Ol' Ivan Offers a Refesher Course in Bubba

U.S. Rep. Mike D. Rogers  (R-Ala) says of Barack Obama: "We survived Jimmy Carter … we can survive this ol' boy."  The Opelika Auburn News is not impressed. "Rogers needs to apologize for what we hope was a momentary lapse in judgment. We find his comments to be offensively disrespectful. Our president is nobody's 'boy."

Ol' Ivan, Underbelly's crack Alabama bureau chief, uncharacteristically comes to Ol' Mike's defense:

 Rogers did not use the expression “boy” in referring to Obama, which is as insulting as using the “N” word. He used the express “ol' boy” as in “that good ol boy may be dumber than a log, but he knows catfishing.” Or,  “that ol' boy aint got the sense that gawd promises a billy goat.” In other words, “boy” by itself is racist but “ol' boy” or “good ol'boy” has nothing to do with race. Used here, it says while I disagree with Obama, we’re “ol' boys” or really “good ol' boys” in this political world together, though on opposite sides.

PS – If Rogers had the sense that God promises a billy goat he would have tacked a “bless his heart” onto his comment. You can say anything about anybody in da souf so long as you include a “bless his (or her) heart.

Welcome, DeLong Throng

Follow Me, Men!

..to your one stop shop for nothing in particular.  That's our problem--branding--unless you can identify an audience for "attention surplus disorder "  An "underrated" ranking from  DeLong is too kind, although the tag "law professor" is somewhat misleading: it is true that I've been on the coal face down here at the law school man and boy these 40-plus years now but after all that time I'm pretty much of a busted flush on law: I would rather talk about Caravaggio or Shakespeare or Verdi or Genghis Khan.   And more, oh so much more: I offer a nomination for The Luckiest Horse in the Fifth Millennium BCE, and The Biggest Fathead in the Second Millennium AD,  plus the predictable mindless yapping  and the occasional absurdly misguided prediction.

Oh, and at no extra charge you get The Wichita Bureau,  The Alabama Bureau, My Cousin Dave, my sister Sally, my friend Joel,   my friend Toni and the twins, Ignoto and Ignota.  Oh and of course, acute or acerb asides from Mrs. Buce.

So wallow and disport yourself ad libitum.  And as the serving maid said to Prince Philip--"Save your fork, ducks--there's pie!" 

Guest Post: Ivan Shares a Martini with the Senator

My friend Ivan, on the ranch down in Alabama,  is waxing  nostalgic this morning about his days reporting politics for the Louisville newspapers, and in particular about the sometimes Republican senator and ambassador to India, John Sherman Cooper:

...Cooper's wife, Lorrainne Rowan Shevlin Cooper, married several times,heir of a family that had settled in la when it was still sand, she ownedthe mansion at 2900 N st. and had a lot of money and connections. when I was in DC CJ bureau, and new congress was coming in in '65, they invited me to a reception at the house. Really icy night. as I was trying to get up the steps, an Indian couple came up behind me and they were having trouble on the ice. I hauled the female up the steps with her husband behind her. she was "the begum" of something. or maybe he was. Alice Roosevelt Longworth was there also. plus a guy who became head of CIA in LBJ  administration. plus a lot of people with a lot of power. Caterers served among other stuff strips
of cooked bacon. you took one as they walked by. i asked Lorraine about the bacon strip hors d. she said a lot of people drink too much at receptions and it keeps them from getting drunk fast.Everett Dirksen came in on a crutch. he had awakened one night, reached for his bedsinde booze glass, and tumbled out of bed, hurting one leg. when he came into the big room the muciscal group started playing "we're loyal to you Illinois" and Dirksen stood in front of them, using his crutch as a baton, directing them and singing his state song.

on the campaign trail in '66, when he beat John Y. Brown,  father of Kentucky Fried Chick billionaire to be John. Y. Brown Jr., Cooper would direct our driver to slip into a liquor store while he was campaiging or speaking, and buy a pint of Dixie Bell gin, always Dixie Bell, cheapest gin in wet county stores. Then, as we finished campaigning and were heading to where we were  going to spend the night, he would ask me if I cared to have a "really dry martini" with him. "Sure." He would fish a couple of tiny paper cups out of
his bag, pour the Dixie Bell gin in the cups, and that was a Cooper martini.  And after a toast he would originate, we would sip our martinis. if we had two, we would sing "buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight, and dance by the light of the moon," until we got to our destination. Some motels we stayed in east of Mount Sterling only had one phone -- sometimes a pay phone -- for guests. it was in the office and when they closed the office you got off the phone.

Once in West :Liberty or Mount Sterling, we were eating breakfast in the local restaurant and I asked for grapefruit juice with my breakfast.I watched waitress, local high school girl, go talk with the cashier (owner, probably) then dash across the street to local IGA store, and in a few minutes come dashing back to restaurant with a little bag. She took the bag in the kitchen, and a minute or two later she had a can of Donald Duck brand grapefruit juice in front of me. Warm. I told Cooper about it and he said the only juice people in eastern Kentucky drank with their breakfast was Tang.

Or as they used to say, "Tang! It's not just for breakfast any more!" I had to hire a copy reader to put in all the capitals and periods. Fortunately, unemployed copy readers come cheap these days. Bottoms up, Ivan, and have a good day.

Rangel Remembered

Underbelly's Alabama bureau, an old Capitol Hill hand, remembers Charlies Rangel:

I met [Rangel] the night of swearing-in ...that same night, he and I sat for a few minutes with a then famous Capitol Hill staffer Maxine Dargens ... . [We] retreated to her office in Rayburn building with drinks, and were resting and chatting. I was lobbyist for Communications Workers of America. ...

I had expected Charlie to be a run of the mill New York congressman -- a go along to get along guy. but, as we chatted in her office, the questions he asked, the points he explored both with me and "Max", surprised me. He came across as a really bright, inquisitive, knowledge seeking guy. I was impressed. Actually, intellectually, Charlie was head and shoulders above the run of the mill congressman. ...

But -- somewhere along the line, he decided to accumulate wealth. And what
he did was illegal. ... Now, this guy, great brain, great political instincts, goes into the history books as a crook. no way to get around it, no matter how the investigations end up.

The AB goes on to speculate that what really gets into the craw of Rangel's constituents is the rent-controlled apartments. They are struggling along in market apartments that can cost thousands of bucks month. And Rangel has rent controlled. Four of 'em. Hard to forget, and hard to forgive.

The Alabama Quiz

Underbelly's Alabama Bureau (thanks, Ivan!) flags me to the Alabama Legislator Test. I particularly like:

7. Have you read the Constitution of Alabama — and all its amendments?

A. Yes

B. No

8. Do you believe liars go to hell?

A. Yes

B. No

9. OK, let's try again. Have you read the Constitution of Alabama — and all its amendments?

I also like: which should be the major source of state revenue--sales tax, property tax or income tax? A more awkward question might be--which is the major source of state revenue? Wonder how many legislators of any state could answer that one. And did he forget a fourth category--"Federal handouts subventions?

And a final thought: Alabama has a Muslim legislator? Yes, apparently so.

Illinois 14th

The Illinois 14^th, Rep. Dennis Hastert’s district, which went Democratic in a special election yesterday, as described in Barone et al., The Almanac of American Politics 2006, 594:

The 14^th Congressional district straddles the line between metropolitan Chicago and Downstate Illinois. It gets close to 30 miles to Chicago’s Loop, in Western DuPage County, with two great Chicagoland landmarks—Cantigny, the estate of Colonel Robert McCormick, longtime publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and FermiLab, the world’s fastest energy particle accelerator nd employer of some 2,500 people—icons of political conservatism and high technology within two miles of each other. The 14^th also contains the Fox River Valley … To the south is Kendal County, the fastest-growing county in Illinois, where new subdivisions are growing up … Farther west, amid what may be the world’s richest cornfields, the 14^th passes through DeKalb, long the world’s leading manufacturer of barbed wire, and goes on to Lee County, including Reagan’s boyhood home in Dixon. Since the 2001 redistricting, the 14^th moves farther west, almost to the Mississippi River, to include farmlands in parts of Whiteside, Bureau and Henry Counties. This was traditionally some of the most heavily Republican territory in the country. … There descendants, in this extension of Chicagoland, remain mostly Republican today.

Past voting: Hastert, 69% 2004, 74% 2002. George Bush, 55% 2004, 54% 2000. Cook Partisan Voting Index R +5.

Afterthought: I could have added that Hastert's district, though "Republican," is not one of the most Republican in the nation. I can't find a rank-ordered listing of the Cook Partisan Index, but I do note that the Alabama 6th gets a Republican ranking of plus 25 (link) (many Dem districts rank in the 30s). Now, if the Dems knock off the Alabama 6th, it will be news.

Afterthought to Afterthought: Underbelly central reposes in the California second, with a Cook index of Republican plus 13--we're part of the red-state interior of blue California.

Hogzilla

Underbelly's Alabama bureau weighs in on the new Hogzilla, the giant wild boar nailed by an 11-year-old boy last week:

Wild hogs are more common than ordinary farm hogs now, I guess. Used to be every farmer had a boar and a sow or two. they'd sell some or most of the little pigs at weaning size, raise the rest to butcher and fill the smoke house. Now, you hardly ever see a sow on a farm around here. all the meat comes from Smithfield's factory farms. some, in NE Alabama -- really Appalachian mountain country, have so bad an odor and other problems, nearby farmers can't breathe the air or even step outside the house. real horror. ...

Many, many years ago i happened to be visiting my in-laws on this farm when a hog-killing took place. we did the butchering on the banks of a branch in the barn lot -- lots of hot water is essential. It was a huge effort -- well, it was a huge hog. long time ago. Incidentally, the smoke house where the hams and shoulders and sides were hung to complete curing is now my outside tool shed.

Phew, I bet he is right about the smell. I remember Southwestern Ohio--out of Dayton, towards Washington Courthouse--on August evenings 50 years ago, i.e., long before commercial piggy factories. The whole county stank, and it was muggy to boot. I can understand why all those nasty flu bugs come from South China.

You Gotta Read Faulkner

"Nobody," says Samuel Johnson, "ever reads a book he was given." When it comes to imposing my literary tastes on others, I try to restrain myself, but I make one exception: Faulkner. I didn't get Faulkner the first time around. It was my friend Ivan (aka Underbelly's Alabama bureau) who insisted I take another chance. By that time I was working as a newspaper reporter, covering politics in Kentucky, which might have made things easier. Anyway, I am eternally grateful for having been noodged into the second chance -- "came to scoff, and stayed to pray," as they say in that part of the world. So I feel I owe it to folks to try to carry on the tradition. Here's the latest--an email to a friend, based in part on what I learned from Ivan, 45 years ago:

You really owe it to yourself to take another shot at Faulkner.

The thing is that Faulkner wrote, not a bunch of novels, but one long novel, like Proust. They just package it in parts. So do this:

Get the Viking Portable Faulkner, with the Malcolm Cowley intro.

Read “That Evening Sun.” If you do not think it the most perfect story you ever read, then exit, there is no hope for you.

Still here? Then read “Spotted Horses.” If you do not think it is the funniest story you ever read, then exit, there is no hope for you.

Still here? Go read the Cowley introduction. From then on, you can be on your own, but I would suggest continuing with the entire reader, skipping “The Bear” which is a big moony overloaded piece of English teacher crap.

Then perhaps The Hamlet. Then several others that don’t claim the attention of English teachers, but are the better for it: Sartoris, The Unvanquished, maybe Intruder in the Dust (Faulkner tries the mystery).

The monuments are still there. Absalom, Absalom! has wonderful parts, but it is heavy weighted with Meaning. Sound and Fury is a literary stunt, but a good novel anyway. It is four overlapping stories from overlapping points of view. Begins with the idiot child (“Tale told by an idiot/Full of sound and fury,” get it?). Skip that, and read Jason IV (“the only sane Compson since the battle of Culloden”). Then Quentin, then Benjy the idiot, and finally Dilsey.

As I Lay Dying is a bit of a stunt also, but perfectly readable, if you like stories about decaying bodies.

From there on you will make your own decision as to whether to reads the rest. I never read Mosquitos. Or A Fable. Or Light in August, although that last I think I should read.

There, now that wasn't so hard, was it?

Meanwhile, On Another Planet...

The Alabama bureau leads a much different life than we here at Underbelly Central:

I sent three big calves to the sale yesterday so I'm hearing a lot of mooing today from sad mama cows...

Sometimes it can be a problem separating the calves going to the sale from the rest of the herd -- bull, other calves and their mamas, but it worked out real well. The main thing is to keep them calm. I pen them up in the area where i feed them. Then, I man a gate while Billy, who hauls them to the sale for me, and my ex brother in law, Jim, try to send the bull, mama cows, and calves not going to the sale, toward the gate. At the same time, they try to keep the calves going to the sale away from the gate. when that's done, We run the ones headed to the sale through the barn, which
opens from the feeding pen, into Billy's cattle trailer. if things dont work out right, they can all go through or over fences or through that gate.

Mama cows whose calves went to the sale yesterday will bawl for three days or so. ...

What made it especially interesting is while all that was going on yesterday morning, the bull was trying to breed one of the cows. That is something you don't want to interfere with or get in the way of. He was on her while I was still manning the gate as the other cows and the little calves not going to the sale were coming out.

Maybe this is what Rebecca West had in mind when she said that "Ladies are more accustomed to not being amused than gentlemen seem to realize."

Johnson v. Delay

Last week I laid on a bit of snark about Lyndon Johnson and Tom Delay (link). Underbelly’s Alabama bureau, drawing on long experience ‘tweendecks in Washington, weighs in:

Seems to me comparing Delay with LBJ doesn’t work because one was using presidential power while the other was using house position power. Different powers. If the comparison was to LBJ as Senate leader and Delay as House leader I'm sure there are comparisons. But LBJ was noted for bringing in everyone he could to work a deal -- civil rights legislation, for instance -- and Delay's tactic was to freeze the Dems out -- out of conferences when final versions are written, for instance. … Delay gloated when he cut a fellow Republican’s nuts, LBJ didn’t get pleasure out of damaging a Democrat.

Say Again?

The Alabama bureau reads the label on the pet food package:

a.. 95% Meat, 5% fruits & vegetables
b.. Grain-free
c.. Made with human grade ingredients
d.. Pasture-fed beef
e.. Complete and balanced for all life stages

Uh--human grade ingredients?

Recommended Reading from the Alabama Bureau

Still snarled up in snuff, so I turn the mike over to the Alabama bureau to offer up a bit of recommended reading:

Hi all -- if anyone needs more reasons why we ought to be leaving Iraq there are plenty in the March 26 New Yorker, in an article by George Packer titled "Betrayed -- the Iraqi translators who helped America." There were probably many good people there from State and a few other agencies and departments trying to do what they saw as right. but almost always the good guys were run over by weirdos, freaks, zealots, psychos supervised by tunnel vision bureaucrats, and top administrators like Bremer and Negroponte and Khalilzad didnt involve themselves in straightening out situations at low levels where the work gets done.

Unnerving report. It ought to be read word for word on the House and Senate floors and ought to be the basis of hearings on why we "lost" Iraq. The Bush administration lost the war the troops won, not Democrats trying to prevent more loss and more failure.

Comment: Might be a good companion to this Masterpiece of Self-Deception, from John McCain, via CNN, via Carpetbagger.

Here's One Who Did Not Get Fired

My friend Swifty, aka Underbelly's Alabama bureau, helps to showcase an issue that needs more attention--what about the US Attorneys who were not fired? Carol Lam and David Iglesias (at least) got in trouble for not pushing the Rove/Cheney agenda. Can we assume there are others who pushed the agenda too well?

Swifty says yes. Here are some excerpts from an email:

Does anybody know if any of the state's editorial pages (or any editorial pages) are looking at the Siegelman prosecution in light of comparison with this Administration's firing of US attorneys -- some of them because they were too tough on Republicans and some because they weren't tough enough on Democrats?

To me, the irony is just glaring.

Here in Alabama, we've got a US atty -- Leura Canary -- that is never going to get fired by this Administration. She has done exactly what Rove et al want -- engineered the prosecution of Democrat Don Siegelman to get him out of the way of Republican Riley's reelection campaign. ... Why this isn't part of the national story and the subject of angry editorials is beyond my comprehension. ...

My first-hand knowledge of Alabama politics is--let's see--ah yes, zilch. But Swifty is an old political reporter who has been watching the Alabama scene off and on for something like 50 years now. If he says it, I'd say it's worth a follow-up.

Arthur Schlesinger, RIP

Underbelly's Alabama bureau remembers Arthur Schlesinger Jr, dead at 89:

Among the many things he wrote is one statement that I think people interested in the public affairs of our community, state, country and the world might like to recall when events seem beyond rational control. He wrote:

Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insolvable. That is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.

I remember Schlesinger's "Crisis of the Old Order"--the first in his three-volume history of the New Deal--as one of the first grownup politics books that I ever truly enjoyed. It was better, I think, than its successors, because it didn't require him to steer quite so close to the partisan shoals. I admit I grew a little tired of Schlesinger as the inventor of Camelot, the too-cool companion of the glitterati. But my buddy's quote recalls a mode of patient optimism we haven't seen in quite a while. I suppose it is the pendant to Enoch Powell's more acerb assertion that "all political careers ... end in failure."

Fn: Press reports say that Schlesinger died while dining at a nice restaurant, with his family. Now that I call style.

Cute

From Underbelly's Alabama bureau:

read a piece about the sentencing soon of Bob Ney of Ohio. should the democrats name the lobbying reform package the "Just Say Ney Rules"?

To Get You Started for Next Year

A couple of late Chrismas items (new improved browser doesn't handle pictures right, I'll spare you the details).

First, from Underbelly's Cape Cod bureau:




Yep, Lobster pots. And now, from Underbelly's Alabama bureau:

Thanks, Sally and Ivan. I'll keep your identities confidential.