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

Friday, December 12, 2003

With More Reporters Like This... - A Time Magazine correspondent was wounded in Baghdad, in an attack on his Humvee while on patrol with the First Armored Division.

According to an NPR report, someone tossed a hand grenade into a Humvee holding Michael Weisskopf and his photographer, James Nachtwey, as well as two soldiers.

There, it gets interesting:
...a memo sent to Weisskopf's former colleagues at The Washington Post said he picked up the grenade and tossed it out of the Humvee. It exploded, blowing off his hand and wounding him in the chest and arms. The memo said Nachtwey received shrapnel wounds that were not as serious.

'According to people he works with at Time, he picked up the grenade and tossed it out, losing his right hand in the process while saving four lives,' the memo said."
Perhaps soon a Newsweek guy will grab the .50 caliber machine gun and return fire...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/12/2003 08:20:23 AM

Something about March 11 - Among the many kind comments added to yesterday's note about my birthday were two from people who also had birthdays yesterday (and Happy Birthday a day late to both of you!). Among all of the random set of readers who came to this site yesterday (and there were nearly 450, not counting me), to have three people with the same birthday is kind of odd.

Which got me to thinking.

I went to a tiny little college - a total of 500 students at the time (over 1,000 now). You'd think that among 500 people, a standard random distribution of birthdays would put one, or maybe two, on the same day.

There were four December 11 birthdays among the 500 of us.

So I think we can safely assume that March 11 has the worst weather of any day of the year.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/12/2003 06:12:23 AM

Demogogma - Matt Entenza (DFL - St. Paul via Neptune) says GOP areas are getting lower property tax increases than DFL areas:
"A recent analysis of property-tax changes across the state shows an average statewide increase of 7.6 percent for homeowners, but House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, DFL-St. Paul, said the more telling information lies in the pattern of tax increases -- and decreases -- across Minnesota.

Displaying mockups of two actual property tax notices, Entenza noted at a news conference Thursday that the statement for a Woodbury homeowner showed a property-tax increase of 2.4 percent, while one for a Roseville homeowner registered at 15.4 percent.
Note to Rep. Entenza: displaying a mockup of a property tax notice is incredibly misleading. It doesn't show the baseline from which the taxes were calculated.

Property taxes in Woodbury and Edina are already quite a bit higher than in Roseville, on average (and notice that the article doesn't mention whether Entenza discussed the actual valuation of the houses, or their current tax burden).

I'm not sure, but I'll bet that the Roseville home's overall taxes as a percentage of value (or, for that matter, income) are still equal to or lower than the ones in Woodbury.

And then we get to this little bon mot:
The data were compiled by the nonpartisan House research staffers.
What's with this "nonpartisan research staff" canard that the Strib pulls out whenever DFL legislators pull flattering numbers out of their assets - numbers that, inevitably, are delivered (or, to be fair, reported) without supporting figures, methodologies or details?

It was the "non-partisan Senate research staff" that generated Wes "Lying Sack of Filth" Skoglund's (DFL-Asylum) "...there will be 90,000 guns on the street" canard during the Concealed Carry debate.

Two questions about our legislative "research staffs":
Non-partisan research staffs? Either they're civil service or govenrment employees - and we know where their union falls, politically - or they're appointees, which does not imply "non-partisanship".
When will the press - or the public - start either demanding better from the legislative research staffs, or at least telling the whole story about them?
. Entenza wailed:
'When people find out that they're paying double-digit increases while their neighbor a few miles down the road is maybe getting a cut, they will be angry, and they have a right to be upset about that,' he said.
And if the absolute tax burdens shifted in the same way as the increases to the point of making the absolute tax burdens higher for lower-valued homes, then they'd have a point.

But I don't see any reference to absolute numbers in this story. And that, I suspect, means that Rep. Entenza (D - Demigoguery) presented any such thing.

The Strib snuck this in:
Although Entenza attempted to make the case that Republicans had 'rewarded their friends and punished their enemies,' that pattern does not fit completely. Many outstate Republican districts -- and even some fast-growing GOP suburbs -- fared poorly under last year's budget.

Austin, a city represented by first-term Republican Rep. Jeff Anderson, is at the top of the list, with an average residential property-tax increase of 43 percent. That includes proposed levy increases for school districts, the city and the county, Entenza said. Anderson could not be reached for comment on Thursday."
So could someone ask Entenza about property taxes on the Iron Range, which continue to hover below overall state rates?

Oh, wait - that's DFL turf...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/12/2003 05:18:04 AM

"You've Heard of 'Simply Red'? Meet 'Hopelessly White'" - So a couple of weeks ago, Rolling Stone came out with their periodic vanity exercise, their Top 500 Albums of All Time.

Whenever you do a Top (pick a number) album list, you're filtering things through your own preconceptions and experiences. My list does no different (we'll get to that later). When you are an editor at Rolling Stone, you're filtering it through your background as an upper-middle-class, Ivy-League ex-hippie who still smells the gunpowder from Kent State.

I was going to let the poll - like most everything else from the increasingly-irrelevant Rolling Stone - pass without comment. The only list that rtruly matters is my own - or, for your purposes, yours.

But ~~Plain~~ Sedalina unloaded on the poll:
I scan this list and think, "Omigod those people at Rolling Stone are fossils!" This isn't the 500 greatest albums, it's a hagiography of Sixties cultural icons.
(Note to Sedalina: Ipse Rolling Stone)
Where's all the electronica and hip hop? (Or for that matter, more country?)
There's an even more important question here. Let's see if you find it before we get to it.

Let's start the list:
1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles

2. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys

3. Revolver, The Beatles

4. Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan

5. Rubber Soul, The Beatles
Right off the bat - three out of the Top Five are Beatles? Sure, they were a great band, but this is a little myopic...

But no, that's not the big problem. Keep looking.
6. What's Going On, Marvin Gaye

7. Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones

8. London Calling, The Clash

9. Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan
All great albums, to be sure. But...

...well, keep looking.
10. The Beatles ("The White Album"), The Beatles
This is the - no, the most overrated album of all time.

But still not the problem.
11. The Sun Sessions, Elvis Presley

12. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
Remember this...
13. Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground

14. Abbey Road, The Beatles

15. Are You Experienced?, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
So at 12 we have a jasz artist whom the sixties generation blessed with hip-itude, and a deconstructor of the blues and guitar revolutionary.

But...

...well, we're getting warm.
16. Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan

17. Nevermind, Nirvana

18. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
Should have been #2 or #3. And Darkness On The Edge of Town doesn't turn up at all. Bastiches.

But that's not the problem. Keep looking...
19. Astral Weeks, Van Morrison

20. Thriller, Michael Jackson

21. The Great Twenty-Eight, Chuck Berry
KAPOW!

So it took us 21 places to get to any of the black artists that actually created pop music as we know it!

Sure, they toss off the obligatory bluesmen like Robert Johnson (27) or Muddy Waters (38), and the always-fashionable R'nB guys like James Brown (24) - but where's Bo Diddley (he turns up at #214)? Little Richard (50)? Where are any of the doo-wop groups that also put early rock and roll in front of the mainstream audience?

However, at least Berry beat out:
22. Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon
...which, unaccountably, beat out:
23. Innervisions, Stevie Wonder

24. Live at the Apollo (1963), James Brown
And while we're on the subject:
13. Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground

42. The Doors, The Doors

43. The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd

58. Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Four of the most overrated albums ever made - and the single worst band (The Doors) ever to become a mass cult.

Hm. I might have to work on one of these, just to show Rolling Stone who's boss...

(Post title via J.D. Considine)
posted by Mitch Berg 12/12/2003 04:59:37 AM

Thursday, December 11, 2003

HBTM - At least I'll never have to tell anyone I'm 40 again...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/11/2003 06:16:49 AM

Graylist - Correspondent PJZ writes:
I see that you have not yet blogged on the supposed "black listing" for Iraqi reconstruction contracts by Paul Wolfowitz. In case you do, I thought you might want a copy of the actual document in question rather than relying on the media reports. Pay close attention to points 4-6.
DETERMINATION AND FINDINGS RE: U.S.-FUNDED REDEVELOPMENT CONTRACTS IN IRAQ (December 5, 2003)

Deputy U.S. Secretary Of Defense Paul Wolfowitz Issues A 'Determination And Finding' That Bids On Redevelopment Contracts In Iraq Will Be Limited Only To "Companies From The United States, Iraq, Coalition Partners, And Force Contributing Nations," With A List Of Countries Eligible For Bidding On U.S.-Funded Contracts
Most of the news stories I've seen have made it appear as if the United States has a de facto black list of nations who did not support or opposed the Iraqi mission and we are specifically excluding some nations.
Read the findings, indeed. It does explain things, vastly better than the media is doing.

Prime contractors on jobs paid for by American taxpayers have to be from coalition-member nations. Subcontractors can be from anywhere. Prime contractors on jobs paid for by anyone but the American taxpayers can be French, or German, or North Korean for all anyone would seem to care.

Of course, some people read this, from the Times...:
President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.

White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq
...and conclude:
I mean, it defies ridicule (what will I do?). The tone? How were they supposed to sugar-coat it?

Clearly, we need to come up with a new executive branch foreign policy appointee, someone whose job it would be to coordinate all this stuff, who could make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, someone who could ride herd over interagency disputes.
(Dr Evil on) Riiiiiight. (Dr. Evil off).

You can count on this: If a prime contract had gone to a French company, the likes of Josh Marshall would be crying "See! Inconsistency! Why are they only "American First" until the money starts to flow?"

If I were the President (or Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice), this would be my response:
OK, pundits. If you insist on tying these two things together, do it this way - because this is the way that actually makes sense:

Yes, we're limiting prime contracts paid for by the American taxpayer to countries that are part of our coalition. Damn right we are. We liberated Iraq with a vision; to create a democracy in the Middle East. Why should we trust this objective to nations that have contributed nothing to sharing that vision?

And yes, we are asking non-coalition members to forgive debts. The debts were for loans that allowed the Hussein regime to consolidate its power, making it that much bloodier and longer-lived than it would have been otherwise. They were, in essence, complicity in mass-murder. So even if a nation doesn't feel it can participate in the Coalition, it would still be a fine piece of moral expiation to forgive these loans...

...or at least send your bill collectors after Hussein, the guy who really owes the money.

And that, my French, German and Russian friends, would solve both problems for you, now, wouldn't it?"
Probably a good thing I'm not in politics.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/11/2003 05:51:58 AM

The Endorsement - Gore made it official yesterday, endorsing Doctor Dean:
"Enveloped by a new aura of establishment credibility, Howard Dean on Tuesday accepted the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore, who urged his Democratic rivals for the White House to shift their focus to the campaign against President Bush.

Gore, who stunned Dean's opponents with his early endorsement, said he was swayed by the vigorous grass-roots support for the former Vermont governor, as well as Dean's staunch opposition to the war in Iraq."
Many, many people have already commented at great depth about the significance of this endorsement; how it's:
a slap at the Clinton/MacAuliffe machine
probably Gore's first move in the '08 campaign
possibly a sign that the Dem establishment isn't that confident in Dean's chances of winning next year; why would Gore tie himself to a winner that could lock him out of the White House for eight more years? (Because Dean would give him the DNC - Ed.).
Here's my question: Is it really good news for Dean?

Think about it: Who really cares about Algore anymore? The people who chant that the President was "selected, not elected?", and believe that Gore is the real president now? People who pine for the Clinton years? How many of that crowd weren't going to vote for the Democrat nominee (whomever it is!) anyway?

Think about this: In an economic boom year (albeit a false and waning one, but we didn't know that in 2000), while campaigning as a sitting incumbent of a popular administration, Algore only got 50 percent and some tiny change of the vote, in an election that by all rights he should have won!

That means somewhere along the line in 2000, Algore lost the scads of swing voters that, under those conditions, should have put him over the top.

So - Dean's being endorsed by the guy who blew a 14 point lead in the fourth quarter.

He's happy about this?

Well, I suppose it means he's locked up the "Josh Bartlett is my president" crowd...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/11/2003 05:51:06 AM

Death Penalty News - Ann Coulter is right about so many things. She's a firebrand, to be sure, a shoot from the hip kinda pundit, and that's what I like about her. And much of the abuse she takes from the liberal press stems from her accuracy, not inaccuracy.

But if there's one thing Ann Coulter says that drives me nuts, it's her constant poo-poohing of the one, conclusive reason to oppose the death penalty; it is prescribed in error way too often. And in my opinion, once is too many.

Here's another case, from the Strib:
"Charges were dropped Tuesday against a man who spent 20 years on Pennsylvania's death row for a murder that DNA evidence says he did not commit.

The decision makes Nicholas Yarris the first Pennsylvania death row inmate cleared by DNA evidence, but he will remain jailed pending appeals on crimes he committed after escaping from sheriff's deputies 15 years ago.

Prosecutor Sheldon Kovach filed the motion Tuesday to drop the rape and murder charges in the 1981 death of a woman in the Philadelphia area. 'The commonwealth would not have sufficient evidence at this point to proceed,' he said."
Now, here's the rub: the likes of Coulter will respond "See? the DNA got him off death row!".

True - two decades later. Here's the rub - according to Yarris' supporters, the prosecution spent the better part of this past decade doing its best to prevent the DNA from the case from getting a proper analysis.

Coulter's a lawyer - and I'd suspect she'd never give the notion of prosecutorial malfeasance any credit. In this case, it'd seem to have happened.

And to me, it's not worth the risk. Life without parole is a better, cheaper - and safer - option.

The only capital punishment I support is the kind delievered by an armed citizen, in justifiable self-defense.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/11/2003 05:13:11 AM

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Grrrr - Blogger was yakking this morning. I finally got the chance to repost everything.

I really need to get Moveable Type going...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/10/2003 06:17:15 PM

Religion and Prosperity - Here's the argument I have with my few atheist, agnostic and non-Judeo-Christian friends. It starts out like this: "Name a non-Judeo-Christian society that has ever been a net gain for the peasant on the street, during their lifetimes."

The argument quickly devolves into a digression on geography, natural resources and will to power - which inevitably dodges the point. "Leave aside the fact," I answer, "that China and India and pre-Columbian Mexico and even Mesopotamia were hardly bereft of resources, historically - it's a matter of fact that in each of those societies, and every other similar example, the resources went exclusively - not "in an unbalanced way", but "without exception" - to the ruling class. It's only been through the rise of Judeo-Christian philosophy that the lot of the peasant has ever improved".

"Yes", the response goes, "but that's only because the West had the Industrial revolution".

But how could the Industrial Revolution - or, for that matter, the Renaissance or the Information Age for that matter - have occurred in, say, a Moslem or Buddhist or Taoist society? The fundamental driving forces of those societies, with the possible exception of Islam - are inimical to the formation of governments that respect the rule of law and have fundamentally liberal values. Christianity does - and many of Western society's great advances have happened, if not in the name of Christianity, at least in societies broadly formed according along the lines of Judeo-Christian philosophy.

I say possibly Islam - there is argument there. Drezner has an interesting debate going on over the economic future of Islam.

Tyler ~~Volokh~~ Cowen is, if not bearish, at least not convinced that Islam is a direct cause of a poor economy - it's merely hard to disentangle it from the lousy governments that strangle people and economies:
These correlations miss the point. To the extent that Islam has negative effects, it operates through indirect mechanisms. Islamic countries have a difficult time establishing democracy and rule of law and good economic policy. True, if you include enough proxy variables in the regression -- such as good policy -- the influence of Islam will wash out. Islam is an indirect cause of some problems, not the direct cause, and the direct causes may well have more statistical significance. But the point remains that Islam can influence the variables that matter.

The study uses intra-national comparisons as well. Muslims in the United States have done quite well. Muslims in India and Ghana are not poorer that non-Muslims in those countries, adjusting for the relevant variables (Malaysia of course is an exception, I might add that in the case of India Hinduism might be bad for growth too, not to mention the animism that is common in Ghana, so this is a comparative result against some not so impressive contenders.) But again this is missing the point. The fact that Islamic individuals can do well, when embedded in some other economic and legal order, does not mean that Islamic countries can sustain such institutions. In fact I think that Islamic philosophy and theology make it harder to have a liberal legal order.

Kieran Kealy disagrees - sort of.

The whole thing is worth a read...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/10/2003 07:20:30 AM

Midnight Confessions - I'm a fairly normal guy. I work a job, raise a couple of kids - in short, nothing unusual.

But I harbor a shameful secret - one so deep and dark and awful, I am loathe to broach the subject in polite company.

And it would stay that way - secret, unbroached - had I not found support out there in the blogosphere. There is one other person with the guts to shine a light on this...thing , to get it out of its dark, shameful corner.

Atomizer, from Fraters Libertas, says it:
Since the Elder has brought up the subject of John Lennon songs that are painful to listen to, let me add the utterly atrocious "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" to the list.
Thank you, Atom.

But in all honesty, I have to say it goes further for me. I can not think of anything John Lennon ever did after the Beatles that I would ever voluntarily listen to twice.

Oh, put it back in the scabbards, all you Lennon zealots out there. He and McCartney did a lot of great stuff with the Fab Four. And while I'm not the world's biggest Beatles' fan (I prefer the Who and the Kinks among Brit Invasion bands), they were a great band - and I like a lot of, say, George Harrison's post-Beatles work.

But Lennon? His whole solo oeuvre sums up like this: A bunch of session guys standing around playing drowsy, self-indulgent, depressing music that sounds like it's being done after too much NyQuil.

And as far as Lennon himself - Ray Davies made bitter, cynical alienation fun. Lennon made it tortuous.

Imagine? Vision of a Sartreian hell. Merry Christmas, War Is Over? "White Christmas" for the "Paxil as lifestyle accesory" set. Double Fantasy - as in, every single song on both disks? Call it Double Miasma, and I might buy it on grounds of pure honesty alone.

I'm with Atomizer - it's Christmas; you can play your Bach, your Irving Berlin, or your Joey Ramone for all I care; any of them can suggest some shred of what this holiday is about.

Save Lennon for the classic rock rotation - the one I never tune in, if you please.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/10/2003 06:07:40 AM

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Gore Endorses Dean - Who to link to about this story:

Hewitt? Sullivan? Reding?

All of them and more, of course. But in the end, Scott Ott probably covers the story as well as anyone.

I did like Sullivan's quote:
if Dean goes down in flames (which must surely be the likeliest eventuality), Gore has allied himself with the energized, leftist Democratic base, and could position himself in 2008 as the real soul of the party - unlike that centrist opportunist, Senator Clinton. In fact, the minute after a Bush re-election, the Gore-Clinton struggle for control of the party begins again in earnest. To my mind, this is somewhat delusional of Gore. No sane political party would ever give him another chance at the presidency, after he threw it away with such spectacular incompetence in 2000. But all politicians have to be a little delusional; and Gore is nothing but a politician.
And this:
And it also marks the first time that a major establishment figure has essentially blessed the new forces of web-based anti-war upper-middle-class activism that has propelled his candidacy. Gore, of course, helps with blacks, for good measure, a group now indispensable to any chance the Dems have next year. So there you have it: the left-wing take-over of the Democrats continues apace. And only the Clintons can stop it.
How much of a blessing is it for Dean? How many of that 50.01% that voted for Gore in '00 would do it again?

Especially now that he's finally (irrevocably) thrown his lot in with the hard left in the party?

Jonah Goldberg notes, regarding Gore's backstabbing of Joe Lieberman:
Indeed, Gore could have picked Dean in 2000 to be his runningmate -- the man was no less qualified then than he is now. The only thing that has changed is that Gore has moved even further to the angry left and Dean is in a position to reward Gore (and Gore may be counting on the even angrier Dean voters in 2008, after Bush finishees his second term). And, oh yeah, we are in a long, dangerous bloody struggle with an enemy dedicated to destroying us. And, we are in the midst of one of the most ambitious and generous foreign policy efforts in American history (recall that Al Gore was a passionate defender of nation-building). But all that seems to be beside the point.

In other words, Al Gore not only thinks Howard Dean is more qualified to be president of the United States than Joe Lieberman was or is, he thinks that is especially the case now after 9/11. If you really let that sink in for a second, you can see what an amazingly mercenary and damn close to dishonorable position that is. Moreover, it shows how a vast swath of the Democratic Party really, fundamentally, doesn't care that there's a war on -- except, that is, to the extent it wants to bug out from it.
So, all of my moderate Democrat friends; who's your guy? Lieberman, the only candidate with a responsible position on terrorism? Or are you going to sit tight and hope for Hillary to throw her hat and her newfound hawkishness into the ring?
posted by Mitch Berg 12/9/2003 07:10:07 AM

AWOL - November and December have been crazy months for me - and the blog has showed it.

Not that I really felt I could maintain my manic output of last spring, at the depths of my un/underemployment, when I wrote just to keep doing something between the job calls that, at the time, never came.

But oy, vey, this last month has really gut-shot my output; not merely in terms of quantity, but in the mental energy I have to put into it. I think it's getting better, but we'll see.

First, I need to fix my coffee maker...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/9/2003 06:52:57 AM

Evolution - Under George Bush, the Republican Party is changing.

Conservatives don't like it, of course. You don't have to look at too many hard-right blogs to see the type of anti-Bush rhetoric that'd make the Democratic Underground blanche.

Liberals don't like it either, of course; Bush is triangulating them out of their turf.

Both sides are right - and wrong. Sullivan pegged it yesterday:
Put together Niall Ferguson's typically brilliant op-ed in the NYT yesterday with Tom Friedman's open mind toward Bush's new Wilsonianism and I think you see one interesting interpretation of the sheer radicalism of this administration. By committing the U.S. simultaneously to a bigger welfare state (now coopted by the G.O.P.) and a policy of aggressive democratization abroad, president Bush is re-casting Cold War liberalism for the next century and calling it Republicanism.
So Bush could be the New Kennedy...
We have no idea at his point in history how this will or will not work out. I'm less sanguine than Ferguson about America's long-term, fiscal health.
...or the new LBJ. Time will tell, and of course you know what I'm hoping for and betting on.

Sullivan continues:
But the deepest insight of Niall's piece is the thought that circumstances in part forced Bush's hand. After the bursting of the Rubin Bubble, and worldwide deflation, a tougher fiscal stance might have led to a catastrophic global depression. And after 9/11, a passive approach to Islamist terrorism might well have sent a signal that we were a soft target and emboldened the new fascists even more. And continuing the failed policies of the past in the Middle East would have meant another, worse 9/11 sooner rather than later. But even if you see the Bush Project as driven primarily by events, that doesn't make it any the less impressive. The sheer scale of the undertaking is undeniable.
This begs a question.

We know how liberals (as opposed to Democrats, many of whom fall back on their Truman/Kennedy roots, and are quite sensible on foreign policy) would have reacted to 9/11 - by launching feel-good initiatives at the UN that would have Clintonized the event, casting it as a national tragedy, a law enforcement incident, a point for endless international negotiation.

How about the hard right? Where would the Buchananites have taken this (are there still Buchananites out there), with both terror and the economy?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

In my opinion, there are a slew of ways the GOP has needed to change. We'll get to that tomorrow.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/9/2003 06:48:03 AM

Come On Baby Light My Cake - Sioux the Librarian, a correspondent on an email list I frequent, notes that yesterday would have been Jim Morrison's 60th birthday.

Let me just take this opportunity to say this: it's a sign of profound hope that the current generation of teenagers does not seem to have had one of the bouts of Morrison-worship that have plagued pop-music every decade or so since Morrison's fire got lit for the final time 32 years ago. The eighties, of course, were clogged with Doors references, from the sublime (John Densmore's self-deprecating appearance on "Square Pegs", Michael Hutchence) to the ridiculous (the "He's Hot, He's Sexy, He's Dead" issue of Rolling Stone, Run Westy Run). The nineties? Two words for you - Pearl Jam.

So far, no signs of any recrudescence of the Doors Cult in this decade.

Maybe the terrorists are losing...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/9/2003 06:26:54 AM

Move Back! - Along with most of the conservative blogosphere, I've been hammering on MoveOn.org for years now. MoveOn - famously characterized by pundits from the Fraters all the way down to that Coulter chick as a group founded on the principle of making it safe to be a middle-aged white lothario - has busied itself with becoming a clearinghouse for anti-Bush claims. Not exactly conspiracy theories; it's more like "Question: How do you know MoveOn is claiming Bush lied about something? Answer: Their fingers are moving over their keyboards".

Spinsanity - not a conservative site, mind you - notes this, writing about "The Daily Misleader", which is MoveOn's blog:
with The Daily Mislead, MoveOn has become the leader of a new school of liberal criticism that seeks to brand every policy disagreement with President Bush as a broken promise or lie. These loose accusations trivialize charges of dishonesty, reducing them to little more than another partisan spin tactic.

Vague promises, partisan interpretations

The most frequent way in which The Daily Mislead unfairly accuses the Bush administration of dishonesty is to present evidence of a vague promise made by the president and attack him for betraying this promise by not supporting some favored liberal policy.

For instance, on November 20, the Mislead made this accusation: "President Bush unveiled his energy plan in May 2001, vowing to 'make this country the world's leader in energy efficiency and conservation in the 21st century.' But the energy bill under final consideration by the Senate and supported by the President devotes less than ten percent of the $25.7 billion in tax breaks to energy efficiency."

But why is ten percent not enough? How much would be enough? MoveOn never says, because it's too busy engaging in partisan attacks posing as objective analysis of dishonesty.
The article goes on to note, correctly, that this sort of thing isn't doing the alternative left media any good in the long run.

Definitely worth a read.

In Other MoveOn News - I subscribe to the MoveOn.org mailing list. It's usually a repetitive daily call to action against the President's latest outrage against democracy, like the Medicare spending bill that out-Democratted the Democrats.

But I got this one yesterday:
The House is scheduled to vote on this bill today, Monday December 8th.
The Senate may follow suit soon afterward -- unless we help stop them.

Please call your Representative and Senators now, at:

Representative Betty McCollum
DC Phone: 202-225-6631

Senator Mark Dayton
DC Phone: 202-224-3244
Local Phone: 612-727-5220

Senator Dean Barkley
DC Phone: 202-224-9430
Local Phone: N/A

Urge them to reject Bush's Omnibus* spending bill.
Move On, indeed.

They sent a correction later in the day.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/9/2003 06:11:19 AM

Monday, December 08, 2003

First You Talk Everyone Into Loving Each Other - Atomizer, from the Fraters, finds the perfect comparison with the Dean campaign's view of foreign policy:
"Howard Dean has revived the old Steve Martin comedy bit of the late seventies entitled 'You Can Be A Millionaire and Never Pay Taxes'. For those of you who don't remember, Martin's foolproof plan to foil the IRS began with:

'First...get a million dollars.'

Dean's modern day equivalent reads (from his own website):

I (have) laid out four goals for American leadership in the world:
First, defeat the threat posed by terrorists, tyrants, and technologies of mass destruction.

Despite the fact that Dr. Dean has opposed everything President Bush has done in the past three years to do just that while offering no alternative solution, I think he is on the right track. All we have to do is simply claim a desire to defeat the enemy and things will work themselves out."
I'm convinced Dean has to know that he's talking garbage - but that his advisors know that the Dean base is completely illiterate about foreign policy.

Or blinded by ideology or anti-Bush hatred to know better.

Same thing, really.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/8/2003 07:25:44 AM

They Begin At Calais - The Administration plans to commence a War Crimes Tribunal, run by Iraqis.

Predictably, it's running into static from ~~France~~ the international community.

Iraq Now - written by a soldier in Iraq - responds:
"Ok, I don't get it. On one hand, these groups are saying the U.S. is too involved. On the other hand, they claim that the little dark swarthy savages - you know, the ones who invented the rule of law in the first place--aren’t competent to try the cases. So if the Iraqis can't do it themselves, and we can't help them, then the only option left is to forget about the tribunal at all.
And an interesting elaboration on politics in Iraq:
Here's what they don't get: If you look at a map of Iraq, superficially looks like one political entity. Ok, we know it really isn't. Almost everyone by now has figured out that it's really three: the minority Sunni muslims, and the Shias and ethnic Kurds who were so savagely oppressed by Saddam and a few of his favored Sunni clans.

So most informed people can draw two rough lines on the map and divide the populated areas of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, stick a Sunni, Shia, or Kurd label on the map as appropriate, and think that passes for a sophisticated understanding of the situation on the ground.

Wrong.

The reality is that there is no bright line along which the ethnic groups can be separated. Further, Sunni areas are further subdivided into tribes, clans, and sheikdoms�some of which�particularly the al-Tikriti tribe, had closer ties to Saddam than others. Other tribes, even in the Sunni areas, were marginalized and brutalized by Saddam themselves and are aching for payback.

Most people simply do not grasp how deep the interclan rivalries and jealousies are, even among Sunni tribes. Saddam the strong man kept a lid on things in the same way Tito kept a lid on ancient grudges between Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians in the Balkans."
There's more.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/8/2003 07:08:11 AM

Do Citizens for a ~~Supine~~ Safer Minnesota Know About This? - Good Samaritans in Redwood Falls get shot at:
Authorities in western Minnesota looked Sunday for a 16-year-old boy who allegedly opened fire on two people who thought he was having car trouble and stopped to help.

The Renville County Sheriff's Department said that as the man and woman stopped on a gravel road along the Minnesota River near Morton around 10:20 a.m., the youth in the car pointed a rifle at them.

He reportedly fired several shots at the car, and at the woman as she fled. Nobody was hit, but the woman was struck with what was believed to be the butt of a gun, authorities said. She was treated and released.
Obviously, we need a five-day waiting period on Samaritan activities.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/8/2003 06:11:18 AM

The War on the Allies - Lately, allied battle deaths in Iraq seem to far outnumber US casualties.

If we had an especially knowledgeable media, this would be bad news for Howard Dean.

Lately, troops from our foreign allies - Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish - have been getting killed, in greater absolute numbers and still-greater proportion, than US troops.

This is no accident. Hussein's sympathizers must realize by now that we're not the same US that ran from Somalia under the cover of the UN. But they also have to know that many of our allies are not especially steady on the war. Somalia-like casualties - and the Italians and Spanish just suffered them - might cause them to waver, at great political cost to the President.

The question; does Howard Dean know this? Or is he merely hoping his voters don't?

UPDATE: There's some wavering going on.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/8/2003 06:08:47 AM

Saturn Wavers - Saturns are one of those things that people either love or hate. The people who hate them tend to be status-crazed yuppies (or yuppies in training) who consider their cars integral parts of their identity, and need something flashier to buff up either withered self-esteem. (That should generate hate mail like the "Violent Lesbians" thread never dreamed of).

I've had one for two years, and I love it. But GM seems to be dead-set on scuppering the marque.

From Chele.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/8/2003 06:06:31 AM