THIS FROM NEAL BOORTZ
PROFESSOR WICHMAN TO THE MUSLIM ASSOCIATION OF MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech." Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:
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THANATOPSIS ALONG THE OCMULGEE

One day last week as I was finishing the last leg of an early morning hike along Macon’s famed River Walk, I came across an elderly (eighty-something), somewhat frail woman seated on a bench, gazing intently across the river. On the other side sits one of our landmark treasuries, the venerable and beautiful Rose Hill Cemetery, democratic resting place of prominent and lesser-known Maconites since the days before the Civil War.
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TONY SNOW IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Tony Snow is a great choice to be the next White House whipping boy. This fellow has the intelligence, background, guts, charisma, and practical political savvy.

I am reminded of a joke:
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PLANTING A SEED IN THE GROUND

The following conversation actually took place in a preparatory Latin class composed of a dozen or so young men and a young teacher.

JIMMY: (A hulking, blond giant of a well-fed sixteen-year-old). Mr. X (teacher’s name) I just learned something important. Can I tell you and the class? I’ll have to use a bad word.

MR. X: (On guard against teen-age chicanery) OK, Jimmy. We’re done with the lesson and have a few minutes before the bell. Please be careful, remember this is still a class.

JIMMY: OK, ok. Well the word is ‘fuck’ and I just learned from another teacher what it meant at first.

MR. X: (Crossing fingers, hoping the worst is over) Please go on, Jimmy.

JIMMY: (Excited now, bathing in the full attention of his classmates) Well it was back in Old England, in the Anglo Saxon days. It was a farmers’ word. It meant to ‘plant a seed in the ground’.

MR. X: (Sensing an opening) Thank you for that bit of information. We have all learned something here today. You have made a contribution to our general knowledge. So why don’t you plant a seed in the ground yourself, Jimmy. (General hilarity….Jimmy didn’t get it.)

I'M BACK
MAYBE

Two days actually. Damn telephone!! Thought the problem was cat ‘horse play’ at first. Then not sure. Phone company came out, checked the line, told me to throw away my old phone and get another. OK….BIG LOTS there I went. Still didn’t work. RADIO SHACK….connectors to tie the inside line to what baby Bell sticks on the side of the house. The module I purchased didn’t speak baby’s language, no communication. Seems like the wiring in here was done before the world knew about area codes. My personal guess is that squirrels have been knawing on the line outside. When it rains, the system gets zapped. Happened a few years ago. Baby Bull’s techies don’t believe me. But those bozos tend to underestimate the little rodents. Another call to phone company, another guy came out another day. This has dragged on for more than two days now….so when you read this on the olde b’log, we’re probably back in action.

Stretched into three visits from Ma Bell-lings. Working for now.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE
PHIL WALDEN

Posted by: Luke on Apr 25, 06 | 6:06 am | Profile

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APOLOGIA
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Having trouble staying online tonight. Problem seems to be in the phone line.

Installed it myself, brought the phone line from the box to this corner of the house where sits my aging computer.

Didn't count on three athletic furry, rodent chasers racing behind and under furniture where the phone line runs.

Back tomorrow with mega update.....I hope.

Ciao

BELLA, HORRIDA BELLA CANO
Publius Vergilius Maro
Roman Poet

"War, I Predict, God Awful Wars," wrote Vergil, putting the prophetic words in the mouth of the prophetess, the Cumaean Sybil. Aemeas amd his intrepid band would not win Italy without a struggle.

Horrida bella has come to Aegypt once again, the third terroristic attack on that nation in something less than two years. Three simultaneous explosions rocked thetourist center of Dahab. More than twenty dead.

War. Horrida Bella.

Every day Bella Horrida Bella. 9/11 was just one example.

And we are at war. War against Muslim fundamentalists who have hijacked an entire religion in an effort to conquer and convert the world. Highjacked it with the tacit consent of the Muslim Majority.

We are at war as much as Great Britain was in 1939 after Hitler invaded Poland, or America Was after the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

I know, I know, 'Jap' isn't very politically correct....neither am I.

The stakes are every bit as big or bigger even than they were at the outset of WW2.

The future of Western Covilization is in doubt.

Why do we have so many myopic pacifists willing to look the other way when cimple logic says give 'em hell?

THE JUNIOR SENATOR FROM THE BAY STATE
IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO

Please remove all children from the room.

Do not go any further if you are offended by pictures of powerful men, elected national figures, in the throes of doin' what comes naturally. Even in the privacy of their own garden areas, we think.

This is a reprint an image we ran just prior to the election of 2004. There are those who claim it might have caused Mr. Kerry the election.

We call it: JOHN AND THERESA ON THEIR FIRST REAL DATE.

You have been fore-warned: More...

APOLOGIES
EARTH DAY

I have to offer my apologies to regular readers and casual visitors.

I didn't celebrate Earth Day, yesterday. Didn't go out to clean out a leaf-choked stream, pick up trash alongside a road, trim trees and pick weeds in some local park or neglected cemetary.

Just didn't have time. Too busy with a ten mile hike followed by an afternoon's spading in the garden.

No Earth Day observance here, just the usual things done every day weather and mood permitting.

Sorry.

ANNIVERSARY OF COLUMBINE SLAUGHTER

I don't often sit in front of my boobus tubus glued to much of anything, including an unfolding news story.

9/11 was an exception, although I missed the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon because i was out for a morning constitutional. It wa pure shock to return to the unfolding story. I channel surfed for hours as I recall.

Another tragedy that piqued my interest took place on April, 20, 1999. It was the Columbine shooting in which twelve teens and a teacher were murdered in cold blood, another twenty-four wounded, and only ended when the whacked-out teen perps took their own lives. More...

GUESS WHAT?
THE END TIMES ARE ALREADY HERE

The ‘End Times’ are here, folks. Started back in the nineties, I suspect. Maybe earlier.

No, no, no….I don’t mean the end of the world as some of our biblically correct friends would have it….prophecy and apocalypse now, anti christ (not Auntie Christ, dodo-brain, she’s a Mary Magdalene of another stripe), lakes of fire, rapture and rupture, The Battle of Armageddon, return of Jewry to its traditional homeland….all that stuff folks find or think they find in scripture, somewhere in the New and the Old Testaments.Some Muslims believe the same sort of thing. More...

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS,
QUEEN ELIZABETH

Please accept our apologies for not posting in honor of The Queen's eightieth Birthday.

It must be a wonderous thing to look back on eighty years, eight decades, four generations of a royal family, so dysfunctional, so inherently inbred that it makes President Bush or his would be successor. J. Kerry, seem like Summa Cum Laude Yale graduates.

Have a shot of something extra strong in your team, mum.

A LINK TO TOWNHALL'S
NAIL YALE

Welcome to a stormy Macon morning....severe weather outside, pot of excellent coffee inside. I like coffee, real coffee, strong and bitter, not these sweet, frothy girly drinks served by trendy, over-priced 'coffee houses'. If i want a milkshake, I'll ask for one. Coffee is best plain, unadorned, and untouched by the effete hand of lsome latte server.

Most of you know that Sayad Hashemi, Taliban PR guy extraordinaire, has recently enrolled in Yale. A real find for that over-ivied institution located in beautiful downtown New Haven. Our friends at TOWNHALL have given us a whole heap of excellent insight into the American-hating Hashemi's presence on the ancient campus. Check out: http://www.townhall.com/blogs/nailyale/ It's a long read, but just the thing to get your juices flowing on a Saturday Morning.

Ciao.

WITH THE BOOTS ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ

Our 'Net friend Riverside Red, local activist and great guy sent a fascinating email forward which is reproduced in its entirety below. It purports to be from a young man serving in Iraq and gives us a serious glimpse at the weapons and tactics of both sides.

Much of the commentary hits at the inadequacy of the rifles and side-arms carried by our troops on the ground has been echoed elsewhere, which makes me think that the missive is accurate.

It paints a picture of the war far removed from what we read or see anywhere in the media.

Why the disconnect? I do have a theory.

Click MORE: More...

HISTORY DOES NOT REPEAT ITSELF

Despite what many sincerely believe, history does not ‘repeat itself.’

We can learn from the past, we may deduce elements of cause and effect operating within the historical fabric, but ‘repeat itself’, with some kind of one-to-one correlation is simply impossible.

There are simply too many variables that muck up any simple equation.
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BREAD and CIRCUSES
PANEM et CIRCENSES
WELFARE and AMERICAN IDOL

One of a society's reasons for being is to take care of its poor and downtrodden. "Lo the poor shall be with us, always."

No problem there. But Americans are becoming more and more dependent on government (and taxpayer) largess that is beginning to approach the kind of cradle-to-grave socialistic welfare state that has ruined the economies of Western Europe since World War Two. More...

UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARY
APRIL 19th.

WACO
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Posted by: Luke on Apr 19, 06 | 6:25 am | Profile

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ERIN GO BRAGH

We finally have learned the name of the Capitol Police Officer assaulted by Cynthia McKinney. He has been identified as 'Paul McKenna'.

We also learned that McKinney did not slap or shove McKenna with her cell phone, but hit him in the chest with her closed fist.

I don't know why the media is giving such broad coverage to a fight between two pugnacious Irishmen. Saw it on a daily basis in Boston a few years ago. There were a couple of Irish bars near Fields Corner in Dorchester where the beer flowed free, Irish bands whipped up the folk to donate to the IRA every Saturday night, and guys and gals mixed it up both inside and on the street.

There is nothing quite like taking an evening stroll accompanied by lilting strains of nostalgic music and the combined smell of disinfectant, beer, and vomit.

McKinney vs Mckenna: ROUND ONE

HERMAN CAIN AILING

Just got an email from Maurice Atkinson, head honcho of the Bibb County GOP which said in part:

F Y I
THIS IN FROM LUKE'S POP
A CHALLENGE

For those of you who know it, I'm in training to run the Boston Marathon in 2007. For those of you who don't know it, I'm still in training to run the Boston Marathon in 2007.

Mamy years ago, long decades before Luke even existed I lived in Boston's Back Bay, only a few short blocks from the inish line. On Patriots' Day (A legal holiday in the Bay State) in April, I joined throngs of other Bostonians, both proper and improper (Like myself and my dear friend Newt Collier), to witness the climax of the twenty-three mile run. In Beantown, this is one of the most widely anticipated events on any calendar year.

This year the winning time was just over two hours and seventeen minutes.

Despite my age (sixty-seven) amd several age-related infirmities, I think I can beat that time. It takes hard work and dedication, but a daily workout on Macon's River Walk and other areas of this fine city is getting me in shape for the attempt.

I HEREBY ISSUE A CHALLENGE TO THE SENIOR SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS, TED KENNEDY, TO RUN AGAINST ME IN NEXT YEAR'S BOSTON MARATHON.

So wish me luck. Might have to leave Luke in charge of the cats and garden while I'm gone, which is a terrifying prospect to say the least.

Back to you, Luke

PS...Waiting for your reply, Ted....

WEB SITE RESURRECTED
WHAT COULD BE MORE FITTING ON EASTER SUNDAY?

I didn't realize it until I got a couple of emails telling me that this site went down some time during the darkness of the night.

However, Greg Holec over at Macon Hosting fixed it in a trice (or two trices, maybe...dunno...wasn't around) and things are back up and running again.

Now I'm behind on my posting and on answering emails...My fault, I took most of the weekend to do the family thing. Later this evening it will be the 'Newton Thing', when Macon's most special native treasure comes over for a little Gin and Juice as befits the best Music-production-documentary-Guru this city has ever known.

So don't expect much here today. folks. Tomorrow is another day.

Bored....Go to TABLE OF CONTENTS and click on some light reading.

Ciao and Happy Easter,

Perge Modo!!!

"EASTER" or "SPRING"
Easter Vacation or Spring Break???
Easter Bunny or Spring Bunny???

BOORTZ vs O'RELLY
site update

Got an enthusiastic, overnight email letting me know that one of my little online essays had passed the thirty-thousand hit mark.

It's called NEAL BOORTZ KICK'S BILL O'REILLY'S POMPOUS ASS It goes back two or three years to a televised confrontation between Georgia's adopted son, Neal Boortz, and the prime time FNC bully, Bill O'Reilly.

The subject....Teen Age Proms in a rural Georgia county west of Macon.

I don't like talk radio very much. Make an exception, of course, for local greats Kenny B. and Jami G. who are always entertaining and informative, except on that one day a year they spend three hours taking predictions of Super Bowl scores from listeners leading to some big prize. I guess Boortz comes next. He's more of a pragmatic Libertarian than a slave to the Party of the Imperial Pachyderm as Hannity and Limbaugh tend to be. What little I have heard from lefty radio (Al Franken, Randy Rhodes is little more than hysterical, stupidly anti Bush invective. (I don't mind intelligent anti-Bush (or pro-) commentary, but unthinking, repetitive rhetoric is as useless as tits on a bull.)

O'Reilly is unique in the pantheon of Prime Time Cable-News-Entertainment. He is popular because he is populist. Or populist on the surface. A favorite and oft uttered mantra runs something like, 'that's what the American People want.' O'Reilly all too often substitutes such notions for law. Mob rule has been the ruin of every fallen democracy or democratic-styled government since the dawn of civilization.

On a personal note, I find O'reilly's pushing his working-class, Catholic background more than a little offensive. He is, in a word, overly-moralistic.

Please check out the essay. It's a short read. Yes, I would change a couple of words and phrases a couple of years on, but it's still pretty effective.

LUKE'S LATEST FROM THE ELEVENTH HOUR

Hit MORE (below) to see my latest, and possibly last column writ for THE ELEVENTH HOUR.

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PLEASE CHECK OUT
BLACK MACON WEB

Please let me call your attention to a great new EZine which was sent my way just today.

An E-Zine is likr a blog, only a little fancier. What I am trying to do withthis site is to help direct and morph it into such a medium in the fullness of time.

The new site is called BLACK MACON WEB, its publisher and chief bottle washer is businessman/activist/hellofagoodguy Alex Habersham who also publishes the BLACK PAGES DIRECTORY, a compendium of Black-owned and/or oriented business in Middle Georgia.

I looked carefully Mr. Habersham's online efforts earlier this evening. It is well-done, informative, and very interesting. Please check it out at http://www.blackmaconweb.com

This has been a great day for material being sent my way for inclusion on my little bit o' cyberspace. This is what a b'log should be all about....communication, real communication; communication with a purpose which is, in a nutshell, the future of the human race.

As a matter of fact, I am convinced that the salvation of this community will not depend on City or County Government, but on responsible individuals acting responsively for the betterment of us all.

Ciao

MORE FROM VICTOR JONES
AND THE FOREST HILL
CONSPIRACY

Yes, I'm calling this group of civic-minded folks THE FOREST HILL CONSPIRACY. Got a nice ring to it, don't you think. I have a nephew in Boston, a professional musician, who has a website-business-performing center called 'The Clarinet Conspiracy'. Sort of partial.

Click on MORE to get a flavor of some friendly but pointed emailing between Joe Allen and our hero, Vic Jones.

Gotta love this stuff: When i say this is true 'participatory democracy' i mean it with all my heart. More...

LETTER FROM GERMANY
THIS WILL SURPRISE YOU

Today has been an amazing day for the receipt of excellent material to add to the b'log.

This letter from two German writers, Mathias Dupfner and Axel Springer appearing in DIE WELT. It was sent in by a prominent citizen here in Macon whom we identify as Walther01@aol.com

If you think all Europeans are lazy, leftish socialist appeasers this might help change your mind. Click on MORE to read the entire excellent piece.

When you have finished, please reread the last line: More...

LADY LIBERTY

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
(Emma Lazarus)

Posted by: Luke on Apr 12, 06 | 6:36 am | Profile

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DESTROYING A NEIGHBORHOOD
THE FOREST HILL PROJECT
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

I don't often do this, but a click on MORE will take you directly to the entire text of an email from Victor Jones detailing some of the infighting taking place over the revamping and reconstruction of Macon's Forest Hill Road.

Three of Bibb County's Commissioners: Joe Allen, Sam Hart, and Charles Bishop voted against the sensible wishes of the neighborhood's plan. Why? Vic wants you to ask them yourself....and send an email their way.

We will let Vic handle the details...but the opposition to the DOT project has become the very best kind of intelligent example of grass roots, populist democracy that we have seen in a long, long time.

If you are not familiar the Forest Hill situation, Vic's letter will clear things and names and positions and politicians up for you very nicely.

Sadly I didn't get to Vic's email until late Tuesday night after the Bibb County Commission meeting was to have been held.

Mr. Jones quotes an article by Travis Fain of THE TELEGRAPH.

Compare this powerful but sane approach with the shameful excess of mass marches by illegal aliens and you have a perfect textbook example of American-style Democracy in action. More...

HANG TEN

DEA AGENT SHOOTS SELF IN FOOT
WHILE TEACHING A CLASS ON GUN SAFETY
CAUGHT ON TAPE

The DEA agent in the videotape CLICK HERE TO VIEW is shown accidently shooting himself in the foot.

He is currently suing the federal government for release of the tape which was shot by somebody in the audience and turned over to the DEA.

Anybody who accidently discharges a firearm in front of a bunch of kids is something of a damned fool. Think of trauma among the children had he shot himself in a somewhat more private portion of his anatomy.

The first thing we teach in firearm safety is a little item called MUZZLE CONTROL. Always know where the thing is pointing and always assume it is loaded.

Only in America.

Thanks to THE SMOKING GUN website.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT MACON'S CITY HALL

City Hall insiders have informed me that there is a great deal frustration among the City Council folks that they are less and less dealing with Hizzoner in person, while more and more of the inteaction between the two factions is being handled by his immediate staff, the fourteen hapless souls who make up his bloated coterie.

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WHAT IF
IMMIGRATION POLITICS AND RECESSION

Nationally, the unemployment rate stands currently at about 4.7 percent. In economic terms, that means we are enjoying an almost unprecedented state of full employment.

But we still have lots of jobs to fill. Third tier jobs, mostly....things that many Americans wouldn't dream of doing: restaurant kitchen work, landscaping, ditch digging, brick laying.

It's easier and cheaper to hire illegal or neo-legal immigrants to fill these positions than it would be to attract folks already here and generations into the joys and ease of a welfare state. More...

A GOVERNMENT OF MOB RULE
ILLEGALS HAVE NO "CIVIL RIGHTS" IN THIS COUNTRY

This will make some of my readers unhappy.

Unhappy? It will piss some of them off most royally.

Let this short rant serve as a promise of much more to come on the subject of "illegal immigrants" entering this nation seemingly at will.

Call them 'illegals' if you will, 'wetbacks' if you must, but don't call those who who have entered this country not according to its laws to work or to enjoy the fruits of your labor and the sweat of your brow. 'undocumented aliens'. They are criminals, pure and simple. More...

READ MY LIPS
LOTS OF NEW TAXES

It's our fault. We elected him. We voted. The local candy-assed GOP wouldn't even field a candidate to oppose the man. His only opposition came from a write-in vote for dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian David Corr.

See what happens when a former used-car salesman becomes your mayor, folks? It has nothing to with race or political party, it has everything to do with lack of imagination and a one track mind.

Two tracks, actually: SPEND and TAX. The city has been spent into virtual bankruptcy; now we raise taxes.

Words and phrases like 'lay off workers', 'cut expenses', 'stop waste' will get you a mouth washed out with soap if uttered in City Hall.

I learned yesterday (Sunday) that the first our City Council heard of Jack's master plan for a three mil property tax increase was, ta...ta...when they read it, as did we all, on the front page of yesterday's TELEGRAPH.

More, much more later....the River Walk is calling.

AN AD I CAN'T STAND

I'm not much of a TV watcher. But lately one particular ad has reallystarted pissing me off. The Lunesta lady has a decided lisp..or is it my imagination?

Hate the ad, can't stand her voice.

WHAT TO DO WHEN
you are the victim of a crime

Supposing you're in the middle of a crime...you being the victim here. maybe you are being robbed, car-jacked, mugged, raped, or about to be murdered.

Everybody's dofferent, of course, we all have varying feelings at times of high emotional stress like this.

But there is one question every Maconitite or visitor to our fair city should could ask himself as he stares, as I once did, down the barrel of a nine millemeter or simple, old fashioned thirty-eight. The gun I faced was in the hands of a seventeen-year-old wearing pants belted somewhere about his knees. Just a kid. A baby wannabe. Probably in the eighth grade if were still in school.

"Am I," you might ask yourself slowly and deliberately, "being robbed, raped, assaulted, or murdered (pick one) by a real live Macon Gangbanger, or simply by one of Mayor Ellis's young 'wannabes', a good kid who is simply a little off course." This might be important to know as you prepare to face eternity.

If the guy is holding a knife or a baseball bat, the following won't do you much good. Simply run and get the hell out of there pronto if your legs aren't broken.

But if he is shoving a lethal-looking handgun in your direction, all you have to do is look at it carefully. If it appears anything like the accompanying picture, you are, indeed, about to become the vic of a genuine, real-live version of the gang banger persuasion. This is your lucky day. More...

UNDISPUTED PROOF
EVOLUTION
A THEORY NO LONGER

It doesn't take a Harvard PhD to see that newly found fossil fish:


FOSSIL

Was the immediate and undisputed ancestor of this all-time favorite: More...