Shot In The Dark

Get Your Own Material -

Get Your Own Material - The Democrats now have their own playing cards.

I see I didn't make the, er, cut.

Pffft. First I'm not in the "Northern Alliance of Blogs", and now this. It's enough to make me want to take the weekend off.

Hmmm - maybe I'll do one for the DFL...

Hey...

Those Edina Lutherans - Jeff

Those Edina Lutherans - Jeff Fecke wrote about my piece from the other day about the Edina Lutherans' lawsuit against the Minnesota Personal Protection Act. His permalinks are just as hosed as mine are, so scroll down if you have to (as this is written, it's still his top posting).

Jeff makes some decent points, regarding the potentially valid property rights concerns a church might have, requiring them to allow guns in their parking lot (albeit stored). He's right, to some extent - infringing property rights is a slippery slope. But we've slid a lot farther down it than that already; that same church must reserve parking spaces and build accomodations for handicapped people that may never attend the church.

But, as a small-"l"-big-"c" libertarian Conservative, I fundamentally agree with Jeff's premise - property rights are certainly vital. The church's biggest kvetch (at least in terms of stated goals) is that they aren't allowed to bar firearms in their *parking lot*. So the question is - do we allow churches to specify the parking lot as a *storage space* under limited, prodential circumstances, as a compromise between the rights of the church and of the legal, law-abiding permit-holder, or do you give the church absolute right to determine what people will bring into a peripheral part of the property (the parking lot) ? Should they also have the right to search cars for guns?

Then there's the obvious question - if a church believes that it's above state law regarding concealed firearms, what about when a church wants to eliminate Handicapped Parking? Or allow only Hispanics to apply for the church secretary gig? Or not pay the janitor's unemployment taxes? If a church can declare that their religious freedom trumps THOSE laws, too?

Here's another part of Jeff's post I wanted to comment on:

A failure of the gun law is that it turns the tables on private actors; it declares the right to carry a concealed weapon to be superior to the right to bar such weapons from your own property. It sets limits on what an organization can do to ban weapons, and limits where weapons can be banned.

Finally - I don't care if a church wants to make its property, parking lot included, a no-gun zone. I won't be there, not willingly. But if I or any member of my family is on those premises, and his harmed as a result of a crime that might have been prevented or halted by a law-abiding citizen with a gun, rest assured - I WILL sue the church, and each and every member of the church's governing body, for every dime they have and will ever make.

I'll give it to other churches and charities, of course. Ones that respect the rights, intelligence and integrity of the law-abiding citizen.

Turn Your Back, Gonna Pay

Turn Your Back, Gonna Pay You Back, Last Call - Minnesota bars will be able to stay open until 2AMunder a new agreement among legislators.

The deal will charge bars a fee based on projected sales, which will go toward funding 50 new Highway Patrol officers:

About two-thirds of bars statewide are expected to take advantage of the new closing time, including nearly all of the 2,000 largest ones.

The new bar fees, plus $1 million a year in federal funding, will also finance a small step-up in liquor control, Pawlenty said. He defended the charges as user fees because they will be spent on efforts that relate "very directly to the impact" of more time for drinking.

He also said that a University of Minnesota study of later bar hours in several other states showed mixed results for public safety.

"In my judgment," he said, "this will not make public safety dramatically worse." As a legislator, he had opposed a 2 a.m. close.

...then what (short of another prohibition) would be more logical than abolishing closing times completely? The most dangerous time to be on the roads is during bar rush, when taverns flush thousands of toxically inebriated drivers out onto the roads. Why not instead let bars stay open all night, to spread the efflux of bombed drivers onto the roads and, above all, not force a mass of drunks out onto the roads simultaneously?

If, on the other hand, the goal is to raise money for the state, in terms of fines - then this law is perfect. Give drunks another hour to get those last two drinks down the hatch, and make the bars (and, indirectly, the drunks themselves) pay for the cops that'll be hauling them into the pokey and on their way toward a multi-thousand-dollar fine?

The later closing time is no biggie to me - I don't think I've closed down a bar more than once or twice in the last ten years, and I usually regretted it the next morning. But I'd love to know the motivation, here...

Radio Nights (and Weekends) -

Radio Nights (and Weekends) - As noted in my article on Monday about local talk radio, I only covered mainstream talk shows between 6AM and 9ish PM. I had several reasons for this: I don't listen to a whole lot of weekend or overnight radio, plus the piece I wrote was plenty big enough already, plus there's a dizzying variety of shows available on the weekends, and I was focusing on current-events/political talk shows on mainstream stations.

But as the Fraters noted, I did omit quite a swathe of talk radio by sticking to weekday prime-time stuff. So I'll set that all straight right now:

• Laura Ingraham(WWTC (Various Times) ) - I really can't criticize Ingraham - and it's only partly because of her impeccable conservative credentials and incisive logic. Oh, her delivery sounds like a barely-reconstructed Valley Girl, and her show has a sort of herky-jerky quality to it (careening between guests, callers and regular bits with little apparent rhyme or reason), and her producer/on-air sidekick is a fairly irritating presence. But if I do criticize her, it'd jeopardize my chance of ever getting a date with her, and that would not do.
  
• Dave Thompson (KSTP (Weekend Afternoons) ) - In my original piece, I wrote that Jason Lewis was the host I wanted to be when I grew up. Dave Thompson, on the other hand, was the host I actually was. I like Dave's show - he's reasonable without being MPR-fodder, funny without distracting, conservative without beating anyone over the head with it. He's a smart, solid, meat 'n potatoes conservative talk show host, a perfect antidote to accidental Michael Weiner Savage exposure. Back in 1987, Lileks wrote a piece about teh KSTP-AM lineup of the day, in which he referred to me as "...an unreconstructed rock-and-roller and painfully polite man...". Well, Thompon's not painfully polite, but you get the idea.
  
• Bob Davis ((KSTP, Weeknights 10-12 )) - If Mischke is like dropping acid, Davis is like snorting coke. It's fast. It's furious. Jokes seem funnier, ups seem uppier, lags seem laggier, and eventually everything gets sorta disjointed. Which, if snorting coke or listening to middlin' conservatism through a heavy-metal filter is what you're looking for, is perfectly fine!
  
• Dark Star ((WCCO, Weeknights 9-12) ) - Star got where he is by being the most skilled, talented and relentless butt-kisser in radio history. Some might take that as a slam - it's not, I swear. Dark Star's rise to prominence in the '80s - from constant gadfly caller on sportstalk shows, to guest, to cable-access sportstalk producer/host, to weekend host on edge-of-metro stations, to WCCO nightside host in a matter of just a few years - is a model of networking, persistence, and self-directed development of talent. Star is a radio Horatio Alger. Unfortunately, his show makes me pray for the sweet release of death.
  
• A Prairie Home Companion ((MPR, Weekends) ) - Garrison Keillor is an archetype that's verging on self-parody. And the parody is sneaking into his show, which is more and more becoming a mouthpiece for Keillor's condescending Democrat sympathies. And yet I still love the show. The writing's just about as good as ever, the "acting company" of Tim Russell and Sue Scott is pretty good, his "News from Lake Wobegone" is still all right, and the show still books a pretty good, eclectic collection of great musical guests. So when one of the bits launches into condescending anti-Bush/anti-Republican jape, I merely say to my radio, in a measured tone: "We won. You lost. That's the news from Lake Wobegone, where all the men have carry permits, all the women voted Pawlenty, and all the children think Roger Moe looks like a muppet".
  
• Josh Arnold's Money Talk ((Weekends, WWTC) ) - This about sums it up.
  
• Sean Hannity((Weekends, KSTP) ) - Hannity combines all of Limbaugh's calculated button-pushing, with none of Limbaugh's sense of humor.
  
• Coast To Coast with George Noory ((KSTP, Graveyard Shift) ) - Whever I hear this program, I give a silent prayer of thanks that I'm normally sleeping at night.
  

My Day - Very long.

My Day - Very long. One good interview, one that might have been good, and I landed another interview at a job I'd never have expected to be interested, early today.

So I'm pretty exhausted. 'til Morning!

SOME Good News - There

SOME Good News - There are few things in the world that I genuinely loathe:

5. People who've adopted Gene Roddenberry's fictional Federation directives as their worldview - their de facto religion.

4. Fruit bagels.

3. Chalupas

2. Actively-practicing Klansmen

And the #1 thing I actively loathe:

1. The 1971 Gene Wilder movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was much better, and those accursed "Oompa Loompas" from the movie still scare me to this day.

But I saw this in the London Times Online today:

The film director Tim Burton is to make a new adaptation of the Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s company, Plan B, will produce.

The Edward Scissorhands director is to meet Dahl’s family to confirm the deal, according to Variety. Dahl was unhappy with the 1971 adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Thursday Blogging - My

Thursday Blogging - My afternoon job interview was rescheduled to Thursday at 11AM. So now I have two job interviews on Thursday, the first at 7:30 AM.

Then, I have to go to my son's presentation at school. His project for the year - Hawaii. He's dressed as Kamehameha, and he's going to demo the volcano we built last week.

Yes, the volcano works. I've always wanted to do that.

Anyway, posts will probably come later in the day Thursday. Bear with me. And with any luck, I'll have a job in the next week or so. Finally.

Dee Long And Winding Road - MPR's Midday show had an hour-long interview with former DFL senator Dee Long today.

Long - most famous (to me) for being at the center of a golf junket scandal about ten years ago - is apparently a pundit without portfolio these days.

I was tempted to call when she said, about the "no new taxes" pledge (I'm closely paraphrasing here) that some user fees are going up sharply - so as long as they're going up, why not raise regular taxes as well?

Big difference, Ms. Long: user fees are to some degree voluntary. Don't want to pay the fee? Don't use. One has some recourse that doesn't involve waiting for the next legislative session. Taxes - direct assessments - on the other hand are not voluntary in the least. It's no surprise that Long wants to give the government more leeway to set and raise the involuntary taxes.

By the way, here's an open note to those of you who say "Tim Pawlenty was only elected by 24% (or whatever) of the total voters. The DFL stands for everyone else!". By your "logic", Roger Moe got 20% of the vote, then, and the GOP stands for proportionally more of the non-voters than does the DFL.

Carry on.

What Would Jesus Pack? -

What Would Jesus Pack? - I'm a Christian. Denominationally, I'm a militantly moderate Presbyterian (purely for theological reasons; I abhor the preening, self-righteous nannystatism and extreme social liberalism of the church's General Assembly, so far removed from John Knox' original doctrines).

I'm a fundamentalist, if you go by the strict definition of the word; I believe Christ is the Son of God, sent to earth to redeem us. I believe that we are saved from our sins by accepting Christ, and that following Christ's teachings leads us to a better life, and that prayer is a direct line of communication to God.

So it's with complete expectation of forgiveness that I say this: I want to pimp-slap a lot of local Christians.

No, not the Moral Majority Falwell clones - while they say and do some noxious things, they've got plenty of people hovering over their every word.

No, I'm talking about the Minnesota Religious Left.

You know the type; painfully-thin, balding, bearded, bespectacled fiftysomething men of scandinavian extraction, with their corn-fed, hawk-faced, alpaca-clad wives, who(as P.J. O'Rourke said) "have self-righteousness like some people have halitosis", standing with wrenchingly grim solemnity at vigil after vigil, trundling between readings and protests and "Peace and Justice Forums" in their Volvos with the "What Would Wellstone Do" stickers on the back...

And the self-righteousness is always, always about social issues.

And one of the issues that gets these types most exercised is guns. During the concealed carry debate, church after liberal-leaning fashionable church bombarded legislators with petitions and results of board or session meetings demanding the bill be rejected.

Now, one well-connected wealthy limo-liberal church is taking the matter to court.

Erik Strand, co-pastor of the 600-member Edina church, said that in his 14 years there, he isn't aware of anyone causing problems with firearms.

Nevertheless, he said, the church council, staff and many congregants support the suit.

"We personally have to inform everybody coming through the door that firearms are prohibited, so it's like 'Peace be with you, now get rid of the guns,' " he said. "Which we think is telling us how to speak within our religious space."

...if it were true. But it's not. Nothing in the law requires a church to tell each and every person entering the building that guns are banned - merely that they are to verbally inform anyone that might accidentally disregard the signs that they need to leave their guns outside. Rev. Strand's story is yet another of Senator Wes "Lying Pig" Skoglund's scare stories - one that has gained currency with that part of the local population that hasn't yet realized that Sen. Skoglund is lying about the issue whenever his lips are moving.

The article goes on:

The suit is based on these points:

• The requirement that the church allow guns in its parking lot. The church, at 4113 W. 54th St., has prohibited firearms on all of its property, including the church building, a child care center, a playground and the parking lot.
• The requirement that a private organization banning guns post 11-by-17-inch signs naming the organization and saying it "bans guns on these premises." The church has decided to post a sign that says, "Blessed are the peacemakers. Firearms are prohibited in this place of sanctuary."
• The requirement that the church modify its customary welcome of worshipers to include personal notification of the prohibition of firearms and a demand for compliance.

The church has a long history of promoting nonviolence, dating to the Vietnam War era, said co-pastor Pamela Fickenscher. Many members were involved in protesting the war in Iraq.

She, Strand and R. Daniel Rasmus, president of the Council of Ministers, joined in filing the suit. After a poll of worshipers Sunday found unanimous support for the challenge, the church council decided to proceed, according to a news release. Lillehaug, a former U.S. attorney for Minnesota who is a member of the Edina church, said he expects about a dozen other churches will join the suit by the time the law takes effect.

Said the Rev. Ronald Johnson of Holy Trinity Church: "I think I speak for an awful lot of churches in saying that we are furious."

David Gross, a former Minneapolis City Attorney and volunteer with Concealed Carry Reform Now, responds to the suit:

He asked whether the church thinks it's not subject to other state laws, such as those mandating parking for the handicapped. The suit is politically motivated by people who don't like the law, he said, noting that churches had not passed regulations about guns on their property until after the current law was passed.

"If this makes it [Edina Community Lutheran Church] feel better spiritually, fine. But there's no legal significance to the suit," he said.

More as events warrant.

Consumer Confidence - One job

Consumer Confidence - One job interview this afternoon, another tomorrow morning (which dropped into my lap yesterday morning at about this time), and two other fairly solid leads in play.

Consumer confidence numbers are slowly rising.

Missing Persons - Fraters Libertas, one of my favorite local blogs, had some very kind things to say about Monday's tour of the local talk radio market.

But they wondered - why did I neglect shows heard on the evenings, weekends, and off-brand stations in the far 'burbs?

Partly because I don't listen to a lot of nighttime or weekend radio. And partly because I'm listening to a lot of these shows for the first time.

But I'm not going to neglect Dave Thompson, Laura Ingraham, Auto Talk, Bob Davis or the rest of the swingshift crew. I have a soft spot in my heart for them - that was my old digs, too.

So stay tun...er, check back.

Imp of the Perverse -

Imp of the Perverse - I was in a "discussion" with a particularly irritating DFLer the other day - a man that fits every unfortunate, demeaning stereotype I've put forth about DFLers. Let's call him "Ben Anjerry". He was a fiftyish, thin, new-agey, retro-hippie, Wellstone-worshipping, henpecked-looking man who teaches some soft-science at a local college. We were discussing the budget debate...

...well, OK, "discussing" is a bit misleading. I was putting forth the thesis that Pawlenty's holding the line will help revitalize the economy, with the rising tide lifting all boats; In response, he was calling me a babykiller. Or close to it.

And as I kept my cool and tried not to rise to the bait, I thought, "wouldn't it be nice to handle this discussion the way rapper DMX would handle it?":

What's gon' be the outcome? Hmm, let's add up all the factors
You wack, you're twisted, your girl's a ho
You're broke, the kid ain't yours, and e'rybody know
Your old man say you stupid, you be like, 'So?
I love my baby mother, I never let her go'

No, I never convinced Ben.

What Sid Did - Some

What Sid Did - Some of my DFLer friends are raving about the new Sidney "Sid Vicious" Blumental memoir of the Clinton years.

Noted rightwing tool Michael Isikoff is less impressed with the former White House Aide.

Isikoff, who broke the Monica Lewinsky story in the major media (after Matt Drudge forced the hands of the editors at Newsweek), exposes Blumenthal's boat-anchory tome as a whitewash:

How, for instance, do you write about the campaign-finance scandal—another Republican "pseudoscandal," Blumenthal claims, in which "all the charges were revealed to be empty"—without even mentioning the Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers or Clinton's connivance with Dick Morris to circumvent the campaign laws by crafting soft-money sponsored "issue ads" from his White House office? There is not a single reference to Johnny Chung or any others in the long parade of Democratic donors who later pleaded guilty to federal crimes in connection with Clinton's re-election campaign. Blumenthal defends the pardon of commodities fugitive Marc Rich. He calls Rich "a financier of the peace process"—and entirely skips over the role of Beth Dozoretz, a Democratic fund raiser who had pledged $1 million to the Clinton library and who peppered Clinton with phone calls about Rich during his final days in office.

The point is not that Blumenthal is a hypocrite (although he seems to be exactly that). The point is that throughout this book Blumenthal seems utterly incapable of understanding how his own uncompromising, take-no-prisoners defense of the Clintons contributed to the poisonous political atmosphere that he bemoans. Time and again, in the book as in life, he rearranges facts, spins conspiracy theories, impugns motives, and besmirches the character of his political and journalistic foes—all for the greater cause of defending the Clintons (and himself). Hyde, Kenneth Starr, Hickman Ewing, Lindsey Graham, Tom DeLay—each was malicious, narrow-minded, bigoted, buffoonish, and anti-democratic. Meanwhile, Blumenthal wonders repeatedly why so many people dislike him. At one point, bizarrely, he suggests it is because he is "intellectual" and "Jewish."

Shameless Solicitation - I have

Shameless Solicitation - I have a second interview tomorrow for a job I really want. It got moved up at the last minute from next Thursday. Supposedly there are three finalists for this position.

So - your prayers, best wishes, karmic kudos or "attaboys" are all eagerly solicited.

Now, off to get my suit pressed.

Profiles in Futility - They're

Profiles in Futility - They're about to repeal the Profiles of Learning.

It's been a Republican goal ever since the Profiles were passed, in '98. It's been a constant topic among "Garage Logicians" all along. It's being treated as a major triumph by the GOP, which has always favored a "back to basics" approach.

I'm not so sure it's a good thing.

Bear with me, here. I have as little tolerance for the arrogance of the professional, academic educational establishment as anyone. And the original Profiles in Learning system reeked of "professional educators" cutting loose with a big budget and a blank sheet of paper.

But the basic idea was sound; children learn differently. Some learn by reading, others by writing or watching or doing or hearing how to do something. Profiles' great strength was that it focused on the outputs of education - can a student put together things he/she's learned to actually do something meaningful?

The Profiles were project-based; the students were to be assessed based on projects that tied together all different areas of learning. It made perfect sense to me. I must have been one of the few.

For years, I've followed the workings of the Sudbury Valley School, in Sudbury, Massachussetts. The website (and the profile on the school on "60 Minutes" two years ago) is full of hippiedippy sounding platitudes - but don't let that throw you off. The school has no formal structure - kids literally study anything they want, even if that means (as the school literature points out) fishing every day for four years. The school's staff is there mainly to hook the kids up with the resources they need to study whatever they're looking for. The goal is the exact opposite of the "Back to Basics" movement.

And, say at least two friends of mine who are committed to the system, so are the results. Kids come out of Sudbury-type schools with something public schools frequently extinguish - a genuine love of learning, and a self-confidence about it that (to most accounts) dwarfs that of most public or private school kids.

Here's an example that Sudbury proponents talk about a lot - nobody tells the kids to learn to read. They learn when they're ready. Then, they work with staff, or other kids, or even teach themselves. Although nobody tells the kids to learn reading, they all do - and apparently at a very good level. Here's where the Sudbury people make a great point; nobody tells children when they have to learn to talk - they just do it. They learn it from their parents, from other kids, everywhere. Barring physical or mental impairment, it's very rare to find "speaking-disabled" kids. But if there were a cultural norm that said "Kids must speak by 22 months", and an entire caste of professional "toddler speech professionals" cramming kids through "speaking programs" and declaring "Speaking Is Fundamental!", it wouldn't be long before you'd see kids in "Remedial Speaking" programs, and developing a life-long disdain for talking...

...the same way so many American adults have a disdain for books, math and science.

But I didn't come here to praise the Sudbury School. I came here to bury the Profiles In Learning.

The Profiles may have been an educationese boondoggle, a bureaucratic mess (I know teachers who detested the immense paperwork involved - which would normally draw a chorus of "boo hoos", but teachers DO have an insane amount of it these days) and a triumph of the (liberal) academic educational establishment - but it did make at least a cursory nod to something our educational system direly lacks - a means of mapping the things they learn in school to their own styles of learning, so that they can apply what they're learning to their lives in ways that'll benefit them long after they're done with school

But proponents of "Back to Basics" standards tend to be two types of people:

• the people who thrive under one style of learning - reading and taking tests. Since this was the system in place for most of recent memory, the people who throve at this style of learning did well in the traditional academic settings - including law schools and universities. Hence, they tend to be the teachers who teach the next generation - and the lawyers who make the laws.
• Those who think that reading and taking tests were good enough for them, so dammit, it's good enough for the kids. "Boo Freakin' Hoo", the Garage Logicians will say. "I learned by sitting in a desk and reading my damn assignment, and look how I turned out!". And perhaps they turned out well. But I'd like to ask them, in all honesty - "what was the last book you read? When was the last time you went out and learned something completely new, not because your boss told you to (important as that is), but because you just love learning stuff? When was the last time you willingly applied something you learned in Algebra, or American Literature, or Biology, to your life?" And, GLers -how did you learn to fix cars? Did you read a book on the subject and take a test before you started tinkering? Really? How do you suppose that connects with your own style of learning? Think about that for a while.

So Minnesota's going back to the old system. As the Strib says:

The new standards, completed so far only for language arts and math, would be substantially different from Profile standards. There are many more of them, and they are more specific about what students should know.

Add four units of English, three units of Social Studies, two units of Math and one unit of Art. Shake vigorously, examine after four years. If the student doesn't respond, discard and start over

Radio Daze - It's wierd

Radio Daze - It's wierd to remember that in 1986, when the Mitch Berg Show was on KSTP-AM (weekend graveyard shift), Talk Radio was not yet a conservative playground. Conservatives were a strong minority, slugging it out against an equal number of liberals and a larger crew of non-political talking heads. I'm not being in the least bit hyperbolic when I say I was the first conservative the Twin Cities had seen on the air.

How things have changed in 16 years.

OK. Nobody asked me. But I'm going to do it anyway; my reviews of the major Twin Cities talkradio shows, sorted by daypart and station.

Mornings

• KSTP - Woedele and O'Connell - This show is like a throwback to the old days of talk radio; two talking heads of indeterminate political orientation talking about...er, stuff. Lots of it. John Woedele - Jesse Ventura's former press secretary - is as connected as he is bland. O'Connell is a great guy (I met him once) who brings some personality to the proceedings; the big question is "Why?"
  
• WWTC - Savage In The Morning - Back in 1987, when I watched Oliver Stone's film version of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, I figured "No. No way anyone could be this insanely dystopic. Nobody could be this depressing and earn a living. Voila Michael Weiner Savage. Listening to him for five minutes wrecks the next hour. I try not to.
  
• FM107 - Luka. - "Radio for women and the men who love them". Haven't heard it yet.
  
• WCCO - Garrison Keillor's Material On Parade - No, not really, it's actually Dave Lee. But close.
  
• MPR - Morning Edition - Edwards intones, Wurzer declaims.

Late Mornings

• KSTP - Ron Rosenbaum - There are talk show hosts out there where you can tune in any day, even years apart, and feel like you're listening to the same show every time. With the good ones, you don't notice. Rosenbaum hasn't gotten to that point yet.
  
• WWTC - Mike Gallagher - Another throwback to old-fashioned talk radio - a reminder of the days when "conservative talk" meant interchangeable voices like Bob Grant and...er, a bunch of others, with interchangeable views. Gallagher sounds like everybland, interchangeable network talk host from the seventies or eighties.
  
• FM107 - Ian Punnett - Every time I listen to Ian Punnett, he's tackling some key, life-or-death existential moral issue. I love key live or death existential moral issues. I could listen for hours. And then I reach my destination, and get out of the car. It's frustrating; key moral issues should be discussed in the living room over a glass of something or other, not interrupted by commercials and turned off when you get to work.
  
• WCCO - Tim Russell - OK, this one really is Keillor-fodder - although Russell's a great guy (and one of the highlights of Keillor's actual show...)
  
• MPR - Cacklin' Katherine Lanpher - She's a prima donna, she has call-handling skills that would have gotten her fired in Bismark, and the whole "Diva" thing that's sprung up around her (thanks, City Pages) is totally misplaced - but if you want to stay in touch with what the Volvo-driving Highland Park "No War With Iraq" set is thinking, this is the place.

Middays

• KSTP - Limbaugh - The guy who invented conservative talk as we know it. I don't listen much, but when I do, I love it if only for the carefully-calculated pomposity; I can practically hear fuses blowing in Mac-Groveland.
  
• WWTC - Dennis Prager - Also a throwback - but in a better way. There was a time when talk radio hosts could be intelligent on a broad variety fo topics without leading with their political agenda (not that Prager's is any big mystery). Prager's great at that kind of show. Unfortunately, I rarely have the patience to sit through that kind of show.
• FM107 - Dr. Laura - Part of me really wants to like this show - I really do. There's a place in this world for no-nonsense moral absolutism. But that voice...aaagh. And while I don't mind moral absolutism, it'd be nice if she actually heard what callers said before pronouncing snap judgements. The show gives me at least one cringe moment each time I listen.
  
• WCCO - Kim Jeffries - Ever seen "The Usual Suspects"? Keyser Söze is a Turkish arch-villain that nobody's every seen, but everyone knows. Kim Jeffries is like that on local radio. She's always existed. If Kim Jeffries didn't exist, mankind would have to make her up. Unfortunately, I have no idea what her show is like.
  
• MPR - Midday with Gary Eichten - The best show that's ever been pieced together from random interviews and taped segments. Word has it that Eichten is MPR's token Republican. Indeed.

Early Afternoons

• KSTP - Garage Logic - Soucheray's social observations are dead-on (when they're not maddeningly off). "The Rookie" is an excellent side-kick and a gifted impressionist; word has it his "moron" schtick is an act. But the show has not changed one iota since Bill Clinton's first term, which is a long time to hear that @#%@^ foghorn. If I hear another engine starting up on the air, I'm going to haul off...
  
• WWTC - Michael Medved - Ooozes smart. So smart, he has to carry his extra brain in a backpack. Like Jason Lewis, he's the kind of host I always wanted to be back when I was doing talk - a conservative who doesn't live to just punch liberal buttons.
  
• FM107 - Kevyn Burger - Former TV reporter. Bob Yates' ex-wife. Very funny woman. I haven't heard the show, but I met Burger years ago, and I figure she's as promising as anyone on FM107
  
• MPR - All Edition Things Almanac Talk Of The Nation - Impeccably produced talk, guaranteed to offend nobody. Neil Conan replaced the unlistenable Juan Williams, thankfully.

Afternoon Drive

• KSTP - Jason Lewis - This is the host I wanted to be when I grew up. Only I'd have better bumper music...
  
• WWTC - Hugh Hewitt - Eclectic, conservative, Christian...I should totally dig Hewitt. I'm still waiting for the blinding flash of Hewitt epiphany. UPDATE: I'm told that the flash of epiphany is inevitable. OK, I'll hang in there...
  
• FM107 - Lori and Julia - Like chippendale night at a suburban bowling-alley bar. In hell.
  
• WCCO - Don Shelby - On a station built around throwbacks, Shelby may be the throwbackiest of all.
  
• MPR - All Things Considered - Usually when you hear women on the radio, you picture some gorgeous vision. Then you meet them - and they're pretty much regular women. Lorna Benson is the opposite; she sounds like one of those flinty, Volvo-driving, fiftysomething Mac-Groveland crones. She's not - emphatically not. Corey Flintoff (or, spelled phonetically the way he pronounces it, "Corey FLYNN toff") intones gravely and precisely - I'd like to hear him do voiceovers for WWF. Oh, yeah - they cover the news.

Evenings

• KSTP - Mischke - I've never dropped acid in my life. With Mischke on the air, what'd be the point? No, I mean that as a compliment. Tom and I go way back - he got his "start" doing hilarious, anonymous "Phantom Caller" call-in bits when I was producing Don Vogel. Through tireless investigative work (his brother told me), I uncovered his identity a year before he went public with it, and I've been a fan ever since. And by "fan", I mean in the "what's going to happen next" sense of the term...
  
• WWTC - Savage Nation - Three MORE hours of depressing dyspepsia. I'm serious - every time I hear Weiner Savage, I feel like I've eaten too much slightly-bad ham. Savage is in real life what every liberal thinks of when they caricature conservative talk radio.
  
• FM107 - Dr. Joy Browne - There are glaciers younger than Browne. Before Doctor Laura, before Sally Jesse, there was Joy.
  
• WCCO - Some sports show that I've never listened to.

By the way, Medved mentioned a "Peter Teel", at a station in Spartanburg, NC yesterday on his show. I'm wondering - could it be "Peter Thiele", former would-be conservative host, board operator and gadfly-without-portfolio from KSTP-AM? The world wonders anxiously.

Fickle Soul Finger of Fate

Fickle Soul Finger of Fate - I hate American Idol. No, really, everything about it.

I've watched a grand total of maybe half an hour of the show during its entire run, in addition to hearing innumerable bits of highlights in the past couple of years, and unlike most "reality" TV, it doesn't merely bore me. I actively detest this program.

Part of it is that the fix is so obviously in. Everyone knows Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken have been the judges' favorites all along. It's got all the drama of watching my goatee grow.

But the worst part of "American Idol" has always been the music itself, the dreck the would-be Idols are forced to sing; the worst dregs the the last thirty years of American pop and "R and B".

"Idol" brings into grotesque relief how far "Rhythm and Blues" has fallen in the last thirty years. How far, exactly, I realized when listening to Nick Spitzer's American Routes on NPR. Yesterday's show (click to hear it in RealPlayer format) was on the Stax Music Museum in Memphis.

Forget Motown - Stax/Volt Records in Memphis was the greatest R'nB label in history. Sam and Dave, Booker T, Otis Redding, the Staples Singers, the Bar-Kays and Rufus Thomas, among many others, recorded on Stax/Volt; the label's hallmark was raw, unpolished, pure soul.

And listening to the rare chestnuts that Spitzer uncovered (Otis' "These Arms Of Mine"), it whacks you over the head what incredible, banal crap "Rhythm and Blues" is today. It's neither rhythmic nor blue.

And, in the hands of our would-be "Idols", it's banal, slick, and has no place to even put any genuine soul (as opposed to the Michael Bolton-y hyperemoting that passes for "soul" these days).

Wake me up when it's over. I'll be curled up listening to my Sam and Dave anthology 'til then.

Hey! Minnesota! I Have A

Hey! Minnesota! I Have A Question! - I've been wanting to follow up on this idea for some time now. I finally have a moment or two.

I've been asking a lot of questions of my liberal friends, in a couple of different contexts: why do Minnesotans feel that they are so utterly superior to their neighbors and the rest of the country, and yet why so many of you feel Minnesotans, left to their own devices, will start gunning each other down in droves, and letting this state turn into a "cesspool" of...er, non-Minnesotan-ness.

Here's what set me off. In another forum, a correspondent said something that' s not at all unfamiliar if you're a Minnesota politics watcher:

Republicans are turning us into a cold Mississippi

So I've often wondered about the dichotomy I've seen in this past few weeks - and years - on this list, and statewide. On the one hand, blinkered smugness that'd make a Greenwich Village scene-hopper blanche with embarrassment; on the other, a sense that Minnesotans don't think other Minnesotans are all that bright underneath it all, without some higher authority to whack them into line once in a while. Maybe even (as we find in the Concealed Carry debate) just a little too depraved to be left on their own.

I should mention this - I'm not from Minnesota originally (although my family goes back about 125 years here, and was in fact involved in creating one of the great Minnesota icons). I moved here after college, in '85, from North Dakota. Yes, I moved here because I wanted a job that didn't involve diesel mechanics or teaching high school English. Some Minnesotans (in other forums) think that means I forfeit any right to criticize this state.

This place has a lot to be proud of - some of it even related to its tradition of public-private partnership. But there's a lot of dreck in that tradition, and for this state to stay healthy - or get healthy again - we need to look with a critical eye at a lot of assumptions. First and foremost, the notion of Minnesota Exceptionalism.

I didn't hatch the notion of "Minnesota Smug". There was a great article in the Strib a few weeks ago (which we covered in this space) by Steve Berg (no relation) that explored the idea in great detail:

The Other Berg reaches a few conclusions I'd contest, but on the way there he brings up some points that we (and that means "you, too") are going to have to deal with:

• Our political-social system, rooted in Scandinavian village traditions and codified during the seventies, may make "us" feel good on some elemental level - but they make Minnesota uncompetitive, which will eventually make Minnesota a worse place to live no matter HOW good you feel about yourself.

• Our sense of exceptionalism, rooted in a time when big (government, business, social programs) was king, is obsolete. Other states accomplish many of the things of which Minnesota is so proud - and do it in a way that stays competitive.

Before we get to my questions, let me clarify - there is much about Minnesota's public tradition to admire. It did a lot with a little, and in its time, it may have even been the right answer in many ways.

So I have a couple of questions for the madding horde:

1. Given that the economies of the world, nation and region have changed drastically in the past thirty years, and that huge, institutionalized, programmatic government tends to be a drag on innovation and competitiveness, how do you see Minnesota's traditional public institutions evolving in these leaner, more competition-oriented times to remain relevant, and to contribute to Minnesota public life again? By this, I mean more than "provide subsistence"; feeding the hungry is a worthy goal, not an end-result. Remember - while Wendell Anderson accomplished a miracle, today's state government is not Wendell Anderson's state government. It's for damn sure today's DFL is not Hubert Humphrey's DFL.
2. Much of Minnesota's public-private partnership was carried by the wealthy business families that happened, happily, to be so enthusiastically philanthropic. The Cargill family, the Dayton family, the Target and 3M families all contributed immensely to Minnesota's charities and arts. But today, most big business isn't family-run, it's controlled by shareholders who have a different set of priorities - and justifiably so. Our state needs to allow the NEXT wave of business leaders to move into a place that will allow them, ideally, to develop into the sorts of philanthropic partners that the state will need in the future. Unfortunately, the DFL detests business growth and investment (as we've seen on this list). So...what do we do?
3. Minnesotans are proud of our educational system - but, frankly, the system is incredibly sclerotic. Nevertheless, when faced with change, some Minnesotans sneer "hah - that'll make us like our neighbors!". Yet many of our neighbors are doing a better job. North Dakota, for example, has an educational system that is every bit as good as Minnesota's (as measured in terms of test scores), and better in many areas (including, of all things, the arts and music education of which Minnesotans claim to be so proud, but at which North Dakota actually leads the nation) at a fraction of the cost of Minnesota's system. South Dakota's business growth is staggering - largely as a result of governmental decisions. Wisconsin's welfare system is years ahead of ours (except in terms of "institutionalizing itself" and "Creating multigenerational dependence", which seem to be the only terms that matter to many on the left). And in terms of public/private partnerships, NOBODY out-does North Dakota, which has both a good business climate AND the only functioning State Bank and State Mill in the country. Question: Can Minnesotans drop some of their provincialism and learn something from our neighbors, who frankly do a lot of things better than we do?
4. To go along with the provincial arrogance I noted above, Minnesotans (or some of you) seem to have a paradoxical low opinion of other Minnesotans. It may well come from the Scandinavian tradition, with its very hive-y mentality. But for whatever reason, many of you seem to think that, left to our own devices, out of the watch of Big Mommy Government, we're a bunch of no-count wastrels. It came up repeatedly during the concealed carry debate; opponents insisted that Minnesotans would seize shall-issue as an opportunity to release their pent-up bloodlust on each other; being told that that pattern had NEVER occurred in 34 other states, including states to which Minnesotans believe themselves superior (Mississippi! Florida! Louisiana! Texas!), made no impact. The same thing holds true with the "frozen Mississippi" remarks - as if Minnesotans want to be anything other than what we are. Question: Do you (on the left) honestly believe that, without the hand of big, intrusive government to guide us, we're all going to jettison everything that we all love about this place? Why?

It's a topic of great interest to me. I'm raising two children here, I've built a career, and I will eventually be involved in politics in this state. So yes, I do care about this state's future - and think that it will have to include a government that is leaner, institutional establishments (especially education and the U of M) that are less hidebound and self-aggrandizing, and a social class that both trusts the people and gives them some credit.

Battered Party Syndrome - I'm

Battered Party Syndrome - I'm starting to see the current realignment in Minnesota much as I would see a change in a long-term, dysfunctional relationship. And I'm going to look at it through the lens of today's Strib editorial.

The Strib editorial board has no doubt about it; when the DFL moses, Minnesota loses now that the DFL has capitulated on the budget.

The editorial starts off peevish:

It was no compromise that was struck Friday by legislators and the governor to balance Minnesota's 2004-05 budget. It was a case of conquest and capitulation -- conquest by Republicans hell-bent on shrinking government's contribution to Minnesota's shared life, capitulation by the DFLers who were its defenders.

Of course, neither the Strib Editorial Board nor any pro-tax activist has ever showed me where the tax cuts will "shrink government's contribution to our shared life" in any substantial way - they even hint at this in the editorial.

But it's not about accuracy. It's about power. When a dysfunctional relationship changes, the person losing power strikes back.

The editorial continues:

Politically, Pawlenty's victory is a remarkable achievement. Not for at least three decades has Minnesota seen a rookie governor get his way so completely. Not before in modern times has a governor attempted to close a double-digit gap in the state budget solely with spending cuts and one-time infusions of reserved cash.

Thirty years ago, Wendell Anderson had his Minnesota Miracle; Pawlenty is producing a Minnesota Retreat from government as this state has known it.

The moment's been a long time coming, of course. As I wrote on Friday, this moment parallels one in national history - one that had similar symptoms.

Minnesota is running about 25 years behind the rest of the country in finally starting to tinker with the notion that happiness is something government can give you. And the Minnesota GOP is also 25 years late in rejecting the Rockefeller Republicanism that dominated the old "Independant Republican" party, the party of Arne Carlson and Al Quie. (And do you remember how the national establishment - the media and chattering classes - reacted to that?)

The old IR was "Independent" because it was far to the left of most Republican parties in the US (New Jersey's was one of few that are worse). They were Republicans in name only; they had Chamber of Commerce presidents in their leadership, rather than union activists and college professors, but the policies were nearly identical.

Why?

Because in a state where the entire public class - the educational, political and media establishments - were solidly pro-tax, pro-spending, pro-government intervention, to swim against the tide was to risk character assassination, abuse, to lose one's reservations at the metaphorical St. Paul Grill of acceptance.

And so the "opposition" became a codependent partner in a sick, skewed relationship, based on a few good things and a lopsided balance of power.

And the establishment used that power, not only to benefit Minnesotans (and even as a conservative I can allow for the benefits that the "Minnesota Miracle" spawned, even as I criticize this state's addiction to state-sponsored miracles), but to intimidate and browbeat those who could foresee a need to trim some of the fat, to become more competitive. The Strib's editorial board was always quick with the class envy...:

Several weeks remain before legislative inaction would risk a state government shutdown. That prospect apparently worried DFLers more than it did Republicans. As one DFL senator said: "It's usually the privileged who think shutting down government would be a heroic act."

It was only in recent days that leading economists and former governors called for state tax increases instead of deep cuts in public services, particularly for children.

It was a codependent in a deeply dysfunctional relationship.

In the early nineties, the conservative wing of the party erupted under Alan Quist, a firebrand, unelectable Christian Conservative. The media feasted on Quist an his followers - you'd have thought Martin Borman had sprung from a field near Mankato and started leading an army in a march on Minneapolis, pledging to feast on children, gays and women who wanted abortions.

The media and the public class hated Quist. Hell, I disliked Quist; many of his grass-roots supporters were pro-life single-issue monomaniacs, illiterate about economics, the Second Amendment, conservatism beyond abortion. Today, those that didn't get more educated are calling talk radio shows to stump for Pat Buchanan.

But they took the flak. They convinced more Republicans and conservative Democrats that the sky wouldn't fall if the Star-Tribune editorial board shunned them. They learned to organize themselves. They learned how Conservatism was done in the real world. Talk Radio and the conservative internet helped a lot - it's no accident that the rise in Conservatism in Minnesota we didn't need the mainstream media to have a common voice anymore.

And they helped the rest of us break out of the trap - the trap that told us "you're nothing without us", the one that said "WE are the people. If you are against us, you're against The People."

And like a controller who senses power is being lost, the establishment is snapping back in anger:

The ultimate loser this session will be Minnesota. In more ways than most people expect, Minnesota's shared life will be painfully pinched as state spending is rolled back. Real cuts -- not just smaller increases -- are in store. They will fall with disproportionate severity on the poor, students, Minneapolis and St. Paul, outstate cities and cultural institutions. The most vulnerable will pay the greatest price.

That has not been the Minnesota way. Until now.

Minnesota is realizing; the party is not the people. The government is not the fount of all good.

We can expect a period where the formerly-dominant partner will wallow in impotent rage.

I think we're seeing that now.

The Answers - For years,

The Answers - For years, the Star-Tribune carried the water for the anti-gun movement in Minnesota, uncritically carrying the fevered rantings of the likes of West Skoglund and Matt Entenza.

They were also the first prominent media outlet to give the concealed carry issue any sort of relatively fair coverage, during the '01 legislative session, when Conrad DeFiebre broke the ice and actually learned something about the issue.

Today, the Strib runs a list of frequently-asked questions about concealed carry, complete with answers.

It's a good step, which helps make up for all the wrong impressions people got during their years of "coverage" that began and ended with the fabrications of the bill's opponents.

And yet, the spin remains. Read the article, and notice how many sympathetic quotes given to those who are trying to find ways to ban the law-abiding permittee from their properties, or find ways to extend the law's restrictions to their circumstances, compared to the complete lack of rebuttal.

The Last Team Standing -

The Last Team Standing - The Twins are in first. It ain't pretty, but they're the only pro team playing in town now.

Until hockey starts up...when? Right after July 4, right?

I love spring.

Metal Health - According to

Metal Health - According to this MSNBC report, the military is using heavy metal music and kiddie songs to break suspects' resistance under interrogation:

THE IDEA, says Sgt. Mark Hadsell, is to break a subject’s resistance by annoying that person with what some Iraqis would consider culturally offensive music. The songs that are being played include “Bodies” from the Vin Diesel “XXX” movie soundtrack and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” “These people haven’t heard heavy metal before,” he explains. “They can’t take it.” Few people could put up with the sledgehammer riffs of Metallica, and kiddie songs aren’t that much easier, especially when selections include the “Sesame Street” theme and some of purple dinosaur Barney’s crooning.

WHAT WILL AMNESTY SAY? Is the Barney song torture?

Ask any parent. . . .

But if you're a prisoner, I agree - wait'll Arthur Kustler hears about this.

Oh wait - he's dead. Never mind.

Der Pianist - I saw

Der Pianist - I saw "The Pianist" last week. If I didn't blog about it, it was only because the past week has been so crushingly busy.

The review in a word? Incredible. What a truly spellbinding, horrifying, wonderful, awful, incredible movie. It's among the great movies about the Holocaust - better, I think, than Schindler's List, Holocaust, and Escape from Sobibor (generally overlooked because it was a TV movie, even though it featured great performances by Rutger Hauer, Joanna Pacula and Alan Arkin and was based on a wrenching book of the same name), it's based on Wladyslaw Szpilman's riveting autobiographical novel of his own survival, and is one of few movies to genuinely do justice to a memoir of any type, much less a Holocaust memoir.

I read William Grim's piece on watching the movie in Munich, surrounded by Germans:

I have to admit that it is a strange experience to watch a Holocaust film in Germany. It's even stranger when you're the only American in the midst of about 200 Germans. But perhaps the strangest thing of all is to watch the reactions of the Germans as the events of the movie unfold. You hear a lot about how Germans are so ashamed today of the behavior of their countrymen during the Nazi period and about how much they've done to atone for their past sins. Don't buy that bill of goods. If the audience of the screening I attended is any indication of German attitudes in general, it doesn't augur well for the future. Remember, this wasn't an audience composed of skinheads from the neo-Nazi enclaves in Karlsruhe and the former DDR. This was a group of Germany's best and brightest: educated, middle class, sophisticated denizens of a major cosmopolitan city.

Brief background: In college, I minored in History and German. History obviously fascinates me - and especially Germany's role in it. I speak the language, and am very familiar with the people and culture.

Now, when you grow up in America, you grow up in a society that's been assembled from the parts of dozens of other nations; an English legal system, a German educational philosophy, largely Anglo-Saxon language, predominantly North-European and Mediterranean religions, and folk traditions that are both as diverse as the nations from which most of us came, and yet that tend to gradually disappear over time as people assimilate into the larger American culture. It's hard to comprehend, for Americans, the notion of living in a genuinely homogenous culture.

Most European cultures are wrapped up in a single, unifying tradition; a shared language, a set of traditions, tales, myths and legends, a series of cultural roadmaps that you inherit at birth (and no other way; you can immigrate to Germany, but you can't "become German" the way that generations of Irish, Poles and Vietnamese have become American).

Germany's shared tradition - it's called "Volk", which literally means "people" in German, but has a vastly deeper figurative and cultureal meaning to Germans, the same way "Liberty" and "Freedom" have meanings much deeper than their Websters' definitions to Americans - is intimately tied to Germany's rural, pagan, insular collective memory, as well as the glories of its imperial history (Charlemagne's "First Reich" figured heavily in this story).

Part of that Volk tradition, as David Goldhagen explored in his book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", is deeply antisemitic. I won't go too deeply into explaining Goldhagen's book - you need to read it if you haven't. Goldhagen traces the roots of eliminationist antisemitism in German culture, and deflates the notion that German hatred of Jews sprang from the whole cloth in 1933; it's part of Volk, an embedded part of German culture.

Goldhagen, in the epilogue to his book, stresses that he believes that the war beat the anti-semitism out of Germany. It's a comforting thesis.

I wonder if it's right?

Did the sound thrashing the South got in 1865 beat the discrimination out of the southern states? Of course not. It went underground, and bubbled slowly back to the surface over the course of a couple of generations of neglect, to the point where America had to fight another civil war - one fought in the legislatures and courts, mostly - to finish the job legally, and to try to enforce it socially. Some would say the war's not yet won.

Now, ask yourself, as I'm asking myself now: If, after a hundred years, it's that hard to get rid of the noxious idea of racism in a nation built at its very core on the ideas of liberty and equality, how much harder must it be to do it in a nation built on a several-thousand-year-old shared cultural tradition of homogeneity, unity and exclusivity?

Not that Germans - maybe a majority of them - don't abhor the notion of antisemitism. But I wonder - how realistic is it to expect that thousands of years of Volk tradition could be extinguished by three years of bombing and eight years of occupation and fifty years of liberal democracy?

I'm genuinely curious. Jede Deutsche die diese Blog lest - was denkt Ihr euch?

UPDATE: Instapundit is getting some emails from people who disagree - Germany is mostly past its traditional antisemitism. But then, there's more commentary on both sides.

I suspect that it's somewhere in between - much as America is with its own past racism. There are still bigots, both overt and covert, in the US. I'd suspect Germany's not much different. Is it the majority? Time will tell.

(Via Instapundit)

Profiles in Tenacity - In

Profiles in Tenacity - In 1863, while leading the Union fleet into Mobile Bay, Admiral David Farragut was told that the channel was blocked by "Torpedos" - the slang term for naval mines of the day. His famous response: "Damn the Torpedos - full speed ahead". The Union went on to win, in a battle that shortly led to the cutting in half of the Confederacy, dooming their rebellion.

In June of 1940, Great Britain's military was a shambles. The British Army had just escaped from Dunkirk, without any of its artillery, tanks, and much of anything else. The Germans, swollen by victory, controlled all of Europe except the British Isles. Emissaries as diverse as Joseph Kennedy and Rudolph Hess tried to persuade Winston Churchill to accept an armistice - to settle for peace. He responded with the Dunkirk speech, which stirred Britain and the whole Western World against the Nazis. Five years later, Naziism was done for.

On December 24, 1944, the Germans surrounded the Belgian town of Bastogne, in the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans - the 101st Airborne and a brigade of the Tenth Armored Divisions - were frozen, short of food an ammunition, and cut off far behind German lines. The Germans sent an emissary to ask the Americans' surrender. General MacAuliffe, commander of the 101st, replied "Nuts". A week later, General Patton's tanks came to the rescue. Bastogne's stubbornness had put a fatal crimp in the German attack, which, in turn, sealed the German doom in the west. The war ended four months later.

The Minnesota Budget Battle is nothing like any of those battles.

And yet Governor Pawlenty and Speaker Swiggum's relentless steadfastness in the face of a full-court press on the part of the state's traditional political/media/social hierarchy is truly a profile in tenacity - and political courage.

I love this quote, from today's Strib story::

Pawlenty, who has maintained a soft-spoken demeanor through much of the negotiations, said Thursday that DFLers "have an opportunity and an obligation to stake out their position, their vision for the future of the state of Minnesota. I don't begrudge them the chance to do that. I just wish they'd done it a little sooner."

But defense doesn't win the game. Fortune favors the bold - and the GOP cornered that market in Minnesota, lately.

The GOP's success this session harkens back to Reagan; they articulated a vision that resonated with voters, including a new bloc of disaffected ones. And they stuck with it, against all the slings and arrows; the endless "case studies" in the papers, the "Four Governors", the relentless doomsaying of the Linda Berglins and Wes Skoglunds and Matt Entenzas.

The Senate has been seeking $1.3 billion in tax increases, including raising the cigarette tax by $1 a pack, raising income taxes on the top 5 percent of income earners and raising the statewide business property tax.

House Republicans and Pawlenty have said all along they would not support any state tax increase, holding themselves to a campaign pledge.

That was made even more apparent to Hottinger early Thursday after he met with Pawlenty.

"He reiterated and reconfirmed to me, very convincingly, that he is not interested and will not raise taxes," Hottinger said.

I think Hottinger knows what Pawlenty does: that the "cuts" (actually a budget increase) won't hurt the vast majority of us, and that an upcoming economic upturn will fix the problem faster than the legislature could.

You'll never hear the Strib admit it, but I'll say it here - and, all my "moderate" friends, note this very clearly: Tim Pawlenty is the muckracking, stable-cleaning firebrand that ou all wished Jesse Ventura was going to be.

We'll see what the next three years holds, but so far Pawlenty has every indication of being the Minnesota Reagan.

Albeit without contras roaming through Missouri...

Everyone's Talking Music - If

Everyone's Talking Music - If you've read my blog, you know I like music. Lots of it. Everything from Mahler to Public Enemy, and a lot of everything in between.

Even bands I hate, I like. Seriously - a band with nearly no redeeming value can have a song that redeems them (Styx was and is wretched, but "Blue Collar Man" was great), or even a single moment (Journey bored me silly, but the part where the guitar leads the band into "Don't Stop Believing" is just lovely).

Lileks touches on this phenomenon with one of the most maligned groups ever - the Bee Gees:

Are the BeeGees good, then? Sure. Some of their stuff, anyway. I can do without most of the songs t on the greatest hits disk...“Stayin’ Alive,” however, is a great song. It may come from a genre that pumped out more dreck than the CB-radio story-song craze; it may bring back painful memories of John Travolta using his walk in such a way as to inform spectators that he is a woman’s man, and hence has no time to talk. But that hook holds up.

And as far as the Bee Gees go, "Jive Talking" is an amazing song, too, one that can give me the funk back on a Perrycomo kinda day, especially the part where Maurice sings the line out of the bridge into the last chorus - pure pop joy.

But as close as Lileks gets to the truth, he still slinks just out of sight of genuine enlightenment:

I usually don’t like the hyperventilating castrati sound - Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, for example. Guys, listen - if you’re going to sing a song called “Walk Like A Man,” don’t sound as though you’ve had your testes kicked so hard they bounced off your diaphragm.

Filter out Frankie Valli's cartoony-castrati for a moment, and listen to the song: there have been macho screeds equally as good, but none better. And further into the Seasons' oevre, you find the real gems: "Rag Doll" is is a more concise version of Bruce's "Backstreets", and their little-known "Big Man In Town", a precursor to "Badlands", got me through one of the worst stretches of my life.

Castrati. Hmpfh.

Speaking of music, there's a form circulating the blogosphere today that's kinda interesting. I saw it over at Plain Layne, and it's one of those things that's like a bowl full of "Twix" bars; you know you shouldn't try one, up until the point where you're disposing of three dozen Twix wrappers.

Here goes:

1. Name one song you hate to admit you like:

• Shadows Of The Night, Pat Benetar.

• And The Angels Cried,Allison Krause and some other guy,
• Oh, Father, Madonna. Yes, Madonna. Go figure. This'd be one of those "moments" I was talking about earlier.

• Voodoo, Godsmack.
• DMSR, Prince
• Easy From Now On, Emmylou Harris.

• The Card Cheat, The Clash
  
• Little Mascara, The Replacements
  
• Sweet Sweet Baby, Lone Justice
  
• What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding, Elvis Costello
  

• Marche Slave, Tchaikowskii
  
• The Promised Land, Springsteen
  
• I Wish It Would Rain The Four Tops
  
• Flower of Scotland, The Black Watch
  
• Wall of Death, Richard Thompson
  

6. Six Songs That Make You Want to Thump Something or Someone:

• Where The Rose Is Sown, Big Country
  
• Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos, Public Enemy
  
• Blaze Of Glory, The Alarm
  
• Shoot Out The Lights, Richard Thompson
  
• Boulevard of Broken Dreams,, Hanoi Rocks
  
• Working For The Clampdown, The Clash

InstaTwister - Glenn Reynolds is

InstaTwister - Glenn Reynolds is blogging without power, after tornadoes pummel the Nashville area.

Moore Scuttling - Disney, according

Moore Scuttling - Disney, according to Hollywood Halfwits, is bailing on Michael Moore's "Documentary" claiming that the Bush family financed Bin Laden.

Disney, via subsidiary Miramax, had recently agreed to cover the production costs of Moore's "documentary" which claims bin Laden was greatly enriched by the Bush family. "The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda," Moore explained.

St. Paul Schools - Longtime

St. Paul Schools - Longtime friend of Shot in the Dark, Tom Swift, is still busy.

Last November, we told you about his discovery of budget shenanigans at the St. Paul Public Schools.

The story is still evolving.

According to Tom, the State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ha said "SPPS and Progressive MN violated the law by giving and recieving a campaign contribution (the "Winning Big" banquet)". Progressive Minnesota apparently has to return the school district's money.

Swift also has "a complaint pending in Pat Awada's office
where it is recieving sterling attention AND I also will have the SP City Attorney look into the $3K payment to PM for it's political organizing seminars given to SPPS site council managers..."

More as things develop.

Minnesota Smug - Again -

Minnesota Smug - Again - I don't have time to write as much about this thread today as I'd like - maybe this weekend, hopefully.

But the pieces of this whole flap - the budget, "We're Not Minnesota Nice", the Four Governors, the hysteria that the media seems to be carefully cultivating - say something big about that character of this state, or at least this state's traditional (read: DFL) public class.

And figuring exactly what to say about it is one of those things that won't come to me until I'm in the middle of a usability test, far from a bloggable computer.

Stay tuned, though. This could be interesting.

Guard of Chucky - New

Guard of Chucky - New York Senator Charles Schumer is one of the leading voices in the Senate speaking for the constriction of the citizen's right to own firearms, and defend their families and properties.

Naturally, he has an armed guard:

Questions arose Wednesday morning about the gun opponent's security arrangements after the New York Post's Cindy Adams mentioned in her column that Schumer appeared at a recent event with a bodyguard in tow.

A quick call to Schumer's office confirmed that the man guarding the Senate's number one gun controller was packing heat.

"He's a New York police detective," the Senator's spokesman revealed to NewsMax. When asked whether Schumer's detective was indeed armed, the spokesman replied, "I would imagine so."

Got that?

This part is rich:

Sensing a public relations problem in the making, the Senator's spokesman explained that his boss "believes in the second amendment and the right to bear arms."

"So I don't think there's anything inconsistent about it," he insisted.

(Via Instapundit)

Kangaroo Court - The Strib

Kangaroo Court - The Strib starts off last Monday's story about - good heavens, can ya believe it, a conclave of former governors! - with this bon mot:

If Gov. Tim Pawlenty were to turn to one of Minnesota's former governors for budgetary advice, chances are he wouldn't like to hear what any one had to say.

The group wasn't gathered to praise Pawlenty, they were gathered - and put in front of microphones - to bury him.

The Strib leads with a strawman:

Four former governors -- three from the same party as the current Republican office holder, and one DFLer -- all said Monday that Pawlenty has painted himself into a corner with his no-new-taxes pledge and that disadvantaged Minnesotans will suffer the most from sharp budget cuts.

Carlson, Anderson and Quie were behind James Lileks' classic line about Arne Carlson during the 1990 gubernatorial election: "I tell my friends in DC that we have two candidates for governor in Minnesota; the pro-choice, high-tax, anti-gun candidate, and the Democrat".

Republicans Elmer L. Andersen, Al Quie and Arne Carlson and DFLer Wendell Anderson told a Humphrey Institute audience celebrating the career of the late Orville Freeman that a balanced approach of spending cuts and tax increases is the best way to share the pain of a $4.23 billion budget deficit.

Andersen, governor from 1961 to 1963, jokingly said Pawlenty could refer to tax increases as "revenue adjustments" to avoid violating his pledge.

For example:

"Taxes put money into the economy, into essential public services, education, culture, parks, highways," said Andersen. "Unfortunately that pledge was made to solve the deficit without a tax increase. People of Minnesota want to get back the kind of state we had."

Here's the part where an actual, critical media would be nice:

Each of the four governors faced budget problems when they were elected, and each of the four endured special legislative sessions to deal with remedies for their budgets, which included tax surcharges, utilities taxes, income tax increases and sales tax hikes.

Some of the hourlong discussion looked at ideologically driven policy and domination of the political parties by members with a narrow range of views and a set agenda.

"Once you turn the system over to people who believe the public purpose is to get elected, the common good tends to dissipate," said Carlson, governor from 1991 to 1999. "You have to protect the interests of young people. And you cannot deny the right to basic health care. . . . It is wrong. The pain should be spread, and that means a tax increase -- particularly on those of us who can afford it."

Your government is you. You are your government. What's good for your government is good for you.

Does anyone see where this is a problem? Let me know.

By the way, Carlson earned my undying emnity for this little swipe:

Carlson also took a shot at the Legislature and Pawlenty on non-budget matters.

"A gun bill. How can you explain a [conceal and carry] gun bill?" Carlson asked. "How does anyone with an IQ that approaches double digits pass that kind of legislation?"

What do you think? Am I reading this wrong?

Just Watch... - ...as the

Just Watch... - ...as the media spins the attacks in Riyadh as some sort of defeat against the War on Terror.

It makes sense, I think, in the same way that it made sense that the last shots fired by die-hard Nazis were fired in Berlin, rather than in New York. They're on home turf!

Truth is, the fact that it's taken Al Quaeda 19 months to carry out a serious follow-up attack, on what is essentially their home field, shows how well things are going in the War, not how badly.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I remember when I got out of college and got my first fulltime job. I'd go to work, get home at 8, go to bed, up at 7, to work at 10, home at 8, go to bed...working fulltime for the first time just exhausted me.

So, too, yesterday. It was my first day working in an actual office in four months. And it smacked me up pretty good!

The job, by the way, is at one of the classic Minnesota companies. And the building is chock-full of a whole lot of classic Minnesotans. For someone who's been working at dotcoms and software shops for most of the last decade, it felt I'd stepped into "Wobegone Junior"; acres of gray-haired, mildly-padded, earnest Lutherans. Don't get me wrong, it was great working again, even if only for a week (so far). But the only thing that didn't feel like I'd gone back to the sixties was the lack of narrow black ties.

And I have to get back there. But I will catch up on the blogging tonight.

Blog, Interrupted - First day

Blog, Interrupted - First day at a new gig today, plus bagpipe class afterward.

I'll be posting a bunch of stuff tonight, but I'm going to be pretty swamped today.

Til then!

Someone Gets It - Activists

Someone Gets It - Activists for aid to Africa square off against Greenpeace:

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) will conduct a counter demonstration at Greenpeace USA's "Run for Your Life" 5K road race at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. The Greenpeace event itself will be a protest, meant to "raise awareness of the serious threats posed by chemical plants to New York and New Jersey residents and workers."

CORE is using the event as an opportunity to confront Greenpeace activists about their opposition to infrastructure development projects in the developing world, opposition to genetically modified foods and the group's opposition to the use of the chemical DDT to kill malaria-ridden mosquitoes, particularly in Africa.

"To serve its own ideological agenda, [Greenpeace] wants to keep the Third World permanently mired in Third World poverty, disease and death. So far, it has succeeded," said Niger Innis, national spokesperson for CORE

When I have lots of time to spare...

Agh - Yet another case

Agh - Yet another case of child murder in the news.

Lufkin, TX-area perfect mom Dee Laney apparently bludgeoned two of her three kids to death, and tried to kill a third.

I know I'm not the only one who gets incredibly depressed by these sorts of stories. It's not just the murders, although the horror of such crimes is numbing after a while. I'm a parent; I have two kids, and neither is anywhere close to perfect, and while I've never, even in my worst moments, even considered hurting them even as a perverse "what if", I understand how the stress of daily life can make kids nearly unbearable; this unemployed stretch has taxed my patience with them.

But the coverage will be almost as bad.

Watch for three things, here:

• The inevitable comparisons to the Susan Smith and Andrea Yates cases.
• Among the comparisons; watch for advocates for women and the mentally ill to demand that Ms. Laney receive anything from leniency to no charges whatsoever.
• As in the Smith and Yates cases, watch those same advocates eventually, inevitably, try to put the fathers on trial - which would be fine, if there were any evidence. But for some people, anything is evidence enough.
• Watch for the nation's Ellen Andersons to start capitalizing on a "wave of child murders" to support demands for funding, laws and so on - despite the fact that child murder is, thankfully, becoming more rare.

That Darned Corporate Media -

That Darned Corporate Media - Michael Moore is financing his new "documentary" - which will reportedly claim Bush family ties to Osama Bin Laden - via Disney, says Drudge.

The director claims he will document on film how the "senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11."

Moore will also scrutinize, in graphic detail, why America is so disliked abroad.

With DISNEY financing now secure, Moore, who once railed against corporate media interests, may appear at this week's Cannes film festival in France.

Miramax is essentially an independent organization which uses Disney's distribution wing. Miramax has a long tradition of financing unusual and controversial pictures. And Michael Moore is the darling of the Hollywood left -- he speaks for them. And the fact that he won the Oscar for Best Documentary means that there is a good chance that he could win one for this film, too, and Miramax is a company known to spend millions of dollars to promote its films that are in award contention. This is a perfect project for a company like Miramax.

The Case Western Shooter -

The Case Western Shooter - It seems the alleged shooter in the Case Western Reserve shootings was quite anti-gun (scroll down to the "Take Action Against Substance Abuse and Gun Violence" link).

Kathleen Soliah, Carl Rowan, Sean Penn, Harry Connick, Biswanath Halder. I guess it's the lefty gun-control types that you really need to worry about.

Who's watching Ellen Anderson?

Heh - A whole new

Heh - A whole new deck of cards.

I may buy one, come payday...

Newspaper of Record - When

Newspaper of Record - When journalists criticize the Blogosphere, they decry the online pundits and journalists' lack of editors and the absence of commitment to journalistic ethics.

And then came Jayson Blair.

The Times has spent the last week apologizing, retracting and correctinghis long trail of journalistic frauds and deceptions - the sort of things that editors are supposed to catch, but shouldn't have to at the Times...

When you're a blogger and you fabricate a story, there are a million other bloggers, including potentially dozens that might have enough interest in the issue to set you (or the public) straight. That's beside the fact that there is no "blog of record".

Who corrects the Times?

I mean, before it hits the fan?

Great...er, Minds? - I've been

Great...er, Minds? - I've been pondering for days the idea of writing about Arby's new Homestyle Pot Roast Sandwich". One the one hand, the ads make it look absolutely dreadful - natural material for a blog attack.

I thought - "Will I look ridiculous blogging about this?"

Fortunately, Cold Fury had no such compunctions, and has delivered the blogosphere's first-ever fisking of a sandwich.

(Via Jay Reding)

Fair Weather Fan - I

Fair Weather Fan - I remember listening to Pat Reusse and Joe Soucheray on the old Monday Night Sportstalk show back in 1987, during the American League Championship Series. The boys were sneering down their noses at the full houses of fans at the Metrodome, wondering where they'd been the previous year, when the Twinks were battling for the AL West cellar against the Chisox, drawing 6-8,000 fans a night. "Minnesotans are such a bunch of wussy, fair-weather baseball fans", rasped Reusse. "Where are you when the team stinks, huh?"

I thought about it for a second, driving down the street to my band's practice. "Probably doing something that they don't think is a complete fargin' waste of time", I answered.

"I mean, what do these franchises think - that just because they're a local sports team - hell, even a local sports team in a sport I love, like Baseball - that I owe them unquestioning loyalty?" I said, louder this time, as I drove up the Lyndale exit on 94. "Jeezawfriday, you stuffed shirts act like actually doing things we enjoy is some sort of base character defect!", I said, yelling by now.

"I mean", I hollered, apoplectic now, as a couple of cute girls in a nearby car watched, goggle-eyed, "it's not like the Twins or the Vikings or the North Stars are, like, the Constitution or our country or our families. IS IT?"

Souch and Reusse prattled on.

Well, that's how I remember the scene.

My motto when it comes to sports teams; "What have you done for me lately". And I'm damn proud of it. Life is too short to waste your time on the stupid and futile.

(Except for the Chicago Bears. I've been a steadfast Bearss fan since I was four years old. Every year since 1970, I've predicted "next year is the Bears' year!". Unlike Vikes fans, I've been right once.)

So anyway - Go Wild! Until the good times are over, anyway, when I'll promptly stop caring, and switch to the flavor of the month (when it comes to local pro sports, anyway).

And if Patrick Reusse doesn't like it, he can get out there and mow my lawn. I'm a fair weather fan - and without about 100 million of us, professional sports would still be on the back pages of the Sports section, and Pat Reusse and Sid Hartman would be donating plasma to make ends meet!

Say it loud; I'm a fairweather fan, and I'm proud.

Now let's play hockey!

It's a Hard Knock Life

It's a Hard Knock Life - Michael Barone examines why so many American teenagers - TV-addled, poorly-eductated, with very low expectations thrust upon them - grow up to create the world's wealthiest nation, most vibrant economy, most innovative technical sector and most powerful, competent military. And in so doing, he uncovers a dichotomy I've wondered at myself; the split between the Hard and Soft sides of American life:

Soft America took over much of society because in the early and middle 20th century, America seemed to many people to be too Hard. Not many kids made it up the educational and job ladders. Much work was hard labor, and in the 1930s, jobs were scarce and charity inadequate. Educators wanted to make schools Soft, and New Dealers wanted to shield people from the marketplace with strong unions and Social Security. By the 1970s Soft America was trying to Soften Hard America with guaranteed incomes, job tenure, and comparable worth (bureaucrats, not markets, setting salaries).

In the 1980s and 1990s Hard America fought back. Surging private-sector growth brushed aside attempts to Soften the Hard economy. The military, hobbled by public contempt after Vietnam, built a voluntary force in which people could gain benefits and honor by performing. Politicians started passing laws to make the people who run the schools accountable for results. A sensible society wants to keep some part of itself Soft: We don't want to subject kindergartners to the rigors of the Marine Corps or to leave old people helpless and uncared for. But a sensible society also understands--and the military has been driving home the lesson--that Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America. And that we have the luxury of keeping part of our society Soft only if we keep most of it Hard.

'Ockey - The Fraters attach

'Ockey - The Fraters attach a block and tackle to the Berg petard:

(Warning to Mitch. This post and probably any other posts of mine today will focus on hockey. No baseball. No bagpipes. No bread baking banality. Perhaps later this summer I'll compare the relative merits of the American and National leagues, Great Highland bagpipes versus North Thumbrian Smallpipes, and the differences between short mix, improved mix, and intensive mix but for now it's hard core hockey baby.)

I liked this observation:

...why do Canadian fans feel the need to elevate every contest into a national showdown with the U.S.? The way the Vancouver fans were waving their Canadian flags around last night during the O'Canada you would have thought we were watching the Olympics. The series was Minnesota versus Vancouver not the U.S. versus Canada. There's just something desperately pathetic about a country so lacking in national self esteem that its people leap at any opportunity, however inappropriate, to demonstrate their patriotism and wave the flag.

Chomskied - Keith Windschuttle, with

Chomskied - Keith Windschuttle, with an article in New Criterion that has the coveted J Go Stamp of Approval.

The article is a Brinks truck full of money quotes. I like this one, among many:

The media, they note, are all owned by large corporations, they are beholden for their income to major national advertisers, most news is generated by large multinational news agencies, and any newspaper or television station that steps out of line is bombarded with “flak” or letters, petitions, lawsuits, and speeches from pro-capitalist institutes set up for this very purpose.

There are, however, two glaring omissions from their analysis: the role of journalists and the preferences of media audiences. Nowhere do the authors explain how journalists and other news producers come to believe they are exercising their freedom to report the world as they see it. Chomsky and Herman simply assert these people have been duped into seeing the world through a pro-capitalist ideological lens.

Nor do they attempt any analysis of why millions of ordinary people exercise their free choice every day to buy newspapers and tune in to radio and television programs. Chomsky and Herman fail to explain why readers and viewers so willingly accept the world-view of capitalist media proprietors. They provide no explanation for the tastes of media audiences.

This view of both journalists and audiences as easily-led, ideological dupes of the powerful is not just a fantasy of Chomsky and Herman’s own making. It is also a stance that reveals an arrogant and patronising contempt for everyone who does not share their politics. The disdain inherent in this outlook was revealed during an exchange between Chomsky and a questioner at a conference in 1989 (reproduced in Chomsky, Understanding Power, 2002):

Man: The only poll I’ve seen about journalists is that they are basically narcissistic and left of center. Chomsky: Look, what people call “left of center” doesn’t mean anything—it means they’re conventional liberals and conventional liberals are very state-oriented, and usually dedicated to private power.

In short, Chomsky believes that only he and those who share his radical perspective have the ability to rise above the illusions that keep everyone else slaves of the system. Only he can see things as they really are.

Maybe Susan Sarandon Will Play

Maybe Susan Sarandon Will Play The Lead - A woman in Tennessee escapes from jail, holds her child at gunpoint:

Lovell, who is in jail for stalking and harassment, had faked a seizure in prison on Thursday and been taken to hospital. On the way back to jail, she gave prison guards the slip, stole a patrol car and smashed through a roadblock, slightly injuring a policeman, on her way to her sister’s home to collect her son. The sister is his guardian.

Lovell then held the boy hostage at gunpoint as police closed in on her. The deputy shot her while she was holding the child, who was then hurried away in a policeman’s arms. He was blood-spattered and crying, but otherwise unharmed.

Monkey Lit 101 - Researchers

Monkey Lit 101 - Researchers in England have taken the first step on the road to a simian recreation of the works of Shakespeare:

Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

Who funded it? Guess:

Phillips said the project — funded by England's Arts Council rather than by scientific bodies — was intended more as performance art than scientific experiment...The Plymouth experiment was part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.

Fast Food Update - Dino's

Fast Food Update - Dino's Gyros in Roseville is my favorite fast food in the Twin Cities. (The Black Sea Turkish restaurant on Snelling is better, but not fast at all. Which is just fine).

The City of Roseville wants to redevelop the Snelling/Larpenteur intersection, which would involve tearing down Dino's, which is in a cruddy-looking building that used to be a Clark Sub shop.

The developer is trying to help Dino's move half a block north, to a new building on the site of an old Embers on Snelling.

Here are the disturbing parts of the story:

Under the plan, the Ember's building would be demolished and a bigger Dino's would be constructed with the updated look of the five other outlets, including a drive-through. This could happen in fall, if all goes as planned. If it doesn't, it's back to square one.

"If they can't get the deal done across the street," says David Schomaker, president of Dino's Gyros Franchise Corp., "we're not going anywhere."

1. There is a possibility the deal could fall through, and my corner of town could be left Dinoless.
2. Not only is there a corporate entity called "Dino's Gyros Franchise Corp.", but its president is named David Schomaker, as opposed to Davidos Shomakapolos.
   Posted by Mitch at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

Jobbed Up - Well, for

Jobbed Up - Well, for a week or two, anyway.

I start a short contract job this afternoon. Three days next week, maybe more the week after (I hope).

I currently have three fairly solid leads for permanent jobs. I just have to hope one of them pulls the trigger during my natural @#$@#%^ lifetime.

Yow - So I've been

Yow - So I've been hearing for a long, long time now about Al Roker and his stomach surgery, and how he's lost a zillion pounds. But I VERY rarely watch the Today show (it's occasionally on in the background as I chase kids around getting ready for the morning's festivities).

So I thought "when did they hire the buff black dude" when I watched the weather this morning, a femtosecond before I realized that's Roker.

Yeah, yeah, I know - I also heard that George W Bush was elected president...

Stiff Upper Yap - Margaret

Stiff Upper Yap - Margaret Drabble of the Telegraph doesn't mince words:

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.

But here's the part that the fellas at DiscountPundit brought to our attention:

But what struck home hardest was the subsequent image, of a row of American warplanes, with grinning cartoon faces painted on their noses. Cartoon faces, with big sharp teeth.

It is grotesque. It is hideous. This great and powerful nation bombs foreign cities and the people in those cities from Disneyland cartoon planes out of comic strips. This is simply not possible. And yet, there they were...

... there was something about those playfully grinning warplane faces that went beyond deception and distortion into the land of madness. A nation that can allow those faces to be painted as an image on its national aeroplanes has regressed into unimaginable irresponsibility. A nation that can paint those faces on death machines must be insane.

What "insane" nation invented that practice?

That's right - the British, in North Africa in 1941.

(Via DiscountBlog)

Death Penalty - I've always

Death Penalty - I've always opposed the death penalty. Some conservatives get very exercised with me about it.

It's not that some people don't richly deserve it, of course - I am a strong advocate of armed self-defense. And racial and social disparities can be dealt with, if the political will to do it is there.

No, my only real qualm about the death penalty is that judges, juries and defense attorneys are fallible - and prosecutors are frequently not only fallible, but also beholden to their political careers. Death cases equal votes - in some cases, it doesn't matter if you kill the wrong person.

While Tom Hackbarth, a Republican rep from Cedar, MN, introduces a death penalty bill every year in the House, it's a legitimate issue this year (although this probably not a serious candidate for passage, this close to the end of the session). The killing spree in Minnespolis and Long Prairie is the headline that's driving a lot of discussion. But behind the scenes, a 1998 federal case against Richard Oslund, who killed an armored car driver in a 1998 robbery in Bloomington, may be what drags Minnesota into the world of death penalty politics.

Here's the part that bothers me:

Observers believe this case was carefully selected as a test because Oslund is not a racial minority and may not have the unstable mental health history common to many death row inmates. U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger declined to comment on the case.

"It was hand-picked to be an unsympathetic defendant," Frey [Barbara Frey, director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota] said.

The death penalty isn't supposed to be capricious; doesn't cherry-picking count as a form of caprice?

Again, I doubt there's any way to pass such a divisive bill this session. But proponents of the death penalty will probably benefit from the same sense that has brought tax cuts, concealed carry reform and a 24 hour waiting period on abortions to Minnesota this session.

Permalinks - I know it

Permalinks - I know it - my permalinks have been broken for a week now. I'm trying to fix them.

This could turn wierd, fast.

UPDATE: I guess they didn't!

UPDATE 2: Or not...

UPDATE 3: So I fix my permalinks, and my formatting goes plooie. Gaaah. I need a job.

The Best They Can Do?

The Best They Can Do? - The Democrats must be getting desperate. They're attacking last week's carrier landing, now.

New Jersey Democrat representative Bob Menendez just finished facing off with New York Republican Peter King on the Today show.

The Dems are trying to string a series of strawmen together into a case against the President.

1. Flying an S3 Viking rather than a helicopter is grandstanding. But - alleluiah - Katie Couric responded "Don't presidents always look for photo ops?"
2. Flying the Viking was wasteful. Almost indistinguishable from flying a helicopter over that sort of distance all in all, Rep. King noted. He's probably right - the S3 has two small jet engines which were running for about fifteen minutes. Marine One also has two engines, and they'd have been running 30-45 minutes to get to the carrier.
3. Flying in was less safe. Unless there was a problem. You can't eject from a helicopter. And President Bush is the only president in history who's been trained to eject from an airplane.
4. It delayed the ship from returning home. That's still very much up to debate; according to Rep. King, the Lincoln was running ahead of schedule on her homeward run, and was going to have to kill some time before docking anyway. In the meantime, had the President opted to give his speech aboard the Lincoln after docking, it would have delayed the crew's disembarkation for hours, caused endless hassles for the families waiting on the waterfront (Secret Service searches of the ship, waterfront and audience, the closing of highways for the presidential motorcade and so on) and the time for the speech itself. No, I'd suspect that the shipboard speech saved time, all in all.

Wrath of Kahn - Rick

Wrath of Kahn - Rick Kahn - the person who arguably put Norm Coleman in the Senate - is finally "breaking the silence".

Kahn - who was the treasurer for the late Senator's 2002 re-election campaign - is infamous for his speech at Paulapalooza the Wellstone Memorial service last fall. His hystericial call to the assembled Republicans to work for Walter Mondale and for the enactment of Wellstone's agenda kicked off a three-hour orgy of under-the-radar campaigning, carried live as "news" on statewide TV and radio. National revulsion for the tacky display hurt, perhaps (but not certainly) fatally, Walter Mondale's bid to replace Wellstone.

Now, Kahn is talking to KARE11's Kerri Miller.

For the interview, which was conducted Tuesday, Miller had Kahn, who was Wellstone's campaign treasurer and close friend, watch his speech, something she says he hadn't done for months. "What he told me was that when he sat down to write it, he was physically exhausted and numb and that as he wrote it, he felt Paul's presence."

Whatever Wellstones virtues, he was an amazingly irritating public speaker. His voice reminded me of Richard Simmons, and his style did nothing to alter that perception. At his worst - like at the last DFL convention - he was a nightmare; shrieking, bellowing, pulling out every cheap device to rouse the rabble, waving his arms like (sorry about the unfortunate comparison) Lenin at the Train Station. It worked for him, of course - he was nothing if not a live wire.

It didn't work for Kahn.

Here's the most interesting question:

Does Kahn say anything conclusive about whether any major Democrat vetted the speech prior to delivery?

"He addresses that," Miller said, coyly. "But I'm not going to give everything away here."

NOW I'm Worried - The

NOW I'm Worried - The left's been wrong about most everything when it comes to Iraq so far. It's been a generally-overwhelmingly-successful liberation, by all rational accounts.

But this could be troubling:

So all the way from Hollywood to the Iraqi holy city of Kerbala, five police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department - in Iraq as reservists with the US marines - have begun training local law enforcement in riot control tactics.

"Right now we're teaching them basic crowd control procedures, how we do it in Los Angeles. Yesterday we went over basic searching procedures, vehicle stops, just the very basic stuff you need to work patrol," said US serviceman Vincent Deglinnocenti.

Nah, best of luck to the guys. Can't blame them for Darrell Gates.

The Real Twin Cities Sports

The Real Twin Cities Sports Curse - OK, the Wild are flying high today after tying their series with the Canucks last night. I know this because I read it. Ever since my very brief stint as the rink announcer for my high school's hockey team, I have watched exactly one hockey game, and that was on a date.

But while I know more about osteopathic surgery than I do about hockey (which, indeed, only serves to draw attention away from baseball), I do know this: I'm worried.

There's a curse in Twin Cities sports: When Patrick Reusse stops grousing about you, you're doomed.

For those who haven't read his column or heard him in the various incarnations of "Sportstalk" on KSTP over the years, Reusse is "dyspeptic" in the same way that Anna Nicole Smith is "a little padded". He's built an entire career growling about sports teams' ineptitude. So when he stops grousing about your team's chances...

...then your team is doomed.

Oh, there've been exceptions. He called the '87 and '91 Twins right. But as a general rule (and by "rule", I mean "something I noticed, and am spinning a column out of"), if you're a team, your luck lasts only as long as Reusse's disdain for you.

So if you're the Wild, this...:

They will be back in GM Place tonight, where the last time the home folks saw them they were getting embarrassed 7-2 by these Wild. We still don't know what that animal is on the front of the Wild sweater, but we are now certain of this:

It's something that can't be killed.

But good luck, Wild. You've overcome a lot this year. It's unfair - but you can hopefully beat this, too.

"Chilling Effects" - While driving

"Chilling Effects" - While driving to pick up my son yesterday, I listened to nattering MSNBC nabob Jill Nelson on the Michael Medved Show. Nelson had just written an article, "A mean-spirited America" in which she claimed that she was more afraid of our government than of any foreign terrorist.

The interview was painful, of course. Nelson is a "Journalist" who never learned to substantiate her story, and Medved tore her apart for it. Her article lapses frequently into the type of paranoia that seems, in a backhanded way, to justify her premise.

It was almost more than I could handle to stay on the road, rather than to find some gas station and call Medved, when Nelson said things like:

These days, a sense of apprehension and foreboding lurks in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach. It’s a gut-wrenching reminder that something very bad has happened and is about to happen anew. It is an anticipation of the next insult and injury in an America that has been defined under the Bush administration by a profound meanness of spirit.

Mizz Nelson? You do realize that you sound exactly like the Apocalyptic Libertarians I used to know back when I was...well, an Apocalyptic Libertarian, back during the Clinton Adminstration, right? One of those people for whom the sky is always falling - because you can always see bits of it up above you? For whom every piece of evidence proves the premise, but then all lack of evidence also proves the premise? You do know this, right?

The piece is so invincible in its paranoia that fisking its nearly-invincible ignorance is probably like cleaning the living room while the kitchen and basement are on fire.

For example, Nelson says in one printed breath:

...to question this war and its aftermath is characterized as at worst treason and at best anti-American cynicism. And woe unto those who criticize Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root and the rest of the corporate sponsors of the Bush administration as they line up at the trough of government contracts to rebuild Iraq and control its oil.

Nor could Michael Medved get that answer from her. Oh, there was bleating about "chilling effects"; Nelson has supposedly "heard from many colleagues" who had supposedly "become reticent about criticizing the government". When presented with the sheer prevalence of the criticism before the war, and especially in the major media in the days before the final rush to Baghdad when things were looking dicey, Nelson said, in effect, "Er, that chilled things, too..".

She goes through several paragraphs of half-witted economic ignorance before she concludes the article:

Meanwhile, here in our great democracy, Americans go along with the program or remain silent, too afraid of the Muslim bogeymen thousands of miles away to recognize the Christian ones in our midst. Fearful that we will be verbally attacked, or shunned, or lose our livelihoods if we dare question the meanness that characterizes our government and, increasingly, defines our national character.

She was, of course, unswayed.

Three years ago, before the bloodless coup d’etat that made George W. Bush president, America was a far-from-perfect nation. Yet there was the possibility, almost gone now, that our country might evolve into a place that lived up to its loftiest democratic rhetoric. Today, I live in an America that makes my stomach hurt and fills me with terror. A nation run by greedy, frightened, violent bullies. It is time to take our country back before it is too late.

But that, of course, would have a chilling effect. And probably be hateful and "mean".

Absent a single example of any action taken against a critic, it'd seem Nelson's main point is this: Dissenting from me is mean. And paranoid. And bad. And poopyheaded.

Read the whole depressing thing.

Update - Got a job.

Update - Got a job.

Well, not a "job" in the sense of "steady long term work". It's more like a 1-2 week contracting job. But it'll stretch my unemployment a bit.

Nice to know I can still get 'em in the hoop...

The Way We News -

The Way We News - On the Today show this morning, Amy Jacobson of WMAQ TV did a report on some very shocking hazing at a high school in the Chicago area, where senior girls harassed junior girls under the pretext of a powederpuff football game, to "initiate" them into their senior year.

And I suppose the proceedings - beatings (including with a baseball bat), kicking, pummelling, pushing through the mud, force-feeding fecal matter - all in all, some pretty ghastly stuff that resulted in five injuries (stitches, broken bones) and a bacterial infection from the fecal matter. It seemed that at least five students videotaped the festivities.

And yet, what was the most jarring part of the report? To me, anyway?

In her report, Ms. Jacobson (one of whose associates went to the high school involved, and was familiar with an earlier, more innocent version of the initiation) described the way the event was carried out "back in the day".

I'd like to look ahead to Network News, 2010:

Yo yo yo, K Cou in Da House! Givin' a shout out to ma homies wit' da Columbia School of Journalism Possss-seeee!

Yo, word up for ma homey, M-Dog Lauer..."

Graham, Lieberman - I'd love

Graham, Lieberman - I'd love to see the Democrats nominate Howard Dean. He's got a lot of juju now among the far-left Democrat faithful. And he'd probably make George McGovern look good.

And I bet the Democrats know that. So I doubt Dean'll get through the primaries (but I'll certainly do my part).

No, I'm thinking the big three are going to be Kerry, Lieberman and Florida Senator Graham.

Aaaaaagh!

No, I'm not talking about their politics - or at least, not Lieberman's.

But if you've been following this blog any length of time, you'll know I place a high regard on speaking style. Dad was a speech teacher, and I worked in radio, and I value verbal expression and commnication. My political idols, of course, are Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.

And from a speaking standpoint, any of these three fossils would be a complete disaster.

With Kerry, you get all of Bill Clinton's smug condescension with none of the former president's facility at faux sincerity.

Joe Lieberman talks like I feel when I accidentally lose count of how many NyQuils I've had.

But Bob Graham may be the worst of all. Listening to him on the Today show this morning, he spoke like a guy whose thought processes just...don't...connect.

No, George W Bush is not a classically great orator - but at least he doesn't make me wonder what's going on in there...

More as the campaign develops.

You Know Who You Are - When you got over your infatuation with the "General Lee" and your childhood desire to be Bo Luke, you graduated to your real teenage desire - to be a fighter pilot.

That dream lasted about two months, until you were told that your 20/100 eyesight and atrocious reflexes would disqualify you from flight training. So you went on to your true vocation - processing titles for UltraTitle in Woodbury.

Your life has taken its bad turns; you're 36, can't get a date (although losing 50 pounds might do wonders, if you can find a very nearsighted woman who's got a thing for doughy faces), you have $12,000 in credit card debt and a ratty townhouse in Golden Valley, your 4x/week beer habit is making you crabby, you've been passed over for promotion to branch manager three times now, and more and more frequently you've been coming up on the wrong ends of the fights you start when your "little guy syndrome" mixes with your "liquid courage" on Friday nights at Champs.

But one part of the dream still remains, as you weave through traffic, pretending you're at the stick of an F-15E, swerving at 80mph through the 50mph traffic.

Which is what you were doing at 8:45 this morning on I-94, eastbound at Dale Street. You raced up behind the delivery truck in the middle lane, swerved out from behind him with about four feet to spare, rode up so close to my back bumper that my "Deserve Victory" sticker has "Dodge" imprinted onto it, and then swerved across two lanes of traffic with two inches to spare between me, the delivery truck and the Geo Metro to my immediate left.

So, on behalf of my son (who was in the seat next to me) and the people on the road this morning that you came one hiccup away from smearing along the nearest abutment, all I can say is this: I hope the extra donut you ate with the 12 seconds you saved yourself getting to work by driving like a ferret on espresso gave you heartburn, you piece of filth.

OK. I'm done.

That is all.

Swamped - Very busy today.

Swamped - Very busy today. I'll be posting this evening.

Til then!

In My Rear-View Mirror -

In My Rear-View Mirror - One of the most contentious issues in the recent concealed carry debate was the extent to which private and public establishments and property owners could post their property to bar concealed-carry permit-holders.

During the final debate on the subject, Senator Jane Ranum (Illiterate, Mpls) harped for a solid half hour on whether or not public university campuses would be able to bar everyone on campus, not just staff and students, from carrying. And Ellen Anderson (DFL, Alpha Centauri) wasted nearly an hour shrieking question after question about her abject horror at the notion of law-abiding, trained, permitted citizens carrying firearms at the State Fairgrounds.

Neither, of course, seemed to notice that there is no law regulating current permit holders in either of those places, or any other private property.

Anyway, the upshot of the law is that any privately-owned property open to the public - stores, y'know - has the right to post its entrances with a notice (of at least 187 square inches) barring firearms from the premises. If someone came in anyway, they were to be notified, and if they didn't leave, they'd be guilty of a misdemeanor with a $25 fine. This notion horrified some of those present (ignorant of the fact that current law has no such provision), who didn't consider that permit-holders - who, after ponying up $100 for the permit, more for the training course, and more yet for the pistol, are likely to be very scrupulously law-abiding - are likely to regard that misdemeanor very seriously. It could be used to revoke their permit or deny their renewal.

So the law covers those businesses that don't want law-abiding permit-holders on their property. Well, fair enough.

Whether I have a permit or not (and you can probably guess my sentiments), I think the proprietors that post their doors need to get a message, too.

I think I'm going to print up a box of these little numbers:

Even if you don't have a permit - if you think the law-abiding citizen is less a threat than everyone else that's carrying, you should find your own way of getting the message across.

State of Mitch - Today's

State of Mitch - Today's report:

• Still job-hunting. It's been four @#$@#% months. The world hasn't ended - that's good. But I'm not very graceful at waiting around.
• I had one job lead go away this week.
• But I had two more appear, including another interview this afternoon.
• Put it all together, at the moment, I have two leads where I've had fabulous interviews, but no decisions made yet; one where the company wanted desperately to hire me after my interview...two months ago; and two more where we'll just have to see.
• Still baking all my bread. I'm doing about four loaves a week, plus extra goodies.
• So I've been trying to switch to Movable Type for the last three weeks. Grrrrr. I hate hate hate it when LINUX geeks write installation documentation.
• My bagpipe test is coming up in about two weeks. I have to pass the test to stay with the class - if you flunk, you have to take private lessons to catch up. The lure of free lessons is pretty intense.
• Guitar update - I can still do 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, even though I've hardly played in the past three months. I feel like I've been neglecting an old friend. I'm going to put in some time, so the guitar doesn't feel jealous of the pipes...

Whither WMD - Debka reports

Whither WMD - Debka reports that Syria and Iraq colluded to ditch Iraq's WMDs:

Now, our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq’s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources say Washington was nevertheless far from placated and Powell’s meeting with the Syrian president Saturday was a confrontation. The secretary of state laid down the following demands:

1. A map with the coordinates of the pits holding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

2. Surrender of Saddam’s most senior insiders who fled to Aleppo and Latakiya. After DEBKAfile blew the whistle on April 3 [already covered in this space], the group staying at the Cote D’Azur De Cham Resort in Latakia was whisked away leaving their families comfortably ensconced there.

3. Handover of the two senior Al Qaeda members now in Damascus. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources say their names and whereabouts were uncovered by US intelligence units in Iraq.

4. An explanation of Syrian motives in allowing two British terrorists, Assif Hanif, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 30, and Omar Khan Sharif, who ran away, to transit Damascus en route to Israel. (One of the duo spent four months of preparation in the Syrian capital with the Hamas operations officer and associate of Hizballah Imad al-Alami, as reported exclusively by DEBKAfile.)

5. An immediate stop to the military-terrorist activities of the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. Failure to do so, Powell explained, will result in a painful tightening of economic pressure on Syria, after the loss of $1b in oil revenues from Baghdad.

As far as points 2 and 3 are concerned...

French Complicity - The French have allegedly been helping Iraqis flee Syria ahead of the apparent Syrian desire to comply with our demands, according to Bill Gertz:

The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned.

An unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam Hussein's government were given passports by French officials in Syria, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The passports are regarded as documents of the European Union, because of France's membership in the union, and have helped the Iraqis avoid capture, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Shocked the World. Shocked, I

Shocked the World. Shocked, I Tells Ya - Jesse Ventura's new TV show is having lots of trouble, says Drudge:

"[Ventura] has been having just a terrible time," says a source with direct ties to the project. "The rehearsals have been extremely trying. It doesn't look good."

He showed nearly no aptitude for broadcasting during his radio talk show - and TV is at least an order of magnitude more difficult.

Acquaintances of mine who worked with Ventura during his stint as a radio talk show host (probably ten years ago) and as governor all agree that the former governor is a galloping ego who's very difficult to work with.

None of this bodes very well.

Chomsky on Tolkien - Via

Chomsky on Tolkien - Via McSweeney's:

Chomsky: One of the problems with the perspective offered by the Man-Elf coalition is that you have to try so hard to get at the truth of the conflict, at what is really going on; it's so obscured by their propaganda and relentless militarism. I mean, here we have swords being distributed to the Hobbits by Strider so they can protect themselves against these "evil creatures." Now, in this case, it's probably warranted, though the "evil creatures" are looking for the ring in their own individual self-interest. They're behaving in a purely rational way.

Blinding Epiphany - Lileks has

Blinding Epiphany - Lileks has passed on one of the great talkradio secrets:

12:24 PM Note to people who feel compelled to begin talk-radio conversations with “long-time listener, first-time caller” - no one cares. Least of all the host.

The staff mercilessly mocks the schlemiels who start off their calls that way. Word to the wise; just don't do it.

However, "Long time caller, first-time listener" might get noticed. Maybe.

You're welcome.

Concealed Logic, Part XXV -

Concealed Logic, Part XXV - I don't, as a rule, turn to Laura Billings for reasoned, rational commentary on the issues.

Her Thursday column in the Pioneer Press, on last week's passage of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, did nothing to change that.

It seems fitting that today's National Day of Prayer comes just as Minnesotans must cope with the newly passed concealed carry handgun law.

Lord, protect us from half-cocked legislation like this.

After all, say supporters, this law is not about putting an estimated 70,000 more handguns on the streets of Minnesota, and shoring up a declining market for handguns.

It's not about repaying the National Rifle Association, which has been awfully generous to so many of our elected officials.

It's not even about pandering to those Second Amendment ideologues who think the Constitution guarantees them the right to pack heat at Gopher games and city council meetings.

Up to this point in the editorial, Billings was trumpeting her ignorance. Here, she turns into Miles Davis:

No, no, our new concealed carry law is all about being "consistent" with the way gun permits are issued in Minnesota. It's about creating a "uniform policy," in the words of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who complained on his radio show recently that the old law was "highly subjective,'' forcing many decent citizens to leave their sheriff's office with an empty holster.

This, despite the fact that a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension survey found that 93 percent of permit applicants got one in 2002.

Say that in Minneapolis, hypothetically, a rape victim receives instant care; is referred immediately and without fuss to a crisis counselor who works with police to gather the evidence in a sensitive yet efficient manner, to ensure the victim's dignity and catch the perp. In the meantime, in Winona, let's say hypothetically a rape victim is forced to wait in a holding cell, while allegations that she was wearing a miniskirt are sorted out.

Or how about this: In Bemidji, domestic abuse victims' complaints are dealt with immediately and fairly, while in Farmington, only victims who are friends with the DA can expect their complaints to be addressed.

Would Laura Billings tolerate either of these situations?

Yet a rape or domestic violence victim who decides she wants to carry a handgun to protect herself (or himself) and the family is routinely rejected in the Metro area (unless she's a crony of the police chief), while outstate the permits are fairly uniformly granted.

See the inconsistency?

Given our leaders' new obsession with uniformity and consistency, one can't help wondering why they're not equally interested in making sure that Minnesotans also pay a uniform and consistent percentage of their income in state and local taxes.

But what is it they say about consistency? It's the hobgoblin of small-caliber minds?

Well, now that we've joined the 34 other states that have had this sort of legislation ramrodded through their legislatures by NRA lobbyists, the organizations and officials forced to deal with the law's implications can't help noticing it has some rather unnerving holes in it.

But first - "Ramrodded through legislatures?" As if the 35 legislatures that have adopted these laws don't have any minds of their own?

Is that Ms. Billings' position? If they're that stupid, why are they voting on taxes, either?

For instance, the law has no requirement for state residency, meaning we are now poised to become the drive-through gun retailer to the upper Midwest, since neighboring states Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa have much more sensible laws. Is this really the way we want to shore up our economy?

Leave aside that any out-of-state applicants would have to meet exactly the same criteria as Minnesota residents. Once they've done that, they go back to Illinois or Wisconsin or Iowa...

...and the permit is no good! That's right, they could drive to Minnesota, spend $100 on the application and more than that on training, and get their permit, and then drive home to a state that doesn't recognize the permit at all, and where using it would be illegal!

Ms. Billings; I realize that you have to fill a certain number of column inches per month. But do try to think about these things before writing, OK?

Mental health "issues" could disqualify an applicant from receiving a concealed carry permit, but after the implementation of much stricter medical privacy rules last month, will sheriffs really have all the information they need to assess which applicants can be a risk to themselves or others?

Guns won't be allowed at the state Capitol, thus providing some protection to the legislators who passed the law. But guns can't be barred from city halls, the State Fairgrounds, or convention centers.

And thanks to the new law, the University of Minnesota Gophers sports teams could be under fire in whole new ways. Unlike private pro teams that can bar gun holders at the door, or high schools that can ban guns from prep sports events, it seems the university can only prohibit students and staff from carrying guns on its property. It would have no authority over spectators, or even fans from rival schools. Imagine how much fun next year's Frozen Four riot could be.

Sure, shootings happen at city halls and at arenas and at state fairs around the country. But legal permit-holders carry out almost none of them.

Unlike Ms. Billings' paranoid fantasies, that is in fact reality in all 34 "shall issue" states.

It seems odd that legislators so concerned with "uniform policy" didn't offer the Senate the chance to amend some of these inconsistencies.

Unfortunately, this sort of ideologically driven legislation is entirely consistent with the new sheriffs at the Capitol, who are determined to shoot holes through the sensible policies that once made our little home on the prairie an oasis of safety and sanity.

Tell her how "safe" and "sane" our policy is.

Er...was.

Lord, have mercy...

Again, I know that I have readers in the Pioneer Press building - I see the entries on my hit logs. Please pass the word to Ms. Billings - I reiterate my challenge to debate the actual issue with her, in any forum of her choosing.

Today - Now and Then

Today - Now and Then - The Today show last month: worrying about the pace of the war.

The Today show this morning; a skateboarding bulldog.

Innocence - Maybe it's just

Innocence - Maybe it's just my normal dyspepsia returning after a really nice weekend.

Maybe it's my 40-year-old brain looking at 21-year-old college kids and feeling like I'm looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

Maybe it's my inner history nerd and my internal social critic getting together, splitting a twelve-pack of James Page, listening to The Alarm and leaping to their feet looking for some butt to kick.

But I'm not quite sure how to react to this piece in today's Strib, about the young composer from St. Olaf College whose first major work, "Christine's Lullaby", received its debut performance at the Minnesota Youth Symphonies concert at Orchestra Hall today.

The piece - an elegy to the youngest victim of 9/11, Christine Hansen of Groton, Connecticut - has been getting great reviews. Lileks was there, and he loved it. It's apparently good neoclassical music - something the world needs more of.

But the composer - Carl Schroeder - had this to say in the Strib article:

"It all became symbolic for me. Christine became a symbol of the senselessness of human violence. It seemed to me the story was being made so complicated -- about a clash of civilizations and about the event reshaping the world -- when what really happened on September 11 was the death of innocence, the loss of our innocent future," Schroeder said.

I'm a dad. When I see the outrages committed upon us, especially to our children, I don't see our nation "losing its innocence", like an eight-year-old hearing her parents fight over what the Easter Bunny's going to leave.

We're more like a guy lying on a beach chair with a beer, who sees his child is walking into traffic. We lose our sense of purposelessness.

Mr Schroeder continues:

He sifted through news of her family's story and found a Web site dedicated to the memory of Christine and her parents, packed with remembrances and condolences. Reading them, he said, "It felt like Christine had become a little more real."

But I'll look forward to hearing the piece.

Allies - Our most powerful

Allies - Our most powerful ally in terms of numbers of troops and hitting power during the Cold War was West Germany.

They built the largest army that their post-war constitution would allow, with the aid of a draft that stopped just barely shy of Swiss-style National Service. During the Vietnam and Carter years, the German military looked down its noses at the quality and fighting ability of the US Army - justifiably so.

But the radical reversal of US doctrine after Vietnam, and the end of the Cold War, have reversed the old roles. Today, the German Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces) are still a largely conscript force - but the conscripts' training has been cut to a fraction of its Cold War level. In the meantime, the budget to train and equip this large force of draftees has been slashed even further. The result, according to this fascinating article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, has left the German military a husk of its former self.

While German professional troops - the HSK commandos and Fallschirmjäger paratroopers that served in Afghanistan - are excellent, the conscripts are a sort of Peace Corps with guns, prompting calls to abolish the draft and create a volunteer, professional military that can actually fight:

After decades of priding itself on its “peace force,“ Germany's “civil society“ is now opposing an “intervention force,“ which is probably why Struck and the entire government do not want all too much military intervention. And this is also why the military draft will only be modified rather than being restructured to fit the war concept of the 21st century.
The Germans are closing their eyes to the globalization of threats. After all, if things get serious, that is what the Americans are there for. Those who believe this are happy to keep the current oversized but underfinanced and poorly equipped Bundeswehr.
Real warriors - which any army needs - are hard to find in the Bundeswehr, as became clear when a commander was asked recently to explain the Bundeswehr's mission. He cited peacekeeping missions, the deployment of conscripts as “nurses“ in the Balkans, and the German military's role in combating natural disasters. All the while, the U.S. military is widening its lead over Germany in terms of military equipment to the point that the two forces cannot be deployed together anymore.

So the solution seems clear right?

Ah, but not in a nation run by a Sozialdemokraten (Think John Marty in lederhosen)/Green coalition.

The Bundeswehr's political and military leadership is hesitating to make the necessary decisions in favor of quality at the expense of quantity. But is the concept of a small but powerful mobile force built around professional soldiers, with just a minor role reserved for draftees, really a viable option? The answer is yes. Only thus can the Bundeswehr save what remains of its military substance.

Cry "Unilateral Quagmire" - Two

Cry "Unilateral Quagmire" - Two months ago, the left was up in arms (so to speak) about the lack of other countries willing to send troops to help in Iraq.

As we predicted in this space last summer, now that liberation is a fait accompli, a good chunk of the rest of the world is signing up under a new US plan to split Iraq in to three and possibly four zones, controlled by US, UK, Polish and possibly Indo/Pakistani troops:

Under the planning, the British would maintain a headquarters to command a multinational division to be based in Basra and elsewhere in southern Iraq. That division would be made up of a British brigade and possibly forces from other nations, including Spain and Italy, which are expected to send troops.

Poland would also command a division and has offered to contribute a brigade of troops.

That has to gall the French. During the war proper, the Poles contributed a commando company, a logistics ship, and a chemical warfare unit - maybe 300 men and women all told. The Poles defied French orders to close ranks with the Franco-Belgian EU against the war.

Now, they've leapfrogged into the position the French (and the UN) thought would be rightfully theirs.

The Australians, who have sent special forces to Iraq, are expected to keep a small military presence in Iraq. Other nations that are expected to contribute troops include Bulgaria, Denmark, Ukraine and the Netherlands.

Three more nations — the Philippines, Qatar and South Korea — have agreed to make other contributions, including field hospitals, engineers, and civil defense and mine-clearing specialists, the official said.

A senior allied official said today there had been discussions about the possibility of troop contributions from India and Pakistan, creating yet another division of troops.

A recent and largely symbolic contribution is the deployment of some 200 Albanian soldiers.

As of now, however, the American-led effort pointedly excludes France, Germany and Russia, three nations that actively opposed the war.

A fierce fight over the role the United Nations will have in postwar Iraq is expected to be fought in Washington, New York and the capitals of Europe and the Middle East over the next few weeks.

It's Sunday - Usually, weekends

It's Sunday - Usually, weekends are big for blogging. A trip through the Sunday paper is always great blog fodder.

But I'm taking it easy this weekend. My reading has found a few things I'm dying to write about...

...but I'm not! Not yet, anyway. I have some family things to do, and a few "Mitch's Mental Health" things as well.

But I'll be back at it tonight and/or tomorrow. The blog never sleeps...

My Winamp's Last Five Songs

My Winamp's Last Five Songs - in reverse order:

1. She Said, the Beatles.
2. Porkpie Hat, Charles Mingus.
3. You Could Make a Killing, Aimee Mann.
4. 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Richard Thompson.
5. The Rising, Springsteen.

Minnesota Codependent - In the

Minnesota Codependent - In the past month, the left in Minnesota's been in a state of mourning. "Minnesota Nice" is apparently dead.

The Strib ran an excellent series a few weeks ago, by Steve Berg (no relation) and Dave Hage, which summed up much of Minnesota's current problem:

In our worst moments, we are still the people Sinclair Lewis so painfully revealed. Smug. Quietly self-congratulatory. For us, Minnesota is pretty good, and pretty good is good enough. Lewis called it "the contentment of the quiet dead."

Institutional Minnesota and the Minnesotans that love it are really genuinely knotted up about "Minnesota Nice". And they're invoking it in some very revealing ways lately .

The first was earlier in the legislative session, when the budget "cuts" were first floated. The nattering nabobs bemoaned "the Death of Minnesota Nice". Note the parallel - Minnesota Nice equals state programs and budgets.

Then, last week, during the debate on the Concealed Carry Reform bill, some of the anti demonstrators carried signs: "Guns aren't Minnesota Nice". Note, again, the parallel - Minnesota Nice equals a state monopoly on self-defense.

Minneota Nice = the Minnesota State Government.

Now, let's forget the absurdity of anthropomorphizing an inanimate body like government with human qualities like "nice" for just a moment. Let's take it at face value.

The people of Minnesota are in a relationship with this anthropomorphous body; let's call it "State". "State" demands a lot; if you don't spend enough on her, she gets peevish; if you don't give her enough attention at election time, she acts neglected, but if you pay her too much attention she wants more space. She assumes all the power - "I can never trust you with it..." - and then mishandles it. The focus is always on her and her needs.

And in exchange for all this fiscal and emotional attention, we get...passive/aggression cloaked as "nice". Enablement of a genuine addiction, plus she's inviting all her friends to the party. If we only refrain from disturbing here, she'll keep being "nice" to us; we're too tired to want to fight about it anymore.

In other words, Minnesota and Minnesotans are in a codependent, dysfunctional relationship. Even a little abusive; the abuse is all psychological, of course, but it's there, the constant threats of disaster if you don't do things her way,

Which is a shame, because the partnership used to work! When both of you were "giving" in the relationship, it was wonderful! But then she started taking you for granted, and all her old patterns started happening again.

Dysfunctional relationships can be fixed, of course. She needs to learn some boundaries. And we need to have the courage to be selfish enough to make some space in the relationship for ourselves - to give ourselves some of the focus we need.

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. And "Minnesota Nice" isn't just nice.

(I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggonit...)

This Battle Was Settled -

This Battle Was Settled - James Lileks likes the Macintosh.

Glenn Reynolds prefers the PC.

They're both wrong. There'll never be another NeXT.

Hillary! - Nick Gillespie on

Hillary! - Nick Gillespie on why Hillary!'s new book is likely to be a complete dog:

Spell-binding memoirs, especially by political figures, are based on revelation; the form is inherently confessional. While Clinton certainly has access to first-rate material—both in terms of politics and in terms of a one-handed read—her entire public persona is built upon obfuscation, privacy, and stoicism in the face of public humiliation. Seneca himself caved under pressures far lighter than those generated by the revelations of Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinski, not to mention Travelgate, Whitewater, and the Vince Foster suicide. Such personality characteristics hardly mark her as exceptional in politics—indeed, they are the tools of the trade. But no one wants to read a memoir by a politician who doesn't take off the mask, and it doesn't seem as if Clinton's will be slipping any time soon. Occasionally, a politician can engage the public with a boilerplate political tract—Barry Goldwater managed this difficult trick with The Conscience of a Conservative—but Clinton's political program is already widely known and several volts short of electrifying.

Which means her only route to reader interest is going tell-all. She may or may not be the "congenital liar" that William Safire once swore she was, but does anyone really think she's more likely to dish now that she's a sitting senator and future presidential candidate? Although accounts of her emotional life have found their way into public view, it's unfathomable that she will discuss such material in a way that will satisfy the reading public. What will she really have to say about her relationship with a husband who is a serial philanderer and an embarrassment even to many of his defenders? Very little.

Stay tuned.

Duty Calls - Yet another

Duty Calls - Yet another job interview coming up. I'll probably post a bit later today.

Free Speech - A fair chunk of the blogosphere is up in arms about this incident, where the William Morris Agency is taking legal action against "BoycottHollywood.com".

Some, including are pitching this as a sign of Hollywood's hypocrisy.

But reading the letter on the site above, it seems as if this is more akin to a spam case; BoycottHollywood is asking people to spam, essentially, the Morris Agency. Morris, in its letter, claims that it's wrong to attribute "artists''" political views to their agency.

And, despite my doubts that you'll ever find a Republican at Morris, I think they're right. BoycottHollywood's approach pretty much solicits harassment.

Is Hollywood hypocritical about individual liberties? Of course. I just don't think this case proves it.

It's For The Children Soldiers

It's For The Children Soldiers - One of the things I detested about Bill Clinton (and still detest about Senator Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis) was the way he'd find some way to squeeze "the children" into any debate, or even "casual" political remark (as if he had any of those).

CLINTON: "Well, Boy Scout Troop 227 of Ottumwa, Iowa, welcome to the White House. For the sake of the children, don't touch the furniture..."

While campaigning Tuesday, Kerry said some people overreacted to the remark. The decorated Vietnam War veteran also repeated his frustration with GOP congressional leaders who never served in the military but used the remark to assail Kerry's patriotism.

''When I fought in Vietnam and fought for my country, I didn't give up my right to make quips and to participate in the debate,'' the lawmaker said.

I can see it now.

"When I was slogging through that rice paddy with my M-16 in my hand, I never thought I'd be discussing capital gains tax cuts...".

On the bright side; maybe this whole flap, and clumsy way of extricating himself, will be to him what "Poland is Free" was to Gerald Ford...