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

Saturday, January 18, 2003

Cultural Archaeology - The Fixx, Styx, Flock of Seagulls and the Alarm, among many others, are making big bucks - and presumably paying off their coke bills from when they were stars, twenty years ago - on the nostalgia circuit.

But if you want a real sign the eighties are back...

...well, words fail me. Read it yourself.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/18/2003 06:55:23 PM

All Hail Chairman Martin - The London Independent writes about the "West Wing" star in tones normally reserved for Kim Jong-Il in the North Korean press.

This bit here:
From his earliest days, Sheen has been a rebel, a nonconformist, a man who delights in challenging authority at the highest levels by standing four-square on his own unshakable moral sense. His radicalism has its roots in a certain populist strain of Catholicism stretching back to his boyhood in a large immigrant family in Ohio; it was nurtured by the shattering experience of the Vietnam War and the rise of Cesar Chavez, the heroic leader of the United Farm Workers' union in California in the 1960s and 1970s.

To this day, there is no company Sheen loves more than that of rebellious Catholic priests, the kind who publicly call for a return to the non-violent, peace-loving message of the gospels, who loathe war, loathe the consequences of US intervention in Latin America and elsewhere, loathe the injustices and disenfranchisement and poverty of the modern United States, loathe even the hierarchy of the Catholic Church itself for its cosy accommodations with the rich and the powerful...
...is the kind of thing I expect to see below a Socialist Realist painting, perhaps with "the Internationale" playing in the background.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/18/2003 05:17:31 PM

Quote of the Day - From the AP Wire:
"I'm hoping that the bus loads of people coming as far away as Oregon and Nevada give an indication that this isn't just the crazy loons in San Francisco - but we reflect the opinions of the entire United States," said Tim Kingston of the anti-war group Global Exchange.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/18/2003 04:46:11 PM

More Press Omissions - The Strib's story on today's demonstrations in Minneapolis leads with this:
While protesting the 1991 Gulf War at a Washington, D.C., rally, Marlys Weber of Minneapolis wore a sign saying that her son, an Air Force pilot flying missions over Iraq, was over there.

Today, Weber will be back in Washington to oppose another war in Iraq, with a message about her grandson who is serving overseas in the Marines.

"I'm just using the same old, beat up sign and just putting 'grandson' " on it, Weber said. "Here we are, another generation and back at doing this again."

Weber will be among several hundred Minnesotans arriving in Washington for a demonstration today against a possible war against Iraq.
Just a typical Minnesota grandma, out to protest a war out of concern for her grandson?

Hardly. The Strib doesn't mention that Weber has a record in the "Pro-Dictator...", er, I mean "Peace and Justice" movement.

In the meantime, it says the following about the protests' nationwide organizers:
The rally and march are being organized by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the group that coordinated an Oct. 26 anti-war rally in Washington that drew more than 100,000 people.

Tony Murphy, an ANSWER spokesman, said he expects a similar or even larger crowd today. Murphy said there are 225 organizing centers across the country arranging trips to the march, 70 more than in October.
Murphy is a local flak for Ramsey Clark, according to a Google search . Hardly someone who just happened to organize a peace protest, but you can't expect the Strib to bother with that...

More to come.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/18/2003 03:54:09 PM

The Goods - Instapundit and Powerline have the details on the groups organizing the pro-genocide, pro-nuke, pro-torture rallies in DC and San Francisco.

Read them - and then read the NYT, the WaPo and the Strib tomorrow. See how closely the descriptions of the demonstrations' various movers and shakers jibe. Powerline in particular traces a number of named organizers to Communist front organizations. As Glenn Reynolds asks:
If the Ku Klux Klan organized a pro-war rally, even if a lot of the protesters were just useful idiots who didn't know who was behind it, I somehow think the Post would manage to ask a few tough questions.
I'm looking for details on any actions here in the Twin Cities. Stay tuned.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/18/2003 03:40:14 PM

11:59:40 - Steve Den Beste of USS Clueless discusses the naval force that's been setting out for the Gulf in the past few days. There's a great explanation of the types of ships and what they do (not that I needed it, being from the great maritime state of North Dakota).

But here was his salient statement:
All these ships can reach the Gulf in less than two weeks. This is no joke; this is real. This is no bluff. This isn't just posturing. You don't deploy these kinds of forces in this kind of numbers unless you're really serious. And you do not send a force like this to a theater to sit on its ass for six months and only then go into combat. In the ideal case, they get sent at the last possible instant both because that maximizes readiness and because it minimizes the window of risk to the men and ships from enemy air, missile or submarine assault.

They're really going to start fighting, and soon.
Hindrocket of Powerline thinks the threat of these ships, and the Marines on them, will be enough to resolve the situation.

I don't.

I think Den Beste's right - we wouldn't go to the expense, disruption and immense trouble of sending this huge armada halfway around the world to "send a message". And although I hate to admit it, I think the "peace movement" has a point - this war is going to happen no matter what. I think the strategic benefits of deposing Hussein outweigh even the imperative of removing weapons of mass destruction.

The Marines will take two weeks to get to the scene. I bet this thing kicks off in February.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/18/2003 09:40:06 AM

Friday, January 17, 2003

Harshing Sheryl's Mellow - You may recall - Sheryl Crow made a famously vapid anti-war appearance at the American Music Awards earlier this week.

Andrew Sullivan digs into it in this Salon article:
I'm taking her too seriously, of course. I should ignore her. But the "anti-war" movement (I put it in quotation marks since appeasement will only make a bloodier future war inevitable) is happy to use celebrities for its own purposes. And so their presence in the debate has to be acknowledged, if only to be decried. So let's decry this moronic celebrity convergence. The weak arguments of the appease-Saddam left just got a little weaker. And the karmic retributions are gonna be harsh, man. Way harsh.
If you're a right-wing pundit, sometimes it feels like Christmas never ended.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/17/2003 12:54:16 PM

Repugnant - "MoveOn.Org", a left-wing-fundedsite that started as an anti-impeachment propaganda machine, is back in action - and their latest effort is a revival of the "Daisy Ad". The original version of this ad, from 1964, painted Barry Goldwater as a warhawk who'd bring on a nuclear war if elected president.

The spots are airing in 13 major cities - including the Twin Cities. (I'm willing to bet the other cities are San Francisco, New York, Seattle...but probably not El Paso, Nashville or Houston...)

MoveOn favors appeasement of Hussein, and parrots the lefty line that "we can win without war" - that the inspections, allowed to run their course, will be enough to bring Hussein's nuke program to heel.
As weapons inspections in Iraq kick into high gear, most of us are breathing a sigh of relief. But some in the Bush Administration are still dead set on war, even if the inspections are working.
They are, indeed, working - if by "working" one means "providing a facade of activity that allows those pre-disposed to pacifying dictators to feel like they're doing something useful to prevent future terrorism".

And the "Daisy Ad" is just as wrong today as it was 39 years ago. Appeasement doesn't prevent war. Carter's pusillanimity in facing Brezhnev and Khomeini didn't bring peace, Reagan's fearlessness and stated willingness to back up his words with strength did. Of course war is nothing to dive into lightly. Never. But either is the blanket appeasement of dictators with weapons of mass destruction. Which is what "Move On" is all about - and what they're trying to scare you into. By the way - this ad sends kids into a panic, which naturally upsets the parents, too - which is, of course, the purpose.

If the little girl in the Daisy Ad gets vaporized, it'll be because "Move On" and its ilk won the day, and allowed the dictators of the world to tinker in their labs in peace, 'til peace no longer suited them.

Absolutely sickening.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/17/2003 09:36:17 AM

The World is Getting Too Wierd - If you'd told me in 1980, when I was still a liberal - or even in 1990 - that I'd ever be writing the paragraph below, I'd have rolled my eyes and wondered if de-instititionalizing the mentally ill were such a good idea.

Bill Clinton was in many ways more fiscally conservative than George W Bush (this, of course, before the tax cut proposal). Some of the Democratic candidates for 2004 are trying to move to Bush's right on foreign policy. And the Minnesota DFL is trying to spin themselves as budget-cutters.
DFL-controlled Senate committees worked furiously Thursday to pass their own budget fix for 2003, crafting a package that saves a little less than Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty's proposal and might upstage the House GOP package by arriving earlier.
Of course, when you read the article you see that the DFL's newfound thrift is really a series of accounting tricks, but it's still oddly disconcerting to see any portion of the DFL painting itself as fiscally responsible.

As usual, the problem is going to be the moderate GOPers in the Senate.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/17/2003 09:16:24 AM

One More Time - In recent weeks, I've posted a few ideas about Iraq, North Korea, and why the President's current stance is not in the least bit inconsistent.

I heard it summed up better than I could, the other day on NPR.

Not only does the North have a history of being extremely aggressive for negotiations' sake, but they are surrounded by nations that are either hostile to them, or two keep them at arms' length. The Russians and Chinese regard them as "with friends like these..."-type allies, the South is the most heavily-armed democracy on earth, and the Japanese military is kept at a high state of readiness mainly against the North these days - and then there's us, the 900 pound gorilla in the area, with enough nukes to turn the Korean Peninsula into the Island of South Korea. None of Kim Jong-Il's neighbors are ripe for the picking.

In the meantime, an Iraq armed with nukes would be able to use them as leverage to gain control of half of the world's oil - and with it, the economies of the entire western world.

And that means busloads of peace protesters heading for Washington would have to play twice as much for gas. Are they ready for that?

By the way - this seems to have passed unnoticed; South Korea is in the midst of an orderly transition of power. Amazing what a few generations of free enterprise can do, eh?
posted by Mitch Berg 1/17/2003 09:08:04 AM

Mindless Sanctimony Alert - You can tell a lot about someone's state of mind by their tone of voice. It's a subtle point, but true.

So I was coming up the stairs with a load of laundry at about 6AM, and I had the Channel 9 morning news on the TV (Mmmmm, Alix Kendall). I heard a voice - not well enough to make out words, but I could get the tone and delivery. The voice was male, but with lousy breath support - a small guy. He was speaking in short, clipped sentences, the tone rising at the end of each sentence in a tone that suggested "moral condescension" to me. I thought - "sounds like a "peace" protester. Probably from some Lutheran church here in the Twin Cities.

Sure enough, it was part of the Nine's live team coverage of a busful of middle-aged Volvo-driving perpetually-concerned people from a local church, taking off for DC to protest in favor of chemical weapons, terrorism, rape and mass-murder.

Stupid School Alert - Also heard on the Nine (mmmm, Alix Kendall) this morning: a first-grader brought a weed pipe to school for show and tell. The kid's teacher called the cops, and the parents were arrested - for child endangerment. So - for getting high occasionally (we don't know), the kid's parents will go through a trial, their parent-child relationship will be scrutinized by packs of county social workers and attorneys and the whole "Child Protection" industry.

So - anyone wonder if the teachers, school administrators, cops, social workers, judges and attorneys ever have a belt on the way home after work? Keep any beer or wine in the fridge, or a bottle of something stronger in the hutch? Maybe a highball after a rough day, or a pitcher of margaritas on a hot summer evening?

Oh, yeah - and the kid, a first-grader, was also suspended. The boy violated the "zero tolerance" policy.

I've never smoked chiba in my life - but the hypocrisy of this story just kills me.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/17/2003 07:47:18 AM

Been Here, Done This - Saint Paul, of Fraters Libertas, who acfually lives in St. Paul, tells a tale that I've lived way too many times:
I was in the final leg on my trip home from work and turning onto my street, nearing my garage, I spied a beautiful young woman up ahead of me on the sidewalk...She was in a word, perfect, and I swear I saw her wistfully gazing off in the distance at the last fleeting robin's egg blue of the day time sky as the sun reluctantly slipped beneath the tree tops and roof lines that make up the western horizon in these parts...
I run across this from time to time in my neighborhood, too. And Saint's next bit is painfully true here as well:
Needless to say, a huge opportunity and one that doesn�t come around too often in my neighborhood. For whatever reason, old people and distinctly not beautiful people are the norm here in the residential familyland of inner city St. Paul.
Pardon me. I have to cry.

He's right, you know. I mean, sure - neighborhoods like mine are crawling with college girls, but they don't seem quite as interested in 40-year-old fathers of two as they do in the movies.

But it's the denouement that caught my attention:
A warm wave of confidence washed over me as I opened my car door, got out, and strode toward the predestined intersection of her, me, my garage, and the future. It was all falling into place. She arrived right on schedule, her head turned my way, her big baby blues looked into my own, the right side of my upper lip began to rise and with it the killer smile to be delivered and ....... I heard a man shouting. Actually, screeching is a more accurate description, screeching like a stuck pig. I turned my head toward this sound and I then heard angry words, frenzied histrionics about .... tax cuts.

My God, it was Jason Lewis. In my angel headed distraction, I left my car door open and the radio was on LOUD to the local talk radio station. And now, at the critical moment of my existence, Jason Lewis was engaged in the violent process of disabusing some caller of the notion that the richest 5% of Americans aren�t paying their fair share. Just as he was wailing �WHAT YOU LIBERALS DON'T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND IS....� I turned my head back, just in time to catch my lovely future bride rolling her eyes, scoffing in my direction, and rushing past me and away down the street, forever. I stood there for several minutes, not believing what had happened and just listening. (Fade to black)
Aw, Saint. I feel for ya, Bro.

If it's any consolaton, it's probably good that you flushed out her bigotry before you got, say, married. I remember once, on a second date, with someone I was getting along with famously, the topic of politics came up. I gingerly mentioned that I was a bit right of center. The woman's face became flushed, and she looked at me with that look people get when the policeman in their rear-view mirror turns on the whoopie lights. "Oh, my. If I'd known that about you, I'd have never gone out with you in the first place".

So I'll see you down at the He-Man Woman-Hater's Club for happy hour, k?

posted by Mitch Berg 1/17/2003 07:18:55 AM

Thursday, January 16, 2003

Pink Pistols - Great article today on the growing gay pro-gun movement.
Doug Krick, a bisexual Internet engineer from Boston who once ran for office as a Libertarian, started the Pink Pistols in July 2000.

The club has no dues or registration rolls, but about 35 chapters have sprung up across the country, with a few thousand members who gather to target shoot and have dinner.

Krick, an avid sportsman, envisioned the group as a social club, but it's taken on a political agenda.

Members have lobbied against gun-control laws and even attacked an openly gay Massachusetts legislator who, like many gay civil rights groups, supports gun control. Others have vocally opposed hate-crime legislation, in keeping with their less-is-more philosophy of government.
Several of my gay friends are sympathizers; like a few female rape victims I know, they'd prefer to carry an illegal gun than go through another assault.

But there's more to the Pink Pistols than that:
Some lawmakers who support gun-control measures, including Democratic Assemblyman Paul Koretz of California, have called the Pink Pistols a tool of the National Rifle Association. But Krick and other members actually fault the NRA for accepting compromise gun-control legislation.

They're one of several groups that cater to specific groups of gun enthusiasts, such as Geeks with Guns and Jews for the Preservation of Gun Ownership.

About a third of Pink Pistol members are heterosexual, including Brian Hepler, who took over the Northern Virginia chapter when a bisexual friend stepped down.

He likes the idea that the club tweaks several stereotypes � that gun owners are mostly Christian right-wingers and that gays are victims.

"The idea is to try to show both stereotypes are wrong," said Hepler, who lives in Fairfax.
The article - and the Pistols' website - are both worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 10:26:09 PM

Lotus Eater! Unite! - The Evanston, IL city council passed an anti-war resolution.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 06:38:59 PM

P.J. News - P.J. O'Rourke has joined the Atlantic.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 06:29:41 PM

The Way We War - Michael Barone, on how war has radically changed, even in the past decade:
The forces now gather- ing around Iraq are being marshaled by one of these "market-states." Industrial America fought its wars with industrial forces: huge armies and navies�15 million men in World War II�made up mostly of low-skill conscripts and equipped with relatively unsophisticated mass-production machines. The war was won with kids from Brooklyn and rural Texas and machines mass-produced in Detroit and Los Angeles. Today, postindustrial America is planning to fight its latest war with highly skilled professional soldiers and sophisticated high-tech machines. We need fewer people�and can expect far fewer casualties�to win quicker victories. Critics who look back at World War II with nostalgia and argue for shared sacrifice and a drafted military miss the point. We are no longer the kind of country that fights most effectively that way.
And I guess in a way I was one of those critics - not nostalgic for WWII, but definitely on board with the notion of a shared obligation to defend the country. My biggest qualm with the idea of National Service has always been that it's militarily redundant these days.

Here's the point that Instapundit found interesting enough to quote:
But the battleground is not just in the Middle East. Before 9/11, Bobbitt saw "the need for a shift from target, threat-based assessments to vulnerability analyses" and pointed out that "remote, once local tribal wars . . . have been exported into the domestic populations . . . through immigration, empathy, and terrorism." An open, high-tech society remains vulnerable to terrorism and cannot be entirely protected by centralized authorities. Our last line of defense must be those high-skill, high-tech, and high-initiative strengths. The heroes who brought down United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania and the alert truck driver who engineered the capture of the alleged beltway snipers used cellphones and ignored centralized authorities' rules (the truck driver acted on leaked information) to stop determined killers. We can fight today's wars with fewer troops than we used to need. But every citizen should stand ready to fight at any time in any place.
As Glenn Reynolds says, this country needs to be less of a herd, and more of a pack.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 03:41:45 PM

Material Breach - Breaching Materials - 122mm chemical artillery warheads found have been found in Iraq:
"During the course of their inspection, the team discovered 11 empty 122 mm chemical warheads and one warhead that requires further evaluation," Ueki said in a statement.
As Andrew Sullivan says, the case for war is closed.

As, I suspect, Washington knew it would be.

The Sea Refuses No River - The soundtrack of my adolescent years (and much of the time since) has a zillion artists on it. But the big three were always Bruce Springsteen, the late Joe Strummer and Pete Townshend. My senior year of high school was framed by The River, London Calling and Empty Glass.

Townshend and the Who, in particular, was a blessing in that he proved there was no contradiction between literate and nebbishy and geeky on the one hand, and acerbic, angry and just plain rockin' on the other.

Morning radio has had a field day with his arrest and arraignment on child porn charges - and with his initial defense, that he's writing a book on the subject that touches on alleged sexual abuse he received as a child.

Know what? I believe it. Or at least I think Townshend's case is pretty convincing.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 02:41:15 PM

Blurgh - Sorry about the light day yesterday. It'll probably be a bit light today too, although we'll see.

I'm at the stage of the job hunt that I hate the worst. The beginning is easy - there's noplace to go but up. And the end is is usually great - you get a job! But this part in the middle - where I"ve had some interviews I like with companies I'd love to work for, or for contracts I'd really like to take, and the interviews go well, but not perfectly (they never do), it's harder. There's anxiety - "I could have done that interview better", or "I dont' want to want this damn job this much". That's a tough one - wanting something leaves you open to incredible disappointment, all the moreso since my current financial situation is so relatively ugly. No, the middle stage of a job hunt is the worst because you actually have something to lose: Hope.

My experience says that's irrational - I interview pretty well, I should land something. But I haven't interviewed in such a crowded market since I've been in high-tech, even though my own field ("Human Factors") is pretty esoteric.

So your support is appreciated - not necessarily the tip jar (although I won't complain!) but your prayers (if you're so inclined) or thoughts as I set off on my eleventh interview in the past eight business days.

Good Sign? - Is it just me, or does F****dCompany.com seem to be carrying fewer stories of companies tanking these days?

Either there are many, many fewer companies to lose, or the economy's improving.

We'll get back to you on that.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 07:19:10 AM

HellPartners - It doesn't amaze me that HealthPartners has been caught doing the same shenanigans that Medica and Allina were several years ago.
Despite the dubious business purpose of many expenses, controls at Minnesota's third-largest health insurer failed to prevent spending on unnecessary trips, gifts, dinners and entertainment, according to Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch, whose office released the investigative findings Wednesday.

Hatch said HealthPartners had a corporate culture similar to the one he found during his 2001 investigation of Medica and Allina Health System.

He said all three nonprofits made it too easy to spend money on executive perks and niceties, creating a "culture of luxury."
Nope. Doesn't amaze me at all. It would amaze me if it didn't happen. Because the system in Minnesota is almost perfectly designed to create such scandal.

Here in Minnesota the state government has carried out a decades-long mission to squeeze out all private health insurance. Essentially, here in Minnesota today you have a choice of a couple of big HMOs and a few beleaguered fee-for-service insurers who've managed to hold out (but probably won't be able to for long). State mandates and policy have made it all but impossible for all but the biggest of the mega "non-profit" HMOs to survive in Minnesota.

So is it a wonder that the executives of these organizations, knighted by the state to further the state entitlement culture, feel "entitled" to wallow in the trough the state created, and filled for them?

Hatch said that "culture" was inconsistent with the nonprofits' core mission of serving the public. Allina and Medica spent more than HealthPartners on such things, he said.

"The health care system itself has to be more accountable," Hatch said.
And yet it doesn't add up to Hatch - this "incompatibility of culture" isn't an aberration of the current system. It's an unintended but inevitable result of the removal of the free market from the healthcare business.

Just as the Enron scandal was a product of Clinton-era policies, the HealthPartners and Allina scandals are the nearly-inevitable product of government meddling in the private market. And the problem is, dealing with HealthPartners will create a feel-good illusion of having "done something", having treated the symptoms - but leaving the disease untouched.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 07:10:16 AM

Sad but True - I belong to the Presbyberian Church.

I know what you're saying; "Mitch! You're a conservative! How can you be a member of a church that is so unreservedly, unabashedly, unreconstructedly sixties-liberal?" The answer is, "it's not easy". My reasons are purely theological, and have nothing to do with temporal politics.

I remember during the prayer portion of a service a few years back, when news of North Korea's potential famine became known. An older woman - a very unpleasant person whose ugliness was utterly internal, a product of a character deficit - took the US to task for "allowing this unjust starvation" to take place, demanding that we work toward "peaceandjustice" (as if they're interwoven) by feeding the people...that Kim Jong Il could have fed himself, were he not wrapped up with building the biggest per-capita military in the world.

Someone sent me this today - enlightening, but hardly surprising. Totalitarians must rely on total enforcement of their "visions", including forcible removal of dissent. That means mass murder, and massive camps.

And yet, after three decades of reading about the Gulag and the Holocaust, this sort of thing still amazes and disturbs me:
NBC�s investigation revealed that North Korea�s State Security Agency maintains a dozen political prisons and about 30 forced labor and labor education camps, mainly in remote areas. The worst are in the country�s far Northeast. Some of them are gargantuan: At least two of the camps, Haengyong and Huaong, are larger in area than the District of Columbia, with Huaong being three times the size of the U.S. capital district.
And this leads to this:
Ahn Myong Chol, a guard at the camp (which is sometimes known as Hoeryong) from 1987 through 1994, examined the satellite photos of Camp 22 for NBC News. They were taken in April, eight years after he left. But he says little has changed. He was able to pick out the family quarters for prisoners, the work areas, the propaganda buildings.

Looking at the imagery, Ahn noted what happened in each building:

�This is the detention center,� he said. �If someone goes inside this building, in three months he will be dead or disabled for life. In this corner they decided about the executions, who to execute and whether to make it public.

�This is the Kim Il Sung institute, a movie house for officers. Here is watchdog training. And guard training ground.�

Pointing to another spot, he said: �This is the garbage pond where the two kids were killed when guard kicked them in pond.�
Read the whole thing.

I can hear the bleat from the far left already; "It's propaganda from the conservative, corporate media". Let's leave the absurd contradiction for a moment - damn straight it's propaganda. As well it should be. Americans should be angry, furious, disgusted about this. 9/11 and Israel's suicide bombers are acute instances of terrorism - but this sort of thing is chronic terrorism; not the terror of the roar and the sudden flash, but of the Orwellian "boot in the face - forever", varying only in intensity.

Kim Jong Il has to go, too. Sometime. By fair means or foul; the way of Hussein and Hitler and Amin, or the way of Gorbachev and Jaruzelski and Honecker. The means aren't important; the timing must be driven by the fact that Hussein is the greater danger. But he must go, and his whole regime with it.

Here's a question; what do you suppose the left'll do when satellite evidence of Castro's camps are revealed?
posted by Mitch Berg 1/16/2003 06:55:52 AM

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

The New Republic Vs. Common Sense - The anti-gun lobby keeps going farther and farther down the logical evolution chain to build an argument. This article, by Eli Kintisch, in today's New Republic Online (registration required) proves it.
Recently I visited Potomac Arms, a gun shop on the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. Making my way past the samurai swords and shotguns, I found the 17-inch Anzio Ironworks .50-caliber "take-down" rifle--named because it can be disassembled in less than 25 seconds--on display. Another brand of .50-caliber, an ArmaLite, was available in the back, a clerk told me. Buying either gun would not be difficult: Under the Brady Bill, I'd need to show identification, after which my name would be run through a computer to check my criminal and immigration status. With a clean record, I could pay and take the gun with me-- with no permanent state or federal record of the sale required.
Note the key qualifier, tossed-off as if it's an irrelevancy: "With a clean record".
Many types of firearms can be purchased that easily in the United States. Few of them, however, would be as dangerous in the hands of terrorists. A .50-caliber sniper rifle, experts say, would be more than capable of shooting down an airliner as it took off or landed.
The author seems to think this is a new development.

The Martini .60 caliber rifle, or the Springfield .45-70 caliber rifle, are both capable of knocking down airliners by the same token. Both have been available for roughly 130 years. Yet, oddly, nobody has snuck into an airport glideway to pot at aircraft yet. Why could that be?

More later.
While a .50-caliber rifle is heavy, and would need to be positioned in line with a plane's path, it has the twin benefits of being accurate from more than a mile away and of doing a great deal of damage on impact.
The author is clearly not very literate about firearms.

There is no particular need for the gun to be "in line with the plane's path", although that makes the shot easier.

Now, picture this 911 call: "Airport Police? There's a man sneaking into the bushes down off the runway apron, holding a REALLY huge rifle...".

Absurd? Not entirely, but if one is going to go to the immense risk of hauling a large, unconcealable weapon into a position from where an airplane - something passing overhead at over 150 miles per hour, never an easy target - can be hit, one might do it with a weapon suited to do more than poke holes in aluminum and people.
Unlike a terrorist, I, of course, hadn't bought a .50-caliber rifle at the store a few miles away.
And, as it happens, either had any terrorists.
Fifty-caliber sniper rifles are a relatively new weapon, dating back to the 1980s.
That is completely untrue. In fact, the very word "Sharpshooter" comes from the Sharps Rifle - a .50 caliber breech-loading single-shot rifle introduced...in the 1840's. The weapon is still a very effective "sniping" rifle today, by the way.
In World War II, the Browning machine gun, still popular today, fired .50-caliber bullets at a high rate of speed but with little accuracy.
The author is again confused. The M2 .50 caliber machinegun has a very low rate of fire, and is famously accurate - sometimes being used itself for "sniping" in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
Equipped with telescopic sight, the modern .50-caliber rifle shoots bullets, one at a time, with equal power and vastly higher accuracy. Up to five feet long and weighing between 30 and 60 pounds, the gun fires six-inch-long, half-inch-wide bullets that can rip through a 3.5-inch manhole from 200 yards away. In addition to incendiary bullets, armor-piercing rounds are commercially available. During the Gulf war, American soldiers used these to penetrate Iraqi armor from as far as a half-mile away, doing so much long-range damage against one armored personnel carrier that Iraqi troops in the vicinity immediately surrendered.
US Special Forces snipers did a lot of damage with .50 caliber rifles during the war. But they're a different breed of troops than your typical terrorist.
Fifty-caliber rounds can penetrate armored limousines, airport fuel tanks, and, presumably, the presidential helicopter, Marine One. "This threat is not a gun-control issue but a national security issue," writes the Washington-based Violence Policy Center (VPC) in a soon-to-be-released study on airport security and the .50-caliber rifle.
And it's presumably been a threat since the .50 Browning (technically called the 12.7x99mm) round was invented - in 1918.
The military acknowledges the gun's specific threat to planes. As pointed out in the VPC report, several U.S. Army manuals warn against the risk of small-arms fire--such as that from a .50-caliber gun--against low-flying aircraft, citing heavy losses from ground fire in Korea and Vietnam.
The author leaves out several key parts of that factoid: the .50 caliber weapons that caused the aircraft losses in Vietnam were universally machine guns - because, for all of the author's hyperbole, rifles are historically a lousy way to attack aircraft when you're still on the ground. Could it happen? Sure. But the opporunities have been there for as long as flight as existed.

So the "Violence Policy Center" is, pardon me, "up in arms" over a weapon that is immense, very hard to conceal, hard to use effectively without specialized training, and a less effective option for attacking aircraft than other, less-common but more-concealable weapons with much lower profiles...

...and that are not sold at gun shops! Which is, of course, the real target here...

The article as a whole is a smorgasbord of faulty logic. I'd urge you to read the whole thing - but if you're a firearms rights activist, you already have. Many times.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/15/2003 03:24:13 PM

Times v. Times - The Washington Times takes on the NY Times, over the New York paper's shoddy math in attacking the Bush tax cuts.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/15/2003 07:17:33 AM

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Crowed - Sheryl Crow - an inconseqential but relatively talented pop singer with an occasional way with a hook - warned of dire consequences of an Iraq invasion at the American Music Awards last night.
"I think war is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies."
While it's tempting to ask Ms. Crow to broach that idea to the Palestinians and Israelis, the first order of business would be to tell Ms. Crow to seek forgiveness for "Soak Up the Sun" before advising others about Karmic issues.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/14/2003 08:58:17 AM

Budget War - Governor Pawlenty has started his effort to re-balance the state budget yesterday, according to the Strib:
Once Pawlenty unveils his proposals, he still will need the Legislature to take exceptionally quick action, passing the package in a matter of two to three weeks. Though legislative leaders have pledged their cooperation, fights over the size and scope of the cuts are bound to emerge in both the Republican-dominated House and the Senate, where DFLers hold a slim majority.
Once can also argue that, despite the November '02 election, the fiscal left still control the legislature. Many Republicans in both houses are moderates who'll vote for expedience - and higher taxes. Pawlenty himself is a fairly newly-minted conservative on these issues. Here's hoping he stays the course.
Pawlenty has said he wants action on his recommendations by early February; otherwise, he may resort to cutting the budget himself. By law, the governor has the authority to cut the budget whenever an economic forecast projects a deficit for the current fiscal period. Known as "unallotment," it would allow Pawlenty to bypass the normal legislative process and simply cut wherever he saw fit.
And while my record of predictions (last November notwithstanding) is dicey at best, I'll bet that's what it comes to. I suspect the DFL will want Pawlenty to take the heat for the budget cuts, and whatever pain they cause. This could be dangerous for the DFL, though; successful cuts and a rebounding economy could conceivably hand Pawlenty a second "Minnesota Miracle", a la Reagan in 1982.
The Legislature's track record on quick budget action has not been great. The state's fiscal crisis is as severe as it is in part because legislative leaders failed to enact long-range cuts in the last budget session.
The Strib is being too charitable, and doesn't explain that the legislature got into this mess by turning "one-time" expenditures from tax surpluses into permanent spending. With more GOP control in the leglislature, hopefully those days are behind us.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/14/2003 06:37:15 AM

For All the Wrong Reasons - I've never really gotten behind the death penalty.

At first, it was because I was a liberal. But even since I became a conservative, I've always been queasy about state executions. Not because I don't believe some people richly deserve it; like Lileks says this morning:
I like it in the specific examples - traitors and child-killers - but not in general, and hence I have no consistent view on the matter. I�m being subjective, which is one of the things that ought not come into play when you�re talking about using the power of the state to kill. It�s one of those complex shades-o-gray issues that eventually comes down to yes and no.
Most of the stock arguments against the death penalty just don't add up to me. According to some statistics, rumors of unfair application are grossly exaggerated. It doesn't deter crime - but justice is as much about vengeance as it is about deterrence.

And for all that, I think it's still wrong - because there is an unacceptable risk that the innocent will be executed. Conservative pundits like Ann Coulter insist that DNA testing eliminates the possibility of error. Two responses to that:
DNA is only as accurate as law enforcement and prosecutors are honest. Our system is fraught with law enforcement who have no compunctions about hiding or destroying evidence, especially in death-penalty cases, or ethically-challenged prosecutors who know that executions equal votes (still>.
DNA sure seems foolproof - now. Thirty years ago, they were making the same claims about hair strand analysis. People were executed based on hair strand matching. Today, it's almost never used; it's just plain inaccurate. Who knows what the future holds for DNA?
Furthermore, death penalty cases are frequently fraught with other hazards; they frequently depend on circumstantial and forensic evidence (prone to being manipulated by the unscrupulous). They frequently involve grisly or heinous crimes, which have intense emotions attached - emotions that force investigators to quick conclusions, warp testimony and jury deliberations, and are manipulated to both legal and political ends.

Am I all for executing the killers of Katie Poirier, or Julie Holmquist (oops - he did it himself) or traitors and terrorists and mass-murderers? Of course. And the rumors of the death penalty's demise are exaggerated - Brendan Miniter has a decent article on the subject today:
This isn't the 1970s. Capital punishment is here to stay, in large part because the system isn't rife with errors the way it was in the 1960s. A full 70% of Americans still support the death penalty. But they are hesitant in applying the ultimate punishment, as they should be.

The execution of criminals for the most heinous crimes still draws little objection. There weren't many tears for terrorist Timothy McVeigh when he was dispatched 2 1/2 years ago. And tolerance for terrorists hasn't grown since then. Even Sen. John Kerry, who says he opposes capital punishment, makes an exception for terrorists.

The death penalty is even gaining strength in some quarters. Kansas and New York state both reinstated it in the 1990s. Virginia--which is getting first crack at trying sniper suspects John Malvo and John Muhammed--isn't squeamish about execution. And lawmakers there are considering making it even harder for the mentally incompetent to avoid justice. Prompted by the murder of eight-year-old Kevin Shifflett in Alexandria by a deranged man two years ago, state officials are considering removing the time limit officials have to make a criminal competent enough to stand trial. Currently, Virginia law allows officials to use medication and other treatments for up to five years.

USA Today reports that a growing number of college professors openly support the death penalty. Robert Blecker of the New York Law School opens his argument with three words: "Barbara Jo Brown." The story of this 11 year-old-girl--who was abducted, raped, tortured and then killed in 1981--draws "gasps from a crowd accustomed to dealing in legal theories," according to the paper.
To sum it up, all the argments against the death penalty are weak and unconvincing...except the one that is absolute and inviolable. As long as some cops seek revenge through the system, as long as some prosecutors put votes over ethics, as long as some juries can be manipulated into putting "closure" and expedience over justice, the innocent will end up on Death Row. And as long as governors blithely assume that the system works, they will ignore the fact that evidence of innocence is not grounds for a judicial reversal, and fail to provide their final role as a fail-safe for the system (my biggest criticism of President Bush).

So in the end, I agree with Lileks:
As most of them do. I�ve changed on this topic over the years; I used to support the death penalty, but I�m less and less certain as the years go on. When it comes to horrible crimes and ironclad proof of guilt, I�m not troubled by it - but it�s not always that easy. Anyone who thinks the system works owes it to themselves to read the recent New Yorker piece by Scott Turow, who served on a panel that advised Gov. Ryan about the death penalty. Turow was on the fence before he joined the panel, but decided against capital punishment in the end. I read the article, and thought, with regrets: yep. Can't do it anymore. Can't say yes. It�s not that I oppose it completely, but I feel less uncomfortable saying No than I feel saying Yes, and this is one of those things you'd best be certain about.
Until humans are perfect, I have to choose the lesser of the evils. Sad, but true.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/14/2003 06:23:22 AM

Monday, January 13, 2003

Adios, VNS - On Election Night, 2002, I made one observation that I figured was just too far out to hope for : noting the absence of Voter News Service reports, I though it's be neat if we never had to deal with their irritating, unnecessary, and possibly result-skewing predictions again.

I truly can't make it up fast enough - VNS has assumed room temperature:
In November 2000, flawed information from VNS twice led networks to erroneousely declare a winner in the presidential election in Florida, the state that proved to be key to the outcome. The state's results were not determined until weeks later after recounts and a court battle that was resolved by the Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush over Al Gore.

Following that embarrassment, VNS contracted with Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based research company, to rebuild its system. But in the 2002 election, VNS was unable to provide its members and other clients with results from exit-poll surveys. This material is used to help make projections of winners and to supplement the vote count with an analysis of why people voted as they did.
Good riddance. May their successors have just as much trouble.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 10:57:14 PM

I Wonder... if Excel Energy and my credit card company will accept this as an excuse?
posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 06:52:00 PM

Achtundsechziger - Germany fascinates me. I minored in the language in college. I read the nation's history voraciously, especially the past century or so.

And its current situation may be the most interesting of all, as the German baby boom reaches its historical zenith. Geitner Simmons comments.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 05:44:11 PM

Inside the Anti-American Mind - In the days after 9/11, it was gratifying to see the way Americans reacted. Probably 99 out of 100 Americans pulled together behind the flag - and more importantly, behind the ideas it stands for.

But there were the others - the Ted Ralls, the Susan Sontags, the Normon "the rubble is more beautiful than the towers" Mailers.

Here's Victor Davis Hanson on the psychological roots of the "America Last" philosophy.
Is it because these elite Americans are so insulated and so well off, and yet feel so troubled by it, that they are prone to embrace with religious fervor ideas that have little connection with reality but that promise a sense of meaning, solidarity with a select and sophisticated group, moral accomplishment, and importance? Is it because of its very freedom and wealth that America has become both the incubator and the target of these most privileged, resentful, and unhappy people? And are their perceptions susceptible of change?

If the answer to the first two questions is yes, as I believe it is, then the reply to the third must be: I doubt it. The necessary correctives, after all, would have to be brutal: an economic depression, a religious revolution, a military catastrophe or, God forbid, an end to tenure. At least in the near term, and whether we like it or not, the religion of anti-Americanism is as likely to grow as to fade.

But it can also be challenged. The anti-Americans often invoke Rome as a warning and as a model, both of our imperialism and of our foreordained collapse. But the threats to Rome's predominance were more dreadful in 220 B.C. than in A.D. 400. The difference over six centuries, the dissimilarity that led to the end, was a result not of imperial overstretch on the outside but of something happening within that was not unlike what we ourselves are now witnessing. Earlier Romans knew what it was to be Roman, why it was at least better than the alternative, and why their culture had to be defended. Later in ignorance they forgot what they knew, in pride mocked who they were, and in consequence disappeared.
It's long, but worth a read through.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 08:59:38 AM

The Things We Do For Money - I meet people - socially, on dates, at family gatherings, wherever - and they ask what it is I do for a living.

And it's always hard to explain. So I'll give you an example; today's Bleat from James Lileks:
Jean-Charles, my French brother-in-law, asked me for some PC help - he wanted to make a home movie of his daughter�s birth, and just couldn�t seem to get anything to work. So I went over to his house to take a look. If I knew then what I knew now, I�d have brought a pistol and put a bullet through his PC. The movie-editing software was aimed at the consumer, much in the same way that North Korean artillery is aimed at Seoul, and it�s fairly recent. Apple�s iMovie has been out for a couple of years, so the PC boys have had ample time to study it, see what makes it work. And did they learn? No. There�s no incentive to learn. They developed an interface based on iMovie - clips on the right, editing line on the bottom, viewscreen in the middle. And then they PCified by adding seventeen icons and check-box options that had nothing to do with anything you wanted to do. Still, I figured I could help.

He�d plugged in his camcorder, let it roll, and downloaded 25 minutes of video. As with iMovie, the program cut the video into separate clips, depending on when he paused the camera. But whenever you clicked on an individual clip to edit it, the clip went back to the beginning of the movie. Each clip had an icon that showed how the scene began, but each clip started at 00:00:01. Huh? I hunted around for the location of the clips, and found the right folder. There were no individual clips. The program recorded the video as one gigantic bolus, and pretended that the clips were discrete files, which they weren�t. So when you edited any portion, you were working with the entire 3.3 gigabyte file. I cannot begin to describe how farked this is. Trust me.
You've all worked with software like that, right? Especially (but not exclusively) in the Windows world?

I fix that. I work with projects to help them design software that is not, to put it in Lileksian, "farked" to use.

All by way of kicking off the second week of my job hunt. Nine interviews last week, one confirmed and one probable this week. Seriously need something to drop in the hoop. Wish me luck.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 07:53:58 AM

Hope In The Air - While it's finally cold (blah) but there's no snow (worse blah) and after a week I'm still job-hunting (blah-iest), there is still hope in the air. it's just a tad over a month until pitchers report for Spring Training.

Twins Geek.com is where I fix up that jones.

Can't be too soon.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 06:53:19 AM

Fortuyn's Legacy, Minnesota's Lesson - Odd parallels here, in a story I first saw on Andrew Sullivan's site. In the Netherlands, a female Somali refugee is ready to take up Pim Fortuyn's cause - and much more.Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a 32 year old Somali woman who is under a fatwa for denouncing Islam's backwardness, seems a shoe-in to win a seat in the Dutch parliament.

There are lessons in this for Minnesota, too.
In a sense Miss Hirsi Ali is the heir to Mr Fortuyn's revolution, despite being part of a mainstream party and, with a fragile frame and diffident manner, seeming anything but a firebrand.

Just weeks ago she was in hiding, evading what amounted to a death sentence, after she said Islam was an oppressive, misogynist religion trapped in the 13th century that seemed to be at war with almost all non-followers.

"I was provoked by some guys shouting at me in a TV debate," she said in precise, fluent English, almost at a whisper. "So I blurted out, 'It's my religion, and my culture, and I can call it backward if I want'. But I was also drawn into saying I was no longer a practising Muslim and that set it all off, because the punishment for leaving the faith is death."
Her story is alternately inspiring and blood-curdling:
The daughter of a Somali dissident imprisoned by the Siad Barre regime in the 1970s, she grew up in exile in Kenya, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. She was subjected to the cruel ritual of female circumcision aged five, then ordered against her will to marry a kinsman in Canada, who wanted her to bear him six sons.

"I was sent to Germany to meet him but I couldn't face it," she said. "So I slipped across the border into the Netherlands at 11 o'clock on a November night in 1992 and asked for asylum." She would have gone to England but Holland had an open border under the Schengen treaty. She was 22 and did not speak a word of Dutch. Finding odd jobs as a cleaner, and learning fast about the underworld of abused Muslim girls hiding in shelters, she educated herself, ultimately studying political science at Leiden University.
Although she's not a member of Fortuyn's party, she preaches the same synthesis of classical liberalism, individualism, and reappraisal of Holland's socialist system. Here's the money quote:
"I wanted to understand why the western countries were doing so well when the rest of the world seemed to be collapsing," she said. "I studied the history of European political thought from the Greeks and Romans up to the Second World War." Her favourite thinker is John Stuart Mill.

"I learned that people in the West value the autonomous individual. They understand the importance of science, knowledge. They are capable of criticising themselves and there is an ability to record history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. It is exactly the opposite in Somalia where all the institutions of record are missing, and my grandmother's memories of the clan wars will die with her," she said.
And she has some lessons for Minnesota:
She was asked by the then ruling Labour Party to research why so many Dutch-born Muslim youths seemed to be at war with their host society.

Her conclusion was a blistering critique of the Dutch state policy of multiculturalism, which she described as a calamitous mistake born of "a misplaced sense of guilt or pity" that has allowed militant imams "preaching hate" to indoctrinate youths in segregated schools, all paid for by fat subsidies from the Dutch taxpayer. She is demanding an immediate end to state funding for 700 Islamic clubs, often run by hardline clerics.

"The Netherlands is a country that worships consensus and peace, but here you have newcomers who are not integrated into this system. They exploit the values of an open liberal society to reach illiberal ends," she said.
Illiberal - or criminal, or just plain corrosive of Dutch society.

Sound familiar to you?

The lesson is one our schools in Minnesota seem to have abandoned: while one needs to study, and be aware of other cultures, there is very little in any of them to emulate; certainly nothing in their political, judicial or social systems is worth lionizing, least of all at our expense.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/13/2003 06:43:30 AM

Sunday, January 12, 2003

Cultural Pathology - Steve Den Beste of the blog USS Clueless is an excellent writer who's not afraid to delve deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of his stories.

A few days ago, he wrote about the story of J.C. Adams, a septuagenarian Atlanta shopkeeper who can only walk with the aid of a walker - but who killed an armed robber and wounded another when they tried to hold up his store. It's an inspirational story, if you believe in:
the individual right of self-defense
the right to keep and bear arms against those who'd harm you
the power of the little guy to see to his own safety.
Den Beste closed with this:
He won't be prosecuted, and Americans everywhere are cheering for this old bastard. Part of why he won't be prosecuted is that there's no chance whatever that a jury in Georgia would convict him of anything. (I doubt they'd deliberate more than half an hour.)

Our overseas friends would do well to contemplate this example. What's remarkable about Adams is that he isn't remarkable. There are millions of Americans who would do exactly the same thing in the same circumstances. We don't give up what's ours just because someone else demands it, whether at gunpoint, or via crashed jetliners, or through diplomatic denunciations and accusations of unilateralism.

Whether it's small (a couple hundred dollars in a cash register) or big (thousand of dead in a terrorist attack) or mammoth (yielding our civil rights through acceptance of treaties), what we care about is worth fighting for, or else it isn't worth anything at all.

The sad thing is that there are people in Europe who are in jail now because they did what Adams did.
This truly does spotlight one of many key differences between our society and Europe.

Europeans apparently took enough umbrage for Den Beste to follow up. It's a very long piece, and worth reading completely.

But this was the part that grabbed me:
...a cultural decision about whether citizens should be men or mice will also manifest in foreign policy. The US didn't choose this war. We were attacked first. But now that we have been attacked, we're going to do what's necessary to make sure it doesn't happen again any more times than is absolutely unavoidable. We didn't decide that there would be a war; that was decided by those who made the plans for the attacks in NYC and Washington. Our only choice is where it will be fought, and how, and who will do the fighting.

Europe wants us to act as a passive and fearful citizen of the world, and to wait for the world's policemen to save us. They want us to absorb our damage and not fight back, and we aren't doing so. America is self-reliant. As individuals and as a group we won't stand passively and let others attack us. We'll defend ourselves; we won't sit and hope someone else takes care of it.

Adams represents the finest strain of America in his act yesterday, and I'm deeply proud of him. For all I know he may well be vile in other ways, but at the deepest level he demonstrated a nobility I'm glad to see. I feel not the slightest twinge of shame in saying that. Yesterday I said this:

Our overseas friends would do well to contemplate this example. What's remarkable about Adams is that he isn't remarkable. There are millions of Americans who would do exactly the same thing in the same circumstances. We don't give up what's ours just because someone else demands it, whether at gunpoint, or via crashed jetliners, or through diplomatic denunciations and accusations of unilateralism.

I want to emphasize this. If you don't understand why Americans are willing to act like this, and why we're proud to act like this, and why we are not going to stop acting like this, then you'll never understand anything we do and your international rhetoric will continue to be ineffective. This taps into the deepest strain of our character.

You're not going to get anywhere by treating this as cultural pathology. We think it's healthy, and quite frankly we've got good reason to believe that. You had better learn about this, and accept it as an essential part of the American character, and deal with it in your diplomacy. The only thing you're going to accomplish by trying to shame us about this is to alienate us, because we're not going to change.

Which has been the actual result since September of 2001, as the politicians and chattering heads of Europe have indeed been attempting to make us ashamed of this attitude. Americans are not interested in hearing "Let the attackers beat you up and kill you; sit passively and let the police take care of it." We're also not interested in hearing "Let the terrorists kill you; sit passively and let the UN take care of it." The only thing this has done is to increasingly convince us that Europe's chatterers are effete cowards.

Everything which is truly important is worth fighting to defend.
Years ago, it was interesting to read Art Spiegelman's "Maus" series of comic books, translating the story of the Holocaust into comic format, with mice representing Polish Jews and cats representing the Germans. And although I have known since junior high that Europeans have a different attitude toward authority than ours, Maus put it in first person; the mice always trusted authority to eventually get sane, or eventually save them. It's an extension of the attitude most Europeans bring to the debate on liberty versus authority; the way they instantly obey police; the way they trooped into the European Union; the way they assume the police will be there when they need them; the way they seem to implicitly believe the UN will come up with a solution to...whatever, even though that would be a first.

Makes one despair of ever getting any sort of "united accord" with them.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/12/2003 11:09:52 AM

The Bush Personality Cult - Eugene Volokh on Paul Krugman's descent into madness:
Cult of personality? Whose personality? Bush's? Oh, yes, outside my office window I see the sign on the street corner -- "Long live Bush, hero of all times and nations!" Highways, schools, cities all over the country are being renamed after George W. Bush. There is talk of the month of May being renamed Bushember.
I'd like to ask KrugmanDowdFriedmanRichIvins - is the president as stupid as you say, or is he as devious and all-controlling as you also say? Which is it? Because it seems like a stretch to think that someone with the mojo to build a cult of personality in two years is also a drooling idiot.

Get back to me on this.
This is a President whose personality is, if anything, mocked by the media and a substantial sector of the public rather than glorified; and while the Administration naturally treats its leader politely, it isn't trying to create anything remotely like a cult of personality, nor could it succeed in any such attempt. And while Bush's stature has rightly risen since Sept. 11, 2001, he is probably a somewhat less commanding and prominent presence in his Administration than Clinton, George H.W. Bush, or Reagan were in theirs (not necessarily a problem for him, but a big problem for the cult of personality thesis).
Read the article.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/12/2003 10:04:47 AM

Blog of the Rings - The Lord of the Rings" story, had Tolkien been on the Blogsphere (according to Alan Henderson). Hilarious.

(via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/12/2003 09:17:47 AM

Religion and Politics - During the elections and in the immediate aftermath, many of us on the right noted this: while many on the right mix religion and politics pretty gratuituously, many on the left go one step further - view politics as their religion.

Yesterday, at the Uptown pro-Terror, pro-Antisemitism, pro-rape, pro-dictatorship demonstrations, the KARE11 crew noted a number of people wearing WWWD stickers - "What Would Wellstone Do".

I expect to see much more of the same at the Wellstone Symposium.

The Uptown pro-Terror, Pro-Antisemitism, Pro-Rape, Pro-Dictatorship Demonstrations - A couple of thousand people turned out yesterday to protest in favor of genocidal dictators, the extermination of Israel, gang-rape of the relatives of political prisoners, and the flouting of UN resolutions. The Star Tribune covered it.
The protest was organized by the Iraq Peace Action Coalition and supported by Women Against Military Madness, Nurses Against War, the Minnesota Anti-War Committee and CodePink.
The article states this as if they aren't all the same group.
Thousands of e-mails, phone calls and leaflets had gone out inviting people to the demonstration. All ages were represented, but it was mostly an adult group.

Organizers said they counted 2,400 people. "We were incredibly impressed with the numbers that turned out," Sundin said. "It was more than we expected in our highest hopes. People's energy was really high."
The temperature hovered around zero. If people don't keep their "energy...really high", hypothermia sets in.
The protest started about 1 p.m. and lasted about an hour. The group was spirited but controlled and stayed out of the way of traffic until spilling into the street and walking on Hennepin Avenue to Lake Street, then down Lake to Lyndale Avenue.
For those of you from out of town - that's "Uptown", which used to be the "artists quarter" of Minneapolis, and is now...well, let's call it "Berkeleyland, the Leftist Theme Park" - all sorts of franchises catering to the Volvo-driving, MPR-listening, Perpetually-Concerned culture. Organic coffee, multiplex arthouse theater, places where you can spend $200 on a saute pan...
Many who braved the cold said they felt compelled to show up and send a message to President Bush.

"I think it's important that everybody who is against the war make their voice heard," said Chris Baird of Minneapolis.

"I think that we would end up killing a lot of innocent Iraqis, and an action like that would not separate us very much from the terrorists," she said.
Snappy comebacks are reeling through my head. But the whole thought that someone, probably college-educated, actually believes this in 2003 is just too depressing.
Evan Swanson of Hutchinson said he joined the protests because "I believe we haven't seen proof of weapons of mass destruction. I don't think there's any rush. Let's do everything we can to keep the peace and negotiate."
Because "Peace" - however unjust and awful and fraught with peril for the US, is always preferable to war, right?
Said Chris Kujawa of Minneapolis: "I don't want to see violence in Iraq. I think it's unnecessary. I think the sanctions are working. I think the war is about oil and not about the weapons inspections."
So much illogic, on so many levels. Lord, where does one start?

And that's the first I think I've ever seen anyone on the left not call for an end to "unjust, child-killing sanctions..."

In fact, on KARE11's coverage of the demonstrations on last night's news and nearly every other hearing the left gets on the war, that was the big theme - "there must be a peaceful solution. Let's try diplomacy. The sanctions are working"...and the capstone, "somehow, diplomacy can fix the situation".

How? Someone suggest to me how "diplomacy" can work, against a dictator for whom diplomacy is purely nothing other than a means to preserve his power?

I'll be waiting.
John Kohring of Minneapolis said that he opposes a war with Iraq and that he is optimistic that public protest will change minds in Washington.

Public opposition to the war in Vietnam brought that conflict to an end, Kohring said, but the opposition did not take root until after the war was well underway. In the case of an Iraq war, "it's quite remarkable that there is such an outpouring" before it even starts, he said.

Kohring said he thinks protests such as the one Saturday have already had an effect by slowing the juggernaut of war. "Each of us has a responsibility to speak out," he said. "This war is not consistent with our values."

Jessica Miranti of Edina said that after 40 years of working for nonviolence she is becoming cynical and wondering whether she has had any impact at all. But, she said, she was out on the street again Saturday because "I am very concerned about this war with Iraq. I cannot imagine sending my grandsons into battle for purely economic reason."

She added: "I'm here because I want to be counted."
Well, that was what they accomplished.

I'm not saying I'm thrilled at the notion of war with Iraq. I think I've been clear on that.

But between the strategic leverage it'd give us against our enemies both overt and covert, and the definite need to pre-empt Hussein's weapons program, I think it's the lesser of a large number of evils.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/12/2003 09:04:58 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