I live in Omaha. . . .

I live in Omaha . . .






. . . because it's photogenic.

If only he'd stayed forever young

If only Bob Dylan had stayed forever young, maybe the New Jersey cops would have recognized who the hell they were about to run in.

As it is, a scruffy looking old man walking through a neighborhood is enough to cause homeowners to freak out and have cops ready to arrest America's greatest living songwriter for vagrancy. Ironic that this story breaks on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.

The hippies grew up, got sober -- more or less -- sold out . . . and now we're almost arresting freakin' Bob Dylan for being a bum. Kind of like how Omaha cops have been known to harass church ladies for feeding the animals homeless in a downtown park.

Thing is, the theory -- an entirely reasonable one -- some folks float in this ABC News story about why Dylan was in that particular Jersey neighborhood is kind of sweet:

Was Bob Dylan looking for the home where Bruce Springsteen wrote "Born to Run" in 1974 when he was detained by police near the Jersey shore last month?

The 68-year-old music legend was picked up one Thursday last month by a 24-year-old cop who failed to recognize him as he walked the streets of Long Branch, N.J. in the pouring rain.

It may have been as simple as it appears: Dylan told police he was talking a walk and looking at a home for sale.

But the area where Dylan was picked up was just a couple blocks from the beachside bungalow where Bruce Springsteen wrote the material for his landmark 1975 album "Born to Run."

In the past nine months, Dylan has visited the childhood homes of Neil Young and John Lennon, in both cases appearing without fanfare and barely identifying himself after he was recognized.

Last November, Winnipeg homeowner John Kiernan told Sun Media's Simon Fuller that Dylan and a friend arrived unannounced in a taxi to his Grosvenor Ave. home, where songwriter Neil Young grew up.

Dylan, Kiernan said, was unshaved and had the brim of his hat pulled down over his head. He asked for a look inside and inquired about Young's bedroom and where he would have played his guitar.

Dylan has shown a deep affinity for the Canadian rocker over the years, most recently in his 2001 song "Highlands." And Young said at a Nashville concert in 2005 that he once lent Dylan one of his most precious musical treasures -- Hank Williams' guitar, for which Young wrote the ballad "This Old Guitar." Both men revere Williams, a country music legend.

In May, Dylan joined a public tour of John Lennon's childhood home, according to the BBC. A spokeswoman for the National Trust, which runs the home as London landmark, said Dylan "took one of our general minibus tours.

"People on the minibus did not recognize him apparently," the spokeswoman told the British news agency. "He could have booked a private tour, but he was happy to go on the bus with everyone else."

(snip)

While it remains unclear whether Dylan was looking for Springsteen's old home in this case, and he never mentioned that he was to Buble, the description that the Winnipeg homeowner gave of Dylan when the singer visited Neil Young's home last year was similar Buble's story.

"So these guys were standing at the front of the house about to get back into their taxi,'' Kiernan, the homeowner, said of Dylan and his friend in Canada. "I noticed he was wearing these expensive-looking leather pants tucked inside these world-class boots. Then I studied his face and tried to keep cool."

It was Bob Dylan, who'd grown up just over the U.S./Canadian border, in Hibbing, Minn., Kiernan said.

"When he said, 'Would Neil have looked out this window when he played his guitar?'," said Kiernan, "I realized what a spiritual experience he was having at that moment, knowing that he would have been doing the same thing at the same time in Minnesota.

GEEZ. Where's Chris Crocker when you need him?

Britney, hell. LEAVE BOB DYLAN ALONE!

3 Chords & the Truth: Aquarian flashback

During the Age of Aquarius, Uncle Favog was the coolest cat I knew.

He drove the coolest VW microbus, he wore the coolest beads, and he had the coolest bell bottoms adorned with the coolest peace-and-love patches.

Uncle Favog protested the war, expanded his mind and got all the groovy chicks. And he played groovy music all night on Radio Free Omaha . . . master of his own fate (at least so long as he didn't cause The Man to come down on the station, bourgeois capitalist convention being what it was, man) and host of 3 Chords & the Truth. This present 3 Chords & the Truth on the Internets is a tribute to that wonderful show of Uncle Favog's four decades ago on the FM airwaves.

Remember when FM was hip, cool, happenin' and now?

Didn't think you did.

ANYWAY, I was rummaging through a box of old reel-to-reel tapes, and I came up with this Big Show gem from 40 years ago this week. Anybody remember what was going on then?

Yeah, you may have seen the news stories featuring aging hippies remembering a certain "happening" in New York state. Uncle Favog, though, would not have been one of them.

Oh, of course he's an aging hippie, but he also was right here in Omaha, playing the musical "guru" as he spun the righteous tunes over the Radio Free Omaha airwaves.

Back in the day . . . when we had problems, but still held out hope, all the while groovin' to the music that could move our souls.

It was -- and is -- 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

The father of modern music, more or Les

In the beginning of music -- and recording -- as we know it today, there was Les Paul. That's all you need to know.

Oh . . . and he was a hell of guitar player, too.

Les Paul died Thursday at 94, leaving behind an entire world of music as his legacy. Not bad for your life's work. Not bad at all.

May God rest his soul.

'This could be Guatemala'

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Opponents of the health-care "reform" in Congress are correct when they portray it as a mess.

The Congressional Budget Office is probably correct when it says the plan won't contain costs.

And for anyone who cares about the value of unborn human life, the plan is a non-starter if it isn't going to keep in place the strictures against federal funding of abortion.

But faced with scenes like these from Los Angeles this week, the conservative opponents' alternative to our present logistical and moral nightmare would be . . . ? It is obvious to the world that America's present health-care delivery system is a broken, bureaucratic mess.

IT IS EQUALLY CLEAR that medical rationing is going on now, with no government meddling to blame. For the "lucky" insured, this rationing goes on at the corporate level -- at the insurance companies. And the motive isn't "cost-control," it's profit maximization.

On a societal level, rationing goes on when the uninsured just don't go to the doctor or dentist. A wildly unsuccessful scheme -- unless they croak before someone can get them to an insanely expensive emergency room to deal with a problem that could have been dealt with much more cheaply before it became a full-blown crisis.

Lots of nations in the Western world have health-care systems that work, and work well. You'd think someone might study those and pick one -- France, for example, ranked No. 1 in the world -- and set about creating an American version of it.

PROPOSE THAT, however, and you'll get called an idiot and a socialist by the outraged right (a group which seems not to be taking advantage of all its insurers' mental-health benefits).

Then again, I'd rather be an idiot socialist that to look at scenes like those broadcast tonight on the NBC Nightly News and be just fine with that.

You can get anything you want . . . .

I've been scarce around these cyberparts, off fighting another skirmish in the ongoing war against cyberobsolescence. Mine.

Or, more precisely, my computer's.

A flat-screen monitor Mrs. Favog and I found at an estate sale for $40 suddenly decided the other day to follow its former owner to the Great Beyond. Or to Florida -- whatever.

Having been burned by our quest to get some LCD magic for (next to) nothing, my better half and I trekked to Nebraska Furniture Mart in search of some brand-new monitor goodness . . . some 22-inch widescreen goodness. As if we had a choice.

Computer-monitor makers still might be cranking out 4x3 displays these days, but the Mart and Best Buy weren't selling them. When in Rome, and all that, you know.

And I love me some wide-format computing. You used to have to hook up multiple monitors to get this kind of virtual workspace.

And the picture. . . . oh, dear me, can a Blu-Ray burner for the old Dell be far behind?

OF COURSE, being that we're talking computers -- particularly 4-year-old ones -- you know the path to widescreen goodness had to be a bumpy one. Very. The road to planned obsolescence is never an Autobahn experience for the poor consumer, who just wants a lot for a little.

Like me and that estate-sale flat-screen.

First, the fargin' integrated video controller, I discover when I hook up the new monitor, wouldn't support widescreen monitors. So everything had that funhouse-mirror look -- the video version of getting the news from home via a phone call from Mama.

Well, I figured that might happen. So I head down to Best Buy to get me an inexpensive video card. Excuse me . . . graphics card.

I can put it in. I can put anything in a computer. Hell, since we got our first one in 1993, I've replaced everything there is to replace inside a computer tower except the power supply and motherboard.

But there's a problem. My Dell Dimension 3000, which I didn't think was that old or decrepit . . . is. And it features an undersized (by today's standards) 250-watt power supply. Most video -- er, graphics -- cards won't give you a crappy black-and-white kinescope view of the world for under 350-watts of the Omaha Public Power District's finest.

ON THE OTHER HAND, it might cause your computer to melt down.

And not only that, most of the graphics cards Dell says are compatible with my model of computer most certainly aren't compatible with the tiny-ass power supply they put in my computer. Power supply, anyone?

To go along with the new monitor and a new video -- OK, graphics, GRAPHICS!!! -- card.

What was a $40 estate-sale bargain so far had turned into a $192 Nebraska Furniture Mart shopping trip. It was threatening to ring up another $65 for a video card and at least that much for a bigger power supply.

Face it, if we all had to constantly rebuild our automobiles just to be allowed on the Interstate, we'd all be taking the bus. But that's the "world of personal computing" in a world that eats the computer-deprived for lunch.

AFTER A DAY of back and forth on the graphics-card issue, I opened up the Dell to see who was full of it -- the folks in Round Rock, Tejas, and their system specs and upgrade recommendations, or . . . the folks in Round Rock, Tejas, who maybe put more power supply in my "old" Dimension 3000 than I thought.

As it turns out, the folks in Round Rock, Tejas, were full of it. And they did put a puny 250-watt power supply in the computer . . . as promised. And it looked like not just any off-the-shelf power supply would fit in that thing.

And it looked like the only place I'd find a graphics card that wouldn't suck up more juice than old Dell could give was online. Trouble is, I was sick of messing with the damned thing -- which was lying half taken apart on the dining-room table.

So we went to the one place in town that carried a 250-watt card and happily paid too much for it. And here I sit, in widescreen bliss . . . $250-odd poorer.

BUT THIS ISN'T about my computer.

It's about how the city of Omaha has gutted the public library system -- and is about to gut God knows what else -- all because some loud taxpayers, and some feckless city council members, think you can run a city on $40 estate-sale, flat-screen computer monitors and not have to pay the piper at some point.

It's about how folks still expect the city to cut, cut and cut some more even when the budgetary fat is gone and the muscle ain't looking so good anymore.

It's about how cops aren't being hired, one library branch will close for the rest of the year (at least) while others slash their hours (and staff) and youth-recreation programs in poor neighborhoods are being axed (great combination, eh?) all because a bunch of loud-mouthed, right-wing yahoos are raising holy hell from somewhere east of Eden and west of the 'hood. Because it would just be completely scandalous and unreasonable to expect people who live in $100,000 houses to pay $25 more a year in property tax.

From the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday:

Although libraries and other services drew strong support, Festersen said he thought the common theme for many average citizens was their opposition to tax increases.

Council members are cool to Suttle's proposed entertainment tax and property tax hike, and they are looking for ways to cut spending further. They are set to vote on the budget Sept. 1.

Suttle and the council face a projected $11 million shortfall next year. The mayor also is trying to close a $12 million revenue gap in the current budget.

The hearing followed weeks of bad news on the city budget: The temporary closing of Florence Library, and cuts in library hours at other branches. Layoffs of 130 civilian employees. The grounding of the police helicopter for the rest of the year. Swimming pools closing early for the season.

Earlier Tuesday, Suttle announced furloughs in the Mayor's Office, saying all members of his staff will take eight unpaid leave days before the end of the year.

(snip)

Doug Kagan, chairman of the Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom, urged the council to cut spending.

“Don't tell us about sacred cows that cannot be touched. Sacred cows make the best hamburger,” Kagan said.

IT SEEMS we have a couple of dynamics at work here in the "don't tax you, don't tax me" contingent.

One group wants a really great computer monitor but sees no real need to pay for it. The other, exemplified by the Nebraska Grumblers for Screw You, already has a computer monitor and figures a Big Chief tablet is good enough for everybody else.

The common good is not a popular notion these days. Obviously.

Which brings us back to, you guessed it . . . computers. In Wednesday's Omaha paper. Really.

Florence is part of northeast Omaha, lying within an area bounded by the Missouri River, Redick Avenue, 45th Street and the Washington County line. It includes the Ponca Hills area.

The decision to close the library has upset residents of all ages.

Teresa Miller, 20, and her brother Jonas, 15, were checking out story and music CDs when they heard the news Tuesday.

“That's weird to close a library,” Jonas said. “I mean, you need books, right?”

It never occurred to Teresa that her childhood library had a shortage of customers. She said the Florence library probably has fewer visitors because it is smaller than most branches.

“I like the small things,” she said, adding that she's frustrated that she'll have to use more gas to drive to a different branch.

For Craig and Deborah Johnson, a stroll to their public library is a family affair they hate to see end.

As a reporter approached the couple, they already were asking, why Florence?

“Things are going downhill real fast,” said Craig. “A snowball effect.”

Both he and his wife have been laid off from jobs as, respectively, equipment operator and office clerk. Tuesday, the couple walked to the library — their 2-year-old and 6-year-old in tow — to search for employment via library computers. The little ones also signed on to a computer.

The older Johnson children use the library as well, often taking a break to go across the hall to play basketball or participate in some other activity at the Florence recreation center. A senior center also is in the complex that contains the library.

Paying for bus fare to go elsewhere is an expense the Johnsons said they didn't need.

Hartline on Tuesday was at the senior center arranging a volunteer visit. She is a frequent library customer and also stops weekly at the post office a few blocks away.

“It's very upsetting,” said Hartline. “We are just as deserving of community facilities as any other part of Omaha.”

SURE YOU ARE. But Doug Kagan would rather you have this really cool $40 estate-sale, flat-screen computer monitor.

Just don't expect him to throw in a couple of bucks toward fixing it.

Tempus fugit, man

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock n roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an get my soul free

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

-- Joni Mitchell

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

3 Chords & the Truth: Sixty-Seven Candles*

3 CHORDS & THE TRUTH TEST

Question 1: Have you ever touched it?

I clicked the mouse once to play it on the computer. It worked. Is that touching it?

Question 2: Have you ever done it?

I told you I clicked the mouse to listen to the show. The Big Show . . . you know, 3 Chords & the Truth. Is that doing it? This is a weird-ass test.

Question 3: If you answered ‘I don’t think so’, would you ever if you could?

What????? I listened to the flippin' show. Of course I would if I could, because I did. Why wouldn't I think so? Are you an idiot?

Question 4: With who? (Be honest, your name’s not on this so it’s okay)

My wife. I listen to 3 Chords & the Truth with my wife.

Question 5: Does she know that you like her?

I hope so. We've been married 26 years. What kind of test is this???

I think you're weird. Doesn't everybody listen to 3 Chords & the Truth? Why the hell do you care if I touched it . . . touched it? Does it come on CD? And what do you care who I "touched" the show with?

Freak.

* For 67 shows.

Café chaud de la Louisiane

My Aunt Rose made the best coffee in the world.

That's because she made it the way God intended coffee to be made -- in the kitchen of a double shotgun house, on an old stove with a whistling kettle and a little, well-used French-drip pot filled with Community coffee. If you want to better understand Louisiana, you need to know about Aunt Rose's coffee.


I'll tell you how to make real Louisiana coffee in a second -- and, mind you, I know about these things. Take Community coffee, for example. That's what just about everybody from my corner of South Louisiana grew up drinking . . . that strong and wonderful inky-black brew.

Hell, I've been drinking Community since I was . . . well, for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, I started off with coffee milk on the weekends.

Anyway, that's what you start your pot of coffee with, some Community "Pacquet Rouge" (above), named for the red bag (or can) in which it's packaged.

THE BRAND has been around since 1919, when Henry Norman "Cap" Saurage started custom grinding dark-roast coffee for customers of his Full Weight Grocery in "Dixie," a north Baton Rouge neighborhood that was pretty much "out in the country" back then. Today, the brand covers the Gulf South like the dew. It's found in every grocery store, and there's a chain of coffeehouses and a booming mail-order business.

I guess you could call ol' Cap Saurage a coffee tycoon. We just called him Uncle Norman, being that he was my great uncle. My half of the family was the poor relations, alas.

But we knew how to enjoy our Community coffee. Which brings me back to Aunt Rose, the little pot on the old stove, a kitchen table and an old double shotgun house off Greenwell Springs Road with a yard full of pecan trees.

Oh, and get you an old French drip pot, too. The one pictured above was Mama and Daddy's, and it's probably 60 years old.


AND BOIL you some water, cher. To make hot coffee, you need you some boiling water. But you knew that.

When I was a kid, I remember half the damn family crowded into Aunt Rose's little kitchen, all talking at the same time -- and loudly -- as everybody waited for the water to boil and then for the coffee to make.

This, realize, was an ongoing and repetitive process. Those little pots only make about five cups of coffee at a time.

Aunt Rose would be boiling water and brewing coffee as the conversation swirled around, by and through her. That's the beauty of coffee the "slow food" way. It's a great excuse to gab while you're waiting.


AS THE TALK went around and around, Aunt Rose would get out the bag of Community and fill the pot up to the ridge there.

Mama would be gossiping with her and my other aunts while Daddy complained about the world with my uncles, and all the young folk kept track of the dual streams of consciousness whizzing past each other -- and sometimes crashing into each other -- somewhere above the kitchen table.

OVER ON THE old stove, the coffee pot looked something like this. Poo yi yi, dis gonna be good, yeah!

AT SOME POINT, everybody would just have to talk a little louder, because the kettle was starting to whistle.

And when the water was boiling, Aunt Rose would turn down her fire just to that point where the kettle would stay at a slow boil. Nowadays, I find it easier to pour my boiling water into something that's easier to pour from than a big ol' kettle.

While the womenfolk were verbally separating the sots of the family from the saints, it was time to get serious about creating a pot -- OK, several pots -- of South Louisiana magic.

See, you pour you water on the grounds a little at a time so you don't make a mess, yeah. You don't want to make no mess with dem water and coffee grounds all over you burner, no.


AND WHILE the menfolk debated the relative merits of, say, Richard E. Nixon, dat communiss Hubert Humphrey -- well, Uncle Jimmy would object to that characterization of Humphrey, being the family's yellow-dog Democrat -- and George Wallace, cher, you grounds gonna start to look like this when dey foam up (above).

I could eat it like this, yeah.

WITH THE running tally being Richard E. Nixon 1, George Wallace 3 and dat communiss Hubert Humphrey 1 (God bless Uncle Jimmy, good Catholic that he is), Aunt Rose would be keepin' on keepin' on with the coffee.

See above? You keep doing it just like this until you got you a pot of good Louisiana coffee. Don't get impatient, cher. All good things -- especially coffee -- come to those what wait. They always somethin' to talk about.

AFTER YOU BEEN doing this a few times, you got to lift up the grounds holder to see how much coffee you done made, yeah.

You don't check on it, cher, and you gonna have a black-coffee fountain spoutin' all over you nice clean stove.


BY NOW, Aunt Rose would have all the coffee cups and spoons on the table. The sugar bowl would be there, too, as well as the can of Carnation or Pet milk if you wanted you some cream with your Community.

Now, ain't that one of the prettiest things you done ever seen? Hahn?

NOW THAT'S some coffee perfection, yeah. Ain't no Starbucks gonna give you no coffee like that, no.

Then again, back in Aunt Rose's day, we didn't know what Starbucks was. (Intergalactic cash money???) We didn't need it.

WHEN YOU HAVE good Community coffee, made amid your little community with care and love, every kitchen table is Starbucks -- only better. That is, if you make time to stop and smell what's brewing at Aunt Rose's.

I bet you can taste it now. Bon appetit . . . dahlin'.

John Hughes, 1950-2009

Oh, no. John Hughes is dead.

From The Associated Press:

Hughes died of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan, Michelle Bega said. He was in New York to visit family.

A native of Lansing, Mich., who later moved to suburban Chicago and set much of his work there, Hughes rose from ad writer to comedy writer to silver screen champ with his affectionate and idealized portraits of teens, whether the romantic and sexual insecurity of “Sixteen Candles,” or the J.D. Salinger-esque rebellion against conformity in “The Breakfast Club.”

Hughes’ ensemble comedies helped make stars out of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and many other young performers. He also scripted the phenomenally popular “Home Alone,” which made little-known Macaulay Culkin a sensation as the 8-year-old accidentally abandoned by his vacationing family, and wrote or directed such hits as “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” and “Uncle Buck.”

AND THEN there was this:

Giving the printer's devil his due

Yesterday, I noted the general lameness of Dana Milbank's Washington Post videos and the newspaper universe in general.

NONE OF THAT has changed. But to show that I'm not a total a****** -- a half-a******, perhaps, but not a total a****** -- I would like to point out something Milbank and the WaPo did right.

In fact, what they did was craft a funny response to the Internet tizzy touched off by his and Chris Cillizza's unfunny "Mad Bitch" episode of Mouthpiece Theater. Really . . . it made me chuckle.

But this is the newspaper industry we're talking about, so you know there's a "but" just around the corner. Or a "butt," as the case may be.

Well, the "butts" in charge of things at The Washington Post had this "but" in store (and, really, it was no surprise): They spiked Mouthpiece Theater just when it was starting to shows signs -- maybe -- of hitting its stride. Sigh.

It's too bad Rupert Murdoch isn't in charge there. He could have ordered up a couple of topless babes for the show and put the whole damn thing behind a for-pay firewall.

Oh, what a pity it is that nobody can figure out how to sell panicked flailing. That's the only going concern newspapers have left.

Scandalized teens unfriend Facebook

We've done it! Adults finally have broken the teen-age addiction to social-networking sites!

Unfortunately, however, as with many great victories, it appears there will be the usual slew of unintended consequences -- some good, most really bad.

FROM THURSDAY'S Omaha City Weekly:

A familiar sight from long, long ago has returned to the Plains, and you won't believe who's behind it.

If you step out into your back yard, or if you go for a leisurely stroll along one of Omaha's hiking trails, chances are you'll see this new-old phenomenon. No, it's not cold-blooded Nebraskans stoking the fireplace in the middle of August. And your neighbor Joe -- or your neighbor's neighbor Phil -- isn't grilling tonight, either.

But it just might be that Junior is talking with his friends.

Check the trend report: Facebook is out, smoke signals are in.

Now that adults from 25-34 have flooded the social-networking site and the 35-plus demographic isn't far behind, Facebook has got its "nerd" on. Suddenly, Facebook isn't where teens and college students meet up with, and spy on, their friends and classmates.

Suddenly, Facebook is where the parents are.

And with E-mail having lost it's "cool" long ago and multiple-party texting being a really good way to deplete a bank account quickly, teens are doing it old school. Really old school.

"A year ago, only a few old men still knew how to send smoke signals," said Winston Flaming Owl, a public-affairs specialist for the Lakota nation in South Dakota. "But now there's incredible interest in the old, traditional ways, and it's all young people hungry to learn about our Native American tradition."

Flaming Owl estimated that practitioners of smoke messaging, as far has he knows, has increased 24,000 percent in the last nine months alone.

"It's incredible," he said. "Who would have thought me and my old classmates getting on Facebook would be the thing to save one of our traditions?

"Not only that, but white people, too. If this trend continues, for the first time in the 500 years since the white man has been in the "New World," native peoples will -- well, in at least this one sense -- will have achieved cultural domination over Europeans. This could be the golden age of Native American culture."

It also could be the golden age of Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco and all the other formerly beleaguered purveyors of tobacco products. And the instant worst nightmare of anti-smoking activists.

Omaha police, for example, have noted a tenfold increase in the amount of citations officers are writing for both underage tobacco possession and violation of the state's Indoor Clean Air Act.

"With texting being too expensive for group application and Facebook being really lame now, there has been a massive increase in teen smoking," said Douglas County health chief Dr. Adi Pour. "Smoke signals is how kids communicate now. And, unfortunately, cigarettes are the perfect communication device for a generation who used to post to Facebook to message a friend just across the room."

Pour said the only bright side of the teen-smoking craze -- one she mentioned on reluctantly -- was that the drastic uptick in tobacco-tax collections will avert expected drastic cuts in her department.

"It's been completely off the charts. I'm just sick about it -- I can't even go into the ladies room anymore without choking on teen-agers' cigarette smoke. But at least we'll be able to treat all the indigent elderly emphysema sufferers now. I guess that's something."

But Pour added that if adults don't abandon social-networking sites soon, the future health consequences will be drastic, with a huge increase in emphysema and lung-cancer cases starting about 2035.

What makes dinosaurs laugh

This is choice.

Here's Dana Milbank of The Washington Freakin' Post -- you know, the guy who has a recurring role as The Washington Post's Dana Milbank on the cable-news "infotainment" lineup -- making fun of a well-to-do politician's attempts to act the part of The Regular Guy.

I am told this is supposed to be witty and amusing, not ironic and hypocritical.

Naturally, if you told the ever-so-in-touch people at the Post that Milbank's Washington Sketch videos were overbearingly self-conscious, lame and not amusing at all, they'd interrupt congratulating themselves for being so hip and "new media-y" to be quite shocked at your impertinence.

NOW, IF WITTY and amusing it what you want, try this takedown of Milbank and the Post instead:


THAT WAS FUNNY. What it was sending up, on the other hand, was not:

I'VE WATCHED this twice now. I can see what they were going for, but . . . no. Does nothing for me.

This is the best the high-priced "talent" at The Washington Freakin' Post could come up with?

What?

Sorry. With which the high-priced "talent" at The Dratted Washington Post could come up.

Trust me on this one: If you're gonna get yourselves in trouble for something like this, make sure it's funny. Now imagine the allegedly lesser lights at (insert local rag here) trying to "do a Milbank" and get his or her own spot on CNN.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The talent is out there to pull it off. Increasingly, however, it doesn't reside in traditional media.

Some of it does, though. And by the time some ink-stained Steve Martin comes up with a killer script and rounds up a killer production crew to shoot it . . . they will send the concept and script into the Newspaper Bureaucracy Dull Machine, and it will emerge as Two Mopes Doing an Impression of Mr. French Reading a Bedtime Story to Mrs. Beasley.

Which is about where newspapers are today -- 1967. Forty-something years out of date and flailing about in a failing bid for relevance.

Ask Dana Milbank.

Profile in political courage

When you see a politician acting on principle -- particularly when he knows it probably will be the end of him -- it's important to take note of it.

Mainly because it almost never happens. Not today. Not in Washington, a town of small ideas and smaller men (and women).

New Orleans' "accidental congressman" might stand just over 5 feet tall, but if you ask me, he's the biggest man in D.C. From a Saturday story in The Times-Picayune:

Earlier in the day, Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, R-New Orleans, the only member of the Louisiana House delegation who had not weighed in on where he stands on the health reform bill, said that he cannot support any bill that permits public money to be spent on abortion.

"At the end of the day if the health care reform bill does not have strong language prohibiting the use of federal funding for abortion, then the bill is really a no-go for me," said Cao, who studied to be a Jesuit priest.

"Being a Jesuit, I very much adhere to the notion of social justice," Cao said. "I do fully understand the need of providing everyone with access to health care, but to me personally, I cannot be privy to a law that will allow the potential of destroying thousands of innocent lives.

"I know that voting against the health care bill will probably be the death of my political career," Cao said, "but I have to live with myself, and I always reflect on the phrase of the New Testament, 'How does it profit a man's life to gain the world but to lose his soul.'"

Cao said he is still undecided about the merits of including a public option in any health reform redesign. On Friday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that Cao will be one of seven Republican members of Congress targeted with radio ads that will play on radio stations with largely African-American audiences, urging him to support Obama's health reform efforts.

LISTEN, LET'S BE BLUNT. Asian intellectuals usually don't go far in majority-black, majority-poorer-than-hell political districts. They really don't go far in New Orleans, a place where everything is about race . . . and grievance.

Anh Cao is congressman because then-U.S. Rep. "Dollar" Bill Jefferson was under indictment and African-Americans largely stayed home during the Dec. 7 general election. If Cao wants to stay in Congress, major obsequiousness is required.

Bucking President Obama and dissing the Dems is not the way to future electoral success for this Republican in a strange land.

Democrats will run their ads, and they'll convince the people -- well, at least most of the black people -- of Louisiana's 2nd Congressional District that the Vietnamese lawyer wants to let the black man (and woman) die for lack of health care.

WHAT THE ADS won't say, of course, is that a strong majority of congressional Democrats want taxpayers to pay for killing highly disproportionate numbers of African-Americans in the womb. The Dems won't cop to this because that might raise serious questions.

Questions like "Who's the racist here?"

Fun with software

Hi, boys and girls! I'm Cap'n Favog, and this is the Revolution 21 Show.

We're going to have a great show today, and we'll get it started with today's Popeye cartoon right after this message from our sponsor, Twice as Sweet cereal. Have some tomorrow! It goes great with an ice-cold Coca-Cola.

In other words . . . there is absolutely no point to this post whatsoever. Just felt like showing off what you can do with a freeware "paint" program while I wait for the Spybot to quit running.

The TV, by the way, is ours. They just don't make sets with character anymore . . . says the original steam punk.

Lewis and Clark Landing gets the lead out

Welcome to another in our series of Omaha travelogues. This week, it's Lewis and Clark Landing on the downtown riverfront.

Here we have a magnificent plaza and boardwalk perfectly suited for a leisurely alfresco lunch . . . or for a summer music festival. Mostly, though, people just like to chill and watch the muddy Missouri roll past River City.

Lewis and Clark Landing lies between the riverfront's Heartland of America Park to the south and, to the north, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge across the Missouri River (shown here). Did I mention this is an excellent spot to chill on a summer evening?

THE LANDING also has a large monument to organized labor, centered on a water sculpture simply entitled "Labor." That's fitting.

Omaha has a rich past as a meat-and-potatoes, blue-collar, union-labor kind of Midwestern city once home to several breweries, some of the largest packing plants in the United States and a massive Western Electric works. And the plot of land where the sculpture sits -- indeed, where all of Lewis and Clark Landing sits -- once was home to this (right).

The ASARCO lead smelter operated on the Omaha riverfront for more than a century until it shut down in 1997 as the company faced numerous lead-pollution lawsuits. All in all, I think we'll take the cool plaza over a bunch of lead-belching smokestacks.

We're funny that way here.

It's an interesting dilemma, isn't it? Nobody wants a poison-belching lead smelter in the middle of their downtown, but getting rid of the bad -- pollution and an ugly industrial wart on your riverfront -- also can mean getting rid of the good as well.

IN THIS CASE, the good was relatively well-paying jobs for the working class. A generation before the ASARCO plant bit the lead-tainted dust, Omaha lost its big meatpacking plants on the south side of town -- thus dealing a devastating economic (and, by extension, social) blow to, for one, the city's African-American population.

What was one of the country's more prosperous minority communities now is one of America's poorest. I wonder what happened to the folks who used to work at ASARCO.

Obviously, we're better off with Lewis and Clark Landing . . . better off in countless ways. But you can be sure there's been a cost as well. Ironically, it's been at the expense of labor.

Speaking of "Labor" -- the sculpture, that is -- the piece actually suggests more of a foundry than a lead smelter -- and the real thing still sits a couple of miles or so to the east, in midtown Omaha.

It's not a huge foundry, but it'll do.

AS FOR OUR relatively new Lewis and Clark Landing, it will more than do. "Our." What do you know -- after a couple of decades in exile from the Deep South, I naturally say "our" when talking about all things Omaha.

Which suggests that if I were to -- as Louisianians would undoubtedly say to me from their perspective -- "come home," I wouldn't be. I'd be exiling myself all over again . . . from home.

The cliché tells us "home is where the heart is." Well, it is. And Omaha -- for that matter, the whole of this exotic, diverse place called Nebraska -- has a way of worming its way into one's heart. Of becoming home.

Or, more precisely, Homaha.

Omaha Moon

Omaha Moon keep shining, on Omaha keep shining down.

We’d like it if you wouldn’t shine on Council Bluffs, or for that matter any other town.

Omaha Moon we heard that

You shined on Cedar Rapids last June.

We’ll thank you to remember that you are a one-town moon;

Don’t forget your name is Omaha Moon.

Moon over the Missouri River,
Omaha riverfront

Ain't no budget ax big enough

Omaha thought it faced budgetary chaos.

Now the city finds out it's facing real budgetary chaos, not mere "economic downturn" budgetary chaos. There is a difference.

Right now, the difference is about $7 million. What was a $5 million hole remaining in the city's ledger for fiscal year 2008-09 -- and that's after city hall already had cut $9 million from the budget -- suddenly has become a $12 million chasm.

AND IF Joe Councilman and Jack Taxpayer think Omaha's going to budget-cut its way out of that kind of deficit, I'll show you a city no one's going to much want to live in anymore. The Omaha World-Herald this morning tells a tale only Arnold Schwarzenegger could love -- not:

Mayor Jim Suttle said Friday that Omaha faces an additional $7 million gap in its general fund budget this year. The new problems raise the total 2009 unresolved shortfall to $12 million.

The shortfall has grown mainly because of weak interest earnings, higher-than-expected health care payments for retirees and lower tax collections on gas and water usage, officials said.

“These latest numbers reinforce the depth of the financial crisis and point out the urgency in obtaining wage freezes from the city unions for both 2009 and 2010,” Suttle said.

Omaha has been struggling with its budget because of the weak economy, with revenues falling short of projections. Both Suttle and former Mayor Mike Fahey have scrambled to balance this year's budget, and Suttle also has proposed tax hikes and budget cuts for 2010.

So far this year, Omaha officials have cut $9 million from the budget passed last summer. Until now, they thought the goal was $14 million in cuts. Suttle had hoped to close the $5 million gap by negotiating wage freezes equaling that amount with city employee unions.

Now, even if the unions agree to those concessions, the city still faces a massive hole in its current budget.

“Ouch,” said City Council President Garry Gernandt. “It's the type of news we don't want to hear, now or ever.”

Suttle and his new finance director, Pam Spaccarotella, did not outline what additional cuts they will propose. Suttle pointed out that his proposed 2 percent entertainment tax, if implemented, would take effect Oct. 1 of this year. While the tax is mainly aimed at solving next year's budget problems, Suttle said it also would generate $2 million this year that could be applied to the current shortfall.

Councilman Chuck Sigerson was not swayed by that argument. He remains skeptical of the entertainment tax and said the latest numbers don't change his mind.

“I think we need to be very, very careful before we leap into an entertainment tax,” he said. “We need to let cooler heads prevail. I just won't be railroaded into doing it, just because of the latest emergency.”

Sigerson also said he hoped that the city would gain extra revenue later in the year. For example, he said, the federal “cash for clunkers” program is enticing more people to buy cars, which would boost sales tax revenue for the city.

Gernandt doubted whether the city would be able to start collecting the new entertainment tax by Oct. 1, even if the council did approve it. He said there would be many logistical challenges in implementing the tax.

But Gernandt also said he couldn't immediately say where the city might make enough cuts to balance the budget.

Spaccarotella said the latest projections for the shortfall are based on actual spending for the first half of the year. Earlier estimates were calculated from spending and revenues during the first three months.

YIKES! One way or another, this is going to hurt.

I wish I thought Suttle -- or the city council, for that matter -- was up to the job.

Suttle this week has proved he's big on "listening tours" as a way of involving the public in city government. Personally, I think that's all hat and no horse, but that's not important now.

What's important now is realizing that this isn't a generation or two ago, and that the main thing the "public" is interested in is Numero Uno. Cynic that I am, I think people would rather see the city go down in flames than raise property taxes . . . so long as it's not their corner of the city getting torched.

No, that's not exactly right. I think that most people who call their council member or show up to these public meetings would rather see the whole city go down in flames than pay higher property taxes. And politicians, being the craven weenies they usually are, would rather be safe than voted out of office.

Of course, if the Founding Fathers had counted on that kind of lowest common denominator government, they would have given us a direct democracy and not a republic. But they lived a long time ago -- "duty" was still in the dictionary then.

Assuming for a moment that "duty" still were in the dictionary, I think politicians would figure it was their lot in life to govern during "interesting" times, and that lot in life included sucking it up and risking the wrath of the self-interested masses. After all, "the common good" never has been an easy sell.

IN A "DUTY-BASED" system, I think the Democrat mayor would recognize he led a small-"R" republican local government . . . and figure most folks don't even get one term to run a city of 435,000. Likewise, you'd see council members telling voters "You'll thank me later."

Even if later was after they'd been tossed out of office.

What's worse, getting the boot for keeping your city alive as a going concern, or continuing to preside over a smoking hulk of what used to be a pretty nice place to live?

The plain fact is the city of Omaha can't cut itself out of this financial pickle without doing severe and permanent damage to itself. The plain fact is that if people can't afford to pay an extra $30, $50 or $150 a year on their $130,000 home, they've got bigger financial problems than a rising tax bill . . . and can't afford to be living in a house that expensive.

The plain fact is taxpayers need to be told to suck it up in the name of the common good. The plain fact is city employees need to be told they have two options: Accept a pay freeze for the next two years or the layoffs begin tomorrow.

Lots of people in the private sector already have faced pay freezes, pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs. When the city has no bread, a city job doesn't mean you get to say "Let them eat cake."

THEM'S the facts. And here are two more for you:

Ronald Reagan is dead, and the party's over. Get used to it.