In the attic. Hole in pants. No 12, no 32.

I waaaaaaaant myyyyyyyyyy, I want my DTV.

That's why I was crouched in the attic last week, fiddling with various sizes, shapes and configurations of antennas -- big and small, indoor and outdoor -- trying to pull in all the digital TV I have coming to me.

Trouble is, it wasn't coming to me.

All I wanted was to be able to pick up Iowa Public Television from the tower 20 miles away. Nebraska public TV out of Lincoln and Omaha would be nice, too. So up in the attic I went, trying to squeeze the last bit of digital superiority out of the ether and into the family-room TV in the basement.

OH, YEAH. We have cable. But we don't have digital cable, don't want to pay for digital cable, but do want to get the better picture quality and extra channels DTV offers. And I have to tell you, hooking up my government-subsidized converter box up to our ancient Sony is something akin to Botox for televisions.

Everything looks like a DVD. The sound is markedly better. Mr. Morita, I don't think we're in 1985 anymore.

And that's before you figure in the craptastic video quality of the downstairs cable connection.

So . . . where was I? Right. In the attic, messing with antennae.

Channels 3, 6 and 7 -- or at least the "virtual channels" for wherever the digital versions of 3, 6 and 7 are hiding on the UHF band -- weren't much of a problem. Channels 15 and 42 could be had with a little dinking around. Channel 26's antenna is a mile and change from the house.

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

She's gone downstairs to check.

(Half an hour later. . . .)

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

(Another 15 minutes later. . . .)

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

She's gone downstairs to check. This is stupid. Hand me up the cordless phone and you get on the cell phone.

Cell phone battery's dead. Crap.

OK, I'LL CALL the dead cell phone, and when the recorded message is over, the missus can just pick up the extension and we'll talk that way.

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

No Channel 12. No 32.

(Half an hour later. . . .)

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

Son of a bitch.

Back down the attic catwalk, ducking wires and trying not to fall through the ceiling. Sit on a rafter to work on antenna. Rip a hole in the butt of my sweats on a piece of metal. Commandeer some extra coax, move antenna next to the attic access.

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

No Channel 12. No 32.

M************ digital television piece of s***.

"What about now?" I ask, wondering how much fiberglass I'm breathing in. It ain't bad, once your lungs get used to it.

Had 12 for a second. It went all blotchy, though. No 32.

Digital this, you bunch of a******s.

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

No 12. No 32. I lost 42.

"GAAAAAH! ARRRRRRGH!" (Dropping telephone.) Complete leg cramp in my calf. Trying to writhe without falling through the ceiling.

I hear a tiny voice coming out of the phone a couple of feet away.

"What's wrong? Hello? Are you alive? ARE YOU ALIVE?"

How the hell am I going to get out of this attic? Fortunately, the cramp passes.

But I stab my finger on a nail in the semidarkness.

"Honey? Is 12 coming in now? What about 32 in Iowa?"

I HAVE ACHIEVED 12. Haven't lost 42.

Still can't get 32. Calling it good. Iowa can wait. There's always the little TV upstairs, next to a window. It gets everything -- except when it's too windy. Or when a bird roosts on the wrong branch.

I'm thinking the digital TV signal isn't exactly robust. There's a good reason I'm thinking that -- as it turns out, the DTV signal isn't exactly robust. It says it right here in this Associated Press story:

Harry Vanderpool, a beekeeper, lives on a hill nearly 1,000 feet above the Willamette River, outside Salem, Ore. It should be a good spot for TV reception, and it used to be.

But now that analog signals are disappearing, leaving only digital ones, he may be losing all his channels.

"When you listen to the advertisements, it's 'Oh, all you have to do is get this little digital converter box and hook it up,'" Vanderpool said. "Well, we get nothing. Zero signal strength."

While generally better than analog, digital reception with antennas can be tricky. Although millions of people will receive more channels when switching to digital, many others are finding that stations they used to get in analog form won't come in on their converter boxes or digital TV sets.

In Ionia, Mich., retiree Bruce Jones is down to watching the two or three channels, rather than the dozen he used to get.

"They tell me I need an outdoor antenna, which I just can't afford," he said. To spare the $10 for the converter box, he had "cut out a day of groceries."

It's not just rural and small-town viewers like Vanderpool and Jones who are having problems with the phase-out of analog TV, which has been on the air for nearly 70 years. It's being done to give more room on the airwaves to wireless broadband, TV for cell phones and emergency communications.

In Hollywood, broadcast engineer Dana Puopolo gets the local stations fine with an indoor antenna in his bedroom, where he gets a view of the broadcast towers on Mt. Wilson, a dozen miles away. But even an amplified indoor antenna isn't enough to supply a watchable image to his widescreen TV, which is in the living room on the other side of the apartment.

"You can get it so the picture's perfect, and then when you sit down, 30 seconds later it pixelates into oblivion," Puopolo said, describing how the picture breaks up into big chunks of color. "The dirty little secret about digital is that it doesn't have nearly the coverage of analog."

NOW they tell me. @%#$%&*!

3 Chords & the Truth: Embrace the quirk

I can't win for losing.

My two occupational loves in life have been newspapers and radio. Unless you've been living under a soundproof rock for the last decade or so, you know what's been happening to newspapers and radio stations -- and the employment prospects for ink-stained wretches and pilots of the airwaves.

At least I have this little thing called 3 Chords & the Truth . . . and you. At least until I wear out my welcome. And welcomes aren't as durable as they used to be.

ANYWAY . . . lest I wear out that tenuous welcome -- and thank you for your graciousness -- I'd better get to the music, which I think is particularly tasty this week.

This week's is a bit of a quirky show, the whys of which I discuss therein. Yet, quirky is good in the universe inhabited by the Big Show.

I hope it's all good in yours, too.

Embrace the quirk; the quirk makes life an adventure. Even for an old fossil whose first languages are newsprint and vacuum tubes.

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

Sadly for the Rocky, Scripps brought wrong hat

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Another newspaper has died. This time, it's the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

There's a lot that can, has and will be said about this sad event. One of the truest things said so far is newspapers aren't things -- they live. And they don't go out of business; they die.

And the heartbreaking damned fact is, given the times in which we live, many, probably most, of the people losing their jobs today -- the people who made the Rocky live and breathe -- will never work for a newspaper again. Perhaps never work in the broad outlines of their chosen profession again.

That's as big a tragedy and waste as the physicist -- or the poet -- relegated to sweeping up factory floors in some communist-bloc country because he or she offended the political regime in some unfathomable way. In America, we don't have an iron-fisted, monolithic political regime to offend and, thus, be banished.

We do, however, have an iron-fisted, monolithic corporate infrastructure to offend by our continuing need for food, shelter and the money to purchase both. We also have the gods of change to offend by becoming an anachronism.

INCREASINGLY, newspapers -- and newspaper people -- are anachronisms. Anachronisms proficient at what, increasingly, no existing economic model will support.

Anachronisms who have mouths to feed and a need to be useful. Anachronisms who know, in their heart of hearts, they will never have a job they can do as well as this one -- this outdated one. Anachronisms who know what they do is needed still, even if nobody else does, because who will keep an eye on the bastards now?

These newly minted anachronisms, the ones with no idea what they'll do now, are human beings . . . despite the prevailing opinion on talk radio and in the Internet comboxes. They hope, they fear, they love and -- to the amazement of those giddy about yet another victory over "the vast left-wing conspiracy" -- they are loved.

And so is their newspaper, which today is no more. One comment on a farewell story on the Rocky Mountain News website struck me as a particularly vivid illustration of this.

SO . . . for the last time, from the Rocky Mountain News:

conative1963 writes:

I feel like my BFF has died. I have been crying on and off for the last 12 hours.

Although I've been in and out of Colorado for the past 20+ years, finding, picking up and reading the Rocky in its inky goodness has been like seeing an old friend. I remember visiting my Grandparents when I was five, and loving the fact that I could actually hold the tabloid-sized paper in my teeny hands MUCH easier than a broadsheet. Thus began my love of an actual newspaper.

Members of my family have been reading the Rocky Mountain News for at least 120 of the last 149.85 years.

I never, ever thought the end of a business would evoke more emotion than the death of a real person. But it has.

I do realize that the Newspaper business has changed, and will continue to change and evolve. Someday, maybe the Rocky will return as an online entity. Until then, it will be missed. Greatly.

I do not look forward to taking this morning's paper to my Alzheimer's riddled 94 year old Grandmother. She inquires daily about her paper, and when I have to take her the Post, I know she will cry.

Thank you, all, for your wonderful work.

Goodbye.

A political joke

I think I may have peed a little laughing at this.

These days, humor oftentimes is the most prescient political commentary. Probably because politicians such as Louisiana's Bobby Jindal are such a joke.

Dust in the wind

As we embark upon Lent, I think it important to give both President Obama and the GOP's tin-eared "savior" a message gleaned from 5,000-plus years of recorded human history.

"No, we can't."

No, Mr. President, we can't come back from this mess we've made for ourselves stronger than ever. Not if we remain a country still given over to a colossal moral and ethical meltdown. Not if we remain a nation devoted to global hegemony in an age of dwindling natural resources. Not if we remain a country powered by consumption, not creation.

And not if we remain a country forced to spend untold trillions to stave off le deluge now, only to ensure le deluge at some future date. The United States of America is in the same boat as the insolvent banks . . . too big to fail, but insolvent nevertheless. We're also in the same boat as "toxic" homeowners -- a swamped boat.

We ain't going to be paying off that national debt.

AS FOR BOBBY BRADY -- er . . . Jindal -- the good gub'na (and sometime exorcist) of Louisiana needs to exorcise some of his own demons, and those of his political party.

(OK, that was a cheap shot. But the one thing we never learn -- and this is a particular "moral hazard" for those of Jindal's religious and political proclivities -- is that Satan's favorite hideout happens to be in our own hearts.)

Ironically, Jindal's response to Obama was wholly based on the same kind of misplaced American exceptionalism -- an exceptionalism unhinged from human history (particularly the history of empires), geopolitical realities and the basic fallenness of humanity.

In other words, no, Americans can't do just anything. If the last eight Republican-governed years haven't made that clear to the "smart man" of the GOP, the poor fellow must be twice as blind and three times as deaf as Helen Keller.

Really, Jindal doesn't have to go far to utterly disprove such a silly notion, this prideful, faux patriotic notion of "Americans can do anything."

For example, Louisiana has been in the Union since 1803 and a state since 1812. If Americans truly can do anything, why, then, is Jindal's state still such a mess?

Why is the next election there for U.S. Senate shaping up to be a battle between a sex worker and a john? Why is Louisiana's educational system such a disaster area? Why can't he balance the state's budget without making education exponentially worse?

If Americans can do anything, how come the Dutch can keep their below-sea-level country safe and dry while we can-doers can't even do the same for one lousy city?

"When we pull together," Jindal said, "there is no challenge we cannot overcome."

AH, BUT THE RUB is that "pull together" part. And, I'm sorry, but if there's one thing Bobby Jindal's Republican Party is not about, it's pulling together.

To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you - the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything. That is why Republicans put forward plans to create jobs by lowering income tax rates for working families ... cutting taxes for small businesses ... strengthening incentives for businesses to invest in new equipment and hire new workers and stabilizing home values by creating a new tax credit for home-buyers. These plans would cost less and create more jobs.

ISN'T THAT WHAT had been going on for the last eight years? What . . . if at first you don't succeed. . . ?

Under Jindal, Louisiana did a fair amount of that itself last year. This year it has a $2 billion deficit. Oops.

No, you can't.

You can't give fallen human beings -- lousy, rotten sinners all -- more and more leeway to build some sort of laissez-faire utopia, then be utterly surprised when they tear down half of what's already there and sneak it out in their lunchbox. Or briefcase.

The trouble with Obama, and Jindal, is the trouble with America. The America that thinks it can do anything, but only occasionally worries about whether the anything it has chosen is anything right.

We've had the pride. I worry now that we're taking the fall.

I wish our political "saviors" would worry about that, too.

Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

'Oh, God. . . .'

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

How bad was Bobby Jindal in responding to President Obama's Not the State of the Union address?

Let's just say it's appropriate the Louisiana governor took his nickname from the dorky little kid on The Brady Bunch. Because when the overrehearsed wunderkind speedwalked up to the camera like one of those women who have to pee real bad on the TV commercials, then launched into a manic, patronizing and preprogrammed sales pitch for hair tonic . . . er, the GOP position, you just knew somebody's gorgeous locks were about to turn orange.


HELL, EVEN David Brooks, who holds down the right side of The New York Times' op-ed page, thought Jindal was "a disaster for the Republican Party."

Well, the gub'na of the Gret Stet always has been an ambitious overachiever. So it's only natural that he's not content to be a merely a disaster for Louisiana.

Come on. The man left MSNBC's Rachel Maddow speechless. She was reduced to the vocabulary of a three-month old.

Really.

OR . . . as Chris Matthews muttered off camera on MSNBC at the site of Jindal waddling up to the camera with a crazed look in his eyes, "Oh, God."

Do not adjust your set . . . or your meds

There is no problem with your computer. The cognitive dissonance you are experiencing is real, and originated at WWL-TV in New Orleans.

If the station's anchor team is going to have to keep breaking into Mardi Gras parade coverage with reports of mass shootings every year, maybe it's time for them to costume themselves as journalists.

That might tend to lessen the whole Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test vibe.

Then again, maybe we should go ask Alice. When she went through the looking glass, it could be she ended up in the Crescent City.

Throw me some Kevlar, Mister!

Oh, New Orleans! You just can't help yourself, can you?

The Mardi Gras parade shootings just keep getting worse every year. Now the city's hoodlums are shooting babies and the cotton-candy man.

THE HOT-LEAD ROUNDUP is courtesy of the Times-Picayune:

Six people were injured this afternoon after a shooting spree broke out along the St. Charles Avenue parade route near Second Street, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

Listed in serious condition are two men, both around 20, who were shot in the abdomen, according to Jeb Tate with New Orleans EMS.

Four others were listed in stable condition. They include a 1-year-old boy with a graze wound to the back; a 17-year-old girl shot in the thigh; a 50-year-old woman shot in the elbow, and and 30-year-old man with a graze wound to the thigh.

All appeared to be innocent bystanders in the area for the day's Carnival parades, said Deputy Chief Kirk Bouyelas.

The violence broke out about 1:40 p.m. on the lake side of St. Charles somewhere between the neutral ground and sidewalk. Truck parades continued to roll down the street as several dozen police officers this afternoon worked the active crime scene just steps away.

OH . . . AND HERE is the money quote from the story, courtesy of a witness: "There was an ambulance that was picking up a guy off the street and people didn't even stop vying for throws."

Every year, Mardi Gras is followed by Lent. And if the Big Easy can't somehow, someway get its s*** together -- and laying money on that would be an even worse investment than financials on the stock market -- the City That Care Forgot will just as surely become the Ghost Town that Lent Won't Leave.

Enjoy all the junk you caught as people lay wounded all around you.

Lord, have mercy.

Everything old is new and hip again

Over on Twitter, someone was commenting on the novel ways of working in sponsors and product placement on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the late-night show on ABC. It was a classic case of "everything old is new again."

In this case, "novel" is a sponsor's product all over the show and commercials done, on the set, by the show's cast.

ONCE UPON A TIME in television, shows often were sponsored by a single advertiser (or just a few advertisers), the sponsor's product was all over the program, and live commercials were quite common -- like the above live ad for Polaroid cameras on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar, and the one below (near the end of the video) for Alpo dog food during Johnny Carson's Tonight tenure.

It's a beautiful thing when things get out of control.

AND, OF COURSE, there was the master of the live commercial during the infancy of television in the late 1940s and 1950s . . . Arthur Godfrey.




INNOVATION. It's a wonderful thing. Even the second or third time around.

Hey, I've got this idea . . . why doesn't somebody put announcers on the radio playing music they find noteworthy and think the audience might want to hear. You could have these guys on all the local stations, live, 24 hours a day -- keeping the listening audience company, as it were.

You could call them something like "disc jockeys." I think that's kind of catchy.

And you could have news every hour so people can keep up with events, and the whole thing could be kind of a "theater of the mind."

It could be groundbreaking . . . really cutting-edge stuff.

I wonder whether anybody would go for it.

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

I've got to stop reading the blogs.

And the news sites and the newspaper.

While I'm at it, I also need to blow up my TV.

"WHY?" YOU ASK? It's because I can't stand being reminded -- reminded every day that God in Heaven sends -- just how much of a bunch of f***ing Nazis we have become.

Find some neighbors on the wrong side of the political divide? Demonize them.

Discover that most people are suckers for one thing or another? Cheat 'em.

Somebody standing between you and your heart's desire? Roll over 'em. Repeat if necessary.

Enjoying the sex but wigged out by the baby in your tummy? Abort it.

Enjoying the sex but wigged out by the baby in your girlfriend's tummy? See above.

Disturbed by the prospect of human suffering? Ask Phil.

Phil left a comment on a Crunchy Con post about euthanizing suffering animals, and how that can get to a body. He wants to know why we shouldn't extend the concept to a higher order of animal.

As in Homo sapiens.

In the world of Phil -- which, sadly, is increasingly the way of the world around us -- we're all a sick chick, a suffering cat or Spot on his last legs:

If putting an animal out of its misery when it's suffering is okay, then why not humans who want to be put out of their misery? Euthanasia should be for more than just animals. There are worst things than death. Living in pain or living without dignity are worst than death.

I'LL SAY HERE what I told Phil in the Crunchy Con comments. To wit:

Why not euthanize people? Because we are not mere animals.

Human suffering has meaning, however much it might escape us as we're in its midst or as we watch others suffer.

If it didn't have any meaning -- if it didn't in a real way unite us with a suffering Christ, or if the Ten Commandments alternatively told us "Thou shalt not kill, except. . . ." -- well, a compassionate arbiter of the greater good would put a pillow over every newborn's face and smother him on humanitarian grounds the second the kid emerged from the womb.

I don't know, maybe you've led a charmed existence and haven't truly known suffering. Or maybe you've been suffering horribly for a very long time now, but you hold on to hope for reasons known only to yourself.

But this I do know: When we say it's permissible to put people "out of their misery," what we are saying is twofold -- there is no hope, and there is no meaning in people's misery.

No sanctification, no contemplation, no fostering of compassion, no inspiration, no nothing. Nada. Nil.

NIHILISM, I think is the word.

We humans are an odd lot. We're the only species that consciously and "rationally" concludes that the solution to almost every damned thing is death.

Me, I'm like Rod's father . . . "I can't stand killin' anymore."

Funny, Phil, how you can speak so much more blithely about killing suffering humans than I can bring myself to talk about putting down suffering animals.

I've always owned dogs. In our going on 26 years of marriage, my wife and I have had four. Two, we've had to put down when they were old, terminally ill and suffering.

Both times, I gave the vet consent. Both times, I held them and comforted them as they died. You don't get used to it, and it gets harder -- not easier -- each time.

I can't even write about it without my eyes filling with tears.

Yes, I know they were animals, not humans. Yes, I know it was the "right" thing to do, that letting them suffer truly would have been pointless. I know all this intellectually . . . rationally.

But in my heart, I know that they trusted me, depended on me and were more loving and loyal than most humans. And you can't help but feel you let them down, and it haunts you.

That's how I feel about my dogs.

I'm sorry, Phil, that you can feel so much more sanguine about "putting down" human beings, individuals each created in the image of their Creator.

Remember Scum of the Earth?

Listening to the Sex Pistols on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth reminded me of this.

I wonder why.

Repent! The end may not be near

Cheer up! Things could be worse.

Or so I'm told.

Meanwhile, this floated over the transom, courtesy of Reuters:

The global economy may be deteriorating even faster than it did during the Great Depression, Paul Volcker, a top adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Friday.

Volcker noted that industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.

"I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,'' Volcker told a luncheon of economists and investors at Columbia University.

Given the extent of the damage, financial regulations must be improved and enhanced to prevent future debacles, although policy-makers must be cautious not disrupt things further while the turmoil is ongoing.

Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve famed for breaking the back of inflation in the early 1980s, mocked the argument that "financial innovation,'' a code word for risky securities, brought any great benefits to society. For most people, he said, the advent of the ATM machine was more crucial than any asset-backed bond.

"There is little correlation between sophistication of a banking system and productivity growth,'' he said.

NOW IS THE TIME for all good men to drop the bulls***. Quit blaming your neighbor who, for whatever reason, is in trouble. Try helping instead.

It's important.

3 Chords & the Truth: Time for a vacation

When in the course of human events, the standard course of American discourse is self-righteous rants about how "losers" aren't entitled to help funded by our tax dollars, screw you, so there . . . it's time to take a vacation.

When you're coming off a bad respiratory bug, and you're better now, but you're not yet 100 percent . . . it's time to take a vacation.

WHEN THE WORLD is crumbling around you, and you wonder if the new definition of "success" will be "he eats regularly," and everybody is looking for someone to blame for this predicament -- someone except oneself, of course . . . it's time to take a vacation.

I'm picturing myself in a Puerto Rican hotel. White sandy sea shore. Tropical breeze. Drinks made with rum. 3 Chords & the Truth on the iPod.

Of course, I'm still stuck here in frigid Omaha, the wind is howling outside, and there's still snow on the ground. But just grant me my illusions, OK?

I'm in a Puerto Rican hotel. Or any hotel, for that matter.

Swilling rum and Coca-Cola. And the music is just fine, right here on the Big Show.

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

That's the other ocean, isn't it?

How to make the switch to digital TV

No matter how many public-service announcements TV stations run, no matter how many crawls during the evening news, no matter how many informational segments on said newscasts, no matter how often everyone in television broadcasting stands on a soapbox to cry "Buy a converter box or get cable, for the end of TV as you know it is nigh!" . . . no matter how much (or how loudly) TV people do all of the above, there's no overcoming the cold, hard facts of life.

People are stupid. Or self-absorbed. Or stupid and self-absorbed.

YOU CAN'T BEAT that triumvirate of dumbth. And, thus far, for every local TV station turning off its analog signal to go all-digital, there has been a small army of viewers blindsided by the Big Switch and wondering where Jerry Springer and their stories went.

TV stations just can't win against genetic -- or willful -- ignorance. Or can they?

In Alexandria, La., KALB television shut down its Channel 5 analog signal at 11:55 p.m. Monday. The station, according to the above report on Channel 9 out of Baton Rouge, got few complaints.

How did it manage such a thing?

It was easy. Station management apparently "forced" viewers to get with the program. For a while, KALB had been shutting off the analog signal during the weather.

Brilliant.

Hoss Allen and The !!!! Beat

Here's a rarity for you -- the great Louis Jordan on The !!!! Beat in 1966, with the great Bill "Hoss" Allen as your host.

Hoss Allen, of course, was one of the legendary disc jockeys on WLAC radio in Nashville, the station Southern kids -- and Yankee ones, too -- tuned in late at night to get a heapin' helpin of the R&B and soul being pumped out on its 50,000 pulsating watts. I wonder how many kids turned on Hoss' short-lived, exclamation point-filled TV show only to be shocked to see a white man on the 21-inch screen.

JUST LIKE John Richbourg, the WLAC great better known as "John R."

Want a taste of WLAC back in the day? Go no further than this recording of Richbourg's show from sometime in the early 1970s. Good times.

And . . . you're welcome.

God, radio was great once. It's too easy to forget that nowadays.

Abandon all heauxp

Let me see whether I can put together some news items from today's Louisiana newspapers.

Let's start with the bad-news baseline for the Gret Stet: There is -- at a minimum -- a bad, bad recession in full swing, the price of oil has collapsed, tax revenues surely will be down and the state is looking at a budget shortfall of about $2 billion.

If things don't get any worse.

CONTINUING WITH the baseline of suck, we note that various constitutional strictures ensure most of the budget ax's blows will fall squarely on the necks of higher education and social services. This promises that cuts to those crucial areas will be draconian. As in -- worst case -- a 30-percent reduction in higher-ed funding.

According to Louisiana State's student newspaper, planning by officials on the main Baton Rouge campus has turned up some dire consequences of a 30-percent cut. The Daily Reveille reported Thursday that:

The University is bracing to endure a 29.8 percent drop in enrollment if it’s forced to cut $71.9 million from its budget next fiscal year, according to documents obtained by The Daily Reveille.

And an apparent difference between the University and the LSU System’s approaches to dealing with the cuts has been a sticking point between the two since the beginning of the year.

An estimated 8,500 students may leave the University if state funding is cut by 30 percent next fiscal year.

This figure — among others like hikes in tuition and student fees — was not included in the LSU System’s “budget reduction exercise” released Feb. 4.

“We’ve tried to minimize any discussion of enrollment loss and avoid too much focus on alternative sources of revenue,” LSU System President John Lombardi told Chancellor Michael Martin in a Jan. 29 e-mail obtained by The Daily Reveille. “Those issues are likely to prompt questions we’re not ready to answer given the variable nature of the budget conversations at the present time.”

With a projected cut in higher education state funding between $212 million and $382 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the Division of Administration asked Lombardi to complete a “budget reduction exercise” showing what a cut of up to 30 percent in funding would mean for the System.

Administrators at the 11 institutions compiled their own budget scenarios to submit to the System office, where they were compiled into one “budget reduction exercise” and submitted to the Division of Administration.

Records show several differences between what the University submitted and what was shown in the System’s exercise.

“I think [the System’s budget reduction exercise] made as good of a case as it could [for the University],” Martin told The Daily Reveille on Wednesday. “I understand that we have other units within the System that have to be represented as well.”

Lombardi declined an interview, through System Spokesman Charles Zewe, about the differences between the budget scenarios.

Martin said University officials focused more on finding possible solutions for a cut of up to 30 percent while the System’s interests lay in displaying what an across-the-board cut of 30 percent would look like for the System.

LET'S PUT THIS in perspective. Right now, LSU's Baton Rouge campus -- the state's "flagship" university -- has an enrollment of 26,140. Let's assume the state makes draconian cuts and the enrollment craters as badly as LSU administrators think it will.

That would leave LSU's new enrollment at just over 17,600 students, smaller than it has been in nearly 40 years. By way of comparison, the University of Nebraska at Omaha -- an urban, primarily commuter campus -- has about 15,000 students.

The enrollment collapse, though, would just be the beginning of the carnage:

Besides an estimated student loss of 8,500 — including 2,250, or about half, the minority student population — other elements were discussed in the University’s budget scenario that were omitted from the System’s final draft.

For instance, the Bengal Legacy Scholarships for non-resident sons and daughters of LSU graduates, the Board of Supervisors scholarships and the Louisiana Freshman Merit Award would be eliminated under worst-case scenario cuts, according to the University’s budget exercise.

“The cutting of any scholarship will have a detrimental impact on students eligible for the awards and may have a negative impact on enrollment,” the document states.

Merit increases for faculty, administrative and professional staff would also be “out of the question.”

With a large budget reduction, closing academic colleges is likely.

“To reach this [30 percent] level of a cut, more than one large college must be eliminated because of the corresponding loss of tuition revenue,” the document states.

WHOLE COLLEGES. Gone. Just the prescription for the "jewel" of a substandard higher-ed system in a poor, ignorant, underdeveloped state.

This is the backdrop for the other headlines of the day.

One is atop a column by veteran Lake Charles columnist Jim Beam, who writes in the American Press that, no matter how much sense it might make, don't look for lawmakers to cut back on the state's bloated ranks of four-year universities.

Quantity always has been more important to the Gret Stet than quality, and the people's representatives aren't about to change things now. No matter how desperate the fiscal situation:

Any legislator with a higher education institution in or near his district is going to be reluctant to close a university anywhere else for fear his school could be next. That is the political reality here.

Making a college education convenient and affordable is everyone’s goal. Unfortunately, the legislators who promoted four-year status for LSU-A didn’t tell their colleagues the whole story.

The ink had hardly dried on the act Foster signed in 2001 before those same supporters launched grandiose plans for spending millions of dollars more on expanded facilities at the university.

While everything Michot, Clausen and others are saying makes sense, it’s not likely to change anything. The Legislature doesn’t have the courage it would take to close any state universities. If lawmakers could resist political pressure, LSU-A wouldn’t be a four-year school today.

MEANWHILE, some legislators are seeking a way to deal with an ideologue governor threatening to turn down, on "principle," billions in federal "stimulus" money as he stares down a $2 billion budget defecit.

On the other hand, according to Gannett newspapers, some legislators -- in the face of the $2 billion budget deficit -- think cutting taxes is just the thing to do when you're already way short of money. Gov. Bobby Jindal thinks this might be just as good an idea as gutting higher education and turning down billions from Uncle Sam:

Questions submitted to the governor's office about the tax cuts proposed so far brought a response from Kyle Plotkin, the governor's press secretary. The governor was out of town.

Plotkin said, "As a conservative, the governor supports tax cuts and has cut taxes in Louisiana six times so far. He is willing to support tax cuts that are fiscally responsible by being fully implemented in the same year and are accompanied by necessary spending reductions.

ONE CAN ONLY ASSUME that Louisiana has gone from being misgoverned by crooks to being driven into the ditch by fools and nuts.

Of course, this being Louisiana, the fools and nuts always had a place at the policy-making table. But now, with crookedness being less fashionable than it historically has been, the fools and nuts have seized their opportunity to shine.

There are three ways to live happily in Louisiana. One is not to care about one's future or one's fellow man.

Another is to adopt a fanatical devotion to Bacchus while trying to ignore the shadows creeping up on you and yours.

The third is to adopt a position of pie-eyed optimism, maintaining that everything is tickety-boo in Bayou Goula despite all available evidence.

UNFORTUNATELY, none of the "happy" strategies account for the inevitability of getting bitten -- hard -- in the ass by reality, which it would appear is now upon Louisiana in what might be an unprecedented manner. And that reality, cher . . . she can be a stone-cold bitch, yeah.

The Swine Rebellion . . . live on CNBC

Did you get talked into an adjustable-rate mortgage by an unscrupulous broker, only to have the value of your house collapse and the mortgage reset?

Did you get a fixed-rate mortgage on an overpriced house that also happened to be the cheapest house . . . at least the cheapest house in a neighborhood you dared live in?

Did you do all the right things? Tried to be responsible, didn't buy too much house . . . but didn't count on your house now being worth two-thirds of what the mortgage is?

Well, bubbie, you're a loser!

YOU'RE A LOSER, a drain on society who doesn't deserve one iota of help from the government. You're a parasite who will be sucking the hard-earned monetary lifeblood out of "ordinary folks" -- like Chicago traders and well-paid CNBC talking heads like Rick Santelli.

And what needs to happen to you is a good dose of social Darwinism. You need to be left to ruin. Homelessness, even.

Government aid should be restricted to the worthy -- to the producers of society. You are worthless and weak and, if need be, there should be a revolution of the fit in this country to put you in your place.

Note that this revolution will be coming after Wall Street got its wad of the taxpayers' scratch.

OR, AS BILLIE HOLIDAY observed as we were emerging from the last depression:

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

THIS IS AMERICA on the edge of the abyss. This is the America of "them's that got shall get." That is, until the gettin's no good.

Then comes the America that eats its own. Its poster child is Rick Santelli . . . live on CNBC.

Never has "capitalist pig" been such an apt description.

Doom is becoming a meme

I keep hoping Gerald Celente is a nut, because if he's not . . . we're toast.

So, how do you think we look in marmalade? Will we go well with tea? Reasonable questions in these interesting times, I think, because Gerald Celente -- the doomsaying trends researcher with a much better than average track record -- is no nut.

Colorful and a great self-promoter, but no nut.

IN BRIEF, Celente thinks we're at the beginning of what he calls the Greater Depression, that unrest and uprising will sweep the land, and that the trendy Christmas gift for 2012 won't be an iPod. It will be food.

Welcome to the United States of America, the world's first formerly developed country. According to Gerald Celente. Who is right more often than not in his forecasts.

I think the reason Celente is all over the media (and now is all over the blogs of folks like me) is that our collective gut tells us he's right. That our entire economy, society and coddled, hyperindividualistic existence is absolutely unsustainable.

Not politically, not emotionally, not spiritually, not economically, not environmentally.

WE GOT too greedy, too fast, and we partied like there was no tomorrow. Welcome to tomorrow.

That's what my ample, middle-aged gut is telling me. That's what Celente's data are telling him.

So, how then shall we live?

My guess is radically differently than we do now -- as if we're going to have any choice in the matter. Everything will change.

I think God will change, too. Rather, I think our perception of God -- our relationship to God and the church -- will change. That, or God will become dead to us.

We no longer can afford a lot of things, and a self-satisfied, self-reverential (and referential), middle-class Christianity is one of those luxuries now beyond our grasp. We will be holy, or we will be savages.

The center did not hold. Neither will Marty Haugen. At least the coming Bad Times won't be all bad.

The next police union mailer?

Given the Omaha police union's "dedication" to truth, justice and the American Way, I think this might be the only place left for it to go in the quest to pare down its enemies list through political assassination.

And if Hal Daub happens to get elected amid the fallout . . . hey, it's a wonderful life, right?

YEAH, a wonderful life. In a city where the police union bullies politicians, then unleashes all demagogic hell upon them if the pols don't toe the security forces' political line.

From the Omaha World-Herald's story on the latest Omaha Police Officers' Association smear job:

The union mailed another political flier this week that shows a creepy sex offender on its cover and takes Vokal and Brown to task for voting against an amendment that would have allowed officers to monitor sex offenders.

Vokal and Brown have both criticized the mailers as "dirty politics," saying they are misleading and that they are political payback for other police issues before the Omaha City Council.

Vokal and Brown have said the mailers are political retribution for his attempt to to limit police pensions during contract negotiations last year.

The mailers are expected to land in mailboxes today.

The dispute centers on a 2006 proposal to allow police to do compliance checks on sex offenders, making sure they were properly registered under state law. It was part of a debate on an ordinance to prohibit high-risk sex offenders from living within 500 feet of schools.

The amendment failed on a 5-2 vote, with Vokal and Brown joining the majority. The ordinance passed on a 7-0 vote.

Police union's politics of fear

If Jim Vokal becomes mayor of Omaha, he ought to appoint 50 independent police auditors and make them all Ernie Chambers.

Come to think of it, half a hundred of the Omaha Police Department's worst political nightmare may not be enough for the job. Just think what Omaha cops are capable of doing to folks in the 'hood when -- given a ballot and the cloak of anonymity -- they elect union reps who will stoop to any level of depravity to trash a sitting city councilman.

One with the nerve, and the poll numbers, to pick off their fair-haired political enabler, former mayor (and mayoral wannabe) Hal Daub.

WHY SHOULD ANY OMAHAN have any faith or trust in the city's police when officers pick as their union bosses an ethics- and truth-challenged band of political sleazemeisters capable of wallowing so deeply in the mud they'd need a ladder to scratch a serpent's belly? This is what we're to expect from our public servants?

Think of it this way: These people -- these "law-enforcement" personnel -- are the folks we entrust with maintaining public order. Yet the leadership of the Omaha Police Officers' Association, when it suits its political purposes (or those of its political patron) does not hesitate to use fear . . . to employ the language and imagery of the lynch mob to take down a sitting councilman.

In the world of politics, Omaha's police-union bosses are perfectly willing to stretch the boundaries of truth, civility and propriety to the breaking point for their own benefit. In the world of the streets, they expect civilians to stay within those same boundaries . . . or else.

Speak to an Omaha cop the way Omaha cops' leadership speaks of their political enemies, you're probably going to get arrested. That speaks to me of a profound credibility problem.

Credibility is the cops' problem -- not the people's. And that will come back to bite them exactly 100 percent of the time.