Levon Helm, 1940-2012

I am old enough to remember when there was only one "day the music died."

This, by God, has been the week the music died.

First, we learned Levon Helm -- of The Band, Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars and his later years of "Midnight Rambles" -- was near death. Then Dick Clark died suddenly Wednesday at 82.

And now, just a day later, Helm has died, too.

The music dies more and more often these days, at least if you're someone my age. But like the savior of the world from a garden tomb, it always rises again, so long as we have our records and our CDs and a decent radio station here and there.

Levon Helm has found his release from this vail of tears, which he once brightened with his music. And which he brightens still.

Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Requiescat in pace. Amen.

Eyeless shrimp, mutant crabs, oozing fish

If you live on the Gulf Coast -- and if you care to know how screwed you are -- you might want to listen more to Al Jazeera and less to local ostriches who can't see the blind shrimp for the sandy tar balls in their eyes.

Short version of the Arab TV network's report from Louisiana: BP did a real number on the Gulf, the marshes and every form of sea life out there. Longer version: The feds say Gulf seafood is safe to eat -- that is, while there still is Gulf seafood . . . and if you don't mind eyeless shrimp, mutant crabs that rot from the inside before they're dead and seafood with sores and lesions all over it.

That's not what people want to hear, however, which is making life really easy (not) for the researchers bearing the bad news, being that facts are a bitch.

Here's an excerpt from the print version of the story:

"The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.

Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."

"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."

(snip)

Dr Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of biology at Louisiana State University, co-authored the report Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes that was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2011.

Whitehead's work is of critical importance, as it shows a direct link between BP's oil and the negative impacts on the Gulf's food web evidenced by studies on killifish before, during and after the oil disaster.

"What we found is a very clear, genome-wide signal, a very clear signal of exposure to the toxic components of oil that coincided with the timing and the locations of the oil," Whitehead told Al Jazeera during an interview in his lab.

According to Whitehead, the killifish is an important indicator species because they are the most abundant fish in the marshes, and are known to be the most important forage animal in their communities.

"That means that most of the large fish that we like to eat and that these are important fisheries for, actually feed on the killifish," he explained. "So if there were to be a big impact on those animals, then there would probably be a cascading effect throughout the food web. I can't think of a worse animal to knock out of the food chain than the killifish."

But we may well be witnessing the beginnings of this worst-case scenario.

Whitehead is predicting that there could be reproductive impacts on the fish, and since the killifish is a "keystone" species in the food web of the marsh, "Impacts on those species are more than likely going to propagate out and effect other species. What this shows is a very direct link from exposure to DWH oil and a clear biological effect. And a clear biological effect that could translate to population level long-term consequences."

Back on shore, troubled by what he had been seeing, Keath Ladner met with officials from the US Food and Drug Administration and asked them to promise that the government would protect him from litigation if someone was made sick from eating his seafood.

"They wouldn't do it," he said.

"I'm worried about the entire seafood industry of the Gulf being on the way out," he added grimly.

WE NOW return you to our previously scheduled BP propaganda spots and "Remain calm. All is well!" platitudes from state and federal officials.



HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

The smoking lamp is off

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The black eye the Pillsbury Doughmagogue got Wednesday from the Nebraska Legislature means that babies will live.

That Medicaid money will be saved.

And that, here in this beautiful corner of the Great Plains, the founders' words mean a little more than they did the day before.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Not white men. Not Anglo-Saxon men. Not American men.

All men . . . and women. And children in the womb.

ONCE AGAIN in this state, future American citizens in the wombs of their mothers -- whether those mothers be poor, undocumented or both -- won't be regarded by the state as throwaway stepchildren of a lesser god. No thanks to our petulant and Mexican-baiting governor, Dave Heineman, who consistently has seen feeding on the bottom as a sure path to coming out on top.

God don't sleep, and this time neither did the unicameral, which ended its session with multiple political bitch slaps for the Doughmagogue. The Omaha World-Herald was there for the festivities:

Teary-eyed supporters predicted Wednesday that the Legislature's decision to restore taxpayer-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants will result in fewer newborns with birth defects and fewer expenses for intensive care stays and delivery room complications.

“For the women, it means they won't have to worry anymore. They can come and get care,” said Andrea Skolkin of South Omaha's One World Community Health Center.

Lawmakers voted 30-16 to override Gov. Dave Heineman's veto of Legislative Bill 599.

The governor predicted that the 2012 legislative session will be remembered most for providing free health care for illegal residents while allowing cities to raise sales taxes on legal residents — referring to the lawmakers' override of another veto.

“I strongly disagree with their decisions,” Heineman said in a prepared statement. “Providing preferential treatment to illegals while increasing taxes on legal Nebraska citizens is misguided, misplaced and inappropriate.”

The vote on the prenatal care bill came at the end of the session's last day, providing an emotional finale to what has been a rough-and-tumble session.

“I like soft landings,” said State Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, the speaker of the Legislature. “We had to foam the runways this year. But any landing you walk away from is a good landing.”

(snip)

A similar prenatal care bill was withdrawn from the agenda two years ago, lacking enough votes to pass. This year, a new estimate of the expected fiscal impact of providing the care placed the state's annual cost at about $560,000.

That was less than the cost to taxpayers and hospitals for just two cases of extended neonatal intensive care for babies born to women lacking prenatal care. One case cost more than $800,000.

Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, a leading supporter of LB 599, said charities and private donations cannot be counted on to finance the care.

Clinics in Omaha and Columbus reported dramatic increases in the number of women seeking free prenatal care, but also several cases of women skipping the care or coming in too late to address early developing problems in their babies. Health professionals have said that for every $1 invested in prenatal care, savings of up to $4 is expected.

“Fiscally, this makes sense,” Flood said. “This is an innocent child in the middle of a red-hot debate about immigration.”

Despite lobbying by Heineman and other foes of the bill, only one previous supporter — Sen. Tom Seiler of Hastings — switched from supporting the measure to opposing the override.

Rockin' through the decades with Dick

These are the times of our lives. Lurking around many of them was an ageless man named Dick Clark and a TV touchstone called American Bandstand.

Here's the way we were in 1964.

And in 1967.



1968.



1976.




1977.



1978.



1983.



1987 . . . the last network show.

The day the music died. Again.

Dick Clark is dead, according to the TMZ website.

The cause apparently was a massive heart attack after undergoing an "outpatient procedure" at a Los Angeles hospital. The man who once seemed ageless before a stroke in 2004, was 82.

Thus, an era truly ends as another piece of 'Boomers' lives slips into the mists of time.

The way we are

"This is not who we are, and it's certainly not who we represent when it comes to the great majority of men and women in uniform who are serving there."

-- Leon Panetta,
secretary of defense

Actually, when this kind of thing -- and worse -- happens often enough, it kind of is who we are.

And we seem to be on a macabre streak in Afghanistan. That's not even getting into the streak of "not who we are" U.S. troops were on in Iraq -- or the official torture that went on at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and at top-secret CIA prisons abroad.

No, I'd say the record indicates this is absolutely who we have become after more than a decade of endless war. It probably is who we were even before almost 11 years of endless war.

Think we have a cultural problem much? Do not delude yourself that it's limited to the young kids in U.S. uniforms. Their "not who we are" behavior didn't just arise out of nowhere.

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times for pulling back the mask just a little bit more.

The legacy of lead: A heavy weight to bear?

Omaha has one of the poorest black populations in the United States, one unusually bereft of a middle class.

Educational achievement lags in this community, while unemployment and social pathologies soar.

The city's African-American community, centered on the near north side of town, also is the center of violent crime in Omaha.

The near north side of Omaha also happens to lie within an EPA Superfund site, where scores of millions of dollars are being spent to clean up widespread lead contamination, the unwelcome legacy of some 120 years of the area's history. The legacy is that of the ASARCO lead refinery, which called Omaha home for all that time and where several smelters were consolidated at the corner of Fifth and Douglas in 1899.

The combined operation eventually became the largest lead smelter in the world, and it stayed in business until 1997.

It belched massive amounts of toxic lead particles into the Omaha sky. For decades and decades the pollution spewed, and where it landed, we pretty much knew -- the near north side, largely.

THE NEAR north side, the heart of black Omaha. Largely poor black Omaha. Often uneducated black Omaha. Often dysfunctional black Omaha.

Often violent black Omaha.

You think a century or more of lead contamination -- lead ingestion by decades of inner-city children -- might have anything to do with any of the above? After all, we do know of the neurological effects of chronic lead exposure. They're not good, FYI.

You ever wonder -- after accounting for socioeconomic, family and cultural variables -- how much of the intractable majority-minority achievement gap in education might be due to chronic lead exposure? I'm starting to.

AND IT SEEMS, concerning violent crime in America, some Tulane University researchers and others have been wondering, too.

That wondering led to extensive research and number crunching, which led to a just-published paper concluding "Yes. Yes, lead does play a part." A story about the research appears on the Science Daily website:

Childhood exposure to lead dust has been linked to lasting physical and behavioral effects, and now lead dust from vehicles using leaded gasoline has been linked to instances of aggravated assault two decades after exposure, says Tulane toxicologist Howard W. Mielke.

Vehicles using leaded gasoline that contaminated cities' air decades ago have increased aggravated assault in urban areas, researchers say.

The new findings are published in the journal Environment International by Mielke, a research professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the Tulane University School of Medicine, and demographer Sammy Zahran at the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis at Colorado State University.

The researchers compared the amount of lead released in six cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, New Orleans and San Diego, during the years 1950-1985. This period saw an increase in airborne lead dust exposure due to the use of leaded gasoline. There were correlating spikes in the rates of aggravated assault approximately two decades later, after the exposed children grew up.

After controlling for other possible causes such as community and household income, education, policing effort and incarceration rates, Mielke and Zahran found that for every one percent increase in tonnages of environmental lead released 22 years earlier, the present rate of aggravated assault was raised by 0.46 percent.

IF CAR EXHAUST can do that, one has to wonder what societal havoc the onetime world's largest lead refinery might have wrought, and to what degree, upon our fair city . . . and its most vulnerable population.

You just have to wonder.

Perhaps it's high time the city's newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, started wondering, too. Every little bit of information helps in tackling the most intractable of maladies.

Eveythang's bligger in Taxass Texuss here

Darren Rovell on WhoSay
And Arkansas breathes a deep sigh of blessed relief as Texas A&M enters the Southeastern Conference as only the Aggies could.

Of course, the College Station apparel maker responsible for the above shirt apologized profusely for its error-riddled product, saying that out of all the 57 states, it should have known that Pennsylvania never would have had an SEC school in it. It plans to issue a "corrected" tee adding Nebraska to the conference map.

Meantime, President Obama announced Tuesday that the Pentagon would immediately enhance U.S. security in Asia by assigning all Aggie cadets, upon graduation and commissioning, to the People's Liberation Army in China and the Korean People's Army in North Korea.

Texas A&M administrators have begun working out the logistics of busing the newly minted officers to Taipei and Seoul four times a year -- likely at the end of each semester.

We don't know what we've got till it's gone

It's easy to forget the music

Amid a radio landscape marked by "downsizing" and consultants, generic playlists and stations threatening to sue their listeners, it seems to be about everything but the music. On an Internet fractured into a billion subcultures, interest groups and -- yeah, this is about right -- tribes, it seems to be about nothing other than a virtual Tower of Babel.

It is what it is; we are who we are. And everything -- everybody -- is off key in this world of discordant notes. It's not about the music. And then you see this:

Levon Helm, the revered multi-instrumentalist and singer for the group the Band, is in the final stages of cancer, according to his family.

A heartbreaking note appeared on the musician's website Tuesday announcing that he is terminally ill:

Dear Friends,

Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.

Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…

We appreciate all the love and support and concern.

From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy

SUDDENLY, we are reminded of the music by its absence. It's the story of life.

As Joni Mitchell put it:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

OR. . . perhaps you might prefer Don McLean's take:

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play

FRANKLY, I prefer to curse the passage of time and the ravages of cancer and culture. I prefer to not look in the mirror. I prefer to delude myself that I'm still 18 and my future is an endless horizon.

But we can't do that forever, now, can we?

Godspeed, Levon. And thank you.

A confederacy of dunces

Getting between the oil industry's posterior and Louisiana politicians' lips is a tight spot only Rhett Butler could love -- "I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost."

Odd that it was a Yankee academic and not Capt. Butler embarking on such a quixotic scheme Monday before a joint meeting of state House and Senate natural-resources committees. Either he was making the kind of profit the fictional Butler did from running guns to the Confederates, or the man just had no idea what he was walking into.

The Oregon economics professor's first mistake, sad to say, was in going to Louisiana in the first place. Nothing good could come of it.

His second mistake was in telling Louisianians -- politicians, no less -- what he took to be the truth, instead of what they wanted to hear.

THE THIRD mistake, as reported by The Advocate in Baton Rouge, was a doozy. He told the legislators that an LSU professor was dead wrong (and guilty of sloppy research) in his report arguing that the state was losing beaucoup revenue and jobs by not throttling lawsuits over environmental damage from old oilfields.

W. Ed Whitelaw, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon, said the widely quoted analysis omitted relevant facts, including any mention of two hurricanes.

David Dismukes, an LSU professor who works for the LSU Center for Energy Studies, released an analysis in February that found that during the past eight years, Louisiana missed out on more than 30,000 oil and gas jobs and support positions because of what are called “legacy lawsuits.”

The lawsuits are over the extent of cleanup of environmental damage caused by oil producers’ drilling practices years ago.

A joint hearing of the Louisiana House and state Senate committees on Natural Resources met Monday to “informally discuss the issues” involving legislation that would change the procedures leading to lawsuits over the environmental damage.

“Legacy lawsuits are strongly and negatively correlated with Louisiana drilling activity,” Dismukes’ report says. “Increases in legacy lawsuits are correlated with reductions in conventional Louisiana oil and gas drilling.”

Whitelaw, founder of ECONorthwest, a Portland, Ore., company that provides financial analysis for businesses and governments, said Dismukes’ widely quoted analysis has several major flaws.

“Understand that these errors, and there are three or four big ones, any one of which is enough to render his analysis nonsense,” Whitelaw said. “These are rookie errors.”

OOOOOOOOOH. Bad move.

In the Gret Stet, legislators reserve the right to starve Louisiana universities to death, but they'll be damned if some damn Yankee is gonna come down and tell 'em they're getting what they pay for. Or not getting what they refuse to pay for.

At any rate, ancestral hatred, a raging inferiority complex, a genuine lack of intelligence and good old bayou buffoonery combined for a quite predictable display of pique and posturing. Like I said, I hope Whitelaw's making obscene money for his expert testimony.

In the joint committee hearing, state Sen. Norby Chabert, R-Houma, came to Dismukes’ defense, asking former U.S. Rep. Chris John, who now heads the Baton Rouge-based industry group Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, how he felt about Whitelaw’s testimony.

“It always chaps my hide when folks come in here from out of state and degrade our universities and our faculty,” Chabert said.

John agreed, saying the oil and gas industry works closely with LSU, his alma mater.

“It is something that we should consider when a person from the Oregon Ducks would actually sit at this table; we’ve had our issues with the Oregon Ducks,” Johns said.

WHAT (expletive deleted) morons. What clowns.

It says nothing good about Louisiana that it's occurred to no one that so many of the state's political maladies could be solved by no longer reminding its politicians to breathe.

It also says nothing good about the place that it's occurred to so few there that the rest of America isn't laughing with Louisiana, but instead at Louisiana.

The second-to-last refuge of scoundrels

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, "policy" is the last way station before you get there.

And "policy" is why ditwad administrators at a ditwad school district in Carrollton, Ohio, won't let a high-school senior "walk" with his classmates at graduation this year.

You see, Austin Fisher has 16 unexcused absences this year -- the limit is 14 if you want to go to prom or participate in the graduation ceremony at Carrollton High School. And it doesn't matter why you're inexcusably absent.

For example, missing school to care for your cancer-stricken mother. Your terminally ill cancer-stricken mother. When you're all she's got.

WJW television, Fox 8 in Cleveland, reports:

Let Fish Walk.

The phrase is taking over the small town of Carrollton, from car windows to signs at local businesses. It’s a grassroots effort for 17-year-old Carrollton High School senior Austin Fisher, who has made it clear that his role as ‘student’ comes second to his role as ‘son.’

“He’s been my hero, my rock,” says Fisher’s mother, Teresa, as tears stream down her face.

Teresa has been battling breast cancer for six years. Last year doctors told her it was stage four–terminal. Through months of chemo and radiation, she leaned on Austin.

But being his mom’s lifeline meant sacrificing school.

“I missed a lot of school for that. Running her to cancer treatments, staying home when she was in bed–it’s just me and her at the house,” Austin explains.

The varsity baseball player, who worked two jobs when his mom was too sick to work at all, racked up 16 unexcused absences. That is two more than the Carrollton school policy will allow for a student to attend prom or walk at graduation.

The news was devastating.

“Those are the moments you cherish,” Teresa says. “I said, Austin, hold your head up, don’t be negative about it. I said, they’ll look at this situation, they’ll come around.”

But Austin says a meeting with his principal proved otherwise.

“They can’t change it. They said guidelines are guidelines. It won’t be changed. I can’t walk,” Austin explains.

A COUPLE of millennia ago, longstanding policy dictated that a woman caught in adultery be stoned to death. Jesus Christ thought better of that, stopped "policy" in its tracks and told the woman to "go and sin no more."

Of course, we know where stuff like that got Him.

Policy dictated it. Just like policy in the Carrollton school district is coming down like a ton of bricks on a teenage kid who knows WWJD . . . and then does it. Some things never change in this life.

I have a new strategy for the seniors of Carrollton High School -- "If Fish doesn't walk, none of us do."

Sometimes, life requires that you put your mortarboard and tassel where your mouth is. And, in the process, bring down the full weight of an entire town of enraged parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles down upon the temple of the holier than thou.


UPDATE: You can't make twits smart or scoundrels virtuous -- at least not in a day -- but you can turn the heat up so much on your average bureaucracy that it cries "UNCLE!" as a matter of self-preservation.

Late developments in the story come from The Repository newspaper in Canton, Ohio:

Austin said that although his story exploded in the last three days, he has known since January that he wouldn’t be permitted to walk at the ceremony.

Upon finding out, he said he immediately went to Principal Dave Davis, as did his mother, but Davis told them, “Rules are rules.”

Petitions were circulated in January, but were confiscated, Austin said.

On Monday, as the story went viral, classmates wore “Let Fish Walk” T-shirts to school.

That afternoon, Austin and Teri met with Fogler and the two building principals, Davis and Jason Eddy, along with an attorney for the district.

Teri agreed to not talk with the media as part of the agreement.

According to Austin, the group discussed the negative publicity the school has received.

“I never intended that,” he said emphatically.

He said the administrators argued the number of absences for the first semester to be 17 days, not 16.

In the end, the decision was reversed.

WHEN YOU genuinely scare chickenshits, they rarely go quietly (or penitently) into that good night, but they do go. That's because while they generally don't much care about doing good, they do dread looking bad.

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

AMEN.

Do the Freddy

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Click here for PDF of magazine.

Continuing on the theme of TV snark . . . behold this 1955 ad in Broadcasting-Telecasting magazine, a sort of birth announcement for my hometown's second television station, WBRZ.

Although, it does kind of tell you much of what you need to know about Channel 2. And Baton Rouge.

First, there is a difference between what you come to expect out of Madison Avenue and what you come to expect out of the Manship family. Second, the Manships never would have hired Don Draper. Third, this ad is enough to make Freddy Rumsen pee his pants.


THERE ARE Mad Men, and then there are madmen.

"Advertise on Channel 2. We'll give your account to the crazed love child of Count Macabre and Orene Muse!"

You don't get this because you had to be there. Trust me.

How do you spell clusterf***?

K-M-T-V.

Otherwise known today as Channel 3rd. This is the way it was for at least 20 minutes just a little while ago.

Not that anything is going on today. Oh, wait.


UPDATE: They're back on now. Weatherman says they took "a very strong power hit."

Which is why God invented industrial-size surge protectors. And industrial-size battery-backup units. And industrial-size generators.

Mercy.

Uneasy lies the head of the Doughmagogue

When you hit bottom in politics, you have only yourself to compete with for King of the Muck.

In which case, put a crown on the Pillsbury Doughmagogue -- Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman. And if you're an all-'Mercun mouth-breather, the king wants to hear from you at 1-800-LYIN SOB. He's ready to talk "illegals" and "anchor babies" if you are; the fewer actual facts, the better.

And know that your "pro-life" monarch -- the one who vetoes funding for prenatal care for poor fetuses -- has what it takes to once again make the Cornhusker State (both in taxes and in complexion) "the white spot" of America. Sorry . . . 'Mercuh.

As promised, Gov. Dave Heineman on Friday vetoed a controversial bill that would restore prenatal services for illegal immigrants.

But the pro-life governor's veto message included a new and potentially explosive new charge: that some of the prenatal funds could find their way to a leading pro-choice organization, Planned Parenthood.

“I oppose providing taxpayer benefits to illegal immigrants,” Heineman said in a press release. “I oppose providing taxpayer funding to vendors that perform or promote abortions.”

A Planned Parenthood of the Heartland official said Friday that the organization doesn't provide prenatal services at its Nebraska clinics, which are in Omaha and Lincoln.

Supporters of the bill, including some anti-abortion officials, said the charge was a last-minute attempt to derail an attempted override of the governor's veto. The Legislature's override vote on Legislative Bill 599 is scheduled for Wednesday.

“This is nothing more than an eleventh-hour attempt to scuttle LB 599,” said Julie Schmit-Albin, the executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, the leading anti-abortion organization in the state.

State Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, the chief sponsor of the bill, said she was “disturbed” that the comment about Planned Parenthood wasn't raised until after the measure had progressed through three rounds of debate in the Legislature.

But Campbell said she did not think it would erode support for LB 599, to which 31 lawmakers gave final-round approval — one vote more than necessary to override the governor's veto.

OF COURSE, there is that veto-proof majority thing in the Legislature. Sigh.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Dr. Suck's weather tales

I do not like tornadoes Sam-I-Am; I do not like them worth a damn.

Would I like them here or there?

I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like tornadoes worth a damn. I do not like them Sam-I-Am.

Would I like them when I'm home? Would I like them in a dome?

I do not like them when I'm home. I do not like them in a dome. I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere. I do not like tornadoes worth a damn. I do not like them Sam-I-Am.


WHICH IS WHY today's Omaha World-Herald weather story is really harshing my mellow:

The Omaha, Lincoln and Norfolk areas face a high risk of potentially deadly weather Saturday that could include fast-moving, powerful tornadoes, strong winds, hail and heavy rains.

National forecasters issued the unusual alert Friday, saying a brewing storm system places 5.5 million people and several major cities at high risk — including Omaha, Wichita, Kan., and Oklahoma City. The risk is expected to begin in the late afternoon and continue until after dark.

Isolated severe thunderstorms also could drop tennis-ball-sized hail, heavy rains and kick up winds of 50 mph to 60 mph, said Josh Boustead, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office that serves eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

Not everyone will see storms, but those who do could see severe ones, he said.

The timing of Saturday's threat means storms are likely to begin firing as tens of thousands of people leave the University of Nebraska's spring game at Memorial Stadium. Before that, there could be lightning, he said.

(snip)

Boustead said it will be hard to predict exactly where the storms will pop up, and officials are warning that any storm that develops could rip along at frightening speed.

Weather officials say they believe this is the earliest they've issued such dire warnings since April 2006. Those preceded a major tornado outbreak that began April 6 in an area from Oklahoma to Nebraska and headed east for two days. More than 70 tornadoes were confirmed and more than a dozen people died in Alabama and Tennessee.

THINK kind thoughts about the Plains. Think kind thoughts about our rains.

3 Chords & the Truth: Good crazy

What the hell kind of music program will be playin' the Jackie Gleason Orchestra one minute . . . and then friggin' Yes the next?

As my old man once screamed at the television, "That sumbitch done lost his mind!"

This music program -- 3 Chords & the Truth. And guilty as charged. On the other hand, aren't crazy people a lot more interesting?

AND DON'T you think the concept carries over to the Big Show? I certainly do.

But then again, this sumbitch done lost his mind.

Go on. Embrace, and unshackle, your inner musical lunatic. You know you want to. And I'll be right here -- in the one-sleeved white suit.

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

I know what the caged bird sings

When you can put "rapper" and "Denham Springs, La." in the same sentence, you know things just aren't going to end well.

And when the rapper in question is a fella named "O G Smoov" . . . one of whose "hits" is "Dat's My Ho" . . . released on Pure Dope Records . . . which has a music video shot with a cell phone . . . you have just arrived at the intersection of hip-hop and irony.

Not to mention just damn funny.


I know Channel 9 in Baton Rouge had some fun with the story:

Not a 'Smoov' move by local rapper; arrested, faces prison time

A rapper from the Denham Springs area has been arrested after police executed a search warrant and found 454 grams of Marijuana, three doses of Alprazalom and a .25 caliber hand gun.

The search warrant was executed after the rapper, Keith Johnson, AKA 'O G Smoov' recently released a rap recording entitled "Still Smoov Till I Lose Life." The photo on the CD cover shows O G Smoov holding a handgun while kneeling over the bloodied body of another man.

Johnson, who was convicted of shooting a woman in 1991 and convicted of numerous counts of illegal drug possession charges over the last 20 years, cannot legally possess a firearm.

Keith Johnson, 39, has been charged with one count of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, one count of possession of Alprazolam, one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and one count of possession of a firearm with a controlled dangerous substance.

I'M SURE Mr. Smoov is explaining to his attorney that it's a bad rap.

With that, the world wholeheartedly agrees.

Wait . . . he means the criminal charges? Oh. Well, no, chances are he's screwed on that account.

In any event, I'll bet I know the last thing this caged bird wants to hear his cellmate singing:

Oh, hail, no!

I'm sure there must be at least a few reasons why someone actually might wish to live in the Texas Panhandle. This is not one of them.

Those aren't boulders, and that's not a narrow grassy path through a lava field.

That's four feet of hail, with a gully carved through it by the runoff from another three inches of rain. That's not something the Amarillo-area chamber of commerce will want to be playing up as it tries to attract new residents.


NOT THAT anyone would believe such a thing -- even about Texas.

Sure, everything's bigger in Texas. But 4 feet of hail from one storm? That's what the National Weather Service, the Texas Department of Transportation and a local sheriff say happened Wednesday in an area north of Amarillo when hail piled up in drifts so wide they cut off a major highway.

The National Weather Service office in Amarillo even posted a photo on its Facebook page, but that wasn't enough to convince skeptics.

"Serious do not think this is 100% hail!!!" commented one person.

"It's a lite dusting of hail on some damn rocks," said another person, referring to the image of a firefighter standing next to what could be taken for boulders.

"I can assure you we do not have big rocks like that in West Texas," Krissy Scotten, a spokeswoman for the weather service office in Amarillo, told msnbc.com.

WELL, at least that's something.

Then there was music and wonderful roses

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,
And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd,
By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.
What then am I? Am I more senseless grown
Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!
'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.
Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night
The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King;
He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd
Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.
Why am not I at Peace?

-- William Congreve,
The Mourning Bride (1697)

Lord of the Fritos

When I was a kid, there was always the same public-service announcement before the late news.

"It's 10 o'clock. Parents, do you know where your children are?"

Boy, is that so 40 years ago. There are so many other questions TV stations could ask "parents" today.

"It's 11:30. Parents, did you know that your little thugs are cleaning out the Kwik-E-Mart?"

"It's 6 o'clock. Parents, did you know your little darlings will be on the news in just a couple of minutes?"

"It's 10 o'clock. Parents, do you give a flip where your children are?"

"It's 3 in the morning. Parents, are you really worthless pieces of s***, or is that an unfair inference on our part?"

MAYBE that's something KATU television in Portland, Ore., might want to consider. It would be a nice complement to stories like this:

Police are hoping the public can help identify several kids who stormed a local gas station this past Saturday night and stole everything they could grab.

On the surveillance video, one person came into the Chevron convenience store on SE 92nd and Foster. Then a second person came in and pretty soon, a large group of kids was packed into the shop. Soon, they were stealing anything they could, from drinks to gum to candy

Carlos Garcia was working Saturday night at around 11:30 p.m. when the incident happened. He said there were 16 kids in the store. Garcia said the kids grabbed anything they could and shoved items into their pockets or simply carrying them in their hands and out the door.

"My first reaction was call police because I can't do more," he said. "I don't want to hurt them -- they're kids. I called the police. They don't stop they're just picking picking as much as they can."