Death: It's the solution to everything!

Murder, human experience has shown, generally is a poor method of problem solving.

Unfortunately, the medical profession never got the memo. So, with doctors being a bit thick when it comes to these things, sometimes the Almighty has to resort to a figurative bitch slap to get the message across.

NATURALLY, "stunned" medical professionals can't explain why nature was so uncooperative about acting like it was supposed to. The Daily Mail in London has the "Cheerio! Pip pip, and all that rot!" details of "Yes, we did unsuccessfully try to kill you for your own good in the womb, but it seems to have all worked out in the end":

They say twins share a strong bond - but the one between Gabriel and Ieuan Jones was unbreakable.

When doctors found that Gabriel was weaker than his brother, with an enlarged heart,and believed he was going to die in the womb, his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision.

Doctors told her his death could cause his twin brother to die too before they were born, and that it would be better to end Gabriel's suffering sooner rather than later.

Thriving: Gabriel, right, with his twin brother Ieuan, is now a healthy 12lb 6oz at seven months

Mrs Jones decided to let doctors operate to terminate Gabriel's life.

Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong.

They then cut Mrs Jones's placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother.

But after the operation which was meant to end his life, tiny Gabriel had other ideas.

Although he weighed less than a pound, he put up such a fight for survival that doctors called him Rocky.

Astonishingly, he managed to carry on living in his mother's womb for another five weeks - until the babies were delivered by caesarean section.

Now he and Ieuan are back at home in Stoke - and are so close they are always holding each other's hand.

Mrs Jones, 35, a financial adviser whose husband Mark, 36, is a car salesman, said: "It really is a miracle. Doctors carried out an operation to let Gabriel die - yet he hung on.

"It was unbelievable."

LOOK AT THE PICTURE of those sweet children. Now, which one was supposed to be better off dead, again?

They're not bothering to can the guy because it's the Apocalypse, right?

KUSports.com

"Again, all I would tell you is I have done
an excellent job in every area. It's hard for
the media to know. But what we've done
off the field and what we did on the field,
it's well-documented. We did some positive
things. We haven't sustained it this year."

-- Nebraska Coach 'Excellent' Bill Callahan

He's STILL the coach? Damn!

"Again, all I would tell you is I have done

an excellent job in every area. It's hard
for the media to know. But what we've
done off the field and what we did on
the field, it's well-documented. . . ."

-- Nebraska Coach Bill Callahan

You mean Callahan's still the coach? It's been hours since the game ended.

“I’ve done an excellent job in every area.”

-- Nebraska Coach Bill Callahan

I don't get it

Here's a simple question I don't know I've heard asked before: If it's legitimate for the United States to bomb the Muslim fruitcakes in Iran to keep them from getting The Bomb, why isn't it legitimate to take out the Muslim fruitcakes in Pakistan who already have The Bomb?

And who now are descending into political chaos.

Because the Pakistanis are our "friends"? Because there's nothing we can do without the Pakistanis blowing one up over Tel Aviv, or New Delhi . . . or Baghdad? Because we're feckless? Because there's nothing we really can do to keep the Iranians from getting nukes, either?

Because we don't care to, no matter how grave the threat?

What the hell is going on here?

MSNBC reports on chaos in the home of the "Islamic Bomb":

Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on Saturday, ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, thrusting the country deeper into political turmoil as it struggles to contain spreading Islamic militancy.

Seven Supreme Court judges immediately rejected the emergency, which suspended the current constitution. The government blocked all television transmissions in major cities other than state-run Pakistan TV, and telephone services in the capital, Islamabad, were cut.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto flew from Dubai on Saturday and was sitting on a plane at Karachi airport, waiting to see if she would be arrested or deported, her spokesman Wajid Hasan said after speaking to the former prime minister by telephone from London.
Witnesses said 100 police and paramilitary troops were deployed at her home in Karachi, though it was not immediately clear if they were there as a protective cordon or to apprehend the opposition leader. A bomb disposal squad was also at the scene.

“The chief of army staff has proclaimed a state of emergency and issued a provisional constitutional order,” a newscaster on PTV said, adding that Musharraf would address the nation at 11 p.m. (7 p.m. ET).

A copy of the emergency order obtained by The Associated Press justified the declaration on the grounds that “some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive” and “weakening the government’s resolve” to fight terrorism.

PTV reported that a new chief justice had been appointed to replace Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, whom Musharraf tried and failed to oust this spring, sparking a popular movement against military rule. Judge Abdul Hameed Dogar was sworn in by Musharraf in his place.

The state of emergency follows weeks of speculation that the military leader, who took power in a 1999 coup and later made Pakistan a U.S. ally in its war on terror, could take the step. Military vehicles patrolled and troops blocked roads in the administrative heart of the capital.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged a swift return to democracy in Pakistan and says it is “highly regrettable” the president has declared a state of emergency.

The U.S. and other Western allies urged Musharraf this week not to declare martial law or an emergency that would jeopardize the country’s transition to democracy. Crucial parliamentary elections are due by January, which are meant to restore civilian rule.

I GUARANTEE YOU, if a Western city is taken out by a terrorist nuke, the bomb -- or the technology behind it -- will have come from Pakistan, not Iran.

Think about that.

Someone tell me, what is the trigger-happy Bush Administration doing about the grave threat that is, as opposed to the threat that might be?

Music that matters . . . on the Big Show

Hi, my name's Mighty Favog, and I'm a redneck. Pretty much.

Hi, Favog!

I can't deny it. I am what I am, and I grew up where I grew up . . . blue collar to the core.

On New Year's Eve, I used to go out in the back yard and fire my shotgun into the air at midnight.

No lie.

And I never got arrested. Nobody ever even called the cops.

There you go.

Being that I am who I am, and grew up where I grew up -- in the bottom half of the Deep South -- it's no surprise that country music is embedded in a chromosome somewhere . . . X, Y and CMT, no doubt.

WHICH BRINGS ME to Porter Wagoner, who died last Sunday and who we salute this week on the Revolution 21 podcast. Yeah, it's a bit of a departure from the Big Show's format, such as it is, but the Wagonmaster's departure from this vale of tears leaves those of us who remain all the poorer.

If you love good writing and gripping storytelling, you admire classic country music, and you revere Porter Wagoner, the Thin Man from West Plains, Mo.

At his best, Wagoner was like reading The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor in two minutes and 47 seconds. With steel guitar. And the legendary Buck Trent on electric banjo.

To hear the opening twang und whine of a Porter Wagoner classic is to receive an electric shock to one's Southern soul and be transported back to a Saturday afternoon in front of a 1962 Magnavox console TV, watching the Pantheon of country music parade past you, week by week, in 525 lines of glorious monochrome on Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, WBRZ.

BACK THEN, I tended to regard this as I did my vegetables and red beans and rice. By the time I was an adult, though, I realized not only did I like vegetables and a big plate of red beans and rice, but that they were good for me. And so was Porter . . . and Buck . . . and pretty Miss Norma Jean . . . and Dolly, too.

Those legends of country music, I now know, had become part of the soundtrack of my life . . . had shaped my musical sensibility . . . had wormed their way into who I would become. Their songs were masterpieces of storytelling, exemplars of the craft of writing, paragons of wit and pithiness.

If you want to learn how to write with style, authenticity and a sense of humor, listen to classic country music. Become acquainted with Porter Wagoner.

IF YOU'RE UNDER 25, you have grown up in a world almost totally devoid of the authentic. You have been surrounded by the calculating and the cynical. By panderers and the prurient.

You have been put into a narrow little box and removed from communion with those unlike yourself.

It's a big world out there, and there are giants walking among you, giants now aged and shunted aside. Legends of whom you know next to nothing, all because somebody in a corner office in a corporate headquarters far away has decided there's no more money to be made off of them.

But those forgotten giants know you. They have written about you -- and about someone you know -- because, though their artistic heyday was decades before you came into this world, human nature doesn't really change much as years go by.

Listen to the podcast. Go to a used record store. Step outside your consumer-culture comfort zone.

I dare you.

We're going to reap exactly what we sow

Bad news on the doorstep -- or in the Internet cache, as the case may be -- this morning.

Americans have lost their minds to their libidos and indifference, and their kids are going to be the ones to pay the price. According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, something like 67 percent of Americans are just fine with schools passing out condoms and The Pill to their children.

THIS, OF COURSE, means that 67 percent of Americans have incredibly low expectations of their children and others', and seemingly are OK enough with that lack of trust, lack of faith and lack of hope that they are resigned to . . . well, everyone rutting like it's 1977 and there's only a couple of easily treatable STDs to worry about. That, and no God to remind you that you're better than rabbits in heat.

Here's the depressing news from the AP:

People decisively favor letting their public schools provide birth control to students, but they also voice misgivings that divide them along generational, income and racial lines, a poll showed.

Sixty-seven percent support giving contraceptives to students, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. About as many — 62 percent — said they believe providing birth control reduces the number of teenage pregnancies.

"Kids are kids," said Danielle Kessenger, 39, a mother of three young children from Jacksonville, Fla., who supports providing contraceptives to those who request them. "I was a teenager once and parents don't know everything, though we think we do."

Yet most who support schools distributing contraceptives prefer that they go to children whose parents have consented. People are also closely divided over whether sex education and birth control are more effective than stressing morality and abstinence, and whether giving contraceptives to teenagers encourages them to have sexual intercourse.

"It's not the school's place to be parents," said Robert Shaw, 53, a telecommunications company manager from Duncanville, Texas. "For a school to provide birth control, it's almost like the school saying, 'You should go out and have sex.'"

Those surveyed were not asked to distinguish between giving contraceptives to boys or girls.

The survey was conducted in late October after a school board in Portland, Maine, voted to let a middle school health center provide students with full contraceptive services. The school's students are sixth- through eighth-graders, when most children are 11 to 13 years old, and do not have to tell their parents about services they receive.

(snip)

The 67 percent in the AP poll who favor providing birth control to students include 37 percent who would limit it to those whose parents have consented, and 30 percent to all who ask.

Minorities, older and lower-earning people were likeliest to prefer requiring parental consent, while those favoring no restriction tended to be younger and from cities or suburbs. People who wanted schools to provide no birth control at all were likelier to be white and higher-income earners.

"Parents should be in on it," said Jennifer Johnson, 29, of Excel, Ala., a homemaker and mother of a school-age child. "Birth control is not saying you can have sex, it's protecting them if they decide to."

About 1,300 U.S. public schools with adolescent students — less than 2 percent of the total — have health centers staffed by a doctor or nurse practitioner who can write prescriptions, said spokeswoman Divya Mohan of the National Assembly of School-Based Health Care. About one in four of those provide condoms, other contraceptives, prescriptions or referrals, Mohan said.

Less than 1 percent of middle schools and nearly 5 percent of high schools make condoms available for students, said Nancy Brener, a health scientist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Underlining the schisms over the issue, those saying sex education and birth control were better for reducing teen pregnancies outnumber people preferring morality and abstinence by a slim 51 percent to 46 percent.

Younger people were likelier to consider sex education and birth control the better way to limit teenage pregnancies, as were 64 percent of minorities and 47 percent of whites. Nearly seven in 10 white evangelicals opted for abstinence, along with about half of Catholics and Protestants.

IT, FRANKLY, SPEAKS VOLUMES that Catholics, whose religion bans all forms of artificial birth control, poll no better than most groups -- and way worse than evangelicals -- on the issue. It speaks of a Church than has in practice surrendered to the Cult of the Eternal I Want, preferring to Be Nice than follow its murdered Savior's example of telling the truth and embracing the Cross.

It speaks of Catholics being no different from Protestants or pagans in turning their backs on all that is authentically divine -- as opposed to self-indulgently "divine" in the "I am my own deity" sense -- in themselves and their children. And in others and their children.

As Catholics -- at least those of us who still believe in all that stuff -- we embrace a faith that is both sacramental and incarnational. Let me define these terms, here, starting with "incarnation." According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1 a (1): the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form (2)capitalized : the union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ.

Now, "sacrament" -- again from Merriam-Webster:

1 a: a Christian rite (as baptism or the Eucharist) that is believed to have been ordained by Christ and that is held to be a means of divine grace or to be a sign or symbol of a spiritual reality b: a religious rite or observance comparable to a Christian sacrament.

People who say they adhere to a sacramental and incarnational faith, yet insist upon society throwing monkey wrench upon monkey wrench into the gears of how all that stuff works have, quite simply, forgotten who they hell they are and why the hell they are.

Simply, the Church always has taught that sex is legitimate only within marriage, and that holy matrimony is a sacrament -- an outward sign or symbol of a divine truth, as well as a means of obtaining grace. Within marriage and open to creating new life, sex not only is fun and gratifying, it's holy.

WITHIN MARRIAGE and open to new life, sex is a profound act of giving. Outside of marriage -- outside the sacramental commitment of marriage -- and closed off to new life, sexual intercourse is a profound act of taking. Of using another -- of causing another to sin profoundly -- just so you can get your jollies.

The fact that you're using Ortho, Trojans or both to thwart disease and parenthood only compounds the wrong by subverting how nature's God intended the whole thing to work. In doing this -- and in empowering schools to empower their charges to engage in "safe sin" -- Americans think they're being intelligent, civilized and "enlightened."

Instead, they're just running headlong away from their humanity (not to mention their divinity) and seeking safe haven with the animals. Worse, they're taking their children, and others', with them.

If we still looked at life incarnationally and sacramentally, we'd see that marriage and the children born of marital love is the closest we can come to being as God. That the family is how we model the Holy Trinity -- three persons, forever united, with one proceeding from the pure love flowing from the other two.

But that's not good enough for 67 percent of the American people, bunches of them Catholic. No, we want better than the divine.

WE WANT to eat the fruit of the tree of Trojan. We want to be animals.

And we will . . . we will.

Favogs don't come from nowhere . . . or, 'People are just different down there'

I like to think of this blog, and the Revolution 21 podcast, as an ongoing conversation betwixt you and me. And I like to think -- like most great conversations -- it's about a lot of stuff.

SOMETIMES, I wonder whether y'all know what the hell to make of me. That's been happening to me a lot ever since I moved to Yankeeland with my Yankee bride.

So maybe it's time you know a little more about where I'm coming from, which has a bunch to do with where I come from -- the Gret Stet of Loosiana. Perhaps the best little story that tells the big story of the DNA of us folks hailing from the Gret Stet is one that happened a couple of years before I was born, the story of when the governor went nuts.

FOR WHATEVER REASON, I've been poring through old newspapers and newsweeklies I've saved over the last few decades. I guess, if nothing else, they've ended up as occasional fodder for the blog.

Tonight, I've been going through old issues of Gris Gris, a long defunct Baton Rouge "alternative weekly," while enjoying Eddie Stubbs' tribute to the late Porter Wagoner on WSM out of Nashville. Anyway, I ran across the issue of June 15-21, 1976, which featured "I Remember Earl" as the cover story.

"Earl," of course, is the late Gov. Earl Long. And note that in Louisiana, the four major industries are petrochemicals, tourism, seafood and Uncle Earl stories.

THIS ONE -- Uncle Earl goes nuts -- will tell you a lot of what you need to know about where I come from, and the . . . uh . . . eccentric milieu I stewed in for my first couple of decades or so. The fine story, which I love to reread every so often, is by Bruce Macmurdo:

Probably the most incredible saga of Earl's life occurred in his last years, when the irreconcilable pressures of integration, his own insatiable ambition and his crazy living pace finally took their toll. His famous nervous breakdown of 1959 made nationwide headlines and brought the Eastern press scurrying.

But the actual story of his commitment has never been published. We put together this story from some of the people who were there.

Earl had hit upon the fatal combination of pills and booze. He would take four or five Benzedrine, wash it down with whiskey, and then to calm himself down, he would take a few Milltowns, a barbiturate. By the time this was discovered, a family doctor said the blood vessels in his brain were bursting.

The family, including his nephew U.S. Senator Russell Long, gathered at the mansion to see what could be done. Earl was sitting up in his bed upstairs, screaming for something to drink. Besides whiskey, his favorite drink was grape juice, but when a nurse would bring him that, he'd pour it over his head. He believed that Russell was trying to murder him, so he refused to sleep. He had literally pinched his arms black and blue staying awake for 72 hours.

It was essential to get him to an institution out of state so that the lieutenant governor could take over. The state constitution had no provision for governors going crazy. But no institution anywhere in the country wanted anything to do with the Governor of Louisiana.

Finally the family called on labor leader Victor Bussie for his assistance. When Bussie arrived at the mansion, they called J0hn Seely Hospital in Galveston and told the doctors that they had this sick man, a labor leader named Victor Bussie, who was suffering from such delusions as thinking he was the Governor of Louisiana.

The hospital said bring him over, so the family, Bussie and some state troopers loaded the Governor into a car, much against his will, and drove him to Texas. They brough Earl into the hospital, naked to the waist, covered with grape juice stains and presented him as Victor Bussie, labor leader gone mad.

"G**damit to hell," raged Earl. "I'm not that sonofabitch Bussie. I'm Earl Long, Governor of Louisiana."

The doctors and nurses nodded as if to humor him and filled out the admission papers.

Once that was done and before they left, Bussie felt it only fair to tell them the truth: "You know that is the Governor of Louisiana."

The shocked doctors refused to admit him.

"Sorry about that, but you've got him," said Victor and walked out the door.

"You WERE Dr. Belcher"

Earl managed to get a habeas corpus hearing in Galveston. Brooks Read, former WBRZ news director, recalls that the legendary sheriff from St. Landry, "Cat" Doucette, was at the hearing with the thickest roll of bills Read had ever seen.

"I come to bring my gubner home," said Doucette.

Long was released after agreeing to voluntarily enter Ochsner's [Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans -- R21] Less than 24 hours in Ochsner's and Earl was off heading toward Baton Rouge. Earl was committed again by his family, to Mandeville [Southeast Louisiana State Hospital, located in Mandeville -- R21] this time.

Even in these traumatic conditions Earl's wit didn't leave him. When he was greeted by an administrator at Mandeville, "Hello, I'm Dr. Belcher," Earl shot back, "You were Dr. Belcher."

He observed that most psychiatrists were nuttier than the people they treat. "Mostly self-anointed. It's not unusual in their profession for a man to lose all sense of equilibrium."

David Bell managed to crawl to Earl's window and tap $100 bills wrapped around toothpicks through a screen to the Governor to bribe the guards. Earl didn't have to use the money, as it turned out. He fired the Director of Hospitals, Jesse Bankston, and hired a new man who certified that he wasn't nuts.

Earl was released but he was never the same man. Those around him say he was much more bitter toward his enemies and much more suspicious of others than he had ever been before.

SO, YOU SEE, we folks from Louisiana don't know so much about good government, good schools or good roads, but in such situations, life does offer its tender mercies. We have a lifetime of great stories, a pot full of good coffee and -- usually -- a gut full of tasty vittles.

We're just different. But that's not necessarily all bad, once you get used to it. I am hopeful that, someday, my Omaha-born wife of 24 years will make the adjustment.

And since I did mention the importance of a pot of good coffee, here's another Uncle Earl story to close with -- again, as told by Bruce Macmurdo in Gris Gris:

"Best Coffee in D.C."

A former aide of a U.S. Senator recalled that he was awakened in the middle of the night by Earl, who insisted he come over to his hotel room and have some coffee. "Best coffee in D.C."

When he arrived, he was treated to the sight of a U.S. Congressman and two state legislators using whiskey bottles to pound pillowcases full of the unground coffee beans Earl had bought.

Life in America, B.C.

I was born in prehistoric times, well back in the B.C. . . . Before Cable.

Until I was almost 11, television in Baton Rouge, La., was a matter of two channels, 2 and 9. When we used to have a big outside antenna, it was double the pleasure -- then, we also could get 4 and 6 out of New Orleans.

You had your NBC, and then you had your CBS, for the most part. WBRZ (2) and WAFB (9) duked it out to see who'd carry the best of the comparatively anemic ABC lineup in the capital city.

That's the way television was, Sept. 16, 1971. Two channels, no VCRs, no cable, no educational TV (which was what people who had it called public TV back then). No Internet, because we had no home computers.

AND IT WAS OK, if that was all you knew.

Whatever did we do with ourselves, relatively all alone with our thoughts in a relatively un-media-saturated world?

Well, for one thing, we all had a lot more in common -- parents and kids, young and old, rich and poor, hippie and square. Let me rephrase that. We all had a lot more of a common frame of reference.

You couldn't avoid it. Whether you liked it or not, you couldn't help but have somewhat broad horizons and wide exposure to lots of everything when the wide world of television got crammed into Channel 2 and Channel 9.

2 AND 9. 9 or 2. No 33 yet. And certainly no 27 or 44. The whole wide world on 9 and 2.

I know all the cultural references of my parents' generation, despite the yawning "generation gap" that otherwise divided us. I know Fibber McGee and Molly, and I know to never, ever open their closet door.

But only the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

And maybe that's because I couldn't "infinite choice" myself out of communion with all those unlike myself. Maybe I owe it all to 2 or 9. And 9 and 2.

But not 33.

So much for the proletariat

Click on photo for video.

In the worker's paradise, don't get between rich Chinese developers and their ability to commit capitalism. Is this what Karl Marx had in mind?

CHANNEL 4 television in the United Kingdom reports on the sordid underbelly of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And sordid might be a wholly inadequate word for the abuses ordinary Chinese citizens are suffering so the ironically named "people's republic" can con gullible Westerners into thinking a repressive dictatorship isn't.

Communism: It only works if people are perfect. In which case, why would you need Marxism?


HAT TIP: Mark Shea.

I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind

God rest the soul of Porter Wagoner: Country Music Legend. They don't make 'em like that no more.

FROM MSNBC:

Porter Wagoner was known for a string of country hits in the '60s, perennial appearances at the Grand Ole Opry in his trademark rhinestone suits, and for launching the career of Dolly Parton.

Like many older performers, his star had faded in recent years. But his death from lung cancer Sunday, at 80, came only after a remarkable late-career revival that won him a new generation of fans.

The Missouri-born Wagoner signed with RCA Records in 1955 and joined the Opry in 1957, "the greatest place in the world to have a career in country music," he said in 1997. His showmanship, suits and pompadoured hair made him famous.

He had his own syndicated TV show, "The Porter Wagoner Show," for 21 years, beginning in 1960. It was one of the first syndicated shows to come out of Nashville and set a pattern for many others.

"Some shows are mechanical, but ours was not polished and slick," he said in 1982.

Among his hits, many of which he wrote or co-wrote, were "Carroll County Accident," "A Satisfied Mind," "Company's Comin'," "Skid Row Joe," "Misery Loves Company" and "Green Green Grass of Home."

(snip)

In May, after years without a recording contract, he signed with ANTI- records, an eclectic Los Angeles label best known for alt-rock acts like Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Neko Case.

Wagoner's final album, "Wagonmaster," was released in June and earned him some of the best reviews of his career. Over the summer, he was the opening act for the influential rock duo White Stripes at a sold-out show at New York's Madison Square Garden.

"The young people I met backstage, some of them were 20 years old. They wanted to get my autograph and tell me they really liked me," Porter said with tears in his eyes the day after the New York show. "If only they knew how that made me feel _ like a new breath of fresh air."

(snip)

Country singer and Opry member Dierks Bentley visited Wagoner in the hospice over the weekend and said Wagoner led them in prayer, thanking God for his friends, his family and the Grand Ole Opry.

"The loss of Porter is a great loss for the Grand Ole Opry and for country music, and personally it is a great loss of a friend I was really just getting to know," Bentley said. "I feel blessed for the time I had with him."

Pete Fisher, vice president and general manager of the Opry, said the Opry family of musicians and performers was deeply saddened by the news. "His passion for the Opry and all of country music was truly immeasurable," Fisher said.

"A SATISFIED MIND" was Porter's first No. 1 hit. I think the lyrics pretty much say it all:

How many times have you heard someone say
If I had his money I could do things my way
But little they know that is so hard to find
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind

Once I was waiting in fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for to get a start in life's game
But suddenly it's happened I lost every dime
But I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind

Money can't buy back your youth when you're old
Or a friend when you're lonely or a love that's grown cold
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
Compared to the man with a satisfied mind

When life has ended my time has run out
My friends and my loved ones I'll leave there's no doubt
But there's one thing for certain when it comes my time
I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind

One quarterback sack LSU could live with

Does Les Miles really need any more of this from Ryan Perrilloux, Louisiana State's troublesome sophomore quarterback? WAFB television in Baton Rouge reports:

LSU Head Coach Les Miles said Monday quarterback Ryan Perrilloux and linebacker Derrick Odom will not practice today and the team is preparing as though they will not have them for Saturday's game. Both players are accused of getting into a brawl with bouncers at The Varsity, a popular restaurant and nightclub near the north gates of LSU. As of Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed.

The incident happened early Friday morning. In a police report made public Monday afternoon, the investigating officer says he was called The Varsity at 2:12am Friday after the department "received several calls in reference to a large fight in the rear parking lot." The officer says, when he arrived on the scene, the head bouncer of The Varsity told him he and other bouncers were attempting to clear the club when a small group of black males refused to leave. According to the report, the bouncer told investigators that Perrilloux stated "they weren't going anywhere". The bouncer said that after asking the group to leave several times, the bouncers "began to shove the subjects out of the club's rear exit." Once outside, the bouncer says one of the males, who was not identified by name, threatened to get a gun "to shoot the bar and its workers."

According to the report, both Odom and Perrilloux told the investigating officer that they were in the club when bouncers approached them and shoved them and their pregnant girlfriends. The investigating officer says Perrilloux told him that no one in his group had any weapons and he felt they were "mistreated because of the color of their skin."

IT SEEMS AS IF Perrilloux not only has a way of attracting trouble, but he has a compulsion to chase it down, grab a hold of it and make it his own. This despite the coach already having him on a short leash after an arrest for allegedly using his brother's ID to try to get onto a casino boat.

And we won't mention the scrutiny Perrilloux got from feds looking into a counterfeiting ring.

Does Miles really need to deal with junk like that from a quarterback who apparently just doesn't learn from his legal travails?

Does Miles really want LSU to venture into the territory Miami already has pioneered -- building the Thug U. brand?

IF I'M MILES -- and I'm already adept at rolling the gridiron dice (legally, without the need for a fake I.D.) in pursuit of a national title -- I think I'd be inclined to roll 'em one more time. And bet the house that I could win it all and sleep soundly, too.

Without Perrilloux.

What went wrong? We shouldn't be nearly so screwed up right now.

We Americans never put enough stock in The Fall.

You know . . . Adam, Eve, serpent, apple, exile, mayhem, suffering, death.

WE NEVER PUT ENOUGH FAITH in mankind's ability to screw up, be dumb, grow obtuse, get distracted, misplace our priorities and not work and play well with others. Tomorrow is always another day; the New Jerusalem is always one scientific breakthrough and one measure of enlightenment away. And what's amazing is that, throughout our history, it's been some of the best and brightest American minds that haven't been able to discern the skunk hiding out in the Sweetness and Light aisle.

If you don't believe me, I'll sell you a round-trip ticket from New York to Los Angeles on the guided-missile flight of your choice -- coast to coast in 30 minutes or less. I've heard the landings can be a bit rough, though.

Personally, I prefer the transcontinental high-speed tubes, myself.

WHAT MADNESS am I speaking, you may be asking. It's not really madness, per se, it's just that I have been reading descriptions of what it's like in 2007.

Trouble is, these descriptions were written in 1956 and early 1957 by national and Omaha luminaries, soothsaying compiled by the management of what would become the city's third television station and sealed in the cornerstone of the new KETV studios then going up at 27th and Douglas. And this fall, on the 50th anniversary of Channel 7's taking the airwaves, current management popped the top on the cornerstone and brought the rosy forecasts face to face with the cold, hard facts of life.

In the real 2007.

I WONDER how the spiffy 1957-model portable television fared the 50 years it sat in its Lucite box in the concrete box in the studio wall.

Probably better than most of the predictions, being that vacuum tubes and resistors, capacitors and transformers don't have to worry about The Fall. Or forgetting about the true scope of its reality, or that paradise will remain lost until kingdom come. Here's a sampling of what we were supposed to be like now:

Mari Sandoz. author

With the vast increase in population, particularly semi-urban, the problem of long-range travel had to be solved, made swift and made safe. By the dawn of 2007 this has been well-started, with the fatalities held down to not over one for every ten million passengers carried in the transcontinental high speed tubes. Already passengers from either coast can reach Omaha in less than an hour. Soon the inter-continental tubes will be carrying passengers to Europe and to the blossoming regions of the new Asia with the same dispatch.


Morris E. Jacobs, Bozell & Jacobs advertising

Guided missile passenger flights will be carrying passengers from New York to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. Omaha's Airport Commission will be studying financing for a missile landing field near the city so that Omahans may journey to either coast by missile.

Atom-powered public transportation.

(snip)

Central heating plants will control all public sidewalks in the city. Snow will automatically be melted, and pedestrians will walk within a "box" of heated air.

(snip)

Life expectancy will be increased to 90 years -- as science finds cures for cancer and most forms of heart disease. Complete cure for cancer.

Education will be free and compulsary [sic] through college, and nearly half of America's young people will continue with graduate studies.


The Rev. Carl M. Reinert, S.J.,
president, The Creighton University

Speaking as a clergyman may I dare to predict that after passing through a decade or so of ultra materialistic living we Americans will once again set our sights on things of higher worth and will come to appreciate the greater worth of spiritual values and, though we may find it necessary to defend our position at the cost of many lives, there will stand among us as monuments to our sacred beliefs ancient and new edifices of worship, proclaiming to all who may threaten our borders that it is still God in whom we trust and His Son in whom we find our promise of salvation.

At the turn of the century we will yet be America the beautiful, America the land of progress, America the stronghold of culture -- the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OH, ABOUT THAT . . .

From Entertainmentwise:

Britney Spears is set to outrage the Catholic Church Madonna-style with a raunchy new photo shoot.

The pop wreck has posed for a series of confession-themed pics - like the one below - for new album, Blackout.

Clad in saucy fishnets, Brit is shown posing provocatively in a confessional box as a handsome priest looks on.

An insider reveals to British tabloid The Daily Mirror that in another "very naughty" shot the singer sits on the priests lap.

OK, Omaha TV news aficionados. . . .

This is the city, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The local ABC affiliate, WBRZ, makes one of its cute, young television reporters into a cute, young anchorette, even though none of the locals can decipher her upper-Midwestern accent.

She handles the duties at five with her partner, "freaky Robert Collins." The "freaky" part dates to his previous job as an underground FM deejay. It is 1978. People dress badly.

My name's Favog. I'm in high school.

* * *

TEN YEARS LATER, I moved to Omaha with my Omaha wife, who still can't decipher my mother's South Louisiana accent. On the TV news was a familiar face, a face still seen nearly every day on an Omaha television station.

Who is it? Surely, this isn't a difficult question.

Dat's Loosiana for you!!

According to The Advocate in Baton Rouge, the local school system -- that of dilapidated facilities fame -- is spending the big bucks on a public-relations campaign.

I'll give 'em one for freakin' free. (See above.)

Unbelievable. Here's the story in this morning's paper:

East Baton Rouge Parish residents may see something these days that they might not expect from the parish school system: advertising.

It started in August with print ads in several local publications. In January, the school system will have ads on billboards and radio, all part of a new public awareness campaign.

“We just kind of want to get the public re-acquainted with the school system,” said Chris Trahan, director of communications.

The campaign began in May and June with a public opinion poll. Trahan is already planning future marketing campaigns, focusing on increasing community and parental involvement.

Under the logo “Better Schools. Better Futures,” the ads highlight facts about the school system that people may not know, such as:

The system had 24 national merit finalists in 2006.

Forty-seven percent of the system’s teachers hold advanced degrees.
The system led the state in the number of Nationally Board Certified teachers.
The school system is also increasing its marketing of its specialized programs.

Today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Mall at Cortana, the school system is holding its annual EBR Mania expo for students who want to apply to its 14 magnet schools.

For the first time, gifted-and-talented programs — 14 schools now offer this service, up from nine last year — also will be on hand to showcase their wares.

Also, starting next week, Superintendent Charlotte Placide is holding three community forums to determine what kind of school construction residents want over the next decade. The forums are scheduled at Scotlandville High School at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Woodlawn High School at 6 p.m. Thursday and Capitol Middle School on Nov. 5 at 6 p.m.

School system leaders know they have a tough task re-engaging a community that in many cases bypasses the school system for private schools or suburban public schools.

At its peak in 1976, the parish school system had almost 69,000 students: 60 percent white and 40 percent black. By 1983, in the wake of a controversial busing order, the school had lost 13,000 students, and its racial breakdown was half white, half black.

Out-migration, by both black families and white families, continues, though overall enrollment has stabilized. As of Oct. 1, the school system had 46,341 students, almost 23,000 fewer than 30 years ago. The racial breakdown is now 83 percent black, 11 percent white and 6 percent Asian, Hispanic and other ethnicities.

(snip)

School Board member Jill Dyason, who has two children in public schools, said many residents in her southeast Baton Rouge district don’t even consider public schools. With the end of the desegregation case this past summer, they should reconsider, she said.

“We are in a different place. The instability is not there like it was,” Dyason said. “We now can listen to you, the parents, about your needs. We can try and address it, and we don’t have our hands tied.”

(snip)

Dyason said if people will just step through the door of a public school, even if they have no children in those schools, they can quickly separate fact from fiction.

“I hope that this will encourage people to take a real look for themselves, and not be misguided by the negative perceptions,” she said.

MS. DYASON -- a junior-high classmate of mine -- had better hope that when people step through the door of a Baton Rouge public school, the ceiling doesn't fall in on them.

I feel another ad coming on . . . gratis, of course.

It goes to 11. That's one more, isn't it?

I can't believe I'm doing this on The Big Show, a.k.a., the Revolution 21 podcast. I did it before, but that was at WBRH in Baton Rouge. I was in high school and didn't know better.

And I didn't care.

THE LAST TIME I went this far out on the avant-garde limb probably was 1978, because the B-52's "Dance This Mess Around" doesn't count. Not that that's weird or anything.

Whatever. This might be the end of the podcast . . . or not. But sometimes you just get a wild hair, and there you go.

If this dooms everything, at least I'll have gone out with a bang. Or a thwang, as the case may be.

And I'll be a vicarious guitar hero.

So, what is it folks? Like? Not like?

Am I done dealin'? Too weird for consumption? More, you say?

WELL, WHAT?

Louisiana, help thou mine unbelief

My friend Rod Dreher has written an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal about Louisiana's latest flirtation with reform. There is sweetness and light and new hope down on the bayou; the wunderkind Bobby Jindal will be governor, having won in a primary-election landslide.

Well, you know what I think about this. If you don't, it's here.

At any rate, Rod is "proud and hopeful" that the folks back home apparently did The Right Thing. I am, too. Kind of.

Reading Rod's piece, I delight in how well he channels the deepest emotions of all us Louisiana expatriates. And I want to believe. I want to believe in hope, because my home state . . . it do get into your blood and you can't get it out:

You notice something, though, when Louisianians meet in exile. Everybody misses home and will take any opportunity to talk about it. Our friends--Yankees, mostly--get the biggest kick out of our honest-to-God tales of Bayou State life (political and otherwise). My wife, a native Texan, confessed that when we first started dating, she thought my stories about my homeland revealed me to be a pathological liar--until I took her there to see for herself. She visited my Uncle Murphy's grave and saw the headstone he'd won playing bourré (a Cajun card game) with an undertaker. He had it inscribed with the epitaph: "This ain't bad, once you get used to it."

Louisiana makes a lot more sense if you read the beloved picaresque "A Confederacy of Dunces" as an exercise in literary naturalism. There's simply no place like Louisiana. You will not find more generous and life-loving people anywhere, and Lord knows, you won't eat or drink better. It's hard to get over that. But you do, mostly. Last Sunday, I ran into a couple I know at a Krispy Kreme shop here in Dallas. We got to talking about the Jindal victory, and the wife, a non-native who had fallen in love with Louisiana as a Tulane student, said warmly that she'd love to move back. The husband gave her a look that telegraphed, "Yes, we all would, dear, but come on."

Despite all the sentimental longing for LSU Tigers tailgating and the scent of Zatarain's crawfish boil on your fingers, moving home rarely crosses the minds of us expatriates. Louisiana is a great place to be from, but the sense of fatalism that pervades life there casts doubt on whether it will some day be great place to be. In Louisiana, to be educated is to love the state and hate the state--and, for many, to leave it.

I WANT TO BELIEVE. I do.

I want to believe, despite my memories of voting for the reformer Buddy Roemer in 1987. Despite my memories -- following the news in subsequent years from my new home in Nebraska -- of how Roemer got chewed up and spit out by the unholy trinity of Dat's How We Do Things in Loosiana, Dat's Loosiana for You and, the grafters' favorite, How You Gonna Hep Me Out Here? (wink wink).

I want to believe in the power of one man -- this Brown- and Oxford-educated son of immigrants who came home instead of doing the sensible thing -- to right in a term or two what the natives took 300 years to f*** up this badly.

Dammit to hell, I want to believe. I want to believe. But then I remember this:


And I remember this:

I HAD LEFT LOUISIANA by the time David Duke beat out the incumbent Roemer in the 1991 gubernatorial primary. The onetime Klan leader and Nazi foot soldier damn near became governor of Louisiana, losing to the crook Edwin Edwards but nevertheless winning a majority of the white vote.

Did I mention that, before running for governor, he served in the state House, representing Metairie, a mostly-white suburb of New Orleans?

When Duke made the governor's runoff, I threatened to never set foot in the state again if the little Nazi won. And I was dead serious. I was prepared to boycott everything about Louisiana, cutting off my pittance to the LSU Alumni Association and even giving up my beloved Community Coffee.

I told my parents this . . . my parents, the ardent Duke supporters. And on Election Day, they cast their votes.

For David Duke. I guess that tells you everything you need to know.

HOPE REQUIRES that I believe that the citizenry of my home state wants reform. Wants change. Wants better than what they have now.

I am to believe this of the self-same Louisiana citizenry that tolerates sending their children -- or somebody's children -- to unsafe, crumbling public schools . . . the same Louisiana citizenry that has embraced the likes of David Duke as a mainstream candidate for high office . . . the same Louisiana citizenry that is OK with maintaining a Third World enclave in the richest country in the world.

Compared to that leap of faith, it's kid stuff to believe Jesus Christ makes Himself present flesh and blood, soul and divinity in a wafer of unleavened bread and a chalice of wine. As a Catholic, I most certainly believe the transubstantiation thing.

As a native Louisianian, when it comes to the reality of true reform back home . . . not so much.

This I do know: You can't turn a supertanker heading full-steam for Hades on a dime. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. And if it's the SS Louisiana, a lot of dumb luck, too.

Oh, Louisiana, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Deadheads diddled while California burned

Gee, Louisiana Democrats aren't the only idiots out there running state governments. Imagine that.

Hasta la vista, Ah-nold.

And, as usual, the feds -- specifically the Pentagon -- aren't looking so good themselves. But that's not really news, is it?

MSNBC has the story:

As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.

How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California’s preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record.

It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.

The National Guard’s C-130 cargo planes, among the most powerful aerial firefighting weapons, never were slated to help. The reason: They’ve yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago.

“The weight of bureaucracy kept these planes from flying, not the heavy winds,” Republican U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told The Associated Press. “When you look at what’s happened, it’s disgusting, inexcusable foot-dragging that’s put tens of thousands of people in danger.”

Rohrabacher and other members of California’s congressional delegation are demanding answers about aircraft deployment. And some fire chiefs have grumbled that a quick deployment of aircraft could have helped corral many of the wildfires that quickly flared out of control and have so far burned 500,000 acres from Malibu to the Mexican border.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials have defended the state’s response, saying the intense winds prevented a more timely air attack.

“Anyone that is complaining about the planes just wants to complain,” Schwarzenegger replied angrily to a question Wednesday. “The fact is that we could have all the planes in the world here — we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government — and they can’t fly because of the wind.”

Indeed, winds reaching 100 mph helped drive the flames and made it exceedingly dangerous to fly. Still, four state helicopters and two from the Navy were able to take off Monday while nearly two dozen others stayed grounded.

Thomas Eversole, executive director of the American Helicopter Services & Aerial Firefighting Association, a Virginia-based nonprofit that serves as a liaison between helicopter contractors and federal agencies, said valuable time was lost.

“The basis for the initial attack helicopters is to get there when the fire is still small enough that you can contain it,” Eversole said. “If you don’t get there in time, you quickly run the risk of these fires’ getting out of control.”

I IMAGINE burned-out Californians will encounter similar competence and efficiency from the government -- and their insurance companies -- when it comes to getting roofs over their heads in the coming days, weeks, months and years.

God help them all.