It takes all kinds to make a world

And that's generally a good thing.

GO, SAINTS! GO!

Please, can the FCC wee on The End?

The name of the radio-station contest was "Hold Your Wee for a Wii." Here's the Associated Press account of what happened:

Assistant Sacramento County Coroner Ed Smith said a preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death."

Jennifer Strange's mother found her daughter's body at her home Friday in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova after Strange called her supervisor at her job to say she was heading home in terrible pain.

"She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. "She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."

Earlier Friday, Strange took part in a contest at radio station KDND 107.9 in which participants competed to see how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom.

Initially, contestants were handed eight-ounce bottles of water to drink every 15 minutes."

They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy," said fellow contestant James Ybarra of Woodland. "They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk."

Ybarra said he quit after drinking five bottles. "My bladder couldn't handle it anymore," he added.

After he quit, he said, the remaining contestants, including Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink."I was talking to her and she was a nice lady," Ybarra said. "She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids."

IF IT'S STUPID ENOUGH, degrading enough or, now, fatal enough, you can bet it originated in the addled mind of a modern-day radio promotions director. American radio thinks it's making a living off of the fact that morons exist -- and reproduce.

What American radio is doing, though, is slouching off into irrelevance. Run the numbers from the past 15 years.

I sooooooooo hope either the feds or the trial lawyers nail the slimeballs of Sacramento's The End to the bathroom wall.

I've been waiting 40 years for this . . .

If New Orleans were a city in Iraq, maybe it would be worth a 'surge'

I procrastinated like hell in putting together this week’s Big Show because, frankly, I’ve been at a loss for words. Plenty of being pissed. Not so much of being able to string words together intelligently.

On the show, we play the music of The Troublemakers, a band from New Orleans. Its lead singer and guitarist, Dr. Paul Gailiunas, got shot . . . shielding his two-year-old son from a fusillade unleashed by some feral being who also shot his wife, filmmaker Helen Hill. Paul was shot up but survived. Helen died on the spot.

And their child, Francis Pop, is now motherless. And Paul has left that dying, dysfunctional, violent, flood-ravaged city . . . has left New Orleans, where he dedicated his career to treating the poorest of the poor. He went to bury his wife in her native South Carolina, and he ain’t going back.

As I say on the podcast -- and this was the first time I've gone into a show absolutely furious -- I say that I have no idea whether Paul, the doctor to the poor, or Helen, who spent countless hours teaching people how to make their own films (and just being a friend to, apparently, everybody), ever thought that they, in their own ways, were being imitations of Christ.

But they were. And, Helen’s imitation of Christ led her all the way to Calvary.

In New Orleans last year, there were 161 insane, senseless murders in a city less than half the size of Omaha, Nebraska (Omaha's population: 420,000). And Helen Hill’s murder was one of eight murders there in the first week of the New Year.

Some conservative loudmouths love to proclaim the United States a Christian nation. But we alleged "Christians" -- ex-Christians? post-Christians? hypocritical Christians? -- have no problem that New Orleans was drowned because the levees broke during Katrina . . . because the feds built them, in effect, to fail.

We have no problem -- as a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" – that we left that city to die -- literally -- right after the storm.

We have, apparently, no problem that we have left it to die a slow death of decay, dysfunction and deviance après le déluge.

When Iraqis kill one another like madmen amid George's bloody little conflict, we send a “surge” of troops to fight a futile holding action in the middle of a foreign civil war.

When the same thing happens in an American city . . . .

Third World poverty and Third World mayhem are completely acceptable in Louisiana, but we’ll smash our military to bloody hell in Iraq to "bring order and freedom." Where is the order and freedom for New Orleans? For Detroit? For Washington, D.C.?

Any last words, President Kurtz . . . um, Bush?

"The horror. The horror."

***

Also on the show, we hear from the Hot 8 Brass Band, which lost its snare drummer, Dinerral Shavers, just before New Year's. He was driving down the street with his wife and stepkids when he took a slug to the back of the head, allegedly gunned down by some genius from the 'hood gunning for his teen-age stepson.

Apparently, it was a schoolhouse squabble. And a talented musician is dead because gangsta can’t aim straight.

This is New Orleans. This is America.

***

"Tell me, sir. What did President Kurtz . . . um, Bush, say before his presidency imploded?"

Your name.

This . . . is New Orleans. Is this . . . the United States?

Read this and weep. An op-ed piece by lawyer and writer Billy Sothern from the Dallas Morning News:

Last Thursday morning I received a call from my friend Kittee. "I have awful news," she said, and then, very quickly: "Someone broke into Paul and Helen's house. Helen was shot and killed. Paul was holding Baby Francis and was shot three times. He's still alive. Francis is OK." Paul Gailiunas – Dr. Paul, I call him – had been my physician for several years at the Little Doctors Clinic, a health center for poor people that he founded in Treme, one of America's oldest black neighbor-hoods.

I had started to see Paul after my previous doctor mocked one of my colleagues about our work representing people on Louisiana's death row. When I met Paul through a friend, I asked him directly, "Are you in favor of the death penalty?" He responded, with a smile, "Eh, I'm Canadian," clearly feeling that was answer enough.

And it was, coming from the founder of our local chapter of Food Not Bombs and the front man for the Troublemakers (a band whose songs celebrate Emma Goldman and the idea of universal health care) in such a lighthearted tone that it would scarcely have alienated the most ardent conservative.

Helen Hill was Paul's perfect match – a kind and generous woman who made award-winning animated films and taught art and filmmaking to children, adults, anyone who was interested. She'd spent much of the last year restoring reels of 16-millimeter film on which she had drawn by hand, and which had been damaged when their house took 4 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina.

She had a new film under way, inspired by discarded hand-sewn dresses, made by an elderly New Orleanian, which Helen had found in the trash after the woman's death. The film interwove the story of the old woman and her dresses with Helen's own flood-torn life, which took her, Paul and Francis to Columbia, S.C. – Helen's hometown, where she will be buried today – for almost a year.

Helen had longed to return to New Orleans, despite Paul's concern that crime and potential hurricanes made it too dangerous for their family. So Helen campaigned, sending Paul's friends in New Orleans blank postcards, addressed to Paul, for us to write and mail to him. In mine, I pleaded with Paul – "We need you" – the way I do with anyone who is thinking about leaving, coming to, or even just visiting New Orleans. After what I am sure was a flood of similar cards, Paul relented.

I saw Paul and the baby a day after their return to the city, at a parade on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Francis had on a little railroad conductor's hat, a T-shirt depicting a cartoon love affair between red beans and rice, and a little sign pinned to his back, in Helen's hand: "New Orleans Native. I Got Back Yesterday!"

The day of the anniversary was solemn but optimistic. Everyone still had a can-do attitude. Paul, for one, could help make the city's people well and improve health care for the poor. Helen could make art depicting the city's life. Others could rebuild schools, demand better levees, reconstruct their homes. It still felt as if our grassroots efforts, along with some real help from a government finally forced to make good on its obligations, could create a more just, fair and safe city. It might have been naive, but it really seemed possible.

After wandering this beautiful, falling-over city the afternoon after Helen's murder, forcing myself to remember why I love it here so much, I came back to my garden and picked flowers, those hardy few that had weathered the recent cold. I put them in a vase, wrote out the verses to Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music" – "I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground / So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind" – and drove to the couple's house, which my wife and I had recently visited for Helen's open studio. On the steps leading up to their old shotgun house I set down the poem and the vase, just feet from where Paul had been found by the police, shot, bleeding, holding his baby.

On the way home, I stopped at my neighborhood bar to try to eat something. A picture of Paul and Helen, followed by one of the baby, appeared on the television in the corner. Oh, my God. The bartender was kind. She asked me whether I knew them, and talked to me about her fears living with her new baby in a city with no functional schools, no real plan for redevelopment, and spotty or nonexistent basic services.

Yes, I did think of that

AND, OF COURSE, I pray to God that the parable from Luke ain't about your Mighty Favog.

Will no one, however, rage against a society overrun by cynicism, blinded by B.S., and deadened by social Darwinism?

Lord, have mercy on us -- sinners all.

Ink-stained cynical chickens***s

The mighty voice of the capitalist Bottom Line resorts to GOP frat-boy snarkiness while Americans die in an American city. From The Wall Street Journal's online Opinion Journal.com:

Crescent Quagmire

The troops were supposed to be home by now, but instead, faced with increasing
violence, political leaders are planning a surge. Iraq? Nah, New Orleans. The Times-Picayune reports from Baton Rouge:

The state will temporarily deploy additional state troopers in the New Orleans area for the Carnival season but will not increase the 360 police
and National Guard troops that have been on duty in the city since a murderous crime wave began last summer, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday.

Blanco told reporters at an informal news conference after addressing the annual meeting of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state's largest business lobbying organization, that despite a rash of killings in the city in recent weeks, she will not order a long-term increase in the 60 troopers and 300 Guard troops assigned to New Orleans.

She said that she has asked State Police and National Guard officials to review the security needs of the city, but "right now we are keeping it at the same level. . . . For Mardi Gras, we normally will bulk up; I expect that will be the same this year." . . .

The 300 Guard forces and 60 troopers were supposed to be pulled out of the city by the end of 2006, but city officials asked that they remain and the state extended the tour of duty through June.

They said New Orleans was supposed to be a cakewalk; some neocons even called it "the Big Easy." They sold us a bill of goods, promising the natives would greet us with beads and celebratory parades. Instead we got murder and mayhem. Cindy Sheehan was right: U.S. out of New Orleans!

OpinionJournal.com Editor James Taranto fails to understand there is a profound difference between fighting a futile war waged on spurious grounds in a foreign land and utter mayhem in an American city that was all-but-destroyed due to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers incompetence. That's the charitable explanation for the above pile of guano in the website's Best of the Web feature.

The more likely explanation is that the poor man just isn't sharp enough to apprehend the dwindling percentage in kissing increasingly isolated, unpopular Bush Administration arses. Thus, Mr. Taranto chooses to "stay the course" and expose himself as a chickens*** suck-up to chickens*** politicians with blood on their hands, and in the process plays dying Americans in a dying American city for laughs.

Welcome to the post-American era of the United States, in which we find a land where some cities and some states (and some Americans) have more intrinsic value than others. And just about all of them have more value than the poor wretches of New Orleans.

Pity the Crescent City, who "respectable" Americans used to ring up when they wanted to let their ya-yas out (away from prying hometown eyes, of course). Alas, the Capitol Hill and Wall Street boys now have as much use for her as they do a 500-dollar whore who's lost her looks and found a crack pipe.

From Luke, Chapter 18

The Lord said, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.
7
Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?
8
I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
9
He then addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.
10
"Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.
11
The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.
12
I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.'
13
But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'
14
I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

We have met the enemy . . . and he is me II

AND I AM SERIOUS about becoming the queen of France.

Roll 'em!

Speed!

ACTION!

We have met the enemy . . . and he is me

The problem with America is that I'm linking to THIS on this blog. Even though it's because I WANT THEM TO GO AWAY.

Iranian nuclear site. Rosie. The Donald. Israeli tactical nuclear strike.

Sounds like a game plan.

(NOTE: No obnoxious, not-so-funny lesbian comics or egomaniacal, bad-comb-over, serial-groom billionaires were actually harmed in the writing of this post. Just channeling my inner Id.)

Misery is a warm gun

The New Orleans Times-Picayune's indispensible Chris Rose is at it again:

I hear the shots.

During late night walks in my neighborhood, sometimes I hear the not-so-distant reports of gunfire.

I wait for the sirens and lights to come, but they don't. In the morning, I tear through the Metro section of this paper, looking for the news, but there isn't any.

It's like the tree falling in the woods, I guess. If no one is killed or injured, it didn't really happen.

It's only a statistic when a victim bites the asphalt, a piece of steel buried in his chest or leg or head.

Everyone I know hears the shots. They get muffled by the sound of fireworks this time of year, but soon the fireworks will stop. The gunshots will not.

My neighborhood is the quietest of them all. Safe, in a relative sense. Very relative.

Down in the 7th, the 8th and the 9th, it's part of the aural fabric of the darkness, rat-tat-tat, the deadly game played on street corners by the Children of the Night.

They play a game called Somebody Dies Tonight. Question is, will it be someone you know -- a doctor, an artist, a musician -- so you'll get all up in arms about it and march on City Hall? Or will it be another nameless, faceless child of the streets, a killer at 17, dead himself at 18?

Should we mourn them any less?

I did not tell my wife about the shots I sometimes hear on my walks until this weekend because I don't want to move away from New Orleans. This is neither the time nor the place to dwell on the many reasons I don't want to go. For the sake of argument, it's just a given.

But how close to my house do I allow the shots to come before I claim no mas? How many more friends and acquaintances will die stupidly in their cars and yards and doorways before I realize that I have become more afraid of and for my city than ever before and am bordering on a siege mentality?

I've written about this before -- the pervasive predatory element of New Orleans -- and truth to tell, I don't have anything new to contribute to the conversation. But then again, I can't sit here at my desk and write about anything else -- the Saints, the weather, the Road Home, trash collection, whatever -- without thinking that it's all kind of moot when the cloud of murder descends over the city.

Again. And again. And again. And again.

We rise up, we get mad, we yell about it at City Council meetings and preachers decry it from the pulpits and the cops get down and dirty for a few weeks and then . . .

And then?

Then it gets quiet, except for the gunshots at night that are trees falling in the woods and we wait until the cycle starts again and then we get all a-tizzy about it again and then rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

READ. REFLECT. Consider that this is America, not Baghdad.

Get angry. Get very angry.

Stupid police tricks

Note to New Orleans' (ahem) finest: If you absolutely must commit police brutality, it would be useful to keep a couple of things in mind. First, make sure you have the right person in custody before you beat the . . . er, before you severely thrash the suspect.

And second . . . MAKE SURE HE IS NOT A LAWYER. Thank you.

"I heard, 'New Orleans Police!' so I immediately turned around," Coleman said in a telephone interview. "I didn't know who it was or what was going on. I put my hands up. They came toward me and immediately started punching me and took me to the ground."

Coleman said he suffered a mild concussion, cuts to the face, lumps on his head and bruised ribs.

He said officers told him they were looking for a pickpocket in the area, a "black man wearing black."

Coleman - who is African American and describes himself 5' 8" and 140 lbs. - said he was dressed in navy blue.

Marlon Defillo, deputy chief of the New Orleans Police Department's Public Integrity Bureau, said his office has opened an investigation and reassigned two department staffers.

"Based on the complaint and the ongoing investigation, we feel it is necessary at this time to reassign them," Defillo said.

The other five officers involved in the incident have not been reassigned, and the investigation is ongoing, said Defillo, who did not release their names.

Officer Reynolds Rigney Jr., who joined the police force in 2004, has been reassigned to technical support, Defillo said. He has an unblemished record with the police department, according to records with the city' Civil Service Commission.

Sgt. Jake Schnapp Jr., a 17-year-department veteran, also has been reassigned to desk duty and camera surveillance, Defillo said. Schnapp, however, has an extensive history of sanctions for on-the-job offenses.

(snip)

The alleged beating took place around 11 p.m. in the 700 block of Conti Street, according to a police incident list.

Coleman's alleged beating came as a group of seven officers from the First District were patrolling the French Quarter, part of increased policing efforts during New Year's Eve and the Sugar Bowl. Coleman said he was returning to his car, which was parked on Conti Street, when the officers pounced on him.

"I said to them, 'What is this? I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything,' " Coleman recalled. "They were yelling, 'Stop resisting.' " Coleman said he sustained punches while handcuffed.

"I started yelling out that I'm a lawyer," he said. "Then the punches stopped."

The officers realized their mistake, according to Coleman, when they ran his identification through records.

Coleman said he filed his complaint with the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau just hours after the incident.

Both the FBI and District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office are aiding in the investigation, which is ongoing, Defillo said. There is no timeline for a ruling on the matter. Coleman said he has also filed a complaint with the NAACP.

The complaint is being followed closely by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu's office, where Coleman was an intern in 2005, said an office spokesman.

Oops.

MEANWHILE, IN THE CITY AMERICA FORGOT . . . .

Please, Please, Please . . . listen to the podcast

Well, we're back from a holiday break on the Revolution 21 podcast but, unfortunately, we have another tribute show. This week, we say goodbye to the "Godfather of Soul," James Brown.

Brown not only was "the hardest-working man in show business," he also was one of the most innovative. Hell, he was doing funk in 1965.

We lost Brown on Christmas Day. Some present. But we can pray that James Brown's Christmas present was life eternal with his Lord.

One of the best things about the Godfather I've seen is a column by the Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson. Here's a snippet:

Before writing this column, I asked my 16-year-old son if there was an equivalent to James Brown in his generation. He flatly said no. There are a handful of artists who make the uplift of black people the subject of a handful of songs. But self-pride largely is drowned by recordings corrupted by the N-word, misogyny and glorification of violence. Instead of preaching about earning it in schools and the workplace, the symbols of making it are too often gold chains, gold rings and gold teeth.

James Brown once sang, "I got somethin' that makes me wanna shout; I got somethin' that tells me what it's all about. I got soul and I'm superbad!" Even though his soul was troubled, he nourished mine and those of countless black youth. The best tribute we can give him is another musician with the soul to inspire another generation to get what they deserve.

On chickens***s and breaking eggs

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.

But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.

"No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat (or drink), or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?

Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?

Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.

But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.

If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?'

All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

-- Matthew 6:19-34

ROD DREHER HAS AN IMPORTANT POST on his Crunchy Con blog over on Beliefnet, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. But I think I can simplify a bit and link it to college football in one swell foop, er, fell swoop.

And that's a good thing fer a recovering redneck like moi. (See, no self-respectin' Bubba would EVER use the French for "me." I must be making progress.)

AIIGHT, see the posts I have on Alabama's new coach, Nick Saban, late of Toledo, Cleveland, Michigan State, LSU and the Miami Dolphins (the last two teams he [expletive deleted] around and mind-gamed to death before haulin' butt for more lucrative gridirons)?

Good.

So, now you're familiar with the concept of being chickens***. The trouble with the Church -- and the reason it has lost a couple of generations for Christ and His faith -- is because it, like the rest of society, has made chickens***tery normative. At least for The People Who Matter.

Once upon a time -- in my middle-aged lifetime, actually -- there was little percentage in being a chickens***. Chickens***s were looked down upon and mistrusted profoundly. Chickens***tery was such a vice that it earned the unflattering term "chickens***."

BUT NOW . . . behavior like Nick Saban's may earn scorn and provoke epithets from the Great Unwashed (at least when the Great Unwashed are the ones being -- ahem -- upon), but it is highly effective where it counts.

Alabama Athletic Director Mal Moore got a highly skilled football coach by being a chickens*** and pursuing a coach who still had three years left on his contract with the 'Fins and who had promised Miami fans and his employer that he could -- and would -- turn the team around. After all, owner Wayne Huizenga had given Saban scads of money and unprecedented authority to do just that.

And the job remained quite unfinished. And, initially, Saban told the world he wasn't interested in the 'Bama job. (Hey, this part kinda sounds familiar to LSU fans!) But Mal Moore was undeterred . . . and Nick Saban obviously was interested in seeing how undeterred the Alabama AD was.

It's sort of like an episode of Desperate Housewives, truth be told.

So, as the credits are about to roll on this episode of How the Chickens***s Spin, we have a happy coach (that Miami gig was getting kinda tough, don'tcha know?) and a happy AD and happy Alabama fans. The coach has scads more money, and the AD and fans have visions of victories dancing in their heads.

And the last two parts of this happy equation haven't been -- ahem -- upon. Yet.

NOW LET'S APPLY THAT MODEL to the Catholic Church . . . though it also works well for other denominations.

First, realize that it's ALL ABOUT YOU, the Hoity Toity power structure, and not the hoi polloi in the pews. Then "realize" that God is on YOUR side, as opposed to the proletarian concept of you being on God's side.

Then, stick with people like yourself. That is, not "common" like those pedestrian schmucks in the pews. That is, exceptional. Aren't we neato?

BUT . . . only stick with those people so far as they are useful to your own divine self. We must be pragmatic, right? And screw the proles . . . except in the unlikely event that they become useful to oneself, and thus beneficial within the complicated politics of Making the World a Better Place (TM).

Now, certainly it is easier for one to see how "overreacting" to the problems of the Unimportant could harm the Important, and thus wreck the Work of Christ on earth, right? If we started "giving scandal" by making a scene over, say, perv priests . . . well, THAT would give our Enemies (TM) ammunition with which to obliterate Our Important Work.

And you know what Stalin apologist Walter Duranty said about "breaking a few eggs to make an omelet."

Then again, neither Duranty nor Stalin were eggs. They were the chickens***s.

The eggs were not amused. And soon enough, eggs are going to start staying the hell away from the kitchen (Church), because Bad Things (or at least not many good things) happen to you in the kitchen.

Right now, both our capitalist society at large and our Catholic Church seem to be all about the omelet, and not at all about the eggs. And the eggs -- who are humble yolk but not stupid -- are fast losing faith in the Omelet Makers.

'Principles and values' . . . at $4 million per

Our mission statement here is to create an atmosphere and environment for everyone to be able to succeed, first of all as a person. We want players to be more successful in life because they were involved in our program, by the principles and values that we're able to develop with them so that they can be successful relative to the character and attitude they have as a football player here at this institution.

-- "Bubbles" Saban, in his remarks after his introduction

as Alabama's new football coach after leaving the Dolphins

with three years left on his contract . . . for a better "rate"

BUBBLES IS AVAILABLE to entertain at your "function" at the reasonable rate of $4 million a year . . . or $1,000/hour.

LSU 41, Notre Dame 14

Read all about the Bayou Bengals' glorious Sugar Bowl victory over the Fighting (snicker, guffaw) Irish here. Or here.

Or just CRANK IT UP!

Meanwhile, all together now -- with gusto . . .

Where stately oaks and broad
magnolias shade inspiring halls,
There stands our dear Old Alma Mater who to us recalls
Fond memories that waken in our hearts a tender glow,
And make us happy for the love that we have learned to know.

All hail to thee our Alma Mater, molder of mankind,
May greater glory, love unending be forever thine.
Our worth in life will be thy worth we pray to keep it true,
And may thy spirit live in us, forever L-S-U.

Despicable scumbags from the pit of Hell . . . as opposed to Gitmo's poor Islamist schmucks

Will no one rid us of this troublesome administration?

Will no one consider that -- in the War on Terror -- we have become Terror? Read this from the Washington Post and vomit, before becoming really, really enraged:

In them, FBI employees said they had witnessed 26 incidents of possible mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including previously reported cases in which prisoners were shackled to the floor for extended periods of time or subjected to sexually suggestive tactics by female interrogators.

In a previously unreported allegation, one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to "Satanic black metal music for hours," then dressed as a Catholic priest before "baptizing" him.

One agent reported being told that while questioning male captives, female interrogators would sometimes wet their hands and touch detainees' faces in order to interrupt their prayers. Such actions would make some Muslims consider themselves unclean and unable to continue praying.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement last night that "the issues and facts raised" in the documents "are not new" and that 12 reviews have showed there were no Defense Department policies that condoned abuse.

"The Department of Defense policy is clear -- we treat detainees humanely," Carpenter said. "The United States operates safe, humane and professional detention operations for enemy combatants who are providing valuable information in the war on terror."

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said all the information from the survey has been turned over to the Defense Department's inspector general.

This would be unbelievable . . . if the previous antics of the Bush Administration hadn't given us such ample reason to believe anything.

Think a sec, here. It is not the jihadis at Guantanamo who have blasphemed against God and slandered the Catholic Church. Is is Our Government. Paid for with Our Tax Dollars.

Now, where are the prosecutions? Now, where are the Catholics who are upset about both torture and the defamation of their own religion?

(Hat tip: Mark Shea)

This is what happens when you value some right things as a civic culture

And how do the states rank in that "Quality Counts 2007" education survey?

Like this:

Virginia

Connecticut

Minnesota

New Jersey

Maryland

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

Wisconsin

Nebraska

Vermont

Iowa

Illinois

Kansas

North Dakota

Pennsylvania

Colorado

South Dakota

Delaware

New York

Rhode Island

Utah

Washington

Maine

Wyoming

Hawaii

Michigan

Montana

Ohio

Alaska

Indiana

District of Columbia

Florida

Missouri

California

Idaho

North Carolina

Oregon

Georgia

Arkansas

Oklahoma

Kentucky

South Carolina

Nevada

West Virginia

Alabama

Mississippi

Tennessee

Texas

Arizona

Louisiana

New Mexico

Hint to the low-ranking states . . . good schools take two things, which must go hand-in-hand:

1) Money. And that means taxes. In our Omaha school district, we pay more than $2,800 in property taxes on our very average residence. More than $1,600 of that goes to the school district.

2) Education has to be important to John and Jane Doe. They have to care about it; they have to support their public schools, which means holding them accountable; they have to stay on their kids' butts to learn and achieve. That's hard, but necessary, slogging.

This is what happens when you have the wrong priorities for a long, long time

From the Lafayette (La.) Daily Advertiser:

There is only one state in the nation in which a student is less likely to succeed than in Louisiana, according to an Education Research Center report released today.

The Quality Counts 2007 report ranks all 50 states on matters from parental education, family income, test scores, graduation rates and school enrollment to determine where a child is most likely to succeed in life.

Scores for the study were calculated using success indicators.

Louisiana received two positive indicators, 10 negatives and one neutral. According to the report, preschool enrollment is 4.1 percent above the national average, linguistic integration is 12.8 percent above the national average and kindergarten enrollment is 1.2 percent, while the state fell 10 percent below the national percentage in the following areas: Parent education, parental employment and middle school math.

This is what people say when you don't practice what you preach

Miami Dolphins Coach Nick Saban broke his "all this, and the moon, too" contract Wednesday to take over the Alabama football program after the Crimson Tide threw in the sun as a deal sweetener.

This, exactly two years after Saban left Louisiana State for the greener palm trees of South Beach. Feh!

This Dan Le Batard column in The Miami Herald is what people generally say about those who so blatantly don't practice what they preach to their charges.

Or, as we used to cheer in the LSU student section way back when, "Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll! Tide, roll!"

Here 'tis:

The punctuation on the Nick Saban Error is greasy and greedy. You know what he was as Dolphins coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. He was less of a success than Dave Wannstedt and more of a traitor than Ricky Williams. There has been very little in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than this hypocrite who at the end avoided the hard questions one last time.

Talk like a warrior. Behave like a weasel.

Maybe Saban would be better off in college. Because, in the pros the last few days, he has looked like a complete and utter amateur.

He will be remembered in these parts as a quitter and a liar. He leaves the franchise in last place, with what used to be his good name somehow far lower than that. And for this he'll get a $25 million raise and more job security in Alabama. Makes you wonder what USC's Pete Carroll or Ohio State's Jim Tressel are worth, doesn't it?

Larry Coker, a decent man, gets fired for his one championship. Saban, a duplicitous one, gets the most lucrative job in college football.

Saban could have fixed his reputation today if he had that mental toughness he is always sermonizing about. We have the meandering spiel memorized by now. About
''competitive character'' and ''overcoming adversity'' and blah, blah, blah. You preach it, Nick. But you don't live it. Not when it's easier to run away and hide.

Such a pity. Saban was a good coach at LSU, and he turned around a decidedly mediocre program there. He preached good values to his players; he stressed good priorities and work habits.

In the end, though, it was All About Nick. I wonder whether he'll have any credibility with his new players at 'Bama when he gives them what's now been proven to be just another load of bull****.

Geaux Tigers! Beat the Irish. Give more for Les!

Heroes and villains

From MSNBC:

The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS -- Seven policemen charged in a deadly bridge shooting in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina turned themselves in Tuesday at the city jail, where more than 200 emotional supporters met them in a show of solidarity.

Each of the indicted men faces at least one charge of murder or attempted murder in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the hurricane hit New Orleans. Two people died, and four people were wounded.

Defense attorneys say the seven officers are innocent of the charges.

As the men arrived at the jail, supporters lined the street, stepping forward to embrace the seven men and shake their hands. One sign in the crowd read “Support the Danziger 7.” Another read “Thanks for protecting our city.”

One protester shouted “Police killings must stop” and “Racism must go” but was shouted down by the crowd yelling: “Heroes, Heroes.”

“These men stayed here to protect our city and protect us, and this is the thanks that is given to them,” said Ryan Maher, 34, of New Orleans, who described himself as a civilian with friends in the police department.

“It’s a serious injustice,” said Sgt. Henry Kuhn of the Harahan Police Department, one of several uniformed officers from the suburbs who joined the crowd.

Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius, officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon were charged with first-degree murder. Officers Robert Barrios and Mike Hunter were charged with attempted first-degree murder, and Ignatius Hills was charged with attempted second-degree murder.

A judge said there would be no bail for the four accused of first-degree murder. Bail will be $100,000 per count for the other three officers.

Hunter posted bail Tuesday; a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police said the others couldn’t in part because banks were closed for the national day of mourning for President Gerald Ford.

The officers are scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

Defense lawyers said they were assured that the men would be kept separate from the general population of the jail.

Hills’ brother Darren Hills was among those outside the jail Tuesday morning.

“It took everybody by surprise. Totally blindsided by the decision,” he said of the charges.

A first-degree murder conviction carries a possible death sentence. A spokesman for District Attorney Eddie Jordan said Monday that prosecutors haven’t decided whether to seek the death penalty in the case.

The facts of what happened on the bridge, which crosses the Industrial Canal between the Gentilly neighborhood and eastern New Orleans, remain murky.

Police say the officers were responding to a report of other officers down, and that they thought one of the men, Ronald Madison, was reaching for a gun. Madison, a 40-year-old mentally retarded man, and James Brissette, 19, were killed on the bridge. The coroner said Madison was shot seven times, with five wounds in the back.

AIN'T IT FUNNY SOMETIMES how when the cops bust some gang-banger in the 'hood for blasting away just 'cause, they have just apprehended the biggest, scummiest, lowlife vermin that ever scurried out of the shadows of the trash pile . . . but when it's one of their own -- or seven of their own -- indicted for blasting away at unarmed black folk on a bridge, suddenly the alleged perps are "heroes"?

I'll not be the man to defend the nobility of scummy, lowlife gang-bangers in the 'hood. But, somehow, I've never considered shooting a 40-year-old, unarmed retarded man in the back particularly heroic.

And, indeed, it is all but certain that somebody -- or bodies -- in that group of seven New Orleans cops fatally shot that unarmed retarded man, as well as fatally shot a 19-year-old and wounded several other innocent, unarmed people on the Danziger Bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. If they are found innocent of first- and second-degree murder and attempted-murder charges, it will be because jurors find the whole mess was a massive, yet understandable, screw-up in the post-Katrina chaos of New Orleans on Sept. 4, 2005.

That would make for a gaggle of tragic screw-ups, not a cadre of gallant heroes. Best case.

Worst case: That crowd of New Orleans-area cops demonstrating for their accused brethren -- in the face of the kind of evidence that gets "vermin" thrown into central lockup with nary a second thought about their scumbag status . . . or guilt -- have decided that it's different when you're a police officer. Murder is something only civilians can commit.

SCREW IRAQ. Bring the troops home and send them to Louisiana, where it's obvious that some "nation-building" is needed here in the United States -- the nation in which we actually have to live.