Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Focus on the Family: Water on the brain


A commentator working for the political arm of Focus on the Family thinks it would be cool for prayer-believin', right-thinkin', right-wingin' Christians to pray for some torrential, "network cameras can't see the podium rain" during Barack Obama's open-air acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention.

Yea, verily the Almighty will unto us giveth a sign, and it shall be wet.


ACTUALLY, with Stuart Shepard's video, the Almighty already hath given unto us a mighty sign: Focus on the Family has gone nuts. Loony. Goofy. 'Round the bend. Here are some details from the Colorado Springs Gazette:
Focus on the Family Action pulled a video from its Web site Monday that asked people to pray for "rain of biblical proportions" during Barack Obama's Aug. 28 appearance at Invesco Field in Denver to accept the Democratic nomination for president.

Stuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, said the video he wrote and starred in was meant to be "mildly humorous."

But complaints from about a dozen Focus members convinced the organization to pull the video, said Tom Minnery, Focus Action vice president of public policy.

"If people took it seriously, we regret it," Minnery said Monday.

"Pray for Rain" was posted July 30 and blazed its way through the Internet, scoring 20,000 page views, Shepard said.

It was one of Shepard's weekly video commentaries that appear on www.citizenlink.org, Focus Action's Web site. The general timbre of Shepard's videos is tongue-in-cheek as he examines political issues from the conservative Christian viewpoint of Focus Action.

Most of "Pray for Rain," which lasted less than three minutes, showed a lighthearted Shepard at Invesco Field asking viewers to pray for "torrential" rain during Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

"I'm talking ‘umbrella-ain't-going-to-help-you rain,'" he said on the video.

The video's point, Shepard said, is that in his view Obama has not clearly stated his stances on abortion and gay marriage, important themes within the Christian right.

"I'm still pro life, and I'm still in favor of marriage as being between one man and one woman," Shepard said in the video. "And I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree."

As for his praying for a deluge: "It's called hyperbole," Shepard said Monday. "It is meant to be humorous."

Minnery said the video was taken down because several Focus members complained that prayer shouldn't be used to bring harm on someone else.

"We are not about confusing people about prayer," Minnery said.
WELL, I GUESS confusing people about prayer would be worse than the usual menu of confusing people about the Republicans' actual commitment to fostering "Culture of Life" social aims.

Still, it's troubling that anyone at the organization -- or its political action group -- would approve such an audaciously stupid video. It also points out just how tone-deaf the evangelical politico-cultural machine has become . . . and how mindless.

Really, if the ancient Israelites had been this gobstopperingly stupid back in Old Testament times, Yahweh might have been forced to move up the Babylonian captivity by decades. Which brings up a funny thing about the Almighty and His often self-righteous posse -- a lot of the time, the Wrath o' God comes down a lot closer to home than "His people" were expecting.

Before I go, here's something I found on YouTube that struck me as just totally capturing that hysterical, "James Dobson jumps the shark" vibe Focus on the Family has been giving off for a few years now.

Enjoy.



What Mrs. San Guinary didn't know. . . .




What do kids today do without a local horror-movie host?

When I was growing up in Baton Rouge, we had Dr. Shock and Shock Theater on Channel 33, starting in 1971 or so. In Omaha, about the same time, there was Dr. San Guinary and Creature Feature on KMTV, Channel 3.

In both places, the sidekick's name was Igor.

Unfortunately for Baton Rouge, we did not have then-KMTV weathercaster Carol Scott as a special guest modeling a T-shirt. If Scott has a daughter, Omaha's now-Channel Third needs to hire her immediately.

I'm just sayin'.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Seen in the comboxes

What do we do now, Lt. Dan? Lt. Dan? Lt. Dan?


The United States has spent the last 17 years poking a stick into the Russian bear's eye, and now Georgie, and Dickie and Condi are shocked, shocked that it's done gone and ate somebody.

THIS, from an Associated Press think piece by Anne Gearan:
The Russian Bear is back, and the United States doesn't seem to be able to do much about it.

The United States saw trouble coming between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic turned nemesis, but didn't have enough leverage, focus or resolve to intervene. Even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a specialist on the old Soviet Union, may have misjudged the combustible combination of Russian grievance and ambition.

The Bush administration's assurances of solidarity with a young democracy also may have given Georgia's silver-tongued, U.S.-educated leader a little too much swagger as he picked a playground fight he never could win on his own.

(snip)

In talking points on the conflict obtained by The Associated Press, the Bush administration claims it had no specific advance warning that Georgia would try to retake control of a breakaway border region largely loyal to Russia.

That doesn't mean diplomats, intelligence analysts and others weren't worried about worsening Russian relations with Georgia over the past two years and in particular about the shoving match over ethnic conflicts left over from the Cold War.

Rice went to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to try to calm things down in July, but infuriated Russia with a public endorsement of Georgia's "territorial integrity." Saakashvili used the visit to display his close relationship with Washington, the organizing principle for an imperfectly democratic government that has collected millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

U.S. officials say they gave Saakashvili a strong warning not to put a match to the ethnic tinderboxes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, even as Rice and others took Georgia's side in public. Bush backed the Georgian claim when he visited Tbilisi in 2005.

"The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone," Bush said then.
I THINK THE PART about a secretary of state who goes to the tinder box to "calm things down" but instead starts throwing around lit matches is rich, indeed.

The problem with the neocon cabal in Washington, as it wreaks havoc at home and abroad, is it's the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Without Lieutenant Dan.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

If loving Georgia is wrong,
Bushies don't want to be right

Dick Cheney's mouth is writing checks that America's ass can't cash.

The Associated Press
has the details of exactly how moronically belligerent the Bush Administration is when it comes to sticking the United States' nose into affairs that are none of its business:
The violence appeared to show Russia's determination to subdue diminutive, U.S.-backed Georgia, even at the risk of international reproach. Russia fended off a wave of international calls to observe Georgia's cease-fire, saying it must first be assured that Georgian troops have indeed pulled back from South Ossetia.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was said to have told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that Russia's military actions in Georgia "must not go unanswered."

Cheney's press secretary, Lee Ann McBride, said the vice president spoke Sunday afternoon with Saakashvili. "The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," she said.

Cheney told Saakashvili "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community," McBride said.
IT TOOK ONE SEMESTER of getting a handle on "realpolitik" in Ramon Arango's world politics class at Louisiana State for me to know -- in about one second flat -- that foolishness like this from the American government will not turn out well for the United States.

It seems to me there are three things you'd better have a handle on before you screw with Russia:

* Are you right?

* Is it in America's vital interest?

* Is it worth the price you will pay for messing with the Russian bear in an area of its vital interest?

Looking at all three areas, you're left wondering whether President Bush and Cheney are stark, raving mad. Well, actually, I don't much wonder about that anymore. I'm sadly sure of the unfortunate answer.

First, the United States' position on this is dead wrong. I don't care how much of an "ally" Georgia is to the West, Georgians crossed a line and "
have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up."

The Georgian government violated its own cease fire to launch an all-out attack on the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Its forces killed hundreds, and probably more than 1,000, civilians . . . plus at least 10 Russian peacekeeping troops.

What the hell was Russia supposed to do? Georgian forces broke a cease fire, killing Russian troops in the process.

Then there is the Kosovo question. In 1999, NATO (meaning primarily the United States) went to war against Serbia -- thousands of miles removed from American shores -- to safeguard Kosovar autonomy and its residents' human rights, which Western nations saw as being encroached upon by Serb authorities.

Yet NATO and the United States now condemn Russia for going to war against Georgia -- on the Russian Federation's southern border -- to safeguard South Ossetian autonomy and its residents' human rights, which Russians saw being molested in a bloody military assault.

The scenarios are identical, yet the American government says it "must not go unanswered" when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev does in 2008 exactly what U.S. President Bill Clinton did March 24, 1999.

Second, does America's outrage at Russia's actions mean, in the name of principled consistency, we now have to
give nearly a third of the United States back to Mexico?

Inquiring minds really would like to know.

THE PROPER RESPONSE by Russia to the neoconservative busybodies in charge of U.S. foreign policy ought to go something like this: "Shut the #$&* up, and mind your own business. If you don't, we'll screw up your oil supply, re-create the Warsaw Pact and grant Mexico membership."

Some things are America's business. Other things aren't. The Bush Administration, of course, doesn't know which is which.

Unfortunately for all of us, the country that put these idiots in charge of its affairs certainly will deserve whatever "just deserts" the Bear serves up.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Cool! Jazz. Cool jazz. Cool, man.


I'm a sucker for spare, artistic TV production from the 1950s and early '60s.

Black-and-white. No whiz-bang graphics. Shots framed and staged cinematically.

I'm a sucker for great jazz, too. Like Miles Davis, John Coltrane (and the rest of the Miles Davis Quintet) performing "So What?" on this 1959 television program. In this case, it's a blend of the two -- masterful music . . . and masterful TV production that complements great music instead of getting in the way of it.

You think some Miles Davis might show up on 3 Chords & the Truth this week?
Better listen to find out.

Friday, August 08, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog's Zen garden

I didn't expect organic gardening to be this Zen thing for me.

ALL I WANTED TO DO was to grow some vegetables in the name of greater self-sufficiency (Take that prepackaged consumerist culture!) and saving a few bucks -- or more -- at the grocery store. And I wanted to accomplish that without putting 47 pounds of MiracleGro and 87 cubic yards of Sevin dust on everything.

I also determined to reuse what dishwater I reasonably could to hydrate said garden. After all, that would certainly make getting rid of coffee grounds and grease easier -- dump it all in the pot the dishwater goes into, then dump it all in the garden.

Putting organic material back into the earth . . . good. I've even got a little countertop compost box that really, really needs to be transferred into a legit outdoors compost pile. I'll get to it.

Anyway, Mrs. Favog calls my horticultural methodology "Nazi death-camp gardening." She'd rather I just unreel a hose pipe to where the tomatoes and pepper plants are, turn on the water, turn on 3 Chords & the Truth and have a cold beer.

Let me amend that. She could care less whether I have a cold beer. The missus just doesn't particularly care for carrying a stock pot (or three) full of water across the back yard to the garden, then unloading the H2O into the rows.

Heinrich Himmler am I. Or is it Heimlich? I have trouble keeping my genocidal Germans straight.

WHATEVER. I GUESS I CAN'T blame her for not having a Catholic Buddhist vibe going when it comes to tomatoes and peppers. Beans, too. If I get them planted in the next week, I think I can get in a crop of pole beans before first frost.

For me, carrying pots of recycled water out to the garden -- and hoeing out the weeds and touching up the rows every couple of weeks -- is the Southern Boy Catholic version of raking a big rock bed or tapping sand out of a straw to make a beautiful mandala. The advantage of my Catholic Zen thang over the eastern Zen thang hinges on one thing:

You can't eat sand. Or rocks.

Tomatoes and peppers are tasty, however. And good for you.

What does this have to do with this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth? I frankly have no idea.

Maybe it has something to do with crafting sets of songs into something with some meaning -- whatever the meaning happens to be with any grouping of music. Maybe it has something to do with music soothing the savage breast.

Maybe it has something to do with being gaga for Joan Jett since I was 16. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth, the worldwide music service of Revolution 21 -- it's Zen radio. On the Internets.

Just go here -- or to the player at the top of this page -- and achieve a higher consciousness. Be there. Aloha.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Mystical secrets of the Radio Troglodyte


If you don't know where you've been, can you really tell where you're going?

Obviously, that's a question some fans of the NPR-canceled Bryant Park Project never have thought to ask as they continue to pile on the network's new editorial director of digital media, Dick Meyer.

To synopsize the objection to Meyer among the "new media" fans, it seems to be centered on his appreciation of some of the charms of traditional community. And, it would seem, his love of a properly made sandwich.

I won't belabor
what I've already covered . . . but it is kind of funny, once you think about it.

ANYWAY, a few of the folks at The BPP Diner seem to be all about "community," so long as it's a "restricted" community. The past is unwelcome. No "backward thinkers" or "old media farts" allowed.

That means you, Dick Meyer.

Vee haff veys of makink you tink forvart!

Also, it's all about the interaction, baby. (Just so long as it's not in any kind of a traditional, physical community with people you've known forever.) And it's all about the glorious mosaic that is diversity. (Just so long as there is enough uniformity of opinion.)

One anti-Meyer commenter -- and all but one (me) were anti-Meyer commenters --
went on about how unique the Bryant Park Project community is:

Yes, I can appreciate some traditions because they can give one comfort. (RC hangover)

Sure Mr. Meyer is a bright man but I will not buy his book to fund his narrow mindedness. Additionally my life is too busy to read a book that seems to based on what Mr. Meyer hates about the world as it is NOW, because I am living my life NOW.

(snip)

BPP brought together a non physical community that enjoyed something that they can never have again. (Like Mr. Meyer's lunch place that is now boarded up.) Consider carefully if it was announced that Day to Day was being cancelled would there be the same outpouring? BPP was unique not just because of the talented people we heard over the media of our choice, but the interaction it encouraged and made available to any one that wanted to participate. Yes at NPR you can, "click on contact us at the top of the page...and be sure to tell us how to pronounce your name." But you might as well be sending a letter using a stamp, envelope and drop box. Which sounds an awful like what possibly could be described as Mr. Meyer's prefered way of communication.

BPP created a community by using many forms communication. BPP encouraged and seemed to delight in people communicating with each other. (Even when we sometimes agreed to disagree.)

[Unless you're Dick Meyer, who must be demonized and belittled -- R21]

What seems to be disquieting about Mr. Meyer is that if he yearning for how it USED to be how can he use his digital/media to ever reach what the BPP created in its short life? Does he want to? Will NPR ever move forward? Will it just dwindle away because eventually no one who has ever experienced a "BPP" will settle for something as mundane.

I THINK everyone on The BPP Diner would agree The Bryant Park Project's style and its melding of "old" and "new" media represented a leap forward for public broadcasting. (Until NPR canceled it and leaped backward.)

Has any of those "forward thinkers" considered that the BPP just might have been a rediscovery of broadcasting's past? Probably not -- realizing that would involve "backward thinking" if not outright worship of the past.

To my ears, as good as the BPP was, it was just a younger-skewing, less ambitious version of
NBC Radio's old Monitor program.

The Bryant Park Project revolved around a witty, genial studio host. Monitor revolved around a witty, genial studio host.

The Bryant Park Project featured the hourly network news, branded to that particular program. Monitor featured the hourly NBC Radio news, branded to that particular program.

The Bryant Park Project had regular features, as well as segments for feature stories, sports discussion, music and interviews. Monitor had regular features, as well as segments for feature stories, sports discussion, music and interviews.

The two programs had their differences as well.

The Bryant Park Project featured an extensive Internet presence, via its web site and social networking. In Monitor's day -- it ran from 1955 to 1975 -- there was no such thing as an Internet. Then, social networking was accomplished at the Elks Club, over coffee and doughnuts after church and across the backyard fence.

OVERALL, especially considering the technology of the day, Monitor was by far the more ambitious program. For one thing, it ran all weekend, not a couple of hours Monday through Friday mornings.

In its early years, Monitor -- which also was part disc-jockey show and featured live band remotes -- ran 40 straight hours each weekend, from 8 a.m. Saturday to midnight Sunday. For most of 1959, Monitor also aired for two hours Monday through Friday nights.

Then there were the comedy bits. From the history section of the
Monitor tribute website:

Classic comedians showed up every weekend, including Bob and Ray, Nichols and May, Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller, Ernie Kovacs, Bob Hope, Bob Newhart, Stiller and Meara, Selma Diamond, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and, later, Pomerantz and Finkelman. In the early years, Bob and Ray stayed at Radio Central for many hours each weekend, ready to ad-lib skits if remotes weren't ready or technical problems blew up a scheduled segment. In 1957, they won a Peabody Award for their outrageously creative routines on "Monitor."
WHO'D HAVE THUNK IT. Monitor even had its own "Emergency Krulwich." Monitor truly was -- in the words of its creator, legendary NBC president and programmer Sylvester "Pat" Weaver -- a "kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria."

But you couldn't expect those who live in the Eternal Now to have known that. When you live in the Eternal Now, everything is new . . . and it's ever cleverer than anything a troglodyte like poor Dick Meyer might conceive.

But we troglodytes are in on a secret. Come close . . . listen carefully, and I will share the secret of the universe. It is this:

Everything old is new again.

NOAH's lark lands on mountain o' cash


The Times-Picayune has a couple of tales of your tax money "at work" in New Orleans.

TALE NO. 1:

Doris Grandpre knows exactly who gutted her 7th Ward house last year, then helped her start rebuilding the single shotgun where she lived for three decades before Hurricane Katrina.

"There was David. You got Christopher. Then there was Jason. Oh, and Simon," Grandpre, 76, said this week, recalling the student volunteers who came from Boston and Seattle to tear out her plaster walls and save the few precious items the flood did not destroy.

"I call them my little angels," she said.

It appears, however, that another crew has taken credit for demolition work at Grandpre's house. City records show that Hall & Hall Enterprises, the highest-paid contractor in Mayor Ray Nagin's home remediation program, billed the city $7,830 for gutting and boarding up the house and cutting the grass at the St. Anthony Street property.

The house is one of at least seven addresses that appear on two lists detailing post-storm remediation. One list belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response, which organized volunteers from across the country to come to New Orleans and provide free home remediation services, such as gutting and boarding up homes, to residents in need of help.

Those same addresses appear on a list produced by the nonprofit New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corp., which oversaw a remediation program that contractors billed a total of $1.8 million.

The homeownership corporation, also known as NOAH, billed taxpayers more than $25,000 for work at those addresses.

Grandpre, a retired nursing aide at Charity Hospital, said Wednesday that she has no idea how her address got on NOAH's gutting list. Since January 2007, she has lived in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer in her side yard, and no city contractor has ever stopped by.

"A group of kids took the stuff out," she said. "The only people who helped me was people from outside the city."

The duplicate entries on the NOAH and church lists raise more questions about the management of a short-lived city program designed to help elderly and poor residents along the road to recovery. A city official said last week that, to his knowledge, NOAH had paid out all of the $1.8 million to its subcontractors.

In light of the scrutiny, NOAH's board of directors suspended the organization's business last week and served notice Wednesday that its remaining four employees will be terminated Friday as of 5 p.m. Officials declined to name the employees or disclose their salaries. NOAH's former executive director, Stacey Jackson, resigned in June.

Also on Wednesday, the NOAH board asked the New Orleans Finance Authority to put into escrow federal funds that were to have been funneled to NOAH for use as soft-second mortgages for low-income homeowners.

(snip)

The shutdown of the agency comes as the FBI and the inspector general of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which authorized grants that financed the gutting program, have launched their own investigations. The city official who oversaw the program has acknowledged that City Hall improperly used the federal money and may have to pay back more than $223,000.

Meanwhile, Jackson, the former executive director, has been linked through business and personal connections to several contractors who worked for the program, including Richard Hall, whose firm billed for $345,000 worth of work, including gutting and boarding up Grandpre's house.

Another house, on Forshey Street near the Monticello Canal, fits the same pattern. Records provided by the Episcopal Diocese program show that volunteers from Texas arrived in October 2006 and tore drywall, tile and floorboards out of the house, which took on 7 feet of water in Katrina. The volunteers even managed to save a few heirlooms.

Ann Brown, whose brother owns the property, said she remembers the volunteers.

"I talked with someone from the church group who was there," said Brown, who lives a block away and keeps an eye on the lot. "I met them. I talked to them personally."

However, three separate NOAH contractors, including a firm owned by Nagin's brother-in-law, have billed City Hall a combined $5,115 to gut, board up and cut grass at the Forshey Street house.

Myers & Sons claimed it had done $4,415 worth of work at the lot, while Iron Triangle and Smith & Associates Consulting have billed $350 apiece. Smith & Associates is owned by Cedric Smith, whose sister is Nagin's wife, Seletha.
TALE NO.2:
Contractors working for New Orleans Affordable Homeownership billed taxpayers at least $123,000 to gut 30 homes that records show were torn down shortly thereafter -- also at public expense -- raising further questions about a troubled city agency charged with a leading role in flood recovery.

Interviews with neighbors suggest that some of that gutting work was in fact never performed.

Whether or not taxpayers were defrauded -- a question that has drawn the attention of federal investigators -- the fact that city-financed gutting crews were followed in short order by city-financed backhoe operators suggests, at best, a City Hall management debacle.

James Ross, a spokesman for Mayor Ray Nagin, said the city is required to pursue demolition of houses deemed to be health threats or in danger of collapse, regardless of whether they have been gutted. He also said that some homeowners may have reconsidered an initial decision to repair a home and sought its demolition instead.

All together, NOAH paid contractors about $1.7 million to gut about 460 properties, according to City Hall records. About 400 other properties received less costly services, mainly grass-cutting and boarding.

Slightly more than 10 percent of the homes the agency assigned to remediation contractors have since been demolished. The federal government financed about half of those demolitions; private individuals paid for the others.

Matt McBride, a blogger and activist who has maintained a database of all properties granted demolition permits since Hurricane Katrina, cross-referenced that list with a remediation list provided by NOAH. He found substantial crossover.

The Times-Picayune spot-checked 11 of the properties that the city spent the most money fixing, ranging from a property on Catina Street in Lakeview at a cost of $8,257 to a property on North Galvez Street in the Lower 9th Ward costing $4,070.

Ten of the 11 had been demolished. The city has issued a demolition permit for the only house still standing: the North Galvez property, one of only a couple of structures on a mostly abandoned block. The city issued the permit to one of the contractors hired to tear down blighted properties at taxpayer expense.

The house has been gutted, but it is unboarded and open to the elements. City records show the work on that house was done by Hall & Hall Enterprises, the highest-paid contractor in NOAH's remediation program.

Richard Hall Jr., who owns that firm, is a former business partner of NOAH's embattled former director, Stacey Jackson. He did not return a phone call Tuesday.
HERE WE HAVE two tales of a city. Do not expect any happy endings.

Here is what you can expect:

* The U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans -- the three federal prosecutors in Louisiana being the state's only effective defense against public corruption -- will get an indictment against Stacey Jackson, the former NOAH head. Perhaps other indictments will be forthcoming as well.

* Being that the trial has to be held somewhere in Louisiana, God only knows whether any convictions will be forthcoming.

* Federal relief money intended to help New Orleans and Louisiana recover from Hurricane Katrina will continue to be wasted, misallocated and blatantly stolen for as long as it continues to roll in.

* The people who need help the most will continue to get the least.

* New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin will continue to run reporters around in circles. When that stops working, he will denounce any reporter who's uncovered yet more graft, incompetence or outright stupidity as "hurting the recovery."

AS THEY SAY back home, "Dat's Looziana for you!"

And as they say everywhere else, "This just might be the time Louisiana cuts its own throat, but good."

Truly -- with the exception of harboring Islamist guerrillas who carry out attacks against the national government -- the Gret Stet reminds one of no less than Russia's troublesome Chechen Republic, an economically devastated region of the dysfunctional and the disadvantaged . . . and of grafters, mobsters and kidnappers. With every outbreak of shenanigans across its post-Katrina landscape, Louisiana further cements its status as America's Chechnya.

And in New Orleans, "an economically devastated region of the dysfunctional and the disadvantaged . . . and of grafters, mobsters and kidnappers" describes Central City on a particularly good day.

FOR THREE YEARS NOW, in the wake of Katrina and the federal flood, Louisiana pols and New Orleans "leaders" have trekked to Washington, D.C., with their hands outstretched. Billions upon billions of taxpayers' dollars, after much wrangling, have been put into those outstretched hands.

And now the outstretched hands full of taxpayers' dollars have been slipped, it would appear, into the pockets of politicians and their cronies -- just as the most cynical and parsimonious in the nation's capital said would happen.

Barring the resumption, after 140 years, of Reconstruction and military occupation (which, really, Louisianians ought to be on their knees praying for . . . that being their last, best hope) there is only one surefire way to stop Louisiana in its thieving tracks.

Only one remaining way to stop crooked pols, their crooked agencies and crooked contractors from collecting federal dollars for work volunteer church kids did. Only one last chance to stop fools in public office from taking federal money to "remediate" flooded homes . . . right before more federal money goes toward bulldozing those same "remediated" homes.

Cut off the cash. Now. Every penny.

There's an old saying I heard over and over growing up in Louisiana -- "Root, hog, or die." Maybe it's time my home state (and the crooks who run it, and the enablers who populate it) find out exactly what that means.



HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Digital rebels without a clue

Talk like National Public Radio's Dick Meyer and you might be a dangerous man.

TO WIT:
"The 1960s was a symbolic turning point," Meyer said, citing the decade as a time when personal choice became more important than following tradition.

"It became much more important to make all these choices as a witting, conscious consumer of life," Meyer said of formerly tradition-bound elements like religion, where people live, whether they decide to get married.

"And deeper than that, there was a sense that if you did follow a traditional route," Meyer said, "you were an existential weakling."
MEYER IS AUTHOR of Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium, and he can't stand incompetence, indifference, rudeness and normative bad behavior. Or, at least, what used to be bad behavior before it became normative. His comments were from a piece accompanying audio from an interview on NPR's Morning Edition.

Meyer, NPR's new digital-media editorial director, also has a certain fondness for traditional community . . . and tradition, period. He thinks it wasn't bad to have identities other than the one you manufacture for yourself out of whole cloth -- a religious identity, an ethnic identity, a community identity.

He thinks those things can add real meaning to life.

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BETTER for Meyer, at least among some decidedly postmodernist combox warriors, had he advocated flying jetliners into skyscrapers. At least, with that scenario, those now hurling invective at poor Dick Meyer might instead be wringing their collective hand and wondering
"Why does he hate us? Have we done something to offend."

That, however, is not how Postmodern Man -- which is kind of like Socialist Man, only whiny and self-centered -- rolls when it comes to those guilty of thought crimes. Here's something taken from the comments on a Meyer thread at The BPP Diner:

This is either a joke or just pure provocation. The man is angry because the only place where he could be sure that the guy making his sandwich wouldn't forget the tomato has closed. The man is a self-hating trailing-edge boomer (see his bio) who yearns for the good old days of "community" where everybody knew your name. Well, they knew your name, but they were probably much more fond of calling you "hey nigger", "hey faggot", "hey dyke", "hey kike", "hey slut"...

AND HERE'S another measured response to the Meyer piece on NPR's Morning Edition:

"But I have no sympathy for "poor Dick Meyer". Appreciating civility and values is one thing. But there's a difference between that and wishing for things to be like the past. You know what, things aren't like they were 50 years ago. Get Over It.

"Seriously, you want a guy who thinks community is having the people in the lunch place know your name running digital media where in the present we are trying to build new types of communities?"

YES. Yes, I do.

If people don't care to know your name in the "real world," they sure as hell won't care to know it in the "new media" world, either. And if someone doesn't care that his sandwich was made indifferently and not-to-order by a couple of lazy morons at the chain eatery, he also just might not care whether your Internet content is created indifferently by a department full of morons.

And if folks think that a prerequisite for building "new communities" based on digital media is the neglect or outright destruction of real-world communities, wait until the power goes out. Or a bad storm hits. Or your house burns down.

Or, perhaps, wait till some future day when oil is no longer affordable (at all) and the economy runs out of gas in an energy-starved country. Can a "digital community" save us if our computers have no juice? Or if we no longer can afford to buy a computer?

Even considering all the potential online social media have, will computers or some "digital community" be there to help raise your kids, or have your back when life hits the fan . . . or make sure you eat when you're old and enfeebled, then wipe your ass when you no longer can?

NO, I GUESS things aren't as they were when I was born in 1961. In some ways, that's a really good thing -- being that I was born in the Jim Crow South, experienced segregated schools first hand and saw quite enough ugly before I turned 10.

In other ways, it's a terrible thing that things aren't as they were in 1961. The commodification of everything in society -- including people -- wasn't nearly so advanced as it is now. Folks had manners, for the most part, and while the barbarians might have been at the gate, they generally weren't running the culture.

Yet.

Tradition is a funny thing. Religion, too. When they're functioning in a meaningful way, they can seem stifling to some people. We feel like we're unable to "create our own identity."

And sometimes, tradition for tradition's sake can grow incredibly stale and pointless. You can't ever lose sight of the "why" in tradition . . . or in anything else.

Thus, it's quite true that some traditions outlive their usefulness, if ever they had any. I don't know that many civilized people would argue for female circumcision, serfdom, intractable class structures or women being regarded as property.

On the other hand, when you start flailing away at the whole of "tradition" and the "old ways" with a broadax, you're going to find quite quickly -- as we now are realizing -- that we've just chopped down whole institutions and forces of habit that provided refuge from what sought to devour us. The unfettered freedom to "create our own identity" likewise gives a disordered and dysfunctional society the unfettered license to define us as mere pieces of meat.

What does a virtual community based on digital media do about that?

Really, isn't the craving for "new kinds of community" online just a case of humans -- operating on sheer instinct -- desperately seeking what they've just spent the last 50 years dismantling?

And some combox Nietzsches see poor Dick Meyer as being unfit to do his digital duty just because he, on some level, recognizes that?

Good God.

Oh . . . sorry about that invocation of a primitive belief structure. It's difficult being a troglodyte, you know.

Ask Dick Meyer.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

She likes us! She really likes us!


Business-tech columnist and author Sarah Lacy ventured out onto the Plains and into our fair metropolis of Omaha for a book tour, expecting to find stolid Midwestern types respectably and soberly inhabiting a stolid Midwestern city.

With a few geeks in the corner.

One, naturally, would have just a leeeeeetle bit of the evening's baked dish hanging off his pocket protector.

Instead, the author of Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 found a funky, creative and happenin' kind of place. That's OK, Sarah -- it's kind of fun to pleasantly surprise people.

But, really, if you know a little about the kind of folk who homesteaded Nebraska, you no longer are surprised that Omaha is a little bit quirky and whole bunch creative. For example, here are some typical Nebraska homesteaders:



ANY QUESTIONS?

I didn't think so.

Monday, August 04, 2008

You tried to tell us, Alexander Isayevich


Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn is dead.

That makes one less who will look humanity square in the eye and tell it what's what.

THIS IS SOLZHENITSYN'S diagnosis of what ails the West, excerpted from his 1978 address at Harvard's commencement -- a speech, come to think of it, about as brave as anything that had gotten him in so much trouble back in the U.S.S.R.:

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.
THIS, MEANWHILE, is from an article in today's edition of The Sun, the mass-market London tabloid:

Many Ibiza tourists are hardcore ravers who drink, dance and smoke away their nights then spend their days in the baking sun.

No wonder it is known as the island that never sleeps.

But however much fun it may sound, the non-stop lifestyle takes its toll on the sleep-deprived, dehydrated partygoers’ faces, with many needing more than a dab of concealer to cover their facial creases.

But the party girls refuse to rein in the late nights and heavy-drinking sessions.

Instead, they have found the perfect way to revive their looks — Botox.

The latest must-do in Ibiza isn’t a new club night, it is beach Botox — and mum and daughter team, Christine, 47, and daughter Nicole Shenton, 27, are cleaning up.

They moved themselves and their beauty firm, Belisimma, to the White Isle six years ago after discovering there was a gap in the market on the island.


(snip)

“Business has been non-stop since we started, especially from British party girls.

“A lot of girls admit the most sleep they get is kipping on the beach in the day.”

Mum Christine says: “We find that most of our clients are British girls who have good jobs, money to spend and are here to party.

“Their faces are obviously affected by the amount they drink, smoke and sunbathe. They want to do all those things but still look good.

“That’s where we come in.”

One of Belisimma’s regulars Laura Jackson refuses to get on the plane home looking worse than when she arrived — even though she spends a fortnight partying every night.

Single mum Laura, a jewellery designer from Manchester, says: “I’ve been having Botox out here for the past two years and can’t get enough of it.

“It’s great — the moment I land, I call Christine to get some Botox before I hit the clubs. Then after two weeks of clubbing, she gives me a top-up before I get on the plane home.

“When I tell people I’m 25, they never believe me. It’s amazing considering the kind of lifestyle I lead. It’s non-stop partying from the moment I get off the plane, and I usually come to Ibiza at least twice a year. “This means a fortnight of drinking a lot and getting hardly any sleep.

“Also, when I’m at home I go out drinking every weekend, and spend most Sundays in bed eating a fry up.”
"SINGLE MUM LAURA" deludes herself in more ways than one. Go to the Sun story page and look at her picture.

And I'm quite sure that when she tells people she's only 25, they never do believe her.


Just like -- way deep down where we can see the truth about who we really are -- we don't believe, not really, our own PR about how happy, healthy, prosperous and enlightened we are in our Western, postmodern rave-up.

You know marketolatry has gone too far. . . .


John, Paul, George and Ringo have nothing on Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana.

And, if John Lennon was right and the Beatles were, back in the day, more popular than Jesus Christ. . . .


SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Mrs. Favog and I attended a 6-year-old girl's birthday party. A 6-year-old who loves, naturellement
, Hannah Montana.

Among the loot the child raked in:

* A Hannah Montana doll.
* A Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus CD.
* A Hannah Montana backpack.
* A Hannah Montana notebook.
* A Hannah Montana singing pen.
* A Hannah Montana "activity pack."
* Hannah Montana pencils, sticky notes, etc., etc., etc.


WHEN I WAS 6, the Beatles were all the rage. But even a cultural force like the Fab Four was easier
to escape than the marketing apocalypse behind the 15-year-old daughter of Mr. Achy Breaky Heart.

Is there any point to American culture -- at least anymore -- other than pimping the latest disposable teen star to the toddler-to-tween demographic? And then selling the kiddies Jägerbombs and
NuvaRings once they -- like fallen tween angel Britney Spears -- achieve puberty . . . and communion with their inner skank?

Sunday, as I struggled with acute Hannah Montana overload, I mused what it does to a teen-ager's head -- even if she did have the advantage (unlike some noted train wrecks) of not being raised by money-grubbing hillbillies -- to walk into a store and see shelves and shelves of . . . herself.

Commodified and idolized.

Personally, I don't think there are enough shrinks in the world to deal with that kind of interpersonal train wreck. Particularly after the applause stops, and all manner of commodified you ends up in the deep-discount bin.

Or worse, at the 99¢ Only Store.


There's only thing more ridiculous than our worshiping some all-powerful deity Who died on a cross and can have His body and blood, soul and divinity become one with a wafer of unleavened bread and a chalice of wine so His creation might feed on Him.

That would be what we worship in His place.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Old times there are not forgotten. . . .

In all the sordid racial history of the American South, one taboo was always powerful enough to kill.

The act of it was strictly illegal. In 1955, in the Mississippi Delta, the mere thought that a 14-year-old black boy might have had it on his mind put Emmitt Till in his grave. What was left of him.

MISCEGENATION.

If all the racial bugaboos of the segregated South had a corresponding curse word, miscegenation would be the F-word, the C-word, the MF-word and the S-word all rolled into one. Especially if we're talking a black man marrying, having sex with, dating or just looking wrong at a white woman.

(White men having their way with black women -- so long as no wedding vows were exchanged -- garnered de jure disapproval but a de facto wink and a grin.)

Miscegenation.

The feds said states' rights didn't include forbidding interracial matrimony. But the toxic enculturation of a Jim Crow society remains lodged in many a Southern mind, not unlike a malignant and inoperable tumor.

The fear of miscegenation is the kind of carefully taught evil that wormed its way into the subconscious of Southerners -- of Americans -- of a certain age and older. It gets beneath one's beliefs and convictions; it adheres itself to Pavlovian recesses of the subconscious, the ones governing what you feel in that split second before moral rectitude kicks in.

IT'S AN UGLY TABOO that feeds on the ugliest parts of our human fallenness.

Which, of course, makes exploiting voters' ingrained race-mixing revulsion a no-brainer for the savvy-but-unethical political operative.

And, in case you haven't noticed, there are just a few of those in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. It looks like a few more have just crawled out from under a rock in Baton Rouge to take racially charged shots at the city's African-American mayor, as reported by The Advocate:

Mayor-President Kip Holden on Friday said he is calling for a criminal investigation into a political mailer that alleges he had an affair with a married woman and was beaten up by her husband.

The mailer was in the form of a letter signed by the Rev. Charles Matthews, who Holden said does not exist.

The mailer includes a photo of Holden with a “black eye and busted lip” that he said is actually a doctored version of the picture on the mayor’s Web site.

Holden acknowledged he did suffer a black eye last year when he tripped over a piece of carpet, but noted he did not get a busted lip from the accident.

The mailer claims the woman’s husband punched Holden in the mouth and eye, and police have refused to serve as his bodyguard “on moral grounds and a strong belief that someone is going to get injured or worse, die.”
THE NEWSPAPER, truth be told, sanitized the story quite a bit. It didn't even touch the miscegenation angle, which the political mailer most certainly did -- including a photo of the black mayor and the white woman in question. Here's some purple prose directly from the "reverend's" word processor:
Pulling his pants up with one hand, grabbing his expensive alligator shoes with the other, Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden ran from the residence, but not before a 5' 10" Caucasian man punched him in the eye and mouth (see picture). A reliable source reported seeing the Mayor's mouth bleeding as he hurried to a black Lincoln with a public license plate.

Standing in the door of his residence the man watched the Lincoln speed away driven by the mayor's bodyguard, an on duty Baton Rouge police officer. With tears in his eyes, he turned and stared at his nude spouse.
EXPENSIVE alligator shoes.

Caucasian man, tears in eyes.

Nude spouse.

You didn't see any of that ugliness in The Advocate's "mainstream" reportage. Nor did the paper point out the staggering irony of it all -- the political opponent Holden suspects is responsible for the flier is . . . black.

Holden said the allegations are ridiculous, and are obviously the handiwork of one of his opponents in the mayor’s race and their operatives.

“I have had the same four police officers with me since I took office. The only one that is no longer working with me is Eugene Smith, who said he needed additional time with his family after his father was killed in an accident,” Holden said.

Holden said criminal charges may be filed as a result of the smear tactic. He said he’s contacted the state Attorney General’s Office and the FBI.

Because the mailer was sent via U.S. mail and contained false information, federal mail fraud charges could be pending against the perpetrators, Holden said.

Holden also suggested that Metro Councilman Byron Sharper may be involved because he called the mayor’s office earlier this week and warned that “we’re going to drop a bomb on you.”

Sharper could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.

In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Holden said Metro Councilman Sharper’s brother, Kurt, has distributed the fliers in public buildings.

“We have provided his identity to law enforcement as a source of information and involvement,” Holden said in the statement.
PERHAPS SOMEBODY'S trying to get both white men and black women mad at the mayor. I mean . . . y'think?

Then, to throw in a red flag for all the fire-breathers among the Religious Right, the smear piece declares, ostensibly unironically:

The FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, THE LOUISIANA FAMILY FORUM, Local Ministers, and the Metro Council recently defeated Mayor Holden's attempt to pass a blanket declaration as to Baton Rouge being a sanctuary for homosexuals through his One Baton Rouge resolution. Please join with us in demanding legal and moral conduct from our public officials.
YOU BET, podna. Pleas for legal and moral rectitude in a sleazy, racist flier allegedly produced by black pols stooping to Kluxer tactics against a black mayor. Only in Louisiana. . . .

Only in Louisiana, dammit. Isn't anyone down there the least bit ashamed yet of what they tolerate and who they vote into office?


Anyone? Anyone?

When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer

I tried Schlitz again after many, many years because it's cheap, and inflation is rampant. I still drink it because it ain't half bad -- just like 35 years ago when I used to ask the old man for a sip, then down half the can.

WHADDA YOU KNOW? It seems I'm a trendsetter and didn't know it. At least that's what The Associated Press says:

It's the beer that made Milwaukee famous. Now Schlitz is making the city nostalgic.

That beer with the old-time mystique is back on shelves in bottles of its original formula in the city where it was first brewed more than a century and a half ago.

Schlitz was the top-selling beer for much of the first half of the 20th century. But recipe changes and a series of snafus made the beer — in many a drinkers' opinion — undrinkable, turning what was once the world's most popular brews into little more than a joke.

But after decades of dormancy, the beer is back.

Schlitz' owner, Pabst Brewing Co., is recreating the old formula, using notes and interviews with old brew masters to concoct the pilsner again. The maker of another nostalgic favorite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, it hopes baby boomers will reach for the drink of their youth, otherwise known as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous." They also want to create a following among younger drinkers who want to know what grandma and grandpa drank.

"We believe that Schlitz is if not the, one of most iconic brands of the 20th century," said Kevin Kotecki, president of Pabst Brewing Co., which bought the brand that dates to 1849 from Stroh's in 1999. "And there's still a lot of people who have very positive, residual memories about their experience. For many of them it was the first beer they drank and we wanted to give it back to those consumers."

In Milwaukee, the comeback is creating a buzz. Stores are depleted of their stock within days, they're taking names for waiting lists and limiting customers to just a few six- or 12-packs each.

People like Leonard Jurgensen say the beer reminds them of better days. The 67-year-old, who grew up on the edge of the brewery downtown, said decades ago it seemed that everyone in the city either worked for the brewery or knew someone who did. If there was a special occasion, you drank Schlitz. Jurgensen had it on his wedding day 45 years ago.

"For many years the product was associated with happy times, especially to people my age," said Jurgensen, who's writing a book on Milwaukee's breweries. "As we all know, the world is not the best it can be today. We used to think those were hard times and when we look back on them, those were the good old days."
BECAUSE, TRULY . . . "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer."

Now, if Schlitz can make a big comeback . . . maybe the other beer of my youth, Dixie, will do it, too. I think I've just made myself thirsty.

3 Chords & the Truth: The defining lie?

What if everything you were supposed to believe about yourself -- and where you are from -- was a lie?

That's the gist of our centerpiece musical exploration on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.

What if the glorious "heritage" you were taught to take pride in was, instead, a more compelling case for intense shame?

WHAT DO YOU MAKE of that? If you -- if your region and culture -- have been held captive by a defining historical lie, how do you make peace with the present and move on to the future?

If you have any good answers, contact me at mail@revolution21.org.

Intrigued? You should be. It's a hell of a question, and we meditate upon it through some great -- and diverse -- music this week.

Of course, in addition to the seriousness, we have a lot of fun, too. That's because the Big Show is the place where you never know what's going to be thrown at you next. Every song an adventure, I say.

And you'll be saying that, too.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, and you can listen right now, right here.

Be there. Aloha.


UPDATE: You did know that the show is available on iTunes, right? Just go to podcasts and search for 3 Chords & the Truth. It's as simple as that, and you can become a subscriber.

Friday, August 01, 2008

What hath YouTube wrought?

Video contains profanity. I'm so shocked.

The "Leave Britney alone!" guy (???) is "leaving YouTube alone."

Why? Because YouTube has disrespected him/her/it. Chris Crocker is not YouTube's favorite viral celebrity.

I MEAN, "They invited the 'Chocolate Rain' guy to, like, go sing at some YouTube event in, like, China."

But no such "cewebrity" luuuuv for Mr. (Miss?) Leave Britney Alone! Such shabby treatment.

"I'm not mama- and papa-friendly, I understand. Mamas and papas don't like me, but guess what? Their kids do," he/she/it says. "I'm a voice of this generation . . . I'm a voice of this generation, and there's no stopping me."

I DISAGREE.