Saturday, October 11, 2003
The Weekend - Posting will be light this weekend, as I ponder re-creating a pathetic simulation of a social life.
Will it work? Well, count the posts between now and Monday morning...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/11/2003 11:25:14 AM
Friday, October 10, 2003
Class - Limbaugh's statement on his addiction.
Here's the money bit:I am not making any excuses. You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes. They are the role models. I am no victim and do not portray, myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem.
I've known a lot of addicts over the years. Many of them toss the blame for their condition off on somone...anyone but themselves. It's always someone else's fault.
Limbaugh does not seem to be doing this.
As to the legal issues:At the present time the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete. So, I will only say that the stories you have read and heard contain inaccuracies and distortions, which I will clear up when I am free to speak about them.
Sorry, liberals; five'll get you ten Limbaugh can plead guilty, get treatment as a first offender, and he'll never darken a courtroom door again. Just like he majority of pill addicts, of all races, classes and paces, that enter the system.
(Via Infinite Monkeys)
Classless - They think they smell blood.
The Daily Kos: "Addiction is never a good thing, but for Rush Limbaugh, it is karmic payback. Now an honest, rhetorically consistent Rush would have no choice but to surrender to the authorities and plea bargain himself a significant jail term...Now that he has been found, there's nothing left than to convict him and send him up the river." Riiiight. Just like the majority of other first-time offenders with no criminal record and zero flight risk.
"Atrios" sounds just a little too excited. And like he's been watching too much "Court TV": "I just got the tail end of it, but apparently Rush was having his drugs Fed-Exed to him. If they were crossing state lines..."
And Aurabass from Rushlimbaughtomy, who seems to have learned writing from a tribe of hereditary Tourette's sufferers...well, I won't bother linking to him. Too depressing.
Enjoy it while you can, kids. This, and your whining about Arnold, the War, and the Economy, is all going to be a benefit to Bush next year.
Josh Marshall: and Cal Pundit: Hey, they had enough class to avoid the subject - so far!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 05:42:31 PM
Catapulted Miles From The Tree - When I was in elementary school, I was a tall, skinny, uncoordinated, greasy-haired dork who was cursed with the reputation as the "School Brain". Some things never change.
Wednesday, I volunteered to help chaparone my son's fifth-grade class on a field trip to Exchange City (a Junior Achievement model city, where kids learn what adults do all day by doing adult-ish jobs).
They were short of volunteers, so I helped out the three fifth grade girls who were in the "Distribution Center" - a little warehouse, where they took and filled orders and made and collected invoices.
"You're Sam's dad?" two of the little girls asked, as if they'd run into Lance Bass' father, doing everything short of squealing like Davy Jones was in the room. "Where is he working?"
It should go without saying that Sam didn't inherit my looks; he's very tall (like me) and while he looked like Calvin when he was six (and acted like him, too), he's become a little blond fifth-grade dreamboat, and he's loving it.
He's on the phone with one of the girls from the Distribution Center right now.
This could be very, very dangerous...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 04:51:22 PM
Schwarzenegger, The Strib, and the Seven Deadly Sins - Today's Star/Tribune editorial about the California Recall goes beyond the usual Strib fare.
We're used to the smug, classist little diatribes the Strib inflicts on the readership. Today's piece is very, very bad; in it, the Strib editors exhibit not only preening entitlement and smug arrogance, but also rank hypocrisy. We'll get to that in a bit.
But today's piece is worse. Much worse. I wrote a long, detailed "fisking" of the editorial - and realized that it didn't go nearly far enough. Today's editorial goes beyond bad - to the point that we have to use metaphysical units of measurement to judge it.
For today's editorial exhibits all seven of the deadly sins - Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Greed and Sloth.
Follow me, here:
Greed - The article starts badly:Most parents have witnessed a version of the Toys "R" Us scene in which a child, caught up in the frenzy of toy overload, cries out, "Mommy, I want it, and I want it now!"
Leave aside the preening sense of superiority (we'll get back to that under "Pride", below); the Strib has it backwards.
California politics, always a raucous affair, has become over the last 30 years more shrill, impatient and petulant, more of a toy-store experience. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ascendance to California's governorship is the latest episode. Voters in the largest state knew what they didn't want -- more Gray Davis, whom they judged an unlikeable, indecisive politician of the worst sort, who had made a mess of things, although they weren't sure quite how.
The voters aren't the children; the government of California is. It's a child that spent its already-too-large allowance, and lied about doing its homework. And the parents - the people - after years of permissive overindulgence, finally lowered the boom, and grounded little Gray.
The Strib Editorial Board acted the same way during last spring's budget wrangling at the Capitol; they joined institutional government in stomping its feet and screaming "give us more money. NOW!" And it's not working.
And boy, the spoiled little brat is howling away in his room!
Lust - Lust is extreme covetousness - and the Strib covets having things both ways, on two different fronts.
In the editorial, they invoke...De Tocqueville! The best profile of today's angry American voter may have been best described 170 years ago by the astute observer Alexis de Tocqueville. He noticed a rising class of "eager and apprehensive men of small property [who] continually and in a thousand ways feel they might lose [it]."
Let's forget for a moment that the Strib's editorial board detests the notions of limited government that De Tocqueville so admired about American society in the early 19th century.
And the Strib's view of the "men of small property" varies - depending entirely on their choice at the polls. As we'll see in our next entry...
Anger - The Strib is comfortably smug that it knows what's good for the little guy: "Society's real have-nots tend not to vote, and when they do, as in Tuesday's election, tend not to vote for candidates like Schwarzenegger." But when the little guy - the "men of small property" that De Tocqueville referred to - get all uppity and start calling talk radio stations or recalling incompetent (Democrat) politicians? It's time to open a can of righteous patrician whoop-ass on the proles!In modern terms, it's people who believe (often mistakenly) that they've made it wholly on their own and that, except for government's interference, everyone would follow their example. Government, thus, joins a lineup of villains that includes immigrants, terrorists, liberals and other bogeymen who conspire to take away the essence of American success.
Did you get that, Little Guy? Vote for the Democrat, and you're a noble "have-not". Vote for a Republican, though, and the Strib will lump you in with the Birchers and the Montana Freemen!
California's ground is especially fertile for anger politics. Its cyclical economy, its über-populist system of initiative and recall, and its media-driven political discourse all combine to make the state increasingly ungovernable.
And what's this "increasingly ungovernable" bilge? The recall initiative followed state law, and resulted in the orderly transition of power. No tanks in the streets. No firing squads. Of course, what the Strib means is "ungovernably by the Democrat".
This is the sort of bigotry that springs from hatred - the ultimate anger. And it's no less deadly a sin when you couch it in the condescending, patrician terms the Strib uses.
Envy - Even as the Strib insults it's opponents, it wants what they have:Schwarzenegger is the latest successful product of the anger industry that now runs American politics...
"Dammit - if only our anger industry were winning!"
Gluttony - The Strib is a glutton for punishment: [Minnesota's] sizable deficit would have been half as large had legislators of both major parties listened to Jesse Ventura.
Minnesota's deficit would have been nonexistent if they'd listened to the Republicans and held the line on squandering a decade's worth of surpluses on permanent spending!
Sloth - In this case, intellectual sloth: Still, we wish Schwarzenegger well. Perhaps a rebound in the high-tech economy will do most of the work for him. Minnesotans know that celebrity hulks don't necessarily make bad governors.
Many states have budget problems -and an economic rebound (the one the Strib so fears) will fix most of them. Gray Davis added rapacious spending, a dose of lying to the people, and a "tax 'em all, let G-d sort 'em out" arrogance to the suppurating stew - and the people called him on it.
And it's also intellectually slothful to call Schwarzenegger a "Celebrity Hulk". He made a fortune in action movies, sure. He also made himself a quarter-billionaire as a businessman. Dismissing Schwarzenegger as a "celebrity hulk" is more or less like calling a successful businesswoman a "hot broad" - myopic and intellectually lazy for most, misleading and biased for a news organization.
Pride - Pride comes before all other sins; the Strib marinades in misplaced self-glorification:It's the contradictory part that explains both Schwarzenegger's victory and his probable failure as governor: People pass measures that demand more government accomplishments, then eliminate the revenues to pay for them. Only in a movie -- or perhaps a political campaign -- could Schwarzenegger promise to erase a possible $27 billion deficit without a contribution from Tocqueville's class of middling and eternally fearful stakeholders.
So in this paragraph, the Strib:
Are these not, in fact, the very definitions of excessive pride?
So as we see, the Star Tribune editorial board has sinned mightily. Repentance is the only answer!
Any bets on when we see it?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 10:17:26 AM
Leadership - Yo, wazzup, ma hizzomies and hizzos? OG Mitch B kicking da noyeeeze...
...er, sorry. I, like many of the kids today, have been sucked up by the commercialization of gangsta culture. It's pretty irresistable - watching MTV and BET, seeing the rappers with the cars and the women and the goodies - as ridiculous as some of it looks, it's hard to rizzist the sizzeductive call of babes, money, guns and cars, nowumsayin?
People - especially black kids - are being sold a glorified bill of goods. What's the natural response?
Go after a stupid game.
Black leaders - or perhaps the term is "black leaders" - are up in arms over Ghettopoly, a ghetto take-off on "Monopoly" (duh): Black leaders are outraged over a new board game called "Ghettopoly" that has "playas" acting like pimps and game cards reading, "You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50."
James, from the Infinite Monkeys - who, sources tell us, is black - has the solution to the problem:
Black clergymen say the game, the brainchild of a Pennsylvania man, should be banned, and have called for a boycott of Urban Outfitters unless the company stops selling Ghettopoly in its chain of clothing stores.
Urban Outfitters has not publicly commented on the issue, and did not return a call seeking comment on Wednesday. "In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, everybody acts as if they're in a rap video. It's beyond caricature, man. It's satire. It's so satire, it's beyond satire, and into something deep and meaningful: and that is, the truth.
I doubt I can vote, but I'm here to lend moral support.
And the truth is Black Leaders , you're barking up the wrong tree. Like you always do, Black Leaders. Reflexively lashing out at Urban Outfitters, when they're not even the purveyors of the 'ghetto thing'...Black people have turned making stereotypical images of themselves into a multi-million dollar industry.
And you're complaining about a board game. See, that just shows how out of touch you are, Black Leaders. I didn't vote for you guys and you guys don't speak for me, and to be frank, I don't particularly like you either.
Anyhow, the whole point of this post, I've decided to take inspiration from my home state of California, and I'm starting a recall of Black Leaders. All of them.
The way we'll do it is, we'll start with Jesse Jackson and move our way down. There'll be some I'll keep around. Like the Rev. Al Sharpton. Because, y'know, he serves my purposes. But believe me, after the Democratic Primaries are over, he's a goner too."
I've always wondered - how do black Americans feel about their self-appointed leadership? I know that locally, not every Afro-American is thrilled about being "represented" on the state level by the likes of Randy Staten and Spike Moss.
Anyone?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 06:34:59 AM
Hatred - I can write for days over the course of a year and a half about Democratic hatred of the President.
And then Ott writes this and I hardly need say more.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 06:33:38 AM
We All Scream for Ice Cream - Star Spangled Ice Cream - "ice cream with a conservative flavor" - is now on the market, selling ice cream via the 'net.
That’s good news for gourmet ice cream fans, and for Gun Owners of America – because from now straight through to the start of the 2004 Fall hunting season, Star Spangled Ice Cream will donate $1 to the educational work of the Gun Owners Foundation Gun Safety Project every time a quart of our politically incorrect flavor GUN NUT is purchased over the Internet....GUN NUT is not endorsed by some of America’s biggest celebrities -- Barbara Streisand, Rosie O’Donnell, Al Franken, Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin and the Dixie Chicks, to name just a few, have enthusiastically avoided buying our ice cream.
Tempting. Very tempting.
Flavors available:
After I get a job, I'm going to order some. Maybe in time for my housewarming/Loya Jirga.
(Via Spoons)
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 06:00:18 AM
Intelligence Revisited - Austin Bay with a fascinating piece - the second of three parts - on the history of intelligence in Iraq. It covers successes and failures, and the majority in between.:
One of many fascinating excerpts:"A major mistake occurred in 1996. Clinton directed CIA to back anti-Saddam dissidents. In August 1996, however, Saddam's forces struck northern Iraq and killed Iraqi dissidents. The United States failed to stop the assault, and the policy of 'protecting Kurds' was damaged. Some dissidents called it a 'little Budapest,' alluding to the U.S. failure to support the Hungarian revolt against the USSR in 1956. Many nations concluded the United States wasn't serious about toppling Saddam. The 1991 coalition, already frayed, unraveled some more.
Worth a read.
Yet Clinton's 1998 Desert Fox air campaign, unleashed after U.N. inspectors withdrew, now appears to have severely damaged Saddam's weapons programs. But in 1998, the degree of damage was tough to ascertain. Without U.N. inspectors, Iraqi defector allegations and electronic intelligence became 'best' sources. Both indicated Saddam pursued illegal programs. Defectors, however, have their own agendas."
(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 06:00:14 AM
Follow The Bouncing BCCI - The Berg Consumer Confidence Index took a quick tumble yesterday on news that the interview last Friday had come a cropper.
Although things were still basically healthy (on the strength of two current contracting jobs), the BCCI (like the stock market itself) is all about psychology. So while I headed to yet another interview yesterday, all the ingredients were there for a major drop:
So it didn't seem all that promising.
Boy, was I wrong. Cool interview, great time, and it could turn into an amazingly cool job - one of those "Jack of all trades" things I love so much. And it's in the Warehouse District of downtown Minnepolis, which after nearly ten years of almost invariably commuting to Eden Prairie or Chanhassen or Minnetonka or Maple Grove (from my place in St. Paul), is almost dreamy.
So the BCCI could spike one way or the other fairly shortly here.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/10/2003 05:59:23 AM
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Quagmire - Elder from Fraters Libertas, gritting his teeth and talking through PTSD thick enough to choke a water buffalo, on another quagmire, long ago:
"Somehow I ended up with one of my friends and we pathetically slogged our way through snow drifts looking not unlike the Grand Armee retreating from Moscow. Soon we were crossing over the same English Coulee that had demarcated our earlier triumphs. This time there was two instead of two hundred. And we weren't on a bridge but on the barely frozen ice of the stream. Barely frozen enough so that we each fell through a number of times before reaching the other side. "
Read it all.
If only they'd planned to win the peace.
And by the way - nobody did snowballs better than Watson Hall at Jamestown College.
Take that, Kroeze Hall! Eat hot...er...snow.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/9/2003 06:29:58 PM
Crazy Day - The BCCI has been bouncing around like Pee Wee Herman after a couple of Vente Frapuccinos.
Decent, although not show-stopping, interview last Friday for a six-month contract gig. Not supposed to find anything out until "later this weeK", says the vendor. That same day, landed a little 20 to 40 hour gig (with a company that I interviewed with last May, and could be considered a "tryout" for a fulltime gig, although there are no guarantees). Then, late yesterday, I got a call for another of those little one-week contracts that paid my bills so handily through the summer. Plus an interview for an interesting-looking part-time job that'll pay my "must-pay" bills (or hugely supplement the income from the above contracts) for the next 3-5 months, if I get it.
So I'm as busy as a ferret on Peruvian flake right now - not unusual, except I'm being paid for it, which is a nice switch.
Blogging may be a tad light until tonight.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/9/2003 08:58:18 AM
No Bias Here. Move Along - So read this paragraph:
"A campaign that began with the late-night comedian may be notarized by him. And so we've had our little revolution and the new emperor is Der Gropenfuhrer, which, in Austrian, means:
So where did that graf, with all its atrocious invocation of naziism, come from? Some extremist lefty blog? Indymedia? MoveOn?
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger."
No, silly. It was Steve Lopez in the LA Times.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/9/2003 06:56:27 AM
You Know Who You Are - You belong to a political party that claims to represent the average American - but when they vote for Republicans anyway, you declare that most Average Americans are morons.
You believe the media are really, really conservative.
You believe that Bush was "selected, not elected", and that if only [insert conspiratorial Republican-dominated body] not interfered with the recount, Bush would have won.
Voters, media, institutions - you think the whole world is a conspiracy of dunces, who are thwarting your righteous mission to create a better world!
And it's your opponents who are paranoid.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/9/2003 06:47:16 AM
Piled Higher and Deeper - The Coalition of Black Churches has succeeded in scuppering the nomination of David Jennings for Minneapolis School Superintendant.
The group scuttles away from the "race card" label - and it's probably fair that they do.
But their real reason is almost as bad: "Terrill said that in the end, the Jennings controversy was not so much about race as it was process and qualifications. Jennings does not have a Ph.D., and search guidelines say superintendent candidates should have one.
Jennings "only" has a Bachelors' Degree. That seems to be a sticking point.
'I'm sick and tired of people trying to make this a race issue,' Terrill said. 'It's not. If they put forth a black candidate that was as unqualified as Mr. Jennings, we'd have the same problem. But if they put forth a white candidate with a Ph.D. who is qualified, we will support that candidate.'"
Personally? I think the Minneapolis district in particular would be improved if they found a solid administrator who was capable of making tough decisions and facing down the most rapacious demands of the teachers union, degree be damned. Remember - the PhD they're talking about is Education. Read a few episodes of the St. Cloud Scholars for background; the more PhDs in Education I meet, the less qualified I think they are to teach, much less run school districts.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/9/2003 06:17:00 AM
Move Out - Classically Liberal took off on a point I started, analysing the history and hypocrisy of "MoveOn".
The piece starts with a fascinating study in two-facedness - and ends with this:So, "voters" see the need for change. But not MoveOn -- no, they just spent $500,000 in support of the status quo in Sacramento. This is the most banal, insipid response I can possibly imagine. "We lost the battle, but we still hate Bush, so we haven't lost the war." Makes me wonder if MoveOn, blinkered from reality in their popular opinion distortion field of the Bay Area (see previous election map of California), can muster any support for its platform beyond the normal partisan Bush haters. This gets back to the point Dan Weintraub made in his blog about the recall -- there is something significantly wrong with the state of affairs in California -- and the Democrats still don't get it.
Give it a look...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/9/2003 05:59:29 AM
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Couldn't Have Said It Better - I keep going back and forth about commenting, even a little, on the opinions found on left-leaning blogs.
On the one hand, it only encourages them.
On the other hand, there is a serious current of contempt for the voter (or at least the voter that forsakes the One True Faith Party) that bubbles out of the "moonbat" realm and infects Democrat thought at large.
I noted the comments of my "favorite" lefty blog, "Hesiod", earlier today in my rundown of leftblog reactions to the Schwarzenegger landslide. Apparenlty, "Hesiod" added a further, even more churlish and snide comment.
Jay Reding covers it. Give it a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 04:53:24 PM
So There's Hope - At least in theory...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 04:27:30 PM
Take Toys. Leave Sandbox. Go Home - Arnold won, and won big.
The Democrat party in California has been given a rebuke that may, possibly, foreshadow the one the party is going to get nationwide in 13 months.
The left of the blogosphere is not happy about it.
I went through some of the foremost, and other, lefty blogs to survey opinion.
"The Daily Kos" says:In the end, it doesn't look like it was close. Arnold is the new governor of California.
Puh-leeze. Stephen Green had the best response to this:
For six months.Will there be a recall petition against Arnold? You bet there will be, just as there has been against every California governor since, approximately, the Mesozoic Era.
And yet this is the first time it's worked. If nothing else, voter fatigue will scuttle any further such effort going anywhere beyond Democrat die-hards.
But the die-hards are out there. Kos prints an email from a correspondent that signifies the denial some of these people are in - my comments are inset in italics:Democracy is a funny business. [Those peasants sure pull some fast ones when you aren't watching them, don't they?]
Understandable from a site run by a guy who works for Howard Dean ,perhaps.
A robust majority of likely voters disapproves of Gray Davis. Still, Davis would probably win a head-to-head contest against Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, McClintock or anybody else on the ballot today.
How can this be? [Read: "I'll do anything to avoid facing the facts facing me right now]
...Davis probably prevails in a Condorcet election, or an IRV election, or a "Cajun primary" election, or a traditional party-nominee general election. Davis probably wins any election except today's election. [Read: I'm going to toss out unfalseable, unproveable hypotheses and wonky fantasies until I feel better]
We move on. Calpundit's Kevin Drum starts out reasonably enough, taking on Kos' whine:With all due respect, can I beg everyone to please not go there? Trying to mount a recall against Arnold would be bad for California, bad for the Democratic party, and only distracts attention from the bigger task at hand: electing a Democrat to the White House in 2004. It's time for the circus to stop.
So far so good. But read the comments - it's scary. There are people out there who believe with a straight if beet-red face that:
This is one time that we should accept defeat graciously [That's Calpundit's strike-out] and turn our attention to more important things. Remember, anger is only useful if it's focused and channeled on something worthwhile, and recalling Arnold isn't it. Let's not blow it.
And of course, through it all - fear, paranoia and hatred of George W. Bush, along with a creeping realization that yesterday's election was a major shot in Bush's arm. Which it was.
Howard Dean's campaign blog is, as Hewitt says, in deep denial:"Today's recall election in California was not about Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. This recall was about the frustration so many people are feeling about the way things are going. All across America, George Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy are undermining state budgets, causing cutbacks in services and increases in local property taxes. Were recalls held in every state, it's quite possible that 50 governors would find themselves paying the price for one president's ruinous national economic policies.
Right. That's why Californians not only elected a governor that largely mirrors Bush's "ruinous" policies, but voted him in by a landslide.
Josh Marshall is apparently drowning his sorrows, and hasn't posted on the results as of 2:30AM.
Atrios (once again - liberals, what is with the pretentious noms de plume?) asks the same question we Republicans were asking on election night, 2000:Hey, maybe he won, but the media could have waited...you know.. until F*****G ONE PERCENT OF OFFICIAL RETURNS WERE IN. Just to pretend.
The comments on Atrios are as manically-depressed as on CalPundit's site.
...jokes aside, this is really serious. I mean, they may truly have enough information to make this call - I have no idea - but I have *never* seen an election called when zero percent of the returns were in, particularly an election with so many absentee ballots. What the hell?
I'm not in denial here, I'm quite ready to accept the Gubernator, but this is about responsibility in an issue that the media spent years agonizing about.
"Hesiod"- a man who veritably defines "moonbat" - is just plain above it all::COUNTERSPIN CHALLENGE: OK. I'm willing to be convinced that the voters of California are not the biggest idiots on Earth. If you voted for Arnold, post a comment on this thread. Explain why you did. And don't tell me things like "Gray Davis and Bustamante sucked."
"Davis Lost because Voters are Stupid!" Please, Democrats - run with this!
Explain why they "sucked," and then tell me how Arnold is going to be BETTER. Please be specific on that last point, by the way.
Back up all your claims with quotes or links, if possible.
And...please no pie in the sky baloney about how Arnold will "shake up the system," or "get things done" in Sacramento. "Reasons" like those PROVE my theory that the voters are a bunch of ignorant knuckleheads.
Oliver Willis' post on the subject combined small doses of denial ("Arnold is a movie star. End of story.") with some common sense:The California GOP is Still Lost In The Woods
Which was on the plan, I'm sure, in any case. The key point being, it might even be worth spending; California, along with Minnesota, could conceivably generate some serious votes, even electoral ones, for Bush next year (Minnesota being rather more likely, which is why yesterday's election was so interesting.
They needed Arnold Schwarzenegger and a gubernatorial recall to win a major seat in the state. Unless Arnold works a miracle, the next governor will be a Democrat and the state will remain firmly in the hands of the Democrats, alleged 60% GOP notwithstanding. President Bush, however, is advised to spend as much money in that state as possible.
Finally, the barely literate fellow behind "Rushlimbaughtomy":Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Grey Davis was by all accounts a miserable governor, but the major problems in the State of California were not his doing. Enron was more responsible for the problems than Davis, but the people of California were fooled by Dan Issa, Bill Simon, Pete Wilson, and the remainder of the Republican corporate machine into the belief that their candidate for Governor would be the 'answer' to the problems caused by Enron.
I'm not sure which is funnier - reading another "If Californians were as smart as us..." screed, or reading it from this particular writer, whose dalliance with literacy would seem to be occasional and unsuccessful (read the blog, you be the judge).
The disconnect between reality and imagination in California is apparent in the election of Governor Gropenator. Style won over substance - myth turmped truth - money & corporatism bought people.
So. This is what we face over the next 13 months. Take a deep breath...
UPDATE: Reynolds quotes Weintraub. Davis in his concession speech showed class, congratulating Schwarzenegger and promising to cooperate with him during the transition. But his supporters were angry and nasty and in no mood to concede anything.
Although he's linking to a great piece by Weintraub, Reynolds has the money quote:
I understand the bitterness, but I’m disturbed by its depth. Several of the Democrats I spoke to were in strong denial about the message sent by the voters, the message being that they, and Davis, have been poor stewards of state government. They see this is an isolated event, a venting, that will quickly pass while they fight to maintain everything they have done the past five years. My gut tells me they are wrong, that there is something deeper here, a desire for fundamental change in the way the state does business and in the way politics works, or doesn’t work, in California.I suspect that national Democrats will respond to this by becoming still more bitter and shrill, that being the response that we've seen to other reverses lately, which won't help things either. But maybe not.
Well, the response from the blogging left does nothing to shake that idea.
So far.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 06:03:01 AM
Words Fall Short - There is nothing I can add to this.
Read the names. Two virtually complete families are on the list.
Note to Nancy Pelosi: Did any of these people "know that the threat was imminent?"
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 06:01:22 AM
Move Back - The Kitchen Cabinet picks up on something that'd been rattling around my head since my last URGENT BULLETIN from moveon.org:
"I do find it hilariously ironic that the group moveon.org is targeting Schwarzenegger: 'the truth about his character is only now starting to get out. We have just a few days to make sure everyone in California knows who this man is.'
Guess what! We've "moved on!".
This is the group whose very name was based on the notion that allegations about Bill Clinton's appalling treatment of women were a waste of time from which we should all 'move on.' Guess it all depends on which party is doing the pawing and groping."
Hope they're satisfied!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 06:00:55 AM
With Balance Like This... - The slow slog toward balanced coverage in Iraq seems to be gathering the strangest bedfellows. Even the Guardian's Julie Flint, famous for her hilariously-slanted reporting before the war, is getting on board.
Oh, it starts rough::Half a century ago, in a blistering denunciation of the Korean war, the British war correspondent Reginald Thompson wrote: 'It was clear that there was something profoundly disturbing about this campaign and something profoundly disturbing about its commander-in-chief.' Thompson's words could equally well apply to the US-led campaign in Iraq and its commander-in-chief: George W. Bush, head of a cabal that seeks to install a client regime in Iraq as a first step to bringing the region under American-Israeli control.
But she gradually cuts to the chase:But there is something disturbing, too, about the way that post-war Iraq has been portrayed. Visceral distrust of Bush/Blair has created a disregard both for fact and for the victims of Saddam. Arab commentators have had no shame in urging Iraqis, exhausted by three wars and more than a decade of sanctions, to launch a new war 'of liberation' against their liberators. Western commentators have luxuriated in the setbacks of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as if wishing failure upon it - and by extension, the Iraqi people.
The article is interesting -partly for its facts, partly for the gyrations Flint goes through to fit snippets of her leftist views into the piece at the most incongruous turns.
Disaster has been prophesied, self-servingly, at every turn: the war would be long (it wasn't, and most Iraqis had no direct experience of it); tens of thousands would die in the battle for Baghdad (they didn't); there would be a fully-fledged humanitarian disaster (there wasn't). Now, we are told, Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war. Not those I know. Not yet. Nor those polled in Baghdad last month by Gallup: 62 per cent thought getting rid of Saddam was worth the suffering they've endured; 67 per cent thought their lives will be better five years from now.
Worth a a read, anyway.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 06:00:29 AM
False Sanctimony - A group of liberal churches has filed suit against the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, claiming the law violates freedom of religion and property rights, as well as the constitutional process.
The suit - filed by former US attorney and former would-be Senatorial candidate David Lillehaug, a parishioner at the church that has led at least one legal action against the MPPA - probably has a slim chance of succeeding:"David Gross, a former Minneapolis city attorney now in private practice and a member of Concealed Carry Reform Now, said he doubts that the argument will succeed in court.
The local anti-concealed carry sites repealconceal.org and Citizens for a
'They [gun law opponents] may not like it . . . but it is my understanding that the Minnesota House was well aware of the requirements of the Minnesota Supreme Court,' he said. 'They [House members] were following the recipe that the [court] has laid down.'
Gross also said he doubts that the religious groups can prove the new gun law deprives them of such a significant use of their property as to be found unconstitutional.
'The state, in those same parking lots, now regulates the minimum parking space size and [provision] of handicapped parking,' he said."Supine Safer Minnesota haven't addressed these suits yet.
Maybe that's a good idea.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/8/2003 02:50:28 AM
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Tomorrow - I'll be doing a post-recall survey and analysis of leading leftblogs.
I'll be trying to gauge the overall tone of their proceedings - about which I will attempt no prediction whatsoever.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 09:00:07 AM
Moron Today - Er, I mean, "Moore on Today".
The lying liar author and filmmaker appeared on the Today show a few minutes ago, with Lester Holt, pimping his new book, Icky Poopyhead Republicans Dude, Where's My Country?". First the surprise - Holt threw Moore a couple hardballs, or at least a few questions that had more stuff than the usual agent-friendly pap that greets Moore on these press tours.
Moore set the tone right off the bat: "This is all about regime change on Pennsylvania Avenue...I have such faith in the American people that once they realize that they been lied to - people dont' like being lied to - when they find out they've been lied to, it won't be about Republicans or Democrats any more.
So unlike last fall, when the Republican pretty much had their way, and Moore was in a petulant tizzy about it.
Holt asked Moore how he felt, given the sometimes hostile receptions he's gotten lately: "I don't consider that. I just speak my mind, even when it's uncomfortable for me, even if I'm not in the majority at the moment". He contradicts himself later, of course - but we'll get to that later.
Holt tripped onto my favorite topic - the "climate of hatred" that Moore is creating and exploiting - in this case, hatred of George Bush."It's not hatred - I don't think he wanted this job to begin with. He's there to finish his Dad's unfinished business, which is to enact the the policies, and put the people there, who make sure the rich get away with as much money as they can."
All starndard-issue cant so far - the kind of stuff you can hear at any coffee shop in walking distance of Macalester College..
But then Moore swerved off the deep end.Holt: "Let's talk about the war on terror."
Words fail me. Draw your own conclusions.
Moore: "We being manipulated with fear... There is no terrorist threat to this country."
Holt: [looking mildly dumbfounded, but quick on the uptake]: "Well, there's a body of evidence that suggests you're wrong - about two miles from here."
Moore: "It was a horrible tragedy, but there's been no threat since then."
Holt: "Well, does that mean we're winning the war on terror?"
Moore: "There will always be bad people. [Moore cited an incident in Michigan in the 1920's where a man blew up a school, killing nearly 40 students and teachers - as if a madman with dynamite is the same as hijacking planes and ramming them into buildings]. They'll always be there. But we can't undo our constitution because there's an occasional horrible incident..every time you use 9/11 that way, you dishonor the dead"
Holt continued:Holt: "Are you out of touch with the way America is thinking today?"
So, is Moore really in the majority, or is he actually just speaking his mind no matter what?
Moore: "No, the right is way out of touch".
Holt: [trying to get an answer] "OK, but are you out of touch on the left?"
Moore: "Look, if you go down the list of issues [which Moore proceeds to do, reading off a list of un-checkable statistics on the American peoples' approval for various liberal pet causes], the American people are very liberal. I'm the mainstream!...Americans just don't like liberal leaders. The look at Gray Davis and go Jeez, is this the best we can do? The majority of Amercans are liberal!"
It's going to be a crazy year.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 08:47:49 AM
Education Standards - I was going to write a long screed about the new Social Studies standards, including the Strib's editorial yesterday by Jim Davnie - but King from SCSU Scholars beat me to it.
I'm going to add more about this in the future, of course - until I can afford private school, I certainly do have opinions about what they teach and why - but until then, the King sorta sums it up.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 08:30:58 AM
Prediction - The recall will pass, albeit not by a complete landslide.
McClintock's vote, like Tim Penny's in the 2002 Minnesota gubernatorial race, will come in about half of where it polled two weeks ago, as people opt to make their vote count.
Arnold will win. I think Hewitt was right - it'll be an eight-point margin.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 08:28:48 AM
More Things The Left Hasn't Told You... - ...about the Kay Report, courtesy Tim Blair:
David Kay’s interim report on Iraq’s concealed WMD was filed after only about 8% of weapons storage areas was searched (which is much less, obviously, than 8% of total areas within Iraq where evidence of WMD may be hidden).
8% of storage areas.
The search is apparently far from over, and the "No WMDs Yet" answer apparently far from definitive.
Blair continues:As Kay tells Fox News, “This is information that, had it been available last year, would have been headline news.”
But not on the major networks.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 06:37:48 AM
Bias Alert Redux - Wishful Thinking? - This story appears on Yahoo news:
"California's recall election looked too close to call hours from the start of polling on Tuesday in a race for governor in which Republican muscleman-turned-Hollywood-film-star Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to unseat technocrat Democrat Gray Davis.
Too close to call?
The Stanford-Hoover/KnowledgeNetworks poll says: The latest findings are based on interviews conducted between Sept. 26 and Oct. 4 with likely voters in California. The survey was done by Knowledge Networks (http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp) in collaboration with the Stanford-Hoover group.
Too close to call?
The poll showed continued support for the recall with approximately 59 percent still in favor of the recall and support for Schwarzenegger increasingly slightly to 43 percent.
Sure - anything can happen. Elections are unpredictable. But I've seen nothing that could rationally, empirically indicate that the election is "too close to call". The Yahoo story shows us nothing to change that.
The Yahoo story continues:What began as a Republican-led protest vote over Davis' handling of the state's economy and recent energy crisis has become a referendum on Schwarzenegger, especially his alleged groping and sexual harassment of women."
Has it?
I'd suspect that for the majority who'd seem to be getting ready to vote to recall Davis, it's about anything but "alleged groping".
Just a hunch, of course. We'll know tomorrow.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 06:22:48 AM
Bias In Action - The LATimes had been working on its dirt bomb against Schwarzenegger for weeks, says the LA Weekly - under intense security:
According to a well-informed source at the paper, the story, which hit the political world with a thunderclap, never appeared on the paper’s internal or external publication schedules. Indeed, project editor Joel Sappell and the three reporters working on what the Times has described as a seven-week-long investigative project were very tight-lipped about both the scheduling of the piece and its contents. They discussed the story only with the paper’s senior editors. Although the story did not appear on the schedule, it was reportedly placed in the "write basket," in which other Times editors and reporters can look at upcoming pieces, after hours last Wednesday night, just a few hours before it appeared on the Times Web site.
So the paper's working a big scoop, and it's keeping it under wraps.
No big deal, right?
Except...:Even with utmost secrecy surrounding the piece, senior Democratic strategists with long-standing ties to Davis knew not only when the story was coming but also the particulars of what was in it. These strategists felt that the story held the possibility of tipping the election away from Schwarzenegger and of defeating the governor’s recall.
But the press isn't biased.
The other day, when talking about Maureen Dowd's hatchet job in the Sunday paper, I wondered out loud if there weren't a source in California that told her to have the goods ready to roll in time for the weekend. Doesn't seem so implausible to me right now.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 06:11:58 AM
Limbaugh and the New Media - The Rolling Stones "jumped the shark", as far as I'm concerned, when their lifestyles became a bigger story than their music. It was subtle, but somewhere between 1975 and 1980 the Stones became more important as celebrities than as musicians. In short - they became just too plain big.
It could be said the New York Times jumped the shark this past year - although we'll need some years to know for sure. Still the signs are ominous for the standard bearer of the old media. Over the weekend, Powerline on the the NYTimes's having to correct its obit of Edward Said: "Earlier this week the Times belatedly admitted having been suckered once again--how many times is that?--by the bald-faced lies of a leftist:
The NYTimes has been caught in a lot of these things since the emergence of the blogosphere: Andrew Sullivan's famed dissections of Paul Krugman (who's become ever-more desperate and irrelevant since then); the blog-centered underground of samizdat news coming from Iraq before the war, and now Iran; the toppling of Jayson Blair (and then Howell Raines), which started among the blogs; the gradual growth in the "US Successes in Iraq" story in the past month or so. I think a case can be made that all are comments on the growing power - and credibility - of the blogosphere.
'An obituary on Friday about Edward W. Said, the Columbia University literary scholar and advocate of a Palestinian state, misidentified the city that was his childhood home and misstated the date of Jerusalem's partition into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Mr. Said was born in Jerusalem, in 1935, his family's home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was partitioned in 1949, not 1947.'"
And who are the last people to be in on the story? The major media. The Times.
I bring this up because of the Rush Limbaugh flap. You've all heard the story; the muted head-shakings of Limbaugh's conservative base, the gleeful whooping of his detractors who are happy for no reason more than they sense a "payback" for the Clinton years, and suddenly feel there's genuine moral equivalence, although they're wrong. Lileks said it well:my gut says guilty. I am also sure that upon hearing the news, Al Franken spronged sufficient wood to knock the table over. In terms of his credibility with his followers, I think Rush just had his Aimee Semple McPherson moment. The faithful will be divided. Short term? His 4Q ratings book is going to rock.
I have had deeply mixed feelings about Limbaugh for fifteen years. His version of conservatism is one sired by convenience as much as by Hayek and Goldwater. And his entry into the syndie market helped screw my nascent talk radio career in the late eighties, when a lot of stations that used to hire 24 year old kids to work their mid-day shifts suddently discovered they could get Limbaugh, a national show, for free via satellite. In a matter of a few years, Limbaugh slashed the guts out of the market for entry-level talk show hosts.
And yet, beyond the sheer joy of watching the apoplexy Limbaugh gives to fundamentalist liberals, Limbaugh's important for a couple of reasons; he's a transitional figure for the new media, and he might be the first of the transitional figures to flame out.
Before Limbaugh, talk radio was:
Limbaugh changed that, ushering in the private syndication deals that dominate so much of radio today. The talk radio market started democratizingitself overnight.
There are parallels.
At the dawn of the computer era, a few large corporations and universities dominated the computer industry. They had to - nobody else could build or program them! And so from the late 1940's to the late 1970's, companies like IBM, Univac, Sperry, Burroughs and other giants built all the computers, big mainframe behemoths that needed to have buildings (or at least large complexes of rooms) built around them, and cost an arm and a leg to run. The big companies lived large - and developed the bad habits of the people who did that sort of thing.
Then, in the early eighties, the personal computer began distributing the power of the big mainframe computer - and eventually, the network that had linked the big computers together. It revolutionized the way data was gathered, refined and processed.
Maybe the media are starting to see the same thing; for centuries, the press was free, as long as you owned a press, or a transmitter or network of broadcast operations. And big media developed all the habits - institutionalized arrogance, inbred excess - that had plagued Big Computing, Big Steel, Big Mining before all were overtaken by their more agile competitors. Watching Dan Rather reading the evening news reminds me of watching Keith Richard, bloated and wacked out of his mind, being led out of a courtroom after one of his many drug trials, awash in dissipation, teetering on the brink between relevance and the Classic Rock circuit. It's the look of a person (or in this case an industry) at its peak, with noplace to go but down.
Today, the internet makes everyone a publisher. A small, lean, frazzled publisher to be sure, but a good blogger can put out an excellent niche product, the same way a good open-source programmer can make a contribution on their home PC far out of proportion to what his uncle could have done from his workstation hooked up to a network mainframe 30 years ago.
So Limbaugh made the institution of the creaky old talk networks obsolete - and took a big gouge out of the edge of the liberal media oligarchy they belonged to. In doing so, he became an institution himself, with all the entropy that goes along with becoming a monolith in a competitive society.
Perhaps something growing among us today will one day send the big, top-down syndication system the way of the dinosaurs, too. Will it be the blogosphere? Smaller, more regional syndication deals? Internet radio?
Limbaugh's alleged drug habit is a personal tragedy - and in a larger sense, maybe a sign that the world of the media (or the alternative media) is evolving.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 06:04:30 AM
Krugman Alert - A look in Sunday's Book events calendar in the Strib shows that Paul Krugman will be appearing at Ruminator Books in St. Paul this Saturday night.
This begs the question - anyone want to put in an appearance?
Regular reader SS writes:perhaps Mr. Krugman could get a "warm" reception from the Northern Alliance. What better time to come together? If he's actually reading, or
Hm. No tomatoes, thanks - but some sort of appearance might be in order.
even talking about his book, you could do the "hold a newspaper up in front of you" thing, or the less obvious "turn your back to the speaker" thing. Then there's always the "golf clap" or to hiss and boo at him and throw tomatoes at him as he is doing his Bush-bashing shtick. Maybe he's just in to sell books and sign them for the prematurely grey haired Birkenstock wearing Volkswagen driving intellectual crowd, and not to talk, but I bet you could bait him into a shouting match very quickly.
So I'll put this out to my fellow muj in the Northern Alliance - any ideas? Could be a fun excuse for that Loya Jirga we've been batting about...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 06:02:39 AM
Arnold Speaks - Hewitt puts out the audio file of his interview with Schwarzenegger. [click here for the link to the audio file]
Interesting stuff.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/7/2003 05:12:44 AM
Monday, October 06, 2003
Oy Vey - Three weeks ago, I installed a hit counter (at the bottom of the Archives list in the right margin).
Sometime in the next hour, it'll pass 10,000 visitors. Yow. I had no idea.
Thanks, everyone!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 02:58:16 PM
Cry Quagmire! - Didn't the Administration plan for this?
Riots shake Minnesota State University, Mankato: "James Franklin, Mankato's public safety director, called the disturbance 'almost a classic textbook case' of 'riotous behavior.'
It's clear that the state's policy in Mankato is unravelling before our eyes. We need to bring in the international community, since our government is clearly incapable of maintaining order in Mankato.
He said it lasted about five hours, from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., and Mankato police were unable to contain it early on. Franklin cited the heavy drinking as the primary cause.
University President Richard Davenport told a news conference on Sunday afternoon that some students might be suspended, but Denise Schlake, vice president of student affairs, said some might face expulsion.
Some witnesses accused police of taking too long to act forcefully, while others accused police of overreacting.
'We had to use force only and when the situation was totally out of control,' Franklin said, adding that police donned riot gear only after the crowds got out of hand and fires had been set in the street.
Most of the arrests were in connection with disorderly conduct and obstructing legal process, but one person was arrested on a charge of third-degree riot. Authorities released no names but said only 20 of the 45 people arrested were students at Minnesota State University, Mankato, formerly known as Mankato State."
The left warned you!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 02:20:43 PM
What Country Is That In? - South Dakota Politics points out an example what what is either bad fact-checking or coastal myopia about "flyover land":
"Firing [Governor Davis] would be a remarkable step, a notion that has been lost in the hurly-burly of the headlong campaign. California has never recalled a governor. In the history of the United States, it has happened only once, in 1921 in South Dakota."
SoDakPol points out, as I did last week - it was North Dakota.
Note to the LA Times; one is north of the other. The other is to the south. And for whatever reason, despite their location and similar spelling, they are indeed two states separated by a common name.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 10:40:33 AM
Man Wrenches Arm Patting Self On Back - A few weeks ago, I posited a theory, which I called "Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary". It said:
No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications for the war in Iraq [WMDs, defiance of UN resolutions, Human Rights, links to terror] into an argument at a time. To do so would introduce a context in which their thesis can not survive".
Looking back, I thought too narrowly. If you look at foreign policy in a broad sense, my theory still holds up.
The left often goes through intense gyrations to rationalize their history on foreign policy. They have to - their history for the last forty years has been atrocious:
If you leave all of that out, the Democrats are historically just fine on foreign policy.
I mention this because the left seems to have found a way to pat themselves on the back in reading (VERY carefully) the Kay Report. Jeff Fecke cites this entry on Gregg Easterbrook's blog on the New Republic Online.
Easterbrook begins:Here's what everyone has missed about the David Kay report of Iraqi arms: Kay finds the Iraqi atomic weapons program, always by far the greatest threat posed by Saddam, stopped in 1998. (See his statement here; I am directing you to the CIA website!) But what happened in 1998? The "Desert Fox" joint United States-British strike on Iraq. If Desert Fox stopped the Iraqi atomic weapons program, this means the Clinton administration's Saddam containment policy was far more effective than anyone, even Bill Clinton, previously realized.
While this is a plausible explanation, Easterbrook sells it as a definite cause-effect result - which the Kay Report does not.
Easterbrook also lends evidence to my theory; his point can only stand if you ignore the rest of the Kay report.
Easterbrook continues:Recall that in 1998, Saddam had thrown out U.N. inspectors. The United States and United Kingdom threatened airstrikes; most other Western nations waffled or counseled appeasement. In December 1998, U.S. and British aircraft bombed Iraq weapons facilities for several nights, while 400 cruise missiles were fired into Iraq. At the time, many conservatives and Republicans denounced the strikes as pinpricks and called for much more dramatic action. Clinton's decision to do everything from the air was derided as liberal fear of casualties.
So far, so good. And in fact, as far as it goes, I'll say the unthinkable: Kudos, Clinton. You did good...as far as it went.
Yet now it appears Desert Fox was a resounding success. Among the Iraq facilities pounded in 1998 was the Al Zaafaraniyah atomic weapons and missile complex. Al Zaafaraniyah was not bombed during the 1991 Gulf war, because the United States did not then know much about it. U.N. inspectors found the facility in the aftermath of the 1991 war; in 1993, Clinton ordered Al Zaafaraniyah hit with cruise missiles to stop Iraq atomic-weapons research; in 1998, Al Zaafaraniyah was reduced to rubble.
But then you have to read the rest of the Kay report.
1998 seemed to be a tipping point on another front: from that point on, the Iraqi program went from being a large, static, industrial program to a knowledge program - what people in the manufacturing industry would call a "Just In Time" operation, where rather than building large, vulnerable stockpiles of weapons in big, static factories, the Iraqis opted instead to switch to the ability to build WMDs in small, dispersed facilities, from stockpiles of nominally-innocent precursors. This was the Kay report's conclusion that has drawn the right's attention, and I think it's a valid one. Remember - while building an atomic (or radiological) bomb or a tank of Sarin or a batch of aerosolized Botulinum the first time is Nobel Prize material, the second time it is merely craftsmanship.
It would seem, if you follow the whole Kay report, that Hussein opted to give himself a plausible, large, capability to produce WMDs in a hurry, rather than giving himself bunkers full of weapons, with all their attendant political and military risks.
Of course, considering that part of the Kay report cuts Easterbrook's point off at the knees.
Easterbrook continues:Set aside the question of whether the United States should have invaded Iraq in 2003; history may still judge this decision favorably, as a liberation of the oppressed. But if most of the Iraq atomic weapons program stopped in 1998, as Kay concludes, then Clinton administration policy on Iraq was far more effective than once assumed; then the WMD case for invasion this year was even weaker than now assumed;
Note the leaps in logic: Easterbrook artificially limits the discussion to "atomic" weapons, while chemical, biological and radiological weapons are equally important and were little effected by Desert Fox. And he assumes, in contravention to the Kay Report's findings, that the program "stopped" in 1998, rather than redirected itself into a more decentralized and tenable form.
The devil is in the details. And most liberal arguments in this area just don't get along with the details very well.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 09:33:58 AM
The Mower County Charges - The American Bankers story is back in the news - and it's weirder than ever.
I explained the American Bankers and Insurance settlement last summer in a five part article that drew the untold story from sources close to the events. To sum it up:
Powerline comments on the current iteration of the flap: "Here are the facts: in the 2002 election, American Bankers Insurance Co. wanted to support both Republican Tim Pawlenty and Democrat Roger Moe. It therefore donated $10,000 to both national parties, with the understanding, apparently, that the money would be spent to support the candidacies of Pawlenty and Moe. (It is legal for corporations to donate to the national parties, but under Minnesota law it is not legal for corporations to donate to the state's parties.) American Bankers mistakenly sent the Republican contribution to the state's Republican Party headquarters, and Eibensteiner forwarded it to the national party. That's it. Oh, one more thing. Ron also wrote American Bankers a letter thanking them for their contribution. I don't know where American Bankers mailed its contribution to the Democrats, but that check presumably found its way to the national Democratic Party as well, where the money was spent to benefit Moe.
Just to clarify on the behalf of Powerline: According to sources at the DFL, the check was apparently never recieved locally. Their $10K apparently adhered to state law.
And if you believe Ron Eibensteiner, he didn't "write" the thank-you, merely signed it.The indictment is, of course, ridiculous. Mower County, located in extreme southestern Minnesota, has nothing to do with the events in question other than the fact that it has a Democratic county attorney who is willing to do Hatch's bidding. The indictment was triggered by a 'complaint' by a Mower County resident whose identity Flanagan refuses to divulge. (He apparently didn't complain about American Bankers' contribution to the Democrats.) Ron did nothing wrong, let alone criminal."
Here, the Powerline guys are correct. I'm going to do a little digging and see if there's any more backstory we're not getting here.
The big question - what does Hatch expect to gain from this ridiculous action?
I'll see what I can find out.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 06:04:34 AM
Trivial Pursuit - Fraters and the Infinite Monkeys are proposing an intramural trivia smackdown between the Patriot Allstars (Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager and David Allen White, and the Northern Alliance Muj - the Fraters, Powerline, the Monkeys, Spitbull and myself, with Lileks' allegiance uncertain.
As long as the subject steers clear of old movies and sports stats, I'm fine. In the realms of history and post-1954 pop music, I'm mighty good.
Save me a ticket. I'm in.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 06:02:26 AM
And Kathy Wurzer is a Harley Chick - NPR can't tell the difference between Hugh Hewitt and Howard Stern:
"SHOCK JOCK? Shock jock? Yes, that's how NPR referred to me this morning in an account of Arnold's campaign trip yesterday: 'AM radio shock jock Hugh Hewitt quickly prompted the crowd to see what they thought about the Los Angeles Times.'"
By NPR terms, a "shock jock" is anyone who's more animated on the air than Terry Gross or Ira Glass. Michael Feldman is shockier than Hugh Hewitt.
But there's a larger point here. Notice the taxonomy the left applies to opinion on the right:
Notice that nowhere in there is "fellow citizen" mentioned.
These are all symptoms of the most worrisome development I can think of in American society; to the left (and yeah, to the lunatic fringe on the right) we are no longer a free association of equals working from both sides of a temporal ideological divide to try to build a society that is better than the sum of its parts. We're now the "englightened" and the "unwashed masses". It's a war.
And the first thing you want to do in a war is to dehumanize your opponents.
Because you don't have to feel guilty about horrible things you do to mere drooling knuckle-dragging dittoheads with phallic obsessions.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 06:01:46 AM
Fascist - There are few things that infuriate me as much as casual invocation of tokens of the Nazi era - referring to someone as a "Nazi" or a "Fascist" lightly, as political rhetoric. Same for calling something a "Holocaust" that doesn't involve the wholesale industrial murder of an entire race; it's crying wolf. As Hindrocket notes on "Powerline", these terms have become meaningless from casual overuse. You know the suspects; college kids who think they're scoring a rhetorical coup when they call someone who disagrees with them a fascist; a pundit, frustrated with the success and reach of talkradio, calling the hosts and their audience Nazis. It's not the sort of thing that, in a just world, would be invoked cynically or shallowly.
Of course, the Schwarzenegger "Nazi" flap has been exactly thatl. The Democrat strategist who figured it would be a good idea to lightly link the former bodybuilder with Naziism deserves to lose this election, as far as I'm concerned, for that reason alone.
Especially given that the truth appears to be quite the opposite. Powerline has the skinny on this:When Schwarzenegger was growing up in Austria, "Nazi" wasn't just an epithet. There really were neo-Nazis who took to the streets much as their fathers had done thirty years earlier. Now, several individuals who knew Arnold as a teenager have come to his defense, pointing out that he not only denounced Nazis--easy to do when, as in America, they do not exist--but actually battled them.
Powerline refers to a couple of articles, including this piece in the Guardian. Money quote:``It's absurd. It's 100 percent wrong that he could have ever liked Hitler,'' Marnul said at his gym, whose walls are plastered with photographs of Schwarzenegger, who began training there at age 15.
The polls over the weekend showed that the smear doesn't seem to be sticking. That, alone, is proof that world isn't entirely unjust. Whatever Schwarzenegger's qualifications for the job - and I have the same misgivings about not only Schwarzenegger but the "at least he's better than Bustamante" philosophy that many conservatives to - nobody deserves that sort of accusation unjustly.
Marnul's interview with AP was the second refutation of claims Schwarzenegger had Nazi sympathies.
On Friday, the Austrian magazine NU, which caters to the alpine nation's Jewish community, quoted former politician Alfred Gerstl as describing how Schwarzenegger and some companions once ``hunted down'' neo-Nazis who had gathered outside the office of a teaching institute run by an avowed anti-fascist.
Especially when the story is being pushed by a biased media and a group of yellow hacks.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 06:01:16 AM
Speaking of Leaking - As the Democrats are crying crocodile tears over alleged White House leaks, it's worth rememberingthis item, about someone whose leaks weren't embarassing - they were deadly:
"'Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, inadvertantly disclosed a top secret communications intercept during a [1985] television interview,' reported the San Diego Union-Tribune in a 1987 editorial criticizing Congress' penchant for partisan leaks.
The Democrats are hitting their knees every night praying to Gaia that the Plame-Wilson imbroglio turns into something they can use.
'The intercept, apparently of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's telephone conversations, made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered American citizens,' the paper said, adding, 'The reports cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative involved in the operation.'"
It's time for the GOP to start showing the world who it is is that historically fouls up our security; emasculating our foreign intelligence, leaking agents for political gain, and let's not forget letting Bin Laden slip away twice.
When we want these peoples' opinion on the Administration's competence at intelligence, foreign policy and diplomacy, we should grant them the right to have that opinion.
But only after they earn it back.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/6/2003 06:00:59 AM
Sunday, October 05, 2003
The Big Plastic Mug is A Third Full - The Cubbies win.
The Twins lose.
And football just trudges on and on to a post-season that is looking inevitably Bears-free.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2003 11:08:10 PM
I See Yellow - Help me out here. I need to come up with a pithy yet dismissive lede for this piece on today's Maureen Dowd piece. I'm having a hard time deciding - partly because Dowd leaves so many openings, partly because this sort of yellow, hack journalism so infuriates me.
Here are my finalists:
MoDo starts:Well, there goes the Jewish women's vote.
Leave aside the slander later in this piece - I don't suspect that Arnold was expecting the Streisand crowd to turn out for him.Twin revelations of Arnold Schwarzenegger's groping and goose-stepping are not going to play well with some Californians. The androgynous Gray spent the weekend hissing at Arnold's excess testosterone, as Arnold tried a rope-a-grope strategy.
Comical, nicht wahr? Dowd makes the rather slanderous jump from "noting Hitler's oratorical skills" to prancing about in SS-wear in one libelous leap.
The governor had to be singing "Danke Schön" over tales of the Austrian's 70's foolery: playing Nazi marching songs; clicking his heels and pretending to be an SS officer; clowning as Hitler with comb as mustache; and praising the dictator's ambition and oratorical skills. A Davis aide slyly wondered if Mel Brooks was Arnold's campaign manager.
But why?
I think we get a clue in the next graf:When I was in California, Democrats said that as soon as Mr. Schwarzenegger went up in the polls, the Davis camp was prepared to blast him on women and "play it out in all its seamy glory," as one well-connected Hollywood Democrat said.
And, given that this Dowd piece plays so incongruously against the reality in the polls - the cynical dirt-mongering seems, if anything, to have helped Arnold, at least among Californians smart enough to use the likes of MoDo and Molly Ivins as bird-cage liner - I think this paragraph is the tip-off.
The "...Davis camp was prepared..." with the gloriously seamy dirt - and five will get you ten part of the preparations involved giving Maureen Dowd advance notice that they needed one of her patented slur-pieces, synchronized to catch the end of the weekend spin cycle before the election; the sort of fact-free "when did you stop beating your wife" distorion-fests that make one thing MoDo is channeling the ghost of Walter Winchell.
And yet it hasn't played that way. This piece reminds me of the infamous "DEWEY WINS" headline of 1948 - Californians, the polls tell us, seem to be failing to fall for the dirt in droves.
Although I don't know if any polls have controlled for Jewish women.When the star's female accusers were recycled in the L.A. Times, Democratic women's groups — already in full cry against Arnold for being boorish despite his un-Bushian moderate stances on women's issues — howled even louder. They rejected his apology and explanation that he was just being "playful" when he grabbed several left breasts out of left field over the decades.
Dowd reports this as if there were any suspense in the fact - that NOW and Planned Parenthood would have reached any other conclusion, that they hadn't planned on some sort of Pro-Davis/Busto, anti-whomever the Republican front runner was, from the moment this recall was certified, harping on whatever agenda point came within a California Dream of violating any of their sacraments.
Even before the latest charges, Hillary Clinton, by phone, and Ann Richards and the lawyer Gloria Allred, in person, joined Governor Davis at a bristly rally in West Hollywood with 200 female activists, including contingents from NOW and Planned Parenthood, chanting about Arnold's sins.
At the Davis rally, Senator Clinton chose not to defend the groper who was not her husband. Ms. Richards chose not to defend the groper who was not a Democrat; in 1998, the former Texas governor shrugged off Mr. Clinton's louche behavior: "If we try to retire every man from office who's done what he did, we wouldn't need affirmative action."
An alien from another planet reading Dowd might think there was a chance that Senator Clinton would ever attack a misogynist who was "on the side of the angels", or that Ann Richards would restrain herself from one of her faux-folksy outbursts even if she could.Now Republicans who thundered against Bill — not Arnold, who scorned impeachment as a waste of time and money — argue that peccadilloes are not relevant to governing. And feminists who backed Bill are ushering Arnold gropees up to the Democratic microphones.
Other pundits, and half the blogosphere, have noted the differences that MoDo's attention span and agenda won't allow; perjury to a grand jury, obstruction of justice, anonymous sources of groping versus named sources on rape; to repeat them would be excessive.
And not to repeat them would be to subscribe to the Democrats' facile, five year old spin: "It's all about sex to the Republicans".
Dowd's cultural imperialism takes a turn:Cheekbones jutting, Maria Shriver played the Tammy Wynette-Hillary role with nerve and verve,...
"While she's a Kennedy - one of us, I'm going to invoke the stereotype of the "red-state" woman that so comforts us: all-enduring, duped, just not like the rest of us!"
Dowd notes that it really is all about her, anyway:Certainly, the bodybuilder-turned-phenom has had moments of being, to use David Letterman's word, a lunkhead. But I find the selective outrage of feminists just as offensive.
But it's not the same thing, and except in the minds of Democrats-at-all-costs, never was. While the zeal of some impeachment advocates may have been excessive, the goal was to punish a criminal, not harass someone's 30-year-old indiscretions.
Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, "Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one."
Surely what's good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator.I asked my friend Leon Wieseltier, who knows a lot about Judaism and politics and women, about Arnold.
Read that last paragraph again; what does it say except "achievement=naziism"?
"Schwarzenegger is obviously not anti-Semitic or an admirer of genocide," he said. "Hitler does not appear to have been his moral ideal, but his business model. His old fondness for the Führer is just another expression of the animating principle of his life and movies: the worship and steady acquisition of power. Sacramento is simply the biggest Hummer he can buy."Besides, if we ever hear the "Horst Wessel Song" drifting from Governor Schwarzenegger's office in Sacramento, there's always the blitzkrieg option: the recall of the recall.
STereotypes, innuendo, clumsy spin (that I'll bet dimes to dollars was written before the LATimes re- ran with the Four Anonymous Gropees...
Well, you know what they say about cute redheads; what they lack in intellectual talent, they make up for in the sack.
Whoops. Did I just indulge in stereotype and innuendo?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2003 12:33:30 PM
What It's About - No, indeed, the California electorate seems to get the big picture. Mark Steyn has a great piece, not only on the state of the recall, but on the absolute, crushing, unbelievable detachment of the media from reality.
On the LATimes' double standard on coverage (anonymous sources of Arnold's groping get front-page treatment, after the paper spiked not only named sources on Clinton's little rape habit, but also syndicated opinion on the subject): "But the lofty ethics bores of American journalism apparently have no problem with opening up their front page for anonymous one-sided accusations of ancient improper advances. In that case, did I mention the time Gray Davis grabbed me by the crotch and whispered in my ear: 'Have you ever had a man tax you up the wazoo?' Or, if the issue is the violent grabbing of anonymous women, how about this? 'He just went into one of his rants of, `F--- the f---ing f---, f---, f---!' He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me until my teeth rattled. I was so stunned I said, `Good God, Gray! Think what you are doing to me!' And he just could not stop.' That's a former staffer of Davis, as reported by Jill Stewart in New Times LA in 1997.
No, the public gets what the LATimes (and Hesiod) don't: The story here is that California is in crisis. The electorate understands that; its media don't. It's CNN that, while sniffing that this election is a 'circus', runs tedious featurettes on the pornographers, sitcom actors and other fringe candidates. Meanwhile, the public winnowed the 130 runners down to a quartet almost immediately.
As always with Steyn, worth a read.
Indeed, the only folks obsessed with joke candidates were the media professionals who took ex-London socialite Arianna Huffington's campaign seriously. In last week's debate, Arianna and Arnold bickered constantly. The pundits assured us Arianna had come out on top. The next poll showed her with 0.4 per cent and she withdrew from the race shortly thereafter. So much for media savvy. The only bottom that's an issue in this election is Gray Davis's, and on Tuesday all it will be feeling is the electorate's boot."
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2003 11:05:55 AM
What If Bustamante Held a Press Conference, and Nobody Came... - Lefty blogger "Hesiod" ponders the deeper meaning of Bustamante's "boycott" of a gubernatorial debate:
"And when I say 'boycott,' I'm not just talking about Cruz Bustamante. He invited ALL of the other 'major' candidates to join him in an unscripted debate...outside of the planned venue. You see...the planned debate they will be avoiding, is the one where the candidates all got the questions in advance. [Thus explaining why Arnold agreed to appear].
"Hesiod" seems to think this is a smart campaign move for Bustamante, and a problem for Schwarzenegger.
The best part is that the other candidates mostly agreed with Bustamante!"
In a normal election, maybe. But this election isn't about any single issue, or even a small group of issues, and especially not about what Cruz Bustamante thinks about them.
For the nearly 2/3 of Californians that plan to vote for the recall, it's about getting rid of Gray Davis, and his administration's detritus (including Bustamante).
They could debate nonstop from now until the election, or hole up in a hotel in Oklahoma for all the good either one will do them. It's about ending the mismanagement, stirring the malaise, throwing the bastards out in the great American tradition.
A former boss of mine would have referred to the debate as "turd-polishing".
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2003 10:55:36 AM
Nauseating - Warning. This piece (via Instapundit) put me off my brunch.
It's about life in North Korea. Read it if you haven't.
But you've been warned.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2003 10:11:17 AM
Coming Up This Week on Shot In The Dark - A veritable embarassment of riches:
I figure if I commit myself to some serious writing, the job offer is more likely to happen.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/5/2003 09:59:19 AM
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