The Trouble with Servers - Whatever it is, I had some this past week.
I'll make up for lost time this weekend, and next week. Nooooo problem.
Mixed Feelings - On the one hand, it's probably good that people in government are finally figuring out that people need to know what do to in case of an emergency.
On the other hand, by the time any information gets through Washington or St. Paul, it's hard to believe any useful information will still occur. Government will tell you what it needs to to keep order first, and protect you second. In that order.
Armed and Dangerous in New York - Citing the inability of the NYPD to protect Jewish institutions from the terrorist attacks the FBI says are possible, a Jewish defense group in Brooklyn has vowed to mount armed patrols in the streets of New York.
Citing their Second Amendment right to self-defense, a NYC rabbi has vowed to put 50 armed men on on the street against the threat that terrorists might use fuel tanker trucks for attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools.
Of course, many New Yorkers are idiots: "We don't need vigilantes like him coming into our neighborhoods," said one very complacent New Yorker.
And - this is almost funny - as I listened to NPR's take on this story, I thought "They're going to mention that this rabbi once supported Meir Kahane". And, within seconds, they did. As if that alters someone's right to defend oneself.
Yet another sign - either of the apocalypse or that the US is swinging to the right: New York Jews touting the Second Amendment.
Media Bias is Good? - Thoughts on the accession of George Stephanopoulos.
Future Awk - Our college students are idiots.
James Lileks' latest screed states my dismay, as usual, better than I do.
And In Other News - Barb McMahon.
That is all.
Ventura's Legacy, Part I - Mike Lynch on what Ventura leaves behind.
OK, so that's one thing I will miss about Ventura. He proved that not only is government not rocket science - it's barely even stovetop grilling. The endless DFL (and moderate GOP) bleat, that government requires lots of painstaking experience, has been proven a load of hooie by a semi-literate buffoon in a feather boa.
So even though Ventura disappointed greatlyin abandoning his "small government" campaign promises (at the hands of the wizards behind the curtain, liberals Dean Barkley and Tim Penney), he may have struck a blow for it anyway - just by being the big, dumb lug he is.
Sportsmanship - Women's sports have been much in the news lately, with universities cutting men's sports, even well-attended ones, to free up budget dollars for sparsely-used women's sports.
And yet basketball and baseball have been godsends for my daughter. I'm certainly not one of the saurean relics who rails against women's sports - hoops was my daughter's first big success, the first step in coming out of her shell. This ties in with the school post a few days ago - about how sometimes it's not the "Three Rs" that spark a kid to enjoy learning, with its eventual segue into critical thinking.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is another conservative with views on women's/girls' sports. She's written a book on the subject that's on my list for the weekend.
Things I Won't Miss about Jesse - I'm going to start my list.
Didn't Know it was a Law, Did You? - Me neither.
I'm talking about the Iron Law of American Politics, wherein, as Terence Jeffrey says,
"the rightward-most candidate in any federal election will be demonized as an extremist by his rivals and by the liberal press... A corollary is that it doesn’t matter how far left the rightward-most candidate sits. If Leon Trotsky were running against Josef Stalin for President of the United States, Stalin would accuse Trotsky of being a rightwing extremist and the New York Times would echo the judgment.
Now, it's Pawlenty who, despite his very moderate voting record, is "an extreme conservative".
Part of me is angry - it's a lie, after all. Part of me says "more power to you all!". After all, that strategery - painting the rightmost opponent as a dangerous right-wing extremist - did Skip "Who?" Humphrey exactly zero good in 1998.
More to come.
Just...Plain...Wrong. - This is your tax dollars at work.
I've long held that the NEA, if it exists at all, should concentrate on teaching school kids about art. One of the current follies of the "back to basics" movement in schools is that art education is suffering at the hands of parsimonious school boards and short-sighted "conservative" parents.
I'm as conservative as they come. But different things unlock different kids' potential. For me, it was music and foreign language that finally kicked open the corner of my brain that handles reasoning. Not math, not science. That's true for lots of people - the "Three Rs" are no substitute for actual thinking. and schools that concentrate on them will reach the percentage of kids whose intellects get worked up over exactly that. For the rest of them, something else - languages, music, art, auto mechanics - is what does the trick, and opens up the love of learning for its own sake.
All of which means that people who love the act of thinking and reasoning for its own sake can confront "artists" like those in the article above with the vacuity of their respective muses.
Ventura - He's not running. Perhaps you've heard!
The irritating part is watching the DFL, with the active complicity of the media, paint Tim Pawlenty as the second coming of Alan Quist, as if to imply that Pawlenty is some single issue paleoconservative. He's not - he's too moderate for my tastes, and I'm pretty libertarian on many social issues.
More to come.
Warm Up That Credit Card - Forget Ventura - the big news is here.
Well, for me, anyway.
People write me and ask "Why are you such a Springsteen fan? He's a Democrat, you know?".
True. And if I had to listen only to music by artists whose politics I share, I'd be limited to Ted Nugent (who sucks but is alive and has a book out) and Joey Ramone (who was a conservative, never wrote a book, and is now dead). So I listen to Bruce, and Bono, and the late Stuart Adamson and the overwrought but fabulous Dave Peters and Mike Sharp and the incredible Richard Thompson, and look forward to Charleton Heston doing an album of Sex Pistols covers...
Churchill - In light of all the revisionism lately about one of the greatest leaders of all time, an excerpt from a review of an excellent book on the subject of great leaders.
Get Down and Cough it Up - Again, let me clarify: I've never been the most savage critic of public schools among my fellow Republicans. I was barely a critic at all, until recently. Save the cookie-cutter criticism.
But there are many problems in the public schools, not the least of which is their institutional immunity to real innovation and genuine excellence.
The story of math teacher Jaime Escalante became Stand and Deliver - an excellent movie that dramatized (in suitably Hollywood-ized form) the rise of Escalante's math program.
Jerry Jesness documents the rather-less-publicized fall.
What is the Problem? - Roger Moe is acting like Tim Pawlenty's move to the right is a bad thing.
Roger Moe is going to make Skip Humphrey's showing look good.
The way I see it, this is a win-win. You get Pawlenty's natural deal-making ability, his flair as a speaker, and his lack of "theocratic" label, plus Sullivan's fiscal conservatism in black and white (the no new taxes pledge). Those are messages that will resonate far better than Moe's uber-wonkery.
Pawlenty can win this.
Your Tax Dollars at Work - Apparently Tyrel Ventura used the Governor's Mansion the same way the Clinton staff used the White House.
Jesse was a SEAL, ya know.
A galloping sense of entitlement, the arrogance of power...why...could it be...
...Jesse's become just another politician?
LA Calling to the Faraway Towns - The Al Quaeda Love Boat is coming to LA.
Big Government and the Environment - According to Greens, liberals, and Al Gore, the only answer to our world's environmental problem is more, bigger government intervention in the economy, from grandiloquent world-wide agreements like the Kyoto Accords, down to government planning of the economy with an alleged nod to the environment.
Of course, you don't need to be a Green to notice the absurdity of this - the world's worst polluters have been the biggest governments. The USSR, the Warsaw Pact, and Communist China were/are the world's worst polluters, along with most of the socialist third world.
"But wait", say the liberals, "how about more civilized socialist governments?"
OK, how about 'em? Let's see how the European Union is doing.
GOP Convention - I didn't make it this year - haven't had time to really be involved in party stuff. But I'd say it was a good one.
The media coverage seems obsessed with the notion that the party can be either conservative or big-tent - as if conservative principles aren't the ones that draw people to the party in the first place.
Bear in mind that by conservative principles, I'm talking about the ones that matter to everyone - economic liberty, lower taxes, safer streets and a more secure world. Abortion is a terrible thing, and I have problems with domestic partner benefits (more later) and oppose both on pure principle - but neither of these are the issues that bring people conservatism.
Ronald Reagan didn't win two landslides elections because he was pro-life. He won them because he made the big, galloping ideas of Hayek and Mill and Madison - ideas about freedom and economic liberty - live and breathe for millions of regular Joe and Jane Lunchpails around the country.
Pawlenty, as I've noted in this space before, is a great stump speaker - the best by far among the current gubernatorial candidates. But years in the moderate-to-liberal legislature have tarnished his conservative credentials. If Brian Sullivan drove him farther to the right - ie, made him an actual Republican rather than a slightly less media-friendly DFLer - then the convention was a very good thing.
The Norm! - At various times in the history of this Blog, I've mentioned my love of good public speaking. Our Senate race between incumbent ultraliberal Paul Wellstone and neocon challenger Norm Coleman puts the contrast between the Haves and Have Nots, public speaking-wise, into sharp contrast.
Did you hear Wellstone's acceptance speech at the DFL convention? He shouted himself hoarse. It was like listening to an adenoidal Mussolini. Dreadful.
Coleman is a slickster of the first order. But his speech was like his mayoral record: smooth, slick, effortlessly gliding over spots that would have sunk a less proficient political animal.
Even if the speaking styles were reversed, I'd still vote for Coleman on policy grounds. But it'll be nice having a Senator that's not painful to listen to...
Heimat,Heim und Volk - that was a Nazi phrase. It means "Homeland, Home and People", but its idiomatic meaning was far deeper than that (which is why the Nazis used it). It alludes to the German cultural connection with the homeland and "volk", a word with connotations to native Germans (especially early in the last century) that don't translate to Americans. It's very exclusionary - Jews, after all, weren't part of the Volk, they didn't come from the Heimat, and had no allegiance to it.
Even in its more innocent sense, it's something that is hard to understand for Americans - our nation is united around ideas like liberty, equality and justice, rather than around some supernatural nationalism. That's why the right in Europe is gaining so much traction against Immigrants - it's impossible to immigrate, truly, to country with an ingrained, psychic sense of nationality.
All of which is part of this icky feeling I've had about the phrase "Homeland Defense", ever since it became de rigeur among the nattering classes after the war began. I haven't talked about it much - it's a hard concept to explain.
Fortunately, Peggy Noonan did it for me.
Constitution 2002 - The current conflict promises plenty of wrangling about who gets what constitutional protections. Terrorists? Americans working for terrorists? Americans captured overseas fighting on the terrorists' behalf? Non-citizens engaged in attacks or planning for attacks?
Many opinions on this - and I'll start with Ruth Wedgewood.
More about Rowley - What the FBI agent's whistleblowing tells us about the media, by Ann Coulter.
Adios, Bill - Bill Maher and Politically Incorrect were exasperatingly...well, politically correct. He invariably claimed "I'm a libertarian", while his rhetoric was pure liberal.
But he is a pretty sharp comic, even if I disagree with him on most things (and let's face it - if I limited my music, comedy and literature to artists I agreed with politically, I'd have a steady diet of Ted Nugent, Drew Carey and Tom Clancy. Although I don't mind Carey and Clancy...). The show was a great showcase for the vapidity of most American celebrities. Maher's panels were corrals of vacuity, groaning in self-congratulation even as their myopia made their "insights" almost too painful to laugh at.
The scary part? What will the desperate ABC come up with to replace it? The mind reels.
The Ties that Bind - Whatever else is going on, the heart quickens (well, mine does) to note that a new Bruce Springsteen album and tour are apparently on the way.
I've seen Bruce twice, both times at pivotal periods of my life - just before I graduated from college, when I was trying to figure out if my future lay in North Dakota or elsewhere, and then a few days before my ex moved out, and I was trying to figure out what my future was at all.
Maybe this time I can just enjoy the show!
Counting the days - although no dates have been released.
Horns of a Dilemma - I'm honestly not sure who to support for the GOP nomination this year.
The Reagan conservative and iconoclast in me is pulling for Brian Sullivan. His heart is in the right places on most issues, and anyone that the reflexive left hates this badly has to be good.
The GOP activist in me has his fingers crossed for Tim Pawlenty. He's the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today - I'd just love to see his speaking style compared, side by side, with that of Paul Wellstone. Pawlenty is smooth, relaxed, natural, a genuinely funny and personable guy in a way that comes across very well onstage. Wellstone rants and shouts like Mussolini. As a student of oratory (Dad was a speech teacher), these things also matter to me.
Both are great guys - I've met 'em - and I'm as torn as I've ever been.
I think either of them, in a head-to-head, Ventura-free competition, could clobber Roger Moe. I'm not even positive that Ventura'd beat Pawlenty, but one never knows with Governor Meathead.
I'll be looking forward to the convention.
Speaking of Oratory - I'm a huge student of Winston Churchill. There has been no better political orator in modern times. In 1940, when the British Army was disarmed by its debacle at Dunkirk, and nothing stood between Britain and the Nazis but 28 miles of water and a few hundred RAF fighters, and Brit cities were being pounded to flinders nightly, it can be argued that nothing did more to keep Britain in the war than Churchill's spoken word.
Today, the situation is a little different. We are the most powerful nation in the world. But we face a zealous, intractable, negotiation-proof enemy that is as hard to find has he is mindlessly brutal.
Victor Davis Hansen notes that we need the same stuff that made Churchill what he was, today - a language of confidence and aggressiveness.
Diversions - I don't watch a lot of TV. In fact, my TV is "broken" for the summer - my kids and I spend a lot more quality time when it's "broken". Shhhh, don't tell. Even when the TV works, I rarely watch much of it. I have never seen Friends, Frazier, Everybody Loves Raymond, Ally MacBeal, Buffy, or a host of other "must see" shows.I try to catch Edand Law and Order, sometimes, but it's not something I rearrange my schedule over.
I think I saw Seinfeld maybe twice in ten years. But I have seen it in reruns a lot, lately - and realize what I missed. OK - I sort of which I had seen it in first run, and wish they were making more of them.
Tom Shales has a great idea...
Take a Look at the Strib's piece on Norm Coleman. Here's the quote that gets me:
But do his executive-style accomplishments sound like the stuff of the U.S. Senate or of the governor's office?.
But does Paul Wellstone's background as a third-rate, polemical college professor with a reputation for browbeating all dissent and discussion into submissionsound like a US Senator?"
Kill the Keg - Claims that Clinton Administration staff vandalized the White House were written off as partisan political posturing in the days after Bush took office.
Back in the Eighties... - the joke that went around was "Who'd win a knife fight between Tiffany and Debbie Gibson". Answer? "The Whole World".
I'm not going to say another thing.
Bad Profiler. Bad. No Treat - A New Jersey police dog is accused of racial profiling.
I've Often Wondered - what it would be like to have interviewed, in 1946, someone who unwittingly sold Adolph Hitler his first tube of mustache wax in 1920.
This woman is possibly the nearest we'll get.
Don't Loiter for Even a Second - The St. Paul Bomb Squad might pre-emptively detonate you. (Fourth article down on the page).
Publishing Tips for Governor Meathead - The Governor's last few books haven't sold so well.
He needs to learn from a genuine master.
Swing to the Right, Part IV- For decades, Europe has been just another synonym for "unthinking blinkered socialism". But the rise of the EU seems to have catalyzed a reaction, as the right wing surges across the continent. The spasms over Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn have been the tip of the iceberg.
Denmark is also part of the shift.
The Organic Scam - I'm a conservative - make sure we're all straight on that, OK? But I have to confess I lifelong preference for organic food. It just tastes better, OK? Don't be yapping about yanking my GOP card over this.
So I listened with great interest to NPR's report the other day about a Swiss study that, supposedly, proves organic farming is more efficient than conventional farming.
But only if you seriously jiggle the numbers, says Ronald Bailey, who notes that "conventional" farming, based on the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer, is responsible for the earth being able to support about two billion people more than it would otherwise.
Has anyone told the Greens this?
Missionaries Rescued - One of the missionaries kidnapped 13 months ago in the Phillipines was killed a rescue mission by US-trained Philipino troops today. Martin Burnham died of gunshot wounds, while his wife Gracia was wounded but safe.
It should go without saying that the media and the American left will second-guess this raid. But admit it - back in the seventies and eighties, when dozens of Americans were being kidnapped around the world, didn't you want to see this,even once? Way deep down inside?
Be honest now.
Nutbar Alert - The right-wing conspiracy theories get all the attention. But Michael Long chronicles the much more interesting - and, curiously, less publicized - wacko conspiracy theories ofthe left.
Storm over Eagan - Mary Jo Copeland passed the first hurdle in her attempt to build a group home - some call it an "orphanage" - in Eagan.
Of course, she still has to get permits from the county and state. And you can expect that, since that permit will come from the very authorities whose power her home will usurp, the permitting process will be as non-partisan as a DFL caucus.
Kelly Digs In - St. Paul mayor Randy Kelly vetoed part of the city's redistribution of sales tax revenues.
Watch for the city's inordinately-powerful neighborhood councils to turn out the troops in force. These councils are essentially second levels of city government, and are basically a St. Paul phenomenon. They exercise enough power to control a lot of money and zoning clout - which, especially at city level, is the power that matters.
Boy, are they going to be angry.
The Whistleblower Speaks. Eventually - Congress is set to receive testimony from FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley on the foulups inthe investigation of Zacharias "Kirby" Moussaoui.
Watch for a partisan pile-on from Daschle and company.
4 Out of 5 Terrorists - The usual suspects are queuing up to whack at Attorney General Ashcroft over his plan to fingerprint Arab aliens in the US.
So let me get this straight - the Bush Administration is being attacked for not doing enough to head off 9/11; but a measure that actually makes sense - keeping tabs on the types of undocumented aliens that represented most of the hijackers - is wrong?
The ACLU took time off from defending perverts' rights to leave spooge all over your library computer keyboards to call this measure "discriminatory" - which means it probably makes good sense.
That Minneapolis Connection - One of the fascinating things about September 11 is the involvement of the Minneapolis FBI office. The office generally had very little terrorism to deal with - and they came ever so close, apparently, to finding the whole thing. If whistleblower Colleen Rowley is correct, it's very possible the FBI's central office spiked the effort that could have uncovered significant elements of the plot.
In the days immediately after the war started, the Onion ran a grimly hilarious piece - "American Life turns into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie". This story feels more like the very technical middle-pages of a Tom Clancy novel...
Speaking of Which - Why on earth did Hollywood hack up "Sum of All Fears" the way it did?
The hero, Jack Ryan, was played by the the thoroughly adequate Alec Baldwin in Hunt for Red October, and Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. In October, we didn't learn much about Ryan, but in the other two movies, he was portrayed as in the books - a family guy, middle-aged, "too old for this stuff".
Now, Ryan is a twenty-something, single guy...well, he's Ben Affleck. Not nearly as interesting a character.
Which isn't necessarily a problem, if you have a story like Sum to put on. A ten year old novel about Arabs using a recovered Israeli atomic bomb to blow up the Super Bowl in Denver, the movie makes the perps Nazis in the pre-9/11 interest of PC, and moves the attack to...
Baltimore?
Why is that? They had to make the movie resonate with people on the coasts who didn't know where Denver was?
I'd love to know the reasoning...
The Sum of All Incompetents- Norm Mineta - the Secretary of Transportation - is one of the more useless cabinet members. He's a holdover from the Clinton years. And he was the first major government figure to oppose the arming of airline pilots.
Now, the former BATF boss - the one who ordered the assault on Randy Weaver's family, and who assisted in creating the organizational culture of incompetence that led to the theatrical and disastrous Waco raid - has sounded off, according to Ann Coulter.
Costs of PC - John Fund, on how some judiciously-applied " (and that is a very important qualifier)racial profiling" might have averted September 11.
Yup - I missed Monday. Overslept, too much to do...
...sorta like today.
The Latest from the Middle East - a Fatwa is the Moslem equivalent of a mafia "contract". Fatwas have been issues for Salmon Rushdie (by the Iranians), all Americans - and now...
...software pirates?