Black Ops

I'll be off-line for awhile. A mission has me in Moscow and Kiev. Democracy and a Blue-Collar Kid from Janesville; is this a great country or what?!

Say What?

In an MSNBC report, did I just hear President Bush urge Americans to carpool and use mass transit?

Whew, thought I woke-up this morning in Jimmy Carter's 1977-78 America...

Gubernatorial Racketeering

The only factor that makes Gov. Blago an imposing political foe, is the size of his warchest. Freeze that, and Blago is a pimple of a politician who returns to private life after an emabarrassingly huge reelection losss in a state where Democrats dominate.

Disclaimer: This is an opinion and in no way do I intend to libel the acne sufferers of America.

Craine's Chicago Business

Money trail
Could federal prosecutors be after Gov. Blagojevich's campaign kitty?

Whatever scrapes Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been in, he's always been able to count on a huge, golden equalizer: a campaign war chest now filled with an unprecedented $14.4 million.

Be they Democrat or Republican, prospective challengers in next year's election know that war chest will fund an unending string of TV ads ripping them apart while praising the incumbent.

That reality has made even the strongest potential foe blink. But what if the golden hoard was snatched away or substantially diminished? What if Gov. Blagojevich didn't have $14.4 million at his back, with more arriving daily?

...The Blagojevich camp says it has not accepted any campaign donations from consultants who dealt with the pension fund. That having been said, the contents of Mr. Cari's plea were particularly curious in one regard: They revealed far more than necessary.

Mr. Cari could have pleaded guilty without mentioning "Public Official A." He didn't need to attest that the extortion was "part of a fund-raising strategy" in which firms seeking pension business were "required to make certain political or charitable contributions."But he did, and the question is why.

...Not only have the feds gone after Mr. Ryan, who has pleaded innocent, they've gone after his campaign committee. In fact, way back in June 2002, they convinced U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to freeze virtually all the money in the committee's bank account — $1 million — on the grounds it was "a criminal enterprise" that likely would have to repay taxpayers for embezzled government resources.

...The judge didn't buy it. The federal racketeering statute actually is applied more often against crooked politicians than mobsters, according to G. Robert Blakey, a University of Notre Dame Law School professor who drafted the law."Political committees are entities, just like all others," says Mr. Blakey. "It makes no difference" if the person who controls the committee is a candidate. What matters is "what the entity did and who did it. If they raised the money illegally, it doesn't belong to them. It belongs to the U.S. government under forfeiture provisions of the law."A seizure requires proof that the assets are likely to be forfeited in the end, he adds. We'll see if things get that far.

Guns or Butter

Just wondering; with Washington DC swamped with Iraq, and the twin storms of Katrina and Rita smashing the Gulf coast, with oil refineries off-line and record deficits projected, with rampant poverty, homelessness, and growing animosity towards the war effort, with gas prices gouging every area of family spending and adding cost to most consumer products, with the stock market flat-lining and reports of a housing bubble burst, with mid-term elections just 13 months away...

Wondering, what is keeping India from invading Pakistan, China taking Taiwan, North Korea moving into South Korea?

Something must be happening in the world that is going unreported right now.

At the end of WWII, when the Allied Powers were dividing Europe, Ho Chi Minh pleaded with Western leaders for aid to Vietnam. With the Marshall Plan on the table, the last place in the world that anyone wanted to look to invest was Southeast Asia.

Ho was ignored and look what that brought to both the French and the U.S.

History has a way of repeating itself. The U.S. appears to be vulerable on the international scene right now. After all, our plate is full at home.

Hooray for Ken Hendricks!

Living the American Dream, right here in blue-collar Rock County, WI...

Ken is the best thing to happen to Beloit since that city beat-out Janesville for a new Milwaukee Brewers single A minor league team (now with the Twins organization). And he continues to promote the area with buying-up old landmarks such as the Parker Pen Building in Janesville and the Dana Plant in Edgerton; both of which sat empty for years and scarred the economic landscape of Rock County.

Ken embodies what makes this country great, even for a high school drop-out - opportunity.

#207 Ken Hendricks

Net Worth:
$1.5 billion
Source: Distribution,
building supplies, real estate
Self made

Age: 63
Marital Status:
Married, 7 children
Hometown: Beloit, WI
Education: High School, Drop Out

High school dropout, onetime roofer bought first construction supply business in 1982; kept right on buying. Today ABC Supply the largest supplier of roofing and siding materials to professional contractors in the U.S. Sales: $2 billion. Frustrated architect helped design corporate headquarters in once-blighted Beloit; pouring money into revitalizing town's downtown factory area with commercial buildings, public space. Popularizing line of
eco-friendly "green roofs" made of plants to absorb rainwater runoff and
heat.

Time for An Eddie Mahe Retreat

Free Will is happy to welcome Charlie Sykes to the choir. As Republican critic (first chair), it has been a slow slog filling the chairs of my choir. Incrementally though, the chairs are being taken by those of us who remember why we vote Republican, why we labor for Republicans, and what we expect from Republican majorities.

SIDE BAR: It has nothing to do with the knuckle-draggin’ policy work of St. Senator Tom Reynolds -- Say What? DOH!

In Washington, DC and in Madison, WI, Republicans are morphing into what Democrats were (are) before losing their majorities, an Incumbent Party.

WHERE DO REPUBLICANS STAND?
By Charles Sykes

As Republicans who control the state legislature return to work this week, they face a nagging question: Exactly what do you stand for?

Lower taxes? The GOP leadership rejected proposals for a gas tax holiday that would have suspended the state’s 29.9 cent per gallon levy to provide consumers some relief from the summer’s soaring prices.

The free market? Republicans have so far been unwilling to repeal or change the state’s minimum markup law, which requires wholesalers and retailers to jack up prices by 9 percent.

Smaller government? Competition? Consumer choice? Key Republicans continue to back a proposal to mandate the use of the ethanol in gasoline statewide despite evidence that it would cost more, give drivers worse gas mileage, continue to wreak havoc with small engines, and actually make the air dirtier.

Each issue has a common theme: Republican leaders are not only siding with well-heeled special interests against taxpayers and consumers, but are also abandoning fundamental principles.

Tax cuts are the party’s bread and butter, but the party leadership turned its back on tax cuts because they didn’t want to anger the powerful road building lobby.. In the face of road-builder opposition, only 12 legislators signed onto a letter calling for a special session of the legislature to consider the temporary tax cut.

Similarly, key Republicans continue to back legally mandated price gouging because they are beholden to the petroleum marketing industry, which insists the Depression-era rules are needed to protect mom-and-pop gas stations against a predatory Wal-Mart. (Even though most mom-and-pops have long since disappeared and Wal-Mart does not have nearly enough stores to compete with thousands of existing gas stations.)

And finally, after years of railing against heavy-handed regulations from the EPA and the DNR, Republicans (and Governor Doyle) seem intent on caving into the demands of the ethanol industry to force consumers to buy ethanol-laden gasoline. In a free market, consumers choose and businesses compete, but such is the clout that the corn farmers and the ethanol manufacturers enjoy, that Wisconsin may use the force of government to override the market.

Talk about being off message.

Legislative leaders may yet turn this all around, but the signs aren’t propitious. Amid the lobbyist riot that is Wisconsin state government too many legislators are drawn to the special-interest honey pots and it has simply become too easy to forget why they came there in the first place.

Republicans could rally around a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, but in the absence of organized special interests like the road builders, the gas marketers, or the ethanol lobby, Republicans seem strangely unmotivated.

Meanwhile, their leadership is adrift and distracted. Dale Schultz was elected senate majority leader precisely because he was so ineffective; while Assembly Speaker John Gard is off running for Congress.

With nobody in charge, it’s been left to the special interests to tell Republicans what they stand for. If anything.

What A Pinhead Looks Like Vol. IV

Having just returned from a Miami business trip, I have some catching-up to do. This one has been festering with me for some time. As Rita soaked and buffeted south Florida, it served to remind me just how important competence is among local elected officials.

Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a repopulation of New Orleans as Rita was making her way around the Keys.

Enough words. It has all be written, giving any and every Mayor wannabe enough verbiage to swamp Nagin's reelection effort. But campaigns are about image and telling a story with pictures to maximize emotion.

I plan on pitching any candidate who wishes to announce their campaign to oust Ray Nagin.



New Orleans....










vs. Galveston...

Ed Thompson Was Right

Repub-licrats? Demo-cans? What's the diff?

Hurricane Costs Send Budget Projections Deeper into the Red

More conservative thought..this, from my pals at the Heritage Foundation;

President Bush has pledged to do whatever it takes to rebuild the lives and communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

This pledge comes with a price tag.

To deliver this kind of aid, Congress and the President must set priorities and make sacrifices and trade-offs to pay for it. Offsetting the cost of rebuilding is all the more important because the rebuilding effort follows a 33 percent expansion of the federal government since 2001, a period that saw:

• The 2001 No Child Behind Act, the most expensive education bill in American history, which led to a 100 percent increase in education spending;
• The 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, the most expensive farm bill in American history;
• The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, the most expensive Great Society expansion in history;
• A war in and the rebuilding of Iraq that, while justified, could cost between $300 and $600 billion, in total;
• International spending leap 94 percent;
• Housing and Commerce spending surge 86 percent;
• Community and regional development spending jump 71 percent;
• Health research spending increase 61 percent;
• Veterans’ spending increase 51 percent; and
• The number of annual pork projects leap from 6,000 to 14,000.

And the punchline (cue the applause);

Unless lawmakers make difficult decisions now, they will dump the largest debt in world history into the laps of the next generation

Yup, those of us who dedicated ourselves to the conservative cause on that July, 1980 evening, while watching the Republican National Convention in Detroit on a flickering Admiral black and white TV, cheering the arrival of Ronald Reagan, this is the results of our 25 years of labor;

A Republican House, a Republican U.S. Senate, a Republican White House, a Republican Judiciary.

Who among them will step-up and do what it takes to keep our country, our economy, our children from facing another round of Jimmy Carter-esque malaise?

Let's start here:

Redirecting their states’ earmarks to the Gulf Coast, where the money is
more needed ($20 billion annually, plus the $24 billion of earmarks in the recent highway bill);

Eliminating corporate welfare spending ($60 billion annually);

Attacking waste, fraud, and abuse, which have grown unchecked for the two decades following the 1984 Grace Commission report (over $100 billion annually);

Addressing the 40 percent of federal programs that, according to the government’s own assessments, fail to show any positive impact on their intended beneficiaries (untold billions annually);

Replacing the unaffordable Medicare drug entitlement with the Medicare drug discount card (as much as $2 trillion over the next 20 years); and

Most importantly, enacting a federal Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights capping the growth government at the inflation rate plus population growth. Such a cap would help lawmakers set priorities and make trade-offs and could save as much as $3 trillion to $4 trillion over the next decade.

How to Save Face? Buy It

History is sometimes the moment a bell rings. He had a historic opportunity to seize this and become a great leader and he bobbled it not just once but four or five times. This is a speech that needed to have been delivered within days of the hurricane.
Douglas Brinkley
Historian and professor at the University of New Orleans

I would take it a step further, and suggest had the President kicked his Homeland Security Secretary in the bricks and mortar, and deployed a rapid response effort over and above the bumbling efforts of the New Orleans Mayor and the Louisiana Governor…

(As mentioned here first)

…had Bush unleashed the power of our military and swept through the Gulf Coast within 48 hours of Katrina making landfall, the speech he delivered would have been a speech of triumph, rather than a speech of contrition.

And the price tag of this massive spending program of $200 billion would have been exponentially smaller.

The best newspaper in the country had the best assessment of why President Bush morphed from the heir to the Reagan legacy to the illegitimate son of LBJ and FDR.

Ironically, everything President Bush called for in last night’s speech became a necessity because, because, anyone? Anyone? Government failed its people.

At all levels, government failed.

President Bush’s speech was a political do-over; made necessary because the only political path left to political recovery is a massive infusion of government money to cover the tracks of what was not done hours before and after Katrina struck.

The President has bet the public trough on a legacy; a legacy though, that can hardly be called conservative.

At least the flame burning off to the side, guiding the way for future conservatives, is The Weekly Standard.

Sweep Out the Stall

Public Official A

Gov. Blagojevich and two top fund-raisers schemed to steer lucrative state pension deals to investment firms and consultants who agreed to donate to Blagojevich's campaign, a key figure in a widening corruption probe claims he's been told Blagojevich was not specifically named in the (Joe) Cari plea, which referred to him as "Public Official A." Sources confirmed to the Chicago Sun-Times that the governor is Official A. The administration said it had no idea who Official A is.

UPDATE: No word from former Governor Jim Edgar on whether he reenters public life to reclaim the big office.

But when a horse breaks its leg, ya shoot it. The horse named Blago is soon to become glue.

What Next in IL - Blago?

Bear Stearns

Retired cop Bill Neumann was in his Champaign office last summer when he was paid a surprise visit by a Chicago executive with Bear Stearns & Co., the firm in charge of investing $25 million of the Champaign Police Pension Fund that Neumann oversaw.

The executive wanted Neumann's permission to "share" some of Bear's $47,000 annual fee with politically connected Champaign developer Peter Fox -- even though Fox, a former Bear Stearns managing director, never had anything to do with the retirement savings of Champaign's police.

Ya think?

All I can tell you is Bear Stearns screwed up -- there were wires crossed. Somebody made a mistake.
former IL state Sen. Richard Luft

Blogging and Libel

Recently, no fewer than 2 powerful attorneys have been drawn to this blog by my posting of what has become a series of sort. No, not the What a Pinhead Looks Like series. And no, not the Big Thoughts, Small Opinions series.

What has drawn these attorneys like prostitutes to a port of call is my posting of the on-going investigation of bribes, extortion, and other criminal activities in my adopted state of Illinois.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion, I have no direct knowledge of where prostitutes solicit, or whom they solicit.

To date, 73 characters of varying political clout have been indicted and convicted. None have been acquitted.

As the investigation continues, it is crossing the border into Wisconsin. This fact has received very little attention in Wisconsin's mainstream media, which may be among the reasons why WisPolitics was asked to pull Free Will from its content.

This blogging business, like everything else in cyber-space, is the new frontier; from questions of taxation of products purchased on-line to whether porn sites should be forced to identify themselves (i.e www.ParisHilton.porn, or, www.Madonna.xxx).

Disclaimer: This is my opinion; I have no direct knowledge that either Paris Hilton or Madonna are porn stars.

Nonetheless, I have agreed to pull a specific posting and also post the following links as a reminder to myself that libel is a growing business for lawyers and cyber-space blogging is equally a new frontier for lawyers.

Charlie Sykes

Libel Outline

A trained reporter friend of mine reminded me that it is not the prospect of being found guilty in a libel case that deters editors from running stories, but rather, the cost of defending oneself.

Disclaimer: It is only my opinion, that I say these attorneys are managing the media exposure through intimidation.

Justice Marotta?

Hey Xoff, a new client beckons;

From WisPolitics...
-- Gov. Jim Doyle is set to announce the departure of DOA Secretary Marc Marotta at a 2:30 p.m. press conference today, according to sources familiar with the governor's plans. Doyle also plans to announce Marotta's replacement at that press conference, scheduled to take place in the Governor's Conference Room at the state Capitol.

Soon to be former DOA Secretary, Marc Marotta, once ran for Congress (1992) when then-Rep. Jim Moody vacated to run for the Bob Kasten U.S. Senate seat, currently held by former State Senator Russ Feingold.

Does Marotta still have the campaign bug?

Justice Pat Crooks already announced his reelection intentions (July, 2005), presumably to deter such tier 1 opposition.

Time will tell if the simple action of announcing a candidacy serves to squash election dreams of other political heavyweights, especially in light of unrest with Crooks among the conservative and business activists.

See feedback to Xoff

Even with the base problem Crooks appears to have, I'd tip the scale in favor of his reelection (but not more than what my thumb could push down without notice).

Crooks looks like a judge...Marotta is an All-American.
Notre Dame alumni donors, versus Harvard alumni donors.
Crooks has an indicted State Rep. Scott Jensen problem to overcome,
Marotta has a Governor Doyle-judicial power grab issue to deal with.
Crooks needs heavy social conservative turn-out,
Marotta needs heavy Milwaukee/Dane axis turn-out.
Crooks has 40 years of spring voters reelecting sitting judges,
Marotta was an NBA draft choice

Supreme Court campaigns are famous for their lack of drama, which results in low voter turnout. This one, could, be loaded with drama.

Lawyering vs. Lobbying

As the ethically-challenged ex-lawmakers Bill Shoemakers, Wally Kunickis, Gary Georges, Chuck Chvalas and Brian Burkes turned Wisconsin into Illinois North with their pay-to-play campaign strategies, here is a nugget from our big-city neighbors that has some merit.

As a business model, it would seem logical for law firms to bring non-attorneys in-house to generate new business or compliment existing business. And because law firms market the attorney-client privilege as a bonus of doing business with them, versus a lobby-shop, where there are no standards of practice or ethical guidelines (other than the paper tiger of a state Ethics Board), it also seems more up-and-up to retain a law firm.

On the surface, everything appears kosher. Yet, as society becomes ever-more litigious, I suspect it becomes exponentially more difficult to work both ends of the equation; the slow slog of lawyers processing motions and digesting case history, versus the more desirable (from a corporate viewpoint) process of drafting a bill or an amendment and lobbying legislative leadership or committee chairmen to fast-track relief. (In Wisconsin, see All Sums legislation)

Neither lawyering nor lobbying are inherently evil professions. The process needs both.

But the process also needs an infusion of better judgment and Winston & Strawn may be setting a new, old, trend that will migrate to Wisconsin.

Winston & Strawn halts lobbying
Headed by ex-Gov. Thompson, firm's growth led to conflicts
-----
The law firm that former Gov. James Thompson built into a lobbying powerhouse in Springfield has quietly gone out of that line of work, a casualty of changing ethics laws and its own growth as a worldwide corporate litigator. Loop-based Winston & Strawn LLP shut down its lobbying practice this summer after the firm's two main Springfield hands, John Nicolay and Timothy Dart, left the firm to set up their own lobbying practice.

They were the only two left in an office that once had six attorneys lobbying for big-name clients such as Philip Morris USA and Illinois doctors' insurance interests. The action follows Mr. Thompson's decision early in 2004 to cease his own lobbying activities. Under a new state ethics law that took effect then, Mr. Thompson had to cease lobbying if his wife, Jayne, was to continue to chair the board of the Chicago Public Library, which is partially funded by the state.

FRIENDLY SPLIT
Both Messrs. Thompson and Nicolay say their split was amicable but necessary, given Winston & Strawn's rapid growth into an international firm with offices serving lucrative corporate clients around the world.

"We'd bring in clients, and we couldn't take them," says Mr. Nicolay. "We got tired of having a conflict (of interest) with some (Winston & Strawn) guy in London or New York that we'd never met."

Indeed, Springfield lobbying increasingly is the domain of boutique firms, such as Chicago's Nicolay & Dart, which don't carry the conflict issues or the overhead of litigation behemoths.

"When you have the costs, the freight, that major law firms do, it makes it much harder to compete," says lobbyist Andrew Raucci, who left a Chicago law firm and struck out on his own several years ago. Unlike lawyers who have to worry about billable hours, "I can be in Springfield all the time," says Mr. Raucci, who charges clients a flat fee, rather than an hourly rate.

Mr. Thompson, who will send prospective lobbying clients to Nicolay & Dart, says he misses "the interaction with the legislative folks" that lobbying provided.

But the four-term former governor noted that under the law, he still can advise clients on legislative strategy. And he continues to rub shoulders with lawmakers on occasion.

"I still see them," Mr. Thompson says. "I just can't lobby them."

The Edgar Countdown

Story from The Sun Times

Will Edgar run? There's a '50-50' chance

You don't run for governor reluctantly," Edgar said. "If you get into this race, you run to win, and you go all-out.

From the Chicago Tribune

Edgar, who had angioplasty in 1992, quadruple bypass surgery in 1994 and was hospitalized in 1998 for a partially obstructed blood vessel at the bottom of his heart, also said he will be undergoing tests with his doctors to see if the rigors of a campaign would endanger his health.

Edgar said the reason he was even considering giving up a financially lucrative private life to re-enter politics was because of his concern for the state.

But Peter Giangreco, Blagojevich's campaign adviser, contended Edgar had shorted pension funds while serving in the private sector.

"When he was on the board of Kemper Insurance, they cut their employee pensions by $11 million and stuck the taxpayers with a $500 million unpaid pension liability," Giangreco said. "He's not Jim Edgar. He's Jim Enron."

_______________

It is an enviable position for the governor to be in; decide against a return to public life and have privacy and wealth, or, jump back in and almost certainly win.

But whaddya win? A bankrupt state and a Democratic-controlled legislature?

Gov. Blago has clearly given Giangreco the latitude to throw high hard fastballs at Edgar's head.

So add the grief of engaging Blago in a nasty street fight, and it looks less than 50-50 Edgar runs.

But then again, he runs, he wins.

Book Mark Bill Whittle's Eject Blog

This is an exceptionally long post, so you’ll want to print this before reading. And you’ll want to run extra copies, to leave in your office break area, to stuff in the neighbor’s newspaper slot, to send to your niece attending Cal-Berkley or UW-Madison.

It is the most brilliant post you will ever read.

Print this and read, Tribes

Giving you just a taste:

Race has nothing to do with this – precisely nothing. The mobs of murdering Hutus and swarms of slaughtering Serbs are as different racially as it is possible to be, and they are cut from precisely the same cloth.

Only a few minutes ago, I had the delightful opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said he wished that white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself could have been herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.

That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal.My Tribe doesn’t see black and white skins. My Tribe only sees black and white hats, and the hat we choose to wear is the most personal decision we can make.

That’s the other thing, too – the most important thing. My Tribe thinks that while you are born into a Tribe, you do not have to stay there. Good people can join bad Tribes, and bad people can choose good ones. My Tribe thinks you choose your Tribe.

But Sean Penn can take himself, an entourage and a personal photographer – that’s three or four people in a four-person boat – and show us all how incredibly big and down-home he is by sailing off a few feet to rescue people, before the boat sinks from the incompetence of failing to put in the drainage plug. He wore a very nice white flak vest, instead of the passé orange life preserver, because getting shot at is a lot more macho looking, if a million or so times less likely, than drowning because you went out into the water with a lead vest rather than a life vest. It’s a scene in the trailer that runs incessantly in their heads: In a world run by evil corporations, a rebel who plays by his own rules starts a deadly game of cat and mouse with an all-powerful conspiracy in this searing portrait of extraordinary courage in a life under siege, starring…me!

But no. It’s not about having people saved. It’s about something else entirely. It’s about having people saved by Sean Penn.

Let’s talk about these two Tribes: Pink, the color of bunny ears, and Grey, the color of a mechanical pencil lead.

The Pink Tribe is all about feeling good: feeling good about yourself! Sexually, emotionally, artistically – nothing is off limits, nothing is forbidden, convention is fossilized insanity and everybody gets to do their own thing without regard to consequences, reality, or natural law.

Then, in the other corner, there is the Grey Tribe – the grey of reinforced concrete. This is a Tribe where emotion is repressed because Emotion Clouds Judgment. This is the world of Quadratic Equations and Stress Risers and Loads Torsional, Compressive and Tensile, a place where Reality Can Ruin Your Best Day, the place where Murphy mercilessly picks off the Weak and the Incompetent, where the Speed Limit is 186,282.36 miles per second, where every bridge has a Failure Load and levees come in 50 year, 100 year and 1000 Year Flood Flavors.

Because everybody dies. Even liberals. And all I can say is that I believe in my heart that I would rather die for something bigger than myself than lead a life where nothing is more important than me.

But the fact remains that firemen went up the stairs when people were coming down, and one ordinary group of people on an ordinary flight on an ordinary day defeated the very best that the global terror network could put together. Our ladies junior varsity squad whipped the living shit out of their Super Bowl A-team over Pennsylvania that day, and they did it because for one brief shining moment enough passengers on that airplane went Grey.

And in Louisiana last week the governor cried and the mayor blamed everyone but himself, and half the country bought every single stinking Pink lie about global warming and missing National Guard units…

Playing the Race Card, and Losing

How, how, is everything turned into a black-white thing?!

From the Wall Street Journal;

Though Katrina is an equal-opportunity destroyer, the news media's coverage
of the disaster has centered on the city of New Orleans--which is understandable, given that that is the center of the metropolis, that it is densely populated, and that it is 80% underwater.

That means the faces of the suffering that we have seen have mostly been black ones. And so what? These are fellow human beings and fellow Americans; the color of their skin makes their misery no more or less heartbreaking, and their rescue no more or less urgent.

From the 2000 U.S. Census;

Parish or county.......White -- Black
Jefferson, La.............69.8% -- 22.9%
Orleans, La............... 28.1% -- 67.3%***
Plaquemines, La...... 69.8% -- 23.4%
St. Bernard, La.........88.3% -- 7.6%
St. Tammany, La.....87.0% -- 9.9%
Hancock, Miss......... 90.2% -- 6.8%
Harrison, Miss.........73.1% -- 21.1%
Jackson, Miss..........75.4% -- 20.9%

WWHJD

What Would Hank Jr. Do?

'Tribes' Find Way to Survive in French Quarter

MSNBC

In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming 'tribes' and dividing up the labor.

As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim....

'Some people became animals,' Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street.

'We became more civilized.'... Tired of waiting for trucks to come with food and water, residents turned to each other.

Johnny White's is famous for never closing, even during a hurricane. The doors don't even have locks.

Since the storm, it has become more than a bar.... 'It's our community center,' said Marcie Ramsey, 33, whom Katrina promoted from graveyard shift bartender to acting manager."

I know where ole Hank Jr. stands on all this...

But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For 43 dollars my friend lost his life
I'd love to spit some beechnut in that dudes eyes
And shoot him with my old 45
Cause a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

What's Race Got to Do With It?

I was raised in lily-white Janesville, WI. I honestly do not remember my first introduction to a black person. I do remember Hmong refugees arriving in town, only because I shared a music stand with Helen Luong.

When I began taking violin lessons in the 4th grade, sometime soon after, it was 1974, 1975, maybe 1976, a person who dressed the same but looked different arrived at Washington Elementary.

Helen and I shared a music stand off and on each school year. Her musical talent quickly surpassed mine and she was moved to first chair. About that same time, sometime during junior high school at Franklin, Helen changed her name.

I remember the first day of the new school year, the fall of 1977, maybe 1978. As roll was called, the pronunciation of Huong Luong fumbled off a teacher’s tongue.

Snickers and curious eyes raced around the class, looking for the new kid with the funny name. It is not good to be different in junior high school. Playing violin was bad enough; I was just grateful I had a normal name.

When Helen raised her hand to acknowledge her name and attendance, I about fell off my chair. When’d she change her name, and why?

I wish I could say we shared café lattes after class as she enlightened me on the pressures of socialization and assimilation, but like I said, this was junior high school.

I simply accepted her explanation that she didn’t change her name; her name had always been Huong. Acceptance. Not sure why it was easy. It just was.

We graduated together, Parker, Class of 1983.

Whatever it was, the massive culture shock I experienced from leaving Wisconsin for college in London, Europe’s version of the Great American Melting Pot, it served as my anchor. People are different. It is not a choice. We just are. Acceptance.

Then, the next chapter of my understanding of race relations was written. I graduated from college in a city that is 80% black, Washington, D.C.

Once again, acceptance was my credo. Living and working in D.C. though, changed my vision. People are not really all that different. And skin color is not a determinator of whatever differences I once thought existed.

My buddies on the second floor of Nebraska Hall, Tony and Fast Eddie, introduced me to so-called black music, rap; funny how Run DMC is now remembered as those cool guys who sang with Aerosmith.

If I knew where they were today, I don’t know if Tony and Fast Eddie would acknowledge the color-blindness I strived to achieve back then; they liked to pick at our different heritage, especially during pick-up basketball;

Tony, why are you calling me Saltine?

Because you are the whitest cracker we ever seen.

I don’t know, because today, so-called black leaders (Bill Cosby aside), keep pulling black America from mainstream America.

Jesse Jackson comments on the American tragedy of Hurricane Katrina by sticking a sharp stick in white America’s collective eye. It was not until Jesse Jackson labeled the New Orleans Superdome the “belly of a slave ship” that I was forced to see black faces, rather than human faces. And I resent it.

It is indeed a truism that racism is taught and learned. It is not part of our DNA.

But I have to wonder, who is doing the teaching, and who is doing the learning, when Jesse Jackson invokes such images upon America?

Gimme Shelter

The Rolling Stones (3rd Best Band, ever)

Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away

War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost it’s way...

There are plenty of worthy charities to send your donation for Gulf Coast Hurricane relief.

My favorite and one I have both volunteered and donated to is Habitat for Humanity.

And here's why:

Koinonia Farm and the Fund for Humanity
The concept that grew into Habitat for Humanity International was born at Koinonia Farm, a small, interracial, Christian farming community founded in 1942 outside of Americus, Ga., by farmer and biblical scholar Clarence Jordan. The Fullers first visited Koinonia in 1965, having recently left a successful business in Montgomery, Ala., and all the trappings of an affluent lifestyle to begin a new life of Christian service. At Koinonia, Jordan and Fuller developed the concept of "partnership housing" -- where those in need of adequate shelter would work side by side with volunteers to build simple, decent houses.

And if you love music as much as my family does, then consider native New Orleanian Harry Connick Jr.'s efforts to rebuild his hometown.

UPDATE:
This morning, Connick, Jr. was named the Honorary Chairman of Habitat for Humanity's Gulf Coast Relief Fund. He and Branford Marsalis are putting their celebrity to good work.

If you have a home
filled with joyous sound
your spirit is free to roam...
(Brian Christianson, lyrics in progress)

Layers of a Political Onion

Subpoena details emerging
U.S. investigators seek politics link in teachers' files

...The government also clearly appeared to be searching for links at the teachers fund to other pending corruption cases against Levine at the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board and at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago.

...Levine is indicted with another former teacher pension trustee, John Glennon, and Jacob Kiferbaum, in a case of alleged kickbacks over construction contracts at the medical school.

...Levine, Kiferbaum and former Bear Stearns & Co. executive P. Nicholas Hurtgen were indicted separately on corruption allegations at the health facilities planning board, where Levine was vice chairman. Hurtgen and Bear Stearns, as well as another former Bear employee, Neil Matthews, were also named in the teachers fund subpoena.

...Also named in the subpoena was Peter Fox, Hurtgen's mentor at Bear, and Knight Infrastructure, which is now called Knight E/A Inc.

...Fox's family is an investor in the firm. Hurtgen's spouse once had owned a share of the firm but divested after her husband was linked to the health board scandal.

An Englishman in New York

…Is what I felt like, as the token Republican, playing in my first Tom Loftus Open.

I was reminded that fellow Republican Bill Kraus also golfed, but as I said, I was the token Republican.

…Glad to report no one shanked their iron shots into me for wearing my Thompson for Wisconsin golf shirt with my Bush-Cheney golf hat.

…Janesville State Rep. Mike Sheridan’s team won the scramble honors with a 2-under.

…WI Democrat Party Chair, Joe Wineke, said his score was honest…on the front nine. We call that, Pulling-a-Clinton, Joe.

…With mulligans costing $5.00 each, St. Rep. Dave Travis was seen pulling several $20 bills from the pro-shop’s ATM.

…As a Blue-Collar Kid From Janesville, it was good to see former Janesville State Senator, majority leader, and Tommy Cabinet Secretary, Tim Cullen, in good health.

…The father of the Do Not Call list , State Senator Jon Erpanbach, may, or may not, have been seen taking an illegal swim in the water hazard afterwards.

Not sure how I made the invite list. Perhaps it was my Norwegian heritage that bought me a pass from the former ambassador to Norway.

Katrina, No Laughing Matter

Xoff has correctly chastised me and Charlie Sykes for lame attempts at levity. Those posts and comments do not serve to balance the absolute whacky blame-game his Lefty comrades are cackling about; Harvard snots blaming President Bush for a nature’s randomness. It was the wrong reaction.

(Read This)

But after 5 days, I simply cannot defend the Bush Administration.

I wanted to see, no, expected to see, U.S. Army Rangers parachuting in; the sky clouded with cargo boxes of food, water, medicine, whatever, landing on every block of New Orleans.

I wanted to see, no, expected to see, U.S. Navy Seals and inflatable power boats throwing a wake; nearly capsizing from the weight of rescued children packed shoulder-to-chin.

I wanted to see, no, expected to see, U.S. Marines driving a convoy of 10,000 trucks from Camp Lejeune.

I wanted to see, no, expected to see, the U.S. Air Force, the U. S. Coast Guard, National Guard, Reservists, ROTC, even those currently in boot camp, deployed to New Orleans before the first nightfall.

Never, never, never, did I think I would ever see American refugees, dying in an American city, of starvation, dehydration, heat, lack of medical care.

The pictures I see on FOX, MSNBC, CNN are not images of Africa, Latin America, Haiti. This is America. And those are Americans, dying, in an American city.

Homeland Security? Rapid Response? I am disgusted by my government.