In anticipation of my upcoming visit to New Orleans, I picked up the four hour Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina When the Levees Broke.

If you recall, I greeted the initial announcement of Spike Lee's project with, ahem, great skepticism. I'm an admirer of Lee's dramas, especially Malcolm X; but he really pissed me off back in the late 90s when he refused to speak at my college (the rumor was that there wasn't enough black students to merit his effort) but I was distrustful of his motives what with the emphasis in the media at that time of his focusing on the conspiracy theory that the government blew up the levees to flood the 9th Ward in order to prevent the much wealthier lake front properties from being flooded.

It's funny but I wonder how many other political Independents out there began breaking from the Bush camp after the ridiculously incompetent government response to the Gulf Coast disaster and the continued waste and ineptitude which continues to this day while people still wait out the rebuilding from their too-little too-late FEMA trailers and shady all-too-small insurance payouts.

I was very hard on Ray Nagin at the time, but I have to say that after watching all four hours of Lee's documentary, Nagin came across as the most genuine and most concerned public official throughout the entire debacle.

I'm not sure what to expect when I hit the Crescent City. Word is that the crime is so bad that the government is seriously considering instituting mandatory curfews like some Third World war zone. I'll be spending a day helping rebuild something in the community of New Orleans and I'm taking my camera to document what likely can't be described in words.

About Lee's documentary: it's an American masterpiece, a historical document of immense importance that should be watched by every American in order to reinforce the simple but often obfuscated truth that the government can never be a natural provider for its citizenry and cannot replace the will and ingenuity of the individual human being.

About Hurricane Katrina: I fear the wrong people learned the wrong lessons and how to profit from them and I can only pray that the right people learned the right fears and how to subvert the wrong people from their dastardly ends.

LINKS:

• 101 Common Sense Management Truths
  

• James Cameron Wants to Make This Generation's 2001 Only It Will Be in 3D
  

• JJ Abrams on the Next Star Trek Movie
  

• Peter Jackson Will Likely NEVER Make The Hobbit
  

• Turn Your Blog into a Book

TAGS:Hurrican Katrina New Orleans Ray Nagin When the Levees Broke Spike Lee

In the past, I have told you all that there are only two periods of history I consider worthy of studying (speaking personally here) and those are 1763-1783 in Colonial America and 1919-1944 in Germany.

But I want to amend that statement to include a third period, equally important to the other two: 1860-1864 in America. That's right, the Civil War and what led directly to it.

Here's my justification for this hypothesis. I believe that the entire present state of human culture and its immediate and long-term future are intimately tied to these three periods of history.

Yes, these historical periods are very America-centric and if that makes me an ardent nationalist, so be it. But hear me out for a moment. Prior to the 1760s, there was never a civilization in the history of world founded upon the precept that the individual human being was inherently free from the tyranny of an earthly power, be it parliament or king. Prior to the United States, no man was above the rule of law and the rule of law was ordained by God.

But after America, laws became an extension of the rights of individual human beings instead of slave cages to herd masses of nameless and faceless human forms through history in service of the state or church.

But America was a loose union of idealism from the 1790s up to the 1860s. Prior to the Civil War, we used to refer to our country as "These United States." The state was the organizing principle of government and the federal government was little more than a frame drawn around the states to ensure they stayed within the bounds of the Constitution which laid out how the inherent rights of mankind were to be protected from infringement by other men or by the institutions of men.

And like a dysfunctional marriage where one spouse is constantly looking to cheat--states prior to the Civil War were always threatening to secede from the Union. The Federalists tried to secede back when Jefferson, Madison and Monroe pulled off the three-peat to keep Virginia planters in the White House for a generation. South Carolina was close to seceding under Calhoun when Andrew Jackson was in office but he shut that shit down quicker than a gay man being offered a hand job by a female stripper.

And then there was Lincoln. His very election caused half the American South to secede and the other 45% followed shortly thereafter, prompting old Abe to initiate a campaign of warfare that led to the death of thousands of his own countrymen in order to keep the frame drawn around the states intact. Could you imagine what the world would be like now if that frame hadn't been fought for and had hundreds of thousands die for in order to preserve? North America would be Europe all over again and the Civil War would have only been the beginning of wars of aggression and outright politic on this continent.

And the Industrial revolution truly blasted off in an age of cheap immigrant labor and monopolistic cartels with the money and resources to direct towards society building in America and you come to the First World War which as we all know was perhaps the most ridiculous war ever fought in the history of mankind and which directly led to the Second World War and totally redefined the United States government's power over its citizenry and the further shrinking of the law as protector of the rights of individuals--moving further and further back towards the cage of restitutional demands upon the individual in servitude of unscrupulous men and the systems they create to dazzle and bewilder denizens who know no better than to bow to the will of what seems like natural authority.

What happened in Nazi Germany is a litmus test for the tyranny of man run rampant in a massive social setting and the dichotomy of what brilliant and powerful men can accomplish when opportunity, circumstance and raw will conglomerate together could not be more diametrically opposed than in the men who pulled off the Revolutionary War in America and the men who pulled off the mass murder of 11 million human beings from the face of the earth in a reign lasting less than twelve years.

History has many truths which reveal themselves only to the lucky and patient among us but there are also many truths as plain as the moon in the sky on clear and cold night.

LINKS:

• Watch the trailer for this documentary about a group of frontline soldiers during the 1994 American occupation of Fallujah (hat tip to Fantastic Bastard because this looks like it will be a great movie well worth watching)
  

• Lazy Dork (hat tip to Glardon)
  

• Where the hell were co-ed naked parties at when I was in college?
  

• Don't mind the man behind the curtain--it's just President Bush and his 100 billion dollar nuclear warhead
  

• Did Judas Iscariot get a bad rap?
  

• Did the Carl Sagan Martian probes from the 70s actually kill off the microbial life they were sent to search for?
  

• A great documentary about the BGNews (my newspaper in college where I wrote an opinion column for a couple years)

Dear Georgie,

Since you won't return my phone calls or my e-mails and since you haven't posted on your ultra secret blog that you've been keeping from Laura and those tight asses in your Secret Service detail; I have to post this publicly. Now c'mon Georgie--you and I go back too far for you start acting like a punk, man. And this letter is an attempt to fix what's gone wrong with us because I care.

You know, when you and I started this thing in the summer of 2000; I had such high hopes for us--I really did. I thought we were going to be the Silver Anniversary surfers, my man--taking life by the big waves and smiling at the sun while the other surfers around us ate foam and wiped out one by one. Damn there's been a lot of wipe outs since that summer, hasn't there? But we've had a few good wave runs too, can't forget that and we shouldn't forget that you were the king dong on the board during those times. But we also can't help but pointing out that you were the Faust in charge when we ate it also.

Dude, I was with you in the days after 9/11--you were in my thoughts and prayers. I was with you when the lights starting flashing and the rocks started flying in Afghanistan. And I was even with you when the tanks rolled into the desert of Iraq and embedded media showed us, the populace and people who gave you the job, how a war begins in real time for the first time in human history.

I didn't get as bent out of shape as the rest of the country with the human pyramid torture pictures because I know that what Dr. Meade said in Gone with the Wind is some true shit: "Good Heavens,...this is war, not a garden party."

I was even with you on the surveillance stuff for the most part. Taking away the privacy of communications from the populace isn't anything new during war time. After all, Lincoln authorized simultaneous raids on every telegraph office in the North and seized the record of ever telegram written for an entire year by anyone in the north. He suspended Habius Corpus and authorized the seizing and imprisoning without being formally charged of hundreds of citizens. He took a shit load of money from the US Treasury and just handed it over to the Lords of Industry to procure the instruments of war from their impressive social and business networks and didn't even ask for a receipt.

So bad shit has been done by Presidents in the past who have also been picked by the three sisters who choose, measure and cut the string. Nobody's saying that you're the only one or even that you've gone way too far and deserve to get fired like your predecessor (even though he wasn't removed).

But I've been reading up on Lincoln a lot lately and things started to come into focus when I read this portion of a speech he gave to Congress on July 4th while the Civil War was still in its newlywed stage:

This is essentially a People's war. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of man, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life...Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that whose who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion, that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by war--teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

That utterance put so many things into perspective for me--with what we're trying accomplish in Iraq and the Middle East in general.

It's a monumental task to take a conglomeration of human minds so entrenched in their belief and in their worship of their deity (who in their minds calls for continued bloodshed in a ridiculous war which has lasted hundreds of years too long) and say to them that the age of religious zealotry has come to a crashing end and that instead of ascribing patterns and powers to the stars in the sky, mankind is now traveling to them and every race, creed and belief system is welcome to come along.

It's a bitch of a thing to say that to people, Georgie--believe me, I know. I've been trying to figure out a kind way to say that type of shit for over ten years ago and it still comes out harsh and unsympathetic. But since when has human history yielded to the sensibilities of the moment and the human emotion that swirls and fills the vacuum of the possibility of the next moment?

So, look--we're cool, Georgie. You can put my name back on speed dial in your Blackberry and you can start leaving comments on this blog again. Because we're down like that, I'm willing to wipe the slate clean in Two to the Double Aught Seven. Just make sure that everything you do is in the spirit of what Lincoln talked about in that speech because so long as you do that--you are still on the razor's edge, my man.

Keep it real in DC, Georgie Boy and next time you come to Columbus you don't have to hang out with just the millionaires. You can come to the crib and we'll throw down on the XBOX 360 in a little Call of Duty or Gears of War and my wife'll make her Shake-N-Bake pork chops, out of the box mashed taters and Bush's baked beans which is about as good a feast as any man needs.

Love,

Josh

LINKS:

• Don't look now, but somone you know just won the very first Blog Carnival for Ohio Bloggers (thanks to Sadie's Take on Delaware Ohio for hosting)
  

• Wal-Mart is Determined to Push Energy Saving Light Bulbs to 100 Million Homes

So I'm reading David Milch's book about his show Deadwood which just came out last week and I'm telling you right now that if you watch that show, you will be truly missing out if you don't read that book. (And if you don't watch that show, you're getting idiot points for every day you don't go out and buy both seasons on DVD and eagerly await the third).

The reason this book is so great is that Milch approaches his work from a very intellectual and spiritual level and this book is much more of a philosophy of life and how the radiance of the divine shines through a work of art grounded in a specific conceit than it is a "making of a television show book."

On page 55 of this book, Milch makes the statement about the value of gold as the agreed upon standard of value between human beings compared with the power unleashed from a strong symbol:

The saving power of an agreed-upon abstraction is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, where our founding fathers declared, "We hold these truths to be self evident." All men are not created equal, but we're goign to accept the fiction that all men are equal. The same way that we are going to accept the fiction that gold is worth something.

Milch does bring up a good point--anyone with common sense knows that everyone isn't created equal but I think that the Declaration is a statement of the principle that every human being should be considered to have the same opportunity to pursue happiness given whatever state of faculty, talent and passion they are born with.

Do you think he's right? Is the Declaration of Independence a lie agreed upon?

I am a firm believer in using one's time wisely. Therefore, I am a huge supporter of listening to audio books in the car. I am in the car about an hour each day commuting from home to the babysitter to the gym to work and back home again and find that an audio book is a good use of what would otherwise be worthless time.

I am happy to announce that today I began Brand's biography of Andrew Jackson which I have been meaning to get to for some time now. Jackson has long fascinated me. I am still awed by the amount of physical and psychological pain he endured during his lifetime. Despite his obvious historical misdeeds (all Presidents have them); I consider him to be amongst the greatest of US Presidents and a model of a tough ass sumbitch.

More to come from this book...

Who do you think is the single person that had the most effect on world history from the 20th Century? To me, it's Neville Chamberlain.

Everyone knows Neville Chamberlain as "The Great Appeaser" but not too many people understand why his failure to act at several critical moments in world history in the 1930s directly led to the deaths of millions of human beings. This makes him, a single solitary man, one of the pivotal figures of world history in the 20th Century.

In 1936, Germans marched into the demilitarized Rhine-land and were given express orders that if the French showed any resistance whatsoever there would be a full German retreat. Chamberlain, along with the French, refused to act and therefore encouraged future Nazi conquest by threat of aggression.

In 1938, Germany seized Austria in the atrocious Anschluss where the greedy little European piggy nations lined up at the trough and allowed Hitler to rape the country while France, Russia and England sat by and ignored their pacts to defend the continent against that exact type of aggression. Also in 1938, Hitler took the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia by the threat of another war.

Great Britain, France and Russia could have allied together against Germany at any point during these three key aggressive moves and would have easily defeated the Nazi military and leadership but Chamberlain foolishly convinced his fellow politicians of a peace with Germany that was never to be.

And beyond that, he helped Hitler in every way he could. Chamberlain didn't do jack shit to save Austria and he worked with Hitler to dismantle Czechoslovakia which was the only democracy east of Germany's border and was also a member of the League of Nations which turned out to be the worst costume party in civilized history. The Czechs had a standing army and fortifications that, when combined with the other Allies, would have obliterated the Nazi government from the face of the earth before they even got started on the shameful acts which ended up defining terror in the 20th century.

But the weirdest mystery of Chamberlain is why he suddenly decided to grow balls on the issue of Germany's demands on Poland that they immediately relinquish Danzig to German control in April of 1939. Chamberlain recklessly resisted Hitler's intrusive demands on Poland by unilaterally guaranteeing Britain's support for Poland should Hitler invade their sovereign territory (which, of course, they did).

Poland at the time was a nation run by a bunch of idiot "colonels" who had previously conspired with Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia only to have him turn on them shortly afterwards (there truly is no honor among thieves). There was little worth to the western world in defending Poland, not like there would have been in defending Czechoslovakia. Yet Chamberlain chose this awkwardly placed country carved in two by a treaty so hated in the Weimar Republic that it essentially ushered in the Nazi reign of power.

And Russia offered to side with Britain several times to combat Nazi aggression in Europe and was turned down by Chamberlain every time (twice in early 1939 alone). But Chamberlain didn't even consult Stalin before he guaranteed British support of Poland in the event of a Nazi invasion (which, of course, they did).

As William L. Shirer says in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

Finally, [Chamberlain] had done exactly what for more than a year he had stoutly asserted that Britain would never do: he had left to another nation the decision whether his country would go to war.

From this point forward, when Chamberlain made his stand on Poland; world history was set into motion like a sad dance timed to the death screams of millions.

I can't help but try to extrapolate these vital lessons of the past when considering the current state of affairs today with the War on Terror.

On the one hand, we have another world leader of the strongest nation at the time who has essentially put his country on a unilateral course of war by calling out other countries as "evil" and is now being put in a position of acting when those countries take actions deemed hostile (i.e. acquiring and detonating nuclear arms).

We're not quite at the horrible point of another nation deciding when we'll go to war (instead of Congress) but we're not all that far away from that point either.

And on the other hand, we have a leader who isn't sitting back and crying for peace while other nations slap us in the face and take by force that which we are entrusted by treaty and integrity to protect--individual human freedom. We have someone who, instead, realizes that sometimes you have to kick a little ass before dickheads in the world perk their ears up and look up from the mutilated carcass of the weak they go through life chewing on.

History is a strange thing as it's not quite a mirror and it's not quite a window but rather; history is like an old woman standing on the side of a highway whispering directions to drivers trying to get to the land of peace and plenty while they drive by at 100 MPH. Only those who slow down and take the time to listen carefully are going to have any shot at all in getting to their destination.

Everyone else is just along for the ride and waiting for the inevitable crash.

LINKS:

• Olbermann asks, "Why does Habeus Corpus hate America?
  

• Gun shoots a million rounds per minute (the most dangerous non-nuclear weapon ever created by man)
  

• Distant planet is half-fire and half-ice

TAGS:
Neville Chamberlain, History, Nazi, Hitler, Politics, war on terror

Everyone knows the soundbite. Kennedy's sharp New England accent peaking crisp--"Ask NOT what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

This is one of the most deceptively evil sound bytes in history because it has gone down in popular history as a statement of social duty for the individual living in a free society when it is actually something that would have been far more appropriate for a Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao or Adolf Hitler to say to their country.

This country was founded on the concept that government is a necessary evil and the most beneficent government is the smallest one with the dullest teeth. Of course, this noble precept was pretty much aborted once the Federalists got hold of the shaping of the country during the period of the Constitutional Convention when the Articles of Confederation started getting holes in their knees. Instead of patching the holes, the Federalists opted for changing clothes altogether.

Isn't it ironic that our Emperor has given up clothes altogether and continues to strut bare ass naked through the ridiculous news parade each day?

So what does it mean when you tell a country of individuals not to ask what their government does for them but rather what they can do for their government? I think it's complete fucking nonsense because governments and countries are not tangible, flesh and blood objects that take up space in the real world.

You might as well say, "Ask not your imaginary girlfriend to give you a hand job. Ask if you can see her invisible boobs."

Sure, the buildings the government inhabits take up space and the ridiculous waste a government produces takes up space in terms of paperwork and mountain high piles of bullshit exuding from all the chicanery and backstabbing which goes on to supposedly secure a government--but government itself is a fictitious collective delusion enforced upon innocent biological creatures upon entrance into this Class-M atmosphere.

I would counter our righteously dead ex-President by saying that when compared to the discarded skin flakes of one of the lowliest individuals who compose it, the idea of a country is worth less than the feces of a slave working the deepest diamond mine;

it's worth less than a ripped up back page in a fifty year old hymnal in the back row of a one room Amish church in the backwoods of Pennsylvania;

it's worth less than the ridiculous notion that peace can be secured through war when death is obviously the only thing secured through war;

it's worth less than the I love you of a rapist as he seizes and grunts over the quiet woman who was walking alone under the stale sodium lights of Anytown college U.S.A.

I don't buy the notion that any government, no matter how grand, is worth protecting over a single law-abiding individual constituent (meaning one who doesn't infringe upon the lives or property of his fellow citizens).

I guess I'm old fashioned in that I believe that the only use for laws is to protect the lives and property of individuals and that the definition of a just law is one where a collective group of individuals have simultaneously deferred their innate right to defense of life and property to a governing body which polices to ensure the protection of their life and property. And I believe that this act of deference, which creates government, gives it charter, is a two way street and this power should always flow back home--to the individual--and not to the governing body.

Call me simple minded but I think President Kennedy was full of shit about a great many things and especially this little do gooder sound byte anthem that barked the death charge of thousands of soldiers who died pointlessly in the Vietnam conflict and the War against radical Islam which began soon after.

I say, "Demand your country protect your life and property and piss on all the rest of the beauracratic bullshit."


LINKS:

• Oliver Stone is Ashamed of His Country
  

• Dude Makes His Own Retractable Wolverine Claws
  

• Did Bush Fire Colin Powell?
  

• Polish Man Farts When Asked What He Thinks About President and is Now the Subject of a National Manhunt
  

• Sneak Preview of Shane Nickerson's New Show on MTV
  

• Improved Nuclear Fuel is Going to Change the Way We Split Atoms
  

• An Excellent and Very Funny Political Ad
  

• Hilarious Stoned Professor

In the year 1818, Columbus Ohio was an up and coming village that had been founded by Lucas Sullivant, a territorial surveyor of the West during George Washington's second term as President.

There were less than 2,000 residents of Columbus in 1818 when William Neil came to Columbus from Kentucky. The war of 1812 had only been over for two years and there was a lot of opportunity for a big boisterous man like "Billy" Neil. Some called him a sonofabitch, some called him a beneficent leader of the community but everyone called him The Stagecoach King.

He started a small inn across the street from the state capital building on High Street. He was an honest man but a hard man as well. God help you if you crossed him.

He started putting his money into stagecoaches and in a few short years what were many coach lines became few and guess who owned them?

Anc once the King of Stagecoaches was living comfortably, he started putting his money into land--the only thing they weren't making any more of.

In 1824, Columbus had a lot of low lying wetlands which bred mosquitoes by the thousands. These mosquitoes brought a plague to the residents and killed off many of the first generation of Columbus's finest.

One of these fine citizens owned a huge farm just north of the village proper. Billy Neil bought the land when he died. The Neil farm ran from First Avenue to Lane Avenue and from High street to the river we all know, love and call the faithful Olentangy. The Neil farm in the mid-1800s was the showpiece of Columbus--the jewel in the crown of central Ohio.

Billy's wife Hannah was one of the most kind-hearted citizens Ohio has ever known. She founded the Hannah Neil Mission and Home for the Friendless as well as the Columbus Female Benevolent Society, a charity which continues to provide for the needy to this day in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1863, possibly in anticipation of the Civil War smoldering down to its inevitable conclusion, the Neil farm house caught fire and burned to the ground. Hannah became sick with pneumonia shortly after and died. Billy followed her seven years later. The Neil farm was then used as a site to found the brand new Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College which changed its name in 1878 to The Ohio State University.

They started a small football team in 1890.

The Ohio State University is now the third largest arena of higher education in the United States and not only has the best football team in the nation, it has the Best Damn Band in the Land.

So, when we're all downtown watching the Buckeyes kick ass this weekend, let's remember old Billy Neil and his saint of a wife who made Ohio a better place for all of us. Actually, it's hard to forget Billy Neil because his farm had a private drive that one had to travel on to reach his farm house. It was named after, well, Billy Neil. It's still around today only now we call it Neil Avenue.

Here's a salute to the people of Columbus. Even though I can't stand your friggin' asses in rush hour traffic, Monday through Friday; I sure do love you bastards on Buckeye Saturdays.

Go Bucks!

TAGS:
The Ohio State University Billy Neil William Neil The Stagecoach King Columbus, Ohio OSU Buckeyes football