Cleanse your brain here

Politics is awful.

It's often hateful. The bullshit is so deep that you'll contract something nasty if you don't wear hip waders and occasionally spray yourself down with disinfectant.

And then there's Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Nancy Pelosi, talk-radio screamers . . . and Steve King. The tea party is outraged -- and largely victorious.

People are still talking big about "watering the tree of liberty" with the blood of tyrants. I am reminded, however, of Gov. Earl Long's question of the arch-segregationist boss of Plaquemines Parish, Leander Perez: "What are you going to do now, Leander? The Feds have got the atom bomb."

THAT'S WHY, today of all days, we need a palate cleanser. That would be this video, I Met the Walrus, based on an interview then 14-year-old Jerry Levitan recorded with John Lennon in a Toronto hotel room as he and Yoko Ono prepared to head to Montréal for their second 1969 "bed-in for peace."



THEN, in Montréal. . . .

Right of the great divide

If you care to look at what kind of political climate we're facing these days, look no further than Rep. Steve King, western Iowa's crazy-uncle congressman.

In 2008, King -- a three-term representative for whom the description "incendiary" may well be an understatement -- won with 60 percent of the vote. Tuesday, he won with 68 percent.

In February, he was being glib about the guy who flew his plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas. Two years before, it was this:


AND THE good people of western Iowa like him just fine, according to today's Omaha World-Herald:

King is a staunch conservative known for eyebrow-raising comments. He expects the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives to lead to his becoming chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. He is the senior Republican on the subcommittee.

He said Tuesday he wants to introduce legislation reducing and eventually ending federal aid to so-called “sanctuary cities” if they did not change their policies.

“We have a number of cities in our country that, essentially, forbid their law enforcement officers from gathering information on illegals,” he said. “We need to put an end to it.”

Cities — including Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco — have adopted ordinances banning city employees and police from asking residents about their immigration status. King described Des Moines as a “de-facto” sanctuary city where the practice is in place without an ordinance.

He also called for ending automatic citizenship for what he called “anchor babies,” children born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Doing that would likely require changing the U.S. Constitution.

WHAT DEMOCRATS have to deal with isn't that King is a nut and attracts like addle-minded zealots. What Democrats have to deal with is that lots of normal people in the country's breadbasket keep electing a bomb-thrower like the congressman from Iowa's 5th Congressional District.

That they regard him as "normal" enough to represent them, and see Democrats as unfit.

What Democrats have to ask themselves is why they are so alienated from normal Midwestern folk -- angry, fearful, marginally knee-jerk and increasingly deluded folk, to be sure, but not particularly lunatic ones. Dismissing folks like Steve King's Iowa voters, deriding them as bigots and nuts, may be satisfying for the Democratic base, but it still amounts to pissing in the wind.

The difficult question that some Democrats need to ask themselves, but won't, isn't "Why is everybody but us so crazy?" The pertinent question, instead, is "Why do people find us significantly more frightening than somebody like Steve King?"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars . . ." etc., and so on.

Your Daily '80s: Election '82

Just in time for Ronald Reagan's first midterm election in 1982, the economy was about as bad as it had been since the Great Depression.

We wouldn't see an economy that bad again until . . . now.

Funny -- isn't it? -- that Reagan (the real Reagan and not the mythologized one) probably would be derided as a RINO by the tea-party crowd today, and the Democrats have become a party that can't hold a lead. Ever.

The greatest country on earth

America today.

Politics today.

The state of anger management today.


We should be so proud this Election Day 2010. It won't get better starting tomorrow, you know.

It probably will get worse. God help us.

Then again, why should He?

FRC = Freaks' Radio Commercials

Here's all you need to know about Christian public-interest groups like the Family Research Council (and I use the terms "Christian" and "public-interest" loosely):

If you're a mainstream Catholic who may not approve of homosexual conduct or gay "marriage" but think that doesn't mean they forfeit their rights as American citizens, you're the enemy of God's self-appointed political goon squads. Like the FRC or its local Family Matters (or Family First, or Family Policy Council. or whatever) affiliates.

If you believe gays and lesbians haven't forfeited basic rights like not getting fired . . . or beat up . . . or killed . . . or otherwise having their human dignity offended just because someone doesn't like their sexual proclivities, the Family Research Council counts you as an enemy. Like they do the embattled Republican congressman from New Orleans, Joseph Cao.

THE FORMER Catholic seminarian has himself a big problem with the FRC, which is running attack ads against the staunchly pro-life representative. One has to wonder whether these Taliban for Jesus just figure that "God Hates Fags" -- à la the Westboro Baptist Church crowd -- and Cao should, too.

So, what horrible pro-gay, anti-family heresy has the diminutive congressman committed? The Times-Picayune fills us in:

Cao's "record is dismal on our issues," Tony Perkins, the former Louisiana legislator who heads the Washington-based FRC, said Saturday.

Cao responded that it was "ridiculous" to charge, as the ad campaign does, that his support for homosexual rights came at the expense of religious liberty.

"As a former Jesuit seminarian and practicing Catholic, it is ridiculous to say that I have ever taken a position against religious liberties," Cao said. "I am, however, a champion of human rights and justice for all."

Perkins said Cao was the only Republican candidate targeted with an FRC attack ad this fall. The ad, which has run on New Orleans station WRNO, known as "Rush Radio" because it airs conservative talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, ends with the tag line, "Washington doesn't need more liberal Republicans. Stop Joe Cao on Election Day."

"He's vulnerable," Perkins said of Cao's prospects for a second term. Perkins said he was keeping a close eye on the campaign to determine whether to ramp up the advertising effort before Tuesday.

Perkins said Richmond is also unacceptable to the FRC. "I know Cedric. I served in the Legislature with him," Perkins said. "He'll be no better."

Perkins said independent candidate Anthony Marquize is more in line with FRC thinking.

YES, Tony Perkins is as ridiculous as you think he is. You really should hear him go off on Christian environmentalists. He thinks they're pinkos or something.

Besides . . . how do these people have the nerve? I'd almost forgotten about George Alan Rekers and his "rent boy," and apparently the FRC thinks you have, too.

Let's keep reading, shall we?

"Who is Rep. Joseph Cao representing in Washington?" the FRC ad asks. "Cao has repeatedly voted for extra protections for homosexuals at the cost of religious liberty. Cao voted to use the military to advance the radical social agendas of homosexual activists and he voted for a so-called hate crimes bill that places your personal liberties at jeopardy."

Cao co-sponsored both the Hate Crimes Protection Act of 2009 and House legislation to repeal the policy that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the armed forces, known as "don't ask, don't tell."

"I believe it is a human rights violation to impose government-sanctioned penalties on a group of people just because of their sexual orientation, just as it would be a human rights violation to impose penalties on a group because of its religious affiliation or race," Cao said. "I will continue to fight for the protection of human rights for all people."

YOU KNOW, it's a good thing for the Almighty that he's . . . almighty. Because if He weren't -- with "friends" like Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council -- He'd be screwed.

Your Daily '80s: Shakin' over Shirley

Welcome back to 1982.

In May of this year, Shakin' Stevens took this little ditty, "Shirley," to No. 6 on the British charts.

But for me, the original of "Shirley" hits a little closer to home.


WELCOME to 1959 -- two years before I arrived on the scene -- in my hometown, Baton Rouge, La. Then, "Shirley" was a little somethin' put to hot wax by John Fred and the Playboys.


ABOUT NINE YEARS later, John Fred and His Playboy Band had a No. 1 hit with another little something you might remember.

Your Daily '80s: Sic transit gloria television

Broadcasting magazine, Oct. 27, 1980 -- 30 years ago this week.

Phil Donahue and his syndicated TV show -- Donahue -- were huge. He was Oprah before Oprah was Oprah, only in a very male, Caucasian manner.

Now? Not so much.

Two sisters turn heads

From Broadcasting-Telecasting, April 12, 1954 (above).

Your Daily '80s: Goodbye to 405

When Great Britain introduced the world's first public television service in 1936, its "high definition" broadcasts were all-electronic at an amazing 405 lines of definition.

By the 1960s, though, a newer 625-line color system began to supplant the original British scheme of transmitting TV programs, and 405's days were numbered. Above, we see the end of 405-line transmissions as viewed on a 1938 receiver dusted off by the BBC for the occasion.

It's Jan. 3, 1985.


AND HERE, we see how it looked to folks with "newfangled" 625-line color sets.

Below, meantime, we see a news story on the oldest working TV set in Britain -- a 1936 model.


YOU THINK your brand-new high-def widescreen set will be "kickin' it old school" in 2083?

Not waiting for locusts, exactly

"You talk to relatives and friends who aren't from here and the first thing they ask you -- they give you that special look -- is, 'Are y'all going to be OK?'

"You know what they're really thinking, they're just too polite to say it. What they're really thinking is, 'What's wrong with you people? Are y'all waiting for locusts?'"

-- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
Oct. 29, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Rock the late night

The Clash + Tom Snyder + Tomorrow = I miss 1981.

Is what I'm saying.

3 Chords & the Truth: You can call me Boris

You can call me Favog, or you can call me Mighty, or you can call me DJ . . . or you can call me Boris.

It's Halloween. Its 3 Chords & the Truth. It's . . . well . . . you know.

I mean, when it gets Spooky like this, you find You're a Whole Different Person When You're Scared. And if the Werewolves of London show up, you may well end up in the Monster Hospital.

THAT'S IF you're lucky.

You could, if one thing or another goes badly, end up in the City of the Dead. A Little Ghost, as it were.

Then again, maybe you'd just end up undead. Then the whole neighborhood would be running around in a COMPLETE panic.

Men and women -- children and dogs -- would be out in the streets screaming. Screaming things like "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!!"

You don't want that to happen. Trust me.

So tie a few heads of garlic around your neck, settle in with the Big Show and experience Halloween vicariously. Or you can go out there on your own and roll the dice with the Real Thing.

And don't be telling people that I Put A Spell on You. That would be untrue.

Unless you're talking musical spells. That would be true.

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

Your Daily '80s: Dance Fever!

One question about Lita Ford's appearance on this 1983 episode of Dance Fever.

If you're going to have Lita lip-sync into a dead wireless microphone, would it have been too much to plug a cable to nowhere into her electric guitar?


AND HERE'S a Dance Fever promo from 1985.

You know, new host Adrian Zmed was no Deney Terrio. That's not necessarily saying much about anything.

Now, if Dance Fever had had William Shatner (Zmed's old T.J. Hooker co-star) on the show to reprise his spoken-word version of "Rocket Man," that would have been somethin'.

Oh, look. I happen to have a copy.


IT'S NOT from the '80s (it's from the 1978 Science Fiction Awards show), but who cares? I'm not proud.

Probably can't remember plays, either

Apparently, there are confused people on the LSU campus -- apart from those trying to figure out what the hell the Death Star (a.k.a. Gov. Bobby Jindal) is going to zap them with next.

And these confused people happen to reside in the Tiger football program (not to mention the sports section of Baton Rouge's daily newspaper).

Interestingly, none of them are Coach Les Miles.

Nebraska's athletic quarterback is "Zach Martinez"? Who dat?

The Huskers have a Zac Lee at quarterback, and they also have a Taylor Martinez. I assume Rueben Shepard was talking about (and the Advocate scribe was writing about) the Husker starter, Martinez.

Whose jock strap the LSU quarterbacks are not fit to hold.

The chains 'businessmen' forge in life. . . .

Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job, the presidential commission investigating the accident said on Thursday.

In the first official finding of responsibility for the blowout, which killed 11 workers and led to the largest offshore oil spill in American history, the commission staff determined that Halliburton had conducted three laboratory tests that indicated that the cement mixture did not meet industry standards.

The result of at least one of those tests was given on March 8 to BP, which failed to act upon it, the panel’s lead investigator, Fred H. Bartlit Jr., said in a letter delivered to the commissioners on Thursday.

Another Halliburton cement test, carried out about a week before the blowout of the well on April 20, also found the mixture to be unstable, yet those findings were never sent to BP, Mr. Bartlit found.

Although Mr. Bartlit does not specifically identify the cement failure as the sole or even primary cause of the blowout, he makes clear in his letter that if the cement had done its job and kept the highly pressured oil and gas out of the well bore, there would not have been an accident.

“We have known for some time that the cement used to secure the production casing and isolate the hydrocarbon zone at the bottom of the Macondo well must have failed in some manner,” he said in his letter to the seven members of the presidential commission. “The cement should have prevented hydrocarbons from entering the well.”

The failure of the cement set off a complex and ultimately deadly cascade of events as oil and gas exploded upward from the 18,000-foot-deep well. The blowout preventer, which sits on the ocean floor atop the well and is supposed to contain a well bore blowout, also failed.

-- The New York Times,
Oct. 28, 2010

Your Daily '80s: 'Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy'

This being the political silly season, I thought it would be appropriate that today's look at the '80s feature the time Dan Quayle walked into a rhetorical right cross.

Or left hook, as the case may be.

It happened here in Omaha at the 1988 vice-presidential debate, and I probably was about four blocks away at the time. Let's step into our time machine -- the pastel one with the little alligator on the fender -- and travel back to Wednesday, Oct. 5, 1988:

Dan Quayle made a promise to the American people before the vice-presidential debate: "You're going to see the real Dan Quayle. " Until Wednesday night, many Americans thought the real Dan Quayle was a sunny, overconfident, high-spirited young man who had spent more time on the golf links than in the library. But the Dan Quayle at the debate was a different person: a grim, wooden, frightened fellow who had stayed up late memorizing answers for the big test. So nervous were Bush's handlers that they denied Quayle any chance to be spontaneous, transforming him instead into an automaton searching for prepackaged answers that he could drone out safely.

The central issue of the Omaha debate was whether the 41-year-old Senator from Indiana had the intellect, temperament and judgment necessary to move into the presidency. Three times Quayle was thrown off balance when asked what he would do if he had to take over from George Bush. Quayle could only sputter bland inanities before falling back on his script about his congressional accomplishments. On his third try, he compared the length of his experience with that of John Kennedy in 1960. It proved a fatal flirtation with one of America's most enduring myths. With precision and rhetorical balance, Bentsen uttered four terse sentences. "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

"That remark was uncalled for, Senator," Quayle interjected. Replied Bentsen: "You're the one that was making the comparison, Senator . . . Frankly, I think you're so far apart in the objectives you choose for your country that I did not think the comparison was well taken." It was as though a respected uncle had reprimanded his young charge for cheekiness.

Afterward, few seemed to care or remember that Bentsen had been evasive in answering questions about his policy differences with Dukakis. Or that many of his responses too were recited verbatim from his stump speech. But never mind. Lloyd Bentsen looked and acted presidential -- indeed, to many he seemed more presidential than either George Bush or Michael Dukakis.

Bentsen also pressed the hot populist buttons that ignite Democratic voters. He played on nationalist sentiments by criticizing the trade practices of foreign countries and by ominously warning of their taking over American businesses. He raised the specter that Republicans are out to slash Social Security -- never acknowledging that he, like Bush and Quayle, had voted for a freeze in cost of living increases. And dusting off a line he had used at the convention, Bentsen articulated the Democratic case against the apparent success of the U.S. economy: "You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you the illusion of prosperity too."

Though Bentsen claimed that his J.F.K. line was spontaneous, it had been germinating for days. The weekend before the debate, the Bentsen camp descended on Austin for practice sessions. In a vacant basement bar adjacent to the Four Seasons Hotel, they set up a mock debate stage. Congressman Dennis Eckart, a golf tee stuck jauntily behind one ear, played Quayle. But Bentsen was nervous; he was not having fun. (They did not realize it at the time, but Bentsen aides mistakenly positioned him at the wrong lectern.) Then at one point Eckart, playing Quayle, compared himself to Kennedy. Bentsen became irritated. According to press spokesman Mike McCurry, he responded, "You're no more like Jack Kennedy than George Bush is like Ronald Reagan." No one commented on the line, and Bentsen's handlers did not even review it on the videotape. But when Quayle cited Kennedy in Omaha, Bentsen was primed.

-- Time magazine,
Oct., 17, 1988

I was . . . 11th on the depth chart. Yeah . . . yeah, THAT'S the ticket!

Here's a lot of what you need to know about Nebraska.

In the rest of the United States, many politicians get caught faking their military-service record to enhance their chances at winning public office. Not so in Nebraska.

In the Cornhusker State, politicians get caught faking their football-service record at the University of Nebraska. The funny thing is, the Huskers had such a massive walk-on program for so many years, faking your status as an ex-player is as easy to try as it is easy to get ratted out by a legit ex-NU player who says "Wait a minute. I don't remember that guy."

AND REMEMBER, boys and girls, I don't make this stuff up. I just leave it to the Omaha World-Herald to report the facts . . . which, alas, are stranger than fiction:

A candidate for Washington County sheriff pulled down his Facebook page Tuesday after he was questioned about his claim of being a University of Nebraska football player from 1978 through 1980.

Nick Thallas, an investigator for the Blair Police Department, used Facebook to promote his campaign against Republican Sheriff Mike Robinson.

The site included a statement that he had been a kicker for the Huskers while enrolled as an agribusiness student. Thallas, also a Republican, earned a place on next Tuesday's ballot by petition.

A search of Nebraska varsity football rosters from 1978, 1979 and 1980 did not find Thallas' name. His name also did not appear in the school's football media guides for those years.

In an interview, Thallas said he played on Nebraska's freshman football team in 1978.

A spokesman for the NU sports information department confirmed that Thallas lettered as a freshman, but he said there was no indication he was a member of the Husker team in 1979 or 1980.

“I was a student and I played freshman football down there,” Thallas said. “Apparently, someone bent this all out of shape.”

A few minutes later, Thallas' Facebook page was taken down.

More politics today

To be scrupulously fair, it ain't just the teabaggers behaving very badly.

Above, in a St. Louis incident quickly picked up by Fox News Channel a year ago and capitalized on by tea partiers as an example of Barack Obama's "goon squads," we are shown an incident that put the "thugs" in the term "union thugs."

And, a year later, that Missouri "town hall beatdown" is being dragged out as an example that the mainstream media is playing up the Rand Paul incident while ignoring liberal violence. Guess who's saying "Well . . . they do it, too!"

You get three guesses. The first two don't count.

WHILE I'M at it, here's another video of what seems to be an SEIU organizer attacking a supporter of a rival union at a California hospital last February:


WHY IS IT the more everyone bleats about "tolerance," the more intolerance we get of . . . well, everything.

Somehow, someway Americans will learn to live up to what we like to tell foreigners about the United States, or we are going to make Bosnia in the mid-'90s look like a walk in the park.

Your Daily '80s: 1987 . . . the apex of Letterman

Sometimes, greatness catches you unawares. Sometimes, you hit your peak, and you have no idea what has happened.

Sometimes, this happens to you, and you have precious little to do with it.

This happened to David Letterman on July 28, 1987. It caught him unawares.

Hell, at the time, most of us in the viewing audience were with Dave. We just figured Crispin Glover was stoned out of his gourd. And weird.

A stoned weirdo.

After watching Andy Kaufman for years by then, we should have recognized greatness.


But now we know the deal.

Politics today

Don't listen to them lib'ruls in the lamestream media -- it wasn't as bad as it looks.

Oh, OK.

The volunteer with Rand Paul's Republican U.S. Senate campaign who stepped on the head of a liberal activist and pinned her face to the concrete said Tuesday the scuffle was not as bad as it looked on video and blamed police for not intervening.

"I'm sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety," Tim Profitt told The Associated Press.

A judge will decide whether Profitt should face criminal charges.

YOU HEARD the Rand Paul militia. Everybody move along; nothing to see here.

By January, we'll probably witness the caning of lawmakers on the Senate floor. Again.

Even a cracked pot can cook your goose

Iraq's Secret War Files, Channel 4 television, Great Britain

Every country has its national mythology.

The national myth is how a people explains itself. It's how a people comes to understand itself as a whole -- what it believes, who it is, what is expected of it -- and that collective "authorized" biography, that national portrait shot in the most flattering light, is more about what a people wishes to believe about itself than what actually is the truth.

The United States' national mythology perhaps is one of the world's most all-pervasive, potent and uncritically accepted by its people. We Americans are always John Wayne in our national biopic, except when we prefer to be Jimmy Stewart or, on occasion, Cary Grant or James Dean.

Never are we Lee Marvin, villain of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and many other films.

And being that the first casualty of war is the truth, our national mythology states Americans always go to war because there's no other recourse, then always conduct themselves as Audie Murphy -- never William Calley.

That's why a Fox News "opinion contributor," former State Department senior adviser Christian Whiton, thinks the United States ought to "explore opportunities for the president to designate WikiLeaks and its officers as enemy combatants, paving the way for non-judicial actions against them."

Whiton wants us to attack Europe looking for where Julian Assange, founder and chief of WikiLeaks, is hiding out? Or perhaps he just wants us to send the CIA to assassinate him and his inner circle.

Funny how the release of the classified truth that belies the national myth causes some to just drop all the pretense, allowing our dark side to show its true face.

BY PROVIDING this service to Americans -- in addition to showing us what our government, and military, was (and wasn't) doing in our name in the Iraq War, acts for which we all ultimately are responsible -- Assange becomes something of a problematic prophet. Perhaps even a mad prophet.

Frankly, the man seems rather insufferable. He was reckless in his handling of the previous "document dump" concerning the Afghan War, and imperiousness coupled with an apparent messiah complex seems to be driving some of the WikiLeaks staff away.

Still, without such a seriously flawed messenger, would we know anything about this, for example? From The New York Times:

The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians — at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan.

The archive contains reports on at least four cases of lethal shootings from helicopters. In the bloodiest, on July 16, 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed, about half of them civilians. However, the tally was called in by two different people, and it is possible that the deaths were counted twice.

In another case, in February 2007, an Apache helicopter shot and killed two Iraqi men believed to have been firing mortars, even though they made surrendering motions, because, according to a military lawyer cited in the report, “they cannot surrender to aircraft, and are still valid targets.”

The shooting was unusual. In at least three other instances reported in the archive, Iraqis surrendered to helicopter crews without being shot. The Pentagon did not respond to questions from The Times about the rules of engagement for the helicopter strike.

The pace of civilian deaths served as a kind of pulse, whose steady beat told of the success, or failure, of America’s war effort. Americans on both sides of the war debate argued bitterly over facts that grew hazier as the war deepened.

The archive does not put that argument to rest by giving a precise count. As a 2008 report to Congress on the topic makes clear, the figures serve as “guideposts,’ not hard totals. But it does seem to suggest numbers that are roughly in line with those compiled by several sources, including Iraq Body Count, an organization that tracked civilian deaths using press reports, a method the Bush administration repeatedly derided as unreliable and producing inflated numbers. In all, the five-year archive lists more than 100,000 dead from 2004 to 2009, though some deaths are reported more than once, and some reports have inconsistent casualty figures. A 2008 Congressional report warned that record keeping in the war had been so problematic that such statistics should be looked at only as “guideposts.”

In a statement on Friday, Iraq Body Count, which did a preliminary analysis of the archive, estimated that it listed 15,000 deaths that had not been previously disclosed anywhere.

The archive tells thousands of individual stories of loss whose consequences are still being felt in Iraqi families today.

Misunderstandings at checkpoints were often lethal. At one Marine checkpoint, sunlight glinting off a windshield of a car that did not slow down led to the shooting death of a mother and the wounding of three of her daughters and her husband. Hand signals flashed to stop vehicles were often not understood, and soldiers and Marines, who without interpreters were unable to speak to the survivors, were left to wonder why.

According to one particularly painful entry from 2006, an Iraqi wearing a tracksuit was killed by an American sniper who later discovered that the victim was the platoon’s interpreter.

IT'S A SAD THING that Assange -- a self-appointed messiah "too busy ending two wars" to answer legitimate inquiries from a reporter -- was the one to give lie to American lies and, yet again, shatter the myth of American moral exceptionalism when it most needed shattering, for truth's sake. From the Guardian in London:

A prisoner was kneeling on the ground, blindfolded and handcuffed, when an Iraqi soldier walked over to him and kicked him in the neck. A US marine sergeant was watching and reported the incident, which was duly recorded and judged to be valid. The outcome: "No investigation required."

That was a relatively minor assault. Another of the leaked Iraqi war logs records the case of a man who was arrested by police on suspicion of preparing a suicide bomb. In the station, an officer shot him in the leg and then, the log continues, this detainee "suffered abuse which amounted to cracked ribs, multiple lacerations and welts and bruises from being whipped with a large rod and hose across his back". This was all recorded and judged to amount to "reasonable suspicion of abuse". The outcome: "No further investigation."

Other logs record not merely assaults but systematic torture. A man who was detained by Iraqi soldiers in an underground bunker reported that he had been subjected to the notoriously painful strappado position: with his hands tied behind his back, he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists. The soldiers had then whipped him with plastic piping and used electric drills on him. The log records that the man was treated by US medics; the paperwork was sent through the necessary channels; but yet again, no investigation was required.

This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a "fragmentary order" which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, "only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ".

Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.

The systematic viciousness of the old dictatorship when Saddam Hussein's security agencies enforced order without any regard for law continues, reinforced by the chaotic savagery of the new criminal, political and sectarian groups which have emerged since the invasion in 2003 and which have infiltrated some police and army units, using Iraq's detention cells for their private vendettas.

Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim – bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated – who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer's whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water – and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.

THE CRITICS, on the right and in the government, are right: Julian Assange seems to be a cracked pot. And a fairly reckless one at that.

That's bad. It's bad that this is the guy upon whose judgment rests the lives of countless people.

It's worse -- immeasurably worse -- that our cracked system, our cracked military and our cracked national mythology combined to leave the likes of Assange as the go-to guy for the truth.

We won't believe Assange, or the documents he procured. We won't even believe Jimmy Stewart.

You see, even after Stewart tries to tell a reporter the truth about who really shot Liberty Valence at the end of the movie, the newspaper's editor won't print the story. He takes a look at the writer's notes, sees the God's honest truth in them . . . and burns them.

"This is the West, sir," he tells the reporter. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Your Daily '80s: The day the music died

May 10, 1982. Noon.

WABC -- Musicradio 77 in New York and one of the biggest Top-40 radio stations ever -- became Talkradio 77. Decades on, radio fans refer to that day as "The day the music died."

At 12:01 p.m., May 10, 1982, there was only one Top-40 AM station standing in New York, 66 WNBC. Top-40 held on there for a time, but then WNBC evolved into more of a talk station with bits of music here and there.

And then, in 1988. . . .


After 66 years on the air, WNBC was no more.

Was it over when the Vols bombed Pearl Harbor?

The Tennessee football team is like the Germans in Normandy not being able to cope with the Allied invasion on D-Day, Derek Dooley? Really?

Listen, Hoss. Your 2-5 football team couldn't even cope when your offensive coordinator looked through his binoculars and saw LSU's Jordan Jefferson coming.

That's more like surrendering to the Italian Army because you were afraid they'd drop their fearsome cannoli bomb on you.

I think you owe some ancient Wehrmacht veteran an apology. Mach schnell!

Your Daily '80s: You. All. SUUUUUUUCCCK!

tHE GeeZErS anD THE FloWEr chilDReN try To MaKe heaDs OR taILs of thE PUNKS, ciRCA 1983 oN wCCo-TV iN mINNEApoLIS.

liSTen, IT Ain'T BRain SurGEry, faSCISt mATErialISTs! PUNKs HatE yOUr PhonY MiDDLe-CLASS, GrEEDy SoCIeTY, and Then tHEy SAy THEY HAtE yOu, TOO, yOU ConFORMIst PIGS, and You pUt ON ThiS bRaIN-Dead FAKE SmilE, anD yOu sAY, "Oh, AlL RigHT, DEaR. ThAt'S NICe."

YoU ARE sO PatHETiC. DIE! DIE! DIE!

Speak American! (wink)

You know how folks are always saying "This is America. Speak English"?

We don't mean it.

Sunday, the Omaha World-Herald gave lie to our dirty little secret with this story:

A small-town Nebraska librarian who won national recognition for teaching immigrants how to read has resigned in a dispute over expanding her literacy work.

Karla Shafer, who was awarded two national grants to teach literacy to immigrants and given an expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., resigned her part-time post as director of the Hooper Public Library last month after she was confronted by a City Council member.

Shafer had planned to teach English to immigrants at Nickerson, about nine miles from Hooper, as part of a second $5,000 American Dream grant from the American Library Association.

But she quit her 28-hour-a-week, $10.64-an-hour job, she said, after City Council President Gene Meyer told her she shouldn't do that because it would appear that the village of Hooper approved of the classes.

“I told him, ‘You can't stop me. It's my own vehicle, on my own day off, with my own energy,'” Shafer said. “You can't tell me what I'm doing on my time off.”

When reached, Meyer disputed that description of events.

“I just said it was pretty unusual that we paid the librarian to go to Nickerson,” Meyer said. “She could do that (literacy class) in town.

“She doesn't work there anymore, and I'm not going to go any further on it,” he added.

NO, WHAT WE really mean when we say that if people want to live in America, they ought to learn English is "Get your damn Mexican butt back to Mexico where you belong. America for Americans!"

And if they habla'd that lingo better, towns like Hooper still would be blissfully all-white, and troublesome free-thinking weirdos like Karla Shafer -- what with all her fancy books and pinko ideas -- wouldn't have half the chance to make mischief like she ended up doing with all them socialist "grants" she was getting.

Don't touch that dial! According to the newspaper, this gets even better.

After she resigned, Shafer said, she went to the library to retrieve her personal items, including many decorations and displays she bought with her own funds.

She said the city clerk and police chief not only blocked her from retrieving her personal items but also began questioning her about how the grant funds were used and whether any went to her personally.

Shafer said she started crying.

“I felt like a criminal,” she said.

Police Chief Matt Schott and Hooper Mayor Larry Klahn said it ultimately was determined that nothing improper had been done with the grant money.

“We had a few questions. She answered them,” Klahn said.

He said city officials had been concerned that city property and Shafer's personal possessions were intermixed.

Shafer was allowed into the library Friday to get her personal belongings. That came after she hired a lawyer, on the advice of friends and library colleagues, to provide help in answering the allegations about the money and in getting back her things.

Shafer said she had to sell a family recreational vehicle to afford the attorney fees. She has suspended teaching English at the library to two Hispanic families that she said are legal residents.

THE MORAL of this tale is a familiar one: Good deeds never go unpunished.

And that goes double in woebegone little burgs like Hooper, Neb.

Your Daily '80s: The ghost of Tigers past

Well, it had to happen. LSU lost for the first time this football season.

And the fans who wanted Coach Les Miles gone when the Tigers were 1-0 . . . 2-0 . . . 3-0 . . . 4-0 . . . 5-0 . . . 6-0 . . . and 7-0, really want him gone at 7-1 after the loss to No. 4 Auburn. For example:

Les you should go to Texas Jerry Jones will love you; PLEASE (Posted on 10/24/10 at 1:17 a.m.)

Mr Miles you will love it there; great place to live We will sell your house for you if you could leave now. Please think about how great it would be living in Texas. Good luck and leave now. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

WAIT. Where am I? What's happening to me?

Why am I being forced to watch dismal "highlights" from the 1983 LSU-Tennessee game? What the. . . ?

Didn't they fire Jerry Stovall after he finished that season 4-7? Hey . . . what's this here?


AND THIS? What is the purpose of subjecting me to this 1980s Tiger-football hell???


OH, DEAR LORD. Thank God this isn't an LSU football installment of Your Daily '90s: LSU . . . the Curley Hallman Years.

I'm at Mass Murder (City Hall). http://4sq.com

@tweeples It had to be said. #Fox4DFW #socialmedia #ithadtobesaid #facebookcomments #retweetthisplease #SBuxmacchiatocoupons???!!!

3 Chords & the Truth: Wassup, moon?

In a small, darkened studio sits an aging radio guy, playing the music from days gone by.

His show is called 3 Chords & the Truth -- or the Big Show, as it's known in the booth.

The music is loud; the music is soft. The songs make you think; your thoughts go aloft.

And when your thoughts reach high in the sky, it's like 3 Chords & the Truth is a balloon . . . to the moon.

BUT THEN the light starts to wane, and the stars come out. And the music plays on, all through the house.

Good night, house.

Good night, mouse.

Good night, dog.

Good night, fog.

Good night, pillow.

Good night, Big Show.

Good night, spoon.

Good night . . . bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang,

Ba ba ding a dong ding Blue moon moon blue moon dip di dip di dip,

Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip,

Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang,

Ba ba ding a dong ding,

Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang,

Ba ba ding a dong ding . . . blue moon.