By Brett McNeil

My police registration card arrived in the mail today. It’s signed by the Inspector General of the National Police in Jakarta and attests to the fact that I’ve been sufficiently vetted by the proper authorities and adjudged sound enough of mind and circumstance to warrant the card. Which is nice.
I’m not exactly sure why I have the card or what it took to get one but the folks running the Fulbright program here in Indonesia told us that a police registration card is difficult to come by. In a country still very much defined by those who have access or an inkling of access to power and those who most definitely do not, possessing a difficult thing suggests a little social or political heft. It’s exclusive, or exclusive-ish, and maybe the cops don’t give you the hassle you might otherwise get as a foreigner working in a country where the official unemployment rate – about 8 percent – is a patently ginned-up fiction. Maybe you get to go without greasing anyone’s palm, or maybe the asking price is a tad more cut-rate.

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Posted on September 28, 2010

By Claudia Hunter

So after the initial shock of my mom’s cancer wore off, life tried to go on as normal. Well, as normal as it ever gets around here, anyway. Only it didn’t work too well. Aside from the fact that I’ve been sick for a year with some Crohn’s-like disease and am fairly often home-bound (with my parents), now mom’s sick too. And as hard as it is for me to deal with her being sick, she really can’t deal with me being sick. Which is understandable. She’s freaked out. Who wouldn’t be?
A few days after her diagnosis, she flew off to bridge camp. Yes, she and her friends go to an old country house every September and do nothing but play bridge for five days. Yowza.

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Posted on September 27, 2010

By David Rutter

1. Jesse Jackson Jr., WTF?
Don’t you just hate it when bad things happen to good people? Er, wait a sec. Sorry. That was a mistake. We think it was an LSD Reflux Moment.
Go ahead, Junior, taunt the federal prosecutor’s office. Wag your finger in their face and tell them, “Bring it on.” And then duck when the smart bomb catches your scent and explodes inside your pants. Are you happy to see us, Jesse, or is that an ICBM in your pocket?

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Posted on September 24, 2010

By The Beachwood Our House Affairs Desk

Spotted on the listserv of Investigative Reporters & Editors, posted by Michael Ravnitzky.
1. These items were recently spotted on the Government Attic Website:
Pages from the National Security Agency (NSA) Center for Cryptologic History
(CCH) intranet web site, 2009 – PDF 22.7 MB
http://tinyurl.com/247r9lo
*
Audit of Circumstances Surrounding Issuance of Visas to Sheik Omar Ali Ahmed
Abdel Rahman; and Audit of Review of the Nonimmigrant Visa-Issuing Process,
1994-1995 – PDF 13.9 MB
http://tinyurl.com/2d47mew

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Posted on September 20, 2010

By David Rutter

1. Chicago cops, WTF?
As a Chicagoan, you can be embarrassed that there are too many criminals and too few cops. That stinks. You can be embarrassed by integrity-challenged politicians who use the public pocketbook as their own piggy bank. There’s enough WTF outrage to go around.
But it’s really embarrassing to be embarrassed by the cops themselves. What-the-royal-EF?
The picket lines this week against chief Jody Weis show a grotesque myopia. Let us introduce Chicago police to the concept of irony, which, as we know, was killed in 1998, but has been rebirthed in Chicago ever since.
There were no police picketers against the rampant corruption and scandals that brought Weis to town in the first place. WTF, officers, we all know you stand steadfastly against attempts to clean up your own force. Your silence confirmed it. How many really bad cops have been defended down to the last dime by the FOP? By you?

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Posted on September 17, 2010

By Dracula Fangs

JOIN THE RANKS OF THE BLOODTHIRSTY: DON’T LET THE WALL STREET BLOODSUCKERS HAVE ALL THE FUN!
Boulder, USA – Are you jealous of CEOs and their multi-million-dollar golden parachutes? Do you want your own $1,600 shower curtains paid for by the American taxpayer? Do you wish that you, too, could suck the life force out of your fellow citizens? Now you can – with Wall Street Bloodsuckers™! Wall Street Bloodsuckers™ can be purchased online at www.DraculaFangs.com for $19.99 a pair.

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Posted on September 15, 2010

By Scott Buckner

There’s nothing like a long-haul trip to take your mind off the hustle, bustle, and overall disgust with the world at-large. Thus was why I found myself on a 650-mile drive last weekend that took me through Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and western Virginia.
Here are a few of my more notable observations from the road:
* The Appalachian Mountains may be kindergarten stuff by, say, Rocky Mountain standards, but when you live in Chicago and the only thing you’ve got to compare is Waste Management’s CID landfill along the Bishop Ford in Calumet City, they’re pretty fucking impressive.

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Posted on September 14, 2010

By Brett McNeil

Like other Americans living in Indonesia, I was annoyingly aware of plans by a bigoted Florida blowhard to burn a bunch of Korans. I’d read about Pastor Terry Jones, the aggressively mustachioed eBay furniture salesman turned internationally renowned Islamophobe, and his promised score-settling with the Muslim holy book. Then late last week, the U.S. embassy in Jakarta sent an alert urging ex-pats to avoid local demonstrations against Jones’ promised conflagration. “Americans are advised that there may be anti-American, possibly disruptive, demonstrations,” the embassy warned, “to mark an announced Koran burning on September 11 in Florida.” Hmm. You don’t say.
As I understood his plan from afar, Jones intended to put the Muslim world on notice: The Koran and its teachings were responsible for 9/11. I didn’t exactly follow the details – had the Koran actually financed and organized the 9/11 attacks, or was that still al-Qaeda? – but Jones’ intent was clear enough. By torching a couple hundred paperback copies of the Koran – or even just talking about burning the books – he meant to stick his thumb in the eyes of Muslims everywhere. He meant to insult them, and maybe to provoke them. He meant to denigrate Muslims and their faith, to incinerate it in a pyre of angry evangelical righteousness. Up. Yours. Muslims. That was the message, and it was received loud and clear. From Baghdad to Kabul, Peshawar to Jakarta, they understood perfectly well.

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Posted on September 13, 2010

By David Rutter

1. The World, WTF?
Can anything be more troubling and less satisfying than the state of the entire, damn universe this week? WTF, world. Get a grip.
First, the Rev. Terry Jones, who, believe it or not, is not the most disturbed evangelical wingnut in the wingnut lunchbox, has seized the pulpit with his torch-the-Koran tease. It’s Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Except in this script, someone caps Pig Pen in retaliation.
But it’s worse. Donald Trump wants to buy the would-be New York mosque property to . . . save our hurt feelings over Muslims praying? Keep Jones from burning books? Motivate Obama to call and volunteer for The Apprentice? As for WTF, we’d change sides in any geo-political-religiositized debate if only, once and for all, we could determine if that thing on Trump’s head is hair or a thatched roof from Tanzania.
Here’s what it comes down to, sports fans.

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Posted on September 10, 2010

By J.J. Tindall

Congress Wars
Memory is the soil of imagination,
the womb of insight,
the crucible of enlightenment.
I have been lighted, lightened,
as by lightning, by revelation
(which rhymes with revolution).

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Posted on September 8, 2010