Shot In The Dark

Let's Do Lunch

That was what the Elder from Fraters said to the Northern Alliance of Blogs, on the occasion of Hugh Hewitt's visit to the Twin Cities.

So we did:

From left to right: Hindrocket from Powerline, Elder from Fraters, Warrior Monk from Spitbull, me, St. Paul and Atomizer from Fraters, Captain Ed from Captain's Quarters (way in the back), Duane from the Hewitt Show, Big Trunk from Powerline, King Banaian from the SCSU Scholars, Hewitt, and JB Doubtless from Fraters.

This past two weeks have been an embarassment of social riches. Except for last week's confab with St. Paul and the King (sounds like a UPN series, no?), the only Northern Alliance member I'd ever met was Lileks, and that mostly fifteen years ago. And now, I've pretty much met them all.

When in the Long Lake area, by the way, check out Billy's Lighthouse. Great food, excellent room, fabulous scenery, top-notch waitstaff.

More later.

UPDATE: The Fraters Elder discusses the event at length.

"Sausage Party" allegations are greatly exaggerated.

Pixar Splits

Computer animation wizzes Pixar have split from Disney Studios.

"After 10 months of trying to strike a deal with Disney, we're moving on," said Pixar chief executive Steve Jobs.

"We've had a great run together - one of the most successful in Hollywood history - and it's a shame that Disney won't be participating in Pixar's future successes," he said.

Uh oh.

Steve Jobs is making business decisions again. The guy who:

• Invented and then nearly killed the Macintosh
• Invented and then oversaw the death of NeXT, the coolest computers ever made (yes, vastly better than the Macs of the day)
• Oversaw the founding of ITunes - and the jury's still out on whether he'll screw the pooch there

So - if you have Pixar stock, I recommend "Sell".

(Note: I am not a qualified market analyst. Merely someone who's been awed by Jobs' capacity for managerial blundering, easily equal to his ingenuity at innovation).

The Nightmare Continues

So the guy that was the target of the bullet that killed Tyesha Edwards last year was, himself, shot.:

"More than a year after 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards was killed by a stray bullet while doing homework in her dining room, police say the gang member who the bullet was intended for has been shot and killed.
Timothy Oliver, 18, was shot several times early Wednesday as he stood alone on a street in south Minneapolis. His death is the city's first homicide of the year.
'This wasn't a random act,' Minneapolis Police Lt. Mike Carlson said."

These gangland shootings never are - and still are, always.

It was five years ago that someone shot my house - three times. There was a punk kid living two doors down the street that was dealing drugs, and he'd apparently run afoul of a couple of other worthless scum. Late one night - about 2:30 AM, as the neighbor kid was walking past my house toward his place, the other punks drove by, and one of the other vermin, firing (one of my neighbors noted) from a primer-colored Toyota wagon, fired eight shots, then reloaded and fired eight more. None of them hit the neighbor punk.

Back in the eighties, a Minneapolis cop told me - mostly jokingly - that the safest thing to be when gang-bangers started shooting was their target. It was true enough that night. Of sixteen shots fired, one hit my porch, another dug into a window frame - in the attic - and one broke a window in my library, fifteen feet from where my son was sleeping, and bounced off a wall, coming to rest under my computer.

The police did the usual perfunctory "investigation". The only fallout - a bunch of neighbors saw the car, it was linked with another shooting in the neighborhood, and a few weeks later I saw it myself, driving in front of the kid's house down the street. Driving a pickup, I ostentatiously drove up behind it, weaving and swearing. They accelerated, and I chased them - the sight of a 36-year-old guy swearing and honking the horn must have scared them worse than the thought of chasing a couple of punks with guns scared me. Nobody saw them in the neighborhood again.

"OK, Mitch. So...?"

Right. Three points:

• These gang-banger scum need to be rooted out and jailed. Or killed.
• The thing that gives these vermin their reason to organize - the "War On Drugs" that gives them their main reason to kill - is a bigger mistake than Vietnam.
• I haven't seen Citizens For a Supine "Safer" Minnesota commenting on this yet. Apparently, none of the killers held legal concealed carry permits. So, C"S"M - who are the dangerous ones? Any time you'd care to answer that, I'll be waiting

As a parent, I can't help but think that there are two families mourning children now; Tyesha Edwards' father's statement yesterday was a gut shot.

As a parent to my own kids, though, I want one thing; for the people, the police, and the idiots at Citizens For a Supine "Safer" Minnesota to focus on the real enemy here.

Those Who Live in Glass Buildings

Those Who Live in Glass Buildings - The Strib doesn't know when to shut up, in its current editorial about the Kay and Hutton reports:

"Hutton investigated thoroughly the accusation that Blair and his colleagues manipulated British intelligence to make a stronger case for war. His conclusions on that narrow question appear well-reasoned, although he does seem to have gone quite 'beyond his remit,' as the British say, in attaching so much blame to one short broadcast comment by a BBC reporter. In the end, the British still put together a dodgy intelligence dossier on Iraq. That would seem a bigger deal than the BBC error, but you couldn't tell it from the Hutton report."

A state-supported press organ lied, and lied grotesquely. What's "Beyond the remit" about that?

Is the Strib nervous?

The editorial goes on:

The United States now needs a Hutton investigation of its own to determine just what the administration did as it sought to develop a case for war.

The record is fairly clear:

• Buried 3,000 dead
• Erased the specious, legalistic distinction between terror groups and their leaders, and the states that support them financially, logistically and morally
• Took out two of them.

You're welcome, Strib.

Seriously - this editorial is further proof of Berg's Law; No liberal commentator can simultaneously attack more than one of the four justifications for the Liberation of Iraq; to do so, they'd invalidate their own case. Iraq was a terror-supporting state (trying to de-link their amply-self-documented payments to Hamas from Al-Quaeda is worse than wrong, it's intellectually frivolous), it violated scads of UN resolutions, it was a human rights nightmare, and yes, at some point in the recent past it did have enough WMDs to use on Iranians, Shi'a and Kurds.

To fail to consider all four of these justifications is intellectually vacant.

Speaking of which:

Britain, conversely, needs a Kay investigation that can document just how wrong the British intelligence claims were, and there were some humdingers...The peoples of Britain and the United States both were sold a bill of goods. While it's nice to know Blair didn't deliberately do that, he still made a hugely important error, for which his administration should be called to account. That matters not only to the British; it matters to Americans as well.

Bill of goods?

IT'S INTELLIGENCE WORK! In the middle of a WAR, no less!

Two intelligence agencies (in league with many smaller ones) put together the evidence they had, and took their best shot at a conclusion. That evidence led the President and the Prime Minister to make the same conclusion that Bill Clinton and John Major and, for that matter, the UN made all the way through the nineties. As somebody noted, President Bush didn't reach any different conclusions than the Clinton Administration did - they just did something about the conclusions.

But to make the Strib's point, you have to forget the nineties. You have to forget the UN resolutions, you have to think of terror groups as insular groups with only incidental interaction - like it would never occur to Al-Quaeda, Hamas, Jamiyat-e-Islamiya, Hezb'allah, the ISI, and ten thousand Wahabbist extremists to give each other a phone call.

And you have to ignore all of that and 9/11.

Which the Strib does, when convenient.

Shocking?

Pepsi has just put out a press release about its lineup of Super Bowl ads.

The big deal, of course, is the 100 million download music giveaway:

Pepsi iTunes – “I Fought The Law”
This groundbreaking ad, featuring 16 real-life teenagers who were sued by the recording industry for illegally downloading music from the Internet, shows music fans a new way to freely and legally download music--the Pepsi iTunes 100 Million Song Giveaway. The commercial is set to Green Day's version of "I Fought the Law.”

About the Pepsi iTunes Promotion
On Super Bowl Sunday, Apple and Pepsi will launch a historic promotion to legally give away 100 million free songs to Mac and Windows PC users from Apple's iTunes Music Store -- the world's number one digital music service.

On the one hand - I like the idea; free music, and lampooning the RIAA (albeit for Pepsi's commercial gain). On the other - there could be a hundred billion free songs available (they're putting download codes on bottles of Pepsi products) and I still won't win one. On the third hand - Green Day doing "I Fought The Law" - pretty cool.

But I'm really wondering about this one:

Sierra Mist – “Bagpipes”
A bagpiper performing in extremely hot temperatures finds a unique way to achieve a “shockingly refreshing” cool down.

I smell a kilt joke coming on.

Reaganmas, '04

Every year, my kids and I celebrate Ronald Reagan's birthday, February 6. We go out to dinner, and I bring some little treat or another in to the office (assuming I have an office) to share with my co-workers.

This year, I'd like you to share the joy of the Reaganmas season by passing on some small, decentralized, private-sector kindness to your friends, family and neighbors.

• Bring jellybeans to share with your co-workers. Take out all the red ones.
• Spend some money - and yet, grow more financially healthy.
• If you have an elderly neighbor who needs any walls torn down, do it.
• Tell your kids the story of the end of the Cold War - including the stories about what life was like when the phrase "Iron Curtain" meant more than just Cher's control-top nylons.
• If all else fails, just send your email acquaintances a Reaganmas card - nothing spreads the joy of the season like a card.

It's really (in the great private sector tradition) up to you.

More on this - my suggestion for the next national holiday - as we approach the big day.

So until then, may the joy of the Reaganmas season follow you through your day!

The Test

Whenever I read many liberals' take on things like foreign policy and defense, I grit my teeth and fume; "Someone should make these people take a test on foreign policy and defense before allowing them to vote for candidates for Federal office."

And I realize - if I don't design this test, who will?

So here it is: The Mean World Awareness Test, soon to be required for all liberals (and too many big-L Libertarians as well).

THE BIG MEAN WORLD AWARENESS TEST

Keep track of your answers. The answer key is at the bottom. No cheating.

That means you too, Mr. Gore.

Pre-Emptive Defense - what do you think about the doctrine of pre-emptive defense?
a) We have to be very careful about pre-emptive defense. We weren't.
b) Pre-emptive defense is wrong.
c) It's inappropriate for the US to pre-emptively defend itself, since we are the world's worst aggressors.
d) After a year of butting heads against the corrupt French and Russians in the UN, the invasion almost doesn't qualify as "pre-emptive" at all.

WMDs - We haven't found any WMDs in Iraq yet. This means:
a) The invasion was done under dubious pretenses.
b) The Administration was wrong to invade Iraq.
c) This proves it was all about oil!
d) Nothing. The only difference between a barrel of insecticide and a barrel of Sarin is a notebook full of instructions, some cached equipment and some time. How much time? How many lives do you want to risk in finding out?

Was Hussein a Threat?
a) Not directly. He had no long-range missiles, and no documented link to Al Quaeda.
b) We need to be searching for Bin Laden! Just Bin Laden!
c) Hah. Unlike Bush, he was elected!
d) In a world where terror groups cross international boundaries with daunting ease, and connections can be hidden within a single innocuous courier trip, and WMDs are supremely portable, and any plane or ship or truck can be a "delivery mechanism", Cold War-era measures of threat (that focus on things like missiles and submarines) are dangerously obsolete. Hussein was as much of a threat as he wanted to be, and could arm himself (or his surrogates) wit not only his own WMDs, but anything he could buy from others.

The UN
a) Getting approval from the UN for a military action would have been a nice backup for our diplomatic efforts.
b) Without UN approval, any action against another nation is illegitimate
c) The UN should have right of first refusal over all US military actions, even in self-defense
d) When it comes to military crises, the only UN actions that have ever worked - Korea, East Timor, Sierra Leone - are the ones where competent military powers (the US, Australia and the UK, respectively) kept the UN within strict limits. Otherwise, UN involvement in military crises ranges, historically, from comical to disastrous.

The Military: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show us that:
a) I honestly dont' know. I haven't read enough about military history and the art of war to have a cogent opinion.
b) The Clinton Military saved the day!
c) The US is the greatest threat to peace in the world.
d) After a decade of post-Cold-War contraction, and eight years of Clinton-era underfunding, organizational contempt and use as a social-services laboratory, we were damned lucky the military still has the Reagan-era legacy of excellence - and Bush II-era funding increases.

The War on Terror - in prosecuting the war on terror, we need to:
a) Focus on catching Bin Laden and Al Quaeda.
b) A law-enforcement issue - something we should tackle with the cooperation of Interpol.
c) Realize that it's we who are the real terrorists.
d) Treat this like the war it is.

Informational Baselines: Josh Marshall and the Daily Kos are:
a) Solidly credible blogs.
b) Not as accurate as Hesiod.
c) Not as accurate as Democratic Underground
d) A couple of liberals with an anti-Bush agenda much more powerful than their extremely limited knowledge of military and foreign-policy matters. They should stick to (in Kos' case) folding, spindling and mutilating polling data, and (for Marshall) analyzing press spin with Yeshiva-like obsessiveness - both of their strong suits.

Scoring
Now that you're done, assign yourself points as follows:

• For every A - 2 points.
• For every B - 1 point.
• For every C - 0 points.
• For every D - 5 points.

Add up your total score, and compare it to the following scale:

• 0-5 points: You're too deluded even to work on the Kucinich campaign. Consider being an ego-bearer for Noam Chomsky. I'm not going to question your patriotism - but I'm not going to interfere with anyone else doing it.
• 6-12 points: Step away from the keyboard. You'll do this nation less damage if you drink a twelve-pack and go driving.
• 13-20 points: You should preface any remarks about the War on Terror by saying "Everything I need to know about foreign policy and defense, I learned from Josh Bartlett...". You would have been a great guest on "Politically Incorrect".
• 21-28 points: You have the right to an opinion. Your comments are welcome.

Let us know how you did.

Amazingly enough, I got a 28.

Saud Off

Given their immense wealth, it's sometimes hard to remember that Saudi Arabia is really a jury-rigged country. Formerly a rump province of the Ottoman Empire, it became a nation purely by decree of the League of Nations.

Those post World War I League of Nations-mandated nations have a pretty poor record; the Czech Republic managed to last seventy-odd years before splintering peacefully; Yugloslavia was another story. As far as Israel and Palestine - the less said the better, right?

The Saudis - a nation of tribes held together only by intrigue and oil wealth - might be showing signs of the same pattern:

The families and tribes here are exploiting the vulnerability of a perhaps fatally weakened Saudi ruling family to reassert their territorial claims over those of the al-Sudairy.

As many as 60 per cent of Saudis identify strongly with a tribe.

Since the increased instability following last year's bombings in Riyadh on May 12 and Nov 8, the ruling family has been eager to show that it has the full support of the tribal sheikhs.

But al-Jouf shows what everyone knows: that tribes will switch their 'allegiance' as soon as it is convenient.

Residents say the final straw was the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, when United States troops took control of the airport in the nearby Arar, the kingdom's official border crossing with Iraq.

So what to do?

Steven Green has an idea:

Best solution in case of dissolution? Extend Jordan down the Red Sea coast to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, as was promised to the Hashemite family after WWI. The Eastern Province -- home to oil and Shi'as, to be united with their Arab Shi'a brethren across the border in southern Iraq. And the Bedouins of the interior can fight one another over what's left: sand and hate.

If, indeed, there is some long-standing social and ethnic reason to partition Saudi Arabia - or at least the parts worth annexing - then, indeed, why not?

Open Letter to Al Franken

So Al Franken took out a heckler - either "hit him low" or "bear hugged and body slammed him". According to one account, he was in his sixties, and by all accounts Franken blindsided him.

According to other accounts, he's done a lot of tough-talking about the likes of Rich Lowry and some other endomorphic pundits.

Well, well. A tough guy.

So, Al Franken, tough guy and would-be senator from Minnesota - come after me next, OK?

Oh, you only haul off on hecklers? OK - you haven't had a funny bit since Stuart Smalley, and that only for the first couple of times. Your voice makes Fred Rogers sound macho. And - oh, yeah - you're a walking example of Little Fella Syndrome in action. Your talk show is going to make Jim Hightower look like Sean Hannity, in terms of numbers.

People who heckle Dean? OK - he's a whack-job.

Wanna go a round or two? I never did any high school wrestling - grappling with guys was never my bag (not that there's anything wrong with that), but worked in bars long enough to know how to do tonsil surgery with a pool cue.

So let's go, Al. Say when - or even charge me from behind, for all I care. Best make it works the first time, though.

Cowardly hypocrite.

Loya Jirga

For all these years, the only person I've met from the Northern Alliance is Lileks - and, with the exception of a brief chat at the State Fair, that was fifteen years ago.

Finally fixed part of that last night. At an undisclosed location (hint: Dick Cheney served the drinks) I popped a few tops with the Scholars' King and the Fraters' Saint Paul.

Someday, I'm going to have to get the whole mob together. It could be a fun party, if we can get JB Doubtless to quit replacing whatever's on the CD player with Perry Como.

Don't Wanna Know If You Have An Opinion

How desperate is the City Pages to whack at the right?

The CP's weekly hatchet job has turned from Lileks and the Fraters to...the Governor.

City Pages - and former Saint Paul Pioneer Press - music critic Jim Walsh interviews Grant Hart.

You might ask "Who's interviewing WHO?" And you'd be right.

For those of you from out of town:

• Jim Walsh is a music critic. He writes about music - although given the CP's pedigree as an "alternative" weekly, he has free reign to yak about politics or cooking for, for all I know, brain surgery. He is an excellent music critic. He is a less effective record producer; I may never forgive him for turning the evanescent Gear Daddies into the dull, flat, joyless band we heard on "Let's Go Scare Al". But I digress; as a critic, he's good; as a producer, he sucks chunks through a long conduit; as a political columnist, he should stick with producing.
• Grant Hart was the drummer for Husker Du, a Twin Cities post-punk band that was what the overly-serious, slightly dorky kids listened to while the fun kids were listening to the Replacements or the Time. They had some great music, and a lot of tossaway filler; graded on their high points, they get an A-, while the Replacements got the A. While the rest of Husker Du went on to bigger and better things (Bob Mould has a successful solo career; Grant Norton is, according to an acquaintance, an excellent chef), Hart went on to front "Nova Mob", a band only a City Pages critic could love.

It turns out Grant Hart and Tim Pawlenty are high school classmates!

No, really!

So what does Grant Hart - dissipate superannuated punk rocker - have to say about Tim Pawlenty, moderate conservative governor?

Well, it's another one of those things where fisking would be redundant. Here's a section, no worse than the rest of Hart's essay:

I don't know how much liberty, life, and pursuit of happiness I can put on the line about this stuff, but I think you know how I feel about what's happened in this state in the last two years. I think that the right wing has looked at history, and they don't trust Minnesota. I think this next year is going to be revolutionary. I mean, even four more years of Bush is going to polarize everyone even more. [The Republicans] are going to give the American people the conclusion that we can't afford to govern ourselves, that we have to have the corporations do it for us.

And they've got a [friend] in Minnesota. When I think of the crowd Pawlenty ran with, it was the high school equivalent of, you know, Grunseths. I mean, kids that weren't in and of themselves bad kids, but kids who automatically made the A squad. The very, very privileged of the town.

I was working at Cheapo [Records] at the time, and bringing my amp and guitar and record player to parties. Guys would go, "Is this the new Aerosmith?" And I'd say, "No, it's the New York Dolls." I would say that Tim was probably into whatever music swung with the crowd he was trying to impress. He probably had never been to an arena concert, at a time when you could see eight bands for four bucks, but I don't know.

That's the funny thing: I knew the guy for years, and it's still like he's a cipher. He's Chauncey Gardener. With a lot less Zen. You know, I'd vote for Chauncey.

Well, as long as you set him straight about the New York Dolls. I mean, really.

Read the whole thing, if only to prove to yourself that the City Pages is overpriced.

(Note to out-of-towners; the City Pages is free. And with articles like this, I have to say it's worth every penny).

Foreign Policy Via Cliff Notes

Further proof today of Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary, the iron-clad law I defined last summer, and which has never been challenged:

No liberal commentator can simultaneously address more than one of the justifications for the liberation of Iraq. To do so would render their position untenable.

Jeff Fecke recaps a theme you're sure to be hearing from a lot of leftyblogs of widely varying degrees of literacy in the near future:

"Anyhoo, now that David Kay has said that there are no WMDs in Iraq and were no WMDs in Iraq, and now that the administration is sending big shots around the globe to say 'hey, we never said anything about WMDs!', and now that the best our Preznit can cite is Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction-Related-Program-Activites-Maltodextrin, I'd say the full story about WMDs has been told, and it is this:

THERE--WERE--NO--WEAPONS--OF--MASS--DESTRUCTION--IN--IRAQ

Except, Jeff - and by extension, all liberals whose view of foreign policy and defense and the War on Terror is equally myopic - you're doing to the issue exactly what liberal media outlets like Reuters and NPR did to the Kay interviews; taking the part that fits your predetermined conclusions and omitting the rest. That is the only way to look at this issue as a defeat for the President, if factual resolution of issues is what determines victory. And it confirms my law.

Remember - or if you get all your news from NPR or Atrios, read it for the first time - Kay also said that Hussein had retained all the information he needed to reconstitute WMDs again. Remember (or if you're a Democrat, learn it for the first time); applied physics is Nobel Prize material the first time it's done. After that, it's a blue collar job.

What's the difference between a drum of Sarin and a drum of insecticide? A CD with the instructions to make the Sarin and a little time.

Longer than it takes to say "Yummy Yellowcakes?" Metaphorically, no.

How long is acceptable?

You Know Who You Are

During the snowfall, with accidents dotting the traffic map and people slewing about the road like open auditions for "Bullitt II" were in effect all over town, you came sailing up behind me, going a good twenty miles per hour faster than me, as I pulled up behind a line of stopped cars on a local arterial.

You were waving your arms and gesticulating like the crack-sotted cabbie you may have been in a previous life - or may be in your next, with the karma you generated yesterday - but you're driving a Blazer, and the outline of a tie was silhouetted against the angles of your white dress shirt in the rear-view mirror, so you don't have that excuse.

As I started going through the light, you swerved around and passed me on the right, sailing down the slushy morass of a semi-open lane as if it were mid-July and you were driving on roads baked for weeks by the summer sun, dry enough that your spit would stick.

The biggest irony, I thought, was that in what passes for your "mind", you probably consider yourself a "good driver" - in fact, the very miserable driving habits you exhibited probably contribute to your vehicular id, creating the exaggerated sense of confidence in your own ability - no, in your competence as a driver that bids you to drive like such a completely irredeemable moron.

Watching you sail around the ramp ahead and slosh to a shuddering halt two inches behind a minivan 30 yards in front of me, I remembered my most wonderful encounter with a driver just like you...

< harps and fuzzy flashback graphics >

It was after the Thanksgiving Blizzard of 1991 - which was a doozy, but has been largely forgotten since it followed four weeks after the memorable Halloween Blizzard. I, my wife (at the time), stepson and infant daughter were driving back from an anniversary party. It was -15, late at night, with a bitter wind, and the roads were still atrocious, with even the "passable" lane on 694 feeling a little tender. I was doing perhaps 45mph, like all of the sensible traffic that night.

A driver in a Ford Bronco came sailing up behind me, doing at least 60. It slowed down behind me, flashed its high beams a few times - and then swerved into the passing lane.

It blew past, gunning its engine petulantly, and sailed about a quarter of a mile ahead of me - up to behind the next car, also doing about 45. The Bronco started repeating the drill - the dramatic slowdown, the flipping high-beams, the acceleration...

...when he got to the swerve, though, things went drastically wrong. He caught a bit of ice, swerved to the left, caught just enough pavement to allow him to lurch back to the right, where he hit ice again. He spun 360 degrees to the right, and kept going as he skidded over the icy shoulder, turning end-around again as he plopped into the snow-clotted ditch.

And I'll bet anything that, as he sat there in the ditch, he was bitching about all those other crappy drivers...

< end flashback >

So, to clarify:

• No, you are not a good driver.
• You are, in fact, merely working out some form of personal crisis or inadequacy via your behavior on the road.
• That being said, you are still scum.
• If, by some chance, your behavior should cause you to slide into my back bumper, they will find the long, thin strips into which I will have torn you, arranged to spell "BAD DRIVER" on the pavement next to your vehicle.

That is all.

The Enemy Down The Street

It's signally depressing to read Speechcodes.org, a site that digest speech codes on our nation's campuses.

MacAlester College is the lead story today. Their harassment policy says:

MacAlester's "freedom of expression does not include the right to intentionally and maliciously aggravate, intimidate, ridicule or humiliate another person." It also defines harassment as "speech acts which are intended to insult or stigmatize an individual or group of individuals on the basis of their race or color, or speech that makes use of inappropriate words or non-verbals" and states that the "use of any offensive or demeaning terms which have sexual connotations including those contained in jokes and humor" may constitute sexual harassment. The college also asserts that it is a "gross misdemeanor" to "intentionally harass a person by engaging in certain acts which cause the person to feel oppressed, persecuted or intimidated." Thus, the college sacrifices students' rights of free speech by prohibiting a broad category of expression, seemingly in order to protect some students' feelings. No one who tells students that they are too weak to live with freedom is their friend.

Speechcodes calls Mac a "Red Light" school, based on this sort of thing.

How do the other area schools stack up?

The U of M also rates a red light, while Carleton College rates a yellow.

I'll have to ask fellow Northern Alliance muj King from SCSU Scholars how he thinks MNSCU stacks up. Reading the blog, I'd suspect "not well".

Franken Smackdown

Al Franken a LaRouche supporter at a Dean Rally:

"'I got down low and took his legs out,' said Franken afterwards.
Franken said he's not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely. 'I would have done it if he was a Dean supporter at a Kerry rally,' he said.

And if it'd been a Dean supporter at a Bush rally...?

'I'm neutral in this race but I'm for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down.'

Because Howard Dean's voice is so utterly stifled otherwise, right?

Here's my question; I have not seen a LaRouche supporter who was less than 60 years old since Jimmy Carter was in office. I'm dying to see what sort of opponent Franken, a high school wrestler, smacked down.

(Via Jay Reding, among others)

On A Typical Morning...

...I wake up at five, dry my laundry from the previous night, take a shower, blog a bit, wake the kids, get them on the bus, put the finishing touches on my last-minute postings, drive to work.

The cat must have unplugged the alarm clock. No, seriously.

Now, I don't NEED an alarm clock to wake up at 6AM - I just do. And normally, that's enough time.

But for whatever reason, Daughter has missed her bus. So - no last-ditch surge in blog productivity this morning.

I'll catch up tonight. After my bagpipe final. Wish me luck.

Fiduciary Responsibility

Doug Grow's column in the Strib today is a masterpiece of misplaced populism:

"Poor Wells Fargo. In a bloody drama that's unfolding in New York courts, the big bank could be portrayed as coldly crushing innocent small businesses owners.

But the big bank points out that it's merely doing its job of protecting investors.

David Dennison, owner of a small video production company in Delano, is among those on the verge of being crushed in the name of investor protection."

Grow goes on to explain that Mr. Dennison is going to court in New York State - and that if he loses, he could lose his business.

With all due respect to Mr. Dennison's situation - and it's a crummy one - I need to ask Doug Grow this; what is Wells Fargo supposed to do? It's a bank and investment company - its job, indeed its fiduciary responsibility, is to look out for the well-being of its investors. The company can be barred from representing investors at all if it doesn't look out for their interests!

And yet - read the article - Grow paints this very legal fact as proof that Wells Fargo is a looming, uncaring bureaucracy whose only interest is squashing the little guy.

Dennison needs to go to court. The court will, hopefully, see the absurdity of the situation.

So does Mr. Dennison have a legal defense fund?

Mr. Grow doesn't say.

(Full disclosure: I'm currently a consultant with Wells Fargo Mortgage - which is not directly related to Wells Fargo's investment business)

Measuring Bias?

The blog Lying in Ponds has an interesting take on measuring the "bias" in media figures.

Now, LIP's vibe is that they oppose "partisanship" of all types, which is ludicrous - partisanship is how things get done.

But it's an interesting exercise nonetheless.

The Ruminator Handout

I've always liked Ruminator Books. Although the store and its management are relentlessly DFL-PC, and they host readings from some of the most obnoxious left-wingers (Michael Moore and Paul Krugman are recent guests), it's a just-plain-good bookstore...

...apparently run by some just-plain bad management. Ruminator's troubles are long-standing and well-known. The store is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

So Ward 4 City Councilman Jay Benanav is proposing giving the store $150,000 in city money in the form of low-interest loans and grants, as the Fraters noted the other day.

The "loan" and gift has drawn a bit of discussion on E-Democracy's "Saint Paul Issues" mailing list. The lines are drawn - between 20% on the one hand who say the city has no business handing out money to any business, 20% on the other who say that not only should the city not give out money to private business, they really really really should't give out money to rich capitalists, and 60% in the middle who really really really really hate giving money to capitalists, but note that David Unowski is a good liberal so maybe we should make an exception.

As one correspondent - a local "progressive" stalwart - said:

When Ruminator asks the city for millions of dollars, then you can raise eyebrows and complain about the lack of equal treatment or favoritism towards only certain businesses in town. But I could find the amount of money that Ruminator needs in attorneys fees that the city paid out to do the Wild Arena deal, so this is really a disingenuous comparison. Ruminator is admittedly a place where progressives feel more at home than City Hall or Barnes & Noble, but you know what, if you look at the voting in the last election, this is an overwhelmingly democratic city. Why can't the people who are in the majority get something they want once in a while, as opposed to all the backroom deals that suck away the downtown property tax base?

I opposed the Wild deal, and I oppose the Ruminator deal. As a taxpayer, I'll raise my eyebrows and complain any time I want to - the St. Paul DFL hasn't yet gotten a law passed requiring prior approval.

And I don't care who the people of St. Paul vote

And I oppose my "representative", Jay Benanav. The main criteria for getting city aid from Benanav seems to be "be a known DFL supporter". Last year, Benanav brokered a deal to sell a residential lot - worth over $26,000 on the open market - to a local businesswoman and neighborhood DFL leader, for roughly $8000 in back taxes. The sale - basically, a $16,000 gift - was justified under "neighborhood beautification"; the woman used the lot ot make room for an addition to her kitchen and porch, and for an extra-huge lawn. It's beautiful all right; but the city would have benefitted much more by allowing the lot to be sold for market value, and letting someone erect a tax-generating house on the property.

Not on Jay Benanav's watch. Paying off patronage is what it's about.

Stay tuned.

Fisking the Unfiskable

Fisking the Unfiskable - Last week, I got one of MoveOn.org's intermittent spams. This one concerned a dire Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to keep the organization's "winning" anti-Bush ad off the Super Bowl.

I like fisking grotesqueries of illogic as much as the next guy - but the whole notion of considering CBS to be in league with the Vast Right Wing was just. too. absurd to get my head around.

Fortunately, Mark at Classically Liberal is more on the ball:

So, clearly let's welcome CBS as a cog in the VRWC instead of a business legally lobbying for law changes which it believes will enable it to prosper better than current law. Regardless of one's views about media ownership changes (I'm generally against them myself...) claiming that CBS is some kind of Right Wing News outlet is hilarious. This is the network with Dan "transparently liberal" Rather as its nightly news anchor and executive news editor.

There are a few issues out there that left and right approach from such grossly different perspectives as to make meaningful communication impossible. The concept of media bias is one of them. I've sat, slack-jawed, reading Greens and Wellstone Democrats describe with a straight face the media's "Conservative bias". I've written it all off to "From Sacramento, Salt Lake City is East" metaphor - but is the part of the Dem mainstream represented by the likes of MoveOn that far out to the left?

Leading Indicator

Leading Indicator - The new Minnesota poll shows Governor Pawlenty's popularity is increasing:

"Two of the more telling indicators in the January poll are those showing his standing among older Minnesotans and political independents.
In September, only 46 percent of those over the age of 65 said they approved of Pawlenty. In the latest poll, three months after he mounted his Canadian drug-buying initiative -- a plan that drew harsh rebukes from conservative interest groups and the Bush administration -- 61 percent of 65-and-over Minnesotans approved of his performance.
In September, 37 percent of self-described independents approved; in the January poll, 52 percent. Among conservatives, Pawlenty's standing improved by only 3 points, to 71 percent, but among liberals it increased 9 points, to 37 percent. Even among DFLers it rose 7 points, to 40 percent."

Although another recent poll shows the President's popularity has dropped a few points in Minnesota, Pawlenty's growing popularity should help this fall.

On one hand, like the President, Pawlenty is earning much of this popularity by departing from many conservative principles. On the other, unlike the President, he's held to two of the big ones - no new taxes, and rollback of gun control with the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

So here's the question; what does the DFL have? For the past year, their entire agenda has been:

• Trying to pin trumped-up ethics charges on the administration
• Complaining about budget cuts that, in terms of actual numbers, weren't.

What am I missing?

In Praise of Flaws

Every time I read David Warren (on my blogroll on the right), I find myself drawing into one of his fascinating intellectual odysseys which prompts thought far beyond the scope of the original article.

Such is his current essay, "In Praise of Slightly Flawed Men:

The essay illuminates the morally-ambiguous acts of three men - good acts performed via means the clucking classes might find odious - and lets you draw your own conclusions - as I hope you will.

The second of the three:

"George Radwanski. I used to hate this guy, but have learned to love him. He was like so many Liberal Party flaks, in and out of public life. Adapted to power, they tend to write the rules by which they are guided, and rewrite as they go along. (This is inevitable in any one-party state.) A career of cynical self-promotion; but mixed, in Mr. Radwanski's unique case, with moments of actual public service. He wrote, for example, two commissions for the Ontario Liberal government of David Peterson (on services, and on education), which were not entirely foolish, and led to some minor improvements.

His very arrogance was put to good use in his job as Canada's Privacy Commissioner, for he had the guts to stand up to the government last year, in the matter of a national biometric identity card. This card could be used to invade our privacy in numerous ways (by data-pooling in combination with communications and video surveillance), while in no credible way improving our defences against terrorism. Mr. Radwanski boldly rang the alarm that it was his duty to ring -- at the cost of becoming a traitor to his class.

And now he is to be investigated by the RCMP, for expense overruns and minor acts of corruption which can hardly impress a student of the coalition of interests that keeps our Liberal Party in power. Let everyone who received a good lunch from this man rise in his defence!"

Read the whole thing.

Take Back Our Sandwiches! -

Forget the war on terror or the battles over taxes and education. Ramblin' Ryan Rhodes knows the questions that really need answering:

There is no way to reclaim a sandwich once modern day portions of mayonnaise are applied. It's a lost cause. It gets all over the lettuce, which is ruined, and it finds its way into the deepest fibers of the bun or bread. Once introduced to the pristine sandwich environment, you see, mayonnaise stages a massive takeover.

It's hard to explain my disdain for mayonnaise, beyond the fact that I just can't stand the taste. I have a violent reaction to the taste of mayonnaise, by which I mean I spit it out and scrub my tongue with a napkin. I think it says volumes about mayonnaise that the biggest mayonnaise company out there is called Hellmans, because when I bite into a sandwich with mayonnaise glued in there, I think, "Yuck! What the hell, man?!"

And, you know, I don't think I'm the only mayonnaise hater out there. I think there are legions upon legions of fellow mayo haters who are sick and tired of restaurants just assuming that we want our burgers iced with mayonnaise.

You're not alone, Ryan. Although there's a caveat.

Mayonnaise is truly a horrid creation, and Ryan has given voice to that which I have too long suppressed.

Paradoxically, though, while I can not eat any other sandwich with even a hint of mayo, I find myself unable to choke down a BLT that doesn't have at least a little mayo. How much? Just enough to make the bread glimmer a bit - basically picking up the piece of toast and whispering "Mayonnaise" at it should do.

The War and the Election

Victor Davis Hanson on the war and its electoral implications in the presidential race.

Money clip:

Europe, not America, has proved most interested in Iraqi oil over the last decade. Europe, not America, is apt to tolerate massacres in the Balkans or Iraq. Indeed, the victory in Iraq emphasized that our greatest sin is in being cumbersome and often acting belatedly to stop autocratic killing — but this is a far different moral quandary than never acting at all. When you look at Iranian fascists being wined and dined in Paris, count up all the corpses from the August heat wave, and contemplate the explosive issue of school scarves, France, not the United States, is the real sick puppy.

Much is made about the security alerts here at home and the new bogeyman Attorney General Ashcroft. But apart from the (necessary) inconvenience at airports, it is hard for Americans to agree with the Democrats that we are living in a police state — or that after September 11 we have been at the mercy of al Qaeda while President Bush was purportedly asleep at the wheel...

...With all this in mind, it is hard to understand the Democrats' logic of disaster. True, we are in an election year — the stuff of predictable hysteria. Politics, of course, is an arena in which there are no laws — a gladiatorial free-for-all that (unless you are Howard Dean) you don't enter demanding the retiarius leave behind his net or the Thracian dull his scimitar. But still, both history and reason offer no support for the calculus of the candidates' current invective. The party of Harry Truman has somehow boxed itself into the corner of seeing bad news from the Iraqi theater as good news for them.

In contrast, encouraging developments — from the capture of Saddam Hussein to a return of services and gradual stability in Iraq — are embraced as antithetical to the Democrats' own election hopes. But do they grasp that very few presidential hopefuls — remember McClellan, McCarthy, and McGovern — have ever been elected during a period of turmoil through calls for a cessation of effort, which the American electorate always interprets as defeatist rather than rational? During wars the more successful candidates usually campaign from the right on matters of tactics, arguing perhaps — as an Eisenhower in 1952 or a 1968 Nixon — that the war is mismanaged and conducted haphazardly, rather than intrinsically immoral and futile.

To be fair, the Democrats do not have a large range of options. After September 11, the United States conducted two brilliant military campaigns when conventional antebellum wisdom predicted doom and quagmire. Al Qaeda has not duplicated 9/11. Saddam Hussein was apprehended far more quickly than the Balkan outlaws still on the lam. Democracy in the Middle East is becoming at least as revolutionary a movement as Islamic fundamentalism.

There is a long way to go, of course. But people who quibble about that do so only by forgetting how long it took to secure Democracy here in the US.

Tear Down The...er...Never Mind

The kids and I went to the Ice Palace last night.

It was cold, and a little windy, and utterly wonderful. Everyone should try it.

However, I was prompted to check out the walls - the walls that, according to the Nick Coleman via Fraters, are such ghastly symbols of our disdain for the poor and disadvantaged.

I checked out the immense ice walls surrounding the huge courtyard and the gorgeous central palace structure - and I think I figured out what they're for:

To make it look like a castle.

Hopefully that'll put this controversy to rest. Thanks.

"But Dissent Is Patriotic!" -

The commander of the British Army's 1st Battalion/42nd Highland Regiment (The Black Watch) has attacked Parliament's anti-war back-benchers and the protesters they supported:

"While careful to make clear that the Government's decision to wait until the last minute was understandable, Lt Col Cowan said it was partly forced on it by anti-war feeling among its own backbenchers.
'As a result, many items of equipment were not available in the right numbers, in the right place, in the right working order at the time they should have been and I think that is widely acknowledged,' he said.
'I think there is a clear realisation that if a decision had been taken earlier then the right kit could have been in place, but there is a clear understanding as to why those decisions were not made.'
Lt Col Cowan's comments, in an interview with The Scotsman newspaper, came the day after the MoD's leading civil servant told MPs that body armour did not arrive because Mr Hoon did not authorise preparations until late November 2002."

Note to the left: "Opposing the war but supporting the troops" should not involve endangering them. Try to work on that.

(Via the Captain)

Virtue Bought Cheap

Alfred Fingulin adds this thought to the Saint Paul City Council's specious anti-Patriot Act resolution on Wednesday:

If the St Paul City Council really means it, then instruct the St Paul Police Department not to comply with law enforcement action requested under the Patriot Act. That would be a gutsy move.

Very true.

It would involve the St. Paul DFL putting their chances of being re-elected where their mouths are.

It's very like the St. Paul DFL to take grandious but supercilious symbolic actions, but leave the beef out. It's not for nothing that Kathleen Soliah felt so at home here.

Standard Standards

My kids - a daughter in seventh grade and a son in fifth - know who Winston Churchill was, why Richard Nixon left office, why the Cold War ended, and why Bill Clinton was impeached. They've heard of Churchill's Dunkirk speech, Kennedy's Moon speech, Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech. They're fuzzy on James Madison, but they do know something about why the Constitution was written and what the Bill of Rights are.

Problem is, it's for damn sure they didn't learn it in school. It's a safe bet that the tiniest possible percentage of their classmates know - or have even heard of any of these things.

They and all their classmates are perfectly literate, however, in the history of Martin Luther King. Not to knock that, of course; King was a pivotal American figure, and his importance can't be underestimated. Leaving aside his social importance, his skill as an orator is something to study from a purely technical perspective.

The other day, someone played a snippet of the "I Have A Dream" speech on TV. My son recited it along with the footage, word for word; he can't even recite lyrics from the Top 40 that faithfully - and it reminded me of an episode of Ira Glass' "This American Life" in which a white social studies teacher from Chicago (I think) arranged a trip for his almost-entirely African-American students to the Washington Mall.

The teacher brought them to the exact spot where Rev. King had stood, and started playing the speech on a large boom box.

And he was shocked at the students' reaction.

They were bored stiff.

It was just another speech - one they'd heard hundreds of times in their inner city school - and, other than playing over footage of water cannon and soldiers escorting black student school, it seemed to have little meaning to the students. King's speech seems to have come to float above history, a self-contained moment that has become isolated from meaning in the process two generations of being taught as a Great Event in its own right. Students know the speech. They know that the speech had something to do with black people not having had the same rights white people had. Before that...?

Which is exactly why I am so happy that a group of Minnesota academics - including the my fellow Northern Alliance muj King Banaian of the SCSU Scholars - have issued this letter supporting Governor Pawlenty's initiative to revamp the state's social studies standards.

This piece in the lede expands on the example of the King speech:

But part of the problem stems from a curricular philosophy that makes Social Studies a field unto itself, with history and geography coming into play only insofar as they supply materials for discussing contemporary issues. For the new Minnesota Standards, by contrast, Social Studies means the four specific fields of knowledge for which the Legislature has mandated standards: History, Geography, Civics and Government, and Economics. Schooling does indeed prepare students to be citizens, but the best preparation is broad-based, not issue-specific; students who have a sense of who and where they are in the world – a template of human time and space – have a framework for accommodating new questions, and making their own judgments.

Exactly.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that I have doubts about the current model of education in both public and mainstream private schools - that's fodder for another post. The professors are right - you can not teach history, politics, geography and sociology in a vaccuum, divorced from the society that creates the things that you study.

The Ugliest American

Today, I'm ashamed to be an American.

Maureen Dowd may have just written the stupidest column ever to grace the NYT - a column full of the sort of myopic provincialism that, had it been written by an Idaho Republican, would have been held up as a prime example of Red state redneck ignorance by the likes of...well, Maureen Dowd.

You wonder how many votes he scared off with that testosterone festival: the taunting message, the self-righteous geographic litany of support? The Philippines. Thailand. Italy. Spain. Poland. Denmark. Bulgaria. Ukraine. Romania. The Netherlands. Norway. El Salvador.

Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?

I'm not asking Dowd to have the faintest clue about the histories of 35 other nations...

...no. That's not true. I am. If a newspaper wants to make a serious claim to be America's "Newspaper of Record", either Dowd or one of her editors had better be literate enough about world history to at least know that Dowd's statement is moronic, if not precisely why.

But I don't like Dowd. I'm going to go into the precisely why.

The Professor quoted Tim Blair:

Reader Matt F. writes: " didn't know that poodles were eligible for service in the Australian SAS. Please clarify.? That line confused me, too, Matt. As far as I was aware, the only role for poodles in our SAS was as occasional target practice (they're cheap and speedy).

The British, Australian and New Zealand militaries have some of the only troops in the world that can keep up with the US. Their Special Air Service (SAS) are among the best special forces in the world - our Delta Force is modeled after the SAS. The British Royal Marines invented the term "Commandos" as we understand it today.

The Dutch? Forget the wooden clogs - the 1,100 Dutch troops in Iraq include their Marine battalion, which spent most of the Cold War with the British Marine Commandos, as well as with the USMC. While the unionized Dutch military has taken a lot of flak over the years, their Marines are pretty much exempt from this.

How about the Scandinavians? While Norway's government far enough left to keep Dennis Kucinich purring happily, their troops are reportedly just fine. Their Special Forces operated with ours in Afghanistan, and likely are doing so today. The Danes are even better-regarded; their Army earned a lot of respect from US troops in the Balkans, and their special forces, the Jaegerkorpset, are among the best in NATO. Both nations learned something in WWII that Maureen Dowd hasn't had to - that pacifism is fine (both nations are renowned for their pacifistic governments), but if you don't back up your pacifism with a strong will to defend it, it's really worthless. Norway and Denmark's militaries are among the best in Europe.

You'd think an alleged feminist like Dowd would pay special attention to the Poles. Leave aside the fact that the Poles have one of the longest and most distinguished histories of fighting for liberty - their own and others - in all of Europe. Forget even that they have nearly 3,000 of their troops there already, actively fighting. You'd think a "genuine feminist" like Dowd would know that Poland's GROM special forces unit, which fought in both Gulf Wars, is one of the very few special forces units to include women.

3,000 South Koreans operate in Iraq today, including their Special Forces and Marines. They've spent fifty years training to fight Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il's immense military, in one of the most dismal climates on earth.

Lapdogs? Poodles?

Jason Van Steenwyck talks about more allies - the Fijians, who developed a reputation for courage in the Golan Heights in the seventies that, according to Steenwyck, they still earn today, among others.

So look at the list of nations with troops in Iraq. Check out the nations that have histories of reclaiming their liberties from brutal dictatorships - Romania, Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Spain, Lithuania, and on and on. Nations that have sacrificed enough blood for their own liberty to overflow the cocktail glasses at every Manhattan club that Maureen Dowd has ever closed down.

I thought it was Conservatives that were supposed to be ignorant, stupid and provincial?

Dowd is, of course, shilling for the idea that the United Nations would have given us "legitimacy" that 35 other nations wouldn't. So what would getting UN "Support" have gotten us? 3,000 French troops, maybe the same number of Germans. Some of the UN's usual suspects - most UN peacekeeping missions include a battalion (500 or so) of Swedes or Irish or Brazilians or Indians. Helpful? Sure. And so would a battalian of Martian Gravity Tanks, which would be just as likely, because as long as the UN vote was controlled by a French veto, and the French were operating under their strategy of containing US power, there would be no UN support if President Bush spent 14 months or 14 years begging for it.

Get over it, MoDo.

(Via the Professor)

Perspective

Perspective - Jay Reding recaps a point I'd love to hammer into the heads of some Patriot Act opponents - most notably the Saint Paul City Council:

"For instance, take the infamous Section 215 which allows law enforcement to look through business records such as library records without notifiying the suspect. Civil libertarians have cried foul over this provision, despite the fact it takes a court order to do so, no library records have ever been searched, and such provisions have already been used in other criminal cases. Library records were searched in the hunt for Andrew Cunanan, the man who shot fashion designer Gianni Versace in 1997, and to hunt down the Zodiac killer in New York in 1990. Yet no one raised a fuss about these searches. It is clear that there is a direct double standard at play, fueled by ignorance of the law."

I've long noticed - one never need bother askng for specifics when the left starts yapping about the Patriot Act. They rarely know any - or frequently "know" things, like Jose Padilla's incarceration, that have nothing to do with the Patriot Act.

Don't get me wrong. Speaking as someone who was a libertarian (in fact, a Libertarian) before John Ashcroft assumed office, I am all in favor of being ferocious in defense of any infringements on civil liberties. But that defense has to be reasonable. There are aspects of the Patriot Act that I find troubling - but they are the sort of thing you settle via legislation or the courts, rather than by empty, and in the final analysis cowardly actions like the Saint Paul City Council's resolution on Wednesday.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Reader Shawn Sarazin sends this piece from the Chicago Sun Times

Last month, Hale DeMar of Wilmette, Illinois shot a burglar in his house. The media reported that the gun was unregistered - as the Sun-Times report says,

And, in a move that has drawn criticism, DeMar was cited with breaking Wilmette's ban on handguns and with failing to update his firearm owner's identification card.

The misdemeanors are unlikely to bring jail time. Wilmette Police Chief George Carpenter did not criticize DeMar for protecting his family but said homes are safer without handguns.

DeMar wrote a letter to the Sun-Times.

It's a classic. I have added all emphases:

Village Trustees ... Stick to Parade Schedules & Planting our Parks

Many of us have experienced a sense of violation upon returning to our homes, only to find that someone else has been there. Someone else has trespassed in our bedrooms, looting and stealing that which is readily replaced. Many of us, still haunted by that violation, will never again have a sense of security in our own homes. Few, however, have awakened to realize that they had been violated as they slept in their beds, doors locked, as family dogs patrolled their homes. For me, the seconds until I found my children still safely tucked in their beds were horrifying. The thought that a young child may have been hurt or abducted was incomprehensible.

The police were called and in routine fashion they came, took the report and with little concern left, promising to increase surveillance. Little comfort, since the invader now had keys to our home and our automobiles. The police informed me that this was not an uncommon event in east Wilmette and offered their condolences.

What is one to do when a criminal proceeds, undeterred by a 90-pound German shepherd, an alarm system and a property ... lit up like an outdoor stadium? And now, he had my house keys and an inventory of things he'd like to call his own. Would the police patrol my dead-end street as effectively the second time as they had the first? Would my small children be unharmed the next time? Would the career criminal be satisfied with another automobile, another television or would he feel the need, once again, to climb the staircase up to the bedrooms, perhaps for a watch or a ring or a wallet, again risking little?

Would my children wake to find a masked figure, clad in black, in their bedroom doorway, a vision that might haunt them for years? Would the police come again and fill out yet another report, and at what point should I feel comfortable that the 'bad guy' got everything he wanted and wouldn't return again, a third time?

I went to the safe where my licensed and registered gun was kept, loaded it for the very first time and tucked it under the mattress of my bed. I assured my frightened children ''that daddy would deal with the bad guy ... if he ever returned.'' Little did I imagine that this brazen animal was waiting in the backyard bushes as I tucked my children into bed.

Fifteen minutes after bedtime, the alarm went off. Three minutes after the alarm was triggered, the alarm company alerted the police to the situation and 10 minutes later the first police car pulled up to my home, but only after another call was made to 911, by a trembling, half-naked father. I suppose some would have grabbed their children and cowered in their bedroom for 13 minutes, praying that the police would get there in time to stop the criminal from climbing the stairs and confronting the family in their bedroom, dreading the sound of a bedroom door being kicked in. That's not the fear I wanted my children to experience, nor is it the cowardly act that I want my children to remember me by.

Until you are shocked by a piercing alarm in the middle of the night and met in your kitchen by a masked invader as your children shudder in their beds, until you confront that very real nightmare, please don't suggest that some village trustee knows better and he/she can effectively task the police to protect your family from the miscreants that this society has produced.

This career criminal had been arrested thirty times. He was wanted in Georgia and for parole violations in Minnesota. How many family homes had he violated, how many innocent lives were affected, how many police reports went into some back office file cabinet, only to become some abstract statistic? How is it that rabid animals like this are free to roam the streets, violating our homes and threatening the safety of our children?

If my actions have spared only one family from the distress and trauma that this habitual criminal has caused hundreds of others, then I have served my civic duty and taken one evil creature off of our streets, something that our impotent criminal justice system had failed to do, despite some thirty odd arrests, plea bargains and suspended sentences.

Hale DeMar, Wilmette

I can find no online reference to a Hale DeMar legal defense fund. Hopefully he won't need one.

Alan Gottlieb, president of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, notes:

"Even Wilmette Police Chief George Carpenter has admitted in a statement quoted by the Wilmette Life community newspaper that the handgun ban ordinance has seen limited use as a law enforcement tool." He also told [Sarah Brady, in an open letter to the gun control diva] that an on-line poll by the Chicago Tribune revealed that an overwhelming 83 percent of the respondents oppose the notion that municipalities can ban handgun ownership, while only 17 percent support that approach.

Yet another nail in the coffin of gun control's credibility.

Trivial Pursuit

The Saint Paul City Council passed an anti-Patriot Act resolution yesterday.

My commentary about my moonbat councilman Jay Benanav (DFL - the Merriam Park People's Collective) is well-worn enough to skip here.

This is about Councilman Dave Thune (DFL - West End). I'd always known Dave Thune to be relatively reasonable for a DFLer.

In the future, I'll probably know it again - and, just to be clear, I say that with an implied smile. Dave's a guitar player and a fellow expat North Dakotan (we are taking over). His predilection for DFL politics only slightly tarnishes the fact that he's an otherwise good guy...

He made a posting this morning on E-Democracy's "Saint Paul Discussion" forum regarding the council's action. I'll chalk this post up to a winter vacation from reason. Perhaps Thune is sitting on a beach in Cozumel right now, taking a big hit off the Deanbong and washing it down with a long belt of Kucinich and soda.

My response - in classical "fisking" format - is pretty much the one I posted to the forum, with a few better things I thought up in the shower.

Councilman Thune wrote:

"Has the Federal government obtained copies of St. Paul residents' reading
history from the St. Paul public library?"

As a member of the St. Paul Library Board of Directors I asked this question today. The Director of the library could not answer "yes" or even say "no" because to do so would place her in violation of federal law!

As well it should. But that's hardly a funtion of the Patriot Act.

Now if you trust that the government ONLY asks these questions of suspected terrorists who take out books on building weapons of mass destruction, then you are too young to remember J. Edgar Hoover and the Nixon/LBJ/Vietnam years. The federal government did in fact spy on U.S. citizens, keep files on peace protesters and wiretap Martin Luther King Jr.

There are many possible responses to this paragraph:

1. I was probably 12 during the Church Commission hearings, so yeah, I do remember them. To some extent, their restrictions were a reasonable response to the excesses of Hoover, Nixon, and (do try to be fair) FDR, Truman and Kennedy. To another extent, they overreached, putting up statutory blocks between agencies that could have been better handled by stronger oversight. As knee jerk reactions go, it was like most - some good, some bad.
2. However, Dave, everyone on this list is old enough to know about the RICO Act, or the Crime Bill of 1994. Both of those sets of laws impose burdens on civil liberties far beyond anything in the Patriot Act - in fact, most of the most noxious parts of the Patriot Act are the parts where the government wants the same power against suspected terrorists that they already have against suspected drug traffickers and racketeers. And yet there is almost no hue and cry from the "League of Cities". Why? The "War on Drugs", unlike Iraq, is based on a huge set of lies. The "War on Drugs" has killed more Americans than Vietnam, two orders of magnitude more than have died in Iraq, and has devastated the cores of most American cities in ways that we'd never tolerate the military doing to a foreign country. Why are the *same measures* so tolerable against drug dealers (who deal in a purely consensual commodity) and "racketeers" (a term whose definition is a lot more flexible than "terrorist", depending on the US attorney involved), but not against those who want to - bulletin! - kill us all?

The measures are no less noxious, because in most instances they are *the same*. So where are the Dave Thunes and Jay Benanavs and Leagues of Cities? Where is the outrage? Where *were* all those ardent libertarians in 1994? Where *were* they when RICO grew into a one-size-fits all legal sledgehammer?

The answer, I guess, is "waiting for a Republican administration".

The resolution we passed today at the city council is the same one endorsed by the National League of Cities and hundreds of other cities and towns
across the country.

And given the political agenda of the "National League of Cities", its motivations are the same, too.

I happen to believe we cannot trust the government.

Indeed we can't. At ANY level.

ALL levels of government lie about *everything*, *all the time*.

In fact, ask yourself this question: "How can you tell when *any* government official is lying?" Answer: "His/her lips are moving!".

Seems overly general, doesn't it?

What you really mean to say, Dave, is "The City Council, being DFL, is playing its part in the 2004 election campaign", isn't it?

How can we trust an administration which lied about the need for war in
Iraq,

They didn't.

sent our children, parents and siblings to fight, die and be wounded
even as we killed Iraqi civilians just as dead as did Saddam

It's been shown that fewer Iraqi civilians died during the period of the war than Hussein himself would have murdered in an equivalent time. It's for sure it's not happening anymore.

Ah, but they're just Arabs. Who cares about them, right?

So if I were to stand up and say as an elected official that the government is spying on my constuents, will I be arrested?

Quick, Dave - name the officials at ANY level of government in the US that have been arrested for any such thing?

Show us the camps full of dissenters on the Idaho plains. Show us the disappeared critics. Show us the shut-down newspapers? (these last two happen all the time in this country, actually - on our college campuses. Dissent from liberal orthodoxy is punished, dissident newspapers are shut down - is the SPCC going to pass a resolution about THIS repression, which has caused more damage to liberty than the Patriot Act ever will)?

Michael Moore and Cher are not lying in a mass grave in Wyoming next to two hundred WTO protesters - they are both earning way more than either of them deserve for their meager talent. Two of the biggest, most accusatory, inflammatory moonbats in American politics today - Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton - are running for president. That's how we oppress dissent in this country. The Minneapolis City Council - which preceded the SPCC in lunacy by quite some time - didn't disappear in the middle of the night.

And they never will!

Don't get me wrong; there are parts of the Patriot Act that DO overreach. I keep asking liberal friends of mine to name them; none can.

St. Paul has stood up in defense of the Bill of Rights.

No. Saint Paul stood up and said "George Bush is a ickypoopyface.". No more.

Don't trivialize this action.

How better to say "It is trivial"?

The SPCC should stick to debating noise easements.

Everybody's Doing It

Everybody's Doing It - It's the first ever "Shot In The Dark Poll" of public opinion!

Remember - no wagering!

Who is is the *last* person you'd trust with the Presidency?
	Carrot Top
	Howard "Mad How" Dean
	Pauly Shore
	George W. Bush
	Dennis Perrin
	Hugh Hewitt
	Eli Pariser, spammer in chief for "MoveOn.org"
	Katherine Lanpher
	Sedalina's new boss "James"
	Michael Moore
Free polls from Pollhost.com

And it's a good thing the polls at Pollhost are free; I've been trying for the last half-hour to unscrew the HTML to make this appear properly on the page. Blah.

Casualty Figures

Casualty Figures - US combat deaths in Iraq passed 500 this month. That passing was noted with somnolent portent by many commentators - and shrill glee by many candidates.

Robert H Reid puts it in context:

Iraq casualty figures are small compared with the horrific bloodletting of some of America's past conflicts. About 19,000 American soldiers died in one month alone in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, a conflict in which more than 290,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in action.

An estimated 620,000 Americans - both northerners and southerners - died in the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict. More than 58,000 U.S. troops lost their lives in Vietnam, both in combat and from non-battle causes.

Nevertheless, the rising death toll after 10 months of military operations in Iraq is significant, especially in a country whose public traditionally has little appetite for their sons and daughters dying in battle in distant, unfamiliar lands.

The United States aborted its participation in an international peacekeeping operation in Somalia after 18 U.S. troops were killed in a battle in the capital, Mogadishu, with forces loyal to warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.

Former President Ronald Reagan pulled U.S. peacekeepers out of Lebanon after a suicide truck bomber killed 241 Marines and other service members at Beirut's airport in 1983.

After U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended in 1973, U.S. presidents were loathe to commit American forces to protracted struggles in foreign lands without clear objectives and overwhelming chances for success.

However, U.S. antipathy to foreign military operations receded after a series of quick and relatively painless operations in places like Grenada in 1983 - with only 16 battle and non-combat deaths - and Panama in 1989, when 21 troops were killed.

One can't trivialize 500 dead Americans.

I guess the central question is, do you think the sacrifice accomplished anything? Many (not all) Democrats say "no", or more comically, "if our guy was in charge, we'd have gotten the same results with fewer/no deaths".

The Fix

Dick Morris knows exactly why Mad How collapsed in Iowa:

What happened to Howard Dean? He was assassinated by Bill and Hillary with the assistance of Chris Lehane, the political hit man who first worked for Kerry and now backs Clark.
Desperate to keep control of the Democratic Party, the Clintons used their negative researchers and detectives to the ultimate and generated a story-a-day savaging Dean. The Vermont governor, not ready for prime time, cooperated by being thin-skinned, surly and combative. And now he is an artifact of history. The left (who had made Dean their darling) embraced Kerry (the original leftist) as their nominee. "

It'll be interesting, one day, to know the Clintons' influence in this race.

Read the whole thing, natch.

Lies Heard In Passing

On MPR's Morning Edition this morning, Senator Mark Dayton was quoted saying that unemployment is the worst it's ever been.

Really?

Ever?

Worse than the depression (25%)?

Worse than the 1980 recession? (over 8%)?

Senator Dayton? Where do you get that ?

A More Concise SOTU Summary

A More Concise SOTU Summary - A friend on another listserve posted this summary of the State Of The Union:

Bush: "We big." (30 seconds of applause.) "We bad." (1 minute of applause.) "And we kick ass whenever we want." (1 minute standing ovation.) "We're getting bigger." (10 second applause.) "But not by using steriods, because those are bad." (30 second applause.) "Countries I once called 'evil' I am now calling 'dangerous regimes'." (45 second applause and foot stomping.) "Weapons I once called 'illegal and massively destructive' I am now calling 'dangerous'." (30 seconds of joyous shouting.) "And we will find some in Iraq." (1 minute of Republicans mooning Democrats while slapping their butt cheeks.) "You, congress, are to blame for spending too much money." (30 seconds of the audience in the gallery throwing feces at the congressmen.) "Peace, prosperity, and good times ahead if I stay your president." (Republicans all hold hands in a manly way and sing the national anthem.) "Thank you and God bless America." (1 minute of "Hail Ceasar!" then Senator Kennedy is tossed into the air and used as a giant beachball to the amusement of all.)

As good as any I've seen.

State of The Union

Many, many bloggers - from Sullivan to Reding - covered the SOTU. I didn't watch, due to a prior commitment.

My second-hand impressions?

1. Not going wobbly on the war - good.
2. Going wobbly on spending - bad.

I have to confess; I was always torn about George W. Bush. Up through the convention, I supported Steve Forbes - and when it comes to economics, I still do.

Would Steve Forbes have reacted as well - maybe magnificently - to 9/11 as Bush did? Hard to say.

In some ways I echo Homer Hickam, author of October Sky, in a WSJ article cited on Medved today:

I don't agree with President Bush about everything but he's starting to remind me of Harry S. Truman. He gets with the program. You can argue with him about what he does and you might even be right, but you can't fault the man for getting out front and leading. That is, after all, what we hire our presidents to do.

And let's be honest - unless you're an ultra-left ostrich with your head buried in Noam Chomsky's ass the sand, that's what we need. It's wartime, and George W. Bush said "Damn the torpedoes", the world is a better and (shut up, Mad How) at least incrementally safer place now than it was two years ago.

What will be the long term consequences of all of this spending? As a conservative, it worries me. Bush in (hopefully) his second term will need to reel it in - and, without having to run for re-election, and especially with a rebounding economy to boost revenues, the deficit will go away eventually, just like it did for Clinton.

As a conservative, though, it is a little bitterly ironic; Bush really has been the anti-Clinton in his first term - fiscally very liberal (except for taxes), socially fairy conservative (although not nearly as much as some of his critics credit him for).

So I'd like to level out the social peaks and fill in the fiscal valleys, conservative-ily speaking.

On the other hand, Deacon from Powerline seemed much more impressed.

Exit the Cackler

Katherine Lanpher is leaving MPR, apparently (so say Fraters) to go to New York to join Al Franken on the new Liberal Titanic talkradio network.

More on that - and I do mean "more on" - later.

This is from MPR's press release:

[MPR's News Veep] Bill Buzenberg praised Lanpher's performance as Midmorning host. "I can say that from the very start, whether listeners agreed or disagreed with her, they listened to her," he said. "The audience was engaged, and every guest had to be on his or her toes to share the microphone with Katherine.

Oh, Bill. Some guests had to be more "on their toes" than others. If you were presenting an opinion anywhere to the right of, say, Ellen Anderson, you had to be dancing en point, ready to field any permutation of out-of-context data, slur and innuendo.

She made compelling radio and was a fabulous host.

Compared to the somnolent fossils that host the crushing majority of public radio programs? I'll give that one to Buzenberg. Lanpher was more "compelling", in the same way that getting a root canal is "more compelling" than eating vanilla yogurt.

We will miss her laugh, her energy, her hard work, her vast intelligence and her indomitable spirit."

Contacts inside MPR tell me they won't miss her prima donna attitude - which should be a perfect fit on a liberal talk network...

Her wide-ranging knowledge and engaging conversational style are credited with significantly boosting listenership.

Quick - without looking it up, who hosted the mid-morning show before Lanpher?

Any guesses?

Anyone?

For that matter, who hosted "All Things Considered" before David "Audibly Volvo-owning" Molpus? Before that?

Lanpher is a powerful MPR personality because she has a personality. Irritating as it is was, it existed in a personality vacuum.

Now, about her future plans; do you hear that scratching sound? It's the sound of the ground below the bottom of the barrel being scraped.

You can tell a lot about the future of the supposed liberal talk radio network from Lanpher's hiring. If this is how far afield Leftnet has to go to find "talent", then it's a fair guess their "bench" behind Franken (himself a dismal choice for a marquee name) is as weak as the Milwaukee Brewers'.

Al Franken isn't as smart as Michael Medved, as charismatic as Rush Limbaugh, as much a train-wreck controversy magnet at Michael Savage, as connected with Fraters Libertas as Hewitt - and yet in all those areas, he stands head, shoulders and ankles above Lanpher.

In other words - don't take her label off her mail slot, Vice President Buzenberg. She may be back before you can dust it out.

While We're On The Subject of Delusion

While We're On The - Going through Mark Gisleson's hilarious Babelogue entries, I counted the number of times he referred, directly or obliquely, to violent overthrow of the government. I've got three so far, and that's just last week.

And I wonder; how do you suppose Mark Gisleson stood on the Minnesota Personal Protection Act? Does he support Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota? Does every conversation about the Second Amendment begin and end with references to "Maodamned Knuckle-dragging Gun Nuts?"

I don't know, but I have my suspicions.

People who prate and gabble about overthrowing the government but oppose the citizen's right to own firearms are like guys who read Maxim for the pictures, but live on Krispy Kremes and Budweiser; there's a serious disconnect.

What A Difference Two Days Makes

The City Pages' Steve "Don't Stop Believing" Perry on the Iowa Caucuses:

There is real electoral gold in going after the Bush gang directly and lustily. It already should have been evident from the successes of Howard Dean, but these people are extraordinarily slow to learn and predisposed to stick to the Republican Lite script. Iowa should demonstrate to anyone paying attention that anti-Bush sentiment runs broader and deeper than our pols and pundits have yet recognized.

Natch, it was written the day before the caucuses, which pretty well repudiated Dean...

...and Perry.

So let's see - if we right-bloggers are "Bloggers of Mass Deception", I guess the Babelogue family of "blogs" are WMDs - Wannabes of Mighty Delusion".

Let Slip the Blogs of Love

Let Slip the Blogs of Love - - Instapundit notes the first known blog-induced marriage, and a number of dates that have started in the blogosphere.

I can contribute the dark side of the story, naturally.

A while ago, a friend tried to set me up for a blind date with a female friend of his.

We talked on the phone. Everything was hunky-dory. Maybe a little better, in fact.

Then, she googled me. And read my blog. And I got an email:

I just read your blog. I'm sorry, but I'm a good, peace-loving liberal. I could never date a conservative.

In addition, I support Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, and therefore I could never date someone with your beliefs on guns.

My response?

Hey, we all make mistakes. I was a liberal once, too.

Actually, I did send that.

I'm still grinning about it.

I'm also still very single.

Ah, well.

The Dean Dance

The Dean Dance - Lileks' techno remix of Mad How's classic screeawwwp.

Soon to replace "Hamster Dance" on my kids' MP3 player.

Sublime? Meet Ridiculous

The City Pages Steve Perry straddles reality in today's Bush Wars.

On the one hand:

Tuesday morning’s conventional wisdom got one thing right. The biggest beneficiary of the whole pageant was Edwards, largely by virtue of his being neither of the main things Kerry is: a Boston Brahmin stiff ticketed for burial in the South, and an already failed one-time frontrunner.

So far, so good.

But then:

(Yes, Kerry’s a war hero--which might forestall certain kinds of attacks from the Bush camp, but hardly looks like a marquee attraction in a race defined by the economy and by widespread opposition to a war that Kerry supported.)

It occurs to me - Perry probably is referring to widespread opposition among the Democrat base.

Which is fine. Campaign on it. See how it plays in Peoria in ten months.

Patriot Survey -

Patriot Survey - AM1280 The Patriot - the Twin Cities "other" conservative talkradio station, featuring Hewitt, Medved, Ingraham and the rest of the Salem Radio lineup - is taking an online survey.

Check it out. Vote for more local programming.

These online polls frequently don't get a lot of traffic - a few votes can go a long way.

Trying To Forget Your Generation

Kondracke in Roll Call via Drudge:

"Here's a harrowing pair of facts for Democrats: In 60 years, no Democrat has ever won the presidency without carrying the youth vote. And right now President Bush's approval rating among 18- to 29-year-olds is 62 percent, higher than his nationwide rating. Top Republican strategists admit that the youth vote is fluid, but right now the trends are all in their direction, which they hope is a harbinger not only for 2004, but also a possible longer-term party realignment."

A Bush campaign official said, "It's called the theory of political socialization. Who are the most Democratic people in America? It's the over-65 age group. Why? Because the two presidents they knew best were Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. And who are the most Republican? People in their 40s, who came of age in the last two years of Jimmy Carter and the first two years of Ronald Reagan. If your politics were being formed during the last two years of Bill Clinton and the first two years of George Bush, there's a fairly good chance that we'll have your support."

Kondracke writes, "It seems impossible that a generation reared on free-love television and rap music, a generation far more tolerant of ethnic diversity and homosexuality than its elders, could support the GOP, whose base in anchored in the religious right. In fact, Democratic theorists such as Ruy Teixeira, John Judis and Stan Greenberg look upon the expanded role of minorities, cosmopolitan regions and diversity-minded young people to produce an 'emerging Democratic majority' through the force of demography.

"But, at the moment, the numbers support the view of GOP leaders that young people are trending Republican because they like Bush."

Flapping Through History

Via Sullivan -Churchill's parrot is still alive!:

"Her favourite sayings were 'F*** Hitler' and 'F*** the Nazis'. And even today, 39 years after the great man's death, she can still be coaxed into repeating them with that unmistakable Churchillian inflection.
Many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the tirade from the bird's cage during crisis meetings with the PM.
But it always brought a smile to the war leader's face."

I had no idea parrots lived that long...

Just

Dean Falling Apart - Just saw Mad How on the Today Show.

He looks angry, defensive, petulant.

Not Presidential material.

Blogs of Mass Deception

If you see Karl Rove hiding in your hedges, call 1-877-MOONBAT. Mark Gisleson is on the beat, and he needs your help.

The City Pages - the Twin Cities "alternative" weekly handout - has always slewed to both sides of a broad, dark line.

On the one hand, they've always had some of the best actual news reportage in town. They have some reporters who do some just plain good gumshoe reporting. And while things have slid a bit on Steve Perry's watch, the actual news operation at City Pages still does a generally good job.

We're not talking about news.

WARNING: ANECDOTE AHEAD: In the mid-eighties, where I was a fringe player in the Twin Cities music scene (back when there was a Twin Cities music scene), the word among local musicians was that there were four ways to get a write-up in the City Pages:

1. Be a classmate of a City Pages music critic.
2. Be on the short list for all the same parties the City Pages music critics went to.
3. Supply drugs for the City Pages music critics.
4. Provide sexual favors for the City Pages music critics.

In other words, the City Pages swerves between being a fairly decent newspaper, and a glorified college tabloid - one with occasional flashes of competence, even brilliance in news coverage - and quite a bunch of people stuck in in the "wannabe literary bad boy/grrl" phases of their lives.

Which brings us to Gisleson. In a Babelogue posting last week, among other rhetorical crimes, Gisleson slagged our Northern Alliance pals Fraters Libertas.

Fraters' Saint Paul slagged back.

You gotta feel sorry for Mark Gisleson. One day - actually, for fifteen years - he's running a little resume writing service. The next, he's off writing politics. And, shock of shocks, those peasants get uppity! Unlike the good old days, when writers just wrote, and readers just read, and a political analyst still got the respect they deserved, Maodammit, today the madding throng can not only publish on the web, but cut your rantings to pieces!

This is normally the part of the posting where I'd start fisking Gisleson. But with Mark, that'd be overkill. I'll let him fisk himself:

Richard Florida on the ?Creative Class War? and yes, he is talking about the arts, among other things like how the Right has convinced the creative community to work abroad where it?s friendlier [What? Artists moving overseas? That's never happened before!]... fringe lunatic base...I almost think Karl Rove is trying to lose so as to avoid the inevitable lamp post that awaits him if we have to resort to the other kind of regime change. ... Glenn ?Instahack? Reynolds at the head of the BMD* mob [That'd be "Blogs of Mass Deception". Gisleson made that up himself! ]...Bret Ellis intensity stuff about corpse-fucking Bill Clinton...pustulently corrupt administration...pretzel-choking, vacation-taking loser-in-chief!...the brown shirts [I hereby invoke Godwin's Law]... ...sarcastic God?s answer to an idiot?s prayer for a second Reagan. Well, that?s what they?ve got, up to and including the premature Alzheimer?s...

I feel sorry for Gisleson's keyboard. All that flying slobber is hell on the pads.

Funnier still, this exchange, filed before the Iowa Caucuses. Did you know that Karl Rove is not only behind the President - he's the driving force behind the Democrats, as well!:

As usual, maestro Karl's timing is impeccable: today's Des Moines Register story on Kerry is about taxes and energy policy. Tomorrow's Sunday headlines will be less kind. It's rank punditry on my part to say this kills Kerry, but I do fear that Rove has just dispatched one of his two most feared opponents [disingeuous paeon to Kerry's war record, written by someone who'd ordinarily spit on veterans, omitted] Can Karl Rove again steal what he cannot win honestly?

You know you're over the edge when Steve Perry serves as the voice of moderation:

Yeah, Drudge has certainly been entertaining the last few days. Only one problem: Without any major exceptions that I'm aware of, this is not Rove and the Republicans doing the "opposition research," as it's called. It's the Democrats themselves, most especially the Clark camp.

Read Gisleson's stuff, especially his unmoderated blog writing. Check out some of the links he cites - one dubious, "Indymedia"-caliber moonbat writer after another - and then check out his "Blogs of Mass Deception" crack. You be the judge.

Gisleson, from what I've read so far, is like one of those talking toys, where you pull the string to hear one of half a dozen predictable, recorded phrases. Call him "Mao-o-matic".

Call this praise with faint damnation - but the City Pages can do better. If Gisleson's writing were a resume, it'd go in the circular file on the first cut.

Slumming It

The other day, I posted a link to Alfred Fingulin's "Gunshow Trash", as well as his "What Is Gunshow Trash" essay.

Almost as enlightening, surely, is reading what we're not - through the eyes of someone who used to think less complimentary things.

This is an LA Times article - registration required:

"I expected a dungeon full of men missing teeth and wearing T-shirts decorated with Confederate flags. Instead, I found a sunny, wood-paneled lobby and guys who looked like lawyers on their lunch break. "

Read the article - it's interesting, and heartening.

Here's what I've found in eight years of evangelizing concealed carry reform; you can convince the darnedest people of the merits of your Second Amendment advocacy, if you can just convince them that shooters are...people like them - and by that, I don't mean you need to buy a Volvo and start wearing free-range Alpaca.

The antis invariably see themselves as reasonable, educated, intelligent - and if you portray your case reasonably and intelligently, you have a shot at getting through, as did the hero in the article above.

Of course, many anti-gun sympathizers aren't reasonable, their education is flawed (let's not confuse "schooling" and education), and their intelligence - let's be polite here - isn't focused on this issue.

The Good Liberal. The Bad Ruling

Nat Hentoff writes about the Supreme Court's decision to let the McCain-Feingold Speech Rationing Law stand:

As Justice Anthony Kennedy, dissenting, wrote, by way of example, "[The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act] makes it a felony for an environmental group to broadcast an ad, within sixty days of an election, exhorting the public to protest a Congressman's impending vote to permit logging in national forests."

However, just as it was before this act was declared constitutional by one of the most mediocre Supreme Courts in our history, super-rich individuals, on their own, can spend any amount, at any time, from their personal funds, to advertise opposition to, or support of, any candidate in a national election—provided they do not contribute those funds directly to a political party or candidate.

Accordingly, George Soros—who is increasingly politically active and is determined to send George W. Bush back to Texas next year—now has more First Amendment rights, thanks to this McCain-Feingold "reform" law, than those of us who contribute to the ACLU or the National Rifle Association during those weeks and months when our voices count. These extra First Amendment rights can also be exercised by Bill Gates or another abundantly achieving capitalist.

Soros, moreover, is additionally enjoying his First Amendment right to take advantage of the recently organized 527 groups, named after the rules in Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code. These groups are less regulated than the advocacy groups for the nonrich, which are instructed by the new "reform" law as to when they can and cannot advertise on radio and TV.

Yet another of life's rich ironies - the Democrats, putative spokespeople for "the little guy", just disenfranchised that little guy a little more.

Note to Democrats

Please, please, please chase Jimmy Carter's endorsement.

Thank you.

Zvi Mazel Tov

Israel's ambassador to Sweden goes berserk, smashes art exhibit:

"The art installation, called Snow White and located in the museum's courtyard, featured a basin filled with red water, designed to look like blood.

A sailboat with the name Snow White floated on the water, and placed like a sail was a photo of a smiling Hanadi Jaradat, the female lawyer who blew herself up in the Haifa suicide bombing attack in October which killed 21 Israelis.
"For me it was intolerable and an insult to the families of the victims. As ambassador to Israel I could not remain indifferent to such an obscene misrepresentation of reality," the ambassador told Swedish news agency TT.

According to museum director Kristian Berg, the ambassador went berserk in front of the 400 specially-invited guests when he saw the piece.

"He pulled out the plugs and threw one of the spotlights into the fountain which caused the entire installation to short-circuit and made it totally life-threatening," he told TT.

Y'know, I'm all about artistic freedom.

And sometimes, art offends public sensibility. Sometimes that's a good thing.

But there's something about some artists - especially in places like Sweden and Minneapolis, where much art is heavily subsidized (disclaimer: I don't know if "Snow White" is subsidized) - that fairly defines "self-indulgence"; they go beyond challenging community perceptions, and swerve past insensitivity into the indulgence of hatred.

One of the two artists who created the work, Israeli-born Dror Feiler, told AFP the ambassador was "totally unreasonable and undiplomatic" and would not listen to his explanations.

"He said he was ashamed that I was a Jew," Feiler said. "We see this as an offensive assault on our right to express our thoughts and feelings."

And what were those thoughts and feelings?

The other artist, Feiler's Swedish wife Gunilla Skoeld Feiler, told daily Expressen that the work was "not a glorification of the suicide bomber."

Here's something artists - especially the habitually obtuse ones - might want ot remember; when you're "expressing your thoughts and feelings" about things in which people are heavily emotionally invested, like their religion (Serrano will never do lunch in Vatican City again) or, say, ongoing eliminationist anti-semitism, don't be surprised if they "express" their feelings right back.

Mazel's only mistake - not calling his actions "performance art."

Powerline has four excellent pieces on the subject - start here and work your way back.

The Pundit Confesses

Sullivan admits it - the pundits are all wrong, again:

What a hilarious period for punditry (and I include myself). I don't know a soul who, only a couple weeks ago, predicted a four-way tie in Iowa. And yet the voters are making their minds up regardless of us media masturbators. What gall!

That's right - a month ago, Edwards was circling the drain, Dean was a shoe-in, and Kerry was an ongoing joke.

The turning point?

The minute Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean, I instinctively opined that the Dean candidacy was finished. And, sure enough, as soon as Gore touched the Dean campaign, things began to go wrong. I should have trusted my instinct: Al Gore is always political death. Now all we need is to find out whom Johnny Apple thinks will win, and we'll be all set. C'mon, Johnny. Put us out of our misery.

Misery, Schmisery. This is great entertainment - both the ongoing rhubarb in Iowa, and the meltdown of the pundits.

The most-common opinion I see in the blogosphere seems to involve polls in Iowa being wrong, and Dean walking away with it in the end.

The most interesting "intellectual" exercise so far: everything so far points, in the event of a Bush victory, to a Hillary!/Gore showdown in '08. What on earth can the GOP do to counter the limitless free publicity the Dems'll get from what will turn out to be the political grudge match of the century? If the Hillary!/Gore grudge slam didn't exist, the Dems would have to invent it.

It's going to be a fun Monday.

Tips For Churches

I've been casting about for a new congregation for the past year or so. I've gone to a bunch of different congregations, and compiled quite a picture of the types of churches that would seem to be available these days.

Bear in mind: I'm a protestant Christian, who believes in the fundamentals of the Christian faith without being a "fundamentalist". That narrows out a lot of denominations, but in the great panoply of Protestantism, still leaves quite a few. I happen to be a Presbyterian - a denomination that, to me, combines belief in the fundamentals of the faith without tossing in a lot of extraneous dogma or belief in things that, to the best of my knowledge, Christ never talked about (and with all respect due to my friends who believe in presdestination, that'd be one of them), a denomination that lives the dictum in Corinthians, that people are of faith have different gifts, and whatever they are, they're all blessings. And while a lot of churches that focus on the purely spiritual aspects of faith are doing very well these days, the Presbyterians focus on the spiritual, real-world and intellectual sides of faith - all three of which my faith craves. The purely spirit-based churches (you know who you are) leave me just as unsatisfied as would, say, Christian Science.

So I'm a Presbyterian. Don't try to "save" me.

This post isn't about theology, though. Because while theology involves developing an intellectual interest in the study of faith, and like all things intellectual involves give and take and learning, this post is about things that are non-negotiable when searching for a denomination.

To wit - my short list of things that will, if not disqualify a church, certainly count as serious demerits:

• Pre-recorded accompaniments - I would much rather listen to someone gamely hack away at an out-of-tune piano accompanying a singer than listen to a canned (and invariably cheesy) accompaniment on tape. Hearing that pre-recorded, MIDI-based sound over the PA is a cringe moment.
• Contemporary Hymns - The Protestant church has a 400 year history of some of the most beautiful music in history, music that glorifies God in a way that few other works of art in any civilization ever have. By all means, retire it in favor of treacly tripe that wouldn't pass muster with Kenny G.
• Bad Gospel - Don't get me wrong; white WASPs from Roseville can do spirituals - if they make a commitment to learning the style as well as the notes. Unfortunately, very few suburban protestant congregations do this. Unfortunately, every lilywhite, usually-heavily-geriatric congregation feels compelled to celebrate "Black History Month" by rolling out an assortment of spiritual warhorses. By the way - if you're going to do a gospel number, make sure that either everyone claps, and claps to the beat - or nobody does. While one choir member clapping half-heartedly might gladden the Lord's heart, having 15 people doing it, and doing it without self-consciousness, must certainly gladded it more..
• Cut the Study-Group Buzzphrases - You know what I'm talking about - the catch phrases for concepts that people bandy about in church seminars. Hearing "Contagious Christianity" in a sermon once is OK. Hearing it 10 times in a sermon is not only very nearly a "walk out" offense - it's also usually a fair sign I won't find many contagious Christians in the sanctuary.
• Can The Politics - Among urban, mainline protestant churches, there seems to be an assumption that Paul Wellstone was a good guy, if a bit conservative. Of course there are exceptions. I just never seem to find them. Presbyterians in particular seem to have drawn many of their current generation of ministers from the unctuous cream of the late-sixties seminary pool. Open note to the PCUSA - Many of your parishioners voted for Bush. You might want to watch the condescension.
• Importing Lutheran Preachers - Don't get me wrong; Lutherans are fine people, and there are some excellent Lutheran preachers. But the Presbyterian seems to put a much higher premium on ministers who can deliver a good, interesting, thought-provoking sermon. In the Presbyterian Church, you tend to find very few ministers who read sermons, word-for-world, off a typewritten sheet. The church I attended yesterday was led by a substitute minister from an area Lutheran congregation, who read a sermon that sounded like a recycled term paper from seminary. He read exactly as he must have typed; every time he flubbed a word, he went back and re-read it, correctly.
• Hi, There - Every mainline protestant church is begging for members. More and more of them are preaching to emptier and emptier pews on Sunday morning. So - if you see a guy wandering around the narthex with a couple of kids, or standing with a cup of post-service coffee, maybe you should send someone over to say hi and see what he's doing here, and maybe answer a few questions. You might not get a second chance.

Maybe God is calling me to be a heckler...

Reading Material

Twin Cities writer, firearms instructor and Second Amendment activist Joel Rosenberg is one of those people that should be blogging.

From his website comes this piece, about the biggest "gun control" issue to face the legislature this year - the Range Protection bill. This is an obscure bill, protecting and opening up existing shooting ranges in the metro area (which are something of an endangered species, due largely to pressure from anti-gun activists), but very much worth supporting.

But the most interesting of all is his piece about his ongoing struggle to convince the management of the Wedge Coop - a relentlessly-PC coop in the heart of The Wedge, one of Minneapolis' most over-the-edge lefty neighborhoods. If you're a concealed carry activist, the piece is well worth reading as a primer on carrying on this battle in your own worlds.

Read it!

Dean Eats Toad

Alfred Fingulin has his commentary on advertising in Iowa. It's on Gunshow Trash, and since his permalinks are a little temperamental, I'm going to beg his indulgence and just post the whole thing:

Howard Dean looks like he ate a live toad, enjoyed it, and thinks you should too.

A stark white background highlights the candidate. It's a corporate white guy in gray business shirt and burgundy tie. Is he announcing more layoffs?

He speaks of power, of who runs America, "corporate special interests and Washington insiders..." He looks like one. "...or the American people." Now I'm confused.

His face begins filling the screen. "I'm..." and the waddles on his neck spill over his collar. Is this Jabba the Hutt? "...Howard Dean."

His face gets bigger. "My campaign doesn't just talk about change. We're empowering the American people..." Every time management says "empower" they don't and they get in your face about it.

And he gets bigger. I'm worried. More layoffs must be coming.

"...so that together we can provide health care for everyone..." He'll make it affordable by laying off hospital staff? "...and government that works for people again." No layoffs coming to his department.

"That's what's a stake on Monday. Please don't stay home, because this time it's too important."

Howard Dean wanted to get out the vote. He got me to post some more resumes on Monday.

I'm really hoping he wins in Iowa. It'll be more fun beating Dean - and especially his supporters.

Judge the Book By Its Sound

I spent 13 years in radio, off and on, at eight different stations. I was always amazed at the extent to which people almost never look like they sound.

The examples of people who don't look as "good" in person as they sound on the air are, of course, legion - the hunky-sounding morning guy who's really a 400-pound homunculus, the mid-day lady who sounds so hot but is, in fact, so not. Better example - Lorna Benson, much-lamented on the MPR's edition of "All Things Considered" after being kicked to the curb in favor of David "Audibly Volvo-driving" Molpus, who sounded like a 55-year-old prematurely gray spinster with an MA in Victimization Studies who wore all free-trade alpaca, but was in fact babe-o-licious.

There are, of course people who sound exactly like they look; Tim Russell, Garrison Keillor, Larry King, and Kris Adams (long-ago mid-day riot-grrl at KDWB).

However, as Fraters remind us, Terry Gross looks exactly as she sounds.

Which reminds me - I need to find the audio of Terry Gross' classic interview with KISS's bass player, frontman and famed sexual triathlete Gene Simmons, who spent the whole interview teasingly propositioning the relentlessly dry Gross:

Terry Gross: Um, just one more question before we wrap up.

Gene Simmons: As many as you want.

Terry Gross: I would like to think that the personality you've presented on our show today is a persona that you've affected as a member of KISS, something you do on stage, before the microphone, but that you're not nearly as obnoxious in the privacy of your own home or when you're having dinner with friends.

Gene Simmons: Fair enough. And I'd like to think that the boring lady who's talking to me now is a lot sexier and more interesting than the one who's doing NPR. You know, studious and reserved, and -- I bet you're a lot of fun at a party.

It was easily the best ten minutes I ever spent listening to Terry Gross. Read the whole transcript - it's hilarious.

Kossed

John at Freespeech.com notices an admirable trait in the Daily Kos:

"Kos writes an excellent post about the fact that people change their mind over time.

"And so on. The problem with those quotes is that they don't allow for context. They don't allow for humor. They don't allow for opinions to evolve. I've changed my mind on any number of issues over the past ten years. Do we want someone whose beliefs are completely static over time? I don't. I want people who reevaluate their beliefs on the basis of new evidence. Yet any opinion shift is met with cries of 'waffler!'

"
I, for one, am delighted. Clearly, recognizing the and acknowledging the complexity of human relationships and the ways opinions evolve, Kos will stop dredging up old quotes from conservatives in an effort to demonstrate their hypocrisy..
Right?"

Alleluiah!

I'll be monitoring Kos for evidence of this change of behavior.

For those who refuse to read Kos, here's the story; Kos, and the coterie of bloggers that lap the jam from between his toes, now say that Clark's waffling on Iraq is a matter of "context".

The correct response, of course, is that the motivations for any action can be completely altered if you are creative enough in presenting the "context" in which the action occurred. Any good can be rendered evil, any evil can be rendered acceptable. Thomas Jefferson's achievements are rendered (to some) moot by the context of slavery (if you effectively-enough manage the parts of the context that are considered, and how). I've heard intellectuals pardon Lenin, given the "context" of the times (according to them - and that context never seems to encompass the Gulag).

Manipulating "context" enough makes meaningful communication impossible. Which is why the likes of Kos are trying to drown out criticism of Clark's flip-flop with carefully-managed "context".

Bagpipes, Day 3 - OK.

Bagpipes, Day 3 - OK. I'm not actually supposed to start playing the pipes for real for another five months; I have to pass two more tests before I'm up to that level yet.

But they just keep calling - and, like Ulyssys' sailors, I keep getting drawn to them. I pick them up, blow air into the bag, and start playing...

...and within half a song or so, my lips hurt, and I can't close them around the blowpipe, and I can't get air into the bag, and the whole thing dies off.

Dang, they're cool!

(Thanks to King for the pointer to the pic)

It's by far the hardest instrument I've ever learned (and I get around, in descending order of competence, on guitar, cello, bass, harmonica, drums, mandolin, keyboards, curan and pennywhistle). It's the hardest thing I've done since I was a beginner on the guitar, and I'd practice, as the song says, until my fingers bled. Which means you can expect me to come into work with bleeding lips and cheeks, I guess. Seriously - I think I pulled a muscle.

I love it!

(By the way - if you're interested, Minnesota Pipes and Drums offers a free instruction program for pipes as well as snare, tenor and bass drums. If you, like me, have always dreamed about playing bagpipes or anything of the sort, email them. Tell 'em Mitch sent you. It won't do you any good, but everyone'll get a good laugh...).

Stupid Iowa Tricks

From Carol Moseley Braun's withdrawal speech:

"Governor Dean has the ability to break through the cocoon of fear that envelopes us..."

"Cocoon of Fear".

Good band name. Dumb statement.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm exhausted today. Work is going to be a bear.

Plenty to talk about - and I'll post more later today.

My New Toy - Got

My New Toy - Got a spectalar deal on a set of Pettigrew bagpipes yesterday.

I'm going to go wake the kids now.

Be right back.

Predictions

As the Iowa caucuses loom, I'll make my predictions for Monday's contest:

1. Candidates will say monumentally stupid things, like this John Kerry speeh:

   "'Do you like the surge?' he asked 160 people packed into a tiny auditorium in Sioux City, as they hollered in response. 'Are you ready to add more surge? Are you ready to make more surge? And are you ready to make more and more surge a surprise on Monday?'"

   I feel a surge, all right.
2. The kinder, gentler Howard Dean will drop a few more points, and we'll see a return of the Angry Doc.
3. One of the Nine Eight Dwarves will win.
4. Jeff Fecke won't write something sarcastic and snarky about the President. He'd never do that, would he?
5. Whomever wins, conspiracy theorists for the other seven Dwarves will blame Halliburton that their guy didn't win.
6. "Emily's List" will be outraged, dammit, that the women are all out of the race.
7. Hillary Clinton will be spinning with joy in her coffin, waiting to rise when the full Election Moon rises in 2007.

Count on it.

Adios, Campbell

It's been fun, Campbell Brown.

We first saw you you during the 2000 recount controversy. And oy, for a political reporter, you really were hot stuff - probably the best campaign-season eye candy any network ever put on the air. But since you went to "Weekend Today", it just hasn't been the same.

And I met someone else. Kelly O'Donnell. She's got all the political reporting chops you've got, and she's actually available, rather than working seven days a week. And she's a redhead - yowsah.

So so long, Campbell. We had some good times. But I'm with Kelly now.

Trash Like Us

Alfred Fingulin - longtime dude Friday of Concealed Carry Reform Now - has a new blog, "Gunshow Trash". It's new, and it's getting rolling, but it'll be a great resource - especially with a new legislative season rolling around. I blogrolled and linked him yesterday - but there's more.

My favorite part of the blog so far? His "What Is Gunshow Trash" section:

"Gunshow Trash" describes the folks who enjoy gunshows.

We're not particularly cultured, but we know more about culture than you think. Where else but the gunshow books table can you buy E. A. Ritter's biography of Shaka Zulu? Catch our fancy and maybe we'll play some fiddle after the show closes (violins belong in orchestras). Or perhaps we'll recite Robert Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee. We liked it in high school and still like it now.

We lack social graces, are terribly blunt, and are sentimental to a fault. Life is too short and too rich to be restrained and proper. Lord knows we've lived full lives. Our memories are intense: love, sadness, and fondness; even for bad things that happened. Yet we like unusual people; we think everybody should be as eccentric as us.

Don't play us for ignorant rubes. Ignorant rubes get the short end of a gun deal. We don't get the short end of anything.

We like gadgets and gimcracks and geegaws; if it interests us, we collect it. But we don't need much. We're self-reliant, and can handle anything life throws at us with either a Leatherman tool, some duct tape, or a handgun.

Some think us "trailer trash." I'll own up to that. But many of us are professionals. We worked hard to rise in life, we've never forgotten our roots, and sometimes wonder what we've missed.

We take family, country, and God seriously, are very grateful for what they have given us, and hope you are grateful too.

"Gunshow Trash" is a point of view.

One you should read.

Stay tuned.

Late Night TV Update

I watch very little TV. But some nights, after the kids are in bed, the housework's done, I've posted some blog to the next day, and there's nothing else going on (and there's never anything else going on), I'll pour myself a beer or two and indulge in some tube.

My current late-night fave? "Spike TV's" Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, an ingenious send-up of American sports TV, as well as a groaningly painful game to watch. The funniest thing on TV since "Mystery Science Theater 3000".

Carry on.

Technicality of Mass Distraction -

Josh "Joshua Micah" Marsall is spinning the Dean "Screw the UN" letter.

Those who think the media and the left give Dean a walk on this issue because they're reflexively anti-Bush are wrong, says Marshall. Oh, no, not even close to Anti-American, nossir:

It's because the US has begun playing by very different rules in the last three years. It has moved from being a dominant power which most often works through a sort of informal consensus to one that increasingly seeks to act through dictation.

Josh - or shall I call you "Joshua Micah"? - you're splitting enough hairs to make the blond guy on "Queer Eye" jealous.

The difference between USA '98 and USA '03 isn't the lack of "informal consensus" - we had 30-plus nations on our side before we went into Iraq, and many more now that we've won it.

The difference is the venue - and, more important, the lack of acquiescence from France, Germany and Russia, nations with vested interests in keeping Hussein in power.

We've become impatient with the minimal restraints on our power created by our participation in various international institutions and agreements -- ones which actually serve to magnify our power.

So impatient were we, we left an ary sitting in the desert for four extra months while we "impatiently" "dictated" to the UN that we wanted a resolution that we never got.

In short, the issue is not so much whether you get sign off from the UN or NATO on every particular thing you do. It's a question of the totality of one's approach to allies and the rest of the nation's of the world. By that measure, the whole situation in the Balkans and the current one in Iraq could scarcely be more different.

Right. Because in the Balkans, the Germans and Russians didn't know where Milosevic had buried the bodies.

Actually, Josh has a small point - the situations were very different. Iraq was a vital national interest. Serbia was not.

This is a big issue and one that deserves more discussion. It's also worth noting that getting our key European allies on board in the Balkans did play a big role in the long-term success of those operations -- and the diplomatic isolation which eventually played a key role in Milosevic's fall.

As it should have! Kosovo was, and should have been, a European concern!

And perhaps Dean has himself made too much of a fetish out of the word 'unilateralism' without fleshing out the critique more fully. But basically this issue with Dean and 'unilateral' action in Bosnia just strikes me as more silly word-game gotcha. Nothing more than that.

That Dean was "gotcha'd" doesn't make it silly.

And it is more than that. Dean and his supporters will "dictate" (Marshall's word) to the UN when it suits them - but when a Republican president, after months of begging the UN to the detriment of US interests, acts without the approval of the UN on a matter of direct importance to the nation, they'll...well, look for silly word-game gotchas.

Like Marshall's post.

For The Children

Others have descended on Dennis Perrin's riff on Lileks - the Commish and Fraters lay the smack down, and the Professor has a good synopsis of other links.

Perrin says about Lileks:

Here, Lileks was aping many of his warblogger brethren:

Lileks? A "warblogger"?

What is a "warblogger" in Perrin's world? The pejoratives abound throughout the piece: they "darkened the already unattractive side of the American character, namely its jingoism", "the enlightened few who pelt dissenters with the debris of the Twin Towers", and, with supreme authority, "the warbloggers, the creation of whom is yet another al Qaeda-sponsored crime."

Ouch. Perrin says:

Lileks, in concert with the rest of the "warbloggers", "reduces all lefties into an easily digestible stereotype, as if a starry-eyed teen PETA activist is the same as University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole (who writes an informative, increasingly popular blog of his own (www.juancole.com); and as if Rick the People's Poet from the old BBC sitcom The Young Ones represented the web-savvy anarchists at Infoshop.org.

Never mind that Cole's blog is routinely lit up for its own preening, academic sense of superiority (I suppose to Dennis Perrin, that's better than "jingoism"), and that Infoshop makes Rik Mayall's "Rick" look fairly balanced - Perrin says Lileks reduces the left to a stereotype?

Perrin notes:

Lileks, as mentioned earlier, also devotes a good portion of his Bleats to daughter Gnat, whose every move is recorded for web posterity, and through whom Lileks filters much of this increasingly cruel world. This type of writing has its place, and as a father I would never question Lileks's love for his child. Conversely, I would never go on and on about my kids when writing about imperial war and political corruption. But that's me. Lileks has a different take and agenda.

As if blogging about one's kids and the war we are in are mutually exclusive.

Perrin seems to object to Lileks acting like a "warblogger" and beating "dissenters" over the heads with pieces of the rubble from the World Trade Center on the one hand, and writing about his daughter on the other. He notes that he has two kids himself, and seems to imply that the two are best kept apart.

I have two kids, too. They're 10 and 12, so they're not as cute as Gnat anymore, but I'm still pretty attached to them. I suspect Perrin would call me a "Warblogger", too - and he'd probably be equally flummoxed by the way I juxtapose my kids and my firm belief in the War on Terror so far.

But there's no way to separate the two. And it involves a different pile of rubble altogether.

Perrin wraps himself in the mantel of New York. I grew up in North Dakota, like Lileks. And a few miles from where I grew up - between my Jamestown and Lileks' Fargo, in fact - the fields were liberally seeded with Minuteman III missile silos. I grew up with a constant, keen-yet-constantly-gnawing sense that everything I knew in this world could be erased on thirty minutes' notice if anyone in Washington or Moscow, or Beijing or Paris or New Delhi, for that matter, screwed up badly enough. I could stand at the shore of my little town and look across the sea of dirt and alfalfa and imagine fireballs blooming in the near distance long before "The Day After". And when I started confronting the notion of having kids and raising a family, my most fervent wish, prayer, and I thought forlorn hope was that my kids wouldn't ever have to grow up with that hanging over their heads.

In 1991 - as my daughter came into the world - it came true. Imperfectly so, but true enough for those of us who had driven by the missile silos and radar pyramids and seen the B-52s flaring out over the sugar beets.

The rubble that affected me first was seeing pictures of the wreckage of the Minuteman III silo nearest my hometown, as it was demolished. It wasn't needed any more. Mission accomplished. I held my kids a little closer that night, and thanked God for what I'd seen, and for what they'd never have to.

And while none of us who knew better really believed that all of our worries ended in the other other rubble - the Berlin Wall - still, it was a moment of some of the most profound hope and relief I've ever experienced in my life. I suppose if you never sensed the existence of the threat all that keenly in the first place (and I'll guess Perrin didn't), it's hard to explain. And yes, 9/11 yanked what little that gave us away.

So for me, reading Lileks' 9/11 bleat is, in its own way, more powerful than almost any of the mainstream journalism of the day:

Again, and again, and again: the Towers thundering down. Gnat happily playing with her books.

News reports dancing in the streets on West Bank. Saw TV reports of some little boys whooping it up. Note to self: do not teach daughter to exult when people die

10: 12 The World Trade Center is not America. Oh, in a way it is - a marvel of engineering, a hub of wealth creation, designed by a man of Japanese ancestry, constructed by hand by citizens whose people came from Europe, Asia, Africa. Men who prayed to one God, to many, to none. All colors and creeds constructed that building; like any skyscraper in any American city, the World Trade Center was the legend of Babel refuted in stone and glass...Went to the polling place with Gnat in the stroller, under the small American flag stuck in the door frame at the school. Lots of people voting - the lady who took my information said they had unusually heavy turnout for a mere city primary. ?I think voting means something more today,? I said. ?I think you?re right,? she said. I wore, for the first time, that little I VOTED sticker."

I've read the books, seen the documentaries, heard the friends and relatives who were in Manhattan that day. And very few documents of that day bring it back to me the way Lileks' piece does - because I also still see the day through my kids' eyes, and through wondering about the world they perceive as they grow up.

And I want to ask the Dennis Perrins of the world - how can one not recoil in horror at the world that "Bun" and "Zam" Berg, and Gnat Lileks and, presumably, Sarah Jane and Wellstone Perrin are just becoming aware of? How can one not tie it into your expression about how that world is developing?

For some of us - Dennis Perrin, I'm guessing, and stop me if I'm wrong - the answer is to submerge that horror in pointillistic ideology ("Of all the Bleats I've read, I've yet to come across a hard critique of Israeli violence") and, presumably, a comfortingly compartmented fantasy view of the world (Perrin echoes the left's conceit that this is all just a big criminal case: "I supported the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and continue to support, in concert with other countries, the dismantling of the al Qaeda network", he says, as if shipping every Al Quaeda member to The Hague would end Islamofascist terror).

And for some of us, the response is the same one we get when we find the house on fire: If we can't grab a fire extinguisher, at least we root for the firemen.

And while we root for the fireman, pardon us if we get a little impatient with those who say we deserved the fire anyway. As Perrin says:

But Lileks's conceit, which is widespread in the warblog domain, is that this particular moment is in fact unique.

In our lifetimes and those of our children, in this place, it is.

That because al Qaeda desires to impose a 7th-century theocracy on others means they have the power to do it to us (Lileks likes playing the It's Their Terms or Ours card, as if we're down to house-to-house fighting).

We are. In Israel. Think globally, act locally, as they say.

Not that it's irrelevant - the choice between a seventh-century theocracy and dying in a cloud of smuggled Sarin gas is a fairly moot one, isn't it?

That Saddam Hussein was a real and tangible threat to our very existence, or might've been down the road, or whenever.

"Or whatever". Sheesh.

In any case, we are presumably "safer" now that we're bogged down in Iraq.

Two paragraphs above, he says "Lileks' conceit...is that this moment is unique", riffing him and all warbloggers for not incorporating all of history into every posting (or not incorporating it Perrin's way, anyway). But Perrin considers the war in Iraq in a three-month-long slice of context - one that was out of date last summer, to boot!

And so on. To Lileks, it seems that 9/11 exists outside of history (except for World War II, images of which have adorned many a Lileks rant). Therefore those who try to view subsequent events differently are guilty of either liberal naivete or abject anti-Americanism.

Let's stick with the naivete. It's bad enough in these times.

UPDATE: The Infinite Monkeys explain Lileks as well as anyone.

The Sword is Mightier than the Penn

The Sword is Mightier than the Penn - Jay Reding notes Sean Penn's return to Iraq - and it's not what you'd think.

Penn is quoted saying:

For Iraqis, there was no pro-war or anti-war movement last spring when the United States invaded their country. That, in their view, was a predominantly Western debate. They're used to war; they're used to gunshots. What's new is this tiny seed and taste of freedom. It is a compelling experience to have been in Baghdad just one year ago, where not a single Iraqi expressed to me opinions outside Baathist party lines, and just one year later, when so many express their opinions and so many opinions compete for attention. Where the debate is similar to that in the United States is over the way in which the business of war will administer the opportunity for peace and freedom, and the reasonable expectation of Iraqi self-rule.

Reding says:

What's surprising about this piece is that it doesn't read like an anti-war polemic. If anything it reads like someone who is legitimately inquisitive about the situation in Baghdad and what the Iraqi people are thinking:

Jay's right.

Note to liberal bloggers (and Dennis Perrin) - there is nothing about "being a liberal" that precludes one from having a conscience, or having two working eyes and a functioning frontal lobe, for for that matter. Nothing about ones' politics enjoins one from intelligent comment about world events.

If Penn could do it, who knows - maybe Tim Robbins is next. Maybe even Nick Coleman...

...OK. That was just the beer talking. I'll stop now.

Politics Via Gavel

A Minnesota Appeals court handed a victory of sorts to a church in posh Edina that wants to flout Minnesota's concealed carry law and ban legally-permitted guns in the church parking lot.

What kind of a victory? Alfred Fingulin - longtime majordomo at Concealed Carry Reform Now, has a long-overdue blog, and he discusses the subject.

It seems a great legal victory. But not if you attended the Appeals Court panel hearing. I did.

All during the oral arguments, I half-expected a judge to stand up, produce a gavel, start tapping David Lillehaug lightly upon the head, and say:

"Listen up, Lillehaug. The law has been in effect for a few months. There's no case law. There's no precedent. Heck, Lillehaug, your original lawsuits are still on the docket. Now you come and waste our time. Why should we do anything but return standing and send the case back?"

Which is exactly what they did. Many judicial rulings are mundane, the equivalent of telling an attorney to "Go do your job, dammit."

It's also "politics by other means." By filing an appeal, Mr Lillehaug stretches out the case, and gets a ruling three weeks before the legislature convenes. This puts pressure on the legislature to eviscerate the carry-law.

And it gets Mr Lillehaug notoriety for a possible political campaign. He's already run for Senate; just 'cause he lost doesn't mean he's going to give up.

Simple fact: Minnesota's shall-issue law didn't pass into law three years ago only because Roger Moe made sure it died in the Senate. The votes have been there since then, and haven't gone anywhere. Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota is deluding itself by thinking they can repeal the Minnesota Personal Protection Act in the legislature - which is why this case is in court.

Which is not to say it's time for concealed-carry supporters to let up.

Picture Of The Day

Via Blackfive and the Professor:

Other possible badges:

• "Here Until Those 150,000 Moderate Moslems Show Up"
• Honk If You're Bogged Down in a Quagmire"
• "My Other Car Is NOT a Peugeot"

More suggestions eagerly solicited.

Policy Shift

Top-ranking members of the Ba'ath Party are denouncing terror and renouncing Hussein:

Former Ba’ath Party leaders in Northern Iraq denounced the party of Saddam Hussein Tuesday and exhorted the people of the region to work with the Coalition to build a free and unified Iraq.

More than 50 leaders who once supported The Ba’ath Party objectives met in the city hall of Ash Shurah, a small town 35 kilometers south of Mosul, to discuss their role in the future of Iraq.

During the meeting, ten 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier leaders of the party publicly denounced terrorism, violence, and voiced the need for all Iraqis to work together for the future of the new Iraq.

So - parts of the Ba'ath Party now agree by extension that the liberation of Iraq was a good thing.

In the meantime, Powerline reports that international donations to the terror-backing Palestinian Authority are down - way down:

Well, it's possible that after all these years, the "donor nations" have grown "fatigued" and "weary of the lack of progress toward peace." I suspect it's more likely, though, that supporting terrorism doesn't have quite the cachet it once did. I'd guess that the "donor nations" can see that the wind is not blowing the terrorists' way, and that aligning themselves with terrorists carries new and potentially unpleasant risks. Is it possible that the Bush Doctrine may be about to score another victory--the collapse of the Palestinian Authority?

Perhaps the Democrats will come around soon.

Probably when Clinton claims credit for it.

Let's Get This Straight

According to Fraters (quoting a Strib article that is apparently not online yet), former Governor Ventura said on the occasion of getting hired by Harvard:

"I'm sick and tired of the fact that we're at war, and they're no protest going on. So I'm going to be the new Timothy Leary. I'm going to go out and fire up these young college kids so we can get some good protesting, like the '60s."

Former Governor Ventura: I've met you. And I've met the late Dr. Leary.

And let me say right now - you are no Timothy Leary.

That is all.

"OK, He's Not *Hitler*, Per Se..."

Last week, MoveOn.org - a group founded in 1998 to protect a middle-aged lothario from the consequences of his actions. and which has morphed into an anti-Bush hate group - issued an apology for the Hitler Ad flap.

One ad mixed images of Hitler and Nazi militarism with Bush taking the oath of office and equated German war crimes of 1945 with Bush's foreign policy. The other quoted Hitler and Bush as saying they acted in God's name to vanquish their enemies.

After being roundly denounced by Jewish leaders and Republicans, MoveOn.org issued a mea culpa saying the two ads were in poor taste. But the group said they had been displayed in error as part of a contest inviting members of the public to create and send in their own ideas for anti-Bush television spots.

Except, according to one of Hewitt's guests last week, it was no error - the clips of the finalist ads were numbered sequentially, said the guest, and two of the numbers in the sequence of finalist spots were missing (anyone have a link to that guy?)

But - according to Drudge - while they may be apologizing formally, MoveOn is still unstinting in its hatred of the president. Monday night saw their award ceremony - which turned into (or was designed from the beginning as) a Bush hate fest.

For example - formerly-funny comedienne Margaret Cho:

MARGARET CHO (Comedian) --

* "Despite all of this stupid bullsh-- that the Republican National Committee, or whatever the f--- they call them, that they were saying that they're all angry about how two of these ads were comparing Bush to Hitler? I mean, out of thousands of submissions, they find two. They're like fu--ing looking for Hitler in a hawstack. You now? I mean, George Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he fu--ing applied himself." big, extended applause) "I mean he just isn't."

's OK, Margaret. If you apply yourself, you might be Lea DeLaria someday, too.

Against that backdrop, Al Franken was almost funny:

"I'm Al Franken. I'm here to present the funniest ad award. I'm a last-minute substitution, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was supposed to be the presenter, but unfortunately he was murdered."

I said almost.

UPDATE: Doh! Captain Ed wrote almost the same piece, last night.

"Team Coverage", I guess...

They're Planners. They Plan

In 1919, the US Army put together the most current version of its "Red Plan" - contingency plans for an invasion.

From our ally, Great Britain. Via Canada.

The plan called, among other things, for the military evacuation of the Dakotas and the rest of the upper Great Plains.

The military has a huge number of officers, per capita. Many of them are involved in planning wars.

Some of the plans are deadly serious: the plans for defending West Germany during the Cold War were as huge and involved as they are now obsolete.

Other plans are purely contingencies; what would we do in the unlikely event we had to launch a war in some out-of-the-way, thoroughly implausible place where we'd never find ourselves in action in a million years? Like say, Grenada, or Panama, or Afghanistan?

Other plans are purely intellectual exercises - things for planners to plan to stay in practice for planning real plans.

Other plans are national policy. For example, during the tail end of my liberal life - 20 or so years ago - I attended a "Nuclear Freeze" meeting. A breathless-looking older woman solemnly intoned "I've heard the US might have plans on file to use our nukes for a first strike!"

No Farging Schneikies, I thought. No kidding. And if you dig far enough through the files, you'll find plans to shoot the missiles at incoming asteroids, and flying saucers, and probaby a few files on invading the Netherlands or repelling an invasion from Mexico. Wake up and die right, you moron! I wasn't much longer for the liberal world.

Today, lefty pundits large and small have their panties in a bind over the Bush Administation's "admission" that they started planning the invasion of Iraq before 9/11.

No kidding. They inherited it from the previous resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

It turns out that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's so-called bombshell revelation that the Bush administration had a "secret plan" to depose Saddam Hussein before 9/11 wasn't such a secret after all.

In fact, not only did plans for "regime change" in Iraq NOT originate with the Bush White House, the "sinister plot" was actually ratified by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton a full three years before President Bush came to Washington.

According to Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, "The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act was passed by an unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House," after which Mr. Clinton certified it as the law of the land with his signature.

Leftyblogger Atrios notes:

The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same National Security Council meetings as O'Neill immediately after Bush's inauguration in January and February of 2001.

"The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces," the official told ABCNEWS. "That went beyond the Clinton administration's halfhearted attempts to overthrow Hussein without force."

Really?

But then this...

In January 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even appointed a special representative for transition in Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, who reportedly had "a mandate to coordinate opposition to Saddam."

Said Albright at the time: "He will be assisted by a team that will include both a military and a political adviser with extensive on-the-ground experience in the region.

...would have to have never happened, right?

Jeff Fecke says:

So...Paul O'Neill was telling the truth then?

Oh wait, no...Insty says it was all Bill Clinton! Clinton was actually planning a preemptive strike against Iraq! Of course, he didn't follow through on it because...

Because...

He was all talk?

Just a guess.

Watch as the Democrats continue to try to have their babaganoush ("Bush planned to invade all along!") and eat it too ("Look! Clinton wasn't completely feckless and worthless at foreign policy!").

Get On The Train

Governor Pawlenty will push for funds for the Northstar Commuter Rail line:

The rail line would extend 40 miles from Minneapolis past Anoka, Fridley and Elk River. To meet federal approval the project was cut in half. It was originally proposed to extend to the St. Cloud- Rice area.
Pawlenty said he would consider support for an extension sometime if the future if the cost and ridership made sense.
The immediate challenge is getting the bonding proposal approved by the Legislature which convenes next month."

In this post-Lewis, Soucheray-dominated market for conservative opinion, we have to make one thing perfectly clear: Commuter Rail is not light rail. It uses existing tracks - the same ones that freight trains run on. It uses common, wide-gauge rollling stock - it can even be purchased used (although I'm sure it won't be).

Above all - it can be self-supporting, and quickly.

This is potentially a good thing on several fronts: it outflanks the Democrats on sensible mass transit (the Northstar will actually move people from where they are to where they want to be, unlike the Ventura Trolley), it will probably be capable of supporting itself before too terribly long, and it makes what could be an important step in providing a free-market-compliant transit solution that could work.

Not for everyone, of course - but for enough people to take some of the pressure off the road system, and for a fraction of the cost of building enough roads to handle the traffic.

Who knows? You might even be able to get through the Fish Lake Interchange without packing a lunch one of these days...

Fire In The Hole

Fire In The Hole - Powerline has had the O'Neill/Suskind flap completely dialed in - with the best coverage I've seen of those whole rhubarb.

Read here, and here, and here, and here and here and finally [as this is written] here.

Print them, take them to work.

Situation in Iraq

This was in the paper Monday:

Freedoms, Money and Cheap Cars
(One) has to imagine an Iraqi who has been in a deep sleep for a year … suddenly his eyes open wide. On TV CNN, BBC or – more probably – the broadcaster banned under Saddam just as it is now, Al Jazeera, is running. His brother is talking to his cousin in Germany on the cell phone. Cell phones were banned under Saddam and families with relatives abroad were viewed with suspicion as a rule. … The brother earns 100 dollars a month, four times the average salary under Saddam. He works as a proof reader at one of the around 150 new, independent newspapers in Iraq in which everything can be written and said, other than calls to violence. …

From now on no more visits from the State Security trying to pressure the son to join the Fedayeen Saddam or threatening imprisonment if one didn’t betray what the neighbor was saying. And on top of it all: two more cousins are free who were locked up by Saddam for reasons that they and their families still can’t figure out.

In the courtyard of the house stands a gleaming Opel Astra station-wagon. Used and from Germany. It cost 2500 dollars, a lot for the family, everyone contributed to come up with the money. But the car is likely cheaper than anywhere else on the planet. The Americans have eliminated all taxes and import customs for eight months, more than a half million cars have rolled into the country since the war ended. Under Saddam it was a strictly regulated matter and to get a car one needed a lot of money along with good connections.

OK, so in what paper did this appear?

The conservative WashTimes? The CSM? Maybe the relatively right-wing London Times?

No! It's Der Berliner Morgenpost! According to David's Medienkritik - they got it!

Ode To Tommy

I got my degree in English. I read my share of Kipling - it's a fascinating artifact of the Empire.

A Brit blog new to my acquaintance, "Free Market Fairy Tales", written by a Mr. Free Market (any relation to the Bemidji Free Markets?), has this update of Kipling's classic "Tommy" (note to Americans: "Tommy Atkins", or merely "Tommy", is the Brit equivalent of "GI" - the generic name for all British soldiers):

Regular reader of this blog will already be well acquainted with my love of Rudyard Kipling. In one better know poems ' Tommy', he talks about the soldiers life & societies attitudes to the ordinary soldier. Frankly, in 100 years, those attitudes haven't changed & yesterday, in The Daily Telegraph, Peter Pindar penned the following updated poem;

We aren’t made for cool Britannia; we leave boot marks on the floor.
We don’t walk like Peter Mandelson or talk like Jack Straw.
Call us “forces of conservatism” if it suits your turn
But we’re off like some world fire brigade when the flash-points start to burn.

Yes it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that that, an’spend less on defence,
But who walks the streets of Basra when the air is getting tense?
When the air is getting tense, boys, from Kabul to Kosovo
Who’ll say goodbye to wife and kids, and shoulder pack and go?

The Queen, she’s sat in Windsor now for 50 years or more.
She’ll see this government depart like the other one before.
And Blair & Bush & Chirac make their plans to no avail
But who remains to serve the Crown when politicians fail?

O it’s Tommy change your values - now diversity’s the game;
But when Christmas leave is cancelled, then whose tyrants are to blame?
There’s tyrants in the mountains, boys, and tyrants in the sands,
So farewell to wives & risk your lives for them in foreign lands.

Flip through the rest of the blog for an interesting take on Brit current events.

Infantilization Alert, Part MXVII

The Brady Factory Campaign is out with its annual report card on state firearms laws.

Minnesota gets a "C-".

I was hoping we'd do "worse":

This year, ten states received “Sensible Safety Star” awards for taking responsible steps to make children safer from gun violence, but nine other states, including Minnesota, were sent to the “Time-Out Chair” for irresponsibly weakening state gun laws.

Oh, dear. The "Time-Out Chair".

What's next - a note to our parents?

Oh - and what exactly did Minnesota do "wrong"? Well, according to Brady Factory Campaign:

Minnesota’s grade for gun laws dropped from a C+ to a C- and the state was put in the “Time Out Chair” for passing a dangerous new law that forces police to let people carry concealed handguns.

Get that? "Forces police..."? The Brady's assume their audience is too stupid to read the facts about the law - although for their members, they may know something I don't.

Gun violence in the state could increase because the federal assault weapon ban will expire this year if Congress does not reauthorize it

Huh-wha? That's not even Minnesota legislation!

...and Minnesota has no state law restricting assault weapons or high capacity ammunition magazines.

Because in the past 30 years, not one person has been shot with a legally-owned "assault weapon". Not one.

Now, I can excuse the Brady Factory Campaign for being factually-challenged - they, along with Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota, are lying pretty much any time they talk, type or print.

But this "go to your time-out chair" metaphor they use - oh, please, Brady Factory Campaign, keep it up! This is the type of thing you can't buy for love or money - if you're an NRA supporter! Americans - especially the majority that are in-between on gun issues - just love being condescended to!

Please, Brady - let's have more!

36!

36! - Ohio's governor Taft signs a shall-issue bill.

Lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday to allow Ohioans to carry concealed guns, and Gov. Bob Taft said he will sign it.

Those who apply for the permits would have to pay a fee, undergo background checks and be trained in the use of a weapon.

The bill also makes the names of permit holders available to reporters. Taft's insistence on this provision had derailed the bill late last year.

The Senate vote was 25-8, and the House vote was 69-24.

Taft, a Republican, said in a statement that the bill was a reasonable compromise that "balances the Second Amendment rights I have strongly supported with public safety and public records concerns."

The challenge, of course, is that bit about making names of permit holders available to the press. Enbanc asks about this provision:

What really bothers me is that it seems likely to me that the Cleveland Plain Dealer doesn't really care at all about "public access." I mean, what is the real benefit of such access? Would anyone exercise it? Even if a "public right to know" seems abstractly attractive as a principle, it seems minor and largely irrelevant in this case. And considering the paper's longstanding opposition to concealed carry, I have trouble believing that this is anything more than a thinly veiled attempt to dissuade Ohio citizens from exercising their rights as provided by the 2nd Amendment and the new Ohio statute. I consider that a cheap political ploy, and an abuse of journalistic power.

Of course, the newspaper probably doesn't know who they are messing with. Scroll down a couple stories at this site to see a representative reaction from the online firearm community:

As soon as they publish permit holders' names, we'll publish the names, phone numbers and home addresses of every single person on staff at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

That's the first thing that would happen, and I have little doubt the reaction (via phone calls, emails, letters, etc.) would be tremendous. The second would be a quiet little bill next term which removed even journalist's access to the information.

I'll publish them here - and I urge any other bloggers who are interested in fighting this abuse of journalistic power to do it, too.

(Via Alphecca) and The Professor)

With Failures Like These... -

Yesterday, we discussed the Strib's declaration that "abstinence only" sex education is a "failure". I had a quibble or two with the conclusion.

So did Joe at Evangelical Outpost, who points out a British observation on the subject:

In the past decade, the number of teenage pregnancies in America has decreased by 30 per cent, with the past year's statistics indicating a historic low of just 43 births per 1,000 teenage girls.

[Promoting abstinence] has been acknowledged as a success, and we, on the other side of the Atlantic, look on in envy. In Britain, the Government has adopted a vastly different approach - that of dishing out condoms and morning-after pills, making sex education compulsory in secondary schools, and inundating our teenagers with explicit information on sex. Sex education in our schools is aimed at increasing sexual knowledge and encouraging contraception to combat teenage pregnancy, rather than condemning underage sex: preventing pregnancy rather than preventing sex is the Government's aim.

While it is a strategy that is lauded in liberal circles, it is also a strategy that has not worked. We have failed utterly to reduce the numbers of gymslip mothers. For the past 12 years Britain has been the pregnancy capital of Europe. According to Unicef's latest figures, in 2002 some 41,966 British girls under 18 became pregnant. Of those, 5,954 were 15; 2,011 were 14, and 450 were under 14.

Such has been the dismal failure in reducing these figures that there have been calls to ditch our "safe sex" schools programme and adopt the American abstinence approach.

Ah, but what do they know. The Strib has spoken!

A Legal Matter

Mark at Classically Liberal comments on my post from over the weekend, about the Dems' propensity for frivolity at foreign policy. I said the Dems demonstrate a misguided urge to consider the War on Terror a law-enforcement operation, with one legitimate suspect - Bin Laden.

Mark comments:

To go after, say Boy Assad, or some other regime that supports terrorism the U.S. would need to suffer another attack that we could "prove" (yes, I use the sneer quotes on purpose) originated with that regime. (N.B. We could only initiate military conflict if France, China, Russia, Gambia and Chile approved via the UNSC.)

It's precisely because of these fantasies about the nature of this conflict over terrorism that I am going to vote for Bush in 2004, even though I think his big government spending (prescription drug program, agricultural subsidies, and space pork, I'm talking about you) has been reckless and dangerous.

As someone who supported Forbes until the 2000 convention, I agree. Bush has committed quite a few sins against conservative orthodoxy - but given the priorities that face our nation, there is only one real choice.

That Objective European Media

Sullivan noted last week that the BBC actually let some balance slip:

How's this for a shocker? Here's how the BBC described the recent Carnegie Endowment criticism of the liberation of Iraq:

The left-leaning Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said US officials misrepresented the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Just giving credit where it's due.

Not everyone is as forthcoming, according to David's Medienkritik:

The "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace" has published a report ("WMD IN IRAQ - Evidence and Implications"), written by Joseph Cirincione, Jessica T. Mathews, and George Perkovich. The main thesis: "Iraq not imminent danger before war, report concludes".

The media - as in this example from the Boston Globe - lend the study an aura of scientific knowledge and objective expertise:

"The study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace states ... a private nonpartisan research organization ... Carnegie Endowment researchers ... one of the nation's oldest foreign affairs think tanks"
At least some media faintly hint at the foundation's political bias: "Carnegie is regarded as a moderately left-of-centre think-tank" (Financial Times). Others point to the fact that two (Jessica T. Mathews and George Perkovich) of the three authors of the study "served in the Clinton administration and opposed the Iraq war." (Boston Globe)

The third author, Joseph Cirincione, has proven himself to be a hardline Bush-hater and a foe of the "neo-conservatives". He bitterly opposed the 2003 Iraq war - before and after. His remarks on the subject were frequently polemic and condescending towards members of the Bush administration. Cirincione does not deserve to be presented as an "expert" or "researcher".

Read the whole thing.

Priorities

Priorities - Joshua "Micah" Marshall noted yesterday in re the O'Neill flap:

CNN's headline story on the O'Neill story reads: "Cabinet members defend Bush from O'Neill"

And then, when you click through, it turns out the cabinet members are Don Evans (the president's Texas crony and political fixer) and John Snow (O'Neill's tepidly respected successor at Treasury).

None of the bigs? That's all? No Colin? We're Rummyless?

Josh (can I call you Josh? Or is it Josh Micah?); I have a hunch Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld might have bigger, better things to do than noodle around with whatever teapot-tempest that bitter, and probably duped, little pissant O'Neill is up to.

At least, they'd better.

Marshall also snarks that it took 74 days for the Plame affair to get an investigator, while it took only one day for the Administration to call for an investigation of the secret documents O'Neill flashed on "60 Minutes". OK, Josh - this one's fairly simple: While the Plame affair is, to say the least, murky, O'Neill was kind enough to flash documents marked "Secret" in front of the camera. Not unlike popping open a money bag and having the dye cartridge explode while on camera.

As you say - priceless.

Poll Cat

Poll Cat - Now that the Daily Kos's list of polls (see right margin) shows Bush's approval ratings beating his disapprovals by 6-29 points, with an average gap of 17 points among the eight he tracks...

...where is the obsessive coverage the polls got from Kos and his followers before Hussein got bagged?

I know. Rhetorical question.

Follow the Bouncing Numbers -

Back in the bad old days when I was office temping between careers, I worked in a litigation support office. We sorted, read, summarized and coded immense stacks of legal documents obtained through the discovery processes, in huge lawsuits (in my case, a suit against a nuclear power plant). Each document - as in, each piece of paper - is given a unique number, a "serial number" if you will. In more advanced discovery systems, the documents are fed into Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems, so that all of the text on each document can be put into a fully-searchable database.

I say this because when I read Powerline, and they wax legal, I frequently develop a raging headache (which is no reflection on the clarity of my writing, merely on my attention span). However, this bit on the O'Neil-Suskind flap rang a bell - it ties directly back to my wretched experience in the litigation support biz:

The CBS promo linked to above says that this document "includes a map of potential areas for exploration. 'It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,' says Suskind. 'On oil in Iraq.'"

True enough; there is a "map of potential areas for exploration" in Iraq here. But what Paul O'Neill and Ron Suskind don't tell you is that the very same set of documents that contain the Iraq map and the list of Iraqi oil projects contain the same maps and similar lists of projects for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia! When documents are produced in litigation (in this case, the Judicial Watch lawsuit relating to Cheney's energy task force), they are numbered sequentially. The two-page "Iraqi Oil Suitors" document that Suskind breathlessly touts is numbered DOC044-0006 through DOC044-0007. The Iraq oil map comes right before the list of Iraqi projects; it is numbered DOC044-0005.

DOC044-0001 is a map of oil fields in the United Arab Emirates. DOC044-0002 is a list of oil and gas development projects then going on in the United Arab Emirates. DOC044-0003 is a map of oil fields in Saudi Arabia. DOC044-0004 is a list of oil and gas projects in Saudi Arabia. So the "smoking gun" documents that Suskind and O'Neill claim prove that the administration was planning to invade Iraq in March 2001 are part of a package that includes identical documents relating to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Does Paul O'Neill claim the administration was planning on invading them, too? Or, as Mylroie says, was this merely part of the administration's analysis of sources of energy in the 21st century?

There is only one possible conclusion: Paul O'Neill and Ron Suskind are attempting to perpetrate a massive hoax on the American people.

Read the whole thing - and ponder the implications of our apparently-impending invasions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The Captain and Reding both comment .

The left desparately wants this to be a scandal [warning - the link is to "Kicking Ass". Take your Dramamine]. It might be - but it'll be held against them.

Propaganda Only

Back in seventh grade, a couple of my friends and I went to see Rocky, the classic American underdog movie.

If you're one of the ten people that's never seen it - Rocky, a palooka club boxer from Philadelphia, fights Apollo Creed, the Heavyweight Champion of the World. Rocky has no chance - but he goes the distance.

Leaving the movie, most of us absorbed the lesson; the plucky underdog, through sheer perseverence, stayed in the fight, went the distance, against all odds...

But one of my friends - let's call him "Stupid Moron" - didn't get it. "But," he said, "Rocky lost".

"Yabbut, he met his goal - he went the distance! And he got the girl, and his respect, and..."

"...but he lost!"

The Strib's editorial last Sunday reminded me of that scene.

The piece - entitled "The threat of 'abstinence-only'" - starts with a bunch of gaping assumptions.

What do parents want from school sex ed? Surely they want their kids to come away with insight as well as knowledge -- with a sense of the profound power (and possible peril) of sexual intimacy.

No.

I want that to come from nearly anywhere but the public school. But that's splitting hairs in the context of this discussion.

But such abstractions are hard to measure, so researchers usually gauge sex-ed effectiveness by looking at facts: They assess how successful various programs are in delaying teen sex and averting teen pregnancy.

And of course it matters what works, because premature sexual activity can mar young lives and foreclose futures. That's why Minnesotans should worry about news that the state's $5 million "abstinence-only" sex education program -- taught to 45,000 of the state's students -- isn't working. The conclusion comes from a study underwritten by the state Health Department, which found that the five-year-old abstinence-only initiative -- which forbids any mention of contraception or safe sex -- has done little to encourage healthy behavior among teens exposed to it.

I worked wth a little fly-by-night consultant operation a few years ago. The group - mostly liberal women - tittered with similar glee at the word from the National Institutes of Health, that the programs didn't generate a lot of results. These women - or, in a few cases, womyn - had a vested interest in the failure of abstinence only. For some, it was about money - they were earning $1000 a day consulting with school districts to integrate new sex-ed programs. For others, it was purely ideological; they saw "abstinence" as a conservative bellwether - and a defeat to a conservative program is a defeat for conservatism.

The company's not around anymore, by the way.

This should surprise no one. Public-health experts have known for years that abstinence-only sex ed is a flop. Both the National Institutes ofHealth and the National Academy of Science have said so. A 2001 Surgeon General report found that the approach increases the chance that kids will neglect to use condoms or other contraceptives when they do become sexually active -- heightening their risk for disease and pregnancy. And a just-released study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute notes that, so far, "no education program focusing exclusively on abstinence has shown success in delaying sexual activity."

"But Rocky Didn't Win!"

There are three canards here.

First - of course "abstinence only" doesn't work in the public schools. It is delivered with the same sort of constrictions every public school program has - ergo, kids go up against two of the greatest forces in their lives - the hormone driven dementia of onrushing sexual awareness and the juggernauts of Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and a popular culture that oozes sex from every magazine stand - with a program and set of pamphlets that are, if anything, less compelling than the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program (which also fails, against the vastly lesser allure of drug abuse).

Second - abstinence only DOES work. It's all that is taught in Catholic schools; no contraception, no abortion, no sex. And students at Catholic schools have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy than public schools. That's because "sex ed" in the Catholic school doesn't divorce the physical and moral components of sexuality - something no public school in his day and age is allowed to do. The difference is especially noticeable in schools with the most troubled kids - kids that may have grown up without either the social motivations and moral education to have any perspective about sex other that what the mainstream of society teaches them.

Third - I challenge anyone to show me a program that has "worked" with students who are not fundamentally wired to accept the program's message - students who've inherited no moral background from their family upbringing. We'll touch on that later.

So to be perfectly accurate, the Strib should have said "Abstinence-only programs, when combined with the publicly-acceptable version of morality, fail".

But it's not about accuracy, is it?

The wiser alternative? Scientists know that, too: programs that urge teens to hold off on sex but stress contraceptive use for those who do become active. Despite the fussing of some abstinence-only fans, there's no evidence at all that such an open approach encourages earlier sexual experimentation. Quite the contrary: Scores of studies show that comprehensive sex ed helps to postpone initiation of sexual activity and increase contraceptive use.

But the Strib doesn't think you need to see the criteria of these "scores" of studies.

What programs are they comparing? What populations? Are the experiences of the "abstinence only" programs at faith-based schools considered? Do the studies control for factors like family religious, social, educational and economic backgrounds?

Pregnancy, birth and abortion rates among Minnesota teens have dropped dramatically in the last decade -- and now stand among the lowest in the nation. The reasons? A dip in teenage sexual activity explains some of it. But most of the decline -- 80 percent of it, researchers say -- is due to increased contraceptive use among teens who do have sex.

The Strib considers this a victory.

Despite its impressive overall ranking, Minnesota has one of the country's highest birth rates for African-American teens -- five times the rate for whites.

Exactly.

Now, why is that? Do the African-American kids get one-fifth the sex education white kids get? No, that's absurd. They do, however, face a dominant popular culture that glorifies irresponsible sex, that treats responsible fatherhood as expendable, and a welfare system that subsidizes teen preganancy and guts the family structures that, up until the 1950s, gave Afro and Anglo America nearly identical out of wedlock pregnancy rates.

What's the lesson, here?

It's not the program. It's the moral background in which the program is presented.

A thoughtful society can do a lot to steer teens away from early sex and unwanted pregnancy; sex ed is far from the only factor.

Right. But we don't have a thoughtful society. We have Hollywood, and pop music, "Bratz" dolls, TV, and even the Disney Channel starting to sexualize kids younger and younger. We have teeny idol Britney Spears playing cat-and-mouse with virginity while living with fellow teen idol Justin Timberlake. We have Christina Aguilera glamourizing sluttiness. We have President Clinton, glamourizing and legitimizing the Lothario. We have innumerable examples of sex as glamorous, powerful, fun, grown-up - and very few of pregnancy, of single parenthood, of the options that pregnancy closes down. And that popular culture, like the Strib, sniffs at the moral aspects of the question - which are the very ones that seem to actually connect with people.

But there's little question that sex ed can play a positive role in nudging teens along the right path -- and no question at all about what sort of sex ed works best.

"But Rocky lost the fight".

Armchair Rocket Scientists

Geoffrey Forden and Theodore Postol take a long, elaborate whack at the administration in a Boston Glob op-ed last week.

They're concerned about airliner security. They have a shopping list of suggestions:

It is time for the Bush administration to abandon its look-good feel-good approach to air transport security. Its failure to do so leaves the country in grave danger.

That's become perhaps the most irritating of Democrat tropes; "the Administration hasn't solved everything, therefore they've solved nothing.

Forden and Postol, however, will:

The sensible course is to use already proven technologies and operational procedures to build a truly secure air transport security system. One element of this system would be aimed at greatly increasing the situational awareness of crews on aircraft in flight. The other element would be technical and procedural steps that could make it nearly impossible for an aircraft to be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Sounds good! What's it involve?

Multiple tiny video cameras could be placed throughout a plane's passenger compartment to record initial actions that might leadto a takeover. Wireless videocams could even be worn on the clothing of flight attendants. The doors to the cockpit should not only be strengthened so terrorists cannot gain access from the passenger compartment; sensors could be placed in the barrier to record any attempts to breach it. Biometric devices could be added to the aircraft control system so only authorized individuals could fly the aircraft.

And there could be a control room at the back of the plane, like that found in every TV station, where a staff would monitor the phalanx of cameras?

At a time when flight crews are getting smaller due to automation and cost pressures (look for one-pilot planes in the next 30 years), who's watching all these cameras?

Aircraft could also be fitted with a control system that prevented it from flying into prohibited space. The control system could use the Global Positioning Satellite System to monitor the location of the airplane and an onboard computer that would store the locations of all excluded airspace.

This "airspace exclusion system" could be designed so the crew could override it in emergencies but only after obtaining a "release code" from the air traffic control system.

More on this later.

There could be an additional black box on large aircraft to record all data from the many sensors. If the airplane was lost, this black box could provide much information for forensic analysis by security experts. If an alarm was set off indicating a possible hijacking, information from the sensors collected by the security black box could immediately be broadcast from the airplane through satellites that could relay the information to the ground.

All of these measures could be designed to provide the cockpit crew with timely information that they were under attack so they could take actions to prevent a takeover of the cockpit.

A chilling but necessary additional objective must be to provide the information we would want if we needed to shoot a plane down. None of our fighter pilots should ever have to face such an awful task without the comfort that their actions were surely needed to prevent a greater loss of life.

In addition to on-plane measures, there must be substantial off-plane information gathering. Areas surrounding planes on the ground should be monitored continuously. Even if such surveillance data could be used only after the fact, it would provide critical information when an incident needed to be reconstructed later.

So how does this play in the flying Peoria?

Fighter Pilot Guy (a high school pal and itinerant fighter jock), who sent the link to the op-ed, writes:

This is a prime example of an (probably comfortably well off) idealist who is familiar with technology that was developed or purchased with someone else's money (MIT's money?) that probably cost just as much as the actual aircraft he would put it in. (and I'm not referring to a Cessna 172) He is correct in stating that another attack would likely be our own fault because the means to prevent it are out there, but who is going to pay? The answer is "us."...we could equip all of our aircraft with the devices mentioned in the article. The problems with that are: when do we down the fleet for the significant re-work required to implant all of the tech gear, who will be willing to pay three or more times as much to fly to pay for it(see impact on the economy when the airlines go in the crapper), and finally, who is going to make all of the foreign carriers implement the changes? If there are planes without the techno-stuff in them, do we really think it will be that hard to identify them and use them?

FPG is right - and this article is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Listening to the debates last weekend - still a depressing thought - the line that's still sticking with me is Howard Dean's "I'd have spent all the money that's been wasted in Iraq on finding Bin Laden". According to Dean, he's have "found Bin Laden" by now. Leave aside pusillanimous Democrat fiction that "the" enemy is Bin Laden - that if you get him, the war on terror is over.

No, the noxious conceit being flogged as a solution by so many who will never be called upon to "solve" anything is that focusing disproportionate effort on solving your last problem - hijacked airliners, Osama Bin Laden - is any sort of answer. From some people - technocrats like the authors of the Boston Glob piece - I can accept that it's the response of a technocrat speaking to what they know. From others, like Howard Dean, I can accept the fact that they have an agenda, and are also idiots.

But from so many on the left, I hear things like "We need to focus on Bin Laden - he's the person who caused all of this", as if the "war on terror" is a police case, and if we just "solve" it and find the Perp, like in a two-year-long "Law and Order" episode, it'll be all done (or worse - we have no business going beyond Bin Laden).

Oh, The Humanity

Oh, The Humanity - RB Monkey, from Infinite Monkeys, has a theory:

Earlier today, a question was posed by Hugh Hewitt. He blogged and later wondered on the air about how long the Hindenburg remained in the air before... you know. What brought the thought on was the past week's campaign performance by Howard Dean...

The Hindenburg went into service on March 4th, 1936. It met its fiery end on May 6th, 1937, only 14 months later. About the same length as a political campaign.

As precipitous as the last week has been for Dean, I prefer to think of him not as the Hindenburg itself, but as the hydrogen that filled it...

Nominating the volatile Dean as the "lift gas" for the Democratic Party seems to be about as risky as pumping Hydrogen into an airship covered with a cellulose skin varnished with its own flammable mixture of chemicals and aluminum flecks while there's a storm a brewin'.

An interesting analogy.

On his website/blog, Hugh Hewitt has a slogan across the top: "Potestas Democraticorum delenda est!" (the power of the Democratic Party must be destroyed!) Perhaps after the seemingly inevitable Dean disaster it will have to be changed to "Oh, the humanity!"

It's still ten months and change until the election. I'd hate to make any predictions.

As cool as it sounds.

Tolerant Liberal Alert!

Friday morning on the KQRS Morning Show, comedian Jim David was in the midst of a rant about the "stolen election" in 2000.

Tom Barnard asked him about how conservatives and liberals got along.

"Oh, Ann Coulter...", he hissed. "There's a woman that needs to have acid thrown in her face."

Can you imagine if a conservative had said any such thing on a top-rated radio show?

But Forget About The Mass Killings...

But Forget About The Mass Killings... The Sunday Strib features an op-ed by by Abbas S. Mehdi, a professor at St. Cloud State.

I once met a Russian who, while broadly admitting that the fall of communism was a Good Thing, held out a few philosophical clinkers. People didn't have the same sense of unity of purpose as they had under the USSR, he said wistfully. Being cast out on the stormy waters of the free market was unsettling to most Russians. Many of them craved order. I felt if I'd asked him if it was worth it, he'd have answered "I'll heff to sink about zat".

I thought about that fellow while reading Mr. Mehdi's piece:

This is what Iraq's liberation looks like to me right now: a woman bleeding to death on a public highway, unable to get help because coalition forces have blocked the road while looking for insurgents. A large room in a hospital where corpses are laid at random on a dirty floor, some of them uncovered, with nothing to identify them, a scene of horror for those trying to find the bodies of their loved ones.

Sounds terrible.

Mehdi elaborates:

The woman is my younger sister.

Aaaah, maaan. And now, I feel like an ass for fisking the guy. Truly, Mr. Mehdi, I am sorry for your loss. So please understand, I understand the grief at the loss of a sister - and that I'm not attacking your grief or loss, but the extrapolations it leads you to draw - and the editorial slant of the Star-Tribune that made them feel that this was news:

She was involved in a car accident on the road between Najaf and Baghdad, traveling home after visiting my parents. When she finally reached the hospital in Baghdad after being stuck on the road for more than six hours, no one could do much for her, and no one was able to get in touch with her family. The hospital was overwhelmed and disorganized, and telephone lines were down.

The Strib must not feel the need to point out that the road is a hotbed of Sunni, pro-Saddamite resistance - hardly a digressive fact, in the context of the story.

Mehdi continues:

It's 26 years since I last saw her, 26 years since I last saw my parents. For all of that time, I have been working for regime change in Iraq, hoping that Saddam Hussein would fall from power and that peace, democracy and stability would come to my country.

And yet...?

Yet I opposed last year's invasion. I feared what the cost might be for the Iraqi people of being subjected to yet another war, weakened as they were by the last Gulf War and the war with Iran, and by protracted economic sanctions. Now that scenario has played itself out and come home to me personally in a way that I never expected, fearful though I was for Iraq and for my family.

So while you "worked for regime change", no doubt knowing that it would never happen of its own volition, now that the regime has changed, you're depressed.

Let's come back to that thought later.

As I talk with the friends and relations who have gathered for my sister's burial, what I hear most plainly is hopelessness. Hopelessness, frustration and resignation.

"She was lucky," one person says bitterly. "It is as if we are all dead already," someone else says. Yet another is grateful that he has no money -- that is why the thieves have left him alone, he says.

Even those I remember as secular liberals murmur inshallah when speaking of my sister's death: "God willing."

Context, please, Dr. Mehdi?

I ask because, while I don't speak Arabic, I do know that Inshallah is a ubiquitous response to events in the languages of most Moslem peoples. In this context, are they saying your sister's tragic death was God's will? Or are they wishing for the same?

It may be a distinction lost on non-moslems, but nevertheless important.

Again - more later.

And people start to tell me stories of other pointless and needless deaths.

More than during the regime?

It's an important distinction. It's been speculated that fewer Iraqi citizens have died since the war than would have had Hussein been allowed to keep killing people at the rate he'd managed for the previous several decades.

That your sister died - and remember, she died because the activities of degenerate guerillas made it impossible to get an ambulance to her, not because we liberated the country - is a tragedy. But for every Iraqi that dies as a byproduct of the liberation, there is at least another, and probably more, that has not been fed into a plastic shredder, or otherwise destroyed by the state...

...whose demise you'd have delayed, probably permanently.

The Iraqi people I speak to are very frightened by the danger and random deaths they see all around them, at home, at work, in the street. They are also worn down by the hardships of their everyday lives.

Right. Life is insecure. Forty years of secure (albeit terrorized) existence changed overnight.

In The main reaction of many Americans to the Iraq war and its aftermath may simply be confusion, but for me, and the people of Iraq, it has meant suffering, destruction and pain. In fact, the latest war has been hugely costly to everyone concerned, to Iraq, to the United States and to the rest of the world, in material and nonmaterial ways. No one is safe there now, not U.N. staff, or Paul Bremer, or Paul Wolfowitz. Even when the president of the United States visited Baghdad, he arrived in a darkened plane, in utmost secrecy, and stayed for only a few hours. My sister would not have died from her injuries if she had not been in a country that is unbearably unstable, to the point of anarchy. In this situation, no one is a winner, and no one feels liberated.

No one?

I shoudn't ask, but since it sounds as if your family is from the predominantly Sunni region of Iraq - might that have something to do with the depression of everyone you seem to have contact with? On a more ecumenical level - you'd have...what? A return to "peaceful" means of overthrowing Hussein? With the apparatus of state oppression swallowing up people no less worthy, or beloved to their families, than was your sister?

Sorry for your loss, Prof. Mehdi. But I know other Iraqis in the Twin Cities who lost relatives and family members, not through the chaos that tragically killed your sister, but through the deliberate actions of the state. Nobody could claim the body, in an ordered morgue or anyplace else - because the person disappeared. Gone, like the dust.

Even with the news of the chaos in Iraq, the joy at the liberation vibrates the walls of their little shops.

Nobody from the Strib has called them yet.

UPDATE: Folsom James Phillips writes:

If you get bored, you may want to do a google search for Professor Abbas S. Mehdi.

He did the job I should have. Googling Dr. Mehdi tells us there are quite a few of them out there. Still, we find quite a few particles, including this one:It's easy to blame everything on a colorful baddie. Saddam Hussein is, undeniably, a tyrant, and 20 years of his military dictatorship has brought a once-prosperous country to its knees. But, tragically for the people of Iraq, current U.S. policy has exacerbated their suffering under Saddam Hussein to new and appalling levels; has made them more, not less dependent on his rule; and has diminished rather than increased the likelihood of his removal and a peaceful transition to democracy, stability and prosperity."

Phillips adds:

He goes on the demand an immediate end to sanctions. How about calling for an end to Saddam's palace building, Professor? How about a call for Saddam to allow the oil for food program to actually buy food and medicine and not golden toilet bowls for his palaces.

To his credit, he does say we should (this is back in 1999, remember) support Iraqi opposition groups. Interesting that what he called for back in 1999 is essentially what is happening now, except that the US military was the catalyst for regime change. Does he imagine that a US supported civil war to overthrow Saddam would have been less costly to the Iraqis? That seems to be the case, and it is an absurd position to take. We've already seen what Saddam did to rebels when he gassed thousands of his own people. Without the might of the US military, even a successful rebellion (and that is wishful thinking at best) would have resulting in an incredible loss of life.

More about Mehdi, from an SCSU website, which seems to avoid most of the politics and concentrates on Prof. Mehdi's stature in his field.

House Latino?

House Latino? - Evangelical Outpost brings us this ugly, stupid flap from California:

First, there was singer and Democratic activist Harry Belafonte calling Colin Powell a “house slave.” Then we have Hillary Clinton making a really bad (and unfunny) joke about Ghandi and a gas station. Now we have a Dean supporter and official with the DNC getting in on the act:

Steven Ybarra, a Democratic National Committee official and regional coordinator of Latinos for Dean, called Rosario Marin the former U.S. treasurer under President Bush who is now seeking the GOP nomination to compete against California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a "house Mexican for the Republicans." The attack was sent out in a mass e-mail to political activists, community leaders and a number of journalists this week.

Marin responded in a statement:

Apparently, according to Mr. Ybarra and many of his fellow Democrats, if you are not a liberal Democrat, then you shouldn't be considered a legitimate minority. It doesn't matter that I'm an immigrant, the daughter of a janitor and a seamstress, or that I had to teach myself English because my first language was Spanish."

No Ms. Marin, for the Democratic Party it doesn’t. To them a "legitimate minority" is one that is sympathetic to their cause. The Democrats' idea of diversity is only skin deep.

< Vic Romano on > Right you are, Joe. < / Vic Romano off >

When it come to race relations, Democrats still flip off the odd smug glare - "we were the party of civil rights" - as if:

• a forty-year-old piece of legislation gives the current generation of Democrats a hereditary claim to be racial-equality crusaders
• the Voting Rights act would have passed at all, in those days when Southern Democrats still smelled the gunpowder from the Civil War - wthout massive Republican support (when in fact a higher percentage of Republicans voted for the VRA than did Democrats

Linda Chavez, in her book "An Unlikely Conservative", tells a fascinating story from her days as a liberal; Chavez grew up in a working-class, itinerant Hispanic family - but, born in America, she spoke English with no accent. When applying for a diversity scholarship in the sixties - one of the first - she found herself losing out to a woman from a very comfortable upper-middle-class background, but who spoke with a thick accent. Diversity, it seems, was best served by outward indicators.

Which brings us back to Joe's story. Party affiiliation is one of the most trivial outward indicators there is. But one can expect no less a performance of Mr. Ybarra - because scenarios like these are the ones that scare the Deocrats the worst. They know that:

• Americans of hispanic descent are very predominantly socially-conservative Catholics.
• Americans of Asian descent are the best examples of free-market idealism and hard, meritocratic work that exist in America today.
• There are no bigger supporters of education reform, including vouchers and creeping privatization, than inner-city Afro-Americans.

So while all these groups vote Democrat, more and more of them are wondering why.

Every Republican I've ever met of African, Hispanic or Asian descent (or, for that matter, ever gay conservative) is in the GOP becuase, in addition to their belief in free markets, law and order and strong defense, they are tired of being treated as an entitlement. One acquaintance - an Hispanic Republican - told me "it's nice to have a party earn my support".

Details of policy changes aside, I hope we can do that.

The Latino Slide=

The Latino Slide - Powerline notes this:

A telephone survey of likely Latino voters in California by PRM Consulting finds President Bush enjoying a 65% approval rating. 74% approve of his handling of the war on terror, and 58% are happy with how things are going in California under Governor Schwarzenegger. More problematic news for the Democrats.

Bush has also won the majority of the Hispanic vote in Texas, twice.

I've wondered for years - is there any reason, besides perhaps inertia, that the mainstream of Hispanic society in the US, is still Democrat?

Most of the Latinos I know are socially conservative; Latin-American Catholicism is much less a whiffle faith than the current American church. They also work very, very hard; why would they continue electing a party that piddles on both of these merits?

The only answer I have - maybe, bit by bit, it's changing. This poll might be fragmentary evidence of this.

Manic Friday

Overslept a bit this morning.

I don't have the ability to blog from work, and I'm not quite obsessed enough to bring my laptop to blog from a restaurant on the ground floor of my office building (which has wi fi), so there'll be a big blast of blogging tonight.

Unless it turns out that I really am that obsessed.

Iron-Clad Laws of Childrens' Television

Iron-Clad Laws of Childrens' Television - While I see less of it than I used to - my kids are 10 and 12 - the TV still winds up on the Disney Channel enough to notice the following:

1. The elderly African American Woman is inevitably the wisest person on the show. This is especially true if she's wearing one of those dishiki hats.
2. The best athlete in any group of kids (except possibly the leader, see below) will be a girl, probably hispanic or Afro-American.
3. The smart kid in any group - especially the geek - will be a pudgy Afro-American kid.
4. The leader of that group will be Anglo, blond, and the only kid who can challenge the Athletic Girl.
5. The Athletic Girl is also always the wisest person in the Group.

I ran the list past my daughter, who's the expert. She said the list is accurate - but that there have been a few shows that seemed to systematically violate the formula - almost as if someone else mentioned this to the executives...

Beyond Parody

Beyond Parody - Sometimes, a piece comes out that practically parodies itself.

And as fun as that can be, the real joy is encountering media product that unconsciously parodies itself, while semi-consciously parodying itself.

Such is today's Doug Grow column in the Strib, regarding the impending, and apparently resounding, selection of Bill McManus as the new Minneapolis police chief.

For those of you from out of town, Minneapolis' police department used to operate under the Darrell Gates philosophy; a force too small for the job on purpose, to create a force motivated by a sense of embattlement. While most cops have a certain "us versus them" mentality ("them" being anyone not in uniform), the MPD, like the LAPD, made it part of their operating philosophy.

The department has also spent nearly twenty years operating under chiefs from the East - from the hilarious but loathsome Tony Bouza to the current chief Robert Olson, both from New York. Both brought their authoritarian, East Coast roots with them.

McManus, from Dayton, Ohio, spent over two decades on the DC police force. His profile in the Pioneer Press notes that "McManus cites a 12 percent drop in violent crime and an 8 percent drop in property crime during the first 18 months he was chief in Dayton", but that in August, the Dayton Fraternal Order of Police, which represents rank-and-file officers, issued a no-confidence statement against McManus. The union criticized a number of the chief's policies, including restrictions on police chases and the use of deadly force. The union also said McManus unfairly fired an officer accused of mistreating a suspect during an arrest" - which, given the problems Minneapolis has had with both types of incident, may be a qualification.

Also for those of you from elsewhere - Minneapolis, especially its chattering classes, are far enough to the left to make Berkeley blanche. And among the lead chatterers is Star/Tribune columnist Doug Grow.

Which brings us back around to self-parody. Grow comments on the booming support for McManus, especially among Minneapolis' minorities:

McManus will become the next chief because politicians do nothing so well as judge public opinion. And every time council members stick their heads out of their offices, they're hearing the same thing: We want McManus.

For me, and I presume many other old, white liberals, the almost universal support for McManus comes as another stunning life lesson about the foolishness of stereotyping, presumptions and assumptions.

I assumed that people of color in Minneapolis would support only a person of color, presumably black, to be the next chief.

Inserting a snarky comment at this point would be depressingly superfluous.

Get used to it, in this column.

Well, no matter how you look at him, McManus is white. Yet, people of color have lined up in impressive style in support of him. It's the white liberals who've done the most gulping about McManus.

"Gulping".

I'd pick a word more like "patronizing pandering to the minority community", but why split hairs?

This being Minneapolis, Grow is far from alone:

Council Member Dean Zimmermann, a white ultra progressive, spoke directly to the race issue at a Wednesday morning breakfast meeting with small business owners and the chief nominee.

" I went into this thing telling myself I'm not going to vote for another white guy," Zimmermann said. "But I'm going to have to eat a little crow."

Here, we get into recursive layers of self-parody.

One wonders if Grow even noticed the irony of someone, an "ultra progressive" no less, approaching such an issue with such a patronizing, pandering attitude. The subtext - that it's part of Minneapolis liberal groupthink - is both obvious and depressingly telling.

And it goes on:

Throughout the course of the day, others echoed Zimmermann's comments.

For example, Sen. Jane Ranum, a DFLer and white member of the mayor's advisory committee in the search process for a new chief, spoke at a hearing with the council's Public Safety Committee.

"If someone had told me we'd end up with a white male out of this process I would have said, 'I don't think so,' " Ranum admitted.

Ranum - fairly pleasant woman who's made a name for herself as someone who makes Ellen Anderson seem fairly moderate and reasoned, adds yet another layer to the onion; she, a Minneapolis resident, had made up her mind (reading between the lines) based on gender and race.

Grow next hijacks Mayor Rybak's voice - apparently, they all do think alike, or at least so Doug Grow seems to think:

Deep down, Rybak himself surely didn't believe that his search would lead him to a white guy from Dayton, Ohio, via Washington, D.C. After all, few people preach diversity so earnestly as Rybak.

Council Member Natalie Johnson Lee, who is black, said Rybak has shown courage by picking McManus.

"The white guy was the hard choice," Johnson Lee said. "But I told the mayor he shouldn't make the politically correct decision, he should make the right decision, and I think he did that."

"The council showed courage by picking the Jew". "Can you believe, a bunch of white liberals selecting a Hispanic for a job like this?" "Hard to believe a woman could get this kind of consideration, given that it's such a tough job, dealing with men and all."

Here in Saint Paul, our outgoing police chief, Bill Finney, has spent the last nine years doing a marvelous job. His force is as good an urban police force as any in the country. Crime in Saint Paul is, always, vastly lower than that in Minneapolis, per capita, and that is largely because of our police force (which is possibly, indirectly due to our less-stupid, less-comically-liberal city government).

Grow misses that - but notes the key (to him) factor:

In fact, Finney, who is black, laughed at me when I suggested I was surprised that people of color were supportive of the white guy.

"What's important to people of color is that the Police Department deliver the same services to them that the majority community receives," Finney said. " . . . I never thought that Minneapolis would be able to find anyone with his credentials. He's got everything. He just happens to be white. For him not to have been selected simply because he's white would have been a gross injustice."

So - what does Bill Finney (moderately-liberal cop) know that Doug Grow (fatuous old white liberal) doesn't?

If you're an old white liberal, ask an inner city minority for the answer. It's about getting the job done. Bill Finney could, and did, do it - and his skin color is irrelevant. Bill McManus shows signs of being able to do the same - and his skin should get the same consideration.

Can Doug Grow do that?

That'd require learning from, as Grow puts it, "another stunning life lesson about the foolishness of stereotyping, presumptions and assumptions".

Any bets?

Hot Off The Press

The RepealConceal website - dedicated to the re-disarming of potential crime victims in Minnesota - has had not been updated since July.

Yeah, that issue's got legs for the DFL.

Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota has updated its page, more or less - although if you look at the bottom, you'll notice that they can't get images on their pages...

Lies, Damned Lies, and Polls

The Captain reports Dean is losing ground among Dems, while Bush's numbers are the strongest ever for a sitting President going into an election year. The numbers come from a CNN, USA Today, and Gallup poll.

Says the Cap'n:

"The numbers seem to show that Dean's support isn't wavering as much as Clark has drawn support from other Democratic candidates. Clark's status as the Clintonista's man in the race as well as his perceived unique ability to carry foreign-policy and national-security gravitas into the general election will probably continue to make him the natural magnet for voters who abandon other Democratic candidates as their campaigns become more hopeless. If Dean is to win the nomination, he has to hope that either he can expand his base or that all nine of his competitors stay in the race until the end."

I can see this happening - although if I were (shudder) still a Democrat, I'd pick Lieberman; foreign policy is my big issue (domestics will basically take care of themselves if left alone), and he's the only Democrat candidate who sounds like he should be trusted with a driver's license, much less the nation's foreign policy.

But wait! Just last week, the Dems were crowing about a Time/CNN poll that showed "Bush over Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean by 51 per cent to 46 per cent, according to the Time/CNN poll," allegedly within the range of statistical error.

Huh-wha?

The key factor came later in the latter poll:

Still, only one in four poll respondents said they were paying "very close" attention to the 2004 election at the moment

I'd be very interested in seeing a poll of likely voters. The GOP always does better - and it's a more accurate sample (albeit hard to gauge this far before the election).

Ode to Frivolity

Ode to Frivolity -The Strib's Kim Ode has a piece - inevitably headlined Oops! What does Britney's joke say about hetero marriage? - in today's edition.

The piece digs for the social "significance" of the Spears "marriage" last weekend. Unfortunately, it digs in the wrong place.

For too many, the Spears, er, "marriage" prompts a reductio ad absurdam:

"Ann DeGroot is executive director of Outfront Minnesota, the state's largest organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. She also suspects how the tables would be turned had the bride and groom been able to use the same restroom.
'I think some of those against same-sex marriage would be saying that it makes a mockery of this institution, that it's shameful that people take marriage so lightly, that we told you this would happen,' DeGroot said. 'Instead, we're getting, 'Geez, she's young, it was Vegas.' No one's taking this too seriously.'

To the extent they don't, it's because most of us - the people - don't take anything that Hollywood has to say about marriage seriously.

We'll come back to that.

Which is galling for those gay couples who take the idea of marriage as seriously as most of the population does. Yikes, maybe that's not even right, given the divorce rates. Maybe some gay people take the privilege of marriage more seriously than many do.

And again, the absurd reduction - and the hopeless one-way trip out of context.

Ironically, Ode follows the comical generalizations - that same-sex people don't treat marriage "seriously" because many of them get divorced, and because Ann DeGroot says many don't take the Spears "marriage" seriously - with this:

It's always a little dangerous to generalize, of course, although that's never stopped some.

You can't pay for comedy like that.

Yes, many straight couples marry for puerile reasons. So, it is very likely, will many gay couples, when and if they can - has anyone considered the absurdity of pointing out straight divorce rates when there are no gay divorce rates with which to compare them? Do Kim Ode and Ann DeGroot think they'll hover around zero in perpetuity?

Ode isnt' done generalizing:

DeGroot knows how the arguments against same-sex marriage sweep all gays into one irresponsible dustbin. 'It's a way of looking at the whole community in terms of their sexual relationships and not the individual,' she said. 'We keep hearing, 'Well, that's how all gay people are,' but this is, 'Well, that's just how Britney is.' '"

Let's say for a moment that all straight people are Just Like Britney - that our marriages are all jokes. Hell, I'm a divorced guy, who am I to say (although if my marriage was a joke, it was more the "funny/wierd" than "funny/ha ha" type)?

But no - "the" arguments against same-sex marriage do not all sweep blithely, and in fact the most important have nothing to do with sexual relationships at all.

It's about the religious - as opposed to legal - institution of marriage. As a conservative, I could care less if two people enter into a binding contract, whatever their genders. I do object to the co-option of the institution of marriage to carry this out. It has nothing to do with sexual relationships, nothing to do with divorces, nothing whatever to do with Britney. It's about "what is a marriage supposed to be?"

I don't think it's supposed to be a joke. I also don't think it's supposed to be a convenient legal threshold for partner benefits (a view that also treats marriage as a joke, in its own way even more cynical than Spears' marriage) - or even a way of saying "I love partner (gender irrelevant), and this is how we're going to make it official", which is both solipsistic and also dodges the real point of marriage.

So what?

Whiny Liberals

Whiny Liberals - You've heard the story - MoveOn.org ran a contest to generate anti-Bush ad designs from its stellar, intellectual audience.

Powerline has the goods - trashing the campaign the most eloquent way possible, by showing its results and the hypocrisy of its defenders.

Among them, liberal blogger Kos

Fresh off his successful whine-a-thon over two fringe Nazi-themed ads on MoveOn, RNC Chair Ed Gillespie has suddenly become a voice for reason, moderation, and inclusiveness. Right?

I think it's a fair bet that you'll see it from Gillespie long before you'll see it from any Democrat commentator or leader, to say nothing of the ever-less-sensible Kos.

Speaking of "whine-a-thons", this was the email I got from MoveOn.org's Eli Pariser today:

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie launched the attack on "Fox News Sunday," and the RNC followed it with press releases and calls to reporters. The charges centered on two ads posted on the Bush in 30 Seconds website which compared President Bush's tactis with those of Adolf Hitler. Mr. Gillespie repeatedly referred to the ads as 'the MoveOn ad' or 'MoveOn's ad,' implying that we had sponsored or perhaps even commissioned the ad. And he also claimed that we might spend $7 million to run it on TV.

This is a lie. MoveOn.org hasn't sponsored such an ad, and we never would -- we regret the appearance of these ads on the Bush In 30 Seconds site. The two ads in question are from more than a thousand posted by members of the public, and they were voted on by MoveOn members through December 31st. Obviously the few hundred of you who viewed these ads agreed that they were not worthy of further broadcast or recognition, because they got low ratings. Yesterday we announced the 15 finalists -- all good, hard-hitting and fair appraisals of the Bush record, in the judgment of the members and others who rated them. The two offending ads can only be found one place now -- on the RNC website!

It's those dagnabbed Republicans, grabbing our slander before we can hide it!

Question, Mr. Pariser; how did they get on your site?

And do you - or Kos - think for a moment that if a contest on a conservative site yielded an ad design with, say, Al Gore flogging a slave, the likes of MoveOn and Kos wouldn't be baying for rhetorical blood at the very least?

Who's whining?

Hey - for some inexplicable reason, Kos seems to be quiet about the declining attacks against US troops, and the allegations of rapprochement between Israel/Libya, India/Pakistan...

Seeing a pattern here?

Kos is rapidly dropping off my list of credible left-wing sources on the blogosphere.

Found Art

Found Art - Heard in passing on a TV show in the background ("Family Guy", I think):

Other Guy: "Guns only cause trouble"

Peter Griffin: "Yep. And when that trouble happens, guns let us blow its' head off"

Productivity

I work in a lean, mean, big office. Don't get me wrong - after the 2003 I had, I'm incredibly thankful about it.

A big part of our current economic growth spurt is due to increasing productivity. This is a good thing.

But there is still room to grow. Here's how I know.

I'm in the midst of my fifth week on this job. There's a woman that sits kitty-corner from me. She has been planning a surprise party for her husband. For 160-odd guests.

For an hour or two a day, every day, for the past four weeks (except for some vacation time around the holidays where, for all I know, she was still doing the planning, but I obviously can't confirm it).

I can tell you this:

1. This party is planned at a level of detail that CENTCOM could have only dreamed of before invading Iraq. The beer kegs, for example, WILL be deployed on time, or heads will roll. I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
2. This couple's friends are serious drinkers. This is not a surprise to me, having worked at a bunch of dotcoms that floated to their deadlines (and eventually dooms) on rivers of vodka, but there people are in their late forties/early fifties. Formidable.
3. You'd have to ask King from the Scholars, but I think the concept in play here is "latent capacity" - productive capacity that is not fully utilized for whatever reason. When this party is over and this woman starts spending her time and energy on her actual project again, I expect growth forecasts to be nudged up another tenth of a point, easily.

More as conditions warrant.

Levis Departs

The usual suspects are bemoaning this week's closure of the last Levi's manufacturing plant in the US. Levis Jeans will now be made overseas.

"This week, the last of the Levi Strauss & Co. manufacturing plants in the United States will close, fading this American icon like a pair of its own 501s.
The struggling denim company has announced that the last two of its U.S. factories, near downtown San Antonio, will shut their doors, leaving 800 employees out of work and ending an American tradition that began 150 years ago. Although the company's headquarters in San Francisco will remain open, and contract work at some U.S. plants will continue, the bulk of the $4.2 billion company's jeans will be manufactured by suppliers in 50 other nations -- including countries in Asia and the Caribbean, where labor is cheaper.
That Levi's will now be manufactured overseas signals to some pop culture observers the death of an institution, one that has been stitched into American imagery like the little red Levi's tag.
'It's an end of an era,' said Patricia Leavy, assistant professor of sociology at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. 'More than any other garment in pop culture, Levi's are symbolic of America. They've come to represent some of the ideals this country is based on. Equality: Anyone can afford to wear them, everyone does wear them -- kids, adults, any age, any race.
'Taking this all-American thing, which is being produced by Americans and American laborers, out of the country, you change the meaning of it,' said Leavy, who teaches a one-day class on the history of blue jeans. 'Even if people still buy it, it's not the same thing."

Especially if that thing is crap.

Look - I'm all about national symbols, and holding on to the meaning of those symbols.

It's just that Levis 501 is the wrong icon to pick. Every pair of 501s I ever owned -back when I bothered buying clothes anywhere but Target - were overpriced, and tended to fall apart very, very quickly. I'd never buy another pair of them for love or money.

Adios, Levis. Don't let the door hit you in the stitched logo on the way out.

(Does anyone else grok the irony of a company in relentlessly-PC San Francisco outsourcing overseas?)

Open Letter to All Minnesotans

Now hear this.

It's not that cold. Quit your whining.

I moved here from North Dakota in 1985. In these 19 winters, I have yet to encounter weather I'd call anything but "wintery"; for my tastes, winters here are a little too wussy.

Snow? -10 lows for day on end? Where I grew up, we call that "Skinny-dipping weather". We don't even button our jackets if it's above 0. To hear the caterwauling of Minnesotans is equal parts amusing and pathetic.

When you have a howling north wind for three weeks in a row, and temperatures that never crack -10 for highs in that time - as seemed to happen every January when i was a kid - give my people a call. Until then, we'll be busy remember the real winters, back where people might not know a mocha from a capuccino, but we surely do know our weather.

And even if you pull him in from a snowdrift with blue lips and chattering teeth, you will never hear a North Dakotan admit otherwise to a Minnesotan.

Not that we'll ever need to.

< mumble > pansies < / mumble > Sheesh, people.

That is all.

Double Standards

Powerline's Rocket Man attacks the WaPo's Richard Cohen for the absurd double standard he observes: liberal organizations, even large "respected" ones like MoveOn.org, traffic in a constant diet of Bush/Hitler comparisons to which Cohen turns a blind eye - but when Grover Norquist calls obsessive opposition to modifying the Estate Tax "Holocaust Morality" ("It's only happening to a minority, and I'm not one of them!"), Cohen condems it.

Rocket man ends with this:

Cohen cannot possibly be unaware that "Bush=Hitler" is the mantra of the contemporary left. So what are we to make of the fact that he has never criticized liberals for their intolerant rhetoric, but has gone absolutely bananas when Grover Norquist had the temerity to mention the Holocaust?

I, personally, would like to see a moratorium on all references to Hitler, the Third Reich, Nazism and the Holocaust in the context of domestic political debate. Such a rule would have no perceptible effect conservative discourse, but it would render the left virtually mute.

Banning Stalin/Lenin references would knock off a fraction of a percent of conservative thought, and that only on the fringe. Banning Hitler references...

...would bring an ACLU suit.

The Sakajawea Revolution

One women, twelve dozen legally-valid spellings...

...and a dollar coin that didn't get its due. At least, not in most of the country.

Brian from Boviosity states an eloquent case for the dollar coin:

I really like the Sacagawea $1 coin.

I'm not into Sacagawea, or Lewis & Clark, or equal rights for women on coins, or saving trees by doing away with $1 bills. I just like it. I think it's practical and beautiful. I was bemoaning its apparent unpopularity with a friend the other day. I was dismayed that, just a few years after it was introduced, I was unable to get any at my bank. My friend challenged me to just go spend some of them if I want them in circulation.

I thought that was a good idea, and now I think I've got a better one.

My New Year's Resolution is to put 100 Sacagawea Dollars into circulation. And I challenge other bloggers to do the same.

You're on Brian. And I have a good start; when I was in New York last month, the New Jersey Transit ticket machines gave all their change in Sakakaweas (the spelling I learned in North Dakota as a kid), and I've been doling them out bit by bit ever since - probably twenty of them.

I'll go looking for more.

Brian's right - the coin is beautiful, well-designed, and just plain feels good.

Viva la Revolucion!

Think Correctly

Think Correctly - Powerline continues their series, Getting our minds right in Minnesota, about the Elliot Rothenberg case.

Rothenberg is a Minnesota attorney who has attacked the Minnesota Bar Association's Continuing Legal Education requirement for "Elimination of Bias" classes, or at least the types of "classes" offered - including, in one notable instance, a rally for accused terrorist lawyer Lynne Stewart.

I won't try to explain it - just read the series.

Post-Punk'd

Post-Punk'd - RobbL Monkey is vexed:Infinite Monkeys:

"Mitch over at Shot In The Dark picked up on Brad's post below about The Alarm's reunion on VH1. He refers to them as 'the third-best British band of the eighties'.

Okay, I'll bite. I think we can all agree that if The Alarm makes it up to #3 on your list, then U2 must hold the #1 spot. They have a symbiotic relationship in 'best-of' lists, and U2 ALWAYS maintains a spot at least two places above The Alarm. Given that premise, I'm going with Simple Minds in the #2 spot. The 'holy' Trinity of marginally Christian 80's Brits.

I will hedge with a side bet that Big Country works their way in there somewhere."

Fairly astute.

And the matter cries out for resolution, because:

Curse you, Mitch Berg! You always know how to suck me in! I was able to suppress the urge to dig up my 12" single of "The Deceiver" when Brad posted. I just kept reminding myself of the horrible stage banter in the middle of "Rescue Me" on that live album they did. Argh! ...But then you went and made a list. And you didn't reveal its contents. "

Indeed.

RobbL has made several astute observations:

• The Alarm truly were always doomed to sit on lists two notches below U2. Even when the Alarm was at the top of their game and U2 at the bottom, the Alarm in true Welsh fashion couldn't shake the jinx
• Simple Minds and Big Country are indeed on the short list for the #2 spot (And yet that would ignore both Cactus World News and Icicle Works).
• But why not Echo and the Bunnymen? Hah! Because their guitar player was dull dull dull!
• But why not the Smiths, with one of the the three coolest British guitarists of the eighties, Johnny Marr? (He being at #3, and Stuart Adamson being #1, and Charlie Burchill of Simple Minds #6) Hah. Because Morrisey made me pray for death.
• OK, forget Icicle Works. I was just being difficult.
• Dexy's Midnight Runners are right out.

So who was #2?

It would have been Simple Minds - had they ever done an entire album as cool as "Steeltown". But they didn't. So it's Big Country, by a slight nod.

I'll let you figure out who Brit guitarists #2, 4 and 5 are...

For The Rich

For The Rich - The city's class warriors are in full warble over Governor Pawlenty's proposal to create toll lanes - not toll roads, mind you - amid some of the metro's worst traffic. "It's preferential traffic for the rich", the Lori Sturdevants and Doug Grows of the metro bleat (although I'm willing to bet an imported beer that both of them will be using the lanes when and if they're built).

But let's address the whole notion that these roads are "for the rich" in the first place.

Many of the nation's higher-density areas - the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut/Pennsylvania metroplex, Chicago and LA, among others - use toll roads. Comparisons with Chicago - which is crisscrossed with toll expressways as well as freeways - are interesting. Chicago politics aren't the overweening, dissipate neo-Berkeley exercise in PC power you find in Minneapolis, of course - but there are similarities between Chicago and Saint Paul. Entrenched union power, powerful special interests pulling tightly-wound strings, ancient loyalties and alliances playing out in the wards based on the neighborhoods that are the currency of power in the city, an unsavory history - all are found, to various degrees, in both cities.

I used to work with people from Chicago - so while I'm far from an expert at Chicago politics, I'm not completely green, either (and if you are from Chicago and have a perspective on this, please comment or email!). I do not recall a single Chicagoan ever referring to their tollways as being "for the rich". They're a price you - whoever "you" are, whether a busy executive or a delivery courier who needs to get someplace fast - pay to traverse a huge, busy city more efficiently.

Stop me if I'm wrong!

By the way - yesterday on Blogomodleft, Fecke said I favor toll lanes. As with most things, it's a lot more complicated than that. For those of you who care, I favor:

• Commuter Rail - heavy-gauge commuter rail using existing freight-passenger lines, as in the Northstar and Red Rocks proposals. These would move people from where they are (the St. Cloud corridor and Washington/Dakota counties, the fastest growing areas of the state) to where they want to go - their jobs in the Cities, they can be built with nearly no new right of way, and they can pay for themselves in the foreseeable future.
• Toll roads, lanes, ramps, whatever it takes turn the construction of new roads and lanes into a user-fee based system. Given the emnity of so many of the warbling classes toward the eeeevul SUV-driving suburban commuter, you'd THINK this would be seen as a Good Thing. That'd imply thought, of course, as opposed to jerking knees.
• Yes, even Light Rail. Light Rail doesn't have to be a stupid boondoggle doomed to failure. If it goes from where people are to where they want to be, and is built along existing rights of way (which don't have to be purchased from scratch at hideous prices) and if it's construction - here's the hard part - is not treated as the construction of a monument to the wisdom and munificence of the currently-sitting government, then it can actually make some sense.

What do these proposals have in common? They make market sense. They let the market drive the transit decisions in a way that, with a little planning, they don't have to be an eternal money drain on the taxpayer...

...which is what our current system is.

Wha in the Whaaa?

In February, this blog will be two years old. It's been a great run.

In that time, I've gotten four emails asking me "what's with the name?"

You'll be sorry you asked.

In the late '80s, in response to the scads of little DIY 'zines from lefty organizations the flooded the entryways of libraries and bookstores throughout the cities, I put out a little, photocopied conservative broadsheet, "Reel News". It was a combination of counter-subversive conservative thought, punk rock news, and...well, basically, the same stuff we put in blogs today. Back in those pre-Internet days, before I owned a computer, I did the masthead on a Mac ($6 an hour at Kinkos back then), and did the rest on the typewriter my parents gave me as a high school graduation present (which I still have in my basement). I was dirt-broke in those days - I'd make maybe 100 copies, and leave them in bookstore and record shop doorways, from whence I'm sure most were taken directly to the trash by store staffs.

Time went on. I fell off the face of the earth, got married, had kids, got a career, got divorced...and discovered Blogger. And I thought "this is what Reel News needed, all along!"

So around 10PM on February 4, 2002, I logged into Blogger for the first time, intending to resurrect the broadsheet of my misspent youth...

...and paused. The name meant nothing to anyone but me. "What SHOULD I call this thing?"

I flipped through a couple of dozen names, and at one point you people came within a mouse-click of reading "Berg, The Blog!" , before I trashed it.

"I need something else", I thought. "This is such a..."

"...shot in the dark", I thought, and the wheels started turning:

• I'm a concealed carry activist
• A shot in the dark is accompanied by a brief flash of light
• The film noir reference is irresistable
• Much of what I do is a figurative "shot in the dark", both personally and, er, blogonally.
• Nothing tastes better than a shot of vodka on a cold night in a darkened bar. OK, I'm stretching it a bit now...

So there it is.

Now you can sleepat night.

Pack, Not A Herd

Pack, Not A Herd - You can keep your Lennons and McCartneys. Jagger? Fuggettaboutit.

Even Pete Townshend, who wrote most of my favorite Brit Invasion music, is just a tad ofay and hyperintellectual in person for my tastes.

Nossireebob - two of my other three favorite British Invasion figures (besides Townshend) were George Harrison and Ray Davies.

Harrison, several years before his untimely death, disinguished himself by wrestling a burglar in his house; even after he was stabbed (and critically injured). The guy had moxie.

Now, this:

Singer-songwriter Ray Davies of the Kinks was shot in the leg while chasing thieves who snatched a purse from a woman he was with, police said Monday. He was not seriously injured.

Police said Davies, 59, and the woman were walking along the Quarter's Burgundy Street around 8:30 p.m. Sunday when the theft and shooting happened.

Davies was treated and released at a hospital, Capt. Marlon Defillo, a police spokesman, said. One suspect was captured within hours of the shooting and another was being sought.

On the one hand, losing Ray Davies would be one of the few baby-boomer age deaths that'd still affect me any more.

On the other hand - you go, Ray.

Now, I can see Roger Daltrey ripping a burglar's arms off at the shoulders...

The Scolding Aunt

The Scolding Aunt - In nearly every Presbyterian church or Lutheran church I've ever attended - and I'm going to assume it's the same in most mainline churches - there's always one old woman who serves as the congregation's professional conscience.

In my church, it's an octogenarian scold who scowls at all comers, rarely says "hi" to strangers - but during open prayers always asks that we "Pray that we quit our imperialistic policy against Iraq", while in the next breath asking "prayers for the starving people of North Korea - and that our government will have the courage to feed them". She's still outraged - outraged, I tell you - that Wellstone lost.

The Strib has one of those: Lori Sturdevant, who wondered in an editorial yesterday on the seeming change in "Minnesotans' attitudes toward toll roads".

Sturdevant - who seemed so depressed by the Republican sweep in '02 and the purported "change for the worse in Minnesota" it swept in that I'm almost glad to see she hasn't harmed herself - says:

That may be because it isn't a toll booth on every freeway lane that's being proposed. It's "a choice," as the governor and his transportation maven, Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, have been saying with mantra-like repetition. Motorists will be able to choose. They can creep along on the existing no-toll lanes, or zip on the new private lanes, and see a few dollars charged to their credit card accounts for the privilege.

Crawl or pay. It's not a great choice, especially considering some of the possibilities that might have come from a governor less wedded to a no-new-taxes pledge and an auto-oriented political base.

Who says it's not a great choice? It's the choice they use in most of the more congested cities. It shifts the costs of roads from the taxpayer at large to the consumer of the lanes' services.

But no - in Lori Sturdevant's world, it's not just a change in the way transit is funded. It's yet another sign that we Minnesotans aren't worthy of the Humphrey/Mondale legacy - of which Sturdevant is a self-appointed steward:

It goes to show what changes in public thinking can be wrought when, in the name of efficiency or tax relief/reform or some other excuse, government is rendered unable to perform up to the expected snuff.

"Expected snuff?"

I don't "expect" my government to blindly hew to some outdated, pseudo-populist dogma.

But, indeed, dogma is what it's about to Ms. Sturdevant:

Starve a government service [in this case, starve it of increases in the gas tax] long enough, and the public can be made to turn against even the most revered of public-sector sacred cows, in favor of privatization.

If you think this column just morphed into one about schools, colleges, parks and libraries, you'd be right.

First: If "no tolls" is a revered public sector sacred cow, then it's one that's best slaughtered. But the real "sacred cow" is the sense of frivolous faux populism that drives Sturdevant and her limo liberal ilk.

There are elements of privatization that, but for the sense of aesthetic violation they'd cause Sturdevant et al, can and will make schools, colleges, parks and libraries better things for all of us.

And if you think this just morphed into a post about lower taxes, more government accountability, and rubbing Lori Sturdevant's nose in the demographic changes in Minnesota that have finally rendered her a political minority (albeit a loud, perpetually carping one), you'd be right.

Debate

I caught a few intermittent snatches of the Democrats debate Sunday afternoon from Des Moines. But only a few.

Hugh Hewitt wasn't so lucky:

How can an entire national party produce such a humorless group of scolds? Only Lieberman and Kucinich display any sort of timing and energy, and Dennis is as mad as a hatter, and Joe's almost a Republican these days.

All told, a boring, won't-change-anything debate because the rules that allow nuts and also-rans to suck up air-time kill off the sort of exchanges that might develop into an interesting bit of political theater.

The Captain found a great - as in, very critical - review from the AP. Money quote:

They still managed to drift off course on trade, led by Gephardt when he said everyone on stage except Rep. Dennis Kucinich (news - web sites) of Ohio and himself had voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and for liberalized trade rules for China.

"They did the wrong thing," he said.

In fact, Edwards was not in the Senate when NAFTA was decided — and he pointed out he had campaigned against it. Dean, the former Vermont governor, never was in Congress to cast a vote.

Gephardt acknowledged the mistake when Edwards called him on it. "I'm quite willing to say you weren't there," he said.

The discussion turned into a critique by several candidates against the weaknesses of free trade agreements. Carol Moseley Braun and Dean were among those who said trade agreements must include strong labor, environmental and human rights standards.

But Braun voted for NAFTA when she was in the Senate and Dean voiced support for that deal and the China agreement before he entered the campaign.

Listening live, the cringe-inducing moments came thick and fast - but the following observations seemed in order:

• The only Democrat candidate that should be allowed NEAR the Football is Joe Lieberman.
• Dennis Kucinich is an idiot.
• Howard Dean oozes slime - I may start keeping a count of who, between Dean and Clark, contradicts himself the most.
• The only pleasant surprise - Joe Lieberman's vocal mannerisms aren't nearly as irritating this time around. It makes me wonder, as a long-time fan of oratory and the son of a speech teacher - given what an awful speaker Al Gore is, was Lieberman sandbagging on the stump in '00?

Hewitt's right - these things won't be a useful exercise until the caucuses squeeze Kucinich, Edwards, Mosely-Braun and Sharpton out of the picture.

In the meantime, liberal blogger and Dean consultant Kos thinks he's found a problem in the AP's coverage. He begins with a quote from the AP's story:

"I opposed the Iraq war when everyone else up here was for it," said the former Vermont governor, invoking the issue that helped fuel his 2003 transformation from asterisk in the polls to front-runner.

Clark and Sharpton weren't around, but war opponents Kucinich and Braun were. So Dean lied! Again!!! That quote is so juicy, let's stick it up high in the story. Second graf, indeed! Except -- and we're starting to see a pattern here -- Nedra and the AP got it all wrong.

From the Debate Transcript (and I remember this moment in the debate, so I know the transcript is accurate):

DEAN: The proper role of the federal government in education is not to pass bills like No Child Left Behind. I have two big policy differences with almost everybody up here. I opposed the Iraq war; with the exception of Dennis and Carol, everybody else supported it.

But why let simple things like, say, transcripts and the truth, get in the way of a good made-up mythical pretend quote, especially if it further's Nedra's fantasies of "lying" Democrats?

Er...Kos?

If "Nedra's" (AP reporter Nedra Pickler) AP story ran the quote as "I opposed the Iraq war when everyone else up here was for it," and Clark and Sharpton weren't "up here", and the trancript says "I have two big policy differences with almost everybody up here. I opposed the Iraq war; with the exception of Dennis and Carol, everybody else supported it," then it's sloppy reporting.

But it's not one iota worse than the coverage conservatives have come to expect of our own candidates.

Sucks to have the media against you, dinnit?

Sacred Vows

I can see where a gay marriage advocate might see some inconsistency in our society, where many of the same people who oppose gay marriage will be chuckling at the news of Britney Spears' 14.5 hour marriage.

Sullivan, naturally, is one of them:

Look, I know some of you will object to the logic, but can you not see how something like Britney Spears' insta-marriage in Las Vegas might infuriate long-committed gay couples who, even now, don't have a shred of the rights Ms Spears enjoyed for a few days?

I'd wonder who would object to the logic?

Yes, I'm a divorced guy - but I think Ms. Spears' little act was repugnant.

Over the holidays, I found myself watching all those VH1 list shows, and happened across the top ten or twenty (I forget which) shortest Hollywood marriages in history. Ha ha ha. We live a world in which Britney Spears just engaged in something "sacred" (in the president's words), where instant and joke hetero marriages and divorces are a subject of titillation, and where a decades-long monogamous lesbian marriage is a threat to civilization as we know it. Please. Can we have a smidgen of consistency here?

More than a smidgen would be nice.

Marriage should not be a joke - and Britney Spears was only the highest-profile marital jokester in recent years. Nor should it be merely an economic union or a political statement - which seems to be the main interest of many gay marriage activists, who seem more interested in poking a finger in the eye of the establishment than in the religious significance of marriage.

In a perfect world, the government would be out of the marriage business, treating unions as contracts and letting churches handle the sacred business among whatever combinations of constituents they can theologically justify.

Will it happen? Of course not. The more I think about this, the more I think civil unions - contractual marriages - are the only rational solution.

Candomatic

Via Blogomodleft, I tried "Selectsmart.com", which features a "2004 American Presidential Candidates Selector".

Methodologically, these things are usually deeply flawed, and this is no exception. Here's an example:

13. ABORTION POLICY Regarding the following special interest groups, my ideal candidate will generally support the positions of:
Planned Parenthood,
National Right to Life Committee,
No preference/None of the above/Prefer alternate solutions

Nowhere do I see "dollops of Christian and Libertarian teaching thrown in to boot - and I think both national groups are wrong", which is the answer that'd be accurate in my case.

Still, after churning through a couple of dozen questions, I got my answers:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%) Click here for info
2. Bush, President George W. - Republican (74%) Click here for info
3. Libertarian Candidate (55%) Click here for info

This is not much different than the list I'd put together myself, actually.

The next four aren't so bad...

4. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (47%) Click here for info
5. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (46%) Click here for info
6. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (42%) Click here for info
7. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (38%) Click here for info

If you held a gun to my head and said "Mitch, you need to vote for a Democrat", I'd probably pick one of these - although in Edwards' case, only if the gun was small-caliber enough to maybe not kill me instantly. Still, the DLC Democrats are slightly less-noxious than the rest.

However, this next one...

8. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (35%) Click here for info

...proves that someone in this transaction is mad, and incidentally it's not me. I'd vote for Idi Amin before Dennis Kucinich.

The rest of the list:

9. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (30%) Click here for info
10. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (28%) Click here for info
11. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (15%) Click here for info
12. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (13%) Click here for info
13. Green Party Candidate (11%) Click here for info
14. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (7%) Click here for info
15. Socialist Candidate (5%) Click here for info
16. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (5%) Click here for info

So I guess it's not that far off - I'd vote for Amin before any of the bottom eight.

At least he's dead.

Anyway - if nothing else, it's better than the "Which World Leader Are You" debacle from last week.

Bang the Krug Slowly

Powerline's piece last Saturday ended like this::

"Paul Krugman is a sad case: a once-respected economist who has become a shrill, hyper-partisan pundit. He cares nothing about truth, and everything about promoting the interests of the Democratic Party. He uses his columns not to inform his readers, but to mislead them. It is hard to think of a worse indictment of a columnist."

Before they got to that point, they proved it.

While lots of pundits and bloggers took on Krugman's column, Powerline did the best job of trashing it. You owe it to yourself to read it - and to any of your friends who still respect the NYT's editorial and column writers to pass it on.

Deferred

Deferred - So I've lived in this house for ten years. It was something of a fixer upper when we moved in, and in ten years, I've done almost no fixing up.

So this is Winter Of The Paintbrush in the Berg house. My goal - repaint the entire interior of the house. Did the living room yesterday - a two-tone job with colors picked out by my daughter that actually looks pretty good so far.

I'd post pictures, but I didn't take any "Before" shots. Maybe when I do the stairwell next week - converting it from its current "Newark Project" motif to more of a "Family Museum" kinda vibe.

This summer - building a patio out back. Then, I will have my housewarming party - eleven years late, but better late than never, right?

The Joy of Shuffle Mode

Last five songs on my jukebox:

1. "This Time", INXS
2. "Minstrel Boy" (Blackhawk Down version), Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.
3. "Romeo and Juliet", Dire Straits
4. "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown", Joe Ely
5. "Life Won't Wait", Rancid

Perfect.

The Slow Slide - In

In today's #1 story, Britney Spears, who apparently went to Wedomatic in Vegas yesterday, is getting her cold feet:

"Pop star Britney Spears reportedly has been a bride for about a day, and is already considering an annulment "

Some say Spears'll be he Madonna of the 21st century. I think she's on track to be the new Cher.

Miracle?

Miracle? - A nearly-100-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble in Bam, Iran today - nine days after the catastrophic earthquake:

"For nearly nine days after an earthquake demolished her city, 97-year-old Sharbanou Mazandarani lay trapped under furniture and crumbled masonry, passing fear-filled days and cold nights with death all around.

But with nearly a century of life behind her, Mazandarani was not ready to give up. And on Saturday, elated rescuers pulled her out of the rubble alive - and amazingly, unhurt.

'God kept me alive,' the petite, wrinkled Mazandarani said as she lay on a bed in a makeshift hospital in Bam, covered to her chin with a blue blanket and a brown print scarf tied around her head.

Rescuers said she asked for a cup of tea soon after her rescue - and then complained it was too hot to drink.

Of course, the official line is, this just isn't possible:

Normally people can survive up to three days in the rubble of an earthquake. It was unclear whether Mazandarani had food or water while she lay trapped under the ruins."

So - after every major disaster, the "authorities" officially give up hope of survivors, and switch to "Recovery" mode, after about three days. They always - invariably, after every earthquake - that it's impossible for anyone to have survived more than 72 hours.

And, it seems, after nearly every major earthquake, there is a story like this; an unlikely, miraculous life snatched from the jaws of death story.

And it happens so regularly - 5, 7, 9 days or even more after earthquakes - that one wonders why officials continue declaring life impossible after three piddly days.

The human body is a miraculous thing. The human spirit, moreso. Humans have survived the damnedest things; the examples are both many and inspiring. The ones I remember:

• Poon Lim, a mechanic on a ship torpedoed in 1942, who survived for over four months on a life raft. Completely impossible, of course.
• After the 1999 Turkish earthquakes, people - as in, groups of people - were being pulled alive from the rubble over four days later.
• The Shackelton Expedition, which stayed alive for two years on the Antarctic ice, and then on two improbably successful over-ocean voyages in lifeboats

I could go on - and on.

The lesson? The authorities care less about life than process. Ignore them. Keep digging.

Perspective

Perspective - The media - and most left bloggers - have less sense of historical perspective than my 12 year old daughter does.

Victor Davis Hanson is here to provide it.

Going into the heart of Mesopotamia, American troops passed Iraqi palaces with historic and often ominous names: Cunaxa, whence Xenophon’s 10,000 began their arduous journey home; Gau gamela, where Alexander devastated the Persian imperial army; and, not far away in southeastern Turkey, Carrhae, where the Roman triumvir Crassus lost his 45,000-man army and his own head. Mesopotamia has long been a very dangerous place for Westerners. By any historical measure other than our own, it is nothing short of preposterous that, in less than a year’s time, American troops would plunge into such a cauldron, topple the world’s worst dictator, and then undertake to introduce the rudiments of a liberal society in the center of the ancient Islamic caliphate—all at a cost of a little over 400 lives.

Now, however, after one of the most miraculous victories in military history, we demand an almost instantaneous peace followed by the emergence of a sort of Iraqi Continental Congress. We demand the head of Saddam Hussein, forgetting that Adolf Eichmann disappeared for years in the post-Nazi archipelago abroad, and that neither Ratko Mladic nor Radovan Karadzic has yet been scooped from the swamp of the Balkans. Our journalists describe the chaos besetting a society allegedly traumatized by American war that in reality is struggling with the legacy of its own destructive past. In Iraq we are not trying to rebuild the equivalent of a flattened Hamburg or a Tokyo among the equivalents of shell-shocked and thoroughly confused Germans or Japanese. We are attempting something much more challenging: to impose a consensual system upon spared peoples, who in liberation did far more to destroy their own country (the losses to pillaging ran to about $12 billion) than we did in either the war or the ensuing occupation.

"But if the Iraqis really wanted to be "liberated", respond the Dowd/Ivins/Hesiod crowd, "this "peace" would be easier!".

Not so:

MOST OF the Baathists among our current enemies in Iraq chose to flee rather than stand and fight. The homes of Saddam’s henchmen were not all bombed. Their friends were not killed. Their pride was only temporarily lost—to be regained, evidently, upon their discovery that it is easier and safer to murder an American who is building a school and operating under strict rules of engagement than to take on Abrams tanks barreling into Baghdad under a sky of F-16’s.

Such are a few of the ironies entailed in our stunning military success, even if overlooked in analyses of the recent turmoil. And there are still more. Hard as it may be to accept, a rocky peace may well be the result of a spectacularly rapid victory. Imagine our war instead as a year-and-a-half continuum of active combat, stretching from the late-March 2003 invasion until the scheduled assumption of power of the Iraqi provisional government this coming July. Now suppose that over the course of this time frame, about 5,000 of Saddam’s hardcore killers had either to be killed, captured, or routed from the country if there were ever to be any chance for real peace to emerge. Somehow, under conditions of full-scale combat, one suspects the job would have been much easier.

As always, a must-read.

(Via Powerline)

Feeling a Bit Defensive, Are We?

Barbra Streisand burns up "valuable" space on Page One of her online screed site website - a place where most artists hawk their wares, like her new album of interminable formulaic ballads recycled from forty years of movies I generally hated songs from movies, to take a swipe at Matt Drudge:

NARAS ISSUES STATEMENT VERIFYING STREISAND GRAMMY NOMINATION FOR "THE MOVIE ALBUM" AND REFUTING MATT DRUDGE AND CINDY ADAMS LIES

(Note: articles were run by columnists Matt Drudge [the Drudge Report] and Cindy Adams [the New York Post] stating that the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences was considering disqualifying the Grammy nomination of Barbra Streisand's "The Movie Album," the articles asserting it was released too late. Adams flat-out claimed that such disqualification had taken place. There was, of course, no truth to their stories, and their charges were refuted by the National Association of Recording Sciences, which issued the following statement:)

"We are diligent about protecting the integrity of our process, especially prior to announcing nominations. According to our records, all of this year's nominations have met the necessary criteria, and we wish all of our nominees the best of luck."

Well.

Glad we got that straightened out, aren't we?

The album's been out that long, and I still haven't bought it?

Go figure.

Be Alarmed

Found on Infinite Monkeys today - VH1 will be reuniting The Alarm, the third-best British band of the eighties.

I'm happier already. That's enough to counterbalance the concomitant reunions of Kajagoogoo and Flock of Seagulls (Berlin will also put in an appearance - they were a fairly awful band, but "The Metro" was a cool enough song that I forgive them. Lileks' notes about Flock's place in the roots of Techno are noted in advance...)

And we'll go marching on...

Someone Call the ACLU

I live in Saint Paul, and I genuinely love the place It's a major city with a small-town feel - one wag called it "Fifteen small towns with one mayor", and he's not far off. While Minneapolis is largely a bunch of bedroom neighborhoods built around a Downtown, Uptown, Dinkytown (the U) and increasingly Northeast, the real action in Saint Paul is in the neighborhoods.

Despite the city's relentless DFL slant, we have some genuinely good city services: the best urban fire department in the US, and an excellent police department as well.

This morning's Strib tells the story of the SPPD's "God Squad", a group of inner-city ministers that the police call upon to help mediate problems.

The ministers walk the streets, attend high school events and talk to everyone from gangbangers to school administrators looking for ways to stem or prevent violence.

The ministers aren't out proselytizing or trying to fill pews on Sunday mornings. They say they're trying to keep volatile situations from turning deadly on Saturday nights.

"We're not trying to 'save' folks," said the Rev. Devin Miller, who helped start the group. "We're trying to save folks."

Harrington and other police officials credit the God Squad with helping to keep St. Paul one of the safest cities in the country by talking to suspects, victims, relatives and residents on behalf of police.

"There are times when the police will call us out and say, 'Why don't you guys handle this,' " said the Rev. Divar Kemp of the Greater Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church on Dale Street in the Summit-University neighborhood.

Harrington [SPPD Commander John Harrington] thinks the group is unique because police call them, and because ministers coordinate with police on ways to keep the peace. The relationship became more formal in November when the police gave the ministers dark blue windbreakers (called "raid jackets") with "God Squad" written on them.

Mixing church and state! Let slip the dogs of political correctness!

How long do you suppose it's going to be?

Open Letter to E-Democracy -

Open Letter to E-Democracy - If you're not interested in the inner workings of a petty squabble between a hack writer and a faded email discussion group, then move on to the next post.

In about 1995, brand new to the Internet, I got involved with "Minnesota Politics", and email discusson group run by "E-Democracy," a local non-profit dedicated to furthering democracy via the internet.

For a few years, it was very interesting. Some actual politicians read the list. You could write something and feel (probably wrongly, but still) that you were making some sort of impact. In those pre-blogger days, it was a forum for a lot of would-be pundits. The lists were moderated - and blessed with some wonderful moderators.

Today, the MN-Politics lists are a few steps above Indymedia or Democratic Underground - which is damnation by faint praise. They are playgrounds for the local Greens and DFLers. Not that that's a problem; there's something indisputably fun about being an underdog minority, on the mailing list as in a state. However, it doesn't take long to notice that conservative voices are actively squelched.

So I resigned:

Since program asked why I'm unsubbing from MN-Politics, here you go.

I'm unsubscribing because MN-Politics has become a completely irrelevant exercise, because [longtime list manager] Terrell Brown runs it in a completely, utterly biased manner (reinforced by the biases of its founders), and because it's not even a faint shadow of its former self. Brown suspended me for six months last September for making three posts in a day, and for daring to respond to one of [a local DFL poobah's] insults. We conservatives better not get uppity, y'see.

There was a time when I felt that participating in MN-Pol was a useful pursuit. I learned things, I was introduced to new people, it helped me evolve in understanding politics in Minnesota. That ended long ago. Today, it's just another rantserve.

A thoroughly left-of-center rantserve, as it happens. Not that it was any different, ever - but it doesn't take a statistical [name of list statistician removed] to observe that EVERY right-of-center voice on these lists finds themselves suspended in short order.

Back when I cared about trying to "improve" e-democracy, I compiled a list that tended to show the unequal treatment received by conservatives; the likes of [Shoreview area pundit and former representative famous for condescending insults] and [St. Paul DFL/Green activist famous for spittle-flecked ranting] insulted and ranted and violated rules all over the place and yet posted merrily away (especially [Mr. Shoreview], whom Terrell Brown allowed to get away with years of personal, degrading insults vastly worse than those for which he documentably disciplined conservative voices). Interested in getting involved wiht E-Democracy at the time, I asked to see E-Demoracy's "disciplinary" records - and received a threat from one of E-Democracy's founders to unilaterally ban me from all E-Democracy activity forever if I got uppity again.

It was about then that I realized a couple of things:

1) E-Democracy isn't about democracy. It's about a few people feeling like they're doing something.

2) MN-Politics is irrelevant - even Phyllis Kahn doesn't participate anymore, and that's saying something. And it's irrelevant for a reason; it's become, after four-five years of Terrell Brown's hack mismanagement, a playground for people who...agree with or have something to offer Terrell Brown!

Blogs are the future of grass-roots political communication. They are decentralized, "do it yourself", inherently democratic. They reward merit - if you're good, people will come. If you spew dreck or bore people stiff, people who don't like boring dreck will stay away in droves. And they work - in the last year, compare the number of articles in the major media about the political and media impact of blogs with that of the email issues listserve. Blogs are inherently rewarding - and I have gotten more genuine feedback from real politicians and media figures from a year on my blog than I did from seven years on E-Democracy. Being as they're decentralized and unregulated, I'm sure they don't fulfill the hive instinct of those who prefer the comfort of a moderated email list - but they matter, which is more than MN-Pol can say these days.

I contributed a lot to MNPol over the years. I wanted to contribute more - time, talent, effort. I was treated like shit. It's offensive. And it's the sort of thing that will render MNPol - and probably the rest of E-Democracy, over time, as the "good" volunteers, like [the moderators of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul discussion lists, which are still excellent], get burned out and are replaced with the likes of Brown - equally irrelevant.

Good luck, and happy new year.

Mitchell Berg

Mitch unleashes the sour grapes? Sure, I'll cop to it.

The points, to the extent that there are any, are in the second to the last graf; when was the last time anyone wrote a news article about political email listservers? Conservatives tend to dominate the blogosphere, while moderated exercises in the collection of groupthink like Indymedia, Democratic Underground and MN-Politics either are lefty activities from the beginning, or morph into them over time.

I used to write an awful lot at MN-Pol - look through the various archives. I was probably the one conservative who managed not to get suspended the longest. I've watched it morph from a fairly interesting, left-leaning but modestly ecumenical effort with some integrity into a snide little rantserve for local DFLers and Greens. Which is fine - they need their place to play - apparently someplace safe from all dissent and real discussion.

But I'm having a lot more fun here.

Nothing Happens. Dean and Democrat Underground Bereft

New Years, under tight security, came in like a lamb.

Powerline has film.

I'll Take Rice With That

The Captain reaches the same conclusion I did a while ago; Condi Rice need to be on the ticket in '04, or at least before '08.

Read the Captain's reasoning. It's different than mine - that it'd gut the Democrats' traditional social monopoly - and a dadburn good idea.

Where's the Beef?

Hewitt sounded off yesterday (scroll to is - his hyperlinks seem to be hosed) with an inspired defense of Jerry Falwell against Howard Dean. Read it - I share Hugh's reservations about Falwells' politicization of his church, and some of his gaffes are truly cringe-inducing, but Hewitt makes observations about Falwell the Minister that are not only dead-on - but are the sort of thing that the GOP needs to remember.

To wit:

"Dean is becoming a crank before our eyes. Democrats must recognize that personal attacks like the one on Falwell are a signal of things to come, and that nominating Dean will assure a steady diet of apologies and clarifications. They may nominate him anyway, but Dean's internal anger is on display, and it is a disqualifying character flaw in a candidate for the presidency.
But since Dean has attacked Falwell as a Pharisee, that makes it legit to ask to see Dean's own records of charitable giving and personal service to the poor and the sick --and bike path advocacy and doctors' hours for which he was paid don't count. Perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised by the size of Dr. Dean's tithes and offerings and his uncompensated dedication to the imprisoned and the orphaned. But it is possible that Dean's attack on Falwell, and through him all ministers and even lay evangelicals who have been active in politics, will have set in motion some questions Dr. Dean doesn't want to answer."

Check it out - even if you're not a fundie, this is important stuff.

2003 Wrapup

So - the war did NOT take six months.

The Battle of Baghdad didn't turn into Stalingrad.

Lack of UN support didn't render the liberation untenable.

Hussein didn't nuke or gas Israel when he was up against the wall (hee hee. Remember when that was the left's big bleat?)

Tens of thousands of Iraqis did not die.

The "Looting of Iraq's history" turned out to be about $500 worth of post-Babylonian equivelents of Happy Meal toys. Most of it took place before US troops were on the scene, at either the museum or the Ministry of Oil.

The entire Sunni Triangle didn't rise in revolt after the war ended.

The Shiites didn't rise en masse to install a pro-Iranian shadow government in the South.

The "Arab Street" didn't rise in anger. They did not troop to the nearest Al Quaeda recruiting office, raise the right arm, turn their head and cough, and ship out for the nearest AQ training camp. Many of those that did are currently pushing up Lilies of the Valley in Iraq, or hiding in mud huts fingering their bombs and awaiting same.

The Turks didn't invade the Kurdish sector.

The deposal of Hussein didn't set the Middle East afire. Quite the opposite - except for the Intifahda, some wars around the world have toned down or ended.

"Yellowcakes" wasn't a Bush lie after all.

Halliburton really isn't profiteering after all. Guess the NYT makes mistakes too, huh?

So here's the question: Is the left making any claims about Iraq that they actually think will stick?

Let us know. That's what the comments are for. Feel free.

Drastic Oversight

Drastic Oversight - In the craziness of the last two months, I notice some of my blog housekeeping has gone undone.

For starters, I see that I haven't added Captain's Quarters into my Northern Alliance Blogroll yet. Great stuff. Read it daily - as I do.

I also see that the Commissioner has inducted Spitbull to the Northern Alliance. OK. They're in!

Although - and I beg the indulgence of my fellow NAOB nabobs - I have to ask why Jay Reding, one of the more insightful Minnesota conservative bloggers, holding down our southwestern border in Mankato, hasn't been given the keys to the NAOB washroom yet? The guy is "Powerline Junior".

Give it a thought, OK, fellas?

First!

Went to Landmark Square with the kids for the street-level fireworks - a new one on me.

I'll probably post some pictures tomorrow. Or today.

Happy New Year!