First Draft

Malaka Of The Week: Steve Holland

I'm trying to get my malaka of the week rhythm back. It shouldn't be hard since there's so much malakatude out there. This week's "honoree" is a Mississippi State Rep who thinks the Magnolia state can rename an international body of water.

I cannot top Gambitman Alex Woodward's vitriol so I'm gonna quote him:

Riding upon a chariot of Hummers driven by bald eagles, Mississippi Rep. Steve Holland filed a guns blazing cowboy steak of a bill, proudly waving our nation's red, white and God-fearing blue to protect our American coastal waters. This week, Holland introduced H.B. 150 to Mississippi's House of Representatives Marine Resources Committee — a bill that, in summary, would "for all official purposes" rename the Gulf of Mexico (or "body of water south of Mississippi") the "Gulf of America."

For all official purposes within the State of Mississippi, the body of water that is located directly south of Hancock, Harrison and Jackson Counties shall be known as the "Gulf of America." ... This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2012.

And just in time for the Fourth of July weekend.

What tickles me about this exercise in malakatudinous futility is this douchebag's last name: Holland. Sounds suspiciously foreign (pronounced furrin) to me so I think Rep. Holland ought to change his moniker. As it stands, he sounds like a dope smoking, red light district legalizing, Socialist furriner.

Maybe Malaka Holland should put down his hash pipe and change his last name to something manly and American before he presumes to change the name of the Gulf. Any ideas, gentle readers? This bozo hasn't got a clue and that's why he's malaka of the week.

You can have my tattoo when you pry it from my COLD, DEAD HANDS!

The saying “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention” needs to be reworked, based on current events. People seem to be getting more and more outraged lately, but it’s a curious set of topics that have them outraged.

The post Thursday from A regarding the pissed off weatherman and his indignation that his job has been outsourced to Punxsutawney once a year  is just one example of how Gary Busey we are starting to become. We’re worried if Mitt Romney is a “weird” Mormon or if he’s really Mexican. We are fervently debating whether Michael Fassbender was denied an Oscar nomination because he’s donging off on screen.

And now this: People are raging against a student newspaper kid who wrote that she hates tattoos.

Lisa Khoury, a first-year student at the University of Buffalo, had her column “Why put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari?” go viral this week, and not in a good way. (Question: has anything ever “gone viral” as a positive? Seems like the closest we get is a video of a cat flushing a toilet or Mitt Romney saying something stupid.)

She makes the argument that overall women have great bodies and inking them up is just a pointless exercise that diminishes their sexual allure. (Khoury’s approach seems to say that if you’re obese and look like your face caught fire and someone put it out with a track shoe, hey, ink away! Kind of disturbing…)The piece was a counterpoint to an article by another student, who explained her attraction to tattoos.

Khoury learned quickly that the Internet is an unforgiving place to espouse an opinion. Even personal thoughts that are well crafted, soundly reasoned and intensely backed by research are eviscerated on a daily basis. When you show up with a knife at a gun fight, things tend to be a lot worse.

In Khoury’s case, she showed up with a spoon.

I’ve always had problems with student papers and opinion columns. As educators, we tend to not teach opinion writing very well and in most cases, people who write columns don’t care to learn what we do teach. My opinion editor almost had an aneurism one year when she was interviewing potential columnists because of this. She asked each kid what he or she wanted to write. The answers varied, but the rationale was the same: I don’t care what you want to read. I want to write what I want to write about, even if I don’t fully understand it. When the editor asked each kid what was the most important aspect of a column, the answers ranged from a good use of vocabulary to a willingness to use exclamation points. Finally, she lost it on one kid and said, “No, you idiot! It’s research! You need some facts in there!”

This column isn’t one of the worst I’ve read, but it definitely fits the writing pattern I’ve seen: Take a stand because you like/don’t like something, offer little in the way of insight and then come across as somehow morally superior because you have a column through which you can pontificate.

In the pre-Web days, you might get a letter to the editor or two based on your ignorance. As a student who wrote really shitty columns, I know I got a few of those. Today, however, this is what you get: a backlash that could knock the asshole off Newt Gingrich.

The thing that stuck with me was the editor’s response to the chaos. He defends his decision to let it run (good call), he protects his staffer without becoming a douche (good call) and then he makes a point about where all this outrage is going (best call):

 

What has baffled me more than anything is how much people care about this issue. Last month, we reported that this university gave money illegally to (then) County Executive Chris Collins' political campaign and that UB President Satish K. Tripathi broke SUNY regulations. We got almost no response.

I respect people's attachment to their tattoos and the personal and emotional value they hold for many. But as a student hoping to make my career as a journalist, I would also like to believe that the public cares about issues that extend beyond themselves.

 

As an adviser, I can relate. One year, a paper I advised uncovered the way the university had set up its mandatory meal plan system to force students to fail. The way the money worked and the prices were set, almost every kid had some money that went unused. This money was then filtered into an 8-figure stash that the university used to do various things it felt were necessary. All of this was under the radar until one kid broke the story.

The response? Deafening silence.

I’m always amazed at what we give a shit about. A few months back, I wrote about how Buffalo Bills fans were raging against a local columnist who told them to chill out about the 2-0 start to the Bills’ season. The fans told columnist to get back in the kitchen, wax off her moustache and stop being a cunt. The Bills finished 6-10, losing eight of their last nine games.

Guess the view is pretty good from the kitchen…

Look, if you like your tats, fine, but a raging defense of them against an ill-informed freshman at a college newspaper is probably not the best use of your oxygen. The people I know who are really into them, including one of The Midget’s classmate’s parents, don’t give a shit what other people think about their ink. If you’ll pardon the pun, they’re comfortable in their own skin.

However, the world is bigger than the Hello Kitty my 6-year-old already told me she wants to have stenciled on her arm some day.

If our current state of vitriolic indignation is any indication, there’s enough outrage to go around.

Malaka Of The Week: Susan G. Komen Foundation

Dissing the Susan G Komen Foundation would have once seemed like shitting all over motherhood, the flag and apple pie. This week, however, the Foundation has cut off funding to Planned Parentohood for MAMMOGRAMS. This is as egregious a case of institutional malakatude and cowardice as I've ever seen. Women could die as a result of this "policy shift.'

The best thing I've read on this subject was by the fabulous Mary Elizabeth Williams who is herself fighting a virulent form of cancer:

Along the way, Komen has become the McDonald’s of cancer — an easy-to-remember brand with a logo that demands little thought or effort from the consumer. Write a check, buy a ribbon, voila! You get to feel like you’re curing cancer.

It’s not that Komen is some questionable, Wyclef Jean-esque mess. It gets high marks from both the Better Business Bureau and Charity Navigator. Yet this is an organization that has repeatedly come under fire for its extravagant promotion of itself as an organization dedicated to a “cure,” when only a small portion of its expenses go to, you know, curing cancer. Komen itself cops to portioning just 24 percent of its funds to research – and 20 percent to fundraising and administration. For an organization with reported revenues of nearly $350 million, that’s still a lot of money for research. It’s an awful lot for itself, too.

This is a problem I often have with establishment charities: only a small slice of their bounteous funds are spent on research. How expensive can all those pink ribbons be? A mere 20% for research is obscene.  What they should do is spend some money on a backbone and refuse to cave into political pressure from  crazy people who value the "unborn" more than the born. The Komen Foundation can fold one of their pink ribbons five ways and stick it where the moon don't shine...

I'll let Mary Elizabeth have the last word about the Foundation's malakatude:

Women’s healthcare is not about lace-trimmed scarves and bottles of perfume. It’s sure as hell not about some feel-good, lip-service version of what my colleague Rebecca Traister calls “infantilizing Pepto-ed advocacy.” It’s not even — for anyone still stupid enough to think Planned Parenthood is some giant fetus-killing complex — about abortion. It’s about screening. It’s about treatment. It’s just that simple. The further away an organization gets from that mission, the more women suffer. It’s just that simple too. And you don’t make good on a “promise” to your dead sister by selling out women who need you most. 

Student media at odds with educational paths

Loyalty and affiliation, once earned and given, become a large part of who we are. It is for this reason that I still wear T-shirts from my student media days, root for the Cleveland Browns through every double-digit loss season and have never once thought about “Newting” my wife.

It can also be something that blinds us a bit to the reality of our surroundings.

I thought about this when one of my previous stops along “career highway” fell into my newsfeed this week. The editor-in-chief of a blog that critiques the Mizzou J-School was told to resign from her post because she would be working at the Columbia Missourian that term.

The Missourian is a unique enterprise, by the very definition of the word. The one-of-a-kind media outlet is owned by the university, edited by faculty members and staffed by students. The paper is Columbia’s citywide a.m. daily and competes with an independent p.m. paper. (It also has obviously expanded into digital outreach over the years since I left.)

The students land on staff as writers, photographers, designers, copy editors and more when they sign up for specific classes that focus on writing, photography, design and so forth. In other words, to graduate in this program, they have to work at the paper. In order to work at the paper, they must not work at other competing media outlets, as per a conflict-of-interest policy.

This clearly bothered the founder of J-School Buzz, David “Teeg” Teeghman,  who took to JSB and lambasted the decision. Aside from calling the policy “antiquated,” he explained his views on how the policy does a disservice to student journalists:

(Kelly) Cohen would have learned a few things as JSB’s editor-in-chief that she will never learn at the Missourian. She won’t learn much there about analytics, what content generates traffic and buzz, the difference between stories an audience “wants” and “needs,” how to run a popular news blog, how to respond to critical commenters and tweeters you know personally, how to keep a site running when it gets a rush of unexpected traffic, and so on. We can talk about how all the sequences are becoming converged, or whatever, but JSBers learn a unique skill set no other Mizzou newsroom can offer.

Comments from the current Missourian editor, Tom Warhover, and current and previous members of the Missourian crew take issue with various points Teeghman makes. To his credit, Teeghman clarified his original aims, defended some of his positions and made amends when it was clear he was wrong, all things I’d expect from any good journalist.

The policy isn’t new and this isn’t its first challenge. In the pre-blog days, the conflict had always been between the Missourian and the Maneater, the student-run paper. Students hated that they had to give up their allegiance to a paper that allowed them to do great journalism and run their own show to come to what they viewed as a weaker place to be told what to do. Students I knew often planned their Missourian terms around their Maneater desires. One kid kept taking summer courses to “get the Missourian over with” so he could get back to the paper and eventually run the place.

It wasn’t the greatest way to view the education you were shelling out tons of money for, but I did understand it.

And I do understand Teeghman’s desire to keep his brainchild up and running. On occasion, I’ll check in on a few projects I started at various stops in my career to see if they’re still going or not. I still hate one J-school that took a decent idea a couple of us built, bastardized the unholy hell out of it and then declared it a “great thing” despite protestations from students each term. I was also saddened to learn one project I launched, involving high school students and press freedom, was discontinued.

Still, as Thomas Wolfe once noted, you can’t go home again.

I also understand that student media outlets often find themselves scratching and clawing for respect and dignity, desires most professional media outlets simply dismiss as “cute.” It always galled me when the pro papers got dibs on a story because sources would call them first. I’d have six kids working on breaking a story in a student newsroom somewhere, backchannelling the shit out of something, begging for interviews and pursuing the piece with the vigor of starved pit bulls. Once it became clear the sources couldn’t stop us from publishing the thing, they’d call up the pro paper and just give them the whole story, which they’d publish before we could. It was infuriating.

It was also infuriating that these “important” outlets never wanted to give the student media their due. They’d take info from the student stories and offer no credit to the paper as a source. They’d be snotty to the kids at press conferences. They’d pretend that student media didn’t really exist.

My first job interview at a pro paper involved sitting down with the city editor and going through my clips. He was polite enough before asking which of the six stories I submitted that I liked the best.

“That one,” I said, pointing at a piece about a house party being busted and $80,000 in fines being levied against the hosts.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I beat you guys on it.”

He gave me this whimsical look and explained that his paper had bigger concerns than this and how this kind of thing wasn’t a big deal. In other words, “We didn’t lose to you. We weren’t even playing the game. It wasn’t worth our effort.”

Nice.

Still, the guy hired me and a few months later, the paper did an “in-depth look” at how cops were busting house parties and handing out monstrous fines. I’m sure in his mind, he still wasn’t behind the story. He was working on something much bigger and more important that we little student people couldn’t understand.

Despite all of this, I get the reason for the policy.

The paper has to look out for its own interests, but also the interests of the students. Even without a direct link to JSB, I’m imagining life in the Missourian newsroom for Kelly Cohen will be a bit awkward. It always was for the Maneater “lifers” who were sentenced to the term at the CoMo. When the Maneater broke a story and left the Missourian in the dust, these kids got the stink-eye. The prevailing thought: “You probably knew about this and didn’t tell us.”

Or, worse yet, when things happened around the Missourian that led to news, if the Maneater covered it, look out.

One year, a kid who was a reporter for the Missourian was busted for theft of some pricy artwork after he and several friends broke into a historic home on campus. As the Missourian was trying to figure out how to write this, word got around that a Maneater reporter was working on this story. One editor was really ticked off and was wondering aloud which of the Maneater kids in the newsroom had tipped our hand.

None had. Shockingly, the Maneater folks knew enough to... (gasp!) check the police blotter and (swoon!) interview people.

And this is with a policy that prohibits working for two places at once. Without the policy, I’m sure the paranoia would have been worse.

We all have to make choices in our lives as to where our loyalties lie and how we let them play out. Sure, it sucks for Teeghman that he’s being shorted a staffer and yet, anyone who knows anything about the school and its policies could see this coming. No, this policy isn’t antiquated or stodgy or whatever descriptor seems easiest to fling when you’re losing a fight like this one. Companies all over the place have rules about what you can and can’t do as a member of their organizations. When it was time to take that pro media job, I had to quit my gig as the city editor at the student newspaper. I was as pissed about this as Teegham is about the Cohen situation. I kept thinking, “This is horseshit. These people just don’t get who we are and what we do.” Eventually, I was the one who figured it out.

I also figured I didn’t want to become the real version of this fictional guy.

If it’s any consolation to Teeghman, I peek in on my other old jobs from time to time, but I’m not horribly invested. When the schools I graduated from call and ask for money, I politely decline.

However, when my student newspaper does its annual alumni fundraising drive, my check goes out in the mail the very next day.

Loyalty, once given, remains long beyond the strictures of policies and the reach of time.

Today In Wisconsin Republican Duck-Fuckery

Funny, he doesn't look like an utter halfwit here.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman (R-Lead Industry). Why is he the duck-fucker of today, you ask? Simple. Just look here:

The bill, introduced only last week, is moving at breakneck speed, getting a hastily scheduled public hearing on Thursday. Introduced by Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, the proposal also apparently has the blessing of Republican leadership. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has signed on as a co-sponsor.

"When a court does something that's as outrageous as (the Thomas ruling), when they retroactively tell businesses that were producing paint in 1900 or 1910 that not only can you be liable for damages ... but you have to be liable for any paint produced by any paint company in the United States in 1900, obviously you can't operate commerce with that type of decision made," Grothman said at the hearing.

Business interests were also enraged by the Thomas decision when it came out in 2005. In fact, they launched a successful electoral crusade to tilt the liberal court toward the conservative side. In 2008 the author of the Thomas decision, former Justice Louis Butler, lost his bid for reelection after business interests spent millions to back Michael Gableman, an obscure, conservative circuit court judge.

Grothman said Thursday that the pending lead paint cases were "filed at the last minute" to beat last year's Feb. 1 enactment of the state's "tort reform" bill, but Earle said he filed his cases before the law was even proposed, some as early as 2006.

Grothman didn't restrict his comments to the bill. He questioned the notion, which has been well-documented over decades, that paint in the home can cause lead poisoning.

"Quite frankly, it's scandalous that lawyers are leading people to believe that the lead paint in these houses is responsible for the increases in the (lead) levels in their blood," he said.

That's right. This man just turned his back on a century of research that says that lead paint is--and I understand this is a stretch here--bad for human physiology and child development.

Just take a second to drink that in.

You know, I understand that industries like buying legislators and having paid mouthpieces. But if I were looking to buy some influence in the state legislature, I'd want better shills than this.

Here's some actual evidence (other than the link provided in the Cap Times piece).  An excerpt from the "Historical setting" section of that article:

Although the audience for this journal is generally aware of the history of lead toxicity, it bears repeating from the perspective of the current debate about lead exposure standards and, indeed, exposure standards for other neurotoxicants. Lead appears to have been first discovered and mined in Turkey in 6500 BCE. Its low melting point and malleability earned it recognition for its utility even at this early stage in human history. Those properties are also the reasons for its extensive exploitation and resulting deposition in the environment. The Romans widely mined and smelted lead from 500 BCE to 300 CE, which resulted in a spike in atmospheric lead release that was not eclipsed until the industrial revolution. Greek physicians provided the first clinical description of the health effects of lead in 100 BCE.

Widespread commercial use of lead soared with the recognition that lead-based paint was both highly protective and durable. The hazardous properties of lead pigments did not go unrecognized, however (Table 3). In 1887 a U.S. medical report documented childhood lead poisoning that, in 1904, was linked to lead-based paint. European governments moved to ban lead-based paints in the early 1900s, culminating in a ban by the League of Nations in 1922. Despite reports of childhood deaths related to consumption of leaded paint on cribs, the U.S. did not begin officially to phase out lead-based paint until 1971, with the passage of the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act. The gradual elimination of lead-based paint inventories meant that houses painted before 1978 may contain lead-based paint. Confronted by the publicity about the health hazards of lead, the paint industry aggressively promoted lead-based paint products including using children in their advertisements (Markowitz and Rosner, 2000a,b). Dismayingly, lead-based paint continues to be a major source of lead exposure in children.

So there you have it. Your Wisconsin GOP, people: Objectively pro-child poisoning.

Is that hyperbolic? Doesn't seem like it to me. This jackass just said that lead paint in houses isn't responsible for higher concentrations of lead in people's blood. He also lied about the timing of the lawsuits in question. He's a schmuck through and through. And that's what you can expect from the modern GOP--distortion and dissembling.

Well, enough of this shit. That's all I can think on this shit for one evening.

Odds & Sods

I'm in for yet another week from h-e-double hockey sticks so I thought I'd go the quick blurb route. I also decided to pander to all the ice people out there by making a hockey reference. Guess I'm still capable of some puckishness.

The No Harbaugh Bowl Blues: I was pulling for the Harbaugh brother coached Ravens and Niners yesterday and we know how that went. I didn't watch either game but it sounded like the heartbreak of psoriasis for those who did since nobody but their own fans root for either the Foxboro Bradys or the Jersey Elis. The good news is that I can skip the Stupor Bowl this year.

NOLA Crime Report: Murder and mayhem are off to a fast start in 2012. It usually doesn't heat up until it, uh, heats up. BUT the crime on everyone's mind was the wasted Bama fan who teabagged a wasted LSU fan after the BCS Championship. I nearly made the aforementioned teabagger, Brian Downing, malaka of the week but the story moved too fast: it broke in Deadspin a week after the game and within a few days the Tide teabagger was identified and surrendered to the NOPD. He's charged with sexual battery, gross malakatude and egregious idiocy. Me, I was just relieved that it wasn't the Brian Downing who played for the ChiSox, Angels and Rangers back in the day.

One may be able to get away with murder in the Crescent City but not dragging one's microscopic sized testicles across a drunk's face. We have standards in NOLA albeit low ones...

If you want to see the notorious video follow this link to Deadspin.

Why Is Anyone Shocked? There's some consternation around the interwebs over Aerosmith's Steven Tyler's rendition of the national anthem before the Foxboro Bradys game. Tyler sounded like he was being strangled with one of his own scarves, which is how he *always* sounds.

Newtmentum: Finally, a political note. In the immortal words of Mitt Haircut I was delighted by his loss and Newt's win. Like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama is lucky in his enemies but who thought it would be the same enemy? Newt has been wildly unpopular for at least 15 years and only has a shot at this thing because the GOP has a bad case of rabies. It's time for Mittbot to reboot in the wake of these Newtastic developments. Btw, there's a great piece online by the author of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein, about *why* Mitt Romney became such a slippery, unprincipled douchebag: it's because his father was too candid and too principled.

One mo thang: thanks, South Carolina.

Tough Cookies

Courtesy of the most Republican parish in the Gret Stet of Louisiana:

A Girl Scout troop on the north shore has collapsed after parents withdrew their children in the wake of a decision by a Colorado troop to admit a 7-year-old transgendered child. That's a move they saw as an objectionable leftward drift in Girl Scouting.

Louisiana Girl Scouts have never been asked to admit a transgendered child, said Marianne Addy, the spokeswoman for Girl Scouts Louisiana East, which provides scouting activities for 17,000 girls. And soon after the Colorado decision last fall, Louisiana Scouting directors, who are free to set local policy, decided transgendered children would not be allowed should one ever apply.

The policy is now posted on the group's website.

But Susan Cramond, a troop leader who had two children in the group that met at Northlake Christian School in Covington, said she and other like-minded parents felt Louisiana Scouting policy-makers should never have had to discuss the transgender issue in the first place. Cramond said when she first contacted Louisiana’s Scouting leaders to ask whether a transgendered child could be accepted into a local troop, she didn’t get the quick and unequivocal “no” she was hoping for.

So Cramond and fellow troop leader Susan Bryant-Snure, a Lacombe doctor, informed other parents. She said they collectively decided to abandon the Girl Scouts and seek affiliation with American Heritage Girls, a similar organization that describes itself as a “Christ-centered leadership and character development ministry.”

Bryant-Snure said by banning transgendered children, the Louisiana board eventually made the “right decision; they just made it in a way that made us nervous.”

Ain't bigotry grand? Guess they're afraid that a transgendered Girl Scout might whip it out and roast their weenie over the old camp fire or some such shit.

My friend Kevin who is Allman directed me to the most obnoxious comment at NOLA.com, which is notorious for its nasty right wing commentariat:

Surely a red flag went up for me when it was revealed that the Girl Scouts is a platform for promoting sexual promiscuity, contraception and abortion.

So, eat a Samoa and promote decadence? Cool. I'll take samoa right here on the floor. Holy Dinah-Moe Humm, Batman:

 

41-5 Without Debate

It strikes me that the world the Wise Old Men of Washington and their fetishists imagine, the one where The Right People just get together and decide everything without any real need to worry about what people actually want to see done, is actually here now: 

The City Council today approved two controversial ordinances that would increase penalties for protesting and expand Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s authority over city contracts in advance of this spring’s NATO and G-8 summits in Chicago.

The measures cleared the council as protesters demonstrated outside the chambers in City Hall, claiming the ordinances would infringe on their First Amendment rights. One protester, a 22-year-old man, was arrested after allegedly striking a police commander, said Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Darryl Baety. Charges are pending.

The council voted 45-4 to tighten restrictions on public gatherings. Protesters will now be required to describe the sizes of signs, banners or sound equipment in permit applications for protests and the minimum fine for violating the ordinance will increase from $50 to $200.

Aldermen Will Burns (4th Ward), Robert Fioretti (2nd), Leslie Hairston (5th) and Nicholas Sposato (36th) voted against the ordinance. Ald. Mary O’Connor (41st) was absent.

The second measure, which gives Emanuel greater control over city contracts for the summits, passed 41-5 without debate.

Governing is hard. Better to just kick back and let Those Who Know Best take care of it. 

A. 

 

'Do not sit beside me and whine'

One of my favorite mythological stories is that of Ares, god of war, returning from the battlefield at Troy. He was wounded in the fight and complained about it to his father, Zeus.

Dad’s response was logical and predictable:

'Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar.
To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympos.
Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles.

Republicans love war, but only when they’re winning and when they’re not getting hurt.

Or when the war doesn’t involve complicated things, like, you know, words.

Billionaire Warren Buffett recently upped the ante on his earlier claims that he wanted to be taxed more. In an interview with Time Magazine, Buffett said he’d be willing to match dollar-for-dollar all contributions Republican legislators made that would go toward paying down the national debt.

He called out Sen. Mitch McConnell, adding, “I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell.”

McConnell is worth about $10 million. He’s the senior senator from Kentucky and the leader of the senate minority.  He’s probably also getting a ton of likeness rights cash from Cabbage Patch Kids people, so a challenge like this shouldn’t be a huge problem.

And yet, this was the response from some literacy-challenged email monkey in McConnell’s office:

Sen. McConnell says that Washington should be smaller, rather than taxes getting bigger. And since some, like President Obama and Mr. Buffett, want to pay higher taxes, Congress made it possible for them to call their own bluff and send in a check. So I look forward to Mr. Buffett matching a healthy batch of checks from those who actually want to pay higher taxes, including Congressional Democrats, the President and the DNC.

The response, of course, makes no sense as a) Buffett said he’d match Republican contributions, not those from Democrats, b) the three sentence statement switches from third to first person at least once and c) ignores the fact Buffett isn’t proposing a tax, but rather a donation to pay down the debt.

I wanted to tell McConnell to grow some balls, but I realized that would be insulting to the ball-less everywhere. My grandmother is tougher, stronger and more aware of the debt situation than McConnell and she’s been dead for 10 years.  

Republicans have made a living on the “get tough” ideology. In fact, they’ve adopted the word “tough” as a standard for keeping themselves in office. They want to get tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on illegal immigrants, tough on foreign powers, tough on toughness…

And yet when someone actually gets tough on them, they scurry like roaches when the lights come on.

In Wisconsin this week, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald filed a complaint with the GAB, arguing that the people who are attempting to recall him got an extra day to collect signatures. Of course, this is horseshit, as the GAB explained the rules back in November, explaining how the clock worked and when signatures were due.

Did Fitzgerald bitch then? Nah.

It’s only now that it looked likely that he’d be told to squeal like a pig that he’s pitching a fit. Or, as one volunteer put it, acting like “the kid who's not winning at Monopoly throwing the board up at the end."

(And of course, the folks trying to recall him just made a “Thanks but no thanks on that extra day. We can recall this asshole now” press statement on Friday.)

For McConnell and Fitzgerald and the other members of the Usual Gang of Idiots, it’s great fun when you’re running the show, calling the shots and demanding things of other people. When someone turns the tables, especially when you think there’s NO WAY that could happen, it’s going to suck.

When you decide to fight that way, though, you need to be able to dish it out and take it.

A scientific rationale as to why designated drivers are hard to come by

Scout got to the Walker fiasco before I could, so I thought I’d take a moment to explain one of the heaviest mysteries I’ve encountered to this stage in life.

Tonight, we’re going out to celebrate The Missus’s birthday with some of her friends. She has some “normal” friends like A and a couple people she met through social engagements and previous jobs. Then, there are her work friends, who have been known to plow through an entire bottle of Red Stag and then give each other “cleavage checks” before they head out to the bars.

We will be going out with the latter this evening.

Early in this process, I volunteered to be the designated driver. I don’t like getting shit-hammered, I really hate hangovers and if I’m getting drunk, I’d like to make sure I’m safe about it.

I think it goes back to my first experience with a drunken driver. When I was 17 or so, my best friend decided no one was driving his car, dammit, and he was just fucking fine. Thus, I found myself riding shotgun, sober as a judge, on the U.S.S. Look Out For That Fucking Light Pole.

When we were inevitably pulled over, my good friend had the misfortune of breathing within 10 feet of the cop who asked, “You drinking?”

True to form and without missing a beat, my friend answered, “Why? Are you buying?”

It was all down hill from there.

In any case, DDing isn’t exactly popular around here. I know at least two people who have court-mandated breathalyzer-keyed ignition locks on their cars and I can’t read the local paper without seeing something about some idiot who showed up drunk to a DUI hearing.

Dennis Miller, back when he was funny for the right reasons, once noted that there are two groups of people in the country now: Those who get pathetically drunk in public and the rest of us poor bastards who are now expected to drive these pinheads home. The first group seems to be growing while the second group seems to be shrinking.

Here’s my logical “Doc-based” explanation as to why.

Let’s start out with the concept of you and a fellow barhopper heading out for a night on the town. If you both have about equal tolerance and start drinking about the same time, you’re getting hammered at the same rate. You thus both find it equally difficult to walk, you both are OK when you want to tell the other person “just one more thing” and you each think the other is fucking hilarious.

You have a very small differentiation in how much of an asshole you are being in your own minds because you’re both drunk. You both might be raging assholes who are puking all over yourselves and trying to grab the bartender’s genitalia, but neither of you notices because the gap between your assholic behavior is so small.

I have labeled this differentiation the A.T.G. or “asshole tolerance gap.”

See Figure 1:

Now, let’s think about you, your drunken friends and your poor designated driver. As you continue from rich to good looking to bulletproof to invisible in your alcohol-soaked mind, your DD is sitting there, sipping a Diet Coke and wondering why everyone else at the table thinks it’s hysterical that the woman at the next table is wearing a “Where’s the Beef?” T-shirt over her A-cup-sized chest. It’s also unclear to your DD why one of your party has been staring at the jukebox for 45 minutes trying to find “That one fucking song… you know what I’m talking about? By that chick… With the tits… And… Fuck, man… It was just here!” Meanwhile, the one girl that everyone hates because because after two drinks she makes it clear that when she says “Let’s blow this place!” it in no way means she’s planning to leave, is over in the corner trying to seduce someone’s husband.

It’s not just your friends that become a problem at that stage for the DD. Your own perception of reality has become something between that of a kaleidoscope and an acid trip as you suddenly come apart on your DD in one of the following ways:

 

1) The “I love you” attack: This is marked by several staggering passes at your beloved DD, who is doing his/her best not to topple over and spill Diet Coke all over the place as you fall slobbering on top of him/her with a “You know I love you, right?”

2) The “horny toad” approach: Alcohol lowers your inhibitions until you suddenly feel like Don Juan or Bella in Twilight. Either way, you sense nothing but yourself, your groin and the DD. There is likely to be a lot of groping, fondling and the inevitable line of “What’s your fucking problem? Don’t you want me?”

3) The “fuck barter” conundrum: Drunks want several things all at once: Food, more booze, sex and sleep. The last one, they really don’t cognitively want, but their body’s putting the squeeze on them to lay down, vomit and start the road to recovery. Still, if you’re drunk, you’re fighting that urge because you “so totally want breakfast/Taco Bell.” Thus, you will offer to trade your DD anything, including a rim job, for the chance to get a stack of waffles or a burrito supreme (no those aren’t euphemisms).

Here’s a tip from me to the rest of the DDs out there: If he/she says, “I will blow you right now for some pancakes,” don’t expect head and don’t bother with the IHOP run. The drunk will be asleep before the second traffic light.

4) The “Dylan Thomas” fight or flight mechanism: Some folks are angry drunks or violent drunks. Some are stubborn drunks. The best way to deal with these drunks is to not be around them in the first place. However, the DD needs to make sure they get home alive. Thus, after what seems like six minutes to you but is actually about 19 hours, the DD will do the “hey, it’s time to get going” thing, which will trigger a “do not go gentle into that good night” moment. You don’t wanna go dammit. That DD fucker isn’t the boss of you. He isn’t the king of Dirk. People can’t tell you what the fuck to do… All of this leads to either a drunken slapfest fight or you running through the parking lot in the middle of a snow storm wearing nothing but a bra, a pair of vomit soaked jeans and one shoe. And if you’re a woman, you’ll likely be wearing even less than that.

At the time you are engaging in any/all of these behaviors, you appear to be totally rational and in the right. Of course, you’re so drunk you spent three minutes making out with the wooden Indian who is guarding the entrance to the smoking lounge at the bar, so what do you know? Meanwhile, the DD is fighting the urge to try to carry you to the car and swearing to GOD that he/she will never DD again. The reason is because he/she sees reality while you are growing more and more and more disturbed and assholic.

Thus, the A.T.G. is much wider.

See Figure 2:

 

 Everyone has an asshole tolerance threshold. Some people can tolerate anything. Take my mother, for example, who works with eighth graders all day. Her tolerance levels are beyond anything I can possibly comprehend. I really think she could have an armored car dropped on her from the top of Empire State Building and emerge unscathed with a “That all you got?” smirk on her face.

Other people are way too sensitive for their own damned good. I remember getting an earful from a former colleague who was incensed at the dominant-male-hegemonic-hierarchial-paternalistic-hegemonic-hegemony of this world after someone in our group made the mistake of referring to a “covered sewer access opening” as a “manhole cover.”

However, for most of us, we have a moderately OK level of tolerance. When someone farts in public, drops an off-color joke or makes an inappropriate movement, we can grit our teeth, blow it off and move on with life. We don’t like it but we tolerate it.

And yet we all have our limits, which is why the A.T.G. is such an effective and rational explanation for why we have fewer DDs and those who do DD don’t like it all that much.

That said, my other theory, known as the “Who the fuck puked in my car?” axiom, also seems promising.

Vaclav Havel, R.I.P.

A genuinely great man has died today at the age of 75. Vaclav Havel was a playwright, dissident, statesman and Zappa fan. He'll be missed.

 

 

Memo from the owner’s desk: Go fuck yourself

Patronizing local and national media have made it their business to explain to me and about 200,000 other folks all over the world that we’re rubes. The reason? We plunked down $250 (plus $25 for a handling fee) to purchase a piece of the Green Bay Packers.

When the Packers, the nation’s only publicly owned major sports franchise, made an offering of stock on Dec. 6, the shares began flying off the shelves. The timing for the Packers couldn’t be better: The team was coming off a Super Bowl-winning season, the team was 12-0 and Christmas was about three weeks away. Add those things up, and you’ve got a lot of folks who were interested in becoming an NFL owner.

Truth be told, this is the second professional sports team I’ve owned. About 15 years ago, Dick Jacobs of the Cleveland Indians decided to open up his team and create a stock sale. The rules of baseball required that one person own a controlling interest in the team. The rest of team? Hey, he could give out shares until his eyes bled.

Most owners balked at this, as by making his franchise public, Jacobs was forced to open his books to anyone who wanted to see them. That’s not a good thing for a group of rich dudes who always plead poverty when they decide they’re not getting enough love or they want the taxpayers to fork over some cash for a new stadium. They’d rather open their jugular than open their books.

Still, Jacobs blew them off and offered stock for $15 a share. It paid no dividends, but it was a tradable commodity (unlike the Packer stock). In his book on the Indians, Terry Pluto recalled a conversation he had with one of the Indians’ PR guys about the sale.

The guy asked Pluto if he planned to buy stock. Pluto laughed it off. He said that the stock paid no dividends, held no voting power and was unlikely to increase in value. The PR guy told him, “That’s all true and I have no inside information here, but have you ever known Dick Jacobs not to make money on a deal?” The guy said Jacobs was a master at making a profit, even when no one else could see how he was going to do it.

A few months later, my birthday rolled around and I had forgotten I’d asked about the stock.

Dad hadn’t.

He knew a guy at work whose wife was a broker and was willing to forgo her fee. Dad and Mom bought me 10 shares, a bargain for them, as the stock had sunk to about $6 per share. When I opened my gifts, I had to open them in a specific order. I got an Indians shirt, an Indians glass and an Indians bumper sticker.

“You need this stuff,” Dad said, “since you’re an owner…”

The last gift was the stock. It had my name on it, 10 shares and a beautiful drawing of Jacobs Field on it.

Over the next few months, I received “important guy” paperwork from the team. I got prospectus info, voting rights info and all that stuff. I think I voted on two things as an owner, if I remember correctly. Of course, my vote didn’t count. Jacobs was still running the team.

Somewhere around 1999 or 2000, I got a certified letter in the mail. It explained to me that Jacobs was selling the team and that the new owner, the Dolan family, was taking the company private. As part of that deal, the team was creating a forced sale of stock.

This basically meant I had two options: Sell the stock to the Dolans at an established price based on what they paid for the team or don’t and my stock would become invalid. The price they established was about $25 per share.

I didn’t want to sell. I wanted to own part of the team. That was the whole point of this exercise in the first place. However, as I wouldn’t be owning the team either way, I sold and made a pretty nice profit. Not nearly as nice as Jacobs did, but still it was a good deal, even if I didn’t want to make it.

To help salve the wound, the team agreed to cancel the certificates of stock and send them back to the former owners. I sent mine in, got it back and it remains on my wall to this day. If the team reopened its offering tomorrow, I’d buy again in a heartbeat.

Which brings me back to the Packer stock…

Thank you, oh all knowing and wise financial investment guys, who are trying to help me understand that I won’t make money off of this deal. I’ve got between four and six college degrees (depending on how you count them), I’ve resurrected two financially bereft student media outlets and I’ve even managed to not trade in my cow for some magic beans. I think that when I read that I get no dividends, I can’t sell it for a profit (or even to get my money back) and that this is not to be viewed as a financial investment, I’m pretty well versed in how this isn’t like buying Yahoo! Stock.

In other words, I’m a lot better off with my investment.

Also, thanks for pointing out that I have no real say as to the direction of the team or any real, tangible voting rights. Just so you know, I’ve got other forms of stock in my retirement portfolio and still pretty much have no voting rights. It’s not like the CEO of MicroSoft is thinking, “New version of Windows for this year? Hang on, let’s ask Doc about this…” Unless you’re buying a shitload of stock, your vote doesn’t count. Even then, it probably doesn’t count. While I’ll likely kid Mark Murphy (the Packers CEO) at the Lombardi Open this year about what I want him to do (since I’m his boss and all), I have no delusions of grandeur.

Also, thanks for helping me out, Sports Guy, by knocking the fact that this money will not get me tickets to the games, a Super Bowl ring or anything else. I do, however, get access to a shareholders’ meeting, a stock certificate (suitable for framing) and access to a “special owner’s line of merchandise.” Even if I got none of those things, that doesn’t make me an idiot. Just because the Packers are issuing these allegedly worthless pieces of paper to help expand the stadium and improve the facilities, that doesn’t make them crooks.

The Packers are special, and I say that not only as a lifelong fan and an owner, but also as a matter of fact. The public owns the team. No one person can have massive sway over the direction of the franchise.

This is a team that, unlike the Raiders, the Ravens/Browns, the Colts, the Cardinals, the Rams and a dozen other professional sports franchises, won’t ever hold its fans hostage and then flee to another city.  Even though the team has taken public money at various points in its tenure, it has done its best to look to other ways of raising revenue, like this stock sale. Unlike the Miller Park debacle in this state decades earlier, you won’t see the Packers waking up state senators in the middle of the night to change their vote on a stadium bill and foisting tax hikes upon residents in multiple counties.

What this sale did was say, “Hey, if you want a piece of the team and you want to help us out with some renovations, here’s how we’re going to do it.” When the Brewers constructed Miller Park on the backs of the taxpayers, people went nuts and rightly so. And, oddly enough, research has shown that publicly funded stadiums are shitty investments for the public. Go figure.

As for the Packers, I supported the team, I supported the expansion and I’m fine with that. No one forced any of these naysaying assholes to pony up money for this. Consider it a refreshing change from how these things are normally handled. If you live in any of the areas listed in this link, you’re paying for your team to stick around and you don’t own shit.  And, if the owner doesn’t get enough money, get the perfect stadium or get a cookie, he/she can pack up and leave and you’re still stuck with the bill.

And I’m an idiot?

So, thank you, omnipotent media members, talking heads, concerned citizens and other Debbie Downers out there who feel it is their job to mock my choice of purchase. I appreciate your dimwitted concern and your complete lack of understanding. I know I’m not getting what you perceive to be a commensurate benefit, but trust me, there are far worse ways to spend a couple hundred dollars when it comes to a football purchase.

If you decide to come around to my way of thinking, I’ll see you at the owners meeting.

If not, feel free to STFU.

Sincerely,

 

Doc
Minority Owner, Green Bay Packers

Deep iCrime Wave Thought

We've all gotten used to seeing people doing remarkably stupid things with their smart phones. Criminals have noticed so the latest NOLA crime wave is a high tech variation on the old snatch and grab: there has been a wave of smart phone robberies/muggings in the last few months. Some of them have even happened in broad daylight on busy streets. I wondered if we were on the cutting edge of this trend but it seems to be commonplace in big cities around the globe.

So, the next time you're walking down the street texting or tweeting just remember to pay attention so some bozo won't snatch your device. In short, be smart when using your smart phone because muggers have the hots for the smarts:

 

Virginia Tech

This is the argument I’ve been having in my head prior to writing today’s post. I cannot promise you this will be fair or balanced, despite some efforts in those directions. I can promise I’ll try not to write in all capital letters or exclamation points as way to build consensus among readers.

---

For the second time in five years, I was frantically searching newspaper websites, TV websites, college media websites, college media listservs, university home pages, Twitter, Facebook and everything short of MySpace (does that thing still exist?) trying to find out if a friend of mine who advises media at Virginia Tech was dead at the hands of shooter.

Or if her students, who despite having no journalism school to fall back on and yet have rushed head-on into danger (and will continue to do so) in order to make sure others know what they need to know about a tragedy that continues to unfold in front of them, are dead.

And with that level of fear and panic comes oddity: When the police essentially figured out it was one officer and the gunman who were dead, I was thinking, “Thank God it was only two people this time.” Then, I smacked myself in the face thinking, “Jesus, what’s wrong with you? Two people are dead. The hell do you mean ‘only.’”

And after that comes reflection: When we were moved into our new offices, we found out the labs were key-card activated and that you could no longer set the doors to be constantly unlocked. Thus, you either had to leave the door partially open or keep locking people out. I remember thinking, “Yeah, what has better odds? Me locking myself out or me trying to lock myself in?” Now, I wonder…

And with all of this comes rage: I’m in a state where people take their kids out of school for the opening of the deer-gun season and yet I never got into the idea of guns. They’re dangerous. They’re unforgiving. They create consequences that ripple far beyond what a 2-cent piece of lead should be able to create.

They’re often wielded by people who in many case aren’t thinking about any of those things and instead are thinking about how it gives them power and dominion over something else. How it evens the playing field. How it provides them with an equalizer in which logic, knowledge, law, security and 100 other things can be laid to waste because they possess cylinders of power that they can unleash as they see fit.

They’re also wielded by people who have no intention of ever using them in that fashion. They want them because they believe it is their right. They want them because, contrary to cozy White America’s rose-colored beliefs, sometimes the law that is meant to protect them doesn’t. Or turns on them.

They’re also a symbol of freedom to people, much like the flag, the bald eagle and the all-you-can-eat buffet at the local Golden Corral. One of the things that stuck in my head in watching the clip at the front of this thing is that Toby never really deals with the first part of that question: What makes the amendment I like better than the one you like?

People hate the First Amendment and have gone to great lengths to squelch it, diminish it or circumvent it. Words have more power than guns in many ways. They’ve raised and halted revolutions. They’ve toppled dictatorships and given rise to freedom. They’ve chased corruption out of the White House and given people a reason to believe. As this country, and dare I say this world, has learned over the course of history, a bullet can kill, but words can do so much more.

As much as I hate mouthy teens, obnoxious bar-based know-it-alls and generally annoying wing nuts, I would still stand up gladly to protect their rights to speak as they see fit. In critiquing high school papers, I can tell the ones that are allowed their First Amendment rights and those that aren’t. The free papers expose bullying, discuss important issues of sexuality, take on school board shenanigans, fight for school pride, exalt school achievement, deride hypocritical policies and provide their readers with value, meaning and knowledge. Those that don’t get those rights often sound flat, defeated and like a voter at a Cold-War Russian election: We’re here because we have to be, but don’t imagine for a second that we think this is any good. With all that this amendment can do, it is no wonder that people don’t like it, especially if they’re catching the brunt of it.

And yet it’s the Second Amendment and its slap-dash application that pisses me off today, because fear has a random galvanizing effect on most of us. When a kid writes a story for the high school paper about a group of girls giving blowjobs, the first reaction is “How could the paper write such a thing? We need to get rid of this rag. Can’t we do something about it?” When an asshole shoots a cop for no discernable reason, my first reaction is, “Why the fuck did he have a gun? Can’t we do something about this?” It’s not rare and it’s not productive.

I’m sure that most of the gun-related crimes in this country don’t come from people who took the concealed-carry courses or were taken by their mom/dad/someone to the range and taught to respect weapons. I know people who hunt and yet oppose loosening restrictions on guns. I know people who have served in the military who wouldn’t own a gun if you paid them. I know people who hate guns and yet want concealed carry laws because of their views on freedom. The gun debate isn’t a stereotype war.

But I keep coming back to the question, “Why did we make guns sacred?”

We ban drugs because of the potential danger they have, even though we all know that if we were able to rid the world of every mind-altering substance, people who wanted to get high would spin around on their lawn until they fell over to get a dizzy buzz.

We say that access to the products makes people more likely to use them, although studies indicate that the more “secretive” you make something or the more “taboo” it feels, the more likely people are to want it. If you banned vegetables from this country, you’d have kids on your street corner paying $20 a hit to their carrot pusher.

We rely on simple slogans like “Just Say No” to try to stem the tide of people saying, “Fuck yeah I want another hit,” not because their stupid, but because they made one step down the rabbit hole and they can’t climb out despite their best efforts.

And yet, when we’ve tried to apply those same basic tenets to gun control (other than the slogan thing. Not sure a “Don’t fucking shoot people” bumper sticker would be a big seller.), people pour out of the woodwork with their bumper sticker arguments about how if you criminalize guns only criminals will have guns.

Decisions are never made well in the aftermath of a shock to the system. We have mandatory minimums for drug arrests, in large part, because people freaked out after Len Bias died of cocaine intoxication. The TSA is allowed to inspect my colon for polyps because people freaked out after 9/11. And any gun-control efforts made now will reek of over-reactive liberal horseshit because an idiot with a gun tore the scab off a still-healing wound inflicted four years ago.   

Dear Journalists: Please Stop

Send your best reporters!

Attention, dear news media: A woman with 19 kids who miscarries the 20th is not news.  It's just not.  I realize that, by posting this, I'm doing a share of feeding the beast.  But stories about the Duggars are the "real" news equivalent of sportsyakkers blithering on about Brett Favre, so please: Stop.  For the sake of your profession, just stop. 

I'm not even going to make a joke here about statistical significance,* because, really, these people are probably truly upset.  Fine.  But this absolutely does not concern anyone outside of that family and their acquaintances. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a mandatory blogger ethics panel to attend.

*I was also very, very tempted to tag this entry "Sieve," but I managed to fight through that.

NOLA Notes: Mayor Of Simpleton

This is more of a suburban note but I prefer to confuse y'all whenever it tickles my fancy. Kenner is a rather benighted suburb of New Orleans whose sole claims to fame are that they have drive through Daiquiri stands and it's the location of Louis Armstrong/Moisant Airport.

Pretty much everyone here pronounces this dreary burg's name "Kenna." It's even turned up on some t-shirts made by two local companies. The one at the top of the post is made by Dirty Coast and the one below is a Fleurty Girl production:

  

Why am I going on about this? The Mayor of Kenner, Mike Yenni, recently took umbrage over his town being called Kenna:

Kenner Mayor Mike Yenni is not amused. Some shops that carry T-shirts with slogans of New Orleans-area neighborhoods have been selling shirts misspelling Kenner and including the slang term for "bro." Some T-shirts say "Kenna bra" or "Kenna Brah."

"It's Kenner, not Kenna," Yenni, a native of the city, said Friday, at a meeting of his Economic Development Committee.

The city was established in 1855 and first called Kennerville, after the Kenner family who owned sugar plantations on land that is now south Kenner.

Yenni chastised people who end the city's name with a vowel as well as the T-shirts that poke fun at the city, some including an image of a woman's brassiere. Any way you spell it, Yenni said, it's got to end. "This is Kenner with an e and an r on the end of it," he said.

Such precision from a man who changed his last name to that of his politically powerful Grandfather and Uncle both of whom were the President of Jefferson Parish. I had a Yenni to name him malaka of the week but preferred trotting out this XTC classic to mock his humorlessness:

 

 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - "The Cain Mutiny" edition

OK folks - looks like the Putrid Potpourri Edition is gonna have to be put off one more time,

Let's suit up, enter the airlock, and see what's been happening on the Cain Trainwreck.

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Cain Denies New Allegations, as Woman Claims They Had 13-Year Affair
FOX News ^ | 11-28-11 | FOX News

Posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:16:15 PM by Lazlo in PA

ATLANTA -- Herman Cain on Monday pre-emptively denied a forthcoming accusation by a woman who is expected to say she had a 13-year affair with the Republican presidential candidate.

In an apparent effort to get ahead of the story, Cain appeared in a cable news interview to say the woman is "someone who I know, who is an acquaintance, who I thought was a friend."

MyFoxAtlanta.com released some details of the story, which is scheduled to air Monday night, shortly after Cain appeared on CNN -- identifying the accuser as an Atlanta businesswoman named Ginger White.

"It was pretty simple," White told the station. "It wasn't complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware I was involved in a very inappropriate situation, relationship."

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

There have been rumors that the Regime had something else up their sleeves to slam Cain again. This may be it.

1 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:16:20 PM by Lazlo in PA

Denial:

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To: Lazlo in PA

She is bufugly and looking for money.

2 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:19:09 PM by coon2000 (Give me Liberty or give me death!)

.

.So if she were gorgeous she's be believable? And he was already giving her money.

To: coon2000

I just saw her on Special Report. She is a hard looking broad and they said she was unemployed. She looks like a perfect candidate for chicanery by this Regime. She had absolutely nothing in the way of proof of any affair and was also very vague.

8 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:23:38 PM by Lazlo in PA (Now living in a newly minted Red State.)

.

.

To: Lazlo in PA

This is ridiculous. Where do they does he find these women?

13 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:25:06 PM by RockinRight (If you're waiting to drink until you find pure water, you're going to die of dehydration.)

FIFY..

To: Lazlo in PA

Someone needs to “James O’Keefe” these MSM bastards who are setting up Cain,

What? Dress them up like 80's movie pimps?

they need to tape phone calls of the DNC offereing money to get people to tell lies about Cain and blow it all up in the faces.....

16 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:26:14 PM by GraceG

Anger:

.

To: Lazlo in PA

Cain may deny it, but his attorney did anything but:

Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults – a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life

If Cain did not do it, he should fire his lawyer.

30 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:31:35 PM by PghBaldy (War Powers Res: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warpower.asp)

.

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To: Lazlo in PA

She’s a cocktail waitress at an off airport lounge for crying out loud.

The eyeliner, black dress and pearls provided by the designer Accusa Trottier

57 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:42:28 PM by Eddie01 (Liberals lie about everything all the time.

.

.

To: marty60

It takes a staggering amount of narcissism and arrogance for someone to run for president of the United States with this much baggage. He must think he is too big to fail.

60 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:44:11 PM by varina davis (We grow too soon old and too late smart -- Pennsylvania Dutch adage)

.

.

To: marty60

How about you provide some actual evidence before just spouting off?

62 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:44:41 PM by Apollo5600 (Cain 2012)

Bargaining:

.

To: Apollo5600

I guess suitable proof for me would be a saucy voice mail. For some reason Herman Cain doesn’t strike me as they type to send raunchy texts. Maybe a Valentine’s day card saying “I love you with all my heart”??

67 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:47:11 PM by ReveBM

.

.

To: umgud

Sadly, the drive-by hits will continue until Cain is nominated.

This is not going to affect my support one iota.

Hollyweird mentality pizzes me to no end.

70 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:48:47 PM by OhioBuckeye ("Here sir, the people govern." - Alexander Hamilton)

.

.

To: Lazlo in PA

It’s the typical slimy DNC Cr*p, any kind of dirty, filthy, no good trick is OK if the end result is what the filthy SOB’s want. They are all hypocrites and liars, I hate commies and socialists with every fiber in my body. A pox on them all, may they all die screaming of rectal cancer every single last one of them!!!

80 posted on Monday, November 28, 2011 5:51:36 PM by mongo141

 

.

Whups - seems like we've veered back into Anger.

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Depression and Acceptance below the thin blew line...

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Free speech at $50 an hour

Gov. Deadeyes is apparently trying to find a way to keep those dirty hippies from showing up for all these annoying protests at the state Capitol.

His solution? Charge them for it. (Check out the policy)

According to the MJS, Scott Walker’s administration has decided that it will hold protestors liable for any costs associated with their free speech.

Yes, that’s irony.

Or stupidity.

Or a Constitutional violation.

Or maybe a shithead trifecta.

In any case, the policy took effect Thursday and will have a “learning period” through the middle of December. The goal, the administration notes, was to clearly identify current rules and establish ways to provide “equal and continuous access for all Wisconsinites to their state buildings in a way that is reasonable and safe.”

This is what the administration considers “reasonable” as per the policy itself:

Groups of four or more people must obtain permits for all activity and displays in state buildings and apply for those permits at least 72 hours in advance. The policy requires permits for 100 or more people outside the Capitol. The policy does provide some leeway for spontaneous gatherings triggered by unforeseen events.

 

I know we’re the Dairy State, but let’s not print our laws and edicts on Swiss cheese. Look at what this is saying:

- Four people (or 1/5 of the Duggar family) acting in concert are at risk of violating this rule if they show up in the Capitol and do ANYTHING without a permit that was sought at least 72 hours in advance. The policy explains that the state police receive hundreds of permit requests per year and that the processing of the event permit can take upwards of a month. While state officials note that there will be no enforcement of this based on the political position taken by the speech, I’d bet that if the Scott Walker Fan Club showed up unannounced to rally for the governor, they wouldn’t be fined or forced to apply for a permit.

Of course that’s probably because there’s only three people in that club at this point and one of them works in the building…

 - The policy is nebulous in about 812 areas, not the least of which is this variable known as the “spontaneous event” clause:

Permits are required for any event occurring in any area inside or outside of a state building unless the event is a bona fide spontaneous event. This paragraph does not apply to events occurring on the State Capitol Grounds.

How, pray tell, does one determine to what degree this is a “spontaneous event?” And who gets to make that determination? Is a flash mob a “spontaneous event?” Theoretically, it should be as the underlying purpose of a flash mob is for random people to show up and do something “Glee” like in front of others and then disappear. That said, if you look at the wording of this notice, you could clearly make the argument that it’s not spontaneous, as someone has planned it, promoted it and people have engaged in it. Basically the things that the policy outlines as being fineable.

- The rule extends beyond the steps of the state buildings and appears to be able to levy costs against people who are in anyway involved in anything that might end up possibly being a protest:

 

Individuals or organizations that organize (note: love the redundancy), sponsor, promote or participate in an event may be held jointly and severely liable for law enforcement expenses arising out of the event.

 

So, it’s not just the big dirty hippie with the bull horn they want to fine but pretty much anyone who helps get people to show up, anyone how tells other people about the event or even shows up at the event. An even more insidious reading of that rule indicates that if you were to pass along emails about a protest, communicate about a protest or in any way get near this thing, you could be liable. Who gets to determine what levels these people are liable for costs? How exactly are you going to bill them?

Obviously, lawyers are going to enjoy smacking the administration around on the issue of free speech, which if has to be government approved and then you have to pay to do it isn’t really free. However, this also violates a second tenet of the First Amendment: the right to peaceably assemble. While the courts have held time, place and manner restrictions can be applied to the Amendment, this fails to fit any of those limitations as the policy is overarching in terms of its requirements and should fail to pass the laugh test.

And of course, forcing people to pay for police presence that they don’t want anyway will likely lead to less-than-peaceable assembly. Which of course is what the state wants, so we can have pictures of no-gooders punching "real citizens" on the news (this time without the palm trees in the background) and the “taxpayers” can cluck their tongues at these protestors and wonder what’s wrong with this country.

Malaka Of The Week: Machine Gun Santa

The "honor" actually goes to the Scottsdale Gun Club in Arizona. As you can see above, their idea of holiday spirit is taking pictures of heavily armed people with Santa.Holy Machine Gun Baby, Batman.

It's 5 bucks for members and ten for anyone nutty enough to think this is appropriate holiday, as opposed to cannon, fodder. It's a limited offer, so if you wanna look like an idiot, go to Scottsdale and head to the gun club on December 10th. We missed the November 26th date, alas. Hmm, I wonder if Santa did any turkey shootin'...

When I heard of this malakatude, I thought it was a sick joke or that it heralded a sequel to Bad Santa, which was filmed in nearby Phoenix. If Billy Bob Thornton's character had had this idea, Thurman Merman would have been an endangered species. But it's not a joke, just tasteless malakatude whereas Bad Santa is tasteless and hilarious:

 

You say food product, I say torture

More fatuousness from the same dipshits who think that pizza and ketchup are veggies:

On Monday night, O’Reilly Factor host Bill O’Reilly and Fox News host Megyn Kelly sat down to discuss what really happened at UC Davis on Friday and whether campus police acted appropriately in showering a group of sitting students with pepper spray. Their conclusion? No big deal.

“Pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?” O’Reilly asked Kelly.

“Right,” Kelly said. “I mean, its like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”

Exactly! Like jalapeno poppers, or queso dip. Delicious. In fact, pepper spray is about 1,000 times hotter than a jalapeno, Mother Jones reports.

I tend to think of myself as hard bitten, cynical and unshockable but the pepper spray cop episode actually shocked me. It was so gratuitous and unnecessary. If pepper spray is a "food product" why isn't it ever used as such? How fucking stupid do they think we are? Oh, that's right it's Bill-O so he has reason to think that his viewers are dumber than a bag of hammers and might just use pepper spray on their vittles.

The other thing that amazes me about the pepper spray episode is that almost *everyone* has a camera phone that can shoot blurry videos. Cruel, gratuitous *and* stupid. Let's call the whole thing off:

 

Cain-ful Arrogance

Herman Cain apparently blew off a newspaper in New Hampshire after blowing up while talking to one in Milwaukee.

The New Hampshire Union Leader caught the backlash of Cain’s recent gaffe in discussing President Barack Obama’s policy on Libya with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The paper video recorded the interview for its website and a segment of it, which showed Cain who answered the Libya question with the grace and certainty of a drunk trying to cross an icy street, went viral.

As a result, Cain told the Union Leader that he didn’t want his interview with the UL’s editorial board to be recorded. After a series of back and forth, Cain bailed on the deal when it looked like the paper wouldn’t relent.

Two things come out of this for me:

First, this reminds me of the joke about the scientist studying a frog. He yells at the frog, “Jump!” and the frog jumps. He then cuts off one of the frog’s legs and repeats his demand. “Jump!” and the frog jumps. He repeats this twice more, each time the frog jumps, but with more difficulty. When all of the frog’s legs have been cut off, the scientist yells “JUMP!” and the frog stays put. He screams “Jump! Jump! JUMP!” and the frog doesn’t move.

The scientist then notes in his research journal, “After all four of its legs are cut off, the frog goes deaf.”

For Cain, the problem isn’t that he doesn’t know crap about Libya, Obama’s approach to it or how many extra men it will take to hold that area in a game of “Risk.”

The problem is that a video camera was there.

Politicians used to like certainty that they could say something and if it sounded shitty, they could say, “The paper misquoted me” or “They misinterpreted what I said,” or something George W. Bush-ian that just confused the shit out of people. Now, with every human being carrying a video recorder of some kind, that’s not possible any more. Most news outlets have websites, which can show video, so newspapers are adding video, TV has always used video and bloggers and our grubby dirty unethical shithole sites are using video.

So Cain’s great Frog Deafness Corollary of 2011 dictates that he needs to get away from the video camera.

Can someone please remind him that he’s running for president? And maybe that on occasion our president will need to understand what the hell he’s doing? And that on similar occasions, he might have to be in front of a camera to explain what the hell he’s doing?

Saying you want to be president but don’t want to be videotaped is like saying you want to be a porn star but you’re saving your virginity for your wedding day and you’re camera-shy.

Second, and perhaps more important, Cain is likely to remain at the forefront of this thing until something truly horrific happens. I mean more horrific than the Libya thing… And the pizza song… And the sexual harassment… And the pictures of him at a pool party with Jerry Sandusky… (I only made one of those up.). You know, something like him walking down the middle of Washington, D.C. with an automatic weapon, acting like Hooper from “Chasing Amy.” Even then, I’m sure the Right Wing will support him for his staunch support of the Second Amendment and embrace his expressive nature and cultural diversity.

So why this guy?

Bill Maher hit this one right on the head, even though he wasn’t talking about Cain at the time: Republicans embrace certainty above all else.

It’s why Cain couldn’t say to the MJS guys, “Look, I’m really focusing on domestic policy at this time and I haven’t really looked into his approach to Libya.” He had to come up with a “THIS IS THE ANSWER!” answer for the board. Watch the video, he kept tuning up for his direct, absolute and forceful condemnation of Obama for something that he had no idea about. It was like watching someone try to light a solid rocket booster with a Bic lighter.

Whether it’s their faith, their family or their country, these people want the absolute certainty of hearing from their leader that he knows exactly what’s going on about whatever the hell it is and that he knows EXACTLY what to do an EXACTLY how to fix it. If you want to win the hearts and minds (what little they have of either), you need to bet that kind of absolutist. No time for learning, no time for discussion, no time for dissention. Grab the weapon and pull the trigger.

If you need any more proof of this way of thinking, look at how Cain followed up his LOL Catz Libya video:

“We need a leader, not a reader.”

Well, it would probably help to do some reading, on say Libya perhaps…

Even more, these idiots don’t get that you can’t boil complex problems down to bumper stickers, three-point plans or 8-second sound bites. The more you try to do this, the more often you fall on your keys and limp away.

This is why Rick Perry got into trouble… And Michelle Bachman… And… oh hell… I don’t even know what else is out there in Nutbag Valley.

But at least I admitted it.

The War is Over

Armistice Day.

A.

It's Veterans Day

Nope. No freedom being defended here.

Reposting this from Memorial Day with minor edits.

So it's Veterans Day, which means that the US is awash with mostly obligatory tributes to military personnel. 

I hate this shit.

I didn't fight for your freedoms.  In the six years I was in, I never once defended your right to vote, or to carry a gun, or to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure (that one doesn't really apply anymore, anyway), or any of the other things you enjoy as a citizen of this country.  I just didn't.  Neither did anyone who went to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam.  It's all bullshit.  It's a fucking lie that we tell ourselves and each other so that we don't have to think about why we send young men and women to serve, suffer, and die for old men's vainglorious ideas and profit margins.

I passed through Burlington, WI this summer, just before Memorial Day.  I was on my way home from plotting world domination with Athenae and decided to stop and visit the annual chocolate festival in that small town.  Who could say no to that, right?  Well, while there (this being Wisconsin), I got myself a beer.  To do so, you had to put up with the shitty metal cover band in the beer tent.  There's a 45-year-old lead singer acting a fool--pouring beer on his own goddamned head, making dumb-ass sexist remarks, saying stupid shit about his teen-aged daughter, etc.  Since that wasn't reprehensible enough, he then proceeded to thank all the veterans in the crowd, specifically pointing out one man whose--well, I'll just quote this asshole.

I wanna thank all of our veterans for what they do for us.  Every guy in the band, our fathers were all in the military.  My dad was in Korea!  This guy right here in front--his son is in Iraq right now.  He's over there FIGHTIN' FOR OUR RIGHT TO PARTY!

I wanted to rush the stage and strangle that fuck with a microphone cord. 

It's all bullshit, folks.  We don't do anything for anyone's freedom.  The military hasn't actually deployed en masse to defend your freedom in a long, long time.  Unless you call rich people fucking over the world's poor and powerless a form of freedom.  As you may have guessed, I don't.  It's bullshit.  And it needs to stop. 

I don't mind honoring sacrifice, but the military doesn't have a monopoly on that, now does it?  I also don't mind remembering military dead and wounded.  But we do it all wrong.  We just fetishize the suffering (like good Catholics, no?) without wondering why it ever happened in the first place.  Remembrance and memorial, it would seem, also involve reflection and assessment.  Just because someone died or was wounded doesn't automatically validate how he or she came to be in that state.  We send our young people overseas to be bored, pull duty, sometimes get shot at, and occasionally get hit.  Then we never ask why they're over there in the first fucking place, because doing so, apparently, does them a disservice.  What kind of jack shit is that? 

A real Memorial Day or Veterans Day (called Remembrance Day in other parts of the world) would involve commitments to cease sacrifices that don't actually, you know, do anything in the name of freedom.  Losing your legs so that Chevron can see higher profit margins is not noble.  It's a god damned shame.  Dying in the service of defense contractors doesn't bestow sainthood on the deceased.  It just means that a life got snuffed out for no good reason.  Reflexive military worship is a cancer on society.  Unscrupulous people use it to justify their actions and avoid any criticism.  That shit makes the act of asking why we should send young people to absorb bullets and get blown to pieces into some kind of subversion and/or sedition.  How fucking ridiculous is that?  Wondering if someone's death was worth the cost doesn't dishonor the person.  I don't know how we've confused evaluating the motives and actions of leaders with spitting on corpses, but we have.  And until we can untangle those things, we're just well and truly fucked when it comes to international affairs.

So this Remembrance Day, take a minute to actually reflect on the acts and deeds of people in uniform.  But that involves critical thought instead of blind acceptance of the rightness of our leaders' actions.  Honor the dead and care for the living, but don't think that people in uniform today are actually standing between you and tyranny. 

Remember that.

 

Say it ain't so, Silvio

The news about Silvio Berlusconi's impending resignation caused some concern among my friends and colleagues. Jude and several others asked how I was going to cope. I *will* suffer, but never in silence, because of the loss of the world's funniest leader. As much as I hate to admit it, it will be a good day for Italy and EU when Silvio finally goes but satirists around the globe will fly their flags at half staff. Now where the hell did I put that black armband?

The good news is that Silvio is already angling to stay on as a caretaker/interim Prime Minister if elections are held. Hopefully, he'll say or do something outrageous before he leaves the limelight.

I'll let Martin and Lewis have the last word:

 

Odds & Sods: Ick Factor Edition

It was a busy news day yesterday and many of the top stories went beyond cringeworthy into pure ickiness.

--> Women who have been groped, harassed and crudely propositioned by Herman Cain are sprouting like mushrooms after a monsoon. The latest accusation is the ickiest and it goes well beyond sexual harassment into the realm of sexual assault. Cain's hold on wingnuttia's imagination had been ebbing for days but he still has the hardcore misogynists like Rushbo on his side. What was described by Ms. Bialek was an assault, which is an unwanted touching of any kind. I wonder if the Hoaxidate has learned to keep his hands to himself. Probably not.

--> I wrote about the uplifting side of college football yesterday as the Penn State perv case unfolded. It's such an icky story that I ended up in a rare serious conversation on Twitter about it. Our conclusion was that Penn State is the Catholic Church of the NCAA. It's a good analogy since Joe Paterno has been called the Pope more than once over the years. It's time for him to go. I bet Pope Benny could find a spot for him...

---> On a *somewhat* less icky note, I saw Jack Abramoff on 60 Minutes. I don't buy Casino Jack's contrition for a nano-second BUT I now understand the secret of his success. The man could sell ice to the Inuits and synthesizes sincerity with the best of them.

---> Finally, let's move into the celebrity ickiness zone. Director Bret Ratner is well known for making "blow stuff up movies" and his latest popcorn flick, Tower Heist is a hit. Ratner harshed his own buzz by saying "rehearsing is for fags." Ratner later apologized but this has got to be the dumbest slur ever. I have no idea what the hell it means since manly directors have been known to rehearse too.

Malaka Of The Week: Shorter University

It's institutional malakatude time again. Until recently, I'd never heard of Shorter University, which is the long and, uh short of it. It's obviously not the most enlightened school:

Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school in Rome, Ga., is forcing its 200 employees to sign a statement declaring that they reject homosexuality. Anyone who doesn't sign the pledge risks losing their jobs.

Atlanta’s WSBTV reports that employees who sign the "personal lifestyle pledge" also must reject premarital sex and adultery, and other behavior the school deems to violate the Bible’s teachings. The statement also bans drug use and drinking alcohol in the presence of students, and requires employees to be active in local churches. The lifestyle statement was adopted by the school's board of trustees last month and presented to employees three days later, on Oct. 24.

All new employees will have to sign the pledge upon being hired, and all current employees will have to sign it in order to renew their contract. The pledge notifies employees that they can be fired for violating the new policy.

An anonymous employee voiced his/her concerns to the Georgia Voice:

"A question about these things is how they will be enforced. We now will live in fear that someone who doesn't like us personally or someone who has had a bad day will report that we've been drinking or that we are suspected of being gay. What happens then? There is no defined process and even if there were, there is no way to absolutely prove or disprove the accusation."

Shorter President Don Dowless told WSBTV that the goal wasn’t to offend people, and that lots of Christian schools have similar pledges. "These are biblical positions," he said.

School officials say that since the school doesn’t receive federal funding, it believes its actions are perfectly legal.

Biblical positions? Missionary I suppose, but never never doggy style.

Not only is this policy indefensible, it's stupid. Do they really expect the gay hordes to descend on their litle Christian college? Perhaps they think that "those people" will confuse Rome, Georgia with the *real* Rome and will flood them will job applications. Where have you gone Marcello Mastroanni? Yeah, I know, he's dead but it's fun name to say...

The whole thing sounds like a recipe for a witch hunt, which is the worst kind of malakatude imaginable.

Headline of the Day

It comes from a Guardian editorial about the Prince of Wales's veto power over legislation that affects him:

Prince Charles's veto: bad heir day

Yeah, it's been used before but, like the British royals themselves, it's always funny.

I'm going to hell...

...since this involves the dread Kardashian-Humphries whatever it was BUT I love these moving gif things:

Hat Tip: The Cajun Boy

As Oakland goes?

Oakland is a city with an inferiority complex: it has been in the shadow of San Francisco forever and is now outshined by San Jose, of all places. I say that because San Jose was a smallish semi-rural town when I was growing up. That was, of course, before the tech boom. Oakland remains best known for Gertrude Stein's wisecrack: "there is no there, there."

Oakland finds itself in the spotlight because of its handling of the #occupy protests:

Police and protesters scuffled in the streets of Oakland on Tuesday as more than 1,000 people marched on city hall to voice anger over scores of arrests at an "Occupy Wall Street" camp.

Police dispersed the crowd once with what appeared to be a stun grenade and several other times set off tear gas to drive the demonstrators away from a downtown plaza that had been at the center of the conflict.

Witnesses reported seeing several people taken into custody during the confrontations, but an Oakland police spokeswoman said the department would not confirm any Tuesday night arrests until Wednesday.

Protest leaders said the march aimed at reclaiming Frank Ogawa Plaza, which had served as a base for two weeks of protests against economic inequality in the city until police cleared it before dawn by firing beanbags and tear gas.

Ain't leadership grand? I got a whiff of tear gas many years ago in (where else?) Athens when the cops busted up a protest rally at Syntagma Square near the parliament. The more things change and all that shit.

I'm not sure where the #occupy protests go from here but I must admit to being surprised by their staying power. They've stuck it out much longer than expected and, if nothing else, came up with the catchy slogan about the 99%. The problem in America is that a good slice of the population wants to be a part of the 1% and doesn't give a shit about the folks they left behind. Some call it American exceptionalism, I call it American selfishness.

Autumn In New Orleans

We're having our first cold snap of the fall. The weather this October has been great but we haven't had a blast of Northern air until last night. The high today is 30 degrees less than Monday. It may not be much for our readers from the frozen North but I quite enjoyed breaking out my jeans jacket for the bus ride to the shop.

It's easy to tell, on a semi-chilly day like today, who lives here: New Orleanians go OTT clothingwise when it cools off. I saw heavy fleece hoodies, wool sweaters, overcoats and boots galore on my way in. It's not really that cold but some people insist on breaking out their winterware at the earliest opportunity.

I was punked by one of our readers the other day. He also follows my twitter stream whereon I natter on about the weird shit that happens to French Quarter merchants. Anyway, this rather tall gent entered and made a crack about the astonishingly low doorknob and then asked "Where do I catch the ferry to Mexico?" I immediately smelled a rat but thought he'd been sent by my friend Chef Mars whose life isn't complete without messing with me. He runs a pretty classy eatery, Louisiana Bistro, so I've never retaliated in kind but I've been sorely tempted. As Bela Lugosi said in Glen Or Glenda: "Beware, take care." That means you, Mars.

Louisiana is currently having the dullest statewide election in recent memory. The state Democratic party collapsed post-K and it has gotten worse in 2011: there are no major Democrats running for Gret Stetwide office. As recently as 2003, the Democrats were dominant. This weekend, Gov. PBJ will be re-elected and the only interesting race is for Lt. Gov. It's a relatively powerless office but since PBJ is widely expected to skedaddle outta here as soon as he can it's a more important contest than usual.

The Lt. Gov race features the old school semi-moderate Republican incumbent, Jay Dardenne, versus Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. You may have seen Mr. Fat Fuck during the BP disaster, he spent the entire time chasing cameras and publicity. Anderson Cooper called him "America's Bubba" but I call him a malaka. He's supported by Bitter Vitter, which is appropriate because Nungesser was also a client of the Canal Street madam. And a cheap one: she swears that she had to go to his father to get paid.

Nungesser's campaign has been relentlessly negative and teabagger oriented. His opponent's main flaw  is that he's NOT insane. Since in some ways this is a shadow campaign for Governor in 2015, I'm planning to sigh deeply and vote for Dardenne. He's not really my cup of political tea BUT in this climate, he's the least bad Governor in waiting that we could have. He also won the vile puns category in the Bulwer bad writing contest in 2005 and rumor has it that I like puns. I haven't a clue as to where that rumor started. I've never taken in roomers so it can't be that...

Okay, time to circle back to the weather and post two of my favorite change of seasons tunes by two of my favorite bands, the Kinks and Squeeze:

   

 

 

Jindal blows a gaping hole in Perry's waterline even wider

 

All right - excuse me for getting out of my box, but I don't see this anywhere else on the interwebz. It made me choke on my ham, onion, and jalapeno omelette.

The MTP bobbleheads had the surrogates for Romney and Perry on this morning, and the subject turned to the M-word:

(Gregory) There’s this issue of”Governor Romney is a Mormon”, this has become an issue in the campaign, pastor Robery Jeffress introduced Rick Perry and said the following:

 (clip runs)

(Jefferson) “So we want a candidate who s a good, moral person? Or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the lord Jesus Christ? Mitt Romney is a good, moral person – but he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity, yet it’s always been considered historically to be a cult by evangelical Christians,”

(clip ends)

 (Gregory) Has Governor Perry satisfactorily distanced himself from this pastor in Governor Romney’s mind?

 (Pawlenty) Well, in my view, David, it’s disappointing that Governor Perry and others who didn’t denounce pastor Jeffress and those comments more directly, We have a country where we don’t have prohibitions on a particular church attendance for public office. In fact, it’s prohibited in the U.S. Constitution.

 (Gregory) Governor Jindal, are you disappointed in Governor Perry? Have you told him he should more formally denounce…

 (Jindal) I don’t think it’s for any of us to judge somebody else’s religious views, their relationship with God. The Bible is very clear, that’s up to God, not us. (…) It’s not for any of us to judge somebody’s faith, relationship to God, I think that would be inappropriate. The Bible is very clear, that’s not our role.

OK.

Pawlenty says that religious tests are against the Constitution, and Jindal says the answers are RIGHT THERE IN THE BIBLE!!!

Even Perry has to be doing a facepalm over this one.

Shorter LAT: Sit down, Cheeseheads, because we said so

The Los Angeles Times has taken time out of its busy schedule to let the folks in our fair flyover state know that they know better than we do when it comes to recall elections.

In an opinion run this week, the paper notes that the 2003 recall in California that sent Gray Davis home and the Governator out of the maid’s pants and into the state house was a bad outcome. They also note that: 

Recalls make it nearly impossible for state leaders to get anything done because they go into campaign mode rather than legislating mode. They worsen partisanship and, Davis' recall notwithstanding, they are usually a waste of time and money.

SNIP

Elections have consequences, and sometimes your side loses. Recalls are a useful tool when a politician commits misconduct, but that's not the case in Wisconsin. Democrats should accept that and move on.

 

In other words, from a sample of one, the folks in L.A. have determined that recalls are a bad idea and that Wisconsin should just let Governor Deadeyes do as he sees fit. Move along, Democrats. Nothing to see here. Please disperse.

Allow me to retort.

Yes, elections have consequences and we know that. It doesn’t take the Almighty Gods of Journalism ™ to tell us that. We’re dealing with the consequences of an election right now. Thanks for reminding us.

And the line about recalls making it impossible for state leaders to get anything done is really stupid. When someone is doing something that does nothing but create damage, you probably want to stop him. Or are you the type of folks who let your kid jump out of a moving car or shove a firecracker in a cat’s ass because you don’t want to curtail his sense of self-expression?

It’s also refreshing to know that the L.A. Times views the only area in which a recall should be used is during the case of misconduct. I wonder where the editorial board draws that line. Is it fucking the maid? Is it being an alcoholic? Is it dropping the “N” word on someone? Seems like these are the things that draw the most attention from the media when someone in some position of authority does them.

Or is it malfeasance of an epic level? Is it an attempt to plow under the other political party through actions that are so egregious that they merit lawsuits and massive protests? Is crushing public workers as you pad the pockets of the rich? Is it pulling off the election version of bait-and-switch, in which you appear to stand for vanilla politics to win and then decide to go all rocky road on our asses? Seems to me these things are precisely what a recall should be used for. It also seems to me these things fit Scott Walker to a T.

Just because you fucked up and elected an action movie hero with ZERO political experience as backlash against an OMG MEEEN TAXY DEM AND HIS CAR TAX, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recall this nub-head. That your piece fails use sources or research to provide a deep argument smacks of an arrogance bred from a paternal sense of massive egotism. In other words, “We know better. We did that once.”

It is offensive that the Times felt it necessary to “set us straight.”

But it is not nearly as offensive as Scott Walker has been to the state of Wisconsin.

Today In Wisconsin Republican Heroics

Republican legislative consultant (file photo)

In their continuing quest to right all of the wrongs in the state, the Wisconsin Republicans have made a great leap forward.

Assemblyman Joel Kleefisch (R-Newgate) woke up recently, opened the lid of his coffin, and said to himself "You know who has it too easy around here?  Ex-cons.  Blah blah!" (Note--this is only a partial transcript.)  So the good Representative took it upon himself to do something to rectify this grave injustice. 

He thought and he thought, and he puzzled some more, and it finally came to him.  "Aha!" he said.  "I'll make it so that bosses, the most downtrodden group in this society, can refuse to hire people (or fire them) based on prior felony convictions!  This will restore balance to the world, and give those poor bosses a break they so sorely deserve."

So he drafted up a bill with the aid of the Captain up there, and presented it to his fellow freedom-defenders in the legislature today.  You see, Wisconsin law already allows employers to consider convictions in relevant fields when hiring, but it's not enough that a forger be kept away from banks and financial institutions.  What about poor Wal-Mart?  Who will stand up for them when a former embezzler is looking for a minimum-wage job?  Joel Kleefisch, that's who.  I mean, if those felons had wanted to reintegrate themselves into society, they should've thought of that before they committed their crimes, right?  It's only right that someone who was once in possession of one gram of cocaine should never be able to secure employment again.  Same for someone who gets into a bar fight and gets busted for felony assault. 

Thank Jesus for brave patriots like Joel Kleefisch.  I know there's no one who would be more approving of harsh penalties for criminals that Christ Himself. 

And the best part of this all?  There are no possible ill effects!  Fine, upstanding employers get to have ever-more control over the workforce, criminals won't be taking jobs from reg'lar folk, and everyone lives happily ever after.

 

 

In all seriousness, it's this kind of motherfuckery that makes me cheer for that goddamn meteor.  I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet that Rep. Kleefisch has ties to the for-profit prison "industry."  By making a class of people permanently unemployable, where do you think they're gonna be headed?  And, of course, there's the racial aspect to all of this; Black people make up about 6% of the population of the state, yet over 60% of the people sent to prison here are African-American.  That's a crying goddamn shame, and it's a stain on the state.  So who's disproportionately hurt by this?  The poor, and (especially) Black. Finally, since one of the stipulations of the bill is that counties and municipalities cannot pass more lenient laws, I guess we can finally put that "Republicans believe in greater local control of government" bullshit to rest, right?

Will this pass the legislature, get signed, and become law?  I don't know.  But in any event, this is some Class-A Motherfuckery, Joel Kleefisch. 

Silvio Strikes Again

My main man, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, has been trying a noble experiment: keeping his foot out of his mouth. The experiment has ended. Silvio is back and tackier than ever:

Italian opposition politicians have been joined by a leading Catholic publication and even government MPs in expressing outrage after Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi joked he was thinking of renaming his political party Forza Gnocca, which translates as Go Pussy.

The criticism came as Berlusconi, whose political career is widely considered to be on the wane, was accused of parking an old friend in a safe job after a former pet food executive was nominated as the new head of the Venice Biennale, Italy's foremost art and architecture exhibition.

Responding to the slide in the polls of his Freedom People party caused by the financial crisis and his sex scandals, Berlusconi reportedly told MPs he had commissioned surveys to find a new name for the party, which started life in 1993 as Forza Italia, or Go Italy.

"Some of polls say the best choice would be Forza Gnocca," he joked, according to the Italian daily La Stampa.

Pier Luigi Bersani, the head of the opposition Democratic party, called the quip despairing, while party colleague Rosy Bindi said: "Now the farce is turning into tragedy."

Democratic senator Anna Finocchiaro said: "These are not jokes but a reflection of the view that Berlusconi and his coalition have of the country – backward, vulgar and squalid."

I wonder if Silvio and Scott Brown have been hanging out together? The PM throws a helluva bunga bunga party, Senator...

You've got spunk! I hate spunk!

As a journalism educator, one of the basic lessons I teach the kids is that they need to answer the 5Ws and 1H. The “who, what, where, when, why and how” are the staple of all good stories. In the case of this story on Anthony Garcia of Albuquerque, we’ve got a pretty easy rundown:

Who: A fucking idiot

What: Served semen to a woman in a store

How: Disguised as yogurt in a sample cup

When: Recently (as in who gives a shit; he pled out Thursday)

Where: New Mexico, where apparently people need better hobbies (Or at the Sunflower Market, which I’ve never heard of before but will be actively avoiding)

 

When you start reading this twisted tale, it’s just a comedy of tragedy. Start with the guy who decides it’s time to go into the backroom and provide his own “sample” of something. Even if this guy is as quick to launch as a bottle rocket, it’s taking some time, some privacy and chutzpah to get that cup filled.

Second, read the criminal complaint. The woman immediately notes that the sample “tasted like semen.” Uh… Wait… I had something for this… Honestly, I’m sure I’d be grossed out as well. Despite the porn myth in which women loudly demand that men turn their faces into a Jackson Pollock painting, weasel whip is not meant to be consumed in that fashion. HOWEVER, I’m not sure I’d broadcast that I could name that taste in one lick. “Hey, this tastes like the jizz I had last night! You sure this is yogurt?”

Finally, I’ve got to give a shout out to Adrastos, as after the spunk peddler had been outed as providing this lady with a shot of salty dick snot, he came back with, “It’s Greek yogurt. It’s full of protein and it’s good for you.” I think the Greek community should sue.

Getting back to the journalism moment here, we’re missing missing the most important element:

Why.

What possesses someone to do this?

Why did he decide this particular woman was just itching for a gulp of spooge?

Why didn’t they make him do an allocution or something so we’re all not sitting around wondering if there’s a vast yogurt/jackoff conspiracy and he’s but one role player?

All humor aside, not only was this disgusting and tasteless, but also dangerous and horrifying. If the guy is doing this, who's to say he doesn't have something in that little to-go cup that couldn't cause this woman harm? It also makes you think twice about those nice people who offer samples. I had to pick up our Market Day order and the lady was pushing samples of turtle cheesecake on people for next month's ordering frenzy. I took one, ate it and was fine, but then I caught this story.

I'm sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. Or as sure as I can be.

However, I'm probably going to treat those sweet little ladies in the grocery aisle like people treated Jack in the Box after the e.coli outbreak.

Just add this story to my overflowing “what the hell is wrong with people” file.

NOLA Potpourri for $200, Alex

October is my favorite month of the year in New Orleans. The heat finally breaks and the chances of a tropical system starts to diminish. It's also been a very newsy few weeks here so I thought I'd share.

The big story right now is the passing of former Archbishop Philip Hannan at the advanced age of 98. Hannan was a larger than life figure. He was a chaplain with the 82nd Airborne in World War II and jumped with his flock thereby earning a series of nicknames, my favorite being the Parachuting Padre. Holy Father Mulcahy, Batman.

Hannan hasn't been the head holy joe in NOLA since 1988 but he's stayed around and enjoyed a busy retirement. His other claim to fame is that he was close to the Kennedy family: he married Jack and Jackie and officiated at JFK, RFK and Jackie O's funerals. The tourists have been pumping me for info about Hannan and it's easy to tell who the Democrats are: they're impressed by that detail, the Goopers shrug and say "whatever." Hannan hewed to the church party line on issues involving sexual politics but preferred talking about the church's stands on social justice. On the debit side, he buried his head in the sand when it came to perv priests but managed to get through that with his popularity intact.

Yesterday there was a procession that brought Archbishop Hannan's body 4 miles from a seminary Uptown to St Louis Cathedral. I popped out and saw the end of this funereal promenade and it was quite a sight. The tourists were quite interested and astonishingly well-behaved. The Archdiocese's public teevee station, WLAE, has had a macabre video stream up showing the viewing of Hannan's open casket. I *hate* open coffin funerals; especially when the deceased was elderly and frail. Somebody should have called the Fisher brothers...

I'd originally planned to write about other NOLA news but there's a shop to be tended and stuff to be sold so it's time for me to STFU for now.

Come see what's Brewin'

Although every fan thinks his or her team deserves something, I can’t help but think the Milwaukee Brewers really deserved tonight.

This is the team that wasted Robin Yount’s prime, oversaw the exile of Paul Molitor and was content to slide into the recipient role of MLB’s revenue-sharing system. Year after year, we saw mediocre baseball and year after year we stopped caring about the team by mid-July.

For years, the only thing worth paying attention to when it came to the Brewers was their Hall-of-Fame announcer Bob Uecker. Uke kept us smiling and laughing all the way through those horrific seasons of loss after loss.

In the middle of the 2000s, it was the Brewers who were the joke.

The stadium’s retractable roof leaked and it played host to the only tie in All-Star Game history. The team was on the way to a 56-106 season and any hope of respectability seemed farfetched at best. It would be the first of three-straight sixth-place finishes in the moribund NL Central.

In 2005, Bud Selig’s family finally sold the team, which finished at .500 for the first time in more than a decade. After slipping back to a sub-.500 record, they finished second  in the Central with a 83-79 record.

The 2008 Season was “The Leap.” Owner Mark Attanasio pulled off the biggest trade of the year and perhaps the most important trade since the last time the Brewers made a run at glory. He pried CC Sabathia from the Cleveland Indians for a trove of prospects. Manager Ned Yost rode him to a 10-2 record, often pitching him on short rest. With 12 games left in the season and the playoffs slipping away, Attanasio fired Yost and replaced him with bench coach Dale Sveum. The team went 7-5 over that stretch and on the last day of the season secured the Wild Card for the National League.

Things looked like they would be returning to mediocrity, with two sub-.500 seasons. With stars Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder heading toward potential free agency and the team regressing, Milwaukee had every reason to believe it was headed for disaster.

Instead, Attanasio and GM Doug Melvin stopped panicking and started building. They traded Cutter Dykstra for Nyjer Morgan.

They sent Brett Lawrie to Toronto for Shaun Marcum, giving them a front of the line starter with a moderate and consistent record.

Then, they went for it: They gave up four prospects and essentially gutting their farm system for Zack Greinke, a one-time Cy Young Award Winner.

While this could be perceived as going “all in” on one shot at a winner, Melvin picked up pieces that could be had for cheap or players whom he could control beyond this year. Unlike the Sabathia deal, which was a half-year rental, Melvin knew he could get players who were young, hungry and valuable and yet proven and strong.

The Brewers started 0-4 and finished April at 13 and 13, but after that, they never had a losing month. They gained on, caught and eventually passed the Cardinals for first place. The one-game lead grew to 10.5 before eventually evening out a bit. The papers started publishing the “magic number” for the team to clinch.

It’s been 29 years since Milwaukee had a division winner. It has won only one playoff game in that time span as well. And yet, unlike 2008, the Brewers seem to belong. They’re not the back-door slider that luckily caught the corner of the plate.

They are here for a reason. They’re fun, not funny.

And I couldn’t be more grateful.

Politically Correct Fruit

Word of warning to people who like to make professional sporting events more interactive: Know your fruit.

Philadelphia Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds, who is black, had a piece of fruit flung at him while participating in a game against the Red Wings. The exhibition, which was taking place in Ontario, has garnered a great deal of press coverage primarily because the fruit in question was a banana.

While people may be quick to jump to the conclusion that this is racism, this might be unfair to the idiot responsible. We have not heard from the flinger, so God alone knows if he was tossing it at Simmonds as a racial insult or because he ran out of other forms of animals, minerals and vegetables.

It could have been just a fruit of convenience.

When I used to cover crime in Madison, I caught a report in which a guy was walking with a couple female friends and a drunken lout made an inappropriate comment to one of the ladies. When the guy stepped in to say something, the whole thing got physical and he got the unholy shit kicked out of him. As the violence ensued, the attacker let loose with various vulgarities, including “faggot.” For this choice of verbiage, police were trying to charge him with a hate-crime enhancement.

I knew the guy who got beat up. He was a Level 24 poon hound. He spent more time between women’s legs than the Victoria’s Secret fall underwear collection. Still, the guy kicking his ass hit a trigger word and that made bad more than a bit worse.

As a matter of course, I’m leaning toward the racism when it comes to Simmonds’ situation, but I’d like to use the FD forum to suggest that idiots who feel the need to test out their throwing arms at sporting events pick a better fruit.

I humbly suggest the politically correct kiwi.

My rationale is as follows:

The size: It’s about the size of a lemon, making it convenient to carry and easy to hide as you attempt to enter the arena of your choice. In fact, if you’re wearing a big coat, have a decent sized purse or you still use a fanny pack, you can take five or six of these things, just in case you aren’t satisfied with your first throwing effort.

The hardness: Apples, oranges, lemons and pears are too hard. You hit someone with one of those from the upper-deck of a decent stadium or arena and you’re likely to cause serious injury. Peaches, nectarines and the like are too squishy, so when they hit, you’ve got to stop the game to clean the ice or scrape up the goo off the grass. Mangos, melons and grapefruits? You're looking at rotator cuff surgery. Kiwis have a nice shell on them that protects them from shattering on impact, but are soft enough inside (if you get them in a fairly ripened state) to not do any major damage.

The color: The turd-like hue can convey your displeasure and people can still see it on TV. It can show up on grass or ice. Works for either way.

The PC factor: Bananas have that same “outer-shell, mushy-center” thing, but again, there’s that whole racism thing. Kiwis are brown and fuzzy on the outside, showing a softer size of people’s general crankiness. Inside, you’ve got black seeds and a white core, living together, intermingled in harmony. If aliens are discovered and start to dominate our games, you’ve got the green fruit built right in. As these things look like fuzzy testicle totes, the only people who should be insulted are people who look like ball sacks.

Sure you could pick any one of a dozen other fruits, but the kiwi seems perfect. It’s light, small and non-racially charged. That way, when you physically attack a player, embarrass yourself and get thrown in jail, you’ll only be arrested for being a moron and not a racist.

It Gets Better...

(Ed. Note: I wrote this after a weekend in a place that had no wifi, no cell service and more deer than people. I was stuck in the Newark Airport in what appeared to be a "boarding call auction" when it came to when we were going to take off: "3:30? Got it. Do I hear 3:45? Thank you! Anyone for a 4 p.m. delay? Yes! in the corner! Do I hear 4:15... A said if I could post before midnight, I'd be fine. Consider this early by journalistic standards. Hope you enjoy it. - Doc.)

I spent the weekend in the middle of nowhere to attend the wedding of a former student. As a teacher or a professor, you get a lot of these and since the students are usually transitory, you tend to get asked to fly all over Hell and Creation trying to meet your responsibilities. In most cases, I send a card, a gift card and my apologies for not being able to make it.

This time, The Missus and I drove to Milwaukee and flew to Detroit, where we were told we might be bounced from our connection.

The reason? “Weight restrictions.”

The Missus, who had not been properly caffeinated and is likely to kill people who make “weight-related comments” to her, told the woman, “We have a rehearsal dinner tonight.” The response? “Well, I’m sure that’s important TO YOU.” 

It’s a miracle we didn’t land on the “no-fly list” after that.

We eventually boarded the connection to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where we are quite certain we dropped a load of fertilizer on final approach and began a hour’s drive to some place that gets no cell reception. We lovingly started referring to this place as “Fugawi, Pennsylvania,” drawing on a somewhat racially insensitive joke and our own sense of how far from civilization we were.

The hotel was “quaint,” which roughly translates to a shed with a bed and an air-conditioner jammed into the wall. The bathroom was well worn, with 1960s tiling and some meat bits someone recently flossed out of their teeth stuck to the wall near the sink. When I tried to check in on FourSquare, my phone just looked at me and said, “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” It was also the first time I’d seen my phone just give up on trying to find service and just slap a big “O” on the reception meter.

On Saturday, we stood in farm field for about 10 minutes, watched a kid I taught exchange vows with a woman I’d never met and then drank until we nearly froze to death. Outdoor weddings always sound like a great until it’s 8 p.m., pitch black and you can see your breath when you are asking for your third or fourth whiskey of the night.

DJ was solid, restroom was a port-o-john and the local people (read: not us) brought a change of clothes, so they were toasty and comfortable and we were not. The night went from elegant strapless gowns to women stealing every available piece of clothing off of their men. By the time the night was over, The Missus was reduced to walking barefoot through frosted grass in an attempt to find our car in a field.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would have the makings of a rip-roaring, sarcasm-soaked post. Instead, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the Milwaukee-to-Detroit-to-Scranton-to-Fugawi-to Scranton-to-New Jersey-to- Milwaukee jaunt that cost about as much as my first car would still be worth every dollar I spent even if it cost twice as much as it did.

 --- 

In my field, you can’t pick favorites. It’s not allowed. As an educator, you need to be fair. As a journalist, you need to be fair. Put the two of those together and you get me: the guy who has to make sure everyone feels equally good or equally shitty.

Still, sometimes, you just can help it.

The kid I went out to see was a favorite. I taught him his first major writing course and disabused him quickly of the notion that the bullshit he was used to slinging wasn’t going to work here. For years, he’d been told he was a great writer and thus, he learned to eat lunch off of that appraisal. When he got to the bigger pond with bigger fish, he still tried to rely on that. It worked in his gen ed courses and his intro courses and he seemed to think it should continue.

Despite his awkwardness, his bipolar level of self-assurance and his general ability to be a sarcastic smartass, I realized he was worth the effort. I felt like the trainer who first saw greatness in Seabiscuit.

He wasn’t the best.

He wasn’t the fastest.

He wasn’t the one you’d pick first.

And, yet he simply had something that made you want to make him better.

After that first class, I never taught him again, and yet he and I always stayed connected. I served on school committees with him, he found his way to our house for Thanksgiving and so forth. The Missus adopted him and treated him like the goofy little kid in the neighborhood who wore mismatched socks and always had a runny nose. She fed him and hugged him and when shit went wrong, she told him an important truism, long before it became a trendy term:

“It gets better…”

When he graduated, he quickly fell into a trap that befalls most of the students I taught at that university. When you are at the “best school” for anything, you feel you must have a “best school” job when you leave. The students measured their value by the size of the paper’s circulation or the market size of the TV station at which they worked. It became the purest of all dick-measuring contests and he was bound and determined to win it.

When his cohorts moved from writers to editors, he felt the pull to become an editor.

When they moved forward and upward along the circulation route, he sought worse jobs at bigger places.

When digital became a bigger deal, I wasn’t shocked to see him try to be a digital guy.

Each stop was “better,” but at each stop he felt worse and his personal life didn’t help matters.

He was a smart kid, a good kid and a kind kid, which meant that in the world of mid 20s relationships, he couldn’t find a date in a morgue. The lack of companionship was always a problem for him.

“At work, I work hard and I end up getting what I want. In school, I worked hard and I ended up getting what I wanted. In love, I work hard and nothing ever comes to me. Why? What am I doing wrong?”

Despite the best effort of his female friends and those of us who knew him well, he never felt comfortable with the answer that sometimes things don’t work out that way. It wasn’t much easier when his friends were getting married and he kept hearing the hollow cliché of “Don’t worry, you’ll eventually find someone perfect for you.”

My phone was constantly abuzz with calls from his latest outpost. He’d sadly recount his exploits and wonder if he’d ever be happy. I’d put on my best face and tell him what he needed to hear, even if he didn’t want to hear it.

“Do what makes you happy. Stop chasing pointless shit. Worry less about other people and more about you.”

“It’ll get better.”

---

Somewhere along the way, the calls of desperation and sadness slowed to a trickle before ceasing all together. He’d found a job selling websites to student media and he was good at it. He felt he was doing something important for people who aspired to be where he had aspired to be.

He met a nice girl, moved to nice place and found some peace, if not perfection, in the heart of Chicago.

Eventually, the calls started up again, but with a positive feel. He wasn’t asking anymore. He was telling.

Stories about the girl he loved and the wedding he was planning.

Stories about his home and his attempts at fixing crap around the condo.

Stories about how happy he was.

Saturday, as we watched the shortest wedding ceremony ever, I looked at him as he waited with his parents. He looked as awkward as always, but yet so damned happy. He and his bride-to-be had decided against anyone standing up for the wedding. Too many people might be insulted, he explained, as he’d stood up for pretty much every wedding from 2001-2010. (Hell, look back at your wedding photos. He might be in there.) Even more, though, I got the sense that he finally had the sense that he didn’t have to impress anyone anymore. He didn’t need to be surrounded by people who would tell him what to do or how well he was doing it.

He had become comfortable in his own skin.

As the bride made her way up the hill to the site of the ceremony, she smiled without ceasing. She had this look of unending joy about her, like she had found a treasure in that field and would give up everything to keep it.

When she arrived and they met by the minister, the happiness just glowed from them. Those of us who were with someone we loved instinctively reached for that person and cuddled in. It was the first wedding in a long time for me that didn’t end with a call to Vegas, checking the line for the couple’s divorce and then immediately taking the under.

---

We spend so much time telling high school kids who are picked on for their sexual orientation, social graces, lack of money or a million other things that “it gets better.” God love Dan Savage for his efforts in this area, because someone needed to say it and plug up the hole through which the kids kept ending up in.

However, the view that high school is the hurdle that must be conquered seems troubling to me in some ways. Sure, high school sucks, but college isn’t much better. You’re on your own, you need to find your way and you often feel that everyone out there has it all figured out while you couldn’t find your ass with the help of a searchlight and a posse. The generation before you and the one before that view you as spoiled, ungrateful mysteries that need to shut up and sack up and do it the way they did, only better.

And then it gets worse, because you graduate, smile for the photo no one buys of you in your cap and gown and boom… You’re even more alone. Your friends also are foraging for an existence, the responsibilities set in and life goes from suck to blow.

You aren’t a kid anymore. You aren’t an adult in the eyes of those who have much more experience being adults. You wonder if you somehow decided to play the wrong hand and now you have no hope left.

Or, as Athenae would say, “I should have gone with the fours, but I didn’t, because I’m a dumbass…”

And then you suddenly get one good thing. And then another. And another. Your fortunes turn with luck, skill, work and faith. You realize that nothing is perfect and that’s fine. You figure out that you are grateful for things because they’re incrementally better than they were or not as bad as you expected.

And that’s how you find yourself in Fugawi, Pennsylvania on the top of a hill in a suit, awaiting the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen who can’t wait to get to you so you can begin sharing the rest of your life together.

It’s why people from as far away as California and Georgia and as close as Hawley and Narrowsville travel to that hill and stand in appreciation of not just your love and your joy but also of your perseverance and your strength.

It’s why I find myself sitting in the Newark airport watching The Missus sleep and muttering cusswords under my breath each time Orbitz tells me we’re getting delayed again.

It’s because we all wanted to be there when “It Gets Better” came true.

Editor to bloggers: I'm sick of you doody-heads. Nyaah!

School started recently and the kids in my class learned that I have one basic rule about graded work: I will talk to you about it until your heart’s content, but you have to wait at least 24 hours before you come and see me about your grade.

The reason I implemented this was to keep the backlash to a minimum. I tend to grade lower than many (read: not everyone gets an A and a hug for just showing up), so the kids tended to see the grade, freak out and storm the podium after class.

It was rage and reaction not rationale and reason. If they could stop, think about what they were doing and then approach the situation in a more “adult” fashion, we’d probably have a better outcome.

That thought came to mind today as I was reading the farewell letter of John Irby, the editor of the Bismark (N.D.) Tribune. After four-plus years in the job, Irby was retiring because he was tired bloggers and commenters and how OMG MEEEEN! they all are:

There are no absolute First Amendment or freedom of speech protections for people making online comments. But I will never be able to convince those who disagree, so how about trying to digest this: The old days have passed. Editors are not in charge of, or responsible for, everything.

I am retiring because I am tired of being the whipping boy, by one and all. My skin has thinned. Life is too short to put up with all the noise.

I can agree with Irby on one point: when you’re sick of the bullshit associated with what you do and it’s no longer worth doing well (or at least doing passably), it’s probably time to quit. Too many people hang around for a paycheck or just bitch about their problems instead of solving them.

However, the rest of this smacks of a petulant toddler, throwing a fit at Walmart because Mom wouldn’t buy him the really, really big bag of Animal Crackers.

Forget for a moment the argumentation that these comments aren’t protected speech or that freedom of the press doesn’t extend to the digital world or that there’s a difference between a private company making choices and a government agency intervening. It’s a grab bag of argumentation that would do little here other than make lawyers rich if we wanted to fight this out.

Instead, think about the arrogance of the last sentence of that first paragraph: I can’t be in charge, the good ol’ days are gone, I can’t keep you fuckers from writing what you want, so to Hell with it.

You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.

As an adviser and an editor, I’ve dealt with sane people who disagreed with me in a very loud and public way. I never really liked this, but I tolerated it. I've also dealt with nutballs, agenda-freaks and conspiracy-theory bloggers who made my head want to explode.

One such blogger had this strange notion that the student paper was some sort of left-wing rag that served as a lap dog for the university. She couldn’t do journalism, she couldn’t get her facts right and she was so over the top that there were days I couldn’t stand it. In fact, when she really got to me, I’d do yard work to just vent the frustration.

By the time she graduated, I had a great looking yard.

In an interesting post script, she’s now one of those “I’m a semi-hot, semi-dominatrix, wingnut, Fox News blogger/commentator who is getting by on bullshit rhetoric and low-cut tops” journalists for Fox. She probably makes four or five times what I do…

The point is, people who piss you off are everywhere. You can’t control that. There are good papers and bad papers, good bloggers and bad bloggers and everything in between. The “I’m taking my ball and going home” approach is a shitty one. Writing a column that takes a giant shit on these people as you run for the hills is even worse.

Combine them, and you’ve got John Irby.

It is possible to tolerate other people's opinions, regardless of how mean-spirited the feel, how uninformed the appear or how just plain batshit crazy they make you. Irby noted his "tough skin" that thinned over time, but in the end, he's no better than the bloggers he's deriding. He used his media post to whip shit back at the monkeys in the zoo because "THEY STARTED IT!"

As a journalist, a blogger, an educator and an adult, I’d like to offer Mr. Irby this piece of advice, which, ironically enough, I learned from a guy who blogs about Mustangs:

“Never argue with an idiot. He’ll bring you down to his level and then beat you with experience.”

Porn Folk, General Knowledge and the Latex Lifesaver

With a horribly shitty week here for the Missus and me, we decided it best to drink heavily. While drinking heavily, we also happened to discuss an ABC nightly news report I saw on the HIV test that brought the porn industry to a screeching halt. One of the biggest points argued about in this report was the use of condoms in the industry. Porn folk had argued it wasn’t a good idea because it would turn off viewers, who tuned in for “the fulfillment of fantasy.”

In earlier “porn” days, the films were required to be “educational marital aids.” People packed a theater to see a man and woman (who were married, supposedly) have sex in various ways so that married folk could learn something. A person, supposedly a doctor, would then explain various aspects of these acts, using diagrams during these cutaway shots.

Taking notes was practically required. (Yes that was a pencil in my pocket and I’m happy to see you.)

OK, so taking those two angles (fantasy and education), The Missus and I took it upon ourselves to do some heavy, heavy research and deep thought on this issue. (Remember, we’ve only done this for you. OK, and because we’re a bit drunk…)

After the break, you will see everything we learned in our endeavors.(Again, we're not approving or disapproving. We just report. You decide. We also stayed with "traditional" porn, as there's a lot of variants out there and we had to economize. Booze is expensive, you know...)

If you have no sense of humor or feel the need to get snooty/high horsey when it comes to topics like this, feel free to pass. (While my goal each and every Friday is to get more comments than the ferrets, I don’t need a slew of arguments about how I am evil for putting the letters P-O-R-N together in any way shape or form.)

For the rest of you, read on, MacDuff… Feel free to add your own thoughts to this important repository of knowledge.

 

Malaka Of The Week: Jackie Clarkson

Jackie Clarkson is a veteran New Orleans pol. She's currently President of the City Council, which isn't as grand as it sounds: we have 2 at large members and they alternate in the post. She is also the mother of the fabulous character actress, Patty Clarkson, of whom she is apt to brag at the drop of a hat. She is also malaka of the week after making a serious gaffe from which she seems unable or unwilling to recover. Here are some extensive quotes from Ariella Cohen's kick ass story at  the Lens:

For Blunt and the millions of non-white Americans who survived segregation, the years before the civil-rights era were fraught with daily injustices as obvious as having to sit at the back of the bus or send your child to an inferior school, and as subtle as being forced to put tissue paper on your head before trying on a hat.

“We had to abide by the rules,” Blunt said.

Given that history, public officials around the country have often avoided using that period as a reference point. Especially in the South. Not, however, New Orleans City Council President Jackie Clarkson.

Clarkson, 76, has been known to invoke the 1940s and‘50s as the city’s halcyon days. Sugary memories of her youth in Algiers, and her father, Johnny Brechtel, who helped found New Orleans Recreation Department in the late 1940s pepper council meetings. One familiar anecdote involves a 1949 issue of Life magazine wherein her father’s work with NORD was recognized for its “progressive” approach to urban recreation.

Rarely in her reminiscences does Clarkson acknowledge that the city was, at that time, building separate playground for black and white children. Most recently, Clarkson spoke of the era while praising Mayor Mitch Landrieu at a public meeting in Lakeview.

“I never dreamed I would stand here and say this city is on the best roll I’ve been since I was a child,” she told a racially mixed crowd. “For those of you who are also my age, is this not just like the ’40s and ’50s?

“It’s that good, and we are back on that roll.”

The usual rule of thumb is that when you dig yourself a hole, it's wise to stop digging. Clarkson is far too grand to do so; she obviously doesn't think she said anything wrong:

“The things Jackie’s thrilled about … the ’50s and ’60s were not glory days for me and the rest of the black community,” said Pearl Cantrelle, President of Kenilworth Civic Improvement Association, speaking at another meeting on the 2012 budget.

“I don’t like sitting on the back of the bus or picketing on the steps of City Hall.”

Cantrelle’s comments drew applause and cheers across the vast Household of Faith sanctuary. And minutes later, Clarkson was greeted with boos from the mostly black crowd after she was introduced to the crowd, having arrived a bit tardy for the meeting. As the catcalls died down and she took her seat, Clarkson can be heard on a video recording telling an aide that she’d never been booed in her life.

“We’ve wasted our time. Let’s go,” she muttered to the aide, though they both stayed.

The mayor, however, apparently didn’t hear Clarkson and decided, a few moments later, to hand off a microphone to the notoriously voluble councilwoman, so that she could explain herself to Cantrelle. And explain herself she did.

Clarkson, wearing one of her trademark printed silk neck scarves and a bright blue suit, began her speech with an earnest plea for the crowd of roughly 300 to understand that she would “never do anything to offend you.” She had “opened a business out here in the ’70s and always believed in you,” she recalled.

After Hurricane Katrina, she had gone on “international television and said ‘bring back the east, that’s a valuable part of our city’,” she said. “If that wasn’t enough to prove how much I believe in you…I don’t know what else to do.

“I’ve been out here as an At-Large Councilwoman, anytime there’s been anything important and anytime I’ve been invited,” she said.

As she continued well beyond the 30 seconds that Landrieu suggested she use for a response, angry voices began to rise around her and Clarkson’s tone hardened.

“Excuse me, excuse me – no, I’m going to finish,” she said. “I’ve never been treated like this in my lifetime, and I won’t have it.”

“I was referring to my childhood,” Clarkson continued. “I had a very happy childhood. I’m not apologizing for that.”

“Please don’t be so rude,” she scolded the crowd before explaining that her “father’s best friend in the 1940s” was Morris Jeff Sr., “a black Ph.D. who I adored.”

Ouch, Jackie C is, of course, a grand dame and grand dames do not apologize even if they acknowledge error. She clearly doesn't think this exchange was a gaffe: it's kind of like my man Berlusconi saying that Italy is a "shitty country" because they're ungrateful for his Silvioness.

Jackie C is known to be imperious: I once dubbed her the NOLA Queen of Hearts. I've never considered her stupid but answering a constituent by saying "one of my Daddy's best friends was black" is asking for it. I do wonder if she's starting to lose it mentally: she *is* 76 years old, after all. Stubbornness is a more likely explanation.

I would, however, like to thank Jackie C for her utter cluelessness in dealing with the inevitable criticism that has flowed from her remarks. Her malakatude is good for the satire business and my little buddy Jeffrey is having a field day, calling the episode The Help 2. Well played, sir.

The good news for Jackie C is that old white people love her and if there's ever a film made about her life, Patricia Clarkson would be excellent casting.

 

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Above is the view from Dr. A's office in dowtown NOLA. It looks like London in 1895 or Los Angeles in 1965.  Here's why: a marsh fire in New Orleans East has been raging for the past few days and the powers that be are letting it burn baby burn. A controlled burn is arguably a sound decision in the sticks but in such close proximity to an urban area it strikes me as malakatude. The authorities are waiting for rain and since there's no chance until tomorrow (and only a 20% one at that) we'll continue to wheeze, sniffle and hack. I wonder if they've considered calling in Burt Lancaster?

Mayor Landrieu is consulting with the Governor's office as I write this and perhaps something will happen since this will give PBJ a chance to get on teevee and speed talk. Perhaps our singin' Mayor and fast talkin' Governor could do a duet on this Kern-Harbach classic:

 

   

“That sort of Negro”

A summer ritual of mine is to reread the books I can’t live without. Two of my favorites, Terry Pluto’s “Loose Balls” and Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four,” seemed particularly relevant this week.

In one part of “Loose Balls,” Pluto is interviewing Bob Costas about his rookie gig with the Spirits of St. Louis of the ABA. One of the best and most controversial players was Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, who had a habit of missing flights, missing appearances and missing out on a career. Barnes was an immense talent, who had a penchant for things that were viewed as being “controversial” in those days, which was code for “black.” He wore a floor-length mink coat, a wide brimmed hat and drove a Bentley. He also, according to myth, had a home with 14 telephones in it, back when most homes had only one, you rented them from the phone company and they cost a fortune.

After one particularly difficult stretch of games, Barnes was on some sort of tear where he explained that the people of St. Louis were not ready for “that sort of negro.” In other words, had he been a white guy, most of this stuff would have gone unnoticed. (Although, to be fair, I’m having a hard time seeing a white guy, other than Joe Namath, who could have pulled off the fur coat thing.)

In “Ball Four,” race was a frequent topic. One of Bouton’s Astro teammates noted he wouldn’t mind being called “the colored first baseman” if they referred to his counterpart as “the white first baseman.”

Even before that, Bouton recounted a semi-serious conversation several players had with teammate Tommy Davis about being a scout. The joke became that they’d send Davis to Watts to dig up black players. As the joke continued to unfold, the satire richened with the idea that the general manager wouldn’t want men of color who were colorful, which at one point they referred to as “that Vic Power shit.”

Power, a native of Puerto Rico, was often criticized by the white press in the 1960s for his flashy and unorthodox play. His greatest sin? He didn’t catch the ball with two hands. He also used humor to defuse these situations. According to author David Maraniss, Power entered a segregated diner in the South, where he was told the restaurant didn’t serve Negroes. Power responded that was fine: He didn’t eat Negroes, but could he get some rice and beans instead?

Which brings us to the recent revelation that prior to making Cam Newton the number one pick in the NFL draft, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson questioned him about any tattoos and piercings. When Newton replied, “No sir, I don’t have any,” Richardson responded, “Good. We want to keep it that way.”

Keep in mind that Richardson is the guy who overrode his own staff to sign Jeremy Shockey, who has more tattoos than my first-period class on any given year. While he told Shockey he could do without the tattoos, that’s an after-the-fact comment and it’s not like he stuck a clause in his contract that would void it if he decided to go back under the needle.

Instead, prior to determining if Newton would be drafted first or not, Richardson appeared to warp back about 200 years when the word “owner” meant something entirely different.

The conversation seemed to smack of the “we don’t want that sort of Negro” condescension and racism that should make everyone want to throw up.

This isn’t the first time that owners and teams have had trouble in this area. In 1999, the NBA put fiery guard Allen Iverson on the cover of its Hoop Magazine, but decided his tattoos were too unruly and airbrushed them away. No word on if they tried to airbrush his cornrows into Jerry West’s crew cut.

In 1994, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott got into trouble for banning earrings on her team. When asked why didn’t want her players bedazzled, Schott replied, “Only fruits wear earrings.” She also was said to have referred to outfielders Eric Davis and Dave Parker as “million dollar niggers” and was overheard telling someone on a conference call that she’d rather have “a trained monkey working for me than a nigger.” Thus, Schott was not only racist and homophobic, but for some reason thought the heart of the problem was jewelry and the image it presented.

Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of tattoos. I've had good friends with them (including one who got a swastika on his chest, swore it was the Hopi symbol for peace and spend six years trying to convince me he was 1/32nd Native American. Somewhere along the way he got a cover-up tat of a screaming flaming skull, which was clearly an upgrade), family with them and more.

My favorite tat story: I was engaged to a woman who got a tattoo of a sun on her breast. She promptly added 75 pounds and the thing ended up looking like a stick of melting butter.

The Missus has one. When she was looking at another one, I was cringing.

Still, their bodies, their choices. And they should be allowed the dignity to make those choices.

Richardson put himself out in the public eye as being a meddling, crusty white man with a double standard approach to self-expression and that should trouble pro football. Cam Newton might or might not want a tattoo, but it doesn’t make him better or worse as a football player or a person.

If you listen to players who have tats, you’ll find that it’s often a tribute to someone important (LeBron James has his mother’s name on his arm) or a reminder of who they are or where they came from (Iverson has “Cru Thik” on his body several places as a reminder of his friends and how they stuck together through thick and thin.)

To that end, I might suggest Richardson and Newton go get one together as a bonding experience.

Newton could get the Heisman tattooed on his bicep, as a reminder of a great college achievement. (Or if you are cynical, a wad of cash, three college transfer slips and an NCAA investigation form.)

Richardson could get “stupid rich asshole” tattooed on his forehead, as a reminder of what happens when you think money and self-importance give you the right to dictate the behavior of others.

Beloit College Sucks, And So Do People Who Like Their Bullshit Lists

Now, in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em.  'Gimme five bees for a quarter,' you'd say.

Christ, it's that time of year again.  Beloit College, who I shouldn't even be mentioning, because this bullshit list is the only reason they ever get any publicity ever, has once again published their stupid fucking "Mindset List."  It's a collection of revolting conventional wisdom and pointless nostalgia that they compile, so they say, to "provid[e] a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall."

Except that's not, you know, what they do.  Mentioning that, say, there's no more Sears catalog doesn't say a damn thing about incoming college students' cultural touchstones.  The presence or absence of juries in Russian courts has zero fucking relevance to 99.9999% of college freshmen.  Something that is totally irrelevant to the majority of people cannot be a cultural touchstone.

But that pales in comparison to number four on this year's list.  Behold!

The only significant labor disputes in their lifetimes have been in major league sports.

What the fuck? 

This is a list written by people at Beloit College.  Beloit.  Which is in, you know, Wisconsin.

That mother fucking Wisconsin. 

Sweet fucking corn-fed Midwestern Jesus, what the fuck?  Are we really just being erased from all the records?  Or are these dickwads just that blind to what's going on IN THEIR OWN BACKYARDS?

Jesus, I hate pointless and stupid nostalgia, but willful blindness and ignoring reality piss me off far, far more.

Deep Libya Thought

I think one of the reasons for Gaddafi's downfall was wearing too much brown. I thought his revolution was the "green revolution so what was with the brown? So, is this the anti-green or anti-brown counter revolution?

One last thing: is it just me or does Gaddafi look like he's had as much plastic surgery as Gene Fucking Simmons?

Questions, questions, all I got are questions...

A womb of one's own?

Not to step all over what is usually other folks’ territory on this blog, but I started calling for Jude’s meteor when I heard John Tesh discussing the trend of mothers-to-be deciding to put everything from their stick-peeing info on through to their “bump charting” on YouTube.

I figured this had to be a joke or something one random idiot was doing. After I typed “pregnancy test” into the YouTube search engine and my laptop caught fire, I realized this wasn’t a joke. In fact, some of these things go on for upwards of 15 minutes. This was the first one I found. I watched two minutes and immediately felt sorry for the kid-to-be. I also felt sorry for the state of humanity, as more than 25,000 people had watched this thing.

What the hell is wrong with people? Tesh explains:

Why is this happening? Dr. Linda Perlman Gordon is a psychotherapist in Maryland. She says that pregnant women are naturally less inhibited about their bodies. After all, they’re now sharing it with another human being, and they’re okay with strangers coming up to touch their belly and asking incredibly personal questions.

Uh… No.

One of the biggest things the women in my family have discussed, at length, in front of me is the overwhelming desire to punch people who invade their space like this. We’ve often landed at family gatherings and friend’s parties where one of the participants was pregnant. About the most “personal” question we asked of those people (who we actually knew, mind you) was “When are you due?”

After that, the conversation turned to the discussion of asshole strangers who decide that laying hands upon a knocked up woman or donning a rubber glove and checking for cervical dilation is acceptable behavior at a Hardee’s.

The Missus and Mom have both noted that every self-respecting woman they know hates the idea of random dipshits who feel that since the body’s holding for two, hey, why not make it a party?

Dr. Gordon says that what’s different now is that the “me-me” generation that grew up over-sharing is starting to have babies of their own. So, it’s natural for them to post things online that used to be private.

Not to have a “Doc says/Doc says” kind of argument with Dr. Gordon, but I’ve got a different theory.

First, this is the first generation to HAVE crap like this and be able to easily video and share information. When I was a kid, it was either breakout the 8mm projector or the slides for a night of boredom. When I got a bit older, my tech-nuts uncles each bought a camcorder for about two grand (each) and filmed all sorts of crap we were doing. It took a NASA engineer to hook it up and play it back on the TV, but we could all be amused by the shit he just shot three minutes ago that we all saw. The other day, I saw a camcorder like that at an estate sale. Price? $5. No one was even sniffing. At Staples or Office Max, you can get a USB-based Flip-style HD camcorder for $20 after rebate. Or you can record it with your phone.

In other words, you don’t have to get an NEA grant any more to put this shit together. Any moron can do it.

And usually, they do.

Second and more to the point, these people are no different than anyone else who feels the need to validate themselves with something like this because it’s all they have. This is no different than the guy who is 47 and still telling high school football stories at the bar or the woman who was regaling all of us at a kiddy gymnastics session how she went to state her senior year on the pommel horse or some such thing. It’s the people who boast about their kids’ athletic achievements or grades. It’s the people who brag about kicking the shit out of some homeless guy. It’s the people who gladly oblige during the “show me your tits” portion of Mardi Gras.

It’s not a “me-me” generation. It’s a “validate-me” generation.

I understand they have the right to post it and I have the right not to look at it. It’s what makes our country great. Well, that and beer…

However, let’s not turn this into some sort of “hey this is totally natural!” kind of trend story.

It’s been around forever. It’s called “dig me.”

Malaka Of The Week: David Cameron

There are many reasons why British Prime Minister David Cameron (aka the Posh Boy) should be malaka of the week but I'll focus on his weirdest statement of this turbulent week in the UK:

David Cameron has told parliament that in the wake of this week's riots the government is looking at banning people from using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook if they are thought to be plotting criminal activity.

The prime minister said the government will review whether it is possible to stop suspected rioters spreading online messages, in his opening statement during a Commons debate on Thursday on the widespread civil disorder for which MPs were recalled from their summer recess.

Answering questions after his statement, Cameron said the home secretary, Theresa May, will hold meetings with Facebook, Twitter and Research In Motion within weeks to discuss their responsibilities in this area.

The prime minister also said that broadcasters – including the BBC and Sky News – have a responsibility to hand unused footage of the riots to police.

Past attempts to force broadcasters to hand over their footage have been met with fierce resistance. On Wednesday, the BBC's head of newsgathering, Fran Unsworth, said voluntarily giving unused footage to the police would damage broadcasters' editorial independence.

"Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill," said Cameron.

"And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and sevices when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

How does Cameron propose to do this? By jawboning, which will, of course, not work. I assume that the Posh Boy is far too grand to actually use social networks himself so perhaps he can have his valet check into it on his behalf. It's what Bertie Wooster would do...

The initial spark for the rioting were savage public sector budget cuts, which threw thousands out of work and on to the dole. Among the agencies cut were-you guessed it-the police. Cameron's war of words with the cops continues as he refuses to relent on po po funding cuts. Cameron would  be well advised to patch up his differences with the constabulary and pronto. It's what his *real* political role model, Tony Blair, would do. Blair would look resolute, hector the rioters and back the police while his Home Secretary would be in charge of rescinding the police spending cuts. The Brits call this a U-turn and it's nothing compared to the gymnastic flip flops of Mitt Haircut.

The core malakatude of this situation is that the Conservative party is at war with the bobbies, which cannot end well for them. It's another test for Labour Party leader Ed Miliband who has to walk a delicate balance between condemnation of the looters and attacking the coaltion. The Tories are making it easier for him by blasting the coppers and refusing to take any responsibilty. Maybe they can blame the perennially po faced Deputy PM Nick Clegg. It's what junior coalition partners are for, after all...

I'll let Frank Zappa have the last word with this Watts riots inspired classic:

 

Yeah, I know the clip is blurry but it features the antics of Napoleon Murphy Brock who has one of the best names in rock and roll history.

London Calling

It's a long hot summer everywhere but particularly in the UK. The rioting in London and elsewhere is conjuring up memories of the late 1970's and early 1980's. There were riots in Brixton in 1981 caused by Tory budget cuts and heavy handed policing. Sound familiar?

One thing that *has* changed, however, is the relationship between the government and the police. David Cameron is suffering some fallout from the phone hacking scandal, which caused several senior coppers to resign and blast the Posh Boy on their way out. Also, Mrs.Thatcher had the good sense *not* to cut spending on police. Nobody has ever accused Cameron of having common sense; nothing common about the Posh Boy or sensible either:

The parallels with the 1980s are everywhere; in the burnt-out buildings, the looting, the anger of an apparently disenfranchised youth and the agonising over what caused an urban uprising which police have labelled the worst disorder in living memory.

There is one significant difference, however. During the riots of the 1980s, when Brixton and Toxteth burned and PC Keith Blakelock was hacked down with a machete as he fled for his life in Broadwater Farm, the police could count on the full support of the government. Margaret Thatcher was in power and the police were seen as an unquestioning arm of the state.

On Tuesday as David Cameron sits around the table with the home secretary, Theresa May, and senior police officers the ambience will not be a warm one. Relations between the country's top police officers and the Conservative leadership are at an all-time low, with senior Tory sources briefing against the country's top officers and they in turn speaking openly of the "stupidity" of government policy.

Cuts to frontline policing – an estimated 12,000 officers are to go as a result of budget reductions – the determination of the coalition to impose elected commissioners, the attacks on the public service pensions of both rank-and-file and senior officers and the Winsor review into pay and conditions have all served to increase tensions.

<snip>

A senior police source has said privately that the government holds the police in utter contempt and, while the service is resilient, the government is starting to lose goodwill from both rank-and-file and senior ranks.

Asked to put their lives on the line night after night, sources say the rank and file feel unsupported and vilified by the government.

It's quite unusual for a right of center government to have such a terrible relationship with the po po BUT this is class based mutual loathing. I keep waiting for the Tories to blame Brown and Blair for the chaos but they haven't quite gone there yet. But they will, they're already making shit up about Labour Shadow Cabinet member Diane Abbott who happens to be-you guessed it-black. It's time for the nasty party to come out of the sewer and start throwing shit around. It will be interesting to see how Deputy PM Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems respond to this: they'll probably stick to the old stiff upper lip and say nothing.

Since everyone is talking about the dark days of 1979 and 1981, here's one of the quintessential British bands of that era:

 

Mubarak on Trial

Wow:

Even the most ardent in calling for his prosecution doubted until hours before the trial began that Mr. Mubarak, 83, would appear in a cage fashioned of bars and wire mesh, a reflection of the suspicion and unease that reigns in a country whose revolution remains unresolved. As a helicopter ferried him to the courtroom, housed in a police academy that once bore his name, cheers went up from a crowd gathered outside.

“The criminal is coming!” shouted Maged Wahba, a 40-year-old lawyer.

Go read the whole thing.

A.