In a small, darkened studio sits an aging radio guy, playing the music from days gone by. His show is called3 Chords & the Truth -- or the Big Show, as it's known in the booth.
The music is loud; the music is soft. The songs make you think; your thoughts go aloft.
And when your thoughts reach high in the sky, it's like 3 Chords & the Truth is a balloon . . . to the moon.
BUT THEN the light starts to wane, and the stars come out. And the music plays on, all through the house.
Good night, house.
Good night, mouse.
Good night, dog.
Good night, fog.
Good night, pillow.
Good night, Big Show.
Good night, spoon.
Good night . . . bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang,
Ba ba ding a dong ding Blue moon moon blue moon dip di dip di dip,
Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip,
Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang,
Ba ba ding a dong ding,
Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang,
In the fall of 1986, a new prime-time news program hit the ABC airwaves -- Our World.
It was a news magazine devoted to the news of days past, with Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf as hosts. I minored in history, so I was a sucker for this show.
Sadly, not so many others were.
Anyway, direct from the fall of '86, Our Worldlooks at the summer of '69.
I don't know where Angela Manns' attorneys would have gotten such a . . . (ahem) . . . crazy idea.
I'll bet the Omaha World-Herald courts reporter was mystified, too:
There is now no dispute that an Omaha woman killed her young son and left his body to decompose in the family bathtub.
Defense lawyers say they will use an insanity defense for Angela Manns, 47, who is charged in the 2009 death of Michael Belitz, 12.
Her lawyers say she is not responsible for her actions because of a mental illness. Neither the attorneys nor her doctor have revealed her specific condition.
Manns' trial, once scheduled for late this month, is now on indefinite hold. She is charged with first-degree murder.
The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that relying on an insanity defense is an implicit admission that the charges against the defendant are true.
The defense now must show that Manns had a pre-existing and diagnosable mental condition when she committed the crime. Most important, the defense must show that the condition kept her from knowing the difference between right and wrong.
Another option for Manns would have been to argue that she suffered from temporarily diminished mental capacity when she committed the crime.
The defense strategy was confirmed in a brief Douglas County District Court filing and comes almost exactly one year after a judge ruled she was mentally capable to stand trial.
Manns will rely on the defense of “not responsible by reason of insanity,'' according to the filing by Gary D. Olson, assistant public defender.
Psychiatric experts at the Lincoln Regional Center now will investigate whether Manns was sane when her son's death occurred.
“In Nebraska, you have to show in this condition that she didn't know the difference between right and wrong, or she didn't know the consequences of her actions,” said Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine.
“We'll see what the doctors say. Now it's in the hands of the experts for their determination as to her state of sanity.”
Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant-colonel in the military intelligence section of the Soviet Union's secret service, reluctantly eased himself into the commander's seat in the underground early warning bunker south of Moscow.
It should have been his night off but another officer had gone sick and he had been summoned at the last minute.
Before him were screens showing photographs of underground missile silos in the Midwest prairies of America, relayed from spy satellites in the sky.
He and his men watched and listened on headphones for any sign of movement - anything unusual that might suggest the U.S. was launching a nuclear attack.
This was the height of the Cold War between the USSR and the U.S. Both sides packed a formidable punch - hundreds of rockets and thousands of nuclear warheads capable of reducing the other to rubble.
It was a game of nerves, of bluff and counterbluff. Who would fire first? Would the other have the chance to retaliate?
The flying time of an inter-continental ballistic missile, from the U.S. to the USSR, and vice-versa, was around 12 minutes. If the Cold War were ever to go 'hot', seconds could make the difference between life and death.
Everything would hinge on snap decisions. For now, though, as far as Petrov was concerned, more hinged on just getting through another boring night in which nothing ever happened.
Except then, suddenly, it did. A warning light flashed up, screaming red letters on a white background - 'LAUNCH. LAUNCH'. Deafening sirens wailed. The computer was telling him that the U.S. had just gone to war.
The blood drained from his face. He broke out in a cold sweat. But he kept his nerve. The computer had detected missiles being fired but the hazy screens were showing nothing untoward at all, no tell-tale flash of an missile roaring out of its silo into the sky. Could this be a computer glitch rather than Armageddon?
Instead of calling an alert that within minutes would have had Soviet missiles launched in a retaliatory strike, Petrov decided to wait.
The warning light flashed again - a second missile was, apparently, in the air. And then a third. Now the computer had stepped up the warning: 'Missile attack imminent!'
But this did not make sense. The computer had supposedly detected three, no, now it was four, and then five rockets, but the numbers were still peculiarly small. It was a basic tenet of Cold War strategy that, if one side ever did make a preemptive strike, it would do so with a mass launch, an overwhelming force, not this dribble.
Petrov stuck to his common-sense reasoning. This had to be a mistake.
In a universe where Nancy Pelosi is the Antichrist in heels, in a political construct where President Obama is a communist Islamic Nazi witch doctor from Kenya who's going to take over health care and force doctors to pull out your fingernails one by one until you retroactively abort your firstborn son and offer his remains to Ted Kennedy . . . it is in this strange, strange world that North Carolinians just might elect to the U.S. House -- with GOP and tea-party blessing (and cash) -- one Ilario Pantano.
Ilario Pantano, who used to be a Goldman Sachs energy trader, ended up rejoining the Marines after 9/11, then went on to pump some 60 rounds from an M-16 into the backs of two unarmed Iraqi detainees.
Ilario Pantano, whom the Marines charged with murder months later but didn't have enough evidence to court martial.
Ilario Pantano, the subject nevertheless of a Marine leadership-manual scenario aimed at teaching unit leaders how not to act on the battlefield, whose actions were described by a lance corporal who reported him as "war crimes."
ILARIO PANTANO, whose actions at Mahmudiyah, Iraq, prompted the following discussion questions at the end of "his" leadership-manual chapter:
* How should the Marine Corps investigate and adjudicate incidents such as those that occurred at Mahumadiyah may have occurred?
* Does the Marine Corps have an equal obligation to protect the reputation of a Marine accused of a crime or dishonorable behavior, someone possessing the presumption of innocence, and the reputations of those who have honorably brought forward questions about that Marine’s behavior?
* Can an action be lawful but dishonorable?
* What do we use as measures of honorable behavior and conduct if the Uniform Code of Military Justice is inadequate or unsuited to the task?
And it doesn't matter to anyone. Most notably, the candidate himself.
One might assume that someone who'd gunned down a couple of unarmed prisoners at almost point-blank range might be circumspect about his wartime actions. Especially actions that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life.
One might think that someone in such a position -- who had been branded by more than one of his own Marines as a war criminal -- might come back home haunted and penitent, and aware that he dodged some bullets that two Iraqi men couldn't.
You know what they say about what happens when you assume.
NO . . . if an alleged war criminal has the nerve to run for Congress, an alleged war criminal has the nerve to have a fund-raiser Sunday at a gun range. And offer campaign-donation refunds to anyone who can outshoot him, reports The StarNews in Wilmington, N.C.:
Republican congressional candidate Ilario Pantano will hold a pistol match Sunday afternoon at the Ant Hill Range in Brunswick County to raise money for his campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-Lumberton.
For $25, “any patriot” who thinks he can outshoot Pantano is invited to show off his marksmanship in a timed target-shooting challenge, according to ads for the event.
Shoot fast and straight enough to beat the former Marine and trained sniper and get your money back.
“Pantano needs your help to fix Washington, so come on out to this fundraiser social for an afternoon of fun, food and guns!” according to an advertisement for the event.
Pantano is advertising the event as a way to protect the Second Amendment and “clear all the anti-gun liberals out of Congress.”
Registration starts at 11 a.m., with the shooting starting shortly after noon. Shooters can sign up at the event and must bring their own gun and ammunition.
ADVENTURESOME "patriots" had better bring their "A" game. The Marines' account(go to Page 49) of Pantano's Iraq adventures indicate he's absolutely deadly at 5 feet:
At this point, the occupants of the white sedan were described as cooperative; no weapons had been found on either their persons or in the vehicle. The women at the target house corroborated their story. The only finds worth mentioning were the coffee cans of nuts and bolts found in the trunk of the car.
The platoon commander directed the corpsman to take charge of the detainees. The corpsman moved them to the rear of the vehicle, separated them and placed them on their stomachs. He stood security on the detainees while the platoon commander and radio operator went to the target house. It could not be determined whether the platoon commander was informed that the residents had confirmed the two detainees’ story. It was determined, however, that the residents had not been held hostage in their homes by insurgents. The platoon commander and radio operator returned from the house. Upon his return, the platoon commander directed the radio operator to get the Iraqis up from the ground and remove the flex cuffs; the radio operator did so using his medical shears. The platoon commander then told the corpsman he wanted the detainees to search the vehicle a second time. The corpsman moved the detainees to the left or west side of the vehicle, placing the older of the two Iraqis in the driver’s door and the younger in the passenger door. The Iraqis had to be told several times to stop talking. The platoon commander directed the radio operator and corpsman to take up security positions, leaving him alone with the two Iraqis. The corpsman testified that he heard the platoon commander say “stop” in Arabic and then again in English. He then heard shots being fired. The platoon commander fired two thirty round M-16 magazines into the two Iraqis using burst fire. The corpsman has testified that the platoon commander fired from a distance of four to five feet.
The corpsman turned during the firing and observed the platoon commander’s rounds striking the Iraqis in their backs. He saw the Iraqis slump into the vehicle. The radio operator immediately faced about and saw the platoon commander firing into the vehicle. After the platoon commander ceased firing, the corpsman checked the Iraqis’ vital signs and informed the platoon commander that they were dead.
Prior to this firing, the only other shots that had been fired were the warning shots to stop the white sedan. The corpsman testified that throughout this entire action, the platoon had not received any fire. Elements of 3rd Platoon were established to the east, west, and north of the scene of the incident and others were at the target house.
The corpsman went to the rear of the vehicle. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to the radio operator, “the blood is not on your hands, it’s on the lieutenant’s.”
The corpsman testified that after shooting the two Iraqis, the platoon commander used his K-bar and rifle to break windows and lights of the white sedan and to flatten its tires. The radio operator also testified that the platoon commander did this, although he testified that it happened before the shootings.
The platoon commander later said that “I didn’t wait to see if there was a grenade. I didn’t wait to see if there was a knife. And unfortunately, there are a lot of dead soldiers and Marines who have waited too long. And my men weren’t going to be one of those dead soldiers or Marines and neither was I.” The Intel Bn Marine testified that he heard the shots and went back towards the location of the white sedan. During this time, a second vehicle approached the scene from the north. The platoon commander ordered that vehicle, a brown sedan with several Iraqi laborers, to stop just north of the white sedan.
The Intel Bn Marine and the interpreter jogged north past the white sedan to assist the platoon commander with the Iraqis in the brown sedan. The interpreter described the scene at the white sedan. “They looked like they were on their knees. They were shot in their backs. One was in the front of the vehicle, the other one was in the back of the vehicle, facing the vehicle.”
He later described the scene as “weird.” “The rounds, sir -- there were too many rounds shot into those detainees, sir.”
The interpreter testified that upon arriving at the brown sedan, he observed the platoon commander using his knife to flatten the tires of the vehicle. The platoon commander ordered Marines to move the new detainees to the north of their vehicle. (There were five or six Iraqi house painters in the vehicle. Painting equipment was found in their car and in the house where they had been working.) They were probably twenty feet from the two dead Iraqis. Here, the Intel Bn Marine and his interpreter questioned them. The interpreter testified that the platoon commander had him tell the painters that “if any of them want to join the insurgency that same thing was going to happen to them as those bodies” and then they were released. They drove away on flattened tires.
By this point, the platoon commander had placed a sign on the first vehicle, on the left side, the same side as the deceased Iraqis. It read “No better friend, no worse enemy.” The first vehicle was not searched again. No effort was made to recover the remains of the dead Iraqis.
PERHAPS THAT ought to be Pantano's campaign slogan: "No better friend, no worse enemy." Wink.
Lots of politicians will stab you in the back. The would-be congressman from North Carolina might be the first, though, to empty two clips into it.
How ironic that Ilario Pantano went off to war to -- What was the official reason at the time? -- "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." That was from President George W. Bush's televised address to the nation at the beginning of hostilities.
"To all the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed.
"The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honourable and decent spirit of the American military.
"In this conflict America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality."
AS IT turns out, Saddam wasn't alone in that regard.
As it turns out, at least one Marine -- it was alleged -- decided he would employ some Saddam-style deterrence for anyone considering messing with Uncle Sam. What happened in Mahmudiyah was literally, it would seem, out of the Saddam Hussein Handbook for Keeping Troublemakers in Line. This pasaage from Saddam's obit in The Sunday Times, for example:
The society he grew up in was violent and well armed. Some accounts say Saddam was given his first firearm at the age of eight. Another has him, at the age of ten, threatening to kill a school teacher who wanted to expel him. But, much more than violence, tribal loyalty was the overwhelming characteristic of the society into which he was born. He was to rise to power not by becoming prominent in politics or the military, but by harnessing the ties of kinship. One of the rebel officers who led the 1963 Baathist coup was Ahmed al-Hassan al Bakr, a relative of Saddam's. Bakr became prime minister and it was under his leadership that Saddam's stealthy seizure of power began, beginning with the building of security and intelligence networks answerable - and loyal - not to the state but to Saddam in person. For five years after 1963, Saddam Hussein lived on the fringes of the new political establishment, frequently falling out of favour and ending up in jail. The breakthrough in his political fortunes came in 1968 when a second coup brought the Tikriti clan to power. Bakr became head of state with Saddam as vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council. he systematic violence and intimidation that was to keep Saddam in power began. Possible opponents were assassinated.
The Kurdish political leader Mahmoud Osman got to know him well during this period. "He told us, 'You have to kill some people, even if they are innocent, in order to frighten others'."
In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein, as Vice President, became head of Iraq's nuclear energy programme. In 1975 he made one of his rare trips abroad - to Paris - to visit the plant that was to supply Iraq with its first nuclear power station. He was welcomed in person by the then French prime minister, Jacques Chirac. Iraq and France signed an agreement which bound Baghdad to the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; the plant would be for the production of energy only, strictly non-military.
In 1979, Bakr, in poor health, announced his intention to step down and hand power to Saddam. Some members of the RCC objected and demanded a vote. They did not live long. Saddam accused his fellow Ba'athists of conspiring against him, and of plotting with foreign powers. A meeting of the RCC was filmed in which Saddam is shown denouncing the alleged conspirators and being persuaded by terrified acolytes not to be lenient. Between a quarter and half the members of the ruling body were executed. It was at this time, too, that another distinctive feature of the Saddam regime emerged - a willingness to punish not only direct opponents and potential opponents, but members of their families as well.
"NO BETTER friend, no worse enemy."
And now, a tangible symbol of the putridity oozing from an infection America picked up during an unnecessary war is on the cusp of election to Congress. Our Congress. The United States Congress . . . as opposed to its Iraqi counterpart.
Or the old Communist central committee of Soviet times.
Not so many, according to a Salon piece, have a problem with this:
But one of the remarkable things about the campaign in North Carolina this year is that the murder charges are not only not an issue, but have barely even been talked about.
David McLennan, a political scientist at North Carolina's Peace College, told Salon that the issue could backfire for McIntyre, the Democratic incumbent, particularly in a district with a large ex-military population.
"There are some people in the district who consider Pantano to be a hero. For McIntyre to raise that issue is just way too delicate," McLennan says.
Some of the only criticism of Pantano's past has ironically come from the man he beat in the GOP primary, fellow Iraq war vet Will Breazeale. He told the Daily Beast after his primary loss that he considers Pantano "dangerous," adding: "I’ve taken prisoners in Iraq and there’s no excuse for what he did."
Asked by Salon if he is surprised that his critics have largely ignored the Iraq incident, Pantano was defiant. "If they want to question my war effort -- if they think that's prudent, they can go ahead ... I've served my country proudly in two wars."
IT WILL be America's great shame if he serves one second in Congress.
The Soviet national anthem, as broadcast in 1984 on state television.
Here we see a vision of a mighty empire and a proud people. Here we listen to a soaring hymn to the glories of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In little more than seven years -- on Dec. 26, 1991 -- the Soviet Union ceased to be.
OUR AMERICAN national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," as broadcast in 1984 at the close of another broadcast day for Buffalo, N.Y.'s public television station.
Here we see a vision of a mighty empire and a proud people. Here we listen to a soaring hymn to the glories of "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
In little more than. . . .
Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.
When I saw a link to an outraged post on one of Andrew Breitbart's "news" sites about what horrible things rat-bastard, "delusional" Krauts were saying about tea partiers in their rat-bastard, commie Kraut magazine, I jumped to an immediate conclusion.
I figure that whatever it was the Krauts said to so upset all the Right people, they must be on to something.
And sure enough, though the language was overbroad in parts of the Der Spiegel opinion piece, I thought this part of it could not have been more right.
If not Right.
But what is more appalling still, what is more shocking on so many levels, is the state of the nation -- the political stupidity of entire federal states and systems that seem hell-bent on self-destruction. Europe and the United States are much farther apart than many Europeans think. The US is different, completely and utterly different. Americans have a completely different understanding of social solidarity and the duties of the state. But there are also contradictions. Millions of Americans want to reduce the power of the government, because that's the way their countrymen have always thought. Yet these same Americans want their president to lead them out of crisis. They want railway stations, schools and clean energy, but they don't want to pay taxes. They are the descendants of immigrants, and proud of it, and they oppose immigration.
Decades of prosperity have made the US a lethargic country. And in contrast to Europeans, whose lives and countries have been shaped by war, Americans are accustomed to feeling unique and invulnerable. They therefore react with near paranoia to a powerful China or a black president. Americans know they need change, yet they fear change. Such attitudes may be called schizophrenic. They're certainly a recipe for hysteria.
The older, conservative German demonstrators who have recently been taking to the streets to protest against the controversial "Stuttgart 21" railway station project are the product of demographic change and their own fears. But the German protesters look absolutely harmless compared to America's hate-mongers, gun freaks and Tea Party demagogues who first compare Obama to Hitler and then minutes later to Stalin. They are people so filled with vitriol they can no longer think straight -- people like television presenter Glenn Beck, who says that putting the common good first is "exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany." Beck has millions of followers, and appears in public with former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, the darling of the Tea Party movement, who gleefully pronounces Obama's middle name Hussein as if it were a naughty, menacing word. Just two years ago, such things would have been taboo, and considered below-the-belt by Republicans.
This is the new atmosphere in America, and it is reflected in the Senate and the House of Representatives, two self-confident bodies populated by two political parties that eagerly take turns holding the reins of power. They paralyze themselves with rules that demand unattainable majorities for everything that is important. And even the Constitution irrevocably decrees that a senator from sparsely-populated Alaska has the same rights as a senator from New York.
The German media alternate on a daily basis between talking about "Obama's victory" and calling him a "loser." But often neither view is accurate, because the president has little or no influence over much of what is done, or not done, in the US and its 50 federal states.
Of course the American media is largely responsible for the impression people get of President Obama as well as the state of the nation as a whole. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's TV news channel, has come to specialize in partisan mudslinging. Four of the potential future Republican presidential candidates are on Fox's payroll. The liberal channels are only different -- they are no longer any better. CNN has atrophied into a soapbox for journalist presenters. There is no analysis anymore on American TV, and little news -- only polemical attacks and shouting delivered in 90-second chunks.
SOMETIMES, distance provides clarity. And always, not actually being in the middle of a nervous breakdown is the best perspective for determining that a nervous breakdown is what's ailing someone.
In this regard, Klaus Brinkbäumer has identified the problem perfectly. His German readers ought to be worried that, in this case, the emotionally unstable basket case controls a big chunk of the global economy . . . and, by the way, is armed to the teeth with thermonuclear weapons.
If you're a little girl in Ashland, and if you want to try your hand at junior cheerleading, you can grow up to shake your butt for the astronauts. And if you don't want to shake it for the youth-football crowd, the cheerleader coach will kick your unshaking butt right off the squad.
Because the "shake your booty" cheer is a real "crowd-pleaser." Make of that what you will when 5- to 11-year-old girls are involved.And note that the NBC version of the video package originally shot by Omaha's WOWT television artfully cuts away before the little girls shake their butts at the camera.
HERE'S SOMEof the story from the Today show on NBC:
“It just felt wrong. I don’t know why,” Faylene Frampton said Wednesday during an interview on TODAY with Tamron Hall. “It just didn’t feel it was a cheer that was appropriate for kids of my age or younger.”
The sixth-grader from Ashland, Neb., says she complained to cheerleading coach Tina Harris in the past that she did not feel comfortable with the cheer, which is number 33 in the squad’s 44-cheer routine.
The cheer calls upon Faylene and younger members of the squad — including some in the second grade — to turn their backs to the bleachers, bend over, and move their pelvises from side to side.
The cheer had been used in the past, but Faylene says never liked doing it and told the coach so. So when Harris gave the signal for “shake your booty” on Oct. 10, the third-to-last game of the season, she decided it was time to put her foot down — both of them, actually — and take a stand.
Faylene, the oldest and most senior of the junior cheerleaders, refused to do the cheer and was sent home. Later, her father was informed by the coach during a phone call that Faylene was being benched for the last two games for disrespecting the coach.
(snip)
Coach Harris told the local NBC affiliate that she didn’t find the cheer sexually suggestive or objectionable, but nonetheless dropped it from the last two games. She added that no one had complained about the cheer before, and that explaining the controversy, and her decision to bench Faylene for the remainder of the season, was difficult.
BUT NOT as "difficult" as just not having little girls shake their butts at adults in the stands of an elementary-school football game.
"Shaking it" is one thing. People dance; little kids dance. It's cute when they do.
But little girls, some as young as 5, turning their posteriors to the stands -- bleachers filled with adults -- and "shaking it" at the crowd is entirely another.
As a Catholic who has worked with kids at church -- and as someone who has completed the now-mandatory "safe-environment" training -- that is not something I'd be comfortable letting high-schoolers do for an audience, much less forcing preadolescents to do under penalty of banishment. Maybe if everybody were doing the "Hokey Pokey" or the "Chicken Dance," but certainly not chanting "Jump! Shake your booty! Jump! Jump! Shake your booty!"
In other words, what the hell is wrong with this overgrown teenager they have "coaching" little girls in Ashland how to be cheerleaders?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- or an astronaut -- to refrain from teaching junior cheerleaders how to "shake it" like junior streetwalkers.
If you were alive in 1987, I don't think there was any way you didn't hear Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again."
If you were male in 1987, there probably wasn't any way you were going to forget Tawny Kitaen, either.
AS A MATTER of fact, this was a pop-culture reference that made it -- big time -- into Bowling for Soup's 2004 video for "1985." (And, no, that's not an older Tawny Kitaen in the video. The actress' name is Joey House.)
I'm with Debbie in the video. There are worse places to be stuck than 1985. Or 1987, for that matter.
I was starting to think that Great Britain had locked up all the good political parties.
So imagine my delight to see that, in last night's New York gubernatorial debate, the only candidate who made any sense whatsoever was Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is 2 Damn High Party.
Not only that, if you go to the party's website, you'll be greeted by the most danceable campaign theme song ever. A stone-cold jam.
From what little I could tell from the above video, The Rent Is 2 Damn High Party is the most entertaining thing to hit Western politics since this:
That's right, the rent is too DAMN high. Especially on landless peasants.
Jonah Goldberg is fond of railing about "liberal fascism" -- in fact, he wrote a whole book about it called . . . wait for it . . . Liberal Fascism.
No doubt, there are liberal fascists. No doubt, there also are conservative ones -- including lots of people Jonah Goldberg likes to hang out with. No doubt.
But what about more interesting social and political forms of deviance. Like, what if Jonah Goldberg put together a panel of conservative policy wonks -- and we're talking a regular right-wing version of the Adams College Tri-Lambs here.
And what if one of Jonah's nerds was hell-bent on, er . . . revenge.
There's no bigger mojo in this perilous, unforgiving jungle of job hunting than a college degree.
In an economy like this, a degree from a respected institution of higher learning can mean the difference between a safe haven among civilized, productive people . . . and sitting in a big pot amid hungry cannibals, wondering "Is this water getting hot, or is it just my nerves?"
No, you can't overstate the importance of a college diploma. Take this one, for example (above).
No, take this one.
Listen, it takes four years and a lot of money -- money you likely don't have, not these days -- to get that piece of paper that tells super-picky employers "Me am smart. Me can does job!"And in a world where nobody knows what tomorrow may bring . . . in a world where you need to grab an elusive position while the grabbing's good, you don't have four years to putz around getting "educated."
Well, friend, I can help.
For the low, low price of $2,500 -- less than the cost of one year at a cut-rate public institution of higher learning -- you can bean official 1984 graduate of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Upon receipt of an envelope stuffed with cash, or a U.S. Postal Service money order (no checks, please), I will send you this bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Louisiana's flagship university. A journalism degreewill open to you the doors of a lucrative profession.
And you can be more than yourself not in four years, but in just the time it takes the mailman to bring me your payment, then deliver to you your official Louisiana higher-ed diploma. (One caveat -- it will be immensely helpful if you can pass for a 49-year-old man. The degree is from 1984, after all.)
I KNOW . . . I know. Right about now, you're thinking, "Favog, this is fraud!"
Well, of course it is, you twerp! This degree is from LSU, which is (DUH!) located in Louisiana, and fraud is how things work down there.
For instance, Louisiana voters every four years elect the most plausible-seeming crook out of a field of several crooks, and then the newly-elected crook fraudulently pretends to govern, and the citizens fraudulently pretend to care.
Each year, the fraudster-in-chief brings his plan for not governing before a bunch of less-accomplished frauds (this is called the Legislature), and they pretend to deliberate over shyster pieces of legislation, then sell their votes to the highest bidders, and it all eventually results in the fraud of a governor signing the fraudulent legislation into a joke of a "law." Then things really get screwed up.
There's a method to this madness, and it is this: You can't run on a platform of "fixing" things unless things first have been rendered completely FUBAR. It's like the water cycle, only government. It's a very "green" process, actually.
Now, under this "government" thing in Louisiana, politicians pretend to set up institutions of elementary, secondary and higher education. Of course, none of them educate anybody worth a damn -- that would screw up everything. Remember, in the economy of government-by-fraud, a little education is dangerous . . . and a lot is g**damned catastrophic, you bloody fool!
Besides, education is among those things that must be "fixed," so politicians can run for office on a platform of lying to voters lying about wanting "fixes" about actually "fixing" them.
Did you get all that?
SO, don't think of purchasing a used degree from me as "fraud," per se. Think of it instead as obtaining a perfectly valid college degree the same way LSU student athletes do. Or legislators' brothers-in-law. One or the other.
It's just the "Louisiana way."
One caveat, however. Act quickly, because the perceived worth of this genuine 1984 LSU journalism BA is likely to decrease markedly next summer. That is due to the havoc unfortunate economic circumstances are playing with the state's official Ponzi scheme, which in some states is referred to as "the budget."
This disruption -- bravely papered over for several years through truly heroic fraudulence on the part of Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators -- most likely will mean debilitating budget cuts, thus rendering plausible deniability impossible if some suspicious potential employer were to wave a newspaper in your face, screaming "That LSU degree of yours ain't worth s***!"
But that's why I'm letting this authentic LSU diploma -- complete with a leatherette case at no additional charge -- go for just $2,500, a full 75 percent off the regular price. You still get a real college degree, with a good eight to 10 months to parlay it into a decent job.
I, meantime, can recoup something out of the thing while there's still some value left. In Louisiana, we call this "Everybody wins!"
You do a little somethin' for me, and I do a little somethin' for you. It's a system that works . . . if you don't worry too much about the meaning of "works."
But, once again, act now. Sooner or later, Gov. Jindal will return to the Gret Stet from his 49-state "GOP: Fool for Me" concert tour, the legislature will convene . . . and LSU will turn into a pumpkin at 12:01 a.m., July 1, 2011.
NOW THAT'Sjust between you and me (wink). It won't reallybe Louisiana State Community College until the carpetbagger feds make 'em change the name because of damn-Yankee "truth in advertising" laws.
So buy today! Remember, "what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
Long ago, in a universe far away, there was no such thing as the World Wide Web.
There was a primitive Internet in this primitive universe, and there were extremely slow telephone modems, and there were Commodore 64 computers, too. Likewise, there was a service called Quantum Link.
A few years later, you would know it by a more familiar name -- America Online. Which is now AOL.
Which is kind of peripheral to what we do on the Internet.
Once upon a time, though, this promotional video was selling us what we imagined to be a George Jetson world, and today was barely imaginable.
If you watched the Nebraska-Texas football game Saturday, it became clear to you that something was horribly wrong with the Huskers.
Of course, we all chalked it up to nerves. To anxiousness. To the Huskers letting their brains slip into R (Revenge) before ever engaging in D (Drive the @#$%!*% ball down the #$%!@*+&! field, you jerks!).
Face it, we just chalked it up to Husker coaches yet again letting Mack Brown and his Tejas 22 get under their skins and into their heads.
Of course, we are fans. That means we are wrong. Horribly, embarrassingly, ignorantly and knuckle-draggingly wrong. Just ask NU Coach Bo Pelini.
No, really. Coach Bo explains it all in Sunday's Omaha World-Herald.
IT WASN'T emotion, or nerves or anything like that. See?
Bo Pelini says the outside influences did not factor, that emotion played no role Saturday for Nebraska and that the Huskers again lost to Texas only because they failed to make plays.
A mountain of evidence from this 20-13 UT win suggests another conclusion: that NU wanted it too badly.
How else to explain the three dropped touchdown passes? Or the opening seven minutes that included uncharacteristic missed tackles and a key fumble by senior Roy Helu? It led to a 10-point hole from which NU never climbed.
“A terrible start,” said Pelini, who dropped to 1-4 in October home games as the Nebraska coach.
AND HUSKER receivers dropping something like 873 passes during the game -- about four of them sure touchdowns? It couldn't be nerves, or . . . PSYCH!!!
Nuh uh.
In this doomed series of Big 12 heavyweights, frustration climaxed for Nebraska on Saturday as Texas improved to 4-0 in Lincoln since 1998.
The Longhorns (4-2, 2-1) won for the ninth time in 10 games against NU as a conference foe. UT denied the Huskers and their fans of the moment they all so desired: redemption against Texas before the Huskers bolt next year for the Big Ten.
Barring a December rematch in the Big 12 championship game, they'll never meet again as league foes. And if this is how it ends, what a disappointment for Nebraska.
“Losing to anyone is not a good feeling,” NU defensive end Cameron Meredith said. “but especially Texas.”
The all-too-familiar scenarios played out often for Nebraska on Saturday.
Notably, there were the drops by Rex Burkhead, Niles Paul and Brandon Kinnie. All three passes were thrown well — the first a Taylor Martinez pass on the opening play of the second quarter; the others from Zac Lee, who replaced Martinez midway through the third quarter.
“It's pretty obvious,” Pelini said. “We had our opportunities to make plays. We didn't make plays. They did. They won the football game.”
BUT NOT making the plays, in which "not making the plays" means "dropped every thrown football laid perfectly into your outstretched hands?" And knowing for sure -- after all, Coach Bo said -- that it wasn't AT ALL due to . . . PSYCH!!!
Well, then. This could be serious, and it seems to me -- given the unlikely repetition of such specific inaction by skilled professional student athletes -- we need to start looking at environmental and medical causes.
Perhaps so many dropped passes could be traced to identical symptoms spread among a number of Nebraska players. (In this, we can use the Longhorns as our "control group." They spent only 24 hours or so in Lincoln, and they exhibited few of the symptoms associated with affected NU players.)
Several things come to mind as a possible reason for so many dropped passes Saturday -- and, indeed, so many fumbles by Nebraska throughout the present football season. The likeliest place to start would be some kind of numbness and/or paralysis in players' extremities, particularly the hands.
Now we're thinking diabetes, nerve damage, ministrokes, Reynaud's disease, peripheral artery disease (Thanks, pharmaceutical TV ads for the heads up!) . . . or multiple sclerosis. A mass outbreak of one of these maladies, however, is highly unlikely in this case.
What we need is something that would cause these symptoms in significant numbers within a group, and cause these symptoms virtually simultaneously. Something that's not nerves, or excessive emotion, or . . . PSYCH!!!
Searching Internet medical databases up and down, I could find only one explanation, and it is indeed a frightening one. In fact, as soon as this post goes up on the blog, I'm firing off an extremely urgent E-mail to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, with a copy forwarded to Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman.
LIVES ARE at stake, and I'm not talking about some unhinged Husker fan doing something stupid to a player or a coach.
* irritability[Pelini brothers (Bo and Carl) --R21] * anxiety/nervousness, often with difficulty in breathing[NU fans at Memorial Stadium] * restlessness[Ditto] * exaggerated response to stimulation[Pelini brothers] * fearfulness[NU fans in stadium] * emotional instability [Pelini brothers] -lack of self control[Bo Pelini] -fits of anger, with violent, irrational behavior[Pelini brothers] * loss of self confidence[Entire state of Nebraska] * indecision [Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson] * shyness or timidity, being easily embarrassed[Entire state of Nebraska] * loss of memory[What were we talking about?] * inability to concentrate[Jenn Sterger is HOTT!!!!!] * lethargy/drowsiness[Entire Nebraska offense] * insomnia[Who can sleep now?] * mental depression, despondency[Are you kidding me? If you're not depressed, you must have flown in from Tejas.] * withdrawal[Leave me alone.] * suicidal tendencies[Life has not been worth living since 1998.] * manic depression[Fiddle dee dee! After all, tomorrow is another day!]
* numbness and tingling of hands, feet, fingers, toes, or lips[Taylor Martinez, NU receiving corps] * muscle weakness progressing to paralysis[NU offense] * ataxia[?????????] * tremors/trembling of hands, feet, lips, eyelids or tongue[Husker receiving corps during game; NU coaching staff after game.] * incoordination[Husker offense] * myoneural transmission failure resembling Myasthenia Gravis[NU receivers -- couldn't see the football coming.]
SEE WHAT I mean? Mercury poisoning. It clearly affects the entire Nebraska football team, and probably everyone spending any significant time on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. Possibly it could be a statewide crisis, I am not sure at this point.
We was robbed? Hell, no. We was poisoned!
This is urgent, and it is incumbent upon the state government to act immediately.
Unless, of course, the state's political and bureaucratic establishments are, at this moment, flying into fits of rage and trying to beat up one another, thwarted, however, by lack of coordination, paralysis of the extremities and an inability to see straight.
In other words, an average mercury-poisoned day at the office.
The music is loud; the music is soft. The songs make you think; your thoughts go aloft.
