SHARKS IN THE WATER

PLUNDER IN THE HALLS OF JUSTICE

BLOODBATH AT CITY HALL

I was going to start the series on Macon’s downtown culture with this issue.

But sometimes events happen that knock a guy’s train of thought into a wild blue funk.

And so it was this week. Before I can begin probing into what is meant by ‘culture’, your humble correspondent needs to vent more than his usual rage, frustration, and nagging suspicion that we are living in an age and in a land where the institutions of government have been taken over by the certifiably moronic.

Where to start? City Hall or the United States Supreme Court. Eeny…meeny miney…moe.

Supreme Court it is.

Probably the nine most important jurists in the world: Learned, brilliant legal scholars who just delivered the most asinine, stupidest, ill-considered judgment in their long history.

The Supremes have dealt a blow against an individual’s right to own private property, one of the fundamental freedoms fought for during eight years of revolution and guaranteed, or so we thought, by the United States Constitution itself.

The FIFTH AMENDMENT, that’s part of the ‘Bill of Rights’ for those who are recent graduates of under performing government schools, guarantees that an individual’s right to own property cannot be subverted by government except under certain strict conditions. It reads, in part: nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Some may not believe this, but the concept of ‘private property’ played a far more important role in the development of our primary legal document than did any question about religion or the public display of the Ten Commandments. The right of the individual to own property, to keep and pass it on to his heirs is one cornerstone of American Law.

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THEY'RE BACK
RETURN OF THE LADIES OF RECALL ELLIS

Yep!! The ladies of the Recall Ellis movement have moved out of the shadows and once again, about a year following their over hyped debut during the summer of 2004, are ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I predicted not only privately but also quite publicly (in the Pages of THE ELEVENTH HOUR) that the movement would fail. And it did. Without legal counsel, without sufficient funds it went down in flames in court because Heather McCroan (not a trained legal beagle, merely a quondam, local TV reporter) was unable to prove in court that Mayor C. Jack Ellis had committed such high or low crimes, had been involved in such financial chicanery, was involved in such a level of chicanery that the recall movement must, by law, move forward.

For eighteen months three successive Grand Juries have been looking into malfeasance inside the current administration. To date they seem to e up with nothing.

An ambitious District Attorney indicted Ellis’ CFO, Kelly Clark, the case was thrown out of court. He promised to re-file against Clark, nothing yet has happened.

City councilors and the mayor are engaged in a kind of pissing contest, mine’s bigger than yours, each attempting to out maneuver the other. Winner gets to screw the taxpayer.

Lots of good people fed-up with Mayor Ellis. You can hear the anger, the frustration in the largely anonymous voices calling in to Kenny B and Jami G each morning. Charles Richardson who tediously compares exposing the interwoven layers of duplicity that surround this administration to peeling an onion, shrinking it ever so as to condense the wrongdoing that lies at the core.

And so Recall Ellis once again sets of to win the day, rid the city of the hated mayor and force a recall election.

They have to date secured one hundred signatures on a petition. Next step is court. They are confident this time they will prevail. They have lawyers advising them this time.

Who these legal advisors are, I have no idea. It’s considered folly at best, economic suicide at worse for any of our highly gifted, wily, courageous, and bold barristers to participate in the recall process. No sense in pissing off the majority black population.

Win in court, then collect twelve thousand plus names on a petition…and voila, instant recall.

Except it won’t work. Didn’t stand an ice-cream-cone’s chance in the infernal realms when it was first considered, doesn’t now.

As I looked over the faces at the rallies, the meetings, the yard sales, the misbegotten poinsettia fiasco last Christmas at the Terminal Station, I saw white. No black. Just white. White faces, white thinking, white anger.

Their perception is simply that the Mayor is a crook. In the eyes of the majority of the city’s citizens he is something very different, a hero, to many, a symbol of black pride.

Recall Ellis is not an overtly racist movement. But it is racial in nature and will, unless it dies a quick death, prove to be a major stumbling block in the city’s history of black-white relations.

The good ladies of the movement may will have their day in court….they might even go on to the next step, circulating a petition.

Personally, I doubt they have the fire in the belly needed collect almost thirteen thousand names. Even if they do, and even if we get to the point of a recall election, they will go down in flames, swamped by black voters pride will not let the first African American mayor in our history suffer defeat at the hands of a few bored, white housewives.

What will the end result be? Just a widening of the racial chasm that has always held this poor city back in the dark ages.

SUNDAY FUNNIES

The following was sent to us by a brilliant lawyer way up north in Beantown. Some of them rank up there with 'spinctocracy', our new term to describe the current version of the United States Government.

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or
changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

GUNSHOW

Spent the day at a gun show. Not the whole day, but most of it.

Some time was spent in other pursuits…a little gardening as the early sun tried to break through a thick cloud cover, some minor housekeeping.

Household chores are always ‘minor’ around here. Cleanliness is OK but since we don’t think much of godliness anything next to it has to rank pretty far down the prioritized list. We do own a vacuum cleaner and at least two mops.

So housekeeping meant washing two cups, the small plate on which the morning’s toast was oleoed, and the coffee pot.

Didn’t drive the two miles to the Centreplex. Nope. Took the Riverwalk, Macon’s most successful attempt to provide recreation for the walking masses. Following the meandering pathway along side the Ocmulgee is a daily thing. Why not combine showing support for the Second Amendment with a little exercise.

I’ll tell you why. Because the righteous walking dude is then forced to carry his new carbine and five hundred rounds of ammunition back the same way he came. Gets to be torture even when your body electric is in fairly good shape.

Gun shows are wonderous affairs. Like all trips to the toy store, they never quite come up to expectations, but so what. Anticipation of toys under the tree is more fun than the toys themselves.

And we are not buying a Christmas Story Daisy air rifle here. The nimble weapon we purchased will do a lot more damage than put little Ralphie’s eye out. Guns are lethal things, filled with potential. No gun will ever hurt, maim, or kill without somebody’s willing it to do so. The act may be simply careless, an accident, as it were, unexpected discharge. “I didn’t know the gun was loaded.” The stupidity of pointing any firearm, loaded or not, at a friend or a little brother. Boom. Thing goes off and there is death. Or injury. Or maybe just lots of fright. But the act may be deliberate. “I’m gonna put a cap in your ass.” “You’re a dead man.” “I hate your guts, Melvin.” “Gimme the money.” “Bang, you’re dead.” Deliberate, kill on purpose. The gun didn’t do it alone, it was driven by an outside force, a human agency that took a piece of metal that is neither good or evil, to do a terrible thing. Kill, maim, injure. Put Ralphie’s eye out.

Somewhere along the line I must have inherited a bit of redneck blood, I so do love these gun shows. They are times to touch my roots, once, to rub elbows with men (mostly, few women there) who have a real handle on what The United States is all about, who understand the constitution, who believe that we do have inalienable rights guaranteed by a Constitution. And however flawed that Constitution is, it’s a hell of a lot better than anything any other society has.

These are kick ass men, veterans, many of them. Theirs is an un-nuanced view of life. Simple. Relatively uncomplicated. A man’s word is his bond. No need for a contract. A man is a man, a woman another. That’s the way god or nature intended it. Kids should respect their elders. Government serves the people. All that stuff.

Men gather in small groups talking, asking questions of gun dealers. Many bring their grandchildren and delight in pointing out the kind of a rifle he carried in ‘Nam or Korea, even. Not many of the WW2 guys left. Sometimes in hushed tones you will see them amid a small collection of Springfields and Enfields, relics of the First World War. They rub their gnarled hands over the originals, thinking back to the time of Blackjack Pershing and Alvin York.

These guys have a much clearer notion of what is good and what evil. Modern relativism has tended to jumble ethics into a meaningless ball of ideas each just as good as the other. Good is not the antithesis of bad anymore. Good is ok and bad is so-so. My ideas are every bit as good as yours. So there.

The hell they are!!!

THERE WAS BLOOD ON THE SADDLE
BLOOD ON THE STAIR
BLOOD ON THE BARSTOOL
AND SAWDUST IN HER HAIR

AND BLOOD IN CITY HALL In a surprise announcement today, Mayor Ellis told the public in a hastily called news conference at city hall that CAO Colonel William Saunders had resined this morning, and that he (Ellis) was replacing him with Regina McDuffy.

Yesterday, after receiving a letter from McDuffy in her capacity as head of the Macon Centreplex in which she refused to cut her budget as the City Council required, the gang of fifteen voted to terminate her salary. Not her. Just her income.

In a televised interview yesterday, the Mayor accused the Council of being childish in its dealings with the director.

McDuffy has worked for the city for eighteen years. Most of that time was spent in the finance office. More recently she has managed the Centreplex. Both positions have a long history of major financial problems. Through several administrations the City’s Financial office has been an unpenetrable jungle, a dense rain forest of unaccountability. The Centreplex has set an unfortunately high level of hemorrhaging red ink and seems unable to make a profit.

I can see nothing in McDuffy’s background that suggests she has the training, the temperament, nor the background to serve as number two ‘man’ in the Ellis administration.

Colonel Saunders, on the other hand, is a hard-nosed pragmatist whose long years in the military make him perfectly suitable to kick all the requisite ass inside the bowels of city hall.

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AND LEST WE FORGET Tomorrow and Sunday, at the Macon Centreplex (see above) there is a mammoth GUN and KNIFE SHOW, sponsored by GEORGIA MOUNTAIN.

This will not be your average, run-of-the-mill wuss gun shows. We are told that this will be the biggest and the best confab of its kind within recent memory.

LET'S BURN A FLAG
AND OTHER LEFTOVERS FROM VIET NAM

NBA FINALS: The last game of the best of seven series was held last night. Two teams battled. One won, one lost. And now it is over. Who won? We have no idea.

BURNING THE AMERICAN FLAG: Let’s get this whole thing right from the start. The House passed with a two thirds vote a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution which would prohibit the desecration of the U.S. Flag.

This happens every few years between Memorial Day at the end of May and the Fourth of July, two patriotic holidays.

To the sphinctocrats in the House, it’s a feel-good idea, something warm and fuzzy like Mom’s apple pie or a three week old kitten. Of course nobody knows a mom who bakes any more. Most of them get their pies direct from the grocery chain’s freezer or a local bakery.

But it’s a bad idea. The notion came about during the Vietnam war when you, college-age protesters used to cruise the highways and byways burning the flag, their draft cards, and bras. In those days it was a coming of age thing. Tensions were pretty high back in those long ago days, days of polyester and tear gas, bell bottoms and fragging. The nation seemed to be falling apart.

But we lost the war, brought our soldiers back with precious little honor, and started licking our wounds. We’re still licking as the 2004 presidential election proved. Remember the Swift Boat vets? John Kerry does.

One big change that took place in the thirty years since getting booted out of Hanoi was that we dropped the draft….went to an all-volunteer army, and so lost the once hated draft cards.

Now many of the members of the House of Representative were busy dodging the draft during the war. And they recall with horror that many young kid activists went about causing trouble acting like, well, immature kids. As mature adults now, the members of congress understand full well the need to head off large numbers of the current crop of young people from doing what they did thirty-five years ago.

So look at the symbols. There is no sense in writing a constitutional amendment that would prohibit draft card burning, there are no cards left to burn. So they chose the flag….a symbol of our great country….thou shalt not desecrate Old Glory. If you do you BREAK THE LAW WRITTEN INTO A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT, which is somewhat more onerous that getting a speeding ticket but below the jail time a cancer patient would get for trying to score some medical marijuana.

Even the clowns who work for us in congress are not stupid enough at this point in time to write a constitutional amendment that would outlaw burning bras.

Let’s hope the Senate is made of sterner stuff.

WELCOME TO SOCIALIST AMERIKA

WELCOME TO SOCIALIST AMERIKA: In a contentious 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States today declared that communities can seize private property to turn it over to developers if it appears that a ‘greater good’ to the community as a whole could be proven.

Prior to this ruling, the only way a state or municipality could seize property was by the right of eminent domain, meaning that such seizure would have to be done so that a new road or public building might be constructed.

Now, wholesale confiscation of property, homes in particular, is allowed to go forward if the state or local government can generate larger revenue by turning over said property for business dwevelopment.

A good case in point might be a WalMart’s demanding your lower forty because its computer geeks decided that would be an ideal sport to erect a store or distribution center. A developer seeking to build multi-million dollar condominiums along a shore front has now the right to ask the state to kick off and dispossess fishing families who have been living there for generations.

The door is open to long-term fraud and abuse.

The property rights Americans have enjoyed since the founding of our nation have just been eradicated by a small cadre of robed hoodlums who would rob us of our constitution and our heritagde.

Shame on the court. Shame on the rapacious money grubbers who support such idiotic socialistic schemes.

“Greater Good’ should refer to the welfare of individuals, not the subjugation of individual rights to a largely unethical whole.

We shall all live to regret this tragic decision.

DURBIN's NON-APOLOGY
TANS and SPLOSTS
THE N-Word on C-Jack TV

APPOLOGY OR NOT: This is part of Senator Durbin’s original statement (the one that got him in hot water). "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings,"

It has created outrage among the GOP faithful. Personally, it isn’t so bad given the first few words which make it a CONDITIONAL SENTENCE, i.e. an IF……THEN construction which does not make the ‘then’ portion a statement of fact.

Two things are here evident: (1) Senator Durbin did not choose his words wisely given the tremendous ‘grammar gap’ so evident in what passes for education in contemporary public (and often private) schools; (2) Republicans as a group are most certainly ‘grammar challenged”, and have fallen into the grammar gap described above. It’s a matter of excess on Durbin’s part and ignorance on the other side of the aisle.

So the senator offers up a tearful statement that the media claim is ‘an apology. Said he, "Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line. To them I extend my heartfelt apologies. They're (the soldiers) the best. I never, ever intended any disrespect for them.”

Is this an apology? No, of course not. He never comes close to saying ‘I’m sorry’. He offers ‘apology’ only to those who ‘may believed that my remarks crossed the line’. This is not even close to a genuine honest-to-Yahweh statement of contrition. It’s a sham….an act…..the statement of a six-year-old caught with his hand on something forbidden.

But then, why should the Senator apologize in the first place. His original conditional statement is not a statement of condemnation.

WELL TAN MY SPLOST: SPLOST passed handily, yesterday, so we get a penny added to sales tax beginning in October. But at its weekly meeting yesterday the City Council pulled a couple of fast ones.

We warned you months ago that the gang of fifteen was about to impose a whopping 30% increase in business fees and licenses. It would hit liquor store owners and restaurant/clubs that sell the demon rum hardest. But all would suffer. The powers that wannabe brought this up for a vote last night at Tuesday’s regular meeting and, save for an impassioned speech by Councilman Cranford, it would likely have sailed through with nary a negative vote.

But sent back it was. Then the real, largely unanticipated bombshell. The council, over some objection, voted to borrow five million dollars to tide the city over until property tax revenues start coming in this fall.

This is a repeat of what happened last summer. Anybody who has spent any time knew it would happen, but apparently some council stalwarts were caught off guard when it came up Tuesday after agreeing in a pre-council session it wouldn’t surface for another weeks.

Who’s in charge here? Damned if I know!!

Macon is looking at something like a 1.2 million dollar shortfall in uly. Ergo…we need the TAN, or ‘Tax Anticipation Note’.

Why? Because we overspend. Because we cannot live with our income. Because we will not or cannot make the hard choices and painful decisions that would put the city on a solid financial footing once again.

And how much did those golf carts cost us, anyway?

This is simply crazy.

“NIGGERS SCREWING NIGGERS:” A colorful newcomer appeared the bi-weekly Open forum segment of the City Council meeting. His name, Mohammed Abdul Kareem. He is theatrical, flamboyant, colorful and treat to listen to especially when facing two solid hours of hearing the droning of ‘and by caption’.

Near the beginning of his allotted five minutes, Mr. Kareem was complaining that at the city-employee picnic, almost short-sheeted by Mayor Ellis’ credit card, the police and firemen were served first, while the remaining workers were forced to eat and make merry at a later hour, partaking of the hindmost teat, of course.

His voice rising to a near crescendo, Mr. Kareem made the statement, it is a case of “niggers screwing niggers”. Gotta give him credit, he made the politically incorrect statement, went on with his talk, and didn’t miss a beat.

Like this guy.

But it started me thinking. ‘Nigger’ is the one word, in a world where the carefully crafted sentence is becoming a rarity, that conventional wisdom allows black persons to say to one another. But let a white man say ‘nigger’ and the cries of racism are heard from on high. It is enough to get a guy fired, a kid kicked out of school, or a politician banned from the Senate crapper.

This is pure bull. Sensitivity aside, I as a white male have every bit as right to say ’nigger’ as does Mayor Ellis, who is reported to have directed the term toward Herbert Dennard outside the Terminal Station a few months ago, and that in front of witnesses.

The difference is I wouldn’t use it. I wouldn’t use it for the same reason I would not use other offensive words in anything like a public setting. Most of us wouldn’t, either.

Saying the euphemism ‘N-Word’ is a complete cop out. It’s as bad as using the phrase ‘the f word’, when one means to say ‘fuck’. It’s a good word. Again, I don’t think it should be at inappropriate times, but it certainly does have its place in the increasingly sterile lexicon of this our barbaric age.

WILDING IN THE MALL
THE GANGBANGERS WHO COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT

VOTE YES TO SPLOST TODAY. Changed my mind on this one, boys and girls. Once the County Commission and the City Council fixed it so that the mayor couldn’t get his hands on the dough, a penny added sales tax seems more like a good idea.

GRAND OPENING OF THE HUMMINGBIRD TONIGHT. “Seen” may be there, guarantee “Ob-Seen” will be. Get noticed by all the people you cannot stand and who more than likely consider you something lower than an earthworm. Being a shining star in North Macon society or the gentrified, in-town variety doesn’t have much appeal these days.

HEADLINE IN THE TELEGRAPH: FIVE SHOT DURING SIX WEEKEND SHOOTINGS IN SOUTH MACON What’s the matter with the sixth shooter, wasn’t he trying hard enough? Maybe he’s one of those gangbangers or gangbanging ‘wannabes’, as Mayor Ellis is wont to tell us, using that sideways shooting style so favored in blacksploitation films. Can’t hit anything with that, boy, learn to use you sights the way Sam Colt intended you to do. If god wanted drop-out idiots to shoot sidesaddle he would have put sights on the flank of your weapon.

And you might want to practice a bit, get a little trigger time away from where you live so your homies won’t get a clue as to how really badly you handle a weapon. It is always a good idea to have some notion of your pistol’s potential as well as its limitations.

Just a suggestion for some young, undereducated jerkface bent on dying violently before his twenty-first birthday. Think of the savings to the taxpayer, when you are lying there in a pool of your own blood, urine and plain old bowel waste, who won’t have to spend the big bucks on a nice jail cell for little Mister Wannabe.

Thank you for sparing us the expense of a trial.


SPEAKING OF THE MAYOR….Hizzoner himself, held a news conference yesterday. Flanking him were Chief of Police Mike Burns, and the mall’s manager, Bill Baker.

The conference took place two days after a nasty and very embarrassing incident at the Mall Friday during which one teen girl apparently slashed two others with a box cutter. At the root of the problem was a young man, needless to say, the object of too much affection.

As the fight started, a crowd estimated at twoo hundred, mostly black teens, rushed in to cheer on struggling girls.

Despite the fact that there is ‘a rule’ stating that young persons under the age of sixteen must be accompanied by an adult, mobs of often unruly kids roam the facility largely at will, especially on Friday and Saturday night. Kenny B. compared it to the phenomenon called ‘wilding’, once a common teen activity way up in the Big Apple. Many potential shoppers, we are told, simply stay away from the Mall on those nights.

The stabbings and the perception that the Mall is often an unsafe place to shop was the hot topic on yesterday's edition of Kenny B and Jami G. Many shoppers, it appears, are frightened off by out of control young teens, unsupervised, and mostly Black. There is, indeed, a racial component to the problem.

During the conference I asked the mayor and Chief Burns pointedly (twice) whether any of the wild goings on at Colonial Mall were the result of gang activity. The answers I got were not satisfactory, Hizzoner squarely sidestepping the issue and the Chief not answering at all but looking much like a deer petrified by an auto’s headlights.

If my tape comes out, we will have more to say about this in the next issue of THE ELEVENTH HOUR, slated to hit the mean streets Wednesday, June 29. Stay tuned.

AND TODAY IS THE WINTER SOLSTICE: Happy solstice all you Wiccan readers on both sides of the Atlantic. I don’t know if practitioners of Black Magic hold the same reverence for the solstices and the equinoctes as do our White WItch friends, but it doesn’t take a flying broom scientist to understand that these good folks tie their thought and activities to the natural cycles of nature. More of us need to do the same….our race would experience less violence and an increased conviction that we all spring from the same place….our differences are unimportant.

Happy Solstice

See You at The HUMMINGBIRD tonight.

HUMMINGBIRD