N.O.'s nutty buddy cuckoo for 'da surge'

What does this dispatch from The Associated Press sound like to you?

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said he's asked Gov. Bobby Jindal to postpone a planned phase-out of National Guard troops, who have been in the city as a way to help fight crime after Hurricane Katrina depleted police force ranks.

The governor had planned to begin a three-month phase-out of the 360 soldiers patrolling New Orleans neighborhoods in June, but Nagin said that would be too quick because the city still is trying to recruit new police officers and needs more time for that effort.

"We thought the June 1st deadline was coming a little too quickly," Nagin said Tuesday after meeting with Jindal in Baton Rouge. "We haven't really ramped up our recruitment. We have a major campaign running right now."

Seventy-five people have been murdered in New Orleans so far this year, and overall violent crime has increased. The police department announced this month that it will begin a national campaign that it hopes will land at least 200 new officers for the city.

Nagin said he'd like the National Guard troops to stay in the city through the summer, with a reassessment of the need in the fall.

The mayor said Jindal "said that he would be very flexible. We didn't talk about any specific timelines or anything, but in previous conversations with he and his staff, he said he would work with us and that the June 1st deadline was not a hard deadline."

IN OTHER WORDS, Crazy Ray is begging the armed forces of the Gret Stet of Looziana not to stand down until the Iraqi Army New Orleans Police Department can stand up.

My God, the National Guard could be stuck there for another 100 years.

They could have watched Leno for free

The new graduates of Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans paid thousands of dollars a year for four years to get their degrees and sit through commencement . . . just to get a rerun of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's performance on the Tonight Show when it came time for their Big Moment.

FOR THAT MATTER, people paid 50 cents to buy a copy of The Times-Picayune to read about what they could have watched on YouTube for free:

Gov. Bobby Jindal told a group of college graduates on Sunday they didn't have to leave Louisiana to find opportunity.

"Dorothy from 'The Wizard of Oz' was right: 'There's no place like home,' " he said. "You can dream big right here at home."

AH, BUT THAT'S THE RUB. Lots of people dream big in Louisiana. Then they go somewhere else to make them come true. Somewhere where mediocrity is not a height that's seldom achieved.

Over the years, Jindal said Louisiana has exported gas, oil, culture and its sons and daughters "who felt they had to leave home to pursue their dreams."

Jindal said that he'd called his mother that morning to wish her a happy Mother's Day, and that she had told him she was proud of him, but for her, his greatest achievement was her grandchildren.

So, Jindal told the graduates, before looking for an out-of-state job, consider the parents in the audience.

"They're looking forward to the day when you fulfill your real purpose by giving them grandchildren," he said. "And they're not letting you take those grandchildren out of this state."

THEY HAVE for decades now.

The trouble with Louisiana -- and with the kind of governor Bobby Jindal is shaping up to be -- is that talk and dreams are plentiful and cheap in the Gret Stet. Success is rare and difficult.

Yes, Dorothy was right in The Wizard of Oz. There is no place like home.

And the wizard's balloon says "State Fair Omaha."

UPDATE: Who knew that the gub'na's speechwriter gets a salary and not paid by the speech? Three commencement addresses, one speech.

Why try harder, eh, Cap?

Make that Mongo County, WV

The erudite swells of London's The Financial Times get in touch with their inner "hill William" while following the doomed presidential campaign of the Thing Who Would Not Die through the hollers of West, by God, Virginia:

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

A landslide victory for Mrs Clinton in West Virginia will do little to improve her fading hopes of winning the Democratic nomination, because Mr Obama has an almost insurmountable lead in the overall race.

But Tuesday’s contest is likely to reinforce Mrs Clinton’s argument that she would be the stronger opponent for Mr McCain in November, and raise fresh doubts about whether the US is ready to elect its first black president.

Occupying a swathe of the Appalachian Mountains on the threshold between the Bible Belt and the Rust Belt, West Virginia is a swing state that voted twice for George W. Bush but backed Democrats in six of the eight prior presidential elections.

No Democrat has been elected to the White House without carrying West Virginia since 1916, yet Mr Obama appears to have little chance of winning there in November. Recent opinion polls indicate that Mrs Clinton would narrowly beat Mr McCain in the state but Mr Obama would lose by nearly 20 percentage points.

West Virginia is hostile territory for Mr Obama because it has few of the African-Americans and affluent, college-educated whites who provide his strongest support. The state has the lowest college graduation rate in the US, the second lowest median household income, and one of the highest proportions of white residents, at 96 per cent.

A visit to Mingo County, a Democratic stronghold in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, reveals the scale of Mr Obama’s challenge – not only in West Virginia but in white, working-class communities across the US. With a gun shop on its main street and churches dotted throughout the town, Williamson is the kind of community evoked by Mr Obama’s controversial comments last month about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling to guns or religion”.

“If he is the nominee, the Democrats have no chance of winning West Virginia,” said Missy Endicott, a 40- year-old school administrator. “He doesn’t understand ordinary Americans.”

IF MINGO COUNTY represents "ordinary Americans," Washington needs to sue for peace with Beijing before war has a chance to start.

Screw the veterans, we want Muslim veggies!

The Advocate in Baton Rouge reports that the House Appropriation Committee found room for some extra spending while it was recommending cuts to Louisiana's colleges and universities . . . and cuts to Medicaid, a veterans nursing home and biomedical research.

Here's what the folks who Louisiana voters elected to represent them think is more important than educating young people, caring for war veterans or curing dread diseases:

* $75,000 for the city of Zachary for an economic development master plan.
* $50,000 to the city of Central for economic development planning.
* $25,000 for the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum operations.
* $100,000 to improve the intersection at Florida and Sherwood Forest boulevards.
* $400,000 to improve Coursey Boulevard between Airline Highway and Jones Creek Road.
* $100,000 to improve the intersection at Jones Creek Road and Coursey Boulevard.
* $25,000 for equipment for the Baton Rouge Fire Department.
* $75,000 for the Pride Fire Department.
* $50,000 for park improvements for the city of Denham Springs.
* $50,000 to the McKinley High School Alumni Association for youth outreach activities.
* $20,000 to the American Muslim Mission of Baton Rouge for a year-round farmers market in old south Baton Rouge.

I'M SURE the old, sick veterans are especially excited that they're getting screwed over so that the McKinley High School Alumni Association might reach out and touch some yutes. Not to mention so that the Muslims will be able to hawk asparagus for Allah in the 'hood.

God helps those. . . .

Get into a discussion about poverty or social dysfunction among most any group of white folks, and it won't be long before someone prescribes the "bootstrap" cure for what ails "those people."

This is especially true back home, in the Gret Stet of Looziana.

AFTER ALL, as eeevvverrrrybody knows, God helps those who help themselves. It's in the Bible. Somewhere toward the back. I think.

Well, if that's how things work in Heaven and on earth, then what are we to make of a state that's at the bottom of all the good rankings and at the top of all the bad ones? What do we make of a people who kill one another at a faster-than-average clip, elect a frightening parade of crooks and buffoons to public office, and are disproportionately poor, ill and uneducated?

And what of a place that never seems to get a clue about the importance of public education, or of honest government, or of a diverse economy, or of just having roads and cities that don't look like out-of-control landfills?

While we're thinking about it, what do we make of an electorate that alternates between idolizing amusing scoundrels or looking for a political messiah to magically lift Louisiana out of the civic poo after it's (yet again) crapped in its own bed?

NOW, TO A BUNCH of average Louisiana Bubbas -- and, for that matter, to your average gaggle of Uptown Brahmins -- the answer is simple enough if you're talking about a poverty-stricken single mother of five who's not of the Caucasian persuasion.

Keep your knees together, get a damn job and quit waiting for the taxpayer to solve your damn problems.

But what about when a whole state of four million (and shrinking) is a basket case? If God helps those who help themselves, can we then assume -- to borrow from the right-wing's favorite African-American preacher -- that God has damned Louisiana?

If we're willing to bring down holy fire and brimstone upon the pitiful minority wretch who has squandered the assistance money on Colt 45 and cigarettes, and who drives Junior to his preliminary hearings in a welfare Cadillac . . . what, then, of a chronically ignorant state that has squandered 300 years of human and natural riches? And which, when it's budget-cutting time, always slashes the essentials and protects the chaff?

The Monroe (La.) News-Star recounts the latest verse of the same old song:

Proposed higher education budget cuts could "cripple" Louisiana's public colleges and universities if they are adopted, according to officials at the state Board of Regents.

Subcommittees of the House Appropriations Committee have recommended a total of $116 million in budget cuts, and nearly $70 million, or about 60 percent, are education related.

The House Appropriations Committee sets ordinary operating expenses each fiscal year. Members are scheduled to discuss House Bill 1 this Sunday.

The cuts are in response to a legislative directive to trim 5 percent from Gov. Bobby Jindal's executive budget.

"It just doesn't seem equitable that the best strategy they (the legislators) could come up with targets educational institutions," said Commissioner of Higher Education Joseph Savoie.

Approximately $31 million in proposed cuts would come from public colleges and universities, meaning higher education would absorb about 23 percent of the total reduction in budget.

"Any reduction would naturally have a negative effect," said Dan Reneau, president of Louisiana Tech University, who has survived 13 budget cuts during his tenure.

"For the first time last year we had 100 percent funding. To go below that — it just doesn't send a good message to the faculty," he said.

Reneau was referring to a formula designed to fund state colleges at an average comparable to institutions in the 16-state region known as the Southern Regional Education Board.

Based on 2006 figures — the most recent year data is available — the board set the average at $6,213 per student at four-year institutions. The average at two-year colleges is currently $3,150.

However, several variables affect the exact amount from institution to institution.

To maintain the SREB "at average" level, 16 schools across the state would need an additional infusion of funds this year, including Louisiana Delta Community College.

Delta stands to lose about $150,000 in funding, said Savoie.

"Prior to last year, we were well below the average. We've been working toward (100 percent funding at the SREB average) for a long time," said Savoie. "This idea of retreating from progress is ridiculous."

AS NOTED in an earlier post, no less an authority than retired LSU baseball coach Skip Bertman easily identified Louisiana's self-fulfilling mentality of shiftlessness.

A profile of the soon-to-be-former athletic director in 225 magazine noted that "from his bosses to his players, from the governor to the maintenance crew that chafed under his daily calls for updates on Alex Box, Bertman has noticed something about Louisiana: Mediocrity is accepted." [Emphasis mine -- R21.]

The article went on in damning detail:

“When the past governor and the one before her say, ‘We want to get to the Southern average,’ I think, ‘Our goal is to be average?’” Bertman says. “I’m not putting them down, and I understand what they mean, but you can imagine how that sounds to me. I’m not saying I could be governor and not have to say that, but in baseball I could do it.” Bertman recalls having to convince his 1984 team that they were unique and capable of achieving their goals. Two years later LSU finished fifth in the country, and by then all his players had to do for a confidence boost was put on the uniform.

IF BERTMAN IS RIGHT -- and he is, you know -- then it just doesn't matter how much American taxpayers pay to rebuild broken levees, or how high the new levees are. It doesn't matter whether American taxpayers pay to rebuild New Orleans, or put Louisiana homeowners back in rebuilt homes.

It doesn't matter whether the American taxpayer pays to rebuild south Louisiana's ruined infrastructure or rebuild its crappy roads and highways.

It doesn't matter whether we pay outrageous gas prices or sky-high air fares to vacation in the Bayou State, stuffing our already overstuffed American guts in its restaurants and braving the state's crazy-high sales tax to buy Looziana geegaws and tacky tee shirts.

None of it matters, because no matter how the American taxpayer tries to help the Gret Stet, the stupid bastards will just screw themselves up again -- it's in their nature. It has to be in their nature, like Skip says.

Who else but some basket-case, doesn't-have-the-good-sense-God-gave-a-jackass, knuckle-dragging, moron, metaphorical welfare queen writ large would make higher education take 60 percent of proposed budget cuts?

Especially when you're already a basket-case, doesn't-have-the-good-sense-God-gave-a-jackass, knuckle-dragging, moron, metaphorical welfare queen writ large.

Tell 'em to grab their bootstraps and pull.

Isn't Louisiana the state whose educated young people are fleeing in droves? Isn't Louisiana the state already woefully short on intellectual capital -- and workers capable of meeting the needs of a high-tech, information-based economy?

Isn't Louisiana the state that's already chasing after all sorts of economic development but -- when corporate America asks "What do you have to show me?" -- the only thing she can resort to is lifting up her shirt?

After all, God helps those who help themselves, and Louisiana hasn't done much to help herself. Why the hell should the American taxpayer be more generous than God?

Tell 'em to grab their bootstraps and pull.

And when Gov. Bobby Jindal goes to Washington and gives the guardians of our cash a song and dance about how Louisiana is stiil hurting and, by the way, it now has "the gold standard" of ethics laws? Particularly when that "gold standard" is a big sham that may look good but actually is worse than the "crap standard"?

Tell 'em to grab their bootstraps and pull.

LISTEN, LOUISIANA. This is the United States speaking. We can't help you.

Your problems, with the exception of the New Orleans levees, are self-inflicted. We can't fix that. Hell, we can't even get Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic primaries.

As any good ol' boy in your neck of the woods knows, your problems will be solved when you get off your lazy asses. In that vein, take an interest in your own governance, have a little pride in yourselves and your state, for God's sake, and just damn fix it.

Here's a helpful hint. Education is important, which you might have figured out for yourselves if you weren't so fuggin' ignorant. Don't cut that.

Otherwise, just grab those bootstraps and remember that God helps those who help themselves. Certainly, your legislators must know a little something about helping themselves.

Right?

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog & the Big Beat

Come with me and you will see,
All the music you can hear for free,

See and hear, hear and see,
It's got to be better than watching TV,

Agnes isn't English, but American, I'll bet,
Though English breaks in the middle of a set,

At least that's what Marianne did say,
And she wouldn't lie, at least not today,

Then there's the Doctor, and the Captain, and the Airplane on the show,
But watch out for the Prunes, or -- My! -- how you'll go!

Now, you might be tired of reading Favog's verse,
But trust me, my child, things could be worse!

So follow this link and you'll find the new show,
Or there's the player at the top o' the page, you know,

But before you accuse me of writing pure Dada,
I'll just implore you to Be there. Aloha!

Taking the brown acid in San Jose

I didn't know how right I was.

Here we find, courtesy of YouTube, video of what the Catholic dissident group Call to Action billed as the closing Mass of its West Coast conference last week in San Jose. That's one possible explanation -- I think.

A MORE PLAUSIBLE explanation, I suspect, is this is old footage of hippies reenacting 1964's Godzilla vs. the Thing as they turned on and tuned in at a 1967 Summer of Love "be in."

In the opening scene, we see Wavy Gravy, abstractly costumed as "Godzilla," chase Sharon Tate and a shaven-headed Sly Stone around the Cal-Berkeley student-union ballroom as Abbie Hoffman (in costume as a Mr. Potato Head version of Mothra) seeks to "save" Ms. Tate and turn "Tokyo" on to some "really good s***, maaaaan."

The reenactment was a "sensory production" for the benefit of the "be in" attendees, all of whom had been given the brown acid at the door. As you can see, the LSD had fully kicked in by mid-video, and a successful trip was had by all.

The flashbacks, they'd we'd deal with later.

HAT TIP: Fratres blog

Bong hits for Jesus

Marijuana, marijuana, LSD, LSD,
Scientists make it, hippies take it,
Why can't we? Why can't we?

That was the schoolyard ditty we sophisticates of the third grade used to sing in 1969. Almost 40 years later, I now have an answer to "Why can't we?":


LOOK AT WHAT those who did hath wrought . . . the "progressive" insanity despoiling every aspect of civic life touched today by that beachhead of the Baby Boom generation, the happenin' guys and gals who smoked 'em if they had 'em back in the day and really haven't come down since.

The above scene is from the closing Mass at the 2008 West Coast Call To Action Conference, held in San Jose, Calif. Of course, it was.

You know, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass . . . pretty serious stuff. Transcendent, even.

That's why these Einsteins thought it wholly appropriate to "let it all hang out" with . . . what the hell ARE those, anyway? Giant puppets?

It would seem there is no serious matter my generation -- and our children -- can't respond to in the most unserious ways. Like this, for another egregious example:

THIS IS FROM a story on FOXNews.com, about the Code Pink protests outside a Marine recruting center in Berkeley. California. Of course, they were:

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley's controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center.

The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "Witches, clowns and sirens day," the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day.

"Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

The group's week of themed protests, which included days to galvanize grannies and bring-your-daughter-to-protest, appears to have done little to boost its flagging numbers.

A FOX News camera, which has a 24/7 live shot of the recruiting center's front door, recorded little action, and the gatherings have, until this point, been ill attended.

SERIOUS MATTER. Silly, unserious response. Typical of life in these United States, in this time.

You know what we are, maaaaaaaaannn? We're screwed, dude.

Like . . . totally. You know?

Talk about a pothead

I'm supposing that NORML has no comment on this Houston Chronicle article. Though that's just a guess:

Two men and a juvenile are accused of digging up a corpse, decapitating the body and using the head to smoke marijuana, according to court documents.

Matthew Gonzalez and Kevin Jones have been charged with the misdemeanor offense of abuse of a corpse, said Scott Durfee, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorneys Office.

According to documents filed in the case, Gonzalez, Jones and an unnamed juvenile on March 15 went to an Humble cemetery, dug up a man's grave, left with the head and turned it into a "bong."

MEANWHILE, your intrepid blogger obtained a reaction from Heads for Hemp head head Ashley Roachclip.

"Whoa! Dude!" said Roachclip. "Like, dude, like how did that work, man? Whoa! That's some weird s***!

"Like, who did you say you were again, man?"

Film at 11.

'Jesus Is for Losers' and other wise words

Christian music really needed Steve Taylor to save it from not only a piety overload, but also from a thought shortfall.

Unfortunately for Taylor, evangelicals' piety oftentimes overloaded their thought process. (Note: Jesus IS for losers.) And the biting satire of "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good" was lost on every side of the abortion debate.

It sucks being a genius. But it's great that, years later, we can watch all that genius on YouTube.

No roomah in the ummah . . . alhamdulillah

The trouble with Islam is that an infidel just can't catch a break.

If you trash the Prophet and his followers, you're going to catch hell. If you compliment a Muslim when she makes a valid point, then point out the commonalities with the Catholic Church's theology of the body, you are called weird.

And when you leave a comment on Tokyo Cairo Rose's blog to ask what's so weird about standard Catholic theology and cultural criticism . . .

The Mighty Favog Says:
May 6th, 2008 at 1:45 am
lol you’ve been edited. no anti-Islamic sediment on my blog. I had enough of that on the daily reveille. I can actually CONTROL comments here. you said somethign about wahhabis, etc. yeah not here go find someone else to spam

- Shirien

p.s. i also edited your URL, no music here either K? Thaaanks

NOW, I FULLY EXPECT that my response to being mendaciously tarred as "anti-Islamic" for politely asking some questions (and restating the Catholic position which seemingly agrees with the Muslim take on modesty) will be short-lived in Shirien Elamawy's (her real name) dawahland.

So, I'm posting it here . . . for posterity:

The Mighty Favog Says:
May 6th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Excuse me, but what was anti-Islamic about asking questions? Or are you incapable of defending your assertions . . . and your faith?

An honest question deserves an honest answer. Responding to an honest question — and an attempt at some form of dialogue — with disingenuous statements and rank hostility is both dishonorable and doesn’t exactly cover Islam in glory.

In other words, child, it would appear that you can dish it out, but you can’t take it. It likewise would appear that would be the modus operandi of your faith as well — if you are a truly representative witness to it.

Furthermore, if you are not Wahhabi (the no-music thing, I seem to remember, is a Wahhabi thing), what are you? I know not all stripes of Islam are anti-music, what others besides the Wahhabi movement among Sunnis are?

Or is asking that inherently anti-Muslim?

In the peace of Issa the Christ.

OH . . . AND WHILE I'm thinking of it, would you like to hear the story of how Ms. Elamawy came to be a columnist for The Daily Reveille and the explicit purpose of her column?

I knew that you would.

Again, straight from the ummah's mouth:

Anyway, fast-forwarding to the end of my freshman year at LSU. Everyone read and still reads The Daily Reveille on campus everyday. One day, I picked up the paper and saw a cartoon drawn on the op-ed page that not only caught my attention, it infuriated me. This wasn’t the first time The Daily Reveille printed something bigoted and completely offensive to Muslims. I decided to head over to the newsroom to have a little talk with the cartoonist but to my dismay he wasn’t there. Surely, I wasn’t going to leave without complaining. After all, I had to defend Islam. And I’m a girl, complaining is in our nature.

So, I requested to speak to the editor-in-chief at the time. It turned out I wasn’t the only one offended by a cartoon which depicted the Iranian President sitting at a laundry mat waiting for his brain to be finished being “washed” with “Quran Detergent;” other people had apparently been complaining all day.

After complaining about how unacceptable it was for him to print the cartoon, he sincerely apologized and told me he “wants to make sure that it doesn’t happen again in the future,” even though he was graduating only week later. He told me that at that very moment they were holding a forum for people who wanted to apply for being on the opinon staff for the next semester. He highly recommended I apply for a position after knowing I was a mass communication major. Subhanallah, it really was the Qadr of Allah that I went to complain at that very moment, because next thing I knew he led me into the room in which I was to apply. And I did. And so did about 100 other people who wanted one of 12 spots.

Anyway, I applied, got called for an interview and then alhamdulillah I got the job. And that started my work in mass dawah. Which wallahi has been such a blessing from the very beginning. However, you have to have a strong heart when speaking the truth about Islam. Don’t sugar coat things, don’t fall under the pressure of those around you.

Wallahi I can’t tell you all how many times I got people saying “Write about something else!” and subhanallah for a brief moment you think about it… then you realize that you are doing this purely for the sake of Allah and I figured if they fire me for not wanting to write about anything other than Islam, then so be it. But they actually loved the readers I would bring and the hits I would bring to the website too, alhamdulillah.

I HAVE just a single question.

If I were to return to LSU as a grad student, could I get a regular column in the Reveille for the explicit purpose of Catholic evangelization? No, I don't want to be just the token non-traditional student who's a "religious nut" but writes about all kinds of stuff.

What I want is the deal Ms. Elamawy got. I want a column "speaking the truth about Catholicism and the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Don’t sugar coat things, don’t fall under the pressure of those around you."

That's the deal I want. Fair is fair. Because I would be doing it purely for the sake of Issa the Christ, alhamdulillah.

Beauty is not skank deep

For traditional Christians and modern Westerners, it's not a difficult task to find areas of profound disagreement with Islam and then beat those divides into gaping chasms of civilizational conflict.

This particularly would be true in the years since violent jihadists flew jetliners full of innocents into skyscrapers full of innocents in a bid to poke a finger into the eye of the Great Satan.

That, however, does nothing to help us -- as Christians and modern Westerners -- come to the difficult realization that, in so many ways, we are the Great Satan.

Or, at a minimum, willing and enthusiastic dupes of Satan.

IN THAT LIGHT, perhaps it would be useful to explore one area where Christians and thoughtful Westerners can have common cause with thoughtful Muslims -- or at least ought to have common cause with those who profess Islam.

I would submit that the devil's greatest success among Western modernists has been in equating "freedom" with the grossest debasements of human dignity, which by extension are the most profound slurs against a Creator who made mankind in His image. The means of debasement are legion, but they all are rooted in denying the fundamental nature and dignity of -- and, yes, divine image within -- human beings by recognizing them solely as objects.

Not as people, but as things.

Satan's second greatest success among modern Westerners has been in convincing them to run right past the concept of "tolerance" into the abyss where what we profess has nothing to do with how we live.

As one who has toiled for a decade and a half as a volunteer in Catholic youth ministry, let me illustrate this concept from that vantage point.

It's not only possible but, indeed, probable to have large numbers of self-professed Catholic teen-agers -- teen-agers who have gone through Confirmation and made solemn promises therein -- to think nothing of dressing like hookers, defining a "good date" as one that ends inside the pants of a young woman, getting wasted every weekend or otherwise behaving in a manner indistinguishable from the most hardcore of nihilists.

THE STARK REALITY of what used to be known as Christendom is a spent culture in which belief is alienated from practice, humanity is alienated from its fundamental nature and, finally, humans are profoundly alienated from their Creator and one another. Its logical -- and inevitable -- end is Death.

I think that's a cultural critique that orthodox Christians and mainstream Muslims not only could both embrace, but also could see as grounds for cooperation.

Which brings me to "the Hijab Challenge."

The Hijab Challenge was the brainchild of a Muslim columnist for The Daily Reveille, my old college newspaper at Louisiana State University. Briefly, what Shirien Elmasraya did was, I think, brilliant -- an in-your-face throwing down the gauntlet to American society's notion of feminine "beauty."

DOES OUR NOTION of womanly "beauty" mainly involve who a woman is, or merely what standard equipment she comes with? Do we value what is divine, or do we prefer to turn a multidimensional imago dei into nothing more than a one-dimensional object -- a thing to be used for our own ignoble purposes:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column challenging University women to wear the hijab - or headscarf - for a day.

A handful of girls took on my challenge this past Friday. They came to campus adorned by the beauty of the hijab.

They went to class, hung out with their friends and lived their daily routine wearing something they normally wouldn't wear.

But anyone who didn't know them personally would most likely assume these women were Muslim, and they were most likely oppressed.

In the past year and a half I've written, I've probably gotten more hate mail and hate comments below my articles online than just about anyone else on The Daily Reveille's staff.

Some of those who would comment would regurgitate over and over again that women in Islam are oppressed, we are backwards and we need to be liberated from our hijab.

I, in turn, wanted to liberate the people who hold these views from the oppression of media brainwashing and prejudice by challenging them to wear hijab for a day and see what it is really like - the result?

None of those who accused me of being oppressed took on my challenge. They are so afraid of reality and so embarrassed to be proven wrong that they did not even bother defending their claim by agreeing to participate.

So let it be known that your words never did and never will hold any weight with me.

Half of my life, I didn't wear hijab. I was oppressed by society and beauty magazines who told me and my peers that less clothes means more beauty.

To me, the hijab is liberating.

One of the women who decided to take on my challenge was Melissa Breen, mass communication sophomore.

"In order for people to truly be open-minded, they must be willing to step outside of their comfort zones," Breen said.

Breen's friend Sarah Berard, English junior, also decided to participate.

"In order to truly love and respect other people, you have to try to understand them. So as a Roman Catholic, for me, the hijab challenge was an opportunity to come to a better understanding of Muslim women," Berard said.

Michelle Richardson, anthropology junior, said it was a special cultural experience.

"It helped demonstrate to the world and to myself that you are not any less of a free, powerful woman for making the personal choice of wearing the hijab," she said.

WE LIVE IN A CULTURE that makes a fetish of "edginess" and rebellion. What that culture fails to appreciate is that the only revolt here is against truth. Make that Truth, with a capital "T."

Otherwise, what we preceive as "edgy" is merely pedestrian slavishness to a warped and dehumanizing status quo, and what we perceive as "beauty" is predicated on appealing to some of our uglier impulses. Thus blinded, it's difficult for the modern American to appreciate Ms. Elmasraya for the revolutionary she is.

And entirely too easy to laugh and say "Look at the backward Muslim" instead of acknowledge the rot in our own self-mutilated culture.

Baba Wawa, youw ignowant swut

Saturday Night Live - Baba Wawa At Home

This chapter of Barbara Walters' new memoir, as reported in the New York Daily News, might be called "Peopwl wuh vewy vewy mean to Baba Wawa":

Back in 1976, Walters, too, jumped from the "Today" show to anchoring the evening news. Walters was teamed on ABC with the venerable Harry Reasoner.

"The blood was so bad between us that Harry's cronies on the crew took to using a stopwatch to note my airtime" so that Reasoner got his share, Walters writes in her new memoir, "Audition." "Harry's hostility soon began to show on the air. I remember reaching toward him at the end of one broadcast, in a friendly manner, just to touch him on the arm. He recoiled, physically recoiled, in front of millions of people. The media picked up on the bad chemistry."

(snip)

On top of all that, Gilda Radner, of "Saturday Night Live," started impersonating her.

"Audiences found her mimicry of my pronunciation of l and r as w hysterically funny. I found it extremely upsetting. ... People started calling me Baba Wawa behind my back, and even to my face."

Nevertheless, Walters was gracious when she met Radner.

"'I guess you know who I am,' I said to her, pronouncing my words very carefully and leaving out any r's. She nodded. ... 'Well, do me a favor,' I said. 'Do me. Please go ahead and do me.'

"We went into a corner, and she sat down and became Barbara Walters. ... She was brilliant, and I told her so. ... We parted friends." When Radner died at age 42 of ovarian cancer, Walters wrote her husband, Gene Wilder: "She made me laugh. I will miss her. Baba Wawa."

IT WAH VEWY, VEWY BAD faw Hawwy Weasonuh to be mean to Baba Wawa. Likewiwse, it wah vewy, vewwy bad faw Baba Wawa to skwew awownd wift Sen. Edwawd Bwooke, who wah mawwied to somwowne ewlse at thw timw.

That iwiz cawwd aduhtoowy.

I'wul bet thawt Mwisus Bwooke wah cawwing Barbara Walters muwuch wuhse things than Baba Wawa.

3 Chords & the Truth: A no-show

Alas, there won't be a new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth this week.

I'm sick, I'm tired, and that has left me rather . . . sick and tired. So I'm punting on the Big Show for this week.

On the other hand, there is a boatload of 3C&T episodes in the embedded player over there on the right side of the page, and I'll bet you haven't listened to all of them . . . or most of them . . . or even any of them. If that's the case, it's your loss.

You don't know what you're missing. Really.

That . . . is all.

Making wishes into horses . . . or stadiums

Whenever a city aims to do something big -- or something as simple as small but different -- there will be squabbles.

OK, there will be knockdown, drag-out fights. Blood in the streets, even. That's the nature of what happens when a city full of non-Stepford Wives tries to combine a thing called "development" with a thing called "democracy."

THE SAD FACT of the human condition is that some people are less visionary than others. And some people are less intelligent, too. And some people just flat-out don't like to work and play well with others.

Furthermore, this "democracy" thing gives contrarians (of whatever stripe) plenty of leeway to create plenty of mischief. Not to mention strife. Mayors can even get shouted down at public forums.

For many cities, that contrarian-democracy interface can be enough to keep a city in the minor leagues forever, if not mire its citizens in an inescapable backwater hellhole. The Bell Curve being what it is most everywhere -- though some areas can be more or less blessed than average -- what is the difference between thriving, developing municipality and "Oh my God, you live where!?"

I don't know that anyone is exactly sure, but I suspect it has something to do with being slightly above average on the Bell Curve populationwise, an effective chief executive and active, visionary civic and business leadership.

For Omaha, it would seem the stars are aligning. After a civic donnybrook, the dust has cleared and there's going to be a new downtown baseball stadium right here in River City. And the College World Series will remain in the Big O until at least 2030.

And the city might be getting a brand-new streetcar system as part of the bargain. With the price of oil climbing into the stratosphere, that's not only cool, but practical.

WE READ the World-Herald today, oh boy. About a lucky city that made the grade:

Fresh from reaching an agreement with the NCAA to play the College World Series at a new downtown stadium, Mayor Mike Fahey is turning his attention to what's next.

Out of his drawer, Fahey pulled plans for a $55 million streetcar loop that would join the Old Market and Creighton University to north downtown. That loop would go by the front entrance of the new stadium on Webster Street.

"It's incumbent on any mayor to continually think about the next move," Fahey said today. "We want the momentum to continue."

Fahey has been talking about a streetcar system for several years and received a privately funded proposal in the fall of 2006. But the streetcar plan sat on the back burner as Fahey fired up the effort to land a long-term agreement to keep the CWS in Omaha.

That 18-month effort is now close to completion with the NCAA agreeing Wednesday to keep the CWS in Omaha for at least 20 years after the current contract expires at the end of the 2010 championship.

"It seems to make sense economically," Fahey said of the streetcar system. "If you look around the country at progressive cities, better mass transportation systems are part of the equation."

The city may need to move quickly, perhaps this summer, to come up with a financing plan to fund the cost of a streetcar, Fahey said.

(snip)

The downtown streetcar loop was proposed as the first phase of a more extensive system that could connect downtown with the new Midtown Crossing residential and commercial development and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Another branch could run south from downtown to the Henry Doorly Zoo.

Mutual of Omaha, the developer of Midtown Crossing, has talked with the city about opening the western branch sooner rather than later, Fahey said.

While the stadium and streetcar are separate projects, they complement each other, said Fahey and Doug Bisson, a community planner with Omaha-based HDR.

"One project by itself is cool," Bisson said, "but the two together are really amazing."

Bisson, who suggested a downtown ballpark in a 2005 study of north downtown and worked on the streetcar project, said the new stadium linked to other downtown attractions would create "that wow factor."

"What it would do is turn our downtown into a true downtown," Bisson said.

But first things first. Fahey wants to turn the CWS agreement into a firm contract. That's likely to happen before the series opens at Rosenblatt Stadium on June 14.

CWS Inc. President Jack Diesing said a championship contract that runs through at least 2030 is an unprecedented feat of which Omaha should be proud. The city has hosted the CWS since 1950 with a series of one-year to five-year contracts.

"The NCAA does not have any agreements that are five years, let alone the 20-year deal we have," Diesing said.

The exact length of the contract is still being negotiated — it's possible that the final contract could be for 25 years.

I COME FROM BATON ROUGE. To me, this kind of civic competence and rapid development is disconcerting. For all the charms Louisiana possesses -- and there are many -- organizational ability and indomitable civic spirit are not among them.

Growing up in Baton Rouge, I observed many people come up with many grand civic schemes. In fact, there is a veritable Mardi Gras parade of cool stuff that either never got off the drawing board, got shot down by flak from the short-sighted contrarian brigades or actually got developed but then died on the vine for lack of public interest.

The thing is, my hometown has all kinds of transportation, natural-resource, climate and geographical advantages that cities like Omaha could only lust after. Perhaps that's part of Baton Rouge's problem.

When the pioneers started settling the Nebraska Territory more than 150 years ago, there were two basic options for the newcomers: 1) Be industrious, hardy and civic minded, or 2) die. On occasion, the civic-minded part hit a rough patch in that rough-and-tumble pioneer era but, fortunately, industrious and hardy always were enough to carry the day.

In case you hadn't noticed, winter can be cold, long and brutal on the Great Plains. Summer can be dry and hotter than a blast furnace. And wherever you see a tree that's not in a river valley or along a creek, you can be assured that the pioneers or their descendants planted it there.

Likewise, out in western Nebraska long, long ago, there used to be another description for the Sandhills -- which lie squarely within America's present-day grain- and cattle belts. That would be sand dunes.

CIVIC LEADERS from my hometown like to take road trips -- junkets to study some big-time place or another to collect ideas on how to turn Baton Rouge into America's Next Great City (TM). Likewise, there have been any number of grand plans, blueprints that surface long enough to make a splash in the news media before slowly sinking into the primordial muck of the Bluebonnet Swamp, never to be heard of again.

So, what is the deal with that beautiful downtown park that's supposed to be built on piers above the Mississippi River?

And why, exactly, is Baton Rouge prevented from being the abandoned-building, civic-dishabille capital of the United States only by the existence of New Orleans and a few unfortunate Northeastern hellholes?

What does studying Austin . . . or Nashville . . . or Portland have to do with fixing stuff like that? What do those cities today have in common with my hometown?

IF STUDY A CITY they must, I'd suggest Red Stick's poobahs come to Omaha not for a few days, but for a few months. Spend some time in its public schools, and see exactly how much taxpayers have to spend to keep them in a hell of a lot better shape than Baton Rouge's.

And stay until they understand why people in my mid-city school district repeatedly raise their own property taxes to make sure their schools stay that way. Let's just say the physical difference between Omaha's Westside High School and my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, is akin to the difference between midtown Manhattan and Port-au-Prince.

The Omaha metropolitan area is similar in size to the Baton Rouge metro, though Omaha itself is a good deal larger than Louisiana's capital. Both are river cities, with Omaha hugging the Missouri while Baton Rouge is a major port on the Mississippi.

Likewise, the downtowns of both cities used to be dumpy and largely desolate after 5 p.m. Baton Rouge's is getting past the dumpiness and desolation (and one plan-become-reality, the Shaw Center for the Arts, is magnificent) but -- as evidenced by the kind of development epitomized by the planned baseball stadium and the present Qwest Center -- Omaha's is approaching "Wow!"

IF A BATON ROUGE delegation came to Omaha, they'd learn that what now is "Wow!" was, a decade ago, a lead smelter. And a scrap yard.

But I guess there's nothing to be learned from that little fact. Or from how that little fact came to be . . . fact. As opposed to just another fancy plan.

UPDATE: Omaha's new deal to keep the College World Series -- at the new downtown stadium -- isn't for 20 years.

It's for 25.

Gospel values on the basepath

This story ought to get a link on every blog in the whole wide world. And The Associated Press has it:

With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count — an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky.

The umpire said there was no rule against it.

So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky’s legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg.

“The only thing I remember is that Mallory asked me which leg was the one that hurt,” Tucholsky said. “I told her it was my right leg and she said, ‘OK, we’re going to drop you down gently and you need to touch it with your left leg,’ and I said ‘OK, thank you very much.”’

“She said, ‘You deserve it, you hit it over the fence,’ and we all kind of just laughed.”

“We started laughing when we touched second base,” Holtman said. “I said, ’I wonder what this must look like to other people.”’

“We didn’t know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run,” Wallace said Wednesday. “That makes the story more touching than it was. We just wanted to help her.”

I WOULD HAVE linked to this last night, but I'm trying to fight off a nasty sinus infection -- welcome to spring on the pollen-filled plains -- and I slept in the Big Blue Chair instead with canine nurses Molly and Scout.

Now if it were a shot-and-a-beer machine. . . .

Barack Obama as . . . The Soprano

This we may now assume: The next president of the United States won't know Shiite from Shinola.

ALL BECAUSE Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama -- obviously the innocent victim of some Looziana-style justice -- doesn't have the stones to deal with his Reverend Whack Job problem once and for all. And if how a man reacts when it all hits the fan shows us what he's made of -- and, indeed, where his convictions truly lie -- electing the doddering, ill-tempered Republican poster child for "senior moments" instead of yet another doctrinaire social-left Democrat probably will end up being a wash for the nation.

That, of course, is tragic in its own right. What can one expect, though, in a nation now politically riven between fascist-leaning, tinfoil-hat wearing GOP true believers and "progressive" Democrats who can muster true passion and outrage only when someone suggests women ought not have the "right" to murder their unborn offspring or, relatedly, suggests that f***ing is not an entitlement.

DO I UNDERSTAND this correctly?

Monday, not only did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright go before the National Press Club and defend some of the more offensive and crazy things he's said in the past, but then insinuated that Obama was disingenuous in the opprobrium he heaped upon his ex-pastor and spiritual mentor's rhetorical excesses.

And Wright couldn't leave bad enough alone, either. No, he had to stick the shiv in one of his own sheep's back as he threw Obama under the bus -- all the while clowning, mugging and mocking like some sort of ecclesiastical Huey Long in blackface. With security provided by the Nation of Islam -- that's Louis Farrakhan's Black Muslims to you and me.

Now, after all that, what you see in the above MSNBC video is all the fury Obama could muster?

Here's how The Associated Press reported the response from the junior U.S. senator from Illinois:

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference.

After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington media Monday. "It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."

Obama told reporters Tuesday that Wright's comments do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church.

"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama said of the man who married him.

Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.

Obama said he heard that Wright had given "a performance" and when he watched tapes, he realized that it more than just a case of the former pastor defending himself.

"What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for," Obama said.

In a highly publicized speech last month, Obama sharply condemned Wright's remarks. But he did not leave the church or repudiate the minister himself, who he said was like a family member.

On Tuesday, Obama sought to distance himself further from Wright.

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining that he's done enormous good. ... But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. ... There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced."

"At a certain point if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally and then he questions whether or not you believe it — in front of the National Press Club — then that's enough," Obama continued.

OBAMA SAID he was outraged, but his demeanor and reserve belied that notion. Instead, Obama just looked whipped.

He looked like a man who was despondent over a political setback, maybe even a fatal one. He looked like a man who'd just been "owned" in an argument. He looked like a man who just got his ass whipped.

That's the problem. His is the "outrage" of personal setback; it is not the outrage of someone who has seen something bigger than himself attacked and trashed. It is not the outrage of someone who fights for something dearer to himself than himself.

Lord knows it wasn't the righteous fury of a committed Christian who'd just seen the gospel cheapened and violated by the hateful, crazy antics of one of its ministers. Perhaps Obama might have summoned that kind of righteous anger if Rev. Wright had attacked "reproductive rights" instead.

AND ISN'T THAT just the problem with "progressives"? In what do they believe apart from "Do what thou wilt"? For what are they willing to die? For what do they live?

Sadly, for the Democrats and for America, it has come to this: Not only can't the Dems beat something with nothing, they can't even beat nothing -- and that's exactly what the Bush-McCain GOP represents -- with nothing.

It takes a Democrat to lose to this GOP

Barack Obama is going to grow a pair, right now, and deal with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- his posturing, egomaniac ex-pastor -- or we're going to be in Iraq until we have no army left and America is left as a broke, broken and beaten country.

And if Hillary wins, things could be even worse.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank weighed in Monday with a most depressing blog post:

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."

That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if Obama manages to save his campaign from Wright's one-man wrecking crew -- Live! In a speaking engagement near you! -- and if he manages to survive the John McCain (expletive deleted) storm that's headed his way, he just might end up being as spectacularly bad a president as Jimmy Carter. At best, there's no way he can live up to his billing as some sort of political messiah, which will leave his delusional hordes with a bad case of disillusionment.

Color me Not Optimistic, no matter what.

If and when the Democrat presidential candidate manages to get blown out by the GOP's McCain -- The Republicans! George W. Bush's Republicans! The morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt Republicans! -- this election year, I'm going to try to buy up the FDR memorabilia at the Dems' estate sale.

I'll be there early.

UPDATE: The Post's Eugene Robinson nails another aspect of this silly, sickening and sad spectacle.

Ruh roh? Ruh rOPEC!

Why do I get the feeling that the America of 2015 won't much resemble the America of 2008?

And why do I likewise get the feeling the U.S. cities that weather the energy storm more or less intact will be the ones that get on the stick and get serious about mass transit -- particularly light rail and streetcars?

Probably, that feeling comes from having read this Dan Dorfman column in The New York Sun:

Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.

That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.

(snip)

Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.

The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.

Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.

While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).

(snip)

Early last year, with a barrel of oil trading in the low $50s and gasoline nationally selling in a range of $2.30 to $2.50 a gallon, Mr. Gaines — in an impressive display of crystal ball gazing — accurately predicted oil was $100-bound and that gasoline would follow suit by reaching $4 a gallon.

His latest prediction of $200 oil is open to question, since it would undoubtedly create considerable global economic distress. Further, just about every energy expert I talk to cautions me to expect a sizable pullback in oil prices, maybe to between $50 and $70 a barrel, especially if there's a global economic slowdown.

While Mr. Gaines thinks there could be a temporary decline in the oil price, he's convinced an overall uptrend is unstoppable. In fact, he thinks his $200 forecast could be conservative, and that perhaps $250 could be reached. His reasoning: a combination of shrinking supply and increasing demand, especially from China, India, and America.

I'M GETTING THE FEELING, too, that there's an old, simple and reliable bicycle in my future.

Ironic, isn't it, that because the Chinese are becoming more like us -- at least in our extravagant, unsustainable way of life -- Americans ultimately will become more like the Chinese used to be until so very recently.