Linebacker53's Blog

After all the background checks, interviews and testing
were done, there were 3 finalists; two men and a woman.

For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men
to a large metal door and handed him a gun.

 

'We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair . . . Kill her!!' 

 

The man said, 'You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife.' 

 

The agent said, 'Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home.'

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, 'I tried, but I can't kill my wife.'

 

The agent said, 'You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home.'

Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping the sweat from her brow.

 'This gun is loaded with blanks' she said. 'I had to beat him to death with the chair.'

 

MORAL: Women are crazy. Don't mess with them

Attn: tees, factseeker, Lilbits, AveMarie, BigSmooov, Josiah Henson, Medger Evers, MLK Jr., Desmod Tutu, The Big "O" & Michelle, microbrother, myresponse :

"The number killed in gun crimes has jumped 40 percent since 2000"

updated 12:01 a.m. ET, Mon., Dec. 29, 2008

WASHINGTON - The number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 2000, a new study shows.

The study, to be released Monday by criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston, comes as FBI data is showing that murders have leveled off nationwide.

Not so for black teens, the youngest of whom saw dramatic increases in shooting deaths, the Northeastern report concluded.

Last year, for example, 426 black males between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in gun crimes, the study shows. That marked a 40 percent increase from 2000.

'We need a bailout for kids at risk'
Similarly, an estimated 964 in the same age group committed fatal shootings in 2007 — a 38 percent increase from seven years earlier. The number of offenders is estimated because not all crimes are reported, said Northeastern criminologist James Alan Fox, who co-authored the study.

"Although the overall rate of homicide in the United States remains relatively low, the landscape is quite different for countless Americans living, and some dying, in violence-infested neighborhoods," Fox said.

Seizing on President-elect Barack Obama's incoming administration as an opportunity for more funding, Fox added: "There is an urgency for reinvestment in children and families. In essence, we need a bailout for kids at risk."

Obama will be the nation's first black president.

The study partly blamed Bush administration grant cuts to local police and juvenile crime prevention programs for the surge in crimes by young black men and teens. Incoming Vice President Joe Biden has promised funding to put 50,000 new police officers on the street to help bring violent crime rates back to a decade-long annual decline that began in the mid-1990s, after then-President Bill Clinton provided local officials with money to hire 100,000 new cops.

Murders up about 8 percent since 2000
Nationwide, the number of murders and violent crimes overall dropped last year after increasing in 2005 and 2006, according to annual data compiled by the FBI. Overall, however, murders have risen by about 8 percent between 2000 and 2007.

The FBI reported 10,067 arrests in murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases in 2007. Half of the people arrested — 5,078 — were black. Almost 10 percent of black people arrested for murder were under age 18, the FBI data show.

The number of young white men who committed gun-related homicides also rose over the same period, the Northeastern study showed, but not as dramatically. In 2007, an estimated 384 white males age 14 to 17 shot someone to death, up from 368 in 2000.

The numbers of homicides committed by women and teenage girls — whether black or white — were relatively few, the Northeastern study found.

Has anyone heard from Madam VP - Elect (a.k.a; Lilbits)???????

This is actually somewhat of a rhetorical question, as there are many answers and yet little understanding. We have become victims of an angry mob and we are in the midst of it as well.

We are angry at our president because we have deemed him the culprit of all of our problems. We are angry at our parents because they failed us in some way. We are angry at ourselves for our lack of perfection. We are angry at our bosses because they are unappreciative of our abilities. We are angry at the driver in front of us who doesn't know how to drive, or the clerk at the grocery store who doesn't work fast enough. We are angry at God because He has let us down in some way or another.

 

Our families are being destroyed from within by anger. Our schools teeter on the edge, ready to explode in the blink of an eye, because of anger. Our neighborhoods resemble war-zones because of anger. Our children are learning to deal with life by anger.

It is everywhere, it has become so rooted in our lives that I wonder, do we even see it for what it is? A festering, foul carbuncle on the trunk of humanity; infecting the very marrow of our souls.

Many find release from it all through drugs and or alcohol, self harm, maybe even food, too much or too little. One needn't look very far to see the ravages that anger has left on humanity. I am sure many of you won't have to reflect very long to replay an encounter with an angry person today. Perhaps that run-in came first thing this morning, with a look in the mirror.

This definition is what I found when I googled the word Anger:

an·ger (áng g?r)
n.
A strong feeling of displeasure or hostility.
v. an·gered, an·ger·ing, an·gers v.tr.
To make angry; enrage or provoke.
v.intr.
To become angry: She angers too quickly.

----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------

[Middle English, from Old Norse angr, sorrow; see angh- in Indo-European roots.]
Synonyms: anger, rage, fury, ire, wrath, resentment, indignation
These nouns denote varying degrees of marked displeasure. Anger, the most general, is strong displeasure: vented my anger by denouncing the supporters of the idea.
Rage and fury imply intense, explosive, often destructive emotion: smashed the glass in a fit of rage; directed his fury at the murderer.
Ire is a term for anger most frequently encountered in literature: "The best way to escape His ire/Is, not to seem too happy" Robert Browning.
Wrath applies especially to anger that seeks vengeance or punishment: saw the flood as a sign of the wrath of God.
Resentment refers to indignant smoldering anger generated by a sense of grievance: deep resentment that led to a strike.
Indignation is righteous anger at something wrongful, unjust, or evil: "public indignation about takeovers causing people to lose their jobs" Allan Sloan…

There are times when anger is appropriate, yet in my humble opinion; the lines have become fuzzy. Where do we put a stop to it? When do we say enough already? When do we decide to get out of the pit of destruction? How do we reach those who know no other way? How do we teach ourselves to express our anger in an appropriate manner? More questions without easy answers.

Anger is a natural human emotion. How we deal with it, or choose to express it can be positive or not. The result of anger dealt with in an un-healthy manner is not pretty. I will submit full waiting rooms in many Psychiatrists offices that bear witness to this fact. Many illnesses are brought on by anger turned inward; so many lives are damaged in some way by the anger of another person taken out on the innocent.

Anger plants the seeds of bitterness which in turn lead to hatred. Anger is a choice. There are times in our lives when we need to be angry; there are times when we need to let go of our anger. We ultimately can choose to be angry over situations or circumstances in our lives.

There has to be a better way. So many times I believe that freedom from anger will come if we can first learn to forgive.

"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves". Eric Hoffer

What will become of this human race if we continue to destroy ourselves with anger?

 

I don't mean any harm by it, but I thought it might be useful to put together a list of the 10 dumbest people of 2008.

I'm not trying to be mean, and I promise to do a list tomorrow of the 10 smartest people of the year so everybody can feel nice and good the day before the big Christmas holiday.
Of course, when I say that someone was dumb in 2008, I really mean they did something really stupid this year. That doesn't mean they were or are always dumb. Some of the smartest people do some of the dumbest things. Hey, we all make mistakes. And I'm sure I made a few by picking (and not picking) some of the people for this list.  Hopefully, their mistakes will remind you what you should not do in 2009. But looking back at the year, it makes you wonder what were these people thinking!!!!!

10. Young Berg. The (not so) popular rapper made a fool of himself this year. First he said he doesn't like dark-skinned women, who he called "dark butts." Then he got arrested on the same weekend his new album was released and despite this possible publicity stunt, the records sales still weren't good. Then he got robbed and beaten in a Detroit night club. Soon after, another rapper's brother was seen on the Internet wearing Young Berg's jewelry. Not sure who is dumber here: the street-talking rapper who gets robbed or the guy who's dumb enough to wear the victim's jewelry.

9. Eliot Spitzer. So you make a name for yourself as an aggressive state attorney general who will prosecute anyone for wrongdoing and you ride this reputation all the way to the governor's mansion in New York. If you're going to campaign on ethics, you ought not be caught in an illegal prostitution ring. But the New York governor got caught with his pants down and now he's the former governor of New York. That, of course, was good news for David Paterson, who became the first black governor of the empire state.

8. John Edwards. Speaking of dumb politicians, how dumb do you have to be to hide an affair while you're running for president of the United States? To quote O.J. Simpson's judge, I'm not sure if that's ignorant or arrogant. As it turns out, it was both. Fortunately for Democrats, Edwards never had a chance in the 2008 campaign. It was always going to be either Hillary or Barack. And by the way, Elizabeth Edwards's comment that the media only covered Obama and Clinton because he's black and she's a woman is pretty dumb too.

7. Mark Penn. Hillary Clinton's chief strategist was so dumb that he helped one of the most powerful politicians in Washington lose to a little known newcomer. How did he do it? By having no strategy past Super Tuesday, where he mistakenly thought Senator Clinton would finish off Obama and become the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee. Only, he seems to have forgotten that people in the caucus states vote too. Then, after he resigned in disgrace, he left his former client with the multi-million dollar bill. Not sure if that's dumb or audacious.

6. Plaxico Burress. You're a superstar NFL wide receiver for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants in the middle of the season and you go out to a crowded nightclub with a loaded gun and accidentally shoot yourself. Not only do you endanger yourself and those around you, you also endanger your career, getting suspended for the season and arrested by the police. We may not expect a lot from highly paid celebrity athletes, but we do expect they won't sabotage themselves. We're talking Michael Vick dumb here.

5. Jesse Jackson. After spending his whole life working to empower black people, Jackson seemed determine to throw it all away this year with his comments about Barack Obama. By the time he threatened to cut off the senator's nuts, a lot of black people had had enough. Jackson joined the ranks of Bob Johnson, Andrew Young, Tavis Smiley and other famous black people who made the mistake of talking smack about the first black president.

4. The big three auto executives. For the record, I fully support the bailout for the big three automakers. But showing up in Washington in private jets to beg for money had to be one of the dumbest things they did in their campaign for help. It's nothing compared to the unchecked greed of the Wall Street titans who swindled the public out of billions of dollars and then got a handout from the government, but it sure looks bad. Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli should have known better, or their PR people should have warned them.

3. O.J. Simpson. I didn't watch the trial this time, so I'm not commenting on whether he should have been convicted of robbery and kidnapping charges, but he's certainly guilty of being stupid. He had to know that a lot of people were out to get him, so he had no business showing up in that Vegas hotel room with or without a gun last year. Maybe we all have Simpson fatigue, so this time, there was no trail of the century and no outrage about the verdict. I don't believe he was only being punished for the hotel incident last year. Of course this was payback from the Nicole Simpson murder trial. But he should have known this day would come when he set foot in that hotel room.

2. Rod Blagojevech. Yes, I know a lot of politicians horse trade for appointments they make and a lot of them self-deal. Heck, Sarah Palin was planning to appoint herself as a senator if Ted Stevens won re-election and got thrown out of office. There's nothing illegal about negotiating positions for yourself from the decisions you make. Until you start negotiating money. But illegal is not necessarily stupid, until you tell your critics to investigate you and they do. And you're dumb enough to be caught on tape saying some pretty corrupt sounding things.

1. Joe the Plumber. There were a lot of dumb people who did a lot of dumb things in the 2008 presidential election. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright said some dumb things in the heat of the campaign. Then Pastor Michael Pfleger said some more dumb things. After arguing that Barack Obama was inexperienced all year, John McCain made the dumb move of picking a running mate with far less experience. And Sarah Palin, well, she was just plain dumb.

But no one was as dumb as Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the plumber. Joe confronted Obama at an Ohio campaign stop, telling the Democratic candidate that he was planning to buy a plumbing business and was afraid his taxes would go up under Obama. He quickly became a conservative hero when John McCain saw the video and starting dropping Joe's name at a presidential debate and subsequent campaign rallies.
Only problem was that Joe wasn't a licensed plumber, wasn't about to buy a plumbing business, wouldn't have suffered under Obama's tax plan, and would actually do better under Obama's tax policy than under McCain's at his real income level. So Joe was basically a fraud, but like the bridge to nowhere and the plane that Sarah Palin supposedly sold on Ebay, the GOP kept telling the same lie over and over again.
McCain and Palin pimped Joe out for weeks, and he was too dumb to realize it. When the smoke cleared, his gravy train had ended and he was looking for book deals and media contracts. Maybe the people at Fox News will have him back on to talk politics in the Obama administration, but if they're smart they won't. 
Sorry Joe, your fifteen minutes has ended. And not a minute too soon.

Credit:  Keith Boykin, CNBC Contributor / BET Political Commentator

Starr has given me the priveledge of posting this weeks Friday Humor due to him having other obligations at this time....

 

IDIOT SIGHTING:

 My daughter and I went through the McDonald's  take-out window and I gave the clerk a $5 bill.  Our total was $4.25, so  I also handed her a quarter.. 

 

She said, 'you gave me too much money.'  I said, 'Yes I know, but this way you can just give me a dollar bill back.' She sighed and went to get the manager who asked me to repeat my request.  I did so, and he handed me back the quarter, and said  'We're sorry but they could not do that kind of thing.'   The clerk then proceeded to give me back $1 and 75 cents in change.

 Do not confuse the clerks at McD'

IDIOT SIGHTING:

 

   We had to have the garage door repaired.  The Sears repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a 'large' enough motor on the opener.  I thought for a minute, and said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower.  He shook his head and said, 'Lady, you n eed a 1/4 horsepower.'  I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4.   He said, 'NO, it's not.'  Four is larger than two. We haven't used Sears repair since....

IDIOT SIGHTING:

 

 I live in a semi rural area.  We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING  sign on our road.  The reason: 'Too many deer are being hit by cars out  here!  I don't think this is a good place for  them to be crossing anymore.'

 

  

 

                      

IDIOT SIGHTING IN FOOD SERVICE:

 

My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco.  She asked the person behind the counter for 'minimal lettuce.'  He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg lettuce.

 

 

 

                                 IDIOT SIGHTING:

 

I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked, 'Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge? 'To which I replied, 'If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?' He smiled knowingly and nodded, 'That's why we ask.'

  Happened in Birmingham , Ala.

 

 

 

                                   IDIOT SIGHTING: 

 

The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street.  I was crossing with an intellectually  challenged coworker of mine.  She asked  if I knew what the buzzer was  for.  I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red. Appalled, she responded, 'What on earth are 

blind people doing driving?!'

 She was a probation officer in Wichita, KS

IDIOT SIGHTING:

 When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it.  We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the drivers side door.  

 

As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked.  'Hey,' I announced to the technician, 'its open!'

 

His reply, 'I know.  I already got that side.'

 

This was at the Ford dealership in Canton , Mississippi

 

                                      STAY ALERT!

 

 

    They walk among us... and the scary part is THEY VOTE & REPRODUCE!

 

Researchers at the prestigious Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute today announce the discovery of a dangerous new neurological disease that causes delusions, psychopathic behavior, pontificating flatulence, irrational hubris, paranoia, and a host of other dangerous and socially debilitating behaviors. Named after the celebrity first diagnosed with the condition, right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the trigger for the disease appears to be the ingestion, over significant periods of time, of massive doses of Oxycontin, and Viagra.

Dr. Tamra E Singh, while elated about the discovery, also expressed dismay at the amount of time it took researchers to discover the syndrome. "It was literally right under our noses, and we never recognized it for what it was," Dr. Singh sighed, "unfortunately, the symptoms of the disease are so similar to Mr. Limbaugh's regular personality, we just didn't see it. Had the disease manifested itself in a normal, decent human, we'd have spotted it in no time at all." Dr. Singh went on to say that another effect of the disease was a tendency for the affected person to ignore personal hygiene in favor of the feverish pursuit of conspiracies and other paranoid, delusional behaviors. "I think that what we are seeing with Mr. Limbaugh right now - his recent assertion that Democrats started our current financial meltdown to help Mr. Obama get elected - is right in line with the behaviors we would predict for patients suffering from this condition. I would warn Mr. Limbaugh to pay close attention to personal hygiene, or risk the recurrence of the rather large anal cyst that plagued him in his earlier years."

Reporters attempted to contact Mr. Limbaugh, but arrived to find his house barricaded, silent, and decorated with anti-Obama and anti-liberal/socialist graffiti. Reporters have also learned that research teams have been dispatched to evaluate Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter, though it is unclear why Ms. Coulter would be taking massive doses of Viagra...

A Prince William County, Virginia sheriff's deputy has been arrested on several child pornography charges. 65-year-old Arthur Staples is accused of swapping pictures of children as young as 11 years old over the Internet. The charges stem from an online chat with an undercover detective from Florida. According to court documents, Staples used the screenname "nudeom200." He allegedly told the detective he was interested in prepubescent children. Court documents allege Staples went into graphic detail about acts he had performed on children. Police say Staples also traded at least one picture of an 11-year-old girl who was nude. Florida police used the screenname and a phone number to track Staples down. Manassas Police were called to arrest the sheriff's deputy on Friday. When they did, police say they also discovered more than 900 child porn images from a computer in Staples' home. Staples is being held without bond.

People watch and know who your children are associating with... You never know Who's - Who in America anymore!!!

Jack  decided to go skiing with his buddy, Bob. So they loaded up Jack's minivan and  headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible  blizzard. So they pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who  answered the door if they could spend the night.


"I realize it's  terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I'm  recently widowed," she explained. "I'm afraid the neighbors will talk if I let  you stay in my house."


"Don't worry," Jack said. "We'll be happy to  sleep in the barn. And if the weather breaks, we'll be gone at first light."  The lady agreed, and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in  for the night. Come morning, the weather had  cleared,  and  they got on their way. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.


But  about nine months later, Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney. It  took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was  from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski  weekend.


He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, "Bob, do you  remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday  up north about 9 months ago ?"


"Yes, I do." said Bob  


"Did you, er, happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up  to the house and pay her a visit?"


"Well, um, yes !," Bob said, a  little embarrassed about being found out, "I have to admit that I  did."


"And did you happen to give her my name instead of telling  her your name?"


Bob's face turned beet red and he said, "Yeah,  look, I'm sorry, buddy. I'm afraid I did." "Why do you ask?"


"She  just died and left me everything."

(And  you thought the ending  would  be  different,  didn't you?... you know you smiled...now  keep  that smile for the  rest  of the  day! ) 

THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!.

 

I was barely sitting down when I heard a voice from the other stall saying:

 'HI, HOW ARE YOU'?

 

I am not the type to start a conversation in the restroom but I don't know what got into me, so I answered, somewhat embarrassed,

 'DOIN' JUST FINE'!

 

The other person says:

 'SO WHAT ARE YOU UP TO'?

 

What kind of question is that?  At that point, I'm thinking this is too bizarre so I say:

 'UHHH, I'M LIKE YOU, JUST TRAVELING'!

 

At this point I am trying to get out as fast as I can, when I hear another question.

 'CAN I COME OVER'?

 

Ok, this question is just too weird for me, but I figured I could just be polite and end the conversation. I tell them:

 'NO....I'M A LITTLE BUSY RIGHT NOW'!!!

 

Then I hear the person say nervously.......

 'LISTEN, I'LL HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK.  THERE'S AN IDIOT IN THE OTHER STALL WHO KEEPS ANSWERING ALL MY QUESTIONS'.

 

                      

 

                                          CELL PHONES, DON'T YOU JUST LOVE THEM?

A Thanksgiving Divorce...

A man in Phoenix calls his son in New York the day before Thanksgiving and says, 'I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of pure misery is enough.
'Pop, what are you talking about?' the son screams.
 The father says, 'We're sick of each other, and I'm sick of  talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her.'
Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone.  'Like heck they're getting divorced!!!,' she shouts, 'I'll take care of this!!!,'
She calls Phoenix immediately, and screams at her father,  'You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then , don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?!!!!' and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife.
 'Okay,' he says, 'they're coming for Thanksgiving and they're paying their own way.

I wish each of you a very special and happy Thanksgiving!  

 

Simply Beautiful



Eugene Allen, 89, a retired White House butler, tries on his old tuxedo for a photo. Allen, who served eight presidents during a period when America 's racial history was being rewritten, is marveling at the election of Barack Obama.

Now retired, he started when blacks were in the kitchen.
By Wil Haygood
November 7, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- For more than three decades, Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land. He trekked home every night to his wife, Helene, who kept him out of her kitchen. At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him. He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen said. He was there while racial history was made: Brown vs. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington , the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations. When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia . "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalled of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better." In its long history, the White House -- note the name -- has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans.

"The history is not so uneven at the lower level, in the kitchen," said Ted Sorensen, who served as counselor to President Kennedy. "In the kitchen, the folks have always been black. Even the folks at the door -- black." Before Gene Allen landed his White House job, he worked as a waiter at a resort in Hot Springs , Va. , and then at a country club in Washington . He and wife Helene, 86, were sitting in the living room of their Washington home. Her voice was musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. She called him "Honey." They met at a birthday party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later.

In 1952, a lady told him of a job opening in the White House. "I wasn't even looking for a job," he said. "I was happy where I was working, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields." Fields was a maitre d', and he immediately liked Allen. Allen was offered a job as a "pantry man." He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $2,400 a year. There was, in time, a promotion to butler. "Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for," he said. "I was there, honey," Helene said. "In the back maybe. But I shook their hands too." She was referring to White House holiday parties, Easter egg hunts. They have one son, Charles, who works as an investigator with the State Department..

"President Ford's birthday and my birthday were on the same day," he said. "He'd have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, 'It's Gene's birthday too!” And, so they'd sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.
"Jack Kennedy was very nice," he went on. "And so was Mrs. Kennedy." He was in the White House kitchen the day Kennedy was slain. He got an invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral."
The whole family of President Carter made Helene chuckle: "They were country. And I'm talking Lillian and Rosalynn both." It came out as the highest compliment.

First Lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. She told him he would not be working that night. "She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' I'm telling you! I believe I'm the only butler to get invited to a state dinner."

Husbands and wives don't sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. "And my son said, 'Momma, just talk about your high school. They won't know the difference.'" The senators were all talking about the colleges and universities that they went to," she said. "I was doing as much talking as they were. "Had champagne that night," she said, looking over at her husband. He just grinned: He was the man who stacked the champagne at the White House.

Colin L. Powell would become the highest ranking black of any White House to that point when he was named Reagan's national security advisor in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that position under President George W. Bush. Gene Allen was promoted to maitre d' in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note. Nancy Reagan hugged him tight.

Interviewed at their home last week, Gene and Helene speculated about what it would mean if a black man were elected president. "Just imagine," she said. "It'd be really something," he said. "We're pretty much past the going-out stage," she said. "But you never know. If he gets in there, it'd sure be nice to go over there again." They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They'd go vote together. She'd lean on her cane with one hand, and him with the other, while walking down to the precinct. And she'd get supper going afterward. They went over their Election Day plans more than once. "Imagine," she said. "That's right," he said.

On Monday, Helene had a doctor's appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again.. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again. He was all alone. "I woke up and my wife didn't," he said later. Some friends and family members rushed over. He wanted to make coffee. They had to shoo the butler out of the kitchen. The lady he married 65 years ago will be buried today. The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office.

Haygood writes for the Washington Post.

Associated Press/AP Online

MILWAUKEE - The head of the Wisconsin firefighters union resigned Tuesday over a racist comment he made the day after Barack Obama became the first African-American elected president.

Rick Gale, who had worked on Obama's Wisconsin campaign, apologized to the union and the public in his resignation letter.

The Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin said Gale's comment was "offensive, inappropriate and racially insensitive and does not reflect the views of our union."

Gale, who headed the union for eight years, admitted in his letter that he used the "single racially charged word" during a private, casual conversation while having drinks with several board members Nov. 5.

"The word has no business in my vocabulary and I should not have used it - not even in private," he wrote.

"In doing so I let myself, the PFFW Executive Board and the entire membership down," he added. "I am sorry. I have asked the PFFW and the public to accept my deepest and sincerest apology."

Gale, a lieutenant with the West Allis Fire Department, said he was also resigning from all the governmental and public boards on which he served.

Those posts include membership on the State of Wisconsin Retirement Board as an appointee of Gov. Jim Doyle, an ardent supporter of Obama throughout the presidential race.

Obama was endorsed for president by the International Association of Fire Fighters, whose general president Harold Schaitberger issued a memo to its Wisconsin affiliates commenting on the resignation by saying Gale's comments were "inexcusable."

"However, this is also an opportunity to restate clearly my fundamental goal of building a union that is free from all forms of bigotry and bias," Schaitberger said.

Gale did not return phone messages left Tuesday at his home and office by The Associated Press seeking comment.

Disquisitions about public intellectuals usually conclude that they ain't what they used to be. Subtitles from recent books on the topic include A Study of Decline and An Endangered Species? Indeed, the major point of debate is dating the precise start of the decline and fall. For some critics, Götterdämmerung started in the 1950s; for others, the 1930s. More-curmudgeonly writers place the date earlier, stretching back to the heyday of John Stuart Mill or even the death of Socrates.

The pessimism about public intellectuals is reflected in attitudes about how the rise of the Internet in general, and blogs in particular, affects intellectual output. Alan Wolfe claims that "the way we argue now has been shaped by cable news and Weblogs; it's all 'gotcha' commentary and attributions of bad faith. No emotion can be too angry and no exaggeration too incredible." David Frum complains that "the blogosphere takes on the scale and reality of an alternative world whose controversies and feuds are ... absorbing." David Brooks laments, "People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers."

But these critics fail to recognize how the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing has partially reversed a trend that many cultural critics have decried — what Russell Jacoby called the "professionalization and academization" of public intellectuals. In fact, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down — or at least erodes — the barriers erected by a professionalized academy.

Most of the obituaries for the public intellectual suffer from the cognitive bias and conceptual fuzziness that come from comparing the annals of history to the present day. Over time, as lesser intellectual lights tend to fade from view, only the canon remains. Even when glancing back at the intellectual giants of the past, current public commentators are more likely to gloss over past intellectual errors and instead focus on their greatest moments. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man might look wrong in retrospect, but it is not more wrong than Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology.

Jacoby repeatedly challenges critics of his 1987 polemic, The Last Intellectuals, to name public intellectuals born after 1940 in order to compare them with past generations. But that is not a very difficult task. At magazines and periodicals, full-time authors and contributing editors who write serious-but-accessible essays on ideas, culture, and society include Anne Applebaum, Barbara Ehrenreich, Malcolm Gladwell, Christopher Hitchens, and Fareed Zakaria. Despite the thinning of their ranks, public intellectuals unaffiliated with universities, like Paul Berman, Debra Dickerson, Rick Perlstein, David Rieff, and Robert Wright, still remain. The explosion of think tanks in the past 30 years has provided sinecures for the intellectual likes of William A. Galston, Robert Kagan, Brink Lindsey, and Walter Russell Mead. The American academy houses many intellectuals uninterested in engaging the public, but it also houses Eric Alterman, Michael Bérubé, Joshua Cohen, Tyler Cowen, Jared Diamond, Stanley Fish, Francis Fukuyama, Jacob Hacker, George Lakoff, Mark Lilla, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Louis Menand, Martha Nussbaum, Steven Pinker, Robert Putnam, Eric Rauchway, Robert Reich, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Lawrence H. Summers, and Cass R. Sunstein. Readers may easily quibble with any of the names listed above, but most cultural commentators would agree that most of the names belong on that list. Furthermore, those names only scratch the surface.

To be sure, some important differences exist between the current generation of public intellectuals and the Partisan Review generation extolled by so many. In the current era, many more public intellectuals possess social-science rather than humanities backgrounds. In Richard Posner's infamous list of top public intellectuals, there are twice as many social scientists as humanities professors. In a recent ranking published by Foreign Policy magazine, economists and political scientists outnumber artists and novelists by a ratio of four to one. Economics has supplanted literary criticism as the "universal methodology" of most public intellectuals.

That fact in particular might explain the strong belief in literary circles that the public intellectual is dead or dying. Barry Gewen, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, for example, recently argued that one had to look to the New York Intellectuals as the standard for thinking about the current crop: "Broadly, they viewed the public intellectual as someone deeply committed to the life of the mind and to its impact on the society at large. ... That is, public intellectuals were free-floating and unattached generalists speaking out on every topic that came their way (though most important for the New York Intellectuals was the intersection of literature and politics)."

What made the New York Intellectuals stand out, however, was that they started in literary criticism and migrated to social analyses. When social scientists like Tyler Cowen or Richard Posner return the favor, they are viewed as either arrivistes or methodological imperialists. The problem here might not be in our public intellectuals but in ourselves — even a modest level of innumeracy can make the public writings of economists look arcane and mysterious.

The only thing worse than a social scientist, apparently, is a social scientist who blogs. As Brooks, Frum, and Wolfe have argued, blogs are an outlet for vitriol and pettiness. Jacoby is simultaneously concerned with the content and volume of this outlet: "Blogs may be more like private journals with megaphones than reasoned contributions to public life. ... Ortega y Gasset's fear almost a century ago of the 'revolt of the masses' needs an update. We face a revolt of the writers. Today everyone is a blogger, but where are the readers?"

That is not a terribly persuasive critique — indeed, it manifests some of the same flaws of the larger decline meme. The concern about vitriolic blogs confuses form with content. All media forms generate distasteful, disposable, or demented material — indeed, as a general rule, whenever a new media is invented, pornography soon follows. Bad content, however, does not impeach the form through which the content is produced. This would be like arguing that Hustler discredits Harper's as an appropriate venue for publication.

Similarly, Jacoby's concern about the mix of erudition and trivia within blogs also seems off base. If celebrity profiles do not compromise Christopher Hitchens's essays in Vanity Fair, there is no reason to believe that snarky blog posts undercut more serious posts. Jacoby recognized this fact back in 2000 when he wrote, "It should be possible for thinkers and writers to be both serious and accessible — not always at the same time, but over time."

Jacoby's original concern was that independent public intellectuals were disappearing from view, and academic intellectuals were increasingly professionalized and hidebound. The proliferation of blogs reverses those trends in several ways. Blogs have facilitated the rise of a new class of nonacademic intellectuals. Writing a successful blog has provided a launching pad for aspiring writers to obtain jobs from general-interest magazines. The premier general-interest magazines and journals in the country either sponsor individual bloggers or have developed their own in-house blogs.

For academics aspiring to be public intellectuals, blogs allow networks to develop that cross the disciplinary and hierarchical strictures of academe. Provided one can write jargon-free prose, a blog can attract readers from all walks of life — including, most importantly, people beyond the ivory tower. (The distribution of traffic and links in the blogosphere is highly skewed, and academics and magazine writers make up a fair number of the most popular bloggers.) Indeed, because of the informal and accessible nature of the blog format, citizens will tend to view academic bloggers that they encounter online as more accessible than would be the case in a face-to-face interaction, increasing the likelihood of a fruitful exchange of views about culture, criticism, and politics with individuals whom academics might not otherwise meet. Furthermore, as a longtime blogger, I can attest that such interactions permit one to play with ideas in a way that is ill suited for more-academic publishing venues. A blog functions like an intellectual fishing net, catching and preserving the embryonic ideas that merit further time and effort.

Perhaps the most-useful function of bloggers, however, is when they engage in the quality control of other public intellectuals. Posner believes that public intellectuals are in decline because there is no market discipline for poor quality. Even if public intellectuals royally screw up, he argues, the mass public is sufficiently uninterested and disengaged for it not to matter. Bloggers are changing that dynamic, however. If Michael Ignatieff, Paul Krugman, or William Kristol pen substandard essays, blogs have and will provide a wide spectrum of critical feedback.

There are, of course, limits to the ways in which blogs aid public intellectuals. It is not clear how many academics will choose to embrace the technology. The academic politics of blogging can also be problematic, particularly for younger scholars focused on tenure. Another emerging problem is that professionalization is creeping into the blogosphere. Popular bloggers are also increasingly paid bloggers — and the emergence of what Irving Howe called a "phalanx of solidarity" among prominent bloggers might retard public debate.

Despite such limitations, Götterdämmerung will have to wait a while longer. In his essay "The Social Role of the Intellectual," C. Wright Mills lamented that, "Between the intellectual and his potential public stand technical, economic, and social structures which are owned and operated by others." The blogosphere does not eliminate those structures, but it does provide an intriguing substitute. As Siva Vaidhyanathan recently concluded, "There has never been a better time to be a public intellectual, and the Web is the big reason why."

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The paperback edition of his book, All Politics Is Global (Princeton University Press), was published in September.

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http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 12, Page B5

Banks are responding to the troubled economy by jacking up fees on their checking accounts to record amounts.

Last week, Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank started charging some customers a new $10 "overdraft protection transfer fee" to transfer money from a savings account or line of credit to cover a checking-account shortfall. Citibank had already raised foreign-exchange transaction fees on its debit cards and added minimum opening deposit requirements for its checking accounts. Over the past year, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Chase, Bank of America Corp., and Wells Fargo & Co. have boosted the fees they charge noncustomers who use their automated teller machines to as much as $3 per transaction.

Getting a Handle on Bank Fees

To avoid getting nickel-and-dimed, it's important to keep close tabs on how much money is in your account and to understand your bank's fee policies. Read The Wallet.

With all these changes, the average costs of checking-account fees, including ATM surcharges, bounced-check fees and monthly service fees have hit record highs, according to a new study by research firm Bankrate Inc.

Depositors are also paying more for extra services. In July, for example, Comerica Inc.'s Comerica Bank raised fees in Michigan for customers who want to stop payments or get a cashier's check. Last year, PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s PNC Bank introduced a processing charge of $3 for customers who use their debit card to get a cash advance at a teller window.

Along with the tough economy and higher credit costs, another factor prompting banks to cut costs and raise fees and loan rates is a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposal to increase the rates banks pay for deposit insurance starting next year in order to help replenish its reserves. If that rule change is approved, experts say, banks will probably pass on more of those higher costs to consumers by raising fees and boosting the minimum balances required to avoid fees.

Consumers are likely to see the most pain from bounced-check and overdraft fees. "By the end of 2009, you will start to see fairly substantial increases in overdraft fees" for the big banks, potentially to as high as $40 per occurrence from a current range of $32 to $35, says Mike Moebs, chief executive of Moebs $ervices Inc., an economic research firm in Chicago.

Such fees are key contributors to banks' bottom lines. About 90% of banks' consumer-fee income comes from overdraft and insufficient-funds charges, which are expected to increase to $42 billion this year from $20.7 billion in 1999, says Mr. Moebs.

Though the government has helped banks with cash infusions, "banks don't want the government to be shareholders forever, so they're looking to generate earnings to recapitalize and pay the government back," says Sherief Meleis, managing director at Novantas LLC, a bank consulting firm.

Tiered-Rate Structures

Already, Bank of America, Citibank and Washington Mutual Inc. have raised their overdraft fees this year, while Wells Fargo raised its insufficient-funds fee in certain markets in July. Many banks are also adopting tiered-rate structures that assess a lower penalty for first-time occurrences but quickly ramp up the costs for repeat offenders.

Nickel and Dimed

With profits under pressure, banks are turning to other ways to raise revenue:

• Many banks have jacked up ATM, overdraft and bounced-check fees.
• Banks are likely to boost minimum account balance requirements.
• More mergers could result in higher fees for some customers.

In August, for example, Fifth Third Bancorp moved from a flat fee of $33 per item to $25 for the first overdraft, $33 for the second through the fourth, and $37 for the fifth occurrence and beyond. The bank also raised its returned-deposit-item fee to $15 from $10 earlier this year.

One thing consumers can do is sign up for services that will automatically tap a savings account or a line of credit in case there is an overdraft in the checking account, though they may pay a fee on this service as well. WaMu, which is being bought by J.P. Morgan Chase, recently raised its overdraft transfer service fees to $12 from $10 and increased the maximum number of overdraft/insufficient-funds fees that can be charged per day to seven from five.

Mergers and Higher Fees

Industry consolidation is also likely to result in higher fees. Banks with more than $20 billion in assets charged an average of $33.43 per overdraft, compared with $24.28 for financial institutions with less than $100 million in assets, according to a recent study by Moebs $ervices.

Next week, some checking-account customers at TD Bank Financial Group's TD Banknorth -- which acquired Commerce Bancorp Inc. earlier this year -- could see higher fees as the combined entity, TD Bank, adopts and rolls out Commerce's fee structure. Although some fees will disappear -- such as charges to use another bank's ATM -- some legacy TD Banknorth customers will face higher overdraft fees as the bank adopts a flat fee of $35 per overdraft instead of the previous fee structure, which ranged from $25 to $35.

"Clearly, this is a very different operating environment for banks, and all banks have to be looking for ways to meet the requirements of shareholders," says Thomas Dyck, executive vice president at TD Bank. "That naturally has them looking for alternative sources of revenue." From the bank's perspective, he says, adopting Commerce's products and pricing structure "positions us to compete aggressively for new customers as our primary way to grow revenues."

No changes have been made to WaMu's checking account, which does not charge ATM fees, boasts free checks for life and has no monthly service charges, says Chase spokeswoman Christine Holevas, who notes that it's still too early. Chase, for its part, will change the name of its Chase Free Checking account to Chase Checking starting next week. "It is a more-accurate description of the account" because of its direct-deposit requirement, she says, and is not related to any changes in fees.

In the midst of all these fee changes, it's even more important for consumers to keep close tabs on how much money is in their accounts and to regularly check their accounts online. Many banks offer free phone and email alerts to notify customers when their account balances drop below specified levels.

PNC's new "Virtual Wallet" checking account -- which combines checking, savings and high-yield-savings accounts -- automatically calculates "Danger Days" that warn customers when their balances will dip into negative territory based on their schedule of online bill payments and upcoming paydays.

What to Avoid

It's a good idea to avoid interest-bearing checking accounts that require big balances in order to avoid monthly fees and invest the money elsewhere, says Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. "Regardless of how high fees go, they're completely avoidable," he says. For example, consumers can sign up for overdraft protection linked to their savings accounts or use a debit card to get cash back at the point of sale to avoid ATM fees, he suggests.

Another option: Shop around. Both Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab Corp. offer interest-bearing checking accounts with ATM-fee reimbursements and no minimum-balance requirements. With ING Groep NV's ING Direct's Orange checking account, which pays between 1.5% and 3.5% on deposits, customers get a debit card instead of a paper checkbook, although the bank will send paper checks for free on request.

Some community banks offer so-called reward checking accounts that pay high yields if you make a certain number of debit-card transactions and direct deposits, and agree to get your statements online.

Alternatives to Banks

Bhaskar Sarkar, a software engineer in Flower Mound, Texas, has stopped using banks altogether. Instead, he parks his cash in a brokerage account at Fidelity, where he is using a municipal money-market mutual fund as his core account. While most brokerage accounts have cash-management features, such as check writing and bill paying, Fidelity's checking-account equivalent, dubbed "mySmart Cash," also offers ATM-fee reimbursements and a no-fee overdraft policy.

By linking the two accounts, Mr. Sarkar is able to withdraw cash from any ATM and have the money pulled from his brokerage account -- all without fees. He aims to keep all of his cash in the money-market fund, where he's earning more interest, and a zero balance in his mySmart Cash account.

Compared to a traditional bank checking account, says the 38-year-old Mr. Sarkar, this arrangement is "more like a no-strings-attached account where I could keep as little or as much as I wanted in it."