Stupid reporter tricks

How stupid are some people?

WELL, here's one example, courtesy of The Detroit News:

Longtime Metro Detroit radio reporter Karen Dinkins has been fired after wearing a pro-Barack Obama T-shirt while covering a rally for the presidential candidate Sunday at the Detroit Public Library.

Dinkins, who has worked at WWJ (950 AM) for 13 years, acknowledged that the radio station fired her Monday, but she did not elaborate.

"I don't want to comment at this time," she said.

Georgeann Herbert, WWJ's director of programming, said in a statement that Dinkins compromised the station's objectivity by wearing the T-shirt.

"(The station) believes that our credibility with our listeners rests on the independence of our newsroom staff," the statement said. "WWJ does not favor any candidate, party or issue.

I'M NOT SURPRISED there are people out there so lacking in common sense. I am, however, troubled that one of them can last 13 years as a reporter for a major-market radio station. Good Lord!

Uh . . . because the bailout's better now?

Rep. Lee Terry, congressman for Nebraska's 2nd District, used to be agin' the Wall Street "bailout" plan. But now he's fer it.

Says the Omaha World-Herald:

The Omaha congressman voted Monday against the House version of the bailout, as did the three other House members from Nebraska and western Iowa. The others remain either skeptical or opposed.

Terry was one of the first to indicate that he could reverse course and support the bill, saying even before the Senate vote Wednesday that his key objections had been addressed.

He had called for an increase in federal insurance of bank deposits and a waiver of accounting rules that require companies to write down assets to reflect their true market value.

The Senate bill raises the cap on insurance for bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, and the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it would ease the "mark-to-market" accounting rules.

"Basically, my demands have been met," Terry said Wednesday night.

He said he now expects that nowhere near the full $700 billion would be necessary — and he feels good about the plan.

"I still haven't committed to anybody," he said. "Maybe I'll think of a new reason to vote no, but I doubt it."

YES, THE ENTIRE Washington power structure was brought to heel by an obscure congressman from the plains of Nebraska. Who previously had been ready to blow up the nation's financial markets because "mark-to-market" rules and more FDIC insurance weren't included in the original package -- even though both long had been under discussion and could be implemented administratively.

No, Terry's flip-flop couldn't have had anything to do with this. Or this.

I mean, what's an entire city administration panicked over the prospect of not being able to float municipal bonds -- and over maybe having to cancel construction projects -- got to do with anything? Compared to "mark-to-market" reform, potentially selling your hometown down the fiscal river is peanuts.

Ditto that concerned billionnaire and civic titan you've got on the telephone there, wondering how you got your head that far up your ass.

Naw, Terry's switch was an entirely principled affair.

Whatever. Just so long as he switches.

Slouching into that good night

We're teetering on the edge of some bad juju here in America, and the woman above could be vice-president.

If that weren't depressing enough. . . .

Don't worry, be happy.

Remain calm, all is well. Yes, we can!

"We're gonna spread happiness! We're gonna spread freedom! Obama's gonna change it, Obama's gonna lead 'em."

Or so we have been informed by a choir of brainwashed children singing hosannas to the Man Who Would Be Dear Leader.

FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I can't figure out why the Europeans don't think much of us anymore. Really, where did this Der Spiegel opinion piece come from?

There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker's tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience's reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.

Or what is left of him.

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN.

The American president has always had enemies in these hallways and offices at the UN building on First Avenue in Manhattan. The Iranians and Syrians despise the eternal American-Israeli coalition, while many others are tired of Bush's Americans telling the world about the blessings of deregulated markets and establishing rules "that only apply to others," says the diplomat from Berlin.

But the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

"Well," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva began, standing outside the General Assembly Hall. Then he looked out the window and said: "He decided to talk about terrorism, but the issue that has the world concerned is the economic crisis." Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the president of Argentina, said that the schoolmasters from Washington had dubbed the 1994 Mexican crisis the "tequila effect" and Brazil's 1999 crisis the "Caipirinha effect."

Are we now experiencing the "whiskey effect?" But President Kirchner was gracious and, with a smile, called it the "jazz effect."

Is it only President George W. Bush, the lame duck president, whom the rest of the world is no longer taking seriously, or are the remaining 191 UN member states already setting their sights on the United States, the giant brought to its knees? UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to a "new reality" and "new centers of power and leadership in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world." Are they surprised, in these new centers, at the fall of America, of the system of the Western-style market economy?

OH, JUST WAIT. It gets better:

This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.

A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.

Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

Gone are the days when the US could go into debt with abandon, without considering who would end up footing the bill. And gone are the days when it could impose its economic rules of engagement on the rest of the world, rules that emphasized profit above all else -- without ever considering that such returns cannot be achieved by doing business in a respectable way.

With its rule of three of cheap money, free markets and double-digit profit margins, American turbo-capitalism has set economic standards worldwide for the past quarter century. Now it is proving to be nothing but a giant snowball system, upsetting the US's global political status as it comes crashing down. Every bank that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is currently forced to bail out with American government funds damages America's reputation around the world.

Of course, it is not solely the result of undesirable economic developments that the United States is in the process of forfeiting its unique position in the world and that the world is moving toward what Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, calls a "post-American age." Washington has also lost much of its political ability to impose its will on other countries.

The failed leadership of President Bush, whose departure most of his counterparts from other countries are now looking forward to more and more openly, is not solely to blame. Nor are his two risky wars: the one in Iraq, which he launched frivolously in the vain hope of converting the entire region to the American way of life, and the other in Afghanistan, in which Bush now risks the world's most powerful defense alliance, NATO, suffering its first defeat.

But it's hard to forget how this president's mentors celebrated the power to shape world affairs the United States acquired in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the East-West conflict. There was talk of a "unipolar moment," of "America's moment," even of an "end of history," now that all other countries apparently had no other choice but to become smaller versions of America: liberal, democratic and buoyed by an unshakeable confidence in the free market economy.

The Bush administration wanted to cement forever this unique moment in history, in which the United States was undoubtedly the strongest power on earth. It wanted to use it to clean house in chronic crisis zones around the world, especially the Middle East. Far from relying on the classic, cumbersome and often unsuccessful tools of multilateral diplomacy, the Bush warriors were always quick to threaten military intervention -- just as quick as they were to make good on this threat.

The strategists of this immoderately self-confident administration formulated these principles in the "Bush doctrine" and claimed, for themselves and their actions, the right to "preemptive" military intervention -- with little concern for the rules of alliances or international organizations.

The superpower even claimed privileges over its allies, even offending some of its best friends during Bush's first term. Bush withdrew the American signature from a treaty to establish the International Criminal Court, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change and he withdrew from an agreement with the Russians to limit the number of missile defense systems.

Washington sought to divide the world into good and evil -- and did so as it saw fit.

Now, in the wake of the crash on Wall Street, the debate in the UN reveals that the long-humiliated have lost their fear of the giant in world politics. Even a political dwarf like Bolivian President Evo Morales is now talking big. "There is an uprising against an economic model, a capitalistic system that is the worst enemy of humanity," Morales told the UN General Assembly.

The financial crisis has uncovered the world power's true weakness. The more the highly indebted United States has to spend to stabilize its own economic system, the more trouble it has performing its self-imposed duties as the world's policeman.
The new US president will only have been in office for a short time when a document titled "Global Trends 2025" appears on his desk. The report is being prepared by analysts at the National Intelligence Council. Its chairman, Thomas Fingar, has already released a preview, and reading it will not exactly be enjoyable for proud American. "Although the United States will remain the most important power, American dominance will be sharply reduced," says Fingar.

According to the preview of the report, the erosion of American supremacy will "accelerate in the areas of politics and economics, and possibly culture."

The century that just began is unlikely to be declared the American century again. Instead, "Asia will shape the fate of the world, with or without the United States," says Parag Khanna, a young Indian-American political scientist whose book "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order" has attracted a great deal of attention in the United States.

There is much to be said for Khanna's assertion. Beijing is already funding a large share of the gigantic American trade deficit, while at the same time selling many consumer goods to the United States. In other words, it benefits from the US's weakness in two ways. And politically speaking, the newly self-confident Chinese will no longer allow themselves to be domineered by the West. Reacting to worldwide criticism of political oppression in Tibet, the Chinese encouraged their nationalist youth to assault Western institutions and refused to allow themselves to be lectured on human rights.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has acknowledged that the "world's largest debtor nation" cannot simultaneously shape the course of the world. The challenges America faces have multiplied, especially in recent times.

WELL, HOW DO YOU like that, America? You really must read the whole thing -- particularly since it's all true.

And particularly since it's all our own damned fault.

Sometime during the last few decades, we Americans ceased to be a serious people. The past eight years, particularly, have exposed a country unserious about public and private morality, unserious about effective self-governance and seriously incapable of cultural . . . seriousness.

But we did get the world to buy into a serious Ponzi scheme. We should be so proud.

We've made a grand hash of things, and now we stand ready to elect as our leaders either an unstable McCrank and his comely-but-ditzy sidekick or the Dalai Obama and his gaffe-prone lesser incarnation.

ONCE, the United States was a country of great products and audacious feats. That time is past.

It's now last call for the American Century as a nation slips off the barstool -- a little hazy, a little discomfitedly buzzed -- and prepares to slouch off gentle into that good night.

Los Estados Unidos de Chiquita

In case you were unsure whether the United States is now a banana republic, this Associated Press story should disabuse you of any overly rosy notions:

Astounded by the U.S. government's failure to resolve the financial crisis threatening the foundations of the global free market, fingers of blame are pointing at America from around the planet.

Latin American leaders say the U.S. must quickly fix the financial crisis it created before the rest of the world's hard-won economic gains are lost.

"The managers of big business took huge risks out of greed," said President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, whose economy is highly dependent on U.S. trade. "What happens in the United States will affect the entire world and, above all, small countries like ours."

In Europe, where some blame a phenomenon of "casino capitalism" that has become deeply ingrained from New York to London to Moscow, there is more of a sense of shared responsibility. But Europeans also blame the U.S. government for letting things get out of hand.

Amid harsh criticism is a growing consensus that stricter financial regulation is needed to prevent unfettered capitalism from destroying economies around the globe.

And leaders of developing nations that kept spending tight and opened their economies in response to American demands are warning of other consequences — a loss of U.S. influence globally and the likelihood that the world's poor will suffer the most from greed by the biggest players in global finance.

"They spent the last three decades saying we needed to do our chores. They didn't," a grim-faced Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday.

(snip)

China's influence in the outcome of all this could be profound because it is a huge investor in U.S. debt. It is already calling for strict new international regulatory systems to apply to globalized financial markets.

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission, said Saturday before a weeklong bank holiday in China that debt in the United States and elsewhere has risen to dangerous and indefensible levels.

The rest of the world is taking notice. Many newspapers made references Tuesday to China's increasing importance in global finance. In Algeria, a large cartoon on the front page of the newspaper El-Watan showed Uncle Sam at prayer: "Save us!" he says, kneeling before a portrait of China's Mao Zedong.

NOW ALL WE NEED is a gruff and impetuous generalissimo in charge of things -- or perhaps a charismatic figure with a Messiah complex and a personality cult -- to complete our climb up the Chiquita food chain.

OH . . . CRAP.

'My advice to you is to start drinking heavily'

The official United States YouTube clip.
We just keep going to this one . . .
because it's so true. Contains profanity.

Dear World,


Hey! You f***** up!

You trusted us!

The Washington Post reports on markets and banks and economies (Oh, my!) in deep doo all across the world:

The turmoil that began on Wall Street now spans the globe.

Stock markets around the world cascaded lower Monday, European regulators announced the rescue of four major banks, and U.S. and foreign officials pledged to make hundreds of billions of dollars available to ensure that banks would continue lending to each other.

Yet the contagion continued. U.S. stocks opened weak, then fell off a cliff after the House of Representatives voted down a $700 billion plan intended to restore stability to the nation's wobbly financial system. That sent Brazil's stock market down 10 percent, prompting authorities in Sao Paulo to temporarily suspend trading, amid worries of a deep U.S. economic slowdown.

In the seldom-interrupted cycle of global financial markets, the extraordinary pace and scale of events brought an abrupt end to the confident attitude displayed by European officials as recently as last week, when officials claimed that shareholders and investors there had less to fear than their American counterparts because European banks weren't as heavily exposed to the troubled mortgage loans undermining the U.S. system.

(snip)

In France, authorities had been worrying about a sell-off of the stock of Dexia, a Franco-Belgian bank catering to local governments. The bank's stock dropped by more than a third in early trading Monday, then recovered slightly on a pledge from Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders to step in with government funds if necessary.

The Paris newspaper Le Figaro said a U.S. subsidiary of Dexia, the bond insurer FSA, had caused concerns among investors because of involvement in shaky real estate mortgages in the United States.

Several analysts said the European banking problems are biggest at institutions with heavy exposure to European property bubbles. Millions of homeowners and developers took out loans against property that is no longer valued at what it was a few months ago.

Nicolas Véron, a research fellow at the Bruegel center in Brussels, said concern has risen about strains in the banking system spreading to the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe, where several nations also have experienced property bubbles.

"We knew this would happen, because the storm in the U.S. is so powerful," Véron said.

Let them eat plastique!

From my congressman's official website today:

WASHINGTON- Today Congressman Terry (R-NE) voted against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, H.R. 3997. The bill failed on a vote of 205-228.

“The magnitude of increasing federal bureaucracy with $700 billion of taxpayer money is not a decision to be made so quickly. I truly believe there are other options including using the private market that should be thoughtfully considered by Congress. I look forward to continuing work in a timely fashion on this critical matter,” said Congressman Terry.

Suicide bombers of the economy

We're all Palestinian nut jobs now. Virtual suicide bombers of the economy.

Americans saw the prospect of a Wall Street bailout, and they freaked out. Started yelling "Death to the infidels!" Declared that if not pulling the financial markets' chestnuts out of the fire meant another Great Depression, then bring it on.

That's what enraged folks were telling reporters and cheerfully saying on talk radio all across the United States -- bring it on. Well, it's on. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points today.

WHAT MIGHT have happened had Congress' failure to pass the "bailout bill" not come more than halfway through the trading day . . . before the Democrats and Republicans melted down into paroxysms of partisan s*** slinging?

Yep, barring a miracle of policy and politics, we really just might have us a depression now. Like H.L. Mencken said so long ago, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Who'd have thought what American voters most wanted was to be just like some Palestinian nut job, so intent on killing Jews that he's perfectly willing to blow himself up -- and whatever other Arabs might be within blast range -- too? Today, just change "Jews" to "investment bankers."

That's what a clear majority of Americans have opted for -- blowing up the economy (and themselves . . . and their friends . . . and their neighbors . . . and their children) on the off chance all those Wall Street robber barons might be reduced from obscenely rich to moderately rich.

IN THEIR FIT of pique -- and in their abject denial that their own greed might have played any role whatsoever in America's financial crisis -- ordinary Americans have turned down what Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader, called "a crap sandwich" in favor of strapping on an explosive vest.

A smart lot we Americans are. A smart lot who think the Palestinians are nuts.

If you want to put a Biblical spin on matters, maybe this is a prime example of why Jesus said we have to forgive others "70 times seven" times. Grudges and hatred make you blind -- blind to your own faults . . . your own sin . . . and your own self-interest.

Today, through our elected representatives, we've struck a powerful and wounding blow to the evil greedheads of Wall Street. We may not survive our glorious victory.

And neither may our children.

We must be so proud.

Don't eat (or drink) while watching this

A drinking game for Mormons

Here's a drinking game that our Mormon (and strict Southern Baptist) brothers and sisters can participate in with a clean -- and sober -- conscience.

Here's what you do: Download Sarah Palin's interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric from the CBS News website. Then, procure a fifth of Seagram's, Early Times, Jack Black, Stoli . . . or, hell, just mix up a big pitcher of "jungle juice" (Everclear and Kool-Aid).

NOW, ALL YOU NEED to do is gather around the laptop, play the interview and take a drink every time Palin makes a lick of sense.

If someone insists on taking pictures to upload to his or her Facebook page, I guarantee that no one will be worried about his pastor -- or any potential employer -- stumbling across them on the Internets.

Here's another Palinapalooza sample from the CBS Evening News:

Katie Couric: Why is it much more challenging there? Can you explain that?

Sarah Palin: The logistics that we are already suggesting here, not having enough troops in the area right now. The… things like the terrain even in Afghanistan and that border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where, you know, we believe that-- Bin Laden is-- is hiding out right now and… and is still such a leader of this terrorist movement. There… there are many more challenges there. So, again, I believe that… a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq. And as I say, Katie, that we cannot afford to retreat, to withdraw in Iraq. That's not gonna get us any better off in Afghanistan either. And as our leaders are telling us in our military, we do need to ramp it up in Afghanistan, counting on our friends and allies to assist with us there because these terrorists who hate America, they hate what we stand for with the… the freedoms, the democracy, the… the women's rights, the tolerance, they hate what it is that we represent and our allies, too, and our friends, what they represent. If we were… were to allow a stronghold to be captured by these terrorists then the world is in even greater peril than it is today. We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan.

SEE, NOT A THING in there that would cause Demon Alcohol to pass through pious lips.

McCain-Tambo '08

My God, the Republicans nominated Shelly Tambo for vice-president!

Not only that, when the second fiddle of the McCain-Tambo '08 ticket goes before the TV cameras without a script in front of her, it's tough to tell Tambo's real interviews from Tambo impersonators' gag interviews. It can get right confusing.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND. If the GOP and Sen. John McCain wanted to recruit a No. 2 from the ranks of Alaska moose-shooters, why not go for Maggie O'Connell? Or even Maurice Minnifield?

Honestly, I thought it was bad enough when, in her first TV interview, Tambo said she had foreign-policy experience because the Brick served both Stolichnaya AND Absolut. But this latest interview with CBS Evening News anchorwoman Katie Couric is just too much.

I think I'd need to polish off at least one bottle of Stoli -- maybe two -- before anything she said would start to make any sense to me.

THEN AGAIN, after a bottle or two of fine vodka, I wouldn't much care. Which would pretty much put me on a par with McCain and the Republican Party leadership, now, wouldn't it?

3 Chords & the Truth: Br0 c4n U 5p4r3 4 d1m3?

The waiting is the hardest part. At least that's what Tom Petty thinks.

But that's what I'm doing here in the 3 Chords & the Truth studio, and that's what you're doing wherever. We're waiting for the end of the world . . . at least the world as we've known it.

FINANCIALLY, we're in a real pickle now. The "experts" say only Congress -- and an infusion of your tax money -- can save us now. Or, more precisely, save Wall Street, which is supposed to, in turn, save us.

From what, we're not sure. Maybe we're waiting for the pols to save us from another Great Depression, whatever that might look like in the 21st century. Perhaps it's just from a nasty recession.

Some folks have had it with the greedheads in finance and government, and they say, "Screw 'em all, being on the abyss!"

Be careful what you ask for. You may get it. "It," in this case, may be the Mother of All Noses Cut Off to Spite Faces.

HELL, I'm no prognosticator. I was expecting the stock market to tank Friday; it was up 120 points. But I think simple logic (and accounting) dictates that even if the politicians pull our butts out of the crack, America still will face a reckoning -- maybe now, maybe later.

I don't think the "American Dream," at least as we now define it, is sustainable. Even if our revolving credit holds out, the oil supply won't forever. And a change is gonna come.

That's what this week's show is all about -- and you knew I would get around to the show eventually, yes? This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is about hitting the wall . . . it's about hard times and hard limits.

It's about being a lot poorer, and it's about redefining what it means to be rich. Wealth without cash, as it were.

THIS WEEK, the Big Show is all about being broke, and being broken. It's about the love of money and the pitfalls thereof. It's about what comes next, after the fall. It's about revolution, victory, peace and love.

And the show, as always, is about damn fine music, put together in a unique manner.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

Way to go, Louisiana!

Dear Louisiana,

I assume not everyone in my home state is a Nazi or a racist . . . or even an ignorant knothead.

On the other hand, though, Louisianians have an unfortunate propensity for tolerating crumbling schools, dysfunctional cities, crooked politicians and crypto-Nazis in high office. Judging from crap like this, a lot of God Bless Amerika conservatives down there are more dismayed by me calling "Nazi" on a pol who wants to eliminate the poor by eliminating the poor than they are by one of their own trodding the same path as Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler.

Anything to save the sainted taxpayer a buck, eh? That's where Hitler got his start, too. Kill and sterilize the "defectives," ease the burden on der volk. Then move up to killing out-of-favor ethnic groups -- because they're a blight, too.

Well, given that Louisiana has been judged guilty of "generational welfare," generational stupidity, generational corruption and generational half-assedness, why shouldn't the rest of America deal with the Gret Stet just as some in the Gret Stet would deal with the poor?

I mean, look. All we need to do is turn on the television to collect sufficient information for a quick verdict.

And we don't need no stinkin' tubal ligations to carry out our sentence . . . which would be your vanishing act. We can just cut off the federal tax dollars -- there go those outraged taxpayers again -- and let the Gulf of Mexico (and the storms that roll ashore off of it) do the rest.

After all, since eradication is what you'd like to do unto others, you must be OK with that being done to you. Right?

You can discuss among yourselves.

Mission accomplished, Mr. President

Once in khaki suits,
Ah, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum!
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!
Oh, say don't you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember?
I'm your pal.
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

-- "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" (1931),
lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney

Say what???

I know pictures on Blogger can lack a certain, errrrrr . . . je ne sais quoi. I think the word is "resolution."

Thankfully for those of us with bifocals, you can click on the picture and see a larger version. For those who don't want to bother, here's what the story page on Omaha.com says:

BREAKING NEWS: First presidential debate schedule for Friday night

The first presidential debate schedule for Friday night, CNN is reporting this evening.

Details to follow.

GLAD TO KNOW IT. Now, what exactly does it mean?


UPDATE: OK, now we're getting somewhere, though I still don't know what the deal is with that first paragraph:

The first presidential debate is scheduled for Friday night, CNN is reporting this evening.

The Associated Press reported whether U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain would go forward with their highly anticipated debate remained unresolved late this evening after their White House meeting failed to conclusively produce an economic bailout agreement.

Details to follow.

REALLY, the debate is scheduled for Friday night? That's news? It's been scheduled for Friday night for a long time now.

The question has been whether the debate would go on, or whether the U.S. economy would plunge into a depression without one last chance for Americans to ramp up their level of small-D depression for the capital-D event.

What's the recycling number for kids?

Ever since Nebraska's "safe haven" law went into effect, a veil has been lifted somehow. And we see into a society's heart of darkness.

"Safe haven" laws were designed to allow parents to drop off their unwanted infants at safe places, like fire stations or hospitals, in an effort to keep panicked mothers from just dumping their babies, period. That, or perhaps killing them outright.

THE 49 OTHER STATES passing such laws before Nebraska put age limits on children falling under their "no questions asked" drop-off provisions. For arcane reasons -- most of them aimed at getting around the objections of a single state senator -- our law didn't include an age limit.

No one thought that would be a big problem. It was, leading to an unending stream of stories in the Omaha World-Herald about parents dumping children who definitely were not newborns.

And today . . . this:

Child drop-offs under Nebraska's safe haven law have until now been individual affairs involving individual children.

But Wednesday evening at Creighton University Medical Center, a father dropped off nine children, all his.

The children ranged in age from 1 to 17 years, said Officer Michael Pecha, an Omaha police spokesman.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services was still gathering details late Wednesday and would not comment, department spokeswoman Kathie Osterman said.

She did clarify, however, the process by which children are handled once dropped off:

When a child is left, hospital staffers call local law enforcement. Police in most cases would place a child or children in emergency protective custody.

The county attorney recommends whether a child should remain in state custody or return home, and a judge ultimately decides on placement.

In the week-and-a-half before Wednesday, at least two teens and one preteen had been dropped off at eastern Nebraska hospitals.

The safe haven law was intended to protect unwanted newborns, but Nebraska's law does not set an age limit on children who can be left at hospitals. Many have interpreted that to mean children up to age 19 can be dropped off.

A FATHER. Abandoning his nine children. At a hospital.

Something is afoot out there. Parents are desperate, and children are expendable.

Children now are just another throwaway item in this age of "choice" -- as in "You get to choose your own reality" and "You get to choose whether your unborn baby lives or dies."

Kids . . . be good, eat your vegetables and don't piss off Mama or Daddy. It's important.

If it quacks like a Duke. . . .

I have been informed that I am a leftist, making the "usual comparisons of Republicans to Nazi Fascists" with my post about the Louisiana state representative hell-bent on following in the jackbooted footsteps of a previous holder of his House seat -- former Louisiana Nazi and Klan leader David Duke.

MY CRITIQUE may or may not be "leftist," but one thing I do know: If Rep. John LaBruzzo walks like a Duke, flies like a Duke, swims like a Duke, quacks like a Duke and wants to sterilize poor Louisianians like a Duke . . . he just might be a Nazi. Just like David Duke.

John LaBruzzo thinks too many poor people are dragging down the Gret Stet by clinging to the public dole. Adolf Hitler thought Germany had a problem with too many Jews, Gypsies and mental defectives burdening the state and dragging down the gene pool.

The only difference between the two -- and their prescriptions for dealing with some humans they see as less human than those who are Aryan enough and well-off enough -- lies in imagination . . . and what one can get away with.

Chad Rogers at The Dead Pelican thinks -- somehow -- that the dishonorable member from Stupid City isn't a Nazi at all, but instead has more in common with the Red Chinese:

The leftist comparison of La Bruzzo's eugenics plan to the Nazi Germany of the 1930s is a way of ignoring the real problem. For this business of government controlled reproduction is more reminiscent of present- day Communist China.

Like communist China, the state and local government has bestowed upon itself the role of caregiver. Thanks to the welfare system, New Orleans has an environment that discourages self-reliance, exacerbates poverty, and encourages dependence on the government dole.

No system like that can financially sustain itself. It now has more people than it can afford. As with Communist China, an environment of dependency has been created that is financially unsustainable.

And now, as with China, politicians are playing God to solve the problems created by politicians.

The left's cries of Nazism in NOLA ring hollow for another reason- La Bruzzo's arguments for sterilization mirror those of left on the issue of tax payer funded abortion. That is, pro-lifers are often criticized for wanting to force women to have children that they can't take care of. In short, they argue that abortion is a means of population control.

THERE'S ONE BIG PROBLEM with that critique: The analogy doesn't hold up.

The Chinese regime may be butchers and draconian population controllers, but they're not discriminatory butchers and draconian population controllers. If you're poor, you only can have one kid. If you're well-off -- at least theoretically -- you only can have that one kid.

If you're Han Chinese, you get one kid. If you're Zhuang, you get one kid. Manchu? One kid. Mongol? Same raw deal.

The Chinese communists are population controllers, and ruthless ones at that. They, however, are not eugenicists. They leave that nasty business to the likes of Adolf Hitler, Margaret Sanger . . . and John LaBruzzo.

If the jackboot fits. . . .

See, LaBruzzo doesn't want everybody to get their tubes tied or pee pees snipped. He just wants the "burdensome" to do that. He was concerned by the tremendous burden he saw the state of Louisiana shouldering as it evacuated, sheltered and provided for thousands and thousands of New Orleanians threatened by Hurricane Gustav.

Here's a picture of Louisiana's Burden:

WHAT DER FÜHRER from Metairie isn't concerned about -- at least concerned enough to propose one Final Solution or another -- is the even greater burden the aging Baby Boom generation is going to start posing for Louisiana taxpayers in a decade or so.

Fine, upstandin', hard-workin' constituents of der Führer are going to have to find a way to pay for all those state services (and pensions) Boomers are going to start sucking down like Otis Campbell with a jug of white lightnin'. Trouble is, my generation got its tubes tied, prescriptions filled and pee-pees snipped in alarming numbers, leaving fewer future taxpayers than otherwise could have been expected.

And worse than that, Boomers' offspring are hauling ass out of the Gret Stet at an even more alarming rate than they did.

Vascectomies and tubal ligations are no viable solution for burgeoning hordes of old people. As a 47-year-old, I tremble to think of what solution LaBruzzo might goose-step his way into for that one -- that is, if culling the burdensome poor doesn't provide enough taxpayer relief.

From the New Orleans City Business article on LaBruzzo's eugenic scheme:

"If both the welfare and Social Security system keep growing, one day we're going to have a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing," LaBruzzo said. "Our kids, who will be working, will be the minority and any vote of theirs will be canceled out. If your livelihood is based on government handouts, why would you ever vote for somebody who is going to lower taxes? They never would. So once we reach that breaking point there's no return."

TALK LIKE THAT sounds familiar. Perhaps like this 1922 passage by Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood?

Our 'overhead' expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded 'captains of industry,' financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.

OR MAYBE THIS from Sanger's 1938 autobiography:

I accepted one branch of this philosophy, but eugenics without birth control seemed to me a house built upon sands. It could not stand against the furious winds of economic pressure which had buffeted into partial or total helplessness a tremendous proportion of the human race. The eugenists wanted to shift the birth control emphasis from less children for the poor to more children for the rich. We went back of that and sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards race betterment.

HERE'S WHAT La Bruzzo is. He's a throwback to a bygone age Americans don't much like to acknowledge anymore, as outlined in The Guardian, with this extract from Edwin Black's War Against the Weak:

The film was called The Black Stork. Written by Jack Lait, a reporter on the Chicago American, it was produced in Hollywood and given a massive national distribution and promotion campaign. Haiselden played himself in a fictionalised account of a eugenically mismatched couple whom he advises not to have children because they are likely to be defective. Eventually, the woman does give birth to a defective child, whom she then allows to die. The dead child levitates into the waiting arms of Jesus Christ. It was unbridled cinematic propaganda for the eugenics movement; the film played at movie theatres around the country for more than a decade.

National publicity advertised it as a "eugenic love story". One advertisement quoted Swiss eugenicist Auguste Forel's warning: "The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. Shall we sit still ... without applying the remedy?" In 1917, a display advertisement for The Black Stork read: "Kill Defectives, Save the Nation and See 'The Black Stork'." Various methods of eugenic euthanasia - including gassing the unwanted in lethal chambers - were a part of everyday American parlance and ethical debate some two decades before Nevada approved the first such chamber for criminal executions in 1921.

As America's eugenics movement gathered pace, it inspired a host of imitators. In France, Belgium, Sweden, England and elsewhere in Europe, cliques of eugenicists did their best to introduce eugenic principles into national life; they could always point to recent precedents established in the United States.

(snip)

As America's elite were describing the socially worthless and the ancestrally unfit as "bacteria," "vermin," "mongrels" and "subhuman", a superior race of Nordics was increasingly seen as the answer to the globe's eugenic problems. US laws, eugenic investigations and ideology became blueprints for Germany's rising tide of race biologists and race-based hatemongers.

One such agitator was a disgruntled corporal in the German army. In 1924, he was serving time in prison for mob action. While there, he spent his time poring over eugenic textbooks, which extensively quoted Davenport, Popenoe and other American ethnological stalwarts. And he closely followed the writings of Leon Whitney, president of the American Eugenics Society, and Madison Grant, who extolled the Nordic race and bemoaned its "corruption" by Jews, Negroes, Slavs and others who did not possess blond hair and blue eyes. The young German corporal even wrote one of them fan mail.

In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant wrote: "Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilisation of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race."

One day in the early 1930s, Whitney visited Grant to show off a letter he had just received from Germany, written by the corporal, now out of prison and rising in the German political scene. Grant could only smile. He pulled out his own letter. It was from the same German, thanking Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race. The fan letter called Grant's book "his Bible". The man who sent those letters was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler displayed his knowledge of American eugenics in much of his writing and conversation. In Mein Kampf, for example, he declared: "The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of clearest reason and, if systematically executed, represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole."

Mein Kampf also displayed a familiarity with the recently passed US National Origins Act, which called for eugenic quotas. "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."

Hitler proudly told his comrades how closely he followed American eugenic legislation. "Now that we know the laws of heredity," he told a fellow Nazi, "it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Nor did Hitler fail to grasp the eugenic potential of gas and the lethal chamber, a topic that was already being discussed in German eugenic circles before Mein Kampf was published. Hitler, who had himself been hospitalised for battlefield gas injuries, wrote: "If at the beginning of the war and during the war 12,000 or 15,000 of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our best German workers in the field, the sacrifices of millions at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: 12,000 scoundrels eliminated in time might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable for the future."

THE HOLOCAUST was Margaret Sanger's -- and all the rest of the American eugenicists' -- theories and practices carried to their logical conclusion. Almost a century since hate was refined into a science, LaBruzzo has bought into that line of thinking wholeheartedly -- and hard-heartedly.

And now, with Louisiana taxpayers' money, he proposes to carry that agenda out to an extent that makes even likely Planned Parenthood sympathizers squeamish.

No, what the race-purifier from Metairie proposes isn't new, and it most certainly can't be blamed on Mao Zedong. And while the Nazis drank deeply from the same poisoned well as LaBruzzo, sterilizing the poor, the black and the "defective" really isn't Nazi, either -- though they certainly perfected the deadly artform.

What the latest menace from Metairie proposes is as American as apple pie. And Jim Crow. And miscegenation laws.

Louisianians had better beware embracing little GOP Nazis like John LaBruzzo, because the rest of America is well into the process of doing to Louisiana what LaBruzzo (and those who support him) would do to "the nigras." Among these United States, Louisiana is exactly what many Americans figure they have too much of, and would like to make go away.

And if folks all across the Gret Stet would rather not embrace the concept of "brother's keeper," that non-embrace is what they're going to get . . . "good and hard," in the words of H.L. Mencken.

From the city that gave us David Duke. . . .

From the R21 video Hall of Shame. Maybe some Metairie, La., voters in there somewhere?
If you live in Louisiana, it might be worth considering any economic crisis that benighted state is headed for might be due less to too many people "depending on government" than voters depending on half-assed Hitlers like John LaBruzzo to run that government.

New Orleans City Business says the state House member from Metairie -- the New Orleans suburb that gave America David Duke -- wants to pay the poor to get sterilized:

State Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, fears Louisiana may be headed toward an economic crisis if the percentage of people dependent on the government is not decreased.

His solution: pay impoverished women $1,000 to have their tubes tied so they will stop having babies they can’t afford.

The idea came to LaBruzzo after hurricanes Katrina and Gustav when the state was forced to evacuate, shelter and care for tens of thousands of people.

"I realized that all these people were in Louisiana's care and what a massive financial responsibility that is to the state," LaBruzzo said. "I said, 'I wonder if it might be a good idea to pay some of these people to get sterilized.'"

I GUESS we can be grateful Louisiana state government -- never known for its efficiency or for attracting the best and brightest -- only seems to be capable, at present, of producing half-assed Hitlers. Lord help us all if LaBruzzo suddenly were to develop the brains of a Philadelphia lawyer and employ the efficiencies of German eugenicists.

Like Adolf Hitler, for one.

Der Führer never would have wasted a single Reichsmark on tying the tubes of a single Jewish woman when he could gas hundreds at a time for a fraction of the cost. LaBruzzo may be evil, but nobody ever accused him of being Hitler smart:

LaBruzzo said he is researching the issue, and if he finds that the number of people on welfare has increased on a dramatic and continuous basis over the past several decades, he may introduce a bill during the next legislative session promoting voluntary sterilization in exchange for monetary compensation.

"If both the welfare and Social Security system keep growing, one day we're going to have a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing," LaBruzzo said. "Our kids, who will be working, will be the minority and any vote of theirs will be canceled out. If your livelihood is based on government handouts, why would you ever vote for somebody who is going to lower taxes? They never would. So once we reach that breaking point there's no return."

Reaction to LaBruzzo's proposal has been swift. It has been called racist and reminiscent of the genocidal policies of the Nazis.

Shana Griffin, interim director of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, described it as a modern day version of eugenics, a theory that promotes improving humanity’s future by decreasing the number of babies produced by people who are seen as physically, socially or mentally deficient.

It is obvious who LaBruzzo is targeting with this legislation by mentioning welfare recipients and those dependent on city-assisted evacuation — poor, black women, Griffin said.

WHAT IS IT with Metairie, anyway? First Duke, now this clown?

Obviously, it would be extremely hypocritical (not to mention evil) of me to advocate the sterilization of the city's voters. Perhaps, though, it wouldn't be out of line to require Metairie residents -- and only Metairie residents -- to pass literacy and civics tests before they can register to vote.

I think that might be a game plan. See, you're not actually trying to wipe out a whole class of obvious social and mental deficients, exactly.

No, you'd just be trying to minimize the damage coming out of Stupid City. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Iran's stopped clock has right time

You know you are really and truly screwed when clowns like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad start to make a lot of sense when he's upbraiding your country.

Read this Associated Press account of Doctor Whack's address to the United Nations General Assembly and know the United States is well and truly up a fragrant creek. Without a paddle. In a leaky rowboat:

Iran's president addressed the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday declaring that "the American empire" is nearing collapse and should end its military involvement in other countries.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said terrorism is spreading quickly in Afghanistan while "the occupiers" are still in Iraq nearly six years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq.

"American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders," Ahmadinejad said.

He accused the U.S. of starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to win votes in elections and blamed a "few bullying powers" for trying to undermine Iran's nuclear program.

ANYBODY WANT to look at the headlines and argue where, exactly, Iran's stopped clock hasn't indicated the correct -- and late -- time of day in Empire America?

K-Doe say: Burn, Wall Street, burn!

This is a short documentary from 1990, when the (now) late, (always) great Ernie K-Doe was volunteering at Tulane University's WTUL radio, spinning the New Orleans R&B he helped make famous.

I DISCOVERED IT on the WTUL website, as I sat here in the studio, thinking I ought to add some sage observation to the Interwebs as Americans sit . . . and wait. Wait to find out how Congress is going to fix the fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, with an assist by the robber barons of Wall Street.

Wait to find out whether we're all poor now.

Wait to find out exactly how far the mightiest nation on Earth -- ever -- has fallen.

Yeah, I thought I needed to write something wise, or at least pithy, about this fine damn catastrophe waiting to swallow us all up. Is this Great Depression II? Shall we now arm ourselves, man the barricades and shoot the looters in three-piece suits?

Perhaps I could just sit at the keyboard and tell you I told you so. Whether or not I actually did.

BUT THAT'S not important now.

It seems to me -- as we tap dance on a ledge high above the abyss -- that the Fed, the Congress, the fancy bankers and the stock-exchange traders are powerless to screw up anything that particularly matters. We'll get by . . . somehow . . . with a little faith, a little orneriness and a little ingenuity.

We'll grow gardens and put in wood stoves, and we'll become a lot more "green" and a lot more local.

And we'll figure out that it ain't so bad, once you get used to it.

Screw Wall Street. Wall Street can't create an Ernie K-Doe. Or a decent R&B record.

We, if we are lucky, might figure out that our riches do not lie in our 401(k) accounts, but in our communities, in our churches and in our cultural cornucopia. We might come to see that we can be rich, even if we are poor (see New Orleans, City of).

Besides, not even Fort Knox could contain a force of nature like Ernie K-Doe, the late Emperor of the World. A pearl of great price who started out life during the last Great Depression at New Orleans' Charity Hospital.

Burn, K-Doe, burn!