'Cornhusker Kickback,' my ass

Greetings from Nebraska, one of the states that pays other states' bills at considerable expense to itself.

Research by The Daily Beast this week ranked the Cornhusker State 45th on its list of "states that sponge tax dollars," with it receiving a paltry 82 cents back from the federal government for every dollar Nebraskans send to Washington.

And right-wingers enjoying disproportionate suckage at the federal teat in places like Mississippi (No. 1, $2.83 for every dollar paid) and Sarah Palin's Alaska (No. 6, $2.24) had the nerve to get all indignant and pissy about Sen. Ben Nelson's ultimately deleted "Cornhusker Kickback" in the struggle to pass health-care reform. Hell, that probably wouldn't even have gotten us back what we pay in.

AS THE unicameral frets and fights over how to close a big hole in Nebraska's biennial budget, I think we may have stumbled upon a solution here. Everything will be all right, with nary a budget cut on the horizon . . . if we just secede from the union and levy taxes at the combined state and federal rates.

We even could be generous toward the Americans and allow them to keep Offutt Air Force Base, headquarters of the Strategic Command. We know how one can get attached to one's nuclear deterrent.

But it would cost them some serious rent.

Less cowbell

There's a simple reason cowbells are for Elsie and Beauregard and not for people.

Cattle have hooves, not opposable thumbs, and therefore cannot whack one another over the head with the things, leaving 4-inch gashes that expose their bovine skulls. Or result in "a concussion, memory loss, mental and emotional distress and anguish, depression, paranoia, anxiety, loss of enjoyment of life and inability to pursue prior educational and professional goals."

This is just one of the ways in which bulls and moo cows tower over your average Mississippi State fan. Another is that bulls and moo cows never have been known to call an LSU baseball player "Buckwheat," causing him to take out after Bubba . . . all the way into the stands.

OK, Albert "Joey" Belle was nuts. But still. . . .

ANYWAY, Mississippi State fans love them some cowbell. Now it's gonna cost somebody big one way or another, it says here in the (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger:

An Alabama man wants Mississippi State University added to his lawsuit against the Southeastern Conference and the man who allegedly assaulted him with a cowbell at the 2009 Egg Bowl.

Doug Foster, attorney for William Matthew Brasher, has filed a motion in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court requesting that MSU and president Mark Keenum be added to the suit.

Brasher alleges he was assaulted by Brent Vowell during MSU's football game against the University of Mississippi on Nov. 28, 2009. He already was seeking unspecified damages from the SEC and commissioner Mike Slive because the league had a "knowing refusal," the suit says, to enforce its own rule on artificial noisemakers.

MSU was sent a claim by Brasher's attorneys on Nov. 16. It said Brasher is "willing to resolve his claim for damages" of $10 million.

MSU officials would not discuss the lawsuit Monday.

I WONDER whether the lawsuit thing will influence the SEC to, er, ring up the Bulldogs for repeated violations of its noisemaker policy?

Just a word to the wise, though -- less cowbell.

Simply '70s: Future shocked

Almost 40 years ago, we were suffering from Future Shock.

Gee, I wonder what fresh hell we're suffering from today?


Too much change in too short a time? The death of permanence?

Wonder where that leaves us four decades down the road from 1972?

No, we don't change the color of our skin, we just tattoo every inch of it. The artificial-intelligence robot that finds its way around the room? We call it the Roomba . . . a self-guided vacuum cleaner.


FUTURE SHOCK, meet Louise Brown . . . and the loss of all the philosophical and ethical qualms we had about such in 1972.

And the film nailed what was coming with gay marriage.


HOME ELECTROSHOCK therapy? Who needs that when you're popping Prozac like M&Ms?

"That is the challenge of future shock, to look clearly into today's world to understand the consequences -- that what we do today determines what tomorrow will be." Reaction No. 1: No s***, Sherlock. Reaction No. 2: We're screwed.


THIS SLICE of 1972, based on the 1970 Alvin Toffler book -- and its vision of a thoroughly shocked future -- notably has no mention of a couple of things shocking the present of 2011 and the future from here on. That would be the Internet and global warming.

Hang on, folks. The journey into infinity and beyond just might be a rough one.

Remembering

Before we end this anniversary night, let us remember. . . .

Genius is fleeting, stupidity persistent

You know how I was telling you earlier about how dumbth has overcome local TV news?

Well, Channel 7 here is nothing if not persistent in its ignorance. Here's a brand new promo -- with the main-man anchor, no less -- repeating the same idiotic error on tonight's upcoming antibiotic-resistant "virus" story.

Consider that a news promo has to rely on information from the original reporter, who got it wrong. It then is shaped by a promotions copywriter who didn't know any better than the reporter.

Then the Cro-Magnon mess goes to the TelePrompter operator, who sets it up for the "talent" -- the ones who do other promos telling you what great journalists they are . . . "the ones you trust" -- who also don't know a Petri dish from a pot to piss in.

THEN IT gets put together by an editor who also doesn't catch the glaring Biology I error, and then (presumably) gets signed off on by some "grown-up" at KETV.

And there you go . . . you're sitting in front of the boob tube, beer in hand, watching boobs tell you about those scawy, scawy "viruses" that antibiotics can't put a dent in.

In other words, the idiots are ascendant and we are doomed.

You knew this was coming

This had to happen eventually, and Jimmy Fallon made it so with a little help from Stephen Colbert and. . . .

TV news . . . for dummies, by dummies?

This is a partial transcript of a news promo aired on an Omaha TV station Sunday night:

"Microscopic . . . and deadly. A new virus that's resistant to almost every antibiotic."

A new virus that's resistant to almost every antibiotic is a piss-poor virus, indeed. What, is Barack Obama going to launch a No Virus Left Behind initiative?

Repètez après moi: Antibiotics are for bacteria; antivirals are for viruses. I think Bert and Ernie have a ditty that explains that to your average 6-year-old.

I DON'T KNOW what to say about the future of democracy when "professional journalists" are about on the ball as your average high-school dropout. And I am pretty much despondent about the state of American education, being that the vast majority of these nincompoops came to ActionNewsWatchOnYourSide with college degrees.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of dumbth . . . I will be scared spitless. For the idiots are with me. Thy rod, thy staff, they provoke prurient giggles during the happy-talk segments of ActionNewsWatchOnYourSide. Because somebody said "rod." And "staff."

My cup runneth over. Film at 11.

Failing but . . . winning!

You've just paid $150 for a couple of seats to a stage show by Charlie Sheen, who's three-quarters out of his mind -- maybe more.

You've shelled out this much cash even though the wittiest thing Sheen has ever said during a weekslong Web assault is . . . "Duh, winning!"

What could go wrong?

Well, nothing for Sheen. After all, he -- as he pointed out in Detroit on Saturday night -- already has your money. Once again, "Duh, winning!"

Then again, maybe he's not as crazy as you think. And maybe you're more crazy than you think -- that is, if you've given Sheen even a dime of your hard-earned money.

In other words, "Duh, MORONS!" Maybe you just need some "tiger blood." That was for sale outside the Fox theater.

AFTER READING this on MSNBC.com, my sympathies are with the Vatican-assassin warlock with Adonis DNA:

Charlie Sheen and his "goddesses" took the stage to thunderous applause Saturday night for the first leg of his "Torpedo of Truth" tour. The 70-minute show hadn't even ended when the first reviews were in, and they were brutal.

The former "Two and a Half Men" star showed that comedic success on the screen doesn't necessarily translate to the stage, and the capacity crowd at the 5,100-seat Fox Theatre rebelled before he left the stage, chanting "refund!" and walking out in droves.

Linda Fugate, 47, of the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park, walked outside and up the block yelling, "I want my money back!"

She said she paid $150 for two seats.

"I was hoping for something. I didn't think it would be this bad."

Fans who gathered outside the theater before the doors opened Saturday — some who had to fly in for the show — said they were hoping to see the increasingly eccentric actor deliver some of the colorful rants that have made him an Internet star since his ugly falling out with CBS and the producers of "Two and a Half Men."

They got the ranting. It just wasn't funny.

"I expected him to at least entertainment a little bit. It was just a bunch of ranting," said Rodney Gagnon, 34, of Windsor, Ontario.

AMERICANS always have had more money than sense, never more so than today. That being what it is, I expect history to rectify that situation eventually.

Welcome to Trollsville . . . losers.

Terror by proxy, fulfilled

When moronic "Christian" asshats in the bowels of central Florida do senseless things like this . . .


. . . moronic "Muslim" asshats in the bowels of another failed state -- this one, Afghanistan -- do senseless things like this.

To be clear, the enraged mob in Afghanistan is a terrorist one. People whose descent into madness comes amid the wreckage of a country that long ago descended into madness.

But what we also have to realize is that the terrorist mob in southwestern Asia is nothing more than the proxy of a lunatic pastor in Florida. The unwitting tool of a little band of lunatic, Bible-believin' bumpkins who think unleashing the fires of hell is a fine idea just so long as it's done in the name of Jesus Christ.

THE LUNATIC PASTOR, the Rev. Terry Jones, knew exactly what would happen in parts of the Muslim world when word got out that he torched a Koran. He especially knew what would happen in Afghanistan -- where 100,000 American troops are already in the line of fire -- when word got out that he and his Bible-thumpin', Jesus-jumpin' gaggle of grotesque humanity had torched an Islamic holy book March 20.

And Friday, it happened. In Masar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan's Islamic answer to America's lunatic fringe of evangelicalism killed seven United Nations workers in the name of Allah.

They were the business end of the metaphorical, geopolitical gun. Thousands of miles away, in a crappy little church full of crappy little people, Terry Jones pulled the trigger.

The tragedy of Islam is that too many of its adherents believe God is so small that He needs an enraged mob to defend His honor. The tragedy of America is that the constitutional guarantees that safeguard Americans' freedom of conscience render the republic largely defenseless against those whose consciences have been freely deformed into grotesque spectacles demanding mayhem much as a vampire demands blood.

Jones hates Islam because he is convinced it's of the devil. You have to give the devil his due for using such a committed "enemy of Satan" to ensure there will be hell to pay.

Give me a latté and some paper. Ding.

Amazing.

See, like I always say, if you hang on to something long enough, you'll eventually become cool again. Now all I have to do is find a 1950s-vintage Underwood manual.

FROM THE Omaha Bee-News:

This is one coffeehouse where you won't find free wi-fi.

You won't find expensive wi-fi, either. Or dial-up at any price.

As a matter of fact, you'll be asked to check your laptop at the counter. And your cell phone or tablet computer, too.

You see, RetroGrounds in Omaha's Old Market district is a no-tech zone. It's all an outgrowth of the slow-food and slow-tech movements, says owner and chief barista Ole Lud-Dytes.

"If you want a good cup of coffee, it something you just can't rush. It's the same thing with a good meal, and it's the same with communicating with one another," he says. "You just have to take your time."

To walk into RetroGrounds is to step out of time -- and into history. There is a 1936 Zenith radio sitting on a corner counter, tuned to a local "standards" station. AM, of course. And if you have to stay in touch with the world while you enjoy a latté or brèvé, manual typewriters -- circa anywhere from the 1930s to the 1960s -- sit on tables around the establishment.

Chasity Lemuels sits at one of those tables, hunting and pecking at a 1962 Royal. It's the first time the 20-year-old has used a typewriter, and only one of a handful of times she's even laid eyes on one.

"It's so . . . tactile," she muses. "It's fun -- very different from using my laptop. I feel like I'm writing with authority, but my fingers hurt.

"I think I know why my grandparents have arthritis," she says, giggling.

RetroGrounds opened about a year ago, and Lud-Dytes says business has been growing steadily.

"I started this with no more than a gut feeling that people just might want to step off the modern treadmill," he says as he foams yet another latté for a customer who has checked his iPad and stepped out of cyberspace and into. . . ?

"Peace. Contemplation. The world where the physical and the realm of communication have once again become one," Lud-Dytes says.

"That's the yearning I just felt people had in this hyperconnected, overly technological world. So far, business is good and tells me I just might be on to something here."

The first-class stamp for your first letter is free with your coffee.

COUNT ME IN. I think my coffee intake will be increasing dramatically.

In case of morons, call Charlie Brooker

NOTE: Contains one F-bomb. But it's in reference to how big
an idiot 50-Cent is, so it's probably wholly appropriate.

I think this about covers it, don't you?

Charlie Brooker explains disaster coverage for the British television audience a couple of weeks ago.

It's not April Fool's yet. Right?

I thought what I just read a little bit ago was an April Fool's joke. Then again, it isn't April 1 yet.

And I'm pretty sure this article in Variety is dead serious. I'm equally sure them what's got are convinced that them what's not are blithering idiots.

I wish I were more confident that the greedheads in charge of every level of our society were horribly wrong. After all, if they were, it would be terribly difficult to explain how we got to where we are right now in America.

IF YOU DARE, read what Variety says Hollywood has in store for us gullible simpletons. Read it and weep . . . or read it and think "COOL!" Whatever.

Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox are the first studios that have agreed to launch Home Premiere as the official brand under which the industry will offer up movies to rent for $30 two months after their theatrical bows for a viewing period of two to three days, depending on the distributor.

DirecTV will exclusively launch Home Premiere nationally to its nearly 20 million customers, while cablers including Comcast will introduce the service in certain cities for an undisclosed period of time some time around the end of this month.

The first films expected to launch include Warner Bros.' actioner "Unknown" and Sony's Adam Sandler comedy "Just Go With It," sources close to the new service say.

The launch plans come months after studios started to float the idea to experiment with higher-priced rentals of pics closer to their theatrical runs as a way to boost their homevid operations with film campaigns still fresh in people's minds.

WB, U and Fox have already succeeded in fending off companies like Netflix and Redbox, forcing them to wait 28 days after a film bows on DVD to offer those titles for rent through their online services and kiosks. Those same studios wouldn't mind lengthening that window even longer and have considered pursuing such talks.

And cue the SEC in three . . . two . . . one. . . .

I'm not a corporate lawyer, and I don't play one on the Internet, but I have been around long enough to know when something doesn't smell quite right.

And David Sokol's sudden resignation from Berkshire Hathaway when he was in the running to become Warren Buffett's successor doesn't smell quite right. Especially after he loaded up on stock in a company he then prodded Berkshire to acquire.

There isn't a bunch to this Associated Press story this afternoon, but I'm betting there will be a lot more in short order -- especially if the feds actually start doing their job for a change:

Buffett said Wednesday that he received David Sokol's resignation letter late Monday, and noted that it came as a surprise. Buffett said Sokol, who had been serving as chairman of Berkshire's MidAmerican Energy, NetJets and Johns Manville units, indicated that he wants to spend more time on philanthropy.

Buffett said he learned earlier this month that Sokol bought nearly 100,000 shares of Lubrizol stock before recommending that Berkshire buy the chemical company. Buffett said he doesn't believe those stock purchases were illegal, and didn't ask Sokol to resign.

YEP, there's more to this. And somehow, I'll wager it all leads back to Sokol's famous arrogant streak.

Simply '70s: If you can't beat 'em. . . .

Sometimes, out there in the North Sea in the '60s and '70s, "pirate radio" lived up to its name.

In this case, realizing they couldn't beat Radio Nordsee International's big pirate signal with their little pirate signal, some folks at Radio Veronica apparently thought arson on the high seas might be a winning business plan in May of 1971. As it turned out, it also made for some compelling radio -- just not for Veronica.


AS IT turned out, arson wasn't even that good of a knock-the-competition-off-the-air strategy. RNI went back on the air the next day.

It would take the Dutch government to pull the plug in 1974.

Springtime in Nebraska

Welcome to springtime in the Great State of Nebraska -- 30ish and snowing.


Molly the Dog is wondering about this . . . and missing the 70ish temperatures of a week ago for her trips outside.

How Omaha got its groove back

If all you know about the Omaha indie scene is Bright Eyes, Cursive, the Faint or the whole Saddle Creek Records scene . . . well, podna, you're missing out on a lot.

Like Iowa boy Adam Hawkins and It's True -- and a whole bunch of other artists and groups kickin' it truly indie amid one of the country's most vibrant music scenes.

Exhibit A is It's True's latest video, "Nothing at All" from the "Another Afterlife" CD (coming April 1) and shot in one take at an old school gym in Avoca, Iowa Neb.


OH . . . and there's this from their previous self-titled album.


HAT TIP: Hear Nebraska

The world I used to know

I just turned 50. That's a blessing and a curse.

The blessing of making it to 50 is the wisdom that comes from remembering 50 years' worth of stuff. The curse is the burden of remembering 50 years' worth of stuff.

See, in some respects, ignorance is bliss. There is a certain contentment in not knowing what you don't know.

Take the state of radio, for example. It's the little story that tells the big story of life in these postmodern times.

If you don't know anything about what radio was, it's difficult to get all grief-stricken about what radio -- and by extension our society -- has become.

I have loved radio for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid -- back when music came on records, sound got recorded on reel-to-reel tape and computers were the size of small rooms -- I used to trek up and down the dial of our big five-band transistor set, listening to all the world that would fit in (and squeeze through) a six-inch speaker.

I would listen to a wonderful world of music -- all kinds of music. I would listen to network broadcasts from New York . . . and the world. I would listen to, and wonder about, life in exotic places like . . . New Orleans. Nashville. Little Rock.

Little Rock? Little Rock. When you're 8 or 9 and growing up blue collar in Baton Rouge, exotic is a catch-as-catch-can affair.

Little Rock was the Mighty 1090, KAAY, with rock 'n' roll in the night. And as I was to learn through the magic of someone long ago hooking a reel-to-reel tape recorder up to an AM radio, Little Rock also was KARK. Or, as the announcers there said back in 1971, "Kay! A-R-K."


IF YOU'RE a lot younger than my 50 years, the above hour of KARK, circa May 19, 1971, must sound like a transmission from an alien culture. That's because it is.

In 1971, the mass media was just that. While in many respects, we were just as much a tribal society 40 years ago as we are today, all our various tribes were on a first-name basis. Even when we hated one another's guts.

Though alienation was a fact then just as it is today, alienation was not a business model for mass media. Though we often screamed at one another four decades past, radio and television by and large weren't about displacing light with heat. Or hot air.

Radio stations like KARK -- those one's parents were most likely to favor -- were all about being the voice of a community. Today, by contrast, the picked-over carcasses of stations like KARK (now KARN) are all about being the cynical voice of an outraged sociopolitical demographic, usually on the far right.

Today, if you don't want to listen to a single thing "The Other" has to say, you don't have to. You can get all your "news" from people who think just like you do. You can listen to radio stations that pull angry voices from the sky -- via satellite -- that tell you exactly what you want to hear.

YOU CAN wander across the AM dial in search of exotic voices from exotic places, only to find that everywhere is just like Nowhere . . . that nondescript backdrop for our unremarkable lives of quiet desperation. The voice from New Orleans is the voice from Omaha is the voice from Little Rock is the voice from the satellite.

The overwrought voice of outrage.

The voice that shouts but never sings.

A few years after the time of our 1971 archived transmission from an alien culture, Harry Chapin sang about a "bright good-morning voice who's heard but never seen." That guy got fired years ago.

Now there's Ryan, or Rush, or Glenn, or Laura, or Sean . . . or the conspiracy theorists selling doom late at night. They're not from around here.

THE BLESSING of my 50 years on this earth is I can remember a time when I had a working knowledge of subcultures not my own. When the snot-nosed kid that I used to be couldn't help but have broad familiarity with my parents' Squaresville landscape. With their history, their cultural underpinnings.

Memory also is the burden I bear. This curse is born of a half century of learning the hard way that "progress" oftentimes isn't -- that things don't always get better and better.

When I close my eyes and shut off the noise we can't ignore, I hear music. I hear exotic voices from magical places. I hear New Orleans. I hear Baton Rouge.

I hear Omaha.

I hear Nashville.

I hear Little Rock.

I hear 1971. It's right there . . . the troubled but magical world from when most of my life was ahead of me, not behind.

I hear it . . . I can almost touch it. My blessing.

I open my eyes, and now it's gone.

My curse.

How not to win friends and influence juries

Some people are indeed too stupid to live.

One of these would be Mr. Isaiah Doyle of Jefferson Parish, La.

I'm not a supporter of the death penalty but, frankly, it's hard to say that Mr. Doyle doesn't have it coming. And if I had been a member of this particular jury, as you will see in The Times-Picayune's trial coverage here, I probably would have insisted that the sentence be, uh, executed right there on the spot:

Hours after he claimed he'd like to kill all the members of the jury that convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of a store clerk in Marrero, the same Jefferson Parish jury recommended that Isaiah Doyle die by lethal injection.

The jury of three men and nine women deliberated just under two hours returning a verdict just before 11 p.m.

Doyle showed no emotion as the verdict was read. His mother, Yvette Doyle, collapsed in tears in the audience and was helped by family out of the courtroom.

Doyle, 28, killed Hwa Lee, 26, on Aug. 4, 2005, even though she complied with his demands that she give him cash from the register behind the counter of her parents' Barataria Boulevard convenience Store.

He blasted her with four .45-caliber rounds and initially told Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives it was an accident. For that, he was convicted of murder by a jury Thursday night.

But, after warning court officials for days he'd take the witness stand, he testified Friday during his penalty hearing that the shooting was no mistake.

"The only reason she was shot four times is because the gun jammed," he told the jury. "Otherwise, I would have emptied the gun in her f****** head."

(snip)

Doyle testified against the advice of his attorneys and said he had no remorse for what he did to Lee. He said he had no sympathy for her or her family. And he lashed out at the jury.

"I hate every last one of you, especially him right there," he said pointing to a man on the panel. "I wish I could cut his head off."

At another point in his testimony, he said, "If I had an AK-47 (assault rifle), I'd kill every last one of you."

WHEN YOU'RE busy failing at life (and at getting life), it's probably no big whoop to fail at Dale Carnegie, too. In this case, that's probably a good thing.

DIckens 4-5275

Good afternoon, WAIL.

Hello, Marge?

This is Marge.

Hey, Marge. Let me talk to Pappy.

I'll transfer you to the studio.

Pappy? Can you play "Blue Moon"? My newborn baby boy is gonna grow up to really like that song, I think, and I was wonderin' if you could put it on. I'll put that GE table radio I won from you last year next to the crib.

I'll get it on for you.


Thank you kindly, Pappy.

There'$ pow'r, pow'r . . . wonder-working pow'r!

There aren't many things that will drag me out of my flu-fouled sickbed to putter around on the blog.

One, however, is the alleged evildoing of a supposedly slimy Bible-believin' preacher. Another is the latest freak show from the Gret Stet.

So when you put those two things together . . . cough, cough . . . sniffle . . . moan . . . here I am.

And there be Bishop Ricky Sinclair of Miracle Place Church, headquartered in Baker, La. According to the Louisiana inspector general's office, one of Sinclair's biggest miracles was in getting money out of the federal government on nefarious grounds.

OK, so that's not so big a miracle. It's common, as a matter of fact.

Here we go. . . . According to the Louisiana inspector general's office, one of Sinclair's biggest miracles was in almost getting away with not disclosing his criminal record on documents when he applied to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to run a halfway house.

Hang on. That's not a miracle, either. We're talking about bureaucracy, and we're talking about Louisiana. The miracle is that somebody noticed.

This guy and his church are running short enough on miracles that they might be in Dutch with the Federal Trade Commission, too.

FROM THE (Baton Rouge) Advocate this morning:

The report by the office of state Inspector General Stephen B. Street Jr. said Bishop Ricky Sinclair of Miracle Place Church also used people — ordered by the courts to attend a church-affiliated halfway house — to perform work clearing land and building a new home for Sinclair, his wife and family.

In a prepared statement sent via e-mail, Sinclair denied any wrongdoing.

“I have read the Inspector General’s report, and the accusations against me are simply not true,” he said. “Miracle Place and Ricky Sinclair have been serving the people of this area for over 20 years, and we will continue to serve them to fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ.”

Street said Sinclair’s fraudulent activities date to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and continued after Hurricane Gustav in 2008.

“You’re not talking about questionable claims here,” Street said.

“You’re talking about blatant, fabricated and deliberate fraud — from scratch in many cases, where they just made things up.”

He said it was “particularly reprehensible” that the fraud was committed against the backdrop of two natural disasters.

Street said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louisiana State Police and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of the Inspector General assisted with the investigation.

The findings have been referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for possible criminal prosecution, he said.

The report alleges that Sinclair collected $121,281 from FEMA for labor costs for operating his church as a shelter during Hurricane Katrina but spent only $39,950 paying workers. He kept the remaining $81,331, the report says.

I HAVEN'T lived in the Gret Stet since Ricky Sinclair still was a two-bit drug dealer, yet I knew the guy is an ex-con. And, according to the story, all his tracts tout that the guy's an ex-con.


HECK, even Pat Robertson told the entire backslidden world, via his 700 Club TV show, that Bishop Sinclair did time for dealing dope. Yet the Gret Stet of Loosiana couldn't figure out a thing until the inspector general noted that Sinclair and some associates "failed to disclose past criminal convictions, as required, when they applied to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to operate the halfway house program."

Some would call Sinclair a moron for that one. I'd merely say that he was just (so far, allegedly) implementing the first half of "be ye therefore wise as serpents." In other words, you have to know what you can get away with.

In the Gret Stet, that would be a considerable amount. The "and as harmless as doves" population ain't what it should be.

Louisiana: It's where self-government goes to eat well, clog its arteries and die of a heart attack.