If wishes were birdies. . . .

Everything's a metaphor. Especially in Detroit.

On the other hand, I think the United States' transition to a banana republic is going pretty smoothly, don't you?

Let's kick up the stupid a notch. BAM!

I love it when brain-dead barbarians take it upon themselves to instruct the rest of us on how to behave in public.

The only difference between Bam Margera, the still-alive Jackass, and Ryan Dunn, the now-dead Jackass, is an immovable tree at the end of a sports car's 40-yard free flight. Yet he and his equally reprobate Jackass Nation somehow think they have moral high ground enough to chastise film critic Roger Ebert for his allegedly insensitive Twitter post about Dunn's death.

THIS IS what the moral high ground looks like to Generation Moron:


SORRY about that. That was what normal, everyday public interaction looks like to Generation Moron. This is what the moral high ground . . . moral outrage . . .righteous indignation . . . whatever . . . looks like to Generation Moron:

@ BAM__MARGERA I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day and piece of s*** roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents

@ BAM__MARGERA About a jackass drunk driving and his is one, f*** you! Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat f****** mouth!

I THINK I choked up a little bit reading those poignant sentiments. It reminds me of the moral outrage and palpable grief of a riotous mob when the National Guard moves in.

Margera's tender defense of his late friend was followed by other instances of Generation Moron calling somebody else deviant in a highly ironic fashion:

* Roger Ebert looks like a victim of drunk driving, s*** happens, its a tragedy when anyone dies. He should let his fans and family grief before talking s***.

* I think this is straight bulls***. those 2 grown men decided to get in the car with him aswell and this "man" keeps wanting to run his mouth. The Jackass crew was family and people need to understand were f****** human beings. The other 2 that died with him were just as liable for getting in that car robert ebert needs to back for the friends and family sake its sad and sickens me. Ryan may you rest in peice. And prayers are sent out to the one hurt from all this. I know I am I enjoyed jackass with my cousin when i have a teen and after he passed a year ago from overdose and when I watch jackass I laigh knowing it was something we shared . ROBERT STOP BEING A F****** DICK LORD AND SHOW THE FAMILY YOU PIECE OF S***.

* Most of you dumb motherf****** have zero sense of accountability. Everyone knows the passenger was boozing, too, and he/she chose to get into the car just like Ryan chose to drive the car. I highly doubt the passenger was protesting when Ryan drove at high speeds. It's a f****** accident and sad that 2 people died. Ebert should shut the f*** up. RIP Ryan, your s*** on CKY and Jackass will give people the giggles for years to come.

* Obesity is a bigger problem in America than Drinking and Driving, Roger needs to take a look in the mirror. Friends don't let friends get obese.

* Everyone, including Ebert, should stop speculating and SHUT THE F*** UP! The only 2 people who really now the circumstances are no longer with us. And even if true….Show some respect you Mother F****** who prentend you've never had a drink or drove over the speed limit.

WE ALSO have proof that friends let jackasses tweet, too:

* I bet God regrets letting Roger Ebert survive the jaw cancer he had.

* Who is Roger Ebert one to tweet about someone's death. Bitch, you have like no f****** mouth. It was taken from you as a sign to STFU!!!

* Roger Ebert can suck a d***, by the way

* ROGER EBERT Go kill yourself! You f****** piece of s***!

* One might say that Roger Ebert put his foot in his half-mouth.

* its gonna be hard for roger ebert to "save face" because he already lost half of it.

BEHOLD the outraged, and outrageous, grief that comes when the barbarians besieging our culture have been caught dead to rights -- literally in this case -- and know their sad fate is nobody's fault but theirs. Not that they won't be making the rest of us pay for their sins, regardless.

Like I said, the only difference between Bam Margera, the rest of Jackass Nation and the late Mr. Dunn is a 40-yard free flight in a fast sports car . . . and an immovable tree at the end.

And, the sensitivity of his comments aside, they hate like hell that Ebert has their number.

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and gamma rays

The missus and I spent a wonderful Sunday night with friends at the College World Series.

The series' new home, TD Ameritrade Park, is beautiful. Awesome, even. And the downtown Omaha setting is a grand slam.

The night was wonderful, the company better, and the game between South Carolina and Texas A&M was a nail-biter. A late-spring night at the CWS always has a little bit of everything -- like the game itself (above).

And daddies and their babies.

And wacky team mascots. This is Cocky from South Carolina.

And, of course, wireless combination radiation and multigas detectors. Because it's dangerous out there.

If it's June, and they're playing baseball. . . .

If it's June, and if a College World Series night game is under way, you pretty much can expect this to happen. Repeat as necessary.

Usually, a slightly above-average outbreak of thunderstorms doesn't merit the tornado sirens going off -- not without a tornado warning -- but this one did because . . . see above. You had a lot of folks inside TD Ameritrade Park at just after 8 p.m. Monday, and even more outside all over downtown Omaha.

With a gust front with winds up to 70-plus m.p.h. headed their way.

Smart move.

In fact, cops were getting people out of their cars on 10th Street and herding them into the Qwest Center Omaha.


NOW, I'm no Jim Cantore (and I don't play him on television), but this is what it looked like in west-central Omaha.

This was just after the gust front went through. I don't know what the wind speed was but -- being that I was outside standing in it like an idiot -- it was strong enough to make it hard to catch your breath.

Back to you, Jim.

It's a mystery why some things happen

NOTE: Coarse language that's not safe for work . . . or kids.

Ryan Dunn of Jackass fame is dead. Who could have seen it coming?

You make a living doing idiotic things, and you're not dead yet . . . that must mean you're impervious to death, right?

MTV made a mint off of the idiotainment of Dunn and his Camp Kill Yourself cohorts for years. And now that the first CKY luminary has "graduated," I wonder whether the corporate enabler of so many of society's death wishes will at least have the decency to pay for the funeral resulting from the success of this particular one.

According to The Associated Press account today, the 34-year-old fell victim to a fiery meeting of a sports car flying low and some trees that weren't going anywhere:

Dunn, a daredevil whose most famous skits included diving into a sewage tank and shoving a toy car into his rectum, was driving his 2007 Porsche in suburban Philadelphia when it careered off the road, flipped over a guardrail and crashed into the woods before bursting into flames. A passenger was also killed, and speed may have been a factor in the crash, West Goshen Township police said.

The force of impact shattered the vehicle into several twisted and blackened pieces, leaving the Porsche 911 GT3 unrecognizable except for a door that was thrown from the crash and not incinerated. A 100-foot-long tire skid marked where the car left the roadway.

Both Dunn and his passenger were severely burned. Police said they were able to identify Dunn through his tattoos and hair, but the identity of his passenger was still unknown.

Dunn appeared on MTV shows "Jackass" and "Viva La Bam" and the three "Jackass" big-screen adaptations. He also was the star of his own MTV show, "Homewrecker," and hosted "Proving Ground" on the G4 cable network.

His longtime friend and fellow "Jackass" daredevil Johnny Knoxville tweeted on Monday afternoon, "Today I lost my brother Ryan Dunn. My heart goes out to his family and his beloved Angie. RIP Ryan, I love you buddy."

ACCORDING TO TMZ, it's likely Dunn also fell victim to being behind the wheel with a gut full of liquor:

One of the friends tells TMZ ... Dunn had 3 Miller Lites and 3 "girly shots" between 10:30 PM and 2:10 AM -- nearly a 4 hour span -- but he was "not too drunk to drive."

But according to another person who was inside the bar that night, Dunn was "wasted" -- and "had a lot to drink."

BUT I GUESS we could have seen that one coming, too. Or, as one YouTube commenter rather uncharitably put it, "He died as he lived . . . with car parts in his anus."

Our loss is Gabriel's competition

When this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth got put in the proverbial can Friday night, the last thing we had heard about Clarence Clemons was he was -- thus far -- making a remarkable recovery from his serious stroke last week.

That didn't work out.

Clemons, the Big Man, the irreplaceable sax man of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, died Saturday at 69. With him, one would think, went the E Street Band. With him, too, went a piece of an American generation's heart.

You can't replace the Big Man.

Bruce can't replace the Big Man any more than a widowed spouse can "replace" the one who, suddenly, no longer shares a home . . . shares a life. You strike out on a new path, with new dreams and a heart that always will be missing a piece.


FOR A GENERATION of us, restless Americans of a certain age now, Clarence Clemons' tenor saxophone -- sometimes joy-filled, sometimes mournful, always soulful -- filled our hearts as Springsteen's words filled our minds and gave voice, a soaring, wondrous musical voice, to our joys, our hopes, our struggles and our fears.

Decades down the highway, they still do. Sometimes more than we could have imagined in 1978. Or 1980. Or 1984.

Only now those hopes, dreams, struggles and fears are quieter now. A little less joyful. A little less expressively mournful.

They now will be told with a lot less soul.


BUT WE REMEMBER a time when we were young, and when our proxies roared and wailed like a mighty beast. Before our advocates grew old, as did we, and the voice began to falter and fade.

In our memories, though, we still roar, and our heroes are still as young as our spirit, lurking as it is behind graying hair and expanding waistlines.

Hand me that old LP, will you. I damn time as I drink of the fountain of youth.

3 Chords & the Truth: A home run of a show

In the frozen north, you have Hockey Night in Canada.

Here on the somewhat-less-frozen Plains, we have Baseball Month in Omaha.

In honor of the advent of yet another College World Series -- this one at the brand-new TD Ameritrade Park, we'll be highlighting . . .

BAH! BAAAH! BAAAAAAAAH!

. . . on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

IN FACT, we'll start out the whole ballgame with . . .

SO GOOD!

SO GOOD!

SO GOOD!

. . . which I think you will find to be a real treat this time around on the Big Show.

And those hipsters down there about three rows -- the ones who are obviously here to be seen being here, even though baseball is usually so uncool -- would enjoy this week's 3 Chords & the Truth excursion into . . .

BAH! BAAAH! BAAAAAAAAH!

It's really going to be cool, even if it was put together by a balding guy well old enough to be their father. Especially when . . .

SO GOOD!

SO GOOD!

SO GOOD!

Aw, screw it. Ima watch the game now.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there . . .

BAH! BAAAH! BAAAAAAAAH!

Aloha.

George Jefferson and the Big Lie

LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson won't be movin' on up to Phi Beta Kappa.

Unfortunately for the university's media-relations types, however, he moved on up to ESPN -- an event they touted to the world:

LSU senior quarterback Jordan Jefferson will spend Thursday at the ESPN Headquarters in Bristol, Conn., appearing on various ESPN shows and platforms throughout the day as part of the network's "car wash."

The ESPN "car wash" for Jefferson gets underway at 9:50 a.m. CT with an appearance on ESPN First Take, which will air on ESPN News. Jefferson will also participate in the network's social and digital media platforms, including an appearance for ESPN Rise Magazine's official website.

"I am excited about representing our team with this opportunity," said Jefferson Tuesday morning. "We had a great spring and we have worked very hard this offseason as a team. I can't wait until camp starts and the start of my senior year. I know our fans are just as excited with the season right around the corner."

After lunch in the ESPN cafeteria and an opportunity to visit with ESPN personalities, Jefferson will conduct an ESPN.com chat at noon CT followed by a live interview on the Scott Van Pelt ESPN Radio show at 12:45 p.m. CT. The "SVP show" also airs tape delayed on ESPNU at 2 p.m. CT. To access the ESPN.com chat, visit www.espn.com/sportsnation/chats.

HOW DO YOU screw up the answer to that question? Easy. By not having a clue about fourth-grade American history.

You get spotted the last name. You see the powdered wig. And you come up with George Jefferson of TV fame?

No, you don't. Even an LSU football player knows George Jefferson was black.

In this case, I'll bet, what you come up with is "Thomas Washington, George Jefferson . . . whatever."

That some Americans surely are that confused about the Founding Fathers and the origins of our country is tragic -- both for civics' sake and theirs -- but not surprising. That some Americans are that confused and on scholarship to an American university when scores of less-confused young people no longer can hope to afford a college education is a crime.

It also is a contradiction that American colleges and universities have ignored for decades, all for the sake of athletic glory and the almighty dollar. It's a contradiction we ignore, despite the injustices at its heart, for the sake of the bread-and-circuses segment of the American economy.

We perpetuate the Big Lie because of all we have built upon its foundation -- giant stadiums, a TV-sports money machine and de facto developmental leagues for the NFL, NBA and MLB. There's big money in the Big Lie.

And not such a Big Future -- at least anymore -- in being a former LSU quarterback in the National Football League. JaMarcus Russell, anyone?


AS CLOSE AS we get to acknowledging the Big Lie is the cynical wink we give when forced to utter the words "student athlete." And that right there is a massive injustice to the many student athletes who fit the bill -- and bear the stereotype for all those who pretend to learn while we pretend they're college material . . . or even aspire to be.

I'm not here to run athletics out of American colleges -- not that I could even if I wanted to. What I am here for is to ask you, as you polish off another damn bag of chips watching all the "student athletes" get the ESPN "car wash" treatment, to give a fleeting thought to the Big Lie.

And to say a prayer for all those non-athletes who do recognize Thomas Jefferson as they slave away for Abraham Lincolns while too many "student athletes" are otherwise occupied getting Benjamin Franklin handshakes.

Benjamin Franklin . . . now that's a Founding Father a college quarterback can appreciate.

Apocalypse Night in Canada

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot rage in all thy sons command.
With flaming cars we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
God help our lads burn Vancouver, B.C.!
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.

Do as I say, not as I make my living

When a big-time NPR reporter gave a speech at a Norwalk, Conn., awards banquet Thursday, the local cable-access guy figured there would be no problem taping it for broadcast.

Happens all the time. Most journalists hawking books welcome the prospect. That's why God invented PR people.

Only in the case of Dina Temple-Raston, NPR's national-security and counterterrorism reporter, it turns out that the Darien/Norwalk YWCA found a broadcast correspondent who's camera shy. A radio journalist who, outside of working hours, just can't abide audio recorders.

The local cable-access TV guy couldn't believe it. And Jim Cameron, a former NBC Radio anchor, didn't like it. Didn't like it at all.

HE LIKED Temple-Raston's attitude so little, he wrote about it for AOL's Darian Patch:

A day before the event, at my request, the Y sponsors circled back to me with more information. Apparently her agent was wrong. It was not an NPR's rule about no taping, it was Ms. Temple-Raston's rule. Clearly, the Juan Williams case (of NPR Staffers speaking off-air) has had a chilling effect on those NPR staffers' outside, money-making speaking gigs.

The day of the event I decided to give full coverage a final try. Arriving at the Woodway Country Club, I told the YWCA organizers that the community deserved to see the award winners and I promised to record only that... if I could speak to Ms. Temple-Raston and make a final appeal. Seconds later, she appeared and we shared a rather contentious two minute conversation.

"You know you cannot tape my speech"' she said. "So I've heard," I said, "But why? Is it really an NPR rule?". "No," she said, "It's just my personal preference. I am on vacation today."

Then I tried appealing to her as a fellow fifth-estater. "As a journalist are you comfortable in stopping my coverage of your speech?”

"Absolutely," she said without hesitation. "You're lucky I'm allowing you to tape the awards presentations!"

"That's not your call," I told her. "I'm here at the invitation of the YWCA."

"Well, that camera better be off. That's an ethical issue," she said, and then added icing to the cake... "and this conversation is off the record."

"No, this conversation is ON the record, Dina, and it is part of my coverage," I said.

At this point two other videographers arrived, one from The Patch and the other from News12, our local cable news operation. Dina visibly flinched, turning to both and reminding them they too could not tape her speech. "No problem," said one of them.

Her final comment came as a somewhat rhetorical question... "why are you being so hard-assed (about this)?"

ARROGANCE LIKE THAT, as Temple-Raston is finding out from the resulting Internet kerfuffle, can be every bit a bad thing for you, your career and your employer's public-relations bottom line as any inflammatory thing you might say during a speech. And didn't want electronic proof of.

Mostly, though, it's just really, really funny.

Why is that?

Well, just wait for the punch line. It will come up right . . . about . . . now. Courtesy of an article on the banquet in the local newspaper, The Hour.

Dina Temple-Raston, National Public Radio National Security and Counterterrorism Correspondent, spoke of her experiences in the Arab-speaking world, suggesting that female journalists can often succeed where male counterparts can't.

"Women are instinctively more aware of their surroundings than men and more alert to dire developments," she said.

SAID THE "instinctively more aware" woman journalist who never saw this one coming.

Some people (namely me) never learn

Anybody know how to get a 33-year-old bumper sticker off a flat screen?

I'm so stupid! I vaguely remember cracking open a bottle of cheap Canadian whiskey last night, then something like, "Hey, y'all! Watch this!"

Should I just buy a new monitor?

One day, I swear, I will learn my lesson. You'd think I would have following the time I touched my tongue to the storm door when it was 15 below zero outside.

The doctor says that with one more surgery, I should once again be comfortable with the letter "S."

That's it! Lesson learned.

From here on out, I will stay away from the cheap Canadian whiskey and drink only the expensive stuff.

I told you so

A Revolution 21 tip o' the hat goes to Col. Robert J. Ruch, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Omaha district.

It's not just anyone who can make your Mighty Favog look like a clairvoyant and prophetic Mighty Favog. In other words, I called it, and it was the good colonel who made it so.

I said that the Corps would "blame this mess near Hamburg, Iowa, on the levee having been compromised by damage from beavers or badgers (or something), then say Iowans should have inspected it better."

WHAT I KNEW was coming came to pass this morning in the Omaha World-Herald:

Downtown, a nearly 10-foot pile of dirt and plastic tarp surrounded the Blue Moon Bar & Grill.

The pub's wooden floors and pool table have belonged to Vicki Sjulin and her family since 1972. Dad runs the grill most mornings. Mom works behind the counter.

“It's been the local watering hole for a long time,” Sjulin said Monday. “Now it's just going to be a water hole.”

Sjulin said she planned to keep the business open as long as possible, until the local utility company cuts power. Frustrated residents poured in and out of the bar to discuss the rising water and their plans to escape them.

“People here are angry, and they want to know why we're at the point we're at,” she said. “This is a total man-made flood, in spite of the high snowfall and rain. Everyone's question is, who made these choices?”

Built by the corps in the 1940s, the levee sustained three recent minor breaches before Monday's incident broke a section one mile south of the Iowa-Missouri state line. About two hours after that breach, floodwater broke through a levee farther south in Holt County, Mo. Officials there planned to intentionally breach the levee downstream to take pressure off a secondary levee built in recent weeks.

“There is risk behind any levee,'' Ruch said. “That is assumed.''

Monday's rupture, however, was not an indicator of what landowners and residents along the Missouri can expect in coming weeks when higher flows arrive, Ruch said.

Ruch said the levee break came as a surprise because the levee had handled higher water during flooding last year.

He said a hole created by a badger or gopher could have eroded the integrity of the earthen structure.

THUS, the first part of my prognostication has been fulfilled. The second part -- blaming the locals -- will come to pass after the locals start taking sufficient shots at the Corps' "your guess is as good as mine" levees.

And isn't it the case that the badgers and gophers always take the fall whenever something bad happens? If I were a Wisconsin or Minnesota fan, I would be pissed.

Of course, I am no expert on the levee-eating capabilities of Wisconsin or Minnesota student athletes, or their furry inspirations. But I am pretty sure that gophers, badgers, beavers or muskrats -- not to mention Big 10 linebackers and tackles -- encounter virtually insurmountable difficulties in burrowing through asphalt, concrete or rock armoring on levees.

That, however, would leave the Corps (and the politicians who'd rather spend money on Wall Street and the military-industrial complex than on vital infrastructure) with no one or nothing else to blame when yet another "heck of a job" turns into yet another heck of a mess.

Meantime, I'm still trying to process the irony of George W. Bush coming to town Saturday for the opening of the College World Series. You think Michael Brown might be available, too?

A river runs rampant

Here's some video I shot Saturday of the Missouri River just upstream from Lewis and Clark Landing, as well as by the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge in downtown Omaha.

In a couple of weeks, I won't have to climb down the levee hardly at all to reach the water's edge.

I recall that, a couple of decades or so ago, there was a movie called A River Runs Through It. In this spring and summer of high water and high anxiety from the top of the Missouri River watershed to the bottom, maybe we could call 2011's thriller A River Runs Through, Across and Over It.

Glub.

Learning it, loving it . . . living it?

The art of sandbagging (when the river's just too much and the levees are just too little) isn't something just any fool can do without a little learnin'. Of course, you'd be surprised at how many try, nevertheless.

This handy video from our neighbors to the southeast should make you an expert in about a quarter of an hour. Though the folks up in North Dakota add an important detail . . . your sandbags should point in the direction of the water's flow.

Remember, this is the age of the do-it-yourselfer. Unfortunately, in this country, this also extends to flood protection. Learn it, love it, live it.


HAT TIP: NET Radio.

When the levee breaks

Heck of a job, Corps of Engineers.

Watch the feds blame this mess near Hamburg, Iowa, on the levee having been compromised by damage from beavers or badgers (or something), then say Iowans should have inspected it better. Then watch me say that if the levee had been armored with concrete, asphalt or rock, the varmints would have had their work cut out for them . . . and the Corps would have nobody to blame but itself.

Eventually.

Just like in New Orleans.


UPDATE: Here, courtesy of the Omaha World-Herald, is the federally constructed pile of mud in the middle of the Missouri River formerly known as a "levee" this morning after the initial breach. Now, according to late reports, the break in the levee south of Hamburg is now at least 300 feet wide.

The upside of inundation

Sometimes, you just have to look at the bright side of things.

We will pause for a moment to allow Mrs. Favog to pick herself up off the floor after reading the previous sentence written by her pessimism-prone husband.


IN THE CASE of the Missouri River flooding in these parts, the upside of a bad thing is that the high water can be quite photogenic. Especially at night, when the light is just right and the reflections dance across the waves.

Going under on the Missouri

Here is the Missouri River at downtown Omaha on Saturday evening (above).

At right, here's the Missouri River at the same spot downtown as it was May 29.

But it's during the coming week, forecasters say, that the real water will start to hit the Omaha area. By the time the Mighty Mo stops rising sometime in the next month or two -- barring any big rains -- we're supposed to have 4 to 6 feet more water than this.

And it's supposed to stay that high all summer.

Can the levees withstand that much water for that long -- and levels above flood stage maybe until winter? No one knows; the Missouri River flood-control system never has had to withstand such a test.

WILL SOME TOWNS around here, particularly on the Iowa shore, go under? It's a distinct possibility.

Are we already having levee problems in spots? Unfortunately, yes we are.

Do I have confidence in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the flood-control system? Not since 2005 . . . I'm originally from Louisiana.

And in these parts, the feeling quickly is becoming widespread.

Do I think Levees.org -- the New Orleans group that's emerged as one of the chief watchdogs over the Corps -- should send somebody up here to take a look and have a listen? I think that would be useful both for us and for it, yes.

DO FOLKS who live on the bottomlands along the entire length of the Missouri need your thoughts, prayers and assistance now and for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely.

3 Chords & the Truth: Don't fear the cowbell

Don't fear the cowbell.

What we need in life is more cowbell, especially on 3 Chords & the Truth.

But if life gives us more than the cowbell can assuage -- like a visit from the Reaper -- we still have Plan B here on the Big Show -- run.

Run, run, run.

Run like hell, as a matter of fact. Whether it's from your own peccadilloes or the raging floodwaters, what I'm saying to you is run away, child. Running wild . . . now that's a plan.

But after all that runnin' 'round this world, if it all catches up to you -- well, in that case, it doesn't matter anymore. Hope to God I'm right on this.

THE ALTERNATIVE could be rather embarrassing.

That got me in trouble once with Mrs. Favog, not being right. I was in serious deep doo until I told her she was kinda kute. I have this look I give her.

If that fails, though, the only alternative is crying, waiting, hoping. Don't ask me why, I'm just the morning DJ on 3C&T.

Don't worry 'bout me, though. I'm just a stranger in paradise, falling in love with love.

BECAUSE, after all, we're all children of the sun. Or something like that.

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

Orlando cracks down on 'terrorists'

Who knew that Orlando, Fla., was the front line in the War on Terror?

But it is. The city that Mickey Mouse built is waging a brutal, years-long battle against homegrown al-Qaida, ruthless enemies of society and the state pursuing a relentless course of . . . feeding the homeless.

The repeated attacks on public hunger, in blatant disregard of Orlando's ban on feeding the animals homeless, have thrown central Florida into a state of panic and chaos, leading Mayor Buddy Dyer to use the phrase "food terrorists" to describe Food Not Bombs' vegetarian-chili ladlers.

ABC News outlines why Orlando is after Food Not Bombs -- part of the city's effort to create a nation of bombs, not food:

Members of the organization Food Not Bombs were in good spirits as they passed out corn on the cob, rice, beans and other vegetarian dishes to the homeless and hungry in an Orlando park. This cheer was interrupted when police officers on bicycles arrived and arrested five of the volunteers.

This is not the first time this scene has played out for members of Food Not Bombs.

Since June 1, a dozen members of the group have been arrested for violating a new Orlando city ordinance that prohibits sharing food with large groups in downtown parks more than twice a year.

The mayor of Orlando even branded them "food terrorists."

Food Not Bombs is an international political organization that protests war, poverty and the destruction of the environment, according to their website. The group meets to distribute food twice a week in downtown Orlando's Lake Eola Park.

They won a district court case to prevent the enforcement of the new ordinance, but the decision was overturned in the appellate court.

A spokesperson for the city of Orlando said that the ordinance had its origins in complaints from residents and business owners about trash left after the food distribution, public urination and concerns about crime.

THIS IS BECAUSE it would be so much more difficult for a couple of cops to patrol the feedings, keep order and prevent public peeing than it is to bring in maybe a dozen or so cops to raid a soup line, arrest all the servers, call in the paddy wagon and haul everyone off to jail.

But you gotta do what you gotta do. Because it's terrorism, you know.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer has been quoted calling the group "food terrorists." He told ABC's Orlando affiliate WTFV, "I think they are using food or the feeding of the homeless for different purposes."

Cathy Jackson, the executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, agrees that motives may be more about self-promotion.

"The meal service that's being provided by Food Not Bombs is an unnecessary service," Jackson said. She says there are at least seven shelter operations within less than a mile and a half of Lake Eola Park that provide daily meal services for the hungry.

BUT ALL THOSE hungry people in Orlando -- the ones it's illegal to feed in public without a permit, and not more than twice in one spot in a year -- weren't at those shelters, now, were they?

The professionals weren't where the homeless were, either, and thus were not "connecting with those they are serving to channel them back into a direction of housing and self-sufficiency." But the "terrorists" were, and at least those homeless folk got a little something to eat.

If this were about more effective means of helping the homeless, we'd see a public-private push to find the homeless where they congregate and bring them to where the food and the counselors are. But the Orlando law -- like laws all across America just like Orlando's -- isn't about addressing our "least of these" problem.

It's about addressing our "Why do we have to encounter the 'least of these' and be troubled?" problem. But what do you expect in a Mickey Mouse city run by a bunch of rats?

Basically, it's always 33 A.D. somewhere, and somebody is always getting what Jesus got for doing what Jesus did.

Rome, sweet Rome

I am half of a Waltons family.

My wife and I both were devotees back during the television series' first-run days in the 1970s and early '80s, and we try never to miss our daily, syndicated trip back to Waltons Mountain today.

The only trouble is this: The channel where we get our nightly fix of Mama and Daddy, John-Boy and Mary Ellen, Jason and Erin, and Ben, Jim-Bob, and Elizabeth also features some of the worst low-budget commercials to ever curse a television screen. The only ray of light is that the faith-based INSP channel doesn't air Enzyte ads.

So, during commercials, I flip over to CNN or MSNBC. And something has become clear to me during these word-from-our-pathetic-sponsors interludes -- The Waltons represents programming far more serious and intelligent than anything on the cable-news channels.

TONIGHT, I kept cutting away from Jason fighting the Nazis in Germany in the run-up to VE Day to talking heads speaking in grave tones about Rep. Anthony Weiner's wiener. More precisely, I kept dropping in on Lawrence and Rachel and Eliot seeing the Republicans' attacks on a Democratic congressman and his junk, then raising them Sen. David Vitter's hooker problem and Newt Gingrich's scandal of the day from back in the day.

Then I would return to The Waltons and a world of homefront sacrifice and battlefield tragedy, circa 1945.

Ike and Corabeth struggling with keeping their customers in food and gas in the age of wartime rationing. Jason trying to hold a shellshocked soldier together as they hunted German holdouts. The shellshocked soldier coming to himself not in the service of killing, but in risking his life to avoid killing a young German infantryman who didn't believe the war was over. John-Boy, meantime, was falling in love with the prettiest woman in France, but ended up torn away from her when the war in the Pacific intruded, landing brother Ben in a Japanese POW camp and calling the first-born son back to Waltons Mountain . . . to his family.

MEANWHILE, on Piers Morgan Tonight, the worldly travails of Sarah Ferguson -- one of which was, apparently, being injected with so much Botox that the upper half of her face has ceased to move whenever she talks . . . which, as it turns out, is much too often.

Of course, one doesn't have to retreat to Waltons Mountain, 1945, to encounter ample tragedy, human drama, and existential gravitas. There's plenty of that today.

Americans find themselves at war, one way or another, in no less than four Middle Eastern countries. In fact, young Americans junior-high age and younger have no memory of a time when this nation was not at war in that region.

Those wars, during that time, have played no small role in bringing the United States to the edge of insolvency. So has a decade of living beyond our means. So has several more years of dealing with the economic collapse Wall Street's (and our) excesses precipitated.

Tens of millions of Americans now owe more on mortgages than their homes are worth. Tens of millions more are out of work. The economy continues to tap dance along the edge of a bottomless chasm.

Not that any of that matters when there are Republicans to bash and Democrats to paint as enemies of God and man. Not when we have Anthony Weiner's wiener to wield as an X-rated weapon in political combat -- which just happens to double as kinky infotainment in a country as polarized as it's been since 1865.

I WONDER how many of those condemning the congressman from New York are guilty of the same thing. I wonder how many of those defending him truly don't see what the big deal is, anyway.

I wonder how many see the whole sordid mess as just another excuse to engage in tribal warfare -- not over any grand principle, but just because they hate Them.

While Americans were otherwise occupied, we stumbled so far off track into decadence and internecine warfare that even columnists for London's left-leaning Guardian newspaper openly wonder whether their American cousins are standing at the crossroads of Britain, 1914 and Rome, A.D. 200. And still we cannot see the forest for the . . . well, never mind.

I suppose it is ever thus in societies a lot nearer The End than they think.