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

Saturday, November 23, 2002

Hate Crime - A british writer for the conservative "Telegraph" was jailed on hate crime charges - namely:
Mr Page, 61, was detained in a police cell after being interviewed about remarks made by him at a country fair at Frampton-upon-Severn, Glos, on Sept 6...

[Mr Page said] that Londoners had the right to run their own events, such as the Brixton carnival and gay pride marches, which celebrated black and gay culture. Why therefore, he asked, should country people not have the right to do what they liked in the countryside.

Mr Page said yesterday: "I urged people to go on the march and I urged that the rural minority be given the same legal protection as other minorities. All I said was that the rural minority should have the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays.

"What is wrong with that in a multicultural society? I said nothing that could possibly be interpreted as racist."
In a society where victim status is a commodity, anything is potentially offensive.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/23/2002 10:41:47 AM

Friday, November 22, 2002

Idiot Conspiracies - The blogosphere has been examining the left's incoherent rage, as expressed on the one hand by "serious" writers like Keillor, Ivins, Moyers - and, on the other hand, the tattered criers in the "Democrat Street"; on the web and elsewhere:
" … alert: possible bush/republican coup: sen. wellstone assassinated … u.s. senator paul wellstone killed in mysterious plane crash right before pivotal, ‘too-close-to-call’ election, just like mel carnahan in 2000 ….

"remember how just before congress was going to vote on signing away our constitutional rights to the usa patriot act, how mail laced with anthrax was sent to members of congress ….

"remember how the nazis set the german parliament building (reichstag) on fire ….

"this is it, folks. We need to mobilize *IMMEDIATELY* … against a potenital [sic] republican fascist assault …. "
Ron Rosenbaum in the NY Observer writes this excellent article about the raft of lefty conspiracy theories that surrounded Wellstone's death:
Why aren’t those who railed against paranoid, right-wing, murder-list Clinton-hatred standing up to this "cesspool" of incoherent Left Bush hatred? A few, like David Corn in The Nation, have tried to combat idiot conspiracy theories. But who can take left dissent seriously if it doesn’t separate itself from Bush assassination and anthrax charges? Who can take left dissent seriously if it defends Mr. Vidal’s ludicrous charge that Bush engineered the mass murder of 9/11? If it defends Mr. Vidal’s crackpot conspiracy theory—as a couple of letter writers did in these pages—as dissent. Of course we must take Vidal’s ravings seriously, they said in effect; it’s Bush he’s talking about, and so proof is unnecessary. But let’s face it: In a sense, they’re right. For much of the Left, dissent has degenerated into nothing more than incoherent, impotent Bush hatred...

Yes, there still is some issue-based dissent, but it’s drowned out by the incoherent rage. So any idiot conspiracy theory Mr. Vidal feels like floating that accuses Bush of arranging the 9/11 mass murder is just fine with today’s Leftists, because it’s Bush, don’t you see: It’s His Satanic Majesty, the Longhorn Lucifer, the Prince of Harkness (Yale reference), George W. Beelzebub.

Sad, self-destructive, but true.

And Speaking of Sore Losers - Go to this site, and see how many times they refer to the Administration as "The Bush Reich".
posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 04:32:29 PM

Blogs! What Are They Good For?- Michael Moore has made a career of ambushing people with their own statements, on behalf of "the little guy". So the irony of Moore being hoist on his petard by the littlest guys 'n gals in the media - bloggers - is richly ironic.

Here's what "Wired" said:
Years From Now They'll Call it 'Payback Tuesday'," Moore wrote in a hyperbolic letter urging his fans to vote in the U.S. elections Nov. 5. The full letter, posted to michaelmoore.com two days before the vote, predicted, "We will deny Bush control of the Congress next week ... Expect a wake-up call from me at your bedside 6 a.m. Tuesday!"
After Glorious Tuesday (as I'm going to call it until I'm tired of it), Moore took down the "Payback Tuesday" page.

And the story mushroomed. Rachel Lucas noticed the excision, and then followed up on it. Soon, it was everywhere.

So - blogs can help keep people honest. Or, in the case of Moore, make them honest in the first place.

In a more trival vein - I'm having lots of fun with the blacklist - send more!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 04:09:01 PM

More Nominees - A couple of correspondents sound off:
"Joe Biernat and Christine Jax [ed: the writer is mistaken. Biernat's a Minneapolis DFL City Councilman who just resigned over corruption charges, and brother of Jax' husband Len, also a bigtime liberal Minnesota pol]. She's the State Commisioner of Children, Families and Learning - there's an Orwellian title for you, huh?] for making liberal sycophancy a family industry"

"Katrina Vanden Huevel-only Trotsky is "progressive" enough for her"

"Rick Kahn [eulogist at the Paul Wellstone memorial and rally], for being the only person in the US who couldn't get Jim Ramstad to vote with the Democrats"

"I'd like to nominate Syl Jones, the [Minneapolis Star/Tribune's afrocentric columnist and...] Racism Expert ("whether it's there or not, he'll find it"). Although I guess this will guarantee my induction in the VWRC (Vast White Racists Conspiracy).
Well, that's the nice thing about being in control of the blacklist - we get to decide who's a conspirator, and who's not, now!

And, says another correspondent:
Mitch! Are you losing your mind? Garrison Keillor! Can't believe you forgot Garry!"
Ooof. He's right.

And another:
John Marty [DFL Senator from the 'burbs who never met an issue he couldn't tie "to the children"]
Andy Dawkins [DFL Rep from St. Paul who led Soliah's crew of local waterboys]
Any Humphrey or Mondale (We have to move on)
Star Tribune editorial board

Nationally:
Marry Francis Berry (The woman is plain nuts)
James Earl Carter
Jesse Jackson
Any Kennedy (See Humphrey and Mondale)
Dennis Kunnich
And more:
Harry ("I've been in the Banana Boat too long") Belefonte

Hanoi Jane role models:
Mike Thompson of California
David Bonior of Michigan

Jesse ("Where's the ambulance?") Jackson

Keep 'em coming!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 11:54:24 AM

Blacklist Nominee - Wow - the pixels were hardly dry! An emailer nominates:
Daniel Schorr - If I hear that nitwit brag one more time about being on nixon's enemies list, i'm going to puke.
Another sends
[MPR "Midmorning" host] Katherine Lanpher. The sneering condescension oozes between the lines of everything she says.
I'll compile the full list tonight, by the way.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 11:10:39 AM

The Blogosphere Blacklist - In the mid-nineties, P.J.O'Rourke started a tongue-in-cheek "blacklist" of liberal celebs and eminementoes that had outstayed their welcomes, and needed to leave the public eye.

Well, it's a new century, and a new adminstration - and it's time for a new blacklist! And where better to do that than here in the Blogosphere?

I'll start things out:

Noam Chomsky
Barbra Streisand
Alec Baldwin
The Berkeley City Council for crimes too numerous to detail
The Minneapolis City Council for looking up to Berkeley
Kathleen Soliah aka Sarah Jane Olson
Soliah's benefactor, MN State Senator Sandy Pappas
Common Cause of Minnesota, for carrying the water for the Speech Rationing movment
Nina Totenberg
Jessica Lange for bringing her squalid Hollywood politics to Stillwater
More to come!

I'm accepting nominations! And spread the word!

posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 10:45:58 AM

The Babs Test - Rachel Lucas got this petition drive in the mail. Supposedly it has seven thousand signatures.
The HUSH Petition (Help Us Silence Hollywood, or, more informally, Up Babs')
We, the undersigned, being of sound mind and strong viewership, would like to petition both Hollywood and the news media in order to restrain celebrities (movie & TV stars, pop & rock stars, producers, directors, etc.) from capitalizing on their celebritihood to sound off on whatever issue-du-jour comes rolling along to which they must bear witness. It is our deeply held belief that, on an extremely sunny day, only 1/2 of one percent of these stars could pass an entry-level college final relating to the political event for which their feet are oft found wedged deeply in their mouths (see B. Streisand, A. Baldwin, M. Moore, H. Belafonte, S. Penn, J. Fonda, W. Harrelson, M. Sheen, E. Asner, J. Lange, et al, etc., ad nauseam) and thereby merit no ink nor air time. It is ruinous enough for the civic culture to hear TV anchors who wouldn't know a "demand curve" from their elbow yammer on and on about the economy, but the glitterati sermonizing to us about America!?

It's clearly time to demand some evidence of educated brain waves prior to handing the public megaphone to celebrities. It is also our belief that if not for showing off their silicon, facelifts, and/or hairplugs on the silver screen, most of these knuckleheads would be modeling underwear at Wal-Mart, working third tier escort services in Jersey, or removing asbestos from tire factories in Detroit. And, as such, the news industry must restrain from entering these vacuous remarks into the public domain until said celeb has passed the appropriate college-level test corresponding to their tirade at hand.

Say, for instance, a Cher belches out that Bush is poisoning our drinking water. Prior to this being placed into the public domain for mass digestion by the news media, it is essential that Cher immediately take, and receive a passing grade on, a college-level Chemistry final. Or the next time a Madonna flatulates that the Republicans are Nazis, Madonna must promptly pass an upper-level history exam on the National Socialist Party's rise to power in 1920's Germany. Or when a Babs bladders poetically about the Hollywood Blacklist, she must drop everything and write a 1,000-word essay (using Spellcheck, of course) on The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and also get 80 percent or above on a pop quiz regarding Stalin’s pact with Hitler, just for good measure.

In essence, the protocol defined in this petition places the burden on celebrities to first prove that their IQs are deeper than their makeup before their opinions, and other like tantrums, see the light of day.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Fly-Over Country
Perhaps what we need, a la P.J. O'Rourke's classic book, "The Enemies List", is to start a new "Black List" of limo lefties, condo pinks, piddlers on merit and greenshirts that need a group razz.

Hmm...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 10:38:03 AM

The Daschle Rant - Trying to find a non-Democrat scapegoat for the Democrat degüello of two weeks ago, lame-duck Senate Majority Leader Daschle has been lashing out at conservative-dominated Talk Radio. It's gratifying to see talk radio lashing back.

Now, I've always been amazed to read/hear liberals complaining about "conservative-dominated media". Greens might be able to make this claim with a straight face - to a Green, Peter Jennings probably is legitimately pretty conservative. But I'm trying to remember the last time I heard a major media outlet other than Fox News coming down on the right side of gun control, abortion, foreign policy, welfare reform, taxes...

A reader writes:
After being frozen out of the Big Media, the Right proceeded to build alternate means to spread its message. The first area was AM radio. Ostensibly a dead medium 20, 30 years ago, unapologetically conservatively biased talk shows took off. The fortunate arrival of the talented conservative entertainer, Rush Limnbaugh, accelerated this build-up, but it was due to happen anyway. There was a market.

The Left, being at best somewhat suspicious of markets, has reacted to this trend by invoking bogus Equal Time requests and generally whining.

I don't know if this is at all a significant realization on my part, but I thought it was interesting. It may not even be unique, which means that someone else may have said it better than I.
Well, there is nothing new under the sun, but it's a very good point. The left has near-full control of the major commercial and public media with regard to editorial stances and coverage spin of the issues that matter to most people: pocketbook and simple policy.

Now that we, the right in all of our mind-blowing diversity, have built an alternate, samizdat media culture of our own, suddenly the left is concerned about media bias?

posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 10:23:10 AM

He Who Laughs Last - As I've said many times in this space, and as virtually the entire blogosphere knows, James Lileks is a great writer, a humorist in the classical sense, capable of mixing poignance, rage, intelligence, love and bathos into a zany laff riot. Like most bloggers (almost all of whom link to him), I hover about, reading his stuff, hoping to find cast-off bits of his talent at the writers consignment shop (Uptown, 32nd and Hennepin).

But, finally, I'm ahead of him on one thing. He's been assimilated. Here's the story.

Like me, James is an expat North Dakotan. He's from Fargo's urban jungles. I'm from Jamestown - a more western outpost.

Years ago - no, years ago, when Lileks was filling in for Bob Yates at KSTP, he was talking about scenery. This, obviously, was in the days before "talk radio" meant "politics all the time'.

I called, and asked:
"James? You're from North Dakota, too. Don't you think that the prairie, in its own way, is just as beautiful as the mountains? I mean, in a nuanced, subtle kind of way, all in the little details, in the same way that a really great line drawing is just as uplifting and interesting as a busy Classical scene study? I mean, the nuances of the prairie grass against the magnificence of the sky, the sounds...don't you think?"
He answered:
"No".
So today's Bleat comes out - and I'm astonished to see this, referring to Fargo's recession-proof (this time) economy and local leaders' efforts to pitch the city:
Climate, I’ll grant them. It’s marrow-cracking cold in the winter. Big deal. So you dress in layers. As for scenery, it takes an unimaginative mind not to see the glory of the prairie - after you’ve seen the Panavision sky change nine times in the course of a day, mountains look so obvious, so tired. Imagine a mountain range that reshapes itself hourly, and you have the cloud banks of the North Dakota prairie. And this sight is available to all, unimpeded by any signs of civilization, five minutes from the Barnes and Noble. You can put down your Starbucks, drive west, stop, and behold a magnificent void that humbles your heart more than any city skyline or coastal view. It’s not for everyone; it has its chilling existential implications, but don’t say they don’t have scenery. When you hit the Great Plains, the sky is your IMAX, and it’s open 24/7.
Just what I said, fifteen years ago!

Only, like, better.

Someday, I'll write my own paeon to the place James and I (and Swen) left behind.

Til then, there's plenty of work to do.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 07:44:02 AM

War Soon? - Swen Swenson from A Coyote at the Dog Show writes the "impending war" post I've been chewing on for a long time.

Well, part of it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/22/2002 06:44:21 AM

Thursday, November 21, 2002

A Great Proposal - James Robbins of the National Review has the best proposal I've seen yet for memorializing the victims of September 11:
I have always admired the fact the Victoria Cross was originally manufactured from metal taken from Russian artillery pieces captured during the Crimean War, from which the decoration originated. In that spirit I would like to propose something similar - that all campaign medallions awarded for service during the War on Terror be cast from metal from the World Trade Center towers. Currently the salvaged beams are being cut up and sold for scrap in Asia. One long beam would supply enough metal for thousands of medals. And I think it would make the decorations that much more meaningful to the men and women who earn them, as well as let the survivors know that a small piece of the buildings in which their loved ones perished has been put to a noble use.

It is comparable to the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt loosing its first sorties against Afghanistan while flying the flag the three firemen raised in the rubble of the World Trade Towers, or Marines seizing the Kandahar airport and unfurling another Ground Zero flag, covered with the names of the fallen and messages from survivors. ("They took 23 good cops. Pay back time.") These moments merge events with power and elegance. Crafting medals from the debris of the buildings destroyed by our enemies — and let's also include the Pentagon — would ennoble the awards in a manner that reaches beyond the valorous service they recognize. A medal struck from tower beams would be more than an acknowledgment; it would be a tangible connection, an unduplicatable fusion of time, space, and memory.
For what it's worth, I'm foursquare behind this idea.

I'm writing my congresspeople right now. Tell them Senator Inouye of Hawaii - himself a Medal of Honor winner - supports this, and he needs their support too.

Here's the Senate and House websites, with addresses.

If you're from Minnesota, write Senators Barkley (no current email address), Dayton, and Senator-elect Coleman, and our House delegation.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/21/2002 01:52:20 PM

Gored, Part IV - If Moveon.org is the most irritating liberal artifact of the nineties, the most cloying trope of the two-thousands has to be the liberal bleat that Algore was defeated by the fiat of an "activist, conservative Supreme Court".

George Will bludgeons that notion, as well as Algore's recent attempts to reconstruct history.
Barbara Walters recently asked him if there were times during the 36 days of Florida turmoil when he thought he was going to be president. He answered:

''Yes. Specifically, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that they would have to actually count all the ballots. That's all I asked for. Count all the ballots. I asked them to count them statewide. They were focusing in on four counties but they should've been counted statewide as well.'' (Emphasis added)

Well. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Gore's historical fiction demands refutation.
Will goes on to do just that. Gore never asked for a statewide recount, and it wasn't the US Supremes that were the judicial activists - it was Florida's, which 'breezily dismissed the Legislature's deadlines for counting votes and certifying results as ``hypertechnical reliance upon statutory provisions.'"

I want to print the whole article and carry it with me for every time I run into another halfwit who parrots that trope...

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/21/2002 11:57:32 AM

Watching the Detectives - Allegations of Budget Irregularities at the St. Paul Public Schools, Part I - Tom Swift is a St. Paul engineer and Republican gadfly. He's one of a small, dedicated group of fellow muckrakers who are wondering where in the hell all of the St. Paul Public School district's money goes.

He went looking for answers. He found something.

Progressive Minnesota is a failed political party that has morphed into a PAC and organizing group working for liberal causes. Progressive Minnesota receives donations from all of the major liberal candidacies - everyone from Jay Benanav for Mayor to Wellstone for Senate appears on their donor lists - in exchange for providing legwork and organizing for the candidacies and their causes. Roy Magnuson of the St. Paul Teachers Federation sits on the Progressive Minnesota Board.

Since May of 2002, Progressive Minnesota has also been a non-profit organization, entitling it to act as a community organization rather than just a Political Action Committee, for legal, regulatory and tax purposes. Remember that date.

In November of 2001, the SPPS paid $3,000 to Progressive Minnesota. The payment was labelled (in the School District's documentation, copies of which Mr. Swift sent me) as "Dinner and Organizing".

The problem with this? Progressive Minnesota didn't have non-profit status - legally necessary to receive donations for such services in any capacity but as a PAC - until this past May. That's six months after the payment was made.

When pressed, the school bureaucracy's cooperation in allowing Mr. Swift access to the information was, at best, grudging. When pressed, one school board member said the money was for "Latino Outreach".

According to Swift, the money had nothing to do with Latino Outreach - Progressive Minnesota has no recognized Latino Outreach program. It was for help in getting out the vote for the referenda on new school taxes, to raise more money for the Saint Paul Public Schools. That is illegal.

The levy referendum passed. When it did, Progressive Minnesota threw a "pre-victory banquet", as it was called in the invitation that was sent out (and of which Mr. Swift has a copy). The Saint Paul Public Schools sent a check for $180 for a number of school board members and staff to attend this "pre-victory banquet".

So - to date, the Saint Paul Public Schools seems to have sent $3,180 to Progressive Minnesota, for political, not educational, services.

Tom Swift confronted the St. Paul School Board last Tuesday night with his information. The board was silent, except for board chairman Al Oertwig, who, to "keep things in perspective", reminded the board that many organizations have both political and civic arms; Oertwig cited the Chamber of Commerce as an example.

However, Oertwig failed to note for the audience and the record that Progressive Minnesota legally did not have a civic arm until they obtained non-profit status - six months after the funds changed hands!

At the very least, this would seem to be a waste of money that's much needed elsewhere. However, in the worst case, these payments are illegal - because Progressive Minnesota was a Political Action Committee at the time the payments were made.

Swift has filed a criminal complaint with the Ramsey County Attorney's office, and is in contact with the staff of Pat Awada - incoming state auditor.

The board sat quietly, as Swift (and Greg Copeland, and former board candidate Georgia Dietz) spoke about the allegations. None rose to defend Progressive Minnesota or the expenditure (although to be fair this may be because of the pending criminal complaint). However, it's worth noting that Progressive Minnesota is not in the least bit shy about their ties to at least three St. Paul School Board members.

There is much more to this story - including separate allegations of campaign fraud that are being forwarded to the Campaign Practices board. We'll go through that next week.

I'll continue covering this as it develops.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/21/2002 10:19:43 AM

Courtesy - Peggy Noonan, on what the ostracism of smokers says about modern-day liberals:
I think it is an insufficiently commented-upon irony that cigarette prohibition and the public shaming it entails is the work of modern liberals. They're supposed to be the ones who are nonjudgmental, who live and let live, but they approach smoking like Carry Nation with her ax. Conservatives on the other hand let you smoke. They acknowledge sin and accept imperfection. Also most of them are culturally inclined toward courtesy of the old-fashioned sort.
If you tried to light up near a left-wing big-city attorney, she would cut off your hand the way Christopher chopped off Ralphie's the other night on "The Sopranos." But if you are a smoker and you go visit a nice little unsophisticated Baptist lady in a suburb of Tuscaloosa, she will not only allow you to smoke, she will scurry into the dining room to find the china ashtray she put away 10 years ago under the folded table cloths. She would do this so you could have a nice place to put your ashes. She wouldn't dream of making you uncomfortable. That would be impolite and inhospitable.

Modern liberals are not culturally inclined toward courtesy. They are inclined toward knowing what's good for you and passing ordinances to make sure you get the picture. The first Thank You For Not Smoking sign I ever saw was in 1976, on the desk of Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis. I thought: I have seen the future, and it is puritanical.
Puritanical.

I remember an acqaintance using that word to describe a Green Party meeting - like a gathering of Puritans. Dwelling incessantly on fear and condemnation, afraid of joy as a sign of frivolity or unworthiness, not above castigating you, for your own good of course...

Noonan says:
Maybe it makes them feel in control. Maybe it makes them feel superior.

Or maybe they just want to bully someone.
Read the whole thing - it's worth the time.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/21/2002 08:50:00 AM

Disintegrating Left Alert? - The most irritating artifact of the late nineties is "MoveOn.org", a group that germinated during the impeachment with blandishments to "move on". Move on from investigating a perjerous president; move on and don't turn over any of the rocks of his campaign finance dealings with the Chinese, or the allegations of rape against him, or his role in a bank failure, blackmail, or...insert list of allegations. Like a toddler that just missed the toilet...just "move on". (Significantly, they seem unwilling to "move on" from the 2000 election.

The bad news? The most most recent iteration of their website is a real piece of work: It refers to the administration, in standard juveno-leftist cant, as a "regime", among many other things.

The good news?

It hasn't been updated since before the election!

Like the Million Mom March, which just laid off about 85% of its staff, maybe they're reaching the end of their tether.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/21/2002 06:47:32 AM

Evil Talk Radio - Although the Dems have yet to show how "right wing" talk radio is responsible (as they claimed in 1995) for the Oklahoma City bombing (which indeed may have had Iraqi involvement - hardly a key Limbaugh audience), Yahoo! Tom Daschle is back at it.

He claims that "What happens when (radio talk show host) Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren't satisfied just to listen," the South Dakota Democrat explained. "They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families and on us, in a way that's very disconcerting."

The logical thing to do would be to clamp down on idiots. But that would hardly do (Democrat voter joke deleted for purposes of civil conversation). But no - it's conservative dissent he's after.

And I loved this one:
If entertainment becomes so much a part of politics and if that entertainment drives an emotional movement in this country among some people who don't know the difference between entertainment and politics, and who are then so energized to go out and hurt somebody, that troubles me about where politics in America is going," Daschle said
So all those Democrats who have been shuffling around since 2000 claiming that Josh Bartlett is the real president should change their tone. Right, Senator Daschle?

Oh, Lord, I'm glad he's from South Dakota.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/21/2002 06:37:43 AM

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

The GOP and the Immigrants - The toughest nut the Minnesota GOP has to crack is the urban vote - controlled in the inner city by afro, latino and asian voters. These voters traditionally vote Democrat nationwide, and DFL locally.

The National Review's Daniel T. Griswold has an excellent article on how the old saws about immigrant voters, like those about voter turnout, may not hold up to scrutiny, especially scrutiny at the polls. One of several reasons he cites:
Hispanics are "up for grabs" politically. Despite their Democratic leanings, they are not monolithic the way black voters unfortunately are. At the presidential level, for example, the share of Hispanics voting Republican swelled from 21 percent for Bob Dole in 1996 to 35 percent for George Bush in 2000. And a recent poll showed that Hispanics would vote 50-35 for Bush over Democrat Al Gore if an election were held today. Many Hispanics are socially conservative with a strong work ethic — Hispanic men have a high labor-force participation rate — and propensity for home ownership. A sympathetic Republican candidate who respects immigrants can woo a sizeable chunk of Hispanics along with other swing voters.
That's Hispanics. The Asians, who are currently a solidly DFL bloc, are equally rabid about small busines - a tradtional GOP strength. The Asian vote is largely habitual in St. Paul - DFL reps were instrumental in bringning many of our Hmong citizens to the US.

If a sympathetic GOP candidate could convince these immigrants - as socially and fiscally conservative as they already are - that the GOP was the party with their best interests at heart, who knows what could happen?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 10:41:12 PM

It's a Man's, Man's, Man's Responsibility - Wendy McElroy on the brewing-up of a gender war whose flames I've been fanning myself for a long time - the matching of reproductive rights and reproductive responsibilities.
According to PC feminism, the woman alone has the right of choice in carrying a pregnancy to term while the man bears legal responsibility for child support. Yet, in paying child support, he has no guarantee of joint custody or even visitation rights.

The idea of responsibilities without rights is taken to such absurd lengths that even men who do not father children are held responsible for them. Consider the case of Morgan Wise, as chronicled by journalist Cathy Young. Blood tests proved that only one of "his" four children were actually his, yet the court ordered Wise to continue all child support payments and prohibited him from contact with the children. His role in that family is now the biological equivalent of an ATM machine. Wise's case is unfortunately hardly unique.

And, so, gender warfare becomes a political reality -- not because it exists naturally, but because it has been created. The legal system now assigns rights to women and responsibilities to men.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 02:53:59 PM

Texas Cage Match - Don't put Rachel Lucas in the same room as Molly Ivins. It won't be pretty, as this fisking shows.

Ms. Lucas, by the way, is a former Minnesotan. Someday, I'm going to do a Three Degrees of Geographical Separation in the Blogosphere. I think I can eventually link most of us...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 02:21:50 PM

Budget Shenanigans at the St. Paul Schools - My kids both attend the St. Paul Public schools. Now, I'm not like a lot of conservatives - my dad taught public school for nearly 40 years, and I'm not one to attack the public school system by reflex.

But all is not well. Despite booming budgets and skyrocketing property taxes to pay for them, the SPPS is starved for cash - or is sure acting like it is. My son came home from school and said his teacher had told him "paper is as valuable as gold" at his school.

So money's tight.

But there's growing evidence that the St. Paul Public Schools made a political contribution to a political action committee, for political reasons. (All but one member of the St. Paul School Board are Democrats, endorsed by the Teachers Union, among others). Money that our students need - and that taxpayers of all political stripes assumed was going toward teachers, books and maintenance - has apparently been diverted to the coffers of a local liberal politcal organization.

More on this as I run down the last of the details.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 11:20:57 AM

Casualties of War - DJ Tice of the Pioneer Press has an excellent analysis of the DFL (and national Democrats') troubles.
What might this reveal? While not ignoring the powerful personal appeal of Clinton, there is a more important common characteristic about the elections from 1992 to 2000, when Democrat presidential candidates did well. Those elections came between the end of the Cold War and Sept. 11, 2001 — a period when issues of national security, for the first time in memory, were not preoccupying Americans' minds.

In this month's election — the first since national security came back as a critical concern — Americans turned decisively back toward the GOP and George W. Bush.

Democrats must fearlessly consider the implication of this pattern. Whatever other problems they face, it simply seems that too many ordinary Americans lack confidence that modern liberals will boldly defend the nation and its interests. It's a long-term problem, born with the anti-Vietnam War movement's declaration that America was the villain in Southeast Asia and continuing today in suggestions among progressives that America's enemies have legitimate reasons to hate us. It's not a problem old-style liberals like Truman or Kennedy had.
In other words, "All You Need is Love" is a fine sentiment when nobody is challenging that assumption; when that happens, the American peoples' motto changes to "Peace Through Superior Firepower".

And I like Tice's closing comment; the notion that bashing American achievement, place and safety was part and parcel of being a big-government, tax 'n spend Liberal is a product of the sixties. Nobody could accuse Truman, JFK, Adlai Stevenson, LBJ, Ed Muskie or Hubert Humphrey of being America-Last-ers. And that generation was shown the door in '72...

...by the likes of Paul Wellstone, Sandy Pappas, Sarah Jane Olson, Andy Dawkins...

Worth a read.

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 10:03:42 AM

A Pack, not a Herd - Glenn Reynolds - aka the Instapundit - writes this excellent column on what Americans can do to be more prepared for - and less worried about - terrorism.
I will say up front, though, that although I'm totally in favor of individual citizens taking the initiative to prepare themselves, such self-help measures would probably do a lot more good if the federal and state governments actually took a role in encouraging and facilitating them. But if they drop the ball, or if you want to get a leg up on the process before the much slower bureaucracy gets rolling, here are a few things you can do to help. The odds are, of course, that you'll never use them, or even come close to needing them, in the face of a terrorist attack. Those are actually pretty rare. But you'll probably never need your smoke detector, either. And, anyway, many of these skills and behaviors may turn out to be useful otherwise.
In the seventies and eighties, saying such things would get one labelled a "survivalist" - with the implicit assumption that one was a paranoid, probably white supremacist.

Good to see, in a way, that world events have made common sense acceptable again.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 08:44:39 AM

Gift of the Hatch - Mike Hatch says, according to the Strib, that Hatch money from his office to Pawlenty has no strings attached.

Which means, of course, that there are strings attached
Hatch happens to be one of the last DFLers standing after election day, and presumably his largesse won't be forgotten when Pawlenty's administration gets down to the business of imposing major budget cuts. The state faces a budget shortfall of about $3 billion, and Pawlenty has pledged to balance the budget without raising taxes.
Watching Mike Hatch - himself a former gubernatorial candidate - adapt to his first conservative administration is going to be interesting.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/20/2002 06:48:08 AM

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Quidditched - I may be one of about twenty adults left in the Twin Cities that haven't read all four Harry Potter books.

Oh, don't get me wrong: I'm not like my sister, who bans the stuff from her house because of her understandable (but silly) belief that they glorify sorcery. My kids have, between them, read them both at least once. They love 'em, and I credit them with catapulting my son's reading level in particular into the stratosphere; it's amazing what a little raucus adventure does for a boy's imagination. And I've read bits and pieces of the books, as bed-time stories - they're fun, well-written, and engaging. Heck - I may even read one all the way through someday. Maybe.

So I understand they're better than either movie adaptation.

Oy, vey - they'd have to be.

I took the kids to see "Chamber of Secrets" Friday night. It didn't help that the 7:45 show was sold out, and the kids inveigled me to wait for the 9:45 show. Which was when I discovered the show was three hours long.

Long story short - I conked out for most of the climax of the movie (although my kids certainly did not). It wasn't just fatigue from having been ill (although that played its part) - it just didn't grab me. It occurred to me - I was more interested in the characters and story in the roughly two hours I've spent reading the stories to my children than in the nearly six hours I've spent in the movies!

John Podhoretz says pretty much what I think:
Might all this affect or scare seven-year-olds? Possibly, but then you can still terrify a seven-year-old by saying "Boo." It's not much of an accomplishment to frighten them. It is an accomplishment to stir their imaginations and infuse their bedtimes with a sense of wonder and excitement. That's what J. K. Rowling has managed to do with her triumphant series of novels. She has revitalized children's literature by making it a grand adventure once more.

The two Harry Potter movies, by contrast, are plodding and dull and dutiful. They attempt to be faithful to the books, and yet the very qualities that make the books so glorious are entirely absent. The movies get everything right but still manage to get everything wrong.
On the plus side - the new Lord of the Rings is almost here.

Before you think that makes me sound like a AV-Club robodork, we are talking about he opposite phenomenon; I couldn't stand Tolkien's books. I made it maybe 30 pages into Rings, and maybe 15 into The Hobbit - and this in ninth and tenth grade, at the height of my acne-ridden, greasy-haired dorkitude.
Yet I loved last year's installment in a way that I never enjoy fantasy/sci-fi movies or books - because it told the story in a way that engaged even a hardened non-fan, made me actually want to know what was going to happen to these people...er, people and hobbits and elves and dwarves and other such things I hadn't talked about since my one lone game of D and D, back in the seventies.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 08:08:37 PM

Quote of the Day - "But it is a bit troubling that we're excited and happy when university presidents endorse free speech, isn't it?" Glenn Reynolds.

And now, I'm going home.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 04:55:15 PM

Lambert on Keillor- Brian Lambert, if you're from out of town, is the Pioneer Press' media columnist. He's the quintessential critic - in several attempts to be an air personality, he's proven himself an excellent print journalist.

And his left-bias is as subtle as Christina Aguilera's outfit at the MTV Music Awards.

But he has the occasional point, as with this one on Keillor's rants:
But it's not like this anger at double standards and routine character assassination by Republican media foghorns validates rumors about a politician's private life. Mainstream media organizations routinely pursue rumors of all kinds about politicians of all ideologies. And by "mainstream," I mean actual journalists. People who require verifiable facts as the basis of their stories...

In other words, the insistence of infuriated liberals notwithstanding, the media are unlikely to run with a story if they can't prove there is any there, there.
And, as noted elsewhere in the article, nobody's been able to find any there, there.

However, Lambert uncorks this hooter:
It is interesting, though, when you ask news organizations, theoretically, what they would do if they found rumors about a politician's personal life to be true. Some say it would be a story in and of itself and that they would run with it. Others say it would require another set of factors — something that would trigger the so-called "hypocrisy factor," such as pandering to the family values crowd.
Which would explain the ongoing media lynching of former Senator Rod Grams. He didn't do anything "worse" than what, for example, another sitting Minnesota congressperson is alleged to be doing more-or-less currently. Yet the media tarred Grams with the brush of his alcoholic, drug-addicted son's hijinks (even though Grams had been a non-custodial parent - his ex-wife had raised Morgan). If Grams had just been a DFL libertine, this quote seems to indicate it would have been kept on the QT. Right, Mr. Lambert?
Either way, anyone who was disgusted by what was done to Bill Clinton ought to stop and think how far into this sewer they want to go.
Fair enough, that. But if Lambert wants to play the comparison game, he's probably on fairly thin ice.

(Via Powerline and Fraters Libertas)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 04:42:30 PM

Cringe- Normally, I couldn't care less about the peccadilloes of celebrities - especially the celebrities who are famous for being famous. People like Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Charles Nelson Reilly...

And Jacko, who's long since lost any claim as a musician.

But this? I cringed looking at this damn picture.

The man...er, whatever...needs to be institutionalized.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 04:15:53 PM

National Ammo Day - Powerline reminds me that today is National Ammo Day.
Celebrate the Second Amendment by buying an extra 100 rounds of ammunition on November 19th. Great for hunting, self-defense, target practice and annoying the anti-gun lobbyists.
A box of 8mm Mauser and a couple of .22LRs should do it.

Happy Ammo Day!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 03:29:09 PM

Maher's Back - Bill Maher took a lot of flak for his remarks after 9/11 - mostly unjustified.

He's back, now, with this pointed-yet-funny set of WWII posters, updated for the War on Terrorism.

(Via Smart Genes)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 03:14:56 PM

Barbarians At the Gates? - Instapundit is carrying an interesting discussion about how civilized societies fight barbarians - with Al Quaeda and the Islamofascists filling the role of barbarians.

Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit )says:
Civilized societies have always won against barbarians ever since the industrial revolution made making things a greater source of power than breaking them.

Civilized societies have found it harder, though, to beat the barbarians without killing all, or nearly all, of them. Were it really to become all-out war of the sort that Osama and his ilk want, the likely result would be genocide -- unavoidable, and provoked, perhaps, but genocide nonetheless, akin to what Rome did to Carthage, or to what Americans did to American Indians. That's what happens when two societies can't live together, and the weaker one won't stop fighting -- especially when the weaker one targets the civilians and children of the stronger. This is why I think it's important to pursue a vigorous military strategy now.
Another correspondent on Instapundit says
The new barbarians, like those of old, consist of groups in which every member is a potential warrior."

It seems to me that a part of the defense against these "barbarians" is to make every (or least most) members of our society a potential warrior by expanding concealed carry rights and allowing people to carry guns as a matter of course. I say this as a person who cannot be considered a gun nut. I am not a hunter, I've never been an NRA member and I have only minimal experience with guns. For a long time I supported gun control, but no longer. Now I am seriously considering purchasing a gun and getting trained to use it properly.
The writer makes a good point - one of many reasons to support shall-issue reform in Minnesota and elsewhere. But if indeed we face total war against barbarians at the gates, perhaps we should learn a lesson from other nations - our contemporaries - who've faced their own gathering hordes of barbarians; the Israelis, surrounded by enemies bent on their destruction; Norway, facing a Soviet threat alone, high above the arctic circle; and Switzerland, which has maintained its integrity for 400 years on a continent where independence has been maintained at a premium.

I'm talking about National Service.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 02:45:54 PM

You Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time - This is the year Minnesota will most likely get a shall-issue concealed-carry law. We came so close in 2001, couldn't fight off a poison-pill amendment in '02 amid the budget fiasco...

...but this year we have a majority in the House, and a closer split in the Senate, where we came two votes from passage in '01.

The "Brady Campaign" - formerly and more honestly known as "Handgun Control Inc" - has posted this "study" to try to bolster the morale of the pro-victim-disarmament troops.

Read it - and note that no specifics are ever mentioned. They've posted the "Executive Summary" - but no raw data can be found anywhere on the site!

So when they say:
Between 1992 through 1998 (the last six years for which data exists), the violent crime rate in the strict and no-issue states fell 30% while the violent crime rate for states that liberalized carry laws prior to 1992 dropped half as much — by 15%. Nationally, the violent crime rate fell 25%...
...they don't mention that the states with the "big" drops were states with higher crime rates to begin with - and the "shall-issue" states were those with lower crime (thanks in part to "shall-issue" laws) before the "study" began!

If you're a CCW supporter, you have to keep your eyes out for this kind of thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 02:17:56 PM

Whither MPR? - According to Smart Genes, the MPR newsroom is "on full alert" after the Keillor rants of the last few weeks.
[longtime DFL road-warrior] Blois Olson, "a Democrat forever" and Janecek's associate publisher at the Politics in Minnesota newsletter, characterized the Keillor rants as "probably the most bitter, immature commentary of that kind that I can ever remember." Looking at the financial downside, Olson added, "And good luck, MPR, the next time you go looking for federal or state money."

The MPR newsroom was on full red alert for unofficial, unvetted opinions on the Keillor columns. No one would speak on record. But it is known that several reporters and hosts were openly angered by the predicament in which the columns put them with the Coleman camp and less sympathetic listeners.

One rumor had it that MPR's news staff's access to Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty was suffering due to the flap. Sources in MPR disagree, saying that the Pawlenty and Coleman (and their handlers) are too savvy to let comments by Keillor - speaking in a forum unconnected to MPR itself - affect their relations with the media.

On the other hand - Bill Kling and Garrison Keillor's longstanding relationship to the DFL is not going to help them much during the next session, looking for funding in the GOP-controlled Minnesota House:
In 1995, MPR and the Democratic National Committee exchanged donor lists, and MPR admitted to purchasing such lists from the DNC prior to then. In 1996, MPR bought donor names from the Wellstone for Senate campaign. (Pioneer Press, July 24 1999, p. 2D.) In 1986, after Lake Wobegon themes were used to promote a DFL fundraising appearance by Garrison Keillor, Bill Kling wrote the Pioneer Press to express dismay over the “crass use of public radio programs and images to promote the DFL party.” (Pioneer Press, October 18, 1986.)
I always wanted to write a bit that starts "Whither..."

By the way - to answer a couple of emails I've gotten, I think that while M/NPR's programming is pretty forthrightly slanted to the left (Katherine Lanpher, Juan Williams, Keillor, Ira Glass and Michael Feldman would never be mistaken for "balanced"), the MPR newsroom does as good a job of maintaining professional detachment and balance as any newsroom in town, and better than several (the Strib and WCCO, for starters, at the very least). Never let it be said I'm not ecumenical.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 12:58:08 PM

Life on Lam Ends - In a story that echoes one we covered in this space some time ago, a St. Paul woman has been arrested for hiding her child from her ex-husband.
It was a secretive life for the women and Elluara.

"I don't think the little girl had any friends," O'Hara said. "The shades were pulled. You could not see in the house. I don't think they wanted the neighbors to know the mother and child were living there...

...Deputies found a loaded .38-caliber handgun in a bag in the women's car after the arrest, O'Hara said. Investigators later found two more handguns and two rifles in the St. Paul house where the girl had been hidden.
It'll be interesting to see if the investigation of this case leads to any of the "underground" organizations that help send parents on the lam overseas with their children when they don't get the custody settlement they want.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 12:01:02 PM

Steph Tanks - George Stephanopoulos is having some problems as host of This Week, and the ratings show it.

This bit is interesting:
Happily, the roundtable also is home to the show's best asset: the articulate and ever-sharp George Will. Television is overstaffed with pundits, most of whom are bearable only when they're saying what you want to hear, and often not even then. Will is one of the few who is worth hearing even if you're opposed to his positions.

Could you imagine the show with Will as host? It might not work, either, but at least it would give your week a jolt.
Why wouldn't it work? Will is everything the article (and simple observation) says Stephanopoulos isn't - acerbic, tough, mentally light on his feet.

Why on earth not?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 06:42:26 AM

Brits - Twin Cities writer Bill Tuomala writes "Exiled on Main Street", a meandering, Godfather's Noon Buffet of pop-culcha. Here, he writes an article I'd been gnawing on for a while - a deflation of British rock history.

He even riffs on Radiohead!
The past few years Smart People and Anglophiles have been wetting themselves over those precious Brits in Radiohead. Those of us who have heard Little Richard would like to adore Radiohead also – if only they had melodies, hooks, and humor. And we wonder: If Radiohead were American, would anyone give a damn? Gladly, Detroit's own Kid Rock has taken to dissing Thom Yorke and Co. In his tune "Lay It On Me", he throws out this couplet: "I got rich off of keeping it real / While you Radioheads are reinventing the wheel." Kid has also taken to dissing Radiohead in the media, most notably pointing out that nobody at one of his parties is going to get lucky whilst playing Radiohead, unless it's out of mercy. In concert, he has been known to cover Grand Funk's "We're An American Band." God bless you, Kid Rock; and God bless America.
I don't feel so alone...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/19/2002 12:30:26 AM

Monday, November 18, 2002

8 Mile and the Detroit Catastrophe - Eminem's new 8 Mile highights the divide between the free market and liberal interventionism. Henry Payne of National Review Online writes this comparison:
The title of the movie is both a literal and symbolic reference to Eight Mile Road, the street that runs along the entire northern boundary of Detroit. As riots, nonexistent city services, and poor schools accelerated the exodus of Detroit's population in the last 30 years, Eight Mile also came to symbolize the growing rift between city and suburb, white and black, safe streets and crime...For movie director Curtis Hanson, Eight Mile is a metaphor for overcoming the odds.

And as politics, Eight Mile is stark evidence of the failure of liberal urban policy.

Coincidentally, greater metro Detroit is also home to America's most densely populated Arab-American community. And it is thriving...

But when Warren Avenue crosses Central Avenue, the vista dramatically changes. Central marks the border of East Dearborn, the beginning of Detroit, and the end of hope. Like someone has flipped a switch, the streets are suddenly lifeless. Storefront after storefront stands empty or boarded up. Graffiti defaces walls, and grass pokes through cracked, neglected sidewalks.
Worth a read.

And then look at the Twin Cities. Look at where South Minneapolis melts into Bloomington, or the north side into the Brooklyns. Not as drastic as Detroit, certainly - duh - but illustrative of the smothering weight of government "assistance".

posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 10:47:16 PM

Faint Praise - The Economist takes on, in impeccable British style, Gen-Y anti-capitalist, crypto-Green anti-globalization gadfly/sex symbol Naomi Klein:
Ms Klein, by her own account, was a late developer as a social revolutionary. Growing up in a family of activists and campaigners, her teenage rebellion took the form of devotion to the shopping mall and willing enslavement to the tyranny of the logo. When her youthful idealism kicked in, its strength and durability more than made up for its delayed onset. In her 30s, Ms Klein has all the incoherence and self-righteous disgust of the alienated adolescent.

As she looks around the world, she sees nothing she likes, no redeeming features—except for “the movement”. The rule of corporations, as she sees it, is inherently repressive and exploitative of powerless citizens. Democracy is a sham. She gives capitalism no credit for the extraordinary progress seen in recent decades in reducing poverty and other measures of deprivation (notably child mortality) in the world's poor countries. She measures the growing-pains of capitalist development not against real-world alternatives but against a Disneyesque utopia in which no poor person ever loses his job or chooses to work in a multinational factory at low wages (by rich-world standards).
And only in the UK could you get:
Ms Klein's harshest critics must allow that, for an angry adolescent, she writes rather well. It takes journalistic skill of a high order to write page after page of engaging blather, so totally devoid of substance.
Read it all.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 09:33:56 PM

Wrinkle - According to a new book by an Atlantic Monthly writer, some New York firefighters were busy looting stores even before the towers fell.
In the recently released, "American Ground," [author William] Langewiesche writes about a fire ladder truck recovered from the pile of fallen debris.

"Its crew cab was filled with dozens of new pairs of jeans from The Gap," he writes. "It was hard to avoid the conclusion that the looting had begun even before the first tower fell, and that while hundreds of doomed firemen had climbed through the wounded buildings, this particular crew had been engaged in something else entirely."
This can't be going over well...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 09:05:18 PM

Why We Need the Electoral College - Part III - The Canadian system of federal government combines:
A popularly-elected chief executive, the Prime Minister (Jean Chretien),
A popularly-elected parliamentary lower house ("Commons")
A parliamentary upper house that is appointed by...the popularly-elected Prime Minister.
As a result, all federal power in Canada is held by the places with the votes - Quebec, Ontario, the fairly-densely populated east.

In the meantime, the Western provinces - "Cowboy Canada" - goes begging for a voice, especially against the majority's socialistic impulses.

And that begging is turning to that greatest Canadian hobby - talk of secession.
By moving unilaterally to endorse Kyoto, and particularly to do so without disclosing what the all-important implementation plan for the treaty would be, infuriated not only the Albertans, but many other provincial leaders as well. However, Alberta's populace and political establishment buys into the standard intellectual-government consensus less than any other Canadian province. Their customary position as the outermost province in the Canadian political crack-the-whip game has generated growing frustration.

Canada's confederal system contains built-in frustration for the Western provinces. Western Canadians are distinct in outlook and economics from Eastern Canada, permanently outnumbered in representation, and disproportionately taxed by Ottawa to fund lavish social welfare schemes. They (and Albertans in particular, to whom all the previous descriptors apply in spades) have time after time floated political initiatives to redress their concerns, always to end in frustration.

Secession is a word that overly fascinates outside observers of Canadian politics, probably because it is used so frequently in Canadian political discourse for effect rather than as a real indication of intent. Its return to political discourse in Alberta, still on the fringes, is a measure of frustration with Kyoto at present, rather than an immanent [sic] possibility....

However, unlike in the past, court decisions and legislation have established a clear indication of how a secession movement might succeed in practice. Intended for the Quebec issue, it also applies to any other province.
If you're getting frustrated with the logic of anti-Electoral-College activists (read: tons of DFLers after 2000), Canada's a fine counterexample.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 03:12:48 PM

Paging Elliott Ness - Along with the Democrat japes about the potential of bringing down Hussein without a fight, there's a persistent nagging from the left that, because Bin Laden may still be alive and on the lam, Bush's mission in Afghanistan is a failure.

Now, it doesn't take a military history buff to know that the leader is not synonymous with his organization (but then, the Democrats don't seem to have any military history buffs in their ranks). Short of destroying the organization, the main goal is disrupting their ability to harm us. Bagging any individual member of the group is, at most, a tertiary issue.

Bin Laden's a priority, says Jim Miller in NRO. Especially a political priority.
Last week, Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle went on the offensive: "I think we have to question whether or not we're winning the war. We haven't found bin Laden. We haven't made any real progress in many of the other areas involving the key elements of Al Qaeda. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were a year and a half ago. I don't want to proclaim that it's not successful, but I think there are increasing questions about whether or not the administration can legitimately say we are winning the war."

It was a shrewd statement, making clever use of CIA director George Tenet's recent congressional testimony, which seemed to contradict Bush's "on-the-run" rhetoric: "The threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer, the summer before 9/11." Daschle also engages in redirection: "I don't want to proclaim..." Then he goes ahead and proclaims it.
Having Bin Laden on the loose may or may not be a military threat in and of itself, if his organization has been driven underground and is incapable of striking us. But Bin Laden is certainly a danger to the President - at the hands of his own opposition at home, anyway.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 11:17:07 AM

Blogger, Heal Thyself Already - Blogger - the site I use to publish this blog - is having all sorts of problems today. If things are running a bit slow, I'll catch up later...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 08:24:50 AM

"No Compromise with the Electorate" - That quote - by a British Labour Party functionary - kinda examplifies what so much of the Democratic Party is feeling these days. If only the electorate were smarter...

George Will, on what Nancy Pelosi means to the Dems.

It'll be interesting to see what adaptations - if any - Mike Erlandson's DFL makes here in Minnesota along similar lines.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 08:00:41 AM

Paging Sun Tzu - I'm always amazed at the Democrats who believe that if Hussein falls without a shot being fired, it's a defeat for Bush.

The great Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu said the best war is the one that didn' have to be fought. Bush and his administration have shown so many affinities for Sun Tzu during their administration, it's hard to believe that they don't know this one.

Jim Dunnigan talks about the one of the manifestations of this knowledge - the information war against Hussein that may already be leading to cracks in the regime. As usual, read the whole thing - it's interesting.

UPDATE: The Guardian passes this "leak" about potential US/UK strategy - along with astute note that it could very well be yet another attempt to psych out the Iraqi leadership.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/18/2002 07:32:21 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