Shot In The Dark

Implosion - I got this

Implosion - I got this story from Vodkapundit, and I think it's great news. The Senate has ratified a plan to allow North Korean refugees into the US.

The plan has some strange bedfellows:

"The US Senate recently passed a measure that would allow North Korean asylum seekers to apply for refugee status in the US, a move that is expected to be supported soon by the full Congress.

Some US officials are concerned that North Korean advocate groups are pushing the change as a way of 'imploding' Kim Jong-il's regime. The advocate groups draw parallels with the fall of communist Europeafter huge refugee movements out of eastern bloc countries destablised the regimes there.

But accepting North Korean refugees received strong support across the political spectrum in the US Senate. It was sponsored by senators Sam Brownback, a Republican, and Ted Kennedy, a Democrat."

Vodkapundit points out that, while the idea has its downsides (read his piece), it has some hopeful historical precedents:

If you'll recall, after Soviet Premier Gorbachev declared an end to the Brezhnev Doctrine, Czechoslovakia and Hungary started to freely hand out travel visas for points west -- even to East Germans. The floodgates were opened, and, before long, East Germany looked on the weekends like a Old West ghost town made of bad concrete. Not long after that, of course, the Wall came down and we had a single Germany.

It's hard for a totalitarian state to allow just a little freedom, as China and Iran are also discovering.

Naturally, the idea has opponents:

Previous attempts by Congress to encourage refugees from North Korea have been blocked by successive US governments concerned about opposition from China and South Korea. Legally, North Koreans are considered citizens of South Korea and not entitled to refugee status in the US.

But since the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, North Korean human rights organisations and refugee advocates are winning enormous influence in Washington.

Vodkapundit, by way of mild disagreement with the plan, writes:

South Korea has fewer than 50 million people, and while they've made great strides, their per capita income is still only up to that of modern Poland. They aren't poor, but they aren't nearly as rich as West Germany was. In addition, their economy isn't as mature or robust, as the Asian Financial Crisis of a couple years back showed.

Up north are 22 million of their starving brethren. Before the Communist dictatorship, they lived a brutal existence as virtual slaves of Japan. "Chosen," as Tokyo called Korea, was annexed by the Japanese Empire 93 years ago. It's safe to say that there is no one in North Korea with any experience living in a politically modern, free, democratic, or tolerant state. Travel is forbidden. Only a small handful of South Koreans are allowed north. There is only one radio station, and it runs nothing but the foulest sort of propaganda. And according to a story in US News & World Report a few weeks ago, North Korea even has concentration camps bigger than the District of Columbia.

Through no fault of their own, the people of North Korea simply aren't ready to enter the modern world, and South Korea can't afford to feed, house, re-educate, and re-civilize them all.

Whether or not there's a war, when North Korea collapses there's going to be a humanitarian crisis on a scale the world has never seen -- 22 million scared, hungry, and desperate people left without any semblance of anything familiar.

Much worth a read, here, including some great comments to Vodkapundit's article.

Hoist the Boats? - A

Hoist the Boats? - A response, in Reason, to the IT outsourcing story.

Alan Cooper - a Bay area GUI design guru, and one of the people who got me into my current line of wor, once famously predicted that by 2020, American software companies would consist of

• Project managers
• GUI Designers (fingers crossed)
• System and Data Architects
• Business Analysts
• Technical writers, who'd take the product of all that analysis, architecture and design, and bundle it all up into specifications to send over to India, Russia, China and Poland, where all the programmers would live.

Last weeks' infamous IBM story, of course, could well bode ill for the code-geek market in the US. But not all, apparently, is lost:

"According to people who actually negotiate outsourcing contracts for a living, your costs are more like $22 an hour for each warm body once all the third-party finders' fees are paid. An experienced programmer's take in India would be around $11,000 out of total cost of over $40,000. That's still quite a gap from the $60,000 an American might demand but once the all-important question of productivity is factored in, it may not be much of a bargain.

Simply put, once you leave the U.S. you are leaving behind the world's best, most proven pool of programmers. That's is not to say that there aren't excellent programmers in Russia, China, India, and elsewhere. But large-scale, world-changing software development ain't easy. The Net bubble devalued just how hard it is to build neat technology.

He's right, of course. I've worked on offshored software development - it's freqently not pretty. And th dotcom boom did create a pseudo-romantic mystique - the code-slinging ubergeek who could create killer code in a month of 32-hour days, then cash out bigtime - that doesn't jibe with the real world building of software.

So maybe not all is lost, here.

Boomerang - The latest capitol

Boomerang - The latest capitol "scandal" seems to be nipping at Mike Hatch as well.

It seems that, after the news media ran the story that Commerce Commissioner Glenn Wilson had agreed to a "controversial" settlement with United American Insurance company, word slipped out that Mike Hatch had worked for UAI.

The legislative auditor's office also confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the agreement with United American, which contained clauses preventing the Commerce Department from notifying the news media, other state insurance agencies and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a national regulatory group, about the settlement.

"Our focus is on what is in the consent order that Commissioner Wilson signed, and did that comply with the department's legal obligations," Legislative Auditor James Nobles said.

And I'll be looking for that report when it comes out.

He said that the investigation of the settlement will be part of the auditing agency's regular review of the Commerce Department and that he expects to release a report within a month.

Weaver took direct aim at Hatch.

"He was the hired gun for this insurance company," Weaver said.

In 1992, Hatch defended United American, of McKinney, Texas, when it was fined $65,000 by the Commerce Department for selling unapproved policies.

More as the auditor's report comes out.

Fearless predictions for when that report sees the light of day:

• Glenn Wilson's controversial consent decree will have been written at the behest of someone in the Attorney General's Office.
• The story will have been leaked from a DFL-sympathizing civil service employee in the Commerce Department.

Just hunches.

Zzzzzzzzzz - Gaaah, I'm tired

Zzzzzzzzzz - Gaaah, I'm tired today.

Thank goodness for these little contract jobs - because my "real" job leads have all tanked this week. The "dream job", sources tell me, was pretty well decided before the first interview. Two other decent-looking possibilities cratered before that. There are three more possibilities - none of which will develop into anything until at least late next month. And the local job market seems to have taken another late-month downturn.

So the Berg Consumer Confidence Index is down around 4 today, with a possible 6 if I hear about any more contract jobs. Rumors abound. As usual.

I'm thinking I need to toss Emmylou Harris's Greatest Hits (Vol 1) in the CD on the way to work. Sometimes there's no substitute.

UPDATE: And no sooner do I post this depressing screedlet than Dice.com comes through with a couple new leads.

Hope springs infernal!

UPDATE 2: And Monster has another! Wow. A guy could get hopeful!

Letter From Iraq - Lt.

Letter From Iraq - Lt. Smash responds to a Canadian critic of the war who wrote to him on his blog:

A couple of months ago, I visited a village in southern Iraq.

That is to say, I visited the site of a former village in southern Iraq.

You see, it’s not there anymore. Saddam demolished it in 1991, after some of the inhabitants participated in the Shiite uprising. It was only a few square blocks of concrete buildings, but they had all been leveled, and were overgrown with desert weeds.

In the middle of one of those demolished buildings, I came across a single shoe. It was a very small tennis shoe, such as might be worn by a five-year old boy. It was covered in dust, cracked and faded.

I took a photo of that shoe with my non-digital camera.

The people who live in the nearby town don’t know what happened to the inhabitants of that village—but it’s a fair guess that they probably were buried in unmarked graves, or dumped in the nearby river.

Contrary to [the Canadian critic's] claims, the people of Iraq had been trying to overthrow Saddam for twelve years before we decisively intervened, and had repeatedly requested international assistance. But Chris asserts that no intervention would be valid without the blessing of the United Nations (Kosovo?), ignoring the “serious consequences” clause of Security Council resolution 1441.

All of this is beside the point.

How many more villages had to be destroyed before an intervention was justified? How many women raped? How many families massacred? How many more children had to die?

From the verdant green forests of peaceful British Columbia, it’s easy for [the Canadian critic] to argue that the war violated Iraqi sovereignty, the principle of self-determination, and the UN charter.

But in the grim reality of the Iraqi desert, such arguments ring hollow.

The answer harkens back to my post about the "peace"makers this morning: it's not about people. It's about agendas, and about fulfilling the very letter of feeling good about oneself in the most legalistic sense of the term.

One of the left's favorite aphorisms when proposing costly, intrusive regulations and taxes: "If we can save even one life...

We'll, we've saved more than one life with our liberation of Iraq. We've saved, by a conservative count, thousands already - more than were killed by American action during the liberation, certainly.

But it's only the lives saved by punishing Americans - our achievements, merits, and dreams - that count, apparently. The lives of all those brown, Moslem people must not count.

Crack of Doom - As

Crack of Doom - As the relatively moderate Democratic Leadership Conference yells into the void that the party is swinging too far to the left (at a conference attended by none of the Nine Dwarves), the new poll by former Clinton pollster Mark Penn shows that Americans might be seen to agree.

The party still has solid support from the core of Roosevelt's coalition - union members, minorities and the working poor - said pollster Mark Penn. It also enjoys solid support from gays and Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority.

But less than one-third of Americans now consider themselves Democrats, down from 49 percent at their peak in 1958. And Democrats lag well behind Republicans among other growing groups of voters whose loyalties swing back and forth between parties and who hold the key to close elections - including suburbanites, professionals and middle-class families with children. That leaves the party in a poor position to build the new coalition it needs to beat President Bush and build an enduring majority in an evenly divided country.

"In terms of the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats, the Democratic Party is currently in its weakest position since the dawn of the New Deal," Penn told a gathering of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of centrist Democrats. "Exciting the Democratic base alone will not bring enough voters into the Democratic fold."

Worrisome for the Dems - the GOP leads among everyone whose lot in life seems to be improving - which is most Americans, recession aside. And it gets worse for the Dems:

One key problem, Penn and others said, is that Democrats are perceived as catering to a political base that is losing its electoral clout in a changing country. When likely voters are asked which party they prefer, Democrats still hold an edge among many groups. Union members and gays prefer Democrats over Republicans by 43 percentage points, and African-Americans and the working poor do by 41 percentage points, Penn found.

But Republicans have an edge of 15 percentage points among suburban voters, 21 percentage points among professionals, and 29 percentage points among white-collar workers.

The Penn poll of 1,225 likely 2004 voters was conducted June 29-July 1 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

"The decline of manufacturing jobs and the shift from cities to suburbs and exurbs, and the dramatic increases in college education and white collar and professional jobs, do not favor the Democrats," Penn said.

The moderate Democrats are locked in the 1970s, thinking taxation (but not too much of it!) will solve our ills. The left - the base - is ping-ponging between the thirties and the sixties - foaming with rage at corporate America, and pursuing a policy of unilateral castration in foreign policy.

At a time when they need a Harry Truman or a John F. Kennedy, they've got eight Abby Hoffmans (Hoffmen?) and a Lyndon Johnson for good measure.

Nine to Five - Or

Nine to Five - Or seven-thirty to five-thirtyish, anyway. Back for three more days' work at a fine local company that's having me back for a third contract engagement in three months.

If I can get one of these per month, I can break more or less even. Two per month, and I'll be just a tad ahead of the game.

Dream job tanked yesterday. Suffice to say, Post-Its (TM) are in, the card you shouldn't leave home without is out.

More posting later.

Cave-In - As I noted

Cave-In - As I noted yesterday, the Pentagon caved on using the Futures Market as a tool to help predict terror.

Instapundit and Postrel both write about this today - Postrel links to this excellent piece by Hal Varian.

I have only this to add; this idea was scuppered by two things: the hatred of Democrats for the word "Market", and the unwillingness of too many Republicans to think out of the box.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Peacemakers - The old saying

Peacemakers - The old saying The pen is mightier than the sword could only have been coined by someone who never had to bet his life on it.

Fun aphorism, right? I've always liked that one. I always thought a friend of mine coined it - although he tells me I did. Going, going...

Here's another fun aphorism, credited to a high school teacher of Dinesh D'Souza's:If Hitler had ruled India, Gandhi would have been a lampshade.

I love aphorisms!

So do the "Southern Minnesota Peacemakers". I've been reading this site for a few days, trying to figure out exactly what to write about them, after first encountering their website via a picture on Rachel Lucas' site.

And after three days (give or take) of stewing on it, I still have no idea what to write.

I thought about something pithy and dismissive, like P.J. O'Rourke's description of a World Council of Churches delegation to a rally in Washington, "...people who have self-righteousness like some people have bad breath". Read the site - it fits.

I thought, "maybe Rachel Lucas has the right idea - call everyone involved an assclown and call it square". But that's intellectually unsatisfying, and it only ennobles your opponent.

I even thought, maybe it'd be good to call then on their creaking ignorance of history, which is on hilarious display on their homepage. No, it's not the quote by Jeannette Rankin (a congresswoman who voted against declaring war on Japan, on December 8, 1941 - sort of the Paul Wellstone of her day) - her quote is standard fare among the groaningly self-righteous among the peace movement. Funnier is the Boake Carter quote. Carter was a CBS radio commentator from the 1930's and '40s, famous for making up the news and eventually sliding off the right wing into territory that'd make Pat Buchanan blanche and Lyndon LaRouche giggle with joy; he once called Franklin D. Roosevelt a greater threat to world peace than Adolph Hitler.

Of course, their opposition to the new concealed carry law provides a wealth of material. Read the page - its big sources of information are Michael Moore (a story that's been debunked as a fraud from "Bowling for Columbine", at that!) and Chris Rock, and a DFL-appointee former police chief with a vested political interest in opposing concealed carry.

But none of it quite rang the big bell for me.

Then, while reading Instapundit this morning, it all came together - in a piece by Charles M. Brown, "Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist", in the Middle East Forum. The whole article is worth a read - it's going into my permanent bookmarks for future reference - but there are a few money quotes, here:

What did we know about Iraq? Hardly anything. Stephen Zunes, a "progressive" activist academic, once acknowledged that "peace activists largely share with most Americans a profound ignorance of the Middle East, Islam, and the Arab world."[6] This was certainly true for our group, but we didn't give it much thought. We saw ourselves as people of action, not reflection. Did we really need to learn the intricacies of Iraqi history and politics and plumb the broader political and economic issues? Who wanted to sit in the library when there were prayer vigils to organize? We opted to march, fast, and hold our signs. Here was a new cause, in need of champions, and that's just what we were. Iraqi sanctions had to go!

Why, indeed, learn the intricacies of Middle Eastern history (the Peacemakers reference the sanctions on their site) or shall-issue (their site isn't even riddled with inaccuracies - just Moore's fictions and the self-adulatory bloviations of sympathetic politicians) or any other issue where violence is a possible byproduct?

No, indeed - it's all about our agenda - and when you're an activist, the agenda is you, and you are your agenda!

We were so preoccupied with our own agenda that we didn't notice or care that the regime made use of us. When critics asked us whether the group was being exploited by the Iraqi regime, we obfuscated, and in so doing put Saddam and his minions on the same level as the U.S. government

Truth, objectivity, moral right and wrong - none of them hold a candle to the Agenda! And we are the agenda, right?

It's the message, dammit! It's not what you do, it's the message you send!

But it's OK - because unlike the activists you model yourself after - Martin Luther King, the Berrigans, Desmond Tutu - there are no real consequences. No snipers, no jail time...

All of these interrelated social movements are characterized by "dramaturgy"—the combination of drama and liturgy, with ostensible prayers for peace and dramatic protest action in the face of significant jail terms. For some of these activists, dramaturgical protest has become nearly synonymous with other (traditional) Catholic sacraments, as exemplified by the title of Jesuit priest John Dear's popular volume, The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience...in December 1998, Voices was notified that it was to be fined a total of $163,000 by OFAC. Nothing further happened until Bert Sacks, a Seattle member, was actually served with a $10,000 fine by OFAC in May 2002. Sacks declined to pay the fine, seeing it as unethical to give money to the government he saw as responsible for the situation in Iraq.

So with its own version of Berrigan-esque "dramaturgy," Voices fancied itself as heir to the mantle of the Catholic ultra-resistance, the Berrigans, and the Plowshares movement. There was just one problem: we refused the punishments that we defied the government to impose on us. The Berrigans were sentenced to significant jail terms and served years in prison for their protest activities. Voices always refused the (few) fines levied on it and escaped serious consequences.

Remember the Twin Cities' "Honeywell Project", which staged vigils for years outside various Honeywell plants? Hundreds of symbolic, "plastic handcuff" arrests - no jail time. Such a sacrifice!

OK - so compare the examples above - and in Brown's article - with what you read on the "Peacemakers" website. Especially read this snide little photo essay, featuring group poobah Chuck Handlon.

What's it scream? "It's all about me! MY beliefs! MY moral certitude! MY views! MY right to protest the injustices I see (absent any consequences to ME, of course)!"

Look at that smug little T-shirt; "Carries No Gun". Read the group's list of values:

# We will harbor no anger, but suffer the anger of the opponent.
# We will refuse to return the assaults, verbal or physical of the opponent. What opponents? What assaults? You're a bunch of pseudo-religious poseurs in ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA!
# We will refrain from insults and swearing. As should all of us!
# We will protect opponents from insults or attack. Really? Let's debate Shall-Issue. Let's see how your group protects it's opponents from insults; I've yet to meet an anti-shall-issue person who won't resort to insult, implied or explicit, sooner than later.
# If arrested, we will behave in an exemplary manner. We will not evade the legal consequences of our actions.But we won't be going out asking for the maximum potential fine, or insisting on metal handcuffs when we get our whiffleball arrests, will we?
# As members of a nonviolent demonstration, we will follow the directions of the designated coordinators. In the event of a serious disagreement, we will remove ourselves from the action. But since you're only going to events where there is no coherent opposition (right? Right?), that's not really going to be an issue, is it?
# Our attitude as conveyed through words, symbols and actions will be one of openness, friendliness, and respect toward all people we encounter, including police officers and workers. On your website, you tout the City of Duluth's "Guns Not Welcome" sign campaign, a pet project of ultraliberal Gary Doty. As a citizen who has never so much as stolen a candy bar in my life, I do not find this "open, friendly and respectful" - it is, in fact, corrosively bigoted.
# We will not damage property. Nor should you.
# We will not bring or use any drugs or alcohol. Whatever floats your boat!
# We will not run or use threatening motions. Er...that's common sense...
# We will carry no weapons. That'd be inconsistent, now, wouldn't it?

it's all about buffing the "peacemaker's" sense of invincible self-righteousness to a fine sheen, without fear of that self-righteousness being challenged in any meaningful way.

And maybe an unwillingness to face any challenge - a request for an email interview went unanswered.

It's still out there.

??? - Either Blogger is

??? - Either Blogger is acting wierd, or my server is.

UPDATE: It was my server.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Instapundit reports that the Pentagon's DARPA think tank has proposed a "Futures Market", where experts could "bet" on the likelihood and means of different types of terrorist attacks.

Here's how it'd work:

Traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The Pentagon called its latest idea a new way of predicting events and part of its search for the "broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."

Two senators - including North Dakota's Byron Dorgan - have been rolling in troughs of press coverage for criticizing the plan:

...Dorgan of North Dakota, said the idea seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax. "Can you imagine," Mr. Dorgan asked, "if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in — and is sponsored by the government itself — people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure?"

After Mr. Dorgan and his fellow critic, Ron Wyden of Oregon, spoke out, the Pentagon sought to play down the importance of a program for which the Bush administration has sought $8 million through 2005. The White House also altered the Web site so that the potential events to be considered by the market that were visible earlier in the day at www.policyanalysismarket.org could no longer be seen.

But by that time, Republican officials in the Senate were privately shaking their heads over the planned trading. One top aide said he hoped that the Pentagon had a good explanation for it.

I'm hoping the Pentagon uses the one really good explanation there is for such an idea.

It works.

The Pentagon, among others, have used the idea of the wager (and what is a futures market but informed wagering about commodities and events rather than sports?) to great effect.

Ironically, I just read about one of the most dramatic examples yesterday. In 1969, a Navy submarine, the USS Scorpion, disappeared on its way home from the Mediterranean. Craven - a primary architect of the nuclear power and Polaris missile programs - was one of many Navy scientists involved in trying to find the sub. They had very few clues to work from - a number of ambiguous sonar echoes from explosions, mainly.

Craven and many other scientists analyzed the data, and came up with several possible conclusions - although Craven's conclusion disagreed with most others (he believed that the submarine was east, rather than west, of the source of the original explosion.

Finally, to resolve the mystery, he gathered up all the information available (as well as some simulations he'd carried out), and put it in front of a group of experts. Each expert weighed the information in front of him, and wagered a bottle of Chivas Regal on their respective results.

Most of the bets trended toward a point east of the original echo. When a deep-submergence vehicle finally went to the scene (after fruitless weeks searching west of the echo, where the Navy brass felt it would be), the Scorpion was found - about 1000 yards from where Craven and most of the parties to the bet thought it would be.

The lesson? Opinions - and theories - are like, er, eyeballs. Just about everyone has a couple. But wagering - assigning a value to your theory - forces people to, as it were, put their money where their mouths are.

Josh Chafetz sums up the advantages:

Knowledge and expertise are widely diffused in any society. As I explained at length in a post on Hayek last year, complex systems function by finding ways to aggregate diffuse knowledge into simple indices, which then allow actors in the system to take advantage of knowledge that they don't actually have (e.g., no one knows exactly what Americans' breakfast cereal preference orderings are, but by watching the information-aggregating index that we call "price," producers can generally ensure that, when you go to the supermarket, you'll find the brand you want. Compare that to the shortages of some items and overproduction of others that centrally planned economies have produced). A futures market in terrorist attacks, while it sounds grisly, may help us to aggregate diffuse knowledge in a way that will prove superior to expert knowledge.

Wagering has the effect of forcing people to cut through the theories, clarify their thought processes, and get to the answers.

So what's the problem? Apparently, to Byron Dorgan, it's just not right, applying market principles - Gambling! - to predicting the future.

UPDATE: Vodkapundit beat me to the story by about eight hours (I didn't know about the "market" idea until I read it on Reynolds' site) - but reached the identical conclusion, for the same reasons, even citing the example of the search for the Scorpion. He also fully closes the loop of the stock market analogy:

The "market" for intelligence works, such as it does, opposite of the stock market. A guy who knows one important bit often can't effectively share it with another guy in another agency who knows another important bit – and so two plus two ends up equaling something quite less than four. Those who simply have good hunches generally aren't intel pros, and therefore aren't given much credence by the government. And so hidden knowledge remains hidden, and good guesses go unheeded. Then people die.

Now that is a truly grotesque system, yet that's how the intelligence world has operated for approximately ever.

Would investors put their money on the line if there weren't any profits to be made? Of course not. Yet today, we ask our military and intelligence professionals to risk their reputations and careers, working mostly in the dark, with zero extra incentive.

It'll be interesting to see exactly how many other bloggers came up with the Craven/Scorpion example independently.

FURTHER UPDATE: Spoke too soon. According to Boomshock, the Administration chickened out.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz just told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that PAM is going to be terminated: "[I]t sounds like maybe [DARPA] got too imaginative."

Sigh. Back to the status quo.

Given all the stories of the standard-issue government mismanagement at Homeland Security and the bungling of the intelligence in the War on Terror so far, can you imagine what the imposition of some kind of free market discipline could do for our effort?

Hopefully, this idea survives somehow.

Hatchet Job - The City

Hatchet Job - The City Pages, predictably, sounds off on the "Telegate" "Scandal", in a team report led by überliberal Steve Perry.

The story is an exercise in polemic masquerading as journalism. It starts in the lede:

Call him Babyface. Even Tim Pawlenty's political foes are prone to leavening their criticisms with testaments to what a personable guy he is. The quality is an asset to any politician, but it's especially useful to one with Pawlenty's slash-and-burn fiscal politics. If you conjure the names of other Midwestern governors who have pushed similar spending devolutions--Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson, Michigan's John Engler--you notice that most are polarizing figures with a reputation for public mean-spiritedness.

The "reputation" is cooked up entirely by people like Perry, for whom failure to scrape at the altar of statism is a functional definition of "mean-spirited".

One reason nice-guy politicians like Pawlenty fare so well is that people naturally assume they possess the other attributes we associate with nice people, such as fairness, guilelessness (relatively speaking; they needn't be Pollyannas, but they can't be inveterate schemers either), and a habit of treating others as they would like to be treated--in other words, of holding themselves to the same standards of conduct as everybody else.

Perry's article then goes on to abjectly fail to show us why Pawlenty is not any of these things.

Here's where Perry's frequently-excellent journalistic chops desert him:

Clearly none of this applies in Pawlenty's case, unless you take the governor's doe-eyed account of his current troubles at face value. We are asked to believe that he a) served actively and responsibly as a board officer for a telecom holding company, earning stock that he eventually cashed in for $10,000, yet never knew a thing about the questionable marketing habits of a key subsidiary; and b) gave no thought to concealment when he set up the functional equivalent of a blind shell company to receive tens of thousands of dollars in payments from a pal and telecom associate during his 2002 run for governor.

Two responses to this:

1. Board members do not, generally, get involved in the day to day operations of a company. They pick the officers that do the mucking about in the trenches. If problems in the day to day operations start mangling the bottom line, the board steps in and "inspires", or if necessary changes, the executive suite. A good board picks a good president, and then gets out of the way - while watching carefully.
2. The "blind shell company" is fairly common practice among independent contractors - for liability as well as tax reasons. I'm not surprised most Democrats - who tend to work in government service or for large nanny-companies - don't know this. But it's rather important.

Perry continues:

Pawlenty's flair for political calculation under pressure has never been more evident than on the Tuesday after the first Pioneer Press story broke. He spent an astonishing two hours talking to the press about allegations that a telecom whose board he'd served on was guilty of shady business practices; his manner was humble, though he never exactly stopped talking like a lawyer. "I don't want to say I wasn't responsible," he hedged. "All I want to say are the facts. Should I have known? If the answer is yes, then I am responsible, no question about it." If the governor balks, you must let him walk!

In the Perry world, giving the right answer (especially when one is a lawyer by trade and training) is apparently incriminating evidence.

During the session, Pawlenty offered an additional, oh by the way disclosure: He had also received large payments from his friend, political ally, and telecom associate Elam Baer during Pawlenty's run for governor last year. These fees (or not) were said to total considerably more than he earned as a legislator, yet the arrangement was never publicly disclosed. Moreover, he conceded, he could not really account for any specific legal projects he had worked on.

This, say sources close to the story, may be the only part where Pawlenty's behavior might step outside any rules - but only with the Lawyers' Board of Professional Responsibilty. Not that that

The governor only wanted to come clean about his associations with the Baer circle, he implied--though he had obviously felt no need to disclose any aspect of them before the shit hit the fan.

Perry fails to show us where there was any legal imperative to explicity disclose anything. Apparently Pawlenty is, alone among all politicians, supposed to provide

When the press sit-down was over, no one in attendance commented in writing on the mastery of what Pawlenty had done: He had used the occasion of a minor scandal to let the air out of a potentially major one. Public opinion usually does not look kindly upon undisclosed financial relationships between politically connected businesses and politicians who seem to have done no demonstrable work for their money.

Especially if the "disclosure rules" are made up from the whole cloth by a press that is hostile to a certain party.

So far the gambit is working reasonably well.

Ah, the old "The truth is duller than the fiction" gambit. Brilliant stroke, Governor!

Pawlenty's preemptive disclosure was hardly brilliant in one sense. Lots of nine-year-olds have already figured out there's less trouble if you 'fess up in toto when you're caught. But it was both shrewd and bold by the lights of contemporary political practice, which typically dictates more lies and stonewalling in the hope that people will get bored and forget about the whole mess. And they always do. Seen from that angle, maybe there is a bit of genius in Pawlenty's approach--by his Tuesday revelation, he slipped a real live baby into the tepid bathwater of the board membership scandal. And now, barring fresh disclosures, all he has to do is wait for it to be thrown out. The DFL has already indicated through its silence that it won't be pursuing the affair seriously (see Robson, What Hearings? What Scandal?).

Perhaps because, like with the American Bankers "scandal", if you dig far enough under the surface, all the "wrong" names pop up?

Perry now starts to wax indignant:

The Friends of Tim are right when they claim that their actions are garden-variety stuff. The real outrage is the political culture in which they are garden-variety stuff. Friends-gate is one of the better glimpses we have had of the workaday connections between business and politics--the fruits of what Pawlenty calls "networking"--since former Senator Bob Packwood's diaries were pried loose by congressional subpoena in 1995.

Everywhere you look in this saga you see friends helping friends--which is to say, insiders helping themselves, and with nothing resembling the openness and probity they expect commoners to display in their daily affairs.

So, again, Steve Perry, what was wrong?

That Pawlenty incorporated his relationship with NewTel? Every indy worth his or her weight in incorporation documents does that.

Not reporting the legal consulting according to LBPR rules? Well, then let's call this a "lawyerly rules violation" and cut the crap, shall we?

The Pawlenty crowd, after all, consists of legendarily tough-minded, fiscally responsible, pay-as-you- go people, avatars of the philosophy of government that says a man never stands so tall as when he stoops to collect co-payments from a single mother. There are no safety nets in Pawlenty's ideal world, except for the ones that people of goodwill and means construct for each other on an informal and largely surreptitious basis.

And in Steve Perry's world, there are no gradations to the right of, say, Paul Wellstone; beyond that point, there be only dragons.

Now, Perry slips into social critic mode:

And while we are on the subject of rectitude and hypocrisy, a few words about the FOT's chosen industry. Elam Baer, the telecom entrepreneur at the center of it all, told reporters that he entered the field because it represented a "great business opportunity." What sort of opportunity, exactly?

Small outfits like the NewTel companies are purely marketing operations. They buy long-distance capacity (time on phone lines, that is) from large carriers and scramble to resell it to consumers, the theory being that their low overhead costs then allow them to undercut the big guys' rates and thrive through the open market. In practice, though, the telecom business is full of small-time, often transient operators with the same idea. The resulting competitive climate is one in which the surest way to get ahead fast is to hustle customers through some version of the technique known as slamming, which involves the use of telemarketers to switch consumer accounts to your service with deceptively obtained consent or none at all. Originally it was the big companies, not the little ones, that pioneered the practice, but now it is most notoriously the province of the minor players. As Pawlenty partisans have pointed out, a great many small telecoms have complaint records as bad or worse.

This is the business culture into which Pawlenty and his circle happily waded, and in a certain sense they did thrive there. Carlene Hughes, a Washington state utilities investigator, told the Pi-Press: "New Access seems to be good at slamming and seems to be good at doing it for a long time--and then moving on when the states catch up with them." Another company that Baer co-founded with Vicki Grunseth, QAI, was the subject of similar claims. Following the early 1997 raid by Wisconsin officials of a firm connected to QAI, state investigators wrote, "Clearly, a pattern of misrepresentations and deception is being used by QAI Inc. to induce prospective customers into ordering their service." Later that year Baer and Grunseth sold out their interest in QAI, and subsequently launched NewTel.

News flash; telecom is a sleazy business. Stop the presses.

So show us where Pawlenty either did anything illegal, or anything unethical as a board chairman.

Now, he starts to get into familiar territory:

Fast forward. The brightest star in this little constellation runs for governor in 2002 with financial assistance from one of the others. This seeming campaign contribution--and why not think of it as such? the governor reasserted through a flack in last Saturday's Pi-Press that he would not release evidence of any actual work he did for the money--goes undisclosed until other details surface regarding Tim Pawlenty's connections to Elam Baer.

Pawlenty wins the election and appoints a man recommended by Baer, a US Bank mortgage executive named Glenn Wilson, to head the Commerce Department. Wilson in turn hires another FOT, gubernatorial campaign manager Tim Commers, whose résumé includes marketing directorship of the oft-criticized QAI and an episode in which he was sued for allegedly running a telemarketing operation that misrepresented his anti-abortion group as another, better known one. When this old news comes to light, Commers resigns, adding that he has never done a single improper thing. "Why should I put myself through this when I can go back to the private sector?" he demands. Indeed.

Commers is a bit player.

But mostly the Friends of Tim prosper. Pat Awada, who owned the verifications company charged with making sure New Access didn't engage in slamming, moves on to greater things as well. Her membership in the Pawlenty circle helps her gain the Republican nomination for state auditor. She sells her company to one of NewTel's co-founders, David Buss, and gets paid partly in NewTel stock. Because she now occupies the auditor post and is charged with keeping an eye on state finances, she is the most shrill of the FOT after the story breaks, even going so far as to claim a success rate of 99.9 percent in her New Access endeavors.

And...Steve? Was that claim false?

I think it's fairly safe to call this ridiculous on its face. In consumer affairs, especially those involving the murky world of telemarketing, typically only a small fraction of the wronged even know where to turn to complain, and a smaller fraction still actually bothers.

So...you think it's ridiculous, based on your assumptions - but you reall don't know?

Just checking.

There is no facet of all this that doesn't stink. Also none that really violates the evolving norms of Banana Republican governance--a phenomenon hardly restricted to Republicans, we should note, though they do own most of the playing field now.

Mr. Perry - if it's "hardly restricted to Republicans", then why is the City Pages - which prides itself on journalistic prowess - only now getting to the story?

Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Who Would Wellstone Quote? -

Who Would Wellstone Quote? - As part of the Nine Dwarves' race to the left for the nomination, the Wellstone name and legacy are getting invoked all over the place.

Is this a good thing for the Dems?:

"Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said that the Democratic hopefuls are engaged in smart politics.

'Wellstone was on the far left of the Senate, but his philosophy is actually precisely where most of the activists in the Democratic Party are,' he said. 'How better to appeal to the actual Democratic electorate than to invoke the name of one of their secular saints?'

David Wellstone, the senator's eldest son, said the candidates 'understand that people loved the fire and the passion and the integrity that my dad brought to the job. And that was all focused on improving people's lives, and that's why they're mentioning him.'

Had Wellstone lived, his son said, he would have been under great pressure to enter the 2004 race."

No doubt he would have been.

And this is the part I love:

"What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home," Al From and Bruce Reed wrote in a memo distributed by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). From is founder of the centrist DLC, and Reed is its president.

That annoyed progressives, including Kelly Young, executive director of the Washington-based 21st Century Democrats.

"To claim that the activists of the party are liberal elites is absurd. . . . We're the party of the people," she said.

Insert comment implying eye-rolling disgust here.

Young said that many party activists are frustrated that the Democratic Party has not backed "bold progressive policies." They are actively working for progressives in the 2004 election, she said, and Democratic candidates are taking note.

"They recognize that the strength and the power right now is in the progressive movement, and that is what Senator Wellstone embodied," Young said.

Sabato noted that invoking Wellstone's name could be risky for Democratic candidates.

"The further they go to the left, the less chance they have of beating Bush," he said.

He predicted that once Democrats settle on a nominee and focus on the general election, there will be far less talk of Wellstone.

"It's those suburban voters and centrist voters that Democrats have to win. . . . They're not Wellstone voters," he said.

The invocations of Wellstone mean exactly what the election of Wellstone meant, 13 years ago; a sign of how far to the left the main DFL base is. In the Minnesota of 1990, that wasn't a drag. In the US of 2003, it is.

American History - For all

American History - For all the Europeans caterwaul about Americans' failure to understand American history, it'd seem (says George Will) that the Euros could study ours a bit more, especially as re their current attempt to craft an EU Constitution:

"Asked to which participant in America's constitution-making he would compare himself, Giscard replied: 'I tried to play a little bit the role that Jefferson played, which was to instill leading ideas into the system. Jefferson was a man who wrote and produced elements that consolidated the Constitution.'

Not exactly. When the Constitution's framers convened in Philadelphia in 1787, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris. When he read what the convention had wrought, he was distressed, particularly about the potential for consolidation of power in the central government.

Europeans believe that American foreign policy would profit from a deeper understanding of European history, and from the tragic sense of history that comes from such an understanding. That may be true.

This certainly is: Europe's evolving domestic arrangements would profit from what clearly has not yet occurred -- a serious study of ambiguities and difficulties that have surrounded the oldest and most successful written constitution, America's."

Read it all, of course.

Moral, Just - Andrew Sullivan,

Moral, Just - Andrew Sullivan, on why the war in Iraq was a just one.

Much worth reading here, but I loved this clip:

"But all the evidence in Iraq points to something else: an extraordinarily successful war followed by slow but measurable progress in putting back together again a brutalized and fractured country. Think back for a moment to what we once feared might happen in the aftermath of a war to depose Saddam. Here are some of the predictions, cited last week by Paul Wolfowitz: civil war; destroyed oil wells; environmental catastrophe; famine; a refugee crisis; and the possibility of cleaning up after chemical and biological attacks. None of this happened - in large part because of the astonishingly innovative and swift war plan. The most staggering result is that Kurds, Shia and Sunnis are still on board for a united, democratic country. But instead of reporting on this achievement, the press, which in large part opposed the war in the first place, has done all it can to turn this success into a 'quagmire.'

Nothing you haven't heard before on the blogosphere, or on talk radio.

But the message bears repeating, because there are still plenty of people out there who just don't get it yet, and won't hear it from the major media.

Yes, there are obvious problems. The electricity grid has proven hard to get back and running again;

And not, it should be noted, because of American malfeasance or incompetence, or Baathist resistance. Like with every totalitarian dictatorship, the things that work, do so because of either fear or, essentially, verbal tradition. Which was what kept the old Iraqi power system going.

Without the Baathist administrators in power - no power. We have to start, almost literally, from square one. It'll be worth it in the long run - to everyone but the Times and the BBC.

...the capitulation of the Baathist thugs in the war means that many dead-enders are still at large and doing all they can to inflict damage in American troops in order to weaken resolve in the U.S.; we over-estimated the need for troops and under-estimated the need for trained policemen in the aftermath of conflict; we were too slow to recruit Iraqis for internal security forces; and so on. These are all forgivable mistakes. But they are all remediable; and steps are being taken to ensure that obvious problems are tackled and resolved. "

Two months since the end of the war. The left is baying at the moon at problems that are not only part of the normal friction of rebuilding post-totalitarian countries - they are comparable to the difficulties we faced in rebuilding Germany and Japan, after allowing for the different contexts of the times.

Johnny Qum Lately - It's

Johnny Qum Lately - It's been galling, lately, to watch the rats climbing back on the re-floating ship.

"Dissent is patriotism!", they say as they slip over the gunwales. To them, it's not the force and cunning of American arms and diplomacy that ended the theo-judicial murders in Afghanistan, or brought down the genocidal Stalinists, Hussein and Sons. No, indeed - it was their dissent; their principled dissidence from the guy who won the 2000 election our lone-wolf, "cowboy" foreign policy. Yep; the human rights victory that was won "Not In Our Name" is suddenly to their credit.

Lileks throws them back in the drink, and their luggage with them for good measure:

Look. I don’t have “political misgivings” about a Liberian intervention; I have practical misgivings about using American forces in TFNs, or Totally Farked Nations. I’m on the fence here. I’ve heard compelling arguments against intervention, and I've heard solid arguments about the uniqueness of an American presence in Liberia, considering their attitude towards its distant thrice-removed paternal figure. But if I decide it’s all a big mistake, and I put up a lawn sign and write letters to the editor and show up for candlelight vigils and all the other examples of symbolic busywork, I don’t get to be thrilled when Monrovia is peaceful and thriving again. I get to be embarrassed.

It presumes, of course, that they're capable of admitting fault.

It's Everywhere - Not only

It's Everywhere - Not only is the US not the only country with a health insurance problem - but sometimes the countries that are held up as the best examples are the ones with the most intractable problems, as we see in this Frankfurter Allgemeine article.

“The current system cannot survive the demographic changes ahead of it,“ said Lauterbach, who heads the Institute of Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology of the University of Cologne and is a member of the Rürup Commission, a body of experts and representatives of various social and professional groups appointed by the German government to develop proposals for reforming the health, social benefits and pension programs.

And no, bussing people to Denmark isn't the answer.

The scary part? Germany's health care system is one of the more conservative in Europe, compared with, say, Sweden or the Netherlands.

The Blog Slate - The

The Blog Slate - The blog The Smallest Minority is proposing an all-blogger slate for the next election.

Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds is the Prez candidate, of course. Given my employment status, I guess Labor is a natural slot for me.

More as events warrant.

Radio Daze

Brian Lambert reports on a number of shakeups at local radio stations.

MPR and NPR are playing musical chairs with a their air talent - in a move whose main impact would seem to sideline the lovely Lorna Benson, MPR will be handing the local hosting of "All Things Considered" to David Molpus.

However, as usual, the real news is on the commercial band, as KSTP-AM's morning show goes through more contortions:

"Elsewhere, KSTP-AM 1500 announced a makeover of its weekday lineup. Gone from the station's heavily conservative talk format is John Wodele, formerly communications director for Gov. Jesse Ventura.

Wodele was hired only six months ago. His 5-to-8 a.m. spot will be taken by Bob Davis, who moves to mornings from KSTP's 10 p.m.-to-midnight slot.

Unmentioned by Lambert: Wodele was awful. Absolutely unlistenable. Twin Cities radio observers felt the station should have given Wodele his severance pay in advance, without actually airing the show - it would have saved the station a lot of ratings grief.

Davis in the morning? Hmmm. I rarely listen to Davis. But Davis' manic streak might be just what the station needs in the morning; not since the early days of Barbara Carlson's morning trainwreck (the first one, not the endless parade of interchangeable voices that accompanied the interminable "Morning Spin" since the mid-nineties) has the station had a morning show that was memorable, much less worth tuning on the radio for.

Syndicated talker and Fox News TV host Sean Hannity has been picked up to fill Davis' time slot.

In other words, for one hour every evening, local talk radio listeners will be able to choose between the bilious Michael Savage and the tedious Hannity.

Wodele's co-host, Mark O'Connell, moves to the 8-to-11 a.m. slot to become full-time co-host with noted St. Paul attorney Ron Rosenbaum.

This is a move that puzzles me. O'Connell is a decent utility player, but not marquee material; his personality doesn't jump through the radio at you. Rosenbaum is an affable enough guy, but I think he'd work better in a supporting role behind...well, a Bob Davis type (but not Davis - I don't think the personalities would mesh very well, although I've been wrong before.

Let's discuss this in six months. I bet the spring book will see yet another shakeup at AM1500.

UPDATE: The Fraters dance, Riverdance-style, on Wodele's radio grave, in a very apt and capable critique.

Jackboots? Check! - Howard "The

Jackboots? Check! - Howard "The Duck" Dean's supporters are playing rough, electronically speaking, spamming journalists who offend the ex-governor:

"'When negative press gets written, we'll ensure that letters to the editor get printed in response. . . . The last couple of months have proven the effectiveness of our efforts at media response,' the DDF says.

Sometimes this is rough stuff. When New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets slammed Dean's appearance on Tim Russert's 'Meet the Press,' the DDF denounced the piece as 'crap,' declaring:

'So here's what we're gonna do. First, we're gonna write Zev (zchafets@yahoo.com) and let him know what we think of his vitriol.'

Suggested themes: 'Russert used Republican lies for his policy research. . . . Anyone who saw Dean's performance knows it wasn't his best, but it was a hell of a lot better than Chafets's columns.'

Chafetz has the mob figured out:

Says Chafets: 'They were polite, but they took issue with the idea that Dean hadn't done well. They were not unintelligent, but it was pretty clear to me they were writing from talking points.'"

OK, let's try this for size: Howard Dean is pimping whatever soul he has to get the Democrats' loony left sewn up for the convention - which is where campaigns like his flourish. If nominated, he will give the Democrats a setback that'll take them another decade or two to recover from. He's a vote whore, willing to

There. I've offended the Duck. Spam me, baby.

Oh, wait - Scrappleface beat us to the punch. Damn you, Scrappleface!

See No Evil - Mark

See No Evil - Mark Steyn, in addition to being a terrific journalist, writes one of the best satirical writers going, as we see in this send-up of BBC war and postwar coverage:

"Andrew Gilligan: I'm leaning on a lamp post at the corner of the street in case a certain little duce swings by, and I don't see any dead dictators, John. But then the Allies have a history of making these premature announcements...

He's just above your head, Andrew. I know you don't like to do wide shots, but, if the camera pulls back, I think you'll find that's definitely a finger tickling the back of your ear...

AG: Well, there you are. He's not hanging from a petrol station, is he? He's hanging from a rope attached to a girder on the forecourt of a petrol station. We've become all too familiar with the Allies playing fast and loose with the facts."

Read the whole thing. After a day of enduring what the Beeb, the Times and the Strib say about the situation, you owe it to yourself.

Steyn on the BBC -

Steyn on the BBC - Powerline tipped me off to this hilarious Mark Steyn sendup of BBC war coverage.

One of many highlights:"Andrew Gilligan: I'm leaning on a lamp post at the corner of the street in case a certain little duce swings by, and I don't see any dead dictators, John. But then the Allies have a history of making these premature announcements..."

He's just above your head, Andrew. I know you don't like to do wide shots, but, if the camera pulls back, I think you'll find that's definitely a finger tickling the back of your ear...

AG: Well, there you are. He's not hanging from a petrol station, is he? He's hanging from a rope attached to a girder on the forecourt of a petrol station. We've become all too familiar with the Allies playing fast and loose with the facts."Read the whole thing? You betcha.

Predictions - Hugh Hewitt, in

Predictions - Hugh Hewitt, in the midst of this excellent interview with John Hawkins, gives his views on the Democrat nomination:

I think it's going to be Howard Dean and I believe it's because of his unique appeal to the unhinged element within the Democratic Party which is large in the primaries. Dean's appeal is his pugnaciousness and the primary voters see reflected in him, their own sense of having been blocked out of every branch of government and their rage at George W. Bush's success. They're doing self-destructive things and the ultimate self-destructive thing is the nomination of Howard Dean and so I expect it.

Here's the big question: I've been told (and vaguely remember hearing) that Hewitt worked really hard to get conservative listeners to vote for The Duck in the MoveOn.org poll. I'd be interesting (and probably impossible) to find out how much impact that poll had on Dean's surge - and, should he carry the nomination, how much impact that had on the '04 race.

Ideas?

I'll Believe It When

I'll Believe It When I See It In My Checking Account - but here's hoping.

2 Key Economic Barometers Post Large Gains in June - which can't be making Paul Krugman or "Move On" any happier.

(Via Sullivan)

Brain Fever - I learned

Brain Fever - I learned long ago - some ideas from the ultra-loony left need to be kept in perspective; sometimes satire is the only real answer, and there's hardly anyone better at it than Scrappleface...

...who ably lampoons the new Berkeley study that tries to pass off conservatism as some sort of pathology.

The scary part was, when I first read it, I had to check and doublecheck to make sure the Berkeley article wasn't some hamfisted spoof of politicized soft-science research as well.

No such luck.

BERKELEY – Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?

I do cognitive research to support software development, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with either the techniques of analyzying peoples' states of mind, or basic experimental procedures, either.

So let's see how this "report" stacks up:

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

* Fear and aggression
* Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
* Uncertainty avoidance
* Need for cognitive closure
* Terror management

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

Assistant Professor Jack Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and Visiting Professor Frank Sulloway of UC Berkeley joined lead author, Associate Professor John Jost of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and Professor Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland at College Park, to analyze the literature on conservatism.

Where to start with this article?

Who Were the Resarchers? Yeah, we got their names, but what are their backgrounds and biases? I mean, if a group of tobacco-industry employees did a study showing tobacco to be harmless, would that cast some aspersions on the study?

Fear not. What Berkeley won't tell you, I will. Jack Glaser is a UCLA researcher whose body of research leans heavily toward leftist social causes. I'll let you be the judge about Berkeley's Frank Sulloway. John Jost and Arie Kruglanski both have quite a few far-left buzzwords in their curriculum vitae.

Which is certainly their right as American Citizens and academics - but the fact that all four "study" authors are more or less overtly left-wing, and work in academic estabishments (UCBerkeley, UCLA, U of Maryland) that are far to the left of even normal American academia should be considered when assigning any credibility to the "study".

The psychologists sought patterns among 88 samples, involving 22,818 participants, taken from journal articles, books and conference papers. The material originating from 12 countries included speeches and interviews given by politicians, opinions and verdicts rendered by judges, as well as experimental, field and survey studies.

Ten meta-analytic calculations performed on the material - which included various types of literature and approaches from different countries and groups - yielded consistent, common threads, Glaser said.

As would have been predictable, I'd suspect, given the authors' biases!

Note that none of these methods, or source materials, are ever explained in the article.

Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way.

Note the rhetorical legerdemain - comparing two modern-day, American sociopolitical conservatives with two fascist butchers. Coming from a bunch of E-Democracy posters, that'd be one thing; coming from allegedly respected academics, though - who are perfectly aware of the rhetorical weight of the connection - is beneath contempt.

It's also a lie. Hitler was no conservative. Yes, indeed, he harkened back to the German people's mythical "volk" traditions, but his aim was to radically change German society (while using the parts he needed to his benefit) - which is the opposite of conservative.

The researchers said that conservative ideologies, like virtually all belief systems, develop in part because they satisfy some psychological needs, but that "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled."

They also stressed that their findings are not judgmental.

"In many cases, including mass politics, 'liberal' traits may be liabilities, and being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering loyalty," the researchers wrote.

Fair enough - but that begs a huge methodological question:

Conservative...as opposed to what? What makes a person liberal, or pro-choice, or "green"?

We get to what I suspect is the real reason for this report:

This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes, the researchers advised.

The latest debate about the possibility that the Bush administration ignored intelligence information that discounted reports of Iraq buying nuclear material from Africa may be linked to the conservative intolerance for ambiguity and or need for closure, said Glaser.

Well, that would certainly justify the "study", wouldn't it?

The article notes that:

"For a variety of psychological reasons, then, right-wing populism may have more consistent appeal than left-wing populism, especially in times of potential crisis and instability," he said.

In other words, conservatism fulfills peoples' need to be safe, and to view certain things (like the possibility of being nuked by a terrorist) in fairly black and white terms.

Glaser acknowledged that the team's exclusive assessment of the psychological motivations of political conservatism might be viewed as a partisan exercise. However, he said, there is a host of information available about conservatism, but not about liberalism.

Huh?

Above, the authors say their source materials are taken from speeches, articles and media appearances. Liberals don't write articles?

The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.

Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended.

But we're not talking about the conservatism of self-preservation, here - we're talking about political conservatism as practiced in the United States. Right?

In the interest of fairness, they do get one part right:

Although they concluded that conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others are, Glaser said, "it doesn't mean that they're simple-minded."

Conservatives don't feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to understand or justify some of their positions, he said. "They are more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm," Glaser said.

He pointed as an example to a 2001 trip to Italy, where President George W. Bush was asked to explain himself. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." And in 2002, Bush told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to nuance."

There may have been an academic reason for this study - but deep-down, I think it has more to with buttressing the liberal need to feel better, smarter and more sophisticated than their opponents.

Whew.

Maybe Scrappleface had the right idea after all.

Self Par-Uday - The Hussein

Self Par-Uday - The Hussein Boys have bought the farm.

Everyone knows it.

Except, of course, Robert "Fisk Fodder" Fisk. Watch him jerk the chains:

Of course, they might be dead. The two men are said to bear an impressive resemblance to the brothers.

Reasonable Doubt!

A 14-year-old child killed by the Americans - one of the four dead - might be one of Saddam's grandsons.

A child! Dead!

Qusay was a leader of the Special Republican Guard, a special target of the Americans. The two men obviously fought fiercely against the 200 American troops who surrounded the house.

Those Plucky Underdogs!

The Americans used their so-called Task Force 20 to storm the pseudo-Palladian villa on a main highway through Mosul.

Task Force 20 combines both special forces and CIA agents. But this is the same Task Force 20 that blasted to death the occupants of a convoy heading for the Syrian border earlier this month, a convoy whose travellers were meant to include Saddam himself and even the two sons supposedly killed yesterday. The victims turned out to be only smugglers.

Therefore - and never mind what they may have been smuggling in this WMD-crazy time - everything TF20, and by extension the rest of the military does, is not only suspect, but guilty until proven innocent!

And American intelligence - the organisation that failed to predict events of 11 September, 2001 - was also responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on 20 March, which was supposed to kill Saddam. And the far crueller air raid on the Mansour district of Baghdad at the end of the air bombardment in April which was supposed to kill Saddam and his sons but only succeeded in slaughtering 16 innocent civilians. All proved to be miserable failures.

All Failures! Like the war itself! Why, except for that whole "liberated country" thingie, this war has been an unmitigated balls-up!

But it's in the closing that Fisk proves himself not only supremely, invincibly illogical, but quite stark raving mad:

If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans

Got that? When the regime in whose interest everyone is fighting is eradicated, only then will Iraqis find it safe to fight us!

When the Fedayeen (who drove troops, NKVD-style, toward the American guns in Nasiriyah) are gone - then fighting us will be a matter of freewill!

Fisk may not have the toxic sheen of a Robert Scheer; he's too doddering and logically incontinent to meet that standard - but the fact that he earns a living at all is telling, and more than a bit depressing.

More Later - I'm at

More Later - I'm at the office, and about to start a day's worth of usabilty testing.

This article infuriates me.

This one puts it in its proper persepective.

More on this later.

The Duck - The more

The Duck - The more I think about it, the more it feels like the Moovies and Howard "Duck" Dean's supporters have gotten it wrong.

Yeah, Dean raised a lot of money on the Internat. So did Ralph Nader in '00 (allowing for the web's relatively lesser maturity and the Green Party's outsider status at the time). I'd suspect there's a fair chunk of the far-left base - the Green Bus crowd - that doesn't attend $1000/plate black tie rubber chicken dinners, and wants to support someone who fits their worldview; when they have a portal like MoveOn spoon-fed to them, it's their opportunity.

Also - let's not forget the simple fact that when it comes to using the internet for communication and organization, the right was here first. As long-time "Shot In The Dark" reader JP, from California, noted in an email today:

Yes, a lot of conservatives voted for Howard the Duck. In fact, for days Hugh Hewitt was pumping his listeners to go to MoveOn.org and vote for Dean.

Indeed. This was before I listened to Hewitt very much (today, the 5-8 time slot is an embarassment of conservative talk-radio riches; Hewitt and Lewis are both great), but Hewitt is as plugged-in to the ways of the Web as anyone in radio (yet).

Many of the Moovies are newbies to this game; most of us conservatives on the web have been reading Drudge since '97 at least, and have many years' head start at using - and abusing - the web.

It'll be fun to watch how the "Dean Rules the 'Net" story develops.

Off to the Office -

Off to the Office - Yep. One more day onsite.

This is a fine time to remind you, gentle reader, that while I'm an underemployed software designer (the titles vary - Information Architect, Usability Engineer, Human Factors Engineer, User Experience Designer, GUI Business Analyst, Web Designer or User Interaction Designer all work), I'm a mighty good one - and I'm very available!

Drop me a line if your company needs to design software that the users don't detest working with.

Sigh. The waiting is the worst.

Speaking of "Just Doesn't Get

Speaking of "Just Doesn't Get It" - Laura Billings brings a bit of old-media snobbery to her commentary:

I might join in these criticisms if I did not also agree with the White House that e-mail is the one form of free speech that should be limited as much as possible. No longer are writers required to sit down with pen in hand and actually think about the best way to make their case. Instead, the ease of e-mail has convinced us that sending an electronic eructation is just as meaningful — and even more deserving — of an immediate response.

This from a woman whose commentary is often so rife with factual and logical errors that I'm thinking about erecting (electronically) a "Fisking Hall Of Fame", devoting it entirely to her, and retiring her number just to avoid the constant, challenge-less repetition of critiqueing her.

Just thinking about it, mind you.

They Don't Get It -

They Don't Get It - Question: If conservatives took over the internet, and no liberal newspaper observed the fact, did it really happen?

Articles in the Boston Glob and the Atlantic answer the question: "Al Gore didn't just invent the Internet, he wrote all the original content".

The Glob, in an article about the newfound influence of bloggers, focuses on the B-list blogger Oliver Willis and his site's contributions to the Howard Dean campaign, as well as another Dean-related site. Unmentioned, of course; the hulking presences of Instapundit, Sullivan, Volokh, Kaus, Drudge, even Lileks and Limbaugh (whose site isn't a blog, but behaves like one) - all right of center, all of whom wield more influence in their fingernail clippings than Oliver Willis' blog (as good as it is) ever will.

The Atlantic focuses on this month's flavor, "MoveOn.org". The site - founded in 1998 to protect Bill Clinton's right to lie to grand juries about his philandering - has made a splash lately with its big straw poll and its role in helping Howard "Duck" Dean jump ahead of the pack.

Political operatives see MoveOn as the wave of the future, a way to reconnect ordinary people to politics. As [Democrat wonk Scott] Rosenberg put it, "They really are at the cutting edge of a new model for how citizens participate in the political process." But he adds, "If they end up becoming a vehicle behind a single candidate, they are not adding a lot of value anymore to the political process."

Indeed. While the Atlantic article fairly breathlessly fawns over MoveOn and the johnny-come-lately Moovies, they do make note of one other Internet reality - shenanigans are everywhere (even after you factor out the fact that MoveOn's organization is sleazy::

Other campaigns complained that the MoveOn primary was rigged in favor of Dean. "The Dean campaign is fabulously organized on the Web," Walsh said. "When Salon writes a story, either pro or con Howard Dean, we hear from people immediately." But why the rigging charge? For one thing, MoveOn director Exley has done work for the Dean campaign. Moreover, after a straw poll of members, MoveOn allowed three "preferred" candidates—Dean, Kerry, and Kucinich—to send e-mail messages directly to its membership. Guess what? They were the top three vote-getters.

Guess what else? Conservatives, seeing Howard "Duck" Dean as a McGovern for the 21st Century, bum-rushed the MoveOn poll. Even *I*- and, says my email, some of my readers - voted for Dean!

Unmentioned in any of the stories I've seen from the left that lionize MoveOn and the Moovies: that the traffic they got during their poll (or, to be more accurate, that they're getting now) would fit neatly into the background noise for any of the major conservatives sites. And conservatives have been using the Web to organize for longer, and (unlike the slick, heavily-financed MoveOn site), at a much more grassroots level. Here in Minnesota, the Concealed Carry campaign was run primarily on the Internet - CCRN's website (not technologically updated since about 1997) was a gateway to an email newsletter that grew to be the second-largest in Minnesota, and was a very effective tool for mobilizing the concealed-carry movement that shocked the state last spring.

Prediction: After the '04 election, the Moovies will, themselves, "move on" to different toys. "MoveOn.org" will eventually let their domain lapse, and by early '06 the domain name will have been hijacked by a group of porn-site owners.

Whacked - It hasn't happened

Whacked - It hasn't happened yet - but it's only a matter of time before I encounter a Democrat who believes, as does Charles Rangel, that killing Qusay and Oday Hussein was illegal.

Volokh, as usual, has the goods:

I don't know if there's been any authoritative interpretation of this order -- and remember that it's just an Executive Order, and to my knowledge violation of such orders with the approval of the Executive (i.e., the President) is not a crime or otherwise actionable -- but in any event, does it apply here? I can't imagine that the order was meant to apply, or was understood as applying, to the killing of the members of an enemy military organization in time of war. That's what you do in a war: Kill enemy soldiers. Sometimes you kill them in battle, sometimes you send special forces to kill them by surprise. Sometimes you kill the grunts, sometimes you kill the generals (and it's often both more effective and more just to focus on the latter).

The next time a Democrat brings this one up, ask them - wasn't Clinton's Lewinsky-Eve Tomahawk attack the same thing?

Not that it matters; this, like the Yellowcakes non-story, is just more evidence that the Dems are panicking.

Back To Work, For Now

Back To Work, For Now - Two more days onsite, then a few days working at home. Nice little project - should pay about a month's bills - and stretch my unemployment another month.

If I were to get one of these jobs a month, with maybe an extra thrown in occasionally for good measure, life would be relatively liveable.

Otherwise, it's pucker time. I'm waiting for word on several jobs, including the dream gig (which is taking forever to decide on third interviews).

Quagmire Index Revised - The

Quagmire Index Revised - The word is out:

Now that Saddam Hussein's sons are dead, a panel of journalists has revised the official Iraq Quagmire Index. According to the new benchmark, all violence against Coalition troops should cease immediately, since Uday and Qusay Hussein are gone.

Scrappleface reports. You decide?

Studies of American news consumers show they appreciate the Quagmire Index because it eliminates the need to consider and remember numerous facts. For journalists it saves time, and bypasses the discomfort of careful news analysis.

Satire?

What Was Your First Indication?

What Was Your First Indication? - The PiPress headline says it all: "Some Fear Dean May Be Next McGovern".

Bruce Reed, who served as President Bill Clinton's chief domestic adviser and now directs the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said the other day: "A campaign based on telling the left everything it wants to hear would be a disaster in the general election. ... Dean has thrown his lot in with a neo-McGovern crowd, and what that crowd likes about him is what the rest of America won't like."

There are concerns that Dean's visceral anger at Bush would alienate the moderate and independent voters who tend to decide national elections, because those voters don't appear to dislike the President. And there are concerns that Dean, a New Englander who opposed the Iraq war and signed a bill legalizing gay civil unions, would be wiped out in the South - which means that, to beat Bush, he would need to win 70 percent of the electoral votes everywhere else.

Dick Polman, the Philly Enquirer writer for this story, hints at the divide in the Democrat party that's floating Dean at the moment - the big, maybe unbridgeable, split between the Volvo Democrats and the Chevy Democrats:

Dean is the insurgent outsider in this race. The Democrats usually have one: Gary Hart in 1984, Paul Tsongas in 1992, Bill Bradley in 2000. They generally attract the party's white, well-educated, professional voters - but as Dunn, a former Bradley aide, warned, "They often can't attract the blue-collar workers and less-educated voters. Hart couldn't. Neither could Tsongas or Bradley. Can Dean reach them?"

In theory, maybe - he's not that far left on many issues that genuinely matter to the blue-collar voter.

But as long as the war is perceived as successful among the blue-collar Americans that provide a disproportionate number of the troops, his anti-war stance is a boat anchor.

And I think the next six months or so will see Iraq start to settle down, and the post-liberation chaos start to form itself into some sort of order.

Reaction, Action - If there's

Reaction, Action - If there's one thing the US military has learned since World War II and Vietnam, it's that planning has to be flexible. The enemy - whoever he is - is constantly acting to derail your plans. And intelligence, being an uncertain, fuzzy field, frequently causes plans to be based on faulty assumptions.

Change is not only good, it's unavoidable - if you're smart.

This WaPo article shows some of the process the Pentagon's gone through.

Until early June, when the Army launched the first of three major offensives in the an area known as the Sunni triangle north and west of Baghdad, U.S. officials didn't fully grasp the extent of Baathist resistance in the area, one Army official said today.

The first offensive, dubbed Peninsula Strike, wasn't aimed so much at Baathists as at hostile remnants of the Iraqi military that remained active in the Sunni town of Thuluya, on the Tigris River between Baghdad and Tikrit. Yet when captives from that operation, from June 8 to 15, were interrogated, they began shedding unexpected light on the role that Baath Party operatives were playing in the region in supplying weapons, recruiting fighters and financing attacks on U.S. troops and bases, officials said.

Later in June, the next offensive, Desert Scorpion, began with scores of simultaneous raids aimed at, among other things, shutting down escape routes available to the former Iraqi leaders. It also went after the secret hoards of cash and jewelry that were financing their operations, and it sought to gather more information about the size and structure of Baathist resistance in the Sunni triangle.

That series of raids yielded information on what analysts said was a surprisingly large network of Hussein loyalists. "We call it the gang of 9,000," said a senior Army official, adding that that figure was just an estimate of the number of Baath Party operatives, former intelligence functionaries and their allies active in the Sunni region and in Baghdad.

It occured to me during the Dash to Baghdad that the traditional culture clash between the left and the military played a small but signficant part of the problem. Both the military and the left are all about plans; the left's plans are usually inflexible documents that focus on visions; the military's plans tend to be more living, evolving things. When a plan of the left goes awry, it's because things are truly off the rails. When a military plan goes wrong - at least, under current doctrine - it is designed to be adapted while in progress.

Of course, not all is lost for the left. The post notes that opportunity waits around every corner:

Despite their recent success, U.S. military officials here caution that the fighting is far from over, and they predict that the nature of the attacks could worsen. They worry that the more they succeed, the more desperate Baathist remnants will become. So, they fear, the next phase of attacks might rely more on car bombs and other terrorist methods than on direct attacks on U.S. forces. Two officials here this week, for example, expressed concern about the possibility of an Oklahoma City-like bomb attack on U.S. officials and Iraqis working with them in the capital.

Well, Howard Dean has to hope so, doesn't he?

(Via Powerline)

Sonset - Qusay and Uday

Sonset - Qusay and Uday buy the farm.

Says Den Beste:

I think it indicates a significant chance, perhaps as high as 1 in 4, that we'll also bag Saddam himself in the next couple of weeks. First, whatever source fingered Qusay and Uday may also have provided information about Saddam's whereabouts. Second, prisoners and physical evidence from the site of yesterday's raid may give clues as to Saddam's whereabouts. Third, this may panic Saddam into moving, and perhaps into giving himself away.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, someone else who sees the news about this raid may decide to finger Saddam for us.

But the real question (Thanks, PJZ) is, what does this mean to the Nine Dwarves and their stealth antiwar campaign? We hand it over to James Taranto.

We hear from John Kerry:

Kerry said he voted for the resolution with the understanding that the administration would build an international coalition before attacking Saddam Hussein's forces.

"It seems quite clear to me that the president circumvented that process, shortchanged it and did not give full meaning to the words 'last resort,' " Kerry said in a 20-minute conference call with reporters.

"And it also depends on what the meaning of the word "is", is", he may have added.

And from Dick Gephardt:

"Foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones, and then everything fades to black," Gephardt, who supported the war in Iraq, said in remarks prepared for delivery to the San Francisco Bar Association.

"Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex, and often costlier than winning the war itself," he said. "No matter the surge of momentary machismo--as gratifying as it may be for some--it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone."

Word has it that the Hussein kids would have been killed faster with kindness.

And finally, Howard "the Duck" Dean:

"It's a victory for the Iraqi people," he told reporters, "but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war."

In comments covered by the Associated Press, the disgruntled Democrat added, "I think in general the ends do not justify the means."

Despite the good news for America, Dean tried to stick to his sour-grapes message, complaining that his Democratic rivals shouldn't have supported the war.

"Why is it that those in Congress have waited until now to question the intelligence?" he whined. "Why were they not asking these questions and seeking the truth nine months ago, before they voted to give the president blank-check authority to go to war?"

Look for the presidential approval rating to start bouncing back shortly.

Off To The Races, Contract

Off To The Races, Contract Edition - First day at another of those little two-week jobs at a major local corporation today. Posting will be nonexistant until tonight.

See you then!

Just Watch - Now that

Just Watch - Now that the "Bush Lied" story is losing its legs faster than a Walmart end table in a freshman dorm, watch for the "Why Iraq, and not North Korea" story to make a return.

By the way, you're hearing all about the "expert" prediction that the North will have eight nukes by year's end. The seven-second soundbite doesn't emphasize the name of the expert making the claim - William Perry, who was defense secretary and a special envoy to North Korea under, in both cases, Bill Clinton. The administration that got us into the mess with the North in the first place.

Perry shows a case of creeping Ritterism:

Only last winter Perry publicly argued that the North Korea problem was controllable. Now, he said, he has grown to doubt that. "It was manageable six months ago if we did the right things," he said. "But we haven't done the right things."

He added: "I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous."

Did he do this because he "hoped the administration" would act? Or just to give more political ammo to whichever Democrat wants to come out of his appeasenik shell first?

The timing is interesting, that's all.

Speechless - This is just

Speechless - This is just too wierd.

Democratic Party stalwart Barbra Streisand will be welcoming a Republican president home.

Her husband, actor James Brolin, has been cast as Ronald Reagan in a four-hour CBS miniseries titled "The Reagans," set to air during the November sweeps period.

I hear Sheryl Crow will be playing Phyllis Schlafly.

Dingellfritz - Powerline has some

Dingellfritz - Powerline has some excellent expository commentary on this exchange between Ward Connerly and Rep. John Dingell (D MI).

The whole exchange is fascinating, of course. Money quote from Dingell:

The people of Michigan have a simple message to you: go home and stay there. We do not need you stirring up trouble where none exists.

Michiganders do not take kindly to your ignorant meddling in our affairs. We have no need for itinerant publicity seekers, non-resident troublemakers or self-aggrandizing out-of-state agitators. You have created enough mischief in your own state to last a lifetime.

Connerly's response is a work of art - see the Powerline guys for much more. I liked this part:

your advice is the echo of southern segregationists who sought the comfort of states' rights to practice their discrimination against black Americans. Have you learned nothing about "civil rights" from that horrible chapter in our nation's history?

There is such an eerie similarity between them and you that it bears comment.

George Wallace, Lester Maddox and others who shared their rabid and abhorrent views believed in treating people differently on the basis of skin color…and so do you.

They wanted to practice their brand of racism free from the interference of “meddling, outside agitators”…and so do you.

They called those who disagreed with them and merely wanted to exercise their right to assemble “carpetbaggers” and “non-resident troublemakers” who were “stirring up trouble where none exists”…and so do you.

They were arrogant and intolerant bullies…and so are you.

Your letter is a prime example of why the texture of civil discourse in our nation is so coarse. It is an indication of why Members of Congress need the police to intervene to separate them from fighting. What a terrible example for our children and our grandchildren.

Read it all, of course. It's a good primer on the coarseness of public debate today, as well as on what a wonderful thing it will be when the generation that includes Dingell, Maxine Waters and some of the Congress' other racialist demigogues finally passes from the political scene.

Saint Paul School Board -

Saint Paul School Board - The Saint Paul Green party endorsed Richard Broderick to run for the Saint Paul School Board.

Now, I have nothing against Greens; if you leave out their la-la foreign policy, their rabid-rodent anti-capitalism, their myopia about "social justice", their marriage to multiculturalism (which is really repressed hatred of Westernism), their galloping double-standards about world cultures, their hatred of achievement and puritanism about food and lifestyles and public morality, they actually have a few good ideas about participatory grassroots politics (which, as it happens, the Libertarians had first).

But this press release bothers me. There's a lot of little, piddly points - the type of thing that I'll nick any Green on.

And then you get toward the bottom, to the genuinely scary stuff.

Here it is:

July 20 -- The Green Party of St. Paul has unanimously endorsed Richard Broderick for the St. Paul Public Schools Board of Education.

Twelve candidates have filed for the School Board race. The top eight vote-getters in the September 9 primary will move on to the November general election, where the top four vote-getters will be elected to the board.

Broderick has lived in St. Paul since 1986. He is a journalist and teacher at Anoka Ramsey Community College and the Loft Literary Center. A Minnesota State Arts Board fellow, recipient of three first place awards for journalism and commentary from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists, two first-place awards from the Minnesota Publishers Association, and numerous other awards for his writing, he is the father of two students currently enrolled in the St. Paul Public School System.

He is running for School Board, he said, because he believes that "public education is one of the most powerful -- and one of the last -- great democratizing institutions in America today." He says that he wants to protect St. Paul's public school system from attacks mounted by the forces of privatization, while also pressing the Superintendent's office to be more responsive to the needs of teachers, students, and parents."

Leave aside for a moment the hilarity of the notion that public education is "democratizing" (it's modeled after the old Prussian system - any system that requires eight year old boys to sit in straight-backed chairs for six hours a day is not "democratic". But that's another subject).

No, the notion that the public schools are "one of the last" democratic influences in our society is one I'd like to ask Mr. Broderick about some more.

Other specific proposals he plans to present include calls for reforms in the district's food purchasing system to favor locally produced, whole, natural, and organic foods;

Has anyone done any sort of cost-benefit analysis on this?

a severing of corporate ties that undermine intellectual freedom;

This is lunacy. While everyone's up in arms about the Channel 1s of the education world, I think it's a fair bet that there are plenty of private, "corporate" involvements that enhance "intellectual freedom".

In the meantime, "intellectal freedom" is the last thing that all too much of the public school system wants - least of all Richard Broderick, if the Green Party's press release is to be believed. But more on that in a bit.

...a School Board veto over tax-increment financing and other sweetheart deals between the city of St. Paul and developers that rob financial resources from the school district;

Read taht again. Broderick and the Greens want the School Board to have a veto in the City Council.

Is this making sense yet?

...development of curriculum in non-violent conflict resolution and creation of student-run conflict resolution committees in each St. Paul public school;

Student conflict resolution is an idea that can work - given that the students have access to genuine democracy in other parts of their school life. Without that, though, it's like giving fully functional municipal courts to the Burmese.

expanded, direct teacher, student, and parent input to the Board of Education;

I'd love to know what they have in mind for these (I asked, in the forum in which this release was originally posted). I won't hold my breath.

and conversion of the district to renewable energy sources.

Again - the costs and benefits, please.

Now - here' the part I think is either scary or hilarious:

"The core principles of the Green Party -- ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, social justice, and non-violence -- are all rooted in a categorical rejection of exploitation and domination as acceptable means to our ends in life," Broderick said. "In order for our society to adopt these values -- as it must, if we are to survive on this planet -- we need to nurture the instinctively Green consciousness of our young people through the comprehensive application of these principles to curriculum, instruction, administration, and district-wide decision-making processes.

Read that again. Broderick sees the school system as the place to "nurture the instinctively Green consciousness of our young people", using the "curriculum, instruction, administration, and district-wide decision-making processes."

I'm not sure about you, but I don't want school board members "nurturing" my kids' political consciousness, Green, DFL or Republican. I want them to teach them to read, do math, reason critically, appreciate our culture and be good citizens. Let them nurture their own consciences, thank you very much.

Greens - what do you have to say about this?

Filthy Lucre - In my

Filthy Lucre - In my never-ending quest to make this site turn even a minuscule profit, I've joined the small cascade of other blogs to start offering merchandise.

Click the "Shop In The Dark" link on the right side of the page to check out the SITD Swag. We have:

• The "Official U of M Human Target" T-shirts (to tell the Regents what you think of their attempt to buck state law)
• The "What Would Reagan Do?" bumper stickers and beverage steins, for your rush-hour or water-cooler conversations.
• An assortment of Shot In The Dark "Blog And Awe" mugs and sportswear.

More to come as the market demands creative urge strikes me.

By the way, if the prices seem high - sorry. I've set my cut as a very small portion of the nut that Cafe Press charges. I'll hope to make up for it in volume.

Only five shopping months 'til Christmas!

Everybody's Doing It - Blogging,

Everybody's Doing It - Blogging, that is. Even my son, Sam, the little comic-book fan.

Here's his blog.

Their Finest Hour - I've

Their Finest Hour - I've said it before. America has it all over so many countries in so many areas. We should be proud of what we, as a people, have wrought.

But there is one area where America trails our friends in Britain; political oratory.

The British Pariliament is a tumultuous, clamorous place. If a speaker can't move the (often hostile) crowd with the force of his or her oratory, they marginalize themselves. It behooves an MP to become good at oratory.

Some Americans get it, of course; Reagan, Clinton, Kennedy, all had their moments. Some more than others.

But the British political tradition stresses great oratory - and pols like Tony Blair deliver.

It seemed, as I listened to it, to be more than just a great speech. It felt like the tide began, every so slightly, to turn against the naysayers, the anti-US cultists that have bogged down our national agenda for the last two months.

Sullivan said it well:

This is what the carpers and nay-sayers still don't understand. The West is at war with a real and uniquely dangerous enemy. When the consequences of negligence become catastrophic, the equation of intervention changes. The burden of proof must be on those who counsel inaction rather than on those who urge an offensive, proactive battle. Does it matter one iota, for example, if we find merely an apparatus and extensive program for building WMDs in Iraq rather than actual weapons? Or rather: given the uncertain nature of even the best intelligence, should we castigate our leaders for over-reacting to a threat or minimizing it? Since 9/11, my answer is pretty categorical. Blair and Bush passed the test. They still do.

But hearing it from Blair was so much more reassuring than hearing it from, say, Bill Frist.

On the Road - More

On the Road - More posting tonight. Or tomorrow.

Or Monday.

See you then!

Pacifists - I've rolled my

Pacifists - I've rolled my eyes in disgust at the moral equivalency shown by many liberal American churches - the Catholics, the Lutherans, and my own Presbyterians. A devout Christian, I am also a realist; Einstein's "You Can Not Simultaneously Prepare for Peace and War", a Twin Cities bumpersticker meme, is belied by the real-life stories of Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands (all of which are intensely pacifistic countries; all of which learned that pacifism without the will and means to enforce peace against aggression is worthless; all maintain relatively large, modern militaries) and Switzerland and Sweden (who have long known that pacifism without teeth is suicidal in the real world).

But blithely unpolluted by any memories of occupation, American liberal Christians continue to insist, at best, that waging war makes all belligerents equally guilty. At worst, they blame America and shun the pesky details. The assistant minister at my own church tosses constant anti-American references into her homilies (did you know that if we were only more G-dly, all those poor North Koreans wouldn't be starving? Me either).

Katherine Kersten has a great article on the subject. While the whole thing is worth an urgent read, here's the part that I knew, but needed a memory jog about; it's not a new phenomenon:

In the years leading up to World War II, church leaders were also in the forefront of America's peace movement. In a recent issue of the Weekly Standard, Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation details this embarrassing and largely forgotten episode in American church history.

According to Loconte, as Hitler rolled through Europe, many American church officials seemed more interested in denouncing their own nation than in protesting the Führer's crimes. John Haynes Holmes, a New York Unitarian minister, was typical. "If America goes into the war," he intoned in 1940, "it will not be for idealistic reasons but to serve her own imperialistic interests."

Like their counterparts today, World War II-era church leaders called repeatedly for "peace at any price." Between 1938 and 1941 -- as Hitler bombed London and marched into Paris -- church groups issued 50 statements insisting that a just and durable peace was possible. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the famous Baptist preacher, insisted that American entry into the war could not be justified. "We see clearly," he wrote, "that a war for democracy is a contradiction in terms, that war itself is democracy's chief enemy."

Predictably, Christian leaders also urged Americans to meet Hitler's aggression with love and forgiveness. Here's Albert Palmer, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary: "If your enemy hunger, feed him -- and understand him." Some leaders claimed that Hitler would respond positively to worldwide peace marches, which would show him that violence was unnecessary. "Without military opposition," Palmer wrote ingenuously, "the Hitlers wither away."

The article cites the great German theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr - a major dissident from the "Peace at any Price" school of theology.

Read it. You'll be glad you did.

Peace, Quiet - Tonight is

Peace, Quiet - Tonight is the last night of my "vacation". Tomorrow, I drive to Alexandria to meet Dad and get the kids.

They've been gone 11 solid days. And as much as I like being able to get away and do what I want, when I want to do it, I miss them horribly. The house seems so big and empty without their happy clamor. I even miss the fussing and fighting.

My only regret - no job offer to tell them about when they come back. Our buying a new puppy is predicated on my getting another gig. They've been very patient. Too patient.

Waiting on word from three gigs any day now. Enough is enough.

But enough of that, too. The kids will be home by dinnertime tomorrow, and that big quiet hole in the house will be full to overflowing.

And I will love it more than when they left.

Due To Gun Control, Volumn

Due To Gun Control, Volumn MCMLXI - The British Home Office has released their new crime figures - and they're not pretty (the London Sun article is called "A Nation Stalked By Fear").

Violent crime jumped 22 percent in one year, and nearly every category of crime is up by double digits.

"But you can't tie it to gun control!", the left will answer!

And, as usual, they'd be wrong:

Last night’s statistics followed the revelation in January that the use of firearms was rampant.

A report showed a 35 per cent rise in gun crime, to 9,974 offences.

And officials admitted yesterday that possession of firearms, including sub-machine guns, was “out of control” in Birmingham, Manchester and three London boroughs.

Wait'll Citizens for a Supine Safer Minnesota hear about this!

(Via Instapundit)

The Faint Thread of Continuity

The Faint Thread of Continuity - Atomizer, from Fraters Libertas, comments about a Lileks Bleat from a few days ago. Atomizer quotes Lileks:

…nothing I make in the Mexican realm will equal the Chili Cheese Burrito at Taco Bell. (Gasps of horror from the audience.) True. It is perhaps the only menu item so fine it survived a merger and acquisition. The Chili Cheese Burrito was a specialty of the Zantigo chain, a far-superior purveyor of FauxMex food. The meat was finely granulated, stirred into a cheesish fluid imbued with peppers, and served in a thin burrito. Mm mm. When Taco Bell took over Zantigo they killed the Chilito dead, but the people rose up and demanded their rights, and in a rare act of corporate wisdom they brought it back, for good. You can still ask for a Chilito by name, and they’ll make it. Ten years after the death of Zantigo. Amazing.

I was addicted to these things. When my friends and I were in high school, we used to bike 5 miles to the nearest Zantigo (the restaurant formerly known as Zapata) almost nightly to get our fix. When we heard the news that the restaurant chain was being converted to Taco Bell in 1986 we went into full survival mode and scoured the Twin Cities area for any remaining franchise that was still operating to stock up.

While Zantigo/Zapata had its merits, neither could hold a candle (one of those Mexican devotional candles you get at Rainbow) to Taco John's. For good, greasy, cheap faux-Mex, they were far and away the top of the mystery meat pile. There can be no rational argument.

Still, Zan/Zap was a loss.

Atomizer discusses other substitutes that don't quite stack up to the real thing:

McDonalds’ New Chicken McNuggets - I like dark meat. It’s juicier than white meat and it just plain tastes better. I’ll take a deep fried chunk of chicken gristle with extra skin over a tasteless preformed mass of breast meat any day. If I cared about eating what is good for me I wouldn’t be going to McDonalds.

At this, Atomizer is correct.

Van Halen - While I was not a huge fan of these guys, I can’t stand them since Diamond Dave departed. Consider this bit of lyrical genius shrieked by Sammy Hagar: “Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.” Good one, Sammy.

As long as Eddie is alive and playing, Van Halen will be worth a listen. But Sammy was really a wretched choice to replace Diamond Dave.

And I can't believe I'm having this discussion, 17 years after the fact...

And speaking of which, it's here that Atomizer tips his whippersnapper hand, and comes up wanting:

Yes - This band’s lineup has changed more times than Michael Jackson’s nose, but the worst had to be Trevor Rabin and Geoff Downes replacing Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. Yes just didn’t sound right without the pretentiousness of Anderson’s vocals and Wakeman’s keyboards.

I looked at this for a while and had to think - Trevor Rabin? The technically-wonky-yet-kinetic South African guitar player that replaced the somnolent, insufferable Steve Howe, giving the band its only, brief, period of pop listenability?

Then I realized, Atomizer was probably not born when the crime was committed. He's referring to Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, AKA "Buggles", the band that gave us "Video Killed the Radio Star", who filled in on vocals and keyboards for about a year in the early eighties. And he's right, to a point - Horn as lead singer was a disaster for Yes. But the period of Yes' music he produced - 90215, 90215 Live and Big Generator, were distinguished as the only three Yes albums that I could listen to without chundering. It helped that they had Jon Anderson, who's vocals really define the band - but lacked Howe and Wakeman, two of the most tedious, party-killing presences in "rock" music. With the savvy, unpretentious Rabin on guitars and the vastly more economical Tony Kaye on keys, the band bordered on listenability (and if you disagree, you probably also listen to Pink Floyd albums other than "The Wall" and "Final Cut". Admit it. I knew it).

1988 Minnesota Twins - Tom Brunansky traded to St. Louis for Tommy Herr? Who needed Bruno’s subsequent 105 home runs and 444 RBI. Herr, on the other hand, smashed out 9 homers and 139 RBI. Brilliant move.

No argument there.

But there are other bad substitutions and replacements throughout history, leading with:

• The Bobless Replacements - Slim Dunlop's a great guitar player - but he wasn't the foil against Paul Westerberg's growing mellowness that the 'Mats needed. Which was one reason he got fired, of course, but the Dunlop-era 'Mats weren't the same. That's not a bad thing - but I missed Stinson.
• The E-Street Band without Miami Steve - the Born In The USA tour was a watershed moment in my life when I saw it's second night, here in Saint Paul in '84. And Nils Lofgren had been a guitar idol long before he hooked up with the boys. But nobody - NOBODY - does backup vocals like Steven.
• Minute Maid in place of Nesbitts - Replacing the delectable Nesbitts brand of orange soda with the neavy, syrupy, but brand-friendly "Minute Maid" brand goo turned me off orange pop forever. There will never be a substitute.
• Bruce without the E Street Band - "Lucky Town" is an underrated album. "Human Touch" was maybe the most disappointing record Springsteen's 's ever released. But the tour that followed can be summed up with four words; Shayne Fontaine on guitar. Not pretty.

More as conditions warrant.

Hewitt's Nod - Hewitt gives

Hewitt's Nod - Hewitt gives Lileks a huge, deserved plug:

Steyn and Lileks are laugh-out-loud writers and pundits with punch. Lileks, incredibly, delivers five mirth-inducing reads for free each week on his website. His Sunday column for the Strib is a homey, chatty, and unfailingly amusing look at the ordinary absurdity of life--a welcome break from the sermons and raised eyebrows of the opinion sections and book reviews. It is written for an audience of Minnesocoldians, but it absorbs the attention of even jaded California denizens. Like his Newhouse columns, Lileks's Strib work could run in every paper in America.

I'm looking forward to Hewitt and James at the Fair...

...holy cow, is that next month already?

Kazemi - Zahra Kazemi was

Kazemi - Zahra Kazemi was a Iranian native, and a citizen of Canada.

She was also a photographer. She went back to her native Iran to document the human rights abuses of the theocracy.

She became one of those abuses, after being beaten to death by a group of pro-regime thugs.

David Warren writes about the murder...

The very people who hired the thugs to pummel Ms Kazemi until she was comatose, and would die of a brain haemorrhage -- thugs themselves too stupid to check if she were a foreign national first -- are hardly going to prosecute themselves. (The Iranian vice-president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, at least had the candour to admit how she died.) The most we will get from them is a few scapegoats offered up to appease our fury. And that, only after unrelenting pressure from our Foreign Affairs Ministry, or a send-up in the international media (and this story has had no wings beyond our own borders).

But he writes even more tellingly about the reaction of the Canadian government - which is, after all, among those doing its best to appease the theocracy, in the name of "Dialogue" and "Peace":

In this case Mr. Graham, who doubles as a politician, was caught somewhat by surprise. Only when he gets home will he discover that he's a bit out of tune with the electorate on this one; and then the little fellow will start puffing and jumping and fuming against the "lack of co-operation" he will be continuing to receive from the Iranian side. It will be funny to watch, as when your kitten arches up and attacks your ankle...

... What we can do is open our eyes. Canada (as France and several other European countries) has gone to great lengths to maintain good relations with the Iranian theocracy, to advance trade and encourage "dialogue". We have publicly rejected the American, confrontationist position. In the name of Zahra Kazemi, it is time to switch sides.

The whole thing is short, and very much worth a read.

Moderation In the Defense of

Moderation In the Defense of Liberty... - The Moderate Republican blog minces no words about its mission:

This is blog for an endangered species-the old Rockefeller Republican.

As a Reaganite, I should add "late and unlamented", but that's neither true nor nice.

Today, Dennis has a posting on the constantly-brewing inter-party fight:

Sometime during the Reagan years, it was said that Republicans should never speak ill of other Republicans.

Well, we were the minority in both houses for much of that period. We did have to stick together.

I think that's an important difference.

On the surface this seems a good attempt at civility, but these days I wonder if it is really a way of silencing dissent. If you look at groups like the Council for Growth and their attacks on moderate Republicans ( remember their slur, "Franco-Republicans?") you can see this rule is not being honored by the far right. Reading this Salon story about the brewing fight in the Democratic Pary makes me think that dissent is not always bad. Back in the 1950s the GOP always had strong debates between conservatives such as Robert Taft and moderates and liberals such as Dwight Eisenhower.

Back in the fifties - years as closely removed from the New Deal as we are from the Reagan Years today, if you think about it - conservatism was a decided minority opinion. There were indeed debates, but they were essentially moot - at the polls, the "moderate" (and, let's not forget, war hero) Eisenhower trumped all debate within the party. He essentially stamped out conservative Republicanism for a generation.

Sure, the Boll Weevils began their drift that culminated in their breaking from the Democrats in '72, and Barry Goldwater maintained his lonely vigil for genuine conservatism. But the "debate" in the GOP in those days was akin to the "good old days of Minnesota Nice" that so many pine for here in Minnesota these days: "moderates" got their way, "conservatives" kindly shut up and sat in the corner.

That changed nationwide in '80, and twenty-odd years later, in Minnesota as well.

The "civility" of the fifties was the civility of imbalance; "We'll talk, You listen".

Things, obviously, changed:

These days moderates are considered traitors to the GOP and are driven out.

There's a difference, though; in the fifties, "moderate" and "conservative" Republicans agreed on some key things; economic growth and anti-communism being key among them (and the Democrats weren't that far removed in those days, either). Today, there are more key issues - and wider differences.

Any moderate that is pro-choice or pragmatic is considered not a "real" Republican and targeted during the primaries.

Which left us, in the 2002 elections, with Governor Brian Sullivan.

Oh, wait. You mean the pragmatic (on social issues) Pawlenty actually overcame and won the nomination against the opprobrium of the baaad conservatives? How could that have happened?

We have become a party of yes men. It would be nice if there were some debate in the party, but there is none. And the moderates that remain are too scared to stand for what they believe in. Debate, not obedience, is an important part of democracy.

I'd love to know what district Dennis caucuses at.

In my district, the battle seems to be between

• social conservatives, on the one hand, and
• Fiscal conservatives and social libertarians on the other.

"Moderates" - pseudo-DFLers - are much less in evidence.

So I'll reiterate the big question: If you oppose holding the line on government spending, and oppose getting government off the backs of the citizens, and think government should have a bigger, more intrusive role in society, then precisely why not join the DFL? Because they already believe these things!

Growing Impatient - Doug Grow

Growing Impatient - Doug Grow holds forth on the latest "scandal" in today's Strib. In so doing, he pounds another spike through the forehead of the notion that he's anything but a shill for the DFL.

Last fall, Tim Pawlenty's gubernatorial campaign was penalized an unprecedented $600,000 for clear-cut violations of Minnesota campaign laws.

There was nothing clear about the law, but we digress.

But in a twist that must have stunned even him, Pawlenty managed to turn that blast on his integrity into a political triumph by refusing to protest the ruling of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.

"A strong leader takes responsibility," he said of the violation and fine.

With those words, Pawlenty wasn't seen as just another cheating pol. Instead, he was applauded as a refreshing, stand-up guy.

Re-read that last paragraph. In other words, he wasn't really a "stand-up guy", doing the right thing. He was (Grow presumes) just another cheating pol. No debate about it - not in Doug's world, anyway.

This fit the image Pawlenty long has cultivated. He has pounded on the themes that he's a God-fearing, rock 'n' roll-loving, joke-cracking, hockey-playing guy with blue-collar roots from the working-class neighborhoods of South St. Paul.

With help from the media, he has sold the image well. Minnesotans may disagree with some of his political stances, but gee, isn't he a swell guy?

Unmentioned by, and perhaps unknown to Grow, is the fact that he is, by every account I've heard from everyone, everywhere, a generally swell guy. To convert him into anything else requires some clever reconstruction of history.

Which is Doug Grow's specialty.

In the past few days, however, it has become apparent that the image is way too simplistic. Overnight, Stand-up Pawlenty is looking a lot more like Slick Tim.

Sorry, Doug. "Slick" is already taken - your ex-president earned it.

We've learned that Pawlenty is secretive about his dealings, keeps vague records and does business with a very small circle of friends who played major roles in putting together his administration.

News Flash: Political associates look out for each other. Unless Doug Grow believes Dorsey and Whitney hired Walter Mondale for his courtroom skills.

He held a two-hour conversation with reporters Tuesday afternoon. Clearly, this session was meant to charm reporters and buff up the tarnished nice-guy image.

Typically, when a governor and reporters gather, the governor keeps a lectern between himself and the media wretches. On Tuesday, we were invited to sit at a huge table with the governor and ask as many questions as we wanted.

Again, stop the presses - the governor knows how to handle the media. Media people have egoes as large as, and generally larger than, that of the great outdoors (and I include myself in those days). He's good at it.

During our nice chat -- where were the cookies? -- the governor was affable, never once showing his temper.

In Doug Grow's world, I'm sure that could only be a sign of supreme artifice.

To many of us, this might be seen as a sign that Pawlenty doesn't think temper is needed - that the truth sets him free.

Still, for most of the two hours, this was Slick Tim talking, not Stand-up Pawlenty. The governor spent far more time talking about what's legal than about what's right.

And this year's "Les Nessman Recognition of the Screamingly Obvious award goes to...Doug Grow, of the DFL Star-Tribune!

Sheesh, no kidding, Doug. In a week in which the press and the DFL punditry has attacked the legality of what he and his associated allegedly did, why indeed would Pawlenty, a lawyer, focus on legality?

Why indeed?

Especially if he's a "stand-up guy?"

For example, he summed up news accounts about roles he and other friends and political appointees played in such companies as NewTel, New Access and Capitol Verification, with the classic lament of all embattled pols.

"What did anybody do wrong?" he asked. "What did anybody, in their role as a government official, do wrong?"

The Governor asks. And Grow responds:

Time may answer those questions.

Ah, a non-answer. So let me get this straight:

• Pawlenty asks the assembled horde to tell him what he actually did wrong, and
• Doug Grow has no answer, deferring it to some future investigation (that will, the Governor must know, reveal absolutely no wrong-doing on the Governor's part)...

  ...but Pawlenty is the slick one?

Grow continues:

Meanwhile, the new surprise that Gov. Slick dropped on Minnesota Tuesday concerned the so-called job he had leading up to, and during, the campaign.

Pawlenty revealed that he was hired by his friend, Elam Baer, to act as legal counsel for Access Anywhere, one of many companies Baer controls. (Recall, Pawlenty served as a board member of another Baer company, NewTel. Pawlenty claims to have had no knowledge of illegal sales tactics being used by New Access, a subsidiary of NewTel, while he was on the board of NewTel.)

And again, not only has no evidence come out that Pawlenty would have known about the "slamming", or that his capacity as legal counsel had anything to do with sales tactics.

Board Members select corporate officers. They do not run call centers. They do not interact with the company at a tactical level. If the company's officers aren't delivering at the bottom line, the board ejects them and replaces them. That is what board members do.

Pawlenty was paid $4,500 a month to "work" for Baer and Access Anywhere. But this was not exactly the employee-employer relationship most regular Minnesotans relate to.

The checks weren't made out to Pawlenty, nor were they signed by Baer. Instead, checks went to BAMCO (Business and Management Consultant). BAMCO was a one-employee company. The single employee was Pawlenty. BAMCO had just one client. The one client was Access Anywhere.

What made the relationship real special is the fact that Pawlenty/BAMCO has no record of the hours spent working for Baer/Access Anywhere. All Pawlenty says is that he worked from 10 to 30 hours a month to collect the retainer. He's vague about what he did.

Question for Doug Grow: Precisely what do you think a retainer is? A fee to retain services as a lawyer, not to use them. It's paying for a lawyer's availability.

What does Doug Grow think the lawyers that McClatchy Newspapers retain do for their time? Deliver newspapers?

There may be nothing illegal here. Certainly, other pols have had sweetheart jobs during campaigns, but typically the public has known about them.

Another question for Doug Grow: Does he think that Pawlenty wasn't listed in the company's annual report as a board member?

It's secrecy that makes this deal smell. Until the headlines hit, none of us knew about Pawlenty's spot on the mini-board of directors of NewTel. Not until Tuesday did any of us know of this funky little one-client firm, BAMCO.

Note to Doug Grow: I'm sure you're also clueless about my little one-person, zero (at the moment) client firm, Humanware Design. It's a legal construct to allow income from freelance or consulting work to be taxed at corporate rather than personal rates.

Or have you been working for the Mommypaper your entire career, and never needed to learn how freelancing works?

What we have here, at least, is less an issue of Pawlenty's secrecy than Grow's ignorance.

Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, is a longtime friendly foil of Pawlenty. He put Pawlenty's political problem succinctly.

"I liked the guy because I thought we came from similar backgrounds," Rukavina said. "But I didn't forget where I came from. I think he has. I don't think there's anybody in his old neighborhood who would be paid $4,500 a month and forget what he did to earn it."

What does it mean to be "from the neighborhood?"

If you're Tom Rukavina, it means talking in an accent that the Coen Brothers would have cut from Fargo as "too over the top", and acting no more literate or knowedgeable than the deadenders that stagger out of the bars at 1AM in Virginia, and waving your "roots" in people's faces, as if they, themselves, were a qualification. It means treating one's "blue collar roots" as a licence to be an ignorant buffoon, or at least to talk like one from the floor of the House.

If you're Pawlenty, it means that no matter how far one goes in life, one keeps some of the values of the place you came from. Including hard work, resourcefulness, and using your talents to their full extent.

Pawlenty left the neighborhood long ago. Now it appears he may have forgotten where it was.

One of the great glories of American Civilization is that one is not bound, any more than one chooses to be, to one's "neighborhood" or upbringing or social class, or much of anything else.

"It appears" Doug Grow has forgotten that.

Backlash, Part II - The

Backlash, Part II - The more I read, the more convinced I am that the Dems jumped on the Yellowcakes Uranium story too soon, and that before the year is out the punditry will be looking on it as a Dem debacle.

This WSJ piece (via Sullivan), indicates there's a lot less doubt, even inside the Beltway, than skimming the national media would have you believe:

One of the mysteries of the recent yellowcake uranium flap is why the White House has been so defensive about an intelligence judgment that we don't yet know is false, and that the British still insist is true. Our puzzlement is even greater now that we've learned what last October's national intelligence estimate really said.

We're reliably told that that now famous NIE, which is meant to be the best summary judgment of the intelligence community, isn't nearly as full of doubt about that yellowcake story as the critics assert or as even CIA director George Tenet has suggested. The section on Iraq's hunt for uranium, for example, asserts bluntly that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" and that "acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."

Sullivan adds:

The president and the prime minister should go on the offensive soon. Maybe Blair will in front of Congress.

In my own mind, I always worry that I ascribe too much prescience to others. Still, given the way the President has played the game against the Democrats and the Media so far, I can't help but wonder - has Bush been planning this? Did he let this "crisis" blow up, knowing that he'd soon be pulling the rug out from under the naysayers to yet more political advantage?

It's hard to maintain astronomically-high approval ratings. But it's not hard to bounce back - Clinton taught us that.

"They Want to Win Wimbledon!" - On Monty Python's Flying Circus, only a Scotsman could save the world from a group of extraterrestrial blancmanges winning Wimbledon.

According to Mark Steyn, things haven't improved much for British tennis. The high point, according to this exerpt?:

In 1877, [Wimbledon] introduced the first Gentlemen's Singles lawn tennis championship, won by an upper-class boarding-school rackets player called Spencer Gore.

Gore was very different from today's star champions: He wore long cotton trousers with vast acres of empty white advertising space that Nike would die for. At that time, the British dominated the tennis scene, thanks to their grueling training regime: On the day of the big match, a chap would take the train up to London, drop in at the Savoy for a haunch of venison and some spotted dick washed down with a couple of stiff ones, toddle down to Wimbledon, change into the heavy underwear and a thick long-sleeved pullover, and dispatch Johnny Foreigner in three sets. Unfortunately, the Americans and Australians then introduced radical concepts like getting up early in the morning and practising.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Pack vs. Herd - Walking

Pack vs. Herd - Walking about the cities, I've been amazed, really, at how few business have actually posted themselves to bar handguns (in the hands of legally-permitted gun owners) on the premises. The response seems to have been, in the great scheme of things, genuinely minuscule.

I noticed this while walking around the Minneapolis Warehouse District after my interview today. I filed it in my mental junk drawer, until I noticed this on Kim Du Toit's site today - a quote by Massoud Ayoob, made after Israeil decided to fight terrorist attacks on schools and students by allowing (and in some instances requiring) teachers and volunteers to carry concealed handguns - a measure that's cut school attacks in Israel to roughly zero:

"Of course, the politically correct hand-wringers want nothing to do with this. Sadly, being helpless themselves, sheep tend to instinctively fear anything with canine teeth. Many of them cannot distinguish between the wolf and the sheepdog, and thus fear them both equally."

I'm feeling rather like a peevish schnauzer today.

Lies About The Iraq War

Lies About The Iraq War - Or were they really just intelligence lapses?

Porphyrogenitus examines them. The synopsis:

1) The Iraqi Army would fight much harder to defend its country than it did in Kuwait.
2) Iraq is not Afghanistan - it will take half a million American troops and at least six months to capture Baghdad, resulting in 50,000 American casualties (of which approximately 10,000 would be deaths).
3) Iraq will draw Israel into the war, leading to a larger Middle East conflagration.
4) There would be massive resistance from the Iraqi population defending their country from invasion.
5) There would be street by street, house to house fighting in Baghdad that would destroy the city, cost thousands of American casualties, and drag on for six weeks or more.
6) A war would create a huge humanitarian crisis as millions of refugees fled Iraq, overwhelming neighboring countries ability to deal with it.
7) A war would create such disruption in the food distribution system and so destroy the water infrastructure that it would result in hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Iraqis dying of starvation and disease.
8) That mythological boogieman, the "Arab Street", would rise up against us and destabilize friendly, pro-Western regimes in the region.
9) Saddam Hussein has no ties to terrorism, but if we attack him then he will launch terror attacks in the U.S. and we will thus produce the very thing we're trying to avoid.
10) War with Iraq would distract from the war on terrorism and it would derail any chances for the Middle East Peace Process.

Porphyrogenitus' response to each of these "lapses" on the left's part are, natch, on his site. Check it out.

The Hokey Pokey, As Written

The Hokey Pokey, As Written By Shakespeare - This is credited to Jeff Brechlin, of the Washington Style Invitational:

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

And now, I'm off to my interview.

Light - I'm waiting for

Light - I'm waiting for my shirt to dry, and going on another job interview in a bit here.

More posting later.

Kulcha Watch - Instapundit notes

Kulcha Watch - Instapundit notes Lileks' observation about a cultural watershed for which some of us have been waiting a lifetime:

...there’s been a sharp decrease in the Boomer Uber Alles effect. If an ad agency suggested using a Joe Cocker song for a car commercial they’d be met with rolled eyes. There’s a marked decrease in tie-dye nostalgia and dead rock-star hagiography. Culturally speaking, I think that pig in the python has finally been digested.

Has the pig been digested? Partially. But it's also been joined by a goat.

Because while the baby boomers enter their Buick-buying, digestive-products-consuming phase of life, those of us who immediately followed them are finally hitting (in theory) our "peak earning years". If I'm seeing fewer references to the Doors and the Beatles, it's because they have to make room for enough Ramones (Blitzkrieg Bop's "Hey, Ho, Let's Go" is popping up in ads all over the place), Iggy Pop (can't swing a cat without hearing Lust For Life on a commercial) or, for the real ex-hipsters, the Soft Boys (I Wanna Destroy You was the hilarious soundtrack for an Amazon.com ad last year).

So little air time. So many market segments.

Fun - The California Coastline

Fun - The California Coastline Project is photographing the entire shoreline of California.

Their website allows you to tour the entire coastline in all of its amazing splendor. I can now see what some of the fuss is about.

I was drawn to this story, of course, because Barbra Streisand wants to put the project out of business.

Look the site over while you can.

We Rule - Fraters noted

We Rule - Fraters noted the Northern Alliance of Blogs' domination of the airwaves - during the 5PM hour yesterday, anyway. Their story notes that the hour started off with a shout out to Lileks and Powerline during the first segment of the Hewitt show, then the Monday Lileks segment (which included a softball-related nod to the Fraters), and then their switch of the dial that brought them to my little call-in on the Lewis show yesterday.

At the risk of immodesty, they missed one - I also called in to Medved yesterday, talking about Liberia.

Gaaa. I need a @#$@#% job.

Hey, gang - let's do a show!

Small Day, Big Week -

Small Day, Big Week - I'm spending the day dolling up my daughter's room.

Tomorrow, interview for a job that popped up last week.

Also - hopefully, this week - word on two other fairly immiment job leads, plus (please, please), word on a third interview for the gig I really want, plus starting a little two-week job at a local company.

And on Friday, the kids come home from Grandma and Grandpa's.

Light posting today - I have to work my way into pretending I'm even remotely domestic.

Return of the Mind -

Return of the Mind - Jesse Ventura's finally talking with a local media jackal.

Today's interview with Neil Justin in the Strib provides more of Ventura's endless prattle - or, as Justin calls it:

...the same swagger, humor, griping and confidence that made him one of politics' most colorful characters.

Most interestingly, the interview talks about Ventura's long-delayed MSNBC talk show:

The gamble: a much looser show with guests offering competing viewpoints on a topical subject and Ventura acting more as a judge than as a moderator.

I'm trying to picture the McLaughlin Group, only with a big, lunkheaded wrestler in the John M. role.

Still trying.

Nope. Can't quite do it.

Remember the scene in This Is Spinal Tap, where Derek St. Hubbins' (Michael McKean) new-agey wife comes to manage the band? And you can see Nigel Tufnel (Christoper Guest) and much of the rest of the crew does a pronounced slow burn, a la Paul talking with Yoko in Let It Be?

Meet the next star:

There probably will be a field of reporters, including Ventura's son, Tyrel.

"MSNBC was so enthusiastic about him," Ventura said. "Ty is only 23 and he's jumping up a whole level."

From peeing in the Governor's Mansion to jumping up "a whole level". Not bad.

A title and a premiere date have yet to be determined, but Sorenson said the show should be ready to go in late summer or early fall.

Didn't they say that last fall?

More as things develop. Assuming they do.

Gay Marriage. Again - I've

Gay Marriage. Again - I've talked many times about Gay Marriage. While the idea bothers me on a religious and moral level, our government's decisions aren't always made for reasons that match any given person's - or group's - religion or morals.

And, to be honest (especially to those of you who've emailed to excoriate my prior takes on this subject), while I still believe that the best, most equitable solution to this conundrum is to get government out of the marriage business, the "culture war" aspects of this bother me as well. It would be a big victory for the cultural left - and we don't want that, either.

Medved was talking about the subject last night. He made the point (which Virginia Postrel of all people disputes) that the family, fundamentally, is an institution in which children are created and raised. He's right, of course (sorry, Virginia).

And I started thinking - where does government interact, not with a married couple, but with its children? Where can we strengthen the notion of marriage where it actually interacts with its most important impact vis-a-vis children?

Taxes.

So why not play it like this. Cultural liberals - you want Gay Marriage (or gay Civil Unions, anyway)? Fine. Then let's jack up the child tax credit while we're at it. Double the deduction per child.

How much is gay marriage worth to the left - enough to give ground on "Subsidies of the the family?"

I think the market will eventually settle this. Are there really so many gays that want to "marry" (and, eventually, divorce, with all the attendant legal and financial anguish to go along with the emotional distress)? In the grand scheme of things, I doubt it, but I remain to be convinced.

Minnesota Is Hell - Part

Minnesota Is Hell - Part CIX - Laura Billings columns are like potato chips - you can't fisk just one.

Last Thursday, she wrote about the Naomi Gaines case. It wouldn't be a Laura Billings column without a swipe at the New Right, of course; in this case, those bloody talk shows:

Radio callers all week have been suggesting, in that politely intolerant way some Minnesotans have when talking about people who aren't from here [emphasis from the original article], that her religion and race played some part in her decision.

The thin film of callers to "conservative" talk radio that suggest being Black and Moslem were factors to this tragedy make a nice, comic-book boogyman to draw attention away from the part Billings did get right; people not from here. Minnestoa's entitlement-driven public health system is overtaxed, and people coming in from out of state for our excessively generous benefits and nonexistent residency requirements don't make matters any easier, least of all in the chronically-underfunded mental health area.

Reasonable people can have a reasonable disagreement about that, of course. What is less reasonable is that Laura Billings is sniping at people who talk about "people not from here" on this issue - but herself leads the sniping against "people not like us" on other issues. She's assigned the demise of "Minnesota Nice" to "people not like" her - Volvo-driving, Wellstone-worshipping, "moderate" liberals who are "willing to pay for a Better Minnesota."

Onward:

In fact, two details of her case hint at a much simpler explanation for her isolation.

The first, her brother's observation that having her first child at the age of 16 seemed to turn Gaines into a different person, not just newly burdened, but deeply depressed. Gaines may simply be reflecting the grim statistics that go along with teenage pregnancy: 80 percent of those pregnancies are unintended; two-thirds of pregnant teens drop out of school; 80 percent of unwed teen mothers end up on welfare.

She "may be reflecting the grim statistics" that buttress Billings' inevitable swipe at the budget-cutting movement. But as a single parent, I'd suspect she may more likely be reflecting the crushing workload, the endless demands, the fatigue, the implacable responsibility of being a mom - so unlike the world any 16-year-old inhabits until that baby is born.

But as long as Billings is going to try to link Gaines' initial bout of depresion with her crimes via a facile "perhaps...", perhaps I'll do the same. Perhaps Gaines' situation reflected that significant part of "urban" culture regards knocking up women as a form of counting coup. And Afro-American society devalues fatherhood, one of the most noxious social holdovers from the days of slavery and Jim Crow. Our social service system completes that devaluation.

Perhaps, as long as we unbidden third parties are hijacking Naomi Gaines' voice for her, my explanations are just as good as Billings' are.

The second, her statement to police that she would "rather be dead than live in a place where I'm not free to walk around, I'm not free to be who I am, I'm not free to see other moms out, single black moms with their kids, enjoying their kids." As court records have shown, Gaines was battling serious mental health problems.

And racism.

And yet, her assessment of life as a single mom hints at the contradictory messages we send to women like her. Our political culture these days "celebrates life," while heaping judgment on poor women ("Why have so many kids if you can't afford to pay for them?"), reducing their access to health care, child care and all the other supports that make single parenting more bearable.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that the budgets for such programs haven't been slashed at all.

If you subsidize something, people will go where the money is. If you build stadiums for sports franchise owners, there will be more sports francise owners. If you give tax breaks for buying houses, more people buy houses. If you subsidize single parenthood (or, to be more accurate, unwed teenage single parenthood - I'm a single parent, and I'm not seeing any benefits), you'll increase your supply of unwed teenage single parents. If we stopped making the life of the single, unwed parent so "bearable", perhaps more single, unwed people (male and female) would quit creating children.

It's that heartless - attacking the problem at its source? Why, if we did that, teenagers would have fewer children - which would create fewer jobs for social workers.

Billings wafts back into irrationality:

No wonder if Gaines wasn't seeing a lot of single moms, black or otherwise, enjoying their kids the way she might have wished.

I'm not sure what this means. She wasn't seeing them because:

• she was mentally ill? or
• there's no program to bring single (and black!) mothers together?

I'm confused.

Neither detail excuses Gaines from her alleged crime. Not at all. And yet, they ought to make us feel more compassion than derision for this young mother, who pushed her stroller through the crowds at the Taste of Minnesota and still felt entirely alone in her troubles.

Compassion? Absolutely. The mentally-ill deserve a lot of it - not only doesn't the general public understand them, either does most of science or the "mental health community", really. The psysiology, psychology and chemistry of mental illness is more opaque to science than is the geography of the dark side of the moon.

But for the benefit of Laura Billings, let's put this in perspective; her crime may have been spurred by mental illness. It was not abetted by the erosion of that mythical "Minnesota Nice". Without that "Minnesota Nice", we'd likely have more Naomi Gainses waiting until they were ready to have children.

I know. I'm such a heartless conservative bastard, what with wanting parents to be ready and all, aren't I?

News Flash - Telemarketers are

News Flash - Telemarketers are Sleazy! - The St. Paul Pioneer Press is hot on the trail of corruption in the GOP-led administration. Again.

The story begins: "Some of Minnesota's top Republicans, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Auditor Patricia Awada, have had business ties to a Minneapolis-based telephone company accused of cheating consumers in seven states."

The story itself notes the connection between the Republican leadership and New Access Communications. New Access was charged by regulators in three states with the process of "slamming" - inducing people via telemarketing to switch phone companies for ostensibly lower rates, but hiding higher rates and fees in the bills - and ended up paying over $200,000 in consumer protection settlements in three states.

The story lists a number of complaints against New Access (owned by NewTel, which was founded by GOP figure Elam Baer, and on whose board Pawlenty sat).

One immediate question: Do board members, concerned with the hiring and firing of executives, have anything to do with the day-to-day operation of a sleazy telemarketing operation? Eventually, sure - if the fines and settlements cross the threshold of "inevitable costs of doing business in a regulated market" to the point where the executives (approved by the board) are having trouble at the bottom line. We don't know the specifics - and either does the Pioneer Press' article, beyond a number of quotes from academic experts from several business schools.

The story notes:

Last year, New Access Communications paid $222,000 to settle charges it violated consumer protection laws in three of those states — Washington, Oregon and Indiana — by overcharging some customers and tricking others into changing their telephone services.

Each case involved complaints filed while Pawlenty was one of three directors and an investor in New Access' parent company, NewTel Holdings. Directors are legally responsible for overseeing the management of a company and its subsidiaries, experts say.

And there's another question: the complaints were filed when Pawlenty was a director - but the story mentions neither when Pawlenty was a director, nor if he was director when the cases were settled, or any of the actions Pawlenty took (or didn't take) that bore on the settlements.

Here's the interesting part:

New Access is also the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Minnesota attorney general's office, according to company officials, who said it agreed last year to stop telemarketing here until the case is resolved. A spokeswoman for the agency said she could not discuss any investigations that may be under way.

To me, as in the American Bankers story, the real story is in the story itself.

Just as the heat from the American Bankers story, the "Pawlenty Will Release Sex Offenders" story (which eventually tanked), and the Gang Strike Force stories - all of which seemed to some observers to have been stage-managed by Attorney General Mike Hatch - died down, along comes another story with ties to the Attorney General's office. It comes to us via the same team that broke the American Bankers story, working for the same newspaper that dropped the story as soon as it swerved back to point to Mike Hatch.

More as the story develops.

Fitting Tribute - Fraters (among

Fitting Tribute - Fraters (among many other bloggers) took due note of the commissioning Saturday of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan - the seventh supercarrier of the Nimitz class.

They also cast aspersions on the planned commissioning, next year, of the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, the latest Seawolf-class submarine.

The Fraters duly note Carter's incompetence as a commander-in-chief, with this Norman Polmar quote:

”Naming the SSN-23 for President Carter further proclaims the bankruptcy of the Navy in assigning names and designations to submarines. According to a leading Pentagon reporter, it also reveals "that Clinton-appointee Dalton is - at best - politically tone deaf.

...as president [Carter] disappointed many senior officers in the armed services, especially the Navy. His personnel policies helped fuel a mass exodus of senior enlisted personnel that at times was so critical that ship deployments were delayed. In 1979, President Carter vetoed the entire fiscal year 1980 defense budget because it contained an aircraft carrier.

For many who served [in the Navy] then, Mr. Carter is at fault for having presided over the hollowing-out of the U.S. military," wrote a Pentagon reporter.”

Friends who served in the military during Carter's administration agree. Still, if you have to name a warship after Carter, better a submarine than a carrier (Carter was apparently a much better submarine officer than President).

No, the real political tone-deafness involved in this story lies not with Carter (whose transgressions were real - but we recovered from them!). No, indeed, the real sleaze in this story lies in - where else - the Clinton administration.

The Seawolf class submarine was the ultimate Cold War weapon. It was designed in the eighties to fight the latest, greatest Soviet attack and ballistic missile submarines, under the Arctic ice. It's big, very fast, and incredibly expensive. The first unit, Seawolf, had just started building when the Berlin Wall fell. The Navy, eager to stretch the budgets that were already starting to shrink, tried to cancel the Seawolf contract. This, in turn, threatened the Electric Boat Company - one of the US' two surviving submarine builders, located in Groton, Connecticut, and one of the state's larger industrial employers.

In the 1992 Presidential campaign, running slightly behind in Connecticut, Bill Clinton promised that if elected, he'd guarantee the construction of at least two more Seawolf-class boats, one of them to be named U.S.S. Connecticut. Clinton came from behind in Connecticut - largely on the strength of this promise, say some analysts - and it may have been this that put him over the top.

The third of the three units, of course, is the Carter.

So - three submarines the Navy didn't want (it wanted to free up money for the newer Virginia-class boats, which are built for the shallow-water, special-forces-heavy operations that the Navy actually expects to encounter in the near future), built at the cost of about $2 billion apiece for purely political gain by the most anti-military administration since the one for which the third boat is named...

If the Reagan is a carrier, and the Carter is a submarine, what kind of ship should the navy name the U.S.S. Bill Clinton? Input is eagerly solicited.

Block Party, Redux - While

Block Party, Redux - While the music was great, and the cause (contributing to the maintenance of the grand old Basilica) is certainly a good one, the politically-liberal Catholic leadership still uses its position to coddle a lot of very dubious causes. So I fully expected to see every entrance to the fenced-off festival area to be plastered with "The Basilica of St. Mary's Bans Guns On These Premises". Enh. No biggie - I doubt I'd have brought one if I had one.

But among the various food and vendor booths spread along the "midway" alongside the Basilica, I found exactly one "political" booth; Citizens for a Supine Safer Minnesota.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that the materials they were handing out were both stupid and inflammatory (their "Minnesotans Against Getting Shot" buttons are an especially Skoglundesque brand of idiocy) or just plain wrong (marking up their literature to highlight the factual errors is an exercise in patience and trying to avert Carpal Tunnel Syndrome); no, the dumbest thing about the booth was the banner at the top of the awning, which said in three-inch letters:

Welcome To Texas Minnesota

...with "Minnesota" in fake handwritten script, as if scrawled in place of the crossed-out Texas.

Beneath all the cynical factual legerdemain behind CSM, the most noxious thing about the group is that they honestly believe that tighter gun controls are a sign of intelligence; that states with more liberal gun laws can't be as "smart" as Minnesotans (or as we used to be, anyway). Their spokespeople gave speeches replete with references to the "Cold Mississippi" we'd turn into if we passed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act - as if Texans or Mississippians (or people from any of the 32 other shall-issue or no-permit states, for that matter) cared any less about their state, or fellow human beings, or were somehow just not as smart as the rest of us.

If this sort of stereotyping were aimed at anyone but white Texans or Mississippians (and the stereotype of the concealed carry permittee, carefully reinforced by the likes of the Star Tribune, is that of a middle-aged white male), it'd be justifiably condemned.

I know Texans. Hell, I'm related to a few. I've been to Texas (even spent time at the dreaded Enron when it was just Enron, not "Enron!"), and the people didn't seem any dumber than Minnesotans. I met bigots and rednecks, and they didn't seem any redder-necked or bigottier than the masses of yobs I used to entertain in bars in Brooklyn Center and Fergus Falls.

I'm from North Dakota, for crying out loud - a concealed carry state that's "dumb" enough to figure out how to build an educational system that's tied with Minnesota's at the top of the heap, for 40% less money.

I was raised, in my naive youth, to believe that conceit would eventually be its own undoing. I know that justice is rare in this world - but deep in the back of my mind, I still fervently believe that the sort of overweening conceit that CSM practices will come back to bite it. In some ways, I think it already has - the bill passed into law, after all.

Time will do it, of course, without any need of my help. But it's galling to see this sort of - let's call a spade a spade - bigotry, being passed off as acceptable by anyone...

...much less in the shadow of the house of God.

Block Party - I went

Block Party - I went to my first-ever Basilica Block Party last night. Wow - fun time. Amazed I've let so many of them go by without seeing one. I spent the whole evening at the Verizon stage, watching Franky Perez, Edward McCain and the Suburbs.

First things first - the opening act, Franky Perez, was amazing. His CD wanders all over the map; mid-tempo latino-tinged balladry (Two Lost Angels, Bella Maria), raucous hook-crazy bar-rock (Love and Hate, Cecilia), and a patriotic ballad (You're A Part Of Me) that swerves unpredictably between Proud To Be An American-style mawkishness and some genuinely beautiful insights (Perez, a Las Vegas native, is the son of Cuban refugees). Live, though, he's as kinetic as films of early '70's-era Springsteen, and his band, the Highway Saints, is razor-sharp. I'd only seen one of his videos (and, in retrospect, heard one other song, although I didn't know it was Perez at the time) before last night - it was amazing. His stage style borrows a lot from the great Stax R'nB performers of the sixties and seventies as it does from Springsteen, and was a refreshing break from the dull, staid cynicism that typifies so many groups performing today. I'm hoping his sophomore CD is a strong one, and gets his stage show out in front of a lot more people; he's really, really good. He'll be at the State Fair this August, at the Bandshell. See him, or I'll come out and give you what-for.

Edward McCain was next. McCain is custom-made for Cities 97; an engaging personality (he had the funniest stage banter of the night), but his music is a mix of mid-tempo acoustic pop ballads and mid-tempo mildly-jazzy acoustic pop ballads that are a lot like chinese food for lunch - an hour later, you've forgotten you've eaten. I imagine McCain's great at the Fine Line, or some intimate little club; in front of a couple thousand people on a stage at the end of a parking lot, stuck between the awesome Perez and the frenetic Suburbs, he was a fish out of water. A capable, fun fish, but still.

On to the Suburbs. The 'burbs were a seminal early-eighties new-wave/dance band from Minneapolis that's had more botched shots at stardom (note the date on the link) than Kate Capshaw.

I remember in about 1982, a college classmate of mine spent weeks talking about his favorite "Just amazing" band from the Cities, the Suburbs. Finally, one night, he played a 'burbs record for me and a few other locals. After weeks of buildup about what an amazing band they were, it was...a letdown.

And over the next several years, knocking around the Minneapolis music scene (and then working as a nightclub DJ), I heard every record they ever did - and was bored stiff. Among Minneapolis bands, I always preferred the Replacements, the Hüskers, Prince - their records sounded less dry and mannered, at the time.

But somehow, despite their reputation as the best bar band in town, I managed never to see the 'burbs live.

Big mistake.

Their show last night (a good one by their standards, say some longtime 'burb gig veterans) was a huge, anarchic, amphetamine blast of fun. The band was tight like a band that's been playing together off and on for 26 years should be tight, but loose in a way that a great live band should be; Charlie Watts once described the Stones as "loosely tight", and that fits the bill. Chan Poling and Beej Chaney split the singing, and while I've heard for years about their idiosyncratic interplay onstage, I really did have to see it to believe it. Poling was the eternal alt-rock geek keyboardist, who had the air of the classical musician slumming it in a bar band - and made it work. Chaney looked, after all these years, like nobody so much as a mid-eighties Iggy Pop, and acted the part; clambering up lighting standards, diving off the stage and floating about on the hands of the crowd (he got a solid 200 feet from the stage), and he's an anarchical, underrated guitar player to boot.

The main point - the band on stage was the exact opposite of their recorded history. While on record they always sounded mannered and fussy and just a little too precious for my raucous punk and soul tastes, onstage they were loud and...

...joyous. The songs that sounded so dry and dessicated on their over-rated early-eighties albums sounded big and alive and full of actual soul onstage.

It was a great evening. Wish you could have been there.

The Missing Link - According

The Missing Link - According to Instapundit, we now have our smoking gun linking Hussein and Bin Laden.

According to Judge Gilbert Merritt - a lifelong Democrat according to Glenn Reynolds, who apparently clerked for Merritt - an Iraqi informant has provided documentary evidence:

When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ''Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.''

So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right.

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.

But why would such a document have been published?

The only explanation for this strange set of events, according to the Iraqi lawyers, is that Uday, an impulsive and somewhat unbalanced individual, decided to publish this honor roll at a time when the regime was under worldwide verbal attack in the press, especially by us. It would, he thought, make them more loyal and supportive of the regime.

His father was furious, knowing that it revealed information about his supporters that should remain secret.

Merritt states his background and side in this issue:

It does not prove that they engaged together in any particular act of terror against the United States.

But it seems to me to be strong proof that the two were in contact and conspiring to perform terrorist acts.

Up until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind.

As always, we'll see.

Although it seems a safe bet that we won't see it in the NYT, ABC News or the BBC.

(Via Instapundit)

Meme Watch - Steve Gigl

Meme Watch - Steve Gigl is a Minnesota guy with a fun blog - sorta Fraters-meets-Adam Corolla. I like it.

He's got this bit today, lifted from Acidman - one of those Internet memes that I shake my head at as I finish every flipping question. Here goes.

1. Do you have a personal hero? If so, who is it? Ernest Shackleton. He's finally getting his due, almost 90 years late.
   
2. What is your favorite book of all time and what made it so good? That's gotta be "Crime and Punishment". It's good on many levels - as good versus evil, as an allegory about the evils of the secularization of the Endlightenment and Socialism, and as a Columbo episode without the seventies styles.
   
3. What does “diversity” mean to you? Respect for genuine differences - and that means ideas as well as skin color or gender.
   
4. What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done? Intervened in a gay bashing, on the side of the bashee.
   
5. Do you regret doing it? Of course not.
   
6. Can you drive a stick shift? I hope never to buy an automatic transmission again. I had it on my first car, and hated it. I love stick shifts.
   
7. What’s the highest speed you ever traveled in a car?Driving, about 100. Riding, 125.
   
8. Which is better: snakes or spiders? I love them both.
   
9. What is the most disgusting thing you ever ate? Scrapple. For northerners, it's a type of loaf sausage found in the mid-atlantic region. It tastes like it's made from a hog that died and sat suppurating in a field in the middle of summer before it was dropped into a meat grinder. Vile stuff. Yes, worse than haggis.
   
10. Have you ever sh*t your pants? Be HONEST! Specifically my pants? As in, nobody else's? No.
    
11. Was losing your virginity an enjoyable experience? Yeah, but I have fun filling out tax forms, too.
    
12. Should oral sex be outlawed or encouraged? Is oral sex when you just talk about it?
    
13. Name one man with a fine ass. Juan Valdez, on the cover of the coffee cans. The burro looks like a thoroughbred.
    
14. Do you watch golf on television? If not, will you iron my shirts? I'll buy an iron before I watch golf on TV.
    
15. Who is Martha Burk? Martha Burk is a clinical psychologist. She probably has people asking if she's Martha Burke, the woman that's been driving half of the New York Times' front page this past year, in re the Masters.
    
16. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My employment status. So I'd have less time for this sort of thing.
    
17. Do you eat raw oysters? I prefer to smoke them.
    
18. Are you claustrophobic? Only in a political sense.
    
19. If you rode a motorcycle, would you wear a helmet even if the law said you didn‘t have to? I've seen a guy splatter his head after flying off his bike. Yes, damn skippy I would.
    
20. Name five great Presidents. Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Reagan, FDR.
    
21. Name three sh***y Presidents. Carter, LBJ, Martin Van Buren.
    
22. Now call me fanny and slap my ass. Just kidding. I'll save time by just calling you an ass. Just kidding.
    
23. This is the 4th of July. Did you set off any fireworks? Bottlerockets are very therapeutic.
    
24. If you could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the history of the planet, who would you choose? Christ, Churchill, Lech Walesa, George Patton, Stanislaus Schmaizner, and an Aramaic-Polish-English-Yiddish translator.

Whew. That'll be enough of that.

Deja View - I had

Deja View - I had an "interview" of sorts in downtown Minneapolis yesterday - basically to sign a contract for another of the little short-term jobs that's kept me out of foreclosure this last six months. Posh deal, really - three and a half days onsite, probably a week working at home. If only I could get one of those jobs every, say, two weeks or so. Life'd be pretty good right now.

I moved here in '85. I lived in various parts of South Minneapolis for a couple of years, then moved to Saint Paul, where i've pretty much stayed since '88. Now, I love Saint Paul. People from Minneapolis see our sleepy downtown, and completely miss the point - Saint Paul is a city of neighborhoods. Downtown rolls up the sidewalks at six, but the action is all happening out on Uni or Grand or North Rice or Payne. The neighborhoods are where life takes place in Saint Paul - each with its own personality. Highland is snooty and aloof in its Lexuses (Lexi?). Mac/Groveland fairly shudders with earnestness - its population of college kids exudes the stuff, before they move to Saint Anthony Park, which has the elegant but nebbishy style of the college professors and non-profit execs that swarm the place. And the Midway, where I live, is a great place to raise kids; the neighbors watch out for each other like they used to do in genuine small towns.

Now, compared to Saint Paul, Minneapolis has neighborhoods in the same way that Applebees has Mexican Food; same ingredients, but they just don't go together the same way. Oh, there are identifiable neighborhoods in Minneapolis, but purely for transient, social reasons; Uptown was Uptown because of its mass of musicians and artists and slackers (who've mostly moved to Northeast). And it's not really a neighborhood if it's recognized as such for all the wrong reasons; would you think of Camden or Phillips if it weren't for crack, gangs and tragedy? Because while Saint Paul's Frogtown and Swede Hollow have their problems, the neighborhoods have histories that predate the troubles, and will probably survive them. Most of Minneapolis' neighborhoods are places where people sleep when they're not working or at the lake.

Yep. I love Saint Paul. It's warm, it's friendly (most of it), it's home. It's Yin.

Sometimes I need Yang.

I used to practically live in Downtown Minneapolis. Its thriving throb was what I left North Dakota for. I played in a bunch of bands at all the bars you know (First Avenue/Seventh Street Entry) and a few you don't (McCreedy's). I loved it.

Then I got married, and life coagulated into two big blots around my house and job (wherever that was at the time). I went years without going downtown. I missed it, badly.

My big second interview last week (won't hear about thirds until next week, I'm told) was downtown, deep in the marble canyon of the older quarter of the core, Second Avenue and Seventh Street. I had a meeting there yesterday, and another (for yet another short-term job) today.

So much has changed downtown since I last actually knew the place, it's like learning a new city. Buildings have different names. Merchants have changed names, disappeared (where did Slice of New York go? Dammit!), even entire blocks have morphed.

And it's fun!

So while I'd be hoping to land the third interview (and hopefully the offer) at the company from last week even if it were in Maple Grove or Eden Prairie or Minnetonka (like my last three jobs), I'm also rooting for it because part of me really, really needs that buzzing of downtown energy.

So - let's all join me in crossing my fingers. Or yours, if that's easier.

Stars In Uniform - 62

Stars In Uniform - 62 years ago, Jimmy Stewart was drafted, rejected for being underweight, and joined the US Army Air Corps anyway. He was standing guard duty when news of Pearl Harbor broke. He was a corporal when he reported for flight training. By the end of the war, he was a bird colonel and had flown 20 combat missions, and proven himself as a leader even beyond that. The story is fascinating.

The Tillman brothers - Pat, an Arizona Cardinals safety, and Kevin, a minor-league pitching prospect - earned plaudits for leaving the world of professional sports behind to join the Army after 9/11 - and justly so. Both served in combat in the Gulf, and now both have been accepted into Ranger training (although only a small number even among successful trainees are selected to join the 75th Airborne (Ranger) Regiment).

Now, perhaps, even a stranger story; rapper Canibus has followed through with his own vow to join the Army. He's now a cavalry scout.

So what's so important about celebrities (albeit B-list ones, unlike Stewart) joining the military? In the case of the Tillmans, it's that men who are on the brink of immense wealth are willing to drop it all in mid-career to serve their country - knowing that professional athletics depends on being at a physical peak that is not only fleeting, but that the military, especially elite infantry units like the Rangers, are famous for wearing out just as fast as professional sports.

For the rapper, it's as big a jump; while Canibus is a B-list rapper (most famous as a battle-rapper), he was at the peak of his career, in an industry with a shorter memory than sports.

The point? Maybe there is none. Or maybe it's just that all is not lost.

Offsetting Penalties - Well, it's

Offsetting Penalties - Well, it's official; the entire right wing has joined forces in castigating Ann Coulter and Michael "Weiner" Savage (as well Trent Lott before both of them). Sullivan even paid Coulter the ultimate dismissal; he said she's like a conservative Michael Moore (rhetorically speaking).

Now, as the Fraters aptly ask - where is the left? Where are the denunciations of Micheal Moore's fabrications and bigotry? Where are the wholesale shunnings of Maureen Dowd's bile?

The Bleeding Edge - I've

The Bleeding Edge - I've posted several times about Gay Marriage in the past year. On no issue do my postings get as many comments and emails - which would make sense if I were Andrew Sullivan, a key stakeholder in the issue! But I'm straight and single (again). Yes, I've come around, somewhat reluctantly, to Andrew Sullivan's side of the issue. To me, the whole thing seems like something that the free market will solve, no matter what the political argument decides.

My idea was, essentially, to privatize marriage - to make it private contractual matter between people and, if desired, their church. I admitted it was a pie-in-the-sky plan.

Or was it?

Not only is John O'Sullivan from NRO proposing the same basic thing - so is Michael Kinsley.

His notion should sound familiar to longtime readers of this blog:

That solution is to end the institution of marriage. Or rather (he hastens to clarify, dear) the solution is to end the institution of government-sanctioned marriage. Or, framed to appeal to conservatives: End the government monopoly on marriage. Wait, I've got it: Privatize marriage. These slogans all mean the same thing. Let churches and other religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want. Let each organization decide for itself what kinds of couples it wants to offer marriage to. Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want. Let others be free to consider them not married, under rules these others may prefer. And, yes, if three people want to get married, or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let 'em. If you and your government aren't implicated, what do you care?

Yep, Kinsley's an ofay liberal whose rhetoric (in this piece) almost sounds as if he's mocking the cadences big-L Libertarians use when talking about this issue. But O'Sullivan brings it back to the point that I, personally, have always considered the strong point of this concept:

Strict religious marriage, I suspect, would thrive even more for a variety of reasons. As the comparative success of evangelical over "mainstream" Protestantism demonstrates, people actually prefer institutions that make stern demands upon them to those that assume failure and forgive it in advance. Religious marriage would benefit from that yearning. Young women too would demand it of their swains ("If you really loved me, you'd marry me for keeps — in church.") And those who did marry in church would be more likely to have children (and so perpetuate their kind) than those who were, however subconsciously, hedging their bets...Traditional marriage might well emerge strengthened from this evolutionary test.

Berg, Kinsley and O'Sullivan today. Tomorrow...?

Savage Nausea - Before we

Savage Nausea - Before we get to the beef of this post, here's a bit of radio trivia for you; when someone in the radio business really does something to cheese off listeners and management, they get fired. When management wants to use a controversy for pure publicity benefit, they "suspend" the personality. It's the oldest trick in the book. If you hear - ever - of a radio personality being "suspended" from the air, replace it with the phrase "given a couple days' paid vacation and priceless free publicity".

So far so good?

OK. So Michael "Weiner" Savage is back. Whoop di doo.

The story's all over the blogosphere, of course - the dyspeptic Savage was fired from MSNBC, and suspended from his radio gig, for an outburst on TV last week.

I won't repeat my past writings about Savage, who I think is the worst thing to happen to conservative talk radio; he's a throwback to the Joe Pine/Morton Downey/Tom Leykis era of talk radio - combative but never enlightening, strident but never funny. He's everything Limbaugh dragged conservative talk radio away from. I literally can't listen to his show; the first time I heard him, I figured he had to be a liberal ringer spoofing a conservative host, maybe Al Franken in red-state drag.

But this isn't about Savage. It's about WWTC (1280AM), "The Patriot", Savage's local outlet. WWTC is one of those little lower-power AM stations that has been casting about for a niche for decades, and it seems they've found it with "The Patriot"; talk radio for those who think Jason Lewis is too much a G-dless commie.

Don't get me wrong - the Patriot has some good programs: Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt are freqently brilliant, and Dennis Prager is often fascinating. Mike Gallagher merely bores me stiff.

But for whatever reason, they carry Savage twice a day; six hours of nauseous dyspepsia.

Here's the part that amazes me: I was listening to Hewitt as I was driving last night, and WWTC's General Manager came on with a promo - twice per hour, in fact. I'll paraphrase the promo:

We know Michael Savage has caused a lot of controversy, and we apologize to his fans for taking him off the air. Please be assured that "the Patriot" will never knuckle under to liberal pressure groups to keep a talk show host off the air. Now, with that out of the way, we're happy to announce Michael Savage is back!...

Now, it's not like the management at WWTC needs to worry about being perceived as every liberal's caricature of conservative talk radio - it's their stock in trade, and the first format idea that's worked for WWTC in recent memory.

The MSNBC flap has got to have Savage, the Salem Network, WWTC and everyone in between cackling with glee at the short-term publicity.

I'll bet dollars to Krispy Kremes that Savage's "one day suspension" coincided with a dentist appointment made six months ago.

Speaking of Irritating Conservatives - The Fraters have been carrying out a debate on the merits of Ann Coulter.

No, not those of her book, or her value as a political commentator. Many conservatives, even her staunchest defenders, have excoriated her latest book, "Treason", and Coulter's approach to rhetoric.

But the Fraters are carrying a wide range of opinion on the other big question - is Coulter a babe?

Well, duh. Even Andrew Sullivan, the gay conservative, knows this.

But in a world with Michelle Malkin, Virginia Postrel, Sabine Herold and Laura Ingraham, it should be clear that we have enough bootylicious, logically-impeccable conservative/libertarian female firebrands who are also not conservative versions of Michael Moore (if only rhetorically).

A Thousand Times Dead -

A Thousand Times Dead - In today's column, Laura Billings reiterates what she and every other non-D.J. Tice-related columnist in the Twin Cities media has been repeating endlessly for the past six months: "Minnesota Nice" is dead.

Apparently distraught over a prank death, the Naomi Gaines case, and the boat rage incident on Lake Minnetonka over the weekend, Billings declares that mythical quality dead yet again (following on its death upon the election of conservative Tim Pawlenty, its death again when the legislature followed Pawlenty's lead on holding the line on taxes and cutting the budget, its re-deadedness when the Minnesota Personal Protection Act passed, Billings bemoans the rottenness that has befallen our state of late:

If you want proof that Minnesota Nice may only be treading water against a stronger tide of selfishness and self-absorption, this is it.

"I worked 12 straight years on the water patrol, and I've dealt with a lot of people," said Hennepin County Sheriff's Capt. Bill Chandler, who made it to the scene about 40 minutes after the first call. "You always get cases where some people are afraid to come forward, but I've never seen a case where people physically hindered deputies from doing their jobs. I've never seen a case where the frustration level was so high.''

What started it all was the kind of over-amped argument that has become too familiar on our freeways — less expected on the water, where everyone claims to be relaxing.

"Minnesota Nice", though, was always a sham. Leave aside the criminal element - they'll always be with us, no matter what state we're in.

There's an entire organization of people who've moved to the Twin Cities (and I can't find the link or remember the name right now, but it's out there, honest!). They formed nearly 20 years ago because...Minnesotans just don't socialize with outsiders!

Remember Russ Shimooka? The outgoing Japanese-American sportscaster came to KARE11 in the late eighties to replace Tom Ryther on the station's evening newscast. He lasted about three months; he was subjected to so many racist taunts and phone calls, it just wasn't worth it. Shimooka went back to San Francisco, to his old job - probably not a believer in Minnesota Nice (And let's not forget Ryther, who was fired because he was old! Also not Minnesota Nice!). How about Amy Powell? Asha Blake? For that matter, any other minority on the TV in this town has gotten the same treatment, from enough people to draw comment!

So before we officially inter the concept of Minnesota Nice, let's note this: Nobody - at least, nobody in the media - bemoaned the demise of "Minnesota Nice" until Tim Pawlenty was elected to office. And five will get you ten that if we ever get another DFL governor, Laura Billings will do a column on the return of the whole smarmy concept.

Minnesotans will still behave exactly the same. Like people - good, bad and indifferent.

Off The Bridge - The

Off The Bridge - The St. Paul woman who threw her twin toddlers off the Wabasha Bridge on July 4 - here's a news flash - had issues.

The ex-husband of a woman charged this week with throwing her twin sons into the Mississippi River told a judge nearly four years ago that the mother was unstable and had threatened the life of another of her children.

Nathaniel Ellis, the father of Gaines' oldest son, now 7, asked the judge to award him full custody of the boy after the couple's divorce in 1999 because Gaines "has once attempted to take her own life and on a few occasions she said … that the next time would take hers and my son," according to Ramsey County family court records.

District Court Referee Charles H. Williams Jr. threw out the custody request in 2000 because neither Gaines nor Ellis claimed the boy and his baby sister in their divorce papers. Ellis, who was convicted of criminal property damage stemming from a fight with Gaines that year, later had a daughter, now 2, with his ex-wife, relatives said.

This is one of those Hellerian situations:

• Leaving aside the exceedingly minimal legal standing that unmarried fathers have in court, Minnesota law has very steep requirements for changing custody for kids; the "Health and Safety" of the children has to be provably, documentably in danger. This is not a bad thing in and of itself - it prevents kids' living arrangements from being as easily manipulated by parental whims and specious charges as it might be (and has been in the past).
• On the other hand, as hindsight shows us, the woman was deeply disturbed. Advocates for the mentally ill make simultaneous, contractictory demands; that society recognize and act on problems like Ms. Gains' - but without resorting to involuntary commitments or excessive scrutiny into their personal lives, especially things like custody of their children.

We'll be following this case as it develops.

Consumer Confidence Reaches Six Month

Consumer Confidence Reaches Six Month High - The Berg Index of consumer confidence crept up to a score of 10 this week, on news of a new two-week contracting job at a major local company, and several new job leads popping up in the past few days. This is a six month high for the index.

Experts say the index was held back from a bigger jump due to waiting for word about a third interview at a local Fortune 500 company.

The Berg Index - which rates consumer confidence on a scale of 1 to 100, and is the only such index or poll recognized by Shot In The Dark - plummeted to an all-time low of 0 in January with the demise of my last long-term contracting gig. It hovered between 0 and 2 through February, March and April, and then climbed briefly to an 8 in May. Experts attributed that climb to my little two-week contracting job at a major local company. The index then went back to a 3 for most of June, as several long-term job leads evaporated unexpectedly.

Iran, Again - Trawling the

Iran, Again - Trawling the big blogs, Iran is the story of the day.

While it seems the students in Teheren have cancelled their big protest today - apparently due to serious threats - protests continue around the US and the rest of the world.

Iran - I grew up

Iran - I grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. It's a place that has nearly nothing in common with Iran, or anywhere in the world outside of small town USA.

Perhaps that was one of the attractions.

Jamestown is the home of Jamestown College. In the sixties, it was the kind of place were kids from well-off-enough backgrounds whose academic aptitude wasn't good enough to get into a serious college on the coast would while away their draft-elegible years, far from the prying eyes of anyone that mattered. Today, JC is a thriving little college, whose enrollment has tripled over the last fifteen years, a time that's seen many similar colleges in the Midwest collapse from lack of interest. Things are good at Jamestown today.

In 1980, things were not good. The college spent the years between the end of the draft and its current prosperity muddling through a long run of nearly-criminal mismanagement. They had to do something to keep the doors open.

And for a few years, that something was recruiting overseas. A few graduates from the fifties and sixties had moved back overseas, and had fond memories of the puritan little outpost overlooking the isolated little island in the sea of wheat. And in the seventies and eighties, as the Gulf states simultaneously rolled in oil wealth and realized they needed to build a cadre of western-trained professionals, those graduates told their nephews and nieces and cousins about Jamestown.

So by 1980, the little school in the middle of nowhere hosted a German, two Kuwaitis, seven Lebanese, three Palestinians, five Jordanians (yes, they all got along just fine) - and about twenty Iranians.

Now, American kids that came to Jamestown tended to be either workaholics attending a few of the programs at which the place excelled (it had superb pre-med and nursing programs), who tended to be found more in the lab than the bars, or kids who were going to JC because they didn't want to go someplace "big and impersonal" like North Dakota State; they weren't social animals. Most were farm kids, kids from the little towns that dot the prairie - and like their parents, they pretty much kept to themselves.

The kids from the Middle East were very different, especially the Iranians. They were cosmopolitan - most had spent time in Europe on their way to America. All were at least bilingual - many communicated with each other in French when the gulf between Arab and Farsi failed them. They had their strange customs; while most were fairly secular, some prayed to Mecca; and every weekend, the entire Gulf community at the school gathered on a big field on the college's edge to play soccer, a game only a few of us had ever seen on TV, and fewer understood. We watched them playing as we biked or endless all-in games, shouting in Arabic and French and Farsi and, rarely, English, a small gaggle of local girls sitting on the sidelines clapping or with their arms wrapped around the one that brung 'em.

They had the kind of money that made most of us Anglo kids goggle-eyed with wonder; I remember standing behind an Iranian kid at my bank, waiting to cash my $100 check from my radio job, and hearing him ask if that month's $2,000-odd stipend check from the government had arrived yet (which was more than my father made as a high school teacher at the time). And as the outgoing, cosmo elites of their societies, they were not content to sit in their dorm rooms, or stand around the keg parties that drew most of the Anglo students - not for long anyway. They came down into the town, they met people, they bought things, and when they gave up on the girls at the college, they started dating the local girls.

And before long, the attitude of many townies was a midwestern echo of the old English lament about GIs during World War II; they were overpaid, oversexed and over here. There was conflict - some of the local rednecks figured flying fists would rake in the babes in a way that their jacked-up Novas and eight-track players stuffed with Bad Company tapes had stopped doing.

It was a strange confluence - the sort of fish out of water story that is probably lost on people from a diverse, major metropolitan area. My kids, growing up as ethnic and social minorities in schools that are mainly H'mong, Hispanic and Afro-American, nod uncomprehendingly when I tell them I was 16 before I met a person that wasn't white or Native American.

A girl who sang in a band with me started dating an Iranian guy, my junior year of high school. He was a math major. And when you got past the language barrier (although his English was vastly better than my Farsi) and the money and the attitude, talking to him was genuinely fascinating. Growing up as I did with the very limited horizons one gets growing up in a typical small town, it was eye-opening to talk with someone who'd seen Paris, who could get around in four languages, and who was going to go home in two years to lead his nation - as an engineer or professor or civil servant in a land where "foreign-educated civil servant" meant big things. I won't say that talking with him "opened my eyes to the outside world" - but it made that world a lot more real, at a time when most of it was still imported via TV from Fargo.

You know how the story ends. Khomeni took over. The Shah departed, unlamented, and died, unmourned by the little slice of Iranian society that I knew.

Then came the hostage crisis - which ushered in a new phase of abuse from the redneck townies - and finally, Hussein's invasion. Nearly overnight, it seemed, all twenty-odd Iranian students packed up and left - some of them parting with a few ill-advised verbal shots at the rednecks and the US, that irritated me then, but I chalk up to adolescent fervor today. Most went home. The few that didn't moved to someplace they'd be less grindingly alone and isolated, if not less hated - Chicago or New York. Word filtered back from the few that kept in touch - things were tough. At least one died in the war; the rest, I have no idea.

They're all my age now, the lucky ones. They probably have kids, and probably shake their heads in disbelief that they spent those years of their young lives stuck in a bucolic, frigid little Ukraininan/German outpost at the edge of the world, before the purges and bombings and turmoil that dominated their early-adult years.

Today, much of the blogosphere is observing the fourth anniversary of the July 9 student uprisings. Jeff Jarvis is carrying a bit of a clearinghouse of Iranian blogs, as well as Iranian Girl. Lileks has his usual terrific, relevant slice of life, and Instapundit is on the case as well.

Gay Marriage and the Republicans

Gay Marriage and the Republicans - A non-Republican friend of mine asked me the other day - what do I think the Gay Marriage flap will do to the GOP?

For me, the solution is simple (as most pie-in-the-sky ideals are): get government out of the business of "Marriage". To government at any level, the only concern should be recognizing and enforcing a contract between two people. The moral and religious aspects should be the province of the churches (and synogogues and mosques) that are where most marriages take place - if the churches opt to perform and observe same-sex unions, that'd be their theological prerogative (one with which I'd sincerely disagree on theological grounds). Opposite-sex couples that disagreed with their church's stance (as I would with the pro-same-sex stance in my own Presbyterian church) could marry elsewhere; same-sex couples who felt the need for a church-sanctioned marriage could find a church that observes them - or, if the motivation is more financial than moral, just sign their contract at a courthouse ceremony.

It is, of course, not that simple in the real world. Hardly anyone separates the religious/moral and legal aspects of marriage in their own minds, or in practice. Marriage is marriage is marriage. And it's between a man and a woman.

Could this be the big wedge that derails the GOP juggernaut?

Good question.

Abortion divides Republicans, of course. To some, it's an evil to be scourged from the earth; to other Republicans, it's a troublesome civil liberties issue that we have to live with.

Governmental philosophy divides the party as well. The national divide between the Reagan/Goldwater Repubicans and the Rockefeller/Whitman Republicans is mirrored in Minnesota by the split between the Michelle Bachmans and the Dick Days of the party.

But both of those issues are ones on which Republicans can agree to disagree; they can put some emotional distance between themselves and the issues by not getting abortions and observing the Big Tent philosophy of coming together when the chips are down.

But Gay Marriage hits everone, whether in the pocketbook or in the vows they take with their spouses. To many Republicans, Gay Marriage is not only about a fundamental realignment of the moral basis of marriage - it's also a government subsidy of a lifestyle.

Both, of course, would be answered by getting goverment out of the "marriage" business; the moral aspects would be decided by the religious institutions and the participants, which is where the decision belongs; the machinery of the actuarial industry will determine the market benefit or detriment of the practice, which is both the motivation for many gay marriage activists and the key objection for many opponents.

But since that won't happen in the real world an y time soon, the question is: can Republicans co-exist on this issue? Or is it something we're going to has out? And how?

Feedback is eagerly solicited.

Tired, Cranky - I'll post

Tired, Cranky - I'll post more this afternoon.

American Bankers and the Media

American Bankers and the Media - According to an editor at the Star/Tribune, the paper is considering doing some followup on their coverage from last spring about the whole American Bankers flap.

If you didn't read the series from the past two weeks about the story, here it is. We will be revisiting this, as well as other stories, shortly.

The Most Wonderful Time of

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Don't get me wrong. I love my kids like there's no tomorrow.

But my mom's in town today, and she's taking them to visit her in North Dakota tonight. Then, hopefully, out to my sister's place in Montana, then wrapping things up with a couple of days at my Dad's place.

I look forward to this 7-10 days all year long. It's when I recharge my parental batteries, and have some semblance of a social life beyond every other Friday.

Blogging may be light today - I'll be out driving my Mom around, looking for graves of relatives I never knew I had.

Hot Potato - A woman

Hot Potato - A woman tried to toss her kids into the river Friday, and jump in after them, in an incident that happened within sight of the Taste of Minnesota. A good samaritan recovered the woman and one child.

Expect advocated for the mentally-ill to jump on this as evidence that the Pawlenty budget cuts are "killing people". Expect others to use it as an example that welfare benefits are drawing people from out of state.

The body of the second child has yet to be recovered.

What's So Great About America

What's So Great About America - Dinesh D'Souza knows. And while his book (of the same title as this post) is finally out in paperback (and I'll be getting it from the library shortly), he's summarized the top ten points of his book, the top ten reasons we and the world need to appreciate out country, in time for the Fourth of July.

Read it when you get a moment.

Now, I'm really done 'til Monday. Go out and have a great weekend.

And may God continue to bless America.

Mike Hatch, American Bankers and the Media - There have been a few small developments since I published the last installment of my story on Mike Hatch, the American Bankers controversy and the local media. We'll talk about it on Monday. If you've been linked to my blog from elsewhere to read the story - go for it! I eagerly solicit your comments.

The Recovery - I was

The Recovery - I was talking with a friend of mine last night. He spent about five months out of work last year - ending right about the time my own out-of-work stretch started. The current economy is a big topic for both of us.

He wondered out loud when we were going to start seeing a serious, strong recovery - the kind that creates new jobs and gets things moving again.

I started digging for parallels. The only two downturns I really remember are the huge recession after the Oil Embargo, which mired the nation in years of stagflation, and the one in the early nineties (which actually began earlier in the Twin Cities, with the big post-cold-war cuts in defense spending).

By the time Ronald Reagan pulled off his big tax cuts in the early eighties, the nation seemed to have nowhere to go but up. But Reagan had a mandate - a huge victory at the polls - to buttress his radical prescription for the economy. By the time the economy bounced back, fueled by the tax cuts, I think (as I recall it) that there was so much pent-up desire to get back working, there'd have been no way to hold it back.

I remember more about the '91 recession. I was a working adult with two kids by that point, and very underemployed. The economy did quickly and clearly bounce back, and indeed launch into the big Bubble, fairly quickly. But the economy had one huge advantage back then - the "Peace Dividend." The US was drawing down its military even before the Berlin Wall fell, but by the time Boris Yeltsin rubbed out the Moscow Coup of '91, the world knew the Cold War was over - and the economy showed it.

The situation today is nearly the opposite of '91. We aren't ending a war, we're just beginning one, one that started as our economy was starting to slide into recession. The economy is digesting that and the fallout from the Clinton Bubble, simultaneously, without the benefit of either a Peace Dividend or a Reagan-like mandate to take drastic economic measures to fix things.

What could happen? Worst case; The economy dips again, and we get bad news in the War on Terrorism (or, more likely, the media spins all news to look bad). Bush loses - or perhaps ekes out a thin victory over a divisive Democrat candidate. Either way - at the hands of any of the Nine Dwarves (except perhaps Joe Lieberman, whose political stock seems to be in the doldrums at the moment) or a George W. Bush weakened by a rough election and with no mandate, and forced to continue his pseudo-liberal triangulation for four more years - the doldrums continue. Continued efforts to fix the economy through interest rates raise the spectre of deflation. The Democrats respond by trying to tax and spend our way to prosperity. We flirt with Depression by the end of the decade.

Best case: Good news somehow eludes the New York Times Good War News Destruction Patrol, and the economy generates enough new jobs in the next 18 months to make enough people happy enough to preserve some of the President's approval rating. The Democrats nominate Howard Dean after a corrosive primary battle, playing to their base, and losing much of Middle America. In a rerun of 1972, Dean is crushed in a huge landslide, carrying California and New York and not much else. Even Minnesota votes Bush. The Senate becomes more strongly Republican, and the House picks up a few Red votes.

Bush is able to act like the conservative that he's had to repress for the last two years, given the divided Congress and his edgy initial election. He reinforces his tax cuts, and leverages the benefits of his aggressive action in the Middle East (which is slowly calming down by this time). Buoyed by a clear election and a slowly-but-perceptively stabilizing world situation, the economy perks up, and by the middle of the decade the economy is again bubbling along at mid-nineties growth levels.

Comments?

Awada - OK, I lied.

Awada - OK, I lied. It's the Fourth, and I'm posting.

I've been saying since the elections that Pat Awada had the potential to do huge things in Minnesota politics. This article in Rake Magazine reiterates many of the reasons. It's a longish piece, but worth a read.

Pat Awada is 36 years old. She is the mother of four children. During the last four years she has become the most controversial woman in Minnesota political history (with the possible exception of Coya “Come Home” Knutson). Her epic battles with the Metropolitan Council over the development of low-income high-density housing in the suburbs earned her the everlasting enmity of suburb-hating urban liberals. Her activist approach to the state auditor’s office has positively unnerved Minnesota’s local government establishment. The Star Tribune’s editorial board has yet to find an Awada position with which it agrees, and when they are not busy attacking the policies themselves, they provide an astonishing amount of space to anti-Awada letters to the editor, many of which verge on the personal.

Of course they do.

Although Awada is actually quite moderate in many ways - she refused to sign the "no new taxes" pledge - she's aroused the emnity of the local left like few recent candidates.

It was inevitable; she's a woman. Women are supposed to be Democrats!

In another forum, a poster raved "She was the meanest mayor in Minnesota and she's taking irresponsibly potshots at public employees from her Auditor's position rather than the people who actually control the purse
strings in local governments. Talk about climbing the political pole on the backs of the powerless." This is fairly typical of what the left says about Awada, who is keenly aware of the reasons for the bad karma:

Ironically, Awada is most closely identified not with an ideology or methodology, but with a suburban lifestyle that rankles many urban liberals. Right or wrong, it’s a reputation earned back in 2000, when she stood up to the Metropolitan Council, a state-chartered planning agency for the seven-county metro area. The Council demanded that Eagan build more high-density, low-income housing, and threatened to hold hostage such Met Council programs as Park and Ride and light rail if it didn’t. Awada won the showdown by correctly pointing out that the Met Council lacks the authority to force municipalities to build specific housing types. She also won enemies: Opponents openly suggested that her opposition to the housing mandate was proof that she was an elitist, a classist, and even a racist. Awada rejects all of the characterizations as emblematic of a left obsessed with labeling opponents. “The liberals’ thing is usually just to cry discrimination or bigotry or, ‘She hates poor people’ or something,” she says with exasperation. For Awada, the argument against mandated housing types was straight logic about the limits of power. “I would never go into Minneapolis and say, ‘Your lots are too small. You can no longer develop like this,’” she huffs over a lunch of White Castles in her office. “I mean, that’s how ridiculous it is to suburbanites.”

Naturally, the media focuses on the side of Awada that's easiest to spin - her "Awada the Hun" image, the "bitch factor" she refers to in the article.

Don't expect to see much play on this side of Awada

At Capitol Direct, Awada set up a playroom and brought her kids to work. But she wasn’t thinking only of herself. She also created a workplace that was particularly friendly to working mothers, and, according to former and current employees, an environment that was especially forgiving of the challenges faced by single mothers. “There’s a very gentle side of Patty, but it really isn’t her public image,” explains close family friend Lisa Holmquist. “My youngest child has Down syndrome and she’s one of the only people outside of my family that I’ve trusted to watch after him.” Holmquist expresses frustration that Awada’s gentler side doesn’t get mentioned by a media that seems enamored of her tough public image. “I’ve known a lot of public and political figures,” she explains. “And I always hate to see someone I know being pilloried in the press. A lot of times it has nothing to do with them.”

Best of all, unlike a lot of female politicians, she doesn't beat us over the head with her gender:

A week later, she reflects on the balance she tries to maintain between her professional and personal life. Awada explains, “Politics is my job. It’s not my whole being. There’s a division between who I am professionally and how I act personally.” She begins to smile devilishly. “Just because I’m a mom doesn’t mean my primary issues are families and children. Mommy issues,” she says with sneering contempt before pulling back with her customary chuckle. “Does my husband have to have daddy issues?” In many ways, this willful compartmentalization is a significant departure from the politics practiced by so many female leaders—from Geraldine Ferraro to Hillary Clinton—who have staked reputations and careers on “feminist” or “feminizing” issues. Pat Awada is a fiscal conservative first. “Mom” is something she leaves at home.

I've been saying since November, and maybe before, that Pat Awada had the potential to replace Mark Dayton. The more I learn, the more I believe it.

Earlier this week, I asked who you all thought would be the best Republican to run against Mark "The Empty Suit" Dayton in '06. There were many good suggestions - Representative Kline, Brian Sullivan, and of course Mark Kennedy.

There's a lot of time between now and '06; we have no idea what's going to happen in the various House districts. If the election were held today, I'd admit that Kline or Kennedy's time in DC would be an important factor. But I'd also ask this: Do you think Kline or Kennedy's districts are solidly-enough GOP to allow the party to give up the advantages of incumbancy in holding those seats?

For now, put me down as an Awada supporter. I have two years to think about it.

Status, Weekend - I had

Status, Weekend - I had what I felt was a very good second interview on Tuesday, for a job that I'd really, really like to have. There were over 100 applicants, of which 12 got phone interviews and 5-6 were brought in for seconds.

There'll be a third interview with the "final three" sometime in the next week or two.

Posting will be light to nonexistent over the long weekend. I put in a long two weeks on the American Bankers story, and I could use a break from this mouseless computer...

Have a great weekend, even as you hopefully remember what the holiday is all about.

See you Monday.

(or maybe earlier. You never know).

Victory? - This one was

Victory? - This one was on Powerline today.

While the pundits will argue, and the negotiators will negotiate, perhaps you can start to gauge acceptance of US policy...

...this year's fashions.

ARIS, July 2 — A remarkable reversal of sentiment and symbolism has occurred in the five months since designers here and in Milan and London, the site of fervent antiwar rallies, displayed peace flags and, in one instance, staged a love-in that featured a couple in a bed. At that time, European opposition to President Bush's position on Iraq ran so high that Tom Ford, the creative director of Gucci and a fellow Texan, told reporters after his women's show in February, "I'm embarrassed to be an American."

But last week in Milan, on the same runway where he had criticized the president, Mr. Ford struck an image that symbolized the virile Texas cowboy in boots and broad hat. Other tried-and-true symbols of American strength and power appeared at Prada, as correct displays of 1950's country-club attire; at Jean Paul Gaultier, as waistcoats inspired by James West, the 1960's television cowboy version of James Bond; at Junya Watanabe, as battle jackets and cartridge belts fashioned from banker's broadcloth; and at Louis Vuitton, as well-scrubbed young men in tennis whites and navy blazers.

Of course (the article also reminds us) that models strutting on a runway do not approval make. But it's an interesting reversal.

Bottoms Up in St. Paul

Bottoms Up in St. Paul - Saint Paul is granting bars permission to stay open until 2AM, after the legislature pushed the statewide closing time back an hour during the last session.

The law is, by the way, only of theoretical impact to me; I can't remember the last time I closed down a bar. It's been years.

Bars will have to pay a three-figure fee to the DPS to stay open late, with the money (so says the DPS) being used to hire more cops.

Inevitably in Saint Paul, "Neighborhood Activists" came out to oppose the change:

Pleas from several homeowners to forbid neighborhood bars from staying open later went unheeded during the council debate. Council Member Kathy Lantry said problems with bars in residential areas should not keep law-abiding establishments from staying open later.

"This issue isn't about what time a bar closes," she said. "If we have a problem at 1 o'clock, we have a problem at 2 o'clock. So we should address the problems, regardless of what time they're happening."

Now that council members have approved later hours citywide, they must make good on their promises to combat nuisance bars, said Ramsey Hill homeowner Chris Yerkes.

"There needs to be an effective way for neighbors to get effective action from the city against bars," said Yerkes, who was among those urging the council to restrict the 2 a.m. closing to downtown and other commercial areas.

I used to work in bars - I was a nightclub DJ for three wretched years. And the biggest problem with bars is that they surge a mass of drunken people out into the parking lot (and their cars) at 1AM (or 2AM, or whenever). The following 45 minutes are an orgy of swerving cars, late-night fights, drunken people wandering neighborhoods piddling on shrubs, and cops racking up fines. if I were the dictator of Minnesota, I'd abolish the mandatory closing time. I'd let bars stay open all night, even 24/7 if they wanted. But they'd have to stop serving liquor at some point.

Disappearance of Impropriety - In

Disappearance of Impropriety - In March, when the American Bankers story looked like a case of influence-peddling, the St. Paul Pioneer Press was all over the story. By May, when the Legislative Audit was uncovering all sorts of alleged shenanigans on Mike Hatch's part, the story was suddenly a cold, dead issue.

Part Five of my series on the American Bankers story runs today - but, with any luck, there will be more.

Click on the story index to read the whole series.

Light Day - I spent

Light Day - I spent about five hours writing the last installment of my American Bankers story this morning, and I'm fairly well fried.

More regular blogging tomorrow.

Spin - The left -

Spin - The left - and the media - is spinning the scattered attacks in Iraq like "Son of Tet".

Victor Davis Hanson, as usual, shines the light on the endlessly-evolving line of the left on this story:

In the first postbellum 100 days, the Americans lost about 60 additional lives in trying to pacify a Muslim and Arab country of some 26 million, wracked by factions, foreign agents, and plagued by thousands of former Baathist fascists who had transmogrified into drive-by shooters and assassins — all in a post 9/11 world where it has been often difficult to distinguish "moderates" in the Middle East from complacent onlookers who were not especially sad to see two towers full of 3,000 Americans disintegrate.

In such a climate, Marines and army units literally were asked to evolve from combatants to peacekeepers to reconstructionists in a matter of hours — as enemy soldiers who ran from battle, now on occasion shot at them for American felonies like directing traffic, seeking to restore electricity, and other unmentionables like treating the sick and organizing local councils. The protocol was for American soldiers in Kevlar and body armor to help 99 percent of the Iraqi population achieve a stable society while less than one percent sought to kill them — to more or less indifference from the beneficiaries who demanded the help (but not to the degree that they would quite yet thank or help protect the helper). "Smile while you shoot back" was perhaps the unspoken mandate for 20-year-olds from New Mexico or New Jersey.

Read it all, natch.

Mike Hatch, American Bankers and the Twin Cities Media - Part 5

Part 5: Disappearance of Impropriety

Imagine the scenario: The Star-Tribune finds a major political figure doing something that has that appearance of impropriety - for argument's sake, let's say it's a Republican.

Let's say they found evidence that, say, John Ashcroft had worked behind the SEC's back to broker a deal to allow ENRON to avoid the public stigma of paying a fine for their transgressions, in exchange for a large donation to, say, the National Rifle Association. Do you suppose it'd get thorough, vigorous coverage? Perhaps assigned to one of the Star-Tribune's excellent reporters, or even a small team, with a simple brief; find everything there is to find?

So why did the local media cover the American Bankers story the way they did?

Second Hand News
No matter how big the newspaper, there are never enough local writers to fill the whole daily issue. Almost every newspaper, in addition to using press services like the AP and Reuters, will rerun articles from other, especially major, newspapers.

The Minneapolis Star/Tribune reruns a lot of NY Times articles. I checked a six-day assortment of issues, from June 20 to June 25, 2003. Counting the A Section, Metro, Business and Variety (I ignored the Sports section), the Star/Tribune ran a total of 21 stories with New York Times bylines (among many others from the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and of course several press services) in those six days. 17 of these articles ran in the A section - articles on topics ranging from Canadian prescription drugs to British soldiers being killed by terrorists in Basra to the fate of Saddam Hussein.

This is, say local sources who closely follow the news, a fairly typical week - a local source close to this story who follows the local press very closely estimates the Star/Tribune runs two dozen stories from the NY Times in a given week.

On May 11, 2003 the front page of the New York Times included an article [currently in the paper's paid-access database] entitled "Strong-Arm Shaking of Charities Raises Ethics Qualms", by Stephanie Strom. The article, which spotlighted a troubling trend among some state attorneys-general to force their own appointees onto the boards of non-profits and charities, fingered Hatch in particular as an egregious example - the article included a photo of Hatch (captioned "Attorney General Mike Hatch of Minnesota has conducted several high-profile investigations of nonprofit health care organizations"). Among the article's findings:

No other attorney general has drawn more attention for such appointments than Mike Hatch of Minnesota, who as conducted two high-profile investigations of nonprofit health care organizations accused of profligate spending and lax board oversight.

In 2001, Mr. Hatch reached a settlement with one, Allina Health System, that resulted in it spinning off operations to a new subsidiary company, Medica Health Plans. He then selected eight "special administrators" as Medica's board of directors, and the court signed off on them the next day.

Four of the appointees had been contributors to Mr. Hatch's campaigns. Theodore Deikel, a multimillionaire businessman [and official at Petters group, which recently bought Fingerhut] whom Mr. Hatch named as chairman of the Medica board, had been host of a fund-raising event for Mr. Hatch two weeks before his appointment. Mr. Deikel and his wife, Beverly, had also contributed $500 each to Mr. Hatch's political campaigns, and three of his four children contributed $1,000 apiece, the maximum allowed under Minnesota law.

Asked whether those contributions and the contributions of other Medica appointees posed a conflict of interest, Mr. Hatch said, "It could, but I don't think it does".

The story was of immediate local interest; the Star-Tribune routinely runs stories about issues with much less direct local impact.

So why didn't the Star-Tribune run this article, which happened to be critical of Mike Hatch?

Local Play

I searched the newspapers' online archives, as well as the story records of the major local news-gathering TV stations and MPR. I found the following stories (leaving out editorials and op-eds):

Star-Tribune:

A June 12 piece by Conrad DeFiebre which noted the perceived illegality of Hatch's proposal, and commented on this contradictions between Hatch's and Wilson's testimony to the Legislative Auditors.

A May 23 piece by David Phelps (no longer available online without charge) that noted the basic findings of the Auditor's report, including a second-paragraph note that the report found Hatch's activities questionable.

That, it seems, was it.

Pioneer Press

After the original March 5 story by Hank Shaw and Tim Huber, which we've already discussed, the Pioneer Press ran the following:

• A March 6 piece by Hank Shaw, with American Bankers' response to the allegations
• A March 7 piece by Hank Shaw about the call for the Auditor probe,
• an accompanying editorial saying the probe would be a very good thing indeed
• A March 8 Hank Shaw story noting that Minnesota law may have prohibited the donation from American Bankers (as already noted in Part 2 of this story)
• A March 13 story from Bill Salisbury which notes the broad outline of the story; the conflicting accounts of Mike Hatch and Glenn Wilson, Wilson's comment that he didn't believe the $3.5 million donation to charity was legal, and so on. But Salisbury also says "Hatch says he learned about the campaign contributions last fall from Ron Jerich, a longtime political ally and lobbyist who had just been hired by American Bankers. Jerich received the thank-you letter from state GOP chairman Ron Eibensteiner and gave a copy to Hatch." This, clearly, contradicts even Hatch's own testimony on the subject, and begs the question; where was Salisbury getting the story from? Since the only people who'd have known any details of the letter's path once it left the GOP office, up until Hatch's testimony to the Legislative Auditor, were in Hatch's office, one wonders to what extent Salisbury was being used by Hatch to impart his spin on the story.
• A March 14 piece by Hank Shaw on proposed legislation to make roundabout corporate contributions (like American Bankers' donations to the RNSEC and Democratic Governor's Conference) illegal.
• A May 23 piece by Hank Shaw about the auditor's report.
• A companion May 23 editorial about the Auditor's report.
• A June 12 piece by Hank Shaw about the Senate hearings, which, alone among his pieces on this story, at least noted the inconsistencies in the various stories.
• June 20 Op-Eds from Mike Hatch. Hatch's piece is curious - in one paragraph, he essentially admits to pursuing an illegal settlement: "After becoming aware of the contributions, I told American Bankers that the contributions were wrong and could constitute a quid pro quo if the company settled for less than it had offered prior to making the contributions." Note that this doesn't jibe with what he told the Legislative Auditors in his deposition, where no mention of impropriety is made. His editorial continues: "I told the company to renew the August offer and it did, except that it wanted the money paid to a charity so that the payment was not disclosed as a fine to other states. Since the offer was oral, I wanted it immediately made to an official of the Pawlenty administration, Commissioner Wilson, and I wanted witnesses to the offer. Since I had just completed a mental health meeting with two insurance executives, I asked them to attend the meeting where the offer was made."

  Later in the piece, he says "I don't believe my request to the two executives was a ruse or deceptive. I told them that American Bankers wanted to offer $3.5 million to a charity. I don't believe I am required to tell them that such a settlement cannot be permitted under the law." [Emphasis added].

  Hatch ends the editorial with this: "My mistake wasn't in inviting two insurance executives to the meeting with Commissioner Wilson. My mistake was not to make a record of the meeting. I knew that American Bankers was corrupt. I did not know, however, that the Commerce Department was as well."

• Another June 20 op-ed, from Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles. Nobles asks some questions that might have been more normally expected to have been asked by the news media: "The attorney general testified that he knew that settlement money from American Bankers could not be contributed to the charity because he knew such a diversion would be illegal. So, why were the representatives of the charity invited (and not informed about the legal problem)?" Nobles finished by saying "If you do not know — or accept — that the Attorney General Hatch was being deceptive on Jan. 8, you can reasonably conclude he broke the law. But if you accept — as I do — that he was being deceptive, you would conclude as I did that the attorney general's actions were disturbing, but not illegal."
• A July 1 editorial by Senator David Haan, a member of the Legislative Audit Commission. The money quote: "It is unconscionable that Hatch, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the state, should continue to recklessly and irresponsibly assert allegations of corruption that are without basis in fact."

Minnesota Public Radio

A search of MPR's news archives showed two stories:

• A March 10 piece by Michael Khoo about Jim Bernstein's testimony to the Senate Commerce and Utilities committee.
  A March 12 piece by Michael Khoo which essentially carried Mike Hatch's allegations verbatim. Khoo did do a fair job of presenting the counterarguments - American Bankers counsel Tim Thornton's denial that there was a settlement, as well as Wilson's initial response - as they were known at that time. However, MPR seems not to have followed up on the story.

A search of the other news outlets - Channels 4, 5 and 11 - showed that none of the TV or radio correspondents did much but report on the happenings at hearings and pass on the comments of the principals.

Questions

So, among everyone in the Twin Cities media, why didn't one single reporter ask:

• Why did Mike Hatch, by his own admission (in his Pioneer Press editorial) not have a record made of his conversation on January 8 with Glenn Wilson? This was, as everyone knows, a legally-touchy area, flirting with the edges of state law. I have yet to meet a lawyer, much less as accomplished a lawyer as Hatch, who wouldn't have made sure such conversations, if above-board, were on the record. Why the exception in this case?
  Why, indeed, would Mike Hatch have made an offer that skirted the edge of the law in the first place?
• Hatch, in his testimony to the Legislative Auditor and in his editorial in the Pioneer Press, says that he brought up the notion of settling the case with the $3.5 million contribution to charity to show that the company was willing to settle for $3.5 million. Leave aside the obvious appearance of impropriety for a moment - why did Mike Hatch put his client (on legal matters), Glenn Wilson, in that sort of a predicament?
• Why, indeed, has no reporter asked Mike Hatch why he asked Glenn Wilson to a meeting that was, at least according to some sources, a "Setup" and an "Ambush"? There is at least credible evidence that Wilson was invited, alone, to a "meet and greet", not expecting to be asked to settle a complex legal issue.
• Why did not one single reporter in the Twin Cities media note Ron Jerich's long, friendly relationship with Mike Hatch?
• Why did not one single reporter in the Twin Cities inquire into how Mike Hatch actually got the letter from Ron Jerich? In early press reports, Jerich "gave" the letter to Hatch, while in Hatch's deposition under oath to the Legislative Auditor, it appeared (in a comical sequence) that he took it, ostensibly without Jerich's knowledge.
• Why did the Minneapolis Star-Tribune devote (by my search) exactly two articles to this story?
• The final settlement and consent decree between American Bankers and the Department of Commerce was signed on February 24, 2003. By Ron Eibensteiner's account, the unnamed reporter called him in late February - almost immediately after the settlement was signed. The reporter had the form letter from Ron Eibensteiner to American Bankers in his possession, and knew the details of the consent decree - at a time when the knowledge of the details of the case was limited to a small number of people at the Department of Commerce, American Bankers, and the Attorney General's office. The first Pioneer Press story on the subject ran March 5. How did the story get to the reporters that fast? Why doesn't this seem odd to anyone in the local media? Nobody would comment on the first conclusion to jump to mind - that Mike Hatch fed the story directly to the media for his own political benefit, against Tim Pawlenty. On other stories in the past few months (the Gang Strike Force, the Sexual Predators), it has been argued he's done the same.
• Why does the Star-Tribune go so easy on Mike Hatch? They ignored the NYTimes' March 11 story featuring Hatch, and they seemed to all but ignore the entire American Bankers flap.
• In a partisan, political vein - does anyone think that once the appearance of impropriety surfaced (as, indeed, it briefly did for Glenn Wilson), a Republican Attorney General would have gotten away with such light scrutiny from the local press?

Observations

You don't have to talk to a lot of people - mostly but not universally Republicans - to hear that the Star/Tribune has a Pro-Hatch bias. It's one of those ephemeral concepts - it's impossible to "prove." But the Star/Tribune left the story pretty much alone.

The Pioneer Press, on the other hand, ran a total of 14 stories and editorials on the subject. They generally followed the theme of the March 5 story - that this was a straight-up issue of low-grade political corruption on the part of the Pawlenty administration. There were eight articles and editorials during the first two weeks after they broke the story. But once the Legislative Auditor's report came out - and raised serious questions about the paper's original premise - the coverage petered out, with only two more stories, an editorial, and three op-eds.

I'm not going to say "The Star/Tribune wants to protect Mike Hatch from criticism", or "The Pioneer Press had their conclusions handed to them straight from the Attorney General's office." That would be unsupportable, and impugn the integrity of some excellent reporters. I'm not going to do that.

But it seems that, when the story was still playing as "Hatch Good, Corruption Bad", the story got a lot more media play than when it turned into a subtler game, that involved explaining to the readers that Mike Hatch may have proposed an illegal settlement, and used his connection with Ron Jerich to spin the incident to embarass the Pawlenty Administration.

Once it turned out that there was plenty of impropriety to spread around, the story disappeared. As we've seen, the story deserved more.

No Comment

During the course of this story, I got comments, information, and questions answered either on the record or on background from quite a number of people. I sought, but as the final installment of this story is written did not get, comments from several key players in this story: Ron Jerich, figures at American Bankers, HealthPartners, Blue Cross, the Attorney General's office and officials of the Minnesota DFL party.

I also have received no response to questions about this story from reporters at the Star-Tribune or the Pioneer Press (except for one reporter, whose response was more or less analogous to "kiss my ass").

As this is a blog, I will run any comments I receive from any of this story's principals.

Hatch, American Bankers and the

Hatch, American Bankers and the Local Media - We'll be wrapping up the series tomorrow with a look at how the local media has covered this story.

Read the whole story - or at least the first four parts.

On My Way Now - All right - I'm off 'til this evening, getting ready for an interview for a job that I'd like to get even if I hadn't been on the beach for the better part of six months.

Your email and comment best wishes are appreciated!

Dayton in Iraq - Powerline

Dayton in Iraq - Powerline takes Senator Dayton's vacuous presence in Iraq to task.

I've had some interesting comments and emails about my question two days ago - who should the GOP run against Dayton in '06? We'll write more about that next week.

No Mouse - Pro and

No Mouse - Pro and Con - Con: Doing serious editing is very difficult using keyboard shortcuts. In fact, pulling quotes from web pages is impossible (as far as I can tell so far).

Pro: Using all the keyboard shortcuts is great finger-dexterity training for bagpipes.

History of the MPPA -

History of the MPPA - Concealed Carry Reform Now has just compiled a bullet-point history of concealed carry reform in Minnesota, including the seven-year legislative ride that led to the passage of the MPPA.

Look this over, and the next time you're tempted to say "the MPPA was rammed through the Legislature", think about it.

I'm at a loss to think of a more successful genuinely grassroots movement in recent Minnesota history. It's the sort of story that should make a Green turn...well, green with envy.