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.

The last out

That's it.

The Omaha Royals played their last home game of the season Thursday night, and that means those of us who were at Rosenblatt Stadium saw the last baseball game played at the beloved old ballyard.

Ever.

After 62 years and thousands and thousands of games, Rosenblatt will be torn down, and the baseball legacy of Omaha will shift to the new downtown T.D. Ameritrade Park.

But we Omahans have spent a lot of the big moments of our lives in that old stadium on the hill, and there a piece of our heart will remain.

And as longtime groundskeeper Jesse Cuevas told the crowd Thursday -- in ceremonies after the last out had been made -- they can tear down Rosenblatt, but it will stand forever in our memories.




Goodbye, old friend.

3 Chords & the Truth: Summer's last blast

Think of this episode of the Big Show as the last fling of summer. It is Labor Day weekend, after all.

But it's more than that.

It's a party, a celebration of all that's ending -- summer, for one . . . can't you feel the first chill of fall in the air? But around these parts, here in Omaha, we've also just had a hell of a wake for our old ballyard, Rosenblatt Stadium.

WE DID our crying Thursday night at the last game -- an Omaha Royals win over Round Rock -- and now, what with the holiday and all, we at 3 Chords & the Truth just want to party like it's . . . Labor Day.

Duh. What'd you think I was going to say? 1999?

No thinking allowed this week. And after last week''s pensive edition of the show, it's just time to jam. And groove. And tap your foot.

Party on , Garth. And try not to get sunburned.

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

When a D+ equals an epic fail

Never, ever hire a design firm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to do an important job.

And remember from this Associated Press story, children, that the only possible PR spin for an Iowa-sized screw-up is "Boy! Are we dumb or what? We must have signed off on this before we went into rehab for our meth addiction."

Leaders at the Des Moines school say regardless of how people react, they are reacting and that's what they wanted to accomplish.The Des Moines Register reported Friday that Drake hired [a] Cedar Rapids-based company to help develop the new "Drake Advantage" recruitment campaign. The university recently unveiled it to prospective students through brochures and its website.

Drake spokesman Tom Delahunt says while the "D+" comes across as a grade at first glance, it's meant to represent all the opportunities Drake offers students.

YEAH, that's the ticket. Opportunities. Right.

Terry Bradshaw: My Hero

The nut from the north

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Who's America's biggest political rock star right now?

Who's the woman good Christian people are counting on to swoop in and make America more good . . . and Christian?

Why, it's an unhinged dingbat diva with a violent temper, a reputation for ruining people who get on her expansive bad side and a growing army of brownshirts to help her do it. It's kind of like if Richard Nixon were meaner, ignorant and people were hopelessly devoted to him.

We learn all this from a blockbuster profile by Michael Joseph Gross in the latest Vanity Fair. Palinistas are calling it a hit piece; the author is saying it's anything but -- he actually wanted to like the woman and went into the story with some sympathy for her, but facts quickly dictated another narrative.

HERE'S an excerpt (and, according to Gross in the MSNBC interview above, the really shocking stuff got left out):

The intensity of Palin’s temper was first described to me in such extreme terms that I couldn’t help but wonder if it might be exaggerated, until I heard corroborating tales of outbursts dating back to her days as mayor of Wasilla and before. One friend of the Palins’ remembers an argument between Sarah and Todd: “They took all the canned goods out of the pantry, then proceeded to throw them at each other. By the time they got done, the stainless-steel fridge looked like it had got shot up with a shotgun. Todd said, ‘I don’t know why I even waste my time trying to get nice things for you if you’re just going to ruin them.’ ” This friend adds, “As soon as she enters her property and the door closes, even the insects in that house cringe. She has a horrible temper, but she has gotten away with it because she is a pretty woman.” (The friend elaborated on this last point: “Once, while Sarah was preparing for a city-council meeting, she said, ‘I’m gonna put on one of my push-up bras so I can get what I want tonight.’ That’s how she rolls.”) When Palin was mayor, she made life for one low-level municipal employee so miserable that the woman quit her job, sought psychiatric counseling, and then left the state altogether to escape Palin’s sphere of influence—this according to one person with firsthand knowledge of the situation. The woman did not want to be found. When I finally tracked her down, her husband, who answered the phone, at first pretended that I had dialed the wrong number and that the word “Wasilla” had no meaning to him. Palin’s former personal assistants all refused to comment on the record for this story, some citing a fear of reprisal. Others who have worked with Palin recall that, when she feels threatened, she does not hesitate to wield some version of a signature threat: “I have the power to ruin you.”

Palin’s public voice is an instrument of great versatility. In a few moments, she can turn from kind to hateful, rational to unhinged. At her best Palin can be folksy and pungent. But she needs outside help to give her voice its national range. For messaging strategy, Palin relies on William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Fred Malek, who was an aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush. The lawyer Robert Barnett, the most successful literary agent in Washington—his clients range from Hillary Clinton to Dick Cheney to Tony Blair—negotiated Palin’s reported $7 million advance for Going Rogue, and he helps oversee her speaking schedule, which is arranged by the Washington Speakers Bureau. The small inner circle that shapes Palin’s voice day to day includes lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, a director of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, who advises Palin on foreign affairs, and Kim Daniels, a lawyer with the Thomas More Law Center, which has been called “the Christian answer to the A.C.L.U.,” who advises her on domestic issues. Palin’s speechwriter is Lindsay Hayes. Doug McMarlin and Jason Recher, both of whom did advance work for George W. Bush, serve as body men and confidants. Both Hayes and Recher were on Palin’s 2008-campaign road team, and both were known for indulging her whims, according to their colleagues. (When John McCain decided to pull out of Michigan, a decision Palin disagreed with, Recher and Palin hatched a plan one day to make an early-morning drive to Michigan anyway. The Secret Service, becoming aware of the plan, asked the McCain campaign what it should do. The answer came: “Shoot out the tires.”) Campaign e-mails indicate that Recher was disrespectful of field staff and support workers. “Our volunteers don’t want to do Palin trips because of the way they are treated by Recher,” wrote one of his supervisors. Of all those who have professional relationships with Palin, only Robert Barnett is generally considered to be at the top of his game, and he is basically just cutting deals, as he would for any client.

Palin’s most unconventional hire is a novice media consultant, Rebecca Mansour, a 36-year-old Los Angeles resident who has been identified in news stories as a screenwriter. Mansour has said that she volunteered for Obama early in the 2008 campaign and then became disillusioned. Not long after the election, with Joseph Russo, a then 23-year-old college student from New Jersey, who would also go to work for Palin, she co-founded the most popular pro-Palin blog, Conservatives4Palin, known informally as C4P (and not to be confused with the “adult swingers” Web site of that name). C4P functions as a hybrid news service, discussion board, and field headquarters for a virtual army of Palin supporters, who pride themselves on brute devotion. “Who We Are and What We Stand For,” a post written by Mansour, declares, “We’re ordinary barbarians here. No one controls us. We’re a horde.” A prominent C4P contributor, Nicole Coulter, told CBS.com this summer, “We would literally walk across hot broken glass for this woman… She’s our family, and you protect your family; it’s like the mafia.”

On C4P, any journalist or public figure who questions Palin in any way is flicked off as a “creep,” a “hack,” a “loser,” a “storm trooper,” a “liar,” or as just plain “slime.” “I assumed the governor was above that,” says Jay Ramras, an Alaska state legislator who has been a frequent target of the site. “Or at least that there was a Chinese wall between her and these people. But then they crossed over—she hired them.” Mansour’s words have continued to appear on the site occasionally, even after she was formally taken on board by SarahPAC. She used to police C4P message boards for dissenters from the party line and, under the name RAM (her initials, shortened from her earlier, more descriptive handle, RAM Hammer), rip them mercilessly: “Now you are banned for life, you sick son of a bitch.” In one comment string, a woman named Sandra wrote, “I wish Sarah would tell us more about what is involved with caring for Trig. I understand there are many professionals involved in his education and training. If we knew more about this there would be more support for organizations that are involved.” Mansour shot back, “Sandra, what are you implying?,” and the comment string went dead. The nastiness on C4P exists alongside an idealization of the former governor, as displayed in the closing lines of “Who is Sarah Palin?,” an 8,000-word posting by Mansour: “C4P has your back, Governor. And when you finally ride out from the north with your banner lifted high, we’ll rally.”

Wee hav are pryareatees

Word is, Les Miles had better win nine games this season at LSU, or he might get that chance to coach at Michigan after all.

Says Peter Finney at The Times-Picayune, the booster community could be ready to come up with the cash for a big buyout:

Now one script tells us, three years after winning a national championship, after going 8-5 and 9-4, Miles needs a 9-3 regular-season record to maintain employment at LSU.

An 8-4 regular season, says one script, and the Tiger Athletic Foundation is prepared to come up with the money necessary to buy out the head coach.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE is, Tiger Nation is going to go apes*** if Les comes away with a loss against North Carolina in Hotlanta on Saturday night.

Meanwhile, buried in the pages of newspapers many Louisianians are too damned illiterate to read, is word of this little "budget exercise" Gov. Bobby Jindal is insisting LSU embark upon -- as in immediately -- to let the Capitol gang know what would have to go if, say, another $74 million disappeared from the university's annual budget.

As it turns out, lots.

But that's not important now. Getting all geared up for a snit fit that will end with the firing of their $3 million football coach is the thing weighing on Tiger fans' minds. Such as they are.

Dat's Loosiana for you: Lose 33 percent of your football games when you're "on the hot seat" three years after winning the national championship, and you're likely going to get cussed . . . and vilified . . . and have your wife called ugly names . . . and your manhood questioned . . . and be booed every Saturday night through November . . . before you're unceremoniously fired.

On the other hand, be the governor who cripples higher education with a 35-percent budget cut -- driving your state even further into a Third Worldish economic and cultural malaise -- and you're probably a sure bet to get re-elected by a wide margin.

IF EVERYTHING plays out like I suspect it will, Les Miles will be hitching up the U-Haul as he contemplates the Mega-Millions severance check he just stuffed into his billfold. And then he and Kathy will kiss, step into the Family Truckster and hit the road.

After a while on the road, as Les dodges a pothole, and then another, he'll glance at Baton Rouge in his rearview mirror. And he'll smile.

Did you know?

Know what?

Know that you can embed the Big Show on your blog or something if you really, really like it.

The things people think of on the Internets.



THAT IS ALL. Above, you'll find the latest episode, which I call "Heck of a Job." You can read about it here.

As always, it's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all.

Be there.

Aloha.

Waxing eloquent on Glo-Coat

Waded through all the gay cyber-picketers to get to the Omaha World-Herald's website so I could check out what Rainbow Rowell was writing about today.

Found the poor gal on there talking about Mad Men as she tried to clean all the rotten eggs and scrawled obscenities off the floor with Glo-Coat. A couple more protesters showed up, not having heard that the paper announced it will print notices for gay engagements and weddings from locales that recognize same-sex marriages.

Anyway, Rainbow had to stop cleaning the floor to explain that Glo-Coat was a nifty old-time floor wax -- not something one might wear to the Max on Saturday nights. The protesters left, downcast.


PERSONALLY, as a Southerner, I relate more to this Glo-Coat ad featuring Loretta Lynn . . . a famous person who actually has waxed a floor or seven in her life.

And if somebody were protesting MY publication, they might get something else. Hit it, Loretty:


BUT THAT'S not important now.

What I really want to know is what's so damned special about Glo-Coat? Why buy such a one-dimensional household product when there's a product out there that's a floor wax and a dessert topping?