Sig File Fodder - This is from an old James Lileks screed, and it's wonderful on its own:
Discontent: the sign of a Serious Person. If you’re Deep and Real and Concerned with the way things are, you’re pissed off. Unless you’re angry about taxes, race-based government policies and the inefficiencies of the public education system, in which case you are an Angry White Male who has to pick gravel out of your knuckles every night. Remember: the Right is full of people who are Resentful and Angry, but the Left is Pissed and Discontented, which is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.
Where is the Anger? - I'm not the first pundit to ask this. But I'll join the chorus.
Where is the anger?
As we creep up on the first anniversary of the attacks, the picture of America you see in the media is...what?
Solemn? Still in deep mourning? "Coming to grips" and "seeking closure" with the events of a year ago? We've got sorrow, oh, yes. Some of it is intense and important - Springsteen's The Rising is incredible - and much of the rest is mawkish and self-serving, and in between there's every other shade, from poignant to absurd. It's also natural - except that it is everywhere!
Wnere is the anger, indeed?
We were attacked! 3,000 Americans and people from other places who regarded America highly enough to come here to live and work, died. They - bond traders, junior high children going on school outings, Hollywood producers, firemen, cube inmates - were immolated, thrown 1,200 feet to their deaths, crushed - by people whose sole goal was to cause terror to further their goals; erasing Israel and turning the entire Middle East into an islamo-fascist commune.
But if you use the American media to gauge perceptions, you'd never know that that still angered any of us. In fact, the US media seems to be doing its best to stop the anger, to curb any urge for retribution - also called Justice - in this country. They will apparently not broadcast the images of the planes striking the World Trade Center. They will apparently not broadcast anything that could tap into the anger that people in the hinterlands (anything west of the Hudson) feel, still.
And the National Education association, as reported in this space a while ago, has told teachers to not merely skim over the notions of anger and retribution - but to equivocate about the causes of the attacks; to share the blame!
This space will have nothing to do with that. I'm no media figure, and I know that phone calls to the media, the school board, the institutions that control who hears what, all will go into the great void. But I'm going to do all that, anyway.
And on September 11, this space will be done mourning. It'll be about justice, and revenge, and yes, anger.
My blood still boils, a year later.
Casus Belli - George Will on the case for war and the need for Congress to be on board.
While I'm with most conservatives on War Powers, I think that Will makes the point as well as anyone. Here's the money graf:
The administration has arrived at an unprecedented yet defensible policy but has not committed itself to seek the sort of sustaining ratifications that are particularly vital when acting beyond precedents. It should remember Secretary of State Dean Rusk's warning. Sadder but wiser after Vietnam, he said that any important foreign policy decision made without Congress is inevitably in the subjunctive mood. That is no mood in which to make war [emphasis is mine].So then, let us set an imperative mood.
And Senators Wellstone and Dayton, and Representative McCollum, here is my imperative to you - vote for the declaration.
Suicide Mission - According to an upcoming BBC documentary, on the morning of September 11, when only 14 aircraft were on air defense duty in the entire US, NORAD actually considered ordering unarmed training aircraft to close with and, if necessary, ram hijacked aircraft in areas where no armed interceptors could reach.
Management Day - Thoughts on the evolution of American labor, as this Labor Day weekend begins.
Talkin' Baseball- There's a chance baseball's owners and players can avoid mutual suicide.
Any bets?
Pearl Harbor - the Local Connection- A U of Hawaii research team has apparently found the Japanese submarine long reputed to have been sunk by the American destroyer USS Aaron Ward, early on the morning of December 7, 1941.
The local connection? The forward ("A") four-inch gun on the Ward that sank the submarine was manned by a crew of Minnesota Navy reservists.
And that same gun currently sits on the grounds of the MN Department of Transportation building, just southeast of the Capitol, in the park area east of the MNDOT headquarters, just north of the Police Memorial.
Back in the Saddle? - Al Quada is apparently again capable of conducting offensive operations against the US.
Ask The Person who Is One - Camille Paglia on the moral and intellectual decline of the Left.
The Saddam Bomb - Word from the London Times - the "Times" that is actually up-front about its biases - about Hussein's nuke program.
Apparently, they have all the expertise they need - they just lack fissile material.
And those in the know are warily eyeing all of that badly-secured former-soviet uranium and plutonium, guarded by soldiers that are paid less per day than you can find behind your couch cushions right now.
Bush and Churchill - Donald Rumsfeld is comparing Bush to Churchill, in re the upcoming war.
Kudo! - Among the big winners at the state fair Children's Art contest was 9 year old sculpture prodigy Zam Berg.
We're related, yes. Why do you ask?
OK. I'm proud of him!
Why, oh Why? - I've been pondering the great immutable questions of life lately:
Springsteen vs. Toby Keith - Two musical looks at September 11, according to Stanley Kurtz.
This is a great article.
Tree-Huggers with Teeth- Jerry Taylor reports from the Earth Summit on why the west is not the enemy of the Earth.
Isn't the Real Problem, here... - that you're irrelevant?
Phil Donahue hits the lowest Nielsen number possible - a .1. Lower even than CNN Headline News.
Life is What Happens... - when you have no time to blog.
Sick kids, crazy job - agh. Well, I'll try to get up to speed again today.
Yes, yes - assuming that what I regularly do has "speed".
Clearing the Air - MPR's insufferable Katherine Lanpher devoted an hour to the Earth Summit - the great environmental Kangaroo Court - this morning.
In the one-hour chat with "sustainable development" talking head Tom Tietenberg, one theme that kept popping up - "we have to examine what it is that separates the haves from the have nots". The usual suspects - SUVs, two-car households, large suburban ramblers - were cited.
Never mentioned by either Lanpher or Tietenberg was "totalitarian dictatorships that stifle the people's ability to succeed, and/or utopian socialist megalomocracies that inhibit the ability to create wealth".
Case for War, Part IV - Cheney makes the case for a "pre-emptive strike".
Oldie but Goodie - The Wall Street Journal reruns a 1945 WSJ editorial about the liberal record of appeasing dictators.
In light of the New York Times' ongoing campaign to sabotage the effort to depose Hussein, it seems all the more prescient now...
Speaking of the NYT - Even the liberal-but-fairly-balanced NPR show, "On the Media" is taking note of the New York Times' obvious, dishonest slant on the issue. Yesterday's installment featured a long, involved interview with Mickey Kaus - who's been dogging the Times ever since the story about the story broke.
The transcript will be available here, soon. You can also hear the segment via RealAudio, although I can never get that to work.
Fair Weather Philanthropy? - Ted Turner has reneged on his pledge of a billion dollars to the UN, due to the stock market plunge.
Live Long, and Poll Well - Trekkie nerds are no doubt going gaga over the entry of Kate Mulgrew's husband into the Ohio Gubernatorial race, with all the attendant appearances by other fossilized Star Trek casters.
For those who care, Mulgrew was "Captain Janeway" on "Star Trek: Voyager".
And the only reason I, a committed non-trekkie, know this is that it came on after "Blind Date" every night.
Your observations about that fact that I know this are both gratuitous and probably accurate.
First to Fight - for diversity... - Ann Coulter has a theory - while liberalism is endemically hostile to the military, the left has no problem deploying troops all over the world...
...as long as there's no crucial US interest in doing so.
Protection - A lawsuit by families of the September 11 terror attack victims alledge that the Saudi government has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Al Queda.
Chasing the Greased Pig - According to the Secretary of Defense, Al Quaeda has relocated...
...to Iraq.
Pre-Emptive War - George Will on the debate over a pre-emptive attack on Iraq.
Meat Head - A correspondent referred me to this article, about the nearly-insufferable ultraliberal Rob Reiner - who along with Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon is perhaps the very definition of Limousine Liberal - and his devotion to...
...well, meatheaded causes in California.
Doug Grow, PR Flack - Doug Grow continues to provide ammunition for opponents of campaign finance reform, using his Strib column as an unpaid promotonal vehicle for Paul Wellstone.
Grow's column serves as the "point man" for Paul Wellstone's claims about Norm Coleman's stances on the environment - or, more accurately, his stances on the tagged-and-bagged hot-button issue of motors and logging in the Boundary Waters.
We have a war, a stagnant economy, and an education system that's failing (for all of which Wellstone is more culpable than average). So of course Doug Grow's hot button is...outboard motors.
One Step Up, One Step Back - The left is crowing over the primary defeat of Bob Barr, as if it were a referendum on the Clinton Impeachment for which Barr fought so hard (and endured so much). In fact, Barr was defeated because the Democrats who control the Georgia legislure gerrymandered their redistricting to ensure he'd go up against a popular incumbent in another district, one more favored by the state's GOP establishment.
In the meantime, Cynthia McKinney, who along with Maxine Waters was perhaps the most noxious by-product of 1992's "Year of the Woman" in national politics, also fell by 16 points.
Fighting the Next War - Bill Gertz, on how the military is a avoiding the classic military blunder - fighting the last war.
Y'know - the one the media keeps doing (thinking Vietnam during the Gulf War, comparing the Gulf War to the Afghanistan war, and now using Afghanistan as a yardstick for removing Hussein).
Sum of All Fears - The evidence keeps piling up on the dangers of not ousting Hussein.
Coulter Takes New York - George Gurley on Ann Coulter v the New York Media Establishment.
Particularly hilarious:
Even though Ms. Coulter’s previous book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, was a best-seller, the publication of Slander did not happen smoothly. At the end of last year, her editor at HarperCollins, Robert Jones, to whom Slander is dedicated, died suddenly of cancer. Then her book was killed by HarperCollins. It took her agent, Joni Evans, two months to find a publisher. Ms. Coulter was told that conservative books don’t sell. An editor at Doubleday informed her that "this book does not move the national dialogue forward," to which Ms. Coulter replied, "That’s funny, because I thought book publishers made money on the basis of how many books they sold."Conservative books don't sell!
Remember - this was after conservatives ranging from the lightweight (Limbaugh, O'Reilly) to the very substantial (Dinesh D'Souza, Barbara Olson, John Lott) had all either topped the charts, or in the case of Lott, sold two orders of magnitude more than normal (for "More Guns, Less Crime", a very dense academic tome dominated by graduate-level statistical analysis of gun crime).
Perhaps the Doug Grow book would be a good bet...
Unbelieveable,Part III - Nobody home at my kids' school. Will update as warranted.
Family Feud - What's behind the Gore/Lieberman squabble.
Let Slip the Dogs of Gaming - Recent Wargames showed the US capable of wnning a war against an unnamed Persian Gulf power...
....but the "enemy" commander quit, complaining that the games were rigged.
Unbelieveable, Part II - A number of teachers say they plan on ignoring the NEA's guidelines for teaching about September 11.
How many? Nobody knows.
I plan on finding out about my kids' schools today. I'll let you know..
Believe It - I got this email from a regular reader today, regarding
the "Unbelieveable" story (earlier today):
Mitch,The correspondent is referring, I believe, to a thread on theI just finished catching up on your blog today, and your headline story
?Unbelieveable? left me shaking my head.I wasted the better part of a year attempting to pass along this message
to the members of the [E-Democracy St. Paul Politics discussion] list. And
when ?the fur flew? even you could not help but step back from the fracas.
We continue:
You say: ?I feel sick. If my kids are exposed toAbout the same thing as it'll
any of this crap, fur will fly. I guarantee it.? My response is why should
that be a possibility? Just what will it take for YOU to pull your kids
out of the public meat grinder?
But onward:
If you mean what you say, then you have alreadyHe's
wasted precious time on making the fur fly Mitch, because I GUARANTEE that
your kids have been exposed to just this kind of thing on a daily basis.
And I went to the school. I told the Assistant Principal (in charge of
"discipline") what this little girl was doing.
"Oh", she said, "her. Yes, well, she's [fill in ethnic group], they have
a different cultural perspective on female aggressiveness than we do. We
need to be sensitive to it".
I stood, dumbfounded. Then: "My kids are descended from Vikings. We are
used to standing up on the bus, er, Longboat, and pillaging everything in
our path. Could we be sensitive to that?" The woman got the point, and
the little girl was told to back off.
All by way of saying, I'm not one to blindly accept the status quo
- not perfect, but I try. But onward:
All totally true.
Talk is cheap; action requires sacrifice. Fighting back means many hours
of meeting with the enemy on their grounds, and digging up their dirty laundry
for a public airing sometimes incurs the wrath of the enemy?s Children of
the Corn, but if one is truly outraged the cost is well worth the effort.The forces arrayed against our kids, literally storming the gates of the
schools, are a force to be reckoned with. They aren?t stupid and they have
momentum on their side.
ForgetAlso true. Writing to the "enemy"'s house infopipe is probably
the sawing on the Oak; attack the acorn on the ground.Welcome to the real world Mitch, we all have our marks in the sand..looks
like you may have had yours stepped on. But take some advice: Forget writing
to the NEA, they will post your message on their bulletin board for a laugh.
If youYes, indeed. That is what needs to happen.
want to make a difference start showing up at the board meetings, that?s
where the fur needs to fly. See you there?Regards,
[name withheld]
I'm as overworked as they come. But until I have the money to get my kids
out of the big social experiment lab, that is what I'll have to do.
So I will.
Keep the email coming, and thanks.
Nastier than Nasty - The Connecticut Democratic Convention opened with an "invocation" that asked for divine intervention against GOP governor Richard Rowland.
Wait - isn't it the Republicans who are supposed to have wierd ideas about religion?
No?
The NEA is telling teachers not to cast blame on anyone during the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
But another of the suggested NEA lesson plans — compiled together under the title "Remember September 11" and appearing on the teachers union health information network Web site — takes a decidedly blame-America approach, urging educators to "discuss historical instances of American intolerance," so that the American public avoids "repeating terrible mistakes." "Internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf War are obvious examples," the plan says. "Teachers can do lessons in class, but parents can also discuss the consequences of these events and encourage their children to suggest better choices that Americans can make this time."Are you angry? So am I. Here's their website. Write them. Tell your friends to write them.
Somebody was to blame. It wasn't Jesse Helms, and it wasn't FDR, and it wasn't George Custer.
I feel sick. If my kids are exposed to any of this crap, fur will fly.
I guarantee it.
The Racist Left - The left wants a black president. As long as she's not a Republican.
The Baltimore Chronicle - think City Pages without the political balance (irony intended) - is the lunatic fringe of the mainstream Democrat effort to discredit the most capable Afro-American woman in government today.
Armey - Dick Armey - a college classmate of my dad's - is retiring. It's our loss.
Clinton and Enron - The media hasn't really touched on Clinton's relationship to Enron, focusing on trying to build a damning one between them and the current administration.
Yet the information is out there.
Glib - Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are both very talented - and, in a place where smug sanctimony is the big substitute for religion, they one of Hollywood's most smug, sanctimonious couples.
Their play about September 11 is getting very mixed reviews.
Awwwww.
Nearly Every Day She Cried - Today's the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis. I shudder to think of the bender Diane, the mom of the bass player from my band in college, is going through today. She was one of those Elvis fans that people used to joke about - one of the corn-fed middle-aged midwestern women who still acted like teenagers chasing Justin Timberlake whenever The King came to the heartland (you know - so unlike all of us rational, sober Springsteen fans!). After Elvis' death (or alleged death), she took every August 16th off from work - depressed, drinking, miserable. Elvis' death has become sort of a midwestern, downmarket white folks' national holiday, in its own Walmart sort of way...
More on Elvis, from Kevin Cherry of National Review - who is quickly becoming my favorite (read: Mitch-like) rock critic.
Case for War, Part II - Victor Davis Hanson on the case for attacking Iraq, and the one against the pacifists.
Credit where Credit is Due - Winston Churchill is one of my heroes. It's hyperbolic to say he saved western civilization - but only a little.
And yet, in 1942, with the Japanese advancing into Bengal (Bangladesh) from Burma, Churchill ordered food stocks in the region to be either moved or destroyed, to prevent their capture. The order caused an immense food panic, triggering vast hording and hyperinflation of food prices - so that even though there was plenty of food, a famine happened. 200,000 may have died.
Was Churchill any less a hero because of this? You can answer that within your own heart.
The point being that in wartime, decisions have to be made, fast. They may or may not be right.
Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft have had to make a lot of fast decisions in the last 11 months (especially in the first days after the attacks, and after our invasion of Afghanistan). Rumsfeld has the benefit of doing his voodoo overseas, among foreigners, many of whom want to kill us.
Ashcroft, on the other hand, has made his decisions in the face of a well-developed civil liberties lobby (of which I'm a proud, conservative member) and a media that is fairly roundly hostile to him. Criticism is forthright and immediate and never, ever muted in the least.
But on the balance - wrinkles and all, Ashcroft's record of doing his job can be called excellent.
The Next War - Last year's movies Enemy at the Gates and Black Hawk Down, illustrated the meatgrinder of urban warfare as well as any movies ever made.
Some of our militarily-illiterate media have joined the hand-wringing left in invoking the spectre of bloody urban warfare at the news that Saddam Hussein's strategy for the apparently-upcoming war is to pull back into the cities.
James Robbins analyzes the pros - and many cons - to Hussein of adopting this strategy.
Live in New York - Kevin Cherry, on the road with Bruce Springsteen.
Room 101 - While elements of the left have been baying at the moon about some of Attorney General Ashcroft's more overreaching provisions, who is it that's led the fight to preserve civil liberties in the face of anti-terrorist pressure?
That's right. The Republicans, under Dick Armey. And who's led the defense? Joe Lieberman.
Heston - The left's glee at the "ironic" contraction of Alzheimer's by Charleton Heston has been nothing short of disgusting.
How many of the left have nudged each others' ribs and asked "Hey - is the state gonna get his guns?"
Slate, in a revoltingly smug article, thinks so. Volokh disagrees.
The "World Court" Flexes - The Euro-Bureaucrats are urging prospective members of the EU not to sign any agreement that would exempt US peacekeepers from the jurisdiction of the new World Criminal Court.
This is the same EU that negotiated a special exemption from the court for its own troops that went to Afghanistan.
Family Feud - Gore and Lieberman - allegedly the front-runners for the Dem nomination in '02 - are mixing it up in public.
Not that it makes me that hopeful - at this time 24 years ago, Reagan and Bush were doing the same thing, but from the right.
Still, it makes for fun reading.
World Housecleaning - James Lileks on the case for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, followed by the AP with the possibility that Castro could be a short-timer.
Never Mind - Baseball is not striking. Yet.
On Baseball's Suicide- George Will - who admits his role in the Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics - neatly sums up the issues leading to a strike that will very possibly kill Major League Baseball as we know it. Eventually.
What Makes a Republican? - As the Minnesota GOP struggles with the notion of what a Republican is, and whether a DFLer in Republican clothing should be called a "Republican", the Strib notes the "turmoil" moving toward primary time.
In a related note, former GOP state chair and Carlson-liberal Dave Jennings appears to support Roger Moe for governor.
Why is it that the left, and the media, and the "moderate" GOP, wants all Republicans to act like DFLers?
The Resurrection of Larry Klayman - as noted in this blog in the previous few weeks, Larry Klayman - head of Judicial Watch - has seen a rehabilitation of his reputation in the major media.
The reason, of course? During the Clinton Years, when his group relentlessly hounded the administration, he was the persona non grata head of the "vast right wing conspiracy". Today, he's sueing the Bush Administration.
Makes all the differencei n the world.
You Are Thy Neighbor's Watcher - The Homeland Security people, despite massive opposition, are going ahead with "Operation TIPS", the "Rat Out Your Neighbor" program.
There's nothing I can say about it that this guy doesn't say better.
Solipsistic Self-Absorption Alert - Hollywood writer and massive Democrat donor Joe Eszterhas has made a big splash in recent weeks, by his revelations that ye has throat cancer, and that Hollywood's glamorization of smoking has led to the "murder" of "millions".
Nick Gillespie writes on what the Eszterhas Crisis tells us about Hollywood, and the American left.
Women and Guns - The governor of Louisiana has urged women to arm themselves against a serial killer currently roaming the state. The media - at least so far - hasn't called for Mike Foster's head on a plate, yet.
John Lott notes the details. He also shows how women actually benefit more from concealed-carry reform than do men.
Money Changes Everything - Time Magazine on Algore's money woes.
Here's the part I wonder about - the story is:
I've been reading too many political/spy thrillers lately, obviously. Move along, there's nothing to see here...
Numbers - Whoah - today should see Shot In The Dark pass a thousand total individual user visits in its lifespan.
That means - let me do the math in my head - an average of four visits a day!
So while it seems that I've been picking up about 10 a day for the last few months (thanks!), that must have meant that exactly two of you were reading from March through May.
That means I can recycle old posts, right?
Ticketgate - OK, perhaps that's an exaggeration - as may be Lloyd Grove's claim in this article that "Former vice president Al Gore's long and grueling comeback hit a speed bump yesterday -- well, more like an elephant abruptly crossing the road -- with Foxnews.com gossip Roger Friedman's report that Tipper Gore used her VIP status in a failed attempt to cadge free Bruce Springsteen tickets".
Still, it's always fun when two of my favorite diversions - politics and Springsteen - come conveniently packaged together.
Green - like Camouflage - Ed McGaa is such a very strange character. The Green party senatorial candidate is a former marine fighter pilot. In the Green party, this stands out like, say, Ted Nugent in the DFL Feminist caucus.
Since every vote for him is a vote less for Paul Wellstone, all I can say is - go Ed!
It's an OJ Thing - We're on the brink of a war. We just finished burying the dead from September 11. The economy is reeling - possibly as much from the "cure" (Democrat baying at the moon for regulations) as from the disease.
So what are the tabloids yammering about?
The travails of Martha Stewart.
Emily's B-List - When Becky Lourey lost the DFL nomination to Roger Moe, some of her supporters protested bitterly. It was as if winning the governorship was less important than fielding a woman canidate. Any woman candidate.
It's not a localized problem. The pro-death group Emily's List exists to find big liberal money,and funnel it to candidates who are pro-female-choice on the abortion issue. They also swipe at the NRA, in the process.
And it's backfiring. Emily's List seems to be weakening Democratic candidacies - and not winning many races of its own.
Words Fail Me - I don't know what's more depressing - that Woody Harrelson is such an idiot...
...or that the press eats it up so completely.
What was the last thing he did, anywahy?
Life Gets In the Way - Sorry about no entries yesterday. I've been buried at work, I have some kid trouble, and I'm flirting with the distant possibility of having a date one of these days.
I'm sure it won't be a problem for long. More blogging to come - including a few longer items this weekend!
More Iraq Taq - James Lilek's screed on critics of invasion.
Welcome to Missile Gap - For decades, now, opponents of Missile Defense have claimed that the whole idea is obsolete even before it's built - because "the main threat is from terrorists who sneak suitcase bombs into the country".
Leave aside the fact that the "suitcase bomb" is largely science-fiction (yes, they exist - there have been tactical nuclear weapons that weigh as little as 100 pounds, measureing 6 by 20 inches, but they require a lot of skill to use properly) - it may be much simpler, more reliable, and do more damage to launch a warhead from a SCUD missile based on a converted merchant ship. It takes old (by high-tech standards, ancient) but reliable technology and exploits its strengths.
And that is where missile defense is suddenly not at all obsolete.
Let Slip the Dogs of Prosecution - I've always felt queasy about the way the terrorist attacks on the US have come to be called "Nine Eleven" by pretty much everyone. I've preferred (in conversation as well as in this blog) to call it "The Attacks" or "The beginning of the War".
Indeed, that is the way we have to think about it, if we as a nation ever intend to end it all.
With Iraq, the prima facie case for war is to end the threat of a nuclear-armed Hussein. So - is it "law enforcement?" "Seeking non-proliferation?" Are either of those terms things for which Americans should risk their lives?
In this article: Doug Bandow, with the case for declaring war on Iraq.
The Price You (Don't) Pay - Algore didn't want to pony up for the Springsteen concert.
Speaking of which - see you on line down at the X Saturday morning at 10AM. (Assuming you're a Bruce fan...)
Still Lying Through His Teeth After All These Years - In an interview last week about the roots of the current corporate morality crisis during his adminstration, former President Clinton tried to compare the shenanigans with his supposed inheritance of the Somali problem - which led to the massacre of US troops portrayed in Black Hawk Down - from George Bush Senior.
Problem was, he was lying. Again.
Thanks to everyone who wrote me about my Springsteen Album review yesterday. I posted the URL to the review on a few other sites, and it drew a few new people to Shot in the Dark - and my hit count for the day showed it.
I'll be buying tickets for Bruce's September 30 show this weekend. This is madness to say, since I'm a single dad whose free time is at a super-premium, but I miss the good old days of buying tickets - getting up at midnight, getting in line at 1AM to wait for the 9AM opening of the doors - trudging forward over the hours, meeting your fellow fans, making dates, swapping tour stories...
Enh. I'll be on Ticketmaster. Such is progress.
Did that sound crotchety or what?
Speaking of progress - the first time I saw Springsteen, at the St. Paul Civic Center in 1984, the ticket was $16.50, with all fees. This time, it's $75 - and that's relatively good, since it's the same price no matter where you sit in the arena. No $300 front row seats here.
Sowing Misery - The fraud behind the Democrat claims about the economy.
They need us to be miserable, to have a chance in the fall elections.
But it's the Republicans who are the heartless bastards, doncha know...
Hardball - A Pentagon briefing recommends turning Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil revenue back on them, should they reject the US ultimatum on ending support for terrorists.
The plan would involve seizing their oil fields.
Their military is tiny, and uses mostly equipment we supplied them.
But watch the weenie elements in the press and the State Department have aneurisms about the depiction of the Saudi autocrats - supporters of suicide bombing and home of most of the 9/11 hijackers - as "enemies".
Come On Up for the Rising - I've posted my review of Springsteen's latest album.
I've been marinading my brain in this record for the past six days. It may be his best ever.
You be the judge.
Media Bias Watch, Part X - Time Magazine is apparently going to move a story echoing Bill Clinton's charge - that President Bush ignored Clinton's plan to deal with Al Quaeda.
In other words: Clinton all but ignores Al Quada for eight years, including four devastating attacks against Americans (the first WTC bombing, the Kenyan Embassy, the Khobar Towers and the USS Cole) - then coughs up a half-assed "plan" at the end of its tenure. The Bush administration doesn't run with the "plan", or otherwise solve the Al Quaeda problem in the eight months between inauguration and September 11 - and it's Bush's fault?
Unmentioned, most likely, is
Conservatives on Bruce - Conservatives have long had a tenuous relationship with the music of Bruce Springsteen. On the one hand, most of it is undeniably great - and, considered over the course of (this fall) 30 years, his output has been almost uniformly superb, commpared with how most of his contemporaries have drifted into complete irrelevance, mostly before Ronald Reagan was even elected to office.
But the contradiction is there - on the one hand, his political sympathies, while rarely overtly expressed, are generally populist, a movement of which conservatism is rightly suspicious. On the other hand, the themes of which he sings - faith, hope, family, love - are things near and dear to the conservative heart.
And he's undeniably a cultural phenomenon - even today, 18 years after his commercial peak. So we write about him and his music. Even hack bloggers like me try it (see top of page).
Let's Call It "Building Suspense" - Overslept today - gotta get the kids up and get going to work.
Later today, though - my review of the new Springsteen album, The Rising, plus the usual stuff.
Friday - Slim pickins today - I'm taking my son to Cub Scout camp for the weekend.
It amazes me sometimes - working as I do as a software designer, and having nine computers at home - how rare it is that I'm completely unplugged for over a few hours. I'm not even a real robo-geek - I don't own a cell phone, a PDA or any video games, or even a working TV at the moment - and yet I'm usually close enough to a computer that I can check my email the vast majority of the day, should I want to.
In the next week:
Grrrrr, Part 5 James Lileks bleats about public opinion surveys.
Bizarre - Bill Clinton says he'd "fight and die" for Israel.
Nothing wrong with the sentiment, by itself, perhaps. But coming from a former president, one who tried mightily to make peace in the Middle East his legacy, one who's on the record trying to effect a diplomatic solution that includes all the parties involved, this strikes me as an incredibly impolitic statement.
Assuming it's true, of course.
Well, that should settle people down nicely, shouldn't it?
Pacifists for War - Well, not exactly.
But this article nicely and realistically sums up the choice a thinking pacifist faces today.
Opinion Sought - Jesse Ventura more or less passed the Independence Party torch to Tim Penny last night.
Now, here's now I see it: Tim Pawlenty (Motto: "The Other Tim") is a charismatic enough guy, but he's been mostly a political tinkerer, not a visionary. He's also far from conservative. But he's the closest we have to one. And not only did non-DFL/non-IP/non-former-wrestlers get 35% of the vote in '98, but many of Ventura's voters were voting for the Ventura they saw in the campaign - a liberarian-conservative, utterly unlike the DFL-lite governor he became.
Allowing for the probability that most Ventura voters will never darken a poll again, I still see the election this way;
OK - so tell me where the scenario is wrong? I'll give you one place - there is no way Penny will keep all of Ventura's voters. Ventura was a phenomenon of charisma and marketing. Penny is a wonk, a political tinker, a poli-sci guy who I just can't see connecting with the Jet-Ski, hunting/fishing, Budweiser crowd that put Ventura in office.
I'd like to print a selection of reader letters on the subject. Write me, and let's pick the next Governor.
The Misuse of Patriotism - This is not a mushy-left screed, by the way.
Contradiction - On the one hand, opponents of concealed-carry reform insist that shall-issue laws will create scenes of enraged vigilante "justice". No examples of legal permit-holders are ever produced, but the spin goes on.
And yet episodes like this happen - invariably in non-shall-issue states, or places like Chicago, with gun bans in effect.