It sucks to be second fiddle . . . and falling fast

In the capital city of Louisiana, the mayor is howling at the moon and -- perhaps -- praying for another hurricane.

The Census Bureau's 2007 population estimates are in, and Baton Rouge didn't do so well. The city -- whose population swelled in 2005 with the near loss of New Orleans -- has not been able to hold on to its demographic largesse and now has assumed its historical position. That would be second banana to the Crescent City, which continues to slowly rebuild from its swamping during Katrina and now has a good 12,000 people on Baton Rouge.

NOT ONLY THAT, Baton Rouge's population drop, in sheer numbers, was the third biggest in the nation -- notching another bad-list triumph for Louisiana. In terms of percentage of population lost, the capital city was a solid No. 2, behind front-runner Columbus, Ga.

At least if you believe the federal government's numbers.

According to The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, Mayor-President Kip Holden doesn't:

New Orleans was the nation’s fastest-growing city during the same period, regaining the title of Louisiana’s most populous city from Baton Rouge for the first time since Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of people in August 2005.
The estimated 2007 population for New Orleans was 239,124, an increase of 28,926 but still just more than half of the city’s pre-Katrina population of 453,726.

Baton Rouge’s estimated population was 227,071.

Mayor-President Kip Holden said Wednesday that the Census report is a flawed estimate that dramatically underreported the city’s population.

“They take a mathematical extrapolation — that they come up with themselves — and come up with erroneous numbers,” Holden said. “Until we have a full census, they would do us all a favor if they would just go away for a couple of years until we can know the exact population.”

Holden said the report contradicts what he said is clear evidence of Baton Rouge’s ongoing growth: steady school enrollment, climbing sales tax revenue and booming business development.

“You can go virtually all over Baton Rouge and buildings are coming up everywhere,” Holden said. “So if that number was correct, would banks be out here loaning all these people money to build condos and apartments and office buildings and restaurants?”

I'M SURE THE CENSUS PEOPLE would be happy to take Holden's contention under advisement, but first they'll have to carve out a parameter in their database for "buildings are coming up everywhere."

They'll get right on that . . . just as soon as they get their giggles under control.

At least one Louisiana demographer is surprised that anyone is surprised by the Census Bureau's estimate.

Shreveport demographer and political analyst Elliott Stonecipher said the simultaneous population drop in Baton Rouge and growth in New Orleans was “anything but a surprise” given the ongoing resettling of Katrina victims.

“To me, it’s just very logical; it was very expected,” Stonecipher said.

Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans urban planner with GCR and Associates, said the shifts in both cities are related and most likely the result of major improvements in services in New Orleans during the summer and fall of 2006.

“When you look at when most people came back to New Orleans, it was really in that period,” he said. “Many of the people from New Orleans were clearly in Baton Rouge.”

The Census report is the second this year to estimate a population drop for the Baton Rouge area.

The bureau released population estimates for parishes and counties in March. That report estimated a population drop parishwide and was also criticized by city-parish officials.

East Baton Rouge Parish had an estimated population of 431,278 in July 2006, but that dropped to 430,317 by July 2007, or a loss of 961 residents, that report showed.

Holden said the estimates are “crippling” for Baton Rouge because federal and state funding is often tied to population. He said Congress should come up with a new method for calculating population between censuses.

WHAT MIGHT BE more useful than trying to convince the world -- and convince it on the sketchiest of anecdotal evidence -- that Baton Rouge can hold its population better than a New Orleans levee holds water would be, instead, figuring out why all those folks (presumably New Orleanians) fled after three years in paradise.

Of course, the pull of home is a strong one . . . particularly for natives of as insular a city as New Orleans. Still, we find that people are leaving Baton Rouge to return to a city that has one of the world's worst mayors at the helm.

They're leaving Red Stick for a city with the highest murder rate in the nation. And that race isn't even close.

They're leaving to return to a city where the school system is still a shambles. And where graft is bigger than Rex on Mardi Gras day.

They're leaving to return to a city that's just a direct hit by a Category 2 or 3 hurricane from oblivion. Again. Likely for good next time.

They're leaving for a city that's still largely in ruins, is a municipal-infrastructure nightmare, suffers under sky-high electric rates and needs patrols by National Guardsmen to stave off utter chaos. As opposed to its normal, everyday pre-Katrina chaos.

I KNOW WHAT IT IS to miss home. To miss one's culture . . . familiar foods . . . familiar music . . . familiar sights and sounds. For reasons transcending all good sense, there aren't that many days that I don't miss Baton Rouge.

But that's not enough to make me go back. And I live 1,100 miles distant from there. Have for 20 years now.

Baton Rouge's former exiles from the Big Easy had found refuge less than 90 minutes away from home. They found themselves relocated somewhere with a somewhat similar culture, closely related cuisine and an identical climate. And any onset of Crescent City delirium tremens would be easily "fixed" by a short road trip.

Did I mention the "one direct hit from oblivion . . . again" thing?

THAT'S WHAT Baton Rouge's mayor needs to be worrying about: Why in the name of Buckskin Bill and Tabby Thomas would people want to leave America's Next Great City(TM) for the corrupt, dysfunctional, beaten-down, dangerous basket case that is New Orleans?

Why would people do that if Baton Rouge is sitting there on the first high land on the Mississippi, just ready to launch itself into greatness?

Could it be that Baton Rouge ain't as wonderful as the mayor thinks?

Could it be that the crime isn't that much lower, the murders not that staggeringly fewer, the landscape not that less dilapidated and the public schools not that much better as to be meaningful to a homesick exile?

Could it be that Louisiana's once-again Second City barely outperforms a crippled New Orleans in the essentials that make a city livable while lacking the kind of vibrant, indigenous culture that makes the Crescent City -- in a very real sense -- the spiritual heartbeat of America?

WHEN MY WIFE AND I LEFT Baton Rouge in 1988, it was pretty much the same size it is now . . . perhaps 10,000 or so smaller in population. That kind of anemic population growth doesn't point to a vibrant, fundamentally sound municipality.

When we arrived in Omaha 20 years ago, Nebraska's largest city was about 100,000 people smaller than it is today. And even then, it still was 100,000 people larger than Baton Rouge is now.

What's the difference?

I think it comes down to this: Leaders of "next great cities" don't waste their time (and the taxpayers' money) trying to mau-mau the federal gummint when census figures don't fall their way. Leaders of great cities (those of "next" or "present" greatness) want to find out why the numbers turned against them.

They want to find out why people left -- or why more people aren't moving in. They want to find out where their city falls short.

And once they've done that, leaders of "great" cities -- or even "pretty good" cities -- move heaven and earth to fix what's wrong and improve what's right. That's not what it looks like Baton Rouge's Kip Holden is doing here.

Nobody likes a whiner, Kip. Not even exiled New Orleanians whose only alternative is "Crazy" Ray Nagin.

Surely, it's the video of the year

You know, we can deal with peak oil and the West being put over a 55-gallon barrel by Middle Eastern extortionists by invading one sand sewer after another forever and ever, amen. And we can do that at the cost of thousands and thousands of American lives as we bankrupt the American nation in the name of our quintessentially American petroleum jones.

Or we can go the unconventional-warfare route, putting the whole thing in the hands of the generals Zucker.

I vote for letting Jerry and David Zucker do to OPEC what they did for the airline industry.

And stop calling me Shirley.

'The man is Ted Baxter.' And was that a threat?

We held back some of this conversation... we didn't feel it had any relevance to the conversation this evening. We are not out to get Jesse Jackson. We are not out to embarrass him and we are not out to make him look bad. If we were, we would have used what we had, which is more damaging than what you have heard. . . .

-- Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly,
airing an off-air, on-mic private remark
by Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama

* * *

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with a small budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done--and are still doing--to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.

-- Edward R. Murrow, in an October 1958
speech to radio and TV news directors

* * *

No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.

-- Mike Rokyo, 1984, upon leaving
Rupert Murdoch's Chicago Sun-Times

The philosopher cop . . . who knew?

Over at BaRou is the New Bklyn, blogger Colleen Kane tells the story of celebrating the Fourth of July in a foreign land.

Sort of.

COLLEEN DESCRIBES how she and her festive crew -- in a city where everybody else already was engaging in a little celebratory "shock and awe" -- were trying to be considerate by shooting off their illegal (wink wink, nudge nudge) pyrotechnics on the wide-open expanse of the athletic field at Baton Rouge High.

Everything was fine, everybody was having a good time . . . but then something happened. Enter Barney Fife: Philosopher Cop.

The cop asked us our ages and where we were from. "You're too old for this," he said, looking about half as amused as we were. Miraculously none of us laughed when he said, "Maybe they do stupid things in Brooklyn, but here in Baton Rouge, we don't do stupid things." In addition, he informed us this wasn't a rural area where you can shoot off fireworks anywhere, and that was a historic school right over there that we were endangering.

MISS KANE and her cohorts have more self-control than I do. I would have asked the cop -- amid gales of doubled-over, gasping-for-breath, gut-busting laughter -- how the hell, then, did he explain the Metropolitan Council and the School Board. And I would have been arrested.

"Maybe they do stupid things in Brooklyn, but here in Baton Rouge, we don't do stupid things."

No, cops just say stupid things in an attempt to get the rest of us to adopt a new Unifying Theory of Louisiana.

R O S E N B L A T T

All things must pass . . . one more once

One of the beauties of baseball is the tempo of the game. It's relaxed enough for even the casual observer to realize that, at the ballpark, the game is only, say, one-tenth of the action.

Or something like that.

Here we continue our photo essays from the College World Series at Omaha's old Rosenblatt Stadium, where we're counting down the seasons until the old landmark gives way, in 2011, to a brand-new ballpark downtown.

It's the long goodbye. And here are some snapshots of Year One of that process.

The game: Fresno State vs. North Carolina.

The date: June 22, 2008.

She loves the game. It's in her eyes.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association wants there to be no doubt about what sport is involved in the College World Series. The NCAA is College World Serious about that particular point. It's BASEBALL.

The old park didn't look like this, exactly, when the CWS first came to town in 1950.

Upstairs, downstairs.

To the meager goes the spoiled

After the big storm Friday before last, our electricity was off for a full three days.

We managed to save the bulk of our perishables through a combination of dry ice, an ice-filled cooler and (finally) hauling everything to the fridge and freezer of friends who had power.

STILL, we took a hit in lost food. Not a big one, but a financial hit nevertheless.

But what if you're on food stamps and you lose everything in your refrigerator and freezer? The Omaha World-Herald reports:

Cerita Gaines lost a mid-size freezer full of food when the June 27 storm hit the metro area. The turkeys she had just purchased at a bargain price, along with the rest of her food, were wasted.

"I lost everything," she said. The 49-year-old was among the hundreds of people today who got in line as early as 5:30 a.m. to receive the emergency ration of food stamps from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

As many as 20,000 to 30,000 Douglas, Sarpy and Saunders County households are expected to apply for the aid that could total $7 million to $10 million, but — for now — families have less than a week to sign up. Long lines also formed Monday, the first day that people could apply for assistance.

One month's worth of food stamps will be provided, which for a single person is valued at $162 and for a family of four, $542. The aid is available to those who lost power, meet income guidelines and have either lost income or have had to spend extra money to recover from the storm.

More than 126,000 households and businesses in the metropolitan area lost power to the storm.

For the second day in a row, the number of food stamp applicants overwhelmed Health and Human Services. At midmorning today, officials were asking those not already in line to wait another day.

"We have waiting lines of several blocks at each location," said spokeswoman Kathie Osterman.

Katrina Shmatrina. They don't need our help.

In Louisiana, this is what's considered a "broken-down vehicle”:

A broken-down vehicle looks a little different here in Nebraska:

AMERICANS NEED to remember that the next time some Louisiana politician or another arrives in Washington, hat in hand, whining about:

* How the state was "wronged" by the federal government over Hurricane Katrina.

* How the state can't possibly pay its 10-percent share of rebuilding New Orleans-area levees.

* How Uncle Sam is "holding back" the rebuilding of New Orleans because Washington has been so unbearably niggardly with federal aid.

* How there's a perfectly good excuse for the latest Bayou State nonsense and -- by the way -- how Louisiana needs to make just one more claim on your federal tax dollar because "We're a poor state."

Right.

And remember that, in such a "poor state," this is a "broken-down car":

AND THIS is what passes for "the crown jewel" of the Louisiana capital's public-education system:

Broken-down car:


Top-of-the-line high school:


ANYTHING ELSE you need to know before opening up that checkbook, America?

Now somebody go inform members of the Louisiana Legislature that ideas -- and the words used to express them -- have consequences. Especially when one's hat spends so much time in one's hand.

All things must pass (the sequel)

Alone . . . all alone. Do I have odor that offends?

Now, you do have
the tickets, right?

Right? Honey?

I asked whether you
have the tickets.

Not gonna make it.
Not at this juncture.

Well, yeah, it is kinda hot out here in right field. . . .
But remember, we get the ESPN discount at Pauli's.
Dah duh DAH! Dah duh DAH!

Heeeeey, batterbatterbatterbatter! Swing, batter!

Heeeeey, batterbatterbatterbatter! Swing, batter!

He can't hit he can't hit he can't hit he can't hit
. . . swinnng, batter!

(The original Rosenblatt Stadium-College World Series post is here.)

The perils of preprints

The problem with preprinted sections in the newspaper is the very real possibility something will happen between the printing and the distribution that will make you look really, really stupid.

Or worse.

Today, it's The New York Times' turn to get bitten in the arse:

Correction: July 6, 2008
An article today in Sunday Business about missed opportunities to reduce America’s dependence on imported oil refers to a 1990 effort by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, to block higher mileage requirements for vehicles and notes that Mr. Helms did not return calls seeking comment. The section went to press on Thursday, before Mr. Helms’s death Friday morning.

All things must pass

A long, long time ago, when my wife was helping her dad put up College World Series posters in Omaha storefronts, those humble advertisements pointed baseball fans and the civic-minded to a city's premier event.

A June rite out here on the Great Plains.

To a spot somewhere over the rainbow where, every year, some college boys of summer would see their dreams come true. Those signs pointed Omahans to Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium, where baseball dreams had come true (and where some others died) every June since 1950.

MY FATHER-IN-LAW had been part of the Omaha team that brought the NCAA championship to a cowtown on the Plains when Harry S. Truman was president. And there it stayed, with Dad at the PR helm for almost 40 years. And here it remains, almost 60 years on . . . long after Omaha traded in market bulls for bull markets and Tech High for high-tech.

In 1950, Municipal Stadium consisted of an average grandstand and a modest press box. Johnny Rosenblatt was on the city council.

In 2008, that same stadium seats more than 23,000 and features a stadium club and an impressive press box. The late Johnny Rosenblatt's name shines upon it in neon lights.

My wife's father has been dead for more than 15 years, but his legacy lives on every June. Right here in Omaha, Neb., where every year, eight colleges' boys of summer come to play.

THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES ain't what it used to be. Used to be, it was small-town, homespun, hiya neighbor and apple pie. Now, it's still a lot of that . . . but it's also corporate-slick, big-time and big money.

And come the opening pitch of the 2011 series, the CWS will forge a new tradition at a brand-new stadium in downtown Omaha.

So last month's CWS began our city's long goodbye to old Rosenblatt Stadium, where so many memories lie. Where a buddy and I, coworkers at the North Platte Telegraph, sat in our free box seats watching Roger Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi pitch Texas past Alabama for the 1983 national championship.

A nice gal, the Telegraph's copy-desk chief, scored those seats for us. Her dad had connections. He did the PR for the Series.

If a girl has that kind of juice, there's only one thing you can do. Fall in love with her, then marry her. So I did.

That was 25 years ago -- probably the last smart thing I ever did.

Probably not the smartest thing she ever did.

TIME, ALAS, marches on. So does progress.

Our memories will live in our hearts forever, but in three years, Rosenblatt Stadium will be toast, and some cute girl will score great seats in a shiny new stadium for some unworthy lout . . . and who knows what that will lead to.

Apart from a whole new batch of precious memories.

So, as part of a city's long goodbye to an old friend, I lugged my old camera -- and a bunch of rolls of film -- to the old ball yard. What you see here, and undoubtedly will see in coming days on the Blog for the People, is a day in the life of the College World Series . . . and Omaha's Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium.

Sunday, June 22, 2008. Fresno State vs. North Carolina.

Memories were made that day. Some of them, I caught in the viewfinder of an old Canon TX.

Holy crap! I can't believe in Jesus anymore!

Oh my unLord! Christianity has fallen!

A first-century BNC (Before Not Christ) Hebrew tablet has been found that's shaken my now ex-faith to its now ex-core. Apparently, ancient Jews had an idea the Messiah would be raised from the dead after three days!

THE NOTION is not a Christian exclusive, and I'm headed out in a few to go a drinkin' and a whorin', because it don't matter now.

Really, it's all in The New York Times:

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

(snip)

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

OH, INSERT Anglo-Saxon expletive here. Jesus and his followers didn't even bother to make this s*** up. They ripped it off from Shlomo the Stone Scribbler. And, come to think of it, the stuff J.C. and the Dubious Dozen were going around preaching sounded an awful lot like some stuff that was in Isaiah, in the Old Testament.

You know, all that "suffering servant" crapola. House of David, my eye!

The Big Guy was even ripping off Psalm 22 when he was dying on the cross -- all that "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" stuff.

And . . . and . . . the former deity known as "Jesus" -- with all this rising after three days stuff -- was ripping off the Book of Jonah, which the stone scribbler also apparently bastardized into some sort of literary "prefigurement" of the Resurrection. I mean . . . really:

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

"Either declare the tree good and its fruit is good, or declare the tree rotten and its fruit is rotten, for a tree is known by its fruit.

You brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.

A good person brings forth good out of a store of goodness, but an evil person brings forth evil out of a store of evil.

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak.

By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you."

He said to them in reply, "An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.

Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.

At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and there is something greater than Jonah here.

At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and there is something greater than Solomon here.

JOHAH. ISAIAH. PSALMS. STONE TABLET. You'd think that what would happen to the "Messiah" was no secret, that ancient Jews had lots of clues in literature and tradition. That all this stuff was of a piece.

That it was prefigurement . . . allegory . . . prophecy. That it all somehow makes sense from a Christian perspective.

Oh, wait . . . it does.

And, while I'm thinking of it, there hasn't been anyone who's come up with a bag of bones six feet under a tombstone reading "Jesus H. Christ, Alleged Son of God."

(Sound of crickets.)

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . perhaps I was a little hasty, Lord.

I can call you "Lord" . . . right?

Sir? Your Almightyness?

TV used to be about the movies. Now it's ESPN

Here's a bit of early Glen Campbell from a 1965 episode of ABC television's Shindig! music program. By today's technical standards, the production is primitive -- black-and-white, graphics limited to simple superimposing of a title card over the main image, analog 525-line NTSC broadcasting instead of high-def digital.

And it's visually stunning. Every camera shot is a masterwork of composition and choreography.

YOU COULD OFFER a similar critique of any number of TV broadcasts from the "old days" of the 1950s and '60s. Here's another clip from the days when TV had nothing to rely on except artistry:

This was what was happening in the mid-'60s over on Hullabaloo on NBC.


And here, The Doors on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. They were never on again . . . Jim Morrison said "get much higher."

And, finally, The Killers on MTV's Total Request Live a few years ago. In some respects, live television is still live television, but you'll notice how quick cuts now predominate -- and how crane shots fly like a rocket, instead of float like a balloon.

It's probably overgeneralizing, but I would submit that television -- somewhere along the way, probably starting in the 1970s and '80s -- began to lose the cinematic aesthetic and instead adopted that of big-budget TV sports.

In other words, television -- particularly music television -- doesn't look like the movies. It looks like Monday Night Football. And SportsCenter.

I wonder what that says about us . . . and our culture.

HAT TIP: The Dawn Patrol.

Lust, license and the pursuit of stuff

Happy Fourth of July!

It is on this day we celebrate the Continental Congress' adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the birth in 1776 of our independent American nation, which actually occurred on July 2 but forget that, we're on a roll.

AND WHEN Lord Cornwallis surrendered his British army to George Washington's American forces and their French allies, it was pretty much all over. The infant nation grew and prospered and, by the 1940s, had become the most powerful the world had ever known. It presided as hegemon of much of the earth, and its people -- through the dual blessings of freedom and prosperity -- dedicated themselves to the pursuit of license and excess.

Secure in our attainment of what we needed, we therefore relentlessly pursued what we wanted. And what we want is stuff. More and more stuff. And bigger places to keep all our stuff.

And governmental policies to help us accumulate that stuff.

Our money says "In God we trust" but that's only constitutional if we don't really mean it. Which we don't, thank God. (And, to be safe. we don't mean that either.)

No, this July 4, we give lip service to self-evident truths and "nature's God" and "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but we all know what's important, don't we?

Stuff.

The pursuit of stuff is what makes us happy. Until we decide we still don't have enough stuff.

Or a big enough McMansion way out in the 'burbs to keep our stuff. Or enough gas-guzzling horseless carriages to haul our fat asses and our stuff from place to place.

Which requires us to invade hapless Middle Eastern despot states like Iraq under the pretense of self-evident truth and letting freedom ring -- and Mom, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet -- to keep is in enough oil and gas to sate our need for speed.

And stuff.

So, I can't think of a better way to celebrate the birth of our nation than by exercising the God-given right to spit in the eye of America's modern mountebanks who sell us snake oil in the name of "freedom."

And in that spirit, I give you the late, great George Carlin, who really had our number.

NOTE: Video contains some profanity. Funny profanity, but blue nevertheless.

If you don't hear from me. . . .

Here we go again.

Yet another severe thunderstorm is bearing down on Omaha, apparently with quarter-size hail, strong wind, torrential rain. I guess I won't be hoeing and weeding the garden today after all.

Assuming I have a garden left after what's left of my garden gets hammered by this round of crappy weather. And this storm, which just blew up north of town, is drawing a bead on midtown Omaha . . . which is where I live.

This will not be good for limbs and trees that were weakened, but not dropped, by Friday's monster.

Once again, I stepped outside to get the afternoon paper and check the mail . . . only to look up, see a Not Good sky and hear the far-off thunder. Came in, turned on the TV . . . and Channel 7 already was on with wall-to-wall weather coverage.

Dammit. This flipping thing has developed a wall cloud. You can see it on the TV tower cam.

It's official. We're all going to die.

I think I'm joking. Maybe not.

UPDATE: The thing just missed our house . . . it's not a terribly wide storm, just a few miles. I don't think it had tremendous wind, but apparently downtown got the worst of the hail. Perhaps golf-ball size.

Needless to say, we're all a bit gun shy during this storm season that just won't end.

Dogs don't blow stuff up . . .

But some folks who hate them because they're "ritually impure" will blow you, your kids and Fido, too, to Kingdom Come to feed the bloodlust of "Allah the merciful."

And they'll blow themselves up to take out Western whoremongers, which will make them martyrs of Islam, which will earn them serious freak time in Paradise with 72 virgins.

And they'll blow other Muslims up because they're the wrong sort of Muslims.

And, I suspect, a lot of Muslims will blow themselves (and whatever else) up just because they're bored and aggrieved over some slight suffered yesterday or 700 years ago.

Maybe they'll blow somebody in Scotland up because Scottish cops -- and the Scottish people -- like filth. Which, in the warped world of Islam, equals a cute little puppy:

A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.

Tayside Police's new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.

The choice of image on the Tayside Police cards - a black dog sitting in a police officer's hat - has now been raised with Chief Constable John Vine.

The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.

Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: 'My concern was that it's not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards.

'It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities.

'They (the police) should have understood. Since then, the police have explained that it was an oversight on their part, and that if they'd seen it was going to cause upset they wouldn't have done it.'

Councillor Asif, who is a member of the Tayside Joint Police Board, said that the force had a diversity adviser and was generally very aware of such issues.

He raised the matter with Mr Vine at a meeting of the board.

The chief constable said he was unaware of the concerns and that the force had not sought to cause any upset but added he would look into the matter.

Councillor Asif said: 'People who have shops just won't put up the postcard. But the police have said to me that it was simply an oversight and they did not seek to offend or upset.'

COME TO THINK OF IT, I wonder whether the outraged Musselmans are angry because God hates dogs -- a cracked idea that's reason enough to raise grave doubts about Islam -- or because the cute pup featured in the Scottish police ad, Rebel, is training to be a police dog.

I mean, who knows? Rebel could end up being a bomb-sniffing dog.

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you," Mark Twain once said. "This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. . . ."

That sounds like the exact difference between Rebel and Scotland's caterwauling Mohammedans. Just replace "man" with "Muslim."

And the difference between a man and Scottish authorities is a man would have told Councillor Asif to piss off.

Gone with the wind . . . for a while

It must have been about four-something o'clock Friday afternoon when I went out to check the mailbox and fetch the afternoon newspaper. Yes, Omaha's that kind of place; we have an afternoon edition of the World-Herald.

I looked up at the sky, not expecting it was a severe-weather kind of day -- and, really, it didn't seem a classic "Oh, crap, somebody's gonna get it" windy, muggy, tornado-incubating afternoon -- and thought "This is not good." When you've lived on the Plains long enough, you know a Not Good sky when you see it.

This was Not Good.

Little did I know how Not Good it would get in a half-hour or so.

JUST A FEW MINUTES after I got back inside the house, the tornado sirens went off. Turned on the television. Not a tornado, but a severe thunderstorm with loads of hail and Category 1-hurricane wind. The sirens were on because this was the Mother of All Thunderstorms, and thousands were outdoors both at Memorial Park waiting for a free concert and downtown at the Summer Arts Festival.

Job 1: Get the dogs to the basement. Job 2: Bring in the hanging begonia. Job 3: Wait.

It started to rain about the same time the wind started to pick up. Then the wind started to really pick up. Quickly afterward, the lights went out. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a transformer blew. This was starting to look, and sound, like a hurricane.

I grew up in south Louisiana. I know hurricanes.

Then, when the hail started falling like rain -- and blowing horizontally into the house like sandblasting with marbles -- I thought it might be a good idea to join the dogs in the basement. You couldn't see out the windows, really, as the hail few out of an impenetrable white fury.

I'd seen that before, too. In 1971, when a F-2 tornado spun out of Hurricane Edith (which otherwise was an unremarkable storm) and wrecked parts of my Baton Rouge neighborhood -- taking out a shopping center, an apartment building, God knows how many trees and, a block away from us, a house's roof.

Have you ever seen a flooded street, driveway and yard become unflooded in about a minute's time? I have.

Ever seen leaves, fiberglass insulation and shingles fly out of a swirling white cloud, stick to your front window, then fly away into the mist? I have.

When the fit starts hitting the shan to that degree, pretty much like what was starting to happen at our Omaha house, you figure there might be a tornado in there somewhere . . . and that you don't mess with. Grab the flashlight, the radio and the little TV, then go subterranean.

What happens when TV goes all-digital? Just asking.

THE STORM eventually let up, and we emerged, the dogs and me, to a dead, dark house sitting in a disheveled, electricity-deprived neighborhood. A small limb was knocked out of the ash tree in the front yard -- we'd lose another bigger limb to wind gusts the next day -- and another one came off the hackberry in the back. The shingles on our roof were beat to hell.

One of our garbage cans rested against the next-door neighbor's house. Another lay in the driveway, its lid halfway to the street. Next to it was our upended recycling bin.

Limbs were all over the place -- up and down the street . . . and in the street. Every house, every window, every car, every thing was plastered with wet leaves. Water coursed down the drainage ditch like a Rocky Mountain stream.

Neighbors were beginning to emerge to see how they'd fared. A fallen tree blocked our street on one end. Down the other way, neighbors said, a tree limb had gone through someone's roof like an incoming missile.

I drifted down to the blocked end of the street, where a group of folks were trying to reopen the street. Some of us pulled a big limb out of the street as others went at the trunk with a chainsaw, and a front-end loader from the hospital down the street waited to push it all to the side of the road.

SLOWLY, the degree to which my city had been whacked began to emerge from the transistor radio in my pocket -- a triumph of technology, circa 1962. The Qwest Center arena downtown had lost part of its roof. A wastewater-treatment plant severely damaged and out of commission. The Summer Arts Festival ransacked.

The Memorial Park concert canceled.

The Memorial Park and Dundee neighborhoods reportedly looking like war zones.

Car windows shattered by hail and wind.

Some 126,000 Omaha Public Power District customers without electricity.

Heavy tree and property damage throughout the area. A boat on someone's roof in Valley.

A report just in . . . two dead in Council Bluffs, the smallish Iowa city just across the Missouri River from Omaha. Teen-agers in car. Crushed by falling tree.

Then some of us, having heard a big tree had been uprooted, went farther down the street to check things out. One had, but it -- luckily -- missed both street and structure.

And after a few minutes, I headed back up the hill and around the corner from where we live, following the sound of chainsaws. One fork of somebody's tree had split off and fallen on the place next door.

Need help? You bet.

So I spent the next couple of hours helping get the tree off that house. The elderly couple who lived there weren't home . . . yet.

When they did arrive, the wife looked shell-shocked. It could have been worse, though. Somehow, though the gutter was toast and the shingles, too -- probably -- that tree didn't punch through the decking. No holes.

If a big tree has to hit your house, that's the way to go.

AFTER A WHILE, Mrs. Favog drove up. Our next-door neighbor told her where she probably could find me. One of the gathered neighbors poured her some wine in a "go cup." After an afternoon of log wrestling, I looked like the "before" half of a Tide commerical -- only worse.

(Dear WDVX: Do you think you could see fit to send me another station T-shirt? An XXL would be nice and comfy, but an XL would do. Thanks.)

When the job was about licked and the ex-tree stacked, I sent Mrs. Favog to the store in search of dry ice (for our refrigerator), more candles and all the batteries she could scare up. And beer. If you have to sit in a dark, hot house, beer makes you not mind so much.

Me, I was headed home to shower while there was some daylight left. We would be dining out . . . wherever there was a restaurant with electricity. That ended up being Jazz, a Louisiana-style restaurant downtown.

Naturally, what usually is a 15-minute trip ended up being a half-hour slog through dark streets and across major intersections with no stop lights.

And then back again, to a dark house on a dark street in a darkened city. A battered city, one strong in all its broken places.

THERE, in a house with no TV, no Internet, no functioning computers . . . no lights . . . in that dim island in an inky sea, there we sat in the candlelight listening to the CBC on the transistor radio.

For a short while, life was as before there were 758 channels (and still nothing on). Before there was the overstimulation of the Internet. Before we caught the whole world in a wide web.

With one ill wind (one that turned out to be low Category 2 hurricane in some spots), our world -- my wife's and mine -- got off the steroids and returned to its right size. Once again, the world at large became . . . large.

The silence was deafening.

You know, it ain't bad . . . once you get used to it.

3 Chords & the Truth: We got the beat

Beat.

The beat. The beat . . . hey . . . the beat . . . hey . . .the beat . . . hey . . . the beat. The beat beat beat.

WE GOT THE BEAT. It's in the air. It's in your hair. It will tear. If you bear . . . the beat. Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

What's the beat? I repeat. I repeat the beat.

Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

It started before time, it took off with jive, it's the heartbeat of life, and it'll cut like a knife.

Man.

IT'S THE BEAT. Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

3 Chords & the Truth got the beat. 3 Chords & the Truth is the beat. 3 Chords & the Truth wants your dancin' feet.

Dancin'. Dancin' to the beat. Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

Man.

The beat. 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

The Daily Blab: Outsourced to The Daily Raj

A long time ago, I was stupid enough to enter my local university. There, I worked hard for a long time, both in the classroom and on the campus daily, and emerged some years later with something called a "journalism degree."

After graduation, I -- along with a great many similarly deluded young people -- went to work for American newspapers. Some of us became reporters. Others, copy editors. Some of us have been both . . . and other things in the media world, as well.

Generally, we all worked hard to know our communities backwards and forwards. And, generally, we all became proficient enough in our areas of expertise that -- before the advent of the World Wide Web -- we, the oracles of The Daily Blab, became daily settlers of bar bets.

And though we already were native speakers (and writers) of English, we still worked to sharpen our writing skills and become even more expert in English grammar and usage.

Even amid a dying newspaper industry, journalists thought that native-speaker thing, at least, would save them from being "outsourced." We thought our college degrees were worth something -- well, worth something economically. We thought we had "bettered ourselves" in some tangible manner.

Saps!

Dupes!

Suckers!

WE THOUGHT LIKE LIT . . . which is a bawdy and scatological cultural reference that Apu in New Delhi will let slip past him -- and into The Daily Blab -- every time. From The Associated Press:

An Indian company will take over copy editing duties for some stories published in The Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily, the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.

Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register.

Mindworks' Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides "high-quality editorial and design services to global media firms ... using top-end journalistic and design talent in India."

Editors at Mindworks will work five shifts a week for one month, performing layout for the community paper and editing some stories in the flagship Register, Fabris said. Staffing at the company will not be affected, he said.

Fabris did not specify which community newspaper would be laid out by Indian designers.

"This is a small-scale test, which will not touch our local reporting or decision-making. Our own editors will oversee this work," Fabris said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "In a time of rapid change at newspapers, we are exploring many ways to work efficiently while maintaining quality and improving local coverage."

WE'RE ALL DISPOSABLE. Yes, we are.

And the Bolshevik Revolution happened for a reason. I'm just sayin'.