Yelling 'rat' about McCain's 'utter rubbish'

CBS correspondent Allen Pizzey gives a proper name to political posturing and ideological spin in an interview with The Public Eye on CBSNews.com:

Brian Montopoli: It seems that some reporters, including yourself and CNN's Michael Ware, have really taken umbrage at John McCain's recent comments, essentially saying that there are a lot of neighborhoods where you can walk around relatively safely. Is it fair to say that that really sort of bothered reporters?

Allen Pizzey: Yes. It's disgraceful for a man seeking highest office, I think, to talk utter rubbish. And that is utter rubbish. It's electoral propaganda. It is simply not true. No one in his right mind who has been to Baghdad believes that story.

Now, McCain and some other senators were there on Sunday, and they claimed, "Oh, we walked around for a whole hour…and we drove in from the airport. Gosh, aren't we great, we drove in from the airport." Excuse me, Mr. McCain, you drove in in a large convoy of heavily armed vehicles. The last one had a sign on it saying "Keep back 100 yards. Deadly force authorized." Every single car that they approached or passed pulled over and stopped, because that's the way it is. When one of those security details goes by, every ordinary person gets the hell out of the way, in case they get shot.

If he did walk around that market, and I didn't see him do it, and he didn't announce he was going to do it, you can bet your life there were an awful lot of soldiers deployed to make sure that nobody came near that place. He's talking rubbish. And he should not get away with it.

AND THE RIGHT-WING ECHO CHAMBER -- taking a break from smearing CNN's Michael Ware (see for yourself what didn't happen) -- said . . . Neener, neener, cancel, cancel! Liberal! Liberal! Commie-lib bias! Bush-hater! Bush-hater! Bias! Bias!

If I could, I'd go have a drink with Ware. Hell, if I were stuck in that hellhole watching the aftermath of people getting blown to bits every single day with no end in sight and not knowing whether you'd be next and Republican politicians saying how things were improving -- See! -- I would go have many drinks with Michael Ware.

Psalm 149

1 Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints.
2 Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
3 Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.
4 For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.
5 Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds.
6 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand;
7 To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people;
8 To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;
9 To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD.

Would you elect this man dogcatcher?

"I'm in the same position now that I was 12 years ago when I ran for animal-control chief -- which is, personally opposed to cutting up puppies with a chainsaw, don't like it, hate it, would advise that person to adopt out the puppies rather than kill 'em with a chainsaw, hope to find the money for it. But it is your choice, an individual right. You get to make that choice, and I don't think society should be putting you in jail."

Even a stopped clock . . .

It says nothing about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but everything about the West, that a man who vows to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, denies the Holocaust and viciously oppresses his own people is made -- frighteningly often, actually -- to sound downright reasonable by the utter hardness and corruption of Western "civilization."

And it's always our most implacable and vicious enemies who know exactly what's wrong with us when we see nothing amiss, isn't it?

ANYWAY, the latest occasion of us making President Wack Job seem a reasonable man comes with Britain's utter humiliation by Iran. And, of course, the Iranians dealt the UK -- and the Americans -- a coup de grace more strategically devastating in freeing their British hostages than if they'd done something vicious and bloody (as I'm sure the mullahs would have preferred) to those Brit sailors and Marines.

Oh yeah, here's what Ahmadinejad said to look like a regular humanitarian, according to London's Daily Mail:

He had criticised Britain for deploying Mrs Turney, mother of a three-year-old daughter, to the Gulf.

"Why was the difficult task of searching the seas given to a mother thousands of miles from home?" he demanded.

"Why is there no respect for motherhood, for the love of her child? How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don’t they respect family values in the West?"

According to one official Iranian website Mrs Turney "burst into tears" as an interpreter translated Ahmadinejad’s words about her.

YEP. Iran's cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs commander in chief gets to wax eloquent -- and, really, he did -- about the sanctity of motherhood and family values, while George Bush and his Mini Me AG defend the "non-torture" torturing of prisoners at Gitmo (and everywhere else the Stars and Stripes hangs in shame) and call Geneva Convention protections "quaint."

Dear Diary: The Bilderberger conspiracy

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2002

Dear Diary,

You won't believe this. Actually, you will, being my diary and all. But I digress . . . .

The other day, the development guy -- fresh back from taking a bunch of big donors (and potential big donors) on a "pilgrimage" down to Total Catholic Radio Network's headquarters and shrine -- stopped in the production room to tell me about the trip. Particularly about this "great" presentation "Father Rafe" gave them.

You know, "standard" Catholic stuff about the move toward one-world government through history. He gave me an outline Father had put together on the subject, replete with an accounting of the conspiratorial machinations of the Bilderbergers and Masons and Trilateral Commission. (I don't know how the United Nations and black helicopters got left out, but there you go.)

The thought occurred to me that this never got mentioned in my religious instruction, or in the Catechism, or in any conciliar documents, or in most Catholic academic and social discourse . . . guess it's just special knowledge you get from Total Catholic Radio Network insiders. Anyway, he said it's interesting reading and that I ought to look it over in my spare time.

Well, I did. Enough to recognize standard wackadoodle John Birch Society boilerplate when I see it.

So, today the development guy comes back to see what I thought of Father Rafe's handiwork. Well, say I, it looks to me to be your standard Bircher conspiracy theorizing.

"But Father Rafe has been researching this for 50 years," he says.

"So have the Birchers," I reply.

What the hell kind of wacko Catholic world do I find myself in the middle of here? And THIS is the stripe of folk -- in general, I assume -- who have a hold of the reins of "orthodox" Catholic media in this country?

I keep telling my wife and close friends about the strange things going on in this peculiar world I inhabit, but no one will believe exactly how wacky it really is. They think I'm putting the worst interpretation on it. That is certainly possible, but the more and more I see, frankly, the less and less probable that becomes.

It absolutely appears that I have to get out of here, but not until I have another gig. While I am here, though, I am going to do whatever I can to counteract this crap, but I feel that I'm becoming more and more marginalized every day.

I know God must have some purpose in this but, thus far, He hasn't clued me in on what it is.

Psalm 108

A Song or Psalm of David.

1 O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory.
2 Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early.
3 I will praise thee, O LORD, among the people: and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations.
4 For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds.
5 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: and thy glory above all the earth;
6 That thy beloved may be delivered: save with thy right hand, and answer me.
7 God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.
8 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the strength of mine head; Judah is my lawgiver;
9 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe; over Philistia will I triumph.
10 Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into Edom?
11 Wilt not thou, O God, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts?
12 Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.
13 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.

Baghdad on the Bayou

NBC's Martin Savidge, the network's intrepid Man in New Orleans, reported Tuesday on the latest outrage in the City That We Forgot:

Since Friday, eight people have been murdered in New Orleans despite the addition of National Guard troops, state police and Federal agents. And the killing is done at point-blank range in broad daylight, leaving neighborhoods fearful and police frustrated.

What amazes even federal investigators about New Orleans crime isn't the violence, but the silence.

"A comment from an FBI agent today is that they can't believe that citizens won't say anything," New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley says.

Four men were killed Monday alone, bringing the number of murders in the city so far this year to 53. That compares to just 17 for the same period last year. Yet police are frustrated by crime scene after crime scene where many people watch but nobody talks.

"These aren't random incidents," Riley says.

Authorities say drugs and revenge motivate much of the killing.

"Enough has been enough," says Rev. Robert Brown.

Some suggest desperate Hurricane Katrina survivors are turning to drug trafficking for income.

"Of course it's going to get worse until they treat poor people better," Brown says.

But University of New Orleans criminologist Peter Scharf says the answer may be much more complicated, and so far has eluded even a beefed-up federal presence.

"Things that everyone thought would work, didn't," Scharf says.

HERE'S THE DEAL, and maybe this will make you (and George Bush) give a . . . darn about the city that was dying before the Corps of Engineers drowned it: At some point, even the hard-core gangstas and other horribly desperate people of "Da Slums a Noo Orluns" will come to themselves -- probably -- and will figure that there has to be more than this crap.

That life must have some meaning somewhere, somehow.

In our previous civilizational operating paradigm, these folks would come to Jesus and there would be a revival, and there would be hope. But as is happening increasingly in our overcrowded prisons -- and is made a more certain bet by the Christian church's embrace of relevance at the expense of Jesus Christ (Remember Him?) -- these desperate folk one day might find meaning and worth in Allah and his messenger, Mohammed.

And the imams who show them the way may not be "peace-loving Muslims" at all. They may be radical Wahabbist, kill-em-all-and-let-Allah-sort-'em-out Muslims.

And we will have Trouble, right here in River City!

With a capital "T"

That rhymes with "B"

And that stands for BOOM!

I'm just sayin'.

The change has come, Dad's under my . . . nostril?

Now, are you positive that the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards wasn't in Cannibal and the Headhunters for a while?

Or, to reference an earlier post, D-E-V-Blow. From MSNBC:

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

“He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said, adding that “it went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

Richards’ father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Richards, one of rock’s legendary wild men, told the magazine that his survival was the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him.

“I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it’s a way of life,” he was quoted as saying.

“I’ve no pretensions about immortality,” he added. “I’m the same as everyone ... just kind of lucky.

ON THE OTHER HAND, even the depraved can be right about music. Says Richards:

“Everyone’s a load of crap,” he said. “They are trying to be somebody else, and they ain’t being themselves. Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party? Load of crap, load of crap. Posers, rubbish.”

The Social Darwinism Chronicles: Life Unworthy of Medical Treatment

From The Associated Press:

Frustrated by the U.S. health care system, an Oklahoma doctor being treated for colon cancer decided to write an essay for a medical journal.

But it’s not his own care that upset him. It’s the plight of the uninsured — specifically a patient of his who was the same age, had the same disease, yet couldn’t afford the treatment he got.

Today, Dr. Perry Klaassen, 67, is still working part-time in an Oklahoma City clinic, six years after his diagnosis. Shirley Searcy, his patient, died 18 months after hers.

Klaassen’s treatment included surgery two days after diagnosis and costly new drugs that have kept him going despite cancer that has now spread to his lungs, liver and pelvis.

“I received the most efficient care possible. I was 61 years old and had good group health insurance through my workplace,” he wrote in the essay.

The doctor didn’t name Shirley Searcy in his March 14 article. After all he’d been through, he couldn’t remember her name. But for days he dug through old medical files searching for her identity after he was interviewed by The Associated Press. He realized he could shine a more powerful light on the plight of the uninsured if her story could be told more fully.

And it is a story that’s far from unique. The widowed mother of eight grown children, Searcy had little money. When she began to sense she might be sick, she put off going to the doctor for a year because she knew she couldn’t pay the medical bills. Deeply religious, she put her faith in God, according to her family.

By the time she saw Klaassen, her cancer had spread from her colon to her liver. She had surgery but rejected chemotherapy.

“She just really didn’t feel like she wanted to endure what that would cost physically or financially,” said her daughter-in-law, Karen Searcy.

Shirley Searcy died Dec. 22, 2003, about 18 months after her diagnosis.

While recent attention has focused on high-profile cancer patients like Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, who have the means and insurance to pay for the best treatment, there are tens of thousands of tragic, unseen cancer cases like Searcy’s — people whose lack of insurance stops them from seeking care when they should.

An estimated 112,000 Americans with cancer have no health insurance, according to Physicians for a National Health Program.

And that’s only cancer. Among the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance, there are countless people with chronic and developing health problems who are risking the same kind of fate that took Shirley Searcy’s life.

Klaassen’s essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association illustrates the issue “right there up close and personal,” said editor Dr. Catherine DeAngelis.

It underscores that insurance can be a life or death issue, said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy research organization. “The cost of health insurance has been going up faster than people’s incomes,” he said.

U.S. spending on health care totaled $2 trillion last year and economists in February projected it will nearly double by 2016.

Said DeAngelis: “We have the richest country in the world and I think the poorest health delivery system in the developed world. It’s really sad.”

Klaassen no longer sees patients but works part-time as medical director of an Oklahoma City group that recruits doctors to give free care to needy patients.

CREATOR GOD, WE JUST WANT to praise you and glorify your holy name -- praise you, praise you, Lord -- for your daughter Shirley Searcy, who gave her life, Lord, to save us from the evil of socialized, communistic medicine . . . from the Satanic plot of national health insurance.

Jesus, we here in Colorado Springs and Washington and Lynchburg and Virginia Beach just want to glorify your holy name right now, and thank you for a Republican administration that saves us from creeping statism and thank you, Lord -- Hallelujah! Hallelujah, Lord! Praise you, Jesus! -- we just want to thank you, Lord, right now, for the meek who forswear their inheritance of the land, Lord, who sacrifice their claim on just wages or worker benefits and insurance, Lord, so your people can gather here today, coming in separate SUVs, Jesus, and listening to Your Holy Word on our individual iPods -- praise you -- all bought at reasonable prices, Lord, because the American working class have heeded your Holy Spirit, Lord, and gotten out of the way of outsourcing and Always Low Prices.

Creator God, we just thank you for this today. We just want to beseech you right now to keep the socialists away from our suburban developments, Lord, and keep our insurance covering our little blue pills, Yahweh, so that we might heed your command to be fruitful and multiply, Lord, just as soon as we've paid off the speedboat, Jesus, and as soon as the market hits the target range, Jesus. Lord, we beseech you that the earnings of our portfolios continue to increase according to thy word, and that you provide our CEOs with a bounty of desperate undocumented Mexicans plenteous as the stars in the sky, Creator God, so that labor overhead might decrease as investor value increases according to Wall Street forecasts, Lord.

Lord God of Israel, save our conservative Republican lawmakers from the abortion-loving and homosexual-kissing liberal demons who threaten our American Way of Life and the Global War on Terror by denouncing torturing those you curse until they give up where the dirty bomb is hidden, Jehovah God, and bring the A-rab hordes to put down their truck bombs and buy our merchandise, which art now made in China.

And we just pray, Lord of Hosts, that if it is thy sovereign will that al Qaida does not give up the dirty bomb location after penile hot wiring and waterboarding, Yahweh, that You will just let it blow up in New Orleans, Lord, so that it will complete thy judgment against the murderous Negroes who have not glorified Your name. Amen.

Psalm 11

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1 In the LORD put I my trust: How say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?
2 For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.
3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

We are Devo.

D-E-V-O. As in devolution. Particularly cultural devolution.

To put it in a religious context (specifically, a Catholic religious context), let's see what passed for hymnody in the 12th century (as translated from the original Latin in the 17th and 19th centuries):

O Sacred Head, Surrounded

O sacred head, surrounded
by crown of piercing thorn!
O bleeding head, so wounded,
reviled and put to scorn!
Our sins have marred the glory
of thy most holy face,
yet angel hosts adore thee
and tremble as they gaze

I see thy strength and vigor
all fading in the strife,
and death with cruel rigor,
bereaving thee of life;
O agony and dying!
O love to sinners free!
Jesus, all grace supplying,
O turn thy face on me.

In this thy bitter passion,
Good Shepherd, think of me
with thy most sweet compassion,
unworthy though I be:
beneath thy cross abiding
for ever would I rest,
in thy dear love confiding,
and with thy presence blest.

Words: Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877), 1861;
after Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153);
and Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676)

NOW, LET'S SEE what passes for hymnody today:

Here in This Place (Gather Us In)

1.
Here in this place, new light is streaming,
now is the darkness vanished away.
See, in this space, our fears and our dreamings,
brought here to you in the light of this day.
Gather us in - the lost and forsaken,
gather us in - the blind and the lame.
Call to us now, and we shall awaken,
we shall arise at the sound of our name.

2.
We are the young - our lives are a mystery,
we are the old - who yearn for your face.
We have been sung throughout all of history,
called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in - the rich and the haughty,
gather us in - the proud and the strong.
Give us a heart so meek and so lowly,
give us the courage to enter the song.

3.
Here we will take the wine and the water,
here we will take the bread of new birth.
Here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.
Give us to drink the wine of compassion,
give us to eat the bread that is you.
Nourish us well, and teach us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true.

4.
Not in the dark of buildings confining,
not in some heaven, light years away,
but here in this place, the new light is shining;
now is the Kingdom, now is the day.
Gather us in - and hold us forever,
gather us in - and make us your own.
Gather us in - all peoples together,
fire of love in our flesh and our bone.

Words and music: Marty Haugen (b. 1952)

And you know it gets even worse than this.

HOW IS IT, EXACTLY, that we have gone from mature spiritual reflection -- in an age when we were years and years from figuring out the gunpowder thing and the vast majority of Western Civilization was yet utterly illiterate -- to self-centered, self-congratulatory adolescent glop in our modern age of democracy, widespread literacy, advanced science and landing spacecraft on distant planets?

We are Devo. D-E-V-O, with pride coming before the fall.

O! What a city we have!

Omaha moon, keep shining on Omaha,
keep shining down; we'd like it if you
wouldn't shine on Council Bluffs

-- Omaha Moon from Omaha!
by Stan Freberg, 1957

OK, this article on the metamorphosis of Omaha into a "happening" place ran last Sunday (March 25) in The New York Times -- T Style Magazine to be more precise.

Now, I had heard the article was coming, and I could have linked to it, like, when it first came out but that would have been the kind of rubish hyperventilation folks who read T Style Magazine would expect from us yokels out on the prairie, wouldn't it? No . . . it is far better to wait eight days to impart the kind of nonchalance, nay, insouciance befitting creating an attitude that we really don't care whether we're regarded as cosmopolitan enough for East Coast swells.

ANYWAY, if you're not from around these parts and might have some interest in our humble city of 425,000 (and metro area of 813,000), here's an excerpt from the piece, written by Omaha native and New York literary (and public radio) mainstay Kurt Andersen:

For the past three decades, I’d returned to Omaha once every year or two strictly to visit my parents, so my experience of the city had been pretty much limited to drives to and from the airport. But around 2003, I started hearing from New Yorkers that a kind of cultural awakening was afoot in my hometown.

Omaha?

It isn’t yet Seattle or Austin, but it’s no longer some kind of Great Plains version of Hartford or Fresno, either. “Alternative” and “independent” aren’t just marketing catchwords in Omaha. The blossoming is real and multifarious. It didn’t happen overnight. And it certainly didn’t happen as a result of any grand master plan by the city establishment. Rather, it has been the improbable result of the hard work of a few local heroes.

In 1968 I turned 14 and underwent the classic apostasy of the day, transforming from a stamp-collecting, Nixon-campaign nerd to a pot-smoking, antiwar muckraker. A certain grotty block downtown on Howard Street instantly became my countercultural ground zero. The neighborhood, known as the Old Market, was excitingly urban, with faded commercial signs painted on the sides of unoccupied 19th-century warehouses, entirely unlike my leafy “Leave It to Beaver” neighborhood. In one building, an art gallery and a head shop had opened. Next door was a jerry-built movie theater called the Edison Exposure, where that fall I saw my first art film — the regional premiere of Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls.” Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and to be young was very heaven.

When I left Omaha in the ’70s, the cool shops and restaurants extended only a hundred yards from the epicenter. The toehold of hip seemed doomed to remain only a toehold. If that. In 1988, as architectural preservation had become America’s happy default mode, Omaha gave ham-fisted urban renewal one last gasp: east of the Old Market, 27 fine old buildings were demolished. I sort of gave up on the place. But during the decade I wasn’t paying attention, the tide turned. The city was persuaded not to wipe away several more blocks of warehouses south of the Old Market district to build its convention center. And in the ’90s, the area quadrupled in size — building by building, organically.

Some of my boyhood outposts of urban cool remain: the Antiquarium bookstore, Homer’s Music and Gifts, M’s Pub, the French Café (which in 1969 called itself the best French restaurant between Chicago and San Francisco). Dozens of new restaurants and shops have joined them, including the charmingly un-American bistro La Buvette and Jackson Street Booksellers, my all-time favorite used-book store in America. Soon more than 1,000 new condominiums will enter the market, mostly converted lofts, but also a handsome new low-rise development (called, inevitably, SoMa, for “south of the Market”). From one building hangs a marketing banner. “Model,” it says on the front, and on the back, “Carpe Diem.”

The main reason the Old Market wasn’t wiped away is that a single family happened to own most of the real estate. That, and the fact that the family members are not, shall we say, typical Omahans.

Sam Mercer arrived in 1866 and bought up swaths of the city. His grandson, also named Sam and now in his 80s, has overseen the family interests mainly from France. On one of his regular reconnaissance trips in 1964, Cedric Hartman, a young Omahan who had gone to New York but returned and who later became a designer, suggested to Mercer that he turn his defunct warehouses into a district of stylish shops, restaurants, theaters, apartments. Back then, that was a bizarre, visionary notion; SoHo did not yet exist.

Mercer’s son Mark, who had grown up on the East Coast and in Switzerland, soon moved to Omaha — temporarily, it was thought, to help get the project on its feet. Forty years later, he and his German-born photographer wife still live in the Old Market, although they keep a Paris apartment. Mark Mercer is a distracted, Woody Allenish man. He had no training in urban planning. “I did read Jane Jacobs,” he said. “It seemed obvious. But the real businesspeople didn’t think it would work.”

Hartman, meanwhile, became a renowned furniture and lighting designer. “In this deadly situation” — Omaha back in the day, he means — “you could get work done if you had an adventurous mind.” His headquarters is a 79-year-old former factory on the Old Market’s edge. “We were deadly bored with this town, and I wanted to make it better,” he said. “The Mercers haven’t messed it up. And Ree Schonlau has been marvelous.”

Schonlau, 61, grew up in a working-class neighborhood near the Old Market with dreams of being an artist. At the University of Omaha (now the University of Nebraska), she explained, “all my professors said, ‘If you’re gonna make art, you’ve gotta leave town.’ ” After spending time in New York, she returned to Omaha in 1971, leased space for a gallery in one of the Mercers’ buildings — 12,000 square feet, $300 a month — cut up her surplus footage into artists’ studios and discovered her métier: not making art but enabling it. She turned the former Bemis Bag factory into a warren of studios and invited artists from around the world to come for residencies. Today more than 600 apply each year, and the Bemis Center occupies 100,000 square feet in two renovated warehouses. It has become, in effect, Omaha’s museum of contemporary art. Schonlau now spends most of her time overseeing the business of her husband, the Japanese-born sculptor and painter Jun Kaneko. The couple are turning another building into a “creativity museum” that’s to open in 2009.

For young Americans, Omaha is probably best known as the home of a whole bunch of indie rock musicians — members of the Faint, Cursive, the Good Life, Tilly and the Wall, Azure Ray and, most famously, Bright Eyes. They play in one another’s bands, produce one another’s records and nearly all release CDs through the local Saddle Creek label. Robb Nansel dreamed up Saddle Creek as a University of Nebraska business major; it was his thesis project. He grew up in Omaha and attended Creighton Prep, the local Roman Catholic high school. Many Saddle Creek musicians, including Conor Oberst (a k a Bright Eyes), also went to Prep, as it’s called. As did the director Alexander Payne, who has set and filmed three movies here.

“We’re just sort of doing things the way we want to do them,” Nansel said. Because Omaha is a cheap place to live — a 1,300-square-foot loft in the Old Market rents for $575 a month — he and his musicians are spared the financial anxiety of places like New York and L.A. “I like to believe in the concept of putting out a record because it’s good,” he said, “not to sell records.” Saddle Creek releases six albums a year and has repeatedly turned down offers to be acquired by a big label.

And it has recruited musicians from elsewhere to join its happy few, its band of brothers. Stefanie Drootin, now 28, was on tour with her L.A. band in 1996 when their van broke down in Omaha. She started playing with the Good Life and Bright Eyes and moved in with a bandmate. The former Athens, Ga., band Azure Ray — Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink — fell in love with Oberst and Todd Baechle of the Faint, respectively, and moved to Omaha. “It was just a boy-based decision,” Fink joked.

The Internet has made it possible for people to pursue serious creative careers in a place like Nebraska, but also anywhere else. Why has it worked so weirdly well in Omaha? Beyond talent, it’s because the musicians have longstanding bonds to one another and the city. “We were all in it together,” Nansel explained, and “nobody wanted to be the first to throw in the towel.”

In short, Omaha’s cultural moment is all about the application of the great Midwestern bourgeois virtues — thrift, square dealing, humility, hard work — to bohemian artistic projects. On this, everyone agrees.

“People here do business on a handshake,” said Cary Tobin, the Bemis Center’s residency program director, who was “dying to get out of here” when she graduated from high school in 1988 but returned after living in Italy and Seattle for a decade. Sarah Wilson was the assistant music editor for Interview in 2005 when she met Tim Kasher (Cursive, the Good Life) in New York. He convinced her to come to Omaha with him to write her novel. “They are workaholics,” she says of the Saddle Creek musicians.

AND IF YOU WERE WONDERING about what audience the Times aims for with T Style Magazine, here's jes' a leeeeetle hint:

Good lodging options in Omaha are fairly limited. The most stylish place is the Magnolia Hotel, which has rooms with fireplaces in a 1924 neo-Classical-style building (1615 Howard Street; 402-341-2500; doubles from $169).

The old Aquila Court (now known as the aforementioned Magnoilia Hotel) is magnificent, to be sure. But how snobbish and particular does one have to be to consider good lodging options "limited" when, just downtown, one will find a Hilton, a Hilton Garden Inn, a Courtyard by Marriot, a Doubletree and an Embassy Suites.

And I know I'm leaving something reasonably swanky out. As I said, that's just downtown.

Good Lord.

Psalm 113

1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise, O ye servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD.
2 Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.
3 From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD’S name is to be praised.
4 The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like unto the LORD our God, who dwelleth on high,
6 Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!
7 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;
8 That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.
9 He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.

Psalm 47

To the chief Musician, A Psalm for the sons of Korah.

1 O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.
2 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.
3 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.
4 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.
5 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.
8 God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.
9 The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.

Psalm 120

A Song of degrees.

1 In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.
2 Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.
3 What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?
4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.
5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!
6 My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace.
7 I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

What's in that box, Pandora?

Time reports that many in the Middle East figure an all-out war between the United States and Iran is inevitable. American sources, meanwhile, ponder another earth-shaking question: What the hell IS the deal with Paris Hilton maybe getting sent to the Big House?

Ah, Pandora prepares her biggest shindigs when we're otherwise preoccupied . . . .

But -- whether an isolated incident . . . a freak skirmish or the equivalent of the 1939-40 "Phony War" in Europe before all hell broke loose -- American and Iranian forces already have fought at least one pitched battle on the Iraqi frontier:

The soldiers who were there still talk about the September 7 firefight on the Iran-Iraq border in whispers. At Forward Operating Base Warhorse, the main U.S. military outpost in Iraq's eastern Diyala Province bordering Iran, U.S. troops recount events reluctantly, offering details only on condition that they remain nameless. Everyone seems to sense the possible consequences of revealing that a clash between U.S. and Iranian forces had turned deadly. And although the Pentagon has acknowledged that a firefight took place, it says it cannot say anything more. "For that level of detail, you're going to have to ask the [U.S.] military in Baghdad," says Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "We don't know anything about it."

A short Army press release issued on the day of the skirmish offered the following information: U.S. soldiers from the 5th Squadron 73rd Cavalry 82nd Airborne were accompanying Iraqi forces on a routine joint patrol along the border with Iran, about 75 miles east of Baghdad, when they spotted two Iranian soldiers retreating from Iraqi territory back into Iran. A moment later, U.S. and Iraqi forces came upon a third Iranian soldier on the Iraqi side of the border, who stood his ground. As U.S. and Iraqi soldiers approached the Iranian officer and began speaking with him, a platoon of Iranian soldiers appeared and moved to surround the coalition patrol, taking up positions on high ground. At that point, according to the Army's statement, the Iranian captain told the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers that if they tried to leave they would be fired on. Fearing abduction by the Iranians, U.S. troops moved to go anyway, and fighting broke out. Army officials say the Iranian troops fired first with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, and that U.S. troops fell further back into Iraqi territory, while four Iraqi army soldiers, one interpreter and one Iraqi border guard remained in the hands of the Iranians.

The official release says there were no casualties among the Americans, and makes no mention of any on the Iranian side. U.S. soldiers present at the firefight, however, tell TIME that American forces killed at least one Iranian soldier who had been aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at their convoy of Humvees.

BACK TO THE U.S.-IRAN WAR QUESTION, here's the assessment of the "smart money" in the region:

Add this to the rest of the bad news coming out of the Gulf, and things look pretty grim. The "surge," despite what some claim, has barely made a dent in the violence in Iraq. Our Arab allies are jumping ship, apparently as fast as they can. At the opening of the Arab summit on Wednesday, Saudi King Abdallah accused the U.S of illegally occupying Iraq. The day before, the leader of the United Arab Emirates sent his foreign minister to Tehran to tell the Iranians he would not allow the U.S. to use UAE soil to attack Iran. That leaves us with Kuwait and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to face Iran.

I called up an Arab Gulf security official and asked him what he thought about it all. He said the view from his side of the Gulf is that if Iran does not soon release the Brits, a war between the U.S. and Iran is in the cards. "I for one am taking all the cash I can out of my ATM," he said before hanging up.

Oh, ah'm dyin', Forrest . . .

Nah, it just feels that way. On death's door and all that.

But your Mighty Favog rallies from his virus-infested sickbed to do another stellar episode of the Big Show . . . and he does it all for you.

THUD.

* * *
GUEST FAVOG HERE . . . or more accurately, Mrs. Favog. Our Mighty One seems to have passed out from the crud that's taken hold of him this week.

But, to toss a cliche your way, the show must go on.

And it's another exquisite offering this week -- I've seen the playlist. He saves the best for last.

Enjoy -- and have a blessed Holy Week.

(OH . . . by the way . . . is there a doctor out there???)

P.S.: Pod-O-matic seems to be having one of its occasional meltdowns, so you might have to wait a bit to get to the show. But you know what they say about all good things . . . .

Psalm 130

A Song of degrees.

1 Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.
2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
3 If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
5 I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
6 My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.
7 Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
8 And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Circuit City unplugs morality component

Here's all you need to know about laissez-faire capitalism in America today.

From the Financial Times:

Circuit City, the US consumer electronics retailer, said Wednesday it would cut about 8 per cent of its US store staff and replace them with cheaper hires, in a move that underlines the tensions facing US retailers as they struggle to keep down staffing costs.

From Business Week:

Investors cheered the cost-saving moves. Circuit City shares rose 1.5% to $19.16 per share on the New York Stock Exchange March 28.

ACTUALLY, I'M RATHER SURPRISED that Circuit City -- to maximize its labor "efficiencies" -- didn't just fire everybody, then replace them all with illegal aliens from Mexico. That way, you could pay them below minimum wage -- What, they're going to complain to the Labor Depratment? -- and their health insurance would be 100-percent covered by the health-care providers.

There would be a slight experience and language problem but, hey, it's not like Circuit City is terribly worried about such niggling details, being that it's already canning its top-shelf workers. And if you have a problem with Español, that's only because YOU ARE A RACIST!

Then again, why am I giving these jerks ideas?

MSNBC's Eve Tahmincioglu explains it all:

It’s all part of a plan to save money and cut costs for the big-box chain, which also reduced sales growth expectations this week. By shutting stores, outsourcing its IT department and cutting 9 percent of its 40,000 store employees, the company hopes to save $110 million in its current fiscal year and $140 million next year, says Circuit City spokesman Jim Babb.

“The essential need we have was to bring expenses of our business into line with current marketplace realities. We acknowledge this is a painful step,” says Babb, referring to the firings.

Indeed, it’s probably a major ouch for workers who are being pink-slipped not because of their performance but solely because they were making more money than the company deemed appropriate. “These were folks who through no fault of their own were being paid more than what the hourly wage range was in their markets,” Babb explains.

How they ended up earning the above-market wages is a puzzler, because Circuit City’s managers presumably approved the pay levels.

I asked Babb if store managers were just too generous in compensating their workers, and after a long pause he said: “I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”

Babb would not comment on how much Circuit City workers make or what these new lower-wage employees would be offered.

Circuit City employees who included their salary information on Vault.com reported making anywhere from $8 to $15 an hour for sales work. The federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, although many states require a higher minimum. Congress is moving ahead on a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over two years.

That leaves Kevin Clark, an assistant professor of management at Villanova School of Business, to ask, “Where will Circuit City find quality workers at a significantly lower wage?”

Circuit City doesn’t seem to be worried.

“We have and continue to pay competitive wages in our stores, and we will find people who take these jobs,” Babb predicts.

David Lewis, president of OperationsInc., a human resources consultancy, agrees that you can always find people to take the jobs, but he believes Circuit City’s move ultimately will weaken the organization. “It will give them short-term gains, but for the long term it’s like shooting yourself in both feet with a howitzer,” he notes.

Most employees who take on a new job hope to someday get a raise, but the message Circuit City is sending, Lewis says, is “don’t progress that much, because eventually you’ll become to expensive and get fired.”

Alas, the cheaper workforce Circuit City seeks may end up coming from among the very people they are now letting go. While all the terminated workers will be given severance packages based on their years of service, they will all have the opportunity to reapply for their same jobs after a 10–week period — presuming they are willing to accept a lower wage, of course.

AND ALL GOD'S PEOPLE said "Oy veh!"

Psalm 39

To the chief Musician, even to Jeduthun, A Psalm of David.

1 I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me.
2 I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred.
3 My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue,
4 LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.
5 Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah.
6 Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
7 And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee.
8 Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish.
9 I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.
10 Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand.
11 When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah.
12 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
13 O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.

Lord of the Flies-R-Us

I don't know what, really, you can say about the spectacle of 10-year-old Florida boys trying to kill the homeless, except for this:

1) Florida really has become the Wild, Wild West. Even though it's on the Atlantic Ocean.

2) Once you start down the path of abortion, social Darwinism and the whole idea that some life is really, truly unworthy of life, you can't say "OK, that's enough, thank you. I just wanted a little bit of Death today."

NOOOOOOOOOO, you're gonna get the whole nine yards. You're gonna be wading in death up to your eyeballs.

You're eventually going to envy the dead, but you won't be able to join them.

Until your children get around to finishing you off.

Lord, have mercy.

From MSNBC:

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Police say three homeless men were attacked by three boys in Daytona Beach on Tuesday.

One of the homeless men was seriously injured and remains hospitalized, WESH 2 News reported.

One of the boys is 17 years old, and the other two boys are 10 years old, investigators said. The three suspects are being held at the Juvenile Detention Center.

Police said the attack happened around 8:30 p.m. when the boys began chasing two homeless men and throwing rocks at them. One of the victims was allegedly pushed against a wall made of concrete blocks and fell at the corner of Mulberry and North streets.

Authorities said one of the 10-year-old boys grabbed a piece of the wall and dropped it on the victim's head.

Who says white folks don't have soul?

I stumbled across this on YouTube, and since Holy Week starts Sunday (Palm Sunday), I thought I'd post it. For my money, this is the best version of "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?" ever.

Ever.

After watching this TV performance by Johnny Cash and the Carter Family -- or listening to their 1962 version on record -- never again buy the line that white folks don't have soul.

Jesus got a juke box that goes doyt-doyt

IF YOU ASK ME, Jesus' juke box don't got no Jesus junk on it. Because, if you ask me, Jesus appreciates honest, real, substantial art better than he does half-assed, Disneyfied Christian ghettos, where life is beautiful all the time.

Unfortunately, much of what passes for Christian "culture" in this country prefers to retreat . . .

To the happy home with trees and flowers
And chirping birds and basket weavers
Who sit and smile and
Twiddle their thumbs and toes . . . .

A couple of artists, however, find that insipid notion rather incompatible with the notion of a God who is greater than ourselves. USA TODAY reports:

You might not expect to find folk-rock renegade Rickie Lee Jones and Christian singer/songwriter Derek Webb on the same concert bill. But on their latest albums, the troubadours do share a goal: They both want you to get to know Jesus better — and not necessarily through messages provided in mass media or houses of worship.

Jones' The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, released in February, was inspired by a different spiritual journey than that informing Webb's Mockingbird, which has been generating praise, and some controversy, since last year.

"I came to religion wanting to take what's beautiful about it,," says Jones, 52. "I think we are spiritual beings, but Christianity's position in the culture can be so aggressive that it makes people defend themselves coming to the table."

So in 2005, when Jones' friend Lee Cantelon asked her to take part in a spoken-word recording of The Words, his book outlining Jesus' teachings — and distinguishing those teachings from what Cantelon views as the dogmatic interpretations that have evolved in organized religion — the project seemed a natural fit. Jones decided that she would rather sing than speak, though.

Jones wouldn't define the lean, starkly atmospheric songs she co-wrote with Cantelon and Peter Atanasoff as Christian music. "I guess I assume that would mean a Christian person trying to convince me of something, to sell an idea."

Webb, 32, began his career in that market, as part of the Christian band Caedmon's Call. "But as I looked around, I thought, 'where are our artists who are talking about politics? About the government?' It's the job of creative people, and especially those who are followers of Jesus, to be radical truth-tellers. That's what the prophets did."

With Mockingbird, his third solo effort, the Nashville-based artist wasn't concerned about ruffling feathers. On one track, A King and a Kingdom, he sings of "two great lies," identifying one as "that Jesus was a white, middle-class Republican, and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him."

Webb muses that Jesus "wasn't a white middle-class Democrat either, incidentally. The point is that he didn't walk any party line. But I think that the church, especially where I live, makes a terrible habit of co-opting the more conservative political party.

"I'm not saying the church shouldn't be concerned with issues. My problem is that they've grown so predictable, and Jesus was in no way predictable. The people he loved most lavishly were often socially stigmatized, and he reserved some of his harshest language for the law-keeping church leadership. That's the opposite, in a lot of cases, of what the evangelical church puts forth."

Webb espouses the kind of evangelism he associates with Jesus' original followers, "which was telling people about Jesus and what he did. But the church in the West has made some distinction between that and acts of mercy: caring for the poor, clothing the naked, caring for our neighbors."

Jones, who defines her political leanings more firmly to the left, echoes Webb's concerns. "Capitalistic religion inhibits the idea of service. You're supposed to be in the business of serving yourself, and if you don't do that, you must be some sort of tree-hugging idiot."

Psalm 117

1 O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.
2 For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.

Here's to you, Mr. Assistant Coach Man

Revolution 21 presents Real American Heroes:

Today we salute you, Mr. Assistant Coach Man (Mr. Assistant Coach Maaaaaannnn) . . . .

For decades, you've broken down the films of your basketball team's opponents, and you've gotten to drive broken down cars while the pretty boys (and girls) get all the glory, and the Lincoln Continentals . . . and sometimes, get all the luuuuuv, too. Hey! Let 'em run their own damn practices! (It would be a jo-oooooke!)

Twice a week in the winter and spring, for years and years and years now, (That's a lot of ye-ears!) you've sat on the bench holding things together while Mr. Pretty Boy or Miss Alpha Girl jumps up and down, chews on towels, cusses at the refs and gets thrown out of games. (Who'll coach the team? Yoooooou wiiilllllllllll! Call a time out!)

You're the unsung American hero who does all the work and gets . . . squat. You're the last to get hired and the first to take the fall when your boss can't buy a winning season. (It's not my fault! It's hiii-iiis!) But Pokey Chatman got caught lookin' for love in all the wrong places, and a desperate university turns its lonely eyes toward you, Mr. Assistant Coach Man! (Hey, hey, hey!)

And what do you do? (You tell 'em to get screwed!) No, you don't, Mr. Assistant Coach Man. You pick up the baton, you start clearing away the rubble, you pick up the pieces, you begin the process of healing (Can we cut the clichés, now?) . . . and you take the LSU women all the way to the Final Four! (That's amazing!)

So crack open an ice cold Bud Light, Mr. Assistant Coach Man! It's guys like you that make the rockin' world go 'round.

(Mr. Assistant Coach Maaaaaannnn . . . )