Douglas Street

Here's a view through the windshield during a Sunday evening drive down Douglas Street in Omaha.


And, no, I'm not the Google Street View guy.


But I could be someday.


The old and the new of downtown Omaha.


That's all, folks!

No. 2,000

Exactly 2,000 posts ago, on Oct. 8, 2006, your Mighty Favog set out on a new-media adventure.

It began here.

Almost four years ago, I was pretty sure where Revolution 21 -- in both its podcast and blog permutations -- was headed. But life happens, the world keeps turning, and you continually reassess your assumptions and re-evaluate what the hell you think you're doing.

Today, April 19, 2010, I think the basic aim is the same. Revolution 21 is still a gumbo comprised of both the sacred and the secular. And blues in the night.

But I think the focus has changed from trying to force some Catholic-secular-topical-musical mashup into being, then calculatedly foisting it onto a world determined to compartmentalize and segregate everything, dammit, to just being myself and saying screw the consequences. For better or worse, what I am is an undistillable compound of the sacred and the secular, which influence one another and result in . . . this.

Among other things.

And that is the constant, through 59 episodes of the Revolution 21 podcast and 98 (so far) of its successor, 3 Chords & the Truth.

Two-thousand posts. Damn. I wouldn't have figured this thing would last 200 when I started out in 2006.

Go figure.

Well, you kids play nice for a while. I think I'm gonna go celebrate on the grittier side of NoDo at the Happy Bar.

3C&T: The song list!

By popular request, here's the song list for this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Funny how disparate things work together, innit? You think there might be a lesson in that, America?

So . . . if you haven't given the Big Show a try yet, maybe now would be a good time.

And remember, the word of the week is "HAMBONE"!

	Song Name	Artist	Year
1	Mushaboom	Feist	2004
2	Lovefool	Cardigans	1996
3	Japanese Art	Theresa Andersson	2008
4	Hold On	Ian Gomm	1979
5	When You Walk in the Room	Jackie De Shannon	1963
6	I'll Never Fall in Love Again	Dionne Warwick	1969
7	Wishin' & Hopin'	Dusty Springfield	1964
8	Gotta Get Up	Nilsson (Harry)	1971
9	Mr. Blue Sky	Electric Light Orchestra	1978
10	Temptation Eyes	The Grass Roots	1970
11	Come and Get It	Badfinger	1970
12	A Day in the Life	Beatles	1967
13	Hambone	Red Saunders & His Orchestra (w/ Dolores Hawkins and The Hambone Kids)	1952
14	Bo Diddley (1955 single)	Bo Diddley	1955
15	Not Fade Away	Buddy Holly	1957
16	(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame	Elvis Presley	1961
17	She Has Funny Cars	Jefferson Airplane	1967
18	Magic Bus	The Who	1968
19	New York Groove	Ace Frehley	1979
20	Rosanna	Toto	1982
21	Ballad of Medgar Evers	Phil Ochs	1963
22	Morgan the Pirate	Mimi & Richard Fariña	1968
23	Musical Key	Cowboy Junkies	1996
24	Sweeter For Me	Joan Baez	1976
25	Day Is Done	Peter, Paul and Mary	1969

My hit parade

This is our iPod. It has vacuum tubes, and you can't stick it in your pocket.

But it does get nice and warm, and the hot tubes in the guts of the 1956 Zenith hi-fi console smell like the magic dust of a long-lost childhood.

There apparently is something out there called "the slow-media movement." This, in our living room, is the "slow-music movement."

Tonight, Mrs. Favog and I were listening to a stash of 1940s home recordings, from back when home recording meant putting a cutting stylus to a blank transcription disc, then carefully brushing away the shavings as the music made its way out of the radio and into the acetate.

I WONDER whether that long-ago Omaha recording enthusiast imagined -- as he (or she) plucked favored songs out of the ether and hid them away in homemade records -- that someday, someone in Future Omaha would listen to those recordings and, however briefly . . . however tenuously, rend the veil between our worlds.

I wonder whether they could grasp that, amazingly, Your Hit Parade would live on -- that the world the recorder knew in 1944 would again emerge, not from the ether but from a homemade record to touch a future world of atom bombs and television and space stations and a computer in every . . . lap.

DID THEY imagine that the youthful Frank Sinatra -- the star of the show who drove legions of bobby-soxers to squeals of ecstasy more than a decade before Elvis got in on the act -- someday would be the long-dead Chairman of the Board . . . and that those frenzied young girls would be great-grandmas?

Someone in 1944 put a heavy stylus down on an acetate-covered aluminum disc rotating at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. The stylus cut tiny grooves into the acetate blank. Message met bottle, and that union was cast into the currents of time.

Ah, but I have a time machine. It's a 1956 Zenith.

It's April 2010. It's December 1944. Ol' Blue Eyes is dead; long live Ol' Blue Eyes.

The slow-music movement can zip you across time and space in just the time it takes needle to meet record.

Listen! Sinatra's singing the No. 1 song on Your Hit Parade. Oh my God, you barely can hear "The Trolley Song" through the screams of the bobby-soxers!

L.S./M.F.T! L.S./M.F.T! Lucky Strike means fine tobacco . . . and lung cancer just in time for the Space Age. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Well, 1944, it was good to make your acquaintance. So long . . . for a while.

3 Chords & the Truth: Hambone!

Oh, the sheer amount of rock 'n' roll resting on a Hambone foundation.

As you will hear this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, one day a youngish Bo Diddley heard this. . . .

Hambone, hambone
Have you heard?
Papa’s gonna buy me a mocking bird
And if that mocking bird don’t sing
Papa’s gonna buy me a diamond ring
And if that diamond ring don’t shine
Papa’s gonna take it to the five and dime
Hambone

Hambone, hambone
Where you been?
Round the world and I’m going again

Hambone, hambone
Where’s your wife
Out in the kitchen, cooking rice

AND THEN he stripped down the beat, turned it around, took the rap and made it his own. And a big beat was born.

This week on the Big Show, we're all about the big beat. And believe me, we know Diddley -- at least -- about Hambone.

We also know a little about pop, and pianos, and a fine set of folk music. Trust me, you have to be there -- on the Big Show.

There, we've got your musical number. We've also got puns and clichés aplenty to use as cheesy catchphrases.

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

Pikshures of thee day

Sigh. And when this is a tea party, the only offical lanoguage is "teabonics" -- at least according to the New York Daily News.

PRESS "1" FOR ENGLISH:

Indisputably, these are the pictures of the day, but that doesn't mean the News doesn't have a bunch more just as funny on display for your giggly pleasure. Get thee there now, and let the hilarity commence!

PRESS "2" FOR TEABONICS:

In desputea Indispot Indesputobley, thees our the picsures of the day, but that dos'nt mean the News dos'nt have a bunch more just as funny on dispay for you're giggly pleshure. Get the they're now, and let thee hilary comense!

Right to (Republican) life

The "pro-life movement" this week declared itself, in effect, to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.

Not that this is a shock to anyone, it's just that before the movement dedicated to a political non-solution of a profound moral crisis held fast, at least, to some small sliver of plausible deniability.

AS REPORTED by the Omaha World-Herald today, Nebraska's largest organization of anti-abortion hypocrites (as opposed to pro-lifers) extracted that sliver from its endorsement rolls:

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and Republican Gov. Dave Heineman both drew fire this year from abortion foes for positions each took on key bills.

Nelson supported a compromise on the health care overhaul in Congress, angering Nebraska Right to Life.

Heineman opposed a bill to restore prenatal care services for low-income women, angering Nebraska Right to Life.

The anger felt against both anti-abortion politicians, however, has differed in scale.

Heineman on Wednesday received Nebraska Right to Life's endorsement, while Nelson was given its cold shoulder for life. The group announced that he would never be considered for another endorsement.

Nelson is up for re-election in 2012, while Heineman will be on the ballot this November.

The group considered Nelson's support for the health care compromise a graver offense than Heineman's opposition to the prenatal bill, which would have restored government-funded medical care for pregnant, low-income women, including illegal immigrants. Reports of affected women seeking abortions followed the bill's failure.

“We just don't see that as having the same weight as health care reform,” said Denise Ashby, director of Nebraska Right to Life's political action committee. “It doesn't compare in our eyes.”

Heineman and Nelson have long received the group's support. Nelson has voted 19 out of 21 times in line with the group's positions. He fell out of favor when he accepted abortion language in the health overhaul bill different than what was advocated by abortion opponents.

Nelson has long argued that the compromise language in the health care law will not allow federal dollars to fund abortions. Under the law, individuals can use a federal subsidy to purchase insurance plans that cover abortions, but policyholders must pay for the abortion coverage with their own separate check.

BEN NELSON was forever disowned for voting for a bill in which only Republicans, "right to life" political operatives and the Catholic bishops' conference could find any "expansion" of abortion rights or funding. Academics couldn't, and the abortion lobby certainly couldn't (which left its members madder than wet hens).

Meanwhile, Dave Heineman gets an endorsement after single-handedly scuttling prenatal-care funding, which quite literally has driven women to abort their unborn children.

Makes sense to me. But that's only because I realize that the politicized pro-life pretenders years ago had accepted their 30 pieces of silver. Had drunk the conservative Kool-Aid. Had surrendered to the kind of "politically correct" groupthink that burrows into the dessicated souls of those who think that politics precedes culture, then sells themselves to a political pimp daddy.

UNBORN CHILDREN -- indeed, vulnerable human beings of any stripe -- have met their worst enemy. And ironically, it's the "pro-life movement."

Planned Parenthood will only succumb more and more to ridiculousness born of its sheer zealotry for sexualizing children while simultaneously seeking to rid the world of as many of them as possible. Abortionists, left to their own devices, will only expose themselves more and more as cynical death merchants who prey on desperate women.

This kind of absurdity is term limited by its very absurdity. Polls of young Americans are bearing that out. Of course, it is young Americans who have had their ranks culled by a third.

It is only the ridiculousness of groups like Nebraska Right to Life -- resorting to sophistry to polish a political turd like Heineman -- that can discredit an entire moral and philosophical position.

Only "pro-lifers" can give lie to the sanctity of every human life, born and unborn, by demonstrating to the world that "even they don't believe that s***."

Be a Saint

Maybe the Vatican, in dealing with the sex-abuse scandal and its never-ending aftermath, just needs to follow the example of a Saint.

For one thing, unlike the pope, a Saint doesn't need a veteran Vatican watcher to explain to the rest of the press corps, in effect, "Yes, Benedict XVI was addressing the Scandals in this homily. It appears he was being critical of the church and pointing to the need for repentance."

At the Vatican, Christ's injunction in the fifth chapter of Matthew about letting "your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No'," has yet to gain complete traction among those who proclaim it.

IS IT POSSIBLE that, in his own way, a modern-day sinner turned Saint -- as in New Orleans Saints -- might have a better grasp on confession and repentance than many of the pointy hats who've been preaching confession and repentance to fallen humanity since 33 A.D.?

Present-day Saint and former Nebraska Cornhusker sinner Carl Nicks just might. Perhaps they ought to start subscribing to the Omaha World-Herald all across Vatican City:

Carl Nicks returned to Nebraska on Wednesday with a Super Bowl watch, a new tattoo and a humble act of contrition.

Nicks met briefly after practice with head coach Bo Pelini, who banned the offensive lineman from the Huskers’ pro day two years ago. It was an unceremonious parting with the program before New Orleans made Nicks a fifth-round draft pick.

Nicks called the NU football office Wednesday and asked if he could come by — and now plans to stay for the spring game Saturday.

“I figured it was about time to put some water on some of those bridges I burned,” Nicks said.

As soon as the 2007 season ended at Colorado — along with Bill Callahan’s reign as head coach — Nicks stopped going to class, which he counts among the “immature stuff I did.” About three months after Pelini replaced Callahan, he cited an arrest and Nicks being a bad example for returning players in barring him from pro day.

Nicks said it wasn’t until he got to New Orleans and talked with former Husker safety Josh Bullocks that he realized that he was in the wrong.

“For about a good three or four months I had blamed Bo for it and I was blaming other people, and at the end of the day, you’ve got to look in the mirror,” Nicks said. “Once I got a little older, played a little professional ball, I realized how good I had it and just how bad I treated everybody.”

AN ASSOCIATED PRESS story adds this from Nicks:

"I'm not who I was then," he said. "It just kind of hurts, to know I made a fool of myself."

Dressed in shorts and a Kobe Bryant Lakers' jersey, Nicks approached Pelini after the coach's post-practice session with reporters. They talked for a few minutes and shook hands.

"I wouldn't be true to Nebraska if I didn't try to apologize to Bo, even though I didn't play for him," Nicks said. "He's the face of Nebraska. I have to make it right with him, Mr. Osborne and everyone I did wrong when I was here."

Osborne surprised Nicks by greeting him as Carl -- "I didn't think he knew my name" - and then told him to learn from his mistakes and finish his college degree as soon as possible.

"I basically apologized to them for being an irresponsible athlete," Nicks said. "I didn't really have to do it, but I felt I needed to do it."

THAT IS the grace through repentance the Pope was talking about in his homily today -- the one the press was divining for applicability to the Catholic Church's present sins.

It would be nice if Benedict could just come out and say what he has to say . . . plainly. Specifically. Explicitly. It would be nice if he could do that in personal terms, not hiding behind addressing the "church."

It would be nice if the pope's subordinates -- who have been so quick to unleash public-relations Armageddon on the "evil press" for delving into the sins of the fathers -- could follow the Founder's command (again, from Matthew 5) instead:

40
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.
41
Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.
42
Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.

IT WOULD be nice if everybody involved -- the leadership of an institutional church just as in need of confession and repentance as any of us (and maybe more) -- tried to emulate the saints in all this. And failing that, maybe they just could follow the example of a Saint.

How 'Crazy' Dave got that way

Well, boys and girls, I see it's time for yore ol' Uncle Favog to pull the rockin' chair up next to the checker board on the pickle barrel and have a heart-to-heart with you young'uns.

Now, when you get a little older and make yore way into the world, you'll find that life can get complicated. Sometimes, nothing will make much sense to you, and you just won't be too sure about what to do or who you kin trust.

And maybe, child, you'll be governor of a small Midwestern state when you find nothin' makes sense no more, an' you don't know what friendly face to turn to ta get re-elected.

That's when you need to remember this one simple thing yore ol' Uncle Favog is about to be a-tellin' ya.

When you lie down with loons, you might catch crazy.

LOOK AT ol' Dave Heineman now. He didn't use to be "Crazy" Dave. Heckfire, he once was just another average, everyday Republican governor a-panderin' to the lowest common denominator.

And one day, he found that the lowest common denominator was bat-s*** loony. But he kept on a-panderin' . . . and that's how he got to be "Crazy" Dave, a-sellin' them used cars on the TV when gas is $8.50 a gallon an' nobody's a-buyin'.

I remember it like it was yestiddy . . . must have been back in ought nine -- no, it was back in 2010, it was. I read about it in the Omaha World-Herald, which was this thing folks called a newspaper. . . .

A political spat over whether Gov. Dave Heineman is a true tea party patriot took another turn Wednesday.

The governor said the only reason he had signed a February letter with 46 other governors asking for more federal stimulus funds a tea party no-no was to show solidarity with his colleagues.

“I was trying to be supportive of my fellow governors, who face much more difficult challenges than (Nebraska),” Heineman said Wednesday.

The issue was raised after Heineman, who is seeking re-election, visited a Lincoln tea party gathering Tuesday. The tea party movement opposes the federal stimulus program, as well as other things seen as making government bigger, such as the recently passed health care overhaul bill.

Heineman said that if he'd been given a chance, he would have voted against the stimulus program. But, lacking that opportunity, he supported taking the $1 billion allocated for Nebraska so the funds would not be sent to other states.

His explanation prompted a howl of hypocrisy from State Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha, a Democrat who supported the stimulus plan.

“If he doesn't support the stimulus money, he should send the money back and not sign a letter saying he wants six more months of it,” Mello said. “This is hypocrisy at its worst.”

Grateful in a strange land

I have lived in Omaha, by God, Nebraska for 22 years now and -- still -- there are times when I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Saturday was another one of those times.

That was the day Central High School opened its doors to the community to celebrate its 150th-anniversary school year -- it was founded in 1859 as Omaha High School, just four years after the city's incorporation and eight years before Nebraska would win statehood. Its present building, the "new" Omaha Central, went up between 1900 and 1912.

You see what a beautiful structure it is.

ALMOST half a lifetime ago, I immigrated to Omaha from a foreign land . . . so to speak. Specifically, an exotic and strange Caribbean outpost by the name of "Louisiana."

It has been rumored that "Louisiana" is not a foreign land at all, but instead one of these United States. Technically, that may be true.

Technically, the cop running the small-town speed trap doesn't have a quota to make, either.

Anyway, I grew up in Baton Rouge, where I graduated from the oldest school in the city. Baton Rouge High came into being sometime around 1880 -- this in a city settled in 1699 and incorporated in 1817, five years after Louisiana became a state.

Its present building, the "new" Baton Rouge High, went into use in 1927.

You see, in this 2007 photo, what a dilapidated structure it is.

Having done no meaningful maintenance -- obviously -- on Baton Rouge High since I graduated in 1979, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board managed to get a sales tax and millage renewed so it would have the money to fix the school facilities.

This after toying with the idea of tearing down the building after years of never toying with the idea of keeping it in good repair.

OF COURSE, "fixing" Baton Rouge High now requires tearing down the entire campus, save the historical main building. And the fate of the original building will involve more "renovation" than "restoration" -- there's not enough money for a full restoration.

All this will require relocating the entire student body for two years as the campus is renovated and rebuilt.


AT OMAHA CENTRAL, meanwhile, keeping up with the times -- and technology -- hasn't meant destroying the charms of a bygone age, save some false ceilings in classrooms here and there. Above is Central's courtyard, created when the "new" school was built around the old, which left what you see here upon its demolition.

Some years back, covering the courtyard with a clear roof created an atrium, now used as a gathering space and food court.


WHEN A NEW gynmasium opened at Omaha Central, workers renovated the old gym (above) into a second cafeteria and multipurpose space. Another view is below.


WHILE WE'RE speaking of gyms, I guess you might want to see Central's new one:


AND WHILE I'M showing you Omaha Central's new gym, I suppose you might like to see Baton Rouge High's gymnasium:


IN CASE it isn't obvious, there are no potholes in the floor of the Omaha Central gym. There are large ones in the floor of the Baton Rouge High gym.

And, yes, the locker rooms at my alma mater are as nasty as they look. Tetanus may be a concern, I don't know.

It is difficult to explain things like this to Omahans, who support inner-city public schools like Central -- that of the beautiful old building, and of the brand-new gymnasium and football stadium.

In fact, about two-and-a-half years ago, when I got some of my Baton Rouge High pictures developed at an Omaha photo lab, the proprietor asked my wife about them. He wanted to know whether the photos were of a school destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

In other words, what people in my hometown had come to accept as normative, people in Omaha assumed was a victim of a catastrophe.

I come from a foreign land. Things are different here in the United States.

Potholes are what you try to avoid on city streets after a rough winter. Potholes are not what you worry about breaking your ankle in during phys ed.

At dear old Baton Rouge High, the old gym will not be renovated into cafeteria space. It will be bulldozed.


THE NEED for bulldozing speaks volumes about the esteem in which public education is held in my old Louisiana home.

Above is a common sight in the 1927 main building at Baton Rouge High. Moisture intrusion is causing plaster to fall off the walls in chunks. Has been for years, apparently.


MEANTIME, IN OMAHA, this is what it looks like in the hallways of Central High. Remember, this building is a couple of decades older than Baton Rouge High. Here's another view:

What it comes down to -- as I've said over and over, ad infinitum -- is culture. The South, and particularly Louisiana, never has been inclined toward public education.

Likewise, the South -- and particularly Louisiana -- never has been inclined toward a strong civic culture . . . or functional egalitarianism.

Recall that my alma mater, Baton Rouge High, did not exist until around 1880. Baton Rouge incorporated, remember, in 1817.

In 1859, the year Omaha Central came into being, there were public schools in Louisiana -- and at least one in East Baton Rouge Parish, I gather, but they were few in number and less than rooted in their communities.

That is because the South was -- and is, to a substantial degree -- a society based on class, and the privileges thereof. If your station in life allowed you the luxury of an education, that could be purchased.

If one was of mean estate, that's how one was apt to live out one's days -- poor. And ill-educated.

And for the vast majority of Southern blacks in 1859. . . .


A CENTURY AND A HALF later in Baton Rouge, those who have the means can purchase a fine, private education -- and that's where you'll find most white kids today. In private schools. Where they fled, starting in 1981, when "forced busing" came to town in the name of racial integration.

Meanwhile, the most prestigious public school in town looks like a casualty of Katrina. More than 30 years ago, when I was a student there, Baton Rouge High was notable for being the least decrepit school I'd attended.

To hell with all that.

To hell with a system where, yes, a school board can erect a nice, new facility where one once lay in ruins -- laid waste by official malfeasance and profound civic indifference -- but where one also has little confidence that what soon will be state of the art won't, in a decade or three, be in just as sad a state as the ruins it replaced.

To hell with it.


Children are a society's treasure, and if what befell Baton Rouge High is any indication -- and it is -- my hometown for decades, if not forever, has been casting swine before pearls. Children also are not stupid, and also for a couple of decades or so upon reaching adulthood, they've been voting in a referendum on the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

With their feet.


THEN THEY BECOME -- like so many of my generation of native Louisianians -- transplants in a strange land, one day walking into a public school and finding they have no frame of reference for the relative wonder they behold.

Like refugees stepping off a plane just arrived from some Third World enclave, they find themselves strangers in a strange land.

And "strange" is good.

And it's 1, 2, 3 . . . what are we fighting for?

Pretty much everyone agrees that Afghanistan, and the American war effort there, is a bloody mess.

What you don't get from most of the popular media, though, is a sense of exactly how horrible a mess it is. How very like the American war effort Vietnam it is. Of how fool's errands such as Afghanistan -- and Iraq -- are putting us on a path to permanent war.

Andrew Bacevich of Boston University has been thinking about all this, and if anyone in this country has the standing to offer some strong opinions on such things, it's the professor of international relations and history. First, he's a retired Army colonel and Vietnam veteran. Second, "all this" has cost him his son.

LAST WEEK, Bacevich discussed "all this" on Bill Moyers Journal:

BILL MOYERS: General McChrystal himself has said that we've shot - and this is his words not mine—an amazing number of people over there who did not seem to be a threat to his troops.

ANDREW BACEVICH: I think that is—that's clearly the case. When McChrystal was put in command last year, and devised his counterinsurgency strategy, the essential core principle of that strategy is that we will protect the population. We will protect the people. And the contradiction is that ever since President Obama gave McChrystal the go-ahead to implement that strategy, we have nonetheless continued to have this series of incidents in which we're not only not protecting the population. But indeed we're killing non-combatants.

BILL MOYERS: Given what's happening in the killing of these innocent people, is the very term, "military victory in Afghanistan," an oxymoron?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Oh, this is—yes. And I think one of the most interesting and indeed perplexing things that's happened in the past three, four years is that in many respects, the officer corps itself has given up on the idea of military victory. We could find any number of quotations from General Petraeus, the central command commander, and General McChrystal, the immediate commander in Afghanistan, in which they say that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, that we will not win a military victory, that the only solution to be gained, if there is one, is through bringing to success this project of armed nation-building.

And the reason that's interesting, at least to a military historian of my generation, of the Vietnam generation, is that after Vietnam, this humiliation that we had experienced, the collective purpose of the officer corps, in a sense, was to demonstrate that war worked. To demonstrate that war could be purposeful.

That out of that collision, on the battlefield, would come decision, would come victory. And that soldiers could claim purposefulness for their profession by saying to both the political leadership and to the American people, "This is what we can do. We can, in certain situations, solve very difficult problems by giving you military victory."

Well, here in the year 2010, nobody in the officer corps believes in military victory. And in that sense, the officer corps has, I think, unwittingly really forfeited its claim to providing a unique and important service to American society. I mean, why, if indeed the purpose of the exercise in Afghanistan is to, I mean, to put it crudely, drag this country into the modern world, why put a four-star general in charge of that? Why not—why not put a successful mayor of a big city? Why not put a legion of social reformers? Because the war in Afghanistan is not a war as the American military traditionally conceives of war.

BILL MOYERS: Well, President Obama was in Afghanistan not too long ago, as you know. And he attempted to state the purpose of our war there to our troops.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Our broad mission is clear. We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies. That is our mission. And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear. We're going to deny al Qaeda safe haven. We're going to reverse the Taliban's momentum. We're going to strengthen the capacity of Afghan security forces and the Afghan government so that they can begin taking responsibility and gain confidence of the Afghan people.

BILL MOYERS: That sounds to me like a traditional, classical military assignment, to find the enemy and defeat him.

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, but there's also then the reference to sort of building the capacity of the Afghan government. And that's where, of course, the president, he'd just come from this meeting with President Karzai. Basically, as we understand from press reports, the president sort of administered a tongue-lashing to Karzai to tell him to get his act together. Which then was followed by Karzai issuing his own tongue-lashing, calling into question whether or not he actually was committed to supporting the United States in its efforts in Afghanistan. And again, this kind of does bring us back, in a way, to Vietnam, where we found ourselves harnessed to allies, partners that turned out to be either incompetent or corrupt. Or simply did not share our understanding of what needed to be done for that country.

BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you as a soldier that our political leaders, time and again, send men and women to fight for, on behalf of corrupt guys like Karzai?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, we don't learn from history. And there is this persistent, and I think almost inexplicable belief that the use of military force in some godforsaken country on the far side of the planet will not only yield some kind of purposeful result, but by extension, will produce significant benefits for the United States. I mean, one of the obvious things about the Afghanistan war that is so striking and yet so frequently overlooked is that we're now in the ninth year of this war.

It is the longest war in American history. And it is a war for which there is no end in sight. And to my mind, it is a war that is utterly devoid of strategic purpose. And the fact that that gets so little attention from our political leaders, from the press or from our fellow citizens, I think is simply appalling, especially when you consider the amount of money we're spending over there and the lives that are being lost whether American or Afghan.

BILL MOYERS: But President Obama says, our purpose is to prevent the Taliban from creating another rogue state from which the jihadists can attack the United States, as happened on 9/11. Isn't that a strategic purpose?

ANDREW BACEVICH: I mean, if we could wave a magic wand tomorrow and achieve in Afghanistan all the purposes that General McChrystal would like us to achieve, would the Jihadist threat be substantially reduced as a consequence? And does anybody think that somehow, Jihadism is centered or headquartered in Afghanistan? When you think about it for three seconds, you say, "Well, of course, it's not. It is a transnational movement."

BILL MOYERS: They can come from Yemen. They can come from—

ANDREW BACEVICH: They can come from Brooklyn. So the notion that somehow, because the 9/11 attacks were concocted in this place, as indeed they were, the notion that therefore, the transformation of Afghanistan will provide some guarantee that there won't be another 9/11 is patently absurd. Quite frankly, the notion that we can prevent another 9/11 by invading and occupying and transforming countries is absurd.

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE cannot go on forever. And like they say, if something can't go on forever . . . it won't.

Empires being what they are -- not to mention empires' habit of coming to think they are exceptions to history's rules -- ensure that the end of this particular one will be about as ugly as all its predecessors'.

Poise amid the storm

Omaha Central threw a 150th anniversary party Saturday, and the festivities at the city's oldest high school featured a concert by alumni of the A Capella Choir.

You may think handing out programs for the performance was a pretty easy job. Amid that teeming mob? That child is made of tempered steel, let me tell you.


Mein Gott, ist Götterdämmerung! And remember, keep smiling,

Offer a program, smile. Offer a program, smile. Offer, smile. Offer, smile.

Trust me, that part of the job would kill an old curmudgeon like moi.


Then . . . blessed relief.

Happy sesquicentennial, Central.

IT'S TRUE! Onion not making that s*** up!

Until now, I always thought The Onion was just making stuff up.

You know what I'm talking about -- for instance, the "fake" advice columns like "Ask a Bee" and "Ask a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child."

You'll note that I put "fake" in quotation marks. That's because I don't think The Onion is making that stuff up -- at least not all of it. The was brought home by an Italian Catholic website, Pontifex, which apparently has run a real-life version of "Ask a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child Bishop."

AND THE retired bishop then went on at length about how the recent media scrutiny of the Vatican is all a big conspiracy put together by the Christ-killers. From London, The Times reports :

A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto, was quoted by the Italian Roman Catholic website Pontifex as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the Pope, given that it was “powerful and refined” in nature.

Bishop Babini denied he had made any anti-Semitic remarks. He was backed by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), which issued a declaration by Bishop Babini in which he said: “Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me.”

However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof.

Monsignor Babini’s reported comments follow a series of statements from senior Vatican cardinals blaming a “concerted campaign” by “powerful lobbies” for accusations that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in covering up cases of clerical abuse both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican.

None has explicitly blamed Jews or any other group. However Bishop Babini, 81, said Jews “do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies”. He added: “Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are deicides [God killers].”

He was quoted as saying that Hitler was “not just mad” but had exploited German anger over the excesses of German Jews who in the 1930s had throttled the German economy.

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said Monsignor Babini was using “slanderous stereotypes, which sadly evoke the worst Christian and Nazi propaganda prior to World War Two”.

YOU KNOW, by the time the Vatican gets through asking Catholics -- at least on this issue -- to believe several unbelievable things before breakfast, and by the time various Catholic clerics and laymen get through saying patently crazy things in defense of the church, you have to wonder how many people will be scandalized right out of believing in God.

And scandalized right into believing The Onion.