Busch Stadium Going Down

I was in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago for a conference. I hadn't been to any such event in a long while - not since library days. Now that's a whole 'nother story, partying librarians. More on that later.

I shared a room with another teacher from a school across town. We got along just fine except for the fact that I had trouble sleeping both nights - probably due to the fact that it was just a strange place, and I'm a light sleeper.

Anyway, I was wide awake both mornings at the crack of dawn, and proceeded to explore downtown St. Louis before the city was awake. It was surprising how few cars and pedestrians were out and about at 6:00 a.m. I swear I saw a coyote walking around down by the arch, and several rabbits hopping around the hotel grounds.

No matter what direction I walked, I was always drawn toward Busch Stadium. Crews were working around the clock wrecking the historic landmark. Though I have never been a big Cardinals fan, I have spent many an hour watching some great baseball at Busch. The arch was a glistening backdrop to perfect symmetry of stadium roof. The pictures don't do it justice.

Next door to old Busch is the new Busch - a stadium built on the model of Camden Yard, a brand new vintage-style baseball field that looks older than the one it replaces. I guess it's a sign of the times that the new stadium will actually seat fewer baseball fans, but stadium revenue is expected to increase due to the construction of larger corporate clubs and boxes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Missouri taxpayers footed a good deal of the bill for this demolition/construction - but fewer of them will be able to buy tickets to watch a game.

So, here are the early morning pics of the old space-aged Busch coming down. The wrecking ball was banging away, crushing concrete into dust clouds.

CIA Provided Bush Accurate Intel on 9/21/01

On September 21, 2001 - ten days after the 9/11 attacks - president Bush received a highly classified report from the CIA regarding possible links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. I read about this interesting bit of pre-war intelligence in a piece written by Murray Waas for the National Journal.

While the CIA and FBI took a lot of heat for not doing a better job of tracking the 9/11 terrorists before the attack, the CIA did provide what turned out to be very accurate information regarding the absence of a Saddam/Al Qaeda conspiracy leading up to the 9/11 attack.

It is becoming clear that the Bush administration was intent on cherry-picking their intelligence reports to back up their call for war. When the largest intelligence organization in the world didn't give them what they wanted, Cheney and Co. took their sources from wherever they could. Their groping around for threads from foreign spy networks led them to base some important pieces of their pro-war propaganda campaign on forged documents that somehow circumvented CIA inspection and were sent directly to the White House from some shady Italian spy-for-hire. The document was suppose to confirm that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase yellow-cake uranium from a contact in Niger. This was the basis from Bush's dramatic "mushroom cloud" warning in his state of the union address (and the beginnings of Plamegate).

Another source was an Iraqi citizen who was interviewed and given a lie detector test by the CIA (more on this in a interesting Rolling Stone piece). This individual, code-named Curveball, supposedly had worked in the Iraqi chemical industry and was desperately trying to obtain a German visa. In his efforts to ingratiate himself with American and German authorities, he gave them what turned out to be totally fabricated information about Saddam's mobile chemical labs and plans to stockpile chemical weapons. Some of this guy's tall tale found its way into Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations - a speech he now regretably describes as "a real low point".

Here's another interesting snippet from the National Journal piece:

"One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources."

According to the CIA, not only was Saddam not working with Al Qaeda, he was trying to figure out ways to keep militant religious fanaticism out of Iraq. The irony is thick when we now see how George Bush and Co. toppled Saddam's secular (albeit unfriendly) regime only to inspire the movement of thousands of Al Qaeda recruits onto Iraqi soil - and for his effort, Iraq is now the terrorist capital of the world.

(For more thoughts on selective intelligence - how the Bush Admin. sliced and diced intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq - take a look The Misleaders from Slate.)

Words of Wisdom from Jimmy Carter

I remember when this guy was president. He was basically run out of town by his own party when he tried to buck party traditions - sort of backfired on the dems when Ronald Reagan swept to power in 1980. Carter came to Springfield on that election day, and I went to see him at the airport. Not many people showed up, of course. Everybody knew he was going to lose, including Carter himself.

I've always respected old Jimmy. He was a knowledgeable and thoughtful man - an honest man. He was ridiculed for his beliefs at a time when politicians didn't wear their religion on their sleeve. Now, he is starting to speak out about the mixing of religion and politics and the lack of moral and ethical leadership from the GOP and the Bush administration. Here's a link to his editorial in the L. A. Times entitled: This Isn't the Real America.

State of the Union

A friend at work who happens to be a Republican said an odd thing to me the other day.
"I guess you're feeling pretty good about all the trouble Bush is in right now," he said. I felt a little insulted, since he was attributing what I consider a Republican character trait to me - petty political vindictiveness. It always seemed to me that the GOP was the party that would stop at nothing to destroy political opponents - ala Bill Clinton, whose own "scandals" (Whitewater - in which he was accused of losing several thousand dollars in a screwed up land deal; Travelgate, where Clinton appointed friends to White House travel office positions, gasp!); somehow evolved, through the office of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr via office gossip Linda Tripp, to a case that eventually had the leader of the free world lying about blow jobs in the Oval Office. The result: for only the second time in American history, a president was impeached. Over what? Tell me again how many lives were lost in all these terrible "scandals"?

I remember the frothing indignation that reigned supreme in the halls of Congress during Clinton's second term. The GOP literally put their own political agenda ahead of national security during those years. I blame them for distracting an entire nation over petty political vindictiveness - and all this while Osama bin Laden was building a terror network centered in Afghanistan.

Then, after the Supreme Court awarded the presidency to George Bush (even though he lost the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes), we see an opportunistic group of shadowy right-wing foreign policy wonks take control of an administration and set about to knowingly dupe Congress and the American public, utilizing trumped up fear-mongering and forged intelligence documents, into an unprecedented pre-emptive war against a third world dictatorship that posed no threat whatsoever to this country (but did possess huge oil reserves).

This could only happen under the weak and blissfully arrogant "leadership" of a man like George W. Bush - a man who, according to the chief of staff of his own State Department was "not well versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either".

Even before 9/11, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their little cadre of neoconmen were hard at work planning the Iraqi invasion. They sold the idea to our clueless leader with remarkable ease ("He tried to kill my dad"), and the die was cast. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was later fired for not towing the party line, was astounded by how, just ten days after the inauguration, discussion of regime change in Iraq monopolized the first cabinet meeting. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," O'Neill later told an interviewer.

As the Bush administration ignored urgent warnings from counter-terrorist expert Richard Clarke and Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their neocon buddies remained steadfast in their push to invade Iraq. They were confident, given past marketing successes, that the case for war against Iraq would be easy enough to sell. The war machine that they helped assemble during the Reagan/Bush years would easily and swiftly crush the Iraqi army, no problem there (Shock and Awe/Mission Accomplished, right?) - and the Iraqi people will welcome us with open arms. The problem was, the CIA was not able to produce any definitive evidence of immediate threats posed by Iraq.

What to do . . .

And then came 9/11 - the day that changed everything. A shocked nation looked to their president for leadership, and he filled this role well in the first few months. The invasion of Afghanistan made sense - this was the center of the terrorist universe, and the U.S. was universally supported in this military action. The Taliban was quickly defeated, terrorist bases were destroyed and Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants were on the run - and somebody in the Bush "braintrust" realized the window of opportunity had flown open. Would there ever be a better time to launch the assault on Baghdad? Many Democrats and even a few Republicans in Congress (not to mention Bush's own Secretary of State, Colin Powell) were instinctively against such a potentially disastrous foray into the heart of the Middle East, but only a few had the balls to speak up - many, like John Kerrey, chose to back the war out of political expediency, fearing their objections would be seen as unpatriotic.

Now, years later, we see the truth beginning to filter out, as it always does in time. No, I don't gain any satisfaction whatsoever that Bush is in trouble. I wish he had never gained high political office. He's a weak man who has always been bailed out when things didn't work out for him. This time, however, the stakes are just a bit higher. It just saddens and scares me that the American public can be so malleable, so easily duped, so easily led astray by a bunch of political ideologues linked to a very effective GOP propaganda machine. The end justifies the means with these people. They now openly condone torture, operate secret prisons, arrest and hold suspects without charging them - and think nothing of slaughtering politically anyone gets in their way. This is precisely how police states are manufactured, how tyrants gain power. I now know, without a doubt, that it can happen here. No, I couldn't care less what happens to George Bush. I worry about the world my kids will inherit.

Exxon Profits At Unprecedented High

Still more evidence that it pays to have friends in high places . . . the Associated Press reported today that oil giant Exxon's third-quarter profits were a new record for any company ever. Third quarter profits were almost 75% higher than a year ago - up to $9.92 billion - and their $100 billion in total quarterly sales was also an all-time record for any company in history.

I really don't have much more to say about this . . . it's distressing but not surprising. I guess my conservative friends out there would argue that the free market is working its magic on the American public once again. So, the American public should just smile and get out the KY-Jelly, which is another fine petroleum derivative - while oil execs shop for more multi-million dollar homes and corporate tax shelters.

I'm wondering why such a huge, profitable industry couldn't invest some of their vast profits into some research and development toward creating more efficient ways to fuel our mobile society - or at the very least build a new refinery now and then so that gas prices wouldn't fluctuate wildly everytime a hurricane blows in or a middle eastern potentate gets pissed at us. There hasn't been a new refinery built in the U.S. since the early 1970's.

Seems to me that cutting corporate profits to give the American consumer a little break would almost be a patriotic act at this point. Wonder what's the likelihood of that happening? It's enough to make a person entertain thoughts of socialism - a government takeover of the energy industry. Things have a way of going full circle, you know.

County Commissioners and Nov. 8 Election

I attended a teacher meeting this week in which two of the three County Commissioners and the Springfield police chief spoke about an upcoming November 8 ballot issue called the Community Safety Initiative (CSI). County Commissioners Dave Coonrod and Harold Bengsch and SPD chief Lynn Rowe took turns talking about why they support the proposed 1/4 cent sales tax.

The proposed tax would ante up about a nickel on a $20 purchase and would raise about $10 million in year one for various crime prevention and law enforcement programs.

Did I hear a yawn? I know. This is usually the kind of thing that I have trouble supporting - yes, they want to build a new crime lab and provide funding for more police officers, blah, blah. But the part that caught my attention, and the primary reason they were pitching this to a group of school teachers, was the $3 million that was to be spent on a proactive early childhood program that was linked to 50 elementary schools in Springfield. It would also create a one-stop center for early childhood services such as WIC, Parents As Teachers and medical and behavioral health care.

Unlike the unfunded federal feel-good mandate known as No Child Left Behind, this program supports and funds an early childhood program that is aimed at breaking the cycle of illiteracy and under-education that breeds all kinds of social problems in the community. Yes, it's on a small scale, but it's a move in the right direction - and I don't think we'll be getting much help from the state or federal government anytime soon - not with the current leadership we have in Jeff City and D.C.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear Coonrod and Bengsch speak to this issue with no small amount of conviction. Hit the link above to read more about it.

***Also, thanks to those readers who inquired about the most recent dispatch from the fields of education. It was deleted because I was worried that the teacher featured in that story would suffer some kind of retribution from a vengeful administrator or demented parent. Given the fact that she still works with those people on a daily basis, I felt it was wise to avoid any risk of making things worse. I did save the story and will re-post it after things cool down a bit.

Still More Evidence of Cronyism in Bushland

I was trying to find a link to one of my favorite news shows when I ran across this article posted on Media Matters for America. The New York Times article explores how Harriet Miers worked a dual role after being appointed by Bush to head the Texas Lottery Commission, which was supposedly suspected of shady dealings. It looks as though some of the questionable activity centered around an employee who had information about Bush's own shady National Guard experience. Here's a clip:

"Allegations about political favors playing a role in Bush's National Guard career first arose in the midst of a lawsuit filed by Lawrence Littwin, the former executive director of the lottery commission who was both hired and fired during Miers's tenure. Littwin had reportedly been investigating what he considered improper political contributions made by Gtech, a company which had a contract to run the Texas lottery. In his lawsuit, Littwin claimed that Gtech pressured the commission to fire him by threatening to reveal that the company had paid lobbyist Ben Barnes $23 million to keep Barnes from publicly claiming that he pulled strings in order to get Bush into the Guard.

In her capacity at the commission, Miers was directly involved with Littwin's dismissal in October 1997. Littwin's lawsuit claimed that after he began looking into financial ties between the company and Texas lawmakers, Gtech pushed Miers to fire him [Houston Chronicle, January 6, 2001]. After a federal judge in Texas ruled that Miers did not have to testify in Littwin's lawsuit to provide an explanation for why Littwin was fired, Gtech settled Littwin's lawsuit for $300,000.

Subsequently -- and while still serving on the commission -- Miers was paid $19,000 by Bush's re-election campaign to investigate his National Guard record in order to "identify potential vulnerabilities early on and deflect any charges that Bush got favorable treatment," according to a July 17, 2000, Newsweek article. Newsweek reported that Barnes's allegations were a key part of Miers's investigation. That would mean that the Miers investigation -- and therefore Bush himself -- potentially benefited from Miers's knowledge of and involvement in the lottery commission."

Everybody knows Bush had preferential treatment with his National Guard stint. First, to get in at all - and later to cover the fact that he was AWOL while out campaigning for his dad. Harriet Miers appears to be a Bush loyalist first and foremost. No wonder he trusts her so much.

Conservative pundits like Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative rag The Weekly Standard characterized Miers' nomination to the high court 'at best an error, at worst a disaster' which should be reconsidered. 'He (Bush) has put up an unknown and undistinguished figure for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction.'

George Will, with whom I hardly ever agree (except for our shared love of baseball and the Cubs) called for the Miers nomination to be turned down by the Senate. Here's a clip from his Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post:

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

Thank you, George, for your eloquence. But will GW listen? I doubt it - so we'll be subjected to an awful dissection of this poor woman at the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Of course, the evangelicals will say she will have been persecuted for her beliefs. But, to be sure, this nomination should go down in flames due solely to the fact that she is nothing more than a political crony who is clearly not qualified to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

Our Girl Harriet

President Bush managed to piss everybody off with this one. The Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination has been roundly panned by pundits from virtually the entire political spectrum. I can almost see GW smirking after he and his trusty advisors came up with this one. This ought to throw everybody for a loop, yuk, yuk. One thing I've got to hand GW, he has shown an uncanny ability to top his daddy when it comes to boneheaded presidential moves. The elder Bush at least had the good sense to avoid a protracted war in Iraq after Desert Storm, while Boy George boldly ventures forth on a misguided crusade to build a democratic state in the heart of the Middle East. Is that conservative? Seems like I remember W criticizing the Clinton/Gore administration for their "nation building" in Bosnia. You don't hear much about Bosnia these days. I guess it depends on your point of view about this nation building concept - if a Democrat is doing it, it's nation building, if a Republican does it, it's fighting tyranny and spreading democracy. Of course, it also helps if the proposed construction site has a fair amount of oil under the surface and your administration is tight with big oil.

Daddy Bush appointed legal lightweight Clarence Thomas to the bench in what many regarded as a cold, cynical move that would force Democrats to oppose a black nominee. I wonder, has Thomas ever voted independently of ideologue Scalia? Ever written an intelligent opinion? He did serve a huge role in casting one of the votes that put Bush's son in the White House. So, the appointment did pay a quick dividend politically. Do you recall how Thomas characterized his contentious nomination process as a high-tech lynching? After viewing his service on the court so far, I guess it could be fair to similarly characterize his ideological obedience as good old-fashioned Uncle Tomism.

In George Bush we have the same man who asked us to trust him as he spread fear and loathing about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq as a rationale for an unprovoked invasion. Turns out the intelligence was bad - wasn't his fault (never is). This is also the man who appointed a totally unqualified Michael "yer doin' a heckuva job" Brown to lead FEMA. (Brown had been commissioner of the Arabian Horse Association, which at least symbolically represents the abundance of horseshit GW has cast upon the American public.) And now . . . he gives us his girl Harriet, former White House secretary and personal legal council. She has virtually no record, no court experience, didn't appear on anybody's list of the top 100 (1,000?) candidates - but not to worry. Our fearless leader knows her heart. Trust him on this one. She'll never change, he assures us. Shew, what a relief. One thing we do know - she is a born again Christian, which, in political terms, is nothing more than a blatant signal to the GOP's conservative base that Miers would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade when the opportunity presents itsself. She will, of course, refuse to talk about that during the hearings.

In the five years that have passed since the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency, could anybody, even his harshest political enemies, have calculated how poorly he would have performed? I wonder how many years it will take to undo the damage this administration has done to the country and our standing in the world. But back to our girl Harriet. I doubt seriously that Bush will withdraw this ridiculous nomination. I just hope the Senate has the guts to vote it down. It'll be interesting to see who stands tall and who bends over.

Bad Boys, School Superintendents & Wal-Mart

Last night, I ran into two of my former students outside the movie store. Brandon and Ricky were always in trouble for one thing or another during their three years in middle school. Both of them flunked almost every class but were passed on year after year, as is the habit in most middle schools. Ricky had a violent streak and was finally placed in an alternative school for much of his 7th grade year. It was mostly 7th grade macho stuff that got him in trouble. Like so many other lost boys and girls we see in middle school halls every year, he had virtually zero parental supervision. Brandon's mom tried to become more involved, but her son was soft and lazy, a follower who seemed hell bent on being cool above all else. Brandon had a good sense of humor and was one of the few in my class who understood my jokes, but he hadn't learned much academically since the third or fourth grade.

They saw me first as I pulled into the parking lot. "Hey, Mr. Smith." It's always nice to see former students smiling when we meet. So often, my memories of scolding them and sending them to the office for some transgression are all I remember. Ironically, some of the worst discipline problems are the friendliest when we meet outside the confines of school. They seem to know that I really did like them - even the bad ones (sometimes especially the bad ones). The two bad boys sauntered up to the passenger side of the car as I pulled in, and we talked through the window. Ricky had his ball cap on crooked and wore an open baseball jersey, the uniform of adolescent rebellion.

"So how's high school going?" I asked.
"We're not in school," Brandon said, smiling.
"We're doing home school now," Ricky said with a straight face. Home schooling? I had to laugh.
"Are you kidding me?" Both of them smiled just a bit, not wanting to completely admit that they weren't doing anything remotely related to school work.
"So, who's teaching you?" I asked.
"My mom," says Brandon.
They knew I didn't buy it, but I didn't say anything more. We said our good-byes, and they drove away in Brandon's beat up Taurus with the bass vibrating a loose muffler. Poor lost boys.

I remembered one parent/teacher conference. Brandon's mom had broken down in tears, pleading for advice on how to persuade her academically-challenged son that doing well in school was important. "He's a good boy," she said over and over.

And now this poor woman was home schooling them? I wonder how she's holding up. Their situation seems hopeless now. I hate it that they have chosen to separate themselves from the one place where they might learn something outside their usual realm - where they could associate with adults who cared about them and had some insight into the real world. The sad thing is, Ricky and Brandon were both reasonably bright, funny kids - especially Ricky. There were times when I knew that I "had them" during particular lessons. There was definitely some hope there - they just weren't in class often enough for anything to stick. When he came to school for a stretch, Ricky actually contributed to class and truly enjoyed doing a little math now and then. He even passed a couple of tests. I can remember how he eagerly shot his hand up when he had the answer to a math problem. Now it seems their education is a lost cause, but I'll keep you posted if there are any future Brandon and Ricky sightings in the 'hood.

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Speaking of education, I met the new superintendent of schools the other day at an NEA meeting. He's an affable fellow, much more articulate than the last suit that flew into town to lead R-12 . . . and much funnier. All the principals like him, but I still haven't heard him say much other than "we must foster a culture of improvement", which seems pretty uninspired to me. Let's all agree to try to do better, okay?

This was his first meeting with Springfield NEA, and a couple of polite teachers lobbed softball questions. He was obliged to mention how awesome (a favorite adjective) the system was and how capable the staff was . . . but then somebody asked him what he thought about class size. Having just struggled through a year when my classes were jammed with 35-36 students every hour, I was interested in how he'd handle this one. It seems amazing to me that a big system like R-12 refuses to hire enough teachers to have optimum class sizes.

Dr. Ridder smiled and apologetically explained that he always gets a little "political" when talking about class size . . . He rubbed his hands together and said, "I've seen teachers do a terrific job with classes of forty and a poor job with classes of fifteen." And then he smiled and nodded as if to acknowledge that what he had just uttered was total bullshit. Exactly the kind of bobbing and weaving we've come to expect from administrative types. I was disappointed but not surprised. He has a nice personality at least. He's coming back in a few months, and I have already promised myself to ask him about the tax rollback. Should inspire a good soft-shoe.

One last thing while on the topic of home schooling and public education. Did you know that the world's largest and richest corporation, besides busting unions and offering low-wage, low-benefit jobs to the working poor, has been funneling all kinds of money to political action committees that are opposed to public education? Here are a few facts from an NEA article:

The Walton family dedicates the bulk of its philanthropy to pushing vouchers, tuition tax credits and charter schools, giving at least $250 million to such efforts over the past six years. (USA Today, 3/11/04)
Since 1998, the Walton Family Foundation has given more than $100 million to private organizations that finance vouchers to private schools, undermine support for public education, and are intended to increase political pressure for publicly funded vouchers. (Mediatransparency.org)
The late John Walton was the biggest paycheck in the anti-public education movement, providing tens of millions of dollars of his own money to support anti-public education ballot initiatives and organizations and sitting on the boards of the major pro-voucher organizations.

What can you do? My little family is boycotting Wal-Mart in favor of companies like Target and Staples, who generously support public schools across the country. In spite of all the problems in schools today, I sincerely believe that public education is the glue that holds our society together, as tenuous as that hold may be. For every Ricky and Brandon that drop out, there are also kids that are rescued from terrible situations and benefit greatly from their time in public schools.

Where's the Love?

The following is in response to Kevin Elmer's commentary in the News-Leader.

Kevin Elmer's one-sided and utterly simplistic commentary in Sunday's paper left me wondering when so-called "conservative Christians" will ever cut the rhetoric, take off the blinders and view the world around them.

Elmer builds a flimsy argument that Islamic radicals love death over life, while we in the U.S. prefer the inverse - and then neatly concludes that this Islamic fatalism is the big difference between them and us. They love death; we love life.

I would argue that many Americans, even devout Christians like Rev. Pat Robbertson, are quite selective about their love of life. It depends on whose life it is - or the stage of development. From conception to birth, we're all about the sanctity of life - but for babies being born into abject poverty, like many of those left behind in New Orleans, well, they're on their own. We build bigger and better prisons to house those kinds of people. They aren't really part of the economy. They are expendable. Nixon advisor Henry Kissinger called them "eaters".

Mr. Elmer also states that 9/11 was the event that "ensured that (Al Qaida) would grow beyond a small group into an inspired movement." He might recall that the entire civilized world condemned the 9/11 attacks and rallied to support the U.S. No, it was the misguided U.S. invasion of Iraq that most certainly boosted the rolls of Islamic fanaticism - virtually every Mideast leader cautioned the Bush Administration on this.

I do agree that the victims of the 9/11 attacks "were not soldiers armed to protect . . . they were innocent." But are the 25,000 Iraqi civilians who have died since the U.S. invasion of their country any less innocent? When asked about civilian casualties, an American general said, "We don't do body counts." Where's the love?

It's always great to hear somebody cheerleading about how the U.S. is the greatest nation in the world. USA! USA ! But right now, after the veneer has been stripped away in New Orleans and with the continuing death and destruction in Iraq, I don't think we're gaining many converts worldwide.

Used Syringes

Today was a first. I've lived in this neighborhood for 14 years, and although there are a few shady characters renting houses a few blocks east of here, it's always been a quiet neighborhood of dog-walkers and kids on bikes. Sure we have our share of teenagers in their baggy pants and slightly askew ball caps trying to look tough, but they're just kids. Right?

I was cleaning up some stuff in the yard today, picking up what people typically throw out of their cars - a couple of fast food cups, a plastic grocery bag. But the grocery bag had something in it. I opened it up and looked down on somebody's discarded meth kit . . . three syringes, one still had a few cc's left in it, and a couple of spoons.

After thinking about all the little kids that live next door and across the street, I decided to call the police. I didn't really think they could do much, but I figured it might confirm what they already suspected about a certain house - maybe a red flag that might get them patrolling the neighborhood more often. I guess that's a good thing. The nice lady on the phone told me SPD didn't send officers to pick up syringes anymore - too many calls, I suppose.

She told me to very carefully place the syringes and spoons in a milk carton or some closed container and throw it in the trash. (This caused me to think of Mayor Carlson's son, whose arrest we talked about a few months ago. One method of investigation the police used in that case was sifting through the suspect's trash. In fact, they did find seeds and stems that served as a basis for his arrest. Now, the nice police lady is telling me to go ahead and throw the syringes in my trash. I guess the police can tell you to throw drug paraphernalia away, and it's all okay. I think there might be a dusty old bong in the attic - might as well toss it in for good measure.)

But seriously, the discovery of this stuff laying in my yard was a little unsettling. I haven't told the neighbors yet. Children ages 11, 6, 5 and 2 live in homes surrounding the dumping spot. Imagine one of them pulling dirty syringes out of bag - gives me chills.

The Drowning of New Orleans

The following snip is from Scientific American, October 2001:

New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. (end of snip)

While many thousands were evacuated, it makes you wonder . . . scientists have warned of this calamity for years, and yet the Army Corps of Engineers and federal officials did nothing to prepare for or avert a disaster of monumental proportions. Monster hurricane Andrew missed the Big Easy by a mere 100 miles in 1992, and in 1998 hurricane Georges was making a beeline for the city before veering just a few miles east at the last moment. Katrina veered a little at the end, as well, but the water surge following the storm broke two levees, and now we see the dreadful images that back up what scientists predicted years ago. (Now, about global warming . . . )

The human suffering going on down there is just unimaginable from our comfortable vantage point here in the Ozarks. These are the kinds of things that only happen in third world countries, right? The truth is, we've always had a hidden third world subsisting within our borders, and events like this only make that truth more evident. Have you seen the faces of the people trapped in the Superdome?

You can expect the rolls of the poor to continue to grow as the struggle to maintain a middle class becomes more and more difficult. The Louisiana coast supplies 1/5 of the nation's oil and 1/4 of its natural gas. We've already seen gas spike to $3 a gallon. Everybody feels this calamity, even here in Springfield.

And we were worried about terrorists.

Blogging from Iraq

So much of the news about the war in Iraq is filtered through corporate-owned media that have their own political connections to protect, it's hard to know if you're getting a "fair and balanced" account of what's really going on in this hellish endeavor. In today's America, that's just the way it is, as Walter Cronkite would say.

Michael Yon: Online Magazine is definitely worth a read if you'd like to get a truly unbiased glimpse of what daily life is like for the soldiers risking their lives doing the dirty work in Iraq - helping the Iraqis gain freedom from tyranny, or whatever the Bush administration rationale is this week.

Jesus Addressing a Republican Fund Raiser

Now that the Republicans have co-opted Christianity in this country, they have re-created Jesus in their own image. Here's a funny excerpt from an article in Slate Magazine entitled "The Parable of Jesus and the Rubber Chicken". This is our Lord and Savior addressing a Repubican fundraiser:

"In My youth, I made certain ill-advised statements that I now regret. If I offended anyone, I apologize. I want to clarify that it is easy for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. (CHEERS, WILD APPLAUSE)
"I'd like to apologize specifically to the money-changers. It is My sincere hope that you will come back into the Temple free of charge as My guests." (WILD APPLAUSE, CHANT OF "U.S.A! U.S.A!")
Finally—and this is Me speaking for Myself now—I want to say to the meek: Once we finally get rid of the death tax, you're not inheriting anything. Not while you're meek, so buck up. (CHEERS) And that goes double for you peacemakers. (LAUGHTER) Good night and Dad bless America. (CHEERS, WILD APPLAUSE)

The whole article can be found at: http://www.slate.com/id/2124768/

Springfield School Board Rolls Back, Rolls Over

I'm not even going to justify this little speil with a link to the Gnews-Leader or quotations from proud school board members. After finally selling a tax levy increase to the voters of Springfield - with a great deal of help from teachers seeking smaller class sizes, I might add - the Springfield School Board has elected to rollback the levy in order to save voters $27 a year on property taxes.

It's a gesture of good will, I guess, aimed at placating those in the community who don't support public education. Seems like an odd stance for a school board, if you ask me. But it also is a complete rollover onto an already burdened teaching staff, and stiffs the kids as well. The board's action further creates the impression that the initial levy campaign, with its threats of program curtailments, was over-stating the problems in our schools. The critics and naysayers were right, they tacitly acknowledge. What an ingratiating and inauspicious start for the new superintendent.

There is a big myth floating around Springfield. The myth is that the citizenry here care about improving education and investing in a good future for the children. The school board's caving on the levy in order to create better PR with the community is disingenuous at best and deceitful at worst.

Who will end up enduring even longer delays on basic improvements to the system? The students and teachers - the people in the classrooms trying to get it done. Are there any teachers out there celebrating this decision? Find one. I remember the leadership meeting I attended last summer. The day the tax levy passed there was a room full of 500 celebrants, cheering, even dancing. But that was an abberation. Nothing has changed.

Last year, this math teacher had 138 middle school math students divided into four classes. You do the math, and it adds up to 34.5 students per class - and this is in a core subject that students are tested over and over and over. The school is ultimately rated over these test scores and then publicly labeled as successful or failing.

If the school board had any inkling or inclination to significantly help the system perform better, they would put as much money as they possibly could into hiring more good teachers and shrinking class sizes. It's interesting that the R-12 school board feels compelled to raise the superintendant's salary "to be competitive" but gets all squeamish when it comes to using that same rationale when hiring teachers. Makes you wonder about priorities.

Am I the only one who thinks this school board is just slightly out of touch with reality? And I'd still like to hear the reasoning behind moving all the R-12 administrative employees to a separate pay scale from other professional staff (teachers). It almost seems like a "class" thing. Surely not. No wonder so many third-year PE teachers opt for getting that administrative certificate, thus utilizing their wealth of teaching experience as building principals. Next step . . . superintendent at Sparta or Ava or Bumfuck . . . who cares? It's great money!

By the way, did you know that the new superintendent's salary schedule was given a sweet $45,000 boost this year? Now it's up to $190,000 for yet another migrant administrator to fly in and utter the same tired platitudes about "ownership", "leadership" and "community". Hell, he just moved here, and he's leading cheers about the community already. Have you ever wondered why they don't promote from within Springfield? If this is such a great community, why is it we can't find any leadership from within? Is it some kind of civic inferiority complex, or what?

But let's get back to the pay scale. The R-12 superintendent's pay raise alone - let me say that again - the superintendent's raise alone, makes up more than 150% of a starting teacher's full salary in Springfield. Just his raise. You want to talk about rollbacks?

Bongs for Burgers! (from the springfieldian #6)

Click to enlarge.

More Precious Mutants

"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Parasitic Brother"

Precious Mutants (from The Springfieldian #5)

My Little Antichrist

From the Book of Revelations, it's "My Little Antichrist," archnemesis of all humankind. Exclusive Mark of the Beast-style eyes say "666", but his arms say, "Hold me!" With flames of retribution pedestal. Hurry, available only until the Apocalypse for just $39.99.

In 1977, artist Sam Butcher received a divine inspiration: Create a line of collectible figurines aimed at the lucrative Christian market; have them manufactured by unwitting non-Christians in Asia; slap on enormous price tags; build a (Sistine-inspired) chapel/retail outlet in the Ozarks to promote the figurines; and become very, very rich.

Inspiration paid off. Today, the world-famous Precious Moments line of products generates half a billion dollars in sales yearly. Key to the popularity of the winsome moppets are their unusual stylized features. Each character is blessed an impossibly oversized cranium - and never has encephalitis been so appealing. The trademark teardrop eyes are equally malformed - yet magnetic, pulling at your heart - and purse strings. It's all held up by freakish swollen ankles. Elephantiasis.

Adorable, yes, but not enough for the notoriously voracious Precious Moments devotees. Snapping up the collections as fast as they could be made, insatiable fans demanded more - bigger heads; more pathetic eyes.

And so, we proudly announce the arrival of Precious Mutants: an exciting new series of figurines incorporating these fan-inspired changes . . . and more! We're sure you'll find them the most irresistible additions to your collection yet. With Precious Mutants, genetic innovations are taken to new heights - and now, with the announcement that a toxic waste facility has moved in next door to the Precious Moments Chapel, the possibilities for further mutations appear to be unlimited.

Downtown Saturday Night

Downtown Saturday night in Springfield, Missouri is not what it used to be. Music from a dozen different venues fills the air. There are misplaced teens everywhere, riding skateboards, beating on worn out guitars. A local prophet of god stands at a street corner, tonight with his son along, warning people about the wages of sin and sex.

The crowd at Ernie Biggs is singing very loudly and another smaller crowd hovers at the door, trying to figure if there's actually enough room to enter the place. They were singing Neil Diamond songs. It was awful. A woman with huge propped up breasts and cleavage about the size of my ass, raised her arms and danced up by the stage. The crowd was way more interesting than the music, believe me.

On the corner of Walnut and South, we ran into what has become a downtown fixture - our own placard prophet. There were two tonight, father and son. When we passed the first time, they stood alone. Most passers by politely ignore them, but when I came back with my camera, there was a crowd of revelers milling around the placards - asking questions, pointing fingers. The prophets usually have four double-sided placards to aim at passing cars and pedestrians. There was one message that really had a group of young halter-topped girls in a tizzy - something about lustful dressing.

The elder prophet calmly tried to explain - the younger one was obviously intimidated by these loud females, who were, by the way, lustfully attired by anyone's standard.

I told my friend, "They're probably rubbing themselves through their pockets right now." It was an awful thing to say. I apologize. Anyway, things got very volatile a little later, as I tried to maneuver to get a good shot of the younger prophet's sign.

"I'm going to take your picture. I hope you don't mind," I said.

"I'd rather you wouldn't," he said, turning away so I couldn't get the shot.

"Well, you're out here on a public street corner, are you too shy to get your picture taken?" I asked. He turned sideways, so the sign was not visible to me. I walked around him. He turned. It was like a weird magnetic effect I had on this guy. We danced like that for a couple of rotations before I gave up and we crossed the street.

One sign, held by the elder man, warned that marrying after divorce was adultery, which I took to mean that you might as well live in sin and save the paper work. Another sign, held by the younger, caused a little ruckus. It read: "True Christians Do Not Go To War". (He's holding this sign in the picture above.) As we reached the other side of Walnut Street, a couple of young men, maybe a little drunk, accosted the two sign holders.

"What do you mean true Christians don't go to war," one of the men shouted, obviously a good Christian patriot. "My brother is over there fighting for your freedom, you fucking coward." He stopped and menacingly pointed a finger, while his friend tried to lure him away. "You don't know a goddamn thing about war, you fucking pussy."

And just like that, the elder prophet interrupted his proselytizing, and screamed back at the man. "YOU DO NOT TAKE THE LORD'S NAME IN VAIN!" (He didn't react at all as his son was being publicly berated as a coward and, worse, a pussy. Does this imply tacit agreement?)

At exactly this time, the police came roaring in. Two cars, and officers quickly calmed the drunk Christian patriot guy, as he earnestly tried to explain and justify his outburst. "My brother's over there," he said.

Things calmed down from that point, but it seemed like the younger prophet apprentice was a bit shaken. He might put the war sign away for a while and stick to safer topics - sex, lust, divorce and adultery. The standards.

Novak a Little Testy (or little testes?)

Conservative columnist Robert Novak must be feeling the heat of the CIA leak investigation. The normally cool and urbane man-about-Washington stormed off the set of CNN's "Inside Politics" on Friday after what seemed like a mild ribbing from Democratic consultant James Carville.

Novak sat next to Carville while host Ed Henry was asking them about the Florida senate primary coming up. Former Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, is one of the Republican candidates, and Carville was saying how this would be a great boon to late night comedy shows like Jay Leno. Harris, among other things, has recently asserted that the media purposely doctored photos to alter her makeup, which set Carville off. Novak, predictably, spoke in support of Harris's makeup claim and was commenting on her chances of winning the primary when Carville interrupted.

"I'll tell you this, you know, you've got to show these right-wingers that you've got backbone. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching. Show them you're tough." To which, Novak turned to Carville and said,
"I think that's bullshit, and I hate that." He then stood up, unhooked his mic and walked off the set while Henry and Carville continued talking without a hitch. (video clip)

Novak had already been informed by host Ed Henry that he would be asked about the CIA leak investigation, but the topic never came up. Did Novak purposely walk off to escape further questioning on the matter? We'll never know, but his little tantrum got him suspended by CNN. "Bob Novak's behavior today was inexcusable and unacceptable," a spokesperson for CNN said on Friday. "We've asked Mr. Novak to take some time off."

As far as air time goes, Novak may have finally shot himself in the foot. He was formerly a regular on Crossfire and The Capital Gang, but both shows have been cancelled. His next big media appearance, however, may be on all the networks, as the CIA leak investigation comes to an end. Novak, who started the whole thing, has been less than forthcoming on the subject to fellow reporters. But it now seems very possible that some indictments will be coming down - and the smug little bastard probably knows he'll be in the vortex when the shit finally hits the fan.

Here's a little background and commentary from a previous Ozarks Angel.