Some folks just can't get anything straight

If the folks at The Daily Kingfish think I'm a conservative who believes Bobby Jindal's religion ought not be an issue in the Louisiana gubernatorial race, can you really trust anything that blog has to say about Jindal?

Or his faith?

Or anything?

After all, if the Kingfisher can refer to your Mighty Favog this way: "A handful of conservatives are now uncharacteristically claiming that Jindal’s faith should not be an issue," it's pretty obvious that he/she/it either didn't read the Jindal post on Revolution 21's Blog for the People, didn't understand the post's plain English or is lying like a rug.

Then again, it is a political blog run by Democratic Kool-Aid quaffers, so "truth" isn't nearly so important as "smear."

FIRST, as I mentioned explicitly in my oh-so-"conservative" post, I happen to be a Democrat. And if the political hacks who run The Daily Kingfish had taken a mere 10 minutes to look at Revolution 21's Blog for the People, they quickly would realize that I'm no political conservative.

I will plead guilty to being a social conservative . . . if that's the proper term for a Roman Catholic who actually believes what his Church teaches -- all of it. And who happens to be pro-life. And who opposes the death penalty, by and large. And who is foursquare against the insane Iraq War.

But I don't think that's what the Kingfisher was getting at. He/she/it seems to think I'm a GOP shill. I'd like the Kingfisher to explain this, then.

Furthermore, if I were one of those "conservatives" who didn't want the public to read Bobby Jindal's 1994 account of an exorcism in The New Oxford Review, why in the world would I have linked to it?

My objection is that to the extent Louisiana Democrats seek to portray Jindal as unfit to govern, and indeed as nuts, based on his acceptance of things he believes in unity with the Catholic Church, that is the extent to which they will be engaging in rank religious bigotry.

Highlighting positions Jindal takes due to his Catholicism which might have negative public-policy implications -- and then straightforwardly outlining what those might be (minus the slurs and innuendo) -- would be one thing. I might not agree, but that is fair political discourse.

Implying that Jindal is a certified whackadoodle because of beliefs the Church has held for, oh, 2,000 years (and Judaism for thousands of years before that) is juvenile, hateful and sliding down the slippery slope toward David Dukeville, which is right down the road from Adolf Hitlerburg.

And if that is the Dems' intent, I think the state central committee needs to be asking some hard questions of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and every other Democrat who also happens to be Catholic . . . and who, at their confirmation into the Church, made some public vows:

Bishop: Do you reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises?
Candidates: I do.

Bishop: Do you believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth?
Candidates: I do.

Bishop: Do you believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was born of the Virgin Mary,
was crucified, died, and was buried,
rose from the dead,
and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
Candidates: I do.

Bishop: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who came upon the apostles at Pentecost
and today is given to you sacramentally in confirmation?
Candidates: I do.

Bishop: Do you believe in the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
Candidates: I do.

Bishop: This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord.
All: Amen.

HERE'S A NEWS FLASH, SKIPPER: Believing in the reality of Satan -- and all the evil spirits "who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls" -- is part of the package. Always has been.

Always will be.

Bobby Jindal's New Oxford Review piece merely reflects that Jindal has experienced quite directly what all Catholics are solemnly bound to believe.

So, what would be worse, those Democratic pols lying to God or, by the party's own implication, trying to fool the voters about what they themselves have publicly professed?

I think your Dems have painted themselves into a divine corner there, Kingfisher.

MEANWHILE, as the Louisiana Democrats try to illuminate Jindal's supposed demons-and-freak-show nuttiness for believing what his allegedly crazy-ass Church believes, The Daily Kingfish likewise tries to tar Jindal for supposedly violating the supposedly nutball Catholics' Official Nutball Protocol. In other words, Jindal conducted an Unauthorized Casting Out of Demons.

What isn't noted is that nobody at the prayer meeting in question ever intended to be involved with an exorcism. Wormwood just happened to appear in the midst of it. What the hell (ahem) were they supposed to do, invite the apparent satanic minion for tea and crumpets?

Furthermore, Jindal apparently was the only Catholic there. He wasn't running the show. It seems to me that, in that event, praying hard was an entirely reasonable response.

Then again, it's pretty apparent that the Louisiana Democratic Party has scant experience with reasonable responses, so it's unsurprising that The Daily Kingfish has trouble recognizing one when it reads about it.

I feel a reasonable prayer for my fellow political partisans coming on now. It was written by Pope Leo XIII at the end of the 19th century, lots and lots of Catholics say it at the end of every Mass, and it goes like this:

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Bongos? Mais cher, ça c'est fou!

The lovely and talented Mrs. Favog and your humble correspondent took a Saturday evening drive around Little Italy, exploring all the nooks and crannies . . . all the narrow, really steep streets down by the Missouri River, all the new construction of condos and the historically appropriate new row houses where one of Omaha's venerable Italian steakhouses once stood.

If we can't have Caniglia's anymore, The Towns at Little Italy is a worthy replacement. Now, if everybody started grilling steaks all at once there one day, it might smell just the same.

I'll have the mostacholi as my side dish, please.

So -- speaking of food -- we ended up downtown at the local Louisiana-style eatery, Jazz, which is part of a Kansas City-based chain. The food is good, and pretty authentic . . . the gumbo more than passable and the fried oyster po-boys first rate. Nice and sloppy, just like I like 'em.

Now, if they could just get Abita beer up here in Huskerland. . . .

Anyway . . . we walk into Jazz to the honest-to-God chank-a-chank of a real, live Cajun band. In Omaha-by-Gawd, Nebraska. With the Sunbeam Bread and old Jax Beer signs on the wall, I could have deluded myself into thinking I was at Mulate's in Breaux Bridge, La. All that was missing was the dance floor.

And the Dixie Beer. Or the Abita Turbodog. I'm not picky.

The Omaha-based Cajun band was passable by Louisiana standards, hunky dory by Midwestern ones. For a second -- until the uttering of the words "You guys" -- I had half-convinced myself the lead singer had a faint South Louisiana accent. Somewhere between Cajun and 'Yat, as softened by professional-class Baton Rouge, if I had to place my auditory hallucination.

But it was just that. A hallucination.

And like the Las Vegas version of Paris, the Authentic Omaha Cajun Experience went a little awry when the percussionist (already a no-no if you're talking Absolutely Traditional Cajun Band) brought out bongos for a couple of numbers. It was as if Desi Arnaz had brought out a German oompa band to play Babalú.

Such is the lot of a Louisiana Boy on the cusp of the Great Plains, where people do listen to oompa bands. You notice things like bongos in a Cajun band. Sigh.

But that oyster po-boy was damn tasty. Mais cher! Ça c'est bon, oui!

If David Duke had had Photoshop. . . .

Some Democrats -- particularly in the Louisiana blogosphere -- think Bobby Jindal would make a spectacularly bad governor. That would seem to indicate they have some serious policy differences with the Republican congressman and gubernatorial front-runner.

SO WHAT BETTER WAY to illustrate substantive policy differences than to take a picture of the Vatican's chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, off the Web, then slide on over to CNN.com for a head shot of Jindal, and then fire up the Photoshop to create instant Internet intolerance?

It all hearkens back to this article in which Jindal describes an exorcism, one which Democrats have been trying to use against him since 2003. Because Jindal expresses his belief -- with his Church -- in the reality of demons, Satan and the possibility of demonic possession, left-wing bloggers in the state have deemed such acceptance of fundamental Catholic doctrine as proof that the congressman is a nut and, thus, unfit for office.

THE LOUISIANA DEMOCRATIC PARTY would appear to agree, being that it plans to run attack ads centering on Jindal's writings in Catholic publications.

In other words, the political arena is off limits to Catholics who actually believe in all that Papist s***.

So much for the First Amendment. And "diversity." And "tolerance."

The blogosphere purveyor of this latest bit of anti-Catholic mockery, Ashley Morris, seems to think that because Jindal isn't his kind of candidate, mocking the man's religious faith is fair game.

Replying to an upset reader, Morris asks:

". . . have you read the piece that Mr Jindal wrote? I am, privately, probably as religious as Mr Jindal. I do not, however, wear it on my sleeve. That piece was somewhat bizarre, you must admit.

I welcome differing points of view, when presented with good backing evidence.

I just think that Mr Jindal is very bad for Louisiana, and he would be an abysmal governor.

YEAH, HE WELCOMES those "differing points of view" -- like Jindal's, for example -- by posting mocking photo mash-ups designed to denigrate that which is precious to the "welcomed."

But why stop there? Why not just start referring to the congressman, who is of Indian descent, as Sabu the Elephant Boy? An ethnic slur is just as good as a religious one, right?

I guess that's why the Democrats most likely to be shocked, shocked by Jindal's beliefs like to refer to themselves as "progressive," eh?

"Progressive" like David Duke is progressive, if you ask me.

And if Morris, the oh-so-witty blogger, is truly "probably as religious as Mr. Jindal," he must be moonlighting as a tract writer for Jack Chick. Which not many people know, because he doesn't wear it on his sleeve.

You know who's featured on this week's show

It's that week in music history. A big anniversary.

A big one.

August 16, 1977.

Thirty years ago this coming Thursday. Good Lord. And we'll remember on this week's edition of the Revolution 21 podcast.

From Q magazine, July 2000:

18 JULY 1953: It was the best $4 investment anyone ever made. That was how much Elvis Presley paid to invent rock'n'roll.

Elvis Presley: I was drivin' a truck and I was studying to be an electrician too, you see. Well, I went in to Sun Records.

Jack Clement (assistant to Sun Records owner Sam Phillips): Sun was just a place that was a lot more experimental than most. I think that is the main thing that made it happen. It was just the only place them weirdo could go/

Jud Phillips (vice president, Sun Records): He was just a long-haired kid who used to hang around the corner drug store. When Elvis came into our studio, It was little more than a glorified barn, he wanted to cut a private disc for his mother's birthday.

Marion Keisker (secretary, Memphis Recording Service): It was a busy Saturday afternoon. The office was full of people wanting to make personal records. He came in, said he wanted to make a record. I told him he'd have to wait and he said OK. He sat down.
While he was waiting, we had a conversation. He said he was a singer. I said, "What kind of singer are you?" He said, "I sing all kinds." I said,"Who do you sound like?" He said,"I don't sound like nobody."

Jud Phillips: My brother Sam met him and was quite impressed with his performance, although with that long hair and old blue jeans he looked pretty wild.

Sam Phillips (co-owner Memphis Recording Service): I was in the control room. The only two thing I heard Elvis do when he came in was My Happiness and this Ink Spots thing[That's When Your Heartaches Begin].

Elvis Presley: There was a guy there that took down my name and told me he might call me sometime.

Jud Phillips: After he'd sung his song, for which we charge $4 for recording, we said maybe we'd call him over sometime to cut a commercial disc. He didn't seem too enthusiastic, but I think that was because he wasn't at all sure of his own ability.

Sam Phillips: I wrote his name down, how to get hold on him, and put it on the little old spindle upfront as we were going out of the door.

26 JUNE 1954: Sam Phillips rings Presley and invites him to Sun Studio to make a professional recording.

Marion Keisker (secretary, Memphis Recording Service): Almost a year after Elvis recorded My Happiness, Sam got all excited about a new song he'd found, but couldn't find anyone to sing.

Sam Phillips: I'd run across a ballad [Without You] written by a prisoner in the Tennessee state pen and I wanted a crooner.

Marion Keisker: I mentioned Elvis to him again.

Elvis Presley: "You want to make some blues?" he suggested over the phone, knowing I'd always been a sucker for that kind of jive. He mentioned Big Boy Crudup's name, and maybe others too/ All I know is, I hung up and ran 15 blocks to Mr. Phillips' office before he'd gotten off the line.

4 JULY 1954: Presley rehearses at Sun Studios with Scotty Moore and Bill Black.

Marion Keisker: We got Elvis to come in, but he couldn't do the song to satisfy Sam. That might have been the end of it, but something stirred Sam's interest.

Jud Phillips (co-owner, San Records): That session turned out to be a mighty frustrating business. He wasn't happy with any of the songs we suggested. Nothing we tried seemed to fit his style.

Sam Phillips: Elvis toyed around with it. I decided he needed a couple pf good rhythm men back of him so I called Scotty [Moore, guitarist] and told him to get hold of Bill [Black, bassist]. And I said, "Now, I've got a young man and he's different," I told him and Bill to go by and work with Elvis a little. I said, "Now, he's really nervous and timid and extremely polite."

5 JULY 1954: Presley records That's All Right, Mama, at Sun Records.

Scotty Moore (guitarist): It was just an audition. That's the only reason there was just Bill Black and myself in the studio. We just needed enough music to see what Elvis sounded like on tape, 'cause the first recording he did was on acetate. Sam was trying to get a line on his voice. Did he sing this kind of song or tempo better?

We tried four songs. I Love You Because was the first thing we put on tape. We were used to playing with more musicians involved, y'know. Whether it was country, pop or whatever - you had a piano player, a sax, a fiddle and so on. When we lucked in on that, I realized I was putting everything I knew into practically every song, trying to play some rhythm, some lead, fill notes, y'know. The first two or three things were put on tape when we were strictly just doodling, looking for a sound.

Elvis Presley: This song popped into my mind that I had heard years ago, and I started kidding around with it.

Jud Phillips: It was an old rhythm and blues number called That's All Right, Mama, and at once things started going right.

Scotty Moore: We were taking a break and, all of sudden, Elvis started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool. Then Bill Black picked up his bass and began acting the fool too, and I started playing with them. Sam had the door to the control room open, and stuck his head out and said, "What are you doing?" We said, "We don't know." He said, "Well, back up. Try to find a place to start, and do it again."

So we kinda talked it over and figured out a little bit what we were doin'. We ran it again, and of course Sam is listenin'. 'Bout the third or fourth time through, we just cut it. It was basically a rhythm record. It wasn't any great thing. It wasn't Sam tellin' him what to do. Elvis was joking around, just doing what come naturally, what he felt.

Sam Phillips: I said, "Right then, that's it!" I knew we had it.

AND, AS ALWAYS, don't forget that The Big Show is only half of the Revolution 21 experience. So go to www.revolution21.org tout de suite!

Misanthropes of a feather. . . .

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful.

* * *

FOR SOME REASON, that Holly Hunter scene from Broadcast News came to mind when I was taking a look at Kathy Shaidle's Relapsed Catholic blog this morning:

I spent the first 20 years of my life trying to get away from losers like this...

Growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, they were unavoidable. They hated their factory jobs, never stopped bitching about how bad off they were, getting paid a zillion dollars a year plus extravagent benefits to hit something with a hammer for 7 hours a day.

Then when the company goes out of business they all whine -- but they hated their jobs anyway, so what are they bitching about? Get a new job, loser. You were so greedy for money you went to work at the factory rather than go to college. That's your problem, not the government's. Shouldn't have spent all your money on lottery tickets and Cheetos.

Thank God someone has the nerve to fisk them...

OF COURSE, the "someone" Kathy refers to is Rush Limbaugh, whose advice to the most pathetic hard cases invariably reads like a Dear Abby column . . . as interpreted in the classic John Prine song:

Unhappy, Unhappy, you have no complaint
You are what you are,
and you ain't what you ain't
So listen up Buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood

Laid off from your factory job after 25 years? Get a new one!

Retired on disability but then had your company go bust and a third of your pension disappear along with your health insurance? America is the greatest place on earth! Quit your whining and take care of your own damn self!

Rush just wishes that all these "losers," as Kathy so quaintly put it, would just go away. Would just stop bothering those who have already gotten theirs. Would just learn to shift for themselves . . . it's The American Way!

That's Limbaugh's laissez-faire conservatism in a nutshell: Leave me alone. Shift for yourself. Am I my brother's keeper?

It's as old as Abel and Cain. Yahweh saw through it then, and Jesus saw through it later. You would think someone who calls her blog Relapsed Catholic would see through it today. But at least Kathy's honest enough to be in the process of renaming her blog to take out the "Catholic" part.

Apparently, the Beatitudes and the parable of the Good Samaritan aren't the only problems she has with the Church.

OF COURSE, you have to admit that Limbaugh is a funny, bright and entertaining guy. He can be quite convincing, so long as you can ignore your brother -- and that small, still voice nagging at you in the back of your superego. The gospel, after all, is a stumbling block to clever bloggers and radio hosts, and pure foolishness to laissez-faire economic theorists.

That's why I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh . . . haven't in a long time. I want to get to Heaven when I croak, and seductive "I got mine; screw you" propaganda on the radio is a stumbling block on the road between Where I Was and Where I Want to Be.

And the sooner I realize that we're all "losers" -- liable to get just as much mercy as we give -- the quicker I can travel down that gospel highway.

Dems' sympathy is with the Devil

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

THE LOUISIANA DEMOCRATIC PARTY ought to have been praying. Hard.

It didn't, however, for that is not a concept commensurate with Party of Lust -- and in Louisiana, Party of Graft -- values. And now, after racial slurs didn't take, we have the looming prospect of the state party launching an ad campaign only Satan could love against Republican gubernatorial front-runner Bobby Jindal.

The state Democrats are flat-out going after Jindal's Catholic faith. In a state where Catholics make up a strong plurality. I wonder how that's going to work out for them. Here's the latest from WAFB television in Baton Rouge:

The Louisiana Democratic Party says an attack ad it is preparing to air against Republican Bobby Jindal -will- focus on Jindal's religious writings from his college days, but will -not- focus on a piece Jindal wrote about observing an exorcism being performed on a female friend. WAFB 9NEWS reported Wednesday night that the exorcism paper would be part of the attack ad, but Democratic Party spokeswoman Julie Vezinot says that is incorrect. Vezinot said other anti-Jindal ads will air that focus on topics others than religion. "The ads are based on facts drawn from his voting records in Congress and his campaign contributions," Vezinot said.

Vezinot says the ad focusing on religion is just one of several the party is planning to launch against Jindal in the coming weeks. The party estimates it will spend nearly $1 million dollars on the series of anti-Jindal ads.

(snip)

"Bobby is a proud Christian, and attacks against his faith prove just how far old-guard party bosses willl go to resist the change our state needs," said Melissa Sellers, communications director for the Bobby Jindal campaign. "People will see this as exactly what it is - the same kind of baseless mudslinging and gutter politics that has held Louisiana back for generations," Sellers said.

WHAT NEEDS AN EXORCISM -- and I am not joking here -- is the Democratic Party. And I say this as a Democrat -- one who doesn't have much use for Republicans. Or Democrats, for that matter.

According to Jindal's campaign manager, Timmy Teepell, the Dems have been previewing the ads, including one attacking Jindal's faith, to potential donors in a bid to raise enough cash to run them on TV.

A party that would stoop to attacking Jindal's Catholic faith, in a largely Catholic state, is not only really, really stupid but something more. Something much more. It is, it would seem, a party that hates Christian faith more than it wants to win an election. It is a party that wants to destroy Jindal and profane the name of Jesus Christ, even if that brings destruction upon itself.

What does that sound like to you? To me, it sounds a lot like being a tool of the devil. Which, of course, always ends with the demonic dupe coming to No Good End.

Why else, as a political entity, would you do it? It's just too insane otherwise, as I say, in a state with a strong Catholic plurality.

Furthermore, in a state desperate for robust debate hinging on policy and civic culture issues, Jindal's religious views are all the Democrats can come up with? That, my friends, points to intellectual bankruptcy in addition to spiritual and moral bankruptcy.

The Louisiana Democratic Party told WAFB that it didn't plan any commercials regarding Jindal's exorcism article in the New Oxford Review, a traditional-leaning Catholic publication. It doesn't have to -- there's already a nasty whispering campaign in the "progressive" blogosphere surrounding that (and even the smear has been recycled from the 2003 gubernatorial campaign), and I'm sure the state party is maintaining plausible deniability.

Jindal's article on a prayer meeting for a cancer-stricken friend that turned into an exorcism when that friend began to act as if she were possessed -- including taunting each person present with an embarrassing personal revelation no one could have known about -- contained nothing that should shock or scandalize any believing Catholic. With emphasis on "believing."

AS A MATTER OF FACT, courtesy of The Daily Kos, you can read it here (PDF file).

I am a Catholic, and I believe with my Church that there is a devil, and that he employs demons who sometimes try in very direct ways to send souls to Hell. We believe that Satan and his minions can possess individuals, treating them as objects to use as he pleases, ultimately destroying them because he hates them.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the Democratic platform . . . and, in this case, Democratic politics. Of course, in the interest of fairness, Republicans have no business pointing fingers in this respect.

It is instructive, though, to see how scandalous the college-student Bobby Jindal's writings are to some snarky-secularist bloggers, Washington ad agencies and their Democratic Party puppet masters. Particularly when it involves such straight-forward Catholic belief -- indeed, such straight-forward evangelical, Pentecostal, fundamentalist and mainline-Protestant belief.

Well, at least back when mainline Protestants used to believe in things other than same-sex orgasms.

IN FACT, I feel a Bible verse coming on. It's 1 Corinthians 1:18-25:

18 The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside."
20 Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?
21 For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith.
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
24 but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS ONE (Luke 6:20-26):

20 And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.
21 Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.
23 Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.
24 But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.
26 Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.

OF COURSE, the Bible is dicey source material when trying to make a point to true-believing acolytes of the Party of Lust (TM). So I will appeal to a higher authority, at least in their petty little universe. The Word of the Almighty Kos (from when he originally posted the Jindal exorcism article):

Amen.

Another conservative for Gekko

If the jihadis don't end us, it's a lead-pipe cinch the conservatives will. Unless the Daily Kossacks do.

But let's just say it's the National Review conservatives who will destroy America, because that is the source of today's Gordon Gekko "Greed is good" moment. Over on The Corner at National Review Online, syndicated columnist Mark Steyn took it upon himself to take an MIT prof to task (at least Steyn seems to think his correspondent was a professor) for challenging this country's addiction to Saudi oil:

Americans will never accept that the way to make the world better is to drive smaller, less comfortable cars. And, besides, the premise is completely false: If you trade in the Expedition for a Honda Civic, that oil you save won't stay in the ground and thus impoverish the Saudis; it will merely be sold to the Chinese and Indians and other fast developing nations who will replace America and Europe as buyers of the cheapest and most easily extractable oil in the world. So the sheikhs will be as rich as ever and funding as many Islamist nutters. But we'll be driving worse cars and feeling virtuous.

The long-term solution is to accelerate a move to a post-oil world, to develop something better and cheaper that makes oil obsolescent, and obliges at the very minimum the Saudi princes whoring in London to make do with cheaper hookers. But instead my correspondent calls for "a working passenger rail system", and at that point his choo-choo pretty much jumps the tracks. Look, America is a de-urbanizing society, even compared to Canada. And that's a good thing. This is the cheapest country in the world to buy a four-bedroom house on a big lot and an automobile that'll take three or four kids. That's one reason we're not in the demographic death spiral of Europe or Japan. It's easy to make do with a Honda Civic or 2CV or Fiat Uno when you've got nothing to put in it.

IN OTHER WORDS, "Greed is good."

Americans will sulk themselves into a barren, childless future and send this country into a demographic death spiral unless they can drive their Expeditions and live in their exurban McMansions. Right. That's exactly why the Europeans and Japanese are depopulating themselves into historical-footnote status.

And I thought it was because they just didn't want to be bothered with anyone but themselves, having -- as whole societies -- lost God and then hope. Hopeless people don't create a future, which children most certainly happen to be.

After all, if a suitably big, petroleum-quaffing land barge is a key prerequisite for allowing one's sperm to say howdy-do to another's ovum, please explain Shakwanda in the 'hood, age 24, with three kids, a crappy apartment and no car.

Actually, the explanation is pretty simple. Not the right kind of breeder. EEEEEEEEENNNNNT! Doesn't count. Tidy market-oriented theories require tidy market-oriented people like . . . us!

But thanks for playing Greed Is Good on ConservoTV, and please accept these delightful parting gifts! GOTCHA! No parting gifts for you! Awwwwww, don't cry -- here's Officer Stedenko to haul you away on a bad-check charge!

COME TO THINK OF IT, though, Steyn's premise is even more flawed than that. If you totally discount all the Shakwandas from Compton and all the Esquelas just in from Tegucigalpa, the American birth rate probably isn't that horribly far off European levels of futility . . . er, fertility.

Despite the McMansion in Suburban Sprawl Land. And the two cars and an SUV in the three-car garage, as opposed to having to dash from your London flat to catch the last train to Ipswitch.

Really, the lengths to which morally bankrupt right-wing ideologues will go to avoid saying "Greed is good" when what they really mean is "Greed is good."

Here's a news flash: Nobody -- with the possible exception of the old woman who lived in a shoe -- needs a McMansion in the exurbs. Nobody needs a Ford Expedition. Or a Chevy Suburban.

Nobody.

AH . . . BUT WHAT ABOUT Steyn's argument that "it will merely be sold to the Chinese and Indians and other fast developing nations who will replace America and Europe as buyers of the cheapest and most easily extractable oil in the world."

Well, I guess that's true, as far as it goes. But if we weren't addicted to petroleum, it wouldn't be us the Saudis had by the shorthairs, now, would it?

And we just might be in a position to tell the Saudis to rein in the jihadis and stop exporting Wahhabiism or watch their oil fields and refineries get blowed up real good. Which would turn the sultans back into Bedouins real fast.

Americans are not a stupid people, nor do we lack ingenuity. We could live in a world of possibility -- freed from the Persian Gulf death trap -- if only we didn't love our greed more than we hated seeing those towers fall six years ago.

Harry Potter and the Cultural Black Hole

Mark Shea today tackles the Know-Nothing wing of the Church, which is still on a toot about Harry Potter and the Minion of Satan (TM) who created him.

This stripe of Catholic is virtually indistinguishable from Falwellian fundamentalists -- indeed, many of them used to be Falwellian fundamentalists . . . or Pat Robertson charismatics -- except for their fundamental belief in the basics of Catholic belief. The Catholic cultural thing, they haven't got such a grip on.

Nor do they have too much of a grip on the basic premise that the Almighty gave humans a brain -- and an intellect -- for sound reasons.

Shea unloads on one of the chief Catholic critics of J.K. Rowling's (hence referred to as She Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken) masterful series, Michael O'Brien, who is quoted in this Washington Times article. Shea writes:

In short, O'Brien talks about Rowling's conversion of more of the devil's real estate into Christendom as though it were a *bad* thing. It's a classic fundamentalist mistake which assumes that imagery borrowed from paganism must corrupt the Faith rather than assuming that the Holy Spirit has the power to sanctify the image. It's like those Chick tracts that say "Egyptians used sun disks in their art, so Catholic art with haloes is a pagan snare to the soul!" As I say, I think the devil must be fit to be tied at Rowling's jiu jitsu: taking the image of the mage and "perverting" it to the service of the gospel. I wish O'Brien would drop this silly vendetta.

IN FAIRNESS, O'Brien isn't the only Wahabbi Catholic out there cracking on the books of She Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken. Steve Wood would be another one -- and he's got an EWTN radio show to use as a bully pulpit in trying to shoehorn a round Catholic culture into the square hole of his former evangelical Protestant beliefs.

In an essay on his website, Wood notes that he used to be involved in the New Age and decries the Harry Potter series' potential to draw susceptible young minds into the world of the occult:

The majority of those who fool around with Dungeons and Dragons, toy with Ouija boards, listen to heavy metal rock, or read books like the Harry Potter series that are filled with themes with witchcraft and sorcery, will never fall into any permanent spiritual deceptions. Yet, I can guarantee that Harry Potter will be an entry point into the demonic /New Age world for thousands of young Catholics. Many Christians scoffed at the potential dangers posed by Dungeons and Dragons, yet research has validated those warnings.

AND CHURCH AUTHORITIES should put the collected works of William Shakespeare on a revived Index of Forbidden Books because Falstaff will tempt us to obese, drunken gluttony and Othello will cause us to murder our wives. Don't get me started on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.

Expecto Patronum!

I just committed sorcery. Steve Wood is now a newt.

What??? I'm informed Steve Wood is not now nor ever has been a newt, despite my spell. I don't understand . . . I watched two of the Harry Potter movies, already!

Snarkiness aside, the last thing a Church which has all but abandoned its social and liturgical patrimony needs is to import -- to be uncharitable, but I know no other way of putting it -- fundamentalist and evangelical iconoclasm, which has worked its way into a historical disdain of art, literature and intellectual pursuits.

To the Steve Woods of the world, art seemingly is utilitarian at best. You use art to bait-and-switch someone into Christian faith; Satan uses it to top off Gehenna. But never can it organically flow out of our human experience . . . of our Christian experience.

And while I am glad that ex-New Agers who become evangelicals who become Catholics have come into the fullness of the faith, I really wish they could find it within themselves to become catholic as well as Catholic.

The phenomenon of orthodox Catholic hyperpious know-nothingism has vexed me for almost as long as I've been Catholic. A priest friend once wrote me that it's the byproduct of the utter collapse of anything resembling a Catholic culture, which no American Catholic under 45 ever has experienced.

We Catholics who fancy ourselves as possessing some degree of cultural sophistication, and who came into the faith -- by birth or conversion -- after Vatican II was a done deal basically don't have a clue about being authentically well-rounded, lives-in-balance Catholics.

Some of us make game stabs at it. Some of us get pretty close. Others just become susperstitious Puritans with sacraments.

Jansenism -- a puritanical Catholic heresy -- is the gift that keeps on giving, apparently.

FOR EXAMPLE, do you think EWTN would ever do a full-blown, uncensored theatrical version of just about any Walker Percy novel or any Flannery O'Connor short story? The blue-hairs would get the vapors!

Others, meanwhile, would find such programming just not "religious" enough, or that it really wasn't "teaching the faith."

The Harry Potter tempest and the neo-Jansenist revulsion at the artistic for its own sake point to the central problem of contemporary Catholicism as you find it in everyday life: The Catholic mind is dead.

The liberals are loony New Agers, and the "orthodox" -- particularly some charismatics, I think -- are sliding fast into some sort of Magisterial offshoot of the Primitive Baptists, with a dash of mystical apocalypticism thrown in with a subtext of the worst of Evangelical faddishness.

I recall one time, during my days in Catholic radio, when Father Stephen Valenta, a charismatic guru, and Steve Wood were the speakers at a conference our station sponsored. Father Valenta, a Conventual Fransiscan evangelist, expounded on how we ought not think, that our thinking gets in the way of the Holy Spirit acting.

Folks went gaga over him. I was going "Huh?"

He also was fairly apocalyptic (real Spirit Daily type stuff), and boasted that he hadn't read more than five books in however many years -- the Spirit reveals to him everything he needs to know. It sounded to me too bloody much like Magisterial snake-handling.

The Steve Wood talk I recall involved a condemnation of dating for Christians, advocating instead the concept of "courtship." If you've got the money, honey, he's got the CD here.

Often, I look at the Catholic wreckage surrounding me -- a religious and cultural landscape laid waste by the war machines of secularism, consumerism and plain old nutism -- and I wonder what Father Chuck O'Malley or Sister Liguori would make of any of it.

Breakfast of cheaters

Dear Diary: The power of punk

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 . . . Pope FM, if you will. 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.

SUNDAY, AUG. 25, 2002


Dear Diary,


It had to happen. It hadn't happened in awhile.

I was working on Holy Spirit Rock early this afternoon, pulling some of the music for next Saturday's show, when I hear a knock on the door. Mrs. Favog was due back shortly with our almost-16-year-old friend Ruth, one of the co-hosts of the Pope FM show, and I thought she didn't want to bother with the key or had her hands full with groceries.

So I open the front door, and . . . .

Mormons.

You know, the bicycle guys. White shirts, black slacks. Name tags. A cross between Wally Cleaver and the Stepford Wives.

I'm Catholic, I say, but they won't stop the step-by-step spiel. I'm the production director at the Catholic radio station, I say, but that didn't make a dent. And I throw in that I'm really busy now working on our Christian rock show. They won't leave me alone, I really don't have time to talk to them and I really don't want to be rude.

At this point, Mrs. Favog comes home with Ruth. We're active in our church, she says. Would you like to come to our 11 a.m. service, they say. We'll be at our church, I respond. Can we come back? they persevere.

"So," asks Stepford Cleaver, "how did you come to your faith?"

"I became Catholic after studying the faith and searching," I replied.

"I came to my faith in the Lord through the Spirit," Stepford said.

"The Spirit has to have something to work with," I shot back.

Just at that moment, an eruption of grinding guitars and screamed vocals pours forth from the huge speakers in our living room, literally shaking the joint. It's the remote speakers from the amp in my home studio/office . . . Ruth has put in a hardcore Christian punk CD, and it's kind of cranked up.

The Mormons jump back from the door. Stepford is startled -- horrified even.

"I don't know how the Spirit could work with that playing," he says.

"Would you believe that's Christian music?" I politely answer.

Stepford is aghast.

"I can't picture Christ listening to that!"

"I can," I tell him as I shut the door.

For Baton Rouge High, we just cry

I had my say about the deplorable state of my old high school, Baton Rouge Magnet High, here.

Years of abject neglect by the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has brought it to this, as reported a couple of weeks ago in The (Baton Rouge) Advocate:

Renovations to Baton Rouge Magnet High School likely would cost twice as much as planned and take twice as long to complete, leading school officials to rethink the whole project.

Instead, a special committee of students, alumni and educators will meet to figure out alternatives, including rebuilding the school in another location.

The partial renovations, scheduled to start this fall, would replace only exterior windows and prevent outside moisture from penetrating the 80-year-old building, built before air conditioning.

The estimated cost is now $7.6 to $9.2 million, based on three construction bids opened last month.

The increases stem from the discovery of no ties between the bricks in the school’s four-story façade and the structure. Fixing that problem would require laborious brick-by-brick reattachment to the school, school officials say.

This spring, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board raised the construction budget to $4 million and extended construction time to 18 months, with work taking place around the students.

The bids call for twice that amount; two of the bids urged doubling the construction time to three years.

“We need some direction,” Bob Cooper, director of the physical plant, told the School Board on Wednesday. “I’m not just speaking to the board, but I’m speaking to the community.”

One alternative is to conduct a full historic restoration, costing an estimated $37 million, but that would leave the school without some modern educational amenities. Another is to rebuild it somewhere else, costing an estimated $40 million. Still another is to preserve the façade but build a new school behind it.

East Baton Rouge Parish Superintendent Charlotte Placide expressed skepticism of a traditional historic restoration.

“We shouldn’t be trying to do more stuff after we’ve spent $37 million,” she said.

I HAD BEEN WAITING to get more information about this before posting, but news just hasn't been forthcoming. That the ironically named "school board" has let things get to this state of crisis is just one illustration of the challenges of giving youth a future in a state where people generally don't care, and government generally doesn't work.

If you were a bright, college-bound high school student attending classes in a facility allowed to -- quite literally -- fall apart over the past 30 years, what would you think of the city, parish and state where such neglect is looked upon as par for the course? What would you think of a city, parish and state where this is good enough for its children?

Exactly.

I guess that's why a sizable portion of my Baton Rouge High graduating class got the hell out of Louisiana ASAP, and why I'd wager that increasing numbers of each of the succeeding 28 graduating classes have done likewise.

MEANWHILE, A 1953 GRAD had his say about what's become of our old school in a recent Advocate letter to the editor:

Published: Aug 1, 2007

I graduated from Baton Rouge High in 1953. It breaks my heart and thousands of others to see what “they” are trying to do to our school — a school we all cherished. Then, all students were brothers and sisters, and the school — the building — itself was one of us — if you can imagine beautiful bricks as a brother or sister.

I remember how we sat on the big front steps with our books before the bell rang … how we walked the wide, long halls … how we looked out of the open giant windows of the classrooms, and enjoyed, without knowing it, the solidarity of the fine building.

If I could write a book on how we loved it, and maybe I will, there would be so many fine things to tell. Someone should write: THE HISTORY OF BATON ROUGE HIGH, with lots of pictures showing the “way we were.”

Next spring we may have our 55th reunion. When we had our 40th we went over to the ol’ school to look at it: Go to every floor … see our old lockers … look at the big stage where we had plays. I don’t think we’ll go there next spring.

You had to be there then to know the heartache now.

David Lewis
retired writer
Baton Rouge

MR. LEWIS, I couldn't have said it better myself. I am grateful you did.

Who is supplying the insurgents with weapons?

What in the world can I -- or anyone -- say about this story? Except . . .

* We're relying on who as the All-Knowing Wise Man to tell us whether the "surge" is working or not?

* Has Bush just been caught trying to Wag the Dog?

The Washington Post elucidates:

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The report from the Government Accountability Office indicates that U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq. (Emphasis mine -- R21.)

The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking. Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers.

"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably were being used against U.S. forces. He cited the Iraqi brigade created at Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2004 and turned its weapons against the Americans.

Stohl said that insurgents frequently use small-arms fire to force military convoys to move in a particular direction -- often toward roadside bombs that target troops and vehicles. She noted that the Bush administration frequently complains that Iran and Syria are supplying insurgents but has paid little attention to whether U.S. military errors inadvertently play a role. "We know there is seepage and very little is being done to address the problem," she said.

What is truth? Whatever neocons say it is.

I think this is all you need to know about neoconservatism and how the United States got into the pickle we're in. From American Enterprise Institute "Freedom Scholar" Michael Ledeen's blog at Pajamas Media:

My friend potkin azarmehr, whose blog is one of the very best, calls our attention to American complicity in the death of an Iranian dissident.

Majid Kavousifar, seen in these pictures before being hanged, left Iran for Abu Dhabi two days after the assassination of one of the corruptest and most repressive judges in the Islamic Republic. Judge Moghaddas who was assassinated by Kavousifar and his nephew, was responsible for handing out long sentences to many political activists. Moghaddas sometimes even boasted that he sentenced the accused without even reading their files!

Kavoussifar had introduced himself as the killer of Moghaddas to the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi, where he had applied for asylum. The embassy guards handed him over to the Interpol, which informed Islamic Republic’s authorities of the incident.
I thought it was just the Homeland Security at the US airports who were the thickest officials in the world!

Here, Majid Kavousifar is seen smiling and saying his last goodbye. Why are so many victims smiling in these latest round of public executions? Perhaps if there is any after life, it will be better than living under the mullahs.

We all know what the government lawyers will say: he was a known killer, his name was on the Interpol list, we really can’t give asylum to someone who has murdered a judge. All true. And yet he killed a killer and torturer, an instrument of mass repression. When is homicide justifiable?

I’m not sure I know the answer to that one, but I do think we should have taken him in, and if we felt obliged to have him tried, we could have tried him in America, where a jury could have heard the whole story. By turning him over to the mullahs, we validated their death warrant on the poor man.

YOU KNOW, I am certain the Iranians would say the same thing about President Bush as Ledeen said about the dead Iranian judge, that he's "a killer and torturer, an instrument of mass repression. When is homicide justifiable?"

And they'd be right about some of it.

So what would Michael Ledeen say about the Iranians if they granted asylum to, for example, an American Islamist who managed to blow Bush's brains out , then somehow escaped the dragnet, got out of the country and made it to the Iranian Embassy in Venezuela?

WOULD LEDEEN and his neocons cronies understand the mullahs' -- even if they tried the assassin in Iran -- reluctance to "validate" the Americans' "death warrant on the poor man"? Somehow, I think not.

It must be a great thing to be a neoconservative and believe in will and power as the drivers of morality and truth.

"What is truth?" indeed.

Perhaps Ledeen ought to bone up on what St. Thomas More thought about the law . . . and due process. Here's the famous dialogue from A Man for All Seasons:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

IT SEEMS TO ME that neoconservatives in high places have been cutting down a forest of morality and law to get at the devil. And now the devil is turning 'round on us . . . and the winds are starting to blow.

Louisiana . . . they're trying to wash us away

What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

POOR STATES, like poor people, just can't catch a break. If you're not doing yourself in -- usually through some of the same pathologies that helped impoverish you -- the fatcats are using you for target practice, either for sport or in the name of "bettering" society.

Louisiana is a poor state, and a relatively uneducated one, too. New Orleans is a basket case, and the state is hemorrhaging educated and skilled people . . . not to mention political clout.

Louisiana 2007 is a lot like Louisiana 1927. And the little fat men with notepads in their hands would just as soon have the Gulf of Mexico wash it away. So would their boss, President George W. Bush.

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
To this poor cracker's land."

After the federally misconstructed levees broke during a glancing blow by Hurricane Katrina two years ago, almost wiping out New Orleans, President Bush made some big promises after his FEMA minions left thousands of people stranded and starving for days after the storm.

"Tonight so many victims of the hurricane and the flood are far from home and friends and familiar things," Bush said on national television, standing before a spotlighted St. Louis Cathedral (thanks to the floodlights and generators the White House shipped in for the live shot). "You need to know that our whole nation cares about you, and in the journey ahead you're not alone. To all who carry a burden of loss, I extend the deepest sympathy of our country. To every person who has served and sacrificed in this emergency, I offer the gratitude of our country."

BY THIS TIME, the words "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" had been bitterly burned onto all our brains, and we were reaching for the hip waders. And the Lysol. But then . . . le deluge.

"And tonight I also offer this pledge of the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives," Bush said. "And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again."

The president and his administration have spent the last 23 months proving to Louisianians, expatriates and sympathetic fellow Americans what a load of bull excrement that pledge was.

Every proposal that could have addressed big needs comprehensively somehow managed to get shot down or denuded because it was "too expensive." This at a time when we're in the process of flushing $1 trillion -- with a "T" -- down a toilet called Iraq.

AND NOW, it seems the president and his Beltway goons are trying to make sure what's left of a hard-case, hardscrabble state literally washes away. From The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune:

In a sharp and unexpected blow to Louisiana, President Bush threatened Wednesday to veto long-awaited legislation that would enhance hurricane protection along a Gulf Coast still struggling to recover from the devastating storms of two years ago.

House and Senate negotiators struck a bargain late last week on a $21 billion reauthorization of the Water Resources Development Act, with about 20 percent going to projects in Louisiana. The measure has broad support and is expected to get final passage this week before lawmakers leave for the monthlong August recess, and is expected to pass by veto-proof margins.

In a strong bipartisan vote, the House passed the bill 381-40.

But in a letter to key lawmakers, Bush's Office of Management and Budget said the price tag is too high. The administration also said the bipartisan deal shifted too much of the cost of new projects onto federal taxpayers and that it improperly green-lighted projects outside the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers.

"This is not how most Americans would expect their representatives in Washington to reach agreement, especially when it is their tax dollars that are being spent," OMB Director Rob Portman and John Paul Woodley, the assistant Army secretary over the Corps of Engineers, said in the letter.

Among other things, the bill would authorize a 72-mile system of levees and floodwalls to shield Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes from storms sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico and up to $1.9 billion in Louisiana coastal restoration work. It would fortify New Orleans-area levees to withstand a 100-year storm and authorize $100 million for hurricane protection in Jean Lafitte and lower Jefferson Parish.

While the bill does not pay for the projects, it gives lawmakers the authorization to appropriate the money, something Louisiana has been waiting for since the last renewal of the Water Resources Development Act seven years ago. The clamor for action grew exponentially after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast and sent more than 2 million people fleeing from their homes in 2005.

"WE WILL DO WHAT IT TAKES." Right. Don't pee down our legs and tell us the levee broke . . . again.

It seems the present American preoccupation with deciding what lives are unworthy of life -- from the unborn to the unwell to the unfortunate -- has been extended to entire unwell and unfortunate states by this "pro-life" administration.

Looks like George Bush and those Washington hands of a like mind already have Louisiana's coffin picked out for it. All they need to do now is to create a corpse with a witch's brew of pretty words and malign neglect.

Well, maybe we can't stop what is starting to look inevitable -- though we can try like hell so long as life remains. But while we're doing that, we also can throw a nice jazz funeral for Louisiana.

That's what we're doing with this week's episode of the Revolution 21 podcast.

We can celebrate its life and treasure its culture. We can hold tight its memory in our hearts, and if it's going to go down -- maybe another good chunk washed away with the next Katrina or Rita -- at least it can go down with a song on its lips.

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

I didn't do it; nobody saw me do it . . . Satan did it!

The Internet Monk notes today that Christian comboxes have been filled with discussion about what God's purpose might be in allowing the I-35W bridge to crumple into the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Paul.

And he rightly wonders what up with that?

The questions I have this morning aren’t about divine causation or Satanic mischief or even evangelistic opportunity. My questions are more earthly minded.

Where did inspections go wrong?

How much of our urban infrastructure is in similar condition?

Is the blame shifting that’s sure to come going to solve the problem?

How much security can we expect in urban life?

Ultimately, how much risk do we engage in that would be unacceptable if we “knew the score,” so to speak?

Does it do any good to talk about who is responsible?
What are families going through?

Where there enough first responders? Who is caring for them?

One of the things that bothers me about religion in general and evangelical Christianity in particular is a tendency to change the focus of ordinary things to religious things. “So heavenly minded, they are of no earthly good” is a valid criticism. It makes me feel good when Baptists and Catholics send disaster relief teams into these situations to just help out. Blessings on those people.

What should happen with a God-centered mind is a redemption and elevation of the ordinary. God is pleased when engineers, politicians and road inspectors have a Christian testimony. He’s also pleased- just as pleased, but in a different way- when the engineer designs a safe bridge, when the politician funds a sufficient infrastructure and when the inspector is thorough and rigorous.

There’s a time to ask theological questions, but there is a time to ask important, humanly significant ordinary Christians. There’s a time to judge a movie by the faith statements of the creators, and a time to judge a movie by the standards of good movie making. There’s a time to evaluate work by its potential for evangelism, but there is also a time to judge work by pragmatic standards.

Christians are sometimes shoddy thinkers, shoddy workers and shoddy creators. That’s usually accompanied by all the expected scripture quoting, testimony giving and God/Satan chatter.

There’s a time for theology, and there’s a time to talk about why bridges fall and what we can do about it.

MY PROBLEM with that kind of thinking exactly reflects IMonk's problem with that kind of mindlessness . . . that it's mindless, and it compromises Christian compassion and the Christian witness. There's something seriously messed up about people whose first reaction to a horrific tragedy is to ponder supernatural causes when their first reaction ought to be praying for the victims, praying for the souls of the dead . . . and rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty being the hands (and strong backs) of Christ on earth.

I've experienced that kind of supernatural fatalism first hand and, for my money, it's nothing more than a conscious or subconscious effort to absolve oneself of responsibility for things going wrong by blaming it on God . . . or the devil.

Here's a concrete example for you. I used to work for a Catholic radio station hereabouts, and the whole culture of the place oozed looking for a "spiritual warfare" explanation for every single, blessed thing. A garbage truck accidentally backs into our transmitter shack and almost destroys the transmitter? Satan drives for Deffenbaugh.

The sewer line keeps getting clogged up underneath the station's rest room in the aging strip center in a bad part of town? Satan is harassing us to disrupt the spreading of the gospel.

The cheap, broken-down equipment in the control room and production studio keeps . . . well . . . breaking down? We're being attacked.

ONE TIME, during a station fund raiser, my boss was having a (ahem) devil of a time getting a telephone guest onto the air from her perch in the production studio. I asked whether she'd done A, B and C.

Yes, yes, yes. OK, let me check it out.

When I walked into the production studio, I found her commanding "Be gone, Satan!" Upon inspecting the control board and phone interface, I found the problem wasn't Telco Satan.

Despite her protestations, my boss had not done A, B and C. I pressed a button . . . et voila!

Just call me St. Michael, slayer of phone demons.

IF ONLY I HAD THE POWER to slay the Interstate bridge demons. But that, I think, will be up to the State of Minnesota.

Tragically, it will come dozens of dead motorists too late. Lord, have mercy.

Please.