Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Sunday, June 23, 2002

Armed and Dangerous in New York - Citing the inability of the NYPD to protect Jewish institutions from the terrorist attacks the FBI says are possible, a Jewish defense group in Brooklyn has vowed to mount armed patrols in the streets of New York.

Citing their Second Amendment right to self-defense, a NYC rabbi has vowed to put 50 armed men on on the street against the threat that terrorists might use fuel tanker trucks for attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools.

Of course, many New Yorkers are idiots: "We don't need vigilantes like him coming into our neighborhoods," said one very complacent New Yorker.

And - this is almost funny - as I listened to NPR's take on this story, I thought "They're going to mention that this rabbi once supported Meir Kahane". And, within seconds, they did. As if that alters someone's right to defend oneself.

Yet another sign - either of the apocalypse or that the US is swinging to the right: New York Jews touting the Second Amendment.

posted by Mitch Berg 6/23/2002 12:18:58 AM

Friday, June 21, 2002

Media Bias is Good? - Thoughts on the accession of George Stephanopoulos.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/21/2002 06:47:53 PM

Future Awk - Our college students are idiots.

James Lileks' latest screed states my dismay, as usual, better than I do.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/21/2002 01:48:51 PM

And In Other News - Barb McMahon.

That is all.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/21/2002 10:37:05 AM

Ventura's Legacy, Part I - Mike Lynch on what Ventura leaves behind.

OK, so that's one thing I will miss about Ventura. He proved that not only is government not rocket science - it's barely even stovetop grilling. The endless DFL (and moderate GOP) bleat, that government requires lots of painstaking experience, has been proven a load of hooie by a semi-literate buffoon in a feather boa.

So even though Ventura disappointed greatlyin abandoning his "small government" campaign promises (at the hands of the wizards behind the curtain, liberals Dean Barkley and Tim Penney), he may have struck a blow for it anyway - just by being the big, dumb lug he is.

Sportsmanship - Women's sports have been much in the news lately, with universities cutting men's sports, even well-attended ones, to free up budget dollars for sparsely-used women's sports.

And yet basketball and baseball have been godsends for my daughter. I'm certainly not one of the saurean relics who rails against women's sports - hoops was my daughter's first big success, the first step in coming out of her shell. This ties in with the school post a few days ago - about how sometimes it's not the "Three Rs" that spark a kid to enjoy learning, with its eventual segue into critical thinking.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is another conservative with views on women's/girls' sports. She's written a book on the subject that's on my list for the weekend.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/21/2002 09:28:16 AM

Thursday, June 20, 2002

Things I Won't Miss about Jesse - I'm going to start my list.
Everything's Personal - The mansion staff didn't exercise their right to complain about something. Oh, no. They "betrayed me", says the governor. And the media isn't reporting a story - they're "attacking my family". This predilection for taking common challenges (especially common for a politician) and turning them into personal attacks - hyping the emotion level to absurd levels - is worse than childish. It's abusive. It requires any dissent to be approached with a double-dose of emotional commitment - you not only have to carry on the dissent, but also be ready to meet the irrational, emotional accusation as well. That, or just fold.
The National Press's complete delusion about him - The national press, including people who should know better, still think Ventura's a conservative! Rush Limbaugh thinks Ventura's a libertarian conservative, for the love of pete! The man is, in a phrase I coined on the Jason Lewis show four years ago, "DFL Lite". You know a politician by the company he keeps, and the policies he backs. All of his appointed offices except Public Safety are held by DFLers, and he caved in to the DFL on squandering the surplus on new spending - the real cause of the deficit we face.

This list will no doubt grow. Feel free to send me yours!
posted by Mitch Berg 6/20/2002 04:34:44 PM

Didn't Know it was a Law, Did You? - Me neither.

I'm talking about the Iron Law of American Politics, wherein, as Terence Jeffrey says,
"the rightward-most candidate in any federal election will be demonized as an extremist by his rivals and by the liberal press... A corollary is that it doesn’t matter how far left the rightward-most candidate sits. If Leon Trotsky were running against Josef Stalin for President of the United States, Stalin would accuse Trotsky of being a rightwing extremist and the New York Times would echo the judgment.

The article shows how this Iron Law now applies, in the era of Blairite Clintonian triangulation, to the UK.
Sound familiar to any of you in Minnesota? Until last week, Brian Sullivan was the Most Dangerous Man in Minnesota. Why, to listen to DFLers, if elected, he would ban abortion, and...er, ban abortion!

Now, it's Pawlenty who, despite his very moderate voting record, is "an extreme conservative".

Part of me is angry - it's a lie, after all. Part of me says "more power to you all!". After all, that strategery - painting the rightmost opponent as a dangerous right-wing extremist - did Skip "Who?" Humphrey exactly zero good in 1998.
More to come.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/20/2002 04:23:45 PM

Just...Plain...Wrong. - This is your tax dollars at work.

I've long held that the NEA, if it exists at all, should concentrate on teaching school kids about art. One of the current follies of the "back to basics" movement in schools is that art education is suffering at the hands of parsimonious school boards and short-sighted "conservative" parents.

I'm as conservative as they come. But different things unlock different kids' potential. For me, it was music and foreign language that finally kicked open the corner of my brain that handles reasoning. Not math, not science. That's true for lots of people - the "Three Rs" are no substitute for actual thinking. and schools that concentrate on them will reach the percentage of kids whose intellects get worked up over exactly that. For the rest of them, something else - languages, music, art, auto mechanics - is what does the trick, and opens up the love of learning for its own sake.

All of which means that people who love the act of thinking and reasoning for its own sake can confront "artists" like those in the article above with the vacuity of their respective muses.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/20/2002 07:37:31 AM

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Ventura - He's not running. Perhaps you've heard!

The irritating part is watching the DFL, with the active complicity of the media, paint Tim Pawlenty as the second coming of Alan Quist, as if to imply that Pawlenty is some single issue paleoconservative. He's not - he's too moderate for my tastes, and I'm pretty libertarian on many social issues.

More to come.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/19/2002 07:42:49 AM

Warm Up That Credit Card - Forget Ventura - the big news is here.

Well, for me, anyway.

People write me and ask "Why are you such a Springsteen fan? He's a Democrat, you know?".

True. And if I had to listen only to music by artists whose politics I share, I'd be limited to Ted Nugent (who sucks but is alive and has a book out) and Joey Ramone (who was a conservative, never wrote a book, and is now dead). So I listen to Bruce, and Bono, and the late Stuart Adamson and the overwrought but fabulous Dave Peters and Mike Sharp and the incredible Richard Thompson, and look forward to Charleton Heston doing an album of Sex Pistols covers...
posted by Mitch Berg 6/19/2002 07:40:35 AM

Churchill - In light of all the revisionism lately about one of the greatest leaders of all time, an excerpt from a review of an excellent book on the subject of great leaders.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/19/2002 07:34:30 AM

Get Down and Cough it Up - Again, let me clarify: I've never been the most savage critic of public schools among my fellow Republicans. I was barely a critic at all, until recently. Save the cookie-cutter criticism.

But there are many problems in the public schools, not the least of which is their institutional immunity to real innovation and genuine excellence.

The story of math teacher Jaime Escalante became Stand and Deliver - an excellent movie that dramatized (in suitably Hollywood-ized form) the rise of Escalante's math program.

Jerry Jesness documents the rather-less-publicized fall.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/19/2002 07:30:28 AM

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

What is the Problem? - Roger Moe is acting like Tim Pawlenty's move to the right is a bad thing.

Roger Moe is going to make Skip Humphrey's showing look good.

The way I see it, this is a win-win. You get Pawlenty's natural deal-making ability, his flair as a speaker, and his lack of "theocratic" label, plus Sullivan's fiscal conservatism in black and white (the no new taxes pledge). Those are messages that will resonate far better than Moe's uber-wonkery.

Pawlenty can win this.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/18/2002 07:39:22 AM

Your Tax Dollars at Work - Apparently Tyrel Ventura used the Governor's Mansion the same way the Clinton staff used the White House.

Jesse was a SEAL, ya know.

A galloping sense of entitlement, the arrogance of power...why...could it be...

...Jesse's become just another politician?

LA Calling to the Faraway Towns - The Al Quaeda Love Boat is coming to LA.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/18/2002 07:36:03 AM

Monday, June 17, 2002

Big Government and the Environment - According to Greens, liberals, and Al Gore, the only answer to our world's environmental problem is more, bigger government intervention in the economy, from grandiloquent world-wide agreements like the Kyoto Accords, down to government planning of the economy with an alleged nod to the environment.

Of course, you don't need to be a Green to notice the absurdity of this - the world's worst polluters have been the biggest governments. The USSR, the Warsaw Pact, and Communist China were/are the world's worst polluters, along with most of the socialist third world.

"But wait", say the liberals, "how about more civilized socialist governments?"

OK, how about 'em? Let's see how the European Union is doing.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/17/2002 10:32:03 AM

Sunday, June 16, 2002

GOP Convention - I didn't make it this year - haven't had time to really be involved in party stuff. But I'd say it was a good one.

The media coverage seems obsessed with the notion that the party can be either conservative or big-tent - as if conservative principles aren't the ones that draw people to the party in the first place.

Bear in mind that by conservative principles, I'm talking about the ones that matter to everyone - economic liberty, lower taxes, safer streets and a more secure world. Abortion is a terrible thing, and I have problems with domestic partner benefits (more later) and oppose both on pure principle - but neither of these are the issues that bring people conservatism.

Ronald Reagan didn't win two landslides elections because he was pro-life. He won them because he made the big, galloping ideas of Hayek and Mill and Madison - ideas about freedom and economic liberty - live and breathe for millions of regular Joe and Jane Lunchpails around the country.

Pawlenty, as I've noted in this space before, is a great stump speaker - the best by far among the current gubernatorial candidates. But years in the moderate-to-liberal legislature have tarnished his conservative credentials. If Brian Sullivan drove him farther to the right - ie, made him an actual Republican rather than a slightly less media-friendly DFLer - then the convention was a very good thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/16/2002 10:07:07 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive