State GOP Brouhaha or What's a Republican, Part IV - The Strib is reporting a big brouhaha among the state GOP, regarding its threat not to give state GOP funds to the Senate Republican Caucus. The SRC wants to support two of its moderate members, Senators Kiscaiden and Martha Robertson. Both are, on many key conservative issues, "moderate" - ie, might as well be Democrats.
The question for the SRC is: who decides what a "Republican" is?
And for the Strib: if it were the DFL withholding funds from unendorsed candidates who contravened the DFL's core beliefs, would this even be a story?
Missile Alert - Again - I wasn't being tongue-in-cheek with yesterday's "Missile Alert" post. But apparently it's more real even than that.
Missile Alert - be on the lookout, for now anyway, for Arab guys walking through Fort Snelling State Park carrying long tubes.
Actually, there is precedent for this - Palestinian terrorists shot at a number of commercial airliners back in the seventies, using the relatively unsophisticated Russian shoulder-fired AA missiles of the day.
Irap - Yesterday, Bono. Today, Eminem.
There's a certain trainwreck quality about watching stars give in to hubris. Marshall Mathers is doing it...
Iraq - Last week, I wondered aloud on this site if Bush's prevarication to the Europeans about attacking Iraq was for show.
William Safetan in Slate advances a similar thesis. Very interesting.
I Know It Was a Long Cold Spring - but I hate heat and humidity.
Waaah.
That's part of the reason today's installment is so thin and late. I'll get on it earlier tomorrow...
Meet the New Anchor, Same as the Old Anchor - Brian Williams will succeed Tom Brokaw.
In other words, the least overtly liberal of the major anchors is going to be replaced by someone who may be more overtly liberal than Peter Jennings.
OPM - Y'know, I"ve been a U2 fan since "Boy", in 1981. I may have been one of five people in North Dakota to have bought that album when it was released. And along with Springsteen, there is no better on-stage showman than Bono. Yes, he's an arch-liberal, but goodness knows that if a conservative tried to listen to conservative rockers, we'd be limited to the late Joey Ramone and the interminable Ted Nugent.
And you have to hand it to Bono - he was one of very few performers after 9/11 who checked in as an unabashedly pro-human patriot (as distinct from National Chauvinist).
Of course, his big topic is third world debt. A valid sentiment? Sure. The stupid debts accumulated by stupid, almost invariably socialist or statist governments are indeed crushing the economies.
But, as Mike Lynch argues, just giving these socialistic and/or autocratic countries the money is about the same as giving a 16-year-old his entire inheritance in advance, wagging your finger at her, and telling her "make sure you don't spend it all on CDs and spring breaks in Cancun!".
Money makes the World Go Round - The Minnesota GOP has its own campaign finance debate going on.
Brian Sullivan echoes the complaints most conservatives have against campaign spending limits - because they leave the liberal media as the ultimate arbiter of what information reaches the public. If Sullivan and his privately-funded (thus unregulated) campaign happen to win the endorsement and the election (which is unlikely,I think), look for massive state and national handwringing about the power of money in politics - the kind that, for some reason, didn't happen after John Corzine won New Jersey's 2000 Senate campaign with 60 million in private spending, or Mark Dayton outspent Rod Grams by severalfold in their Senate race.
Corzine and Dayton are Democrats, of course.
Stop Me If I'm Wrong - but Bush's Normandy speech was not what I'd hoped for.
Granted, it did what Memorial Day speeches are supposed to do - honor those who died protecting our freedom, and bringing it back to those who'd lost it.
But the part many of us hoped for - the statement of doctrine to the Europeans that Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction made them an enemy worthy of our military attention - wasn't there.
Part of me likes to think that silence is golden - that it's all there, under the surface, waiting to come out when the time is right.
Part of me is worried that it won't.
Lunacy International - According to a report by Amnesty International, the passengers of Flight 93, whose doomed uprising against their hijackers may have saved the White House, violated the hijackers' rights to Free Speech, Trial by Jury and Due Process.
OK, not quite. But the rest of their report, despite little motes of occasional relevance (opposition to the vagaries of the Patriot Act) is a statement of such smug and idiotic America-last-ism that words fail. In a world full of Sudans and Zimbabwes, for Amnesty (to which I used to contribute) to harp on the US would be comical were it not so depressing.
No Heads Rolled - I doubt many rational non-agendified people really believe that the president knew anything about 9/11 in advance, certainly nothing he or anyone could have formed a considered reaction to. But Jesse Walker, in Reason, asks - if' that's true, are all of the "Patriot Act's" powers such a good idea?
Ugh - A significant part of the Moslem world is fairly inscrutable to Americans. A place and people that can generate dozens of suicide bombers is just too strange for many Americans to comprehend.
But suicide bombers come in dime lots. And just when I was thinking that radical Islam was the most inscrutably insane belief in the world, comes the news that two thickly-populated nations, India and Pakistan, are just as wacko as the worst Palestinian walking into an ice cream parlor wrapped in TNT and nails.
Memorial Day - With this, I risk diving deep into bathos.
Tough. It's my blog. If you're not in the mood, pop on over to nsync.com til it blows over.
It's 4AM on Memorial Day. Memorial Day has always been a poignant holiday for me - I've never been one of those Americans who was unaware of what this holiday was about. I grew up in a town steeped in the lore of WWII. The local National Guard company - Company H of the 164th Infantry Regiment - served on Guadalcanal and in the Philippines. Their dead were a part of the atmosphere I grew up in. We remembered, all right.
Well, we have a lot to remember today. In addition to the 900,000 American servicepeople who've died in our nation's service in the past 227 years, we have 3,000 civilians.to mourn as well. One of them was from a little town not far from my own hometown. Ann Nelson worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, and I think I knew her brother, although I'm not sure - many North Dakotans are only a degree or two of separation apart, but there are as many Nelsons there as in Minnesota. And I read her portrait in the Times - her story is a little close to my heart, personally. She was another small-town kid who moved to the big city to chase a big dream or two. She died in the World Trade Center, of course.
What do you say? My baser side says "Exact revenge a thousandfold" - and tonight, on the first wartime Memorial Day of my adult life, it feels verygood to say.
But in the end, again, all I can say is remember what this day is for, and pray that this day next year, or the year after, or the year after that, brings us a world free of everything that led us to this point.
Open Letter to the President - President Bush - it's Mitch. I helped get you elected, two years ago. Do me a favor. Please.
You'll be speaking at St.Mere Eglise, overlooking Omaha Beach, sometime later today, Memorial Day. Please, please, drop the dovish tone of the last few days - the one you used at the Bundestag in Berlin last week. The world needs another Winston Churchill. We do not need empty platitudes, calling us to endless wariness and uncertain sacrifice toward an unknowable end.
We need a speech like Churchill or Reagan or FDR would give - one that left our goal so clear even the most myopic tyrant or zealotry-befuddled thug can't help but get the message: We're awash in righteous rage, and we're going to exact a hundred Afghanistans from the next pack of degenerates that doesn't come to the table with its tail between its legs and it nuclear weapons programs lolling about the circular file.
We need a speech that puts Iraq on notice that their current path will lead only to Tomahawks in the dark, shadows in the night disgorging flame and steel and cold-eyed killers in green and sand berets that strike in the dark leaving cut throats and flaming bunkers and numbing chaos. With Turkish tanks rumbling over those who don't have the sense to do what their fathers and older brothers did ten years ago - surrender.
Mr. President; do not let us down.
The Left Gets Its Wish - The Professional Bellyaching Class yapped long and loud about the "treatment" Al-Quaeda prisoners were receiving at Camp X-Ray, at Guantanamo Bay.
So - today, these butchers are treated better than drunk driving convicts in any American county jail.
I'm beginning to think the Russians had the right idea.
Institutional Culture - We've long known that the Minneapolis FBI office had a hint that Zacharias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th Hijacker" who was arrested in the suburbs of St. Paul a month before the terrorist attacks, had some inkling they were on to something.
Today - word from the WashPost that the institutional culture of the FBI may have thwarted the further investigation that might - just might - have flushed the 9/11 plot before it happened.
The allegations - from a career FBI counsel - hinge on senior FBI officials' careerism - which came before solving cases.
Scary stuff.
Memorial Day - Everyone reminds you of this - but take a few minutes to remember those who died for this country. Maybe even pass some of the facts along to our woefully-educated kids.
In these days, when we fight wars 10,000 miles away with cold-eyed professionals and casualty rolls fit handily one one page of notebook paper, most students don't know - because most of their teachers don't know, either - that as many Americans died in World War II as currently live in Minneapolis. At least 2.5 times that many were injured. That means that of the 10 million Americans who served in World War II, nearly 1 in 11 was killed, wounded, captured, or hurt in some way; it was not a paltry risk, in those days, and most of those who went had no choice. Enough Americans were killed in the drive from Normandy to Paris - from June to September of 1944 - to fill the Metrodome. The Marines that were killed in a month on Iwo Jima - 5,000 - died taking an area not much bigger than the U of M St. Paul Campus, with the Ag station.
And the average age of those dead was 23 years. 1/3 of their life expectancy.
My ex-father-in-law lived past his life expectancy, thankfully; he passed away on Martin Luther King day, this past January. He joined the Navy the morning after Pearl Harbor, at age 20, along with most of his seven brothers. It was week after his wedding. He served on the battleship USS Iowa for a cruise, then spent the rest of the war on the destroyer USS Collett. He once spent 18 months aboard, without setting foot on land. He shot down a Kamikaze, narrowly evaded being torpedoed, and came back four years later. I'll be visiting his grave - he's my kids' grandfather - this weekend.
Hope you all do something similar.
Senator Springsteen? - One of my favorite Bloom County strips, back in 1985, was a trip to the future - complete with President Springsteen.
This took an ironic turn toward (humorous) reality this week, as a former Jesse the Meathead staffer launched an effort to draft Bruce Springsteen to run for Senator from New Jersey.
Cheesy publicity ploy to get the Independence Party some play in Jersey? Most likely - Bruuuuuce promises he will not accept any nomination or run for any office.
Vital Signs - I'm a serious student of political oratory. My father was a high school speech teacher, and I grew up with a deep appreciation of the art of moving people and nations with a well-crafted and perfectly-timed speech.
And in this regard the President has surprised pleasantly, even stirringly. He will never be mistaken for Winston Churchill - but then, we are not Britain in 1940, and the situation doesn't call for one.
In an earlier post, I expressed some trepidation about what seemed like a retrenchment on engaging Iraq. After reading Andrew Sullivan's piece today, I wondered: is Bush abandoning the notion of attacking Iraq, or was he downplaying the hawkishness and concentrating on building up the European consensus and realization of the danger terrorism presents them?
Peggy Noonan's article today makes me think - maybe, just maybe, the latter.
And I'll be watching his upcoming speech in Normandy very closely. This, the scene of what may have been our nation's greatest undertaking, has been where previous American presidents set the stage for other great undertakings; Eisenhower on the changes since he first crossed those beaches twenty years earlier, Reagan making the case to Europe to resist Soviet tyranny...
...and, this week, Bush. Stay tuned.
Pavlov's People - The idea started almost as a joke - right-wing wags and punditry thinking aloud "I wonder if the Democrats really care about doing anything about Social Security, or if they just like having it around for fear fodder?"
Today - the "smoking gun". A congressional staff memo essentially spells out that that is, indeed, the Democrat strategery; the mess that is Social Security is worth more to them as a boondoggle than as a working program that supports senior citizens.
When it comes to cynicism, you really can't make it up fast enough anymore.
Suppose this'll stick? Any bets?
Second Thoughts? - It's odd. At work (at a local engineering company), there's a big, pre-9/11 poster of Manhattan - a big aerial photo taken from south of Battery Park. People walk by and look at the picture, and seem awed by the huge amount of space the twin towers took up in the picture. I've done it myself. From that angle, the World Trade Center took up a very large part of the field of view - and it's easy to see why people feel like such a huge piece of Manhattan is missing.
All this is apropos the President's announcement yesterday that he's not considering moving against Iraq - one of the powers that wants the ability to erase the rest of the Manhattan skyline.
Is Bush dissembling? Is he lying to put the Iraqis at false ease? Is he playing to the room (full of pusillanimous European leftists), for temporary gain? Or has he lost his nerve? Is he (as Andrew Sullivan puts it) surrendering to the terrorists?
What do you think?
All About Accusations - Ann Coulter on what the Democrats knew.
Scary - We've long known that the FBI office in Minneapolis may have had the key to breaking September 11 before it happened.
you can feel the frustration
Today - with the bureaucracy...
Try to Comprehend the Horror - The Minneapolis Police Department has a reputation for thumping first and thinking later. The Minneapolis Public Schools are a mess. They have higher crime per capita than St. Paul, their city council and other officials have been getting dinged for corruption, they're about to lose two sports franchises, and they're just not as cool as St. Paul...
...but what gets Doug Grow really upset is those damned scantily-clad waitresses at the potential Downtown Hooters.
You can hear the teeth gnashing.
Ummm - Governor?... - This story from Reason Magazine is interesting for its perspectives on mass transit, yadda yadda...
But notice, a few paragraphs into it:
"We're one of the few cities of our size without a mass transit system, and it's been years and years in process and we still don't have anything started yet."
Hmmm - didn't Governor Ventura say that Minneapolis/St. Paulwere the only such benighted cities?
It Was the White House - People have long suggested that Flight 93 - which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers tried to kill their hijackers - was intended for a target in DC.
Today - evidence from Abu Zubayda that the target was, indeed, the White House.
The Wednesday that Wasn't - woke up late, never had time to post anything. In meetings all day, kids' stuff all night, and ended up falling asleep during the first commercial break in "Law and Order", about an hour before I'd planned to post something.
Sorry! I'll try to catch up today.
Stupid People - An Australian company is selling a line of September 11 handbags.
They're made in China, and apparently being exported to...you guessed it, Europe.
The Feeding Frenzy - Now that the legislature has shown its willingness to buckle under to Major League Baseball's demands, billionaire Red McCombs is bellying up to the trough.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
At least the Wild can't demand a new arena yet.
Can they?
Another Upside of Home Ownership - The next terrorist attack may involve renting an apartment in a high-rise and packing full of explosives.
Wonder if this will drive rents down, and thus solve the "Affordable Housing" crisis?
Gandhi Award - During WWII, Mahatma Gandhi urged Jews not to resists the Nazis, but to go to the gas chambers by way of shaming the Nazis with their non-violence.
This year's award-winner - the Dalai Lama.
Actually, I was somewhat shocked to see the Dalai Lama does recognize the concept of the "just war" - which makes him a lot smarter than a lot of liberal western religious leaders.
Second Thoughts about Second-Guessing - from Slate, of all places.
Benefit of Having No Social Life - Walk-in Suicide Bombers termed "inevitable".
LA, It Is A-Splittin' - The San Fernando Valley is trying to secede from Los Angeles.
My favorite part:
Nationally, urban affairs experts warn other cities not to be too smug. Los Angeles has exported everything from skateboards to facelifts, and secession could follow."Every city has some neighborhood that doesn't feel loved. And every one of those cities will be looking with interest at what LA is doing," said George Thomas, an urban affairs professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
I hope the Valley goes through with it (along with the LA port town of San Pedro, which is also pondering bailing on LA).
The Times, They Are a-Fabricating... - Yesterday's bit on the Anti-Gun Media (see below) was only the tip of the iceberg.
Ann Coulter points out the flimsy academic and historical basis of the left's belief that the Second Amendment only applies to the National Guard - and the hollow nature of the Times' reporting on this issue.
I love this part:
Indeed, the one guy the Times dredged out of the left-wing toilet willing to provide tepid endorsement to their bunkum was Stanford history professor Jack Rakove. Even Rakove – the only academic still defending Michael Bellesiles' fraudulent anti-gun book Arming America – wouldn't stoop to supporting the Times' preposterous claims.Far from asserting a "bipartisan consensus" for the Times' view, Rakove said it is "no secret" that controversy over the Second Amendment "has escalated in recent years." (Except at the Times, where it remains a huge secret.) Moreover, Rakove's big rebuke to Ashcroft consisted of his meek observation that "it is far from clear that the Justice Department's new position would prevail."
For taking a position that an anti-gun zealot says might not prevail, the Times says Ashcroft is betraying "his public duty."
Candidate Sharpton - The sheep entrails and tea leaves seem to indicate Al Sharpton has presidential aspirations.
Oh, please, let it come to a Gore/Sharpton slugfest at the convention!
Cuba Libre - Jay Nordlinger writes about Carter's visit to Cuba last week.
I'm not sure I agree entirely with Nordlinger. Oh, yes, Carter's become a drinking buddy of the world's Ortegas and Arafats since he left office. He equivocates and rationalizes and finds moral equivalences between the US and Cuba that no rational, freedom-loving person ever should. He is our most embarassing ex-president.
But during his speech, he did sneak in a few shots at Castro and the regime, the type of thing no Cuban had ever read or heard on Cuban national TV before.
More to come...
Fight for the Right - Heading into the GOP convention, Brian Sullivan and Tim Pawlenty are oh, so close.
For me, it's all a matter of seeing how Ventura breaks on the stadium bill. I'm told a veto is not a lock, as I'd assumed it would be. Likely, but I'm not betting my mortgage payment on it.
If he vetoes the stadium, I'll support Sullivan. Otherwise - or in the seemingly unlikely event Ventura doesn't run - I think I'll give Pawlenty the nod. I think he can beat Moe and beat him bad.
It Ain't Easy, Being Green - The Green party took another step on its slide to irrelevance outside Dinkytown today, at its state convention in St. Cloud.
The party, built on its platform of hatred of achievement, envy of wealth, and absolute dependence on government masquerading as physical self-reliance, will not have Ralph Nader (the egghead's Jesse Ventura) to rally around - and the Greens will fail to get 5% in any statewide race this year. Their one chance at remaining more relevant than the Libertarians or the Grass Roots party - endorsing and serving as kingmaker to Paul Wellstone - fell short in favor of the endorsement of Ed McGaa.
It's been funny, watching the German Greens self-destruct in the wake of September 11. Now, watch as the Minnesota Greens cease to be relevant outside of, say, Dinkytown.
Been fun to know ya!
...But Not So Bad Being Black - Afro-Americans face lots of problems, even now.
According to some middle-class Afro-Americans, the media's perception of them may be one of the bigger ones.
Four More Years - The legislature has passed a stadium funding bill, thereby giving Jesse Ventura the political equivalent of the Atomic Bomb in the coming election.
It's over. I've resigned myself to four more years of governor Meathead.
The Anti-Gun Media - Lawyers for John Walker Lindh - AKA "The American Taliban" - have tried to get his charges dismissed on First Amendment grounds (free association) - as well as Second Amendment reasons, mainly to do with Attorney General Ashcroft's stance that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual, not collective, right (in other words, because it applies to citizens, and not some tortured definition of "militia".
So why did the New York Times cite "problems" with only the Second Amendment, and not the first?
Jacob Sullum, in Reason, writes an excellent article on the re-emerging Second Amendment battle. A recent Fifth Federal Circuit decision began the process of reversing the "collective rights" interpretation that started with the badly-interpreted Miller decision in 1939. Between that, and Laurence Tribe's recent change of mind from collective to individual interpretation, look for this issue to be back on the front page soon.
Thank God for John Ashcroft.
The California Supreme Court has ruled that Nike corporation is not allowed to defend itself in the court of public opinion.
One hopes the US Supreme Court will have the common sense to pound a stake through the heart of this idiotic decision.
Powell Among the Euroweenies - Powell gave selected left-wing European newspapers what-for yesterday.
It's not only fun to see the Bush administration responding to European leftist pusillanimity in the face of terrorism - but it also begs the question; was that as much a shot on behalf of the resurgent Euro right as it was for our own foreign policy?
The Dutch elections last week (more to come) were a resounding victory for the center-right. Italy and Hungary are already run by center-right governments, while elections in Germany last month indicated the Christian Democrats may have a rosy future. Even the UK's battered Tories are showing signs of life. The anti-EU, anti-unfettered-immigration message of the center-right parties is resonating with more and more European voters, to the immense consternation of the bureaucrats that run the EU, and the left-wing media that supports them.
The Guardian (the English newspaper in my link above) describes Powell as "...the most Europe-friendly figure within the Bush administration". Is it a coincidence that he's in Europe giving these interviews now?
More to come.
Schwoops - I just had a two day haggle with my ISP. I won - hence, the site is on the air again.
I'll post a bunch of make-up stuff over the weekend...
Metaphor Alert- The state budget passed the Legislature today. It basically deferred a lot of spending against the hope that tax collections (and thus the economy) will pick up in the next year. Way up. It also pilfs from the Tobacco Endowment, which is very good news.
Quote of the day, from Governor Meathead:
``If you're just shifting and doing money shifts, that isn't solving the problem,''
Would-be Scandal Alert - Apparently, the federal government (including the White House) was warned about a potential hijacking plot in the weeks before September 11.
Although the alert mentioned nothing about using airliners as missiles, and White House advised concerned agencies about the threat, here's my prediction; someone is going to claim it's a White House conspiracy. Michael Moore? Tom Tomorrow? Molly "the Idiot" Ivins? I don't know, but watch for it.
Schwing Naar Recht - OK, it's probably not really Dutch, but the Netherlands, long the continent's poster child for socialist utopianism, is edging to the right.
In the wake of the murder of prime minister candidate Pim Fortuyn last week, the slain libertarian/anti-immigrant/anti-EU leaders' "LPF" party came in second to the Christian Democrats (the name for many European center-right parties - think Jim Ramstad in wooden clogs), sweeping Prime Minister Wim Kok's Labor/Social Democrat coalition from parliamentary leadership in voting today.
The left's going to be so angry. Watch for more backlash against unassimilated immigrants, the EU and the stultifying buro-socialism and enviro-terrorism - and more media hatchet work against anyone to the right of Tony Blair.
A Timely Lesson - When columnists and pundits as diverse as Ann Coulter and Jason Lewis hold forth on the incompatibility of the Moslem and Western worlds, they ignore one of the best examples of political moderation, interfaith coexistence, and friendship to the United States - Turkey.
Tunku Varadarajan writes in Opinion Journal about his admiration for Turkey, its leaders and people. I'll admit - my mother and her husband lived in Turkey quite a while, so may things in this eye-opening article were not news to me. But the fact remains that Turkey is a bastion of small-l liberalism (by near-Eastern standards especially), and after Britain and Israel our most steadfast ally, is news to most Americans. While the pusilanimous EU crabwalks away from the US when the heat is on, Turkey's in there with us. Expect Turkish forces to be heavily engaged in any war against Iraq.
Strange Bedfellows - When regular people get together to talk about gun owners' rights, they discuss the practical aspects of the issue; "do guns in the hands of the law-abiding make us all safer"? It's an argument that the gun-rights movement has largely won, on the merits of a strong, unrefuted case.
When wonks gather to discuss the issue, it's more likely to turn to talk of is there really a right to keep and bear arms. There, the issue is both clearer and murkier. The Second Amendment is not a well-written piece of legislation, although a majority of our premier legal minds support the notion that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual, not group, right. Even pre-eminent constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, after years of claiming the Amendment referred to a group right (the misunderstood "well-regulated militia"), changed his mind - largely on the strength of the reasoning of constitutional legal scholar Sanford Levinson.
Now, something I never believed I'd see in my lifetime - liberal antigun zealot Senator Chuckie Schumer has come out supporting the concept of the individual right.
The Berlin Wall falling in our lifetimes was nothing compared to this...
All Tingly - In my heart of hearts, I have always wanted to take a year off and write the ultimate documentary on theliberal bias of the media.
Well, Hammerin' Ann Coulter has done it for us, in a book to be launched shortly.
I'll buy it when it hits the stands. Expect me to quote from it...er, liberally.
Doh - another crazy day, will post more later.
I'll leave you with this for now - the media's attempt to repackage Chelsea Clinton as the next JohnJohn. The girl has her father's vacuousness and her mother's conscience.
Screed not lest you be Screeded - James Lileks attacks the leftist bigot...Patch Adams.
Wonderful.
Our Class Society- The list of issues where America's wonk class differs from the man and woman on the street is endless - gun control, the Green Party, PBS - and now, the view of Israel.
Resistance is Not Futile - Security guards foil a hijacking in Iran.
Crazy Day - I'm running late this morning - but I'll write more later today.
News Vs. Propaganda - As rumors of impending war against Iraq quietly mount, 60 Minutes ran an article on tonight's broadcast about the aftermath of the post-Gulf-War gas attacks on Halabja. Saddam Hussein attacked this Kurdish village with nerve gas (attacking victim's central nervous systems) and mustard gas (causing horrendous skin and respiratory burning) after his defeat in the Gulf War. Hundreds died. Many more suffer from cancer, respiratory diseases, and hellish skin and nerve ailments.
Watching tonight's report (which I believe may have been a repeat), I had to wonder - why now? It's a horrifying and utterly compelling report - and watching it moves you to demand action for those responsible, while realizing what that means - toppling the Iraqi dictator.
So - is propaganda a Bad Thing if it moves a nation to move against an evil that, if we wanted to, we could let lie for a while? Who's not directly threatening us?
Yet?
Much more to come.
Bad Medicine - Speaking of Sixty Minutes; another piece broaches a long-overdue issue: balanced coverage over the medical-industrial complex' politicized approach to guns.
It's about time.
Whee! We're Three! - Yow. Time flies when you're having fun.
The blog turns three today. Months, that is, which is a long time for something I started as a prank...
I'm enjoying it, so look for many more months, hopefully...
Grrrrrrr - Four years ago, I ran for Minnesota State Treasurer on the Libertarian ticket. The website from that bid is still floating around the 'net.
Oh, I know. Quit laughing.
My only campaign promise; abolish the office of state treasurer. Of course, there was a ballot initiative that year to do exactly the same thing. That initiative passed, resoundingly. I considered this a victory (along with the fact that I got 36,000 votes - which was about 35,500 more than I expected). The victory was sort of post-ironic - the citizens of Minnesota didn't need a politician to abolish their deadwood office for them, and you can't get more libertarian than that!
Now, the House has voted to retain this unnecessary and antiquated position - as an appointed job.
This is idiotic. I'm writing my representative (not that writing Alice Hausman is good for much of anything), and you ought to as well. The will of the voters is not only being flouted, but in such a way as to maximize the office's use as a spoil of political victory rather than state accountability.
Fame and Fortuyn, Part II - More on the Pim Fortuyn the media doesn't want you to get to know.
This ties into so many things we've touched on in this blog, it's enough to make one's head explode. There's angles on media bias, the hatred that drives so many liberals, terrorism, the west's responses to terror - it just keeps coming.
I'll try to find some time this weekend to write about it all. Wake the kids!
Iraq - The liberals, the Europeans, and those who think that deep down inside we really had September 11 coming, are all lined up against attacking genocidal nuclear-bio-chem weapon producer Iraq. Newsweek started last week with a big denial of Iraq's complicity in the attack on the US.
But there's enough evidence out there to give you pause.
Do the math: if they don't have NBC weapons, they will. And they'll be dropping them on Israel, or shipping them to the US, when they need to.
Pork Pork Pork - Pete Du Pont on the stalinist travesty that is Farm Bill.
With the President cuddling up to Ted Kennedy on education, adopting prescription drugs for seniors as well as ultraliberal Paul Wellstone's plan to force coverage of Mental Illnesses, and now this caving to farm-state liberal pork, I have to ask; where is the "ultraconservative" all you liberals were wringing your hands over during the 2000 campaign?
Woux Houx - Andrew Sullivan nails the key to the cooling of US relations with France - and why we're getting closer to Israel.
Method Acting Madness - Liberal actor James Brolin, husband of ultraliberal "singer/actress" Barbra "BS" Streisand, has signed to play Martin Sheen's GOP opponent in next year's episodes of NBC's liberal propaganda film West Wing.
Um, yeah. I'm sure that'll be a fair and sympathetic portrayal.
Terror from the Left - Both on and off the page, in this case.
First - it turns out the Pim Fortuyn's assassin was an animal right's activist. He was murdered over fur.
Fur.
ALF and the ELF and their ilk have long flirted about the edge of what we'd call "terrorism" in this country. It's time to get serious about them - they're not a lot less radical, or more concerned with human life and suffering, than Hamas.
By the way - check out the not-at-all subtle spin in the article I link above. Note how Fortuyn is catagorized; "Far-right" and "extremist" labels abound, while neo-socialist Wim Kok is considered mainstream. A more balanced look is available. Or as Andrew Sullivan put it (commenting about a very skewed NY Times article):
"Dutch political leaders decided today to go ahead with the general elections next week, even after the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing politician who had stood a chance to become the country's next prime minister. The police confirmed today that they were holding the assassination suspect, a 32-year-old Dutch environmental activist." Notice how a socially libertarian maverick is "right-wing" but an ideological assassin is just an "environmental activist." Even the Dutch police have described the murderer as an enviro-radical. But extremes, in the Time's p.c. world, only exist on the right. The subtle marginalization of Fortuyn continues, even in death. I would simply ask you to imagine: if this gay man were a liberal and had been killed by a fascist, do you think this story would be treated by the New York Times the same way?
Dey Fracture Loudly, Part II - Doug Grow's column in today's Strib captures some of the dismay and anger among DFL feminists over the endorsement of Roger Moe.
And late word has it that ultra-left former candidate Becky Lourey will neither run for her Senate seat again, nor run as a Green - which, combined with the redistricting and (I suggest) Minnesota's swing to the right, means a solid potential for a two-house GOP majority (let's assume Ventura remains at the executive offices in Maple Grove and Hollywood for a while.
In the meantime, Judy Dutcher apparently is not considering running for any other offices (despite some calls that she run in the Third CD against my fellow Jamestown, ND native Jim Ramstad).
My fearless prediction - the GOP will endorse a woman for governor before the DFL does. And she'll be endorsed for her qualifications - not because she's not a man.
Hooray for Hollywood Limo Liberals - Paul "I'll only run for two terms" Wellstone has gone Hollywood in search of donations.
Expect to see a parade of Hollywood's most execrable b-listers in the next six months. I'll lay ten bucks right now that we can expect a Martin Sheen appearance.
Dey Fracture Loudly - The DFL' s show of post-convention unity fractures, as ultra-leftwing former gubernatorial candidateBecky Lourey takes her toys and leaves the sandbox.
The DFL Feminists, especially the younger ones, seem to be (from the email traffic I've seen) in a serious snit about Lourey losing the nomination. Expect trouble. This should be good.
Moe Betta - Is Roger Moe the best news Brian Sullivan ever had?
If the GOP ran Tim Pawlenty, we'd be facing a career politician with...well, a good, interesting career politician who has conservative credentials (albeit a weaker record than I'd like) and who will run rings around Moe (and most others) on the stump. Pawlenty is one character who can go head to head with Jason Lewis in a stump speech and come out looking good - he's quite an orator (and that, as the son of a speech teach and former radio guy, is something I respect). But he's still a career politician. And with Jesse probably in the mix...
Is this the best news Sullivan's ever had? The "outsider", and some the media will have to work very hard to smear.
Fame and Fortuyn - Why Fortuyn's death matters.
"Far Right" - Watch the liberal media start to spin the murder of Pim Fortuyn. They'll start by calling him "far right", comparing him to Le Pen. But by all accounts, he's not even as far right as Pat Buchanan. He'd be classified as a fairly strident libertarian-conservative in the US. He wasn't "anti-immigrant", as portrayed by many in the leftist media - merely wanted immigration controlled, and immigrants to assimilate themselves into Dutch society.
He was anti-EU, gay, and a small-government activist. By all accounts, he had not a fascist bone in his body.
This is a dark day for rational politics.
US Dumps World Court - The US bailed out of the International Criminal Court today.
Thank Goodness. Under no circumstances should the US turn over any of its legal sovereignty to any world body that includes such pioneers of freedom and legal equity as Red China and the Sudan.
It was for good reason Israel didn't kowtow to the UN over the "massacres" at Ramallah - the UN is full of people who hate the first world, especially the US and Israel. By no means are the perpetrators all third-world natives, either... It's an object lesson for the US as we deal with the UN, the EU, and their detritus.
Our Professors, Ourselves - Interesting article about women's studies programs...
European Politics Gets Nasty? - Pim Fortuyn was to the Netherlands what Pat Buchanan is to the US. He was a conservative rabble-rouser who ran for the prime ministership in the Netherlands.
He was shot dead today outside the Dutch national radio station at Hilversum.
I"ve been following the increasing vituperation of the European left in the face of resurgent national-sovereignty movements in many countries - Italy, Hungary, France, Denmark, Belgium, Hungary and more. If this killing is politically motivated, it'll ratchet things up even more.
Fortuyn was, in particular, a lightning rod for left-wing fascists. A few weeks ago, he was hit in the face by a number of cream pies laced with urine. His supporters are very upset.
Two points:
The State Is Your Mommy alert - A national ID card creeps closer to reality. The rationale? Terrorism, of course.
This is scary.
Moe - The DFL Feminist crowd is already in full fume over Roger Moe beating out Judy Dutcher and Becky Loury for the DFL Gubernatorial nomination.
But I have to wonder - why? And is it all it seems it is?
I was at the convention. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting a feminist activist in full froth and combat plumage. Women, I believe, outnumbered men. Feminists and their sympathizers certainly outnumbered their opponents by an order of magnitude. Itis apparently beyond some DFL feminists of both genders to consider that.
So after decades of fruffing and phumphering, why is the DFL base still whining about its inability to nominate anything but white European males? Those who want a woman at the top of the ticket at any cost have ALL the advantages, not the least of which being a majority of voters.
So why, in 2002, after decades of electoral quotas and Emily's Lists and supercharged fundraising to get women on every possible (liberal) ticket, do we come down to Renee's near-liturgical expresson of frustration yet again?
Two theories to advance, tonight:
Not that Buffett, Unfortunately - Warren Buffett warns that a nuclear terrorist attack of some sort is a virtual certainty.
He's in the insurance business. That's the part that scares me.
Good Thing They Have Gun Control, Part IV - An NYC bus driver kills the man who stabbed him, with the attacker's own knife.
If it'd happened in the Twin Cities, five'll get you get the bus driver would be facing serious charges.
I'll be at the DFL convention tonight. I'll be working the Concealed Carry Now! booth (sort of like being in the JDL booth at a Michigan Militia rally).
But I plan on telling all my DFL acquaintances that I'm registered as a delegate under an assumed name, just to see if they're paying attention.
As a Republican, I'm hoping that the party's granola-munching Birkenstocking base helps Becky Lourey win the nomination. She's a textbook, Ann Wynia-level ultraliberal, and either GOP candidate should make short work of her.
Which isn't to say the heir apparent, Roger Moe, isn't plenty vulnerable, although as one MN-POL corresponded wrote, this last year at the legislature has been, in effect, a Moe campaign speech.
I'm looking forward to the election!
Grrrr - Where did Molly Ivins get her reputation among Democrats as...sentient?
This woman is to thought what David Schwimmer is to Shakespeare.
Danger - Homeland Security director Tom Ridge announced yesterday that the feds are thinking about national drivers' license standards.
The feds' strategery must be to wear us down. Every few years, some federal apparatchik tosses some sort of National ID off as a trial balloon, just to see how it flies. It never does - civil liberties groups always manage to cook up a big negative response. But how long until the public reaction to the constant testing finally fades, and the feds figure the coast is clear?
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance", indeed...
Coming Soon - And I thought the idea of an Ellen Degeneres TV Show was a bad one; Former president Clinton is apparently entertaining offers.
Granted, he does need to find a job, but...
Them is Them - James Lileks has a great screed (at the end of the Daily Bleat) about the fallacy of "understanding" the other side in a war. You know the type - "if you only took some time to understand the Palestinian [Iraqi, Taliban, Russian, German] side of things, you wouldn't be so pro-[Israeli, America, etc...].
Read the whole thing - but my favorite quote is:
If Saudi Arabia had a Star Trek, do you think they’d put a Jewish Chekov at the helm?
Open Minded Liberals - Blogger Angry Clam notes the appearance of rancidly anti-semitic posters ("Kill Jews")...
...at UC Berkeley.
And conservatives are supposed to be the bigots...
Smoked Out - It's not often that I compliment Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch. In fact, I never actually have.
But Hatch led the charge to strip the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco (MPAAT) of its funding - $202 million. MPAAT got the money as part of its' share of the spoils from Skip Humphrey's assault on "big tobacco" four years ago.
The charge continues. And if it means no more Target Market ads, then it'll be more than worth it.
Talking with the Enemy - OK, not "the enemy", per se - I like to be a bit more civil than that. But it's DFL Convention time again, and I'll be there.
No, I haven't lost my mind. Fear not. I'll be there with a group out in the lobby. And I'll be watching eagerly.
Criminy - I don't even ownany Birkenstocks...
Europe, Part IV - Another theory of the psychology behind the Euro-intelligentsia's loathing of America.
When Juergen Goes Marching Home - On the other hand, the best of Europe was in the news again, today.
One of the spookiest moments I recall after September 11 was looking up in the sky on September 13 - two days after all air traffic in the US was shut down - and seeing contrails in the sky. Curved, not straight. Two of them, in formation. Military aircraft flying Combat Air Patrol over the Twin Cities. I caught my breath - only rarely did that happen over US cities in the middle of World War II. But there they were - F-16s with air-to-air missiles, patrolling to fend off the terrorist attack on the Mall of America or the IDS tower that never came.
It was unprecendented - suddenly, the USAF had to go from its Clinton-distended peacetime footing to having to continuously patrol the skies over most of America's major cities, while simultaneously gearing up for a war in Afghanistan. It was a stretch.
So NATO sent a unit to help out - a multinational squadron with some AWACS aircraft, in the first invocation of NATO's "An attack on one is an attack on all" principle. Today it was announced they're standing down and going home.
Thanks, NATO.