We apologize if Sweden is offended

We further apologize to Finland, because it just got in the way. But at least now we'll be rid of those damned Swedish vodka ads.

BECAUSE SWEDEN is now Russia, and we're all drinking Stolichnaya.

From The Associated Press:

The Absolut vodka company apologized Saturday for an ad campaign depicting the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers.

The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan "In an Absolut World," showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence.

But the ads, which ran only in Mexico and have since ended, came as the United States builds up its border security amid an emotional debate over illegal immigration from their southern neighbor.

(snip)

Absolut said the ad was designed for a Mexican audience and intended to recall "a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal."

"As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market, and for that we apologize."

3 Chords & the Truth: In the name of love

Forty years ago, I had no clue.

As a 7-year-old, I knew that a bad, bad thing had happened to an important man. I knew the man was dead. I knew people were rioting because he was dead.

BUT AS A Southern child growing up in a working-class, white and illiberal milieu, the only thing I knew about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was that he was not afforded the commonly benign label of "colored" and certainly not the formal moniker of "Negro" -- which you only heard on the TV and radio, anyway.

I had heard that he was something called a "communiss."

What I would find out later -- as I grew in knowledge and as my world grew in size and scope -- was that Martin Luther King Jr,. died not only so that African-Americans could be free in this "land of the free," but so that I might be free, too.

We may not be totally free yet, but we're getting there. And because one man obeyed his God all the way to his own Calvary, we -- all of us, black and white -- are a lot closer than we would be otherwise.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is dedicated to remembering and mourning what happened in Memphis, Tenn., four decades ago Friday. America is a much changed country for the assassinations of King and, a mere two months later, Sen. Robert Kennedy.

That change was a profoundly tragic one from which we've yet to recover. All these years later, the wounds still bleed.

But the Big Show also celebrates a momentous life -- and the profound difference it made in this country and in the world.

On this week's program, you won't hear me getting in the way of the music . . . or the message. Thus, I'll publish this week's playlist below.

Enjoy the show.

Say It (Over and Over Again)
John Coltrane Quartet
w/ McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (bass),
Elvin Jones (drums)
1962

It Feels Like Rain
Aaron Neville
1991

Help Us, Somebody
Chris Thomas
1990

The Sky Is Crying
Elmore James
1960

Keep On Pushing
Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions
1964

Redemption Song
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
2003

Memphis Blues Again
Bob Dylan
1966

Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Green Day
2004

Inner City Blues
Dirty Dozen Brass Band
2006

Don't Burn Baby
Sly & the Family Stone
1968

We Gotta Live Together
Jimi Hendrix
1970

Motherless Child
Hootie & the Blowfish
1994

Nothing Lasts
Matthew Sweet
1991

Faithful To Me (Reprise)
Jennifer Knapp
1997

Lay My Burden Down
(feat. Mavis Staples & the Dirty Dozen Brass Band)
Dr. John
2004

Forever Young
Joan Baez
1974

I have been to the mountaintop. . . .

On April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last speech, in Memphis, Tenn.

HE WAS THERE in support of striking sanitation workers, who were protesting low pay and abysmal working conditions, and his oration that night -- prophetic, some called it -- would become one of his most famous.

Forty years ago today, on April 4, 1968, a bullet ripped into King's face and neck as he stood on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel.

It was about 5:45 p.m.

Doctors pronounced him dead about an hour and 15 minutes later. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was 39 years old.

From The Washington Post:

The Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, a local minister and King friend who was there that night, believes King was forecasting his own death. "I am so certain he knew he would not get there," Kyles said. "He didn't want to say it to us, so he softened it -- that he may not get there." Later, Kyles would tell people that King "had preached himself through the fear of death."

What is often unremarked upon about that speech, however, is how resolute King was in his prescriptions for fighting the injustices suffered by the poor. He urged those at the meeting to tell their neighbors: Don't buy Coca-Cola, Sealtest milk and Wonder Bread. Up to now, only the garbage workers had been feeling pain, King noted. "Now we must kind of redistribute the pain."

The next day, King was in a good mood, almost giddy, Kyles remembered. Kyles was hosting a dinner for King at his home that evening. "I told him it was at 5 because he was never in a hurry." But when Kyles knocked on King's door, at Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, to hurry him along, King let him know he had uncovered the little ruse: He had found out the dinner was actually at 6. So they had some time, and King invited Kyles to sit down. Abernathy was there, too. King liked to eat and was anticipating a lavish soul-food feast, so he couldn't resist razzing Kyles. "I bet your wife can't cook," King told his friend. "She's too pretty."

Just to tease a little more, King asked Kyles: Didn't you just buy a new house? He then told the story of an Atlanta preacher who had purchased a big, fancy home and had King and Coretta over for dinner. "The Kool-Aid was hot, the ham was cold, the biscuits were hard," Kyles recalled King jiving. "If I go to your house and you don't have a decent dinner, I'm going to tell the networks that the Rev. Billy Kyles had a new house but couldn't afford to have a decent dinner."

It was about 5:45 when King and Kyles left the room and stepped onto the second-floor balcony. Abernathy stayed put. King leaned over the rail to gaze at a busy scene in the parking lot eight feet below, exchanging words with his young aide Jesse Jackson, among others. Kyles was just about to descend the steps, with King behind him, when he heard the shot. "And when I looked around, he had been knocked from the railing of the balcony back to the door," Kyles recalled. "I saw a gaping hole on the right side of his face."

Kyles ran back into the room and tried to call for an ambulance, but no one at the motel switchboard answered. He took a bedspread and draped it over King's body.

King was pronounced dead at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph's Hospital.

"Forty years ago, I had no words to express my feelings; I had stepped away from myself," recalled Kyles, now 73, the pastor at Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis. "Forty years later I still have no words to describe my feelings."

For years, Kyles struggled with an internal question: "Why was I there?" And at some point, he can't remember when, "God revealed to me, I was there to be a witness. Crucifixions have to have a witness."

Ye shall know them by their T-shirts

con·ser·va·tism \kən-ˈsər-və-ˌti-zəm\ n (1832) 1 capitalized a: the principles and policies of a Conservative party b: the Conservative party

2a: disposition in politics to preserve what is established b: a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change; specifically : such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (as retirement income or health-care coverage)

3: the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

SUPPOSE A SPACE ALIEN landed somewhere in these United States tomorrow and began studying our culture, our media and our politics.

Considering what passes for "conservative thought" at the beginning of these new Dark Ages -- and assuming the existence of an English-to-Zorkonian version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary -- our visitor might end up making some very wrong assumptions about what America has been all about these past 232 years.

And he'd probably report back to the home planet that there's this embattled fellow in Chicago, name of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who is a prophet sent from God and suffering much the same fate as his Old Testament namesake from this earthling spiritual guidebook -- "The Bible," it is called.

He would relay that "conservatives" are a fierce and violent lot who apparently hate everyone and everything, seek to kill as many real or imagined "enemies" as possible and are prone to being tendentious braggarts. Also, the Zorkonians would learn -- to their utter horror -- that conservatives' artistic and cultural output resembles Klingon opera as much as anything

And these "conservatives" even may harbor a taste for gagh, not to mention bloodwine.

Likewise, the scout from Zorkon would report that the United States' "conservative" goverment apparently is dedicated to ceaseless war and employs torture against enemy prisoners, a practice widely celebrated by American conservatives.

Great. These earthling ideologues seem to harbor all the worst traits of the Klingons and the Cardassians.

Preliminary recommendation: A mandatory quarantine of Earth, with no outside contact permitted. Also, continue close observation; reserve the right to launch tactical photon-torpedo strikes against the "United States" region if the Americans develop warp-propulsion technology.

IF A SPACE ALIEN came down from the heavens tomorrow, could we -- would we -- blame him for thinking such about our country seven years into the Shameful Administration? Could the last two or three thoughtful conservatives blame a total outsider for equating their political philosophy with intellectual softness, rhetorical inconsistency and rank barbarism?

Can a movement whose proud members are apt to decry legal abortion while defending waterboarding while wearing a "Rope. Tree. Journalist" T-shirt be taken seriously . . . even a little bit?

I don't think so. Not unless one is a political and cultural anthropologist conducting a study on how modern conservatism got from William F. Buckley to Benito Mussolini (with a dash of Mao Zedong-style cultism thrown in) in 50 short years.

I SUPPOSE, at this point, I could launch into multiple pull quotes from multiple outrageous columns by Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Jonah Goldberg or any number of lesser lights from the farm teams of "conservative" punditry.

Oh, what the hell. How about just a couple from WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, who doesn't just tolerate waterboarding -- he hearts it:

It was used successfully to learn about terrorist operations planned by two of al-Qaida's top operatives – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, involved in the planning of the 9/11 attack, and Abu Zubaida, another leader of the terrorist organization.

Apparently both of these mass killers endured many hours of coercive interrogations without talking. But they sung like canaries after a few seconds of waterboarding.

In both cases, there is reason to believe planned terrorist attacks were foiled as a result of this technique.

Nevertheless, there is a growing chorus of opposition against any further use of waterboarding in similar or even more dire scenarios.

Let's use our heads for a minute.

Imagine American law enforcement or military authorities have captured a terrorist mastermind who has knowledge about an imminent nuclear detonation in an unknown American city. He knows the time, the location and the details about the warhead.

The bomb could be going off at any minute. It could kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Would you really want waterboarding to be banned under all circumstances? What alternatives would you suggest for quick results? Should we call in top negotiators from the State Department? Should we play loud rap music? Should we force the prisoner to listen to Hillary Rodham Clinton speeches?

While I also find those experiences unpleasant, I don't think they would produce the needed results in time to defuse the bomb.

Let's not tie the hands of future Jack Bauers who will need to do what they have to do to save lives.

I personally think Mohammed and Zubaida got off way too easy with waterboarding.

I would personally have performed far more unpleasant procedures on them without a twinge of guilt in my conscience. Real torture techniques would have been appropriate in both cases.

BUT ABORTION, on the other hand, is icky and an abrogation of God-given rights:

Tell me, where is due process for those unborn children sentenced to death while still in the womb?

Some abortion advocates have tried to suggest that Roe v. Wade – an arbitrary and capricious attempt by the Supreme Court to exceed its constitutional limitations and legislate – is itself the due process for unborn babies.

Once again, however, the Constitution trumps that poor excuse for an argument.

"Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."

Roe v. Wade is, thus, a sham – a house of cards. It was an artificial attempt to make abortion a right by citing a "right of privacy" that is itself nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Roe v. Wade created rights where none existed and abrogated those that were enshrined as unalienable.

I rest my case.

But I will not rest entirely until this nation is awakened to abortion as both a national tragedy as well as a constitutional threat to all of our God-given rights – as well as an endangerment to the lives and liberties of our posterity.

OBVIOUSLY, Joseph Farah is just making this s*** up as he goes.

By what stretch of what dictionary-conservative (as opposed to "Do what thou wilt" fascistic "conservatism") definition does someone reason that God-given rights apply more to cute little fetuses than scum-sucking Islamic terrorists?

If the rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution emanated from a Creator -- as went the Founders' contention -- by what authority do today's addle-minded right-wingers proclaim that God-given rights and God-bestowed dignity is the birthright of unborn baby and me, but maybe not thee?

They proclaim it by their own authority, that's how. Run like hell when you see folks with hate in their eyes and blood on their hands trying to wrap the Almighty in an American flag.

Run, because there's no unbridgable difference between them and European fascists of old. Run, for while they love to decry hip-hop culture and ghetto thuggery, they emblazon a Caucasian version of "tha gangsta life" on their "conservative" apparel and try to rebrand a Mad Dog philosophy as Chardonnay and canapés.

Mordor and mammon: They go together like fire and brimstone. What a conservative concept.


HAT TIP: Catholic and Enjoying It

Does Planned Parenthood sell blog condoms?

Kyle Michaelis over at the New Nebraska Network blog is upset that some Nebraska and Iowa Republican congressmen are upset over an explicit Planned Parenthood website aimed at teen-agers.

And he's doubly upset that the Omaha World-Herald, in reporting the story, didn't name the site -- TeenWire.com:

Yesterday's Omaha World-Herald included a cheap attack on a sexual education website for teenagers run by Planned Parenthood. Probably the worst thing about the front-page article - other than the complete idiocy, opportunism, and childishness of Nebraska's Republican Congressmen - is that the World-Herald never even gave the name of the website or published its internet address so readers could judge it for themselves.

IT'S PRETTY BASIC JOURNALISM to name what you're talking about, so you won't find me defending the silly refusal to identify TeenWire.com. Facts are facts, and newspapers ought not be in the business of deleting one of the "five W's" -- who, what, when, where, why -- because an editor was prone to the vapors.

But neither am I a fan of knee-jerk "progressives" who never miss an opportunity to further an unreflective party line by slinging intolerant invective in the name of "tolerance." Like this, for example:

The site in question is TeenWire.com. It's a shame the World-Herald would allow the site to be insulted like this without even giving it a name and listing its address. But, then those few young people who read the World-Herald might actually be able to get some real information about safe and responsible sexual health. Of course, we wouldn't want that.

(snip)

The facts - and the website - speak for themselves. Rather than listening to those, the World-Herald listened to four jackass Republican Congressmen who are desperate for some good press and resorting to cheap shots at an easy target.

As for Terry, Fortenberry, and Smith - and their even more contemptible counterpart from Iowa - their attack on this website and their continued support for this failed experiment in abstinence-only education are simply unforgivable.

They are pandering to the far right-wing, embracing ignorance that is killing Nebraska teenagers. There is no justice for a crime and a sin so ugly and reprehensible - at least, not in this lifetime.

WHAT? NO SLURS against the Catholic Church while he was at it? No obligatory "Get your rosaries off women's ovaries" mantra?

Then again, if you're so far over the top that you're shrieking about "embracing ignorance that is killing Nebraska teenagers" and "no justice for a crime and sin so ugly and reprehensible," a little gratuitous Papist bashing would just be anticlimactic.

But I am curious about something.

If there's "no justice" for the "crime and sin" (yadda yadda yadda) of "pandering" to GOP congressmen upset over an explicit and tacky website aimed at teens, how, then, are we to view a group that's willing to earmark donations specifically for ridding the world of African-Americans?

I think two words would describe such a group -- "racist" and "genocidal." Come to think of it, two more words would describe such a group . . . "Planned Parenthood." You know, the people the New Nebraska Network seems to be so fond of.

Watch these videos produced by The Advocate, a magazine published by a pro-life student group at UCLA, and be horrified. Unless, of course, you're Kyle Michaelis.

The smoke of Satan. . . .

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio.
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis,
Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute, in infernum detrude.
Amen.

This could have been my first NC-17 post if I had embedded the video depicting what's being exhibited at the Dommuseum in Vienna. That smutty "art" is being exhibited in some European museum isn't, in itself, exceptional.

What's exceptional is when smutty art -- including depictions of the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy and a naked Roman soldier performing a sex act on the crucified Christ -- is the focus of an exhibit at the art museum of the Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen. Well, it used to be exceptional -- back when the faithful still recited the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel at the end of every Mass.

From United Press International:

The Dommuseum in Vienna, the art gallery attached to the historic Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen, is running an exhibition of works by a self-avowed Marxist atheist, titled "Religion, Flesh and Power," that includes depictions of explicit homosexual sex acts. Prominent among the works is a rendition of the Last Supper with Christ and His Apostles depicted as homosexuals engaged in an orgy.

Another work depicts Christ on the cross without a face but with uncovered genitals. The Last Supper rendition is displayed in a prominent place near the entrance to the exhibition, LifeSiteNews.com reported Wednesday.

Dommuseum Director Bernhard Böhler said visitors asked "in a more or less emotional way" why the Apostles are depicted copulating. According to the director, the artist responded, "There were no women around."

AND AT THE DOMMUSEUM, one might suppose there are no actual Christians around. Next door to the cathedral. Literally under the nose of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. Who needs to redecorate his museum with a can of lighter fluid and a match.

It is said that Pope Leo XIII composed the prayer to St. Michael in 1896 after receiving a vision of how Satan would attack the Church for roughly 100 years, beginning in the 20th century. I think we've been getting a damned good idea of why Leo XIII went as pale as a corpse and rushed to his office to compose the prayer, which he ordered recited after every Catholic Mass.

That practice ended in 1965, after the Second Vatican Council's revision of the liturgy.

Oops.

If Muslims get apoplectic about cartoons of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, Christians have every cause to get three times more exercised over this blasphemy aimed at God Himself. God will deal with the Marxist, atheist artist, Vienna's Alfred Hrdlicka.

Pope Benedict XVI needs to deal with Schönborn, the prelate who allowed this sacrilege -- this scandal -- on his watch, at his cathedral, in its art museum.

Now.

HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

Skip explains the fundamentals

If you want a succinct, truthful answer about what ails Louisiana, you don't go to a politician. Politicians lie for a living because they have to -- because you can't handle the truth.

No, if you want to find out what's wrong with Louisiana -- what's wrong with it at its core, and what always has been wrong with it -- you go to someone who has to face facts or end up out of a job. You go to an old baseball coach.

You go to one of the best baseball coaches ever.

And, during the course of a 225 magazine profile of LSU's retiring AD, Skip Bertman -- the man with five College World Series titles on his resume -- the old coach tells us the problem with Looziana:

Months before his first game in purple and gold, Bertman met with Broadhead with a plan to build bigger crowds. He wanted to install 100 regular chair back seats behind home plate.

“Jeez, Skip, that costs a lot of money,” the A.D. said.

“No, I’m going to make money,” Bertman shot back. “The seats cost $40, and I’m going to sell them for $100.”

Eventually Broadhead conceded. Bertman went on to double attendance that first year (and for several years afterward until LSU led the nation in attendance his final six seasons). “Broadhead came back at the end of the season and said, ‘Why don’t you put in some more?’” Bertman recalls with a sly smile.

For a former catcher, Bertman acts an awful lot like a closer. He had to do an incredible amount of convincing that first season, and years later his clashes with Joe Dean became underground legends in LSU circles. In a lot of ways he still believes his mission is to change minds. And he will need that instinct as a fundraiser, because, 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.

“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.

NOBODY'S SAID it better. Nobody.

"Our goal is to be average?"

Desperately seeking messiahs

America, a nation that has forgotten both God and common sense, busies itself this electoral "silly season" looking for messiahs in all the wrong places.

ON THE LEFT, some of Sen. Barack Obama's sillier supporters seem to think he, if only we elect him president, might lead us to the Promised Land. After all, the man is black (and white!), he's cool under fire and he gives a hell of a speech.

Meanwhile, on the right, some of the sillier members of a stupid party are looking into the fever swamps of Louisiana for their messiah. After all, the state's new governor, Bobby Jindal, is brown, he's a scary-smart policy wonk and he's conservative, dammit . . . whatever "conservative" happens to mean this month.

Now, silly young people designing silly faux-religious icons with Obama's serene visage replacing that of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint are way up there on the silly-o-meter.

And sillier yet might be author Alice Walker writing columns in British newspapers with prose like "He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill."

BUT I AM NOT convinced that, for all its nuttery, the Obama worship is any crazier than that of Jindal by the GOP chattering classes. I mean, get a load of this by Mary Katharine Ham on Townhall.com:

There once was a man who campaigned on a message of hope and change. In his victory speech he promised never to succumb to a worldview in which “lobbyists begin to look larger and the people begin to look smaller.” In exchange, he asked voters to help him “defeat cynicism” by believing in him and themselves.

For schools, for government, for business, “change is not just on the way . . . Change begins tonight,” he proclaimed, his quick grin and young family breathing life back into a process gone sour, his unique life story bringing voters from unexpected backgrounds.

Sound familiar? It should. You’ve heard the media tell the story a thousand times a day. They’re just telling it about the wrong guy.

These days, Bobby Jindal is working for change in a city that could eat the ethical foibles of Obama’s Chicago for breakfast, like so many shrimp upon a bed of grits. Elected governor of Louisiana in 2007, he replaced the politically deflated Kathleen Blanco, who did not seek reelection.

Jindal is keenly aware of the problematic legacy he inherits. Inside Huey Long’s sky-scraping capital building, “I wonder what crimes were committed here?” is a not infrequent visitor question, posed not quite jokingly. The state’s political history is fraught with the kind of men Southerners often euphemistically call “colorful,” who given proper federal investigation, end up being very uneuphemistically corrupt.

READY TO PUKE? No? Well hang on, then. Read this and, soon enough, you'll be purging like a New York model after a cheesecake binge:

He’s also aware of the opportunity his state offers. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were talked about, on a national level, as revelations of persistent poverty in America. In Louisiana, they were a reminder, too, of the political perfidy that’s perpetuated it.

“Shame on us if all we build is what was here before,” Jindal told a small group of bloggers at the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge last week.

Unwilling to accept Louisiana as it was — one of the most uneducated, unethical, and unhealthy states in the union — Jindal made ethics reform his first priority, working on the theory that being a national punchline doesn’t draw business investment.

The 36-year-old governor slid into a January special legislative session on the strength of his political capital and came out with one of the strongest ethics reform packages in a nation awash with attempts at reform.

(snip)

To Jindal, the big-government response to Hurricane Katrina betrayed conservatives’ lack of confidence in their own ideas, and his first three months in office have gone a long way toward showing he has all the courage of conviction he needs.

The Republican Party remains the party of ideas in Louisiana, under Jindal’s leadership. And, as the unabashed policy wonk runs through four-point plan after four-point plan in his detailed recipe for Cajun-style reform, his 3-year-old son big-wheeling through the foyer of the governor’s mansion, one can’t help but think, “So this is what real change looks like.”

OH. PUH. LEEZE. Just because the Democrats of Louisiana are, indeed, sad specimens it does not therefore follow that the state's Republicans -- headed by Jindal or no -- are exactly a bunch of Einsteins.

Before Jindal's election, about the biggest idea the Louisiana GOP had was "For a good time, call Wendy Cortez." And we see where that got U.S. Sen. David Vitter.

Then there's this bit of political idolatry from James P. Lucier, writing in The Wall Street Journal:

No, this is the time for change, real change. This is a time for someone whom everybody knows to be the rising star of the GOP, the new governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal.

And what a governor! Having taken office in January, after winning 54% of the vote in the open-field primary, Mr. Jindal immediately called a special session of the legislature and persuaded them to pass his 64-point agenda for ethics reform. They said ethics reform couldn't be done in Louisiana--a state whose reputation as a cesspool is legendary--but he did it in a two-week session. Now he's calling a second special session to pass the tax cuts necessary to jump-start the post-Katrina economy in his state.

I'M MIDDLE-AGED, I'm too fat, and I have a bad knee. If I went back home to touch the hem of my gubna's bidness suit, do you think I could be thin, young and have my lost hair back?

I didn't think so.

But it seems like Rebubbacans -- in some cases, the same ones who've been so aghast at the messianism of the Cult of Obama -- lust to bestow no less a plethora of mythical, wonder-working powers upon their own Great Brown Hope.

And the Rebubbacans' "theological proofs" are even more scanty than the Cult of Obama's. After all, the Louisiana savior merely jumped from wonkdom to wonkdom before losing to Kathleen Blanco in the 2003 gubernatorial race, then served an undistinguished term and a half in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Now, let me return to some of that Ham-handed purple prose on Townhall.com.

Jindal is the GOP messiah because he's going to fix "one of the most uneducated, unethical, and unhealthy states in the union." Oh, yes. He will do this despite being born, raised, educated and culturally assimilated in "one of the most uneducated, unethical, and unhealthy states in the union."

See, Bobby Jindal went to my old high school -- Baton Rouge Magnet High -- almost a decade after I did. It was -- and is -- an island of excellence established, staffed and funded by the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, a governmental body Louisiana Republicans just love to hate . . . and which they regularly try to deny tax revenue because it's irredeemably awful, don't you know?

SO WHAT WE HAVE is the Rebubbacans' new messiah, educated by a school system that oughtn't have been able to properly educate a GOP savior . . . because it had not yet been healed by his policy touch. After all, Jindal was still in his messianic-formation program -- in that Louisiana public school.

In a school system many white Baton Rougeans, many of them loyal Rebubbacans, were so busy fleeing.

Got that?

Oops.

What kind of Republican messiah is this who can arise from unhealthy, unethical and uneducated backwardness? Probably an unneeded one. To steal a line from that other messiah, Louisianians themselves are the change they've been waiting for.

All they've needed all along is to just do it.

Right there in Baton Rouge, ordinary citizens and their "broken" institutions already have, after all, turned out a real-life political savior. Go figure.

Locked and loaded for the news

This has New Orleans written all over it. "This" being a look back at one of the most creative, entertaining and notorious radio news operations ever to hit the amplitude-modulated airwaves "back there then."

ONLY THING IS, this was in Detroit. Or, more precisely, in Windsor, Ontario, at the Big 8, CKLW . . . the Top-40 blowtorch of the Motor City, where nobody tuned out when 20/20 News came on at 20 till and 20 past the hour.

And since it seems that New Orleans is the New Detroit -- particularly in deadly mayhem -- it just may be that the Crescent City is a 20/20 News kind of town.

I can't say I approve of the wild and woolly 20/20 ethos -- though I will admit to being greatly entertained by it, in a guilty sort of manner -- but I will say that if a New Orleans radio station tried it today in K-Ville, it just might make money as fast as Murdertown's blood-stained purveyors of rigor mortis crank out fresh corpses for the coroner's cadaver-stackin' toe-tag team.

Just ahead of much more music on Revolution 21, I'm the Mighty Favog . . . 20/20 News.

HAT TIP: Classic Rock FM.

Why do you think they call it 'screwed'?

The woebegone account that follows, as published Sunday in the Omaha World-Herald, might be the most depressing -- and infuriating -- thing you read all day. Consider this fair warning.

Now, on to a tale of complete cultural meltdown:

Both Keyana and her mom, Samona Jones, were pregnant before high school. Samona was 13; Keyana, 14.

Samona dropped out of eighth grade, never married and had more babies.

Keyana adores her mom but dreams of a different life. She wants to travel. Move to a bigger city. Maybe become a lawyer.

She can't do that with a house full of kids.

"Who's got my brush?" Samona yells.

Today mom and daughter are both getting ready.

Keyana is taking daughter Lauren for her 18-month well checkup.

Samona also is seeing a doctor. She's 31 and soon to deliver her 12th child.

(snip)

And more than 75 percent of blacks in Douglas County who gave birth were not married. That compares with 24 percent for whites and about 49 percent for Hispanics.

In 2002, the most recent year for which comparisons are available, the Omaha area ranked seventh worst in teen births among blacks. More than 22 percent of blacks who had babies were teens, a share that beat New Orleans and Chicago.

Of about 800 births to Douglas County teens in 2007, 36 percent, or 283, were to black teens. Overall, the county's population is about 13 percent black.

Says Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: "As long as half of black families with children under 18 are headed by a lone female and as long as a quarter of young black males who are out of prison and out of school are not even looking for work, the poverty numbers for blacks are not going to come down much, no matter how good the economy is and no matter what new social programs the politicians try."

Teenage pregnancy has become so accepted, sometimes even planned, that a counseling center in north Omaha dropped crisis from its name. Ads now emphasize its quality medical professionals.

I DON'T THINK you can overstress how dysfunctional every aspect of life has become among this country's underclass. Of course, it always has been thus. Now it's that and the kitchen sink.

Not only that, but I don't think you can overstress how it also undermines the foundations of the larger society. For example, the popular culture's glorification -- in its never-ending quest for "edginess," fashion points and amoral profit -- of the "gangsta" and hip-hop culture.

To an extent, the relative wealth of "middle-class, white America" counteracts some of the worst consequences of a chaotic embrace of thuggery, baby-mamas and baby-daddies. But it can't not steadily undermine those things that make a bourgeois life possible in a modern society -- self-restraint, education, a strong work ethic, the support of a relatively cohesive family unit.

Sooner or later, with the foundation undermined, our societal house will collapse upon itself. It can't not happen.

Again, from the World-Herald:

The Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reports that a baby is nine times more likely to grow up poor if mom is unmarried, a teen and a high school dropout than if none of those factors exists.

Bottom line, says the Children's Defense Fund, odds are greater that poor children will lag in health and educational achievement. They're more likely to get in trouble with the law.

Omaha suffers from a toxic poverty blend that goes beyond money woes, said Franklin Thompson, a city councilman who teaches about race at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

He said the black community is gripped by a "culture of poverty" in which the so-called gangsta side of hip-hop marketing brainwashes youngsters into believing, for example, that speaking intelligently is "acting white."

So encompassing is the culture that those in it settle for less and adapt to an underclass lifestyle, Thompson said.

A strong generation of upwardly mobile minorities could help reverse such self-destruction with role modeling.

But, Thompson said, "Omaha lacks a sizable homegrown black middle class to help mentor children and undo some of the damage that has been done."

WHEN FACED WITH the complete collapse of a social structure -- when deviance become normative, in societal terms -- it seems to me that we have nothing in our secular civic or governmental toolboxes that can effectively address the problem.

We are shooting spitballs at Godzilla. All we can do -- even with model public-policy initiatives, superior schools and effective social-welfare programs -- is chip away at the edges of intractable poverty and deviance. Through heroic effort, both by the community at large and by the striving poor themselves, a few might be saved from the abyss.

And there goes Tokyo. Still.

Of course, it nevertheless is the duty of the larger society -- despite the grave challenges -- to make the effort. It's our duty to provide social services, formulate better policies and provide first-rate public schools.

It's our duty to do that if only a single child, in the end, might escape to a better life. But we have to recognize it's not enough. Our best social-welfare and policy tools can, at best, only provide a firm foundation for some future "killer application."

IRONICALLY, that "killer app"-- the societal "troop surge," if you will -- is the only weapon we have left . . . or at least the only one we have left with wonder-working power.

It's the "blood of the Lamb." It's a massive outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It's that whole triune God thing, via its local distributor, the church.

If it's sin that makes you stupid -- and I think rutting like jackrabbits out of wedlock historically has been considered sinful, not to mention societally disruptive -- we need something that overcomes the power of sin. I humbly would submit that's the power of God.

And, unfortunately, that's about the most unacceptable notion of all in these troubled times. Even within large swaths of the church itself, alas.

I LOOK AT the sad example of Keyana and Samona Jones, and I am tempted to think all is lost. That there is no hope.

But on the other hand, I also am fairly confident that the seemingly hopeless conundrum of our inner cities could be brought to heel in a generation or two. All we would need is a sizable number of Jesuits under the age of 90 who still believed in a God that actually mattered.

We're screwed.

Barring a miracle, of course. Fortunately, as an Easter people, miracles are something we have come to rely upon . . . and regularly receive.

The third hosing is the charm

First comes Katrina and a demonstration of just how well the feds build levees and floodwalls.

Then comes the unending bureaucratic nightmare involved in trying to rebuild what Uncle Sam destroyed.

And just when you think you see that light at the end of the tunnel . . . it turns out to be the 8:15 to Houston, it has a full head of steam, and the engineer is drunk at the throttle.

That's right boys and girls, the Road Home program bites Louisianians in the ass yet again, as reported here by The Associated Press:

Imagine that your home was reduced to mold-covered wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government provided-trailer that gives off formaldehyde fumes you finally win a federal grant.

Then a collector announces that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

For thousands of Katrina victims, this may be a reality.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

The contractor, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., revealed the extent of the overpayments when it issued a March 11 request for bids from companies willing to handle "approximately 1,000 to 5,000 cases that will necessitate collection effort."

The bid invitation said: "The average amount to be collected is estimated to be approximately $35,000, but in some cases may be as high as $100,000 to $150,000."

The biggest grant amount allowed by the Road Home program is $150,000, so ICF believes it paid some recipients the maximum when they should not have received a penny. If ICF's highest estimate of 5,000 collection cases — overpaid by an average of $35,000 — proves to be true, that means applicants will have to pay back a total of $175 million.

One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week. The program, which has come to symbolize the lurching Katrina recovery effort, has $11 billion in federal funds.

ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann said in an e-mail Friday that the overpayment recovery effort was made inevitable when insurance and other aid to Katrina victims was eventually measured against what an applicant received from the Road Home program.

Brann said there was a sense of urgency in paying Road Home applicants, and ICF knew applicants might eventually have to return some money.

"The choice was either to process grants immediately or wait until the March 2008 deadline (for submitting Road Home applications) before disbursing any funds," Brann said in her e-mail.

Brann pointed out that 5,000 collections cases would represent a 4-percent error rate for the Road Home that is "quite good for large federal programs."

EVERY TIME I try to formulate a comment on this, I just keep falling into black-hearted, seeing-red fury and thoughts that mass violence might be an appropriate response, given that this follows nearly two years of red tape, bureaucratic bungling and extreme delays in getting compensation for anyone.

James Kunstler would name -- has named, actually -- a blog after just the sort of mess contractor ICF has made the Road Home program into. And now this.

And the hell of it is, professional liars (or so it would seem, at least) employed by the contractor expect us to believe the company has done a bang-up job with the whole thing.

If I'm Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, here's my response: I call all the top ICF executives to Baton Rouge for "urgent consultations" on the program. Make it mandatory that all the top executives of the company attend to "hash things out."

When they arrive at the governor's office for the meeting, state troopers immediately take them into custody. Fraud charges are filed. Bail is denied.

And then the state prosecutes with all the speed ICF has exhibited in paying out awards to flooded-out Louisiana homeowners. As those execs sit in the general population of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.

Justice requires it.

Will cell-phone jones fry your brain?

If a prominent British cancer expert is right, young people are doomed. They basically live life with microwave ovens permanently attached to their ears.

The scary story from London is in today's Independent (and note that the British term "mobile phone" equals the American term "cell phone"):

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade.

TALK ABOUT your sobering articles. I now am so glad that I have a big enough aversion to the telephone in general that I've never wanted to have a cell phone around, except for emergencies. Almost never use one of the damn things.

But I do fear for all the young people I know, for whom the cell-phone jones hardly could be more intractable than those for meth or nicotine. You just don't need to be that bloody "connected" -- you just don't.

There is value in being alone with your thoughts. That is, beyond reducing one's brain-cancer risk.

And the brain-cancer thing is horrific struff indeed. My father died of brain cancer. You don't want to go that way . . . and you don't want to see a loved one go that way.

Trust me on this one.

Hot boudin . . . cold cush cush! C'mon Tigers, shoot, shoot, shoot!

State legislatures need to come with "black box" warnings, much like pharmaceuticals with potentially deadly side effects -- when stupid people get a hold of them, really bad things can happen.

And with Ernest Wooten in occupying a desk in the Louisiana House, that black box ought to cover an entire side of the 34-story state capitol. This story in the Baton Rouge Advocate is scary testimony to that:

Proposed state legislation would make it legal for some students and faculty to carry handguns on college campuses as a “deterrent” against the wave of college shootings in Baton Rouge and nationwide.

State Rep. Ernest Wooten, R-Belle Chasse, is proposing the controversial bill that could arm more people on campuses from dormitories to classrooms.

“We’ve got a problem,” Wooten said, “and maybe it’ll be a deterrent if one of these disturbed persons or whackos thinks, ‘If I go in shooting, they may shoot back.’”

In the last few months, two international students at LSU were murdered in their on-campus apartment. Weeks later, a Louisiana Technical College student in Baton Rouge murdered two students in a classroom before killing herself.

The recent string of college murders nationwide began with the rampage murders of 33 Virginia Tech students last year.

State Commissioner of Higher Education Joseph Savoie said Wooten’s proposal is going in the wrong direction. There should be fewer guns at colleges, not more, Savoie said.

Too many young people are still emotional and immature when it comes to firearms, he said, noting that campuses have already beefed up security measures statewide.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to arm a bunch of excitable students,” Savoie said.

Wooten’s House Bill 199 would make it legal to carry licensed concealed handguns on all state colleges, from technical schools to universities.

Not only that, but the bill also would forbid colleges from enacting policies to limit the rights of gun owners from carrying concealed handguns on campuses.

FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. GOD. I mean, really. Is there really anybody with half a brain who thinks that it would be a good thing to have a bunch of college kids packing heat?

Really?

Obviously, not all college kids are the same, and not all are excitable doofuses. On the other hand, if we can't always trust students to do something as simple as behave at football games -- or not drink themselves into oblivion long before their 21st birthdays -- isn't it pretty safe to assume it's probably not a good idea to arm a bunch of kids who still await maturation of the risk-aversion part of their brains?

College bars have double-drunk Tuesdays for a reason, people. It's called "getting rich."

Can't wait until all the boys from Kappa Tappa Kegga -- armed to the teeth, because it's the "cool" thing to be -- stream out of Friday-afternoon classes and into a Friday-night alcoholic haze. Maybe if Rep. Wooten is lucky, one of them will accidentally shoot and kill America's Next Campus Shooter.

Or maybe they'll just kill some poor Phi Beta Kappa as they show off their chrome-plated manhood while trying to impress some girl.

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it: Wooten thinks pistol-packing collegians would be a "deterrent" to the next Seung-Hui Cho.

“We’ve got a problem,” Wooten said in The Advocate story, “and maybe it’ll be a deterrent if one of these disturbed persons or whackos thinks, ‘If I go in shooting, they may shoot back.’”

Uhhhhhh . . . why would that be, when all the recent campus shooters ended their rampages by putting a bullet IN THEIR OWN HEADS? For future reference, the threat of death is no deterrent to suicidal whackos.

The key word being "whacko" . . . or "suicidal" -- take your pick.

Unfortunately, neither is stupidity a deterrent for some people seeking public office . . . or the voters who put them there. It really doesn't take a MENSA candidate to figure out that if you want more armed people on campus to deal with crazed killers, you hire more campus cops.

It's as simple as that. Unless you're paid to make the laws.

3 Chords & the Truth: Squiggles in the smoke

Inspired by the unveiling Friday of the oldest known sound recording -- dating back to 1860 -- I decided to record this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth with a phonautograph, just like the one French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville used to make those first "records" of sound so long ago.

ALL IT TOOK was a functioning phonautograph, "borrowed" from a museum, and 3,000 feet of soot-covered rag paper. What you hear on the Big Show this week emanates from only the finest scratchings onto the sooty medium, faithfully reproduced by a top-secret laboratory process.

I think it came out all right, if I do say so myself.

You be the judge. It's hip, it's now, it's happenin' . . . and it's historical, too.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, is what it is. Be there. Aloha.

Taking graft for granite?

You can call this little story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune proof that even a stone-cold kook can swing a sweetheart deal in exchange for a little sumpin' sumpin'.

You know what I'm sayin', dog?

Mayor Ray Nagin told reporters Tuesday that he and his family have done nothing wrong in landing a deal to install granite countertops for four local Home Depot stores as the giant retailer was negotiating a tax break and other concessions from the city for a planned new store in Central City.

In a radio interview, Nagin said a Sunday Times-Picayune article describing the arrangement was "deceptively written to suggest that there was something unethical being done."

Before the article appeared, the mayor declined on multiple occasions to comment on his role in Stone Age LLC, a company he and his sons Jeremy, 23, and Jarin, 21, formed in 2005. On Tuesday, he described himself as the company's "financier" but otherwise shed little light on his involvement in the firm or its dealings with Home Depot.

Dane Ciolino, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes in ethics questions, said Nagin might have violated state ethics laws that bar city officials from being paid by entities that have or seek "business or financial relationships" with the city. Home Depot's efforts to purchase a group of streets from the city would meet that definition, Ciolino said.

Ciolino said the prohibition would be triggered only if Nagin owns a share of Stone Age totaling 25 percent or more.

Nagin on Tuesday declined to specify his stake in the firm.

"My sons own the majority of the company, I basically -- you know, it's my sons' -- so I'm pretty much the financier for the company," Nagin said.

In response to another question, he replied: "I own less than a majority of the company. My wife and I own a percentage of the company."

Asked the size of the percentage, Nagin said, "I'm not getting into that."

State records list Nagin and his two sons as the company's three members. The law does not require ownership shares to be divulged.

Nagin also was asked Tuesday about his appearance, listed on his 2007 planner, at a meeting with Home Depot officials at Stone Age's offices in February 2007. Stone Age landed the Home Depot installation deal two months later.

Four Songs: Signing off

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I'm talking about the bite-sized offering from the Revolution 21 empire, Four Songs. Obviously, you had a different opinion.

And Four Songs is no more. The bottom line is that it didn't increase listenership. Thus, there's no point in continuing. So there you go.

The other audio offering from Revolution 21, 3 Chords & the Truth, will be sticking around. For now.

I'm doing a lot of reassessing nowadays. I had thought there was an opening for a "Catholic" media effort that was cultural in focus, rather than explicitly apologetic and rooted deep in the Catholic ghetto. Now I am not so sure, because I have come to believe that Christians -- particularly Catholics -- just don't "get it."

I don't think Christians, as a whole, grasp the importance of engaging the culture and trying to bend it -- even if it's just by a little -- via means other than voting for Republican shysters (How has that worked out for you so far?) and staging "sound-and-fury" protests and boycotts of all manner of infidel crapola.

Again, how's that working out for you?

Catholics and other Christians have become known primarily for what we're against. No one knows what we're for . . . including us, at least a lot of the time.

Trouble is, we say we serve a Savior who got Himself crucified for what he was for. Because of Who He said He was.

Well, Catholics, you can have your ghetto. Delude yourselves about the tremendous impact you've had on American culture . . . as everything you allege you stand for gets shoved further and further into the "lunatic-fringe" margins of American society.

Me, I'm going to keep trying to find a way to do what I do while maintaining a clear conscience. And I'm going to try to do it while being who and what I am. Above all, that would be Catholic.

And I don't know how that's going to work out.

Dial 'S' for stupid

Hi, you've reached the voice mail of Ruben the Robber. I'm not available to hold up your place of business right now, but if you leave your name and address at the beep, I'll be over to take your money and cap yo' ass as soon as possible.

Have a nice day, homes.

BEEEEEEEEEEEP!

Yes, stick-up artists on the go now rely on callbacks to more efficiently relieve marks of their hard-earned cash . . . sort of like "If you've got the money, honey, give me a ring-a-ding-ding."

Chicago police say Ruben the alleged robber couldn't wait around all day for a muffler-shop manager -- the guy who could let him into a safe where the "big money" was -- so he left his cell-phone number with some shop employees Monday, along with strict instructions to call him when the manager got back.

AND CALL the would-be victims did . . . following the strict instructions of police officers. But unfortunately for the suspected dial-a-crook, waiting cops had no intention of letting him have that "big money" when he showed up.

They did let him have a slug in the leg, however.

I'm not making this up. Look, it's in the Chicago Tribune:

Ruben Zarate of the 5100 of West Schubert Avenue was charged Tuesday with attempted armed robbery and aggravated assault of a police officer, the Cook County state's attorney's office said.

The incident started about 8 a.m., when the masked man, armed with a revolver, came in to Velasquez Mufflers For Less at 2600 N. Laramie Ave. and began demanding money, said Jose Sida, 37, a mechanic.

Employees told him they had little money and couldn't open the safe, so the man left two phone numbers for them to call when the owner returned with the combination, Sida said.

"He said, 'You guys better call me because otherwise I'm going to come back to shoot you,'" Sida said.

Instead, an employee called Chicago police.

Officers dressed in plainclothes came to the shop and told employees to call the man, Sida said. The man returned about noon, wearing the same mask and black clothing and officers told the employees to get to the back of the shop, Sida said.

A police source said the teen pulled a gun from his hooded sweat shirt and at least one officer opened fire. Zarate's injury was not thought to be life-threatening, the source said.