If it quacks like a Duke. . . .

I have been informed that I am a leftist, making the "usual comparisons of Republicans to Nazi Fascists" with my post about the Louisiana state representative hell-bent on following in the jackbooted footsteps of a previous holder of his House seat -- former Louisiana Nazi and Klan leader David Duke.

MY CRITIQUE may or may not be "leftist," but one thing I do know: If Rep. John LaBruzzo walks like a Duke, flies like a Duke, swims like a Duke, quacks like a Duke and wants to sterilize poor Louisianians like a Duke . . . he just might be a Nazi. Just like David Duke.

John LaBruzzo thinks too many poor people are dragging down the Gret Stet by clinging to the public dole. Adolf Hitler thought Germany had a problem with too many Jews, Gypsies and mental defectives burdening the state and dragging down the gene pool.

The only difference between the two -- and their prescriptions for dealing with some humans they see as less human than those who are Aryan enough and well-off enough -- lies in imagination . . . and what one can get away with.

Chad Rogers at The Dead Pelican thinks -- somehow -- that the dishonorable member from Stupid City isn't a Nazi at all, but instead has more in common with the Red Chinese:

The leftist comparison of La Bruzzo's eugenics plan to the Nazi Germany of the 1930s is a way of ignoring the real problem. For this business of government controlled reproduction is more reminiscent of present- day Communist China.

Like communist China, the state and local government has bestowed upon itself the role of caregiver. Thanks to the welfare system, New Orleans has an environment that discourages self-reliance, exacerbates poverty, and encourages dependence on the government dole.

No system like that can financially sustain itself. It now has more people than it can afford. As with Communist China, an environment of dependency has been created that is financially unsustainable.

And now, as with China, politicians are playing God to solve the problems created by politicians.

The left's cries of Nazism in NOLA ring hollow for another reason- La Bruzzo's arguments for sterilization mirror those of left on the issue of tax payer funded abortion. That is, pro-lifers are often criticized for wanting to force women to have children that they can't take care of. In short, they argue that abortion is a means of population control.

THERE'S ONE BIG PROBLEM with that critique: The analogy doesn't hold up.

The Chinese regime may be butchers and draconian population controllers, but they're not discriminatory butchers and draconian population controllers. If you're poor, you only can have one kid. If you're well-off -- at least theoretically -- you only can have that one kid.

If you're Han Chinese, you get one kid. If you're Zhuang, you get one kid. Manchu? One kid. Mongol? Same raw deal.

The Chinese communists are population controllers, and ruthless ones at that. They, however, are not eugenicists. They leave that nasty business to the likes of Adolf Hitler, Margaret Sanger . . . and John LaBruzzo.

If the jackboot fits. . . .

See, LaBruzzo doesn't want everybody to get their tubes tied or pee pees snipped. He just wants the "burdensome" to do that. He was concerned by the tremendous burden he saw the state of Louisiana shouldering as it evacuated, sheltered and provided for thousands and thousands of New Orleanians threatened by Hurricane Gustav.

Here's a picture of Louisiana's Burden:

WHAT DER FÜHRER from Metairie isn't concerned about -- at least concerned enough to propose one Final Solution or another -- is the even greater burden the aging Baby Boom generation is going to start posing for Louisiana taxpayers in a decade or so.

Fine, upstandin', hard-workin' constituents of der Führer are going to have to find a way to pay for all those state services (and pensions) Boomers are going to start sucking down like Otis Campbell with a jug of white lightnin'. Trouble is, my generation got its tubes tied, prescriptions filled and pee-pees snipped in alarming numbers, leaving fewer future taxpayers than otherwise could have been expected.

And worse than that, Boomers' offspring are hauling ass out of the Gret Stet at an even more alarming rate than they did.

Vascectomies and tubal ligations are no viable solution for burgeoning hordes of old people. As a 47-year-old, I tremble to think of what solution LaBruzzo might goose-step his way into for that one -- that is, if culling the burdensome poor doesn't provide enough taxpayer relief.

From the New Orleans City Business article on LaBruzzo's eugenic scheme:

"If both the welfare and Social Security system keep growing, one day we're going to have a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing," LaBruzzo said. "Our kids, who will be working, will be the minority and any vote of theirs will be canceled out. If your livelihood is based on government handouts, why would you ever vote for somebody who is going to lower taxes? They never would. So once we reach that breaking point there's no return."

TALK LIKE THAT sounds familiar. Perhaps like this 1922 passage by Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood?

Our 'overhead' expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded 'captains of industry,' financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.

OR MAYBE THIS from Sanger's 1938 autobiography:

I accepted one branch of this philosophy, but eugenics without birth control seemed to me a house built upon sands. It could not stand against the furious winds of economic pressure which had buffeted into partial or total helplessness a tremendous proportion of the human race. The eugenists wanted to shift the birth control emphasis from less children for the poor to more children for the rich. We went back of that and sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards race betterment.

HERE'S WHAT La Bruzzo is. He's a throwback to a bygone age Americans don't much like to acknowledge anymore, as outlined in The Guardian, with this extract from Edwin Black's War Against the Weak:

The film was called The Black Stork. Written by Jack Lait, a reporter on the Chicago American, it was produced in Hollywood and given a massive national distribution and promotion campaign. Haiselden played himself in a fictionalised account of a eugenically mismatched couple whom he advises not to have children because they are likely to be defective. Eventually, the woman does give birth to a defective child, whom she then allows to die. The dead child levitates into the waiting arms of Jesus Christ. It was unbridled cinematic propaganda for the eugenics movement; the film played at movie theatres around the country for more than a decade.

National publicity advertised it as a "eugenic love story". One advertisement quoted Swiss eugenicist Auguste Forel's warning: "The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. Shall we sit still ... without applying the remedy?" In 1917, a display advertisement for The Black Stork read: "Kill Defectives, Save the Nation and See 'The Black Stork'." Various methods of eugenic euthanasia - including gassing the unwanted in lethal chambers - were a part of everyday American parlance and ethical debate some two decades before Nevada approved the first such chamber for criminal executions in 1921.

As America's eugenics movement gathered pace, it inspired a host of imitators. In France, Belgium, Sweden, England and elsewhere in Europe, cliques of eugenicists did their best to introduce eugenic principles into national life; they could always point to recent precedents established in the United States.

(snip)

As America's elite were describing the socially worthless and the ancestrally unfit as "bacteria," "vermin," "mongrels" and "subhuman", a superior race of Nordics was increasingly seen as the answer to the globe's eugenic problems. US laws, eugenic investigations and ideology became blueprints for Germany's rising tide of race biologists and race-based hatemongers.

One such agitator was a disgruntled corporal in the German army. In 1924, he was serving time in prison for mob action. While there, he spent his time poring over eugenic textbooks, which extensively quoted Davenport, Popenoe and other American ethnological stalwarts. And he closely followed the writings of Leon Whitney, president of the American Eugenics Society, and Madison Grant, who extolled the Nordic race and bemoaned its "corruption" by Jews, Negroes, Slavs and others who did not possess blond hair and blue eyes. The young German corporal even wrote one of them fan mail.

In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant wrote: "Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilisation of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race."

One day in the early 1930s, Whitney visited Grant to show off a letter he had just received from Germany, written by the corporal, now out of prison and rising in the German political scene. Grant could only smile. He pulled out his own letter. It was from the same German, thanking Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race. The fan letter called Grant's book "his Bible". The man who sent those letters was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler displayed his knowledge of American eugenics in much of his writing and conversation. In Mein Kampf, for example, he declared: "The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of clearest reason and, if systematically executed, represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole."

Mein Kampf also displayed a familiarity with the recently passed US National Origins Act, which called for eugenic quotas. "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."

Hitler proudly told his comrades how closely he followed American eugenic legislation. "Now that we know the laws of heredity," he told a fellow Nazi, "it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Nor did Hitler fail to grasp the eugenic potential of gas and the lethal chamber, a topic that was already being discussed in German eugenic circles before Mein Kampf was published. Hitler, who had himself been hospitalised for battlefield gas injuries, wrote: "If at the beginning of the war and during the war 12,000 or 15,000 of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our best German workers in the field, the sacrifices of millions at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: 12,000 scoundrels eliminated in time might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable for the future."

THE HOLOCAUST was Margaret Sanger's -- and all the rest of the American eugenicists' -- theories and practices carried to their logical conclusion. Almost a century since hate was refined into a science, LaBruzzo has bought into that line of thinking wholeheartedly -- and hard-heartedly.

And now, with Louisiana taxpayers' money, he proposes to carry that agenda out to an extent that makes even likely Planned Parenthood sympathizers squeamish.

No, what the race-purifier from Metairie proposes isn't new, and it most certainly can't be blamed on Mao Zedong. And while the Nazis drank deeply from the same poisoned well as LaBruzzo, sterilizing the poor, the black and the "defective" really isn't Nazi, either -- though they certainly perfected the deadly artform.

What the latest menace from Metairie proposes is as American as apple pie. And Jim Crow. And miscegenation laws.

Louisianians had better beware embracing little GOP Nazis like John LaBruzzo, because the rest of America is well into the process of doing to Louisiana what LaBruzzo (and those who support him) would do to "the nigras." Among these United States, Louisiana is exactly what many Americans figure they have too much of, and would like to make go away.

And if folks all across the Gret Stet would rather not embrace the concept of "brother's keeper," that non-embrace is what they're going to get . . . "good and hard," in the words of H.L. Mencken.

From the city that gave us David Duke. . . .

From the R21 video Hall of Shame. Maybe some Metairie, La., voters in there somewhere?
If you live in Louisiana, it might be worth considering any economic crisis that benighted state is headed for might be due less to too many people "depending on government" than voters depending on half-assed Hitlers like John LaBruzzo to run that government.

New Orleans City Business says the state House member from Metairie -- the New Orleans suburb that gave America David Duke -- wants to pay the poor to get sterilized:

State Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, fears Louisiana may be headed toward an economic crisis if the percentage of people dependent on the government is not decreased.

His solution: pay impoverished women $1,000 to have their tubes tied so they will stop having babies they can’t afford.

The idea came to LaBruzzo after hurricanes Katrina and Gustav when the state was forced to evacuate, shelter and care for tens of thousands of people.

"I realized that all these people were in Louisiana's care and what a massive financial responsibility that is to the state," LaBruzzo said. "I said, 'I wonder if it might be a good idea to pay some of these people to get sterilized.'"

I GUESS we can be grateful Louisiana state government -- never known for its efficiency or for attracting the best and brightest -- only seems to be capable, at present, of producing half-assed Hitlers. Lord help us all if LaBruzzo suddenly were to develop the brains of a Philadelphia lawyer and employ the efficiencies of German eugenicists.

Like Adolf Hitler, for one.

Der Führer never would have wasted a single Reichsmark on tying the tubes of a single Jewish woman when he could gas hundreds at a time for a fraction of the cost. LaBruzzo may be evil, but nobody ever accused him of being Hitler smart:

LaBruzzo said he is researching the issue, and if he finds that the number of people on welfare has increased on a dramatic and continuous basis over the past several decades, he may introduce a bill during the next legislative session promoting voluntary sterilization in exchange for monetary compensation.

"If both the welfare and Social Security system keep growing, one day we're going to have a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing," LaBruzzo said. "Our kids, who will be working, will be the minority and any vote of theirs will be canceled out. If your livelihood is based on government handouts, why would you ever vote for somebody who is going to lower taxes? They never would. So once we reach that breaking point there's no return."

Reaction to LaBruzzo's proposal has been swift. It has been called racist and reminiscent of the genocidal policies of the Nazis.

Shana Griffin, interim director of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, described it as a modern day version of eugenics, a theory that promotes improving humanity’s future by decreasing the number of babies produced by people who are seen as physically, socially or mentally deficient.

It is obvious who LaBruzzo is targeting with this legislation by mentioning welfare recipients and those dependent on city-assisted evacuation — poor, black women, Griffin said.

WHAT IS IT with Metairie, anyway? First Duke, now this clown?

Obviously, it would be extremely hypocritical (not to mention evil) of me to advocate the sterilization of the city's voters. Perhaps, though, it wouldn't be out of line to require Metairie residents -- and only Metairie residents -- to pass literacy and civics tests before they can register to vote.

I think that might be a game plan. See, you're not actually trying to wipe out a whole class of obvious social and mental deficients, exactly.

No, you'd just be trying to minimize the damage coming out of Stupid City. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Iran's stopped clock has right time

You know you are really and truly screwed when clowns like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad start to make a lot of sense when he's upbraiding your country.

Read this Associated Press account of Doctor Whack's address to the United Nations General Assembly and know the United States is well and truly up a fragrant creek. Without a paddle. In a leaky rowboat:

Iran's president addressed the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday declaring that "the American empire" is nearing collapse and should end its military involvement in other countries.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said terrorism is spreading quickly in Afghanistan while "the occupiers" are still in Iraq nearly six years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq.

"American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders," Ahmadinejad said.

He accused the U.S. of starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to win votes in elections and blamed a "few bullying powers" for trying to undermine Iran's nuclear program.

ANYBODY WANT to look at the headlines and argue where, exactly, Iran's stopped clock hasn't indicated the correct -- and late -- time of day in Empire America?

K-Doe say: Burn, Wall Street, burn!

This is a short documentary from 1990, when the (now) late, (always) great Ernie K-Doe was volunteering at Tulane University's WTUL radio, spinning the New Orleans R&B he helped make famous.

I DISCOVERED IT on the WTUL website, as I sat here in the studio, thinking I ought to add some sage observation to the Interwebs as Americans sit . . . and wait. Wait to find out how Congress is going to fix the fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, with an assist by the robber barons of Wall Street.

Wait to find out whether we're all poor now.

Wait to find out exactly how far the mightiest nation on Earth -- ever -- has fallen.

Yeah, I thought I needed to write something wise, or at least pithy, about this fine damn catastrophe waiting to swallow us all up. Is this Great Depression II? Shall we now arm ourselves, man the barricades and shoot the looters in three-piece suits?

Perhaps I could just sit at the keyboard and tell you I told you so. Whether or not I actually did.

BUT THAT'S not important now.

It seems to me -- as we tap dance on a ledge high above the abyss -- that the Fed, the Congress, the fancy bankers and the stock-exchange traders are powerless to screw up anything that particularly matters. We'll get by . . . somehow . . . with a little faith, a little orneriness and a little ingenuity.

We'll grow gardens and put in wood stoves, and we'll become a lot more "green" and a lot more local.

And we'll figure out that it ain't so bad, once you get used to it.

Screw Wall Street. Wall Street can't create an Ernie K-Doe. Or a decent R&B record.

We, if we are lucky, might figure out that our riches do not lie in our 401(k) accounts, but in our communities, in our churches and in our cultural cornucopia. We might come to see that we can be rich, even if we are poor (see New Orleans, City of).

Besides, not even Fort Knox could contain a force of nature like Ernie K-Doe, the late Emperor of the World. A pearl of great price who started out life during the last Great Depression at New Orleans' Charity Hospital.

Burn, K-Doe, burn!

Easy answers to Twitter questions

When morons run schools

What happens when bigoted morons run schools? Well, for one thing, they ban constitutionally protected speech -- like wearing rosary beads as a symbol of Christian devotion -- calling it "gang related."

ON DAYS LIKE THIS, I really, really wish I had gone to law school. Because I would take Tabitha Ruiz's case pro bono, and the Dallas Independent School District would pay, and pay dearly.

KXAS television has the details:

A Dallas County high school student said she was forced to remove her rosary before going to classes because the school considers it is a gang symbol.

Tabitha Ruiz, 16, said she was stopped at Seagoville High School after she went through a metal detector and told to take off her rosary.

"I was going through the metal detectors, and they looked at me and they saw the rosary and told me to take it off because it's gang-related," she said.

The Dallas Independent School District said in a statement that items that represent a gang are prohibited.

"Students are not allowed to wear logos or symbols that represent a gang," DISD said.

"Dallas police identified a rosary as a gang symbol."

But Dallas police said a rosary is not considered a gang symbol.

"Rosaries are not considered gang symbols unless the person is (a) known gang member or he/she is wearing a red or blue rosary in conjunction with other red things like shoe laces, belt or bandana," police said in a statement.

Ruiz's mother, Taire Ferguson, said she was stunned to hear a rosary was considered a gang symbol.

"My first reaction was, 'Gang people don't have Jesus. Maybe they need Jesus,'" she said.

Ferguson said it was "unacceptable" for the school to ask her daughter to take off the rosary. She said item is just a symbol of her daughter's Christianity.

"She's never been in trouble. She's a good kid," Ferguson said.

She said she is ready to take the case to court.

IT'S AMAZING -- isn't it? -- what fools, tyrants and mediocrities we oftentimes manage to put in charge of our children's education. Young minds deserve better.

And the powers that be at Seagoville High School and the DISD deserve to be made into a powerful example of the terrible things that can befall bureaucrats' when their minds get "stuck on stupid."

Avoiding a depression . . . at what cost?

CNBC's Jim Cramer thinks the government's plan to buy up Wall Street's problem debt just might have saved us from the Great Depression, Part 2.

WHAT I'M WONDERING, though, is whether we've avoided the abyss at a terrible cost.

Just how much money is the government going to have to just start printing now? How bad will inflation become? How much debt will foreign governments have to buy from us . . . if they will at all anymore?

How far in the hole will Uncle Sam now be, and what does that mean?

Will we have avoided another depression -- an economic cataclysm -- by closing the door once and for all on the American Century? And has that sentence been commuted, or merely temporarily stayed?

I'm no economist, and I don't know. I also don't know whether anyone does know.

AND I DON'T KNOW, either, whether our government realizes that America's fate is no longer in American hands. We have an Achilles' heel, and the world knows what it is.

We've acquired a de facto empire, the product of power and hubris . . . and maybe we've just crossed a bridge too far. We're Napoleon, and we can see the spires of Moscow, but winter is coming on fast and we've outrun our supply lines.

Suddenly, it seems to me -- And, really, what the hell do I know? -- we've come to the end of an era. Suddenly, we're no longer exceptional. Suddenly, empire is something we no longer can afford . . . if ever we could.

We're the Army-Navy game. A faded treasure of formerly great consequence, now more suggestive of stubborn pride and greater witsfulness.

Time marches on. With us or without.

3 Chords & the Truth: 1971 . . . and 2001

I'm sitting here in Room 222, waiting for Pete Dixon's American History class to get over with so I can do my air shift at KWWH, the voice of Walt Whitman High.

Maybe, if I have a little time, I'll drop by Miss Johnson's class to say hi. I know she's an English teacher and all, but she's still a totally groovy chick.

Anyway, my show is on during lunch period, so I know I'll have a big audience. I can't wait to play the new Grass Roots and J.J. Cale records . . . the J.J. Cale thing will be enough to straighten out Bernie's white-boy 'fro. I mean, it's really far out, man!

OH, HANG ON for a sec. . . .

Jason! What's happenin', man?

Groovy!

Later, man! Right on, bro!

Anyway, man, I was going to play more acid rock, but I don't want to push Mr. Kauffman's buttons too much, you know? Yeah, he's kind of a square, but he's a square who can shut me down.

I guess sometimes you got no choice but to play by The Man's rules. It'll be different in college, man. There, we can organize to fight the Establishment oppression.

Well, gotta run. Catch me in a bit on 3 Chords & the Truth . . . straight talk and cool music, right here on KWWH.

It's the grooviest show on the radio! Be there. Aloha.


P.S.: I wonder what people will be playing in 30 years? I don't know why I was thinking of that -- like, I just was, man.

Fair is fair. But society isn't.

Rod Dreher over at Crunchy Con posts the following points about "white privilege" sent in by a reader of his. I'm ashamed to say that, in reading the post, I was taken aback that I hadn't even considered some of it before.

TO SHOWCASE just one example, what about Bristol Palin getting knocked up by her "f***in redneck" boyfriend, and how, if the young couple were black, we'd be clucking about "social mayhem" and the problem of black illegitimacy. Which we would.

Is it a problem that we don't see preggers Bristol and her ruffian baby daddy as some sort of baby-mama ho and her white-trash Tupac? Do the daughters of GOP vice-presidential candidates have a higher class of unplanned, unwed pregnancy?

Or is it a problem that we've become conditioned to see just about every unwed black mother and her baby daddy as just that, almost without exception?

MAYBE THE PROBLEM is both. That we're too quick to overlook the forces of social disruption lying at the heart of every white Romeo and Juliet and too quick to condemn African-American kids when they do the same damned thing.

No difference in the offense. Big difference in white society's perception. And that's flat-out wrong.

Not to mention racist.

Anyway, here's part of what Crunchy Con posted. Go read the rest . . . and cringe as you do:

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. White privilege is when you can call yourself a "f**kin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their f**kin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot s**t" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

Hey, Boo Boo! Don't mess with the Russians

The Bush Administration ought to have thought about how badly Russia can screw over the United States -- every day in every way -- before America started messing around in the Bear's neck of the woods, trying to humiliate Yogi in front of Boo Boo and everybody.

And George Bush has big trouble now, because Yogi Bear (a.k.a. Vladimir Putin) -- who's "smarter than the average bear" -- is in the process of stealing his "pic-a-nic" basket, as The Times of London now tells us:

Russia defied the United States yesterday by announcing plans to sell military hardware to Iran and Venezuela.

The head of the state arms exporter said that he was negotiating to sell antiaircraft systems to Iran despite American objections. Russia has already delivered 29 Tor-M1 missile systems under a $700 million (£386 million) deal with Iran in 2005.

“Contacts between our countries are continuing and we do not see any reason to suspend them,” Anatoli Isaikin, the general director of Rosoboronexport, told the RIA-Novosti news agency at an arms fair in South Africa.

Reports have circulated for some time that the Kremlin is preparing to sell its S300 surface-to-air missile system to Iran, offering greater protection against a possible US or Israeli attack on the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities. The missiles have a range of more than 90 miles (150km).

Sergei Chemezov, the head of the state-owned Russian Technologies, also disclosed that Venezuela’s leader, Hugo Chávez, wanted to buy antiaircraft systems, armoured personnel carriers, and SU35 fighter jets when they come into production in 2010.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Sechin, one of the closest allies of Mr Putin, the Prime Minister, visited Venezuela and Cuba this week. Kommersant, the financial newspaper, said that Russia was forming “alliance relations” with the two antiAmerican regimes as a response to US involvement in former Soviet republics.

The Russian moves mark a serious deterioration in relations between Washington and Moscow. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, threated to block Russia’s membership of key international organisations. She told the Kremlin that its “authoritarian policies” could prevent it from joining the World Trade Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which coordinates economic policies among industrialised countries. In an outspoken speech to the German Marshall Fund, an institution promoting greater cooperation between America and Europe, Dr Rice said: “The picture emerging is of a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad.

“Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation is now in question. And so too is its attempt to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

She added: “Russia’s international standing is worse now than at any time since 1991.”

HEY, CONDI! I don't think Russia really cares. It has the oil . . . and your pic-a-nic basket.

Was Georgia, Kosovo and the Ukraine really worth riling up Yogi? Not even Ranger Smith can help you now.

Every man a schmuck

Dear America,

Congratulations! All you bastids is gonna be a big banana republic!

HAAAAAAAAA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

We's all white trash now!


Love,

The Gret Stet of Louisiana


P.S.: Squirrels is good eatin'.

Hell on wheels

To my old man, wheelchairs didn't bring forth visions of the disabled. They were just more stable platforms to shoot from.

I learned this the hard way.

Mrs. Favog and I hadn't been married but a few years when we became aware of my father's . . . uhhhhhh . . . eccentric views about those confined to chairs with two big wheels in back and a pair of little ones in the front. We were living in Baton Rouge at the time, and we were over to my folks' house for dinner.

IT WAS Labor Day. I know this because I recall that we were watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

I made the mistake of asking whether they'd be making a donation to Jerry's Kids, fighting the good fight against muscular dystrophy.

Hell, no, said the old man.

Why was that?

He then launched into a diatribe about the crippled, wheelchairs and guns. Something about how the Wheelchair People were just itching to gun us all down.

I can picture it now: The cute little Muscular Dystrophy Association ambassador -- probably all of 11 years old -- was pissed as hell about his impending horrible death from a dread disease and, dammit, he was going to take as many people as he could with him.

Unfortunately for us, the wife and I did the rational thing when presented with the specter of Roland the Crippled Wheelchair Gunner. We laughed our asses off. But my old man wasn't joking.

I ought to have figured that he wasn't. The old man almost never joked.

WHAT FOLLOWED was an angry diatribe by the old man -- aimed at his uppity son and his g**damn Yankee wife. Somewhere in there was the memorable phrase, "I might not have book learnin', but I got common sense."

That phrase spoke volumes, actually. It needed to. What followed from the old man was about a month's worth of silence -- and not just on the subject of wheelchairs and guns.

The old man is long dead now, but the whack genius of Psycho Gunners on Wheels lives on in Favogian lore. After all, you just can't get anymore insane than. . . .

Ohhhhhhhhh . . . CRAP:

This shooter had an unconventional mode of transportation.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call about a person who was down in the street near 69th and Maple Streets. Officers found Patrick Amburn, 40, of Glenwood, Iowa, who told them that he had been shot by a man in a wheelchair.

Amburn was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his back. His injuries did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.

THANKS, Omaha World-Herald. I can hear the old man going "HEH HEH HEHHHHHHHHHH!" all the way from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge, La.

The cops had better haul in Jerry Lewis for questioning. He probably knows the assailant.

We extend greetings to our Chinese overlords

No comment is necessary on this CNBC report, I don't think.

Morgan Stanley -- one of the two last independent, U.S.-based investment banks -- is negotiating with the Chinese government for a fresh infusion of funds into the beleaguered investment bank.

Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack held various conversations with potential merger partners Wednesday afternoon including top executives at Citigroup and Wachovia Bank . However, Mack continues to work to keep Morgan Stanley an independent company CNBC has learned.

Executives at Morgan are currently crunching numbers to determine how much of an additional minority stake they need to sell to settle market fears about the company.

Mack's plan is to sell a piece of Morgan Stanley to a Chinese bank. Mack has been dealing with Chinese government officials all day Wednesday to line up money from China.

He also has been dealing with top officials from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to lobby them to give approval to a Chinese bank increasing its stake in the company.

China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation (CIC), already owns 9.9 percent of Morgan. However, Mack, according to people close to the company, understands that he faces significant obstacles including a turbulent market that has crushed Morgan shares.

People close to Mack say that he does not expect any deal tonight and he would like to avoid one on Thursday. However, if he has to do a deal, because of further deterioration in stock price he will.

CNBC's David Faber had earlier reported that the Federal Reserve has been active in encouraging the Chinese to invest in U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has even made it clear that it would look favorably upon a Chinese acquisition of a U.S.-based financial institution, sources said.

Morgan Stanley stocks plunged more than 24 percent Wednesday and it is imperative that the investment bank gets a cash infusion before its shares decline further. London-based HSBC has also been cited as a possible suitor for Morgan Stanley.

Napoleon Obama rallies the troops

Overheard on Obama Farm: "All speech is free. Some speech is freer than other speech."

IN ITS TUESDAY EDITIONS, the Chicago Tribune tells a tale that could have been written by George Orwell . . . or Saul Alinsky in full "We'll really f*** 'em tomorrow!" mode:

Chicago radio station WGN-AM is again coming under attack from the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama for offering airtime to a controversial author. It is the second time in recent weeks the station has been the target of an "Obama Action Wire" alert to supporters of the Illinois Democrat.

Monday night's target was David Freddoso, who the campaign said was scheduled to be on the station from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Chicago time.

"The author of the latest anti-Barack hit book is appearing on WGN Radio in the Chicagoland market tonight, and your help is urgently needed to make sure his baseless lies don't gain credibility," an e-mail sent Monday evening to Obama supporters reads.

"David Freddoso has made a career off dishonest, extreme hate mongering," the message said. "And WGN apparently thinks this card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine needs a bigger platform for his lies and smears about Barack Obama -- on the public airwaves."

THIS READS like a page out of the Industrial Areas Foundation playbook.

It's the kind of grassroots strong-arm tactic a "community organizer" uses against the city council or a school board . . . or an abusive employer in the community. But to use such tactics as not-so-vague intimidation against a media outlet in the name of stifling free-and-open debate?

And not only that, but to use such tactics not against The Man, but in service of a Washington pol who seeks to become THE Man?

Would Saul Alinsky cheer on a disciple who grabbed the reins of power? Or would he be horrified that his methods had been subverted by the institutional power base in service of Obama's personal ambition?

And the status quo.

Maybe some hints lie in an old Playboy interview with the Old Radical himself, conducted by Eric Norden in 1972:

PLAYBOY: The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?

ALINSKY: Conservative? That's a crock of crap. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in longterm endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless. Their utopia of status and security has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal.

They're the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. We'll give them a way to participate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy. We'll start with specific issues -- taxes, jobs, consumer problems, pollution -- and from there move on to the larger issues: pollution in the Pentagon and the Congress and the board rooms of the megacorporations. Once you organize people, they'll keep advancing from issue to issue toward the ultimate objective: people power. We'll not only give them a cause, we'll make life goddamn exciting for them again -- life instead of existence. We'll turn them on.

PLAYBOY: You don't expect them to beware of radicals bearing gifts?

ALINSKY: Sure, they'll be suspicious, even hostile at first. That's been my experience with every community I've ever moved into. My critics are right when they call me an outside agitator. When a community, any kind of community, is hopeless and helpless, it requires somebody from outside to come in and stir things up. That's my job -- to unsettle them, to make them start asking questions, to teach them to stop talking and start acting, because the fat cats in charge never hear with their ears, only through their rears. I'm not saying it's going to be easy; thermopolitically, the middle classes are rooted in inertia, conditioned to look for the safe and easy way, afraid to rock the boat. But they're beginning to realize that boat is sinking and unless they start bailing fast, they're going to go under with it. The middle class today is really schizoid, torn between its indoctrination and its objective situation. The instinct of middle-class people is to support and celebrate the status quo, but the realities of their daily lives drill it home that the status quo has exploited and betrayed them.

THE OLD RABBLE-ROUSER really had suburbia's number, didn't he?

Certainly Obama, the erstwhile community organizer, still is adept at Alinskyesque sloganeering and at cutting and pasting from the IAF playbook. But in what way does he propose to rally the middle class against that status quo, which "has exploited and betrayed them"?

Especially when he's running on a platform that's merely a Democratic Party version of the status quo in an attempt to become the duly elected Quo of Quos.

Hanoi Hiltoning John McCain

If John Kerry got "Swift Boated" in 2004, is John McCain about to get "Hanoi Hiltoned" this year?

It would appear, so far as presidential politics goes, the Vietnam War is a gift that keeps on giving. To Republicans and Democrats alike.

BRAVE NEW PAC has come out with an ad and Internet video featuring a former Naval Academy classmate of McCain's who, as it happens, occupied the cell across the corridor from the GOP presidential nominee in the infamous North Vietnamese prison.

"I think I can say with authority that the prisoner of war experience is not a good prerequisite for a president of the United States," Phillip Butler says in a 30-second ad by the political action committee. The TV commercial is based on the PAC's much longer YouTube video featuring Butler.

Brave New PAC aired the ad on national cable for a couple of days, reports Talking Points Memo, to see whether "Hanoi Hiltoning" McCain has legs:

Robert Greenwald's Brave New PAC goes up on national cable with a new 30-second spot starring fellow McCain POW Phillip Butler, who says he knows from personal experience that a POW background is not desirable in a commander-in-chief.

"John McCain is not somebody that I would like to see with his finger near the red button," Butler says in the spot.

(snip)

As for the buy itself, it's a modest one. The spot is running on national cable today (and ran yesterday, too). It's funded by Brave New Films and Democracy For America, the independent group run by Jim Dean, who's Howard Dean's brother.

The ad is really a flare -- an effort to see if this controversial line of attack catches the attention of the national media.

"If it takes off and this storyline gets some pickup, then that'll give us some incentive to go raise more money for it," Brave New PAC spokesperson Leighton Woodhouse tells me.

I DON'T KNOW WHY the ad wouldn't "have legs."

Actually, what Brave New PAC proposes in 2008 is thin gruel compared to what George W. Bush's backers actually did to McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary. Pro-Bush forces, after all, went so far as to suggest McCain was some kind of Manchurian Candidate.

All the Democrat-leaning PAC contends with the latest videos is that McCain was a touchy hothead before he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese, and that "the POW experience" certainly does not enhance one's physical or mental health.

To tell you the truth, I was wondering when the Dems would get around to publicly saying what I had been thinking for some time now.

And if there are others like me. . . .

And if you're still not convinced. . . .

Did I mention that Hurricane Ike was only a strong Category 2 storm when it plowed into the Texas coast?

This is why you evacuate

These government before-Ike and after-Ike pictures of Texas' Bolivar Peninsula is why you get the hell out of Dodge when The Man says "Get the hell out of Dodge."

As anyone in south Louisiana will tell you -- well, anyone but the really stupid and the really foolish -- you don't mess around with hurricanes. Hurricanes have lots of ways they can kill you.

And they have lots more ways they can kill you if you do something stupid. Like stay on the coast when one's aimed at you.

If only your BlackBerry could crap in your pocket. Or be a surly brat.

Love, honor and cherish your BlackBerry.

MORE THAN your wife. More than your kids.

Wives and kids are disposable. Thus, we have this story from WCBS-TV in New York:

Of all the possible things that can come between spouses, you can now add BlackBerrys -- or more precisely -- BlackBerry addiction to the list.

A new study reveals BlackBerry's are becoming -- among other things -- the 800-pound gorilla in the bedroom.

'Berry, 'Berry, addictive?

"I live with it. I can't live without it," one New York City resident told CBS 2 HD.

Yeah ... there's a reason some call 'em ... CrackBerrys.

But are you having a love affair with yours?

"I am on my BlackBerry more than I see my boyfriend," one woman said.

The study of 6,500 traveling executives says 35 percent of them would choose their PDA over their spouse.

"That's a tough call," one said.

"Oh you don't want to go there," another added.

AND THEN, we have this story from the Omaha World-Herald:

Nebraska lawmakers didn't expect the first children dropped off at hospitals under the state's new "safe haven" law would be a teenager and a preteen.

The law was intended to save newborns.

People who work with children and families say they were not surprised, though, and called the dropoffs a "wakeup call."

The 2-month-old law was used twice Saturday, both times by people leaving misbehaving adolescents with whom they could no longer cope.

An 11-year-old boy was dropped off Saturday afternoon at Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha. A few hours later, a 15-year-old boy was left at BryanLGH Medical Center West in Lincoln.

"This is what we feared," said Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director for Voices for Children of Nebraska. "It appears this law has now created a new front door to the child welfare system."

Karen Authier, executive director of the Nebraska Children's Home society adoption agency, said the cases should be a "wakeup call" to alert communities to the need for more resources to help struggling families.

State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he had not anticipated many older children would be dropped off when he agreed to remove the age limit in the original safe haven proposal.

Upon reflection, however, he said the law's first use is an indicator that Nebraska needs better ways to deal with young people with behavioral problems. Other indicators, he said, include the level of gun violence in Omaha and teen suicides.

"It's an alarm bell, clearly another alarm signal," Ashford said. "I'm very concerned about how pervasive these issues are."

WE ARE A SICK BUNCH of SOBs, we enlightened and knowledgeable postmodern Americans.

There's no need for "safe haven" laws for CrackBerries. No one in his right mind would think of throwing one away.

What kind of barbarian would treat such a fine communication device like he would his wife? Or a child?

How 'bout THIS 'faith merchandise'

Barack Obama has set the price for a Catholic's soul at $2.50. Cheap!

Two-and-a-half bucks and a Catholic can tell the world he -- or she -- backs a guy who is perfectly OK with the fact that, since Roe v. Wade in 1973, 48 million or so American babies have been the victims of legal homicide in their mothers' wombs.

A GUY who thinks that when teen girls get knocked up, they're being "punished," and that a little pill or a little procedure can negate the punishment by making a defenseless human being disappear.

A guy who couldn't even bring himself to oppose partial-birth abortion . . . or favor a "born alive" act to guarantee medical treatment for infants who survived late-term abortion attempts.

CNN has the details:

The Obama campaign is preparing rolling out a new line of “faith merchandise” – the latest move in an ambitious effort to win over religious voters.

“Check out the Believers for Barack, Pro-Family Pro-Obama, and Catholics for Obama buttons, bumper stickers and signs….” says Obama Deputy Director of Religious Affairs Paul Monteiro in an e-mail obtained by the Beliefnet Web site.

“Believers for Barack rally signs and bumper stickers, along with all Pro-Family Pro-Obama merchandise, are appropriate for people of all faith backgrounds. We'll soon be rolling out merchandise for other religious groups and denominations, but I wanted to get this out to you without delay,” he adds.

Both campaigns have been making a major push for the Catholic vote, which has gone to the winning presidential campaign in every race since 1976, except Al Gore’s 2000 White House bid.

Beliefnet reported that "Clergy for Change" and "Pro-Israel Pro-Obama" merchandise will soon be offered.

FOR A LOUSY $2.50, Obamaniac Catholics can tell the world they don't care their Church places concepts like "Catholics for Obama" pretty much in the same neighborhood as "Catholics for Nuking Darfur."

I can't wait until the Republicans come out with "Catholics for Torture" signs.

'GREAT HORNY TOADS, THAT SMARTS!'

Some of Barack Obama's "nutroot" supporters are finding the presidential election to be an unexpectedly sticky wicket.

AND IN POLITICS -- unlike the sexual revolution -- when you make a "mistake," you damned well are going to get "punished" with a good ass-kicking.

Thus the Financial Times audience revisits the cast of Change You Can Believe In in New Hampshire, as the Lightworker discoveres how difficult finding an abortion provider can be when you need to terminate your political base amid a particularly nasty electoral freak-out:

Mr Obama signalled that he was heeding calls for a more aggressive approach with a punchy stump speech that combined cool anger about the country’s problems with mockery of John McCain’s claims to be the man to fix them.

The crowd hooted with derision as the Illinois senator sarcastically picked apart his opponent’s claims to be an agent of change. “He’s saying, ‘watch out George Bush, with the exception of tax policy, healthcare policy, education policy, energy policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics, we’re really going to shake things up in Washington.”

He avoided direct attacks against Sarah Palin, Mr McCain’s running mate and the catalyst of Republican resurgence. But his supporters showed less restraint.

“You want to know the honest truth? I think she’s like a bad actor from a B-list sex movie,” said Paula Vanbuskirk, an Obama-supporting independent, whose contempt for the Alaska governor and self-styled “hockey mom” was shared by almost everyone questioned by the Financial Times.

If it was Mr McCain’s intention to ignite a fresh “culture war” between middle America and east coast liberals by nominating Ms Palin, the evidence in Manchester suggested he has succeeded in spectacular fashion.

“I just do not trust the American people,” said Eleanor Shavell, 58, a computer programmer, who, along with several others, joked she would move to Canada if Mr Obama loses. “I cannot believe that 80 per cent of this country thinks we’re headed in the wrong direction yet 50 per cent are supporting McCain and Palin. I guess it’s like at school, there’s always got to be a bottom 50 per cent.” [Emphasis mine -- R21.]

METHINKS MS. SHAVELL might be making a bit of a rash assumption about who's on the back side of the Bell Curve.

Really, how bright can a political party be when it knows what its opponents are going to do, how they're going to do it and -- like Wile E. Coyote or Yosemite Sam -- they walk right into the trap anyway.

Muttering the whole time about those "stupid varmints."

Eye-rack. Track. Hell-bent. Exactly, Charlie.

Tina Fey is Sarah Palin

Uncanny. I don't know whether I've ever seen a more dead-on parody of someone as Tina Fey's of GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.