Shot In The Dark

Real Predictions - Why mess

Real Predictions - Why mess with the amateurs, when Austrialian uber-blogger Tim Blair has the real scoop on 2003?

My favorite

29th Liberals flock to a Minneapolis-area juice bar where a likeness of Paul Wellstone has appeared in a wheatgrass spill.

He thinks he's being funny.

Speaking of Oz - The latest ethnic pressure group may be my favorite.

JUST founded this month in a New York bar is the G'Day B'rith society, modelled after the Jewish B'Nai B'rith, and dedicated to stamping out vilification of Australians.

"Vilification of Australians? Criminy. Next, the Norwegians, I guess.

We can all celebrate Rosh Youbetcha together.

Rangel's Angle - Representative Charles

Rangel's Angle - Representative Charles Rangel runs for the right on military policy.

Or does he?

Rangel has proposed "universal military service." This could mean anything from the old-fashioned "draft" - the onerous lottery we rid our nation of 30 years ago - or it could mean National Service, like in Switzerland, Israel and a few other countries, which some conservatives (including myself) have supported. And even for a few of the same stated reasons:

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, said such legislation could make members of Congress more reluctant to authorize military action.

That's one of the reasons I cited in the article I link above. I used to wonder - would we have been as quick to jump into Haiti and Kosovo if Chelsea Clinton were serving as a reservist in a Military Police company? If the children of the Beltway elite were serving in the military - as well as some of the elites themselves (reserve service in Switzerland and Israel ends at age 50 - 55 for officers), how would it affect our military policy?

But what's Rangel's real agenda?

"I'm going to introduce legislation to have universal military service to let everyone have an opportunity to defend the free world against the threats coming to us," Rangel said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"I'm talking about mandatory service."

The Korean War veteran has accused the Bush administration and some fellow lawmakers of being too willing to go to war with Iraq.

"When you talk about a war, you're talking about ground troops, you're talking about enlisted people, and they don't come from the kids and members of Congress," he said.

"I think, if we went home and found out that there were families concerned about their kids going off to war, there would be more cautiousness and a more willingness to work with the international community than to say, 'Our way or the highway.' "

Rangel did not provide specifics of his proposal.

Indeed, he didn't.

Sergeant Stryker has an excellent piece on the subject.

Several points come to mind:

• Militarily - especially when fighting overseas - a professional, volunteer military IS a better thing.
• The "Draft" - the "lottery" system we had - IS onerous.
• However, if used properly, National Service - as in Switzerland or Israel - doesn't have to be an onerous burden. It's a duty of citizenship - sort of like paying taxes and serving on juries. It's like . It also doesn't make the military particularly less competent, if applied correctly - Israel's military does generally OK. For providing troops for domestic defense, disaster relief and supporting operations abroad (as opposed to sending masses of draftees overseas), it's not necessarily a bad thing, IF applied properly.
• But we all know that's not Rangel's angle. It's hard to know what he wants, except to find some backdoor way to stymie the administration - which has been the force propelling his career for the past two years.

The idea itself gets a C - it does nothing for the defense of our country, but in other democracies can be shown to have been a good thing. The motivations get a D - he's sniping at the President, even if it's for motivations even a lapsed Libertarian like me can grudgingly accept. Rangel's political acumen? It's an F. As Instapundit notes, I doubt it'll get a lot of traction. Our military ain't broke.

Hm. Maybe that's what Rangel's after?

By the way - in the world's most successful "Universal Service" systems, like Switzerland, Israel and Norway, people serve for a period in the army (less than a year in Switzerland, a few years in Israel), and then in the reserves until age 50. They also keep their military firearms and ammunition at home, in case they're mobilized. That surely can't be what gun control advocate Rangel wants...

Brown Knows - When Tina

Brown Knows - When Tina Brown isn't editing vapid lifestyle magazines, she writes some excellent stuff, like this piece on how New Yorkers are missing that post-9/11 feeling:

For New Yorkers, 2002 was one long morning after. We all just want to log off and slink away with a huge pile of DVDs and a mug of hot chocolate. After 9/11 we expected a paradigm shift, the discovery of what we really wanted for our children, our country, ourselves...

It was also, I suspect, the attempt to rekindle how we felt in the first months after the terrorist attacks. New Yorkers secretly miss the people they became at that time, elevated by a new connectedness and the exhilarating absence of materialistic trivia. Beneath the city’s pace for a while there was a new undertow of meaning.

It's that "rekindling feeling" bit I wonder about. Bear with me here:

In "Modern Times - a History of the World from the Twenties through the Eighties" - Paul Johnson notes about the beginning of the First World War that

• contrary to popular myth, the young people of Europe were the ones most eager to get into the war,
• This eagerness was borne of a desire to participate in something "bigger" than the workaday lives they (Europe's youth) saw stretching in front of them, and
• the older generation - many of whom remembered the Boer or Franco-Prussian wars - were much more wary of the conflict that ensued.

Yes, we have ample reason to hit back at terror. AND invade Iraq, for that matter. But I wonder if America isn't also looking for something "bigger" than the pretty normal, pretty comfy life we have?

It's a two-edged sword, if so.

Mamet On Israel - Playwrite

Mamet On Israel - Playwrite David Mamet - who describes himself as an "aging diaspora Jew" - writes this excellent piece in "Forward" on life as a Jew, outside looking in at Israel.

There, before me, was a broken-down Volvo of old, the vehicle of my brethren, the congenitally liberal. It was festooned, as are its kind, with every sort of correct exhortation: "Save James Bay," "Honor Diversity" and so on. A most interesting bumper sticker read: "Israel Out of the Settlements." Now this is a legitimate expression of free speech. Israel has been involved, as we know, in a rather protracted real estate dispute with several hundred million of its neighbors. This legitimate political expression, however, had all its "S"s transformed into dollar signs. Here we have, one would have supposed, a civilized person (one would assume that one could reason with the owner of a Volvo) sporting a slogan which could best be translated as "Hook-nosed Jews Die."

It's been interesting, watching the little scraps of endemic anti-semitism creeping out from the left this past two years. It continually begs the question - why do Jews keep voting Democrat?

Mamet did pull one clinker:

My very airplane book, my refuge on the endless flight to Israel, is Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears," in which I find the major plot point, the misplacement, by Israel, of an atom bomb. As per Mr. Clancy, in this otherwise ripping yarn, the world is going to end because these lazy or distracted Mockies have committed a blunder no civilized folk would make.

I have to wonder if Mamet actually read the book - the bomb was hardly "misplaced". The scene where the bomb is accidentally put on a plane that is shot down, and the bomb buried underground in the Golan, reads like an utterly ecumenical SNAFU. I can think of few authors who admire Israel as effusively as does Clancy.

Mamet again:

It is — I cannot say "refreshing" — a relief to trade a low-level umbrage at anti-Israeli tripe for the reality of a country at war. Israel, at war, looks very much like Israel at peace. Life, as the phrase has it, goes on.

It's a great article, and well worth a read.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

What Would Muhammad Drive? -

What Would Muhammad Drive? - The cartoonist has apparently recieved death threats for this one.

Recovering Liberal - As someone

Recovering Liberal - As someone who abandoned liberalism like a cheap date who'd been binging on Old Style beer and gas-station frozen burritos...

...Er, wait. That image is just too much.

Anyway - I love this blog, by a fellow recovering liberal, called, oddly enough, Recovering Liberal. It's by Kathy Shaidle, a Canadian who in addition to being an ex-liberal, is also behind "Relapsed Catholic", which is interesting stuff even if you're a non-lapsed Presbyterian...

All These Years... - of

All These Years... - of websurfing...

...And I haven't yet discovered this?

All About Betty - The

All About Betty - The Strib logs in with this short piece about the voting record of my "representative", (which I put in quotes because she represents me in no way), the Fourth District's Betty McCollum.

She makes Nancy Pelosi look pretty darned moderate.

Ventura Backs Data Collection -

Ventura Backs Data Collection - In perhaps a final bit of proof that Ventura was the DFL-iest "populist" we've ever elected, our soon-to-be-ex governor okayed the biggest data collection act in Minnesota history.

The Strib article says:

Some groups consider the plan an attack on privacy, but health officials say sensitive details would be encrypted to protect confidentiality.

Note the artful dodge; "Encryption" does indeed protect data - from outsiders. But outsiders aren't the ones that "some groups" are worried about! It's the state itself that is the problem, here - as they collect private data to help them make "policy" decisions.

The Strib goes on to say:

The department sees the database as a tool in tracking health-care quality around Minnesota and a way to spot troubling trends early. Other states have similar systems already in place.

The medical database would include everything from who has a stroke, an abortion or a surgery to who takes Prozac and other prescription drugs.

So the state can figure out who is doing what, with what - and feed that data into the maw of the state's regulatory machine.

The Strib just doesn't get it.

Declining Standards Alert - Los

Declining Standards Alert - Los Agneles Magazine is apparently ready to call Barbra Streisand's website it's Website of the Month.

For teaching us all how to spell Gephardt, one presumes.

Random Thought - Re-reading my

Random Thought - Re-reading my screed on the death of Joe Strummer from earlier this week, something occurred to me:

• My dad is probably a Scoop-Jackson-ish sorta-liberal.
• My mom is a far-left liberal.
• My favorite musical artists - Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer, Joe Grushecky - are all liberals to one degree or another
• Some of my favorite authors - Orwell et al - are liberals (and others are classical liberals, like Tolstoii and Dostoyevskii)
• The non-family, non-media/entertainment figure that had the biggest impact on my pre-college life - Reverend Bill King - was so far to the left, he went on to minister at one of those lefty wackjob Presbyterian churches in lefty wackjob Madison that served as "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants from Central America, some of whom were most likely fugitive terrorists
• One of my favorite college professors, Dr. Stan Slade, did Rev. King one better, leaving his teaching position to serve as a missionary in Nicaragua (he was a strong proponent of liberation theology) during the height of the Sandinista regime

And yet, each of these people played a key role in making me a better, more thoughtful conservative. Vastly more so than Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly ever could.

This must be what they call a Larry King Moment...

Jesse "The Ex" Ventura -

Jesse "The Ex" Ventura - The Pioneer Press' Jim Ragsdale is one of the Twin Cities' best political reporters.

And this piece in the PiPress, on the unravelling of the Ventura administration, is a great one.

And I like this part, especially because it's what I've been saying for the last year about Ventura and the "Independence" party:

Ventura supporter Mark Jumer, a 42-year-old meat cutter, was quoted four years ago exulting about Ventura's victory.

Not anymore.

Ventura's moon-lighting for pay didn't bother him. Neither did the governor's controversial comments — Jumer likes someone who tells it straight. What irked him was Ventura's inability to work with the system and with the media, and to be the moderating force government needs.

Jumer said he believes Ventura blew a "perfect opportunity" to build consensus from the center. He called Ventura's frequent outbursts evidence that he couldn't cope with the give-and-take. He and others fear the idea of a third-party renaissance is now a national joke, courtesy of Jesse Ventura.

"I really thought it was going to be the start of a movement," Jumer said. "I think his first two years, he did OK. Then in his last two years, it just got to be almost like a three-ring circus. I really thought he was going to be able to bring people together. I believe now that he chased people away."

Jumer voted for Republican Pawlenty this time, as did most of Jesse Country. The result suggests Ventura was a one-time anomaly, a product of his own fame and the generosity of voters during a prosperous economy. But he couldn't transfer that popularity to the candidate who most agreed with him — Tim Penny, who had a dismal showing in most of Ventura's strongholds.

Ventura was not swept into office on a wave of admiration for wonks!

Here's another quote:

The last stop on Ventura's February 2000 bus tour was a tree-shaded municipal office building off Interstate 94 near St. Cloud. Then it housed the newly incorporated "City of Ventura," a name town leaders chose to draw attention to their boundary dispute with neighboring St. Cloud.

Ventura went there to promote his plan for a one-house Legislature, and the "City of Ventura" became a symbol of the need for legislative reform. A House-Senate conference committee had scuttled a negotiated solution of the boundary dispute, and Ventura joined city officials in saying those shenanigans would end in a single-house Legislature.

Today, Ventura's dream of a one-house Legislature remains on the shelf, never even advancing to a floor vote. And the "City of Ventura" reverted to being the "City of St. Augusta" in an overwhelming public referendum. Mayor Ollie Mondloch, a 1998 Ventura voter, said the German-Catholic community never forgave Ventura for calling organized religion "a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people" in a 1999 Playboy magazine article.

"He was intolerant about people questioning him … that's not a trait you can go far with," said Mondloch.

Read the article - the insider stuff is amazing, and tends to confirm the views of a few media insiders of my acquaintance - who think Ventura was one of the most arrogant, stuck-on-self people in all of Minnesota politics (or, leaving aside Keillor, the media as well).

So these last four years have been interesting - in the same sense that car wrecks and brawls at hockey games are "interesting", too.

Predictions - The fabulous Bill

Predictions - The fabulous Bill Quick does some fact-checking of the National Review staff's predictions...for 2002.

So we see the danger of trying to predict things. Still - no guts, no glory.

I'll do mine. I'll make them nice and general - to avoid the wrath of Quick next year.

1. Iraq will fall. Probably in February.
2. There will be a Tienanmen-square-style incident in Iran. The mullahcracy will stand - but the cracks will widen.
3. The "Clone" will be found to be a sham. This time.
4. The nattering classes that are currently quibbling about Bush's sitzkrieg-induced dip in popularity will be eating their words, as the post-Iraq popularity bump will push him back into the seventies.
5. Evidence will tend to show Bin Laden is dead, again. Still.
6. Ditto Francisco Franco

Send me your predictions - why should I have all the fun?

Cusacked - I've always liked

Cusacked - I've always liked John Cusack. He's had probably the best percentage of good-movies-to-clinkers of any actor I can personally think of. Better Off Dead was the best teensploitation film of the eightiesand the best John Hughes parody ever. Say Anything, Grifters, Hi Fidelity, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil...he's no slouch in the movie department. Less so than most actors, anyway.

But this, from Newsmax, kinda makes Winona Ryder look good:

The New York Post recently reported that the actor is fond of a practice he calls "celebrity looting." In an interview with Black Book magazine, he explained what the activity entails.

Cusack pointed out a clothing store to the interviewer and said, "We did celebrity looting there. … They asked me to come over, patronize the store, pick up some stuff. So I took all my friends over, and we went straight for the $8,000 rack of leather coats and took a bunch. The managers, they get all nervous and twitchy. They freak. But you just look at 'em really hard and walk out. That's celebrity looting."

Needless to say, Cusack is a liberal - but his name is being bruited about as a potential far-left candidate:

The actor, who is actually being touted by the left as a possible presidential candidate, told Details magazine last year what he thinks of President Bush. He labeled him a hypocrite who is going to "do a lot of damage."

"Bush means Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and all these ... crypto-fascists are gonna get in and start carving up the pie and handing in all their markers to the Republican Party that's been itching to get back into power," Cusack said.

Although bear in mind this piece was written two weeks before the November election.

The American Empire - One

The American Empire - One of the best things the late Stephen Ambrose ever wrote was toward the tail end of "Citizen Soldiers". I'll paraphrase it: throughout history, a squad of foreign soldiers was something to fear. The Roman legionaire, the Cromwellian levy, the Napoleonic cannon-fodder, the Japanese soldier or German soldat or Russian draftee from the steppe was usually nineteen or so, and in conquering his hated foe, usually developed a keen sense of revenge. They commandeered goods, took the winter's food supply, raped the women, burned the houses for a laugh.

And yet at the end of World War II, Germany and Japan and Italy learned to see the squads of nineteen year old GIs (and British "Tommies") as something different. The same band of olive-drab snuffies that had scaled the cliffs and blasted their own nations' übermen out of their concrete bunkers at Omaha Beach, or learned to stalk the jungles to kill the samurai in their lairs, came in as conquerors - and gave out candy, and kept the peace, and rebuilt the conquered nations in their own images, and gave them the power to be what they'd never been. Like us. For the first time in history, a squad of nineteen year old kids with guns was not a force for malevolence.

Bill Whittle weighs in with an excellent essay that extends this idea. It's long, but worth the read.

(via Rachel Lucas)

Aaagh

Fraters Libertas reports the impending demise of Sherlock's Home. An authentic Brit brewpub, it was one of the few - and most profound - joys in the bleak southwest suburban bar 'n chow scene, one of the precious few non-chain places to be found west of France Avenue, and one of the first and finest of the bazillions of brew pubs that have sprung up in the last fifteen years.

I may have to try to sneak over there...

It'll Find You Everywhere -

It'll Find You Everywhere - In a nation with few cars, certainly few built after 1960, it's wierd to see that Cuba has a horrific traffic problem.

Hah. I'd like to see them get from Chanhassen to Saint Paul at 5PM...

Drought - I didn't blog

Drought - I didn't blog yesterday. In explanation, a poem. Ahem:

Twere the days after Christmas, and all through the joint,
Mitch was stuck in meetings; staring at PowerPoint.
The quarterly specs nearly ready do dump,
on all the unfortunate programmer chumps.

When what, to my wandering eyes, should occur
but a manager who, up his butt, had a burr.
There were I's to be dotted! T's to be crossed!
Nostrils were flared! Tempers were lost!
Requirements changing! Changing Required!
And so, the designs I'd so lovingly squired
all through the quarter were brutally altered.
Artistry bowdlerized, function befaltered.

When, six hours later, from the meeting he bolted
(five minutes before the crew might have revolted),
he turned at the door, and said with a grin,
"Happy Christmas to y'all - 'til we do it again!"

Y'know - if I were to look in my Tip Jar and find about $30,000, I could quit this gig and devote myself to blogging! Hmmmm.

Follow the Money - Chuck

Follow the Money - Chuck Simmins - apparently an EMT - asks where the money is going in the current "smallpox preparedness" program. It's not pretty.

I knew this was going to happen. When I saw plans to vaccinate hospital janitors, and hospital unions demanding two days off with pay for their vaccinated members, I just knew.

This is the deal, folks. You're contagious with smallpox when you feel awful. Most people will feel so bad that they will not be able to move around. So, they'll call the ambulance. And I'll show up, unvaccinated, along with the fire guys and the cops. And some ward clerk in OB/GYN will have received the vaccine.

And, to all the little kingdom builders in health departments and hospitals everywhere, GET A FREAKIN CLUE!

If smallpox breaks out, everyone working on VD, you'll be working on smallpox. All the lab space devoted to the flu and to West Nile will be devoted to smallpox. The bureaucrats assigned to getting teen age mothers maternity care will be working on smallpox. The guy with the toothache at the Emergency Department will be told to go home and get a life because they'll all be working on smallpox!

You don't need a new lab, a new laptop, more personnel. You'll all be working on smallpox!

I'll say it again. The smallpox scare is being promoted by people at the trough waiting for Uncle Sam's feed truck to fill it up. Is it possible that we could be attacked by terrorist using smallpox. Yep. Are we already under attack by terrorists sucking on Uncle Sam's teats? You bet! This is a manufactured scare, and if we are really attacked, my EMT butt is in a sling because all the wrong things will have been done.

As Instapundit says - Investigative Reporters? Have at it. Here's your entree to this issue.

My Clone Sleeps Alone -

My Clone Sleeps Alone - Yesterday's cloning "news" set off tremors of revulsion, fear and anger, especially throughout the talkradio and blog worlds.

And I wondered - is this just another "Cold Fusion"? Especially given the geneology of the group making the claims? (We're all clones of extraterrestrials, indeed...).

Jay Manifold has the same idea.

I predict that this will be the non-story of the year. I also predict someone'll do it for real before too terribly long.

Try, Try Again - The

Try, Try Again - The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were a second attempt (after the 1993 attempt which failed to topple one tower into the other only through blind luck, as it turns out).

The attack on the USS Cole was also a repeat of an attempt, months earlier, at a nearly identical strike on the USS The Sullivans.

And as this WaPo article makes clear, many in the higher ranks of our Homeland Security apparatus think Al Quaeda's tenacity bodes ill for Washington DC, especially the White House.

In an interview conducted in June but broadcast in September by the satellite television network al-Jazeera, al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh said United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, had been aimed at Congress.

U.S. analysts lean to the view that Binalshibh was lying. Four officials said the better evidence points to the White House as the target.

The article quotes retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who was President Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism until this past July.

"These guys continue to go back after targets they have tried to get before," Downing said. "That's why I expect they're going to go back to Washington and why I expect they're going to go back to New York, both because of the symbolic impact of those attacks and the economic effect."

The strongest expression of that view came in very personal terms from a participant in efforts against al Qaeda whose office is adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue.

"They are going to kill the White House," the official said. "I have really begun to ask myself whether I want to continue to get up every day and come to work on this block."

The article also delves into the failure (so far) of attempts to build a concentric, anti-nuke detection barrier around the District.

Chilling stuff. Read it.

(Via Smart Genes)

For the Geek Who Has

For the Geek Who Has Everything - When you've been through all the XBoxes, PalmPilots and other geekcessories, Eric Raymond has the one thing they don't have - and really do need.

Putting the Christ Back in

Putting the Christ Back in Christmas - D.J. Tice, the only local conservative writing full-time for either of the dailies, has this wonderful defense of the Christianity of Christmas. The motivation is a New Jersey school which cancelled a visit to "A Christmas Carol" because of a complaint about the Dickens story's Christian themes. Cal Thomas denied the theme, Tice upbraids Thomas...well, read the article.

This part stands out:

All religions include beliefs in miraculous events. But in none is the miraculous so central and indispensable as it is in Christianity, a religion founded entirely on faith in the ultimate miracle of Divinity entering the world as a human being.

The Christian emphasis on miracle — on the porous border between the natural and he supernatural — also helps explain why Christmas has more or less contentedly absorbed so many pleasing customs from ancient pagan winter festivals — decorated trees and mistletoe and lights and Yule logs and all the other earthy trappings that make the holiday seem less than fully "Christian" to some.

It's because Christianity believes nature itself was redeemed once for all by the Incarnation that the pagan instinct to detect something spiritual in natural forces, enchanted mountains, and the cycle of the seasons contains a truth Christianity can appreciate.

As for conversion, it is true once again that all religions seek enlightenment and transformation. But the Christian emphasis is special. The gospels are positively full of stories in which righteous people of the time were scandalized by Jesus' spending time with sinners. He set them straight with some of the best-loved Christian parables — the prodigal son, the shepherd who abandons the 99 to go in search of one lost lamb.

So there is nothing about Christmas that is by its nature exclusionary - and likewise nothing that should make Christians in the least bit bashful about proclaiming the festival's purpose and meaning.

DUI or Not DUI -

DUI or Not DUI - In its spare time, the legislature will be debating that perennial warhorse, lowering the Blood Alcohol Limit still further.

Minnesota already has failed to gain $14.6 million in highway "bonus funds" from the feds by not approving 0.08 in the past five years. Proponents of 0.08 say the budget-strapped and traffic-plagued state can't afford to send highway money back to Washington anymore.

Opponents, especially in the liquor industry, say Minnesota's relatively low level of drunken-driving casualties shows that 0.08 does little to address the problem and instead unfairly targets social drinkers.

"Joe Lunchbox is just going to get punished for having a couple of drinks with the boys after work," said Tony Chesak, associate director of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association (MLBA).

Nonsense, said Lynne Goughler, Minnesota public-policy liaison for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). "At 0.08, you're not a social drinker," she said. "That's a drink every 15 minutes."

First and foremost - always take MADD's statistics with a grain - no, a block of salt. These people are less interested in curbing drunk driving than eliminating alcohol from daily life, much as our anti-smoking zealots are doing.

For a refreshingly angry counterpoint, I refer you to the DUI Gulag. This part is of direct impact on the current debate:

MADD PROPAGANDA will never tell you that nationwide in 1996 only 8.9% of motor vehicle accident fatalities occurred in "alcohol related accidents" where no person involved in the accident had a BAC equal to or greater than 0.10%. This statistical percentage has decreased every year since 1996.

The site has many, many more factoids, most of which would seem to deflate most of MADD's claims.

I report, you decide - but I personally continue to consider MADD one of America's most corrosively authoritarian groups.

I come not to Rip Strummer, but to R.I.P. Strummer

As I wrote the other night, right after I got the news, the death of Joe Strummer caught me right in my 40-year-old breadbasket.

Yeah, the Clash were a huge band for me when I was in high school and college. Part of it - only a tiny part - was that I was a far-left liberal until I was about 20 years old. That the Clash (which was not just Strummer - Mick Jones (punk's first heartthrob) played the wry, lyrical McCartney to Strummer's cynical, fiercely dour Lennon) stood up for me after my own political epiphany says less about their politics (and mine) than about the fact that they wrote a lot of punk rock that rocked, that dug into the crevasses of my brain and shook loose...something. Something I'd not really thought about in a while, until the news of Strummer's death.

And this happened during my own political conversion! Not only do you not have to agree with music to dance to it, or to listen to it until the wee hours and ponder what the song made you think about your own life - you don't have to agree with a political statement for it to affect your own statement.
The Elder, from Fraters Libertas, writes a dissenting opinion on the death of Joe Strummer.

I see this as a good time to make the point that IF I HEAR ONE MORE FUCKING THING ABOUT “IMPORTANT” FUCKING RECORDS I’M GOING TO DRIVE A TELECASTER THROUGH BONO’S MELON!

Am I the only one that does not look for music to be “Important”? I want music that excites my senses—I can’t imagine relaxing with a cocktail and Frank’s Songs For Swingin’ Lovers and thinking “Yeah, this is one important record”. Give me groove goddammit. Give me excellent musicians at the peak of their craft. Give me someone who can paint a picture with their words without being overbearing. Give me a vocalist who can convey what they are feeling through their God-given ability to sing in tune and with power. Keep your teenage Take On The World to yourself. Punk is music for teenagers. Hear me adults? Adults USED to listen to adult music but that died with rock n’ roll (of which punk is just an offshoot, not some other genre as it pretends to be…SIDE NOTE: I’d rather listen to every Foghat, Boston and Toto record ever made than to have to sit though one side of a Clash record ).

Read the rest of Elder's piece - it's good.

But there's nothing about "importance" in a record that precludes it having "groove". After all, "importance" is judged among a committee of ofay Rolling Stone writers (or was, 20 years ago); the only arbiter of groove is in my own hypothalamus. In '80, the Clash were underrated musicians at the peak of their rough, snotty craft. And London Calling does groove: the title cut's ominous stompy shuffle, Working for the Clampdown's fearsome tattoo, The Card Cheat's heart-rending climax (Mick Jones' greatest moment), innumerable other moments that had an angry sheen that transcended most of the rest of punk (and I say this as someone who loved punk!) - and behind it all the politics. Yes, the endless, smug Eurotrash-socialist politics that Elder nailed in his screed.

Let's talk about that.

I'll say it here, even though it'll make Joe Strummer spin in his not-yet-occupied grave: The Clash made me a better conservative. Listening to London Calling exposed me to a lot of the tripe and trope that passes for political thought on the left; I could listen to Sandinista and rock out even as I became revolted by the smug, self-satisfied politics. Because it didn't take long to notice that Noam Chomsky's politics weren't a whole lot deeper and better-thought-out than Joe Strummer's doggerel (which was, itself, a whole lot more consistent).

Were the punks a bunch of poseurs, and are rock critics a bunch of wankers with overly-precious opinions borne of hothouse-flower outlooks, and are English punks a bunch of art-school fops with guitars? Does the sun rise? All are givens.

But to be a conservative rock fan is to be an adept filter and to excel at tolerance. I can't accept the politics of a Joe Strummer or a Joey Ramone (who at least shared his band with two conservatives) or Stuart Adamson or even Bruce Springsteen; but I don't like to think about the empty spots that London Calling, The Ramones, Steeltown or The River would leave in my life if they'd never existed.

Christmas in Uniform - Austin

Christmas in Uniform - Austin Bay writes this excellent piece on the sacrifices our servicepeople make this, and every, Christmas:

The year 2002 ends in crisis, but name a recent year that hasn't? Peace on Earth is a great, empowering hope, but a dim and distant prospect. In our broken world the uneasy quiet that passes for peace anywhere on the planet is usually a lucky concoction, a mix of genuine good will, complex self-interest, mutual economic interest and armed vigilance.

Like it or not, at this point in world history American economic vitality, military vigilance and diplomatic engagement remain central to stabilizing the most threatening geo-political conflicts and promoting peaceful resolution.

There are many people who will say -- with callous accuracy -- that for servicemen and ser-vicewomen hard duty is their job. They signed up to go whenever and wherever they are sent.

That's true. But consider the persistent demands we have made on service members and their families over the last 13 years, the baker's dozen since the end of the Cold War.

Christmas 1989: Operation Just Cause in Panama. Christmas 1990: Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield, prelude to Operation Desert Storm. Christmas 1992: Somalia is on the horizon. Christmas 1993: Somalia, again, and new worries about North Korea. Christmas 1994: The pace of air and naval deployments to the Balkans increases. USAF, Marine and Army reservists reinforce regulars in Panama and Guantanamo to work the Cuban migrant camps. Troops deploy to Kuwait, responding to saber-rattling by Saddam. U.S. troops are also assigned to Macedonia.

Christmas 1995: the Bosnia occupation, which was to last a year but still remains an American duty post. In the background, the Navy continues to enforce the U.N. embargo against Iraq and patrol the Persian Gulf. Fall 1998, the Hurricane Mitch relief operation in Central America, with U.S. forces playing a major role in the relief and recovery effort. Spring 1999, the Kosovo War, which by Christmas 1999 becomes occupation duty. Fall 2001, Afghanistan, the duty station in December 2002 for the 82nd Airborne Division. December 2002, uncertainty on the Korean DMZ as the ramp up for action against Saddam continues.

This list, though incomplete, makes the point.

Anyone who has ever worn a uniform and spent the Christmas holidays guarding the motor pool, flying a mission or dodging bullets cannot help but recognize our soldiers' sacrifice and applaud their commitment.

The personal burden is real. At the moment two friends of mine are deployed in Kuwait. Another recently completed a tour in Afghanistan. A couple of Decembers ago I received a letter from a friend who mentioned that her brother-in-law, an Air Force air rescue pilot, was on his way back to the Balkans. She wrote: "My brother-in-law spends probably 70 percent of the year away from home."

That's a commanding example of service -- service above all else; and it is more than the pilot's service, for his family's sacrifice is an integral part of a war -- or peacekeeping -- effort.

To all my friends in the service overseas - and those ni the reserves waiting to get "mobbed" - the best wishes a grateful American can send.

(via Instapundit)

What Next? - In the

What Next? - In the past year and a half, we've lost

• Ben Orr
• Joey and Dee Dee Ramone
• Warren Zevon (soon)...
• George Harrison, although he's the wrong generation
• And now, Joe Strummer.

This is getting scary.

Off We Go - We're

Off We Go - We're heading out to my Dad's place in North Dakota now. (Note to any burglars that prowl the blogosphere: my high school chum Vinnie "Blowtorch and Pliers" Cincinelli is house-sitting, with his four Rottweilers - War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Don't get ideas). I'll try to post when I'm out there - in the same sense that I'll try to do some work on my laptop - but just in case, I'll give you my greetings now.

So from my daughter "Bun", my son Sam, my cats Nosemarie and Madeline, and yours truly, may you and yours have a wonderful and blessed Christmas, and I'll see you Thursday if not sooner.

Vote Now! - The blog

Vote Now! - The blog "Little Green Footballs" is running a poll for "the Fiskies" - the first attempt I've seen at a blogosphere-based award.

Vote early and often!

Joyeux Noel - As I

Joyeux Noel - As I wrote a few weeks ago, Thanksgiving is my major holiday, personally - the time when I take stock of the year that's been, and make the little secret plans in the back of my head that'll carry me through til next year.

And Easter is the center of my faith - one of my favorite holidays for purely philosophical reasons (and thus, the holiday whose Hallmark-y aspects most irritate me).

But for all that, I love Christmas. Put me in a gingham skirt and call me pollyanna, but I think I've managed to get to age koff koff forty without succumbing to the wearyl cynical tolerance so much of adult America feels for this holiday. I still step out into the cold, brisk night on Chrismas Eve, hustle the freshly-scrubbed bratlets off to the church, and feel exactly the same sense of glorious wonder that I felt at their ages; the excitement, the sense of rebirth, the crisp air, the smell of wrapping paper and walnuts and the cheap candles at the Christmas Eve candlelight services.

I listen to the people who complain about the grind, the teeth-clenched stress of this holiday - and I sympathize (all too well!) but only to a point. Yeah, money's always a hassle this time of year (especially if the number and cost of presents you buy are an integral part of your self-image) - and yeah, if your family has a "dramatic" history, the holidays are always the end of the third act for the year.

But it's impossible for me to look at the wonder and anticipation on my kids' faces and not get caught up in it all, yet again.

Today, my kids - age 9 and 11 - both stated an eloquent case for Santa's existence. They gathered their evidence, ordered it well, and stated it forcefully - may they do so well in high school debate class - and refuted their more-cynical friends pretty convincingly, I must say. And I thought - in this day and age, when MTV and Nickelodeon and Disney try to train our children to be hip, cynical little consumer-bots, that they can still be so ingenouous - even innocent - is itself a minor miracle, a wondrous, maybe final taste of the early childhood that I'm even now missing in the pit of my gut.

And this week, at Gramma and Grampas, we get more of it - along with my sister and her kids and husband. I can hardly wait.

So - back to blogging for real on Thursday. I may blog a bit in coming days, but in case I don't, have a great holiday. -

Joyeux Noel - As I

Joyeux Noel - As I wrote a few weeks ago, Thanksgiving is my major holiday, personally - the time when I take stock of the year that's been, and make the little secret plans in the back of my head that'll carry me through til next year.

And Easter is the center of my faith - one of my favorite holidays for purely philosophical reasons (and thus, the holiday whose Hallmark-y aspects most irritate me).

But for all that, I love Christmas. Put me in a gingham skirt and call me pollyanna, but I think I've managed to get to age koff koff forty without succumbing to the wearyl cynical tolerance so much of adult America feels for this holiday. I still step out into the cold, brisk night on Chrismas Eve, hustle the freshly-scrubbed bratlets off to the church, and feel exactly the same sense of glorious wonder that I felt at their ages; the excitement, the sense of rebirth, the crisp air, the smell of wrapping paper and walnuts and the cheap candles at the Christmas Eve candlelight services.

I listen to the people who complain about the grind, the teeth-clenched stress of this holiday - and I sympathize (all too well!) but only to a point. Yeah, money's always a hassle this time of year (especially if the number and cost of presents you buy are an integral part of your self-image) - and yeah, if your family has a "dramatic" history, the holidays are always the end of the third act for the year.

But it's impossible for me to look at the wonder and anticipation on my kids' faces and not get caught up in it all, yet again.

Today, my kids - age 9 and 11 - both stated an eloquent case for Santa's existence. They gathered their evidence, ordered it well, and stated it forcefully - may they do so well in high school debate class - and refuted their more-cynical friends pretty convincingly, I must say. And I thought - in this day and age, when MTV and Nickelodeon and Disney try to train our children to be hip, cynical little consumer-bots, that they can still be so ingenouous - even innocent - is itself a minor miracle, a wondrous, maybe final taste of the early childhood that I'm even now missing in the pit of my gut.

And this week, at Gramma and Grampas, we get more of it - along with my sister and her kids and husband. I can hardly wait.

So - back to blogging for real on Thursday. I may blog a bit in coming days, but in case I don't, have a great holiday. -

The Dumb Gun - The

The Dumb Gun - The gun control movement hasn't been able to convince the vast majority of Americans that firearms are a bad idea. Most people know that it's not the gun that causes the problem - it's the person carrying it.

It's perhaps logical, then, that since they can't convince the voter that guns themselves are the problem, they've moved on - to making the guns themselves useless.

Jacob Sullum writes in Reason about "smart guns", and New Jersey's extraordinarily-stupid move to require this new, unproven, potentially lethal technology in all guns sold in that state - technology that would make guns both unaffordable to poor people and potentially unreliable in the sort of emergencies for which law-abiding citizens buy handguns in the first place:

Revealingly, the mandate exempts police weapons, even though research on personalized firearms was initially aimed at stopping criminals from firing guns grabbed during struggles with cops. The exemption is also odd because one of the bill's avowed goals is to prevent adolescent suicides. "What children have more access to guns than the children of police officers?" asked a lobbyist who fought the mandate.

Legislators must have recognized that police officers would not want their lives to depend on batteries, electronic chips, or recognition devices that could fail in an emergency. As the Independence Institute's Dave Kopel observes, "the police will not put up with a gun that is 99% reliable."

Even if a "smart gun" always worked as designed, various contingencies could prevent an officer from firing it. What if he forgot his transponder ring, wore gloves, had sweaty palms, switched hands, or tried to use a colleague's gun?

What if, indeed. Perhaps the Trial Lawyers association are seeing this as potential lawsuit fodder. Seriously - what better way to ban guns than make them ineffective? Speaking of costs:

The bill's authors probably were also concerned about the cost that "smart guns" would impose on police departments. Colt, one of the manufacturers working to develop personalized firearms, estimates they will cost $300 more than conventional models.

The mandate's supporters apparently did not worry about its impact on the budgets and lives of ordinary citizens. Yet once the law kicks in, it will effectively ban affordable handguns, preventing poor people in dangerous neighborhoods from defending themselves.

In a related note: All of you Minnesota gun owhers - if you're not hitting your knees every night thanking God for this past election, we need to talk.

This Was the Week That

This Was the Week That Was - Oy, vey, such a week I'd not wish on Bill Clinton.

As I wrote earlier in the week, it was the software-development equivalent of finals week. We were bundling up a release worth of functional specs to send off to our development office somewhere in the Third World (Canada, in this case). Constant meetings, writing, re-designing things after managers changed their minds about things they'd approved the previous week, etc - all the stuff that made Scott Adams rich, but just makes me crabby and gets me behind on my blogging.

And tomorrow, I'm heading out for four days on a trip with the kids to my anscestral homeland, Jamestown, North Dakota, for Christmas at my dad's place for the first time since 1989.

I'll try to get on from time to time during the coming few days. Must be a sign of the times - even my dad is wired these days.

Death by Diva - One

Death by Diva - One of the most irritating trends in pop music in the last 10-15 years is the faux pop "diva". There are women with enough talent as singers to do amazing things with their voices - and not enough musical sense to know how to use that talent.

You know who I mean: the ones who, when the song should go

DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO

instead sing:

DO miremerefla RE la,tiflutter trill whoop ME...

Barbra Streisand is the spiritual godmother of this coven - but I blame Whitney Houston. Before her, the "divas" n music (remember Aretha Franklin Chaka Khan or Patty LaBelle, anyone?) put their chops behind the songs, to support the music. Then came Whitney Houston (and a few years later, Mariah Carey, who was worse). Suddenly, every chorus was an excuse for a dogs-only high note fireworks display; every note of two counts or more, the setting for a flurry of ornamental grace notes that could give epilepsy to the susceptible.

Today, it's everywhere, from the tastelessly formidable (Carey) to the technical and tacky (Christina Aguilera) to the rote and inept (Britney Spears). Woman singer + music = excuse for empty technical flash.

I'm a guitar player. It reminds me of the late eighties and early nineties, when the biggest guitarists were those who could play the mostest notes fastest - all of Eddie Van Halen's skill, none of his musical wit.

So here's a new years wish: May the world get a female pop singer that's studied Aretha's soul, not just her vocal chops.

The Two Blowhards attack this trend.

San Francisco Update - San

San Francisco Update - San Francisco has voted to regulate psychics and ban some of the tricks of their trade.

The tricks, banned under the new law, include the knot in the thread (the fortune-teller makes a knot disappear) and the blood in the glass (the fortune- teller asks a client to spit into a glass of water, then secretly adds black dye to show the client is cursed).

Also banned would be the hair in the grapefruit (the client rubs a grapefruit on his body and covers it with money, and the fortune-teller then plants a hair inside the grapefruit to prove the money is cursed, and keeps the money) and the buried money in the graveyard (the fortune-teller promises to bury a client's "cursed" money in a graveyard, but keeps it instead).

Peskin introduced a 36-year-old San Francisco woman who lost $17,000 last year to a Richmond District fortune-teller.

The fortune-teller charged the victim hundreds of dollars per visit and tricked her into buying two $2,000 gift certificates at Union Square stores. The fortune-teller said she would bless the gift certificates and return them to her lovelorn client, so that she could give the certificates to her estranged husband and win him back. Instead, the fortune-teller used the certificates herself.

"I don't know why I believed her," recalled the victim, who did not want to be identified. "It was so stupid. I lost my sanity, I guess."

She was half right.

The proposed law, which comes before the Board of Supervisors next month, covers fortune-telling by not only crystal balls, tarot cards and astrology charts, but by "sticks, dice, tea leaves, coins, sand and coffee grounds" as well. Fortune-tellers would be required to post rate cards and a phone number for complaints. Police say requiring permits would make it easier to keep tabs on swindlers.

Next to be banned: The old "pull the finger" trick.

My Christmas Present to You

My Christmas Present to You - Today's Lileks Screed.

Yeah, it's free. It's the thought that counts.

Slime - I'm as sick

Slime - I'm as sick of excessive hyperbole as the next guy. I think American society, especially our political culture, need a lot less of it.

I say that to qualify my next statement.

The DFL oozes slime.

Yeah, that is hyperbolic. But I urge any open-minded person to read the current edition of the MN DFL website and not feel the same - and to tell me why.

In this piece, they try to take the "moral high ground" on the Lott controversy...by quoting Bill Clinton.

NEW YORK (CNN) --Former President Clinton said Wednesday it is "pretty hypocritical" of Republicans to criticize incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for stating publicly what he said the GOP does "on the back roads every day."

"How do they think they got a majority in the South anyway?" Clinton told CNN outside a business luncheon he was attending. "I think what they are really upset about is that he made public their strategy."

Protocols of the Elders of Zion, anyone?

By the way - the DFL might like to hire a competent webmaster. Count the number of HTML and copy errors on the DFL website, if you need to kill some time this holiday weekend.

Update: Glenn Reynolds has this suggestion for helping the GOP leave the segregationist parts of its past in the dust.

UPDATE: I've wondered for the past week if the Lott incident couldn't actually be a good thing for the GOP?

Daniel Drezner agrees.

Gored And Eddied - Why

Gored And Eddied - Why why are Democrats pulling out of the presidential race, two years early, without the benefit of a Supreme Court case even? Gore, Edwards...

A friend of mine last night had a good observation - the smart Democrats see that it's pretty much an unwinnable situation for them - but being the Vice Presidential half of a losing ticket isn't such a bad plan. '04 is to the Dems what '96 was to the GOP - a dead issue.

I think the parallels bear some extending. I think it'll remain for the elder statesman of the party, the one for whom the presidency is less a match than a sinecure - to make the run and thus take the running fall on his sword. As in '96, it was Bob Dole, in '04 it'll be Kerry, or Gephardt, or anyone too old and slow to get out of the way of the speeding GOP truck.

Confederacy of Dunces - Say

Confederacy of Dunces - Say "states
s rights" to a Democrat, and he'll wonder where you put your white hood. John Ashcroft was harassed during his confirmation hearings for his interest in the Confederacy - as if the Confederacy was about nothing but slavery.

It's a bogus comparison. The National Review's Steven Hayward writes about how the left has hijacked "states' rights" from the good guys.

But "states' rights" was a sound principle of federalism that was debased by Democratic party rule in the south, for which it is not Republicans who owe an apology.

Indeed. "State's Rights" isn't shorthand for slavery, but for enumerated powers - AKA the Tenth Amendment.

Hayward continues:

Reagan had a long and well-known record of criticizing centralized government power, and this is how the media at the time interpreted his statement. "Most of those at the rally," the New York Times reported, "apparently regarded the statement as having been made in that context." And as a westerner Reagan had fully associated himself with the "Sagebrush Rebellion," for whom "states' rights" had no racial content, but rather meant wresting control of land from Washington. This was far from an outlandish or minority view. The same day Reagan made his "states' rights" remark in Mississippi, the National Governors Association issued what the Associated Press described as "a militant call for reduced federal involvement in state and local affairs." Arizona's liberal Democratic Governor Bruce Babbitt wrote in a New York Times op-ed article that "It is time to take hard look at 'states' rights' — and responsibilities — and to sort out the respective functions of the federal government and the states." I missed where Jack White added Babbitt to his roster of racists (never mind Carter's calculated appeal to "ethnic purity" in 1976).

To liberals, however, employing the phrase "states' rights" in any context is to waive the bloody shirt of racism and segregation. Little time was wasted in accusing Reagan not simply of pandering to old-fashioned segregationist sentiment in the south, but of actively sympathizing with it. Patricia Harris, Carter's secretary of Health and Human Services, told a steelworkers' union conference in early August: "I will not attempt to explain why the KKK found the Republican candidate and the Republican platform compatible with the philosophy and guiding principles of that notorious organization." (A KKK chapter in Louisiana had scored some cheap publicity by endorsing Reagan in 1980, which endorsement Reagan immediately and forcefully rejected.) But, Harris added, when Reagan speaks before black audiences many blacks "will see the specter of a white sheet behind him." Andrew Young went even further, saying that Reagan's remarks seemed "like a code word to me that it's going to be all right to kill niggers when he's President." Coretta Scott King managed to top Young: "I am scared that if Ronald Reagan gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party." Maryland Congressman Parren Mitchell, a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that " Reagan represents a distinct danger to black Americans." Reagan, it should be noted, received the endorsement of several black leaders in 1980, including the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and the Rev. Hosea Williams, another prominent cleric from the civil rights movement.

Yet another phrase we have to steal back.

The Just War - John

The Just War - John Cullen on why invading Iraq meets the strictest definition of "just war".

James in Wonderland - One

James in Wonderland - One of my favorite topics ever - fever dreams.

I remember as a child, lying in bed as a fourth-grader, looking at a movie playing itself on a square of light on my wall. Marilyn Monroe was talking about gambling with none other than Scottish formula 1 great Jimmy Clark. They went on for what must have been hours.

Lileks writes about his most recent bout.

the old confident brain shouldered aside the capering imps of Feverland, took the director’s chair, and gave me a gripping tale with a coherent narrative. Back to normal! I remember little, but I do remember defending my wife from a small, unshaven oily-skinned stubble-chinned Brit who was threatening to cut her up “an’ spoil tha’ pretty faice a’ yours.” I stabbed him in the heart with a scissors with such force that it pinned him to the wall. Then I called 9-11.

Next scene: my wife and I are in the movie theater, watching Lord of the Rings. “Don’t you think someone should be at the house when the police get there?” she said, and you know, she had a point. I was a little nervous about what might happen, since there was a dead burglar pinned to my wall, but to my great relief the intruder had shrunk to the size of a Christmas tree ornament, and no one seemed to notice.

Almost more fun than being healthy!

Duelling Colemans - Nick Coleman

Duelling Colemans - Nick Coleman - who is to Twin Cities columnists what Cliff Clavin was to barflies - lets loose on Norm Coleman - and inadvertently compliments him. Purely unintentional, I'm sure - read between the lines. (It's usually the best way to read Nick Coleman).

Big Trunk at Powerline reviewed this column, saying

Even though the piece slightly betrays the hostility you would expect from the liberal columnist (Nick Coleman, no relation to Norm) who wrote it, it accurately captures Norm and his strengths as a politician. It also provides the first public glimpse of which I am aware of Norm's active religious faith.

Worth a read - albeit not for the reasons Coleman (Nick) intended.

Second Amendment And Us -

Second Amendment And Us - Rachel Lucas uncorks a great one.

(via Instapundit)

Steele on Lott - Shelby

Steele on Lott - Shelby Steele on how far the Trent Lott incident might set conservatives back.

School Dazed - My second part of the St. Paul Schools' budget flap is slower coming together than I'd thought - but I'll have something this week.

Squashed - This is the

Squashed - This is the software-development equivalent of finals week. I'm packing up a release to send it off to the developers - and it's pure hell. So posting from work is going to be a little tight this week - and posting from home moreso, since I'm so amazingly tired...

Eminem as Republican - About

Eminem as Republican - About a year ago, I called in to local conservative Jason Lewis to defend rappter Eminem. My defense was mostly on musical grounds - I'm a former rap DJ, and I'm really tired of the trope that "rap just isn't music". Eminem is a great stylist in the genre - Cleaning Out My Closet", for example, is chillingly amazing song no matter what genre you're talking about.

But I seem to have sold him short even at that. According to Gerald Marzorati and Ann Powers of Slate he might even be a Republican

...the Eminem story—or the movie version that unfolded in 8 Mile—is an echt Republican story, one about pulling yourself up and overcoming your circumstances while your pathetic single mom waits around for a handout...

Hey, if NWA's "Eazy E" could appear at a George Bush Senior fund-raiser...

Thanks for the Memories -

Thanks for the Memories - Damian Whitworth of the London Times provides this perspective on Algore's withdrawal from the '04 race:

So, farewell then, Albert Gore Jr, the Prince of Tennessee. You made us laugh (mostly at you), you made us cry (heavy tears of boredom). But now you have made us smile.
For at last, after a lifetime’s quest for the most powerful job on earth, you have decided to give up. This decision, which saves your country from future misery untold, is the bravest you have ever made and demonstrates that you finally know who you are. So long, loser.

But, Jeepers! it took you soooooooooo long to see it

Shakedown

The Recording Industry Association of America is on a campaign to get the government to help it enforce laws against file sharing and piracy.

And while the recording and entertainment industry's ethics are pretty terrible across the board, it seems they have a lot of trouble with more prosaic fact-checking:

Yesterday it issued a press release announcing a piracy bust in New York which unearthed 421 CD-R burners.

Only there weren't 421 burners, but "the equivalent of 421 burners."

In fact, there were just 156. How did the RIAA account for this discrepancy?

"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed," was the official line yesterday.

I especially loved this part

Apparently another example of the Association's difficulty grappling with new technology. After the RIAA's website was hacked, with large sections rendered inaccessible, spokespersons explained the difficulties were due to a sudden upsurge in popularity.

Well, that's one way of putting it.

Perhaps the most trouble aspect of this story:

The other curious aspect of yesterday's release is the use of Secret Service agents in the bust. The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials[*]. Perhaps this is a further indication of who's really in charge.

This, from an industry that was found to have cheated on nearly 100% of artist contracts. Would that Hollywood were as honest as Enron...

First Amendment and Man at

First Amendment and Man at Saint Cloud State - A member of the St. Cloud State University's College Republicans.is accusing a university professor of attacking him.

The student, Zach Spoehr, is accusing Professor Rona Karasik of attacking him after he tried to take pictures of the booth.

Karasik said she felt the display had ``anti-Semitic material.''

Karasik became upset because she felt the use of the flag sent the message that the College Republicans had the support of the Israeli government and the Israeli people, said Nathan Church, vice president for student life and development.

So what was this anti-semitic material?

The display featured literature prepared and paid for by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Israel's flag, and a list of terrorism victims in Israel.

So self-defense and acknowedging one has been attacked is "anti-semitic"?

As the email correspondent said in referring this piece to me: "Only in Minnesota".

Sadly, that's not true.

Lott of Problems - Michelle

Lott of Problems - Michelle Malkin pegs my misgivings about Trent Lott in his current situation.

My fellow conservatives, if you weren't already convinced that the Mississippi senator was a gutless, ineffective, self-preservationist sap before his remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party last week, this pandering to the race Mafiosi in the aftermath of his comments seals the deal."

The real danger is that Lott will give away the store to buy off the race-hustlers (i.e., Democrats):

"In interviews with Sean Hannity and Larry King, Lott cravenly pledged support for 'community renewal' (more minority set-asides); said he would 'put more money into education so no child is left behind' (more federal spending for failed urban programs); and boasted of his 'African-American interns' and appointments (more racial preferences).

That's my big worry. Even before he was in trouble, in his first stint as majority leader, he showed a frightening capacity to cave in to the Democrats, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Now that the pressure is on...

Well, Malkin's right.

(via Powerline)

Commence Bombing - Sean Penn

Commence Bombing - Sean Penn has arrived in Baghdad.

"By the invitation of the Institute for Public Accuracy, I have the privileged opportunity to pursue a deeper understanding of this frightening conflict," Penn said in a statement released in Washington and Baghdad on Friday. "I would hope that all Americans will embrace information available to them outside conventional channels.

Like Hollywood.

As a father, an actor, a filmmaker, and a patriot, my visit to Iraq is for me a natural extension of my obligation (at least attempt) to find my own voice on matters of conscience."

And that is the big obligation, isn't it? Finding one's voice?

Earful? - Governor-elect Pawlenty spent

Earful? - Governor-elect Pawlenty spent two days on a "listening tour" of southern Minnesota. Here's what the Strib had to say about it.

All the media coverage has centered on this incident: A group of schol parents in Winona trying to shame Pawlenty into ditching his "no new taxes" pledge:

In Winona, about 30 parents of students at Bluffview Montessori, the first charter school in the nation, met Pawlenty outside as he arrived for a visit. Bearing signs that said, "Pawlenty: Please be everybody's governor" and "Taxes teach children," the parents said they were concerned that his no-tax-increase campaign pledge would hamstring his ability to solve the budget problem and still deliver quality education.

"We don't see why he has to adhere to an ideology like that," said parent Steve Leonhardi. "He should be more pragmatic about solving the problem."

But Pawlenty, a Republican, said he would not budge on his pledge, pointing to the disparities between government spending and revenues.

"It's a principle that is at the heart of the debate in Minnesota."

"We can't continue on that path," he said. "In government it takes a crisis to get things done. Well, we now have the crisis."

In 1980, Reagan inherited double-digit inflation and unemployment, a stagnant-yet-inflationary economy, and full-blown national malaise. He plotted a course that made the weak-kneed blanche, but was directed toward an overarching vision of what he wanted for America. And for two solid years, he followed that vision through incredible difficulty and intense criticism - and the results were spectacular.

Pawlenty needs to take a big hit from the Reaganbong, and keep that in mind. As Dick Armey says, "Freedom Works". So does tenacity.

And so, in fact, does the economic cycle.

In the Meantime - A number of Winona high school students took a shot at balancing the budget, and presented their results to Pawlenty.

Outside Bluffview, Winona high schoolers waited for a chance to put in their two cents' worth. It took them only two days, they said, to solve the budget crisis. Among their recommendations:

• Increase taxes on cigarettes and liquor.

• Take $500,000 from the tobacco settlement proceeds.

• Extend the sales tax to clothing (which they said would generate $300 million a year).

• Create a new tax bracket for those who earn $100,000 or more.

• Give the working poor a tax credit.

"We did it by the skin of our teeth, but it can be done," said Sarah Merchlewitz, a student at Winona High School who was elected governor of the Winona Model Legislature.

Two things:

• No, Ms. Merchiewitz, you didn't "do it" by the skin of your teeth. You did it by the skin of the teeth of smokers, drinkers, and people who earned more money than you've been trained to believe is acceptable.
• And what happens when the leglislature spends all of the money you raised via your "solution" and the special interests you're appeasing come back for more next year? And the year after that? More new tax brackets? Punish "sins" some more? Rescind the "working poor" tax credit?

And just how did the students get the idea to "solve" the deficit problem by raising taxes and attacking upper-middle-income earners?

Her government teacher, state Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona...

Ah, that would explain it.

...ran the numbers by the state Finance Department, and officials there said the students' plan worked.

So, I bet, would confiscating all income above $50,000.

In An Alternate Universe - this is how the story above would read, in part:

Outside Reaganview, St. Paul high schoolers waited for a chance to put in their two cents' worth. It took them only two days, they said, to solve the budget crisis. Among their recommendations:

• Retroactively cut every appropriation that had started as expenditures of budget surpluses in the past five years. .

• Give every dime of the tobacco settlement proceeds to the insurers that were the alleged reasons for the suit in the first place.

• Extend the sales tax to clothing, but cut sales taxes across the board by a percentage point.

• Mercilessly ridicule the dorks who proposed a new tax bracket for those who earn $100,000 or more.

• Start making the "working poor" pay more of their share for state government. Most people who make less than $30,000 pay virtually nothing to the state. If they did, perhaps they'd be less enthusiastic about the efforts made to tax them and everyone else.

"We did it - hell, we knocked it out of the park," said Raheem Jinkins, a student at Reagan High School who was elected governor of the St. Paul Model Legislature.

His government teacher, state Rep. Mitch Berg, GOP-Da Midway!, ran the numbers by the state Finance Department, and officials there tried to destroy all existing copies.

A guy can dream.

Showdown - Pejman Yousefzadeh on

Showdown - Pejman Yousefzadeh on the upcoming showdown between the Fifth and Ninth US Circuits on the Second Amendment, and the role Blogs have played in this dispute so far.

Thus, once again, it appears that Judge Reinhardt did not allow the historical facts so important to a correct ruling on the Second Amendment to get in the way of his zeal to argue that the Second Amendment confers a collective, not an individual right.

In writing about the ruling, Professor Volokh stated that he found it "disappointing." Considering how many aspects of Second Amendment law and scholarship Judge Reinhardt got wrong, characterizing the opinion as "disappointing" would perhaps constitute a monumental understatement.

We'll be watching this one closely.

I'd Get Mad - But I'm Too Tired

Michelle Cottle of the New Republic writes about the newest trendy affliction: Harried Woman Syndrome.

This part's absolutely rich - so rich I gag on it:

Gag. Must we medicalize everything in order for it to be real? I'll tell you what's wrong with women: We have stupidly agreed to do it all. We bought into that "you can do anything a man can do" line, without pushing the reciprocal expectation that men will do much of what we were originally doing. This is why many dads still expect a ticker-tape parade when they change a diaper or wash a dish.

Oh, good lord, woman - quit channelling Barbara Billingsley. Even when I was married, I did all of that without so much as a Distringuished Service medal. Believe it or not.

It's also why, when women come home from ten hours at the office, their brains immediately shift into life maintenance mode, spinning through a mental checklist of thousands of chores yet to be done. It's not that men won't help when asked--repeatedly; it's that most never look around for what needs to be done without being asked--repeatedly. (When's the last time a man spontaneously checked to see if the house was low on toilet paper or Saran Wrap?)

Every blessed day, Martha Stewart.

Here was my day today, Ms. Cottle: Up at 5:45. One load in the wash, fold the load from the dryer. Wake the kids. Take a bath. Wake the kids again. Get 'em dressed, and out to the bus. Oops, son's been suspended from the bus - drive him to school. Drive to work (30 miles). Work. Get call that ex can't pick up son from school - race back through rush-hour to get son. Home. Cook dinner. Homework. Basketball practices for both kids. Home, baths, bedtime stories, to bed - and the maybe an hour for me.

And that routine is not that much different than when I was married, maam.

I'm not here to whine about life as a single dad. I love my life, and all that comes with it. But men today - married or not - are every bit as harried as Ms. Cottle's benighted broads. If Warren Farrell, author of Myth of Male Power is to be believed, harried to death. The whole book is worth a read.

But thanks for reminding me - I gotta get toilet paper and Saran Wrap.

That said, women do not need some trendy medical diagnosis to legitimize their fatigue and low libidos. (Speaking of which, maybe if you guys would get up off your asses and empty the dishwasher occasionally without being asked, your honeys would have more energy for a quick snog.)

Ms. Cottle, I have forgotten where my libido goes.

But I'll use the last of my energy before starting supper and homework and hoops to urge you to put down the rampaging sense of victimhood and step away from the keyboard.

Hypocrisy.com - Democrats.com - a

Hypocrisy.com - Democrats.com - a Democrat hate site - is collecing a specious online petition for Trent Lott's resignation.

I wrote to ask them "what about Robert Byrd, Fritz Hollings, Al Sharpton...". Still no answer.

By the way, note two things about this page:

1. The scan of the 1948 ballot featuring Strom Thurmond running for president is a Democrat production, and
2. the headling is helpfully labelled ".comedy". In case you needed the help figuring it out.

I know I did.

Ambush! - Many on the

Ambush! - Many on the left are trying to portray the denouement of the Missile Saga as an embarassment for the administration.

The London Times' Daniel McGrory disagrees.

Merry Kwanzaa, courtesy Minneapolis Public

Merry Kwanzaa, courtesy Minneapolis Public Schools - The Minneapolis Public Schools have been scrubbed clean of crucifixes, Stars of David, creches, nativity scenes...

...but by golly, there will be a Kwanzaa celebration.

Watching the Defectives - It

Watching the Defectives - It had to happen; a weblog entirely devoted to fact-checking the fact-challenged Michael Moore.

(via Rachel Lucas)

Trent Lott as Diversion -

Trent Lott as Diversion - Stay with me on this one:

The Dems got clobbered in this last election because they didn't run for anything - all they did was run against Republicans - their candidates and ideals.

What is the only topic among Democrats today? Trent Lott.

Could Trent Lott's slip of the lip be the best smokescreen the Administration's had?

Think about it: with the GOP back in the majority in the Senate, and Dick Cheney in his customary role as Congressional überwhip, why not keep Lott in the majority seat, as an infuriating, diversionary Trojan Horse?

I wouldn't be sorry to see him step down as Majority leader - as Jason Lewis points out, he's way too cozy with the opposition when the chips are down. But if he stayed, he could eat up a lot of the Dems' mind-share and air time, and create a big foggy screen behind which the Adminstration could maneuver.

Thoughts?

Fiasco, Eh? - This article,

Fiasco, Eh? - This article, from the Toronto Globe and Mail, is interesting on so many different levels:

1. As a critique of the lunacy of gun registration. Even in Canada, where the majority population (Ontarians and Quebequois) is docile and coalesces easily with big government initiatives, the attempt to register firearms has been a notable boondoggle.
2. It shows in Technicolor the deep, seething contempt the gun control movement, here and there, feels for its nemeses and their collective intelligence:

   Justice Minister Martin Cauchon found time to drop in on a Dec. 6 memorial service attended by grieving relatives. Former justice minister Anne McLellan accused the nasty provinces and the gun nuts of sabotage. Allan Rock, who presided over the launch of the blighted registry, blasted away at rival Paul Martin for "playing into the hands of the gun lobby" because Mr. Martin had dared to say something bad about it. Then he presciently claimed that the gun registry will save 1,240 lives by the time it's up and running. "You have to ask yourself, what are 1,240 lives worth?" he said."

3. It says much, also, about Canada's prospects as a nation. The populous eastern provinces, controlled by liberal machines and given extremely broad sway over policy at the federal level by a federal government system that rewards population, rams gigantistic statist initiatives down the rural, conservative West's throat with a healthy dose of contempt - and the West has had about enough!?

Very much worth following.

(via Instapundit)

Evil - Andrew Sullivan covers

Evil - Andrew Sullivan covers the two big "axis of Evil" stories today - the interception of the Scud-like missiles being sent to Yemen, and the American media's continual spiking of the gathering, anti-theocrat revolution in Iran.

Regarding the interception of the missiles:

A North Korean cargo vessel flying no flag was halted on Monday in the Gulf of Aden by two Spanish warships, and a search revealed Scud missiles hidden beneath sacks of concrete, senior administration and Pentagon officials said today.

American military explosives experts were summoned, and the ordnance crews were still working tonight to identify and tally the contraband cargo and to stabilize any explosive warheads or volatile missile fuel, officials said.

Officials went on to say they saw no link between the missiles, bound for Yemen and Al Quaeda. Sure. Think about it. Yemen - a nation with a tiny, putative military and a reputation for pragmatism in dealing with its neighbors - needs SCUD missiles precisely why? .

In the meantime, the major media continue to sit on the big story - the crumbling of the Iranian theocracy.

Tensions over weeks of student protests have reached into Parliament here, with hard-liners leaving the floor in protest on Sunday as a reformist member called for a referendum on the current government. It was the first such scene in recent years.

The popularity of the protests, which began over a death sentence for a reformist scholar, is also broadening. Several hundred people broke through the gates at Amir Kabir University here today to join student protesters, witnesses said.

Does Dan rather cover this?

Celebs For Love - Mark

Celebs For Love - Mark Levine parodies the all-"star" antiwar letter.

And war is always bad for our industry. The 24-hour news cycle preempts some of us best programming. The Gulf War forced the premature cancellation of such television classics as Doogie Howser, M.D., Blossom, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and Jake and the Fatman.

Mike Farrell?

No News is Good News - There was just very little news yesterday!...

Sigh.

OK. Rough day at work, feeling like bilge when I got home. I'll try to make up for it this morning and this evening.

Solipsistic Fops - the Next

Solipsistic Fops - the Next Generation - Slate rings up a new Rhodes Scholar - the son of a couple of Weathermen terrorists - and discusses not only his preening self-obsession, but the vast and morally-decrepit gaps in the New York Times' coverage of this "event".

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

A Blogger's Christmas Wish -

A Blogger's Christmas Wish - All I want for Christmas is:

• To get on Instapundit's Blogroll
• To get a copy of Virginia Postrel's book. Or at least the cover art. (Hey! Go there and vote for your favorite picture!)
• Enough of a social life so that I can pretend that all the blogging I end up doing some nights actually displaces something fun

I've been a good boy.

Islam - Is It, or

Islam - Is It, or Is It Not? - This is a very long piece on Isntapundit - and it's fascinating. Probably the most concise detailed explication of the whole Moslem schism I've ever read.

Very highly recommended.

The Pro-Saddam Rally - Back

The Pro-Saddam Rally - Back during the Gulf War, about the time the bombing started, I wanted very desperately, to go down to the U of M with a fire extinguisher to put out burning American flags.

This guy had a better idea.

(via Fraters Libertas)

Whole Lott o' Trouble, Part

Whole Lott o' Trouble, Part III - the Thurmond Years - There are some very articulate and persuasive Trent Lott fans reading this blog, and I'll post some of their comments later.

But Powerline made a great observation today:

To listen to Trent Lott (and others), it would appear that Thurmond's career was, from beginning to end, a credit to himself and his native state. This simply isn't true. Thurmond's early career, viewed from the perspective shared by nearly all twenty-first century Americans, was a disgrace. His political rehabilitation coincides more or less with his leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a Republican. For the Republicans to be seen as unqualifiedly embracing Thurmond is a needless tactical blunder. It exposes the Republicans to the slander that, as the party now supported by the majority of Southern whites, they have merely inherited the racist mantle once worn by the Democrats--thus leaving the Republicans holding the bag for the Democrats' embarrassing past. The truth is the opposite: the ascendancy of the Republican Party in the South has largely coincided with white Southerners' rejection of their region's segregationist past, and their desire to create a "New South" unsullied by the unsavory aspects of the region's history. For Republicans to give up this moral high ground by failing to take the opportunity to distinguish between Thurmond's inglorious past as a Democrat and his mainstream present as a Republican was unforgivably stupid.

So the GOPers bobbled the ball on that one. Doesn't change any facts - but it doesn't help the spin war, either.

Talking Turkey - James Bennett

Talking Turkey - James Bennett of UPI discusses Turkey, and their misguided goal - perhaps obsession - of getting into the EU.

What's wrong with these hopes and dreams, even assuming the EU would ever fulfill them, is that the price of EU entry has risen higher and higher, while the potential benefits are becoming more and more meager. With the potential entry of poor Eastern European nations, the claims on EU transfer payments increase, while the budget-pressed rich members grow more and more unwilling to increase spending.

Most critically, however, the EU grows more and more burdensome each day. The requirement that each new member adopt the crushing load of EU regulations, uncompetitive and archaic labor practices, and the one-size-doesn't-fit-anybody single currency would be a disaster for a still-developing nation like Turkey. These practices drag down highly developed economies like Germany's and France's. To impose them on a much poorer economy may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Still, Turkey has come to view EU membership as a sort of validation, and the American State Department has become the loyal friend that keeps trying to help fulfill that dream. The problem is that the U.S. ends up expending political capital with the Europeans in helping Turkey, in a quest that will probably disappoint by failing, and still disappoint if it succeeds.

The article confirms some truths - that Turkey's membership in NATO helped it become the closest thing to a genuine liberal democracy in the Moslem world.

But the nation's history of "Westernization by decree", going back to Ataturk, is rife with examples of clinging to the letter of some key western ideas while ignoring their spirit. Ataturk's secularization policy - which to be fair has so far helped Turkey avoid most of the problems of its Islamist neighbors - adopted the full rigor of western liberal "separation of church and state" with none of the tolerance the civilizes that drive.

Similarly, the drive to join the EU takes what is an admirable attempt to focus outward - and combines it with a stultifying, top-down regulatory bureaucracy of the exact type that has proven to be a destroyer of developing economies over the last seventy years.

Read the article!

MADD About You

One group whose influence has always frightened me is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Their absolutist views combined with their incredibly coercive philosophy on engineering society through their emotional - but often fact-challenged - approach to policy makes them both a dangerous and intractable opponent.

Instapundit links to some excellent articles on MADD's rather selective indignation, as well as some of their fuzzy statistics:

It cited increases in "alcohol-related traffic deaths" as its explanation for the low grade. The language that MADD used is important. "Alcohol-related" statistics include every accident in which someone involved had something to drink. That includes, for example, accidents in which a sober driver runs a red light and strikes a driver who had two beers and those in which a drunk stumbles out of a bar and into the path of a bus.

And this article on TalkLeft steered me toward this fascinating, angry, info-stuffed site that pokes at some of the myths MADD is spreading.

Moore Problems - Andrew Sullivan's column in yesterday's Sunday Times of London sums up the current body of work devoted to fact-checking Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine - and the database of misleading and hyperbolic claims that's come from it.

(Via Talkleft and Instapundit)

When Courts Collide - Last

When Courts Collide - Last year, in US v. Emerson, the US Fifth Circuit held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms.

Last week, the ultraliberal Judge Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit in Silveira v. Lockyear has reached the opposite conclusion.

Next stop - the Supremes?

Eugene Volokh - an überblogger and UCLA law professor with a long rap sheet on Second Amendment issues - tells us where Reinhardt got it wrong.

Now Iss ze Time on Shprockets Ven Ve Kill Ourselves - Berlin avant garde art fans mistake a suicide for a performance installation.

"A group of visitors to the center at first thought the body lying on the ground at the art center was part of an art performance," said police spokeswoman Christine Rother. "It took a while before anyone realized it was not an act but a suicide."

Courage - Eric Raymond has

Courage - Eric Raymond has a fascinating analysis on the resurgence of male, physical and moral courage - and its detractors.

Before 9/11, we were in serious danger of forgetting that courage is a functional virtue in ordinary men. But Todd Beamer reminded us of that — and now, awkwardly, we are rediscovering some of the forms that humans have always used to nurture and reward male courage. Remember that rash of news stories from New York about Upper-East-Side socialites cruising firemen's bars? Biology tells; medals and tickertape parades and bounties have their place, but the hero's most natural and strongest reward is willing women.

Manifestations like this absolutely appall and disgust the sort of people who think that the destruction of the World Trade Center was a judgment on American sins; — the multiculturalists, the postmodernists, the transnational progressives, radical feminists, the academic political-correctness brigades, the Bush-is-a-moron elitists, and the plain old-fashioned loony left. By and large these people never liked or trusted physical courage, and it's worth taking a hard look at why that is.

More on this in coming days.

Unassimilated Immigrants - Not Just

Unassimilated Immigrants - Not Just for Europeans Anymore - Last summer, around the time of Pim Fortuyn's assassination, we noted how unassimilated immigrants were going to be a growing problem in Europe. European culture makes it pretty much impossible for immigrants to be fully accepted into society - "Frenchness" is a matter of birth and language, not choice. America is supposed to be different. And thus, we've managed to avoid the problems that immigrants bring to other countries.

But perhaps the other side of the coin may be happening here in the US. FrontPage magazine reports that many Mexicans in America are acting more aggressively Mexican every day, and it's not a pretty sight.

In Los Angeles last year, cars were seen bearing illuminated signs that read “F--- you, this is still Mexico.” Not just a few cars. Thousands. This is but one sign of the hostility towards the United States that is growing among Mexicans living in this country.

As the number of Mexicans living in the U.S. has ballooned (growing from 2 million to 23 million over the past thirty years), so have the feelings of anti-Americanism among them. While the many Mexicans living in the U.S. are still law-abiding and loyal, there are disturbing signs that anti-Americanism is on the increase. Worse, it is being aided and abetted by the anti-Americanism of native American leftists.

When the Mexican national soccer team came to Los Angeles to play a match against the U.S. team in the summer of 2002, the loyalty of the fans was clear, as demonstrated by the number of Mexican flags waving across the city. Similar attitudes were shown at a 1998 match, with even more repulsive behavior by the Mexican fans. White members of the crowd were jeered at, cursed, soaked with beer, and otherwise harassed. Some in attendance even reported that the United States Marine Band was doused with urine.

Time bomb? We'll see soon.

In the meantime - grassroots efforts to control immigration so far are having mixed results.

(Via Kim DuToit)

Self, Nation, Service - In

Self, Nation, Service - In the past, I've written about the notion of National Service - the concept of citizens spending six months to a year in the military (or some similar national or civil defense job), and then serving in the reserves for some period (in Switzerland, it's from 21 to 50 years of age).

There's more commentary on this issue lately: Nicholas Provenzo writes in Initium last week, dissenting from the idea. He makes the usual points, all good ones. Here's an important one:

So why then do many conservatives support something that is tantamount to part-time slavery?

Question for people like Provenzo and Jason Lewis: Is jury duty "part time slavery?" Or is it something that citizens in this country do to provide each other with a basic right, a jury trial?

Obviously, in a conservative, capitalist system the primary motivation is and should be enlightened self-interest. Altruism - sacrifice of one's self for others - is a great thing, but purely voluntary (as Provenzo says).

But just as sitting on a jury for a week every four years is less "slavery" than something we do as citizens to help support one of our founding ideals, national military service (NOT the draft) protects our "liberty and property" as well as everyone else's (and, by extension, everyone else is doing the same). It's not pure self-interest - but it's not slavery, either.

There are reasons to oppose national service. The best are military.

Whole Lott o' Trouble, Part

Whole Lott o' Trouble, Part II - More conservative voices calling for the ouster of Trent Lott.

(via Instapundit)

Winter. Sorta - It's freezing

Winter. Sorta - It's freezing out. Thank God.

I've had this theory since I was a kid: People are best adapted to, and prefer, the weather they were first exposed to.

Example: I was born in the middle of winter. When my parents took me out of the hospital, it was 25 below, with a howling wind. I don't button my jacket if it's above ten degrees. But if it gets above 85 humid degrees, I'm a sodden mess.

My father was born in the summer of 1936 - the hottest in history. It was over 100 degrees in the house when he was born. He can shoot 200 holes of golf on a 90 degree day, have a cup of iced tea, and shoot 200 more, but if it gets below 40, he starts like a Fiat Spyder in a blizzard.

So I love winter. Oh, not commuting to Chanhassen through snow-sclerosed freeways full of morons who think signalling a rude imposition on their space. No, I'm talking about snow, the bite on your nose, the warm feeling you get cuddling up on the sofa as the cold outside makes the air itself crispy, the fuzzy well-being you get being in a warm car on a cold night.

There's a Norwegian saying: "There's no such thing as cold, just inadequate clothes".

All I know is, I get the opposite of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think I feel better in the winter. Heat and mosquitos and humidity drag me down. Cold and snow and columns of white smoke in the darkness rejuvenate me enough that I can ignore the early sunsets.

Apropos not much.

War Comes to Stanley -

War Comes to Stanley - Again - This front-page above-the-fold story from Saturday's Strib about how Pearl Harbor and 9/11 came together in Stanley, North Dakota was strangely affecting to me.

If you've never lived in an isolated little prairie town, it's hard to describe how these sorts of things work.

Read it. It's good. And on this, the 61st anniversary of Pearl Harbor, it's good to keep these things in mind.

Freedom - real freedom - doesn't come cheap.

Whole Lott o' Problems Every time I criticize Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, I get email - good, solid, reasoned email from rational, thoughful readers of this blog, the kind I'm proud to know are clicking on "Shot in the Dark" - who point out that Lott's frequently been pilloried by a media that's fundamentally unsympathetic.

And yet, we have incidents like his comments at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party which have to make you wonder - where are his priorities? What is he thinking?

Republicans are even starting to wonder about Lott.

Ground Rules Triple - I"ll

Ground Rules Triple - I"ll admit it - I'm not the biggest sports nut. Yeah, I used to produce the MN North Stars in the eighties, and I was a stringer for WGN Radio's "Sports Round Table" (the original "Da Bearss" show from Saturday Night Live). But as a rule, sports websites generally do nothing for me, and sports radio (like KFAN) bores me catatonic (Note: Someone please tell "P.A and DuBay" that it's just sports). I always prefer sports I can play myself. Most sports web sites bore me stiff.

That being said, I'm a baseball fan. And this site, TwinsGeek.com is the most amazing read.

Highly recommended as we count down the two months of predictable football, played-out NBA hoops and one-note hockey 'til pitchers report for spring training.

Armey

Yesterday, Dick Armey (R Texas) retired from his post as House Majority Leader. I listened to his speech, excerpted here on DrudgeReport. It was truly a stunning speech - I plan on finding the whole text. Here's a part I loved:

"We, the people, had better keep an eye on we, the people; that is, our government. Not out of contempt or lack of appreciation or disrespect, but out of a sense of guardianship. How do you use these tools we have given you to make us safe in such a manner that'll preserve our freedom?

"That is a duty to our very essence as a nation. Who we are, what is it about us that has set us apart in the history of the world is our love for freedom.

"As I said earlier, freedom is no policy for the timid. And my plaintive plea to all my colleagues that remain in this government as I leave it is, for your sake, for my sake, for heaven's sake, don't give up on freedom.

. Dick Armey's a great man. I'm particularly proud to note that he, also, is an expat North Dakotan - from Cando, just up the road from my own birthplace. He graduated from Jamestown College, my own alma mater, two years ahead of my father.

He's leaving to join the ACLU - perhaps one of the best moves the civil liberties organization could make to bolster its own credibility.

And for all that, the thing I'll always most associate with Armey is a line from a Dennis Miller rant several years back: "Dick Armey - that's like the most macho name ever!"

Human Shields - So this

Human Shields - So this Canadian news story starts with this lede:

Opposition to a war on Iraq has a long way to go before it rivals the draft-card burnings and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, but a new anti-war movement is growing muscle. Some Canadians already have left for Iraq to serve as human shields against bomb attacks on Baghdad. More will follow before Christmas.

Wow. The anti-war movement is growing!

By how much?

You have to look down to the middle of the story to note that:

Irene Vandas and Jennifer Ziemann of Vancouver are heading to Iraq on Friday. Vandas, a 32-year-old registered nurse, and Ziemann, a 30-year-old home-care worker, will fly to Amsterdam, board a plane to Amman, Jordan, then drive into Iraq all the way to Baghdad where they will live with Iraqi civilians. There, they will join friends Linda Morgan and Irene MacInnes, two Canadians who travelled to Iraq in mid-November.

The four Canadians,

Whoah! Four people!

Yes, I guess you could say they have a way to go before it's on par with the anti-Vietnam movement!

One of the Canadians said:

“I’m not too scared,” Vandas told CBC News Online the day before she left. “I think it will be a powerful experience.”

Four people! Or, given current exchange rates, 2.5 people...

Worse, the CBS injects what is either moral incompetence or bias into the discussion with this bit here:

The last time human shields were in the news was during the 1999 war in Kosovo, when NATO accused Yugoslavia President President Slobodan Milosevic of using civilians as human shields at strategic targets, such as bridges and power plants.

Did you catch that? The CBC is drawing a parallel between hostages, people herded at gunpoint to the neighborhood of important targets, and a bunch (four!) dottsy Canadians who, blinded by moral equivalence, are putting themselves in some semblance of harm's way.

The article goes on to make some other breathtakingly editorial comments. Check it out.

Wow - So cool it's

Wow - So cool it's scary!

What's In A Name- Firearms-Rights

What's In A Name- Firearms-Rights supporters should get a great laugh out of this one.

Citizens for a Safer Minnesota has been, for about a decade, the Twin Cities' main anti-gun organization. They've been behind the disinformation that has spearheaded most of the gun-control, and anti-gun-owners' rights, legislation in recent memory.

But they are apparently not so not with the paperwork.

Last spring, a couple of Twin Cities firearms-rights activists and lawyers - Joe Olson of Minneapolis and David Gross of St. Louis Park, both longtime Second Amendment activists and prime movers in Concealed Carry Reform Now - discovered that CFASM hadn't kept it's bases covered, according to this article from Gun Week:

Olson told Gun Week that he discovered that CSM had not filed its required annual registration for non-profit corporations, and as a result, the corporate names were, quite literally, up for grabs.

“There’s a box to check for inactive corporations, and they both came up as inactive. I pulled up the pages that describe their status and noticed that the tax-exempt organization had stopped making its annual filings in 1995,” Olson related. “I pulled up the lobby and they stopped making filings in 2000. I stared at that for about three seconds and remembered that, after 2000, if you failed to file for one year, you are (considered) dissolved.”

So - the name and trademark for Citizens for a Safer Minnesota now belongs - to citizens who actually want to make Minnesota safer for its citizens!

CFASM's woes won't end there. According to Olson in Gun Week:

The former CSM group could be in serious trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. Because the tax-exempt arm of the group has been dissolved for three years, since December 1999, they may have to pay taxes as an unincorporated association on all of their grant money and contributions for the three tax years that have passed.

Perhaps worse, Olson suggested that every one of their donors “have made contributions to a non-existent organization” and, as a result, may have to consider filing amended tax returns eliminating the charitable deductions they took, and pay the additional taxes and interest.

“The donors probably won’t get a negligence penalty,” he said, “but the entity should.”

. How much money does this involve? Good question.

More to come on this. I'll keep you posted.

Medical Prying - Minnesota is

Medical Prying - Minnesota is doing its darnedest to beat the rest of the country to the goal of socialized medicine. Over the past decade, state mandates have driven the cost of health insurance into the "utterly unaffordable" range, ridden most of the traditional fee-for-service insurance providers out of the state, and via the fees brought more and more people to "MN-Care", our embryonic single-payer system.

Last week, an Administrative Law judge paved the way for the state to start collecting virtually all the medical data it wants to.

Blessedly, Governor-Elect Pawlenty opposes this:

``I understand the need for research,'' Pawlenty told KSTP-TV for its Sunday ``At Issue'' program. ``But I think this law goes too far in terms of collecting personally identifiable information relating to people's health conditions.''

The medical database would include everything from who has a stroke, an abortion or surgery to who takes Prozac. Health officials say information that identifies people would be either deleted or encrypted before it leaves the department in the form of a study or other release.

``I think they should be able to get the research done through generic fashion without identifying the individuals involved and I'm going to be looking potentially at calling to change that law,'' Pawlenty told the station.

The Governor could veto the legislation that would provide for this (whomever the governor is by that point). Get on the horn.

Concealed Carry Reform - As

Concealed Carry Reform - As we slouch toward our next legislative session, many questions remain to be answered. One question that seems less and less in doubt is this: By the end of this session, Minnesota will join 34 other American states in adopting *some* sort of "Shall Issue" concealed carry law.

Minnesota Concealed Carry Reform Now has, over the last eight years, carried out perhaps the most amazing piece of grass-roots political organization in recent memory: in eight years, MN-CCRN has gone from being unable to get an audience with most legislators, to being an "A" list force to be reckoned with.

How much so? Two straight DFL gubernatorial candidates (Humphrey and Moe) had bucked the national trend by making opposition to concealed carry reform a key element in their campaigns. And both have been shredded. Now, that wasn't the only reason, of course - but if Minnesotans truly opposed "shall issue" reforms, you'd think they'd have expressed it at the polls, no? Pro-reform candidates have won the last two gubernatorial races.

In the meantime, the various iterations of the Personal Protection Act keep getting closer and closer. In the 2001 session, the MPPA passed the House, and came within two votes of passing in a hostile Senate.

Two votes. In a Senate that was vastly more hostile, at least in terms of rank and file membership, than today. More on that later.

In the meantime, while the political value of opposing "shall issue" has proven to be virtually nil, some former opponents are coming on board. The rank and file of the National Association of Chiefs of Police Minnesota Sheriffs' Association have both come out in upport of the MPPA.

So the traditional trope "Law enforcement opposes this" is false.

For all that, it's not all roses for supporters of freedom and opponents of Victim Disarmament. But more on that later.

THE PROPOSAL
The nuts and bolts of the proposed law have changed a bit. The changes could be "good" or "bad" depending on your point of view, but we'll come back to that.

While this year's bill is still being drafted, here are the salient points to look out for. Applicants must apply to a County Sheriff, and:

• Be 19 years of age or older (down from 21 last session)
  
• Pass a rigid background check, and show no record of
  
  • felonies
    
  • violent misdemeanors
    
  • alcohol or drug abuse
  • violent mental illness (no violence or threats
    against self or others)
    
  • presence on any law-enforcement watch lists (like the Gang Task Force list of known bangers)
  
  
• Pass a skills course, teaching the practical AND legal
  aspects of armed self-defense, given by a recognized
  and licensed handgun self-defense instructor,
  
• Fork over $50, of which the Sheriff gets 80%.

Then - and here's the big change from previous years - the County Sheriff would have the ability to deny the license for cause. The applicant would have the ability to appeal the denial and challenge the given causes to a judge.

BUT WHY?
I've been writing about the MPPA in one form or another for the last seven years on this list. I've spend a fair amount of time and effort explaining the benefits of "shall-issue" laws (or, in the case of the new MPPA proposal, "just-about-always-issue" laws). And I'm sure I will again.

But suffice to say they boil down to three main points:

1. At best, violent crime drops.
   
2. At worst, violent crime does not rise
   
3. Since 1983, 25 states have adopted one form' of shall-issue law or another. NONE have repealed it. In fact, in no state has any repeal effort gotten any steam, and in many states, some of shall-issue's former opponents are now on board, or have at least retracted their earlier opposition.

So it's off to the Capitol we go!

HANDICAPPING
And when we get there, there's good news, and there's bad news.

Good: The House and the Governor are both solidly pro-MPPA. The winning margin of two years ago is solidified, and Tim Pawlenty will pitch in when the chips are down. And the Senate is much more closely-matched than it was two years ago, when only two votes separated us from that year's MPPA passing into law.

Bad: While the Senate is a closer race, the DFL still controls it - and by all indications, committee chairs are going to be even more dogmatically Metrocrat than ever before. And that is the victim-disarmament lobby's only real hope this session - keep the MPPA, whether a standalone bill or amended to another bill, bottled up in committee. So while Democrats (other than Roger Moe) backed away from Gun Control like a toddler from an oopsie this past election, you can expect the back-room finagling to be absolutely epic. Keeping potential victims disarmed is core DFL orthodoxy - one must not expect them to go gently.

MN-CCRN has won some incredible victories - basically, they've found almost every vote that CAN be considered "swing" on this issue, and turned most of them. To have come within two votes in

a Senate that was DFL-controlled, and whose GOP caucus wasn't much farther to the right, was an amazing feat. And there may be a few more swing votes out there - and a few state legislators who

know full well that the state's firearms owners are among the most enthusiastic and diligent voters of all.

Highly-placed sources at MN-CCRN say that when they first went out to campaign for concealed carry reform, they gave themselves "a 30% chance of passing, and a 70% chance of NOT passing a law. Today, we have an 80% chance of passing, and a 20% chance of not passing" some sort of concealed carry reform law.

This is the year. I've been saying it for two years, and I believe it in my bones. This is the year our racist, sexist, paternalistic carry law gets scrapped once and for all.

See you at the Capitol!

I Have a Theory -

I Have a Theory - So in the past few weeks, liberals have been yakking about the influence of the conservative media (Fox, talkradio and the mostly-conservative blogosphere), and a few have been asking "where and how can we get something like that - a media outlet that'll be biased for us?

After I stopped laughing, I thought about it for a moment. Yeah, the major media are left-of-center on most issues, but for the most part it's subtle, rather than the explicitness of a Rush Limbaugh or a Bill O'Reilly. While most "hard news" coverage slants left, most mass-market punditry slants right. Not for lack of trying - the media keeps tossing liberal pundit-wannabees against the wall nationally (Jim Hightower, anyone? Phil Donahue?) and locally (the "Morning Spin", Ron Rosenbaum, and most columnists). None of them really succeeds commercially - because nobody really watches/listens to them.

15 years ago, stations AM broadcast band started carrying Talk Radio - at a time when many industry types figured the AM band wasn't long for this world as a medium for commercial radio. Today, it's at least as profitable if not moreso than the FM entertainment band.

And I thought - what if the left were to find some moribund media outlet that had nothing to lose, moved in, and stacked the lineup with the likes of Begala, Carville, Donahue...

Well, I can't make it up fast enough anymore.

Here's the big chance!

UPDATE: An email correspondent writes:

I don't really think RR is a liberal. While neither he nor MO are right-wingers, they are well to the right of Barbara Carlson. Admittedly, that's not too hard.

I like Rosenbaum, even if he is repetitve. He's pretty much a genuine lawyer and I think his perspective is a good counter-weight to Jason's idle con-law musings (even tho I agree with most of it).

Perhaps that's true. Both Rosenbaum and his foil O'Connor are to the left of Lewis (not hard to do, either). I haven't listened much to him - and the shows I heard may well have been skewed farther left than the norm.

So it's a fair point - Ron Rosenbaum is hardly a "left-wing" talk show host.

Still, I'll stand by the point - genuine liberals are a total stiff on the radio. Think of the liberals they've tried to float at KSTP over the years - Nick Coleman, Jim Klobuchar, Katherine Lanpher's pre-MPR incarnation - all of them stiffed (although it didn't help that they were all virtually unlistenable).

Kopfschmerze - The German government,

Kopfschmerze - The German government, under Social Democrat Helmut Schöder, just can't win. It barely squeaked back into power in last fall's elections, it ticked off the Social Democrat base by sending troops (their elite HSK commandos) to Afghanistan, and now they're trying to split the difference between involvement (allowing US overflights and use of bases in Germany) and detachment (providing no material support for any invasion) - and getting hammered from both sides in the process.

Recent days have seen the Schröder government playing a delicate balancing act, attempting to improve damaged relations with the United States by pledging logistical cooperation in any campaign against Iraq, but continuing to insist Germany will not offer active military support.
One measure of the strains the issue is putting on the cabinet came on Thursday when Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul accused the United States of “pure cynicism“ in its Iraq policy.

Watch the German Green party implode the same way the DFL just did, once war actually begins.

Light Day - I had

Light Day - I had the same headachey crud yesterday and this morning that's laid half the office low this week. And it's been a crunch week at work, with a zillion deadlines.

So I'll be catching up this evening, and probably blogging up a storm over the weekend.

Glorious Lucre - Hey, thanks

Glorious Lucre - Hey, thanks to those of you who contributed the first dollars to my tip jar! I truly appreciate it!

Hopefully the DFL won't come after it too soon...

Deficit - The Strib

Deficit - The Strib notes something the DFL can't seem to - this is as big an opportunity for the GOP as it is a risk.

"If a $3 billion deficit was an opportunity to reform, a $4.5 billion deficit creates a real urgency for change," said David Strom, the league's legislative director. The league, financed largely by Republican business leaders, promoted the no-tax pledge in the recent election campaign that Pawlenty adopted.

Last night, Jason Lewis pointed out that

• the 4.5 billion dollar estimate is most likely pessimistic (while granting that the deficit is serious)
• The deficit is about the same amount as that by which the budget is supposed to rise in the next biennium - and freezing the budget would go a long way toward solving the problem, and
• an improving economy will most likely take care of the rest

I'm not sure that freezing the budget will solve the entire problem, any more than keeping alcohol out of reach of an alcoholic will cure alcoholism. It's for sure that raising taxes will only make the long-term problem worse.

If We Make Politics Criminal,

If We Make Politics Criminal, Only Criminals... - DJ Tice writes about the growing "criminalization" of many simple poliical activities.

Consider the case of St. Paul's Greg Copeland ...Copeland stands indicted by a Ramsey County Grand Jury for a gross misdemeanor. His alleged "crime" is that he made an innaccurate political claim when he called himself "the only pro-life candidate" in an election field. Copeland's plight has received almost no public attention. He is due to appear in court next week.

Unusual as it is, Copeland's prosecution seems of a piece with a strange and increasing modern intolerance of politics and a widespread eagerness to run to court with election disputes. To wit:

• Gov.-elect Tim Pawlenty was fined the past campaign for (horrors!) cooperating with the political party that nominated him.

• Taking their cuefrom the 2000 presidential election, which triggered an historic courtroom war, national Democratic Party leaders boasted repeatedly this year that they had 10,000 lawyers at the ready to file election challenges across the country. (Blessedly, little came of this.)

• Sweeping restrictions on political expression — called "campaign finance reform" — took effect last month. Their doubtful constitutionality will immediately be tested at the Supreme Court.

Copeland has been indicted under old and frankly weird Minnesota election statutes. State law, believe it or not, makes it a serious crime to distribute political appeals containing statements one knows to be false or where one simply shows "reckless disregard" about their accuracy.

Now, in a way, these bizarre prosecutions based on byzantine laws may, in the long run, be a good thing. If we subject politicians to the consequences of too many laws, maybe they'll develop some empathy for the rest of us.

European Naivete - Peter Ross

European Naivete - Peter Ross Range, editor of the Democratic Leadership Council's "Blueprint", has this very interesting take on the perception gap in foreign policy between us and the Germans.

The lack of nuance in the German perception of U.S. policies is sometimes breathtaking. One of the more preposterous arguments I heard came from a top Schröder advisor during the chancellor's election night party on Sept. 22. "You don't just go roaring into a war you haven't thought about," he said, clearly unacquainted with the debate raging for months in the United States. "And besides, Baghdad is not so far away from us." Right: only about 2,000 miles and light years of involvement.

Such misperceptions are driving a wedge between the United States and its friends in Europe. Our relationships with them are fundamentally shifting, and will probably never be quite the same again. We must hope that the Germans someday grasp the fact that just as Dresden was a defining moment for them—130,000 people killed in a single night's bombing—the 9/11 attacks have become one for us. One can only hope it won't take another Dresden—or a Paris or Berlin terrorist catastrophe—to achieve that understanding.

Now, I get very upset when I hear the likes of Ann Coulter poo-poohing the notion, to say nothing of the substance, of our allies' involvement in the war so far. For better or worse, few of their militaries are designed to be able to pick up and move anywhere - they were built to fight a war, at home, against the USSR during the Cold War. It'll take a massive realignment of priorities to change that. And for all that, our allies were there in Afghanistan; the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Germans, Norwegians and Danes all contributed their special forces to the hunt through the Hindu Kush for Al Quaeda - all of them excellent troops, on a par with anyone we have.

Geitner Simmons, where I first found this piece, had this to say:

the United States is going to need allies. The current America-as-hegemon environment isn’t likely to last; even the seemingly intractable Cold War conflict eventually evaporated. In coming decades, other centers of power will arise in the world. Sure, the United States is likely to remain the dominant power, and thankfully so. But over time it would hardly be a surprise if we saw slippage in our ability to convince or coerce other governments. And we could well face problems in exercising our sovereignty to use military force, given the way some NGOs and diplomats are working to reshape international law.

The unanswered question being "what is international law, and how much attention do we, its chief enforcers, need to pay to it?

Another Late One - Work

Another Late One - Work is eating my brain today - but I'll put some stuff up this evening.

Spin Alert A group of

Spin Alert A group of Houston citizens, sick of their neighborhood being ignored by the police, have armed themselves and taken to the streets - or, as the Houston Chronicle says, "HoustonChronicle.com - Weapon-toting neighbors declare war on local thugs".

The article does its best to subtly discredit the citizens involved:

Assistant Chief Charles McClelland said the group's efforts could backfire and touch off a new gang skirmish -- one between the residents and street thugs.

I think they might know that, Mr. Assistant Chief. I believe that's why they're patrolling the streets:

Black takes issue with what he sees as neglect from the Houston Police Department and the Anti-Gang Office. Gangs have their way on East End streets, he said, urinating in yards, selling drugs in plain view and robbing homes.

From his porch, Black said, he has not seen enough police to deter the criminals.

In addition to Black, the 13-member group includes a pipefitter, a man who resisted a gang invitation, a man whose wife was beaten by gang members, a young woman and eight other men.

No mention of the members' race, meaning they must be mixed; otherwise, there'd have been an "all-white" in there somwhere.

How about the other officials involved?:

Adrian Garcia, director the Anti-Gang Office, said forming an armed posse is "a crazy remedy. We would never encourage residents to do that."

I wonder if their "anti gang task forces" work as well as the one in Minneapolis? Y'know, the one that has been utterly unable to make a significant dent in gang activity in South Minneapolis in the past 17 years?

A violent response to street thugs might only foment more violence, Garcia said. The gang task force, he said, instead tries to find creative, peaceful resolutions to street conflicts.

"Might only foment more violence"? "Please, Mr. Banger, I'm not trying to foment anything..."

In a 1998 case in southeast Houston, Garcia's office found that a family feud centering on two young lovers had sparked what seemed to be a gang war.

And, Mr. Garcia, might any of the "family feuders" have also been gang members? Might that possibly have been wny the "family feud" got violent in the first place?

If a real resurgence in East End gang activity is occurring, Garcia said, it may be because some leaders convicted of crimes in the 1990s are making parole.

Here in Minnesota, we know all about violent criminals getting out out parole.

Garcia also noted that Houston gangs rarely attempt to terrorize their neighborhoods to the degree that Black describes.

Rarely!

When the Personal Protection Act passes, I'm going to apply for a permit so fast, the scent of burning rubber will still be in the air when I get home.

Datecrime - I'm going to

Datecrime - I'm going to take you to a place that few want to go - a place where a strong stomach is as priceless your Mastercard.

That's right. My personal life. Do what you need to protect the children, then get back here.

I've alluded in a few posts to some experiences I've had while dating. An email corresondent wrote in response to one of them:

I believe you are missing something on this. The date who can't go on dating you because you are
a Republican does this because, to her, you are evil. I mean that. Most people cannot see being romantically
involved with someone who is inherently immoral.

You and I define someone's morality by what they do - how they act - but not everyone does, especially modern
liberals. Their morality is defined by what you believe. It is a fact that Bill Clinton treats 21 year old women like garbage
and is at least probable that he is a rapist. Nevertheless, he is a good person because he is pro-choice and so forth. He
believes the right things. Garrison Keillor is nasty to people in person because treating actual human beings with dignity
simply is not part of his definition of what makes a good person.

All fair points for discussion.

Here's how it's played out in that comedy of errors called "My personal life".

The first was a woman who, near the end of a very nice second date, started talking politics. Bear in mind, we'd had two superb dates, and things were looking just fine. But once I said the "R" word, she looked at me with the look a parent gets when their toddler has plopped next to the toilet. "If you'd told me that before we went out, I'd have never dated you!", she said. She'd had just enough good breeding to almost, but not quite, cover the hissing incivility between the lines. We had one more phone call - the very definition of "perfunctory". And I learned my first lesson.

But not in the sense that it did me any good!

Different woman: while discussing perhaps going out, she did a Google search for my name. Sh found a few references to my conservative ideals. She sent me an email: "You seem like a nice guy, but I'm a peace-loving DFLer who believes in peace and justice and equality". An email protesting that I am equally in favor of peace, justice, equality, love, brotherhood and truth went unanswered.

Yet another woman, with whom I'd clicked pretty famously in person and by phone. She also Googled me, and sent me yet another "Dear Mitch" email: "I think our differin political perspectives would cause us a lot of problems. I will not be writing you again".

Now, I know that the situation is reversed at times - but in every case I've personally heard of, it's been on the grounds of some deep emotional issue: Christians angry over abortion; former Marines who'd never date an anti-war protester; stuff that was personal and attributable to something a person had explicitly done, not just beliefs. I have yet to hear of a Republican dump a Democrat purely on the basis of broad beliefs. Has it happened? Sure, but not to anyone I know. In the meantime, I and several conservative, recently-divorced friends have had exactly the same experience.

Could it merely be that we're all ugly and lousy dates? Well, me, sure. But not all of them!

At any rate, the swiftness and vehemence of the disengagement reminded me in every case of, for example, a Jewish person cutting off contact with a goy, or someone who had discovered some drastic difference in lifestyle or worldview - like if they'd discovered their suitor was a felon!

But in no case was there any vast, gaping divide in education, expeirence, life story...no, just political party.

Am I wrong? Has anyone had a vastly different experience? I can't collect much hard evidence on this, but anecdotes are more fun anyway...

Due to Gun Control -

Due to Gun Control - According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, the UKhas the worst crime rate in the indusrialized world.

But wait - don't the gun control advocates still cite the UK as an example of all the good befall a gun-free society?

Instapundit notes that it's not totally about gun control, but that

Gun control is just the most visible symptom of a systematic surrender to society's worst elements that has been the core element of British crime strategy for over fifty years. Gun control is bad in itself, but it can only exist in a setting in which the right to defend oneself against aggression has already been devalued in a way that makes crime much more rewarding, and hence much more common. That's what has happened in Britain, and it's why the historically low British crime rates have skyrocketed.

The good news is that things have gotten bad enough that there are now voices of sanity being raised. The bad news is that the authorities still haven't caught on, responding to cellphone theft by putting up posters telling people to keep their cellphones out of sight in public.

The steady dripping of fact is slowly getting through.

Very slowly.

(via Instapundit, obviously)

Aaaagh! - Work has reared

Aaaagh! - Work has reared its head today. I'll blog more tonight/tomorrow.

Problem Solved - All the

Problem Solved - All the world's problems, solved right here.

You're welcome.

Homeless - The left usually

Homeless - The left usually portrays homelessness as a byproduct of capitalism.

William Tucker shows how it's really a result of shackling the free market with government interference - and its unintended consequences.

In "New Homeless and Old" (1989), Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton demonstrated how Chicago entrepreneurs once bought abandoned factories and partitioned them into hundreds of small bedroom cubicles, renting them for $2 a night. These "partition hotels" accommodated thousands - until they were condemned in the 1970s. Homeless populations emerged shortly thereafter.

...and much more.

(via Powerline)

On the One Hand... -

On the One Hand... - People, especially in New York and northern New Jersey, are pretty touchy about terrorism.

On the other hand, some people need to relax just a tad.

More Hate - Several emails

More Hate - Several emails about yesterday's piece on the climate of hatred that led to this, among other things:

Let's start here - a correspondent writes:

It seems like you could develop the notion of progressive politics as a religion even further (e.g. NGO’s as missionaries), but I haven’t tried to work it through to see where I end up.

Well, let's run with the idea, shall we?

The left - especially the Minnesota DFL - reminds me of the perpetually-warring branches of the Lutheran Church; last summer's DFL convention - with feminists, Greens and the "old-boy" DFL machine all engaged in a game of "who's holier", like the Missouri Synod and the ELCA going at it, hammer and tongs. And it seems (to the casual observer) that an awful lot of DFL activists have no other job or vocation in life - like good acolytes, they've devoted their lives to the cause.

Again, it's a casual observation.

Another emailer wrote me:

Before I start, I want to make it clear that I think the defacing of the Coleman billboard was wrong. It was also stupid, immature, and hateful as well. With that said, I have to disagree with your implication that the inter-party hate consists entirely of Democrats hating Republicans.:

I'd never dream of saying the hatred is all one-way. You don't have to listen to much of the Jason Lewis or Dave Thompson shows to hear a caller bubbling over with rage - it's become a media cliche, the angry white talk radio caller. I neither deny them, nor make excuses for them. However...well, we'll return to that thought later.

I took some time out of my apolitical life this past election day and volunteered to help get-out-the-vote for the first time in my life on November 5th (maybe because of some sympathy for Wellstone's campaign or something, I'm not really sure why). During that day I spent an hour or so a highway overpass here in Minneapolis' western suburbs holding Mondale campaign signs. The reactions I observed fell into four categories, listed here in decreasing order of occurrence:

1) No reaction
2) Thumbs-up/Wave/Honk
3) Raised middle-finger
4) Thumbs-down/Head shake

What really surprised me was the order of the last two reactions. How could someone dislike a candidate so much that their reaction to a campaign
sign would be an obscene gesture at the person holding it? And, more importantly, how could that reaction be more predominant than some other more civil (less hateful) negative reaction?:

When I worked in talk radio, we learned one statistical truism - 1% of all people who believe in any given idea will call a talk show. I don't think it's overstepping to extend that to people sitting in their cars: only a small percentage will be motivated enough to feel strongly enough about anything to do anything about it. And I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone who feels negatively enough to react at all, might react strongly - and extending the middle finger takes less effort than a thumbs-down.

I guess my point is that there are extremists out there from both ends of the political spectrum that have gone overboard in their expressions of dislike people with different ideologies. Maybe it's so much a part of the discussion among pundits that those politically active (like yourself) don't recognize it unless it's directed at someone "on your side," but it's very obvious to me. As someone who's political involvement has been pretty much limited to voting every couple of years, I'd have to say that there's all kinds of hate out there and the Democrats don't have a lock on it.

I'd never dream of saying the Dems had a lock on hatred and bigotry. I've sat through GOP caucus meetings where I heard some fairly noxious bilge.

The difference, I suggest, is this: I suggest the genuine hatred on the part of GOPers is the extreme; you don't see Republicans of the stature and fame analogous to, say, Garrison Keillor or Alec Baldwin or Cher or Barbra Streisand saying the sorts of things about Democrats that we've heard going the other way. Fringe players, yes - not the mainstream. Not the leadership. Picture Arnold Scwarzenegger insulting his enemies like Barbra Streisand. Does it work? I don't think so.

The standard response from the left when I say that is "Oh, yeah? What about Limbaugh? 'Feminazi' isn't very civil!". True, it's not. It's also aimed, rather forthrightly, at specific people as a consequence for specific deeds, not a generalized reflection on the humanity of the phrase's target.

More to come.

St. Paul School Board News- We'll do Part II of the SPPS Budget Shenanigans series next week. I'm still running down some facts.