Shot In The Dark

Blogger's Block

Blogger's Block - This server yakk came at a good time, actually. I was suffering a bit of writer's block. The three days off was actually just what the doctor ordered.

And when I'm back on the air, suddenly, like chum to the sharks, a Nick Coleman column, and a really stupid one at that.

It's like Christmas in March!

Nick Coleman is Losing It

Nick Coleman is Losing It - Coleman on - what else? - the bus strike:

Bob Wright is a 65-year-old believing Christian and political independent who works a security job at the Pillsbury Center and harbors no delusions about the bus strike ending anytime soon. He'll get by -- he's been driving his car from his home in north Minneapolis since the strike began. But when he saw me wandering through the Pillsbury Center, looking for workers who ride the bus, he asked me to sit down because he had something he wanted to say:

This bus strike isn't very Christian.

Nick Coleman is apparently wandering the skyways, trolling for stories with a journalistic gillnet.

And when Bob Wright, Christian Security Guard, says the strike is "not very Christian", what does he mean? That the strikers should get drop their absurd, hideously expensive demands for fear for their mortal souls?

"Our governor always talks about how everyone's got to 'share the pain,' " Wright said while members of the transit union rallied across from his building, in front of the Hennepin County Government Center. "But it's people without means and people of color who are feeling the pain on this strike.

It's about this point that words fail me.

"People without means and people of color..."? All "people of color" are poor?

"What is up with our good conservative Christian friends? Where is their empathy? 'That which you do for the least of these, you do unto me.' Those are the clear words of Christ. So where the hell is the empathy? And where the hell is the governor?"

Good questions, Mr. Wright.

But you won't get the answers from Nick Coleman.

The Governor is running a state. He's not involved in labor negotiations.

And lest the casual Coleman reader not remember, the governor didn't prompt the strike. It was the drivers of the precious buses, wanting a vastly-more-than-market pay increase and a lifetime entitlement to health care at next to no cost to themselves.

It's in the next paragraph that we see part of the problem:

For four weeks, people who can't afford to lose their job have walked to work. For four weeks, Minneapolis and St. Paul have looked like backwater burgs with no public transportation and no reason to visit.

DAD: "Mavis, come on! We're late! I don't wanna miss one bus-riding minute when we're in Minneapolis!"

MAVIS: "Sorry, Roger. I was just packing extra tokens for the kids."

KIDS: "MET RO TRANSIT! MET RO TRANSIT!"

And, by the way, Nick: If we're "backwater burgs" now, then when the buses are back, we'll be a backwater burg with buses.

Fargo has buses.

I do not know whether the union has the moral high ground, and it doesn't matter. Hashing out a new contract between the union and the Metropolitan Council is not my job. It is the governor's job.

It's in this next stretch that I'm confident you'll agree that the title for this post isn't remotely hyperbolic:

Governors have a responsibility to maintain public services without inflicting hardship on the citizens or hacking away at the quality of life. No one said the job is easy -- the issues in the transit strike are thorny. But they are not impossible. Washing his hands of the strike is not acceptable. So far, though, Pawlenty has shown indifference to the needs of 75,000 daily riders. It makes me pine for the glory days of Gov. Arne Carlson.

Carlson, a Republican like Pawlenty, ended a 1995 bus strike by intervening with both feet after only two weeks, jawboning the union, threatening to replace the buses with a jury-rigged system run by the National Guard and using his office to help get negotiations past a crucial hump. Some of his ploys could have backfired badly (the Teamsters threatened to shut down the state if the National Guard started running buses). But Carlson called for binding arbitration (Pawlenty has refused it), criticized transit managers and adopted a non-ideological approach (he even agreed with some union demands) that brought the strike to an end.

Where, oh Lord where, to start with this lunacy?

• Nick Coleman wants the governor to circumvent the negotiation process by calling out the military - a military that is currently working very hard (direly overstretched as it is) trying to do it's job.
• He wants Pawlenty to jam everyone into court to settle things in a way that both guarantees another strike (which would have the benefit to Coleman of guaranteeing him more material) and preserves our present hideously expensive ridiculously inefficient transit system. Why does Mr. Coleman presume we're having another strike so fast, but for Arne Carlson's idiocy nine years ago?
• Arne Carlson, non-ideological? No, Nick - Arne Carlson was a DFLer who wandered into the wrong caucus sometime in the early sixties, and never bothered to fix it. He was no less ideological than you are.

He goes on.

Hours before the strike began, Pawlenty came down from the mountain and was spotted in the general vicinity of last-ditch negotiations that came close to averting the strike. Although he didn't sit in on the talks, he sounded gubernatorial for a minute:

"We are not going to give up," he said. "We are going to find a way to get this resolved as quickly as we can."

Then he went back to proposing billions for stadiums. It is 28 days later. What happened to "quickly?"

You're right, Nick.

He should have hired Pinkertons to bash striker heads in - or Peter Bell's head, perhaps.

Pawlenty has done little publicly to end a strike that has robbed the poor and the lame of economic transportation, not to mention deprived a major metropolitan area of a hallmark of civilization: reliable public transportation. If anything, he has made the strike more difficult to resolve by crying crocodile tears for those who need the bus and dipping into the strike windfall -- money the state is saving by not operating buses -- and dispensing a few drachmas, like crumbs off a royal robe, to a few social service agencies to help get their clients around by car or cab.

So let me get this straight: Arne Carlson was "gubernatorial" for threatening to spend millions of dollars and disrupting thousands of lives and livelihoods by threatening to call out the Guard to drive people to work, but Pawlenty is cruel and uncaring for spending a small amount to help organizations whose mission this actually is to do the job?

Indeed: Perhaps this is the real answer to the transit problem in the Twin Cities - shelling out a pittance to innumerable small contractors in cars and vans to haul people from where they are to where they need to go. I can guarantee you this - a system like this would feed the need, never grow sclerotic, and never strike.

Carlson opened the governor's residence for marathon negotiations in the strike of 1995, and drove in from his lake home in Forest Lake to make sure that they got the job done. So far, Pawlenty has remained above the battle. Maybe he thinks he is governor of South Dakota instead of Minnesota.

Maybe South Dakotans have a better sense of how to deal with these things than either Arne Carlson or Nick Coleman.

I Knew It!

I Knew It! - On last weekend's Northern Alliance Radio Network, I predicted that "all-news" station WMNN would be the Twin Cities' outlet for FrankenNet "Air America", the new liberal talk network. The signs were there - low ratings, no power, and they were running a show, "Higher Ground", on mid-days featuring the heart-rendingly lovely but politically hopeless Colleen Kruse.

Via Steve Gigl, I see I was right.

Sort of:

"Al Franken's new show on the liberal Air America radio network has effected a last-minute landing at Minneapolis' WMNN-AM 1330 just in time for its national debut tomorrow.
WMNN station manager Scott Murray confirmed that the new show, 'The O'Franken Factor,'' will air from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow 'if we can pull things together from a technological standpoint.''

Read: If we can get this done with minimal work.

But wait - did he say just Franken's show?

The new liberal talk show will feature the St. Louis Park native and former Minnesota Public Radio 'Midmorning'' show host Katherine Lanpher.
None of Air America's other programs, one of them featuring former Twin Cities comedian Lizz Winstead, will be carried by WMNN. Murray confirmed that the arrangment will be only temporary...Starboard plans to have new programming on the air by late May or early June.

So in other words, the Northern Alliance has already outlived them!

As John Kerry would say, "Braaaaang Ut Awwwwwwwwwnnn".

So Here We Are

So Here We Are - Long story, but here I am. New domain, new ISP.

Now that I have everything moved, of course...I have nothing written!

More later today.

Just Walk Away

Just Walk Away - The Clarke story is sinking faster than Michael Jackson's chart vitality. As I mentioned on the Northern Alliance show last Saturday, now that the Republicans on the 9/11 panel have cut the guts out of Clarke's assertions, the media is backing away - or, more accurately, changing the subject.

David Adesnik at Oxblog reports that the WaPo is flip-flopping on the Clarke story. In the meantime, the Star/Tribune is de-emphasizing Clarke and re-casting the story as just another election-year squabble, in Washington correspondent James Rosen's tellingly-titled "Cease-fire ends; blame game starts".

Huh-wha? "Cease-fire" "ends"? When was it a cease fire? And does anyone remember why it ended? Will the Strib, which carps endlessly about the "death of civility" in American politics, deign to note that it was the Democrats who decided to turn the 9/11 commission into a political circus by arranging the stage-managed interview in last week's edition of "Sixty Minutes?"

For 30 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Republicans and Democrats honored an implicit agreement to avoid casting blame.

Now, with the publication of former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke's incendiary book and a fierce counterattack by top White House officials and the Senate Republican leader, the cease-fire is off.

For a week, Americans heard a barrage of accusations and countercharges as Clarke and the nation's highest military and diplomatic policymakers over the past 12 years gave media interviews or testified before the national commission investigating the 2001 attacks.

When all the hours of debate had ended, the exchanges could be distilled to a single politically explosive question:

Who is more responsible for the worst attacks ever on the American homeland -- Bill Clinton or George W. Bush?

And with that, the Strib tries to change the subject of the debate.

Because the real politically-explosive question is "Which party -- Bill Clinton or George W. Bush -- did more to prevent another such attack from ever happening again? And which candidate -- Bush or Kerry -- is likely to do more in the future?"

But from where I sit, the second question is by any rational measure very, very easy to answer.

Monday Night

Monday Night - Testing Again

Massive Server Problems - If

Massive Server Problems - If you're reading this...you're lucky.

The site was interrupted for a long time yesterday, and continues to suffer intermittent outages. Usually Saturdays see a solid 300+ people visiting Shot In The Dark - yesterday was around 100.

Will investigate.

Lazy, or Biased?

Lazy, or Biased? - The Strib ran a story this morning in regard to the Clarke fiasco.

They cite a phone interview with a Tom Maertens of Mankato - a long-timer in the foreign service and National Security office - saying he "broadly agrees with Clarke".

They also tried to set up his bona fides as a impartial observer of the whole situation:

Maertens, who says he has voted for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, broadly agrees with Clarke. The two worked together but were not close friends. While Clarke prepared to testify Wednesday, Maertens headed to Lanesboro, Minn., for some trout fishing...

Just a good ol' Minnesota boy, off to do some fishin'. Not really a partisan.

But while the Strib managed to relate the details of Mr. Maertens' love of fishing, they didn't bother to tell you that Maertens has a bit of background in banging on the Administration, as we see in this article published on left-wing opinion site CommonDreams.org:

We Were Led to War Under False Pretenses
by Tom Maertens

A year after the invasion of Iraq, it's now clear we were led into war under false pretenses. Contrary to the Bush administration's claims, Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and Saddam was not involved in 9/11 or tied to al-Qaida.

We have learned instead that the whole thing was a setup: The Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq from the day it took office, according to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

His CommonDreams article ends with this:

the invasion is fraught with ironies: North Korea, Iran and Libya — unlike Iraq — actually were developing nuclear weapons. And the worst proliferator of nuclear technology was not Iraq but the friendly government of Pakistan.

There are many chickens that will come home to roost, most of them long after George W. Bush has vacated the White House. Unfortunately, it is the American people who will be stuck with the droppings.

The article appeared all over the place, naturally.

It can hardly be said that Maertens is the unbiased bucolic that the Strib portrays.

Advice

Advice - Mickey Kaus has advice for the President:

"P.S.: I was seated next to two soldiers who'd returned injured from Iraq and were being treated at Walter Reed hospital. If I'd known Bush's joke was going to be a major object of puffed-up outrage, I would have monitored their reactions closely. But I didn't. They certainly didn't register any audible displeasure. ...
P.P.S.: The soldier sitting closest to me clearly liked Bush, perhaps because he had just seen the president, in person, for the third time. Apparently, Bush pays regular visits to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed. Did you know that? I didn't. Admittedly, it's easier to visit the wounded than to go to funerals, which Bush has been accused of not doing enough of. Still ...

The politics behind the visits to Walter Reed are interesting. They don't make the media - but I'm thinking they're great "viral marketing" (as it were) - keeping relations with the Red States strong, but using his relationship with the military to bolster his share of the minority vote.

That's how I read it, anyway.

What do you think?

Outrage?

Outrage? - This email was forwarded to me by Colonel Fingers (congrats!), after a roundabout journey from Kirkuk Airbase in Iraq:

All outside US flags need to come down per CENTAF guidance. Col Gibson is taking this back to CENTAF. Inside flags are good, Chief [deleted]

We are allowed to put the flag up for special days or events, but we can't have it up all the time implying that we are occupying Iraq. Chief [deleted]

In the email I received, it drew this response:

Sir, When we carry the bodies of our fallen men and women to the aircraft for their final flight home, can we still drape the coffins with our flag, or will that still offend the people that we are dying for so they can be liberated.

Amazing.

Have a Good Time... -

Have a Good Time... - I'm deliriously happy to say that the new CD by Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers - the latest incarnation of the Iron City Houserockers, a band to whom I produced this tribute website, is the best thing they've done since the original incarnation of the band broke up 20 years ago.

The original Iron City Houserockers remain the best band you've never heard. Hopefully we can fix that in the next few months.

Turf War

Turf War - Twin Cities black ministers push back at the comparison between gay marriage and the civil rights moveement:

"There's no parallel between the African-American struggle to win civil rights and the campaign for gay marriage, said a group of Twin Cities black religious leaders that supports a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
'Our marriage laws do not deny access to any individual the right to marriage, unlike the days of segregation when African-Americans were systematically excluded from full participation in society,' said the Rev. Bob Battle, pastor of Berean Church in St. Paul and former chairman of the city's human-rights commission.

I like the way the Strib reinforces his bona fides.

But I digress:

The five leaders, who said they were representing themselves, responded Thursday to claims made by some gay-marriage advocates that denial of marital rights to same-sex couples is comparable to racial discrimination.

Not so, they said.

Sam Nero, pastor of the Church of New Life Christian Ministries in Minneapolis, said he was denied rights while growing up in Louisiana. 'My civil rights were violated because of my skin color, not because of my lifestyle. ... It doesn't match. It's not the same. It doesn't come close,' he said.

Remember this question. I'll come back to it in a bit.

Battle said that the laws that once banned interracial marriage unfairly segregated people but didn't redefine marriage as gay advocates want to do.

The gay-marriage debate has divided African-Americans and religious leaders as it has other groups.
Civil rights leaders Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., each have said each have said gay marriage is a civil-rights issue and back efforts to legalize it. Sixty black activists and religious leaders meeting in Los Angeles last week announced support for gay marriage.

Yet a national survey conducted last summer by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 64 percent of black respondents opposed gay marriage...

...Mahmoud El-Kati, a civil-rights activist and former professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, said he's still figuring out his position on the issue. One thing he's sure of, though, he said: Civil rights and gay rights are not analogous.

"People struggling for their dignity as human beings is quite different from a question that's essentially private. ... It's obvious that many gay people enjoyed rights that I couldn't enjoy," said El-Kati, who is black.

He added that it's not surprising that many black congregations oppose same-sex marriage. He said he thinks black Christians generally are conservative and base their beliefs on the Bible.

"I think the black community by and large has been very tolerant of gayness in their churches, but because they don't have the vocabulary, they just don't deal with it," he said.

Battle said he believes "100 percent" of the 43 Minnesota Church of God in Christ congregations he oversees, as chairman of the elders committee, oppose same-sex marriage.

So 2/3 of Afro-American churchgoers oppose gay rights. As we say above, many see it as a lifestyle issue rather than a genetic or adaptational one - which flies in the face of the current party line on homosexuality.

Question: Let's do the math. In the Democrat Party nationwide, the gay vote is non-trivial; the Afro-American vote is huge. Here in Minnesota, the gay vote is big - and due to the MNDFL's caucusing system that guarantees every significant special interest a disproportionate voice in party goings-on, they're even more powerful than nationwide. This is a line-in-the-sand issue for the gay faction in the DFL, and a big one for the Afro-American side as well. What does this mean for the DFL?

Question 2: Why do Afro-Americans stay with the Democrats, especially the DFL? There are three issues with which black Minnesotans seem to differ with the DFL, especially if they're middle-class and have families; education (especially in the city), crime, and now gay marriage. Add in some issues where black middle-class Minnesotans (and Hispanics and Asians) have serious interests - like economic development, taxes and small business issues - and you have to wonder what it is besides force of habit that keeps them with the DFL. I'm seeing more and more Afro-Americans at the GOP caucuses and events lately, so there's something to it...

Whoah

Whoah - This weekend's Northern Alliance Radio Network show is going to be a barnburner.

Why I'm Not A Libertarian

Why I'm Not A Libertarian - Michael Medved calls Libertarians "Losertarians".

Medved's wrong.

Oh, not entirely. Medved is rarely completely wrong about mch of anything. But on this
issue, Medved paints with an uncharacteristically broad, clumsy brush.

Not enough people are concerned with civil liberties - or, to be more accurate, our broad range of civil liberties. Oh, on one level, a lot of people are concerned, it's true. But much of that concern is heat without light, as a whole wave of summer civil libertarians, the "Ashcroft Libertarians", have debouched like hounds chasing the beer concessionaire instead of the fox, knotted up about the "civil liberties" of foreign terrorists captured on the battlefield, and baying at the moon over further erosions of liberties first gutted under Bill Clinton - for whom most Ashcroft Libertarians voted. The real role of the Libertarian party - as the nation's nagging Jeffersonian conscience - is more important than ever.

I touched on the basic reasons that I left the GOP and joined the Libertarian party the other day in this space. I left the Republicans in or around 1992, angry at the GOP's caving in on taxes and gun control. I was convinced I'd made the right choice in the early years - as the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 Counterterrorism Bill and the eternal War On Drugs wrought real havoc on genuine liberties. I watched Congress knuckle under and ban a range of guns that looked scary, and vote to allow property forfeiture without trial, and a range of wiretaps and surveillance and smash-and-grab searches and police deception that'd make the Ashcroft Libertarians blanche with horror, if they stopped howling at Ashcroft long enough to pay attention.

I was as active a Libertarian as my schedule allowed - which meant then as today "sporadically". But I ended up running for office twice - in 1996 for US House against Bruce Vento (I lost) and in 1998 for State Treasurer. I wasn't a "true believer", but I was certainly a believer.

While I was in the Libertarian Party, I noticed that it seemed to draw three basic types of people:

People who found the groupthink of the left too stifling, or who felt the left had abandoned its one-time focus on liberty. They tended (broadly) to be former hippies, or seem like them.
1. People who were outraged enough about one or two issues to have left one party or another (usually the Republicans).
2. Purists - people with absolutist, rigid beliefs about civil liberties; the kind of people who regretted the Federalists' influence in ditching the Articles of Confederation, who felt the North was the big bad brother in the Civil War (while furiously allowing that slavery was both grossly immoral and, simultaneously, curable by market forces). The kind of people I eventually characterized as "having their feet firmly planted in the clouds".

I was a #2, with a touch of #3. I admired the #3s.

It was good. I learned a lot. And in 1998, I ran for State Treasurer, and won [1].

And while my time in the Libertarians was good, two realizations crept up on me, starting as little germs of doubt and growing into reasons for my return to the GOP in 1999.

First - they were purists. There's nothing wrong with purism - Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton were purists. Purism is the privilege of the unchecked idealist. But not only are most people pragmatists, but most problems do not lend themselves to being solved by absolutist, purist means.

Second - views on defense started my exit from the Democrat party in the early eighties. It was, if anything, more important with the Libertarians. The Libertarian dogma ranges from the suicidal (that we should "Defend our borders" and nothing more) to the vacuously frivolous (the military should be privatized). It was telling that even Jefferson, the patron saint of Libertarianism, abandoned traditional libertarian isolationism when faced with a foreign threat (the Barbary pirate crisis of 1803), when he abandoned his traditionally libetarian beliefs to declare he'd spend "millions for defense but not a penny for tribute".

So I left. I went back to the Republican Party. When I caucus, I sit on the side of the meetings with the other "libertarian Republicans", people who supported Jack Kemp and don't really care what gays do and whose feelings about abortion vary but whose beliefs about civil liberty don't. It can be uncomforable, as King Banaian described in sCSU Scholars yesterday:

My own Siddhartha journey began when I announced at a caucus my support for Jack Kemp and the first question asked was "Where does he stand on abortion?" I said I didn't know, and that whatever it was would not change my mind about supporting him. Nobody spoke to me the rest of the night.

I laughed when I read that. I've faced the same audience, the one that sits on the other side of the room, the ones that are there because they oppose abortion and, in many cases, no other. God bless 'em - the party needs everyone it can get - but the interrogation they give you when you're running for even the pettiest party office always starts with "what are your views on abortion" and ends with "But do you really Really REALLY oppose abortion?"

Back to the original point; Medved's wrong. The Libertarians may never win a significant office outside of Montana or Alaska, but they have had one vital function; they've served as the nagging libertarian conscience of the right. As the Greens drag the Democrats to the left for fear of losing 3% of their number to the ideological purists, so do the Libertarians force the GOP to stay as true as it does on civil liberties. I think it's important that right after the Libertarian Party USA hit its peak in terms of national influence and mindshare - the early nineties - the GOP adopted its most libertarian approach in decades (the 1994 campaigns borrowed heavily from Libertarian themes), to keep the 1-2% of Republicans that might defect to the Libertarian Party in the fold.

I'm still a Republican. I'll always be one. But in the GOP meetings, I wave the figurative Libertarian flag and do my bit to nag the rest of the caucus to focus on the things that matter - freedom being the big one - and leave the little things to the people.

Where they belong, as much as it pains some of us.

[1] Not in the sense that I actually spent four years as state treasurer or anything. My only

platform point was "Abolish the useless office of State Treasurer". There was also a ballot

initiative that year to do exactly that. While I got 37,000 votes , the ballot initiative passed 2-1. The people proved they didn't need any stinkin' politician to abolish their offices; you can't get more libertarian than that. I declared a moral victory.

Allies

Allies - Trent Telenko writes a column about the US' decisive advantage in military communications and what it means.

It's a piece you need to read on many levels. But since we spend so much time dealing with the la-la-land predictions of of John "Fop and Jaw" Kerry and his minions' claims that the US needs to integrate its defenses with our allies, I thought this bit, quoting Tom Roberts, was particularly on-target:

"Non US forces don't even have digital communications for the most part. In many cases the Coalition forces have to be lent commo gear so that their HQs can talk with US forces. This creates a dichotomous pace of operations in any NATO command as well. Without heavy US liaison elements, the NATO forces don't know what is going on. To a certain extent the Canadian friendly fire deaths by Kandahar two years ago were due to such issues (along with two US pilot's very poor judgments), but you might notice that when US forces swing into an offensive situation either allies get totally integrated into the US force structure (like the Canadian snipers were at Tora Bora or the Aussie SAS is with us Spec Forces) or they get totally out of the way."

This is a point the left never, ever gets; even if the French and Germans were inclined to support us in liberating Iraq (they weren't) and if the bulk of their militaries were field-worthy (other than their special forces and elite troops like Airborne, Marines and Foreign Legion, they are not), neither their troops nor those of any of our other allies are capable of fighting - really engaging the enemy - alongside ours.

Like Howard Dean's phantom "135,000 moderate moslem troops", the capacity for our allies to fight alongside us - to cooperate in any militarily meaningful way - is a chimera, a bedtime story the left tells people to try to convince people that it is remotely competent to comment on defense issues.

People need to know better.

"In The Sights"

"In The Sights" - The left is now in a tizzy about the footage indicating that, sometime before 9/11 but after Bush's inauguration, a Predator drone allegedly had Bin Laden spotted.

Questions:

1. In those pre-9/11 days, how do you think a government assassination of a foreigner - not even a foreign leader - would have gone down? That's hard enough for our government to do even i wartime; in the opening days of the war in Afghanistan, a Predator had Mullah Omar dialled in, and we couldn't get the trigger pulled.
2. Everyone's assuming the Predator was armed. To the best of my knowledge (stop me if you know I'm wrong), Predators were only armed (with a pair of Hellfire missiles) on operational missions after the war started. Would the Predator that saw (allegedly) Bin Laden have been able to shoot at all? Remember - a Predator that was forced down, or had mechanical problems, over a foreign country at all would have been a diplomatic disaster (and you know how the left loves diplomacy, right?) Now - if the Predator were armed with with live missiles - see where this is going?

The Democrats are trying their damnedest to paint Bush as soft on terror. I don't know whether to laugh or...laugh harder, I guess.

Writer's Blog

Writer's Blog - Lileks explains it this way:

This being a column night – and it’s hard going, believe me; the well has been bone dry and I’ve my brain has been full of salted slugs all week – I have little to offer here, but as we now know that's the Wednesday Curse.

For me, it's just the cumulative effects of a new (huge, difficult but rewarding) project, lots of personal subtext, and a few weeks not not-early-enough sleep catching up with me.

But there's so much going on! I'll post more later...

Old and In The Way

Old and In The Way - The City Pages' Steve Perry bounces back and forth between paranoia and perception in this week's cover story on Karl Rove.

So tell me - in this next section, the "money" section of the piece - which are we seeing?

"It's said one quality that sets Rove apart is his ability to see the whole playing field in politics. So let's talk about the playing field that Rove seems to see.
Start with the people. They are tired, overworked, and scared--about their own livelihoods and threats from without. More important, they are woefully ignorant and easily worn down concerning the details of any political subject. They are acclimated to political races in which the main differences revolve around personality, and they're comfortable making almost entirely emotional decisions about candidates. This is an overgeneralization, but to date a viable one.

It may be "viable" in the sense that most people have little time or interest in detailed wonkery, whether due to being "tired, overworked or scared" (those dang Republicans!) or merely having real lives.

However, I have a hunch that the average American knows quite a bit about issues that matter to them; by the time they get jobs, they get serious opinions about taxes; by the time they have kids, schools become an issue (pro or con); while the likes of Perry would no doubt sneer, a lot of Minnesotans were very interested in the politics of the JetSki in 1998. An awful lot of Americans - NRA members - are more literate in the politics of the Second Amendment than the majority of the news media.

The media: On a mass basis, the medium that matters most by far is television. According to a 2003 Pew Research Center study, over 80 percent of Americans claim to get most of their news from TV. And if you take the further step of looking at TV news viewership numbers, you will find them pretty underwhelming. The only sensible conclusion is that a great many Americans consume political news in sporadic, sidelong fashion if at all.

And it's here that Perry turns myopic.

There's another "sensible" conclusion; Americans are getting their news elsewhere. Rush Limbaugh is the primary news source for an awful lot of Americans. This probably scares Steve Perry (as it would scare me if they got their news from "Babelogue"), and I'd suspect these people don't show up on as many polls as the Volvo-driving free-range Alpaca-wearing MPR-listening types, but it's information. What people do with that - or any - information varies from person to person...

...but to say "people are watching less TV, ergo they're getting less news information is the kind of thing that shows what a traditional media insider Steve Perry has become.

Many others try to follow events, but lack the time for anything beyond a few minutes of cable news and glance at their newspaper's front page.
Two things follow: First, the relative impact of political ads versus news coverage is much greater than a casual observer might think."

Right. Because the people are such a bunch of mental laggarts that if you were to put on an ad telling people to eat woodscrews and drink varnish, the people - tired, overworked, scared, and self-bereft of the wisdom of TV news to tell them otherwise - would probably do it.

A Rare Point

A Rare Point - Michael Savage had a good one last night.

The same liberals who are exercised that Bush hasn't yet taken out Osama Bin Laden...

...are the ones who are condemning Israel for killing a guy who - in proportion - has done much more damage to Israel than Bin Laden likely ever will to the US.

Israel's casualties in the intifada, if made proportional to the US population, would amount to 16,000 dead and over 90,000 wounded.

The double standard is sickening.

I Had The Strangest Dream...

I Had The Strangest Dream... - ...last night. Impressed with the last hour of every week's "Northern Alliance Radio Network' program, a Chicago-area PBS station recruited the Fraters and myself to go up against "The McLaughlin Group".

Then Al Franken (and, oddly, Tom Davis) were seen wandering Chicago looking for us, exhibiting that lugubrious Franken speech but oddly showing Joe Pesci mannerisms.

No more Bushmills at bedtime...

Passion and Prejudice - A

Passion and Prejudice - A couple has drawn big yuks for coming to blows over the movie 'The Passion of Christ':

"The two left the movie theater debating whether God the Father in the Holy Trinity was human or symbolic, and the argument heated up when they got home, Melissa Davidson said.
'It was the dumbest thing we've ever done,' she said.
Davidson, 34, and her husband, Sean Davidson, 33, were charged with simple battery on March 11 after the two called police on each other. They were released on $1,000 bail.

I first saw this on TV and heard this on the radio on Thursday.

And all the broadcast reports, as well as several internet ones, got creative on the next part of the story:

According to a police report, Melissa Davidson suffered injuries on her arm and face, while her husband had a scissors stab wound on his hand and his shirt was ripped off. He also allegedly punched a hole in a wall. "

The bolded part was removed from every story I saw until I read this story Sunday.

So who attacked who first? We don't know - but because the vast majority of the coverage ignored the injuries to the guy, the guy is guilty until proven innocent for a good chunk of the jury pool.

Is Sullivan Losing It?

Is Sullivan Losing It? - I know what it feels like.

The political party that you thought reflected your views, at least in most areas, betrays you in some other areas that also matter a lot to you.

I was there, about 12 years ago. George Bush had raised taxes. The GOP in Washington had abandoned the barricades on taxes, and sold a nice chunk of the Reagan Legacy down the river. Worse - to my politics, anyway - the GOP in Congress went along with wave after wave after wave of gun control legislation (even as they were perfectly happy to accept the money and votes of the millions of American gun owners).

So I left. I joined the Libertarian Party in 1994. I stayed until about 1999, when I realized that my best bet for a better America was to change a party I generally agree with, rather than try to convince Americans to come over to a party that I increasingly thought was wrong on other issues that mattered to me (which is a post for later in the week).

Andrew Sullivan, the gay, catholic British conservative columnist, author and uberblogger, is so upset about the GOP's stance on gay marriage that he's trying to rationalize a Kerry/McCain ticket:

Here's a question worth asking: whatever John Kerry's record, could he afford in office to be weak on terror? Wouldn't he be obliged to continue Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and even, as he has already promised, actually increase troop levels in those countries?

Obliged is a mighty strong word. In short, no. Kerry has shown us that he doesn't recognize the concept of "obligation".

But the real question is, would McCain give Kerry religion on national security?

John McCain knows Kerry and says he doesn't believe he'd be "weak on defense."

John McCain is sorely lacking in judgement in many key areas.

He knew McCain-Feingold would get the money out of politics - and it's done wonders, hasn't it?

Kerry might not be "weak on defense", but he'd certainly be weak on the War on Terror, (that's another post for this week). If Sullivan doesn't get the distinction, he'd better. Fast.

Sometimes, a Democrat has to be tougher than a Republican in this area - if only to credentialize himself.

There's the pesky matter of the Democrat Base, though - the part that thinks being strong on defense is being weak on democratitude.

I can certainly conceive of Richard Holbrooke being a tougher secretary of state than Colin Powell. I'm not yet convinced and want to hear much more from Kerry. But I'm persuadable. Four more years of religious-right social policy and Nixonian fiscal policy is not something I really want to support.

That's what it all comes down to, doesn't it?

Like a lot of Republicans, I have trouble with Bush's fiscal triangulation; he gave up a lot of conservative principle to push through an aggressive agenda on defense. Did he have to? Maybe not, and it's why I'm supporting nothing but fiscal absolutists in the Congressional elections this year.

Those are separate topics, though. The big one is this; in a colossal rage over the Gay Marriage amendment - an idea with which I disagree, by the way, but whose political rationale I completely understand - Sullivan is trying to convince himself that John McCain could drag Kerry to the light on defense.

Just the way Dan Quayle (much more conservative than George HW Bush) dragged his boss to the right. Just the way George HW Bush "moderated" Ronald Reagan (remember that, from the '80 campaign?) The way Al Gore got Bill Clinton to lisp and declaim ponderously...

The idea that tacking on an applique figurehead like McCain would make John Kerry, on any substantial level, a responsible choice on defense (or any issue) is absurd. That a powerful columnist like Sullivan entertains the idea at all shows that he's just as emotionally debilitated by one issue as I was, 12 years ago.

I regretted my decision. But my decision didn't run the risk of helping a worthless fop like John Kerry into the Oval Office.

Uh Oh. Now They're Really

Uh Oh. Now They're Really Mad - After years of bombings, suicide bombings, machine-gunnings, rocket attacks and ambushes, Hamas is finally going to get serious about killing Israelis, apparently:

"Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians chanting 'Revenge! Revenge!' flooded Gaza's streets Monday to bury Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by an Israeli missile. As ordinary Palestinians seethed with anger, militants pledged unprecedented retaliation - including threats against the United States."

Well, then. Things had been going so well...

Thanks, Gilligan

Thanks, Gilligan - "Hey, great party! Your house is on fire, though - I gotta run!"

That's the essense of this week's Democrat scam - the "Clinton Staffers testify they warned Bush about 9/11" trope.

This may be the lamest, most cynical attempt the Democrats have ever launched. Powerline dissects it capably - if you're a blogger, make sure you link this piece early and often.

The big question: Why are they tossing this out with seven months and change until the election? Something this pointless yet inflammatory - is there some big bombshell about Kerry coming up that the Dems are trying to counterspin?

This is going to be an interesting month, as the Dems try to prevent what I think is a gathering implosion in the Kerry campaign.

Yeah, call me an optimist.

Damned If You Do...

Damned If You Do... - Last week, the President finally started hitting back.

So I suppose this was inevitable This piece, from AFP, is headlined "Kerry and Bush urged to tone down election attacks frenzy".

Try this exercise at home: find where John Kerry is told directly to do anything:

With a new poll showing Bush and Kerry neck-and-neck in the race, senior members of the Republican and Democratic parties appealed to the rivals to change tactics.

"Let's keep it civil so we don't get so nasty that we discourage people from coming out and voting in a very important election," said Senator Joseph Lieberman, who was a contender against Kerry for the Democratic nomination.

This is, of course, garbage - people love negative campaigning, and it only scares off people who take politics waaay too seriously. But I digress.

Senator John McCain, who challenged Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000, said opinion poll verdicts on the campaign of attack adverts and political mudslinging would force them to change tactics.

"If they start getting polling numbers like I think they will of people who will say: 'A pox on both your houses,' then I think it will change. And I hope that it does," he told Fox.

I'm sure you do, Senator McCain. Because this election is, among other things, the first acid test for your idiotic speech rationing law. And so far, it looks exactly like the joke we Republicans told you it would be.

And what's with invoking John McCain every time the media wants a "Republican Dissatisfied with Bush" for one of these stories? The guy's openly pondering running with Kerry! Citing him as a Republican on the national level is the same as Nick Coleman waving Arne Carlson and Elmer Anderson in front of his readers to try to shame Tim Pawlenty - they were old-school, pre-Reagan, Rockefeller Republicans. McCain is a Republican in the same way that Jesse Ventura was a conservative.

McCain said he was hearing from people in his home state of Arizona who are saying: "Look, I'm not even going to vote if this is the way the campaign's going to be conducted."

Tell them to get in touch with John Kerry's foreign leaders.

Kerry On Defense II

Last Friday, I asked Democrats and other Kerry supporter exactly why they thought John Kerry was "untouchable on national security".

I got roughly the answers I expected: Jeff Fecke of BLOTML said "I think most Democrats believe Kerry will be better than Bush on national security for reasons that have been beaten into the ground," - which surprised me, since other than "he was in Vietnam", I've heard not a single qualification of any sort from anyone, ever - but then Fecke allowed "but only a truly blinded partisan believes national security is an issue that Kerry owns. " A fair point, but it's the blinded partisans I'm looking for. Perhaps it's reasonable to assume I don't get many blind Kerry partisans on my blog. My question remains - besides the completely irrelevant fact that he was in the Navy for four months before a thirty-year career of gundecking the military, what are his national security qualifications?

Because I'm convinced it's one of those things that he only has because Terry MacAuliffe says he has them.

Maybe there's another approach, though. Rick Heller - he of the excellent "Smart Genes" blog - commented on my question: "I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt last year, and he flubbed it. That's why I'm inclined to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt in 2004."

Well, now we're getting somewhere, even if it's akin to saying "I tried eating better and working out, and it didn't make my life better, so this year I'm taking up cocaine and unprotected sex with hookers I meet at convenience stores on Franklin Avenue". Leaving aside the gaping perception gap that would cause one person (say, me) to call the deposition of a dictator with the blood of millions on his fangs, the removal of a potential source of terrorist weapons and funding, the reinforcement of the power of the very UN that the opposition claims Bush ignores, and introducing democracy into the least Democratic region of the world a "flub", but think the - words fail me - worthless fop John Kerry would be any better; I'd like to have one rational reason people would vote for him based on defense.

Just one! But remember - I said rational reason. "He got a Silver Star in Vietnam" is not a rational reason.

In another comment last week, "Fingers" - a fighter pilot I know from high school - makes a great point. Even if you assume Kerry is otherwise competent on defense, his entire notion for the war on terror - treating it like a law-enforcement exercise, taking the term "defense" literally - cedes the entire initiative to the enemy, allowing him to choose the place and time the war will be fought (the answers in this case being "In Your Cities" and "When We Want To"). This may be the only way to deal with crime - under our constitution, criminals are innocent until they are proven guilty, and they actually have to commit a crime before they can be arrested. War is different. The responsible - no, the competent commander does not let the enemy take the initiative.

Clinton did. Kerry would.

Bush, to his immense credit, did not. And that alone is reason, whatever his other shortcomings, to return him to office in my book.

Is Nick Coleman Losing It-

Is Nick Coleman Losing It?- A weekly ritual at the Northern Alliance Radio Network production meetings is the race to claim our nominations for "Hack Column Of The Week".

Dibs on this week's Coleman.

Although fisking Nick Coleman is starting to lose its satisfaction. With Lori Sturdevant, there's at least a certain intellectual exercise, finding the fey slaps at the MN GOP woven into the thread of an often-reasonable-sounding column. With Steve Perry, there's the exercise of just getting to the end.

With Coleman?

His latest piece is titled "Our state's emperor is feeling a budget chill". The editorial delivers on the promise.

With all of the budget cuts Minnesota has endured over the past year or so, we may have lost a sense of what government is supposed to provide. But now, thanks to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, we have a succinct statement of the purpose of our great state:

"We've got to have some stuff for people to do."

At first glance, Pawlenty's Theorem seems a little thin as a cogent philosophical expression of the relationship between citizens and their state.

That's because it's an off-the cuff remark, not really a "philosophical expression".

In a twist on the familiar but outmoded "Cold Omaha" argument, which held that the Twin Cities would sink in esteem beneath the status of a semi-frigid Nebraska municipality if we were to lose our beloved Twins and Vikings, Pawlenty posited that we need the big leagues because Minnesota is small and cold, like the heart of a program-slashing ideologue. Then, in a brilliant phrase that conveyed a sense of urgency and a deeply felt compassion for the average man, he issued a plaintive appeal for millions of dollars in state support: "We've got to have some stuff for people to do."

No argument. No public funding for stadiums.

But when it comes to cogent displays of political philosophy, Coleman is confused. Pawlenty didn't invent the phrase "Cold Omaha". No, that was a product of the DFL, a convenient trope they'd wheel out every time anyone deigned to deny the faintest scrap of funding to [fill in DFL sacred cow].

Coleman continues:

I do not mean to sound satirical. I am in earnest, but as the great Roman writer Juvenal once observed, sometimes satire is hard not to write.

I...just...can't...go on...

You probably know him better for saying -- this was during the fall of the Roman Empire -- that the once mighty Roman people no longer were interested in greatness. They just wanted bread and circuses. I believe the Latin phrase is: "Populus wantum stuffus to duticus."

I'm sitting here, wondering where to go on. Dumping the DFL agenda - by not increasing the budget as much as the DFL wanted - is on par with the fall of the Roman Empire. Nick Coleman has slipped far past caricature.

In Minnesota's classical period, when Republicans such as Gov. Elmer Andersen believed that government should help people while providing for the common good and extending a safety net to protect against family-crushing disaster, Minnesotans had plenty to do: work, pray, raise kids, fish, hunt, chop wood.

These days, however, we have become a soft and lazy people with lots of time on our hands and boredom in our heads.

What must it be like to be Nick Coleman? Stuffing back his contempt for his fellow Minnesotan to come downtown every day, holding down the gorge of the hatred that has eaten what once a promising career, watching the rabble wander out of their bowling alleys and firing ranges and into the polls and getting all uppity.

Pawlenticus is right. We have nothing to do. Think about it:

Want to read a book? Who can remember when the library is open anymore, now that they've cut hours and staff? [Same hours they had before]

Go to the rec center and play hoops? Oops, they've cut back there, too. Plus, I think a kid needs $2 to get into "open gym."[Why shouldn't people pitch in?]

Maybe we can go to the nursing home and say hello to Grandma. Except Grandma has Alzheimer's, so she's got to pay extra now, and she's in the basement with 30 other oldsters, stacked up like cord wood.

Got pictures?

Witnesses?

Any evidence of old people "stacked like cordwood in the basement?"

Or is Nick flailing for relevance again?

Hoax-Free Zone

Hoax-Free Zone - The Monkeys comment on the sloganeering wars that have erupted at Claremont McKenna University.

The piece skewers one of the great signs of liberal higher-consciencemongering: The smug placard.

Read it!

Kerry On National Security

Kerry On National Security - One of the Democrat mantras this election has been "Bush Can't Touch Kerry on National Security".

Kerry is, of course, a complete non-entity on national security. It's entirely possibly that Dianne Feinstein would be better at National Security than John Kerry - a comparison that truly defines the phrase "Damnation by Faint Praise" for both.

In months of hearing the mantra, I've caught exactly three reasons that John Kerry is qualfied at all on national security, much less more qualified than the President:

1. He was a war hero. Even if we take his war record at complete face value - a tenuous claim, but let's do it anyway - as we discussed a few weeks ago, heroism doesn't necessarily equal leadership ability.
2. He's, er, been in the Senate - Where he's voted against most of the military we have today, but he'd seem to want us to forget that.
3. He's in touch with lots of foreign leaders.

I've heard nothing so far this campaign that would qualify John Kerry to argue with me in a bar about national security, much less lead the world's most powerful nation in wartime.

So here's the opportunity I'm offering, Dems. In the comments thread below, state John Kerry's actual national security qualifications to be President, in terms that would "sell" the idea to someone who takes national security seriously.

You may start now.

Pat Hall

My grandmother, and last surviving grandparent, Pat Hall, died Thursday morning. It was the day after her 91st birthday - hence the name "Pat".

She died two years to the month after her husband of nearly 70 years, my grandfather Don Hall.

She was a lucky person - active and busy up to the very end. On her birthday, my aunts and uncles all gathered at her home in Houston and threw a party for her. She had seemed - from the distance I'm at - to have bounced back as well as possible from Grandpa's death.

And yet after nearly 70 years with someone, it must have been hard to go on. I have a hard time imagining that; after a ten-year marriage that splintered like furniture from Wal-Mart, I have a hard time picturing ever investing that much of my soul in another person; it seems oddly foolhardy, almost criminally stupid. "They *will* let you down, the cynical (or maybe just bruised) subconscious tells me.

And yet, there they were; from 1935 to 2002, always with each other, through bad times (a depression, a war, decades of teaching in skinflint rural high schools) and good times (three kids, nine grandkids, six great-grandkids and a step-great-grandkid). Always together, looking out for each other, whether being the big couple in college (they were homecoming royalty) to galavanting around Asia and tearing up every golf course in Phoenix in their sixties, to being each other's seeing-eye people in their eighties and nineties.

The fact that people like my grandparents ever existed gives me hope, and justifies some faith in humanity. I'm very glad I was able to know them.

My Theory

My Theory - I love oratory. A really great piece of public speech can be a wonder to behold.

Lileks talks about some of the speeches of note this past week:

I heard four speeches this week – one by Carville before some firefighters, screaming like cat that had been dipped in turpentine; one from Kerry about something or other (it’s hard to stick with it; he sounds like a 45 RPM record played at 33 1/, and you keep making revolving-hand motions in the hopes you can somehow, like a butterfly that flutters its wings in Brazil and causes typhoons in Tahiti, cause him to pick up the pace a little); one from Dick Cheney, and one from Bush. Cheney’s speech was tailor-made for his speaking style, which consists of pressing the point of the sword into the opponant’s arguments and slowly pushing the entire blade in with steady force. Bush’s speech had many thick sheets of boilerplate, but it had economy and optimism.

This prompts me to think there's a pattern here; let's look at some of the last several elections:

• 2002 Minnesota Gubernatorial: Three speaking styles on display: Funny, natural stump speaker (Pawlenty) versus condescending, smug and irritating (Tim Penny) versus dull and inept (Roger Moe). Pawlenty wins.
• 2002 Minnesota US Senate: Smooth, natural speaker (Norm Coleman) versus collegial-but-dull speaker (Mondale, who was also hampered by his well-earned age). Coleman wins.
• 2000 Presidential: Irritating, condescending, lispy, crushingly-declamatory (Gore) versus rough but personable and optimistic (Bush). Bush wins.
• 2000 Minnesota US Senate: Smooth but not especially comfortable speaker (Rod Grams) versus slick-but-preening dullard (Dayton): Dayton wins.
• Entertaining, crude loose cannon (Ventura) versus smooth and natural (Coleman) versus collegial-but-"please kill me"-dull speaker (Skip Humphrey). Ventura wins.
• 1996 Presidential: Optimistic, slick (Clinton) versus stilted-but-occasionally-wry (Dole). Clinton wins.
• 1994 Minnesota Senate: Smooth but not especially comfortable (Rod Grams) versus shrill and irritating (Ann Wynia). Grams wins.
• 1992 Presidential: Optimistic and slick (Clinton) versus genial but uncomfortable (Bush Sr). Clinton wins.
• 1998 Presidential: Genial but uncomfortable (Bush Sr) versus dull and scolding (Dukakis). Bush wins.
• 1994 Presidential: Epic communicator (Reagan) versus collegial but dull (Mondale). Reagan wins.
• 1980 Presidential: Epic communicator (Reagan) versus earnest but irritating (Carter). Reagan wins.

My theory should be obvious; in most elections, the better public speaker wins. Sometimes the definition of "better" is squishy - Ventura is a terrible speaker, but he knows how to entertain and he gets body language, which is as important as your writing style. Sometimes the theory doesn't work - Mark Dayton isn't much better a speaker than John Kerry - but other factors are at play (the media lynched Rod Grams).

However, for the most part, the better oratorical communicator wins the election.

George W. Bush's speaking style is strained at times, but when he's on focus, he's blazingly effective. John Kerry is - words fail - dreadful. Worse than Dukakis. Nay - worse than the interminable bore, Gore. (On the state level, nobody will ever score worse than Roger Moe, a man who learned oratory from dairy cattle).

By this standard, Bush has an edge going into November, and - if taken to its illogical conclusion - John Kerry will be lucky to be elected to the Nantucket school board.

On Franco

On Franco - Joe Gandelsman was a reporter in Spain about the time the Franco government collapsed.

He has a blog today - and writes this fascinating piece about the Basque separatist and terrorist movement ETA.

He finishes:

--- MY CONCLUSIONS:
---1. ETA is small. But you don't need big numbers to do damage as terrorists.
---2. ETA's longtime goal will never happen: Spain's Basque County won't unite with France's Basque Country and there are no signs the majority of Basques want to totally break away.
---3. There are Basque moderates and leftists. They're not in sympathy with ETA.
---4. ETA's one hope, then as now, is in provoking the government to overreact and do things that upset moderate or leftists. Think of it as a wedge issue, with higher stakes involved.
---5. If you look at the history of ETA in recent years, no matter what chronology you read, you see that ETA simply never adjusted to the times and was even battling Spain's first post-Franco Socialist government.
---6. If ETA's point is to provoke the government, then murdering 200 people and injuring 1200 would be a good test of the government's patience. If they DID do it and deny they did it and the government cracks down hard on them, they can call it a diversion -- that the government doesn't want the people to know it was really done by Muslim terrorists. (In this view, evidence the police found with Muslim links was to make the government look like it's lying about who did it)
---7. ETA has gone through various incarnations with varying styles of leadership and, in that context, and you can just hear some young ETA terrorist say: "Just kill THREE people? That's so 20th century!"
---So, in the end, what happened in Madrid may be an example of Al Qaeda as a bad role model for youth......

The whole piece is incredibly fascinating. Read it.

(Via Al in my comments section yesterday. Visit his blog)

Day From Hell

Day From Hell - It's been one.

More later.

Bienvenue A Des Moines

Bienvenue A Des Moines - Hi, all. I've been in Des Moines on business for the last couple of days.

Naturally, today - on the last morning of my trip - I discover that my hotel has halfways decent free wi-fi in the lobby.

More tonight.

Frivolity

Frivolity - Jeff Fecke left this comment in my "Wages of Appeasement" post yesterday. I'm highlighting it because it spotlights so many of the fallacies that inflate the left today:

The terrorists did not win in Spain. Democracy did.

Right. It also won in 1933 in Germany.

Democracy "won", if "won" means "got manipulated by clever, evil people into doing something that sane people will deeply regret someday". It's a standard liberal conceit - that everything is OK, as long as a majority approves (or a majority of judges say that the majority is irrelevant, but that's a tangent).

No. The Spanish election may have been "Democracy in action", but it was also just plain wrong.

Had Aznar told the truth about the attacks, rather than playing pin-the-blame-on-ETA, his party may well have won the election. Instead, his party lost. THAT WAS NOT THE TERRORISTS' DOING.

But "Democracy", given all the information that a free society can provide, chose to elect an appeasenik government. That was the Terrorists' goal and wish.

One more time, slowly: OPPOSING THE IRAQ WAR IS NOT EQUAL TO OPPOSING THE WAR ON TERROR.

One more time, with ominous Churchillian resolve: Yes It Is. In fact, opposing the war in Iraq equals gutting the war on terror.

Opposing the liberation of Iraq is a vote to continue the war - on the enemy's terms. Letting the enemy choose the battlefield (here, not there) and the time and place the war will be conducted. Forever. And when you let the enemy control the place and time of a war, you cede the initiative.

And you lose. Inevitably.

Trying to separate the Iraq and Terror is one of those bedtime stories the left tells itself to convince itself that it's responsible and mature about foreign policy and defense, yet still hasn't sold out its antiwar, pro-appeasement-at-all-costs base. There are many of them; "Al Quaeda is the real enemy". "We need to bring the terrorists to justice". "There is no link between Iraq and Al Quaeda", as if international terrorists are bound by no-compete contracts, and they respect each others' turf and never overlap. "No WMDs!", as if the disappearance of the Iraqi WMD program invalidated the war.

For all the left's carping about "nuance", this is the line of thought that proves them completely incapable of grasping it. In the left's imagination, the "war on terror" involves bounding through the hills of Afghanistan hunting Al Quaeda, and chasing through the suqs of the Third World with arrest warrants until we bring Osama Bin Laden to The Hague...

...and then we're done.

Dumb. Too dumb for words. Saying the "war on terror" begins and ends with Bin Laden and Al Quada is like treating the flu by putting a cork in your throat so you can't throw up; it treats an obvious symptom without addressing ANY of the causes.

So here's your nuance - it was the liberation of Iraq that caused Libya to cough up their nuke and chemical programs (Hey! We found WMDs! And neither Blix nor Scott Ritter had any idea they were there!), and is ripping holes in the fabric of tyranny in Iran and Syria, and is forcing fissures in Saudi society that will eventually dry up the terrorists' funding, either by reform or overthrow. The Liberation started a process that will take patience (something no Democrat has when he is out of power), but whose results are already obvious to anyone who's not so blinded by ideology that they think...

...well, that John Kerry is a responsible choice for chief executive.

Choosing to pull out of Iraq--as the Spaniards apparently will--is a rational choice for any country not named America. (For us, as the leaders and principals in the occupation, a pullout may or may not be desirable, but it is morally inconceivable.) It is not a capitulation to al-Qaeda, any more than our pulling our bases out of Saudi Arabia was.

It's a capitulation, though - to irrationality, and to the false security that you get from appeasing tyrants and madmen.

It'll work for a while - just like "staying neutral" worked for Belgium, Holland and Norway in 1939. It was perfectly rational - until 1940.

It's a fool's security.

And Kerry is the fool's candidate. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for letting the terrorists control the place, time, and agenda of the war on terror.

Like last weekend's vote in Spain - it's a vote for surrender.

Out Of Town

Out Of Town - I'll be out until Thursday on business. Blogging will be light, unless my hotel room's data port actually works.

Goebbels 101

Goebbels 101 - "'If you tell a big enough Lie, and keep on repeating it, in the end people will come to believe it."

Case in point:

Senator John F. Kerry attacked President Bush on national security issues today, asserting that Mr. Bush has played politics with the battle against terrorism and that the bombings in Spain show how ineffective his policies have been.

"When it comes to protecting America from terrorism, this administration is big on bluster and they're short on action," Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said. "But as we saw again last week in Spain, real action is what we need. The Bush administration is tinkering while the clock on homeland security is ticking. And we really don't have a moment of time to waste."

I could repeat the obvious; that the Bush Administration actually did something that has a chance of actually ending terrorism, given enough persistence; that Kerry's approach is downright infantile. I think everyone with the brain the comprehend this split already knows it.

And I don't think Kerry is shooting for that "know what's going on" vote.

By the way -

Mr. Kerry, in his address to the firefighters' union, showed again that he was unwilling to be pre-empted by President Bush on security issues. He said the times demanded "truly dedicating ourselves to homeland security, not using it as a political prop."

Kerry is the one using the war as a prop. Goodness knows he can't use it as a qualification.

(Via Powerline)

Terrorist Strategy?

Terrorist Strategy? - It's occurred to me - probably much later than to most people - that the US is probably the safest place in the world to be right now, when it comes to terror. It's Western Europe, Japan and South Korea where I'd be nervous.

I'd lay money on this: the terrorists know that an attack on the US, the UK or Australia right now would make their lives much harder; at best, the Bali nightclub bombing reinforced Australia's will to fight; the UK weathered decades of IRA bombs, and has a superb counterterrorist intelligence apparatus (because of those IRA bombs). Above all, they have to know that an attack in the US right now would reinforce George Bush's presidential campaign.

Their best hope for four years of undeterred free worldwide reign is to get Bush out of office.

That means exactly what many commentators have said: trying to create more Spains; "swing nations" in the war on terror, especially ones with fragile conservative governments that are barely holding out against socialist, appeasenik oppositions, like Italy.

The more of those get picked off and leave the coalition, the more credible John Kerry looks. The more nations defect, the more Kerry's fraudulent claims of Bush's diplomatic incompetence will resonate with that segment of the swing vote that is illiterate enough in world affairs to believe in the virtues of multiateralism for its own sake.

So I'd say we can lower the threat level to "Green" until the first weekend in November.

After that? Well, it's then that our choice for President will really count.

More on why we, as a nation of free people, cannot afford John Kerry as a president as the week goes on.

Munich, 2004

Munich, 2004 - Saturday, during the radio show, I asked Rocket Man and Captain Ed if they thought the Madrid bombings might signal a turning point in Europe's approach to terror.

Sunday morning I sat slack-jawed and depressed, seeing that it was a turning point indeed. For the worse.

The War on Terror has been an emotional kaleidoscope so far. On the morning of September 11, I ping-ponged back and forth between fear and jaw-wracking anger. The day the Northern Alliance took Kabul, I was agog with amazement. The day the statue of Hussein fell in Firdos Square, it was stunned pride in our troops.

Yesterday was the first time in this war I've felt depressed. An entire nation - one in which in whose integrity I had at least a shred of faith - has turned tail and run.

Appeasement and cowardice won in the Spanish elections. "He that trades a little freedom for a little security deserves neither" said Benjamin Franklin.

Sullivan says:

it's vital that the Islamist mass murderers target those who backed both wars. It makes total sense. And in yesterday's election victory for the socialists, al Qaeda got even more than it could have dreamed of. It has removed a government intent on fighting terrorism and installed another intent on appeasing it. For good measure, they murdered a couple of hundred infidels. But the truly scary thought is the signal that this will send to other European governments. Britain is obviously next. The appeasement temptation has never been greater; and it looks more likely now that Europe - as so very often in the past - will take the path of least resistance - with far greater bloodshed as a result. I'd also say that it increases the likelihood of a major bloodbath in this country before the November elections. If it worked in Spain, al Qaeda might surmise, why not try it in the U.S.?

Let's see what it does for the Spaniards. It did wonders for the Turks, after all...

Saturday's Show

Saturday's Show - Last weekend's Northern Alliance Radio Network broadcast was better than the first one. Everyone's starting to settle down a bit. The first week's show was awash in adrenaline, which causes all sorts of problems. Everyone - myself included - was a lot more relaxed and focused Saturday.

The interplay in the studio during the show is tightening up; people are communicating via hand signals as they listen to phone calls or interviewers, waving a hand to say "I got it" like good outfielders calling a pop fly.

The show's settled into a nice format: First hour is "Week in review", with Rocket Man, Captain Ed and (last weekend) Elder and I chewing over the news of the past week. Second hour we usually have an interview - although, given Big Trunk's facility at snaring interviews, we could probably fill 2-3 hours a week on 'em. Third Hour seems to be devoted to punchier fare; last show, Ed and J.B. Doubtless argued over the merits of The Passion for most of the hour, and drew a one-hour record for phone calls.

Speaking of which - it was great hearing from DC from Brainstorming, who called in during the third hour. Who'll be the surprise blog guest next week?

People keep asking - when will we start streaming the show? Stay tuned - we should have big news on that sooner or later. By that time, we should be fairly decent...

Wages of Appeasement

Wages of Appeasement - Mark Steyn spells it out pretty thoroughly:

Suppose you're an ETA cell. Suppose you were planning a car-bomb for next month – nothing fancy, just a dead Spanish official plus a couple of unlucky passers-by. Still want to go ahead with it? I doubt it. Despite Gerry Adams's attempts to distinguish between "unacceptable" terrorism and the supposedly more beneficial kind, these days it's a club with only one level of membership. That's why so many formerly active terrorist groups have been so quiet the past couple of years. In that sense, Bush is right: It is a "war on terror", and on many fronts it's being won.

If Islamic terrorism were as rational as Irish or Basque terrorism, it would be easier. But Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." You can be pro-America (Spain, Australia) or anti-America (France, Canada), but if you broke into the head cave in the Hindu Kush and checked out the hit list you'd be on it either way.

So the choice for pluralist democracies is simple: You can join Bush in taking the war to the terrorists, to their redoubts and sponsoring regimes. Despite the sneers that terrorism is a phenomenon and you can't wage war against a phenomenon, in fact you can – as the Royal Navy did very successfully against the malign phenomena of an earlier age, piracy and slavery.

Or you can stick your head in the sand and paint a burqa on your butt. But they'll blow it up anyway.

Kerry supporters! People with "No War in Iraq" signs! Is any of this getting through?

Drifting Up?

Drifting Up? - Deacon from Powerline reports that some new polls are showing the base is returning to Bush.

I wonder if Kos is harangueing about these yet?

Another Guy In A Red Jumpsuit

Another Guy In A Red Jumpsuit - Elder, from the Fraters, is a fellow Mike Nelson fan. In a Thursday post, Elder notes with an especial spring in his prose that Nelson - one-time head-writer and then star of the classic "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" would seem not to be a "rabid, Bush-hating, foaming-at-the-mouth Lefty", who in Nelson's own words, says "And if it isn't clear by now, I think Bush should win" in an interview in the Lincoln Heights Literary Society.

I liked this quote especially:

Mike Nelson: I'm one of those unfocused people who has eight books going at once. I'm finishing a very large work of non-fiction by the almost supernaturally brilliant Paul Johnson called "Modern Times," a history of the world since WWI. I've also started working through the one volume Martin Gilbert biography of Churchill.

Yet again. It was "Modern Times" that began my conversion from arrogant little liberal snipe to the libertarian-conservative I am today. That book is like the "Where's Waldo" of more former liberals than Johnson himself (also a former liberal) would probably believe.

And this piece here is wonderful:

LS: What place does religion have in our lives? Can you be moral without belief in God?

MN: Well, as a Judeo-Christian nation, there's obviously a great tradition of religion, but I do think there now seems to be a phobia about speaking of it in the public sphere. It's too bad, because it closes off a gigantic, well-developed and thorough intellectual discipline. (And I happen to believe there's that whole "saving your soul" issue, that I wouldn't want people to lose sight of.) As the apologist Greg Koukl is fond of pointing out, Christianity is well-equipped to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

And obviously, you can be a wonderful, completely moral, thoroughly beautiful human being without a belief in God (I think it's much more difficult, and you'd be pulling it off in spite of your beliefs, not because of them.) But on the intellectual plane, many Atheist thinkers have tried to construct a framework for morality and all of them have been unconvincing. To my thinking, "morality" is meaningless unless you talk about "absolute morality." And you can't do that without bringing God into it.

Finally:

LS: What's your favorite movie pre-1970 and why?

MN: It's probably "Casablanca." I'd love to say it was some little known foreign film instead of this rather pedestrian answer, but there it is. Come on, it's just a beautiful film.

Attaguy!

I liked MST3K a lot. I think I'll take Elder's advice and snare some copies of Nelson's writing.

Elder's right - read the whole interview.

Bring It On!

Bring It On! - The names, I mean.

Colin Powell called the candidate on his lie omission:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, under pressure to say which foreign leaders were rooting for him to beat President Bush, refused on Sunday to reveal any names.

"No leader would obviously share a conversation if I started listing them," Kerry told reporters after Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested he name some names or stop implying foreign leaders were encouraging him to beat Bush.

And we all know to whom you owe your loyalty, right?

Kerry...said last week he had met foreign leaders who told him "you've got to beat this guy" because of unhappiness over U.S. foreign policy.

He was challenged on the issue by Powell, who said on "Fox News Sunday" that "if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names. If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about."

Why should we do all the work?

Democrats - tell us, who are these "leaders"? Do you people feel any need to hold your candidate accountable?

Cedrick Brown, owner of a small business in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, also pressed Kerry on the issue during a town hall meeting and questioned whether he had met any foreign leaders recently.

Kerry, who last traveled overseas in late 2002, insisted he had talked to and met with foreign leaders who were rooting for him. He said during the town hall he talked to "several" in the past week and that all the conversations were not face-to-face.

He said the leaders were "at all different levels" of government and said their support was fueled by dissatisfaction with U.S. unilateralism and "arrogance" in foreign policy.

I have always felt John Kerry is weasel. Why it's taking the rest of the nation so seemingly long to figure this out is downright depressing.

Ou Est Le Boeuf? -

Ou Est Le Boeuf? - Kerry won't cough up the names of his alleged foreign supporters:

Sen. John Kerry refuses to provide any information to support his assertion earlier this week that he has met with foreign leaders who beseeched him to prevail over President Bush in November's election.
The Massachusetts Democrat has made no official foreign trips since the start of last year, according to Senate records and his own published schedules. And an extensive review of Mr. Kerry's travel schedule domestically revealed only one opportunity for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to meet with foreign leaders here.
On Monday, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Florida that he'd met with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him.
"I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' Things like that."
Aides and supporters of Mr. Kerry have said providing names of the leaders or their countries would injure those nations' ongoing relations with the current Bush administration.

Aaaah. That explains it.

Kerry supporters; please use the comment section of this post to explain why you back this...words fail me. Moron? Hamster?

Fop?

Not Over

Not Over - Was it the Basque separatist group ETA? It seems out of character:

"If the attack was carried out by ETA, it could signal a radical and lethal change of strategy for the group that has largely targeted police and politicians in its decades-long fight for a separate Basque homeland."

On the other hand, it looks as if ETA had been changing its MO anyway:

The government said ETA had tried a similar attack on Christmas Eve, placing bombs on two trains bound for a Madrid station that was not hit Thursday.

"ETA had been looking for a massacre," said Acebes, the interior minister. "Unfortunately, today it achieved its goal."

The Interior Ministry said tests showed the explosives used in the attacks were a kind of dynamite normally used by ETA.

The bombers used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite also found in a bomb-laden van intercepted last month as it headed for Madrid, a source at Aznar's office said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Officials blamed ETA then, too.

Was it Al Quaeda? The splinter group claiming responsibility is sorta the Cliff Clavin of terrorist groups:

The United States believes Al-Masri [an Islamist splinter group that claimed responsibility for the Madrid massacre] sometimes falsely claims to be acting on behalf of al-Qaida. The group took credit for blackouts in the United States and London last year.

Two bigger questions: How will Europe (and John Kerry, our first European candidate) treat this? If it does turn out to be ETA, will they do their best to compartmentalize this attack into a "Not Al-Quaeda" box? Or will they draw the conclusion that ETA has been emboldened by having seen what terrorists can accomplish - perhaps with their help (Carlos the Jackal reportedly dealt with ETA, and Al Quaeda's presence in Spain has played a key part in the 9/11 investigation).

And how will Spain and Europe react? Like one of their members has been attacked?

Any bets?

I'm digging for something to say about Spain and the Spaniards. They are such an admirable nation in so many ways: while many nations had bloodthirsty tinhorn dictators, Spain's stepped down and turned his nation over to a constitutional monarchy. Franco was that most misunderstood of characters - the idealistic authoritarian. Popular history lumps him in with Hitler - who supported him in his destruction of the Communists in the Spanish Civil War - and Franco the pragmatist made nice with the Germans during the war - but Franco detested Hitler, according to Paul Johnson. Franco sought the preservation of Spain, and disdained Hitler's neo-Leninist rantings about radically transforming society. Toward the goal of preserving Spain, Franco ruthlessly suppressed the leftists who he saw as the main threat to Spain - but Spain accepted tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from the rest of Europe. Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist - and, alone among dictators, guided Spain toward a date with a promise of freedom that, in the end, he kept.

And the Spaniards took the ball and ran with it. They joined NATO in the early eighties - not because they feared Communist neighbors, but because they believed contrbuting to the common defense of their neighbors was the right thing to do (yeah, yeah - to get US aid, too). They have taken their place in NATO operations, and the first Gulf war, and now Iraqi Freedom. Their Navy (one of the biggest left in Europe) was one of the most active in supporting ours in the run-up to Iraqi Freedom, helping enforce the blockade of Iraq.

When at a loss for what to say, I often turn to Lileks:

It makes me admire the Spanish more than ever, I’ll tell you that: after 9/11 the media – the American overclass – was all about pain and sympathy and vigils and candles; vengeance and retribution were not invited. Stand up and strike back was not a theme of those awful hours after 9/11. Partly because we didn't know who to hit. Partly because we realized eventually that we would be striking back, hard, soon. The national character best expressed itself by a brief period of introspective mourning, not brutish demands to level half the planet. Bush did not call for massive demonstrations to approve his desire to defeat terrorism. In American terms, that would have been unseemly. Grief first. Then war.

Spain doesn’t have the luxury of 200 years of Constitutional rule. Young adults sitting around the dinner table look at parents who grew up under Franco; they might value freedom more than we do. We cannot possibly imagine losing it. They have heard stories of how quickly it can be lost.

It'd be trite to say "My thoughts are with Spain" today. The thoughts of every person with a living soul are with the Spaniards.

Steyn Nails It

Steyn Nails It - As usual:

In other words, the "coalition of the willing" has effected more positive change in the last 10 months than the multilateral establishment has in the last 10 years.

If President Bush loses in November because he can't provide sufficient witnesses to prove where he was on certain weekends in 1972, he'll still have an impressive legacy: He has toppled two dictatorships, neutered a third and put the squeeze on several more. Yes, Americans are still being killed by Islamists in Iraq. But they're not being killed by Islamists in New York offices, or Washington government buildings, or U.S. Embassies and ships.

Assume for the purposes of argument the media are right — that John Kerry's four months in Vietnam are so impressive they outweigh two decades of zero accomplishment in Washington, save for a series of votes remarkable for being wrong on every major issue, from Ronald Reagan's raid on Libya to the Gulf war to every new weapons systems for the U.S. military. What will President Kerry do?

This is how he characterized the war on terror to Tom Brokaw: "I think there has been an exaggeration," he said. "They are really misleading all of America, Tom, in a profound way. ... It's primarily an intelligence and law-enforcement operation."

The very idea that someone would consider any of Kerry's arguments persuasive - at all, ever, for any reason - is profoundly depressing.

Blame Ashcroft

Blame Ashcroft - You know somebody will when this sort of thing happens:

Two Dutch political parties called Wednesday for laws prohibiting sex with animals after a man suspected of having sex with a pony was set free.

Wearing nothing but a T-shirt, the man was arrested by police in Utrecht Monday after the pony's owner caught him by surprise in his stable.

"He was caught in the stable, busy with the pony, and was arrested for animal mistreatment," Mary Hallebeek, a prosecution spokeswoman said.

The prosecutor set him free because there was no evidence of a crime. Dutch law does not prohibit bestiality.

I figure since we're in the midst of the Passion of Howard Stern, nobody else might cover this...

The Voter's Choice

The Voter's Choice - Sullivan notes the real "two Americas":

Yes, there are two different countries within a country right now. But it's not red and blue exactly. It's not even secular and religious. Or north and south. More accurately, as blogger FrozenNorth explains, it is between those who believe we are at war and those who believe we aren't.

He also notes his own conundrum:

I may be unable to support a president who would defile the constitution. But equally, no one should support a candidate who cannot be trusted to take the war to the foes of this country. Before they take the war to us - again.

So there's your question: Which is more important to you? The budget/gay marriage/abortion, or our survival as a free, safe nation? That presumes, falsely, that it's a clear choice - that John Kerry woulc be any better on the budget, for example.

That it's a choice at all for so many people is profoundly disquieting.

That Sullivan has been trying to stir that choice up so hard for the past few weeks is worse.

FrankenNet Unleashed!

FrankenNet Unleashed! - The new Liberal Talk Net has announced its lineup:

Air America Radio, a progressive talk radio network, announced today it will hit the airwaves on March 31st. "Air America Radio is launching in the top U.S. markets with leading talent that will provide compelling and entertaining programming on the radio, on satellite feeds, and on the web," said Mark Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of Air America Radio. "We aim to build an important new media franchise that delivers results."

And those results?

So far, not too promising:

The network's on-air personalities represent today's top political and popular satirists, commentators and activists. Comedian, and best selling author Al Franken, who was recently taken to court when Bill O'Reilly and Fox News were seeking an injunction to halt distribution of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," and is known for fact-based, drug-free satire, will host a weekday show on the network called "The O'Franken Factor."

Fact-based? We'll see, I have my doubts, and they'll be played out right in this space (assuming they ever air here).

Let's see - so far, this network's marketing is based entirely on

• Fox's lawsuit
• Limbaugh's former drug habit,
• Hatred of George Bush and all he represents.

Seems like a thin concept.

"I'm so happy that Air America Radio will be on in three battleground states, New York, Illinois and California - no wait - those aren't battleground states. What the hell are we doing?" said Franken.

I don't believe in Karma - but I think what goes around comes around. If Captain Ed is right, Franken may eat those words.

Let's check out the lineup:

Monday-Friday
Uprising: 6:00-9:00am

This is a fast paced morning show that will entertain and engage audiences with wit and political satire. It will feature the latest news, offering up to-the-minute interviews with newsmakers, analysis and strong opinions.

Host: Marc Maron
Co-host: Sue Ellicott
Co-host: Mark Riley

Marc Maron? Former host of Comedy Central's "Short Attention Span Theatre"? He was lame even within that weak concept. Dull, dull comic. Sue Ellicott - a regular on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", the often-entertaining but doggedly-lefty MPR quiz show. Ellicott is funny, and a babe (sixth from the left in the picture below)...:

...but she brings that "NPR" attitude to the proceedings.

But she's not the last one to do that.

Standup comic count: 2.
NPR Retread count: 1 - We'll get back to this.

Unfiltered: 9:00am- 12:00pm
Air America's midmorning program is a showcase for conversation about the political and cultural state of the union. Unfiltered introduces listeners to fresh new voices not available in mainstream media today.

Co-host: Lizz Winstead
Co-host: Chuck D
Co-host: Laura Flanders

Sound like an MPR concept? Emphasis on "concept?"

Chuck D should do a show by himself, without the worthless Winstead and the dreary, NPR-ish Flanders; while I'd disagree, it'd probably be interesting.

Standup Comic Count: 3.
NPR Count: 2

The O'Franken Factor: 12:00-3:00pm
Relentless, pure satire, delivered by the leading political humorist of this generation. With his partner, longtime radio host Katherine Lanpher, this will be three hours of fearless barbs, sketches, and interviews with newsmakers and characters who have lived, up until now, only in Al's fertile imagination. He's no policy wonk, but this best-selling author and veteran of Saturday Night Live, is devoting his energy to fighting back against rightwing propaganda with hard evidence and facts.

Host: Al Franken
Co-host: Katherine Lanpher
Producer: Billy Kimball

Well, start fighting against me, Al!

Calling it the "O'Franken Factor" is too cute by half; funny maybe the first time, wears out fast.

Standup Comic count: 4 - Franken sorta still counts.
NPR Count: 3

The Randi Rhodes Show: 3:00-7:00pm

Randi Rhodes has spent the last 20 years burning up the airwaves in southern Florida with her pointed and provocative brand of talk radio. Combining live interview, call-in and commentary, Randi engages her audience with a passionate presentation.

Host: Randi Rhodes

Rhodes is Molly Ivins without the "wit", quotes included.

Standup Comic count holds at 4
NPR Count holds at 3.
Talk radio has-beens: 1.

So What Else Is News? : 7:00-8:00pm
Based in Los Angeles, this is a one-hour program showcasing the intersection of politics, media and popular culture. This program will feature analysis and reports from the presidential campaign, as well as a daily reporters' roundtable on how the news of the day is affected and reflected by the media. Marty will also cover the spinning of the news with a regular segment called "The Corrections.?" This is also the place to hear the political voice of Hollywood, with celebrity guest interviews from the entertainment industries.
Host: Marty Kaplan

This sounds...not just dull, but "Desperately Dull". Combine talking heads with a "Marketplace" host, and you have grounds for class-action suits on behalf of people driving off the road in their sleep.

And "Political Voice of Hollywood?" Yeah, Hollywood's political voice has been pretty brutally stifled of late.

Has anyone on the left thought this through yet?

Standup Comic count: 4
NPR count: 4
Talk-radio has-beens: 1

The Majority Report: 8:00pm-11:00pm

This program will introduce new, younger voices and opinions, with live guests from the world of politics, the arts and entertainment. Host: Janeane Garofalo
Co-host: Sam Seder

All of Al Franken's snide sneering. None of his folksy charm.

Standup comic count: 6 (Seder counts as half).

So the final count:

Standup Comics: 6
NPR Retreads: 4
Talk radio has-beens: 1

Let's not forget the weekend:

Additional programming will include Best-of Air America Radio and Best-of-O?Franken Factor as well as other original programming to be announced soon.

Might I suggest a group of liberal bloggers? Oh, wait...

I love this quote:

?We are excited about the diverse and important voices Air America Radio is bringing to the airwaves, both on our own WLIB signal and others,? said Pierre Sutton, Chairman of ICBC.

Diverse? I guess - if "diverse" means "Has-been standup comics" and "a few people were weren't quite moldy and dull enough for NPR".

I think the emphasis on using comics and NPR retreads like Lanpher and Kaplan is important; comics are inevitably angry, bitter people with gargantuan egoes. They are used to dominating stages with the force of their personalities. I admire this on one front; a good comic's stage presence is amazing. On the other hand, comics almost inevitably talk down to people; they' usually ooze contempt for their audiences. NPR is similar - public radio personalities give you the sense that they are something you'd better absorb for your own good - without any actual entertainment value.

And always, always, the Hollywood connection. Look at how much of the show is based on inteviews with guests - "live guests from the world of politics, the arts and entertainment", as Garofalo's blurb puts it. Liberal radio talks down to the audience.

Conservative talk radio succeeds because it's like Extreme Barroom Conversation. You can imagine yourself talking politics with people like you hear on conservative talk, whether it's that maddenlingly erudite Medved guy in the front booth, that blowhard O'Reilly by the jukebox, those Northern Alliance schlemiels around the pool table, or that Limbaugh guy in the back room.

Comics? Their job is to get the bar to shut up. And if you try to talk with them directly, they'll give you a too-cool-for-the-room cutdown and try to hit on your girlfriend.

And the NPR guys? They're over at the Dunn Brothers listening to Peruvian techno.

Will it fly? You can help me figure that out, with...

The Liberal Radio Dead Pool - That's right. Let's predict the demise of Frankennet. If you're feeling really cnfident, let's do the same for the individual shows.

Winner of the dead pool wins a "What Would Reagan Do?" bumper sticker from "Shop In The Dark".

My predictions are as follows:

• "Uprising": Comics are as stable as show poodles. I say the show has burned through both of its co-hosts in the first six months, and is "re-worked" by September 31.
• "Unfiltered": Lilywhite Winstead is a snide, hip, too-cool-for-school comic. Chuck D is a hard-edged polemicist. Separately, neither invites conversation. Together, I see the show being as much fun as a MacAlester teach-in. I predict Chuck bails within six months.
• "O'Franken" - For starters; basing your show's identity on a slap against your rival merely plays his game, and shows the...well, stupidity of FrankenNet's executive suite. Second: I'm trying to figure out Al Franken's reaction when he realizes his sidekick is Katherine Lanpher, the overrated dim-bulb of MPR fame. I say Lanpher's out by March 21, 2005, and the show grinds to a halt by September 30, 2006.
• Randi Rhodes: Gone by March 31, 2005.
• "Majority Report": Garofalo is an acquired taste when you're watching her do comedy in a room; much of her appeal (and I'll admit right here - she has appeal) is physical; her face is half of her act. Note to FrankenNet's brain trust; on radio, nobody can see your face! I give it six months: By 9/30/04, Garofalo will be gone.
• Finally - FrankenNet will get a major re-tooling by September 31, 2004. Most of its original lineup will be gone as noted above. Its first major affiliate will switch formats by 3/31/05, and the network will be officially dead by 3/31/06.

Count on it.

Teachers - SCSU Scholars points

Teachers - SCSU Scholars points us to a wonderful piece by Michael Tinker on why standards may not be as important as the teachers who teach the material.

To which I reply "Alleluiah".

Tinker says:

So the so-called "greatest generation" didn't do well on standardized history tests? Hmmm. I was thinking about my own history career before college. I went to a really good high school in Chattanooga, TN and had:

*7th grade - American History - junior school football coach
*9th grade - "government" - not bad, though the teacher was reputedly a charity hire; he was certainly odd, without being crazy enough to be vivid or fun
*10th grade - European history - the chainsmoking registrar, the only class he taught. Misery. I read the textbook to pass the time, and when I finished that started snaffling books off his shelf. Guess that's why I did well on the AP.
*11th grade - American history from a man who was a historian. Bob Bailey, r.i.p, was a fine teacher and a fine historian. If he did anything outside the classroom for the school (and it was the kind of place where every teacher did something) I don't remember it. We were his priority. Little as I have grown up to enjoy the kind of historian who wears costumes which reflect his favorite period this man could make us think that history was interesting and that writing the history term paper was a mild imposition.

I have no problem believing that most people learned little from their history teachers, given how little I, who seemed to be destined for the subject, learned from 3 out of 4 in high school.

Was your experience different?

Oh, good lord, no.

• Seventh grade History and eighth grade Geography were both taught by the Girls Basketball coach. He was a real guy, which served its own purpose - most of my male classmates had never had a male teacher, and they certainly needed one. He really didn't know much about history beyond what was in the textbook, and certainly had no idea how to make it compelling to students who weren't already fascinated by it.
• Seventh grade English was taught by a girl's Track coach. I think English had been her minor (she'd majored in Phy Ed), and only because she liked books.
• Eighth grade English teacher - a guy who'd gotten back from Vietnam a few years earlier, and was visibly bored teaching junior high English - he left the profession a few years later to open an electronics shop.
• Ninth grade civics was taught by a guy who was quite visibly punching the clock 'til retirement. He'd been in WWII, and rumor had it that he'd been the only survivor of a platoon that had been ambushed in Italy. Occasionally, when a car backfired or a malicious student popped a paper bag behind him, he'd still flatten himself on the floor, automatically. Knew very little about the subject.
• Ninth grade English; a pleasant woman who was very clearly bored with teaching, after about two years in the field. I think she left teaching to be a housewife a few years later. I loved the literature semester, and got straight "A"s. The grammar part? Well, this was the third time I'd had it in three years, to say nothing
• Tenth grade social studies ("Africa", "Ancient Rome" and "Western Civ") were team-taught by two people - a confirmed bachelor who quite visibly hated teenagers, and a woman we'll return to shortly.
• Tenth grade English was another team project; Literature was taught by an older fella who seemed to wish he was teaching college; he was visibly fascinated by his material, but was completely unable to convey that fascination to anyone, including me. I got straight "B"s. The Grammar teacher was a grossly-overweight recently-divorced woman who, in hindsight, resembled the demon spawn of Roseanne Barr and Al Franken. On this, my fourth or sixth pass through the rules of Grammar, I was so bored I ended up spending most of the semester dreaming about surfing and designing the army I'd have when I founded my own country. I got C's and D's, and she told me I had no aptitude in English.
• The varsity football coach taught eleventh grade history. He wasn't the typical football coach - a genial, agreeable guy, really - and he freely admitted I knew more about history than he did. "Talk is cheap", you say - but he also let me teach the World War II unit.
• I had my dad for eleventh-grade English, and a great Creative Writing teacher my senior year. Finally.
• Senior year "Government" class was taught by a guy who was very obviously counting the hours until retirement. How completely had he given up? He'd assign ten-page papers. A well-researched eight-page paper would get a "C". Ten pages of dirty jokes wrapped with a beginning and end-page that looked like thesis and conclusion pages would get an "A+". His wife - the aforementioned tenth-grade social studies teacher - was the same thing, only her hair was curlier. He counted the pages, rather than reading them. This was one of the few classes where summer school was a plum merit assignment; kids competed to get into the summer class, working hard for the limited number of seats; it was great practice for medical and law school (although I got into it...).

I got a BA in English, with a minor in History (and one in German, but for some reason Language teachers seem to want to teach languages; I never met a coach that taught languages).

Point being, if you want people to learn social studies, it might be a good idea to put a premium on finding people who care about teaching the subject.

Fear

Fear - Steve Gigl pointed me to this piece from "A Small Victory". On one level, it talks about the election, and her own personal journey from voting for Nader to supporting Bush.

She gets some criticism, it seems, from those who think basing her vote on the Terrorism issue is irrational:

"This is not irrational. It's real. Was this a fake event acted out on a sound stage? No, it was real. How can you say that the fear that comes with something like that is not real? Contrary to what you may believe, Bush did not instill that fear in me. A bunch of radical religious nuts on a jihad did that. Are you so naive to think that they don't want to do it again?

All very true - and it touches on a larger point that was made in a smaller way, over the past decade here in Minnesota.

During our concealed carry debate, one of common attacks on supporters of the reforms went like this, delivered in full self-righteous indignant fury:

I choose not to be afraid! I choose not to live in fear!

The irrationality of this statement drove me crazy: So Do I!

I supported shall-issue specifically because fear doesn't mix with life well. I want the people - the rational, law-abiding people - of our society to have less to fear.

Ditto voting for Bush. Confronting ones fears is not the same as caving in to them.

Michelle continues:

How is that I'm selfish if I vote with my own family in mind, but you aren't selfish if you vote with your own agenda in mind? When you go to the polls, you aren't going to be thinking of me or what I want. Maybe the economy or gay rights is number one on your agenda but, as much as those things are important to me, they are not number one on mine. How dare you have the nerve for calling me selfish when I decide to cast my vote according to what I feel should be the priorities of this nation.

Isn't that the way of the left? They do it at a national level (Iraq is "fearmongering" while Haiti and Liberia are worth intervention) and the personal level (defending against robbers and bangers and rapists is "fearmongering", while Rush Limbaugh or personal faith or homeschooling are "Scary").

RTWT, of course.

Deserve Victory - Powerline posts

Deserve Victory - Powerline posts posts a challenge from Professor Charles Kesler

Perhaps, then, what the voters really wonder is whether this is war or only a new kind of protracted, indecisive police action, better fought now by airport screeners and international organizations than by the military. In that case, Americans may be tempted to elect a candidate who will declare victory?or stalemate?and bring our troops home. After decades of intoning the lessons of Vietnam, John Kerry's moment may have arrived, just when we need a war president who will insist on nothing short of victory.

Then, they (in this case, Big Trunk) asks:

Which brings us back to the question I raised this morning: Does the American public understand that we are still at war and in need of a war leader? Will they understand it come the election this November?

Two answers.

I think that in the Red states - where people are much more likely to have family members and friends in the military and the National Guard - the answer is "usually".

And, for the sake of this country, we have to hope so. If our memory is that short, I hate to say it, but perhaps this nation deserves what happens.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Kaplan

Lies, Damned Lies, and Kaplan - There's working hard, and then there's working smart.

When you are trying to paint John Kerry as responsible on foreign policy and defense, working hard is not enough.

Problem is, either is working smart. You have to work fictional.

Last week, a fair chunk of the blogging left jumped on a piece by Fred Kaplan in Slate Magazine that purported to show that Kerry was actually no worse than the GOP - or parts of it - on defense voting.

Kaplan starts out cutesy, with a mystery quote:

After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper [MX] missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. ? The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.

Needless to say, the quote was by George H.W. Bush, in the 1992 State Of The Union address.

That's right. 1992. The dust from the fall of the Berlin Wall had barely settled. Some where hypothesizing that history had ended. Congress was already busy figuring out how to spend the peace dividend. In this world - which seemed so safe and peaceful at the time - John Kerry voted along with so many legislators from both sides of the aisle.

But it's not even close to the whole story. Will Collier at Vodkapundit responds:

That'd be a nice argument, Fred, except that you didn't bother to fact-check your own statements against the rest of the public record. Like, say, this 1984 Kerry memo, which Kerry's campaign has admitted is genuine. It lays out, in Kerry's own name, plans to "cancel" all of the above programs, plus several others.

In other words, Fred, you're either completely misinformed, or you're lying. Based on your previous "work" regarding defense issues, I might have given you the benefit of the doubt. You clearly don't know a damn thing about how weapons systems are designed, tested, used, or bought (repeatedly quoting a fraud like John "I'm not an engineer, but I play one on TV" Pike doesn't help your credibility), but since Mark Steyn has had that memo linked for the better part of a month, I'm inclined to think that you're just ignoring it.

In other words, lying.

And voting against these weapons in 1984 was a very different thing than it was seven years later - votes that Kaplan glosses over at the very least.

Kerry voted, among many other things:

• to halve the size of the Tomahawk missile program - which allowed us to attack targets from Libya through Afghanistan and Iraq without risking our pilots to do it.
• To cancel building enough M1 Abrams tanks to re-equip our entire armored force, as well as the upgrading of the M1 to the current A1 standard (with a bigger cannon and thicker armor). Had Kerry had his way, a large part of the US tank force would have remained in the 1950's M60 tank. There's an Israeli joke that goes "What's the difference between an M60 and a Zippo lighter? The M60 lights up on the first try every time". In two wars, no Amerian tanker has been killed by a through-the-armor hit in an M1 Abrams.
• The AH64 Apache, which has been so essential to depriving the enemy of the ability to maneuver on the battlefield in two wars
• The F14A and D, the F15, the AV8 Harrier - most of the planes that are the mainstays of our air power

Worse, he voted against them not only after the Cold War, as Kaplan noted - but during the height of it. His contempt for the military at that time was unforgiveable - and shouldn't be forgiven.

Second Black President - If

Second Black President - If a Republican candidate for office had stuck his feet in his mouth the way John Kerry has this last few days - i.e., to the knees - the media would be crucifying him.

First, his asinine comparison of the black and gay struggles for civil rights last week - crushingly stupid and illogical:

This was followed by a flashback to the most groan-moment in recent American history, if you have a sense of communal shame; John Kerry trying to latch on to the stupidest statement ever made about Bill Clinton, the "first black president".

This was a statement that made me cringe for Clinton when I first heard it in 1992. I waited for the avalanche of calumny from the Afro-American left.

And waited.

And am still waiting.

Leave aside for the moment that Bill Clinton was a descendant of the redneck peckerwoods that, if stereotypes are what we are talking about (and we are), made life miserable for Afro-Americans ever since reconstruction. Ask this: What made Bill Clinton "black"? Because he was born poor and had a no-count father? Is that something Afro-American society wants to identify with? Is that part of the society's identity? Because he was born poor and southern?

Is that all it takes to be taken in by African-American society?

Now, at least somebody is riffing on Kerry for his stupid statement. Is it the NY Times? The WaPo?

No, Yahoo News, natch.

Second Black President, Redux

Second Black President, Redux - In yet another case of John Kerry trying to have his cake and eat it and cut carbs too, we trip across this story about John Kerry's background as a supporter of affirmative action and an opponent of, ironically, affirmative action:

Mary Frances Berry's assessment is supported by the facts. While Kerry claims he seeks to "mend, not end" affirmative action and that he rejects quotas, he's done neither. In the 12 years since the Yale speech, Kerry's had numerous opportunities to vote against quotas and "mend" affirmative action, yet in every case he's stuck with the status quo, i.e., in favor of quotas and set asides. For example, he could've supported the 1995 Dole-Canady bill that would've eliminated federal preferences, or the Gramm-Franks amendment that would've discontinued minority set-asides in government contracting, or he could've signed onto an amicus brief opposing the University of Michigan admissions system found unlawful by the Supreme Court. But in the end his actions didn't match his rhetoric.

So, if he's always voted for quotas and set asides, why do preference supporters view Kerry with suspicion? Because affirmative action orthodoxy is inviolate. Expressing reservations about affirmative action's merits (even if you don't really mean it) is apostasy.

In the end, preference supporters will probably line up behind Kerry — but not with the level of enthusiasm displayed toward the first black president.

Y'know, lots of people have documented (and documented, and documented...) Kerry's flip-flips on issues. Someone needs to tackle Kerry's just-plain-stupid statements.

Any volunteers?

I'm afraid it would take more time than I have free...

Mojo Setting

Mojo Setting - Via Ken Layne and Steve Gigl, I see that Mojo Nixon is retiring from music.

He says:

"'I have nothing more to say,' says Nixon. 'Not only am I empty, but obviously nobody gives a rat's ass about the things I have been saying for twenty years. The masses are just as blinded by the light of stupidity, prudery and the shiny objects of hate.' "

Ah, Mojo. I do give precisely a rat's ass. In fact, I often turn to your lyrics in my times of pain and joy.

When I'm feeling pensive or agog witn wonder at the beauty of this world, I recall the words of his "Wash No Dishes No More":

Ain't gonna go to no lawyers no more
Ain't gonna go to no lawyers no more,
It's just like Shakespeare said,
all them peckerheads oughtta be dead,
Ain't gonna go to no lawyers no more.

Ain't gonna carry no ID no more,
Ain't gonna carry no ID no more.
Can't you suckers see,
that it's me, me, me,
Ain't gonna carry no ID no more.

Ain't gonna go to school no more,
Ain't gonna go to school no more.
They don't want you to do your best,
they just want you to take a test,
Ain't gonna go to school no more.

And so on. I get kinda choked up.

He'll be missed - for the roughly three months this "retirement" lasts.

Funniest Ad I've Heard Lately

Funniest Ad I've Heard Lately - Perhaps the funniest political ad I can remember lately, if not ever:

"Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Hairstyle by Christophe's $75. Designer shirts: $250. Forty-two foot luxury yacht: $1 million. Four lavish mansions and beachfront estate: Over $30 million."

"Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people. Priceless."

Via Vodkapundit

Short Day of Blogging -

Short Day of Blogging - Not feeling particularly well. Besides, what am I going to say? "Kerry's still a mealy-mouthed hack?" "The Strib's columnists are biased?" "Ruby is a vacuous little troll?"

More later.

Separated at birth

Yeah, yeah - it's a Kerry blog.

That doesn't mean I can't make fun of it:

When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: “Asses of Evil” with “Bush”, “Cheney”, “Rumsfeld” and “Ashcroft” surrounding it. She met, greeted and talked to a jam-packed room of Kerry supporters and others who came for the MoveOn documentary. Many were curious, others undecided, or belonging to other candidate camps.

She gave us a bit of what she does best, connecting us as a community with her heart, compassion, and willingness to fight throughout all her life for the good of all of us. As her husband, John Kerry has throughout his life.

Apropos nothing.

Which Priorities Do We Have, Anyway?

Which Priorities Do We Have, Anyway? - How many times can we repeat it - John Kerry is not a serious candidate when it comes to foreign policy. We - and by "we", I mean "the blogging right" as well as "every right-wing pundit that matters" - have been repeating this ad infinitum since the beginning of the campaign. We'll need to keep hammering on it, so that every American that can be reached on this issue, is.

Jay Reding doesn't have the first summation of Kerry's ineptitude in this area. His won't be the last, not by far. But his latest is an excellent one, and very much worth a read.

Money quote:

In essence, Kerry would have been willing to buck the international system in order to prop up a dictator but wouldn't be willing to do so to remove a tyrant who presented a clear threat to the region. Such a position is completely untenable and reflects a simpleminded opposition to Bush Administration policy rather than a coherent foreign policy.Such a position would put US troops in support of a crumbling and illegitimate regime, and ensure that the violence in Haiti would only escalate. The international community did the right thing by removing Aristide and beginning to work to ease the suffering of the Haitian people and help them restore a truly democractic system. Yet Kerry is now on the record as opposing that position in a mindlessly partisan repudiation of Bush Administration policy.

Haiti stands out as the first new, breaking foreign policy crisis since the presidential campaign got serious. Kerry's reaction to the crisis, essentially? "I'd do the opposite of whatever the President says..." - and not much else. There is no there there.

Reding sees this:

His foreign policy is a simplistic negation of the Bush Administration's policy, his positions lack coherence, and he barely mentions the most important issue of this election. The fact that Kerry very rarely mentions foreign policy on the stump, except to use it as a hammer against Bush is equally telling. John Kerry may have been a war hero in Vietnam, but he is not Commander in Chief material, and a Kerry presidency would return the US to the rudderless foreign policy of the Clinton Administration - a foreign policy that directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans at the Khobar Towers, our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the fields of Shanksburg, Pennsylvania.

I think - no, I hope and pray - that the average American this coming November realizes this simple fact: John Kerry's war heroism (let's take it at face value) is not, in and of itself, a qualification for office.

The Stewart Verdict

The Stewart Verdict - The Today show is interviewing four of the Stewart jurors - a hindu woman, a black guy, an older, very brahminish-sounding woman...

...and a blond woman - Dana D'Alessandro - that sounds like she should play the Marisa Tomei role in the stage production of "My Cousin Vinnie".

I'd be more afraid to tangle with her than with John Gotti...

Now, they're talking with Naomi Wolf and Tina Brown are talking about whether "Martha Stewart was targeted because she's a powerful woman".

Wolf: "It's almost Greek - a woman flying too close to the sun...there's almost a tribal taboo against women having too many resources...we're just not ready...look at Hillary, her hairstyle, people wanted to burn her at the stake over that...".

Brown: "It was if Martha had broken down and cried...it's a reflection of the schadenfreude people feel...people wanted to see her bleed...the whole culture of the corner office male executive doesn't carry the freight of having to admit that I did this".

None of them actually questioned the verdict, though, which brings us to the question: what does her gender have to do with it? People didn't attack the personalities of the principals of the Enron flap - because there is no "Ken Lay Living" show on TV.

Huh?

Huh? - Spike Moss commenting on the TV about Minneapolis' latest gangland shooting:

"I think it's a tragedy that a kid can spend five of six years looking for a scholarship, but can find a gun in fifteen minutes in our community"

The problem, of course, is that it takes less than that to find a buyer for the drugs that the kids that aren't looking for scholarships are selling.

Perhaps if the dominant urban culture glorified the search for scholarships as much as they glorify guns, Benzos and hos, the kids might spend less time searching for those eeevul guns.

Just a thought.

Finally Saw the Bush Ad

Finally Saw the Bush Ad - I counted two seconds of coverage of September 11 in a thirty-second spot.

Given that the events and fallout from September 11 have dominated over 3/4 of the time of his administration, I thought it should have been given more play in the commercials.

But no. If you're a Democrat, the President should pretend it all never happened. Right?

The Tabby In Winter

The Tabby In Winter - Dan Barreiro writes about his resignation from the Strib today. Thinking back, it may have been the third Barreiro column I've read in 17 years. I couldn't tell you what the other two were.

If you grew up reading Chicago newspaper legend Mike Royko, and you wanted to become a writer, you knew two things. The first was that you'd never come remotely close to carrying Royko's jock. The second was that you should write what your gut tells you, and care not what feathers you ruffle...You also learn that when the commentary is more biting than poignant (once upon a time in newspapers, the former was valued every bit as much as the latter), the readers' blood may boil. You hope that whether they agreed with you or not, they understood that all you tried to do was write what you saw.

I'll leave it to the Fraters to do the real fisking here. I have only one thing to say.

DAN! You're a sports writer. You exposed no corruption. You brought no comfortable middle-Americans to worlds they'd never seen, agog with wonder or nauseous with righteous revulsion. You never made a reader feel the thump of incoming mortar fire or smell the blood on the street after the gangland shooting.

No, Dan. You wrote about milliionaire athletes playing kids' games. I've known sports writers. When you get to the big leagues, it's just about the poshest life one can imagine.

But as we all know (because newspaper columnists that matter have told us so), big incomes combined with easy, diverting work aren't always enough to keep one satisfied:

That some folks cared even a little is something that this hardened cynic will always treasure.

That a grownup can become a "hardened cynic" over sports is something that will make this guy who has no time for sports shake his head and wonder about other peoples' priorties.

Sorry, Dan. Didn't care.

Moderate Humor

Moderate Humor - I'm trying to imagine the furor if a conservative commentator were to write something like this:

Senator and authoritarian martinette Hillary Clinton (R - Hell) is in the hospital for pancreatitis brought on by a gallstone. She is expected to make a full recovery, which ruins my day. No, I'm just kidding, but if she were to die of a sudden illness...oh, I should stop teasing myself.

Get well soon, Senator Clinton. Feeling compassion for the likes of you makes my skin crawl.

So how is this piece any better?

The point - that the central message of the left is of stomach-churning, fevered hatred, and this hatred has infected even normally-rational schlemiels like Jeff Fecke.

"But the right hated Bill Clinton" will be the obvious response.

No. Not like this. There were those on the right that hated Bill Clinton because of what he and his wife did, and why they skated for it. Had he been a bit less feckless in his personal habits, and were his wife less of a closet Peron, he'd have probably been one of the Democrats that Republicans could have admired, like Truman or Kennedy.

But the left hates Bush and everything about him because:

1. He won an election that they regarded as their sinecure,
2. With that shaky mandate, he achieved a lot.
3. Most importantly, he's just not like them. He and his administration "Don't act like us".

For the left, the ends don't justify the means. Unless it's their ends.

UPDATE: Jeff has reconsidered. Very good.

Seven Words You Can't Say

Seven Words You Can't Say On Radio - ...apparently turn up with great regularity on the John Kerry website.

Falling Off A Log

Falling Off A Log - There's something about being in a radio station that's unlike any other place on earth. The stacks of electronic equipment give off a faint odor of ozone that reminds you of how the air feels after an electrical storm. You get a sense of urgent tension in most radio stations; standing there, you feel like there's stuff that needs doing, and NOW!

And that's just walking in the door.

Being on the air is another level of the same feeling; when you open the mike, you sense that what you say is going to go out there to the rest of the world right now - there are no mulligans. The immediacy buzzes back at you through the headphones.

And that's just introducing a record.

Doing a talk show? It's yet another level altogether. Let's be honest; it takes a certain amount of ego to think your opinion - on politics, sports, cooking, whatever - has anything to offer to other people. And armed with that ego and (hopefully) a lot of show-prep, you sit down in front of that microphone, smell the ozone, feel the tension, and see that clock - and realize that it's two minutes after the hour, the opening theme is starting, and you have to keep some kind of talk going on for the next fifteen minutes. And then take a four-minute break, and repeat the process eleven more times. And if at any point you run out of things to talk about, you and your ego are going to sound really stupid.

Call it "Extreme Barroom Conversation". When it works, there's nothing like it.

So the Northern Alliance Radio Network debuted Saturday on AM1280 The Patriot. The show went wonderfully; better than most of the guys expected, I think, although about like I'd figured it would; there was too much talent involved for the thing to tank completely, and not so much talent that embarassing failure was guaranteed. With so many people involved, the big worry with this sort of show - not having any callers - doesn't mean much. We could have probably talked among the nine of us for the whole three hours without taking any calls - but that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

How'd it go? Well, so many people blogged about it, I can't add much; Brainstorming had a great review, and the American Thinker sounded off as well. Powerline did a great wrapup, and of course Captain Ed liveblogged the whole thing.

A few other notes: It was a pleasure to work with producer Joe Hanson again. We used to work together at another station, many years ago. He's the best in the business.

And the after-show party at Rocket Man's place was a wonderful time. Mrs. Hindrocket made the best roast beef I've had in twenty years - yes, I kept track! - and a "Martha Stewart's Macaroni and Cheese" that should be considered a mitigating factor in any upcoming sentencing. We got to meet the great Yale Diva as well.

Good show, good company, good time. We'll have to do it again sometime.

Tune in next week!

On Tomorrow's Show

On Tomorrow's Show - In the first hour of the Northern Alliance Radio Network - The Week In Review, with Saint Paul, Captain Ed and Rocket Man.

At 1PM, we'll have a guest from Saint Olaf College, talking about the response to the "Peace-In" at St. Olaf College, featuring Big Trunk. Rocketman and King will join the conversation.

Finally, in the two-o'clock hour, we'll be discussing the Hack Columnist of the Week with JB Doubtless, King and some other special guests.

Call in, starting at noon! Oh, yeah - and listen in! AM1280 The Patriot can be heard throughout much of the metro area.

Why Schools Can't Succeed, Part IV - Teaching Tyranny

Most of the great names in the history of American democracy, philosophy and independent thought, not to mention industry, learned to read, compose and calculate in more or less the same way the farmers of De Tocqueville's observation did; any way they could. Lincoln famously taught himself; many more learned by doing in simple country schools, or sunday school, or while being tutored by kids not much more advanced than they. Many of the greatest writers, thinkers, artists and engineers of the Edinburgh Renaissance - Watt, MacAdam, Turner and many more - and their counterparts in America were self-tutored as they worked as apprentices; their achievements are monuments not only to their respective disciplines, but to the history of human achievement and the glory of liberal (small-l) government.

It's ironic that the system that teaches kids about them today is such a complete contradiction.

In the late 1800s, reactionary social theorists in the US began to worry about the number of immigrants in this country. What were these new immigrants teaching each other?

America's schools were a hodgepodge of efforts: little community schools, parochial schools, home schooling, informal tutoring and apprenticeship, and no school at all. The reactionaries were worried - they wanted to make sure the waves of immigrant children were properly indoctrinated into American life. The right place to do this, they figured, was school.

And the looked with admiration on the system Bismark had incorporated in Germany. German state education relied on all the things we regard as the norm in public education today - a strict, uniform, approved curriculum; teachers certified in their knowledge of approved curricula and methods; grade levels, and a set of promotion standards based on objective (if arbitrary) criteria.

Bismark's goal in instituting this system was to ensure that Germany's emerging militocratic society would have the raw human material it needed, sorted out just the way the military and the rest of German society needed them:
It would funnel the top 10% of society down the achievement track; they'd be the doctors, the lawyers, the professionals, academics, and the military's officers. The elite of this elite would be the generals, the presidents, the cabinet ministers and head bureaucrats.

The next 30% would be the foremen, the primary school teachers, the middle management and petty bureaucracy, and the military's noncommissioned officers.

The other 70% would be the labor, the assembly line workers, the farmers, the service sector, and the military's enlisted men.

Each of these slices of society were to be identified early, and provided with education commensurate with their station. The system lives on, to a great extent, in the German "Gymnasium" system, and the Japanese system which copied it; tests like the German "Abitur", given at age 10, determine the child's academic direction for the rest of his or her life.

And this system - which causes so many Americans to shake their heads at the soulless authoritarianism of it all - is the one ours is modeled after. Some of the windowdressing has changed - but at the end of the day, the American system of education is the first cousin of these systems. For while the pre-WWII German and Japanese systems made no bones about their desire to produce well-indoctrinated cannon-fodder and docile labor, the system we copied from Bismark was intended to create "good citizens" less in the sense that Madison and Jefferson and De Tocqueville intended than supplanting immigrant culture as quickly as possible.

But when presented with alternatives to the traditional, ?keep your butt in your seat? model of education, both the left and the right squawk.

?How will they learn what our society needs them to learn?? asks the left. ?How will they learn responsibility?? asks the right.

My question of both sides; how could you design a system that would teach either concept worse than what we have now?

How do you teach learning in a system that violates so many key principles of human cognitive development?

Where?s the responsibility when curricula and the expected results are set up years before the student takes the class? When all actions, reactions and consequences have been scripted out?

How do you teach citizenship to people who are not allowed to practice it in any meaningful way for the first 18 years of their lives?

By throwing more standards at kids? By teaching them less stuff, but more of it? By giving teachers more paperwork?

I've dreamed about solutions for years. I thought how nice it would to homeschool my kids - but I'm not independently wealthy, and the bills don't pay themselves. I've tried to get involve with groups trying to start Sudbury schools in the Twin Cities - but it takes a lot more dedication and time than those groups of frazzled overworked parents could muster, week in and week out.

So I'm trying to teach my kids that there's a huge difference between "Education" and "Schooling". They're not the same - not at all.

I don't know that it's enough. I don't worry much about my daughter; she plays the game well enough. Schools are very friendly places for girls these days. My son, on the other hand, is bored stiff. He's not regurgitating the answers demanded of him on cue. The teachers and staff wrinkle their faces in concern. "He's so bright, and we'd hate to see him not performing up to his potential..."

It's all I can do to contain myself during some meetings. "His potential to what? Absorb information that means nothing to him? Barf answers back to you on cue? The kid knows more about history and current events than any of his classmates - and some of his teachers. *I* taught him long division and multiplication when he was six years old. Why did your "program" allow that to atrophy in school? Why is it labelling a kid who is rocketing ahead of the rest of his class in areas that he cares about, and showing his boredom with the prescribed program, "Below Average?" But no. To the school system, as much as they care about him, the goal is to turn him into another unit of product, manufactured to the accepted quality standards.

I reach the end of this screed no better off than I started it. I have no answers. Talking about most education reform - standards, the cretinous "focus on the three Rs", even privatization - causes my eyes to glaze over. The nearest I can figure, the answer is this; our society needs to re-discover what "education" is. It's not a quantifiable process, like manufacturing Buttoneers. It's teaching children - people - how to find their own level in life, whatever that is. I'd rather that my kids grow up to be dishwashers that find intense, lasting fulfillment writing country music or building fishing shacks or developing grand unification theories in their spare time than college professors who are miserable and unfulfilled in their lives - or, for that matter, be anything that allows them to best harness their skills, passions and intelligence to give them a life they're satisfied with, and to be good people to boot.

I think the school system we have is a lousy start toward that. Most of the reforms proposed are akin to rearranging the deck chairs...no. No, we need a new cliche to describe the system of education we have in this country. It's rearranging the patio chairs behind the house of a family whose parents are emotionally crippled and stunted from generations of ritualized emotional abuse so comprehensive that nobody knows who really has the problem.

(Parts One, Two and Three)

Sullivan on Cooke

Sullivan on Cooke - Andrew Sullivan comments on the retirement of Alistair Cooke from the BBC.

It was an oasis of calm, fascination, and piercing intelligence. How he sustained that quality for so long is awe-inspiring. He was still at it in his 90s, until he retired this week. He gave me my first understanding of America - that great, mysterious giant that loomed across an ocean. And I will always be grateful. He is irreplaceable. But his example of translating this wonderful and completely baffling place to the British has been an inspiration for me as I write each week for the Sunday Times in London. He made me understand what a privilege it is to convey something of this country's diversity, paradox and exhilarating energy. And how impossible it is to come close to his wit, erudition and extraordinarily good judgment.

In the seventies, Cooke hosted a long miniseries, "Alistair Cooke's America", which started on PBS and migrated to syndication in the early eighties (and is not available on DVD yet - which is the subject of a petition drive of sorts. It's a wrong we need to right). Each episode explored a different aspect of America; the birth of the nation, exceptionalism, strength, becoming American, and on and on, exploring what America and being American both are in a way that was gloriously accessible yet stuck to your intellectual ribs.

His "Letters to America" radio series - which ran on the BBC for around, ahem, sixty years - was heard on MPR's BBC simulcasts, and remained a fascinating, loving, critical portrait of our place and people throughout.

Cooke just retired from the BBC at age 90. I, for one, miss him already.

Woo Hoo!

Woo Hoo! - I finally got onto Taranto's Best of the Web!

Eighteen years ago, during the democratic revolution that overthrew Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a certain haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, arrived on the scene as part of a congressional delegation of election observers. In an article for Rolling Stone, later reprinted in his collection "Republican Party Reptile" (and excerpted last year by blogger Mitch Berg), journalist P.J. O'Rourke described the scene

I was wondering where yesterday's surge in hits came from. Welcome, OJ readers!

Foreign Polity

Foreign Polity - I was going to respond to John Kerry's idiotic statement ("This president has in fact created terrorists where they didn't exist," he said. "And I believe this president has run the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of our country. And we need to hold him accountable.")...

...but Captain Ed already gave the response I wanted to.

Read it all.

And, if you're a Kerry supporter, weep.

Kerry Picking

Kerry Picking - Some on the left (I got this from Centrisity) are claiming the right is "cherrypicking" John Kerry's record on defense to find damaging votes.

As evidence, they cite this column by Fred Kaplan.

The piece deserves a detailed fisking - which I'll give it either tomorrow or Monday, when I have the time. It's a masterpiece of deceptive spin, more full of holes than Dennis Kucinich's campaign staff.

If you're a Democrat and you're pinning your hope on this article to restore Americans' faith in Kerry as someone we can trust on Foreign Policy, the Defense and the War on Terror, I'll give you the opportunity to get a head-start:

1. Don't.

As Drudge says - "Developing".

War Hero

War Hero - John Kerry's war record may or may not stand up to much detailed scrutiny, according to Thomas Lipscomb in the NYSun.

Assuming it ever gets detailed scrutiny. But then, that's what we're here for.

[Admiral] ‘Bud’ Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.” And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

Hm. What did Kerry know, and when did he know it?

Lipscomb continues:

By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

Kerry's role model, the original JFK, was also a famously reckless boat handler; his nickname (according to the bio "PT109" by Robert Donovan), Kennedy's nickname in his squadron was "Crash". More conscious emulation on Kerry's part?

Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as “accidents of war.”And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post.

Y'see, here's a part where I'd given Kerry too much credit. Officer rotations through combat billets in Vietnam was very fast - where enlisted grunts were rotated out after a year, officer slots were turned over every six months, mainly to give more officers more combat experience. I'd figured Kerry's four-month tour was related to that.

My bad.

Read the whole thing, of course.

Why Schools Can't Work - Part III - The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

When De Tocqueville came to America, he noticed something astounding; the peasants could read! "Simple" farmers would spend their evenings reading by the fire, soaking up everything from the latest penny potboilers and broadsheets to the latest and greatest in political philosophy.

Where and how did they learn not only to read, but to crave reading and the learning that came with it? From nearly as many places and by as many means as there were people, practically; from small one-room schools, from older siblings and parents, from church (reading the Bible was a key precept of the protestantism that drove so many colonists)...

...but the "How" and "Where" is less interesting than the "Why". The reason De Tocqueville was shocked by the literacy of the American farmer was that it was in stark comparison to the illiteracy of the European peasant. Americans learned to read because America was built on an idea - and to be up to speed on the idea, one had to practice the currency of its trade, just as one had to know how to use a plow to practice farming. The currency of liberty (both political and religious) was literacy. And so Americans learned how to read - by any means available and necessary.

Today, it's accepted both as an article of faith and a challenge; a kid's gotta learn to read before he or she is seven, or there's something drastically wrong. They need to be gotten into a remedial reading class, and forced to learn to read, NOW, or their entire future will be at risk!, for the love of God!

It's not like this everywhere.

In the Sudbury School, in Framingham, Massachusetts, kids aren't required to learn to read at all. Nobody tells them to learn their ABCs. Nobody tests their fluency in their native language.

And yet every single kid at Sudbury (and the many schools around the country modelled after it) learns to read. When they're ready, they do it; some learn from other kids, some from the staff, some even teach themselves from the bits of phonics they pick up from learning the alphabet; kids can be incredible at applying logic to problems around them. And while nobody tells them to do it, they all do - every single one, according to friends who are involved with Sudbury schools around the country. And they do it for the same reason the farmers did it 200 years ago - because it's obviously in their interest to do it, and because they realize they can.

Sudbury advocates use an interesting parallel; almost every child learns how to speak, barring some sort of mental or physical defect that makes normal learning impossible. Speaking is vastly more complicated than reading - and yet, by hanging around adults and watching and hearing it done, and seeing the results of verbal communication and feeding their innate thirst to participate in that communication, somehow, almost every child manages to be fluent in their family's native language by age five.

But if Government were to step in and decree that "all children must learn to speak by age three", and added the force of compulsion and the stigma of failure to the process of learning, and stick their butts in chairs so that the university-trained experts could teach them to speak now! (under threat of action against the parents if they declined), you'd see a logarithmic increase in the number of "speech disabilities" diagnosed, new remedial speech programs springing up in buildings around the country, and entire departments full of learned academics devoted to studying a "disability" that does not exist in the wild.

So if most children can learn the gargantuan task of speech without the aid of teachers, specialists, programs and post-graduate expertise, why are the relatively trivial tasks of reading, arithmetic and composition seeming to get harder and harder to "teach", the more resources we put into them?

Not only does the system not work - it is completely counter to the way people actually learn things.

How does this relate to politics?

Tomorrow.

(See Part I and Part II)

Bile Pages

Bile Pages - Lileks doesn't like the new Yellow Pages. He doesn't know the half of it.

The new phones books arrived today. Usually not something I note unless I’m desperate for a column. (Years ago I reviewed one, treating it like a piece of literature. Hah! Boy, that was original.) But this time the phone book is truly different: it combines yellow and white pages, and splits them into two big two-toned books...So why do something so obviously stupid? Because they don’t own the Yellow Pages market anymore. There’s a new competing book in town, just as big, just as yellow – but it lacks the lineage that somehow confers legitimacy on the Dex Yelllow Pages. From Qwest you can trace a direct line back to a Bell, I think, and for some reason that’s comforting. (The Yellow Pages were the original Google.

The worst part, though? I'm actually going to have to pay attention to what's in the Yellow Pages. For years, Qwestdex.com was, if somewhat cantankerous, at least a useful and free way to get both white and yellow listings. For years, I didnt' even unwrap the directories that popped up on my porch periodically.

No more. Because Qwest bollixed up the directory website so badly, it's completely unusable.

Up until probably three months ago, qwestdex was a little touchy about input (you had to put in "St paul", not "Saint Paul"), but, and here's an important part, once you put the stuff in, actual results came out. If you knew a James Gronsolosky in Mendota, you'd enter:

Last name: Gronsolosky
First name: James
City: Mendota

And you'd get:

Gronsolosky, James (651) etc.

With the new site, "Dexonline", there's a new wrinkle. Say you want to find the Pizza Hut in Falcon Heights.

Enter "Pizza Hut", select "Falcon Heights" as the city, and uncheck the "Check surrounding area" box. Click the button.

You get dozens of pizzerias; Pizza Nabob in Elk River, Pizza Swede in Hugo, Pizza Spew in Uptown, and dozens of Pizza huts as far afield as Winona.

But not Falcon Heights.

Re-enter the data - you knew you didn't ask for "surrounding area".

Same list.

Repeat this process for everything you want to try to find, for two straight months.

With the old site, I found what I was looking for, every time. With the new site, it's about 30%. Speaking as someone who designs software to be usable, I'd say it's a big step back.

If they're trying to drive business to their toll 411 line, it's a lame way to do it.

Clear And Present Non-Factor

Clear And Present Non-Factor - Last year, as we were getting ready to move into Iraq, the left talked out both sides of its mouth, demanding that we extend what had already been 18 months of diplomatic Schühplottel at the UN even further before attacking a regime that had violated hundreds of pounds' worth of UN sanctions, had engaged in decades of inhuman atrocities, was linked with terrorist groups and had paid money quite openly to terrorists, diverted billions of dollars of oil-for-food money for weapons, bribes and graft, and was believed by everyone to have had WMDs...

BUT

...demanded immediate military action in Liberia, in a civil war that posed absolutely no threat to any significant US interest.

Today, the left - as manifested in its de facto leader, John Kerry - is still exercised about getting meticulous international approval before taking any action that would protect US interests (say, against thermonuclear immolation)...

...but has his saber drawn and is doing his best Clint Eastwood impression in regard to Haiti?

Kerry (D-Mass.) said he would have sent troops to Haiti even without international support to quell the revolt against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"President Kerry would never have allowed that to get where it is," Kerry said, though he added he's not "a big Aristide fan."

A Kerry administration would have given the rebels a 48-hour ultimatum to come up with a peaceful agreement - "otherwise, we're coming in," he said.

"I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally," he said, adding the most important thing was to protect democracy.

And the US interest in Haiti is exactly what?

This is like Mad How's "135,000 Moderate Moslem Troops" canard; unverifiable, not based in fact - and what Gramma would have called "talking out his ass".

The thought that anyone would trust these...wanker with foreign policy not only astounds me - it makes me say things I may not regret in terms of substance, but certainly in style, later on.

Sullivan Bottoms, Bounces?

Sullivan Bottoms, Bounces? - In today's Dish:

It struck me as a strong one on domestic issues. On energy independence, and protecting the Constitution, it was a winner. He looks like a potential president. But it was deeply worrying in one respect. The war on terror was barely mentioned. This on a day of appalling carnage in Iraq. I fear this man simply doesn't get it. No one should support him for the highest office in the land until he proves he understands our enemy; and demonstrates that he will get up every day in the Oval Office to see how he can take the fight to the Islamists. I don't see that fire right now. In fact, I don't even see a flicker. It's a deal-breaker for me.

Mr. Sullivan:

As a longtime fan of yours who is critical of your (hopefully brief) dalliance with the notion of creative gridlock for the very reason you cite above, and applied to all Democrat contenders (except maybe Lieberman) from the beginning, I have to ask - and I'll ask in advance that you excuse my gruffness on the issue:

< ahem >

DUH! DO YOU THINK SO?

Is THIS why you're the big, highly-paid editor of the New Republic and a guy who brings in $100K a year plus for blogging? For THIS blinding flash of insight - "Kerry's clueless about the war on terror?"

< deep breath >

OK. I'm done now.

Caucusian

Caucusian - Went to the District 66B GOP caucus last night.

HUGE turnout. If you think the base isn't energized in Saint Paul, think again.

And that's even with the state GOP's crummy attitude about the "inner city", which is a subject for a later post.

I'll be seeing you at the 66 convention - and hopefully, the CD4 after that!

UPDATE: The good news: I got the resolution the SCSU Scholars proposed passed.

The bad news: I was the only person in my precinct attending - so I'm the precinct chair, secretary, convenor and delegate.

The good news: Mine was the only solo precinct, by a long shot. Some of the precincts over in DFL-strangled-dominated Frogtown were very well-represented, and Roseville jammed the place.

Why Schools Can't Succeed, Part II - Siddown, Shaddap

Siddown, Shaddap

While conservatives and liberals differ sharply on their views on how what an education is, it's ironic that criticizing the "Sit in your chair and learn" model of education draws virtually the same conclusion from both sides of the spectrum; "What, are you crazy?"

To the liberal, the institution of public education is intended to be the great equalizer (although the liberal leadership belies that vision; the ranks of students at Breck, Blake and Saint Paul Academy are full of the children of DFL mavens and liberal activists). It's everyone's duty to society to sit in that chair and learn!

To the conservative, the act of making your brat sit in that chair and learn the Three R's, Dammit!" is seen as an essential character building exercise - sort of like hazing.

Both sides tend to agree - there's a base of knowledge about our society that a kid needs to have to be a productive adult. Exactly what's in that base is open to endless, vituperative debate, like the current rhubarb over the state's social studies standards.

But - one way or another - the goal of both sides is to shovel the kids through 12 years of a planned program to make sure that everyone "knows" the same stuff. Some kids do - depending on where you are, a majority of kids who started in first grade might walk across the stage twelve years later and get their diploma - and like the Zuni shamen we discussed yesterday, we'll assume that the schools are the reason why the learning took place.

I'm less and less convinced of that every day. The more I see the way education works - and, more accurately, "doesn't work" with kids who might not be on the traditional college track, and especially with kids who don't respond to the punishments and enticements of the traditional "Sit down, shut up and learn!" school of education - the more depressed I get.

In any segment of society, on any subject, the "achievement" scores of any group of people, when plotted out on a graph, will resemble a bell curve. If the subject is History, my score will probably come in "above average" against the general population (and in the 99.9th percentile when measured against liberal bloggers). If the subject is auto mechanics, I'd score an "C" against the general population, a "D" among rural males, and a solid "F-" among auto mechanics. It's not a big subject for me.

Now, picture this scenario:

1. The government of the State of Minnesota, aghast at the lousy decor of Minnesota homes and lawns, has decided that all Minnesotans must become functionally literate and knowledgeable in the art and science of interior decoration.
2. To facilitate this, the State decides that its citizens must attend four years of interior design school.
3. By the way, this is such a huge priority, the state has decided it's too important to be left to your own discretion; if you don't attend, your kids will be put in foster care.
4. You will spend six hours a day for four years learning an approved curriculum of interior design, cooking, decoration and aesthetics.
5. You will be graded against the federal "No American Left Tacky" standard. Students that don't perform as required by the standards will be shunted into "remedial interior design" programs, even "special education", to bring them up to speed. Schools that dont' get their students up to speed on basic interior design concepts will be sanctioned.
6. Performance will be gauged by a series of structured tests, to ensure that at the end of each year, you're progressing on your way to becoming a good interior designer.

How do you think you'd do?

• If you love interior design - probably pretty well!
• If you come from a family that's motivated to succeed at interior design - especially if they're so motivated that they pull you out of a public interior design school and put you in a private one - probably pretty well, too.
• If you manage to teach yourself the fine art of taking tests, you'll do fine, whether you know design or not. You'll graduate a highly-literate test taker, perhaps even with a graduate degree!
• If you like it well enough, but learn all you need to help you teach yourself what is REALLY important to you in the first year, and get bored out of your skull afterwards, your teachers will spend the next three years saying "you're bright, but we need to figure out how to make you perform up to your potential!", where potential equals "Ability to give the answers you are supposed to give".
• If you're more wired to learn how to fix cars or split atoms or write stories, you'll probably get used to being considered a "failure", and count the hours until your four years are over.

Fanciful? Really?

What separates that scenario from our school system today?

And why do we have that system? More tomorrow.

(Part I here)

Tort and ReTort -

Tort and ReTort - Jeff Fecke's not a bad guy. But reading his blog, you can tell he cut his political teeth on Bill Clinton.

He wrote a long response to my Open Letter to Gay Marriage Supporters yesterday. He made this point, slightly edited for brevity:

First of all, I'll stipulate for the purpose of argument that the definition of marriage is stable and cross-cultural. I can show many reasons why it is not, has not been, and likely never will be, but that's beside the point.

No, it's not. In every significant society in the world, "Marriage" has always been between men and women; usually but not always one of each. The total number of spouses per marriage may be more than two, but the number of genders involved, worldwide, throughout history, has pretty uniformly been "two". No real way around it.

Jeff continues:

The fact is, most Americans do have a clear idea of what marriage is, and it is the union of a man and woman who love each other. Or as Minnesota Statute 517.01 states:

Marriage a civil contract.

Marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract between a man and a woman, to which the consent of the parties, capable in law of contracting, is essential. Lawful marriage may be contracted only between persons of the opposite sex and only when a license has been obtained as provided by law and when the marriage is contracted in the presence of two witnesses and solemnized by one authorized, or whom one or both of the parties in good faith believe to be authorized, so to do. Marriages subsequent to April 26, 1941, not so contracted shall be null and void.

But this, of course, leads to an obvious answer to Mitch's second question: what is the new definition that can pass legal muster? Quite simple:

Marriage a civil contract.

Marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract between a man and a woman two people, to which the consent of the parties, capable in law of contracting, is essential. Lawful marriage may be contracted only between persons of the opposite sex and only when a license has been obtained as provided by law and when the marriage is contracted in the presence of two witnesses and solemnized by one authorized, or whom one or both of the parties in good faith believe to be authorized, so to do. Marriages subsequent to April 26, 1941, not so contracted shall be null and void.

Strike thirteen words, add five. Not difficult, not at all. The courts wouldn't even blink.

Voila!The secret to all things! Write or rewrite the law!

Think of the ills we could fix if a simple rewrite was really all it took. For example, let's take the following sentence:

Mitch Berg is a single guy who spends his limited free time blogging.

Not good enough. Let's fix reality via re-write:

Mitch Berg is a single guy who spends his limited free time blogging is in a torrid relationship with Marisa Tomei.

Wow. I took out six words, added eight, and reality suddenly looks much better! And no court would even blink at it, either...

...although Ms. Tomei might.

Absurd? Sure. Just as absurd at the notion that striking references to gender, and opposite gender, will change peoples perceptions about what marriage is supposed to be.

Now, Jeff's redefinition might make sense if he doesn't try to define "Marriage", but rather "Civil contractual union". Those are the parts of "marriage" that might rationally be construed to be subject to equal protection.

Maybe.

Jeff says:

Now wait, you say--didn't Mitch say "Please show me a line that will allow two 'people who love each other' that will not allow any pair of roommates or pals or co-conspirators to call themselves 'Married' for any reason they want. By the way, 'people do that today - look at Britney Spears' will not cut it as an answer[.]"

Yes he did--but he can't take that off the table, because that's the heart of the issue.

It's completely irrelevant to the real issue. It's like saying "Lots of women have children for stupid reasons. That shouldn't be used to prevent men from conceiving and bearing children!" The issue is not "can the likes of Britney Spears get married to guys for stupid reasons", any more than it is "Should marriage be harder to get into?" (as good an idea as that'd be). The question is "If Britney wanted to enter into a "lifetime partnership" with Christina Aguilera instead of Jason Alexander, would that have been a "marriage" in the sense of the term that the vast majority of the people are willing to recognize?

He also notes:

There is a good argument to be made that the reason Roe v. Wade is still raw is that it was imposed on the nation by an activist Supreme Court.

Then again, when Loving v. Virginia was decided, support for anti-miscegenation laws dwarfed support of banning gay marriage. Over 90% of Americans were in favor of letting some states keep the races "pure." An activist court decided that case (and changed the definition of marriage in this country, for what it's worth). And now, only 38 years later, the idea of making a marriage of a black man and a white woman illegal just for the color of skin involved seems barbaric.

Right. Because it involved a definition of "Citizen" and "Human" that truly was barbaric.

Nobody this side of the lunatic fringe believes gays are not subject to the same rights, laws and protections that everyone else is. This isn't about the definition of "Human". It's about the definition of "Marriage".

Which is why in a perfect world I'd say "get government out of the business of performing marriages, and let them stick with enforcing contracts". Let them issue civil unions, and leave the more ephemeral concept of 'Marriage" up to churches (and, I guess, ship captains), where the subject belongs, and let people decide where and how they want to observe marriage.

What is going to happen if we change the definition of "Marriage"? For starters, the market will change the definition of "Insured". Look for insurers and employers to drop, or reduce, the benefits of marriage, as the concept of marriage becomes too open to cover anymore.

Perspectives on Specs

Perspectives on Specs - The visual art gene skipped a generation in my family, from my mother and my sister to my kids. I have no aptitude at drawinag or painting - my artistic abilities are purely musical and, arguably, prose writing.

But my kids are both quite talented (and it's safe to say that they got as much of that from their mother as from my side). My son in particular loves art - he won the State Fair art show in his age bracket in 2002 for the most adorable sculpture I've ever seen.

So my kids are the visual artists - but I try. I'm particularly illiterate at the history of painting. Yet through the fog of my lack of knowledge of visual art, one artist has always stuck with me: J.M.W. Turner.

Turner was a key artistic manifestation of one of the most amazing confluences of art, science, engineering, philosophy and understanding of the world in history, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to about 1835 - a period Paul Johnson called "The Birth of the Modern" in his book of the same name, a time when the precepts for many of the lynchpins of what we call the modern world were actually invented and popularized; things and ideas as diverse as the macadam road, steam power, indoor plumbing, pre-emption, trousers, romanticism, mass education, generalized wealth and popular concern for general welfare, the internal combustion engine...

...and in the case of Turner, the color yellow. Prior to Turner, the technology of pigmentation hadn't developed to the point where it could produce a genuine yellow paint; prodded by Turner, it did - and the new color in Turner's palette allowed him to pioneer the representation of light and the interplay of light and shadow and the atmosphere in a way that no artist before had. Turner's work was both realistic and intensely evocative, an achievement of both art and technology.

And, according to Charles Paul Freund, of overcoming disability:

Turner’s vision has been debated before, but [British eye surgeon and art buff James] McGill’s diagnosis is a specific one: The painter suffered some color blindness, affecting his reds and blues, and saw the world through cataracts. The latter would have resulted in his perceiving "exactly that effect of dazzling shimmering light we see in the paintings."

This, however, is a problem for some people.

Turner's style was, along with Byron's poetry, Shelley's prose and Beethoven's music, one of the founding pillars of Romanticism, the artistic tradition that eschewed the physical and empirical, and probably was most concisely stated by John Lennon - Byron, Shelley, Tchaikowskii and Thoreau would have probably felt "All you need is love" (fill in the unquantifiable, intangible human value of your choice) was a perfectly fine summation of the Romantic ideal. Later romantics and their descendents completed a separation of empirical and ethereal that would have horrified the likes of Turner, who saw the material, artistic and spiritual linked in ways that defied ideology.

Which is something both art and science need to rediscover.

If true, such a diagnosis would hardly diminish Turner; it would make his achievements more impressive, because he’d have chosen to make his disability a part of his method. Yet despite a wealth of suggestive case studies...the effort to understand art in terms of biology remains peripheral, and art remains locked in its Romantic cage.

If Turner did strive to make art from a clouded vision, his effort would have been one of intensifying intellectual engagement with the world, not of Romantic spiritual alienation from it. A Turner with fading sight would not have been trapped by biology; he would have been using his work to transcend it.

Read the whole thing, naturally.

First Ten Songs

First Ten Songs - I just hit shuffle on my MP3 player. Here are the next ten songs:

1. Wall of Death - Richard and Linda Thompson. Very appropriate, these days. No, not what you think. You have to know the song...
2. Duke's Place, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
3. Downtown, Neil Young and Pearl Jam
   
4. Guns and Roses, "Mr. Brownstone"
5. "My First Lover", Gillian Welch
6. "Tattooed Love Boys", Pretenders
7. "Scotland The Brave', the Black Watch
8. "Gloria", U2.
9. "World Shut Your Mouth", Julian Cope
10. Lion's Den, Springsteen (Live at Penn State).

Team report at ten.

The Sound of Markers Being

The Sound of Markers Being Called In - As word of John Kerry's complete absence from voting starts to circulate, it only makes sense that his biggest supporters - the media - are closing ranks.

In a prominent place on this morning' s Today show commercial interview, Katie Couric noted "So, you're heading back to Washington to vote?"

Kerry: "Yes, if a vote looks like it's going to be close or very important, I will fly back to Washington to take part".

Couric: "What are you voting on?"

Kerry: "I'll be voting on the gun show loophole, and on the ban on assault weapons..."

And on, and on. It was as if it was done off a script written by Terry MacAuliffe.

Why would Couric be so concerned about Kerry's itinerary?

As Powerline notes in quoting the BoHerald:

The Herald reports: "During his run for the presidency, Kerry has missed every one of the 22 roll call votes in the Senate this year and was absent for 292, or 64 percent of the roll call votes last year, according to a Herald review of Senate records." Isn't this one Bush campaign commercial that writes itself?

True - which is why Kerry, with the seeming connivance of the media, is making such a deal out of these votes.

This is what we're up against.

Kerry Scrambles

Kerry Scrambles - John Kerry is in the middle of a five minute unpaid campaign commercial on the Today show.

Couric lobbed him a softball about gun control: "You believe in gun control, don't you?", which led to a two-minute uninterrrupted drone in which Kerry hit both sides simultaneously; "I'm a gun owner and an avid hunter", he started, on his way toward attacking the sunset on the Assault Rifle ban and linking the "gunshow loophole" with terrorism.

However, when it turned to gay marriage - "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman...", he emphasized front and center, before tossing out civil unions.

What does that tell us about Gay Marriage? If John Kerry opposes it, it must be an absolute slam-dunk safe stance.

The Hype Machine

The Hype Machine - I'm watching the "Today" Show.

Katie Couric: "Who is Ed Schultz? Meet the man that some say could be the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh".

I'm stunned.

Is this how desperate the left is? Is this who they're pinning their hopes on, to seize the airwaves from the conservative phalanx?

I'm...stunned?

Idiots and Spin

Idiots and Spin - First, the idiots.

Former "Republican" governor Arne Carlson is leading an effort along with former Vice President Walter Mondale to try to repeal the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

For starters, the Strib published a logically-incontinent piece by Carlson, which makes me wonder two things; how desperate is the victim disarmament movement, and who at the Strib decided that this was publishable?

Oh, yeah - and how did we ever elect this hamster?

Carlson starts with the scare quotes:

More than 15,000 people applied for permits to carry concealed handguns in Minnesota in the first seven months after the state made them easier to get. Of 15,873 who applied for the permits in 2003, 139 were denied, according to a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension report released Monday.

Another 20 permits were suspended, revoked or canceled. In three cases, they were taken away because permit carriers were under the influence of alcohol. In two other cases, holders were under restraining orders for stalking or threatening people. In one case, a permit was suspended over the reckless discharge of a gun. Another wrote a bad check.

Before the MPPA passed the Legislature last year, the left was crying that anyone could get a permit. What Carlson shows us is that even writing a bad check - not a violent crime the last time I checked - can get your permit revoked.

Carlson continues:

Of those who had a permit application denied, most -- 84 -- were rejected because applicants were considered a danger to themselves or others. Many of the others that were rejected were because the applicants didn't take required gun safety and training courses or had been convicted of domestic violence.

Think about this (or, if you're a member of Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota, try to think): the police and sheriffs are denying roughly 1/2 of 1% of permit applications for cause.

1/2 of one percent.

The report shows a sharp increase in the number of people allowed to carry handguns, although it also shows the state is not on track to meet a prediction that 90,000 would get permits in three years.

The "prediction" was a number pulled ad rectum by a couple of Legislative researchers. In none of the 33 states that preceded us have more than one percent of elegible people applied for permits.

Under the old law, 11,381 Minnesotans had been licensed to carry as of the end of 2002.

Until the new law took effect on May 28, police chiefs and sheriffs had broad discretion to deny permits to carry, and some of the metropolitan counties issued few permits.

The change showed in the report. Most of the new permits were issued in metro counties. Hennepin County, for example, issued 2,710 permits while Ramsey County issued 1,188. Anoka, Dakota and St. Louis counties also issued more than 1,000 permits each in the law's first seven months.

Arne Carlson thinks this is a Bad Thing.

No. This reflects the politically-biased "discretion" that the metro police exercised in issuing permits under the old system.

Arne! How many of those new permits have been used to commit crimes?

I'll wait. I'll have to.

My question to the Strib and to Arne Carlson; did Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota feed you these "facts", or did they come straight from the Strib?

The new statute guarantees a permit to practically any adult who gets the required gun training and safety classes, pays an application fee and passes a criminal and mental health background check.

And this is a problem precisely why?Now the spin; the Strib and KARE11 both report that Carlson and Mondale's presence make this a "bipartisan" effort.

I use the term RINO - "Republican In Name Only" - very sparingly. Arne Carlson earns it richly. He was fiscally profligate, socially craven, and was a strong an advocate of victim disarmament as any DFL hamster.

Note to Arne Carlson - get your sorry, unwanted ass back out on the golf course. You were a worthless governor, and you're a worthless ex-governor.

Fritz? Don't get me started.

Stupid Labor Tricks

Stupid Labor Tricks - Metro Transit drivers may be ready to strike tomorrow.

Metro Transit is holding firm on money.

I'm not hearing any sympathy for them among bus passengers I know. Among non-bus commuters, most don't know what bus they'd take to get anywhere anyway.

Sullivan's Descent

Sullivan's Descent - Sullivan notes in response to an email yesterday:

If you take seriously the fact that this country is headed toward fiscal catastrophe in the next decade, then restraining spending and raising some taxes in the next four years is almost as essential as tackling the entitlement crunch. Neither Bush nor Kerry wants to help. They're both cowards (although Kerry seems to have a better grip on fiscal reality than Bush does). So gridlock is the best option. The combination of Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress was great for the country's fiscal standing. Independents and anyone under 40 concerned with the deficit don't need a Perot. They just need to vote for Kerry and hope the GOP retains control of at least one half of Congress.

In peacetime, I might - MIGHT - almost agree with Sullivan.

But this isn't peacetime.

If the mainstream Democrats were remotely responsible when it came to foreign policy and defense, I might agree with you.

But the Democrats are not responsible when it comes to foreign policy and defense - and it doesn't take a rocket scientist ,or even a particularly avid reader, to see how frighteningly trivial they are. They are unfit to wear the same label that FDR, Truman and JFK wore.

And until we have a second party in this country that can be trusted IN ANY WAY with defense and foreign policy - in this case, especially until the Democrat party produces a candidate that any rational person would trust as a Commander In Chief, the notion that "gridlock is good" is fatally flawed.

In this case, "fatally" means "people die". Thousands of them.

In 1992 and 1994, when the world looked to be at peace for the foreseeable future, and the Republicans were selling out their core beliefs and the DLC Democrats were bad-but-not-too-bad, "gridlock" was an acceptable solution.

Today? No way.

Fiscal problems can be fixed. Dead Americans can not be.

Why Schools Can't Succeed, Part I

My father taught high school for the better part of 40 years. He was easily the best teacher I ever had in 12 year of public school and 4 more of college. Everyone should have a teacher as good as my dad. (Just watch - this'll be the post he actually reads). I say this to state my bona fides; when liberals talk about conservatives and our views on education, it's usually to say that we "want to kill public schools".

No, I don't.

And it's irrelevant. They're killing themselves. In all honesty, I don't think there's any way they can succeed. And it's not for any - or at least all - of the reasons conservatives usually cite.

It's much more complicated than that.

Open Letter to Gay Marriage

Open Letter to Gay Marriage Activists - Mitch Berg here. I'm a conservative, a Christian, a divorced guy, and someone who's been on both sides of the gay marriage issue. I may be the least anti-gay Christian Conservative you will ever meet, although some gay activists have tried to quibble with that. They were were wrong then, and they still are.

Andrew Sullivan has long stated a case about gay marriage that has come, at times, very close to convincing me to support the idea - although it has its absurd components to it as well. Sullivan is right about quite a few things; while the Catholic church and most protestants as well will say that marriage is about a man and a woman getting together to create a family, there is no church that bars, for example, the infertile from marrying; churches don't comb through their records to find the childless and warn them to get busy or they'll get annulled.

I think there's a case - a strong one - to be made for civil unions among gay people. I say "case", not "slam-dunk".

Neither Sullivan nor any other pro-gay-marriage activist I've heard has addressed either my major concerns about the issue, or the one, overriding point that Sullivan, as eloquent as he is, consistently fails to touch. If the state tosses out the traditional definition of marriage, what replaces it? "Two people who love each other?" So now the state must toss out a 10,000 year old definition of "Marriage" - as stable and cross-cultural a concept as humanity has ever shared - and cough up a definition of "love", a concept that changes every generation or so? Where do you draw the line between "people who can marry" and those who can't? And by "line", I mean a line that will pass logical muster in a court of law, a place that doesn't easily forgive intellecual and logical sloppiness. Please show me a line that will allow two "people who love each other" that will not allow any pair of roommates or pals or co-conspirators to call themselves "Married" for any reason they want. By the way, "people do that today - look at Britney Spears" will not cut it as an answer; if two people marry for any significant amount of time, then dissolution has serious penalties, even in our no-fault culture, especially if kids are involved. And do you think opening marriage to gays will lower the number of frivolous marriages? What's the over-under on Rosie O'Donnell's marriage?

To cynics, of course, the whole thing is about paying for AIDS. As with so many issues, I recoil at the cynics' logic - but can't prove them wrong, either.

So here's my challenge to all of you that support gay marriage; since the Federal Marriage Amendment is dead on arrival (and I sincerely doubt anyone, including Karl Rove, expected differently) but 2/3 of the American people still oppose the idea of gay marriage, you have some time here:

• Stop trying to do this through the courts. While partner benefits may be a civil rights and liberties issue - and just enough of one to engage the libertarian in me - the definition of "marriage" observed by the vast majority of the people in this nation is not. And just as religion needs to be kept out of government, so government needs to be kept out of religion. To the vast majority in this nation, "marriage" is a religious concept, not a civil one. If you use government to ram your definition down everyone's throat, you will forever delegitimize it.
• Take the time and effort to convince those who disagree, rather than condescend to them. No, really - the worst thing about most Gay Marriage supporters is that most of them are confrontational without being convincing; they seem to hold the conceit that they shouldn't need to be bothered with the necessity of convincing the rabble. It won't work.
• Rebuke Gavin Newsome, Rosie O'Donnell and the rest of the scofflaws. Again, these morons only delegitimize your views. Most Americans are intrinsically law-abiding - and resent those that scoff at the laws (under the protection of benevolent, PC local governments). Ignore this at your peril.
• Learn and listen. Want to learn something about prevailing against popular sentiment? Take a look at the NRA and the Concealed Carry Reform movement. While most Americans are anti-gun control, concealed carry reform is counterintuitive for many people, especially those whose understanding of the issue is a product of prejudice and hysteria. Sound familiar, gays? And yet in the past 21 years, grass-roots movements in 28 states have overcome the media-induced fear and hysteria and passed reform movements. And they've done it one legislator at a time, without getting it passed by judicial fiat. It's legitimate law. And it's done the right way - which is how you're going to have to do this in the long run, if you want gay marriage to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

I see no reason to alter the traditional definition of marriage - and great dangers in doing it. I also can also see reasons to allow binding civil unions between gays.

The Three Signs of Spring

The Three Signs of Spring - In my little corner of the Midway, there are three key signs that spring has sprung:

1. The puddles of vomit in the street after the Hamline frat boys' parties wash away in the rain and runoff, rather than freezing into solid chundercakes.
2. The legislative staff checks to see if Representative Alice Hausman pops out of her hole and sees her shadow; if she does, we'll have twelve more months of blatant teachers' union sycophancy and nonexistant constituent relations.
3. The Anoka Flash's kegerator is open

.It's an early spring this year, as his post indicates.

Now, the fun part is going to be seeing if there's any kegerator trend that we can tie to the Presidential election...

Open Letter to Andrew Sullivan

Open Letter to Andrew Sullivan - Andrew:

I owe you a bunch. I had never heard of blogs before reading your site - and I didn't read any other blogs until after I started this one.

And while I disagree with you about gay marriage, you did prompt me to think about the issue - a lot. I support civil unions now, which I didn't before. Chalk up half a convert.

But in today's column, you say:

For my part, it confirmed something I've suspected for a while. John Kerry is highly unlikely to put John Edwards on his ticket. And his spending plans make even George Bush look fiscally responsible. A must-read this week: the Washington Post's analysis of Kerry's big spending budget plans. It looks increasingly as if anyone who cares about fiscal sanity is going to have to sit this election out.

Andrew: This is insanity.

You've observed yourself; the war on terror is the major issue in this election, and it doesn't take a discerning pundit to see that John Kerry is a complete no-show on the war and all foreign policy. You know this election will be a close one, so you know that staying home will be the same as voting for Kerry, especially given the consuming Bush-hatred that animates the left.

You disagree with Bush's spending, even as you note that Kerry would be even worse, and he'd raise taxes, which would neuter the recovery, perhaps send us into double-dip recession. You are also mortified by the Administration's stance on gay marriage, even while noting that Kerry is no better.

So I'll say this: If you are a conservative and you love this country - and you've adopted it as your homeland, Andrew, so you must - then the sane course of action is obvious. We need to stop this insane talk about sitting out the election over our pet issues, and do the following:

1. Use our votes this November, and in November of '06, to make the Congress more fiscally conservative. We need to elect more people like my own governor, Tim Pawlenty - who is a moderate Republican who was forced by a fiscal conserative groundswell to swing to the right on fiscal issues, promising no new taxes in Minnesota. He had the integrity to stick with that promise. Andrew - we saw what a conservative Congress could do to Bill Clinton's spending habits; we can do the same to Bush's.
2. The American people aren't ready to support gay marriage. Some will. Some never will. Some can be convinced, either way. Some will favor a compromise. You need to take some time in the bully pulpit that God and your talent gave you and convince a lot of the latter, I think. You need to win this fight, if it can be won, in the legislature, not in the courts or via idiotic scofflaws like Gavin Newsome.
3. We all need to keep our priorities straight; if you think spending is bad now, wait until you see what it's like with a Kerry presidency; higher spending, higher taxes (leading to a vicious cycle as the economy grinds to another halt), and vast additional spending as, inevitably, the Kerry appeasement leads to the Islamofascists regrouping and taking to the attack again.

I won't say sitting out the election is "treason"', as some of my overheated friends do.

But if you really do believe that the stakes are what I think we agree they are, then it'd be dereliction of citizenship.

That goes for all of you conservatives out there.

Five Days

Five Days- The Northern Alliance Radio Network debuts on Saturday at noon, on AM1280 The Patriot here in the Twin Cities.

It's going to be a fun show; more about the debut show's line-up later this week.

All About Ed

All About Ed - As I mentioned last week, I have a very long screed about education in the hopper - one that is likely to get my conservative friends just as exercised as my liberal ones.

Last week, I hadn't decided if I was going to run the whole, DenBeste-ishly long piece as one log blob, or break it into four posts. It'll be four posts, starting tomorrow. Two reasons for this:

1. I forgot to post the whole long thing over the weekend.
2. It's just as well, because I still don't have an ending for it. At the moment the whole screed leads up to a Kerry-like, wishy-washing non-ending. And I think the piece needs one.

So it starts tomorrow, in four parts, which will give me a Friday deadline to figure out what the actual ending is...

Why Schools Can't Succeed

This was a four-part series I did on education - somewhat dyspeptic, a little revolutionary, and definitely tired of both sides.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Saving Senator Rudy

Saving Senator Rudy - Saint Paul from the Fraters has uncovered a massive injustice: the highest-ranking references to former Minnesota Senator Rudy Boschwitz visible on Google are a set of scabrous hatchet jobs put out by a stealth "progressive" front group.

The Saint savages the scabrous assassination:

Boschwitz wasn’t “whipped” in 1996. Wellstone only got 50% of the vote then, precisely what he got in 1990. While Boschwitz did decline from 48% of the vote in 1990 to 41% in 1996, this can mostly be attributed to the presence of vanity candidate Dean Barkley of the Independence Party (who got an appalling 7% in 1996). Wellstone never whipped anybody. Throughout his elected tenure, until his death, he remained a divisive, polarizing force, one never supported by more than half of Minnesotans.

Regarding TPJ’s description of Wellstone as a “poorly funded populist”, according to the Almanac of American Politics (2002 edition), here are the 1996 totals for campaign contributions in their Senate race:

Wellstone - $7,459,878
Boschwitz - $4,385,982

Regarding their value laden characterization of Boschwitz’s voting record and Minnesotans reaction to it, simply ridiculous. Raving, malignant rhetoric worthy of a Star Tribune editorial. Not even worth dissecting.

What is worth pointing out is their emphasis of the “Jewish” question in the 1990 campaign. Something voters were “repulsed by” according to TPJ. In truth, this controversy was one of those patented last week of the campaign hit tactics by the Democratic party. And this one the media swallowed and disseminated to an unprecedented degree.

Read the whole thing? Duh.

But here's the important part (and the ironic one, given the previous post): Saint's plan for electronic restorative justice:

With Google it’s all about the links. The more sites linking, the higher on the hierarchy you go. Therefore, if you care about the legacy of Rudy Boschwitz, about historical accuracy, or about a woman’s right to choose (to read the truth about Rudy Boschwitz), you need to help us ascend the staircase of Googling preferences. Link to the truth. Link to this post. Link to Fraters Libertas today! Remember, only you can save Rudy Boschwitz’s legacy.

Heck. If it'll help, I'll add some more links. Anything to help. right a wrong.

I encourage you to do the same.

The Numbers -

The Numbers - I'm thinking Bush is going to have to start getting these numbers out there:

The numbers speak of strong overall economic growth. The gross domestic product — the figure for the total output economy — grew at an 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter of 2003, and at a 4 percent rate in the fourth quarter. The GDP is forecast to grow at a 4.5 percent rate in 2004. As economist J. Edward Carter writes: "For the third consecutive year, the U.S. economy is poised to grow faster than most other industrialized economies. France, Germany and Japan, for instance, are not expected to grow even half as fast as the United States."

The numbers indicate an economy constantly finding new and better ways to work. Nonfarm productivity — a crucial indicator of economic efficiency that corresponds over the long term with higher wages and greater national wealth — grew at a healthy 4.2 percent rate in 2003. During Bush's first three years in office, productivity has been increasing at a 4.1 percent annual rate, the best start to any presidential term in roughly 50 years.

It's eight months until the election, and it's already shaping up to be a doozie. As many things as I think Bush messes up, he's got a lot of potential great stuff out there - and Kerry's an almost boundlessly weak candidate, if we let him be.