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

Friday, August 01, 2003

Weekend - OK, nearly every weekend, I say I'm done posting until Monday.

This week, I mean it. I'll be out of town until Sunday-ish.

NOTE TO BURLGARS: My high school friend, Vince "Blowtorch" DiGrizio, will be here with his four rottweilers, putting he-man grips on his collection of large-frame pistols in my workshop.
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 10:26:27 PM

Night Out - I don't listen to much daytime radio - but I was driving home from a client site Friday and heard a bit of "Garage Logic" on KSTP.

Usually when I listen to Joe Soucheray, I'll stay tuned while he's freestyling on whatever topic grabs him. He's good at that. Then, when someone calls in to get rulings on baby names, or talk about their garage, I flip over to Medved.

Friday, though, he had a great idea.

National Night Out aganist Crime is coming up on Tuesday. People around the country are supposed to go out, meet their neighbors, maybe serve some brats and koolaid, and show the criminal class that they're not afraid to go out in their own yards.

Which isn't saying much in my cozy little corner of the St. Paul Midway. Crime is extremely low here (anything north of Thomas Avenue is pretty tame), and there's just not much to be afraid of.

But over in North Minneapolis, things just keep getting worse and worse; gangbangers rule the streets, beating and robbing and occasionally killing more or less at will.

So why not have the "Night Out" crowd leave their secure enclaves in Burnsville and Woodbury, and drive in to Near North and Jordan and flood the streets with law-abiding civilians? Why not displace the bangers and human filth for an evening?

Thoughts?
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 10:26:00 PM

Grim Anniversary - Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of one of history's greatest examples of pure, unadulterated, doomed courage.

On August 2, 1943, inmates at the Treblinka death camp, knowing their turn in the gas chambers was coming soon, rebelled, killing enough guards to force the fences and make a run for the neighboring forests.

85 Germans and nearly 900 prisoners were killed in the battle that followed. Dozens of prisoners made it to the woods, where they were mercilessly hunted by Germans - and Poles, many of whom, indoctrinated by the incredibly caustic anti-Semitic Catholic dogma of the day, hated Jews even worse than they did their German occupiers. The war still had nearly two years to go, and it is estimated fewer than two dozen Treblinka inmates survived the war (the inmates of the Sobibor death camp, who rebelled the following year, benefitted from nearby Russian lines, and hundreds survived).

One - Samuel Wilenburg - is still alive, and gave an interview with the BBC:
Fortunately, they had got their hands on a copy of the key to the weapons store. One night they stole in and removed some arms. Child prisoners hid hand grenades and rifles in baskets and prams.

The revolt began at 0400 on 2 August, after a German guard became suspicious and the prisoners had to kill him.

As the alarm sounded the prisoners had to act quickly. They set fire to the barracks and began to cut the fences. Many were picked off by sentries atop the guard towers.
The BBC story leaves out a lot. The prisoners had to destroy a German armored car, which decimated the fleeing prisoners. The guard towers, armed with machine guns, had to be picked off by starving prisoners armed with rifles, pistols, knives and their own hands.

Somehow, some made it:
Seeing a hole in the fence Samuel Wilenberg scrambled over the bodies of his dead friends through the barbed wire. His good friend fell beside him under the hail of bullets and pleaded with him to end his agony. Reluctantly, he did so.

"It was like flying on wings. I was shot in leg. My shoe was full of blood. I don't know how long I had to run for," he recalled.
The examples of people like Wilenberg - and the Iraqis who've survived nearly as bad, and the North Koreans who are doing the same today - should shame us, and inspire us at the same time.

They do for me, anyway.
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 07:48:36 PM

The Poles - The Poles are sending a brigade of their troops to Iraq, according to the Washtimes:
[Polish President] Kwasniewski said he planned to visit Iraq himself once the force had settled in. 'I think that such a visit makes sense at a time we will already have gathered experience.'

...

Polish forces, including 370 officers, are to arrive in Iraq beginning Tuesday.
Stanislaw Boczkowski, in his 60s, who came to say goodbye to his son, said he spent six years in the 1980s in Iraq as a construction worker.
'It was a horrible dictatorship. Everyone was very poor, with the exception of a small elite of rich people. It is a very good thing that soldiers go there,' he said, looking proudly at his son.
The United States is footing most of the bill for the Polish-led division.
The soldiers, their uniforms marked with the Polish flag and the word Poland in Polish and Arabic, have also learned some basic Arabic and taken lessons in Iraqi customs and culture.
The coalition now has 13,400 non-U.S. troops deployed in Iraq, the bulk of them British, ground-forces commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said last week.
'There are 18 countries here right now,' Gen. Sanchez told reporters, adding that Britain was providing 8,300 troops and the Netherlands 800.
The United States said Monday that 30 nations have so far agreed to join it in an international stabilization force for Iraq even without a specific United Nations mandate demanded by some. "
Many other nations are contributing troops as well - and for a variety of reasons:
The Polish-led division will include 1,640 Ukrainian and 1,300 Spanish soldiers.
Bulgaria is sending about 500 troops; Hungary has pledged several hundred; Romania and Latvia each are deploying about 150, while Slovakia and Lithuania are dispatching 85 apiece.
The reasons why European countries have offered military support to coalition forces in Iraq vary.
Some, such as Britain, Poland and Spain, have done so because they genuinely believed in the justness of the war on Saddam's regime. Others have done so as a way of showing their loyalty to Washington.
All but Britain have experience in living with, or under, dictatorships.
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 05:52:42 PM

Bloodbath, Part II - I said there'd be more to come - and I meant it!

Right Of Center - a Minnesota blog that's apparently been around a while, but I've only just found - notes that some armed robbers in St. Paul are smarter than their victims. He noted that KSTP-TV...:
...ran a story about a recent outbreak of robberies in St. Paul. Apparently two men are entering bars, which they have obviously staked out previously because they avoid all security cameras, and take money from the registers, pull tab booths and bar patrons.

I couldn't find the story at KSTP.com, but did find a story at the Pioneer Press. One point that KSTP made, and the Pioneer Press didn’t mention, was that all these robberies have taken place at bars that displayed signs banning guns on their premises.
Of course, people can learn from their mistakes:
In reaction to these robberies, the president of the St. Paul Hospitality Association is considering a recommendation to remove all signs from their establishments.
I wonder how long this fella is going to keep wearing that dopey shirt?
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 05:42:51 PM

Blaaaah - Feeling very ill at the moment - roaring headache, feeling very crummy.

Posting will be a tad light until I feel better.

Give me a couple hours...
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 01:50:44 PM

Bloodbath Rising! - Saint Paul's had its first crime involving a concealed carry permit holder since the Minnesota Personal Protection Act went into effect!

Here's the police blotter, passed to me by a source in City Hall:
Auto Theft: On 07/31/03 at 1521 hours [that's 3:21PM], officers were sent to 3XX Lexington on a stolen vehicle that was located, the owner (victim) was holding the suspect at gun point. The victim showed proof of Permit to Carry. One arrest was made.
But...wait; you mean to tell me the law-abiding permit-holder DIDN'T "blow" the perp "away", the way so many of the MPPA's detractors insisted would happen? No innocent bystanders mown down? No random gunfire?

Nope. Just another worthless car thief off the street, a car thief that would have gotten away to steal more cars - and G-d knows what else - had the law-abiding permit-holder not been able to react effectively. Just another would-be crime victim that isn't a crime victim after all.

One less Sandy Pappas voter on the street.

Will the media report this? And how?

More to come. Count on it.
posted by Mitch Berg 8/1/2003 01:49:54 PM

Thursday, July 31, 2003

Implosion - I got this story from Vodkapundit, and I think it's great news. The Senate has ratified a plan to allow North Korean refugees into the US.

The plan has some strange bedfellows:
"The US Senate recently passed a measure that would allow North Korean asylum seekers to apply for refugee status in the US, a move that is expected to be supported soon by the full Congress.

Some US officials are concerned that North Korean advocate groups are pushing the change as a way of 'imploding' Kim Jong-il's regime. The advocate groups draw parallels with the fall of communist Europeafter huge refugee movements out of eastern bloc countries destablised the regimes there.

But accepting North Korean refugees received strong support across the political spectrum in the US Senate. It was sponsored by senators Sam Brownback, a Republican, and Ted Kennedy, a Democrat."
Vodkapundit points out that, while the idea has its downsides (read his piece), it has some hopeful historical precedents:
If you'll recall, after Soviet Premier Gorbachev declared an end to the Brezhnev Doctrine, Czechoslovakia and Hungary started to freely hand out travel visas for points west -- even to East Germans. The floodgates were opened, and, before long, East Germany looked on the weekends like a Old West ghost town made of bad concrete. Not long after that, of course, the Wall came down and we had a single Germany.

It's hard for a totalitarian state to allow just a little freedom, as China and Iran are also discovering.
Naturally, the idea has opponents:
Previous attempts by Congress to encourage refugees from North Korea have been blocked by successive US governments concerned about opposition from China and South Korea. Legally, North Koreans are considered citizens of South Korea and not entitled to refugee status in the US.

But since the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, North Korean human rights organisations and refugee advocates are winning enormous influence in Washington.
Vodkapundit, by way of mild disagreement with the plan, writes:
South Korea has fewer than 50 million people, and while they've made great strides, their per capita income is still only up to that of modern Poland. They aren't poor, but they aren't nearly as rich as West Germany was. In addition, their economy isn't as mature or robust, as the Asian Financial Crisis of a couple years back showed.

Up north are 22 million of their starving brethren. Before the Communist dictatorship, they lived a brutal existence as virtual slaves of Japan. "Chosen," as Tokyo called Korea, was annexed by the Japanese Empire 93 years ago. It's safe to say that there is no one in North Korea with any experience living in a politically modern, free, democratic, or tolerant state. Travel is forbidden. Only a small handful of South Koreans are allowed north. There is only one radio station, and it runs nothing but the foulest sort of propaganda. And according to a story in US News & World Report a few weeks ago, North Korea even has concentration camps bigger than the District of Columbia.

Through no fault of their own, the people of North Korea simply aren't ready to enter the modern world, and South Korea can't afford to feed, house, re-educate, and re-civilize them all.

Whether or not there's a war, when North Korea collapses there's going to be a humanitarian crisis on a scale the world has never seen -- 22 million scared, hungry, and desperate people left without any semblance of anything familiar.
Much worth a read, here, including some great comments to Vodkapundit's article.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/31/2003 06:52:58 PM

Hoist the Boats? - A response, in Reason, to the IT outsourcing story.

Alan Cooper - a Bay area GUI design guru, and one of the people who got me into my current line of wor, once famously predicted that by 2020, American software companies would consist of
Project managers
GUI Designers (fingers crossed)
System and Data Architects
Business Analysts
Technical writers, who'd take the product of all that analysis, architecture and design, and bundle it all up into specifications to send over to India, Russia, China and Poland, where all the programmers would live.
Last weeks' infamous IBM story, of course, could well bode ill for the code-geek market in the US. But not all, apparently, is lost:
"According to people who actually negotiate outsourcing contracts for a living, your costs are more like $22 an hour for each warm body once all the third-party finders' fees are paid. An experienced programmer's take in India would be around $11,000 out of total cost of over $40,000. That's still quite a gap from the $60,000 an American might demand but once the all-important question of productivity is factored in, it may not be much of a bargain.

Simply put, once you leave the U.S. you are leaving behind the world's best, most proven pool of programmers. That's is not to say that there aren't excellent programmers in Russia, China, India, and elsewhere. But large-scale, world-changing software development ain't easy. The Net bubble devalued just how hard it is to build neat technology.
He's right, of course. I've worked on offshored software development - it's freqently not pretty. And th dotcom boom did create a pseudo-romantic mystique - the code-slinging ubergeek who could create killer code in a month of 32-hour days, then cash out bigtime - that doesn't jibe with the real world building of software.

So maybe not all is lost, here.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/31/2003 08:32:07 AM

Boomerang - The latest capitol "scandal" seems to be nipping at Mike Hatch as well.

It seems that, after the news media ran the story that Commerce Commissioner Glenn Wilson had agreed to a "controversial" settlement with United American Insurance company, word slipped out that Mike Hatch had worked for UAI.
The legislative auditor's office also confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the agreement with United American, which contained clauses preventing the Commerce Department from notifying the news media, other state insurance agencies and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a national regulatory group, about the settlement.

"Our focus is on what is in the consent order that Commissioner Wilson signed, and did that comply with the department's legal obligations," Legislative Auditor James Nobles said.
And I'll be looking for that report when it comes out.
He said that the investigation of the settlement will be part of the auditing agency's regular review of the Commerce Department and that he expects to release a report within a month.

Weaver took direct aim at Hatch.

"He was the hired gun for this insurance company," Weaver said.

In 1992, Hatch defended United American, of McKinney, Texas, when it was fined $65,000 by the Commerce Department for selling unapproved policies.
More as the auditor's report comes out.

Fearless predictions for when that report sees the light of day:
Glenn Wilson's controversial consent decree will have been written at the behest of someone in the Attorney General's Office.
The story will have been leaked from a DFL-sympathizing civil service employee in the Commerce Department.
Just hunches.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/31/2003 07:40:17 AM

Zzzzzzzzzz - Gaaah, I'm tired today.

Thank goodness for these little contract jobs - because my "real" job leads have all tanked this week. The "dream job", sources tell me, was pretty well decided before the first interview. Two other decent-looking possibilities cratered before that. There are three more possibilities - none of which will develop into anything until at least late next month. And the local job market seems to have taken another late-month downturn.

So the Berg Consumer Confidence Index is down around 4 today, with a possible 6 if I hear about any more contract jobs. Rumors abound. As usual.

I'm thinking I need to toss Emmylou Harris's Greatest Hits (Vol 1) in the CD on the way to work. Sometimes there's no substitute.

UPDATE: And no sooner do I post this depressing screedlet than Dice.com comes through with a couple new leads.

Hope springs infernal!

UPDATE 2: And Monster has another! Wow. A guy could get hopeful!
posted by Mitch Berg 7/31/2003 07:31:08 AM

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Letter From Iraq - Lt. Smash responds to a Canadian critic of the war who wrote to him on his blog:
A couple of months ago, I visited a village in southern Iraq.

That is to say, I visited the site of a former village in southern Iraq.

You see, it’s not there anymore. Saddam demolished it in 1991, after some of the inhabitants participated in the Shiite uprising. It was only a few square blocks of concrete buildings, but they had all been leveled, and were overgrown with desert weeds.

In the middle of one of those demolished buildings, I came across a single shoe. It was a very small tennis shoe, such as might be worn by a five-year old boy. It was covered in dust, cracked and faded.

I took a photo of that shoe with my non-digital camera.

The people who live in the nearby town don’t know what happened to the inhabitants of that village—but it’s a fair guess that they probably were buried in unmarked graves, or dumped in the nearby river.

Contrary to [the Canadian critic's] claims, the people of Iraq had been trying to overthrow Saddam for twelve years before we decisively intervened, and had repeatedly requested international assistance. But Chris asserts that no intervention would be valid without the blessing of the United Nations (Kosovo?), ignoring the “serious consequences” clause of Security Council resolution 1441.

All of this is beside the point.

How many more villages had to be destroyed before an intervention was justified? How many women raped? How many families massacred? How many more children had to die?

From the verdant green forests of peaceful British Columbia, it’s easy for [the Canadian critic] to argue that the war violated Iraqi sovereignty, the principle of self-determination, and the UN charter.

But in the grim reality of the Iraqi desert, such arguments ring hollow.
The answer harkens back to my post about the "peace"makers this morning: it's not about people. It's about agendas, and about fulfilling the very letter of feeling good about oneself in the most legalistic sense of the term.

One of the left's favorite aphorisms when proposing costly, intrusive regulations and taxes: "If we can save even one life...

We'll, we've saved more than one life with our liberation of Iraq. We've saved, by a conservative count, thousands already - more than were killed by American action during the liberation, certainly.

But it's only the lives saved by punishing Americans - our achievements, merits, and dreams - that count, apparently. The lives of all those brown, Moslem people must not count.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/30/2003 04:49:38 PM

Crack of Doom - As the relatively moderate Democratic Leadership Conference yells into the void that the party is swinging too far to the left (at a conference attended by none of the Nine Dwarves), the new poll by former Clinton pollster Mark Penn shows that Americans might be seen to agree.
The party still has solid support from the core of Roosevelt's coalition - union members, minorities and the working poor - said pollster Mark Penn. It also enjoys solid support from gays and Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority.

But less than one-third of Americans now consider themselves Democrats, down from 49 percent at their peak in 1958. And Democrats lag well behind Republicans among other growing groups of voters whose loyalties swing back and forth between parties and who hold the key to close elections - including suburbanites, professionals and middle-class families with children. That leaves the party in a poor position to build the new coalition it needs to beat President Bush and build an enduring majority in an evenly divided country.

"In terms of the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats, the Democratic Party is currently in its weakest position since the dawn of the New Deal," Penn told a gathering of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of centrist Democrats. "Exciting the Democratic base alone will not bring enough voters into the Democratic fold."
Worrisome for the Dems - the GOP leads among everyone whose lot in life seems to be improving - which is most Americans, recession aside. And it gets worse for the Dems:
One key problem, Penn and others said, is that Democrats are perceived as catering to a political base that is losing its electoral clout in a changing country. When likely voters are asked which party they prefer, Democrats still hold an edge among many groups. Union members and gays prefer Democrats over Republicans by 43 percentage points, and African-Americans and the working poor do by 41 percentage points, Penn found.

But Republicans have an edge of 15 percentage points among suburban voters, 21 percentage points among professionals, and 29 percentage points among white-collar workers.

The Penn poll of 1,225 likely 2004 voters was conducted June 29-July 1 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

"The decline of manufacturing jobs and the shift from cities to suburbs and exurbs, and the dramatic increases in college education and white collar and professional jobs, do not favor the Democrats," Penn said.
The moderate Democrats are locked in the 1970s, thinking taxation (but not too much of it!) will solve our ills. The left - the base - is ping-ponging between the thirties and the sixties - foaming with rage at corporate America, and pursuing a policy of unilateral castration in foreign policy.

At a time when they need a Harry Truman or a John F. Kennedy, they've got eight Abby Hoffmans (Hoffmen?) and a Lyndon Johnson for good measure.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/30/2003 12:42:07 PM

Nine to Five - Or seven-thirty to five-thirtyish, anyway. Back for three more days' work at a fine local company that's having me back for a third contract engagement in three months.

If I can get one of these per month, I can break more or less even. Two per month, and I'll be just a tad ahead of the game.

Dream job tanked yesterday. Suffice to say, Post-Its (TM) are in, the card you shouldn't leave home without is out.

More posting later.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/30/2003 06:47:55 AM

Cave-In - As I noted yesterday, the Pentagon caved on using the Futures Market as a tool to help predict terror.

Instapundit and Postrel both write about this today - Postrel links to this excellent piece by Hal Varian.

I have only this to add; this idea was scuppered by two things: the hatred of Democrats for the word "Market", and the unwillingness of too many Republicans to think out of the box.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/30/2003 06:28:10 AM

Peacemakers - The old saying The pen is mightier than the sword could only have been coined by someone who never had to bet his life on it.

Fun aphorism, right? I've always liked that one. I always thought a friend of mine coined it - although he tells me I did. Going, going...

Here's another fun aphorism, credited to a high school teacher of Dinesh D'Souza's:If Hitler had ruled India, Gandhi would have been a lampshade.

I love aphorisms!

So do the "Southern Minnesota Peacemakers". I've been reading this site for a few days, trying to figure out exactly what to write about them, after first encountering their website via a picture on Rachel Lucas' site.

And after three days (give or take) of stewing on it, I still have no idea what to write.

I thought about something pithy and dismissive, like P.J. O'Rourke's description of a World Council of Churches delegation to a rally in Washington, "...people who have self-righteousness like some people have bad breath". Read the site - it fits.

I thought, "maybe Rachel Lucas has the right idea - call everyone involved an assclown and call it square". But that's intellectually unsatisfying, and it only ennobles your opponent.

I even thought, maybe it'd be good to call then on their creaking ignorance of history, which is on hilarious display on their homepage. No, it's not the quote by Jeannette Rankin (a congresswoman who voted against declaring war on Japan, on December 8, 1941 - sort of the Paul Wellstone of her day) - her quote is standard fare among the groaningly self-righteous among the peace movement. Funnier is the Boake Carter quote. Carter was a CBS radio commentator from the 1930's and '40s, famous for making up the news and eventually sliding off the right wing into territory that'd make Pat Buchanan blanche and Lyndon LaRouche giggle with joy; he once called Franklin D. Roosevelt a greater threat to world peace than Adolph Hitler.

Of course, their opposition to the new concealed carry law provides a wealth of material. Read the page - its big sources of information are Michael Moore (a story that's been debunked as a fraud from "Bowling for Columbine", at that!) and Chris Rock, and a DFL-appointee former police chief with a vested political interest in opposing concealed carry.

But none of it quite rang the big bell for me.

Then, while reading Instapundit this morning, it all came together - in a piece by Charles M. Brown, "Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist", in the Middle East Forum. The whole article is worth a read - it's going into my permanent bookmarks for future reference - but there are a few money quotes, here:
What did we know about Iraq? Hardly anything. Stephen Zunes, a "progressive" activist academic, once acknowledged that "peace activists largely share with most Americans a profound ignorance of the Middle East, Islam, and the Arab world."[6] This was certainly true for our group, but we didn't give it much thought. We saw ourselves as people of action, not reflection. Did we really need to learn the intricacies of Iraqi history and politics and plumb the broader political and economic issues? Who wanted to sit in the library when there were prayer vigils to organize? We opted to march, fast, and hold our signs. Here was a new cause, in need of champions, and that's just what we were. Iraqi sanctions had to go!
Why, indeed, learn the intricacies of Middle Eastern history (the Peacemakers reference the sanctions on their site) or shall-issue (their site isn't even riddled with inaccuracies - just Moore's fictions and the self-adulatory bloviations of sympathetic politicians) or any other issue where violence is a possible byproduct?

No, indeed - it's all about our agenda - and when you're an activist, the agenda is you, and you are your agenda!
We were so preoccupied with our own agenda that we didn't notice or care that the regime made use of us. When critics asked us whether the group was being exploited by the Iraqi regime, we obfuscated, and in so doing put Saddam and his minions on the same level as the U.S. government
Truth, objectivity, moral right and wrong - none of them hold a candle to the Agenda! And we are the agenda, right?

It's the message, dammit! It's not what you do, it's the message you send!

But it's OK - because unlike the activists you model yourself after - Martin Luther King, the Berrigans, Desmond Tutu - there are no real consequences. No snipers, no jail time...
All of these interrelated social movements are characterized by "dramaturgy"—the combination of drama and liturgy, with ostensible prayers for peace and dramatic protest action in the face of significant jail terms. For some of these activists, dramaturgical protest has become nearly synonymous with other (traditional) Catholic sacraments, as exemplified by the title of Jesuit priest John Dear's popular volume, The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience...in December 1998, Voices was notified that it was to be fined a total of $163,000 by OFAC. Nothing further happened until Bert Sacks, a Seattle member, was actually served with a $10,000 fine by OFAC in May 2002. Sacks declined to pay the fine, seeing it as unethical to give money to the government he saw as responsible for the situation in Iraq.

So with its own version of Berrigan-esque "dramaturgy," Voices fancied itself as heir to the mantle of the Catholic ultra-resistance, the Berrigans, and the Plowshares movement. There was just one problem: we refused the punishments that we defied the government to impose on us. The Berrigans were sentenced to significant jail terms and served years in prison for their protest activities. Voices always refused the (few) fines levied on it and escaped serious consequences.
Remember the Twin Cities' "Honeywell Project", which staged vigils for years outside various Honeywell plants? Hundreds of symbolic, "plastic handcuff" arrests - no jail time. Such a sacrifice!

OK - so compare the examples above - and in Brown's article - with what you read on the "Peacemakers" website. Especially read this snide little photo essay, featuring group poobah Chuck Handlon.

What's it scream? "It's all about me! MY beliefs! MY moral certitude! MY views! MY right to protest the injustices I see (absent any consequences to ME, of course)!"

Look at that smug little T-shirt; "Carries No Gun". Read the group's list of values:
# We will harbor no anger, but suffer the anger of the opponent.
# We will refuse to return the assaults, verbal or physical of the opponent. What opponents? What assaults? You're a bunch of pseudo-religious poseurs in ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA!
# We will refrain from insults and swearing. As should all of us!
# We will protect opponents from insults or attack. Really? Let's debate Shall-Issue. Let's see how your group protects it's opponents from insults; I've yet to meet an anti-shall-issue person who won't resort to insult, implied or explicit, sooner than later.
# If arrested, we will behave in an exemplary manner. We will not evade the legal consequences of our actions.But we won't be going out asking for the maximum potential fine, or insisting on metal handcuffs when we get our whiffleball arrests, will we?
# As members of a nonviolent demonstration, we will follow the directions of the designated coordinators. In the event of a serious disagreement, we will remove ourselves from the action. But since you're only going to events where there is no coherent opposition (right? Right?), that's not really going to be an issue, is it?
# Our attitude as conveyed through words, symbols and actions will be one of openness, friendliness, and respect toward all people we encounter, including police officers and workers. On your website, you tout the City of Duluth's "Guns Not Welcome" sign campaign, a pet project of ultraliberal Gary Doty. As a citizen who has never so much as stolen a candy bar in my life, I do not find this "open, friendly and respectful" - it is, in fact, corrosively bigoted.
# We will not damage property. Nor should you.
# We will not bring or use any drugs or alcohol. Whatever floats your boat!
# We will not run or use threatening motions. Er...that's common sense...
# We will carry no weapons. That'd be inconsistent, now, wouldn't it?
it's all about buffing the "peacemaker's" sense of invincible self-righteousness to a fine sheen, without fear of that self-righteousness being challenged in any meaningful way.

And maybe an unwillingness to face any challenge - a request for an email interview went unanswered.

It's still out there.

posted by Mitch Berg 7/30/2003 05:51:26 AM

??? - Either Blogger is acting wierd, or my server is.

UPDATE: It was my server.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/30/2003 04:19:01 AM

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Instapundit reports that the Pentagon's DARPA think tank has proposed a "Futures Market", where experts could "bet" on the likelihood and means of different types of terrorist attacks.

Traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The Pentagon called its latest idea a new way of predicting events and part of its search for the "broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."
Two senators - including North Dakota's Byron Dorgan - have been rolling in troughs of press coverage for criticizing the plan:
...Dorgan of North Dakota, said the idea seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax. "Can you imagine," Mr. Dorgan asked, "if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in — and is sponsored by the government itself — people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure?"

After Mr. Dorgan and his fellow critic, Ron Wyden of Oregon, spoke out, the Pentagon sought to play down the importance of a program for which the Bush administration has sought $8 million through 2005. The White House also altered the Web site so that the potential events to be considered by the market that were visible earlier in the day at www.policyanalysismarket.org could no longer be seen.

But by that time, Republican officials in the Senate were privately shaking their heads over the planned trading. One top aide said he hoped that the Pentagon had a good explanation for it.
I'm hoping the Pentagon uses the one really good explanation there is for such an idea.

It works.

The Pentagon, among others, have used the idea of the wager (and what is a futures market but informed wagering about commodities and events rather than sports?) to great effect.

Ironically, I just read about one of the most dramatic examples yesterday. In 1969, a Navy submarine, the USS Scorpion, disappeared on its way home from the Mediterranean. Craven - a primary architect of the nuclear power and Polaris missile programs - was one of many Navy scientists involved in trying to find the sub. They had very few clues to work from - a number of ambiguous sonar echoes from explosions, mainly.

Craven and many other scientists analyzed the data, and came up with several possible conclusions - although Craven's conclusion disagreed with most others (he believed that the submarine was east, rather than west, of the source of the original explosion.

Finally, to resolve the mystery, he gathered up all the information available (as well as some simulations he'd carried out), and put it in front of a group of experts. Each expert weighed the information in front of him, and wagered a bottle of Chivas Regal on their respective results.

Most of the bets trended toward a point east of the original echo. When a deep-submergence vehicle finally went to the scene (after fruitless weeks searching west of the echo, where the Navy brass felt it would be), the Scorpion was found - about 1000 yards from where Craven and most of the parties to the bet thought it would be.

The lesson? Opinions - and theories - are like, er, eyeballs. Just about everyone has a couple. But wagering - assigning a value to your theory - forces people to, as it were, put their money where their mouths are.

Josh Chafetz sums up the advantages:
Knowledge and expertise are widely diffused in any society. As I explained at length in a post on Hayek last year, complex systems function by finding ways to aggregate diffuse knowledge into simple indices, which then allow actors in the system to take advantage of knowledge that they don't actually have (e.g., no one knows exactly what Americans' breakfast cereal preference orderings are, but by watching the information-aggregating index that we call "price," producers can generally ensure that, when you go to the supermarket, you'll find the brand you want. Compare that to the shortages of some items and overproduction of others that centrally planned economies have produced). A futures market in terrorist attacks, while it sounds grisly, may help us to aggregate diffuse knowledge in a way that will prove superior to expert knowledge.
Wagering has the effect of forcing people to cut through the theories, clarify their thought processes, and get to the answers.

So what's the problem? Apparently, to Byron Dorgan, it's just not right, applying market principles - Gambling! - to predicting the future.

UPDATE: Vodkapundit beat me to the story by about eight hours (I didn't know about the "market" idea until I read it on Reynolds' site) - but reached the identical conclusion, for the same reasons, even citing the example of the search for the Scorpion. He also fully closes the loop of the stock market analogy:
The "market" for intelligence works, such as it does, opposite of the stock market. A guy who knows one important bit often can't effectively share it with another guy in another agency who knows another important bit – and so two plus two ends up equaling something quite less than four. Those who simply have good hunches generally aren't intel pros, and therefore aren't given much credence by the government. And so hidden knowledge remains hidden, and good guesses go unheeded. Then people die.

Now that is a truly grotesque system, yet that's how the intelligence world has operated for approximately ever.

Would investors put their money on the line if there weren't any profits to be made? Of course not. Yet today, we ask our military and intelligence professionals to risk their reputations and careers, working mostly in the dark, with zero extra incentive.
It'll be interesting to see exactly how many other bloggers came up with the Craven/Scorpion example independently.

FURTHER UPDATE: Spoke too soon. According to Boomshock, the Administration chickened out.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz just told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that PAM is going to be terminated: "[I]t sounds like maybe [DARPA] got too imaginative."
Sigh. Back to the status quo.

Given all the stories of the standard-issue government mismanagement at Homeland Security and the bungling of the intelligence in the War on Terror so far, can you imagine what the imposition of some kind of free market discipline could do for our effort?

Hopefully, this idea survives somehow.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/29/2003 09:06:39 AM

Monday, July 28, 2003

Hatchet Job - The City Pages, predictably, sounds off on the "Telegate" "Scandal", in a team report led by überliberal Steve Perry.

The story is an exercise in polemic masquerading as journalism. It starts in the lede:

Call him Babyface. Even Tim Pawlenty's political foes are prone to leavening their criticisms with testaments to what a personable guy he is. The quality is an asset to any politician, but it's especially useful to one with Pawlenty's slash-and-burn fiscal politics. If you conjure the names of other Midwestern governors who have pushed similar spending devolutions--Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson, Michigan's John Engler--you notice that most are polarizing figures with a reputation for public mean-spiritedness.
The "reputation" is cooked up entirely by people like Perry, for whom failure to scrape at the altar of statism is a functional definition of "mean-spirited".
One reason nice-guy politicians like Pawlenty fare so well is that people naturally assume they possess the other attributes we associate with nice people, such as fairness, guilelessness (relatively speaking; they needn't be Pollyannas, but they can't be inveterate schemers either), and a habit of treating others as they would like to be treated--in other words, of holding themselves to the same standards of conduct as everybody else.
Perry's article then goes on to abjectly fail to show us why Pawlenty is not any of these things.

Here's where Perry's frequently-excellent journalistic chops desert him:
Clearly none of this applies in Pawlenty's case, unless you take the governor's doe-eyed account of his current troubles at face value. We are asked to believe that he a) served actively and responsibly as a board officer for a telecom holding company, earning stock that he eventually cashed in for $10,000, yet never knew a thing about the questionable marketing habits of a key subsidiary; and b) gave no thought to concealment when he set up the functional equivalent of a blind shell company to receive tens of thousands of dollars in payments from a pal and telecom associate during his 2002 run for governor.
Two responses to this:
Board members do not, generally, get involved in the day to day operations of a company. They pick the officers that do the mucking about in the trenches. If problems in the day to day operations start mangling the bottom line, the board steps in and "inspires", or if necessary changes, the executive suite. A good board picks a good president, and then gets out of the way - while watching carefully.
The "blind shell company" is fairly common practice among independent contractors - for liability as well as tax reasons. I'm not surprised most Democrats - who tend to work in government service or for large nanny-companies - don't know this. But it's rather important.
Perry continues:
Pawlenty's flair for political calculation under pressure has never been more evident than on the Tuesday after the first Pioneer Press story broke. He spent an astonishing two hours talking to the press about allegations that a telecom whose board he'd served on was guilty of shady business practices; his manner was humble, though he never exactly stopped talking like a lawyer. "I don't want to say I wasn't responsible," he hedged. "All I want to say are the facts. Should I have known? If the answer is yes, then I am responsible, no question about it." If the governor balks, you must let him walk!
In the Perry world, giving the right answer (especially when one is a lawyer by trade and training) is apparently incriminating evidence.
During the session, Pawlenty offered an additional, oh by the way disclosure: He had also received large payments from his friend, political ally, and telecom associate Elam Baer during Pawlenty's run for governor last year. These fees (or not) were said to total considerably more than he earned as a legislator, yet the arrangement was never publicly disclosed. Moreover, he conceded, he could not really account for any specific legal projects he had worked on.
This, say sources close to the story, may be the only part where Pawlenty's behavior might step outside any rules - but only with the Lawyers' Board of Professional Responsibilty. Not that that
The governor only wanted to come clean about his associations with the Baer circle, he implied--though he had obviously felt no need to disclose any aspect of them before the shit hit the fan.
Perry fails to show us where there was any legal imperative to explicity disclose anything. Apparently Pawlenty is, alone among all politicians, supposed to provide
When the press sit-down was over, no one in attendance commented in writing on the mastery of what Pawlenty had done: He had used the occasion of a minor scandal to let the air out of a potentially major one. Public opinion usually does not look kindly upon undisclosed financial relationships between politically connected businesses and politicians who seem to have done no demonstrable work for their money.
Especially if the "disclosure rules" are made up from the whole cloth by a press that is hostile to a certain party.
So far the gambit is working reasonably well.
Ah, the old "The truth is duller than the fiction" gambit. Brilliant stroke, Governor!
Pawlenty's preemptive disclosure was hardly brilliant in one sense. Lots of nine-year-olds have already figured out there's less trouble if you 'fess up in toto when you're caught. But it was both shrewd and bold by the lights of contemporary political practice, which typically dictates more lies and stonewalling in the hope that people will get bored and forget about the whole mess. And they always do. Seen from that angle, maybe there is a bit of genius in Pawlenty's approach--by his Tuesday revelation, he slipped a real live baby into the tepid bathwater of the board membership scandal. And now, barring fresh disclosures, all he has to do is wait for it to be thrown out. The DFL has already indicated through its silence that it won't be pursuing the affair seriously (see Robson, What Hearings? What Scandal?).
Perhaps because, like with the American Bankers "scandal", if you dig far enough under the surface, all the "wrong" names pop up?

Perry now starts to wax indignant:
The Friends of Tim are right when they claim that their actions are garden-variety stuff. The real outrage is the political culture in which they are garden-variety stuff. Friends-gate is one of the better glimpses we have had of the workaday connections between business and politics--the fruits of what Pawlenty calls "networking"--since former Senator Bob Packwood's diaries were pried loose by congressional subpoena in 1995.

Everywhere you look in this saga you see friends helping friends--which is to say, insiders helping themselves, and with nothing resembling the openness and probity they expect commoners to display in their daily affairs.
So, again, Steve Perry, what was wrong?

That Pawlenty incorporated his relationship with NewTel? Every indy worth his or her weight in incorporation documents does that.

Not reporting the legal consulting according to LBPR rules? Well, then let's call this a "lawyerly rules violation" and cut the crap, shall we?
The Pawlenty crowd, after all, consists of legendarily tough-minded, fiscally responsible, pay-as-you- go people, avatars of the philosophy of government that says a man never stands so tall as when he stoops to collect co-payments from a single mother. There are no safety nets in Pawlenty's ideal world, except for the ones that people of goodwill and means construct for each other on an informal and largely surreptitious basis.
And in Steve Perry's world, there are no gradations to the right of, say, Paul Wellstone; beyond that point, there be only dragons.

Now, Perry slips into social critic mode:
And while we are on the subject of rectitude and hypocrisy, a few words about the FOT's chosen industry. Elam Baer, the telecom entrepreneur at the center of it all, told reporters that he entered the field because it represented a "great business opportunity." What sort of opportunity, exactly?

Small outfits like the NewTel companies are purely marketing operations. They buy long-distance capacity (time on phone lines, that is) from large carriers and scramble to resell it to consumers, the theory being that their low overhead costs then allow them to undercut the big guys' rates and thrive through the open market. In practice, though, the telecom business is full of small-time, often transient operators with the same idea. The resulting competitive climate is one in which the surest way to get ahead fast is to hustle customers through some version of the technique known as slamming, which involves the use of telemarketers to switch consumer accounts to your service with deceptively obtained consent or none at all. Originally it was the big companies, not the little ones, that pioneered the practice, but now it is most notoriously the province of the minor players. As Pawlenty partisans have pointed out, a great many small telecoms have complaint records as bad or worse.

This is the business culture into which Pawlenty and his circle happily waded, and in a certain sense they did thrive there. Carlene Hughes, a Washington state utilities investigator, told the Pi-Press: "New Access seems to be good at slamming and seems to be good at doing it for a long time--and then moving on when the states catch up with them." Another company that Baer co-founded with Vicki Grunseth, QAI, was the subject of similar claims. Following the early 1997 raid by Wisconsin officials of a firm connected to QAI, state investigators wrote, "Clearly, a pattern of misrepresentations and deception is being used by QAI Inc. to induce prospective customers into ordering their service." Later that year Baer and Grunseth sold out their interest in QAI, and subsequently launched NewTel.
News flash; telecom is a sleazy business. Stop the presses.

So show us where Pawlenty either did anything illegal, or anything unethical as a board chairman.

Now, he starts to get into familiar territory:
Fast forward. The brightest star in this little constellation runs for governor in 2002 with financial assistance from one of the others. This seeming campaign contribution--and why not think of it as such? the governor reasserted through a flack in last Saturday's Pi-Press that he would not release evidence of any actual work he did for the money--goes undisclosed until other details surface regarding Tim Pawlenty's connections to Elam Baer.

Pawlenty wins the election and appoints a man recommended by Baer, a US Bank mortgage executive named Glenn Wilson, to head the Commerce Department. Wilson in turn hires another FOT, gubernatorial campaign manager Tim Commers, whose résumé includes marketing directorship of the oft-criticized QAI and an episode in which he was sued for allegedly running a telemarketing operation that misrepresented his anti-abortion group as another, better known one. When this old news comes to light, Commers resigns, adding that he has never done a single improper thing. "Why should I put myself through this when I can go back to the private sector?" he demands. Indeed.
Commers is a bit player.
But mostly the Friends of Tim prosper. Pat Awada, who owned the verifications company charged with making sure New Access didn't engage in slamming, moves on to greater things as well. Her membership in the Pawlenty circle helps her gain the Republican nomination for state auditor. She sells her company to one of NewTel's co-founders, David Buss, and gets paid partly in NewTel stock. Because she now occupies the auditor post and is charged with keeping an eye on state finances, she is the most shrill of the FOT after the story breaks, even going so far as to claim a success rate of 99.9 percent in her New Access endeavors.
And...Steve? Was that claim false?
I think it's fairly safe to call this ridiculous on its face. In consumer affairs, especially those involving the murky world of telemarketing, typically only a small fraction of the wronged even know where to turn to complain, and a smaller fraction still actually bothers.
So...you think it's ridiculous, based on your assumptions - but you reall don't know?

Just checking.
There is no facet of all this that doesn't stink. Also none that really violates the evolving norms of Banana Republican governance--a phenomenon hardly restricted to Republicans, we should note, though they do own most of the playing field now.
Mr. Perry - if it's "hardly restricted to Republicans", then why is the City Pages - which prides itself on journalistic prowess - only now getting to the story?

Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 11:10:32 AM

Who Would Wellstone Quote? - As part of the Nine Dwarves' race to the left for the nomination, the Wellstone name and legacy are getting invoked all over the place.

Is this a good thing for the Dems?:
"Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said that the Democratic hopefuls are engaged in smart politics.

'Wellstone was on the far left of the Senate, but his philosophy is actually precisely where most of the activists in the Democratic Party are,' he said. 'How better to appeal to the actual Democratic electorate than to invoke the name of one of their secular saints?'

David Wellstone, the senator's eldest son, said the candidates 'understand that people loved the fire and the passion and the integrity that my dad brought to the job. And that was all focused on improving people's lives, and that's why they're mentioning him.'

Had Wellstone lived, his son said, he would have been under great pressure to enter the 2004 race."
No doubt he would have been.

And this is the part I love:
"What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home," Al From and Bruce Reed wrote in a memo distributed by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). From is founder of the centrist DLC, and Reed is its president.

That annoyed progressives, including Kelly Young, executive director of the Washington-based 21st Century Democrats.

"To claim that the activists of the party are liberal elites is absurd. . . . We're the party of the people," she said.
Insert comment implying eye-rolling disgust here.
Young said that many party activists are frustrated that the Democratic Party has not backed "bold progressive policies." They are actively working for progressives in the 2004 election, she said, and Democratic candidates are taking note.

"They recognize that the strength and the power right now is in the progressive movement, and that is what Senator Wellstone embodied," Young said.

Sabato noted that invoking Wellstone's name could be risky for Democratic candidates.

"The further they go to the left, the less chance they have of beating Bush," he said.

He predicted that once Democrats settle on a nominee and focus on the general election, there will be far less talk of Wellstone.

"It's those suburban voters and centrist voters that Democrats have to win. . . . They're not Wellstone voters," he said.
The invocations of Wellstone mean exactly what the election of Wellstone meant, 13 years ago; a sign of how far to the left the main DFL base is. In the Minnesota of 1990, that wasn't a drag. In the US of 2003, it is.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 03:51:45 AM

American History - For all the Europeans caterwaul about Americans' failure to understand American history, it'd seem (says George Will) that the Euros could study ours a bit more, especially as re their current attempt to craft an EU Constitution:
"Asked to which participant in America's constitution-making he would compare himself, Giscard replied: 'I tried to play a little bit the role that Jefferson played, which was to instill leading ideas into the system. Jefferson was a man who wrote and produced elements that consolidated the Constitution.'

Not exactly. When the Constitution's framers convened in Philadelphia in 1787, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris. When he read what the convention had wrought, he was distressed, particularly about the potential for consolidation of power in the central government.

Europeans believe that American foreign policy would profit from a deeper understanding of European history, and from the tragic sense of history that comes from such an understanding. That may be true.

This certainly is: Europe's evolving domestic arrangements would profit from what clearly has not yet occurred -- a serious study of ambiguities and difficulties that have surrounded the oldest and most successful written constitution, America's."
Read it all, of course.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 03:42:36 AM

Moral, Just - Andrew Sullivan, on why the war in Iraq was a just one.

Much worth reading here, but I loved this clip:
"But all the evidence in Iraq points to something else: an extraordinarily successful war followed by slow but measurable progress in putting back together again a brutalized and fractured country. Think back for a moment to what we once feared might happen in the aftermath of a war to depose Saddam. Here are some of the predictions, cited last week by Paul Wolfowitz: civil war; destroyed oil wells; environmental catastrophe; famine; a refugee crisis; and the possibility of cleaning up after chemical and biological attacks. None of this happened - in large part because of the astonishingly innovative and swift war plan. The most staggering result is that Kurds, Shia and Sunnis are still on board for a united, democratic country. But instead of reporting on this achievement, the press, which in large part opposed the war in the first place, has done all it can to turn this success into a 'quagmire.'
Nothing you haven't heard before on the blogosphere, or on talk radio.

But the message bears repeating, because there are still plenty of people out there who just don't get it yet, and won't hear it from the major media.
Yes, there are obvious problems. The electricity grid has proven hard to get back and running again;
And not, it should be noted, because of American malfeasance or incompetence, or Baathist resistance. Like with every totalitarian dictatorship, the things that work, do so because of either fear or, essentially, verbal tradition. Which was what kept the old Iraqi power system going.

Without the Baathist administrators in power - no power. We have to start, almost literally, from square one. It'll be worth it in the long run - to everyone but the Times and the BBC.
...the capitulation of the Baathist thugs in the war means that many dead-enders are still at large and doing all they can to inflict damage in American troops in order to weaken resolve in the U.S.; we over-estimated the need for troops and under-estimated the need for trained policemen in the aftermath of conflict; we were too slow to recruit Iraqis for internal security forces; and so on. These are all forgivable mistakes. But they are all remediable; and steps are being taken to ensure that obvious problems are tackled and resolved. "
Two months since the end of the war. The left is baying at the moon at problems that are not only part of the normal friction of rebuilding post-totalitarian countries - they are comparable to the difficulties we faced in rebuilding Germany and Japan, after allowing for the different contexts of the times.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 03:23:04 AM

Johnny Qum Lately - It's been galling, lately, to watch the rats climbing back on the re-floating ship.

"Dissent is patriotism!", they say as they slip over the gunwales. To them, it's not the force and cunning of American arms and diplomacy that ended the theo-judicial murders in Afghanistan, or brought down the genocidal Stalinists, Hussein and Sons. No, indeed - it was their dissent; their principled dissidence from ~~the guy who won the 2000 election~~ our lone-wolf, "cowboy" foreign policy. Yep; the human rights victory that was won "Not In Our Name" is suddenly to their credit.

Lileks throws them back in the drink, and their luggage with them for good measure:
Look. I don’t have “political misgivings” about a Liberian intervention; I have practical misgivings about using American forces in TFNs, or Totally Farked Nations. I’m on the fence here. I’ve heard compelling arguments against intervention, and I've heard solid arguments about the uniqueness of an American presence in Liberia, considering their attitude towards its distant thrice-removed paternal figure. But if I decide it’s all a big mistake, and I put up a lawn sign and write letters to the editor and show up for candlelight vigils and all the other examples of symbolic busywork, I don’t get to be thrilled when Monrovia is peaceful and thriving again. I get to be embarrassed.
It presumes, of course, that they're capable of admitting fault.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 03:14:38 AM

It's Everywhere - Not only is the US not the only country with a health insurance problem - but sometimes the countries that are held up as the best examples are the ones with the most intractable problems, as we see in this Frankfurter Allgemeine article.
“The current system cannot survive the demographic changes ahead of it,“ said Lauterbach, who heads the Institute of Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology of the University of Cologne and is a member of the Rürup Commission, a body of experts and representatives of various social and professional groups appointed by the German government to develop proposals for reforming the health, social benefits and pension programs.
And no, bussing people to Denmark isn't the answer.

The scary part? Germany's health care system is one of the more conservative in Europe, compared with, say, Sweden or the Netherlands.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 12:46:24 AM

The Blog Slate - The blog The Smallest Minority is proposing an all-blogger slate for the next election.

Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds is the Prez candidate, of course. Given my employment status, I guess Labor is a natural slot for me.

More as events warrant.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/28/2003 12:22:41 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