Makadem says vote for The One who will bring goodness and light to all nations.
Oyez, "Obama Be Thy Name."
Americans must listen to this sage musical entreaty. Because Kenyans are all about choosing their presidents wisely.
EXHIBIT 1, from the Columbia Journalism Review:
For the next 4,000 words, Rose described a spiral familiar to many Katrina survivors: the “crying jags and fetal positionings,” the “thousand-yard stare,” the inability to hold conversations. “I’d noodle around on the piano, read weightless fiction, and reach for my kids, always, trying to hold them, touch them, kiss them. Tell them I was still here,” he wrote. “But I was disappearing fast.” Finally, Rose described how the anti-depressant drug Cymbalta helped clear away some of that darkness, enabling him to function again.
In few cities would such a personal account have received such prominent play—or elicited more than 6,000 e-mails. But Katrina has transformed how journalism is practiced at The Times-Picayune. It has blurred the lines between those who suffer and those who chronicle that suffering, and has challenged traditional notions of objectivity. And it has become a better newspaper in the process. Every reporter and editor was directly affected by Katrina, and the Picayune’s pages are suffused every day with outrage and betrayal—and with solid reporting. The paper has relentlessly investigated the Army Corps of Engineers, which built New Orleans’s faulty levees, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose response to the storm provoked such frustration and anger. It has sounded the alarm about Louisiana’s disappearing wetlands, which would render New Orleans even more vulnerable during the next hurricane. And it has sent reporters to Japan and the Netherlands to learn what makes successful flood-control systems work.
And the newspaper has bonded with its readers; the Picayune is an essential part of coffee-shop conversation all over the metropolitan area. At a time when dailies are wondering how to hold onto wandering readers, it has proven that a paper that claims a stake in its city’s survival, reporting with passion and voice, can remain an essential part of the civic conversation. “Other papers would kill to be that relevant,” says Harry Shearer, the actor and satirist and part-time New Orleanian.
No Picayune writer epitomizes this transformation more than the forty-seven-year-old Rose, whose journey through breakdown and redemption spurred a communal catharsis. “He bled for us in those columns,” says Linda Ellerbee, the former NBC anchor who covered Katrina’s aftermath for Nick News, a children’s broadcast. “He made it more real than any photo, any TV coverage could—more than Anderson Cooper crying on the air, more than Sean Penn going though the water in his boat. He let us into his dark places. In the old-fashioned, Biblical sense, he bore witness.”
(snip)
In fact, for Rose, recovery was proving harder than just taking a pill. Feeling impatient, he started upping his dose of Cymbalta. Then he added painkillers to the mix. He began withdrawing again, and losing weight, until he weighed what he did in eighth grade. His columns became “unrunnable,” says O’Byrne, who spiked three in a short span of time. “They were just angry, rageful rants against life and the universe.”
Finally, last April, Rose’s wife Kelly arranged for an intervention. She and O’Byrne, along with three neighbors, confronted the columnist at his house and urged him to enter rehab. He didn’t need much persuasion. Not only did Rose understand he was in trouble, but he had an additional incentive: he had also recently learned that he was a bone-marrow match for his sister, who had leukemia. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna save Ellen’s life and then write a story that will blow people away,’” Rose says. “And I get to be the hero.” Rose went into rehab for thirty days, kicking both the painkillers and the antidepressants. But not in time to donate marrow to his sister, who died three months later.
There is no thousand-yard stare on Rose’s face now. He is as transparent in person as his columns are. One afternoon last October, he brought forty copies of 1 Dead in Attic, the best-selling compilation of his post-Katrina columns, to a meeting of the Ladies Leukemia League in suburban Kenner. After a spirited talk—Rose repeatedly mocked the country-club neighborhood where they were meeting—his friend Jacquee Carvin raised her hand. “Is there anything else that you can personally impart to the leukemia society?” she asked. Rose let out a sigh. “You put me on the spot there,” he said.
“Just watch me and you’ll get through it,” Carvin replied.
Rose’s eyes welled up. “My sister died of leukemia in August,” he said, his voice choking. “I was her bone-marrow match, but we never made it.” He told the women about his struggle with depression and slide into drug addiction. “I was killing myself real fast. When I found out I was a bone-marrow donor, I said, ‘I’ve got to fix myself.’ And I went to rehab. So what happened was, instead of saving my sister’s life, she saved mine.”
These days, Rose laughs hard and cries easily. His marriage has dissolved, but he is hanging on. “I’m a work-in-progress,” he says, sitting on his new front porch near Tulane University and watching his children race in and out of the house. “I got these little guys; I gotta take care of them.” And Rose is trying to figure out the next step for his journalism. He’s writing fewer internal monologues and more reported stores. He feels settled into New Orleans for the long haul.
AND NOW . . . EXHIBIT 2, from Sunday's newspaper:
Chris Rose, a columnist for The Times-Picayune, was arrested Friday night and booked in an alleged domestic violence incident.
Rose, 48, caused a disturbance and refused to leave the home of a former girlfriend, according to a New Orleans Police Department report filed in Municipal Court.
Police booked him with a municipal domestic violence charge and disturbing the peace. The police report said Rose refused to leave the woman's home but does not mention physical violence.
The incident took place at about 7:30 p.m. in the 7400 block of Pearl Street, the report says.
Rose allegedly became involved in a dispute with a 34-year-old woman, his former girlfriend, and another man. Responding officers wrote in their report that Rose had a "strong odor of alcohol and slurred speech."
After being booked, Rose posted a $2,800 bond. He is scheduled to appear in Municipal Court on Monday morning, according to court records.
Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss declined to comment on the incident.
Reached Saturday afternoon by telephone, Rose said he "had the poor judgment to try to have a conversation" with the woman when it was clear she did not want to talk.
Rose said the woman's companion took offense and punched him in the mouth. Rose said he then left and was walking home when he was arrested.
NOBODY GETS out of this life unscarred. Nobody gets out of this life without screwing up big-time sometime.
These days, folks seem to be living that concept large in the City Formerly Known as Big Easy. Especially newspaper columnists of the sensitive type.
Like Ringo says:
It don't come easy,YEP. God help us all.
You know it don't come easy.
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,
And you know it don't come easy.
Progressive rock music, which over a year ego started as a fluke, has now blossomed into a format at the Omaha FM radio station, "Radio Free Omaha."
This station replaced KOWH-FM.
It first went on the air Sep. 16, and plans on expanding its program to a 24-hour basis. As of now, air time is 2 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Currently the station has three disc jockeys. From 2 to 7 p.m.. Harold Lee Roberts leads the way with John Mainelli taking over from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. On weekends the station is disc jockeyed by Kevin Clark.
Progressive program music started over a year ago by Tom Donahue. Donahue, who has sometimes been called 'The voice of Hippie' set the format at radio station KSAN-FM in San Francisco. He is currently operations manager at KSAN.
“Radio Free Omaha” was founded by Program and Music Director, Tom Rambler. The station is located at 94.1 megacycles on the FM dial.
As pointed out by him, the advantage of FM over AM stations is is that it gives full sound stereo and is interference-free. Whereas AM stations lack these qualities.
Rambler said, "This type of radio broadcasting is going to replace AM radio." He continued, "The AM radio announcers and commercial aspects are not the same nowadays."
(snip)Rambler said, "The key to the success of the progressive rock format is 'loose' . . . be free to experiment with sound ideas. Music will be the only reason for a listener to 'tune in.'
The announcer will be there to take the listener from one experience to another, in an easy going, mature manner. The announcer should he free to bring new ideas to his listener.
Progressive rock stations are so new that nobody knows, yet, what is what, except the theory that has been formed on the music. Progressive rock music means anything new and exciting . . . rock, country, jazz, classical, blues, R&B, every form of music."
Generally this music cannot be played on AM radio.
The music played from 1 a.m. to 2 p.m. is called guru. A guru is a guide who guides you from one music to another. This music takes on all forms. It is anything non-commercial.
(snip)He said, "Our main support is from the coast. Especially from the 'head shops' and certain Hippie-oriented businesses."
He exuberantly exclaimed, "We're even growing faster than it is on the coast."
Just what type of music does this progressive rock movement air? It covers all areas of music. Some examples are: the Canned Heat, the Steppenwolf, the Wizard of Oz, the Hassels, the Bohemian Vendetta, the Spirit, and the Jiini Hendrix Experience, with many others.
FM stations carrying progressive rock music are: KGRD-FM, Las Cruses, N.M.; KCBH-FM, L.A.; WAVA-FM, Wash.; and many others.
The most elaborating sight is that progressive rock formats are turning many "dead weight" FM facilities into dynamic audience-grabbing radio stations with the potential for making money.
ALAS, Tom Donahue is long dead in San Francisco and, in Omaha, so is KOWH-FM.
OK, I think this Florida anchorwoman is just a little over the top in her questioning of Sen. Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate this presidential silly season.
Obviously, the Obama-Biden campaign thought so, too. Angry over "hostile" questioning, the men who aspire to global leadership knocked over the checkerboard and told the Orlando television station they weren't going to play anymore. Ever.
Nanny nanny boo boo to you . . . you meanies!
I THINK Barbara West went into the interview loaded for bear and looking to turn a political hide into a new rug for her Grizzly Adams cabin somewhere in the Everglades. Two problems with that, though.
One, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.
Two, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.
OK . . . three things wrong with Theodora Baxter's interview with Joe Biden.
One, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.
Two, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.
Three, you can't get top dollar for the pelts of pols with hair plugs. Hey, it's a tough market these days.
OTHER THAN THAT, there wasn't a thing wrong with Baxter's West's interview with Biden for WFTV. It was great television.
Her earlier softball interview with GOP presidential hopeful John McCain, on the other hand, sucked. It was dull. It broke no new ground. It was insipid, and it neither forced the senator from Arizona to stretch intellectually nor defend his positions.
Yuck.
But everything that was horribly wrong about West's interview with McCain was pretty right with her Biden interview. Yah, you betcha West was Ted Baxter in drag for both interviews, but at least her hostile goofy questions of Biden totally took the self-assured senator by surprise and knocked him off balance.
He had to engage the issues . . . even if the issues might have seemed like they were straight out of "if Fox News had bought WJM from Wild Jack Monroe."
Engaging the issues. Intelligently defending one's political positions. Gee, isn't that why we pay career pols like Barack Obama and Joe Biden the big bucks, anyway?
I DID MENTION that Obama and Biden seek to lead the United States of America, right?
Geez, if Joe Biden can't handle an unintentionally comical Florida anchorwoman, and Barack Obama's response is to yell "No fair!" and run home, what's their game plan for the Great Enemy Nations Acid Test the Delaware senator's been warning us about?
Vladimir Putin -- for one -- may be many things, but Ted Baxter he is not. And picking up your marbles and going home is not an option when you're playing with the Big Boys.
This is what it looks like when you turn political slimeballs loose in a video-editing suite.
With its boy in danger of going down in flames in 11 days, the National Republican Congressional Committee is hoping a little GOP firepower -- as in opening the gates of hell with this television commercial -- will save Rep. Lee Terry (or Terry Lee, as he's known to Dick Cheney) in Nebraska's 2nd District.
THE NEWS PEG for Screwtape at play in the editing bay is Democratic challenger Jim Esch's drunken-driving arrest seven years ago. Have you screwed up really bad -- somehow -- in the last decade?
Bet you have.
Do you want your mistakes -- every one of them -- to be held against you for the rest of your life? Especially if you've managed not to repeat them, like Esch, who has had no other DUI arrests?
Is a world without redemption and devoid of new beginnings a world you care to inhabit? Is justice without mercy -- or, indeed, the concept of a debt to society paid in full -- really justice at all?
The Republican ad on behalf of Lee Terry tells me nothing about Jim Esch.
It tells me all I need to know about Terry.
No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.
I strongly urge every one of you to make a Novena and pray the Rosary to Our Lady of Victory between October 27th and Election Day, November 4th. Pray that God’s will be done and the most innocent and utterly vulnerable of our brothers and sisters will be protected from this barbaric and grossly sinful blight on society that is abortion. No woman, and no man, has the right to choose to murder an innocent human being.
An Omaha teenager has been put in foster care after trying to turn herself in under the state's safe haven law.AND FROM THE HILL, it could be an interesting election night. In the Chinese-curse sense of "interesting":
Nebraska's safe haven law protects people from being prosecuted for leaving a child at a hospital, but a parent or guardian didn't leave the child in this case.
Also, a 17-year-old boy was dropped off Wednesday, becoming the 20th youth taken in under the safe haven law.
In the teenage girl's case, according to an affidavit by a hospital social worker that was filed in Douglas County Juvenile Court:
The 16-year-old girl went Friday to Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha to "enact the safe haven law on behalf of herself."
The teen said she had been kicked out of her mother's house the previous night.
She said her mother had pushed and hit her before grabbing her by the hair, pushing her out the door and telling her to "get the hell out of my house."
The teen said her mother has been taking welfare checks and vouchers intended for the teen's 10-month-old son and has refused to buy her necessary items, such as tampons. Two of the teen's aunts have been giving her money for baby supplies and food.
The teen said her mother also had been emotionally abusive, telling the teen she looked like a prostitute and making other demeaning remarks.
The teen and her baby were placed in foster care.
Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest.
Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.
Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors.
Democratic strategists and advocates for black voters say they understand officers wanting to keep the peace, but caution that excessive police presence could intimidate voters.
Sen. Obama (Ill.), the Democratic nominee for president, has seen his lead over rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) grow in recent weeks, prompting speculation that there could be a violent backlash if he loses unexpectedly.
Cities that have suffered unrest before, such as Detroit, Chicago, Oakland and Philadelphia, will have extra police deployed.
In Oakland, the police will deploy extra units trained in riot control, as well as extra traffic police, and even put SWAT teams on standby.
“Are we anticipating it will be a riot situation? No. But will we be prepared if it goes awry? Yes,” said Jeff Thomason, spokesman for the Oakland Police Department.
“I think it is a big deal — you got an African-American running and [a] woman running,” he added, in reference to Obama and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. “Whoever wins it, it will be a national event. We will have more officers on the street in anticipation that things may go south.”
Our Catholic moral principles teach that a candidate’s promise of economic prosperity is insufficient to justify their constant support of abortion laws, including partial-birth abortion, and infanticide for born-alive infants. Promotion of the Freedom of Choice Act is a pledge to eliminate every single limit on abortions achieved over the last thirty-five years. The real freedom that is ours in Jesus Christ compels us, not to take life, but to defend it.
Together with the other Bishops of Missouri I am calling on all the faithful to make this last week before the election a week of prayer for our nation - a week of prayer for the protection of Human Life.
Join me in calling upon Mary in this month of the rosary. In 1571, in the midst of the Battle of Lepanto, when the future of Christian Europe was in the balance and the odds against them were overwhelming, prayer to Our Lady of the Rosary brought the decisive victory. We ask her now to watch over our country and bring us the victory of life.
Opposes an abortion ban.IN CONSIDERING John McCain -- and note, please, that I can abide neither John McCain nor his sleazy campaign -- here's the NETWORK party line:
Supports an abortion ban with exceptions in cases of rape, incest and risk to the mother's life. In 2005, voted against expanding health services and education to reduce unintended pregnancy. Will seek ways to promote adoption as a first alternative to abortion.AFTER LOOKING at this disingenuous piece of goo -- a disingenuous piece of goo with catchphrases like "conscientious Catholics" and "consistent ethic of life" all over it -- I told my Republican wife that I, as an old-fashioned liberal Democrat, was offended. Liberal Democrats used to be a lot of things, but smarmy, devious and disingenuous were not among them.
A "religious" organization that takes money from George Soros (who also funds the pro-abortion, heterodox likes of Catholics for a Free Choice) has no moral right to even utter words such as "conscientious" or "consistent ethic of life." A parish bureaucracy that tries to put an imprimatur on partisan propaganda needs a clear message from the local bishop: Get your heads out of your ass, or find new jobs at Democratic headquarters.
Like THAT will happen. A blind eye can be turned upon any sort of heterodoxy, political shilling or liturgical abuse, it seems, so long as the annual appeal gets pushed hard enough from the pulpit.
After all, at least in Omaha, Feed My Sheep = Pimp My House. Maybe, though, this year's appeal can help add lots of coop space to the chancery and Archbishop Elden Curtiss' pending retirement digs. Maybe all the annual appeals across all of America's dioceses can be tapped to build hundreds . . . thousands . . . millions of coops on church properties all across the land.
All the better to house all those chickens coming home to roost.
ALL THOSE CHICKENS started their long journey when bishops forgot who they were and why they were here. When prelates forgot what they believed and why they should proclaim it, teach it . . . and live it.
Catholics' fowl journey got under way well and good when their leaders lost their faith and proclaimed themselves ever closer to a therapeutic deity. It gained fellow travelers when church bureaucrats decided it might be more "enlightened" to teach children crap and call it catechism.
Er . . . religious education.
Chickens are coming home to roost in a church where Catholics figure they not only don't have to believe any of that mess but don't have to pretend they do, either. In chanceries where, for too long, fat wallets have been equated with a healthy church. And where, for much too long, there has been an unwritten 11th commandment: Do as I say, not as I do.
Chickens are coming home to roost, boys. They will know their shepherds by the chickens*** on the chasubles.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman said this morning that he did not fold under pressure from the governor or other state officials when canceling William Ayers' speech last week.AMERICA: You can't make this s*** up.
He also defended the university's decision to invite Ayers, a 1960's radical-turned-educator, to speak on campus next month before education students.
"Let me be clear: I believe that the invitation to Professor Ayers was appropriate," Perlman said at a press conference. "He is an expert in his field and during the time in February when the invitation was extended, he was not the central figure of a presidential debate."
This morning marked the first time Perlman spoke publicly about the Ayers' flap.
Perlman, who was in China last week, said the university's "threat assessment" group called him Thursday night, after the speech was announced, and spoke of several phone and e-mail threats made to UNL regarding Ayers.
Two professors, including one who is an expert on security and threat assessment, sit on the team. Perlman said the team also consulted with campus police and City of Lincoln police Thursday night.
The chancellor said he was concerned about the safety of Ayers as well as students who may interact with him, and canceled the Nov. 15 speech. Perlman said the university did not announce the cancellation until late Friday because Ayers, who was in Taiwan, needed to be contacted.
Perlman said the Board of Regents and University of Nebraska President J.B. Milliken did not order him to rescind Ayers' invitation to speak.
"If I would have received such an order, I would have resigned," he said.
Levi Stubbs, whose distinctive, rough-hewn voice and pleading vocal style elevated the Four Tops' soul classics to masterpieces, died today at his Detroit home. He was 72.I THINK I'll just leave you with this from Billy Bragg -- his 1991 video of "Levi Stubbs' Tears."
The Michigan native had been in ill health since being diagnosed with cancer in 1995. A stroke and other health problems led him to stop touring in 2000.
Stubbs was born in Detroit and grew up with the future Tops in the city's North End. Stubbs and Abdul "Duke" Fakir sang together in a group while attending Pershing High School, while Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton attended Detroit's Northern High.
The group was formed after the four began harmonizing at a birthday party in 1954. They began practicing the next day and soon began calling themselves the Four Aims, performing mostly jazz standards.
Later that year, the Aims had their first gig, $300 for a week of shows at Eddie's Lounge in Flint. They also performed regularly with Stubbs' cousin, Jackie Wilson.
(snip)
Howard Kramer, curatorial director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted the group in 1990, said the Tops were a polished group by the time Motown came calling. "The Four Tops were seasoned; they had a better world view than kids right out of high school," he told The Detroit News in 2004.
"They also had one lead singer, which gave them more of a distinguishable identity. Levi Stubbs was the first church-based soul shouter and pure singer. James Brown could shout, but Levi was a singer as well. He could invoke so much passion and longing in a voice; he is incredibly expressive."
"Well, I'm rather loud and raw," Stubbs told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. "I don't really even have a style; I just come by the way I sing naturally. When I learn a song, I try to live it as best I can."
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Joe the Plumber, America's most famous tradesman, said Thursday he doesn't have a license and doesn't need one.YEAH, LIKE WE'RE no longer a serious people, informed by a serious press and, therefore, are screwed. Oh, so screwed.
Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, the nickname Republican John McCain bestowed on him during Wednesday's presidential debate, said he works for a small plumbing company that does residential work. Because he works for someone else, he doesn't need a license, he said.
His boss, Al Newell of Newell Plumbing and Heating Co. of Toledo, is a licensed plumbing contractor in Toledo, records show. But anyone working under Newell should have a journeyman’s plumbing license or an apprenticeship license, officials said.
And the county Wurzelbacher and Newell live in, Lucas County, requires plumbers to have licenses, but neither is licensed there, said Cheryl Schimming of Lucas County Building Regulations, which handles plumber licenses in parts of the county outside Toledo.
Wurzelbacher, who voted in the Republican primary and indicated he backed McCain, was cited by the GOP presidential candidate as an example of someone who wants to buy a plumbing business but would be hurt by Democrat Barack Obama's tax plans. Wurzelbacher said he was surprised that his name was mentioned so many other times.
"That bothered me. I wished that they had talked more about issues that are important to Americans," he told reporters gathered outside his home.
Wurzelbacher, 34, said he doesn't have a good plan put together on how he would buy Newell Plumbing and Heating in nearby Toledo.
He said the business consists of owner Al Newell and him. Wurzelbacher said he's worked there for six years and that the two have talked about his taking it over at some point.
"There's a lot I've got to learn," he said.
Josephine the Plumber is fine with Barack Obama's tax plan. She makes only 67 percent of what Joe the Plumber does and won't get above the Democrat's $250,000 soak 'em threshold.
Tough bounce, John the Panderer.
Sarah Palin's husband was warned by a top police official to stop trying to have her ex-brother-in-law fired, it has emerged.
John Glass, Alaska's deputy commissioner of public safety, told him the move could result in "an extreme amount of discomfort and embarrassment," a state inquiry into the so-called "Troopergate" incident found.
Mrs Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, was found by the inquiry to have abused her power in personally pushing for the dismissal of Mike Wooten, a state trooper and her sister's ex-husband.
The report discloses a warning given to Todd Palin by Mr Glass in the spring that disciplinary action had already been taken against Mr Wooten and that "we could not fire him".
"I also warned him that it was going to cause some extreme amount of discomfort and embarrassment for the governor if they pursued this and it should never have become public," Mr Glass told the inquiry. "That it would just be not good for the governor if it continued, and that they needed to cease and desist."
The inquiry was sparked by Mrs Palin's dismissal of Walt Monegan, Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner, which he claimed was due to his refusal to sack Mr Wooten.