We're all Sunnis and Shiites now

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Ilario Pantano
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The basics of the would-be congressman's resumé were clear enough.

Former Goldman-Sachs guy joins the Marines after 9/11, eventually ends up in Iraq as a second lieutenant.

His men stop a car seen leaving a house they were searching. Found some garden-variety weapons in the house, find nothing in the car or on the driver and passenger.

Marines search the car again, search the occupants again. Still nothing.

The would-be congressman smashes up the car. He sends the rest of his men off, has the unarmed Iraqi civilians search their own vehicle again. For some reason, he empties two clips of M-16 ammo into their backs at close range. They slump into the car.

The one which contained no weapons.

Afterward, the lieutenant slashes the tires on a car full of Iraqi house painters. After that, he places a handmade sign on the car with the two bodies inside: "No better friend, no worse enemy."

MONTHS LATER, the Marines investigate. Prosecutors charge him with murder, which could have meant the death penalty. A hearing determines there's not enough evidence to court-martial him.

The presiding officer, however, recommended a non-judicial punishment for "extremely poor judgment." He said the lieutenant, by desecrating the Iraqis' corpses with the sign, had disgraced the Marine Corps.

Then he sheds his uniform, finds Jesus, paints himself as a red-white-and-blue hero of the Iraq War, writes a book to that effect . . . then puts himself forth as a Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina.

And that, friends, is how Ilario Pantano became a Tea Party darling and got 46 percent of the vote against a conservative, pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare.

That's how he went from staring a murder rap and the death penalty in the face . . . to almost getting elected to Congress. With the backing of a whole, big bunch of Republicans, including Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani.

That such a character as Pantano has gotten so far in politics is no testimony to the civic heath of North Carolina. You have to wonder what the hell is wrong with those people, frankly.

In Pantano's native New York, however, old friends and acquaintances wonder what's become of the man they once knew. These deep misgivings about the would-be congressman reverberate through the pages of New York magazine:

But to some of his old New York friends, the new Pantano is not the one they thought they knew. “Is this obviously a new and different phase in Ilario’s life? Yes. Has he made major changes in his life? Yes. Is this the guy I’ve known before? No,” said Noah Shachtman, a contributing editor to Wired magazine and a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution. He met Pantano at Horace Mann. “As a politico turned musician turned reporter,” Schactman added, ”I don’t begrudge anyone the right to reinvent themselves.”

Though Pantano moved to North Carolina about ten years ago, Schactman, like other New York friends who’ve kept in touch, believed Pantano a New Yorker through and through. His mother was a New York literary agent, though she now raises horses in North Carolina; his wife was a Jewish New Yorker and onetime model who posed for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Pantano never did drugs, but he loved to dance and loved the hot nightclubs of the nineties. “He went to Mars, the Palladium, Disco 2000. “He couldn’t have gone there and possibly have had any issue with gay people,” said Alex Roy, who runs Europe by Car, a family business, and who held a fund-raiser for Pantano when he was accused of murder. “He’s changed a lot. I am pretty surprised to hear that he’s against gay marriage, considering that we have gay friends in common. He’s 180 degrees away from the person I grew up with. Maybe it’s a function of where he lives, or having served in the military. If you’re running for office it sure pays to agree with people in your district.”

Vlad Edelman, who was Pantano’s partner in a digital media business for half a dozen years, called Pantano after his New York speech against the proposed mosque. “What’s going on with your politics? I don’t recognize them,” Edelman asked. Shachtman also worried about Pantano’s fearmongering — the candidate fears a Chinese attack via Cuba, as he told Schachtman in an interview for Wired.

THERE YOU GO. Being against gay marriage is a big, big concern. Alleged war crimes? Not so much.

Likewise, giving a speech against the "Ground Zero mosque" is some kind of major faux pas, but gunning down actual Iraqi Muslims in cold blood . . . not so much.

"What's going on with your politics?" As if there were no red flags in 2004, in some God-forsaken corner of Iraq?

Screw it. You want to know what America stands for today? Nothing. Not a damn thing apart from self-righteousness, nada apart from talking a good -- albeit hypocritical -- game. That's who we are, what we're all about.

Left or right, Bohemian or Bubba, there's only one unforgivable sin in contemporary American society today -- being politically incorrect. I guess what they say is true . . . you are what you invade.

Your Daily '80s: True

Spandau Ballet was all over the charts with "True" the summer and fall of 1983 -- it hit the Billboard Top 40 on Aug. 27 and stayed there for 10 weeks, peaking at No. 4.

Not only is "True" a great pop song, it also forever will take me back to being a newlywed; it hit the Top 40 exactly one week after Mrs. Favog and I were married.

We had just moved across the country, from North Platte, Neb., to Baton Rouge, and I was heading back to LSU to finish my degree.

Good times, and a fitting soundtrack.

Maybe Lee was 'so drunk' . . . again

We have to give Lee Terry the benefit of the doubt for his support of BP's best buddy as chairman of the House energy panel. Maybe that lady lobbyist got him "so drunk" again.

Or maybe the congressman from Omaha is just such an expletive-deleted that he figures he can get re-elected no matter how much contempt he shows for justice, ordinary citizens or the environment. At least it looks that way from this article on Politico:

Eight Republicans Wednesday began circulating a letter indicating support for Texas Rep. Joe Barton in his longshot bid to lead the House Energy and Commerce committee.

Texas Reps. Ralph Hall and Michael Burgess joined with Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), Cliff Stearns (Fla.), Joe Pitts (Pa.), Steve Scalise (La.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and John Shimkus (Ill.) on a “Dear Colleague” letter, signaling that they are recommending their “friend and colleague, Joe Barton, for the Chairman of our committee in the 112th Congress.”

“You know Joe,” the letter reads. “He has provided unyielding conservative leadership during our protracted partisan battles over cap-and-trade and health care reform.”

It’s the largest measure of public support for Barton, who is term-limited out of the chairmanship this Congress. His staunch lobbying has irked members of the Republican leadership, throwing further into doubt any chance he had at obtaining a waiver of the term limits rule.

What’s notable is that the co-signors are all members of the committee, and are drawing a clear line in the sand against Michigan Rep. Fred Upton. Furthermore, Shimkus and Stearns were both considered contenders for the gavel.

Barton’s main argument for a waiver, something Republican leadership seems averse to, is that his time as ranking Republican on the committee should not count against the term-limit rule – a point Republican leaders thinks is peripheral, and long-settled.

It’s been an ugly fight. Anonymous opposition dumps – which Barton denied having a hand in – have circulated around Capitol Hill, saying Upton is not conservative enough. The Republicans supporting Barton made that point in their letter.

IT'S CLEAR. Only two things matter in Congress anymore -- money and ideology. Matters of right, wrong, people and nation are just the detritus of the modern political process, to be discarded along with your empties after "policy discussions" with the lobbyists.

Maybe you can fool all the people all the time. Until you can't.

The question, however, is whether that "can't" moment in American history does or doesn't arrive before the "It doesn't matter anymore" moment.

TV Blow-Up, or . . . shootin' like the King

This might be the sanest thing anyone in America has done in the last year, and look what it gets the guy.

Besieged by the SWAT team.

Busted.

Written up in all the newspapers.

ALL BECAUSE of a completely sane, rational response to the politician who not only won't go away, but tells all her no-account kinfolk to come over, too. Here's what The Associated Press put out on the wires, but you be the judge:

A rural Wisconsin man blasted his television set with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin's "Dancing with the Stars" routine Monday night, saying he was fed up with politics and Palin wasn't a very good dancer, according to court documents.

Steven Cowan, 67, of the town of Vermont, about 15 miles west of Madison, then pointed the gun at his wife, 66-year-old Janice Cowan, who escaped and called police, authorities said. A SWAT team surrounded the couple's farmhouse, and officers were able to talk Cowan out Tuesday morning after an all-night standoff.

Cowan had been drinking before he sat down to watch "Dancing with the Stars" and suffers from bipolar disorder, his wife told officers. He was charged Tuesday with second-degree reckless endangerment, and could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Cowan was expected to make his initial court appearance Wednesday in Madison. Online court records show that the state public defender's office was appointed to represent him, however the office said it had no record of him as of Wednesday morning.

Dane County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Elise Schaffer said Cowan works as a landlord, but that she didn't know where he owned property. He has a clean criminal record, she said.

"It's kind of sad, actually," Schaffer said.

YEAH, IT'S SAD that y'all put the poor man in jail after his spontaneous fit of rationality. That's what's sad.

But that's just my opinion. Let me know if anybody's interested in starting up a defense fund for a true American patriot.


AFTER ALL, if the King can shoot a TV set -- and get away with it -- for less provocation than a Palin, there just ain't no justice for the common man.

The '70s that I miss

When I think of the 1970s, this is the '70s in my mind and of blessed memory.

The '70s I miss is, to be sure, the bubblegum, rock and soul-flavored fun of Top-40 AM radio, but even more, it is the thoughtful and horizon-expanding world of FM radio . . . the freeform, AOR, laid-back funkiness of that cultural space between 88 and 108 megacycles.

That brief moment in broadcasting and pop-culture history when FM was a statement, not the next place to be assimilated by the forces of homogeneity.

WHEN I think of Jimmie Spheeris, the name is inseparable from "Loose Radio" in Baton Rouge, WJBO-FM, later to become WFMF.

That's the 1970s to which I sometimes desperately wish I could return. But I can't, and neither can any of us.

Dem things happen.

Your Daily '80s: Afternoon TV

It's the fall of 1987 in Omaha. You're a vidhead.

What to watch, what to watch on TV this afternoon?

Well, you can watch this.


Or you can watch that.

Gross misconduct

What does it say about Omaha as the excitement capital of the Midwest when a championship high-school volleyball coach decides she's going to let her freak flag fly in . . . Grand Island?

Talk about not only gross misconduct -- or, in this case, Gross misconduct -- but I think there may be some "get a life" issues in play here as well. Let me be blunt: Coach (or ex-Coach, as the case may be), you do realize you are (were) the coach here of a high-school girls volleyball team, right?

And that you just won the Nebraska state championship and not the Olympic gold medal, right?

And that, like, you're waaaaaaay past your teen-age years, never served a single ace or made a single kill in the tournament and are supposed to be the adult here, right?

NEVER MIND. The Omaha World-Herald makes it pretty clear she never thought of any of that:

Korrine Schuster apparently is no longer the Omaha Gross volleyball coach, though the reasons for her departure are unclear.

Kearney-based television station NTV reported on its website Monday night that Schuster was removed from the Midtown Holiday Inn where the Cougars were staying after capturing their second consecutive Class B state volleyball championship. Officer Butch Hurst of the Grand Island Police Department was quoted as saying there was a disturbance at the location.

The station reported that no one was arrested, but police said Schuster was removed from the property after police received a call about 2:45 a.m. Sunday.

Hurst said, “At the time officers thought she was intoxicated, and she alleges she was coach of Omaha Gross,” the station's report said. The officer also was quoted as saying that “a female was being referred to the Hall County Attorney's Office for disturbing the peace.”

The television report added it wasn't clear what happened at the hotel, located just blocks from the Heartland Events Center — site of the state tournament. Further, the TV station said the police report made no reference whether any girls were involved.

The parent of a senior player said Tuesday that none were.

Gross president Beckie Cleveland was quoted in the TV report as apologizing for actions out of line with the Catholic school's mission. She also was quoted as saying that Schuster was no longer employed there, but declined to comment further.

KORRINE, all I have to say is that girls like you are why I wanted nothing more, as a 16-year-old, than to be the only male student at St. Joseph's Academy, the Catholic girls school in Baton Rouge.

But you're not a hot-to-trot Catholic schoolgirl. You were part of Catholic-school officialdom. Yet you were pulling crap like that.

Even as a hormone-crazed teen-age male, I would have found that just . . . well, gross.

It helps to know thy enemy

Suttle recall spokesman Jeremy Aspen explains to the Omaha press that
the Republican Guard committed volunteers have crushed the mayor.

In case you were inclined to mistake the Mayor Suttle Recall Committee for serious people with legitimate concerns and a well-thought-out plan for righting what's wrong with Omaha, your last illusion just disappeared.

In its place is a clear picture of a bunch of spoiled, angry asshats taking the money of gullible, equally irate Omahans and using it to throw a very public and -- at times -- very funny temper tantrum.

Take Saturday morning, for example. A gaggle of petition circulators in Elkhorn spotted some easy marks walking down the street and started selling hard the notion of how Omahans needed to get rid of that no-good, tax-raisin', outta-touch scalawag Jim Suttle.

One of the people they were trying to convince to throw the bum out, however, was . . . the bum. Mayor Jim Suttle.

IT'S ALL in this morning's Omaha World-Herald:

Recall petition workers unwittingly made their pitch to Suttle Saturday morning as he took a chilly walking tour of the Elkhorn business district with a small group of local boosters.

“He thought it was kind of funny,” said his spokeswoman, Aida Amoura.

The three recall backers — two men and one woman — approached the group.

Suttle played along for a while, said Elkhorn businesswoman Jennifer Pospichal, who described the exchange this way:

“What are you guys working on?” Suttle asked.

“We're trying to recall the mayor,” one man said.

Pospichal said it was obvious that the recall worker, who told Suttle he was not from Omaha, didn't realize whom he was talking to. She asked him if he was interested in meeting the mayor. When the recall worker said he was too busy for that, she motioned in Suttle's direction.

The man looked shocked, said Pospichal, an officer of the Elkhorn Station Main Street group.

“It was really hilarious,” she said. “He just turned in his tracks and started walking on the other side of the street.”

OBVIOUSLY, the guy -- the whole bunch of recall backers -- had no clue who Suttle was, or that they were trying to get the mayor to sign up to recall himself.

The recall committee wants you to believe these people are eminently qualified to tell Omahans -- who can recognize their own mayor when they bump into him on the street -- why their mayor is a bum. And then cajole them into signing a recall petition, triggering a special recall election that the city can't afford.

Which, of course, likely would end up raising taxes that much more, because the money has to come from somewhere. Just like mercenary recall workers, I guess.

What may be even funnier than some clueless carpetbagger asking the target of a recall petition to sign on the dotted line was how recall spokesman Jeremy Aspen tried to spin the unspinnable:

Aspen said the non-Omahan who spoke with Suttle was a paid worker who helps “coach” other petition circulators as they seek potential signers. Actual circulators must be Nebraska residents.

For Suttle and the recall workers to show up at the same place Saturday was a coincidence, Aspen said, but it illustrates that Suttle opponents are working hard to get the nearly 27,000 signatures needed to force a special election. The recall group has until Friday to turn in its petitions.

“It does demonstrate our presence,” he said.

IT DEMONSTRATES something, all right.

When TV was but a punk kid of 10

In 1949, this was the NBC Television Network. It stretched from New York to St. Louis, all hooked up to the coaxial cable, as ably explained that year by Howdy Doody, Buffalo Bob Smith and Clarabell the Clown.

If your city wasn't on the hookup, then your local network affiliate (assuming you had a TV station at all) got its national programming, what there was of it, via kinescopes -- 16-millimeter film recordings of a TV monitor at the New York studios. The hinterlands got network shows when they got them.

And videotape still was the better part of a decade in the future.

What you see here -- the state of the art four years after the end of World War II -- features less capability and lower quality than a 4G-enabled smart phone today. And it was miraculous.

As primitive as it seems today, it would revolutionize an entire society in the years following 1949.


THOUGH TELEVISION still was very much in its infancy in April 1949, NBC was in a mood to celebrate how far the medium had come since the advent of regular American broadcasts 10 years earlier in New York.

Through the New York facilities of WNBT (now WNBC), here we have a kinescope of TV's first anniversary gala. NBC was celebrating a decade of television, and the network was throwing a party.

Kind of an austere party by today's standards, but a wingding nevertheless.


IN THIS CASE, the folks at WNBT were thanking their lucky stars for now-forgotten singing stars, because not only was TV history in short supply in 1949, but also reliable ways of archiving old programs. That tends to make retrospectives problematic.

Let's just say I hope you enjoy old kinescopes of fighter planes taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. That was a really big deal back then -- it wasn't the content; it was that the TV people could broadcast from an underway naval vessel at all.


IT'S TIME to go, now. And, of course, that would be Bulova Watch Time.

Your Daily '80s: Square Pegs

Before there was Sex in the City, there was virginal and geeky at Weemawee High.

It's Square Pegs, and it premieres Sept. 27. And yes, that's Sarah Jessica Parker.

Welcome back to 1982. It's a totally different head. Totally.

Lou Holtz, you've just been Favre'd!

Via Deadspin, this YouTube vid of Lou Holtz being an a-hole -- and picking on the girls, to boot -- back when he was at South Carolina.

Look at Dr. Jekyll's Mr. Hyde here, and realize that he was making a young intern cry just because he had to wait five minutes instead of one minute, like he'd been told.

So much for Mr. Nice Guy. St. Lou, as it were.

What amazes me is how, the more big-shotty people become, the more dumbassy they become, too. You would think that if you absolutely, positively had to act like a Richard (Hey, this is a fambly blog, of sorts.) you'd have enough sense not to do it in front of a TV camera.

You'd think you'd realize that someone, somewhere was rolling the videotape.

But, no. Which just goes to show you, we've always had Facebook. It's just that we used to call it television, and you generally had to be a high-profile a-hole to be exposed to the world as one.

Eventually.

Have fun, Coach. Somewhere in South Carolina, "theREALpeto" is proving the axiom that revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.

A vortex of suck in Sarpy County

The Omaha Royals -- which, by the way, are no longer actually in Omaha -- are changing the minor-league team's name to the Omaha Storm Chasers?

Really?

YEAH, really, says the Omaha World-Herald:

Alan Stein, president of the Omaha Royals, unveiled the club's new name Monday night at the Embassy Suites Convention Center. The switch was made as Omaha's Triple-A baseball team makes the move to Werner Park in Sarpy County next spring.

Since 1969, the team has been named the Royals, the team's major-league affiliate, for all but three years, when it was named the Golden Spikes (1999-2001).

Martie Cordaro, general manager of the Storm Chasers, said the process of changing the name began in May 2009. The club hired Plan B Branding, a branding and logo company from Las Vegas, to research the Omaha area and hold focus groups on whether a name change should be made. The Royals polled the public on its website for name suggestions and then had the public vote on the top three choices.

Cordaro said the fans named the team, while Stein and the staff approved it.

"I'm very pleased," Stein said. "It's an extremely perfect name for Omaha. It will be a lot of fun. What I like about it is being able to get into the area schools and talk about science and weather safety with kids."

I DON'T KNOW about you, but the first thing I think about when it comes to Triple-A baseball is creating opportunities to tell kids about weather safety.

What's to tell about weather safety? "Hey, kids! When the siren goes off, run to the basement. And don't drive Mommy and Daddy's car into swiftly moving water during a flash flood!"

For God's sake.

Why not use the team's new identity to do some real "safety education"? Why not the Omaha Crack Hos? Or maybe -- and this one is a real hummer -- the Sarpy Syphilis.

No, really. I think the Sarpy Syphilis has a certain ring to it -- on so many levels, it just works, don't you think?

Call the new mascot Clappy (and, if you think about it, the same mascot could work for either the Sarpy Syphilis or the Omaha Crack Hos), and tell kids to "avoid the clap." And he/she/it could go to schools and pass out those condoms that look like candy coins.

You couldn't buy enough advertising to get that kind of publicity.

Your Daily '80s: Saturday morning TV

In 1989, I -- blessedly -- was long, long past my Saturday morning cartoon-watching prime.

Really, Punky Brewster was bad enough in prime time.

Wow. Just wow.

I think this is what Pat Cadell, an old liberal warhorse from the Carter White House, and a former Clinton Administration pollster, Douglas E. Schoen, are trying to tell President Obama and the nation:

People? See this here? This is the abyss.

Take another step, and you just might fall into it. That would be bad.

Basically, your -- all of your -- intransigence, venom, hatred of people unlike yourselves and willingness to do anything -- anything -- to make sure that you win and, more importantly, your "enemies" lose is pushing us toward that abyss. You are on a path that leads over the edge and into nothingness.

Nothingness as a people.

Nothingness as a coherent political entity.

And certainly nothing in the way of a decent life for your children or future generations of Americans. Some of you have forgotten the meaning of commonweal -- you think it's a dirty word, some radical notion cooked up by Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels.

Others of you believe in commonweal, only you think it's an excuse for some of you to wield the power of the state as a bludgeon against people you hate . . . ironically because you contend they are "hateful." Of course, hateful nowadays is a moving target, unaffected by objective standards of judging such.

One side or another of you may prevail -- that's certainly doable. It will be your funeral.

WHAT IS IT that Cadell and Schoen have written that I feel the need to boil down for you?

Oh, nothing much. Just an op-ed piece in The Washington Post calling on Obama to forgo running for re-election in 2012.

They want him to throw politics out the window, try to stop the division of America into warring camps and to, in effect, form a bipartisan national-unity government for the remainder of his term.

They think that either he does that, or there will be hell to pay. For all of us.

To wit:

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

IT'S A reasonable suggestion. I'd call it "taking the high road," only radically so.

I also can't imagine any American politician actually doing it. I hope I'm wrong, because I think I might -- tentatively, at least -- associate myself with their remarks. Read on.

If the president adopts our suggestion, both sides will be forced to compromise. The alternative, we fear, will put the nation at greater risk. While we believe that Obama can be reelected, to do so he will have to embark on a scorched-earth campaign of the type that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election, which divided Americans in ways that still plague us.

Obama owes his election in large measure to the fact that he rejected this approach during his historic campaign. Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by his rhetoric and purpose. Now, the only way he can make real progress is to return to those values and to say that for the good of the country, he will not be a candidate in 2012.

Should the president do that, he - and the country - would face virtually no bad outcomes. The worst-case scenario for Obama? In January 2013, he walks away from the White House having been transformative in two ways: as the first black president, yes, but also as a man who governed in a manner unmatched by any modern leader. He will have reconciled the nation, continued the economic recovery, gained a measure of control over the fiscal problems that threaten our future, and forged critical solutions to our international challenges. He will, at last, be the figure globally he has sought to be, and will almost certainly leave a better regarded president than he is today. History will look upon him kindly - and so will the public.

WOW. Just wow.

Your Daily '80s: Early Fox . . . and early Bart

Remember the early days of Fox?

Actually, you probably don't -- not unless you lived in one of the scattered places that had a Fox affiliate in 1986 or 1987. I didn't.

No, we had to get our Tracey Ullman fix on the road. And what the hell are those really bizarre cartoon segments? The Stinsons? The Simons? The Simpsons? Something like that.






There you go. Welcome back to Nov. 1, 1987.

Y'know, those Simons . . . Simpsons . . . whatever . . . are weird, but I think they could catch on.

Spanning the Gulf betwixt skid marks, skid marks

When I was 7, I thought this commercial had it goin' on.

After 42 years, my opinion hasn't changed. No Nox against it at all.

Thank you! Thank you very much -- I'm here all week.

3 Chords & the Truth: Wintry mix

Don't let the name of this week's episode fool you.

That, for the most part, was no wintry mix out there. For the most part all evening, it's been a flat-out snowstorm in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. And suddenly the forecast for a "wintry mix" became one for "3- to 6 inches."

You know what kind of weather that is, don't you?

It's stay inside, grab a cup of something hot, grab something warm to curl up in . . . and put on 3 Chords & the Truth. Because while it's snowing like the dickens outside, the Big Show -- safely inside -- is offering up a "wintry mix" today.

And one set in particular is downright toasty. Really toasty. If you know what I mean.

WELL, that's about all I have to say about this week's edition of Everybody's Favorite Podcast.

Cold outside.

Warm inside.

Wintry mix.

Good music.

Some of it . . . very unwinterlike.

If you know what I mean.

DID I mention it snowed today? Did I mention the music's fine, so come on in?

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

Your Daily '80s: Andy & Dave, 1980

Here's a little agit for the never-believer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a little ghost for the offering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a truck stop instead of St. Peter's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mr. Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling (wrestling bears).
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Hey Andy, did you hear about this one? Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elvis? Hey baby, are we losing touch?
If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve, then nothing is cool

-- R.E.M., 1992

The importance of being Bobby

The only thing that surpasses politicians' rank hypocrisy amid our never-ending Left-Right food fight is politicians' capacity for self-aggrandizement and lack of capacity for introspection.

This is how a ditwad governor of a failed Southern state manages to write a memoir at age 39, throwing in chapters about how to better run America while his own state sinks into a Third Worldish fever swamp and another complaining that President Obama was mean to him and Rahm Emanuel cursed his chief of staff.

(In Emanuel's defense, when dealing with a governor who named himself after Bobby Brady, and whose chief of staff is named Timmy Teepell, tamping down one's junior-high PTSD might be too much to ask of a man.)

AND, OF COURSE, Politico is on the story:

On Obama’s first trip to Louisiana after the disaster, the governor describes how the president took him aside on the tarmac after arriving to complain about a letter that Jindal had sent to the administration requesting authorization for food stamps for those who had lost their jobs because of the spill.

As Jindal describes it, the letter was entirely routine, yet Obama was angry and concerned about looking bad.

"Careful," he quotes the president as warning him, "this is going to get bad for everyone."

Nearby on the tarmac, Jindal recalls, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was chewing out his own chief of staff, Timmy Teepell.

“If you have a problem pick up the f——n’ phone,” Jindal quotes Emanuel telling Teepell.

The governor asserts that the White House had tipped off reporters to watch the exchange on the New Orleans tarmac that Sunday in May and deemed it a “press stunt” that symbolized what’s wrong with Washington.

“Political posturing becomes more important than reality,” he writes.

What might explain why Obama and Emanuel were so angry at Jindal is that the governor released his food stamp request the previous day to the media and indicated that he wanted a response by the close of business Monday.

AND PEOPLE wonder why reporters drink.

Probably because vast quantities of hard liquor is the only thing that will stop the voices of politicians in your head. Especially if the politician is the anthropomorphized cognitive dissonance that is Bobby Jindal.

Your Daily '80s: Uncle Walter sells the '60s

And that's the way it was, advertising '60s nostalgia in 1984. He was Walter Cronkite. Good night.