Is glorious people's TV. Is funny.

Is missing glorious programming of SCTV from years ago.

Capitalist boot lickers is making television unwatchable today. Program now is counterrevolutionary offense to people's humor over the collective airwaves.

CCCP1 better than running-dog swill people must endure today. Bring on glorious Soviet minicam!

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Things is bad bad in da Gret Stet of Loosiana, cher.

Dey so bad don't nobody know what ta do, baby!

An' one uh da congressmens say evuhbody laughin' at Loosiana. He say things has gots to change, 'cause da stet can't be goin' on like dis.

Mais no, he serious as a heart attack, cher. Lissen. . . .

"Ninety thousand of our citizens have left Louisiana in the last three years trying to find jobs and opportunities somewhere else."

As long as the oil-patch jobs were there, it was easier to tolerate children getting a substandard education, he said. Foul air and dirty water could be ignored as long as the oil money kept rolling in, added the congressman.

But he said the state could no longer put up with the chicanery and behind-the-scenes dealing of its politicians.

"When the oil fields were booming and we were all making money and we were all prospering, we might have been able to tolerate some of the kinds of images we created in our political institutions," he said.

DON'T BE LOOKING for that article in your morning paper. It won't be there.

The story is true. The congressman was Billy Tauzin. The date of the newspaper containing the Associated Press piece . . . Dec. 5, 1986. It was the State-Times in Baton Rouge, which ceased publishing in 1991.

Here's how the AP story ended almost 24 years ago:

Tauzin said the severity of the crisis means the state is ready to change.

"People are desperate," Tauzin said. "We're desperate enough now that we might think some new thoughts.

YEAH, LOUISIANA. How'd that work out for you?

Tauzin's fatal fallacy was in not realizing that in order to think new thoughts, you first have to think at all. And a quarter-century later, virtually nothing has changed in the Gret Stet.

The only change after the oil bust of the 1980s was that, in 1991, Louisiana had "changed" enough to almost elect a Nazi as governor. It dodged a bullet by electing Edwin Edwards -- who now is an involuntary "houseguest" of the federal government -- to yet another term.

Then, in 2005, Katrina came, and New Orleans almost disappeared forever . . . but not before exposing exactly how bad things had gotten on any number of fronts. Talk about a clarion call for "change."

Yet politicians from Slidell to Shreveport are still answering to that standard introduction Tauzin so fretted over in 1986 when it was put to him as banquet humor -- "Will the defendant please rise?"

And Louisiana children still receive inadequate educations, in many cases inside facilities unfit for animals.

And Louisiana people are still some of the poorest anywhere in the United States.

And "Cancer Alley" is still there between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

And long stretches of the coast are now fouled, thanks to a different kind of "oil boom."

And Louisianians -- scores and scores of them -- are still leaving in search of something better.

THIS BEGS a rather obvious question. Exactly how desperate is desperate enough that Louisiana might think some new thoughts?

Or, for that matter, start to think, period.

HAWKWIND

When I was a student at Louisiana State some 453 years ago, one thing was impossible to escape.

No, not Mike the Tiger.

No, not parking tickets.

No, not a bunch of Kappa Alphas, in their finest faux-Confederate regalia, re-enacting the Battle of Gettysburg by attempting a cavalry charge up North Stadium Drive armed with beer bongs and astride Trans Ams their daddies bought them before they left for the Ole War Skule. Well, actually, this scene was pretty hard to avoid, but it could be done.

THERE WAS just one thing that couldn't be dodged or ignored. And that was the word "HAWKWIND" spray painted on just about every flat surface on campus.

I would like to think this was the result of a proto-guerrilla marketing campaign by the space-rock band, targeting underachieving Southern universities as a means of growing its redneck demographic. I likewise would like to think that the disyllabic graffiti poet/artist was none other than the trippy hippie dancing chick who performed with the band.

In an ideal world, she crept onto our benighted campus in the middle of the night, clad in a tight, tie-dyed T-shirt and a pair of well-worn Daisy Dukes. Blowing bubbles as she spray painted HAWKWIND here, there and everywhere, maaaaaaan.

I'd like to think that.

MORE LIKELY, it was LSU's former student-government president, Ted Schirmer, who preferred the Grateful Dead but went about -- theoretically, I reiterate . . . he's a lawyer now -- tagging everything with HAWKWIND just to piss off the fascist, totalitarian university administration. Which just wanted to keep the people down, man.

HAWKWIND.

It probably wasn't about space rock and shimmying hippie chicks at all.

HAWKWIND.

It probably was just another protest against the counterreactionary forces of in loco parental repression.

HAWKWIND.

Crap.

When geeks do hype

If we all paid as much attention to making actual good products as we do to bullshit, we wouldn't have to worry about how we'll ever manage to learn Mandarin.

So we can converse with our new Chinese overlords.

This is the Windows Phone 7 team celebrating, no doubt, the inflicting of yet another so-so Microsoft product upon the world. Oy. So geeks think they can dance?

THEN the WinPhone peeps had a "funeral" for the iPhone. And took pictures with an Android phone.

Oops.

Thus, the story of America today. All hype, no substance. All hat, no horse.

All bullshit, no side of beef.

How about this for a revolutionary, countercultural thing for tech hipsters to embrace? How about, when you make a new product, you make sure it's a good one, OK? And then you could, like, shut the hell up about it.

Celebrate by lifting a couple at the neighborhood tavern. Tell someone "Attaboy!"

Or "Attagirl!" We're not sexist.

JUST QUIT giving us reasons to think your mad tech skillz may be, in reality, just as lame as your choreography. And your parade planning.

3 Chords & the Truth: Nine-10

This is the 3 Chords & the Truth episode of Sept., 10. 9/10, as it were.

I can't do an installment of the Big Show on 9/10 without immediately thinking of the Big Win 910, WLCS . . . the radio station of my adolescence.

Likewise, I can't think of recording 3 Chords & the Truth on 9/10 without doing some sort of tribute to radio's 910. Or at least the only 910 on the radio that matters to me.

So there you go. Now you know where we're going on this week's musical odyssey that we call the Big Show. I've said pretty much what I have to say about WLCS before in this space, so I won't belabor the point.

But I will rerun something I wrote a little more than a year ago, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Big 91's demise. Read on -- and remember . . . it's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

* * *

ONE THING kids today will never know is what it was like to have your own radio station.

Not what it's like to be a bazillionnaire and own your own big-time broadcast outlet but, instead, what it's like to be devoted to a radio station, this hometown entity that plays cool tunes (well, mostly) and becomes your window on a world much, much larger than the hick burg in which you find yourself trapped. Face it, unless you're a kid growing up in New York, L.A. or Chicago, you think where you're from is That Which Must Be Escaped.

And I'll bet L.A. and New York kids probably want to flee to Paris or Rome. Maybe London.

You see, long ago, radio stations were living things. They were staffed by live human beings whose job it was to entertain and enlighten other live human beings. These were called "listeners," something radio has radically fewer of these days.

Oftentimes, way back deah den (as my mom says), people would find one station or another's personalities and music so compelling that the station, in a real sense, became "their" station. Listeners took emotional and figurative ownership.

They listened day and night. They called the DJs on the "request line." (And note, please, this was an era when "DJ" immediately brought to mind a radio studio, not a dance club.)

Listeners went nuts for the contests, whether it was the chance to win $1,000 or just a promotional 45. They'd pick up a station's weekly survey to see where their favorite songs ranked this week.

They'd wake up to the "morning man" and boogie down to the groovy sounds the afternoon drive guy was spinning out through their transistor radios.

Boogie down to the groovy sounds? Ah, screw it. You had to be there.

THE REAL business radio was in back during its second golden age -- the Boomer age of Top-40 AM blowtorches . . . and of laid-back, trippy FM free-form outfits, too -- was the business of making memories. That stations sold some pimple cream while selling even more records was just a happy accident, at least from the perspective of their loyal fans.

Back when the Internet was more like the Inter-what?, radio was the Facebook of its day. It told us about the world . . . and about each other. It served up new music for our consideration.

Likewise, a station's listeners formed the pre-social-networking incarnation of what became Facebook groups and fan pages. In short, between the hits and the ads, between the disc jockeys and the contests, radio was community.

All you needed to join was an eight-transistor job, or maybe a hand-me-down table radio in your bedroom, its tubes glowing orange in the darkness as the magic flowed from its six-inch loudspeaker.

AT ITS BEST, radio comforted the afflicted, afflicted the comfortable, lifted downcast spirits, was a friend to the lonely and provided the soundtrack for the times of our lives. To this day, I can hear a song and immediately think "WLCS, 1975," or "WTIX, summer on the Petite Amite River, 1972."

And every early December, my mind will drift back to a late night in 1980 when I was studying for finals at Louisiana State, with my head in a book and WFMF on the stereo. Bad news through the headphones, and -- at least for my generation -- "something touched us deep inside."

It was the Day the Music Died. Again.

Tonight my mind drifts back to Aug. 31, 1984. That was the night a close friend passed into that good night of blessed memory.

That night, the Big 91, WLCS, played its last Top-40 hit and left the Baton Rouge airwaves for its new home in the youthful memories of aging teen-agers like myself. Two-and-a-half decades later, it just doesn't seem right that it's gone.

OF COURSE, lots of things don't seem right nowadays.

That WLCS isn't there anymore -- hasn't been there for more than a generation -- is just one of them in the mind of one Boomer kid from a middling city in the Deep South. You can read about why that is here.

But a couple-odd decades in retrospect, it seems to me that Aug. 31, 1984, was in a way about as profound as the deaths of Buddy Holly and John Lennon -- the intangible end of something we still haven't quite gotten our minds (or our culture) around.

It's not that the actual deaths of Holly or Lennon, or of the "Big Win 910," precipitated some sort of musical or cultural cataclysm in themselves. It's just that things were happening.

And being that things were happening that more or less coincided with each instance of "bad news on the doorstep," it's handy to use these events as markers.

For me, the demise of WLCS -- and the deaths of many stations that were nothing if not actual life forces in their own cultural rights -- signals The Great Unraveling.

The unraveling of a common culture is what I'm getting at, I guess.

Lookit. As much as we kids claimed stations like 'LCS as our own, we can't forget that many of our parents listened, too. Or that Top-40 radio of old played what was big, period -- be that Jefferson Airplane or Frank Sinatra. Because of WLCS, I think I could comprehend more than my own little world of teen-age angst and teen-age fads.

And it's why I feel just as comfortable with Andy Williams and Tony Bennett -- and, yes, Ol' Blue Eyes -- as I do with (ahem) "harder" fare. My world is bigger, richer, more diverse because of a 1,000-watt AM station in a midsized Southern state capital too often prone to calling too much in life "good enough for government work."

Thank God, that couldn't often describe the Big 91.

And because "good enough" wasn't often good enough at WLCS -- because the men and women who worked there just did what they did and did it well -- I owe its memory more than I can repay.

If, after these 25 years, somebody were to require that I pen an epitaph for my long-dead friend, I'd write just this: WLCS played the hits.

Götterdämmerung, reconsidered

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Oops.

Looks like the "Ground Zero Muslims" can't be threatened, extorted or mau-maued.

And now it seems that Nuts for Jesus down in Florida may be reverting to Plan A in their "terror by proxy" scheme -- provoke overseas Islamic radicals into full-blown Götterdämmerung. What a no-lose scheme this constitutionally protected terror by proxy be!

HERE IS the latest, from MSNBC:

The Florida pastor whose plan to burn Qurans on Sept. 11 generated worldwide outrage among Muslims and pressure by the U.S. government to relent said late Thursday that he might not call off the protest after all.

Pastor Terry Jones told NBC News that "we are a little back to square one" after a supposed deal involving a proposed Islamic cultural center in New York evaporated.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Jones had said he was canceling the Quran burning because a Muslim imam had assured him that the proposed Islamic center could be moved away from the World Trade Center site in return.

But the imam proposing to build the Islamic center near the World Trade Center denied that a deal had been struck to move the project.

"I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said in a statement. "However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri (of Florida). I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony."

After that statement, Jones said the Quran burning had only been suspended.

"Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision," Jones said. "So as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it."

Jones wouldn't say if the church would burn Qurans but said "I'm praying" to decide what to do next.

At Jones' first press conference, he appeared with Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida and said that Musri had told him that the mosque would be moved.

MARK MY WORDS, the whole world -- particularly nuts all across these formerly-United States -- are watching this play out . . . and many of them are way smarter than a bunch of self-important, hateful bumpkins down in the swamps of Florida.

When they take the concept of terror by proxy and run with it, it will end with concrete strictures placed on our rights as Americans if, of course, by that time there are any Americans left to crack down upon.

As I said before, John Adams was right:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

WHAT THE late president didn't see coming was it being the "religious" who'd help so much in bringing the whole thing down. The 9/11 hijackers were "religious." Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" cultists from Kansas are "religious," as are the asshats in Gainesville.

The world is filled with "religious" people. Everybody thinks God is on his side.

What's in much shorter supply are those who humbly seek to be on God's side. There's a difference, one that John Adams seemingly didn't take into account.

And that's what's going to be the end of us all.


UPDATE: Nuts of a feather burn sacred texts together.

Yes, the "God Hates Fags" contingent has weighed in. And they're stocking up on matches, reports the Ocala Star-Banner:

Westboro Baptist Church, the small Topeka, Kan., church that pickets funerals of American soldiers to spread its message that God is punishing the country for being tolerant of homosexuals, has vowed to hold a Quran burning if Gainesville's Dove World Outreach Center calls its off."

WBC burned the Koran once – and if you sissy brats of Doomed america bully Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center until they change their plans to burn that blasphemous tripe called the Koran, then WBC will burn it (again), to clearly show you some things," the church announced in a news release this week.

Terror by proxy

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The terrorists may have won today.

And I'm not talking about al Qaida, Hamas or the Taliban.

This terrorist group is a small one -- a band of fewer than half a hundred Pentecostal (or evangelical . . . or whatever they consider themselves) extremists in Gainesville, Fla., hell-bent on propagating an ideology of hatred and mayhem. Yet, the Dove World Outreach Center has shown itself adept at using a novel tactic, terror by proxy, to bring a superpower to its knees and -- perhaps -- force the "Ground Zero Mosque" far away from Ground Zero in New York City.

MSNBC has some breaking details:

The pastor planning to burn Qurans on the Sept. 11 anniversary said Thursday that he had called off the event after being given assurances that the Muslim group seeking to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site would move the project.

"We would consider that a sign from God," the Rev. Terry Jones told reporters.

But sources close to the imam behind the New York mosque denied any deal had been struck.

And Sharif Al-Gamal, owner of the building where the mosque and cultural center would be housed, told NBC News that there had had no discussions with Jones.

Jones insisted, however, that he had spoken to the imam, and "I have his word that he will move the mosque to a different location."

Jones also said he would travel to New York on Saturday to meet with officials of the mosque project.

President Barack Obama earlier implored Jones to call off his Quran-burning "stunt," saying it would jeopardize U.S. troops abroad.

Obama told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview aired Thursday that he hopes the Jones listens to "those better angels."

"If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans," the president said. "That this country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance."

"And as a very practical matter, I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform," Obama said.

Jones, leader of a small church with about 30 members in Gainesville, is planning to burn copies of the Islamic holy book on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Look, this is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida," Obama said of the planned burning. "You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan." The president also said Jones' plan, if carried out, could serve as an incentive for terrorist-minded individuals "to blow themselves up" to kill others.

Jones had said that a call from the Pentagon, State Department or White House might make him reconsider his plan.

On Thursday, Jones said Pentagon chief Robert Gates had called him to urge he back off.

Obama has gotten caught up in the burgeoning controversy surrounding the practice of Islam in America, saying at one point that he believed that Muslims had a right to build a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York City.

Earlier, several members of his administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had denounced the Quran-burning plan.

IT REALLY doesn't matter now whether the New York mosque moves, as Jones contends it will, or whether nothing happens, as the mosque sources insist. The die has been cast, and the strange bedfellows of Christian extremism and Muslim extremism have been united in a symbiotic relationship that serves to get each what it wants -- at the expense of us all.

And it's all perfectly legal and, in the Gainesville case, apparently protected by the First Amendment. As John Adams said more than two centuries ago, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Little did Adams know that -- at least in this case -- the immoral and irreligious people who threaten to extort the rest of us to Kingdom Come would do so in the name of God, in a "terror by proxy" arrangement.

Here's how it works: You threaten to do something as outlandish -- and constitutionally protected -- as burning a bunch of Qurans, knowing full well how egregious and offensive the act is and what it will provoke extremists on the Muslim side to do to Americans. And you think, "Well, that's good. The homo-loving, socialist, Godless liberals deserve whatever happens to them."

And being something of a death-dealer and death-lover yourself, you figure that if you get martyred in the process . . . you're a martyr! That's worth at least 7,500 bonus points in the heavenly sweepstakes.

On the other hand, if the heat gets a little too hot in the run-up to Götterdämmerung, you still holding lots of high cards. You still have the ability to extort something pretty good out of everybody.

You can crack the "Ground Zero mosque" more thoroughly than Humpty Dumpty after he fell off that wall. And all Glenn Beck's horses' asses and all Fox News' men . . . will be eating your dust.

If that doesn't work out, there's always Plan A. And we know it.

And every nutwagon in America is copying down the winning game plan.

F*** stuff

God bless the Landless Peasant Party.

And God save Angus X, wherever he might be after his unfortunate loss in the British national elections this spring.

An old friend was musing about the present doings of Land Is Power -- the party annual meeting is coming up Saturday at an Edinburgh cafe -- so I wandered over to the website of Angus X and the landless peasants . . . and found an amazing video.

No, really. That's it above -- The Story of Stuff. Please watch it.

WHEN I was watching this amazing presentation by Annie Leonard, I thought "This is pure Catholic social-justice kind of stuff here. I'll bet Glenn Beck hates it." And sure enough. . . .

Gosh, I feel so dumb now. The conservative ubercapitalists quickly reassured me by saying market efficiency and ongoing miniaturization will solve many of the problems of the sustainability and disposal of our abundant stuff.

Besides, we have a whole planet to be mined. We've barely scratched the surface. Why, if we mine deep enough -- through the earth's crust and well into the mantle, which we could do as technology advances -- we could have all the raw materials we need to make more and more stuff.

Deep extraction, that's the ticket. What could go wrong with that?

Like I said, The Story of Stuff is pretty standard Catholic social teaching. Don't believe me, look it up.

This little fact -- in addition to making Glenn Beck even crazier than usual -- also is likely to dismay one of the film's producers, the Tides Foundation, which believes we can best care for the poor and powerless of the world by helping them abort their poor and powerless offspring.

Sigh . . . in a fallen world, nobody bats 1.000. Well, at least fetuses are biodegradable, right?

WE NOW return you to Angus X, who remains not safe for work . . . or the kids. But kind of spot on, nevertheless.

Jolly good show, Rupe!

As we used to say in junior high school . . . DUHHHHHHRRRRRR!

Imagine . . . Rupert Murdoch locked up The Times website in a virtual Tower of London. His competitors didn't.

And, after he no doubt did all kinds of research to justify what he was hellbent upon doing anyway -- and after no doubt spending loads of money putting up the paywall -- what happened was what I could have told him would happen in exchange for a MacBook and a bottle of good bourbon.

THE READERS all went somewhere else, and The Times was quite effectively removed from the Internet conversation. But don't believe me, believe The Independent -- where you can read all about Rupert's Folly for free:

As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive – only follow-up stories by rival news organisations such as The Guardian and ITN.

Two months after Rupert Murdoch's decision to erect a subscription paywall around the websites of The Times and The Sunday Times, thus removing their content from search engines, the bold experiment is having a marked effect on the rest of British media. There are many who still wish the 79-year-old mogul well, hopeful that he is at the vanguard of a cultural shift that will save newspapers. Yet elsewhere there is dismay among analysts, advertisers, publicists and even some reporters on the papers.

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, "We are just not advertising on it. If there's no traffic on there, there's no point in advertising on there." Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges. "That was the same forecast they were giving us prior to registration and the paywall going up, so whether it's a reflection on reality or not, I don't know."

He warns that newspaper organisations have less muscle in internet advertising campaigns than they do in print. "Online, we have far more options than just newspaper websites – it's not a huge loss to anyone really. If we are considering using some newspaper websites, The Times is just not in consideration."

THE TROUBLE with newspaper dinosaurs today is that advertisers aren't nearly as stupid as they are. DUHHHHHHRRRRRR, indeed.


P.S.: Thinking on this a little more, I believe there's only one way you'll make paid online "newspaper" content work. It needs to be iPad friendly; it needs to be a rich, flashy multimedia experience . . . and once you've bought it, you need to be able to keep it on your hard drive, or whatever. Just like you can keep a dead-tree edition of the paper.

As they say -- or at least used to say -- in the housing market: Why rent when you can own?

No more waterboarding, but fire next time

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The problem with a democratic republic such as ours is that it too often has damned little ability to defend itself from its baser instincts -- or its baser idiots.

Enter the Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., noted hater of "homos" and Allah alike.

Jones hates Allah, and Islam, so much that he intends -- the consequences be damned -- to burn a whole heapin' helpin' of Qurans outside his flaky Church of Who We Hatin' Now, otherwise known as the Dove World Outreach Center. And because God, to Whom he has an exclusive communications line, has "told" him to flick his Bic, the good bad reverend will not be dissuaded.

Not by the president. Not by the attorney general. Not by the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, whose men stand to pay the price for an idiot Elmer Gantry's "freedom of speech."

NO . . . the redneck revile-alist is hellbent on throwing the "word of the devil" into the inferno, reports MSNBC. What's wrong with that notion?

Religious leaders who met with Holder for nearly an hour Tuesday to discuss recent attacks on Muslims and mosques around the United States said those were his words on the plan by the Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla.

The meeting was closed to reporters, but a Justice Department official who was present confirmed that Holder said that the plan to burn copies of the Quran was idiotic.

Holder also told the group no one should have to live and pray in fear and that he planned to address the issue publicly soon, the meeting participants said. He also reiterated a commitment to aggressively prosecute hate crimes, they said.

The Justice official, who requested anonymity because the meeting was private, also said Holder was quoting Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, when he used the word dangerous.

Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence." It was a rare example of a military commander taking a position on a domestic political matter.

But Jones insisted he would go ahead with his plans, despite the criticism Petraeus, the White House and the State Department, as well as a host of religious leaders.

Jones, known for posting signs proclaiming that Islam is the devil's religion, says the Constitution gives him the right to publicly set fire to the book that Muslims consider the word of God.

Jones said he is also concerned but is "wondering, 'When do we stop?'" He refused to cancel the protest set for Saturday at his Dove World Outreach Center, which espouses an anti-Islam philosophy.

"How much do we back down? How many times do we back down?" Jones told the AP. "Instead of us backing down, maybe it's to time to stand up. Maybe it's time to send a message to radical Islam that we will not tolerate their behavior."

OF COURSE, it's a free country, and a madman minister can preach what he wants about Islam. He can call the mayor of Gainesville a "homo," as does a sign outside his church.

It's all due to this little thing we have called the First Amendment.

The First Amendment, however, does not speak to what happens to folks who build bonfires without a city burn permit. The constitution does not cover, as far as I know, the aggressive fighting of illegal -- and potentially catastrophic . . . look what happened in Detroit on Tuesday -- open fires within city limits.

That people do think the First Amendment gives you the right to burn whatever the hell you want whenever the hell you want wherever the hell you want is due to milquetoasty fops like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the MSNBC story, Bloomberg goes all wobbly on us:

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the minister's plan to burn the Muslim holy book on Sept. 11 is "distasteful" but added the minister has a right to do it. "We can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement," he said.

BULL. Let's see what the NYPD would do to some evangelical nutcase who lit a great big bonfire of Qurans in the middle of Times Square. I could be underestimating the open-mindedness, civility and tolerance of public disorder on the part of New York's finest, but I'm guessing that ass would be kicked, fire would be extinguished . . . and no one would be mentioning anything about the Bill of Rights.

Besides, I find it hard to believe that in the Deep South -- where half a century ago authorities demonstrated to the world their mastery of the fire hose in quenching peaceful, non-permitted civil-rights protests -- officials are suddenly stymied in figuring out the best use of municipal fire departments in response to blatantly illegal bonfires set by dementoids.

Particularly ones that threaten to set the whole world alight.

It's quite simple. This is America. We don't burn books.

There is none so blind. . . .

This "Holy smokestacks, Batman!" moment is brought to you by the Baton Rouge Business Report:

When the idea of taking the next Canvas trip to Pittsburgh was first suggested to Baton Rouge Area Chamber CEO Adam Knapp, his reaction was to wonder what a “dirty, northern steel town” might have in common with Baton Rouge. But Pittsburgh might have more to teach canvassers than one might think.

Last (re)call for alcohol!

You want to know why reporters drink?

It's because the jackasses they often have to cover make their brains hurt, and alcohol helps to deaden the pain. A little.

Take the Omaha World-Herald's Maggie O'Brien, for instance. She covers city government . . . and the people who try to blow up city government whenever they get in a toot about something. Usually, it's taxes.

LOOK AT what the poor girl has to deal with daily. If she's not at The Dubliner swilling black-and-tans right now, she's a totally amazing woman:

A group exploring the possibility of recalling Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle has launched a website that will take donations.

The site, mayorsuttlerecall.com, was launched Tuesday. Organizers said donations will be accepted online by Tuesday afternoon.

Last month, the Mayor Suttle Recall Committee announced it had raised $5,000 by Aug. 17, triggering the group to file with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission. The group plans to take out recall affidavits later this month.

IN CASE you've not apprehended the irony here, let me help.

The Mayor Suttle Recall Committee wants people who allegedly are so strapped that they can't pay another farthing in any kind of a tax -- no matter how dire the city's financial situation -- to donate money to them to recall the mayor. For raising taxes.

Because we're all broke.

But not too broke to give what you'd likely spend in higher taxes to a bunch of well-off cranks and cynics to blow up city government because you don't want to pay higher taxes.

Because you're broke.

Destitute. A $15 wheel-tax hike from losing your car to the repo guy, losing your house to the bank and being reduced to wandering the streets of River City filling a hijacked grocery cart with castoff aluminum cans -- which you desperately hope you can turn into enough cash to buy a Big Mac and a Budweiser tall boy.

JUST REMEMBER this one important thing, all ye poor, desperate, taxed-into-nothingness wretches of Omaha:

If you are concerned about having your name attached to the recall, donations of $249.00 or less do NOT have to be reported to the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

Now, a word from our contestants

If you think you're having a bad day, think again.

You could be a participant in the cattle judging at the Nebraska State Fair, trying to send out telepathic waves to everyone you encounter -- mental images that impart a simple message:

Eat mor chikin.

Because for a cow at the state fair, if you win, you lose.

ON THE other hand, life at the fair ain't exactly a bowl of cherries for the sheep, either.

They get paraded around. They get stretched. They get lambhandled by teenagers.

They get poked, pulled, prodded, gawked at and ogled.

All they want to say is "Hey, you @#&%+*$! Go pick on somebody your own size! Some creature with opposable thumbs and a discernible IQ! Leave. Me. Alone."

But can the sheep say that? No, they can't.

They try, but all that comes out is "BAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

And you think you're having a crap-o day, huh, Bunkie?

IN THE WORDS of that great philosopher Travis Tritt, "Here's a quarter. Call someone who cares."

We are Midwesterners. We have perspective. Now, get away from me before I make you march behind the draft horses. Blindfolded.

And barefoot.

IT'LL HAVE to be next year, though, for the state fair has ended its 2010 run at its new home out in Grand Island.

Pray for Bossie. And for Beauregard, too.

And remember . . . eat mor chikin.

The hit record labels missed

Here is the story of a crime that led to an impassioned soliloquy from the victim's brother that led to the most awesomest use of Auto-Tune ever (OK, the one awesome use of Auto-Tune ever) that led to one of the awesomest viral videos ever that led to an iTunes single that led to . . . the Billboard Hot 100.

Outstanding!

Is this a great country or what? I mean, great if you don't have to live in the projects, which I'm hoping Antoine Dodson's family will be able to leave with all the money to be made on the "Bed Intruder Song."

Oh . . . I hereby pronounce record labels irrelevant. That is all.

Of crackers and s***holes

S***hole isn't a geological process.

S***hole is a state of mind that -- eventually -- becomes a geographical reality.

That's my explanation for places like St. Helena Parish, La., and I'm sticking to it. And, frankly, all the evidence is on my side.

Last week, I noted the parish's crumbling -- no, literally crumbling -- schools. That goes along with already collapsed educational achievement, refusal of voters to financially support the school system and how they are content to warehouse students, 95.5 percent of whom are black, under conditions that would get someone cited for animal cruelty if it were dogs we were talking about.

Let me clarify -- animal cruelty anywhere else in these United States apart from Louisiana.

Earlier, I cited this as an example of Tea Party America, which it is. I didn't hit the racial angle hard, because I couldn't be sure, despite my suspicions as a Louisiana native.

One thing is clear, though. Whites, who make up about half the parish's population, abandoned the public schools at some point during the federally mandated racial-integration life cycle in St. Helena, which has been going on for 57 years now. Fifty-seven years!

Same thing happened in my hometown, Baton Rouge. Its federal desegregation case dragged on nearly that long. And by the time it was put to rest, it was pointless; there weren't enough whites left to "desegregate" much of anything.

OF COURSE, the argument goes that taxpayers refuse to see their tax dollars be flushed down the toilet of a dysfunctional school system, long on corruption and short on results. Is that the "chicken" part or the "egg" part of the whole "What came first?" argument?

And no matter how much these spiritual children of Leander Perez and Willie Rainach protest it's "not racial," it's clear it all boils down to "Nigger ain't getting no tax money." When you hear Louisiana people -- or most Americans, actually -- protest long and loudly that something's not about race . . . it's all about race.

And where the news coverage of the sad state of St. Helena schools (and a federal judge's mulling whether to raise school taxes there by decree) left some doubt concerning motivations, the comments box doesn't. People can restrain themselves only for so long.

Then true colors start to show. As does the attitude that "liberals" are just ignorant if they can't see why the racist position is the utterly logical one.

Saturday's article in The Advocate went like this:

A federal judge is scheduled to try on Wednesday to sort out what to do about St. Helena Parish’s dilapidated public schools.

Reports from three state agencies and an architect show that the problems with the buildings go deeper than the cosmetic blemishes visible to a visitor.

Likewise, difficulties between the school system and the community, which is almost equally divided racially, are also deep-rooted, say people involved in the case.

U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that the population of the parish is 51.3 percent black and 47.8 percent white. A walk through the halls of St. Helena Central High School shows few white faces.

The population of the parish’s public schools is 95 percent black, Superintendent of Schools Daisy Slan said in an interview.

Voters have rejected four school-improvement property tax proposals in three years, and race is playing an issue, according to a court filing submitted by School Board attorney Nelson Taylor.

“The white community not only abandoned the public school system physically, it withdrew its financial support as well,” Taylor wrote in requesting the judge to order a pair of taxes put in place without a vote of the electorate.

One of the proposed property taxes would pay to put the wages of St. Helena teachers and staff on par with their counterparts in neighboring parishes. The other tax would fund a bond issue to build new schools.

Alton Travis, who is one of two white members of the six-member St. Helena School Board, said the board is split on the issue of whether a federal judge should impose new taxes by court order. Travis said he opposes the idea.

Nelson’s implication that white voters alone are killing school tax proposals is wrong, Travis said.

The majority of the parish’s population is black and about 60 percent of the people voting have opposed an additional school tax, he said.

“The board attorney makes this tax issue appear to be a racial issue and it’s not,” Travis said.

THEN the Baton Rouge paper went on to report this:

Asked about the matter, attorney Jonathan “Jay” Augustine, who made the request, said his main objective is to get St. Helena students into a better environment and “to give the court more options, not less.”

The tax issue also will be on the table during Wednesday’s hearing.

One of the taxes the School Board is asking the judge to order, without a vote by the electorate, is a 62.3-mill property tax to increase employee salaries, which Slan said are well below those of surrounding parishes. The second is a tax large enough to fund $27.5 million in new school construction.

“I’m totally against a tax without a vote,” Travis, one of the two white School Board members, said.

Travis said that while he doesn’t dispute the need for improvements in the schools, he thinks the imposition of a tax without a vote of the people “is wrong.”

Taylor, the School Board attorney, said in an interview there is “reasonable precedent” for a federal judge to give the School Board authority to levy such a tax.

The school system doesn’t have the funds to operate schools that provide students a safe place in which to learn, the School Board attorney said.

“Public schools require public support,” Taylor said.

Without the support of the most influential voters in the parish, there isn’t much of a chance of a school tax gaining approval in parishwide balloting, he said.

Most of the white population left the school system after schools were desegregated in the 1960s, Taylor said.

FUNNY, isn't it, how it's "wrong" to impose taxes without a vote, but it's perfectly OK for whites to abandon public schools en masse, then be the linchpin of a withdrawal of public support for those same public schools?

Alton Travis is damned lucky I'm not on the federal bench in Baton Rouge. It would not go well for the good, white Christian people of St. Helena Parish.

Why? For that answer, let's go to the Advocate's comments section.

Boilerroom53 kicks things off by sticking to the "race is not an issue" party line:

Race is not an issue Mr. Taylor. As a proud resident of St. Helena parish who also happens to be white, I am in the minority in this parish. A majority of voters are required to pass the taxes which have repeatedly been voted down over the past three years. I would remind you that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is clear that the people of our parish are not in favor of a property tax to fund the school system. Perhaps another and more equitable tax should be considered rather than simply placing the same property tax before the voters again. It is alarming that this property tax which has been voted down by a majority of people may simply be imposed by a single judge over the will of the voters.

MR. ROOM (Mr. 53?) may think this argument is novel. I heard the same 40 years ago when the "tyrannical" federal judge ordered neighborhood schools as a desegregation plan.

We have a republic, not a mobocracy. Minorities have rights, and white folks can't do whatever they want by majority vote.

But at least we don't have to endure the facade of faux enlightenment for long. Truth1 says what he or she (it?) really thinks. And remember, boys and girls, raseizm maykez yew smrot:

Taxation w/o representation??? Sounds familiar dont it. Also proves whites dont want to associate w/blacks... why do you think that might be??? School taxes should be put on property by the state w/the proceeds alocated to the school boards by student population. Also shows the blacks are not a self sustaining culture w/o dragging down other peoples w/them... both economicly & socialy. We no longer have a sustainable civilization in this country. Degenerative diversity is destroying our civilization.

TommyRucker tries a more sophisticated approach, however. I call this the "Black Folk Tear S*** Up" gambit:

The real issue is that the schools are TRASHED. Why should people give up their little hard earned money when pupils and students are NOT taking care of the school property. Most of the tax money is going into the hands of employees, teachers and administrators as they have unbelievable PERKS. People will support systems that are well run and when they TRUST that their tax money is not going to be WASTED. Many of these school administrators allow their schools to be trashed so they can use them politically to gain PERSONALLY. Many of these "educators" are using these kids as that is what demagogues have always done, they USE members of the MOB to enrich themselves personally and blame their failures on someone else (a scapegoat). They have learned well from other demagogues as they practice the principles that characterize demagogues.

AND ON . . . and on . . . and on it goes:

daisy/scarlet

Looks like we need to introduce another "option" for the Judge Brady....what if the school was cleaned up...really cleaned....doesn't look like the problems are all structural....maybe the janitorial staff needs to be replaced with a few maintenance employees and people who know that their job is to clean. Many of the problems look to be cleanliness related....hmmmm....not popular....wonder why? And, what does the state say about the condition of the middle school that was taken over? Are they complaining, too? I haven't heard anything from them about this. Didn't they just take over this last year or two? It might be worth it if Judge Brady imposed a tax, dismissed all of the St. Helena School Staff - supt. to custodian - and replaced them with staff that worked and operated like Livingston or Zachary educators. I'm certain there would be instructional improvement even if the kids had to remaiin in the old schools.

silverrose

The La Dept of Ed website reports the parish gets $10,076.00 per student compared to the state average of $9,781.00 for 2008-2009 school year. And if you do the math, it comes to $12,000,000 plus just as previously commented on. This is additionally shocking when you see that Livingston and Tangi schools got $8220.00 and $8229.00 per pupil. The question is where is this money going? By their own admission, St Helena teachers are paid less than surrounding parishes. It certainly isn't going to the facilities as evidenced by inspections of the buildings. So, one is left to wonder how much is being paid to the "non-teaching" staff and what is the relationship of these people to members of the parish school board. The race card is a red herring to deflect attention away from how the funds are being used. A child has one chance at an education and if the local public school is unable to provide it year after year, responsible parents have to look at alternatives. Address the issue of a quality education and this school will have the support of the parish.

bluedogdemocrat

The St. Helena School System (the only parish of all parishes with only three schools to take care of) situation is nothing new. Let's sum it up, timber is the only tax base in a parish with one red light, high minority population, low socio-economic background, ignorance, corruption, vote buying from my understanding including not passing a tax, flight to Tangipahoa and Livingston. As with anything, it has come to a catharsis, a climax after the rising action, to a halt... These conditions didn't start, it is a combination of poor management and an eroding tax base unwilling to pay for the ignorant fieldhands caring only for Hawks football.

newzjunkie

Mr. Taylor wants a federal judge to impose a tax that a vote of the people failed to approve?! Obviously another Southern Law graduate who fell asleep during the Constitutional law class. We fought a little thing called the Revolutionary War over this issue, counselor. Face it. Until the voters of St. Helena take responsibility for the education and future of their children, they remain doomed to live in an environment of welfare, unwed motherhood and incarceration. Then again, it's easier for some to play the race card and blame everyone but those who live the welfare mentality. The majority of parish voters, regardless of race, are obviously tired of their tax dollars being flushed into a system that seems (and likely is) helpless and hopeless. Build all the new schools you want in the parish. Come back in three years and they'll look like a bomb hit them. Can you imagine what a day at that high school must be like? Dixon Correctional likely has fewer problems.

CAN YOU IMAGINE what a day living in St. Helena Parish must be like? Life in a Third World country likely would seem like an improvement over such a gigantic s***hole.