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

Friday, May 16, 2003

Profiles in Tenacity - In 1863, while leading the Union fleet into Mobile Bay, Admiral David Farragut was told that the channel was blocked by "Torpedos" - the slang term for naval mines of the day. His famous response: "Damn the Torpedos - full speed ahead". The Union went on to win, in a battle that shortly led to the cutting in half of the Confederacy, dooming their rebellion.

In June of 1940, Great Britain's military was a shambles. The British Army had just escaped from Dunkirk, without any of its artillery, tanks, and much of anything else. The Germans, swollen by victory, controlled all of Europe except the British Isles. Emissaries as diverse as Joseph Kennedy and Rudolph Hess tried to persuade Winston Churchill to accept an armistice - to settle for peace. He responded with the Dunkirk speech, which stirred Britain and the whole Western World against the Nazis. Five years later, Naziism was done for.

On December 24, 1944, the Germans surrounded the Belgian town of Bastogne, in the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans - the 101st Airborne and a brigade of the Tenth Armored Divisions - were frozen, short of food an ammunition, and cut off far behind German lines. The Germans sent an emissary to ask the Americans' surrender. General MacAuliffe, commander of the 101st, replied "Nuts". A week later, General Patton's tanks came to the rescue. Bastogne's stubbornness had put a fatal crimp in the German attack, which, in turn, sealed the German doom in the west. The war ended four months later.

The Minnesota Budget Battle is nothing like any of those battles.

And yet Governor Pawlenty and Speaker Swiggum's relentless steadfastness in the face of a full-court press on the part of the state's traditional political/media/social hierarchy is truly a profile in tenacity - and political courage.

I love this quote, from today's Strib story::
Pawlenty, who has maintained a soft-spoken demeanor through much of the negotiations, said Thursday that DFLers "have an opportunity and an obligation to stake out their position, their vision for the future of the state of Minnesota. I don't begrudge them the chance to do that. I just wish they'd done it a little sooner."
And therein lies the essense of the budget debate; the DFL, emotionally gutted after two straight rejections at the polls, has faded into the role of the heckler, sniping at GOP initiatives while staking none of their own, betting their future that the GOP would fail.

But defense doesn't win the game. Fortune favors the bold - and the GOP cornered that market in Minnesota, lately.

The GOP's success this session harkens back to Reagan; they articulated a vision that resonated with voters, including a new bloc of disaffected ones. And they stuck with it, against all the slings and arrows; the endless "case studies" in the papers, the "Four Governors", the relentless doomsaying of the Linda Berglins and Wes Skoglunds and Matt Entenzas.
The Senate has been seeking $1.3 billion in tax increases, including raising the cigarette tax by $1 a pack, raising income taxes on the top 5 percent of income earners and raising the statewide business property tax.

House Republicans and Pawlenty have said all along they would not support any state tax increase, holding themselves to a campaign pledge.

That was made even more apparent to Hottinger early Thursday after he met with Pawlenty.

"He reiterated and reconfirmed to me, very convincingly, that he is not interested and will not raise taxes," Hottinger said.
Facing a special session - and yet the message hasn't changed. Pawlenty has not blinked.

I think Hottinger knows what Pawlenty does: that the "cuts" (actually a budget increase) won't hurt the vast majority of us, and that an upcoming economic upturn will fix the problem faster than the legislature could.

You'll never hear the Strib admit it, but I'll say it here - and, all my "moderate" friends, note this very clearly: Tim Pawlenty is the muckracking, stable-cleaning firebrand that ou all wished Jesse Ventura was going to be.

We'll see what the next three years holds, but so far Pawlenty has every indication of being the Minnesota Reagan.

Albeit without contras roaming through Missouri...
posted by Mitch Berg 5/16/2003 01:13:59 PM

Everyone's Talking Music - If you've read my blog, you know I like music. Lots of it. Everything from Mahler to Public Enemy, and a lot of everything in between.

Even bands I hate, I like. Seriously - a band with nearly no redeeming value can have a song that redeems them (Styx was and is wretched, but "Blue Collar Man" was great), or even a single moment (Journey bored me silly, but the part where the guitar leads the band into "Don't Stop Believing" is just lovely).

Lileks touches on this phenomenon with one of the most maligned groups ever - the Bee Gees:
Are the BeeGees good, then? Sure. Some of their stuff, anyway. I can do without most of the songs t on the greatest hits disk...“Stayin’ Alive,” however, is a great song. It may come from a genre that pumped out more dreck than the CB-radio story-song craze; it may bring back painful memories of John Travolta using his walk in such a way as to inform spectators that he is a woman’s man, and hence has no time to talk. But that hook holds up.
You can hang a side of beef on that hook - and once I got over my seventies' punk aversion to all things disco, I realized there was a lot of great stuff on the Saturday Night Fever album (Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You" was even better than "Stayin' Alive" in the hook department).

And as far as the Bee Gees go, "Jive Talking" is an amazing song, too, one that can give me the funk back on a Perrycomo kinda day, especially the part where Maurice sings the line out of the bridge into the last chorus - pure pop joy.

But as close as Lileks gets to the truth, he still slinks just out of sight of genuine enlightenment:
I usually don’t like the hyperventilating castrati sound - Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, for example. Guys, listen - if you’re going to sing a song called “Walk Like A Man,” don’t sound as though you’ve had your testes kicked so hard they bounced off your diaphragm.
Tread on the Four Seasons warily, my friend. As Lonnie Donegan was to the Beatles, so were the Four Seasons to Springsteen.

Filter out Frankie Valli's cartoony-castrati for a moment, and listen to the song: there have been macho screeds equally as good, but none better. And further into the Seasons' oevre, you find the real gems: "Rag Doll" is is a more concise version of Bruce's "Backstreets", and their little-known "Big Man In Town", a precursor to "Badlands", got me through one of the worst stretches of my life.

Castrati. Hmpfh.

Speaking of music, there's a form circulating the blogosphere today that's kinda interesting. I saw it over at Plain Layne, and it's one of those things that's like a bowl full of "Twix" bars; you know you shouldn't try one, up until the point where you're disposing of three dozen Twix wrappers.

Here goes:

1. Name one song you hate to admit you like:
Shadows Of The Night, Pat Benetar.

2. Name two songs that always make you cry:
And The Angels Cried,Allison Krause and some other guy,
Oh, Father, Madonna. Yes, Madonna. Go figure. This'd be one of those "moments" I was talking about earlier.
3. Name three songs that turn you on:
Voodoo, Godsmack.
DMSR, Prince
Easy From Now On, Emmylou Harris.
4. Name four songs that always make you feel good:
The Card Cheat, The Clash
Little Mascara, The Replacements
Sweet Sweet Baby, Lone Justice
What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding, Elvis Costello
5. Name five songs you couldn't ever do without:
Marche Slave, Tchaikowskii
The Promised Land, Springsteen
I Wish It Would Rain The Four Tops
Flower of Scotland, The Black Watch
Wall of Death, Richard Thompson
...and to this list, I need to add:

6. Six Songs That Make You Want to Thump Something or Someone:
Where The Rose Is Sown, Big Country
Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos, Public Enemy
Blaze Of Glory, The Alarm
Shoot Out The Lights, Richard Thompson
Boulevard of Broken Dreams,, Hanoi Rocks
Working For The Clampdown, The Clash
All right. Enough fun - back to politics and current events, now.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/16/2003 10:40:37 AM

Thursday, May 15, 2003

InstaTwister - Glenn Reynolds is blogging without power, after tornadoes pummel the Nashville area.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/15/2003 09:45:42 PM

Moore Scuttling - Disney, according to Hollywood Halfwits, is bailing on Michael Moore's "Documentary" claiming that the Bush family financed Bin Laden.
Disney, via subsidiary Miramax, had recently agreed to cover the production costs of Moore's "documentary" which claims bin Laden was greatly enriched by the Bush family. "The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda," Moore explained.
Wow. Must be something to all that "corporate media" palaver...
posted by Mitch Berg 5/15/2003 06:15:35 PM

St. Paul Schools - Longtime friend of Shot in the Dark, Tom Swift, is still busy.

Last November, we told you about his discovery of budget shenanigans at the St. Paul Public Schools.

The story is still evolving.

According to Tom, the State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ha said "SPPS and Progressive MN violated the law by giving and recieving a campaign contribution (the "Winning Big" banquet)". Progressive Minnesota apparently has to return the school district's money.

Swift also has "a complaint pending in Pat Awada's office
where it is recieving sterling attention AND I also will have the SP City Attorney look into the $3K payment to PM for it's political organizing seminars given to SPPS site council managers..."

More as things develop.

posted by Mitch Berg 5/15/2003 06:57:26 AM

Minnesota Smug - Again - I don't have time to write as much about this thread today as I'd like - maybe this weekend, hopefully.

But the pieces of this whole flap - the budget, "We're Not Minnesota Nice", the Four Governors, the hysteria that the media seems to be carefully cultivating - say something big about that character of this state, or at least this state's traditional (read: DFL) public class.

And figuring exactly what to say about it is one of those things that won't come to me until I'm in the middle of a usability test, far from a bloggable computer.

Stay tuned, though. This could be interesting.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/15/2003 06:43:52 AM

Guard of Chucky - New York Senator Charles Schumer is one of the leading voices in the Senate speaking for the constriction of the citizen's right to own firearms, and defend their families and properties.

Naturally, he has an armed guard:
Questions arose Wednesday morning about the gun opponent's security arrangements after the New York Post's Cindy Adams mentioned in her column that Schumer appeared at a recent event with a bodyguard in tow.

A quick call to Schumer's office confirmed that the man guarding the Senate's number one gun controller was packing heat.

"He's a New York police detective," the Senator's spokesman revealed to NewsMax. When asked whether Schumer's detective was indeed armed, the spokesman replied, "I would imagine so."
Just so nobody misses this: Senator Schumer doesn't think that you, the citizen, deserve to protect yourself. However, being a Senator, his life is of incalculable worth, and worth defending with lethal force.

Got that?

This part is rich:
Sensing a public relations problem in the making, the Senator's spokesman explained that his boss "believes in the second amendment and the right to bear arms."

"So I don't think there's anything inconsistent about it," he insisted.
It's consistent in the same way that giving black Legislators the right to vote, while stonewalling it for black citizens, is "supporting the Fourteenth Amendment".

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 5/15/2003 06:02:14 AM

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Kangaroo Court - The Strib starts off last Monday's story about - good heavens, can ya believe it, a conclave of former governors! - with this bon mot:
If Gov. Tim Pawlenty were to turn to one of Minnesota's former governors for budgetary advice, chances are he wouldn't like to hear what any one had to say.
Well, isn't that special.

The group wasn't gathered to praise Pawlenty, they were gathered - and put in front of microphones - to bury him.

The Strib leads with a strawman:
Four former governors -- three from the same party as the current Republican office holder, and one DFLer -- all said Monday that Pawlenty has painted himself into a corner with his no-new-taxes pledge and that disadvantaged Minnesotans will suffer the most from sharp budget cuts.
The three were not from the same party Pawlenty leads. They were to today's GOP what Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller were to Ronald Reagan; holdovers from the era when GOPers were just like Democrats, but more polite.

Carlson, Anderson and Quie were behind James Lileks' classic line about Arne Carlson during the 1990 gubernatorial election: "I tell my friends in DC that we have two candidates for governor in Minnesota; the pro-choice, high-tax, anti-gun candidate, and the Democrat".
Republicans Elmer L. Andersen, Al Quie and Arne Carlson and DFLer Wendell Anderson told a Humphrey Institute audience celebrating the career of the late Orville Freeman that a balanced approach of spending cuts and tax increases is the best way to share the pain of a $4.23 billion budget deficit.

Andersen, governor from 1961 to 1963, jokingly said Pawlenty could refer to tax increases as "revenue adjustments" to avoid violating his pledge.
Which is the thought process that has made so much public life in Minnesota so intolerable. 2+2=5, Winston. Taxation is cheaper, regulation is more free.

For example:
"Taxes put money into the economy, into essential public services, education, culture, parks, highways," said Andersen. "Unfortunately that pledge was made to solve the deficit without a tax increase. People of Minnesota want to get back the kind of state we had."
Actually, a majority in recent polls seems not to want that, but we digress.

Here's the part where an actual, critical media would be nice:
Each of the four governors faced budget problems when they were elected, and each of the four endured special legislative sessions to deal with remedies for their budgets, which included tax surcharges, utilities taxes, income tax increases and sales tax hikes.
Unmentioned in the Strib article: each of the governors responded by further enabling the illness that caused the problems in the first place - raising taxes to enable out-of-control spending. It's like giving an alcoholic a Bloody Mary for her hangover; it may feel better in the short run, but in the mid-term you're still dealing with a dysfunctional drunk.
Some of the hourlong discussion looked at ideologically driven policy and domination of the political parties by members with a narrow range of views and a set agenda.

"Once you turn the system over to people who believe the public purpose is to get elected, the common good tends to dissipate," said Carlson, governor from 1991 to 1999. "You have to protect the interests of young people. And you cannot deny the right to basic health care. . . . It is wrong. The pain should be spread, and that means a tax increase -- particularly on those of us who can afford it."
This was the part of the "Four Governors" broadcast that started me thinking; this isn't about getting their views. It's about defending what I, a member of the loyal opposition, consider the most noxious part of Minnesota Politics: big, wasteful government is considered the norm, the status quo, the fount of all goodness by the part of the public class people like the Four Governors and the Strib editorial board represent, to the point that that philosophy of governance isn't just "the government" - it's the state itself. Dissent from that view is an attack not merely on the government, but on all that is good and holy about the state itself.

Your government is you. You are your government. What's good for your government is good for you.

Does anyone see where this is a problem? Let me know.

By the way, Carlson earned my undying emnity for this little swipe:
Carlson also took a shot at the Legislature and Pawlenty on non-budget matters.

"A gun bill. How can you explain a [conceal and carry] gun bill?" Carlson asked. "How does anyone with an IQ that approaches double digits pass that kind of legislation?"
Former governor Carlson; if you'd care to challenge my IQ, feel free to get in touch with me. It'll be a short discussion.

What do you think? Am I reading this wrong?
posted by Mitch Berg 5/14/2003 04:55:02 PM

Just Watch... - ...as the media spins the attacks in Riyadh as some sort of defeat against the War on Terror.

It makes sense, I think, in the same way that it made sense that the last shots fired by die-hard Nazis were fired in Berlin, rather than in New York. They're on home turf!

Truth is, the fact that it's taken Al Quaeda 19 months to carry out a serious follow-up attack, on what is essentially their home field, shows how well things are going in the War, not how badly.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/14/2003 04:35:09 PM

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - I remember when I got out of college and got my first fulltime job. I'd go to work, get home at 8, go to bed, up at 7, to work at 10, home at 8, go to bed...working fulltime for the first time just exhausted me.

So, too, yesterday. It was my first day working in an actual office in four months. And it smacked me up pretty good!

The job, by the way, is at one of the classic Minnesota companies. And the building is chock-full of a whole lot of classic Minnesotans. For someone who's been working at dotcoms and software shops for most of the last decade, it felt I'd stepped into "Wobegone Junior"; acres of gray-haired, mildly-padded, earnest Lutherans. Don't get me wrong, it was great working again, even if only for a week (so far). But the only thing that didn't feel like I'd gone back to the sixties was the lack of narrow black ties.

And I have to get back there. But I will catch up on the blogging tonight.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/14/2003 06:28:51 AM

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Blog, Interrupted - First day at a new gig today, plus bagpipe class afterward.

I'll be posting a bunch of stuff tonight, but I'm going to be pretty swamped today.

Til then!
posted by Mitch Berg 5/13/2003 06:13:14 AM

Monday, May 12, 2003

Someone Gets It - Activists for aid to Africa square off against Greenpeace:
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) will conduct a counter demonstration at Greenpeace USA's "Run for Your Life" 5K road race at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. The Greenpeace event itself will be a protest, meant to "raise awareness of the serious threats posed by chemical plants to New York and New Jersey residents and workers."

CORE is using the event as an opportunity to confront Greenpeace activists about their opposition to infrastructure development projects in the developing world, opposition to genetically modified foods and the group's opposition to the use of the chemical DDT to kill malaria-ridden mosquitoes, particularly in Africa.

"To serve its own ideological agenda, [Greenpeace] wants to keep the Third World permanently mired in Third World poverty, disease and death. So far, it has succeeded," said Niger Innis, national spokesperson for CORE
It'd be fun to map out all of the left's contradictory special interests, someday.

When I have lots of time to spare...
posted by Mitch Berg 5/12/2003 08:26:02 AM

Agh - Yet another case of child murder in the news.

Lufkin, TX-area perfect mom Dee Laney apparently bludgeoned two of her three kids to death, and tried to kill a third.

I know I'm not the only one who gets incredibly depressed by these sorts of stories. It's not just the murders, although the horror of such crimes is numbing after a while. I'm a parent; I have two kids, and neither is anywhere close to perfect, and while I've never, even in my worst moments, even considered hurting them even as a perverse "what if", I understand how the stress of daily life can make kids nearly unbearable; this unemployed stretch has taxed my patience with them.

But the coverage will be almost as bad.

Watch for three things, here:
The inevitable comparisons to the Susan Smith and Andrea Yates cases.
Among the comparisons; watch for advocates for women and the mentally ill to demand that Ms. Laney receive anything from leniency to no charges whatsoever.
As in the Smith and Yates cases, watch those same advocates eventually, inevitably, try to put the fathers on trial - which would be fine, if there were any evidence. But for some people, anything is evidence enough.
Watch for the nation's Ellen Andersons to start capitalizing on a "wave of child murders" to support demands for funding, laws and so on - despite the fact that child murder is, thankfully, becoming more rare.
Oh, yeah - and watch for copycat cases any time here.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/12/2003 07:48:42 AM

Sunday, May 11, 2003

That Darned Corporate Media - Michael Moore is financing his new "documentary" - which will reportedly claim Bush family ties to Osama Bin Laden - via Disney, says Drudge.
The director claims he will document on film how the "senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11."

Moore will also scrutinize, in graphic detail, why America is so disliked abroad.

With DISNEY financing now secure, Moore, who once railed against corporate media interests, may appear at this week's Cannes film festival in France.
The folks at Moorewatch have this to say:
Miramax is essentially an independent organization which uses Disney's distribution wing. Miramax has a long tradition of financing unusual and controversial pictures. And Michael Moore is the darling of the Hollywood left -- he speaks for them. And the fact that he won the Oscar for Best Documentary means that there is a good chance that he could win one for this film, too, and Miramax is a company known to spend millions of dollars to promote its films that are in award contention. This is a perfect project for a company like Miramax.
Stay tuned.

posted by Mitch Berg 5/11/2003 09:56:51 PM

The Case Western Shooter - It seems the alleged shooter in the Case Western Reserve shootings was quite anti-gun (scroll down to the "Take Action Against Substance Abuse and Gun Violence" link).

Kathleen Soliah, Carl Rowan, Sean Penn, Harry Connick, Biswanath Halder. I guess it's the lefty gun-control types that you really need to worry about.

Who's watching Ellen Anderson?
posted by Mitch Berg 5/11/2003 06:07:43 PM

Heh - A whole new deck of cards.

I may buy one, come payday...
posted by Mitch Berg 5/11/2003 05:17:47 PM

Newspaper of Record - When journalists criticize the Blogosphere, they decry the online pundits and journalists' lack of editors and the absence of commitment to journalistic ethics.

And then came Jayson Blair.

The Times has spent the last week apologizing, retracting and correctinghis long trail of journalistic frauds and deceptions - the sort of things that editors are supposed to catch, but shouldn't have to at the Times...

When you're a blogger and you fabricate a story, there are a million other bloggers, including potentially dozens that might have enough interest in the issue to set you (or the public) straight. That's beside the fact that there is no "blog of record".

Who corrects the Times?

I mean, before it hits the fan?
posted by Mitch Berg 5/11/2003 03:23:41 PM

Great...er, Minds? - I've been pondering for days the idea of writing about Arby's new Homestyle Pot Roast Sandwich". One the one hand, the ads make it look absolutely dreadful - natural material for a blog attack.

I thought - "Will I look ridiculous blogging about this?"

Fortunately, Cold Fury had no such compunctions, and has delivered the blogosphere's first-ever fisking of a sandwich.

(Via Jay Reding)
posted by Mitch Berg 5/11/2003 02:49:26 PM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

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