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

Saturday, October 05, 2002

Caldicott was Right? - In the '80's, feminist anti-war hysteric Helen Caldicott said that computer games were training the next generation of techno-warriors to man anti-ballistic missile systems.

This article - by Wagner Au, in Salon - confirms her thesis. With one exception - America's Army, the Army's new interactive shoot-em-up-with-a-mission-and-a-conscience recruitment tool - among others, apparently has value in training ground-pounding infantry, Ranger and Special Forces.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2002 08:02:11 AM

Friday, October 04, 2002

Women and Guns - Rachel Jurado is angry.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2002 04:20:42 PM

Deja Vu - Zell Miller, on the similarities between 1972 and today, at least for Democrats.
The world threat at that time was communism, not terrorism, and this highly ambitious group of senators was sailing the ship and tacking hard to the left. Mr. McGovern tacked the quickest and the furthest to the left, and, with the help of his brilliant campaign manager, Gary Hart, captured the antiwar crowd. Then, for all practical purposes, Mr. McGovern nailed down the nomination by defeating Hubert Humphrey in California with the help of Shirley MacLaine.
Today, the names have changed: The South Dakotan is Daschle, the manager is MacAuliffe, and the actor is Martin Sheen or Alec Baldwin or Cher or...

But the story, says Miller, is playing the same.

posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2002 02:30:01 PM

Gored - Spinsanity, on the lies in Algore's most recent speeches.

I should start tracking this for later. In case there's a later for Algore.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2002 07:44:27 AM

A Good German - Thomas von der Osten-Sacken is a leading German expert on Iraq. This article - in Ha'aretz - both criticizes our mistakes in dealing with Iraq in the eighties and during the first Gulf War:
"American policy in Iraq is a series of huge mistakes. Firstly, it was a mistake to support that horrible regime in the 1980s knowing, for example, about the massacres against the Kurds. Secondly, it was a huge mistake not to let the Iraqi people topple Saddam in '91. The Americans feared democracy in the Middle East, they feared the breakup of Iraq because it would strengthen Iran, so they allowed Saddam to crush the uprising.
and approves of deposing him, for the good of the world.

"With regimes like the Iraqi one, there will be no peace in the Middle East. You cannot contain a regime like Saddam Hussein's. That was a mistake of the West. So the question is: Is America ready to face up to the mistakes it made in '91 and in the '80s? Are the Americans ready to support democracy? Because people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden grew out of the Middle East. They are not products of Afghanistan."
Worth a read.

Racist Racism Conference - An international conference on racism, in Barbados, voted to expel all non-black members.

It's so odd to see Cuba leading the dissent against that decision (which was proposed by British delegates).
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2002 07:06:46 AM

Wellstone's Remarks - Wellstone declined to support action against Iraq, absent complete approval from the UN.

I love Lileks' screed on the subject.

Here's the best part:
The opponents of military force always make the best argument for Saddam’s removal. They spend a great deal of time detailing how he has lied and cheated and killed and stalled and gassed and oppressed, and hence should be given an additional last chance to prove he’s worthy of the last chance we’ll give him in November. It’s not surprising coming from Wellstone; he belongs to the UN party. As I’ve noted elsewhere, there are two parties nowadays: the US party, and the UN party. The former includes Republicans and Democrats who have an inordinate, romantic, and almost quaint attachment to the Constitution and the notion of national sovereignty. The latter regard nation-states as subsets of a global construct that values unanimous impotence over individual effort, and values procedure over results. The US party calls in mortar fire on the enemy positions. The UN party stands up, climbs over the lip of the trench, and recites Robert’s Rules of Order as it approaches the machine-gun positions. Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for evil is specifically prohibited under Article 4, subclause B.
And with all of Wellstone's (and the left's) cringing before the opinion of the "Arab Street", and the mortal danger we face by "going it alone", this part is hilarious
Wellstone apparently believes that Saddam would use a “go-it-alone” invasion to inspire France, Canada, the Solomon Islands and Belarus to launch simultaneous attacks against us. What forces would he unite? Do we fear the mighty Egyptian Army swimming to Florida? If he’s talking about the terrorists, then he seems to believe that an invasion of Iraq would topple those fence-sitters who hated America, hated Jews, hated the pig-monkey mongrel West with its beer-and-Britney sinfulness. It’s bad enough that the West exisst at all, but toppling a secularist whack-job who co-opts the Muslim cause for his own clan’s advancement - that’s the last straw. And the infidels won, too - all the more reason to rise up and demand that they kill us, too!
By the way - isn't it amazing what a dove Wellstone was not, during the Clinton administration?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2002 06:43:03 AM

Thursday, October 03, 2002

Shootings - Five are dead in shootings in the Maryland suburbs of DC.

Interesting to note that while this part of Maryland is very close to Virginia, the shootings appear confined to Maryland. I'm sure it's unrelated, but Virginia has a shall-issue concealed carry law, while Maryland has a very restrictive "probably won't issue" law, like Minnesota's.

These kinds of shootings just don't seem to happen in shall-issue states - outside of schools, where guns are "illegal", anyway...

posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2002 12:56:19 PM

Rice Doctrine - For all the prattle from the left - and the media, which is largely illiterate about things more then two new cycles in the future or past - Bush's foreign policy has been incredibly consistent, says the Financial Times.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2002 11:36:16 AM

The Dumb Guy - Yesterday's resolution was a political maneuver worthy of Slick Willie.

When will the Dems figure out "Dubya" isn't the idiot they...no, wait. Best that they continue with their delusion.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2002 07:56:10 AM

Wednesday, October 02, 2002

Balbra Steisanb - "The Star" seems to need an errata page. This is the "news" page from her website.

Odd, isn't it? When the President makes a slipup, it's because he's an idiot (according to Streisand et al), but when Ms. Streisand's atrocious spelling is called to task, it's because:
...when the Republicans don't like what you say, they attack you on the lowest and least pertinent level. At least, that was the way a Republican source leaked a private memo which had been sent by Barbra Streisand to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt. The manner in which this memo was leaked obliterated the imperative message of the note by drawing attention only to the fact that a few words had been misspelled.

The story behind the misspelled words is explained here only because those spellings were used as a ruse to avoid addressing the real substance of the memo.
Well, we wouldn't want to use things like spelling, or verbal tics, or facility at impromptu speaking, to "avoid addressing real substance", now, would we?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2002 02:55:11 PM

Fraud - As if the war wasn't causing enough trouble for Democrats, Bill Luther's campaign has other problems.

For those who haven't been following the situation, longtime DFL activist Sam Garst filed to run for Congress in the Second District, under the "No New Taxes Party" moniker. Those who know Garst (and I've sparred with him for years on the Minnesota Politics forum) know that he never met a tax that he didn't want to french-kiss, and that he's as DFL as they come. The bid was a transparent ploy (to those in the know) to siphon conservative votes away from Bill Luther.

Luther denied any involvement by his campaign at first. Now, he's found a scapegoat - his "overzealous" campaign manager.

This could be the GOP's year, finally...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2002 01:01:25 PM

Unintended Consequences - The moral laxity of the Clinton years and the moral relativism of the Sixties have combined, since the weekend, to make war more, not less, likely.

Robert Torricelli's abdication in New Jersey threatens to erase at one shot the Democrat lead in the Senate. Even if the New Jersey Supreme Court gives the Democrats an extralegal upset victory by allowing the Democrats to put Frank Lautenberg on the ballot, Lautenberg would face long odds. So while the punditry has been talking about how bad this election looks for the Dems, this has made it even worse.

In the meantime, Representatives Bonior and McDermott's performance in Baghdad over the weekend may go down in history as worse, if anything, than Neville Chamberlain's performance in Munich. They may have done for the Dems what Chamberlain did for Labour after Munich.\

Did you hear Tom Daschle today? Over the course of five days, he's gone from stalling like a madman on the Iraq resolution, to (this morning) backing it. Granted the support is the support of the sidewinder - he can lash out again on the slightest pretext - but the public reaction to Bonior and McDermott's has apparently been scathing enough to get Daschle to do what the combined efforts of the entire GOP couldn't - soften his stance, make him run for cover.

My big question: Bonior and McDermott's performance pretty well gutted, for now, the far left's credibility on this issue. After Bonior and McDermott, who is the most recognizable paleoliberal in Congress?

No, besides Maxine Waters and Dianne Feinstein and Jerry Nadler...

Yes, that's right, Paul Wellstone.

What will Wellstone do? How can Coleman use this to strengthen his (so says Zogby) lead?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2002 12:57:36 PM

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Wellstone's Veterans - The Vietnam Veterans of America, which has endorsed Paul Wellstone, today condemned a Coleman ad which criticized Wellstone's voting record on defense issues.
"For Norm Coleman to come out and say that Senator Wellstone is unpatriotic is just an out and out lie," Richard Bergling, past Minnesota president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said at a State Capitol news conference.
Unmentioned by the Strib was the fact that the VVA is to veterans what the AARP is to seniors, and the AFT is to teachers; a special interest group that is out to get its share of the pork. Wellstone, whatever he lacks in his defense voting record (i.e. lots) has certainly delivered the pork to the veterans lobby.

Not that veterans don't deserve it. But there are veterans who do realize that Wellstone's support of veterans exists to mollify critics of his stance on bread-and-butter defense issues.

The Mind Boggles - Twelve California cities are sueing gun manufacturers because "they'll sell guns to anyone with a Federal Firearms License".

So if a Federal License doesn't make someone a safe customer...who has the problem?

Anyone?

I don't want to keep seeing the same hands here...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2002 04:25:07 PM

One Stop Retort Shop - Jonah Goldberg does us all the public service of summarizing the retorts to most of the most well-worn anti-invasion tropes.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2002 04:12:17 PM

The Money War - Tom Holsinger on a surreal idea - buying victory in Iraq.

It's really not that surreal. Governments have been buying the support of factions within enemy governments and nations as long as there've been conquerors. It's how we won in Afghanistan - as Holsinger notes, we outbid Al Quaeda for the loyalty of the southern warlords.

But read the whole article. It's not all good news.

The Way Ye Were - Barbra Streisand is caught quoting a hoax version of Shakespeare.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2002 01:46:57 PM

Clout - The most exclusive club in New York City? Easy - people who can get concealed carry handgun permits.

And as is often the case in areas with strict gun control laws, it's the celebrities and goverment apparatchiks who get the permits, as this Newsday article shows. Regular citizens are undefended, while government figures and celebrities can get them for the asking.

Especially interesting how many guns went to aides of highly-anti-gun-rights former mayor Giuliani.

Here's the partial list:
Handgun Permits

The Numbers For 2002

Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, compared to same period last year

FORMER GIULIANI AIDES

Joel Miele - Environmental Protection Commissioner
Richard Sheirer - Emergency Management Director
Anthony Carbonetti - Chief of Staff
Jerry Cammarata - Youth/Community Development Commissioner [The Youth Commissioner needs a gun?]
Bernard Kerik - Police Commissioner
Kevin Farrell - Sanitation Commissioner [the head garbageman needs a gun? They must take their trash seriously...]

MTA OFFICIALS [Transit executives with guns!]
Lawrence Reuter - NYC Transit President
Joseph Hofmann - NYC Transit Senior Vice President
Thomas Savage - MetroCard operations chief
Michael Ascher - Bridges and Tunnels President
David Mack - Vice Chairman
Rudy Washington, former deputy mayor - Board Member
James Simpson - Board Member

ENTERTAINMENT FIGURES
Tommy Mottola - Record executuve [For protection from ex-wife Mariah Carey, we presume...]
Steven Seagal
Buddy Hackett [Buddy Hackett needs a gun? Buddy Hackett is allowed a gun?]
Robert De Niro
Harvey Keitel
Chazz Palminteri
Howard Stern
Don Imus

OTHERS

Richard A. Brown - Queens DA
Leslie Crocker Snyder - State Supreme Court
Fernando Mateo - Livery-driver advocate
Winthrop Rockefeller - Millionaire
Donald Trump - Developer [Amazing]
William F. Buckley - Columnist [and one of few anti-Second-Amendment conservatives at that...]
Joseph L. Bruno - State Senate Majority Leader
Of course, it's not much different in Minnesota - clout counts.

Not, as it happens, being a crime victim.

All the more reason to pass the Personal Protection Act.

posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2002 11:50:03 AM

Amazing - Lots to talk about - the elections, Alec Baldwin, and of course last night's Springsteen concert.

I'll hit all that later this morning.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2002 07:06:27 AM

Monday, September 30, 2002

Furball - So on the one hand, local Republicans are crying "foul" over Alec Baldwin being in town to raise money for Paul Wellstone. He's engaged in anti-Republican hate speech, say Republicans.

Democrats respond "But, it was all a joke!".

Well, so was Reagan's "we begin bombing in five minutes" quip. Did anyone cut him a break?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2002 02:50:15 PM

I Don't Like Mondays... - I'm in the midst of getting a big software design release packed up and off to our programmers in a third world country. Canada in this case.

Very, very buried.

But I'll make up for it the rest of this week.

...Except - Springsteen is tonight. So this particular Monday's not so bad.

Expect a full report tomorrow.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2002 02:38:02 PM

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