By George, he's Krazy!

If you don't know who this is, never mind. You had to be there.

Man, I hadn't thought about Krazy George in years, but then he turns up on this '70s vintage WWL-TV blooper tape from New Orleans.

Good times.

3 Chords & the Truth: On the folkways

All our bags are packed; we're ready to go.

We're standing here outside your door. And we've got a folk-flavored episode this week of 3 Chords & the Truth. Listen here . . . or listen via the player on this page.

The music world lost Mary Travers this week, and this sad passing seems an appropriate occasion to salute Peter, Paul and Mary -- and to shine the spotlight on the rich world of folk music.

So that's what we're doing on the Big Show this week . . . exploring the breadth and the beauty of the genre, with a focus on a group that put folk at the top of the charts in the 1960s. That group, of course, was Peter, Paul and Mary.

Peter Yarrow, Noel "Paul" Stookey and Mary Travers not only had their prominent place in a line of performers who comprised the "folk revival" of the late 1950s and early-to-mid '60s, but they also stood as great champions of a whole generation of singer-songwriters, from Gordon Lightfoot to John Denver to the great Bob Dylan.

THE TRIO had big hits with Dylan songs before Dylan himself did. Ditto for Lightfoot and Denver.

To be succinct, the trio recorded some of the sweetest music this side of the Pearly Gates, and the death of Mary Travers leaves a gaping void in American music.

One of the great tragedies of our denuded American culture these days is that you don't hear so much folk music on the radio. That's putting it mildly.

That's also a crime -- at least in the cultural sense. Tune in on the virtual radio here on the Internet, and let's see what we can do to remedy things. It's the least we can do . . . for Mary.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth y'all. Be there. Aloha.

The fruit of the wingnut vine

It's not just Glenn Beck.

No, above, we have the darling of the unhinged right's conspiracy-theorist section singing the praises of perennial presidential candidate and prominent "birther" Alan Keyes.

And Alan Keyes has got that Glenn Beck religion. Or is it that Glenn Beck has that Alan Keyes religion? Let's just say they both have that W. Cleon Skousen religion.

Watch.

I'LL BET the Catholic Keyes was surprised to find out that having that old-time Skousen religion . . . makes him a pretty hardline Mormon.

On the other hand, the Mormon-convert Beck has no such problem.

Which is good, because Beck loves the works of Skousen, who viewed the world through the eccentric lens of Mormon theology and saw a grand conspiracy of the "super rich" and the communists, working toward a "one-world order." To that end, the State Department handed Eastern Europe to the communists after World War II, and we abandoned China to Mao Zedong.

IT'S ALL those damned "secret combinations." The Rockefellers are selling us out to the commies, and ol' Dwight Eisenhower was a comsymp, too. Ike gave Cuba away to the Russkies after forcing Fidel Castro onto the Cuban people, who didn't want him.

Hell, don't you know that it was Harry Hopkins -- that longtime adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman -- who gave the Russians not only the plans for the atom bomb, but a cache of enriched uranium, too?

What, you don't know that? Obviously, you've been "brainwashed." So said Skousen in 1976, when the above recording was made.

And this brings us full circle to Glenn Beck, from earlier this month:

OY VEH. Swords into plowshares as a communist plot. Isaiah must have been part of a secret combination.

And then there's this, from today. W. Cleon Skousen, no doubt, would be so proud:

IF THE MASTER can come up with "Harry Hopkins gave the Russkies the Bomb," why can't the student come up with something as piddling as "Barack Obama hates the Constitution?"

There's a little problem though. Why in the world wouldn't the nation's first African-American president judge that the original document -- which not only did nothing to abolish slavery but went so far as to count slaves and Indians under U.S. jurisdiction as three-fifths of a person for apportioning purposes -- was objectively flawed in some way?

And, in fact, President Obama went on to expound upon the flaws. And Beck's staff at Fox News Channel edited that out -- rather badly, actually. I could hear the edits.

I'll take my leave by posting the unedited version of Obama's remarks. Glenn Beck and Fox News: Fair and balanced? You decide.

The madness behind the madness

Glenn Beck, as he "war gamed" a coming American civil war with an expert panel, professed to be horrified by the mere prospect.

So why is he going out of his way to stir up mobs of cranks, nuts, racists and simpletons against the "socialist" and "communist" Obama regime, one full of czars and "oligarhs"?

Salon has some answers for us. Short version: It's because he's a disciple of a dead Mormon nutjob who was so far right that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI considered him a national threat.

AND IF J. Edgar Hoover was scared, imagine how scared we should be. Read on:

In reality, however, the so-called 912ers were summoned to D.C. by the man who changed Beck's life, and that helps explain why the movement is not the nonpartisan lovefest that Beck first sold on air with his trademark tears. Beck has created a massive meet-up for the disaffected, paranoid Palin-ite "death panel" wing of the GOP, those ideologues most susceptible to conspiracy theories and prone to latch on to eccentric distortions of fact in the name of opposing "socialism." In that, they are true disciples of the late W. Cleon Skousen, Beck's favorite writer and the author of the bible of the 9/12 movement, "The 5,000 Year Leap." A once-famous anti-communist "historian," Skousen was too extreme even for the conservative activists of the Goldwater era, but Glenn Beck has now rescued him from the remainder pile of history, and introduced him to a receptive new audience.

Anyone who has followed Beck will recognize the book's title. Beck has been furiously promoting "The 5,000 Year Leap" for the past year, a push that peaked in March when he launched the 912 Project. That month, a new edition of "The 5,000 Year Leap," complete with a laudatory new foreword by none other than Glenn Beck, came out of nowhere to hit No. 1 on Amazon. It remained in the top 15 all summer, holding the No. 1 spot in the government category for months. The book tops Beck's 912 Project "required reading" list, and is routinely sold at 912 Project meetings where guest speakers often use it as their primary source material. At one 912 meet-up I attended in Florida, copies were stacked high on a table against the back wall, available for the 912 nice price of $15. "Don't bother trying to get it at the library," one 912er told me. "The wait list is 40 deep."

What has Beck been pushing on his legions? "Leap," first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recasting the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by the French and English philosophers. "Leap" argues that the U.S. Constitution is a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owes more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment. It lists 28 fundamental beliefs -- based on the sayings and writings of Moses, Jesus, Cicero, John Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith -- that Skousen says have resulted in more God-directed progress than was achieved in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined. The book reads exactly like what it was until Glenn Beck dragged it out of Mormon obscurity: a textbook full of aggressively selective quotations intended for conservative religious schools like Utah's George Wythe University, where it has been part of the core freshman curriculum for decades (and where Beck spoke at this year's annual fundraiser).

But more interesting than the contents of "The 5,000 Year Leap," and more revealing for what it says about 912ers and the Glenn Beck Nation, is the book's author. W. Cleon Skousen was not a historian so much as a player in the history of the American far right; less a scholar of the republic than a threat to it. At least, that was the judgment of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which maintained a file on Skousen for years that eventually totaled some 2,000 pages. Before he died in 2006 at the age of 92, Skousen's own Mormon church publicly distanced itself from the foundation that Skousen founded and that has published previous editions of "The 5,000 Year Leap."

As Beck knows, to focus solely on "The 5,000 Year Leap" is to sell the author short. When he died in 2006 at the age of 92, Skousen had authored more than a dozen books and pamphlets on the Red Menace, New World Order conspiracy, Christian child rearing, and Mormon end-times prophecy. It is a body of work that does much to explain Glenn Beck's bizarre conspiratorial mash-up of recent months, which decries a new darkness at noon and finds strange symbols carefully coded in the retired lobby art of Rockefeller Center. It also suggests that the modern base of the Republican Party is headed to a very strange place.

Willard Cleon Skousen was born in 1913 to American parents in a small Mormon frontier town in Alberta, Canada. When he was 10 his family moved to California, where he remained until he shipped off to England and Ireland for Mormon missionary work. In 1935, after graduating from a California junior college, the 23-year-old Skousen moved to Washington, where he worked briefly for a New Deal farm agency. He then began a 15-year career with the FBI, also earning a law degree from George Washington University in 1940. His posts at the FBI were largely administrative and clerical in nature, first in Washington and later in Kansas.

After retiring from the FBI in 1951, Skousen joined the faculty of Brigham Young University, the Latter-day Saints university in Utah. He then enjoyed a tumultuous four years as chief of police in Salt Lake City. During his tenure he gained a reputation for cutting crime and ruthlessly enforcing Mormon morals. But Skousen was too earnest by half. The city's ultraconservative mayor, J. Bracken Lee, fired him in 1960 for excessive zeal in raiding private clubs where the Mormon elite enjoyed their cards. "Skousen conducted his office as Chief of Police in exactly the same manner in which the Communists operate their government," Lee wrote to a friend explaining his firing of Skousen. "The man is a master of half-truths. In at least three instances I have proven him to be a liar. He is a very dangerous man [and] one of the greatest spenders of public funds of anyone who ever served in any capacity in Salt Lake City government."

During his stint as police chief, Skousen began laying the groundwork for his future career as a professional anti-communist. He published a bestselling expose-slash-history called "The Naked Communist." In the late '50s, America's far right began to bubble with organizations peddling stories about the true state of the Red Menace. Groups like the Church League of America and the John Birch Society organized to channel, feed and satisfy Cold War paranoia. Members of these groups were the original postwar "domestic right-wing extremist threat." Then as now, they were very much on the government's radar.

After his firing from the police force, Skousen became a star on the profitable far-right speakers circuit. He worked for both the Bircher-operated American Opinion Speakers Bureau and Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. The two groups competed in describing ever more terrifying threats posed by America's enemies, foreign and domestic. As the scenarios became more and more outlandish, the feds grew concerned. In an internal memo, the FBI described Skousen's friend and employer Fred Schwarz as "an opportunist," the likes of which "are largely responsible for misinforming people and stirring them up emotionally ... Schwartz [sic] and others like him can only do the country and the anticommunist work of the Bureau harm."

How did Skousen become an expert on communism? He claimed, as his apologists still do, that his years with the FBI exposed him to inside information. He also boasted that he worked closely with J. Edgar Hoover. But both claims are open to question. Skousen's work at the Bureau was largely administrative, according to Ernie Lazar, an independent researcher of the far right who has examined Skousen's nearly 2,000-page FBI file. "Skousen never worked in [the domestic intelligence division] and he never had significant exposure to data concerning communist matters," says Lazar.

Skousen also trumpeted the insight he says he gained researching "The Naked Communist." But this research was as shaky as his résumé. Among the theories Skousen charged a healthy fee to discuss was the alleged treason of FDR advisor Harry Hopkins. According to Skousen, Hopkins gave the Soviets "50 suitcases" worth of info on the Manhattan Project, along with nearly half of the nation's supply of enriched uranium. This he told thousands of audiences across the country, sometimes giving five speeches a day.

When Skousen's books started popping up in the nation's high-school classrooms, panicked school board officials wrote the FBI asking if Skousen was reliable. The Bureau's answer was an exasperated and resounding "no." One 1962 FBI memo notes, "During the past year or so, Skousen has affiliated himself with the extreme right-wing 'professional communists' who are promoting their own anticommunism for obvious financial purposes." Skousen's "The Naked Communist," said the Bureau official, is "another example of why a sound, scholarly textbook on communism is urgently and badly needed."

(snip)

By 1963, Skousen's extremism was costing him. No conservative organization with any mainstream credibility wanted anything to do with him. Members of the ultraconservative American Security Council kicked him out because they felt he had "gone off the deep end." One ASC member who shared this opinion was William C. Mott, the judge advocate general of the U.S. Navy. Mott found Skousen "money mad ... totally unqualified and interested solely in furthering his own personal ends."

When Skousen aligned himself with Robert Welch's charge that Dwight Eisenhower was a "dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy," the last of Skousen's dwindling corporate clients dumped him. The National Association of Manufacturers released a statement condemning the Birchers and distancing itself from "any individual or party" that subscribed to their views. Skousen, author of a pamphlet titled "The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society," was the nation's most prominent Birch defender.

AS THEY SAY . . . read the whole thing. Now.

Mary Travers: Requiescant in pace

Today has been a brutal one in celebrity deaths.

First Henry Gibson, the actor and fractured poet of Laugh-In, and now we learn of Mary Travers' passing at 72. Leukemia, it was.

THROUGHOUT the 1960s, Peter, Paul and Mary were responsible for some of the sweetest music this side of the beatific vision. I pray she, at this moment, is adding her angelic voice to the heavenly chorus.

From The Associated Press:

Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s.

The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of “If I Had a Hammer” became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included “Lemon Tree,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Puff (The Magic Dragon.)”

They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the August 1963 March on Washington.

And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.

The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.

It was heady stuff for a trio that had formed in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, running through simple tunes like “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

(snip)

In a 1966 New York Times interview, Travers said the three worked well together because they respected one another. “There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together,” she said. “I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another.”

With the advent of the Beatles and Dylan’s switch to electric guitar, the folk boom disappeared. Travers expressed disdain for folk-rock, telling the Chicago Daily News in 1966 that “it’s so badly written. ... When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn’t take along any good writers.”

But the trio continued their success, scoring with the tongue-in-cheek single “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” a gentle parody of the Mamas and the Papas, in 1967 and the John Denver-penned “Leaving on a Jet Plane” two years later.

They also continued as boosters for young songwriters, recording numbers written by then-little-known Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro.

In 1969, the group earned their final Grammy for “Peter, Paul and Mommy,” which won for best children’s album. They disbanded in 1971, launching solo careers — Travers released five albums — that never achieved the heights of their collaborations.

And a doofus plumber shall lead them

The problem with the pro-life movement is the same as the problem with the evangelicals . . . and the "orthodox" Catholics . . . and even the pro-Obama Catholics United crowd.

And it's an old problem at that, as old as the gospel.

The problem with pro-lifers is tribalism and zealotry. We're right, the Almighty is on our side, let's go out there and smite the Other for the glory of God.

I wonder how glorified God is feeling nowadays, with all the calls for revolution, demonization of the president, nasty signs about Ted Kennedy and all manner of anger, shouting, paranoia and bad behavior undertaken in His name.

BACK IN JESUS' TIME, one of the things the Pharisees, et al, couldn't get their heads around was that this man who claimed to be the Messiah didn't at all act like everybody knew the Messiah should act. The Messiah should be raising an army and kicking the Romans' butts all the way back to Rome.

Obviously, this "teacher" who preached blasphemy and upbraided the religious authority of the day was a scandal and a nut, and the sooner he was crucified, the better it would be. And when Pilate tried to finesse matters by proposing to release Jesus as part of the Passover amnesty, the first-century tea party would have none of it.

"Give us Barabbas!" They wanted the murderer and insurrectionist released instead. A man of action. A fighter of Romans.

In refusing to render unto Caesar, they likewise were hell-bent in their refusal to render unto God. By 66 A.D., the Zealots had launched a revolt against Roman rule.

By 70 A.D., the Roman legions sacked Jerusalem, cut out the heart of the revolt and destroyed the temple, thus fulfilling Christ's prophecy that "there will not be left here a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down." By 73 A.D., the last Jewish stronghold at Masada had fallen, leaving not a single survivor -- the defenders all killed themselves rather than be taken by the legions.

TODAY, WE HAVE parts of the Catholic and evangelical subcultures seemingly spoiling for a fight against a new Caesar. We have a prominent "Catholic" pro-life organization deriding its own church and bishops for being insufficiently zealous in denying a dead, pro-choice senator a public funeral Mass.

We likewise have pro-life organizations acting as if the answer to America's culture of death lay in the Barabbas model, as opposed to the Jesus of Nazareth model. The American Life League, "the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States," distributed signs to Washington "tea partiers" last weekend urging "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy."

And LifeSiteNews.com saw fit to run this cartoon with its story about ALL founder Judie Brown and other pro-life leaders trying to stop Kennedy's Catholic public rites:


YEAH, IT'S what you think it is. It's not only objectively disgusting, it's also just as uncharitable toward a man who, in his last days, well may have repented of his legislative advocacy of abortion rights.

It seems to me that we in the pro-life movement -- not to mention the "birthers," the Obamacareophobics and the "tea partiers" -- have to come to terms with the rise of the modern-day Zealots. This coincides with the Obama Administration having to deal with its own Zealot uprising -- the Zealots Against Zealotry, as it were.

On the left, the Zealots like to cuss a lot, call names and revel in their tastelessness. Occasionally, they'll threaten a "mass action" or a demonstration of some such.

On the right, more than a few Zealots threaten armed revolt as they march down the road to Masada. And, as noted previously, this is the company groups such as ALL choose to keep.

WEDNESDAY, I discovered there was such a thing as National Pro-Life Radio. And on it, amid the typical "pro-lifey" programs and Christian music, you have programs like Faith 2 Action with Janet Porter.

Let's just say Porter and her callers like "tea parties," hate "socialism" and love them some Rep. Joe Wilson, of "You lie!" fame. Wednesday's guests were Joe Wurzelbacher (a.k.a., "Joe the Plumber"), Phyllis Schalfly and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

And what can the pro-life movement learn from Joe the Plumber? Mainly that Joe the Plumber is a blithering idiot. Don't take my word for it -- here's a partial transcript of Wednesday's show:

Caller: I need to ask you a question, OK? Straight out, I just want to know if you think Mr. Obama is a liar.

Joe the Plumber: Yes, I do. I respect Joe Wilson for saying it -- maybe not in the spot he needed to do. If anything, he needed to apologize to Congress, not the president, because he has been lying -- y'know, it's been proven time and time again, he pulls numbers out of the air . . . $50,000 for a foot amputee when doctors are sayin', "No, it doesn't."

The guy's been lying left and right, and we're gettin' a taste of what he really wants to do. So, yeah, I believe the man's a liar.

Caller: Well, so do I. Just like you, I been tryin' to get a business going myself. It's tough. And I just don't need to be payin' all this kind of money for these . . . for what? Other people that, that suckin' m-my royalties?

Joe the Plumber: Well, no, it is tough, especially for a small business. I mean, the state's into your business, and then you also have the federal government into your business, and they seem to want a part of it they really don't deserve.

It seems like we're penalized more and more for trying to fulfill the American dream. It's almost like they don't want us to be a country of producing individuals; they want us just to consume and depend on the nanny state, and we can't do that.

Janet Porter: Couple thoughts I just want to interject, Ray, that if you get four friends, you get a group rate, which is gonna save you money if you can still come and you can check the website . . . we're gonna get some stuff streamed and some tapes for you to hear.

But one of the things, too, regarding Joe Wilson -- he is actually the first congressman in history to be formally rebuked for his behavior toward the president. It's interesting. He apologized right away -- something I have yet to hear from Nancy Pelosi regarding the CIA -- but immediately everybody's saying 'You must be racist.' In fact, they interjected things he didn't say -- the word 'boy,' for example -- didn't happen.

I saw the same thing happen to you (speaking to Joe the Plumber). Were you called racist during this campaign?

Joe the Plumber: Oh, absolutely -- just because I shave my head and got blue eyes, I must belong with the Aryan Brotherhood. So, I was called a racist right off the bat, but you got to understand politicians -- Republicans and Democrats both -- that's just a political tool. That's just to rile people up to take their eye off the real issue and press advantages home they believe they have, which is just disgusting.

You want to see real racism? Go to Israel and in the Middle East, where they teach that Jewish are literally pigs. Not figuratively, but literally, and they call for the whole destruction of the race. I mean, the racism here in America -- don't get me wrong, there is there, I grew up around it, but it's not nowhere near as strong or as grievous as it is over in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

It's just a political tool for our politicians to use and to keep us divided -- and remember, they do not want Americans to be united. Otherwise, again, we'll hold them accountable and make them do their job.

Janet Porter: By the way, the House rules now are banning the words 'liar,' 'hypocrite' and 'intellectually dishonest' -- boy, they're, instead of calling people and making them accountable for what they say, and say 'Hey, listen, this has not been accurate. What you're saying has been so far off from the bill itself -- the truth -- uh, but no, instead what they're doing is they're, they're they're banning speech. I find that to be troubling. Do you?

Joe the Plumber: Well, absolutely. It goes along the lines of the political correctness. I don't know how many people realize that, but that actually started over in Germany. They wanted to, ah . . . 'How, how do we get communism to spread?' And they're like 'Well, you need to take down Western civilization.'

So they had a think tank, and they came up with this critical thinking, ah, critical, ah . . . ah, ah, critical thinking t . . . think tank, to where they . . . 'Well, you know, political correctness, that's the way of doing it -- I mean, it came to be known that. But it's pretty much criticizing anything and everything.

And that's where we find ourselves at now.

AND THAT'S WHERE the pro-life movement and "Christian America" find themselves at now.

Perhaps now would be a good time to quit digging, leave the Republicans to their own crazy-pants meltdown, and shut the hell up if all you know how to do is shout.

And in the silence, perhaps it also would be a good time for the pro-life movement and "Christian America" to pray -- pray specifically for faith, hope, love, charity . . . and brains.

To those who play with fire . . .

. . . you just might get burned.

And it ain't gonna be no tea party.

No sign of life

Pro-life, my ass.

This (above) is the kind of thing we can come to expect today from some of America's thoroughly politicized national "pro-life" organizations.

For the low, low price of $5, those seeking to uphold the sanctity of human life "from creation to natural death" can join the American Life League in making sport of the natural death of a politician they've officially designated as "the Other." Funny this should come from an organization that says we must fight Planned Parenthood because it sells sex "as bait to steal souls — your children’s souls."

With tacky revenue-generators like

"Bury Obamacare With Kennedy" and Pharisaical demands about whom the Roman Catholic prelate of Boston may or may not grant a Roman Catholic funeral, one must wonder what happened to ALL's "soul." Apparently, at some point the souls of ALL and other significant portions of the pro-life movement must have been pilfered by the Republican Party.

It had to be soul theft, because Lord knows the pro-life movement didn't get enough in return for it to be considered a transaction.

IF GROUPS such as the American Life League aren't mere tools of the GOP and the health-insurance industry, why is ALL condemning some Catholic organizations for signing on to the mere concept of health-care reform? From a recent ALL press release:

Catholic Charities USA, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Catholic Health Association are urging their members to support "healthcare reform now," (i.e., current legislation that includes tax-subsidized abortion and rationed care for the sick and elderly).

ALL was alerted to the scandal when supporters passed along an action alert issued jointly by Catholic Charities and the de Paul Society, in which they tell members and supporters, " [W]e must maintain momentum for health care reform efforts with calls and emails supporting health care reform immediately. The groups that do not support health reform have been blanketing House members in opposition to any reform. Your members of Congress need to hear from you that you support health care reform, and that the system needs to be reformed now."

The Catholic Health Association produced a video which begins with a clip of President Obama, the most pro-abortion president in history, rallying Congress to support his health care plan. The de Paul Society inserted the video in its web site.

After American Life League issued a statement condemning this move, Catholic Charities USA described "online media reports" as "inaccurate," "disingenuous" and "politically motivated."

"We reported, verbatim, the statements these organizations sent their members," Brown responded. "These groups are apparently attempting to work out a backroom deal with the Obama administration. Their primary concern is universal health care, while the preborn and the elderly are left behind as collateral damage. As institutions rooted in Catholic social teaching, these groups should be at the forefront of the fight against the injustice of rationed care for the poorest of the poor, of tax-subsidized abortion and contraception, and of disregard for the health of the sick and elderly.

THE TROUBLE IS, today's health-care system is all about rationed care, as well as subsidized abortion and contraception -- all at the hands of private, profit-driven insurance companies. Every denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, every denial of payment for treatment received, every lifetime limit on claims and every denial of coverage for life-saving treatment is all about rationing care so that insurance companies' profits might be maximized.

Likewise, some 86 percent of private insurance policies now cover elective abortions. Who needs government, right?

One supposes that babies must somehow be less dead when dispatched with revenues from policyholders than when the deed is done by "government." If this supposition is false, then where are the all the ALL press releases hyperventilating against the evil, baby-killing private insurers?

If ALL and other "pro-life" groups are so committed to the sanctity of life "from creation to natural death," why do they rail against health-care reform period instead of merely decrying the objectionable proposals within the present health-care reform bills? This is especially relevant given that federal "death panels" exist only in the fevered imagination of Sarah Palin, and taxpayer-funded abortions under "Obamacare" are far from a done deal.

And what about ALL making sure reams of its tasteless, mean-spirited little "Obamacare" protest sign found their way all around the weekend "tea party" in Washington? What better way for a group to associate itself with stuff like this:

IN CASE you can't read everything, the yelling woman's sign calls President Obama a "fascist," and her shirt reads "The Cure for Obama Communism Is a New Era of McCarthyism." Fascist communists???

And ALL, in its infinite wisdom, also successfully managed to associate pro-lifers with this, too:


ONE THING can be said of ALL, just as it can be said for the "teabaggers" in general -- their zeal, and anger, is all-consuming.

In the name of the people, they do the bidding of corporate America.

In the name of freedom, they call -- or remain silent amid calls -- for a "new era of McCarthyism" . . . and the ideological witch hunts that accompanied the original era of McCarthyism.

And in the name of God and "a Christian nation," they tolerate threats of armed revolt, demonize those who disagree with them, make light of a senator's death, sow hatred and fear . . . and ultimately give aid and comfort to the Prince of Darkness and his evil designs.

The ironically named American Life League -- that which accuses others of stealing souls -- acts as if its primary directive is to steal the soul of the pro-life movement and set it against itself. And, once again, Americans are not without their reasons for equating "pro-life" with "pro-nut."

AS AN ORDINARY Catholic layman who believes what his church proclaims -- as someone who really does embrace the right to life from conception to natural death -- I find that there is indeed a last straw, and that it has disappeared.

And I now wish to disassociate myself from what is commonly understood to be "the pro-life movement."

This utterly and unfortunately politicized "movement" may be pro-something, but that something isn't necessarily life. Or the Author thereof.



IN CASE YOU'RE INTERESTED, here are some of the folks with whom the American Life League decided to get in bed.

Granted, these folks probably don't represent a majority of those at the Washington "tea party." But if they represent even 20 percent, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Roland the Crippled Wheelchair Gunner

My old man was not right!

My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right! My old man was not right!

HE WAS talking crazy talk. My old man was not right!

I must keep repeating this. And this, from Monday's Washington Post, does not represent a trend:

D.C. police said they are searching for a gunman in a wheelchair who shot a woman in her right foot Monday, then fled before patrol cars arrived.

The attack occurred about 1 p.m., moments after the 47-year-old victim had stepped off a Metrobus in the 1200 block of H Street NE, said Capt. Mike Gottert.

The woman, whose wound was not life-threatening, told police that "she had some kind of verbal dispute with the guy two weeks ago," Gottert said. "She was riding the bus. She got off. He came up and shot her. Didn't say anything. Just shot her."

BUT IN CASE it does, please do what you can to placate our wheelchair-user population. Do kind things on their behalf. Help Jerry's Kids!

No, really. Help Jerry's Kids. The telethon's over, but so what?

The life you save may be your own.

Yo, Kanye! Your time is up

I think we've had enough from Kanye West, don't you?

Now off with him, then.

Oh, and I'd like to associate myself with these remarks from Pink, who tried to kick Kanye's ass, but was stopped by security:

"'Kanye West is the biggest piece of s*** on earth. Quote me.'"

Oh, and because this is a low-rent, no-class fool we're discussing, note that the first two videos are filled with off-color language. Why couldn't they just let Pink at him, eh?

Pug. In diapers. Snoring.

This is Smudge.

He's a little friend we're dogsitting for a while. He likes to sleep and snore loudly. The snore loudly is a pug thing, I think.


DID YOU KNOW there's such a thing as doggie Depends? I do now. Poor Smudge -- the grief he must get from the other dogs.

Smudge is a sweetie, though. Kind of like Shrek.

Jim Carroll: I'll miss him. He died.

Jimmy started playing ball when he was a kid,
Started writing too, told us everything he did,
Catholic boy big star, in the paint and with a pen,
Poetry in motion, and looking for a fix, fix,
Poetry in motion, and looking for a fix, fix

Jump shot, junk shot, he was a boy genius
But, damn, the kid needed something intravenous,
Shoot some hoops, write some books,
Hustle on Times Square for that damn fix, fix
Hustle on Times Square for that damn fix, fix

Traded NYC for the DTs, cleaned out his brain
On the West Coast, wrote some more verse
Tried to sell some books, tried to shake that curse
Got on the stage, turned poems into punk, punk
Got on the stage, turned poems into punk, punk

Basketball Diaries, the Jim Carroll Band
Took the cards he got dealt, played out his hand
He was a punk poet -- banging heads, writing verse
That's how he lived; that's how he died, died,
That's how he lived; that's how he died, died

3 Chords & the Truth: Who are we now?

Sometimes, you stumble upon stuff.

Sometimes, it can get you to thinking hard.

And, sometimes, you just have to stop and wonder "Who am I?"

Last spring's Baton Rouge High senior video (above) was something I stumbled upon this week. And it ended with something that hit home:

Remember, this is who we were.

Who will we become?

THIRTY YEARS of memories came flooding back. Thirty years ago, I was where last semester's seniors were. And the same questions were on our minds, too.

Thirty years on, I wonder.

Who was I?

Who did I become?

Indeed, who did we all become? Sounds like a theme for a set on 3 Chords & the Truth, the show where we're not afraid to look at such things. In a musical manner, of course.

It's the Big Show, and you can find it here. And here. And at the upper right-hand corner of the blog.

3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

AND Bob Meyers . . . rest in peace, buddy.

There's a 'birther' born every minute

That didn't take long.

Go to the World Net Daily "superstore," and you too can call President Obama a liar for the low, low price of $5.95.

If magnetic bumper stickers aren't your style, perhaps you could choose something from the "Tea Party Store," the "Birth Certificate Store" or the "Don't Tread on Me Store."

I understand "birther" yard signs are all the rage today. You can have this attractive item for only $19.95.

The "Where's the birth certificate?" standard is a full 28-by-22 inches and would be an excellent complement to an authentic "Don't Tread on Me" flag ($39.94).

After all, what's political asshattery if you can't make a buck off of it, right?

Nuke attack imminent. Story inside.

Apocalypse is now.

See Lee Benson, Utah section.

So -- wondering why the imminent death of millions and the end of the United States as we know it isn't worth the front page -- the curious reader turns to Benson's column in the Utah section of the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.

WHAT'S IN that column, an interview with "terrorism expert" Daniel J. Hill is enough to challenge one's continence:

The man who predicted 9/11 is worried that its sequel is imminent.

"Muslims that I talk to say things like, 'America thinks they're safe now. They've forgotten about 9/11. But watch, Daniel. Stay near your TV. It's going to be bigger than 9/11,' " he said.

Hill said the next terrorist attack will involve suitcase nuclear bombs that will be detonated in small, low-flying two-seater private airplanes manned by men hanging onto the belief that, like the 9/11 hijackers, they are about to die as martyrs and enter paradise.

He is not alone in suggesting such a scenario. A 2007 book, "The Day of Islam," spells out the details, as do any number of Internet sites about a plot called "American Hiroshima."

The nukes, he said, will be detonated over New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

I asked Hill, "Why now?"

"Eight years from 1993 to 2001, eight years from that 9/11 to this 9/11," he said. "Symbolism. They're big on symbolism."

"Ramadan started two weeks ago Saturday," he said, referring to the Muslim holy month of fasting. "It always hits around Ramadan."

Eight years ago, Hill predicted the attack would come on Oct. 16 — almost in the middle of that year's Ramadan (the timing of Ramadan varies from year to year). He was about a month off.

"I don't know the second, hour or day. I just know they have the means, will, motivation and desire to do it," he said, noting that it's believed that years ago the suitcase nukes, acquired from former USSR operatives, were smuggled into America across the Mexican border.

ANYWAY you cut it, what we have here is a staggering act not of terrorism, but instead of journalistic incompetence and irresponsibility. This goes double in an age when people are so gullible as to seriously believe Barack Obama is a card-carrying Muslim communist who isn't the real president because he really was born in Kenya, not Honolulu.

Let's look at this a second.

The Deseret News thinks it's sitting on a story, from a "credible" source, that a nuclear attack upon seven American cities may be days away, and it gets 17 column inches in a column in the freakin' Utah section? Really?

Not only that, the editors of the Deseret News, are going to go with a -- sorry -- "atom bomb" of a story about an imminent American apocalypse, and it's 17 single-sourced inches by your local columnist, who couldn't be bothered to spend a little Google time fact-checking the thing? Really?

THE EDITORS of the Deseret News are going to risk scaring the poo out of readers -- and especially the populations of New York, Washington, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami -- without even bothering to also interview a few terrorism and nuclear-weapons experts on the phone to see whether they've heard the same things? To see whether it would be possible for al Qaida to acquire "suitcase" nukes and smuggle them into the United States?

Really?

If you're a newspaper columnist or newspaper editor, you're going to herald the possible End of the World as We Know It -- or at least as New York, Washington, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami know it -- without even checking to see whether "suitcase" nukes even exist . . . especially ones that can fit into a two-seater Cessna?

Really?

The J-school grad in me looks at this kind of glow-in-the-dark yellow journalism and isn't surprised that the newspaper industry has about had it. Especially if one thinks the Deseret News is typical.

The cultural realist in me looks at the whole mess and wonders why the Deseret News isn't making more money.

And the Catholic in me is pretty sure he knows why Mormons don't drink. If this is what's turned out by stone-cold sober columnists for a newspaper published by a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Lord knows what they'd come up with drunk as a skunk.

(Hey! I know what you're thinking. Don't go there.)

OF COURSE, Benson's missive on the predicted hell bombing of the United States isn't even original. It's just more regurgitated paranoia and fear-mongering from the depths of the lunatic right. World Net Daily, otherwise known as Birther Central, has been all over this for years. And all the Art Bell types republish it.

Sad, because it doesn't take much Internet effort to track down some thorough debunking of this stuff. Like this 2005 piece by Richard Miniter on Opinion Journal.com:

A month after September 11, senior Bush administration officials were told that an al Qaeda terrorist cell had control of a 10-kiloton atomic bomb from Russia and was plotting to detonate it in New York City. CIA director George Tenet told President Bush that the source, code-named "Dragonfire," had said the nuclear device was already on American soil. After anxious weeks of investigation, including surreptitious tests for radioactive material in New York and other major cities, Dragonfire's report was found to be false. New York's mayor and police chief would not learn of the threat for another year.

The specter of the nuclear suitcase bomb is particularly potent because it fuses two kinds of terror: the horrible images of Hiroshima and the suicide bomber, the unseen shark amid the swimmers. The fear of a suitcase nuke, like the bomb itself, packs a powerful punch in a small package. It also has a sense of inevitability. A December 2001 article in the Boston Globe speculated that terrorists would explode suitcase nukes in Chicago, Sydney and Jerusalem . . . in 2004.

Every version of the nuclear suitcase bomb scare relies on one or more strands of evidence, two from different Russians and one from a former assistant secretary of defense. The scare started, in its current form, with Russian general Alexander Lebed, who told a U.S. congressional delegation visiting Moscow in 1997--and, later that year, CBS's series "60 Minutes"--that a number of Soviet-era nuclear suitcase bombs were missing.

It was amplified when Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking Soviet military intelligence officer ever to defect to the United States, told a congressional panel that same year that Soviet special forces might have smuggled a number of portable nuclear bombs onto the U.S. mainland to be detonated if the Cold War ever got hot. The scare grew when Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Clinton, wrote a book called "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe." In that slim volume, Mr. Allison worries about stolen warheads, self-made bombs and suitcase nukes. Published in 2004, the work has been widely cited by the press and across the blogosphere.

Let's walk back the cat, as they say in intelligence circles. The foundation of all main nuclear suitcase stories is a string of interviews given by Gen. Lebed in 1997. Lebed told a visiting congressional delegation in June 1997 that the Kremlin was concerned that its arsenal of 100 suitcase-size nuclear bombs would find their way to Chechen rebels or other Islamic terrorists. He said that he had tried to account for all 100 but could find only 48. That meant 52 were missing. He said the bombs would fit "in a 60-by-40-by-20 centimeter case"--in inches, roughly 24-by-16-by-8--and would be "an ideal weapon for nuclear terror. The warhead is activated by one person and easy to transport." It would later emerge that none of these statements were true.

Later that year, the Russian general sat down with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes." The exchange could hardly have been more alarming.

Kroft: Are you confident that all of these weapons are secure and accounted for?

Lebed: (through a translator) Not at all. Not at all.

Kroft: How easy would it be to steal one?

Lebed: It's suitcase-sized.

Kroft: You could put it in a suitcase and carry it off?

Lebed: It is made in the form of a suitcase. It is a suitcase, actually. You can carry it. You can put it into another suitcase if you want to.

Kroft: But it's already in a suitcase.

Lebed: Yes.

Kroft: I could walk down the streets of Moscow or Washington or New York, and people would think I'm carrying a suitcase?

Lebed: Yes, indeed.

Kroft: How easy is it to detonate?

Lebed: It would take twenty, thirty minutes to prepare.

Kroft: But you don't need secret codes from the Kremlin or anything like that.

Lebed: No.

Kroft: You are saying that there are a significant number that are missing and unaccounted for?

Lebed: Yes, there is. More than one hundred.

Kroft: Where are they?

Lebed: Somewhere in Georgia, somewhere in Ukraine, somewhere in the Baltic countries. Perhaps some of them are even outside those countries. One person is capable of actuating this nuclear weapon--one person.

Kroft: So you're saying these weapons are no longer under the control of the Russian military.

Lebed: I'm saying that more than one hundred weapons out of the supposed number of 250 are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia. I don't know their location. I don't know whether they have been destroyed or whether they are stored or whether they've been sold or stolen. I don't know.

Nearly everything Lebed told visiting congressmen and "60 Minutes" was later contradicted, sometimes by Lebed himself. In subsequent news accounts, he said 41 bombs were missing, at other times he pegged the number at 52 or 62, 84 or even 100. When asked about this disparity, he told the Washington Post that he "did not have time to find out how many such weapons there were." If this sounds breezy or cavalier, that is because it is.

Indeed, Lebed never seemed to have made a serious investigation at all. A Russian official later pointed out that Lebed never visited the facility that houses all of Russia's nuclear weapons or met with its staff. And Lebed--who died in a plane crash in 2002--had a history of telling tall tales.

As for the small size of the weapons and the notion that they can be detonated by one person, those claims also been authoritatively dismissed. The only U.S. government official to publicly admit seeing a suitcase-sized nuclear device is Rose Gottemoeller. As a Defense Department official, she visited Russia and Ukraine to monitor compliance with disarmament treaties in the early 1990s. The Soviet-era weapon "actually required three footlockers and a team of several people to detonate," she said. "It was not something you could toss in your shoulder bag and carry on a plane or bus"

Lebed's onetime deputy, Vladimir Denisov, said he headed a special investigation in July 1996--almost a year before Lebed made his charges--and found that no army field units had portable nuclear weapons of any kind. All portable nuclear devices--which are much bigger than a suitcase--were stored at a central facility under heavy guard. Lt. Gen. Igor Valynkin, chief of the Russian Defense Ministry's 12th Main Directorate, which oversees all nuclear weapons, denied that any weapons were missing. "Nuclear suitcases . . . were never produced and are not produced," he said. While he acknowledged that they were technically possible to make, he said the weapon would have "a lifespan of only several months" and would therefore be too costly to maintain.

Gen. Valynkin is referring to the fact that radioactive weapons require a lot of shielding. To fit the radioactive material and the appropriate shielding into a suitcase would mean that a very small amount of material would have to be used. Radioactive material decays at a steady, certain rate, expressed as "half-life," or the length of time it takes for half of the material to decay into harmless elements. The half-life of the most likely materials in the infinitesimal weights necessary to fit in a suitcase is a few months. So as a matter of physics and engineering, the nuclear suitcase is an impractical weapon. It would have to be rebuilt with new radioactive elements every few months.

THE WORST PART of the Deseret News' irresponsible, unvetted fear-mongering is that it really might happen some day -- maybe even as soon as Daniel Hill thinks . . . though the "suitcase nuke" thing strains credibility to its breaking point. At least for now.

Because al Qaida really is still out to get us, the subject deserves a thorough, sober examination. One quite unlike the single-source bit of hackery from a credulous local columnist buried inside a middling newspaper in Salt Lake City.

Killing him softly with their song?

Politico finds all the really rich remarks.

Like Republicans, in the wake of "You lie!" and lynch-mob "town halls," faulting President Obama and the Dems for being "overly combative."

I MEAN, really.

Republicans — some of whom expressed open contempt for Obama by scanning their BlackBerrys or holding up copies of GOP bills during the speech — saw the president’s remarks as a Democratic call to arms that belied the president’s oft-repeated calls for bipartisanship.

"I was incredibly disappointed in the tone of his speech,” said Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).”At times, I found his tone to be overly combative and believe he behaved in a manner beneath the dignity of the office. I fear his speech tonight has made it more difficult — not less — to find common ground.

"He appeared to be angry at his critics and disappointed the American people were not buying the proposals he has been selling... If the Obama administration and congressional Democrats go down this path and push a bill on the American people they do not want, it could be the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency."

YES, IT'S A SHAME Barack Obama couldn't be high-minded and civilized like Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Glenn Beck and all the wingnuts conjuring up visions of swastikas and hammers and sickles.

For lack of a heavy cane. . . .

Tonight may have been South Carolina's "finest" political hour since Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential bid in 1948 -- if not Rep. Preston Brooks' 1856 game of whack-a-mole in the U.S. Senate chamber . . . using the head of Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass., as the "mole."

During President Obama's speech on health-care reform before a joint session of Congress, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-Seditionland, provided one of South Carolina's top political moments -- but not the top political moment -- since the state came up short on slavery and segregation during past periods of American ferment. Tonight's bid for glory fell just short, mainly due to Wilson's lacking a heavy, gold-headed cane . . . and that he was too far away from Obama to throw a shoe at him.

STILL, according to this story on MSNBC, the congressman gave it the ol' college try. Think Ole Miss, 1962:

Without naming Bush, Obama blamed his administration for bequeathing him “a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House ... because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for — from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy.”

“I will not make that same mistake with health care,” he said.

The remarks contributed to a sense of palpable tension in the room. When Obama promised that his plan would not cover illegal immigrants, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted “You lie!” — the most obvious of several instances when the president was greeted with audible disagreement.

The Associated Press reported that Obama’s wife, Michelle, shook her head in disappointment.

OBVIOUSLY, they do things differently in South Carolina, and Wilson forgot that Americans don't do "Question Time" like they do in Britain. Just like our national legislators don't duke it out on the floor like they do in Taiwan and South Korea.

Unlike Britain, the chief executive here is not a prime minister but, instead, a president -- a head of state as well as government. American legislators would no more -- well, at least until today -- scream "You lie!" at a president than Brits would flip off the queen.

It would be like giving the finger to the nation itself.

Then again, they've developed quite the knack for that in the Palmetto State over the last century and a half. Wilson's fellow Republicans likewise seem eager to learn all the wrong lessons from history.