July 31, 2004
Fun Stuff
We had our first ever Northern Alliance Radio Network live remote this afternoon What a blast. This follows on the wonderful time we had at Keegan's last Saturday - the NARN is starting to have a social life, and it's fun!
We met about eighty NARN fans and afficionados of amazingly gorgeous real estate. When the kids and I got to the site, I walked out to the bluff - and was amazed to see a golden eagle soaring below me. The place is simply the most gorgeous piece of real estate I've seen in years.
We also met some longtime friends of the NARN; DC from Brainstorming was there, along with Steve Gigl, Ryan Rhodes, and a bevy of other fans who made the drive to the development.
Great to meet you all! We'll have to do it again sometime!
July 30, 2004
Back To Class
Chumley notes:
To which King responded:Mankato Mayor Jeff Kagermeier predicts President Bush will get a "fairly warm reception" from both sides of the political aisle when he visits on Wednesday. Kagermeier says a lot of people in Mankato, possibly because it's a college town, can see past the partisanship of politics.Perhaps Mankato is a unique commodity among college towns, a bi-partisan mecca if you will. Or perhaps Kagermeier is blinded by the light, racked up like a deuce, another roller in the night. Sorry, but I thought one ridiculous statement deserved another.
I never did like that song.OK, King - we need to figure out if you need to go to Music 090.
Are you talking the atrocious Manfred Mann knockoff? Very true. Mann butchered three different Springsteen classics - Blinded By The Light, Spirit In The Night and For You during his misbegotten seventies "Earth Band" incarnation. Mann's dessiccated, dreary dirges demand denunciation I duly deliver.
On the other hand, if you're talking about Bruce's version? Well, we might have to settle this with CDs at twenty paces...
Tomorrow's Broadcast
I really hope you can make it to tomorrow's Northern Alliance broadcast at the Estates of Diamond Bluff (directions on the linked page).
It's the first-ever Patriot Picnic, with food, prizes, and of course a chance to buy some of the most gorgeous real estate in town.
Noon to 3PM tomorrow. (And if you can't make it, by all means listen - AM1280 in the Metro).
Not A Bad Idea
Jason Goray is a local (area?) guy I've known for about eight years. The guy wears "counterculture" like some of us wear "clothes".
But unlike a lot of his fellow travellers, he's alwas been a pretty rational guy. I've been trolling for decent lefty blogs, and Jason's...well, is.
One of his post has a good injunction for the left - especially a lot of blogging lefties (and I know Jason would blanche at being called "lefty", but it's my blog...):
Today'sGood thing for everyone, of all political inclinations, to remember.
Be careful with the "Bush is a liar" rhetoric. As far as I know, you'll find very few provable lies. You will find statements that were overly confident, predictions that turn out to be wrong, and statements that lead people to make the leap to false conclusions, but few outright lies. Never forget "plausible deniability": a politician who traps their self in a provable lie is a rare fool.Speaking of which, even though I have indulged in it on occasion, be careful of the "Bush is an idiot" rhetoric as well. First of all, it isn't really all that relevant. The policies of the Bush administration are what they are, and are based on the world view and philosophies of more than just one man.
Secondly, it smacks of elitism. Whether or not you're comfortable with that, the "swing voters" tend not to be. It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong when you're shooting yourself in the foot.
So - of everyone who worked at Integrity Solutions, we've got Odin, Pete, Jason and I...who am I missing?
Freedom Fighters - Coleman Style
Nick Coleman has found a fascists in our midst, in this piece on the brutal repression of a couple of Duluth kids outside President Bush's speech a few weeks ago.
The Ringsred brothers of Duluth may turn out to be poster boys for the 2004 presidential election.What, indeed, happened?
The Ringsred brothers of Duluth may turn out to be poster boys for the 2004 presidential election.
According to Coleman, it was a crushing of free expression:
The Ringsred boys had gone down to the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center to demonstrate against the president and wound up getting free rides to police headquarters, where they were held and interrogated.Shocking. Just shocking. It's like we don't have a democracy anymore at all - maybe Josh "ua Micah" Marshall was right?If the cops wanted to make an example of them, they succeeded: The Ringsreds offer a splendid example of why you better keep your mouth shut this election. The politicians and police are in no mood to tolerate protest. You raise your voice, you may have to raise bail.
Anyway - the Ringsred boys sure seem like clever lads, according to Coleman:
On July 13, Odin Ringsred, one of the twins, pasted his shaggy hair to one side and painted a Hitler mustache on his face. While Bush was inside the arena speaking to 7,000 supporters, Odin was outside, holding a handmade sign that had the president's name and swastikas on it. It wasn't very subtle. [Or clever. Or smart - Ed] Miles, it must be noted, was wearing a dress, which he figured was another sure-fire way to irritate Republicans. There is nothing like a teenager for understanding how to needle an adult. [And nothing like a button-pushing little prick to irritate a human - Ed]But that's OK, it's America, you have a right to be a moron - and if you're a lefty moron, you have plenty of company.
The real beef is, what was the brave piece of political criticism that prove, as Coleman says, "you better keep your mouth shut this election"
During the President's speech, the Ringsred boys got into an argument, and a scuffle over the swastika-bedecked sign, with soe pro-Bush protesters at the event. Then, after the speech:
Odin, still steamed by the tug-of-war over the sign, tossed it at the guy who had been grabbing it and said, "Here, you want it so much, take it!"Oh. Oh, my. When Nick Coleman said the boys had been collared for political speech, I had no idea that he really meant "for being stupid". Throwing signs, wising off and giving smart-ass answers to cops who are trying to control a crowd - a crowd full of spoiled little morons waving swastika signs who are doing their damnedest to inflame things, at that.At that point, a cop came up and asked Odin what his name was. Odin had a perfect 14-year-old wise-guy answer at the ready: He said his name was Adolf.
As fast as you can say "Nazi jokes are verboten," he found himself shoved into the back of a squad car.
Odin's twin, Anders, came over to argue that the cops should be going after the alleged grownup who had tried to swipe Odin's sign. A gaggle of cops answered Anders' pleas by roughly tossing him inside the car with his brother...When Miles realized what had happened, he ran over to the cops and demanded that his little brothers be released. "This is none of your business," a cop told him."Yes it is," Miles insisted.
The cop ordered him to go home and swore at him, Miles says. So Miles responded by making a Nazi salute and saying, "Yes, Mein Fuhrer!"
You can guess what happened next. The only difference was that Miles got his own squad car.
"Spoiled?"
The Ringsreds come from a prominent family. Their father, Eric, is an emergency room doctor and former school board member who was the driving force behind the reinstallation of the Duluth harbor foghorn (loved by many, cursed by some).Ah. A bunch of high school kids who grew up around boundless entitlement. Amazing.
So Nick Coleman? You spun this as "crushing of dissent", but in fact, isn't it really "Dumb kids acting like morons?" This has nothing to do with political belief, and everything to do with lousy judgement.
Question: Does anyone take Nick Coleman seriously? The man's writing beggars any description, in my opinion, this side of senility. If you're a Coleman fan, please answer the question "good Lord, why?"
The Word
Jay Reding has an excellent piece over on RedState about the one word Bush needs to win the election.
I'd post an excerpt, but RedState seems to disable copying of more than a line or so of its content. Note to Redstate guys; we bloggers like to do pull-quotes. Please fix it.
Strange Pattern
I was going through my posts, cleaning up a few dozen spam comments.
Now, spam is (more or less) advertising. And advertising goes (more or less) where it thinks it has a market.
Now, I had a big surge of spam in the last 48 hours; I'd find 20-odd spam comments for various crude pr0n sites in a given post. The interesting part is, those posts always related to Al Franken, FrankenNet, or Air America.
Spammers must know something about their audience...
Elitist Test
From Quizilla, the "What Kind of Elitist Are You" test.
Me?
Your CD collection is almost as big as your ego,
and you can most likely play an instrument or
three. You're a real hit at parties, but you're
SO above karaoke.
What people love: You're instant entertainment.
Unless you play the obo.
What people hate: Your tendency to sing louder than
the radio and compare everything to a freaking
song.
What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Puhleeze. Me, a musical elitist? Sheesh.
I mean - CD's? That's so 1989. I do have a couple gig of MP3s, though. I'll do karaoke, as long as I can do "Thunder Road". Sheesh. And Oboe? Pfft. Although the bagpipes are, like the oboe and bassoon, a double-reed instrument...
Er, OK. Take the test.
Josh "ua Micah" Marshall Loses His Mind
Josh "ua Micah" Marshall has officially slipped the surly bonds of credence, and slid into full raving moonbat-ism.
In this case, it's about the capture of Al Quaeda leader Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, nabbed in Pakistan. "So apparently they couldn't come up with bin Laden himself," the Georgetown fratboy sniffs, like he's sending back an overcooked swordfish filet.
That's right, Josh "ua"; they're not chasing a bunch of the most dangerous men in the world, men surrounded by fanatical guards in the midst of sympathetic populations; the job has never been any harder than finding the perfect free-trade latte; as if Donald Rumsfeld can order up an Al Quaeda leader like a book on Amazon (a concept that would seem a key part of Kerry's terror policy).
Marshall continues:
...I'd be very, very curious to hear whether when, oh say, CNN goes on about how this al Qaida guy has been hauled in they will mention at all, or with any consistency, that one of the most respected political magazines in the United States reported just weeks ago on the pressure the administration has been placing on the Pakistanis to serve up an al Qaida bad guy on this day.My bosses tell me they want a project done by June 1; if I get it done, does that impute cynical motives to my bosses?Will they make the obvious connection? Or will they just ignore it?
This is just the latest, but perhaps the most blatant, example of how this administration has placed politics and, really, political dirty tricks above national security itself, and along the way persisted in defining political deviance down until tactics we used to associate with banana republics start to seem commonplace here.So accomplishing the mission - the one that even the Democrats recognize, "fighting Al Quada", is a deviant tactic?
I thought going after Al Quaeda was the job we were suppose to concentrate on rather than liberating Iraq?
Or were we supposed to put off all progress against Al Quaeda until after the election, for appearances sake?
One more question: If the administration were going to drop a cynical "July Surprise," do you suppose it would have been an Al Quaeda leader anyone might have heard of?
And while we're at it, this is yet another example of how truly important it is that we democratize the Middle East. Because once we have, some of them will be able to come back here and redemocratize us.No, Josh "ua". But some of them can come to your Georgetown condo and explain to you what real tyranny is.
I'm starting to realize; just as Michael Savage is an embarassment to the right - a caricature of conservative pundits that makes liberals chortle with glee - Josh "ua Micah" Marshall is every bit as much a caricature of the left.
Scratch another "worth reading" lefty blog from the list. Are there any left?
July 29, 2004
Thinking the Unthinkable
Deacon from Powerline ponders the worst by way of answering a rhetorical question:
Dean Esmay poses this question to conservatives: If Kerry is elected, will they try to support him if he does the right thing, or will they degenerate into partisan backbiting as Democrats did after 2000? My answer is "both." We will support him if he does the right thing but attack him in ways that will seem partisan if (when) he does not. For example, if Kerry stays the course in Iraq, he should not be attacked when mishaps occur or second-guessed over every questionable tactical decision. In the unlikely event that Kerry initiates new military actions for which he can make a case in the context of fighting terrorism, conservatives clearly should rally behind him since, heaven help him, many liberals will not. And conservative support should not diminish if the intelligence that contributed to his decision turns out to be flawed or if a few soldiers engage in abusive behavior.That is, of course, what I believe.
I think that while many - probably most - rank and file Democrats genuinely care for their country, the mainstream and "elite" of the party are most concerned about getting back into power, whatever the means or cost.
I think that most Republicans are primarily motivated by the safety of the country, and that gaining and holding "power" is at most a secondary motivation.
"But wait", someone will say, "what about the Clinton years? That couldn't have helped the country, can it?"
Three problems with that idea:
- Clinton did damage the country; he lied under oath. Forget the original transgression if you want; he still broke the law.
- Show me the Republican MoveOn.org. No, not a group that is a far-out as MoveOn - that's easy. I mean show me an extremist group that so controls the GOP's agenda.
- The devil makes work of idle hands. The nineties were a trivial decade; with no communism to vanquish, parts of the GOP became unclear about their mission. The Democrats rarely have that problem - they basically are always on one crusade or another, be it class warfare or the sacramentalization of infanticide or whatever. Republicans' crusades are bigger - when we don't have them (vide: the seventies), some of us get a little crazy. That is clearly not a problem these days.
Health Is Death, Winston
So when Whoopie Goldberg and Rosie O'Donnell and Linda Ronstadt face public disapproval for their political statements, it's a "chilling" descent into "fascism".
So what is this?
Curves International, America’s fastest-growing fitness franchise, is devoted to women’s health. But its founder’s financial support of women and teen clinics that either denounce abortion or decline to discuss it has triggered a membership cancellation drive among pro-choice members who say his stance is not healthy for women.So many angles on this story.
In Santa Cruz, as in other parts of Northern California, the fallout stems largely from a San Francisco Chronicle article last month by columnist Ruth Rosen who linked Curves founder Gary Heavin with militant anti-choice groups.Chilling effect!Although a lengthy correction was printed May 12 distancing Heavin from the radical anti-abortion movement, some members continued to say that news of his financial support of pro-life organizations that are supported verbally by Operation Save America, a radical anti-abortion group, is reason enough to rescind their memberships.
"This is a women’s-health-centered gym, the whole point being health and well-being," said Bonnie Friedman. "They’re a corporation whose founder is taking those profits and funding groups that are antithetical to women’s health. I almost feel set up."
Friedman said she’s received no reply to a certified letter she sent to Janna Malizia, the owner of four local Curves.
At least 10 local women have confirmed with the Sentinel that they either resigned their membership or tried to get out of their contract in the last month.
What these maroons don't realize - and what the story doesn't tell - is that Curves is a franchise operation; resigning your membership only hurts your local franchisee, not the corporation.
The most troubling part, of course, is the continued, concerted attempt to make "Abortion" a synonym for "health". Read the detractors' comments, above - to them, it's as if exercise and abortion are equal partners in the health of a woman.
Polarization Index Rises Through Roof
You know things are getting bad when I start defending Michael Savage.
That's what it's come to.
Here's what Savage said on Monday's show, according to
Michelle Malkin":"I'll go down the list of people who should not have the right to vote. Let's start with illegal aliens. Should they have the right to vote? Course they shouldn't, but they do. They're being courted by the Democrats as we speak."David Brock's Media Matters flak group - which includes newly-exposed moonbat blogger Atrios - was on the case, as Michelle relates:The smug liberals at Media Matters respond: "Contrary to Savage's assertion, the U.S. Constitution grants voting rights only to American citizens."And lest we forget, Phylllis Kahn is still at large. It's not a big leap between lowering the voting age to 12 and extending it to illegal aliens.This prompted one of Media Matters' readers to comment, "He thinks illegal aliens can vote? What an idiot. Is he really worth taking seriously?"
I hate to burst their self-righteous bubble, but here in my home county, Mongomery County, Md., six cities (Garrett Park, Takoma Park, Somerset, Chevy Chase, Martin's Additions and Barnesville) allow illegal aliens to vote in local elections. So do Amherst and Cambridge, Mass. A similar policy was proposed last month by Democrats in San Francisco.
Someone Tell Soucheray
This story's headline wrote rhetorical checks that no story could cash:
Segway owners beat each other with homemade malletsStill, the payoff is there.
It's about Segway Polo:
What next?The only thing worse than paying $4,000 for a scooter has to be using said scooter for a game of polo.
Yes, friends, it has come to that. A small band of Bay Area Segway owners have set a new low for the device - an almost impossible feat when you consider that "IT" was meant to have revolutionized cities by now but has actually ended up being little more than a poor selling toy. About ten of the Segway grunts recently gathered for a disturbing go at scooter polo.
Ventura Trolley Jousting?
Vespa Baseball?
July 28, 2004
If You're In The Greater NYC Area...
...you might want to check in on Red.
I'm worried she hurt herself writing her latest enormous magnum opus on Saint Exupery. Or the Adamses. Or Cary Grant. Or...
Well, anyway, just check in on her.
Missing the Point
Jesse at Pandagon says about Commissioner Hugh "Ralphie" Hewitt:
Hugh Hewitt...feel my wrath.True...How stupid of Democrats to call attention to the photos of Kerry's Dukakis-in-a-tank moment by complaining about them and giving Drudge a huge reason to run with the shots.Anyone whose point about someone else being stupid is this self-defeating should not be talking. Remember the Alex Polier story? When Kerry was supposed to have been having the mad crazy adulterous sex with an AP intern/reporter? Drudge pummeled that idiotic story, despite the fact that the only major statement was given by Kerry to Imus saying that it flat out wasn't true - and yet, Drudge ran with it.
...but this isn't about Drudge. Hugh could have named Drudge, or any of a thousand conservative bloggers, or Rush Limbaugh, Peter Jennings or the North Korean News Service for all it matters. The destination doesn't matter.
The important part is that Kerry, Mary Beth Cahill, and the entire Kerry spin machine would seem to be running into the weeds having their difficulties.
But Hewitt's just being totally ridiculous here - Drudge is a Republican attack dog. A beast, a machine, a doomsday device. The only excuse he needs to talk about the story is the fact that it involves a Democrat. He isn't poor widdle Drudgey-boy, getting all this nasty Democratic press forced on him by Terry McAuliffe. Then again, I don't think Hewitt's point was to provide an honest account of why every's favorite fedora-wearing rumor-monger is covering this.Hewitt is dead-on. Kerry's clumsy denials - that the pictures were leaked and unauthorized - are obviously false on their face.
Rag on Drudge all you want (although his accuracy rate isn't much worse than ABC News); he's not the story.
And either is Hugh.
Atrios Unmasked
The identity of longtime overheated lefty gossipblogger Atrios has been revealed. His name is Duncan Black, and...:
It turns out that Mr. Black works at Media Matters, the new David Brock media watchdog group, which is kind of interesting - he is doing paid media commentary on one site, and a lot of anonymous media criticism on the other...Well, then.
Atrios' identity is a huge story among the bloggers covering the Dem convention, prompting much auto-backpatting:
I've known Atrios was Duncan Black for some time now. I've even met him.It prompted one particularly astute comment on Oliver Willis' site:I'm a total DC insider now.
The fact that Atrios's identity is as big a story in blogtopia as any DNC-related item, and that bloggers are reporting on themselves as much as convention goings-on tells me the blogosphere hasn't yet found its way out of its echo chamber. I don't expect any better from the RNC convention bloggers.True as re the blogosphere, but I think you can expect much better from the RNC bloggers; compare the astuteness of the likes of Ed or Rocket Man with the echo-chamber sycophancy of
No contest, I say.
Memo To DNC: Lose the Silly Hats
Blogs of War on Sillypicturegate:
I didn’t think anything of the original photos but then again I spent many years working in and around NASA. You get used to guys in funny suits. The real story here is Mary Beth Cahill sticking both feet in her mouth over something so completely trivial.I didn't think anything of them either - until I took a a second look.
(Hat tip: Brian from Boviosity)
And when this one gets out, he's really hosed...
This could get ugly.
Status Report
In case you were wondering:
- I'm working the little project that could (where "could"="could eat my brain"). Perhaps the most trying little project I've ever worked on.
- The lease on my car is up on Friday. My credit is a complete hash, so car-shopping, something I normally would skip to visit the dentist, is just that bit more hellish.
- It's 4AM. Some nights, I schedule posts to publish at 4AM. But no - it's really me, really up at 4AM posting. Stress? Probably.
- I have exactly forty posts in my Drafts section. Several of them are posts I'm dying to get out - they're dynamite, I tells ya - but something prevents me from pushing them over the top.
- That last bit is such an apt metaphor for so many things in my life.
- The sooner we host another blogger bash, the sooner I'll be able to say I have something in my social life. Goodness knows there's nothing else going on.
- Something really smells in my kitchen, and I can't find what it is. I've accounted for the cat...
- My brain hurts.
- "Madeline" is on the Disney Channel right now (note to self - turn off TV. It was a favorite of my kids - both of them - when they were babies. We used to sing the "Madeline" theme as we drove - no, let's be mortifyingly honest (mortifying for them), they used to demand I'd sing it in my absurd French accent, over and over:
Eeef you beeleeeve you most beee beeg
The most overwhelming memories are the ones that catch you by surprise.
in oardair too be toff,
then you should get to know me, I'll teach you othair stoff...I'm Madeline, I'm Madeline, ahm not a leettle Tweeg,
I'm Madeline, I'm Madeline, and inside, ahm Beeg! - My daughter is up. Oy. She's on the other computer, typing her "Lord of the Rings" fan fiction. On the one hand, she's become a very talented little writer. ON the other hand, sneaking downstairs at 4AM? That's too much like...
...er, never mind.
Cravings
Malkin talks about her various late-night cravings.
Her list:
Things I miss about...The problem with the Twin Cities is that most of the best late-night craving food is long gone.Seattle: Dick's Drive-In fries and homemade vanilla milkshakes. Copper River salmon. Ivar's clam chowder.
Los Angeles: In-n-Out burgers.
South Jersey: Funnel cakes and lemonade on the Boardwalk. Fralinger's Original Saltwater Taffy. Joe and John's pizza. Hoagies from anywhere.
The old Szechuan Express on 26th and Hennepin, where you could get eggolls at 2AM? Long gone. Doyle's, on 38th and Bloomington, with the best onion rings ever made? Long, long gone. And most of the Embers' seem to have gone to the big bus tub in the sky, and most Perkinses seem to be closing at midnight, and Denny's - let's not get ridiculous here.
As to late night pizza delivery - oh, the humanity.
Mickey's Diner lives on, of course, and there is no better late-night carb bomb than their O'Brien potatoes. But that's a thin thread to base a whole city's late night cravings on.
Something needs to be done.
Starblogger
Tom Webb is the Washington correspondent for the Pioneer Press.
He has - no, strike that. The Pioneer Press has jumped on the blog bandwagon by shoehorning this old-school reporter into a pseudo-blog on the PiPress' online edition. The Fraters' Saint Paul commented about the local institutional blog phenomenon yesterday.
Here's what Webb had to say yesterday:
It wouldn't be a convention without free-range celebrity sightings -- that is, spotting VIPs outside of their usual habitats......zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Huh? Oh, crap. Sorry. He talked about Garrison Keillor and Patty Wetterling and B-Af...what is it with the left and stars? Half of Air America, I swear, is fully involved in paying obeisance to Hollywood. "Washington Reporter" Webb carries on like a star-struck Rona Barret.
:Just a minute, Berg - Webb is not "the left". He's a journalist".
Really? Let's check out who his "blog" links to:
- BostonDParty - the Democrat convention's house blog
- Daily Kos - amoral Democrat moonbat
- Instapundit - the one "conservative" blog that everyone has to link. Unless they link Andrew Sullivan.
- Blogging of a President - Left-leaning blog seemingly led by Boston NPR host and former MPR fill-in Christopher Lydon, a blog that accomplishes the difficult task of reading like "Mid-Morning" sounds.
- Centerfield - "Centrist", meaning moderate-left-leaning blog by a consortium of bloggers, including longtime "SiTD" friend Rick Heller
- Scripting News - non-aligned linkblog.
- Musselman for America - billed as the blog of the youngest delegate in the Texas delegation - to the Democrat convention, natch.
- TopDog04 - A really, really dumb lefty blog that I've never heard from before, and never will again.
- Wonkette - Really, really dull left-leaningDC gossip-blog.
In a blogosphere dominated by great conservative blogs - to say nothing of (my own, admittedly-self-serving obligation to mention) the Northern Alliance, a group of conservative bloggers of fairly immense influence (well, Lileks and Powerline and Ed, anyway) in Webb's paper's own backyard, that group of odds and sods and hacks is the best Tom Webb can come up with?
Note to the Pioneer Press; if you want to "get" blogs, you need to get in touch with the Northern Alliance. Ed, Trunk, Rocketman and the Fraters deliver more good stuff in a week than every "blogger" in your paper will in a year, and hold down day jobs to boot.
Just pathetic.
So There's Hope?
Since my former guilty pleasures Red and Michelle just aren't that guilty anymore (sorry, Red), I've needed to replenish the stockpile.
Perhaps Jess fills the bill?
As in this this post about a subject near to my heart:
After some drinks last night, I made a Very Important Decision. If I am still dating in my 30s, which much to my mother's chagrin ("I just don't want you to end up alone!") I most likely will be, I will only date divorced men.Hello!
I've already missed the first marriage wave. Husbands and wives my age are, right now, fighting and throwing things and getting separated and deciding who gets what. Since I made it through the first wave unscathed, now I have to sit back and wait for the divorces to be final and custody to be decided.Atcher service!
Why not date bachelors, you ask? Because bachelors in their 30s have been bachelors for too long. They're too used to it. They have all these "space" issues. They're very particular about their "stuff." They're afraid that getting into a relationship means that they can't watch sports anymore or hang out in their underwear. Especially if they've lived alone for years on end. Then they just get weird.Well, definitely not my problem!
Divorced men are a much better bet, once they get all the rebounding stuff out of the way. They've learned from their mistakes. They know how to make a commitment. And if they have a child or children over 4, yee haw! Then I don't have to deal with a baby, there's a possibility he won't want any more kids,So far, so good...
and we'll only have them on weekends...Ooof. So close, but yet so far.
Be There!
The Northern Alliance will be at Diamond Bluff Estates this Saturday, noon to 3PM for the first-ever Patriot Picnic.
Hope to see you there!
We'll have food, prizes, and a first look at our big surprise we'll be unveiling at the State Fair! (I'll give you a hint - it's really, really huge!)
So - if you've ever wanted to come to a Patriot get-together, but didn't want to fork over the money it takes to see the likes of a Medved or a Hewitt, get your money's worth this Saturday!
July 27, 2004
Self-Portrait Of The Artist as a Bored Guy
Via Red, another great time-waster - the self-portrait-o-matic.
Here's what I got:
Two observations:
- Yick, what a gross picture.
- Yick, what an accurate picture.
Coulter Kerfuffle
Yesterday, USA Today bagged their planned Ann Coulter convention column.
Today, Human Events has (courtesy of Coulter herself) the editor's line comments from Coulter's submission
Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.
One of many hilarious additions:
Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.Read the whole thing.# USA Today: EYE-ROLLING? AT WHAT?
Coulter notes:
“Apparently," said Coulter, "USA Today doesn’t like my ‘tone,’ humor, sarcasm, etc. etc., which raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them in the first place. Perhaps they thought they were getting Catherine Coulter.”USA Today has at least made some apparent efforts at political balance in their paper. Maybe we chalk this up to teething pains?
However:
In a sort of package deal, USA Today plans to have Michael Moore offer commentary at the Republican National Convention next month. “My guess is they will ‘get’ his humor” said Coulter. We agree.As do we.
Me? I'll stick with the blogger coverage.
Scouts
The New York police have been finding suitcases - empty ones - on the subway. They've concluded that the city's defenses and responses to potential bombs are being probed.
And reports of people probing the defenses at airports and on airplanes - of which Annie Jacobson's is only the latest and most famous - are starting to filter out to the public.
And the public is responsing - as did Jacobson, for better or worse (depending on your perspective).
Bad thing, right?
I don't think so. Here's why.
Chumley Wonderbar at Plastic Hallway summed up part of the terrs' goal
They don't act until absolutely necessary because acting too soon opens them up as a target to a group that may not have revealed its true numbers. What if the number was not 14 but 20? And what if the other six were all sitting within a few seats of an armed Air Marshal? Do you really think it would be that hard for them to take his or her gun? Then, once the group is armed, what are the other Air Marshals going to do? Have a gun fight in a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet? Trust me, no captain in his or her right mind is going to open the cockpit door, no matter how many people are getting killed in the cabin. As far as I'm aware, any method of getting into the cockpit would take at least a few minutes, so there really is no need for an immediate response. Lastly, what if these people were just looking for a pattern in Air Marshal's behavior? What if they were seeing what precipitated a response and what did not? If Ms. Jacobsen's story is true, then she and the flight attendent who shared all that information with her were both in the wrong. Let the trained professionals do their jobs without opening them up to any more danger than they already face.The terrorists aren't stupid. They know that the job of "blundering" through American security and testing the reactions doesn't need to be carried out by the A team, the actual murderers.
The also know that in an open society, not only will a significant portion of our society be actively hindering efforts to hamper their efforts, but they ethnically represent a big enough part of society that pleas that they're just going about their business are perfectly plausible.
Captain Clout
The Northern Alliance's Captain Ed has been selected as a live-blogger at the GOP Convention!
This is a huge break for Minnesota bloggers, the Northern Alliance, and of course Ed, himself. He'll be joining Michelle Catalano from A Small Victory, and many others whose names will no doubt trickle out over time.
Go visit Ed's PayPal link (as I will myself, before he takes off).
July 26, 2004
Shout From The Pack
I've been a huge fan of Sergeant Stryker for a long, long time. He's the first milblogger I ever blogrolled, and he remains a very frequent read.
Stryker has gotten some play from this piece, which whacks at both sides on the terrorism debate.
It starts with the "hysterical woman/Syrian band/probing our defenses" story from last week.
The story, and the response to it from the (forgive the pun) reactionary portion of the blogodome, is telling. Most of the blog responses to the story from the conservative wing or the “single-issue voters” was one of fear. “Could this be a dry run?", “This is why we need to profile all Arab males!", “The security doesn’t work, it’s up to us!” were all common responses to the story, which is odd because most of them base their support of the current Administration on the very fact that it has done a lot to protect us from future terrorist attacks. If you believe that this Administration is our last, best hope for Victory, then why do you carry-on as if nothing has changed or improved in the past three years? How do you rationalize the paradox?There's no rationalization needed.
Part of the improvement is that the goverment is responding to the larger threats.
Part of the improvement is that more of we, the people, know that "the authorities", whoever they are (government, management, whomever) don't have a monopoly on wisdom, intelligence, prescience, or even competence. The CIA and the other organs of government flubbed terrorism for years; the citizens on Flight 93 figured it out in seconds. 911 operators told people on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center to stay put after the first plane hit - and they likely died for trusting authority.
The parts of our safety that are within the government's purview are probably better-handled these days. The parts that we, the people, have do deal with - damn straight they are.
Most of the responses to the panicked woman story were indictments against the current Administration on the very issue that they say represents their over-riding decision to support the Administration. It doesn’t add up.Unless "the Administration" is riding in every plane with me, in disguise and carrying a concealed MP5K, they are really two different issues.
Most of you conservatives say we’re at war, yet you’d hardly know it from your actions. You engage in the same stupid partisan bickering and arcane gamesmanship as in peacetime. You say this Adminstration is strong against terrorism, yet your very actions and words betray your confidence in it. You support it because it uses strong words and invaded Iraq. When you eliminate all of your paradoxes about this Administration, that’s all you have left: you support this Adminstration because it talks tough and it invaded Iraq. Are you safer now than you were 3 years ago? You wouldn’t know it by listening to you.Now, Stryker is arguing like a liberal; "Inconsistency=Hypocrisy!".
I'm confident that the economy is picking up - but I keep my resume polished up just in case. Does that make me a hypocrite, or merely prudent?
Most of you liberals say we’re at war, but your war is against the President. You’re more concerned about defeating Bush than you are about defeating the enemy. To you, Bush is the enemy. Just like your conservative brethren, you’re more interested in political showmanship than doing anything to seriously help win this war. You oppose the President because he uses strong words and he invaded Iraq. Unlike the conservatives, you think that the security apparatus put in place after 9-11 does it’s job too well and does it against the wrong people. Are you safer now than you were 3 years ago? Obviously not. You think we’re on the verge of the Third Reich.I'm too close to this to comment fairly.
Stryker?Do you want to know why I’m an independent? It’s because you conservatives and liberals are a stupid and silly people. You bicker and posture as if we have all the time in the world to defeat international terrorism. You say we’re at war and things need to be done right now when it’s politically convenient for you to do so, but you carry-on as if we’re still at peace. We have Americans dying overseas while they’re obstensibly trying to protect you, but all you can do is paint them as either untouchable heroes or pathetic victims. You can’t seriously debate the course of this war because for you, this isn’t a war against international terrorism, this is a war about personalities, specifically one personality: George W. Bush. For you, this isn’t a real war with real consequences, this is just another phoney war of opinion. You aren’t conservatives and liberals, you’re Phobos and Deimos: Fear and Panic. One of you uses the fear of external threats to win elections, the other tries to frighten you with internal threats. You both serve the same Master and that is why your supposed differences are as illusory as the fears you try to frighten us with. You’re more concerned with winning the next election than you are the real war. It’s a farce. This would make for a great comedy if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.
Bullshit.
The election is important - vital - for how this war will be fought. Or have you forgotten the Clinton Years in the military already?
There's nothing wrong with being an "independent", in and of itself - but it tends to engender a smug "above the fray" sense of superiority - like "Moderates", they are often passive-aggressives who never take stances of their own, but have no problem pecking at other people's actions.
The bleat from the "independents" often resembles Stryker's - "We're playing politics while the terrorists are getting ready to strike again!". That's right. That's because we live in a Democracy, and that's how decisions are made. Do you suggest a dictatorship? Or are you suggesting that in a representative republic, a people who stuck religiously to the middle would ever made any decisions at all?
Yow
So I heard at the Blogger party on Saturday that Odin Soli is novelizing Plain Layne. The typical novel is between 50,000 and 100,000 words. The 3.5 years of the Plain Layne blog generated 800,000 words.
This made me curious, so I exported all the content on this website into a Word file.
1,176,593 words.
Some of it is Moveable Type database information, of course, but I think that still leaves me more than a million words.
But can I make a novel out of it? Nooooo.
Drastically bad planning on my part.
Sci Fi Comes To Life
Military Lasers were in the realm of science fiction for most of the last fifty years.
Then, for about the last twenty years, they've been a tool - for aiming, measuring ranges and so on.
But the long-standing goal of using lasers as a tactical weapon seems to be imminent.
According to security sources familiar with the design, the MTHEL will be able to fire a beam every five seconds and follow 15 targets simultaneously. It will also be able to turn glass canopies on fighter jets into opaque glass after a one-second blast. The MTHEL could also be used against helicopters.So they're already using lasers for tactical anti-missile defense.In field tests conducted since development of the system, the Nautilus has succeeded in downing over thirty Katyusha rockets, and several artillery shells.
Advanced testing in New Mexico further improved the laser’s targeting system and enabled it to down a long-range missile.
Yes, this is a little simpler than defending against strategic missiles (like the North Koreans are developing), but only in the sense that the current technology needs to be iterated another time or two and the reservations of the anti-missile-defense left will be as obsolete as a Buck Rogers comic.
I Credit The President
For most of my life, I've vaslty preferred all things lime to lemon.
For years, it wasn't easy. Ever tried to find Limeade at the grocery store? It's much more expensive, if you can find it at all. It always seemed not to be as popular.
And yet the delights of the lime - tastier than the bland orange, more appealing than the astringent lemon - beckon.
Finally, justice is being done.
First came Diet Coke With Lime; quite simply, the best carbonated beverage ever made.
Now, the world of alcoholic beverages is on board, with Mike's Hard Lime.
Lime continues to be a trendy darling in the beverage industry. The latest limey-flavored beverage comes from Mike's Hard Lemonade, makers of flavored malt beverages."Trendy Darling" my butt. Lime is as trendarlingly as the Chicago Bears - something us fans have been doggedly rooting for long before it became hip.Mike's Hard Lime is for those who like a pucker punch and crisp flavor. It's tangy and tart and not as sweet as the original Mike's Hard Lemonade.
It is, however, by far the best of the Mike's line of spiked Crystal Lite-knockoffs malt beverages.
Peril? Profound? Perchance...?
Perhaps it's just that I'm halfway through working an all-nighter, and have have been listening to a long stretch of Emmylou Harris and Leonard Cohen (especially his "Joan of Arc" duet with Jennifer Warnes, which I should never, ever listen to after dark), but I found this exchange strangely affecting, almost profound.
And I have no idea why
Note to self: Find a 24 hour coffee shop. NOW.
Dog Bites Dog
There was an an ordination in Minneapolis yesterday A new minister - who happens to be gay - was being ordained:
Swathed in a white robe with a rope cinched about his waist, Jay Wiesner stood in silence Sunday afternoon as parishioners clustered nearby, laying their hands on his shoulders while scores more stretched out their arms and hands in his direction.Wow. This must be a unique occasion!In a bellowing voice, the ordaining minister queried the packed house about their commitment to the would-be pastor and in one voice, the crowd of more than 100 twice answered, "We will." Then with a resolute, "Amen. Thanks be to God," the audience ripped into an unbridled display of clamorous applause, joyous hollering, foot-stomping and fist-pumping.
It was, after all, the Twin Cities' third ordination of an openly gay pastor from an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation.Leaving aside whether this is a good thing or not - and I personally think it's between a congregation and G-d, anyway - the question is why is this news? It's the third ELCA ordination of a gay minister!
It's not news anymore, is it?
July 25, 2004
The Party Found Us
At the height of last night's Blogger Party at Keegan's Pub, an acquaintance of mine who works for the Million Mom March came up to me and exclaimed "There are 1,800 people here!"
-------------------
Hard to even know where to start with the Minnesota Blog Party, last night at Keegan's Irish Pub in Northeast Minneapolis.
A veritable Who's Who of great Twin Cities bloggers were there - and, just as interesting, a gallery of blog fans that have become well-known to us bloggers in their own rights. It was a fascinating evening.
I apologize in advance for anyone I miss. The Northern Alliance was there in force, of course; Captain Ed, King, Atomizer, Elder and Saint from Fraters Libertas, Scott "The Big Trunk" Johnson from Powerline and of course James Lileks, the last five of whom were constantly at the center of big knots of fans all evening long.
Beyond that? DC from Brainstorming brought her husband. Cathy from Cathy in the Wright brought her brother and, as we see in last night's edition of her blog, a camera!. Anoka Flash from Centrisity took an evening off from a "Honey Do" list longer than "The Brothers Karamazov". Chuck Olson from Blogumentary brought his video camera as well, causing a scuffle between bloggers who thought it was inappropriate to bring a camera to a party and people who were lining up to get on camera. Jay Reding showed up, looking a lot less like the young William F. Buckley than I'd anticipated - but it was a pleasure to finally meet. Chumley Wonderbar from Plastic Hallway, and John from Policy Guy were both there. I also met two guys I've been swapping emails with since long before I knew what blogs were, Thorley Winston from Tacitusand Shawn Sarazin from The American Mind. There was Dave Kevin from Wombat Rampant, and Kevin Dave from Dave's Picks, KSTP's Bob Davis, Plain Layne creator Odin Soli, GOP lobbyist Sarah Janecek, David Strom and Margaret Martin, and most notably Don, the guy who gave or sold me (I can't remember) my copy of the Iron City Houserockers' Have A Good Time But Get Out Alive back in 1986, still one of the best records I own...
...and it's about here my memory starts to fail. For everybody I remember, there is at least one blogger I'm missing. I walked around and did a headcount at the height of the party - there were more than sixty people there. Not bad, all in all.
When I left at 9:30 (to rescue Anoka Flash and Mrs. Flash from my son), Lileks, Davis, Janecek, Winston, Soli and the Fraters guys were still holding out on the sidewalk tables, looking like they'd pretty well settled in for the evening on one the nicest sitting-on-the-patio-and-drinking-beer evenings of the year.
Thanks, of course, to the good folks at Keegan's, who showed they can do more than host a mean trivia contest!
So we'll have to do it again sometime. It was a wonderful evening, and I don't think I saw anyone that wasn't having a great time.
July 23, 2004
Democrats With Happy Fingers
First, it was Sandy Berger and the Pants and Socks of Holding.
Now it's Phyllis Kahn (DFL - Shangri La). Kahn, who was a moonbat before being a moonbat was cool, was collared pilfing a Republican candidate's literature.
State Rep. Phyllis Kahn, a 32-year veteran from Minneapolis and a key figure in the DFL House caucus, was stopped by New Hope police earlier this week after a citizen complained that she was removing a Republican House member's campaign literature from doorsteps and replacing it with a DFL opponent's material.The case has been referred to the Anoka County attorney's office for possible charges, officials said.
Kahn could not be reached for comment, but she issued a statement to local media in the northwestern suburb.
It said she "made a mistake in picking up a few pieces of (Rep.) Lynne Osterman's campaign material, which was done without direction from anyone."
This isn't uncommon, of course; as the Strib says,Complaints about petty shenanigans such as lawn-sign vandalism or literature-swiping are not uncommon -- often involving kids or overzealous volunteers.[...]...who sweep through neighborhoods here in Saint Paul smashing Republican signs en masse before every election; entire blocks of lawn signs are routinely vandalized by the "kids and volunteers".Kahn is, need it be mentioned, neither a kid nor a volunteer. She is a state representative and a senior member of the Minnesota House.
The Strib continues:
Osterman, who has worked as a communications manager for public and private-sector institutions, said she has mixed feelings about the incident. "It's sad that it came to this," she said. "[Kahn] has kind of an esteemed career and has been a model encouraging women candidates."Expect more. Much more.But, she continued, the incident illustrates how desperate DFLers are to retake her seat and others, and "it's stooping about as low as you can stoop.
Fraters are also on the story.
Party
Don't forget - tomorrow at 5PM, after the Northern Alliance broadcast, all Twin Cities-area bloggers and blog fans are invited to Keegans Pub in Northeast Minneapolis for an all-blogger party!
Keegans is half a block west of Hennepin Avenue, on University. It's just across the Hennepin Bridge from Downtown Minneapolis.
RSVP if you'd like to party@REMOVETHISPARTnorthernallianceradio.com, although no RSVP is necessary; it's not like we'rebuying anything...
Hope to see you there.
Bushwhack
Jay Reding links to Steve Den Beste's fascinating predictions for the race.
They're interesting, and only in the least because they coincide with my own.
Reding concludes:
This election is fascinating; Republicans who aren't shaking in panic or petulantly disowning Bush over one too-moderate position or another are confident; Democrats are confident to the point of irrational exhuberance; they seem to think as Fecke does, that Kerry should start measuring himself for the Oval Office right now.If I had to guess, my guess is that Bush wants the Democrats to continue to bash him mercillously and savagely. My guess is that he knows that kind of boorish behavior will alienate the swing voters that will decide this race. Whoopi Goldberg does not represent “the heart and soul of America� as Kerry and Edwards seem to think. If the tape of that ever gets out, and chances it will, it is not going to endear Kerry to the American people.
All in all, it seems as though Bush is getting ready to hang Kerry by his own petard. Of course, the Democrats, who think Bush is a blithering idiot, will invariably walk right into it. Bush has made his whole political career on being “misunderestimated� by his political opponents – and this election appears to be no different.
Read Steve and Jay. Fascinating stuff.
Deep Frustration
My output has been light lately.
Unlike my previous light spells, it's not from being burned out, or just having no ideas. I'm overflowing with ideas to write about - and my draft folder in MT shows it. It has dozens of little snippets - links to articles, one-liners I thought of that I figured would make good articles someday, things I jotted on my Handspring and uploaded...
...where they sit still, in my drafts, awaiting that ten minutes of work that'll make them ready to publish. And more ideas pop up daily! If I was as unemployed as I was last year, I could be writing a dozen pieces a day, and piling more up for a rainy day...
...but I'm fairly buried at the moment. I may have to spend a few hours this weekend actually finishing some things, culling through the drafts...
...but not this morning. Oooh, no. Too much going on.
More later. I hope.
Played
Joseph Wilson has duped a good swath of the American media.
Matt Continetti says:
OVER THE LAST FEW DAYS, ever since Ambassador Joseph Wilson's credibility was thrown into question by the Senate Select Committee's report on prewar Iraq intelligence, the ambassador has taken to the airwaves to defend himself. How do you respond, he's been asked, to charges that, in numerous conversations with reporters over the last year, you inflated your role in "debunking" foreign government intelligence reporting which suggested Saddam Hussein's Iraq sought uranium from Africa? And Wilson gave his answer. He blamed the reporters he had snookered only months before.Read the whole infuriating thing.Thing is, the reporters don't seem to mind.
July 22, 2004
Franken: Lying Liar
I was listening to Al Franken today. He was crowing about his "ratings victory" over Bill O'Reilly.
Franken noted on the air that while O'Reilly beat him in overall listeners, Franken had better numbers in the key 25-54 age bracket - the wealthiest, most advertiser-coveted demographic in talk radio.
Unusually for Franken, he had a point. As usual for Franken, he's right if you are ruthlessly selective with facts.
What Franken failed to mention to his "nationwide" audience was that:
- the numbers were only for New York City - a city where liberals far outnumber conservatives. If Franken, flush with novelty and relentless media overkill, didn't slam O'Reilly in New York (and San Francisco and Portland and Los Angeles), it'd be a major defeat.
- In any case, Limbaugh clobbered Franken,
- He beat Bill O'Reilly - the Fast Eddie Schultz of the right, a man saved from the title "most worthless right-wing talk show host" only by the existence of Michael Savage
- Limbaugh still clobbers Franken, even in New York, both in overall listeners and in 25-54.
Stabbing John Knox's Corpse
To: The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA
From: Mitch Berg, disenfranchised parishioner.
Re: Your continued idiocy.
Dear General Assembly,
My parents left the Lutheran church and joined the Presbyterians when I was probably 11 or 12 or so. I credit some of your clergy - Reverends Bill King, Jim Jacobson and Mick Burns, especially - with helping me grow up not too terribly far in the moral weeds, and into a person I'm not terribly unhappy to be.
When I was in college, I embarked on a bit of a personal quest - to see where I belonged in terms of faith, if anywhere. I examined a lot of different types of faith; I rejected things like Buddhism because it's inherently self-centered and, at its core, nihilistic, and makes no intellectual sense.
Eventually, I wound up back where I started, in the Presbyterian Church. The reasons were purely theological. The core beliefs of the Presbyterian Church are really wonderful, and really cut to the heart, to me, of what being a Christian means. And the original teachings of your founding father, John Knox, had important resonances for what it meant to be an American, too. No reformation theologian better combined the notions of faith, the free will of the citizen, and the place of the state in the life of the person of faith than Knox and the church he founded.
Unfortunately, I think the search took a nasty turn.
Lately, and unfortunately, the Presbyterian Church/USA itself seems to cut, more often than not, at the heart of what it means to be a morally-decrepit idiot.
For example, see this story, about the PCUSA divesting from Israel:
The Presbyterian Church has three million American members and is one of the strongest denominations in the country. This time it did more than issue declarations condemning Israel's occupation of the territories. In a precedent setting decision, it took practical steps to halt investments in Israel, and to discourage contacts with companies that do business in Israel.With this decision, you've joined the German Lutheran congregations that turned a blind eye to the depredations of the Nazis. That you, the General Assembly (the supreme governing body of the Presbyterian Church) could engage in such a wretched recognition of phony moral equivalence is galling; the thought of raising my children in a denomination that equates terrorists with a nation defending itself is hilarious, in a tragically grim way. I won't do it.Divestment decisions regarding Israel have in the past three years been reached by academic and research bodies in the U.S., but these have mostly been small institutions with limited economic clout. Their calls for divestment have had a marginal economic impact. Now, for the first time, a significant religious entity that controls large sums of money and commands the beliefs of millions of followers has called for the imposition of economic sanctions on Israel.
You are a democratically-elected body. But I can assure you that the investments you maneuver about the world will include not one dime from me forever more, until you as a governing body rediscover the difference between good and evil. Until you do, you shall have no part in teaching it to my children.
Who will, at this rate, be the next generation of a whole different church. Count on it.
Shalom, my ass.
July 21, 2004
Must See This
Red's review of the new Metallica documentary, which looks like equal parts Great Rockumentary and Spinal Tap. Which are both good things.
Gotta see it when it comes to town...
Cultural Watershed
This is the first time I've seen this analogy from a major pundit:
The Commission is so desperate to maintain the illusion that it's conclusions can be trusted that it is denying the parrot is dead.I'll know my generation has finally taken over when such Python references are as common as spam spam spam eggs spam spam and spam.
Strib Still Loves Wilson
From reading the Strib this morning, you'd never know that Joe "Sweet Tea" Wilson had been caught lying about the results of his "investigation".
Nary a mention of his perfidy in this morning's editorial; just more Democrat talking points dressed up as an editorial.
They roll out the big guns bright and early:
From loud -- and erroneous -- claims that a link finally had been established between Niger and Iraq, you'd think the entire case for invading Iraq had finally been validated. That's hogwash."Hogwash". Wow. They're taking this seriously.
Everyone recalls the issue: Prior to the war in Iraq, the Bush administration claimed -- most famously in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech -- that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium ore from Niger. Later, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times saying Bush was wrong and that the CIA knew it. The basis for Wilson's claim: He had traveled to Niger at the CIA's behest to investigate the claims and found them baseless.Right. But the Strib doesn't tell you that that's not what Wilson really said when he came back from Niger.
The Strib thinks you're a moron, by the way:
Meanwhile, rather than focusing on the larger intelligence failure, Americans have been led by Republican spin artists to ponder the mind-numbing bureaucratic intricacies of the supposed Iraq-Niger link. Finding that such a link existed requires circular logic, and that is abundantly in evidence, particularly in the Butler report. Bush's defenders have seized on a passage in it which said, "We conclude that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' were well-founded."Too complicated for you to follow? The Strib thinks so.
The long and short of it: the Strib is carrying the water for the anti-Bush left:
The whole Niger discussion is being used to obscure a larger truth: that the entire central case for going to war -- the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- has proven baseless. Saddam had no program for building nuclear weapons, though he perhaps wanted his internal and external enemies to believe he did.This editorial is further proof of Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary: No liberal commentator can simultaneously address all four of the justifications for the war in Iraq; to do so would invalidate their case". WMDs were one plank of the case, along with Iraq's longstanding defiance of UN resolutions (undeniable), their human rights record (nobody with more moral character than Michael Moore denies it), their links with terror (not just Al Quada, although those links are there, not to mention possible links to the Oklahoma City and '93 WTC bombings) and the WMDs, which they did have (not that the Strib wants you to know about Halabja).
So, Strib editors - when are you going to stop lying and selling whatever journalistic soul you claim you have to get Bush out of office?
By the way - I cancelled my subscription 18 months ago. Don't bother calling.
The Inmates Rule The Cities
It was as predictable as could be - once Bloomington (a south 'burb of Minneapolis, best known as the home of the Mall of America) banned smoking, it wouldn't take long for Minneapolis or Saint Paul to do the same.
As bogged down by Highland Park DFL activists as we are in Saint Paul, there is at least a veneer of common sense on the part of some of the Democrat clacque that owns City Hall; Randy Kelly's Eastside faction is at least smart enough to veto nonsense like this.
But Minneapolis? A city that elects Greens to the city council? Oy.
Support for a smoking ban in Minneapolis bars and restaurants grew Tuesday after the Bloomington City Council approved a far-reaching ordinance forbidding smoking in most public places.I'm convinced - eventually, the activists in the cities will put themselves in charge of planning your houses (actually, they already do in a way), your free time, and eventually your families.The next move belongs to the Minneapolis City Council, which is expected to vote Friday on a proposed ordinance that now has the backing of the mayor of the state's largest city. The Bloomington decision made the suburb the first metro-area community to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, and now the attention turns squarely to Minneapolis.
St. Paul remains locked in a stalemate between a City Council majority that supports some form of a ban and Mayor Randy Kelly, who vetoed the council's first attempt at restrictions.
Blogging the Conventions
There are times I think it'd be fun to blog at the conventions. Oh, not so much in the conventions themselves; I think blogging from the mob of fleabitten moonbat protesters outside Madison Square Garden would be a lot more interesting than covering the foregone conclusion inside.
And that way, I could avoid the big controversy in the building; the burning question, "are bloggers journalists?"
Joe Gandelman has an interesting story on the subject.
I always tell people about when, a few years after I left journalism school, I was in Spain writing for the Chicago Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor and other publications. A major news magazine hired me to help them out on legwork and sidebars on the last few months of the Franco regime. By then I had written for some two years in India and five months in Spain. One of the magazine's big correspondents looked at me and said: "That's a good story you wrote. But you can't cover this if you haven't covered City Hall."Read the whole thing, naturally.I almost said "What do you mean I can't cover this? I AM COVERING IT NOW.." (Today I would say it). But he was resentful that I hadn't gone through "the system" yet. That's what Jones is basically suggesting about bloggers at conventions:
Bloggers will be covering the conventions WITHOUT jumping through the hoops. Without the editors (for better or for worse). Without being under the corporate pecking order which may entail advancing through layers of political gamesmanship. Without having gone through the organizational advancement required to be given a prominent forum to comment on big issues. And with freedom -- and an instant audience not provided for by a big corporation.
So there's lots of RESENTMENT on the part of some because bloggers (perceived as nobodies without journalistic status) are doing it, not through the normal channels...and they will HAVE AN AUDIENCE.
Disintegration
You know the basis of your credibility - if you're a darling of the left, like Joe Wilson - is falling apart when even the WaPo bails on you.
Their conclusion:
Mr. Wilson chose to emphasize the latter point, that no deal was likely -- but that does not negate the one Mr. Bush made in his speech, which was that Iraq was looking for bomb material. This suggests another caution: Some of those who now fairly condemn the administration's "slam-dunk" approach to judging the intelligence about Iraq risk making the same error themselves. The failure to find significant stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons or an active nuclear program in Iraq has caused some war opponents to claim that Iraq was never much to worry about. The Niger story indicates otherwise. Like the reporting of postwar weapons investigator David Kay, it suggests that Saddam Hussein never gave up his intention to develop weapons of mass destruction and continued clandestine programs he would have accelerated when U.N. sanctions were lifted. No, the evidence is not conclusive. But neither did President Bush invent it.So when will Kerry renounce Wilson?Dems?
July 20, 2004
The Manchurian Columnist
In the Manchurian Candidate, Chinese Communists use anti-communist hysteria to run a communist sleeper for the presidency.
It's almost as if, say, conservatives were to infiltrate someone into the news media - someone who earns lots of respect in his career as, say an economist; then, he switches to the news media, where he works as a columnist.
Then, before long, he starts writing stuff like this column.
Eventually, he'd write something like this:
So let's imagine an update - not the remake with Denzel Washington, which I haven't seen, but my own version. This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation's defender against terrorist evildoers.Or this:The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.
Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons.Or even...:
Who knows? The Arabian candidate might even be able to deprive America of the moral high ground, no mean trick when our enemies are mass murderers, by creating a climate in which U.S. guards torture, humiliate and starve prisoners, most of them innocent or guilty of only petty crimes.But no. If a conservative had been infiltrated into the media to wreck the credibility of a major newspaper, he could never get away with anything so irredeemably, verifiably stupid. People would twig to the ruse immediately.At home, the Arabian candidate would leave the nation vulnerable, doing almost nothing to secure ports, chemical plants and other potential targets. He would stonewall investigations into why the initial terrorist attack succeeded.
Or would they? (DRAMATIC CHORD)
Smoked Out
As Bloomington acts to ban smoking citywide, and Minneapolis and Saint Paul sniff around the idea of doing the same, it's starting to sink in with some of the local punditry.
Even Doug Grow gets it, although he squeezes a lot of his same old crap in with his big revelation.
Grow starts:
I should have seen this coming more than a quarter century ago.As an aside - it's amazed me how people in the media have been quitting smoking. At one of the stations I worked at (KDAK in Carrington, ND, where I worked when I was 19) I was the only non-smoker; it wasn't very different from many media outlets of the day. These days, a lot fewer people in the business seem to smoke.It was 1978 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. I was a sports writer, covering a game between Notre Dame and Texas. I'd arrived at the press box early to set up my work station. This involved putting my typewriter, a couple of notebooks, two boxes of Marlboro cigarettes and an ashtray on my table space.
I was ready for anything -- except for the scribe sitting on my right.
"You're not planning on smoking those are you?" he asked.
"What do you think, I'm just going to look at them for the next six hours?" I asked.
"I'm asking you not to smoke," he said.
"This is a press box!" I said, incredulous. "We're sports writers!"
But back to Grow:
A few months ago, I attended a neighborhood political caucus, interested in hearing my friends and neighbors talk about what I thought were the great, common issues of our day: war, peace, an economy that shows corporate profits rising while incomes of individual workers fall. But the caucus was dominated by people with special interests. And no special-interest group was more dominating that the antismoking crowd.Neighbors who want to build a utopia on the block are one of the great evils of the Twin Cities. I have another piece in the hopper about this topic; it's a bigger problem than you might think.My favorite was a woman who rose to her feet to deplore the fact that bowling alleys aren't smoke free.
"How can I take my child bowling?" she asked.
I left this exercise in democracy with this question: Where's the line separating sound policy and over-the-edge, goofball zealotry?Grow goes on to detail the process by which the St. Paul Park board has banned smoking in city parks, parkways, bike trails and golf courses.Turns out there may be an answer: St. Paul.
"I tried to be reasonable," [Park Board member Al] Paulson said. "I tried to tell 'em that there's more bad stuff coming out of the barbecue pits than from a few people enjoying a smoke. I said, 'So what are we going to do next? Ban picnics?' "Don't put it past them.Grow goes on to make the big point:
This knee-jerk Park Commission action was a microcosm of 21st-century American politics, he said. Leaders are listening to the zealots, from the U.S. Senate to the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Commission.Yeah, but the zealots at home, working at grass-roots level, are the ones that will affect your life first.There is some common sense out there, yet:
"Compromise and common sense are left out of the equation," Kelly said...Kelly already has vetoed a City Council measure that would have made St. Paul the first city in the metro area to ban smoking in bars and restaurants...He doesn't need to veto the Park Commission's recommendation. He can -- and will -- simply ignore it.Whew. Good thing we have a Republican mayor."It will not become policy," he said.
Oh, dang - Kelly's a DFLer. But as an east-side Democrat, he's far enough to the right that he's generally reviled by many of the Volvo-driving, free-range Alpaca-wearing Highland Park DFLers that dominate city politics.
But the zealots are in control. And we have groups on the right and the left demanding to tell the rest of us how to live.Fair enough.Kelly has a word for this.
"Tyranny," he said. "From the left or from the right, tyranny is tyranny."
Now, Doug Grow (or any of his supporters): Show me an issue where any right-wing zealot is getting policy rammed through?
Now, compare it to the issues where the zealots of the left have imposed their agenda on the rest of us: Seatbelts, victim disarmament (including last week's ruling temporarily striking down the Minnesota Personal Protection Act), condoms in schools, planning and zoning (of which more later)...
But I suppose if this gets the likes of Doug Grow to sit up and notice, it's a start.
Golden Age of Animation
I never liked cartoons much. When I was a kid back in the seventies, it was the beginning of the great drought in American animation; the wretched cookiecutter output of the Hanna-Barbera studios dominated Saturday mornings - hence, I spent most Saturday mornings outside. I probably am better off for it; to this day, I watch very little TV compared to most people. In my entire house, there is one thirteen-inch TV, which I take as a point of perverse pride.
And yet, at least a couple nights a week I catch myself watching "Adult Swim" on the Cartoon Network.
The Adult Swim entourage is only the latest in a series of consistently witty and original cartoons that have emerged on television in recent years--from "The Simpsons" to "South Park" to "King of the Hill." And this is on top of the plethora of fine feature-length animated films that have graced movie theaters such as Monsters Inc., and the Shrek series. Indeed, if novels, pop music, and live action movies have been going through a bit of a fallow period, we are arguably living in a golden age of cartoons, one that rivals in creativity and appeal to the era of "Looney Tunes" and "Betty Boop" over half a century ago.Read the whole article - it's a fascinating look at the Williams Street animation shop which produces most of "Adult Swim", which I think has some englightening parallels with the alternatie media:
The emergence of such high-quality commercial animation begs an intriguing question about the entertainment industry as a whole. How is it that the same economy that gives us bland fodder like Vin Diesel, Evanescence, and "According To Jim" can sometimes suddenly produce the sort of wonderful, bizarre material that we see on Adult Swim? It's because the good stuff tends to come when nobody's looking--created by those on the fringes of the studio system, occupying marginal creative real estate with minimal supervision. In the natural world, punctuated evolution occurs when small groups find themselves geographically isolated and free from natural predators, allowing creatures with rare mutations to thrive and develop into entirely new species. So it is in entertainment: The best material has often come from the back alleys of the studio system. Though only 200 yards across the street from the Turner Entertainment corporate complex, the Adult Swim's Williams Street warehouse is miles away in terms of sensibilities--and it has given rise to an entirely new species of cartoons.Read the whole thing. The article is fascinating - although you get the impression that when Justin Peters calls ""Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law," a "Perry Mason"-like spoof in which a winged superhero with a law degree defends famous cartoon figures accused of various crimes", you get the impression he's not old enough to have connected the show with the original "Birdman" series.
To help you keep track, here are the official ratings:
Good:
- Home Movies - an off-kilter show about a movie-making kid, his single mom, and his alcoholic soccer coach.
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force - a milkshake, a wad of meat and a floating carton of french fries fight crime. In theory.
- Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law - Birdman represents Hanna Barbera cartoon characters (Shaggy and Scooby, Grape Ape, Devlin, Penelope Pitstop and many more) in court
- Family Guy - wonderfully twisted show about a lunatically-dysfunctional family, which debuted in
- Space Ghost Coast to Coast - the original old cartoon spoof.
- The Brak Show - Never, ever funny.
- The Oblongs - I'm not sure what it is about this show, but it makes me want to drink Drano...
July 19, 2004
From the Duh Files
I wasn't nearly as surprised to hear that the Department of Defense has shut down the Pentagon daycare as I was to hear there was one there in the first place.
Ever since a hijacked jetliner crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, parents whose children attend day care there have been assured their kids were safe. But last week, Defense Department officials told them the center would close in the fall because they could no longer ensure the children's safety.Now, as convenient as it can be to have on-site daycare when you're a working parent - it would have been a dream come true for many years - if I worked at a place likely to be a terror target, I'd keep my kids well-distant no matter what the inconvenience.
Yep - the Pentagon is a military base. Military bases are targets. Parents don't keep their kids at target sites. Seems obvious to me - but then, I'm just a conservative who reads a lot of military history, so what would I know?
Not nearly as much as my liberal counterparts, who are saying things like this:
The Pentagon is closing down its childcare centre. Why? Because America is much safer now, obviously.Maybe the author has heard; we're at war. Nothing in life is completely safe - you could get hit by a bus right after reading this. Life is even less-so when you're on the world's foremost military base and we're at war with people with all sorts of surprising tricks. You can calculate the risks, as most people do; I know people from rural areas who think I'm nuts for living in a large city during a war with terrorists who are looking for WMDs of their own. I think the risks are acceptable for my family and I; if I lived on Manhattan or in DC, I might think differently. And if I worked in the Pentagon, I'd never dream of keeping my kids in a daycare there.
Or this: this:
I guess the Pentagon forgot to tell the White House speechwriters about this.The author - former Calpundit and formerly good blogger Kevin Drum - is referring to the President's statement that the world is a safer place today that it was before. "See?" the left snarks, "Inconsistency equals hypocrisy equals BUSH LIED!"
Rubbish. Parts of the world - Iraq and Israel to name two - are safer today, by any objective measure. And in the Pentagon, and Manhattan, and the rest of the US? Our safety before the war was the fool's safety, a bubble waiting for a strong breeze to pop it.
We're at war. And even if we elect John Kerry and begin the process of chronic, plausibly-deniable capitulation, we still will be. The Pentagon and Manhattan and for that matter the Mall of America are, and will remain, potential targets, even as the world becomes incrementally safer.
And until the war is won, I wouldn't want my kids on-site at any major targets, no matter what anyone, left or right, says.
Blogger Party Update
The responses continue to roll in for this weekend's Blogger Party. And we know we haven't reached everyone yet, not by a long shot.
So - if you're a blogger, or a blog fan, anywhere within driving distance of the Twin Cities (or I guess flying or hitchhiking distance, if you're really dedicated), we'd love to see you there.
The party is at Keegan's Pub in Northeast Minneapolis - half a block west of Hennepin on University. We'll start things rolling at 5PM, and go until the sound of uillean pipes finally drives the last of us completely starkers.
Drop us a line at party at northernallianceradio.com!
One Step Up and Two Steps Back
Paul Demko at Live Nude Weblog (a wholly-owned City Pages blog) addresses the rather odd Northlands Trading spots that have been running on various talk radio stations:
A curious advertisement has been running frequently on The Patriot (AM 1280) in recent weeks. It's for a company called Northlands Trading and the product they're pimping is the Iraqi Dinar.And I also don't remember the exact pitch, but as I recall, the spiel has a lot more to do with a fairly ecumenical listener's desire to get rich quick by investing in the Iraqi Dinar, which the ad points out has been devalued rather drastically since the government tht issued them was pulled out of a spiderhole.I can't remember the exact pitch, but it hamfistedly plays on Patriot listeners' presumed right wing, pro-invasion sympathies.
The gist of the argument is that by investing in the Iraqi Dinar you'll be fulfilling your patriotic duties, insuring a second term for Team W., and getting fabulously rich.Again, I don't remember the pitch, but I don't recall any mention of the US election, and would not be in the least surprised if this spot plays all over non-political radio as well.
However...
The company's web site provides zero business data about Northlands Trading, and a quick Nexis search covering two years of newspaper articles yields not one tidbit of information.Paul Demko seems to be a good guy, one of the better bloggers among the City Pages' stable of mcblogs. But the irony of taking unchecked economic advice from a City Pages staffer would no doubt raise as many alarms as, say, an ad to get rich investing in the Rwandan Franc.I know it's not really my place, but a bit of financial advice for you patriotic Patriot listeners: This might not be the wisest investment.
I'm going to fob this off on my Northern Alliance colleague King Banaian from SCSU Scholars. What's the skinny, King?
UPDATE: King has the inside skinny. Lots of skinny (is "lots of skinny" an oxymoron?)
Not So Fast
F*** The Vote (not at all safe for work - you've been warned) isn't the dumbest idea I've seen - that would have to have been vote-swapping between Nader supporters in Gore states and Gore supporters in swing states back in 2000.
But it's...well, wrong on a couple of key points.
(Via Spitbull)
There's this quote here:
Everyone knows liberals are hotter than conservatives - we look hotter, we dress hotter, our ideas are hotter, and we are infinitely hotter in the sack.Sorry to pop your bubbes, people - but no. As to looks, I refute you thus:
Most of you look like frumpy librarians, you dress in visual cliches, your ideas are laughable And I'm here to testify, your last claim is also sadly in error.
You'll have to take my word for it - but no, it's no contest.
Believe it or not, even the most seemingly deeply rooted right-wing ideologue can be manipulated by sex. As we all know, the sex drive is a powerful beast that has the potential to change people. People lie for sex, they cheat for sex, they even kill for sex - and you can be sure that they will change the way they think (and therefore vote) for sex. All you need to be armed with are your sexy progressive values, a razor-sharp wit, your genitalia, and a mindset that doesn't mind taking one for the team.Taking bath wouldn't hurt either.
At F*** The Vote we provide a Pledge Sheet that can be used conveniently before becoming physically intimate with a conservative, The Pledge Sheet asks the signee to make a promise to vote for anyone but George Bush in the November election.Hm. A contract that can neither be verified nor enforced, being bandied about by people whose hatred of George W. Bush drives them to things like this...the mind reels.
They are dumb, aren't they?
Dog Days
A week or so ago, I reported on a story that an anti-Bush person had kicked a dog at a Fourth of July parade in Edina, MN.
The story was picked up on Free Republic, so I got a zillion hits that day. A few commenters claimed it was a "Republican Lie".
This letter appeared in the Edina Sun last week:
To the editor:Enough to make me wish I had a dog.This year the Edina July 4th parade was perfect as usual. It really gives the community the opportunity to express our love of the country, reflect on our blessings and, if we choose, get involved in the political process of our democracy. If nothing else, it is good to see our democracy freely expressed. That is what the Fourth of July parade is all about.
But apparently this was not the case for some. Just before the Edina Fourth of July Parade started, I, as a volunteer for the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign and an Edina resident, was passing out Bush/Cheney stickers accompanied by my loyal golden retriever, Maddie, who was sporting a Bush/Cheney poster on her. I approached a 50-ish couple sitting on the sidelines and asked if they would like a Bush sticker. The woman, without hesitation, kicked my dog and said, “Get him out of there. Get him out of the White House!”
I was so surprised by her actions. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen, so I had to ask her, “Did you just kick my dog?” The woman responded, “Yes, I did, and get him out of the White House!” As I walked away, because I really didn’t know what to do, I had another woman approach me and say, “I just saw what that woman did and I am sitting next to her. Please give me 10 of those stickers so I can give them to everyone sitting around me.”
Now I know this is a presidential election year, but mean and nasty public expression is unacceptable, particularly at a July 4th parade. This anger and bitterness toward President Bush is really unwarranted and least of all should not be taken out on my dog. Maybe they should have stayed home.
Samantha ******
Edina
A very sturdy one.
Earth Shakes
IKEA opened here in the Twin Cities last week.
Or so I'm told. I haven't been yet. Probably won't for a while, either. Truth is, I don't have the faintest idea what the fuss is about.
Part of it is that I'm - how shall I put this - a straight guy, with no aptitude and not much interest in furniture. Part of it is that I hate hate hate, as in hate hate hate hate, big stores and long lines.
Luckily, Chumley Wonderbar went, so I don't have to:
My opinion might be slightly skewed here because they were really busy, but I felt a little like I was wandering through a museum dedicated to what the future of economy furniture was envisioned to be in 1970 Europe. Actually it was more like being pushed through (did I mention they were really busy?). I don't know how far spread Service Merchandise was in their heyday, but I shopped there a lot as a young'en and IKEA employs a very similar concept of putting most of their merchandise in a storage zone at the end of the guided tour. In both cases you had to write down on your shopping list (utilizing the provided golf pencils) what exactly it was that caught your eye in their various room displays. At the end of the road at IKEA, however, is a very Menardsesque warehouse from which you must procure your own goods before heading to their bevy of checkout lines (all of which were extremely long since they were so busy).Ugh.
What is the fuss? And when you answer, please don't use the phrase "all that cool furniture". I just don't get it.
July 18, 2004
Buy This Book
It's Hugh Hewitt's new book, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It.
Buy it. You'll be glad you did.
Having A Party
If you're a blogger in Minnesota (or anywhere within driving distance of the Twin Cities), we really should get together sometime.
There are a lot of cool people writing blogs - or even just reading them - in the Upper Midwest, and we should definitely try to meet sometime. So the Northern Alliance is throwing a shindig - a non-political, ecumenical one - for bloggers in the area, and we'd like all you bloggers to be there!
Here's the deal: We'd like to meet at Keegan's Irish Pub in Northeast Minneapolis, on Saturday, July 24, at 5PM. We'd like to spend a few hours hanging out, meeting other bloggers, and just having some fun. Cash bar? The whole place IS a cash bar!
By the way - this is not a "Northern Alliance" event, just a random social thang.
Interested in being there? We'd love to get a headcount. Please drop us a line at
party *at* northernallianceradio *dot* com
Tell us who you are and what blog you write, if any. We'll send the details right back.
Hope to see you all there! Oh - and spread the word among any other bloggers you know
UPDATE 7/18: We're looking at decent turnout so far, and we have some notables of the local blogging scene showing up.
So all we need is you!
July 17, 2004
July 16, 2004
A Thousand Words
Via Powerline and Dean Esmay:
Don't forget to tune in the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow; we'll be talking with Robert Gallucci about North Korea - and then Mike Nelson, formerly of MST3K.
Noon to 3PM on AM1280.
Fearless Predictions
Last January, the Northern Alliance met Hugh Hewitt for lunch at a restaurant in Long Lake, Minnesota. At the end of lunch, Hugh had us predict the electoral vote breakdowns by state, and thus predict the election.
Of the entire assembled Alliance, I was the second-most optimistic, behind only Hewitt himself. That surprised me; I've never been especially sanguine about any Republican in elections.
It's been a roller coaster ride.
But I think I can see the last corkscrew coming up. Here's why.
Now bear in mind I never really supported George W. Bush until after the 2000 convention (I was for Forbes), and never really got behind him until September 11. I've become a fan - but purely for personal reasons, not because he's my party's guy. Still, the party could have done much worse.
But the last year has truly been an amazing ride. Bad intelligence leads to an international shell-game for WMDs. Worse media bias has buried the real stories - the Oil for Food scam, French and Russian complicity with Hussein, Joe Wilson's perfidy, the overwhelming success in most of Iraq, the extent to which the entire world's intelligence indicated Hussein had WMDs, the success in the rest of Iraq at killing off the insurgents, the record-breaking speed of the turnover of sovereignty, and most of all the links between Hussein and the whole rogue's gallery of world terror groups, including Al Quaeda. The White House's seeming unwillingness or inability to defend itself. For a while, the pessimism of the likes of Rocket Man started getting to me.
Yesterday, Jeff Fecke of Blogomodleft commented in one of my posts:
drop by my site. There's a link to the latest Electoral College projection. Hint: 500 votes isn't gonna be the margin this time.I don't like doing political predictions. Oh, it's not that I'm not usually right - I am. But the whole exercise is so subject to emotion, and devoid of any empirical logic, it's really only usable for entertainment purposes. And I'm not just talking amateurs - nobody got the last Minnesota election right, and the pollsters were pretty much all wrong about the 2000 election too.
So as re Jeff's prediction, I agree. Because as close as the polls are today, this next few weeks will be John Kerry's last honeymoon with success. I am starting to think Bush can not only win this thing, but by a controversy-proof margin.
As I said, part of it is emotion; I fervently hope America isn't stupid enough to elect Kerry and Edwards, two of the most vacuous empty suits I've ever seen on the campaign trail. I hope that the morally-incontinent majority of the Democrat Party, the ones awash in sneering, condescending partisan hatred, get their heads handed to them, have their aneurisms and leave the rest of us alone.
So yeah, emotion plays its part. In the 1990s, when we could afford to be trivial and vapid as a nation, we could indulge ourselves with a Bill Clinton, the presidential equivalent of a middle-aged guy buying a convertible.
There are no consequences to supporting John Kerry yet - supporting him doesn't have any actual effect on US policy. I think that translates into numbers.
Do a lot of people hate George W. Bush. Is it 48% of the population? No. I suspect (and it's just my suspicion at the moment) that John Kerry's support at the moment is:
- 15% people who genuinely hate the President,
- 15% beyond that that will vote Democrat no matter what
- The remainder, who have as many reasons as there are people; contrarianism, inordinate attention to candidate hair, hot-button issues.
- Bush's approval, which has never dipped far below 50%
- The rising percentages that think Bush is the right choice for both the war and the economy.
- the percentage that think Bush will be re-elected no matter what (about 3-2 the last I checked)
Kerry's lack of bounce from selecting Edwards, especially in the South, was a big story - the polls barely budged, and it looks like Kerry is poised to lose the entire south (including, according to some polls, Florida). This, with full-court media adulation that made Jessica Lynch's reception look like a tough day on "Crossfile".
But I think his complete ineptitude as a campaigner is bigger. It's been said that when Cicero spoke people said, 'How well Cicero speaks,' but when Demosthenes spoke they said, 'Let us go against Phillip.' When George W. Bush speaks, people are sometimes inspired and sometimes they just joke about his pronunciation; when John Kerry speaks, people nod off and wish they were elsewhere. He makes Algore - a terrible speaker in his own right - look like William Jennings Bryan.
Long story short: the media will do their best. They'll continue to show Kerry/Edwards in the best light and softest focus they can possibly engineer. They'll increasingly pull out the stops; I have no doubt that they're working on a nother big non-story like the "DWI" from 2000, which may have cost Bush a clear majority. I have no doubt that story will be unleased at the strategically perfect time.
But I'm equally sure that as we get closer to the election, barring a terrorist attack, more people in the middle (and I think there are a lot more of them than the polls suggest) will realize both the seriousness of the war and the strength of the economy; Reagan showed us that the average voter can look at tax cuts, see their paycheck, and put two and two together.
And I think that after the Dem convention plays out, the endgame will be a lot clearer than the campaign itself; Bush will pick up points, Kerry will slowly lose them, and at the end of the day the "swing states" will mostly go for Bush. It will be a clear victory this time (although the moonbats will roll out the conspiracy theories anyway), although no landslide. If there's a terrorst attack, it'll be clearer still, because it will put into even starker relief the most salient fact of this election in my opinion; John Kerry could not be a competent leader of a nation in wartime.
So that's my prediction; Bush victory. We might not know it in Mid-October, but I think it'll happen.
I think Minnesota will vote for Kerry, although barely; the metro's influence will continue to wane. I think Wisconsin might go Bush - that'd be gravy.
Oh, yeah, one more; at least one major liberal blogger will have a heart attack or stroke, or be arrested for a violent crime of passion within a week of the election.
Sanity?
America's divorce, child custody and child support systems are massive, stupid jokes.
We've spelled out some of the horrors this system has inflicted over the years.
Finally - some sanity?
(Via Dean Esmay)
For many years, both in California and many other states in the US it wasn't necessary for an unwed mother to prove paternity in order to collect child support from a man. All that was required was his name. As if that wasn't bad enough, many times the alleged 'father' had never even met the woman filing the complaint. The county (or state) looked for someone with the same name living in the town or city that the 'dead-beat' dad was supposed to live. It wasn't too often that the agencies involved did much in the way of investigation. In some cases they also did a very poor job of notifying the supposed dead beat dad of his obligations. In many cases the first indication that a 'dead beat' dad has is when the support payments are garnished from his wages. By then, it is usually too late to appeal as the appeal deadline has passed and he's stuck paying child support for a child that isn't his even if he can prove he isn't the father.I added the emphasis.Now that may be changing.
On June 30th, the Second District Court of Appeal of California overturned a court order requiring child support payments by Manuel Navarro on the basis that he had proved that he wasn't the father based upon DNA tests and that the lower court had erred in denying his appeal even though under state and federal child-support laws he could be ordered to do so. The Court of Appeal cited a section of California's Child Support Enforcement Fairness Act of 2000 as the main reason for its decision to overturn the lower court.
Oh, the stories I could tell.
And will. In August or September.
Long story.
Perfect
Pic says a thousand words.
Especially if it's the Adam West Batman we're talking here...
(Via A Small Victory)
July 15, 2004
Purely Academic Question
Do you suppose that with all the bits and pieces of information that are starting to come out about possible Terrorist activities pertaining to the conventions, the Olympics and the election - including a number of terrorist arrests here in the Twin Cities, for crying out loud...
...that the left will someday stop trying to wring maximum too-cool-for-the-room irony from the DHLS' attempts to warn people that there might be trouble, and you might want to be ready for it?
Second academic question: Which group of Americans will be the ones demanding investigations if an attack happens on a day Tom Ridge said was a "Yellow" rather than a "Red" alert day?
Not that I expect answers or anything.
A Maggot Who Eats The Dead
Michael Moore ripped off footage of a soldier's funeral.
The family of U.S. Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone was shocked to learn that video footage of the major's Arlington National Cemetery burial was included by Michael Moore in his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."...The movie, described by critics as political propaganda during an election year, shows video footage of the funeral and Stone's fiancee, Tammie Eslinger, kissing her hand and touching it to his coffin.The major's Mother's response:
We are furious that Greg was in that casket and cannot defend himself, and my sister, Greg's mother, is just beside herself," Gallagher said. "She is furious. She called him a 'maggot that eats off the dead.'"Note to PETA: The woman is slandering maggots. Please see to this.
The family does not know how Moore obtained the video, and Gallagher said they did not give permission and are considering legal recourse.And I hope they find it.
Strange Bedfellows
In a recent poll, Americans' bottom five least favorite, least appreciated professions were as follows, in descending order:
- Baby Seal Clubber
- Fedayeen (Michael Moore fans boosted them out of the #4 slot)
- Staff Counsel, NAMBLA
- Television Programming Executive
- Al Quaeda senior management
And it'd be true.
Unless you're mixing it up with the dreaded, "conservative" Fox Network. Then, Brian Lambert wants to know about it.
Lambert says:
Much as you hate to interrupt a guy on his honeymoon, someone has to step up and call Fox a bunch of thieving low-lifes. At ABC, the job falls to Stephen McPherson.Consider for a moment that paragraph: Someone has to insult Fox? And to do this you're willing to interrupt a man's honeymoon? Or is the implication that blasting Fox is a higher calling than starting one's marriage?
And the big question: Why is insulting Fox such an important calling to this man?
AI'll bet he's not. Not should he be. But not for the reasons Lambert gives us..
BC's prime-time troubles over the past five years are legendary. Only "NYPD Blue" (entering its last season, by all indication) and "Alias" qualify as reliable performing dramas. The death of John Ritter tore a hole in the network's best new sitcom, "8 Simple Rules," and while "The Bachelor" franchise performs well, it is no "American Idol," "Survivor" or "Apprentice."Which is why ABC needs "Wife Swap" so badly.
A hit in Britain, the mere title of the show created buzz when ABC announced it would make the fall schedule. (It is another reality show. Two families exchange wives/mothers, and the women learn to cope with someone else's slovenly husband, noisy kids, etc. The American version is certain to steer clear of anything salacious.)
With the buzz, ABC felt upbeat for a change. Hey, people want to watch something on our network! Cool! But as has become the norm this summer, Fox soon applied the buzzkill.
Out of nowhere, Fox announced it had come up with show called "Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy" and — what's more — would have it on the air more than a month before "Wife Swap."
McPherson isn't happy.
"In terms of ripping off or cloning or whatever you want to call it," he said, traffic circling the Arc de Triomphe behind him, "I'll put it this way: If I was a member of the creative community, it would be incredibly disconcerting to me to know that if you take a show, a pitch, into Fox, and they can't or decide not to buy it, they will steal it. Plain and simple. I think it's really upsetting. I think it's bad for business, and I don't think its right."Yeah, McPherson, but you're not a member of the "creative community". You're a member of the "creativity-destruction community", AKA a Network Programming Executive. There is no honor among thieves, but then, thieves aren't Network Programming Executives, so they can count on some legitimate public sympathy.
And it'd seem that ABC's Mcpherson is indeed also a thief:
As for the pesky detail that ABC's "The Benefactor," starring Dallas tycoon Mark Cuban, seems an awful lot like "The Apprentice" and Fox's Richard Branson show, McPherson explains it's one thing to copy an established hit — that's showbiz — but it's something else to swipe ideas before they see the light of day.Why? Because the Fox people get their insultingly bad, derivative, stolen programming ideas into production faster than ABC can get their insultingly bad, derivative, stolen concepts filmed?
I guess as long as it's Fox...
Democracy Denied: Day Three
As is often the case, Joel Rosenberg has the essential take on Judge Finley's idiotic ruling on Tuesday regarding Minnesota's Shall Issue law.
The ruling makes a specious claim - that "omnibus" bills (bills with multiple "sub-bills", if you will, attached) are unconstitutional; the MN Supreme Court, of course, has ruled on this in the past, saying there must be a "filament" of context connecting the bills in an omnibus bill:
The DNR bill, to which the MCPPA was attached, had licensing and training provisions involving firearms, via a "bridge amendment." Obviously, there's more than a "filament" of connection between licensing and training provisions about firearms for hunting, and licensing and training provisions about firearms being carried for personal protection.Rosenberg continues:Now, were the Supreme Court to take the position that the old "filament" rule has been replaced by the judge's rather, err, unique position, it would endanger all omnibus legislation, previously passed. And omnibus bills that have been passed include not only tax bills, spending bills, but crime bills. There's been something like 500 of them passed in the last ten years; many have been challenged, and the only challenge ever upheld was the one I referenced above [an irrelevant "prevailing wage" bill stuck into an utterly unrelated bill, a DFL effort in the 2000 session].
Some of the implications of Finley's radical position -- an omnibus bill, even when the various matters covered have a strong connection, is unconstitutional, and that no other aspects of it need to be discussed -- are obvious...(Hell, was the original version of 624.714 [Minnesota's old discretionary issue law, from 1974] passed as part of an omnibus bill? I dunno -- but if it is, by Finley's precedent, it's unconstitutional, too, and there's no statutory bar on people eligible to possess firearms carrying them in public at all, even without a permit.)More to come.Which is why a stay upon appeal is virtually certain. Letting this precedent loose isn't something that the judges are going to want to do.
Just (Lo-Cal) Desserts
Slim-Fast done up and dumped Whoopi Goldberg, child!
Slim-Fast was upset about Goldberg's obscene rant at last week's Democrat fundraiser:
Someone call Michael Moore! Chilling effect on art! I blame Halliburton!Florida-based Slim-Fast said it was "disappointed" in Goldberg's remarks at last Thursday's $7.5 million star-studded fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
"Ads featuring Ms. Goldberg will no longer be on the air," Slim-Fast General Manager Terry Olson said in a statement, adding that the company regrets that Goldberg's remarks offended some customers.
Safety In Numbers
As Fraters noted yesterday, they were ('til today) the only remaining online repository of this photo:
That's Cacklin' Katherine "Six Martini" Lanpher, the co-host of the Al Franken show, which bills itself ironically as "Drug Free Radio", in a photo taken after her DUI arrest last year.
Naturally, a photo this important must be carefully safeguarded; the Northern Alliance will need to keep one in an undislosed location.
Foreboding
Caught this, via Lileks; apparently an immense proportion of our fleet is at sea.
As a seafaring friend of mine once remarked, an aircraft carrier is not really listed on the books as a "ship," but as a "strategic asset." And when a country starts to move 7 out of 12 of these assets around on the global chessboard, it might betoken something more than just a summer 'exercise.'Forward deployed...against what?Indeed, if this were wartime (What? It is? Who knew?) moving this much killing power out onto the seas would be thought of as a fleet surge.
Truman, Enterprise, Stennis, Washington, Kennedy, Reagan, Kitty Hawk. It could all be, of course, just prudent planning and practice. On the other hand, given the various signals being sent by Homeland Security, the nearness of the Olympics, and the advent of the elections, it may be a case of "Fortune favors the forward deployed."
Against this?
The war on terrorism is again at Minnesota's front door after federal authorities arrested a man who they suspect has terrorism ties.Much more to come.Federal sources told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the man was arrested last Wednesday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Sources in the Twin Cities and in Washington D.C. said the man arrived on a flight and was taken into federal custody. Along the way, customs agents found disturbing items in his possession...A federal source would not say where Almosaleh's final destination was, but that source did indicate it appears Almosaleh had plans to travel beyond the Twin Cities.
One federal official in Washington noted, this is a "very sensitive" investigation.
July 14, 2004
Hugh Knows New Media
As Captain Ed noted earlier today, we in the Northern Alliance are much in Hugh Hewitt's debt.
And I even moreso, after today's shout-out in World Net Daily, where he included me in his list of blogs that everyone should read:
Thanks, Hugh, and welcome, WND readers. I've been waiting! We have an election to win!WorldNetDaily
FreeRepublic
Instapundit
Lileks
Powerline RealClearPolitics
EvangelicalOutpost
FratersLibertas
OutsideTheBeltway
RedState
Tim Blair
RogerLSimon
InfiniteMonkeys
DaschlevThune CaptainsQuarters
ShotInTheDark
The Senate Shuffle
As the rumors of Mike Ditka running for Senate gain substance, it's clear that time has not mellowed Ditka, known to all rational football fans as the greatest coach the game of football has ever known.
From the Washington Dispatch:
In a snapshot of what may be to come if he decides to run for the US Senate, Mike Ditka is already upset with the media. The Illinois Leader is reporting that Mike Ditka was angry once he arrived at what was to be a secret meeting with Illinois GOP leaders...This is not a surprise, as Ditka loves to be in charge and complete control of the situations he is involved with. And while that won’t play well in Washington DC, it will play very well in America’s heartland. It’s impossible to call at this point, but his candidacy seems to be getting closer to fruition. If he does run--expect daily fireworks.If Ditka runs, I'll send money. If I'm in Chicago between now and the election (and I may well be), I'll pound pavement for him.
By the way, keep your comparisons with Jesse Ventura to yourself. Ventura was an oaf with no qualifications for office other than his instinctive sense of self-promotion.
Ditka has that - plus some experience actually getting things done. More importantly, he is running for Senate, where someone can get by on personality; Ventura was governor, a position that requires the ability to delegate, to negotiate, to do things.
This blog officially supports Mike Ditka for the US Senate.
Non-Sequitur
Powerline notes this exchange between the Bush and Kerry campaigns:
Bush also took issue with Kerry's pronouncement this week that he and running mate John Edwards were proud of the fact that they opposed in the Senate the $87 billion aid package for Afghanistan and Iraq. Kerry said they had done so because "we knew the policy had to be changed.''The sound of the ground below the rhetorical barrel being scraped?"He's entitled to his view,'' Bush said. "But members of Congress should not vote to send troops into battle and then vote against funding them, and then brag about it.''
Kerry's campaign responded that Kerry had served in the Vietnam War and questions linger about Bush's wartime service in the Texas Air National Guard.
White City Bickering
Before there was Springsteen, before the Clash and the Pistols and the Houserockers, Pete Townshend and the Who were the artist and band (along with Ray Davies of the Kinks) that spurred my imagination.
Townshend lights up Michael Moore diplomatically in , but at the end of the day he still lights him up.
Townshend starts:
Michael Moore has been making some claims – mentioning me by name - which I believe distort the truth.Sounds like the way Moore does pretty much everything, huh?He says - among other things - that I refused to allow him to use my song WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN in his latest film, because I support the war, and that at the last minute I recanted, but he turned me down. I have never hidden the fact that at the beginning of the war in Iraq I was a supporter. But now, like millions of others, I am less sure we did the right thing.
When first approached I knew nothing about the content of his film FAHRENHEIT 911. My publisher informed me they had already refused the use of my song in principle because MIRAMAX the producers offered well below what the song normally commands for use in a movie. They asked me if I wanted to ask for more money, I told them no.If you think this isn't signficant - well, that's coming up later.
Nevertheless, as a result of my refusal to consider the use, Harvey Weinstein - a good friend of mine, and my manager Bill Curbishley interceded personally, explained in more detail to Bill what the movie was about, and offered to raise the bid very substantially indeed. This brought the issue directly to me for the first time. Bill emailed me and told me how keen Harvey and Michael Moore were to use my song.Now, remember - this is Pete Townshend we're talking about. The guy who sells Who songs to anyone. Throw enough money at Pete Townshend and he'll lend Who music to just about anyone.At this point I emailed Bill (and he may have passed the essence of what I said to Harvey Weinstein) that I had not really been convinced by BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, and had been worried about its accuracy; it felt to me like a bullying film. Out of courtesy to Harvey I suggested that if he and Moore were determined to have me reconsider, I should at least get a chance to see a copy of the new film. I knew that with Cannes on the horizon, time was running short for them, and this might not be possible. I never received a copy of the film to view. At no time did I ask Moore or Miramax to reconsider anything. Once I had an idea what the film was about I was 90% certain my song was not right for them.
And yet Moore was bullying and inaccurate.
Interesting bit of Who trivia (if you're a Who fanatic, as I have indeed been):
I believe that in the same email to my publisher and manager that contained this request to see the film I pointed out that WGFA is not an unconditionally anti-war song, or a song for or against revolution. It actually questions the heart of democracy: we vote heartily for leaders who we subsequently always seem to find wanting. (WGFA is a song sung by a fictional character from my 1971 script called LIFEHOUSE. The character is someone who is frightened by the slick way in which truth can be twisted by clever politicians and revolutionaries alike). I suggested in the email that they might use something by Neil Young, who I knew had written several songs of a more precise political nature, and is as accessible as I am.Townshend finishes up:
I have nothing against Michael Moore personally, and I know Roger Daltrey is a friend and fan of his, but I greatly resent being bullied and slurred by him in interviews just because he didn't get what he wanted from me. It seems to me that this aspect of his nature is not unlike that of the powerful and wilful man at the centre of his new documentary.Yeah, at the end of the day Townshend is still an arty English fop. But at the end of the day, one of his own camp has crossed over to slap Moore on the face with the riding glove.
I wish him all the best with the movie, which I know is popular, and which I still haven’t seen. But he’ll have to work very, very hard to convince me that a man with a camera is going to change the world more effectively than a man with a guitar.The answer is simple; neither.
Light Strawman, Kick Across Stage
One of the most insidious strawmen of the past week has been the left's insistence that "Edwards has just as much leadership and foreign policy experience as Bush did when he was elected."
Buncombe.
The comparison goes like this; leaving out time spent in the private sector - Bush as an oilman and sports executive, Edwards as a plaintiff's lawyer - Bush spent five years as governor of Texas, while Edwards is in his sixth year as a USSenator.
According to this, says the left, Edwards is just as qualified to be President as was George W. Bush four years ago. "More so!", they peal with delight, "because Texas is a state with statutorily the weakest governorship of any!", and it's only a state government to boot! Why, more foreign policy experience is bound to rub off in the Senate than in Texas!
Now, let's take this apart.
Senators have no executive responsibility. They talk, and talk some more, and then talk more beyond that. They take meetings, go on junkets, sit on committees, and at the end of the day (rhetorically speaking), they vote. That's it. Governors have executive responsibility. The bucks stop at their desks. They have individual accountability for their decisions; Senators don't, unless they're running for re-election (or President, if the media feels like it). Edwards has never had the hot potato end up in his lap; he's swum with the 99 other big fish for his whole governmental career.
As to foreign policy experience, here's a news flash: nobody has experience with this level of foreign policy, save for the Secretary of State, and there's a reason they tend not to run for President. However, Presidents - being executives - have to know how to delegate and just plain hire the right people to shore up their own areas of inexperience. Bush knew this job intimately - as well as any president, ever - while it'll not only be a new skill for Edwards, but John Kerry's never really done it either.
Counting years in office gives a misleading impression. John Edwards is not only less qualfied than Bush was four years ago, so is John Kerry.
And it doesn't matter - because Bush has the experience now. In times with lower stakes, a change of horse in midstream mightn't be a catastrophe, unless the choice was better than the status quo ante. That is clearly not the case in this election.
July 13, 2004
Democracy Put On Hold; Criminals Safer
If there was a judge in the country that could be counted on to say "Off what?" when the ultra-liberal Twin Cities establishment yells "Jump", it's Ramsey County judge John Finley.
Today, citing an extremely dubious interpretation of Minnesota law in response to a case brought by a number of well-heeled, clout-enhanced ultraliberal cronies, Finley declared the Minnesota Personal Protection Act unconstitutional.
The Strib picks up the story:
Minnesota's conceal and carry gun law was declared unconstitutional today by a Ramsey County District judge.Of course, this has been a common practice in Minnesota for quite some time. But those laws didn't have well-heeled opponents in tony suburbs; smug, posh, activist church congregations that include the likes of former US Attorney and DFL Senate candidate David Lillehaug, who led the insider push for today's custom verdict.Ruling in a lawsuit brought by several churches, Judge John Finley wrote in his decision that it was unconstitutional for the 2002 Legislature to bundle the conceal and carry gun language with a "totally unrelated bill relating to the Department of Natural Resources."
He said the state Constitution prohibits laws from embracing more than one subject.Which is rubbish.
Minneapolis attorney David Lillehaug, who represented Adath Jeshurun Congregation in challenging the gun law, said Finley ruled that passage of Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act of 2002, known as Senate File 842, was "contrary to Minnesota's tradition of open government."Because there are none.Finley issued his order about 11 a.m. and was unavailable for comment on the immediate effects of the ruling. Under the law, citizens who obtain a permit are allowed to carry a concealed gun.
Minnesota Attorney General Michael Hatch said he will appeal Finley's ruling. Hatch said he was still researching the opinion, but believes that conceal and carry permits obtained since the law was passed are still valid.
He said the whole issue of laws embracing more than one subject has been in debate for the past 10 years.
Hatch also said he is not aware of any ill effects from the gun law.
This ruling - as stupid as any I've seen in Minnesota, and one totally driven by the judge's agenda - will be appealed. I'd bet on an attempt to outflank it in the legislature as well.
It shows, certainly, how panicky the rollback of gun control Victim Disarmament makes the rabid left.
To Plan Or Not To Plan
I got some of the most gratifying response ever to my post from two days ago, Chum for the Moonbat Pond, where we discussed the Administration's inquiry into the legalities and policies regarding postponing the presidential election in case of a major terrorist attack.
It's brought up some interesting ideas.
Via
Spot On, I encountered this piece, on the blog "Right Moment".
On the one hand, "if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail". If the nation doesn't consider what to do in the event of a rending national catastrophe, then if it happens we will have no idea what to do - guaranteeing an election dispute that'll make this last four years look like trying to figure out which movie to rent at Blockbuster.
On the other hand - as we saw during last year's Terror Market controversy or the "Duct Tape" advisories last year, if a government institution even considers a point that is emotionally loaded enough to torque a significant minority, then that point will go unconsidered. Every time.
I think a sensible nation - Switzerland, for example - capable of national pragmatism, with a n opposition that was truly united for the objective good (read: survival) of the country, would be able to confront things like this, and fashion a response; perhaps create a set of non-partisan, legal and objective standards for the postponement of an election, like the use of nuclear weapons resulting in the complete disruption of communications in a significant part of the country.
Or, alternately, create a procedure for having staggered elections; if a disaster-ravaged New York or Los Angeles were incapable of voting on the appointed date, then they would vote a month (for example) later.
But no. We'll have the emotional tug of war, between the "Bush wants to appoint himself king!" morons and the "Any caving in to Al Quaeda is a defeat" absolutists (one of which I am, as a generality).
The question - regardless of your politics - is "what is the right way to approach this thorny problem - the first time we've ever faced it". People say "Lincoln conducted elections on time during the Civil War" - but no Northern cities were in flaming ruins in 1864.
I'm still inclined to hold the election on time no matter what - but it bears thinking about.
Non-Veterans For Logic
Doug Grow takes a big hit from a steamin' bong full of Nick Coleman Weed in this piece from today, about the "Veterans for Peace" rally against the Twins' "GI Joe" giveaway.
Just for kicks, let's count the strawmen.
Grow starts:
Now John Varone, a man of peace, has some peace again. The media, national and local, have moved on.Wow - two strawmen already! Conservatives hardly dominate the airwaves in the Twin Cities. And as one of them, he was labelled a lot of things, most of them having to do with being trite, facile and PC.Varone, president of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, was caught in the spotlight on the Fourth of July weekend when a newspaper reporter called him and asked about a promotion being sponsored by the Minnesota Twins. The Twins, as a so-called tribute to U.S. troops, were giving away a G.I. Joe doll to children attending the July 5th game.
Varone, a draftee who served in Vietnam for a year (1969-70), answered the question, but tried to add context about his organization's position. But context was stripped away from his answer.
What was left was this: "I think the Twins are way off base with this idea. For gosh sakes, the last place we need to promote war is at our national pastime."
The ink was barely dry on those few lines of type when Varone's phone started ringing. Fox, CNBC, ESPN were calling for comments. And Varone became a punching bag for conservatives who dominate American talk radio. He quickly was labeled everything from a crackpot to a threat to national security.
What is it about peace lovers that so many find so threatening?That's three. Nobody finds peace lovers threatening. We merely find some of them grossly illogical. A GI Joe doll doesn't make the world one jot less peaceful.
"What bothers most is the accusation we don't support the troops," Varone said. "It's a replay of the old 'Love it or Leave it' syndrome. The thing is, we are for the vets. We especially want to take care of the kids when they come home."That's four.
"I support the troops, but I oppose the war" is the great canard of the left today. If you condemn the mission that the troops are on, your support for the troops themselves is hollow at best. What you support, in that case, is an "idealized" notion of troops; the PTSD-stricken anti-war activists of the future.
As a new generation of victims.
What if the new guys don't cooperate?
Varone said he understands how complex the scars of war can be. He came home from Vietnam and battled alcohol for 22 years, he said. There were other demons, too, which didn't reveal themselves for years after his service ended.Perhaps the first non-strawman.A lifelong hunter, Varone said he was hunting small game near Chaska seven years ago. Two helicopters flew over him. Suddenly, he said, he was sweating heavily and "stalking" the game.
"I sold the guns," he said. "Now I fish."
And perhaps not.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is far from uncommon. And yet (say psychologists I know and/or know of) the biggest contributing factor is the receipt of a mortifying trauma combined with a feeling of helplessness.
Most of our troops in Vietnam were draftees. For much of the war, they were poorly-trained for war in the jungle. They were hamstrung by stupid strategy, in an Army that was rudderless, decaying, and micromanaged. They were kept in country for a year while their officers rotated out. They usually flew into the country alone, and at the end of their year, they were flown directly from the war zone to their hometowns. Many have commented on feeling like poorly-trained cannon fodder.
Today's troops are volunteers, in a military that is at the top of the military art. They are much less commonly the "Hunted" than they were in Vietnam. The military has learned a lot about PTSD in the past thirty years. I'd never predict that it's a thing of the past - but given what we know about it, we should see less of it.
Call it a half.
At so many levels he lives in the mainstream. Varone, a finance specialist in the Scott County Social Services Department, also is president of the county public employees union. He and his spouse, Becky, a social worker, are collectors of antiques.Strawman 4.5."I like to collect old fruit jars," he said. "I guess that really makes me a dangerous radical."
No, it doesn't. Your trite, silly crusade against GI Joes makes you...well, not so much dangerous and radical (I can't - and don't - believe anyone called him exactly that) as an overweening, victomology-mongering PC warrior.
But there are aspects of his life that separate him from most of us.Strawman 5.5. Really gratuitously rotten assumption; many of us spend a lot of time condemning the likes of Doug Grow who, along with the rest of the media, have been working overtime to derogate and confuse people about the rationales for the war, acting as if WMDs were the only reason when there were in fact three others, equally valid and uncontested.For example, there's a coffin in his garage. At one point, the coffin was simply used as a prop at antiwar demonstrations.
But when the administration blocked photographers from taking pictures of the coffins carrying home the remains of U.S. troops, Varone started writing the names of those killed on the surface of the coffin.
"At first, it was a task that I felt I had to do," Varone said. "We had to do something to show that these are not just numbers. I'd put down about 100 names, and then it became something more than a task. Now, it's something spiritual for me. It's very important. I put my hand on the coffin and think about each name. I say, 'We have to remember you. We can't ask anything more of you.' "
Sweet. Moving.
But it's far more than most of us do.
We are trying to keep their sacrifice from being rendered vain - like that of so many of Varone's conteporaries - by the meddling and diddling of chattering fools like Grow.
We proclaim our appreciation for sacrifice being made by troops, then, we go to a ballgame or go shopping.Strawman 6.5. As if going on with life after proclaiming appreciation for sacrifice was inappropriate.
"Some people merely proclaim their appreciation for the sacrifice of the World War II and Korea generations - and then go back to their job, where they've spent a career carrying water for the people who ensured the sacrifices of the Vietnam Generation were reviled, scorned and held in vain for most of a generation.
What's wrong with Varone? Why does he go so much further?Strawman 7.5. He's not "Going further", he's just doing stuff, value very much indeterminate.
He is frustrated by the presidential campaign to date because there's no real debate about the war.Strawman 8.5. Many of us are debating the war, and the Administration has stated its case time and time again."They only talk about who's more patriotic," Varone said.
There's no campaign discussion of depleted uranium, another big issue of Vets for Peace and other organizations. (Depleted uranium is used by the military for such things as armor-piercing shells. The radiation from the depleted uranium lingers long after the fighting stops. Many believe this radiation will prove fatal, over time, to friend and foe.)And many believe it's a made-up controversy. Strawman 9.5.
When the reporter called to ask about the G.I. Joe giveaway, Varone said he tried to talk about meaningful issues like depleted uranium and the Veterans for Peace freshwater project in Iraq.Strawman 10.5. Your water project might be worthwhile, but it's not the news. Your organization's trite, trivial, self-righteous demonstration at the Twins game was.He said he tried to talk about how his organization supports vets in ways far more meaningful than most Americans muster.
"When they do come home, our soldiers are going to need the support of all of us," he said. "And they're going to need our hugs."And that's 11.5. He's not dangerous, and I demand proof that anyone said he was.Dangerous character, this Varone.
No. Like so much of the anti-war movement, he's parlayed his Vietnam experience into a trite, superficial activism that ridicules veterans rather than honoring them.
Which goes double for Doug Grow.
Josh "ua Micah" Marshall Will Gladly Give You a Scoop Tuesday For A Hamburger Today
In the wake of his embarassing failure in covering the Plame/Wilson non-story, Zonitics (via the Monkeys) note that Josh "ua Micah" Marshall has a curious habit: he habitually writes reportorial checks that he can't cash.
Regarding Wilson/Plame:
When the confirmation of the Iraq/Niger/Uranium story broke in the Financial Times last week, my enthusiasm was slightly guarded because of this post by Josh Marshall (lefty uber-blogger): [Long snippet, coyly and hypothetically impugning the Financial Times story blowing the lid off Wilson/Plame, deleted for brevity].As you can imagine, after writing that post, I pretty much quit checking out Marshall's blog as a useless waste of my time.As I did, years ago. Kicking Ass gives me the same DNC talking points without the middleman.Nine days later and still nothing on Marshall's blog from Marshall and his colleagues who "know" something different. Instead, today we learn this:
[Admission of failure-disguised-as-snipe-at-Financial Times deleted for brevity]
I would like to believe that Marshall actually knew something when he published his critique of the first Financial Times story. I'd like to think that Marshall wouldn't post something with so much breathless innuendo if there weren't something to back it up.
Unfortunately, Josh Marshall's history leaves one with little reason to believe him when he makes such assertions....[Historical example - and a great one, at that - deleted for brevity]
"So We...Can..Tor...Ment...YOU!"
Back in third grade if I was sick, Mom and Dad would bring me home a bottle of Seven Up and a Mad Magazine.
Dunno what Lileks' excuse was, but for one reason or another, he exhumed the one edition of that American classic, the one I remember most distinctly: "Antenna on the Roof":
And what makes America so bad? “When Yippies tear the flag to shreds – they act like imbeciles / When hard-hats go crazy and start busting heads – they act like imbeciles too. / When industries pollute the land, they act like imbeciles / When unions keep striking till they’re out of hand, they act like imbeciles too”30 years later, and I remember singing that song (the "Fiddler" soundtrack was one of about 20 records in the house when I was a kid) with the "Mad" lyrics...
...but anyway.
Defense Dictionary
A big problem for people on the left; when they try to talk about things related to the military, they tend to sound incredibly ignorant. For the most part, it's because they are; most of them (I'm generalizing here, but if I'm wrong, it's not often) are fairly illiterate on matters of defense, military history, and the military.
This piece, in Winds of Change, should help.
July 12, 2004
Kickng Dogs Redux
A while ago, we relayed the story of a couple of degenerates kicking a dog festooned with "Bush/Cheney" posters at a July 4 parade in Edina.
The story was apparently picked up on Free Republic, which brought a couple of hecklers who claimed that it had to be "Republican Spin" (spinning the kicking of a dog?)
A little bird told me the story has been corroborated in the letters to the editor section of the Edina Sun-Current (letters not published online, unfortunately).
Like Jane Goodall
I've written many times in this space about the wierd juxtaposition one gets, being a conservative in a liberal place like St. Paul.
But what if you really dove into the heart of the left?
Doug from Bogus Gold, a former anthropology major and (like me) college actor, is doing exactly that.
It started when an old friend asked him to do a play he'd written...:
...a voice from my past (well not that far past - we've gotten together on occasion for dinner or drinks) beckons me back to that world I left behind long ago.His observations - the first in a series:Of course I accepted.
And suddenly I found myself in the midst of a strange breed of creature I normally only hear about from a safe distance: Liberals. And I don't mean the namby-pamby, Katie-Couric-loving, PTA member type. These are the hard-core Bush-is-a Nazi, Michael-Moore-is-a-prophet, gay-marriage-is-the-new-civil-rights-movement sort.
We rehearse in the WAY liberal Uptown area of Minneapolis. It has been a blast.
I've noticed this; for all the left's nattering about the lack of intellectual sophistication of the stereotypical conservative, it's not like most of the left has dug into their own beliefs more than skin-deep.
1. These people are still living in September 10th. If not in fact, in spirit, they believe events like September 11th only happen when evil men like Bush hold office. They really, truly, and deeply have no notion that this is threatening to us as a nation. To them it's just an extension of partisan politics. The idea that a foreign power would hold both the noble liberals and evil conservatives of our country in equal contempt is not remotely considered.2. These are not bad people. They're not die-hard socialists. They're not blind to multi-cultural foolishness. They simply have very little exposure to any credible worldview other than the liberal one. And any counter vision would challenge SO much of their self-image and their social relationships, that the bar for alternative vision is staggeringly high.
More reports as I get more deeply entrenched.
We'll be watching for more of Doug's observations.
The Moron from Massachusetts
Silly America speaks.
"And," Kerry added with a grin, "We've got better hair. I'll tell you, that goes a long way."With John Kerry, it's going to have to. It's probably his most coherent foreign policy statement.
Deflation
Regarding the Joe "Frog Walk" Wilson, there's not much I can say that Captain Ed and Powerlinehaven't already said better.
But I have a few questions.
First: How would the left like its crow?
Let's go back and look at some of the stuff the left was writing about Joe Wilson a while ago.
I'll start with the relatively responsible, credible lefty-bloggers (and I'll have to do some digging to make sure that should be plural). Kevin Drumnotes
None of this really seems to have any impact on the legal question of whether someone in the administration leaked Plame's name to the press, but it sure has an impact on Wilson's credibility. Stay tuned.In other words, "That whole 'alleged complete gutting of the rationale for war' thing is toast, but we might still have a low-level leak scandal!". But Drum is a smart, honest guy - he at least notes that it has an impact on Wilson's credibility. He's getting warmer.
Josh "ua Micah" Marshall obsesses over the minutiae...
Susan Schmidt is known, happily among DC Republicans and not so happily among DC Democrats, as what you might call the "Mikey" (a la Life Cereal fame) of the DC press corps, especially when the cereal is coming from Republican staffers....substituting spin for analysis (go figger, a WaPo reporter who listens to Republicans). Read the rest of his piece; he nips at the fringes of the story, without ever acknowledging that Wilson's story is probably fatally tainted. He dishes out an ad hominem against Schmidt, without actually addressing the substance of her article. this bon mot on the Daily Kos from last October:
The transcript of Joe Wilson's chat at John Kerry's site is up. It's a must-read.Money, propaganda and the truth. Ironic, huh?Wilson is an evidently intelligent and often drily humorous man, as was evident when he appeared on the Daily Show a while back.
Some money quotes:
- I was and am not anti war per se. I am and John [Kerry] is anti stupid war. Invasion-conquest-occupation unilaterally is a classic example of stupid war.
- Cheney was secretary of defense when I was in charge of the embassy in Baghdad. He was an addressee on cables I sent from there. I am sorry his memory is so bad but, frankly, I am not too sorry never to have shaken his hand. I take it as a badge of honor that I don't know him.
- Ambassador Wilson, what was your initial reaction when you found out that your wife's identity as a CIA operative was leaked to the press?
My initial reaction was unprintable ... but it starts with an F.
- What we are going to be up against next year is votes and enthusiasm vs money and propaganda.
- There is very little that Bush says these days that bears any relation to the truth.
Nothing about Wilson's story being, essentially, all lies.
On Atrios, nothing relating to Wilson shows up since early May, which fussed about Bob Novak's involvement.
Nobody on the left - certainly the top-flight sites - seems to be talking about this week's cutting of Wilson off above the knees.
Back to the Future
Further proof that too much of the left is lost in the sixties:
Walking the parade route with his mom, younger siblings and politically conservative friends, Jason heard words from the crowd that felt like a thousand daggers to the heart.Remember, though - it's conservatives who are responsible for the "climate of hate"."Baby killer!"
"Murderer!"
"Boooo!"
Simple Choices
Victor Davis Hanson the real story, not only of the Hussein trial, but of the war itself.
The piece is aptly titled "Civilization vs. Trivia - Sometimes life’s choices are simple". It's appropriate.
Hanson says:
There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda. Civilization has come to Iraq.Hansen notes something I've noted in the past - bereft of large accomplishments, the Democrats carp endlessly about meaningless - utterly meaningless - minutia. Hanson gives examples:Nor was the destroyer of Iraqi dissidents hitched — Saudi-style — to a Humvee and dragged to pieces through the streets of Baghdad. The pillager of Kuwait did not lose a limb on the precepts of a sharia-inspired fatwa. A young Saddam-like Baathist assassin did not break in and shoot the desecrator of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the back of the head. And a West Bank-like mob did not lynch the torturer of dissidents in the public square. Even al Jazeera, an enthusiast of the usual barbarity, was wondering what the heck was going on in its own neck of the medieval woods.
Surely, the slow emergence of real civilization in Iraq is one of the seminal events in the history of an Arab and Muslim Middle East that has had no prior record of either consensual government or an independent judiciary. Unlike Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, a global criminal is facing his victims in a legitimate court administered by the beginnings of a free republican government. The more Washington, D.C., insiders insist that the transfer of power was a meaningless construct, the more we are beginning to see the future shape of an autonomous, free, and civilized Iraq. Don't listen to cynical American reporters and played-out professors who laugh at the idea of civilization. Watch instead how dictators and monarchs in the region recoil at it all. After all, such autocrats have lots to worry about: 70 percent of the world is democratic; excluding Israel, 0 percent of the Middle East is.
At a time when tens of thousands are risking their lives to end the barbarism that has spawned a quarter century of worldwide terror, the New York Times wishes us to know that its columnists can properly pronounce Iraq and really do remember that freedom "rings" more often than "reigns."The upshot?Meanwhile, an even smugger Billy Crystal was introducing the billionaire John Kerry at a millionaires' banquet in L.A. with similar gravitas — comparing 9/11 to the president's SAT scores. Oh yes, 3,000 incinerated on September 11 add up to the president's combined SAT score. Analyze that: comparing charred corpses to multiple-choice tests taken by high-school seniors.
The message of this out-of-touch, spoiled idiotocracy seems to be something like, "How embarrassing for us to have an inarticulate president who has freed Iraq and inaugurated democracy in Saddam's place." Are all these people crazy and ignorant of history — or do they simply want a free civilized Iraq and the American soldiers who brought it about to fail?
Only belatedly has John Kerry grasped that his shrill supporters are often not just trivial but stark-raving mad. If he doesn't quickly jump into some Levis, shoot off a shotgun, and start hanging out in Ohio, he will lose this election and do so badly.Hewitt said it well: the meta-war is the one in the US, between serious people and silly people. Hanson rings up the sillies in this piece, which you need to read the rest of right now.The war that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards once caricatured as a fiasco and amoral is now, for all its tragedies, emerging in some sort of historical perspective as a long-overdue liberation. At some point, one must choose: Saddam in chains or Saddam in power. And the former does not happen with rhetoric, but only through risk, occasional heartbreak, and the courage of the U.S. military.
No Blood For Tyrants
Yet again, notes Jay Reding, the French are abetting the spilling - no, the filling of the gutters with - blood...
...for oil.
What will the American left say about this?
Prediction: "How is America coping in the two months since Friends went off the air?"
July 11, 2004
Chum In The Moonbat Pond
First things first: Homeland Security's reschedule the election in the event of a terrorist attack is a lousy one. This country is built around ideas; the biggest idea is that our democracy is more important than its government. The election must go on.
The other reason? It's giving thousands of left-blog moonbats an aneurism.
Powerline states the case well:
This report will start the propellers spinning on every tinfoil hat in America. But conspiracy fantasies aside, canceling a Presidential election would send the worst possible signal to everyone, not least the American people. Come Hell or high water, the election should proceed on November 2.As Rocket Man predicted, the tinfoil hat props are purring away.
The left's been calling Bush a fascist dictator since the 2000 election; naturally, every genius of the "Bush Lied" set is jumping on this like the last bag of Fritos at a Phish concert.
The Left Coaster thinks it's a big election scam:
If Bush isn't man enough to win the election on his merits, then it looks like the scenarios we all feared might come true are actually being planned. We can no longer be sure that they won't stage an attack in order to have an excuse to halt the election. Scalia wouldn't dare stop it again, so other means must be found.Get that? Bush wants re-election so bad, he'll stage an attack.If such an event is in the planning stage, it would explain why Jebbie gave in so easily on the felon's list.
A person called Suburban Commando thinks Bush knows he's going to lose, and he's playing for time:
Or is it simply to postpone Bubble Boy's day of reckoning and hope events will turn the tide in his favor?Hoping for an attack? Well, I guess that's a bit more charitable than thinking he's actually planning it.
A fellow named Unfogged veers perilously close to reason...:
If they really do try to postpone the election, it's incumbent upon people of goodwill to start blowing shit up. On the other hand, that's clearly a case in which appropriate protest only bolsters the rationale for what's being protested....before veering back home to zoopdieland...:
In an interesting way, by protesting or not, the people will wind up choosing whether they want democracy or an imitation of it. It's amazing how fragile the whole thing has turned out to be.Got that? Democracy is finito, even without a postponed election!
The big joke of this whole non-story is that I'll bet dollars to donuts that the whole thing is based on a contingency study; like the flap about the terror market last year, a lot of ill-informed, hysterical lefties panicked loudly enough to get the Pentagon to back off the idea.
Diminishing Returns
Kerry received, in effect, no bounce in the polls from picking John Edwards.
The Bush campaign was borrowed a page from the Clinton notebook, predicting a very large bounce; Any jump less than the prediction, naturally, is spun as a minor victory.
It may not have been necessary:
Tad Devine, a Kerry campaign strategist, said he does not believe Republican claims about "a double-digit" bounce of 12 percentage points to 15 percentage points.And that might be the best news of all; there might not (I emphasize, might not) be any big reserve of voters to jump to the Kerry camp before the big shaking-out of the undecideds in the weeks or days before the election."We've gotten the bounce already that we're going to get," Devine said. "If you look at the Democratic vote, it has already consolidated behind John Kerry."
Both Devine and Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said on "Fox News Sunday" that they have detected slight gains for Kerry in the polls after the Edwards' choice.The bouncing isn't done, of course; the media is going to keep carrying the Kerry campaign's water (they're getting millions in free publicity on "Sixty Minutes" as I write this), and the convention will be a media love-fest for the Democrat ticket.Kerry's announcement Tuesday was followed by a tour of several states by the candidates and their families.
Kerry has "gotten a slight uptick, whether it's temporary or not," Dowd said.
But those looking for a Kerry surge in the polls after the Edwards pick saw a shift of a few points, often within a poll's margin of error.
An AP-Ipsos poll released Thursday offered an early hint there would not be a post-Edwards bounce for Kerry.
Bush had a slight lead over Kerry as voters expressed increasing confidence about the economy. Bush was at 49 percent, Kerry at 45 percent and independent Ralph Nader at 3 percent, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
But it's a decent sign; maybe Kerry/Edwards' absolute, maybe terminal vapidity might be finally sinking in after all.
July 10, 2004
Let Slip The Dogs Of Spin
Psssst. Hey, buddy. Wanna know a secret?
Gotta keep it on the low. Promise?
Promise? OK, good. Here goes.
Fox News is biased to the right.
Huh? You're laughing. Why are you laughing? OK, wise guy. You've had your friggin' yucks.
What? It's no secret? Then I guess there's no need for the "documentary" that's going to debut on Monday, right?
Not only will the documentary debut, but it will "prove" that the sky is above us the Fox network has a rightward bias.
Drudge says Fox is going to do a little exposing of its own:
A senior FOX NEWS executive tells DRUDGE: "We have enough ammunition to nail both MSNBC & CNN." Sources say FOX is prepared to go public with these accounts if necessary.I think this is a good thing. Maybe a very good thing.Elsewhere, the NY TIMES magazine on Sunday is planning a detailed expose on the FOX NEWS movie, and the question of the documentary's fair use of footage broadcast on FOX NEWS.
The doc makers have gone the Michael Moore route, sources tell DRUDGE, and are using material apparently grabbed from satellite feeds -- material that was not seen over FOX NEWS air!
First; I don't think Fox gains anything by denying its focus to the right. Most media outlets in Europe are to one degree or another honest about their underlying agendas: when you read Le Monde, Die Zeit, De Amsterdaamse Volkskrant or The Guardian, you know the news, while probably more or less factually accurate, is filtered through a left-leaning editorial staff. Likewise with the Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Osservatorio Romano, you're getting your news with a slight rightward slant - again, with the assumption that the reporters are getting their facts straight. The BBC is, of course, the exception to the rule in Europe - they claim objectivity, although it's a joke.
Like it is everywhere in the US media, most of which claims to be disconnected politically, and most of which leans left to one degree or another (unless you're a socialist or a Green, in which case it's hopelessly reactionary).
Second: Fox's riposte, as well as the "expose", will help achieve that end. Assuming Fox really does have the goods on how leftward bias infiltrates the agenda at MSNBC and CNN, it'll help strip away the veneer of "objectivity" those networks still wave in the faces of their critics.
It'll be about time.
July 09, 2004
Northern Alliance Radio, 7/10
We have a genuine embarassment of riches on the show tomorrow.
We'll be interviewing Tracey Schmitt, BushCheney04 Regional Spokesperson. Then, we'll be talking with Bryan Henderson, a West Virginia high school kid who took on his high school's politically correct administration with his Republican values, about his ongoing battle.
Finally, we'll be interviewing Odin Soli, the writer behind "Plain Layne", which is either the biggest internet hoax or best internet soap opera of the last few years.
Tune in - AM1280, noon until three PM Saturday!
At the Feet of the Masters
As the Fraters note today, it was another win for them at the Keegan's Trivia contest.
The Minnehaha Allstars didn't do so hot, but them's the breaks. It's a building season for us, and so we can content ourselves with a slow crescendo of trivia excellence. We'll let the Fraters continue to marinade themselves in their obvious, intense pride in their accomplishment, knowing exactly what pride cometh before.
And I'll invite them to compete with Wog and I at Old Mexico's NTN trivia contest, which one or the other of us usually goes four or five for six. Not to brag - that would not be humble.
Just saying - them that can, do individually. Them that can't, play short-bus trivia in teams of four.
Again - just saying.
Blast from the Past
Remember the howls of outrage when George Bush answered Larry King's question:
Well, I haven't been briefed yet, Larry. They have offered to brief me; I just haven't had time.They called him "willfully ignorant". They called him "Smirking Chimp".
That George Bush - what an idiot!
Except it was John Kerry.
Hewitt's right. This election is the big battle between Serious America and Silly America.
Musical Anchor Chairs
KSTP TV shuffles their anchors yet again.
In a dramatic newsroom upheaval, anchor team Kent Ninomiya and Harris Faulkner left KSTP, Channel 5, Thursday night, and were replaced by the newly hired Cyndy Brucato.It's a good thing they mentioned "Channel 5" - I'd nearly forgotten where KSTP was on the dial.
The big question isn't so much "Why did they do it". The Five's numbers have been horrible, and getting much, much worse. Their ad campaign - capped by the "No Dancing Bears" spots featuring Lou Grant Ed Asner - can't have helped much.
No. The real news is the return of Cyndy "The Barracuda" Brucato.
Brucato was rehired after an 18-year absence from KSTP to help the struggling 6 p.m. newscast and made her first appearance at that time on Thursday night...Brucato then appeared on the news again at 10 p.m. as the solo anchor, and Hubbard said she would continue to anchor both newscasts. He declined to say who would be anchoring the 5 p.m. news.Brucato was not, shall we say, ratings dynamite in her first tour at the Five.
What are these people thinking?
PERSONAL UPDATE: When I was working for Hubbard Broadcasting, they were famous for firing people. Forget 401Ks - we used to "joke" "Don't pack a lunch - you probably won't need one". Turnover among lower echelons at all Hubbard properties was pretty amazing.
And even in that context, after Cyndy Brucato was fired the first time (in early '86), being "Brucatoed" was a Hubbard employee slang term for a particularly abrupt, suspicious termination.
Ironic then that Faulkner and Ninomiya achieved the bifecta of irony; being Brucatoed, and being replaced by Brucato herself.
I give her a year, by the way. Then, she gets "Faulknored".
MoveOn Now Superfluous
I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh much - I'm usualy busy during that time of the day - but the few minutes I caught yesterday were classic.
John Kerry has joined the lunatic, conspiracy-mongering left - and he did it on tape.
here's the transcript from Limbaugh's site.
It started with this quip from the President:
REPORTER: If I could try another Edwards question. He's being described today as charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy. How does he stack up against Dick Cheney?Later on Wednesday, a reporter asked Kerry about Bush's statement:BUSH: Dick Cheney can be president.
KERRY: John Edwards, who has more experience than George Bush and better judgment than he does when he became president of the United States. He was right that Dick Cheney was ready to take over on day one, and he did, and he has been ever since.Wow.
So, Democrat readers - your candidate has joined with your tinfoil-hat fringe.
I'm torn. Was it an act of cosmic stupidity, like Limbaugh thinks? Or was it genius - bringing the lunatic, moonbat fringe officially into the mainstream of the Democrat Party? Maybe he's doing it to head off the Dean charge at the convention?
Discuss?
Finally
Finally, one of those personality quizzes I can sink my teeth into.
Or can I?
My results:
You are an SECL--Sober Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a politician. You cut deals, you change minds, you make things happen. You would prefer to be liked than respected, but generally people react to you with both. You are very sensitive to criticism, since your entire business is making people happy.Which is odd - most of the times I've seen this, it's been a little more...tart.At times your commitment to the happiness of other people can cut into the happiness of you and your loved ones. This is very demanding on those close to you, who may feel neglected. Slowly, you will learn to set your own agenda--including time to yourself.
You are gregarious, friendly, charming and charismatic. You like animals, sports, and beautiful cars. You wear understated gold jewelry and have secret bad habits, like chewing your fingers and fidgeting.
You are very difficult to dislike.
But "Politician"? Eeeeg.
July 08, 2004
But Wait - Bush Didn't Lie?
Uranium from Niger - a Brit Government report will soon show Iraq was in the market..
A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.All right, Dems - who's going to be the first to admit they were wrong?The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government's claims about the threat from Iraq.
As I predicted you'd have to?
(Via Jay Reding)
Malkin, Irritated
Michelle Malkin goes after Ted Rall over his latest strip (to which I will not link), in which he calls Condoleeza Rice a "House N****". It's delicious.
Rall is not the far Left fringe. He gets away with this pen-and-ink-stained excrement because he reflects the closet thinking of mainstream media editors across the country and their mainstream liberal audiences. His work is reportedly carried in 140 newspapers. He and his ilk are everywhere. I grew up with his kind. I went to school with his kind. I work in the media with his kind. I have been getting contempt-filled, profanity-laced, "You-are-a-traitor-to-your-race/You banana/coconut/Aunt Tomasina/white wannabe" diatribes from his kind in my mailbox for the past 12 years.Proof? Well, in a nutshell:
(It's also valuable, by the way, to see Rall's mainstream media clients such as the Washington Post continue to stand by him...while at the same time, moan about the lack of civility in public discourse.)I know I have some liberal readers - and many of you are eminently rational people.
What do you think about this?
(Conservatives are welcome to comment as well).
(Via Powerline)
The Trivial Pursuits
Barring any complications, the Minnehaha Allstars (myself, Anoka Flash, the Doctor and a surprise guest) will return to Keegan's for Thursday Night Trivia tonight.
Peeps' scurillous claims aside, we made no claims last time we played (two weeks ago), and we make none tonight. That way if we lose (and who could ever seriously contemplate beating the mighty mighty mighty Fraters, the greatest trivia team in the history of the universe, or in its future as well, who shall never, ever be beaten), it'll be a fun night out. Whereas if we win - unlikely as that is - it'll hit the Fraters like the cold slap of Death itself.
Underpromise, overdeliver. It's as smart in trivia as it is in business.
Besides - the Boxty at Keegans, washed down with a Boddington or Guinness or two, is better than the trivia anyway. Mmmm.
State of Twin Cities Radio, 2004
Last year, I did a long post in which I reviewed every talk show on the air in the Twin Cities.
The local talk market has changed a lot in the last year; I figure it's time to give it another shot.
I'm going to try to review programs i every daypart, at all the major local talk stations:
- KSTP, the big talk blowtorch here i the Twin Cities. The station that Limbaugh built. As pointless full disclosure, I worked there from 1985-1987.
- WWTC, the Salem network affiliate. Mosty network programming, with the exception of three shows on the weekend. Dislosure: I host one of them.
- FM107, KSTP's sister station. Literally. Even Hubbard staff call it "chick talk"; it's talk radio aimed at women.
- WCCO, once the highest-rated major-market station in the US, now just another middle-of-the-road player.
- KSMM/WMIN - the two frequencies currently carrying "Air America" and other liberal programming. Managed by Janet Robert, former mud-slinging congressional candidate.
- KNOW, the local MPR news-talk affiliate.
Mornings
- KSTP - Bob Davis - A huge improvement over the dreadful "Woedele and O'Connell". Davis is the first decent morning show KSTP's had since the first incarnation of Babs Carlson - which was the first decent morning show it had ever had. Fun, funny, worth tuning in. Handicapped, at least to me, by the fact that I have a hard time listening to talk radio in the morning.
- WWTC - Bill Bennett - Salem rolled out Bennett in, I think, three months ago. It's...there. Good guests, very sober, very rational - none of which make it the kind of thing I want to hear in the morning. Bennett would be a great mid-day show, but I think he's terribly miscast in the mornings.
- FM107 - Ian Punnett - I like Punnett. Rigorously, scrupulously intellectual, with frequently-fascinating takes on events and life. The kind of person I'd love to talk with (and in fact I may try to do just that - I may try to crash one of his "Dead Theologians Society" meetings). The problem is, I only listen when I'm in my car - in 15-20 minutes snips. Punnets dissections of events and ideas can go on, and on, and on. And on. I never hear the beginning or the end of any idea with Punnett. It drive me crazy.
- WCCO - "Garrison Keillor's Material On Parade - No, not really, it's actually Dave Lee. But close. That's what I wrote about the Dave Lee show last year. I see no reason to change.
- MPR - Morning Edition - Generic public news/talk product. Happy to say, though, that Cathy Wurzer is finally broacast-quality talent.
- KSMM/WMIN - Morning Sedition - Even if these guys were conservative - as in, traded in three hours of conservative cant and conspiracymongering, and told three hours of oh-so-naughty-and-"edgy" conservative pseudo-blue jokes and Sue Ellicott put me in an olympic-caliber liplock, the show would be an embarassment. To conservatives. And humans.
Late Mornings
- KSTP - Ron Rosenbaum and Mark O'Connor - I'll disagree with some of my NARN colleagues; Rosenbaum has improved as a host. He's had to - he's been saddled with Mark O'Connell, perhaps the the deadest radio weight in the Twin Cities, as his "sidekick"-voice of radio experience.
- WWTC - Laura Ingraham - Her forte is skewering current events. Few hosts are better at this. She's not a great interviewer, though.
- FM107 - Laura Schlesinger - Every show has one bon mot of genuine wisdom. Every show also has four or five moments where Schlesinger tears into someone based on having mis-heard what they said, launching into a canned rant on a subject that isn't even tangential to the call. It's her right, it's her show - and it's become rote.
- WCCO - Pat Miles - So light, it would fly away at the sneeze of a baby.
- MPR - Midmorning with Kerri Miller - A huge improvement from Cacklin' Katherine Lanpher. Miller brings the ability to conduct a non-fawning interview, and some actual broadcast chops to the table.
- KSMM/WMIN - Wendie Wylde - Or Wendye Wilde. No, it's actually Wendy Wilde. Former really bad WCCO host, Wilde and her four - that's four support staff (executive producer, two producers, and a researcher) spend two hours a day gurgitating talking points from MoveOn.org. One wonders - why four support staffers when simply reading MoveOn, Daily Kos and Democrats.com would save them so much money? Oh, yeah - Wilde is a wretched interviewer. Wretched. Ghastly.
Middays
- KSTP - Limbaugh - Gotta hand it to Rush - not only is he the father of conservative talk radio, he's the father of liberal talk as well. FrankenNet exists as a response to Rush, down to the promos for Franken's show ("Drug-free radio" - not only is it petty, but given that Catherine Lanpher is a famous lush, supremely ironic). Every time he opens his mouth, someone in Highland Park loses 20 seconds of life expectancy.
- WWTC - Dennis Prager - Intensely intellectual. Almost too much so. When he's talking about a topic that interests me, there may be no better host out there; he's thorough, and intensely intellectual. When he's talking about something I could care less about, it's pure tuneout. He's excellent - but his vocal tics drive me crazy to the point of tuning out at times.
- WCCO - Kim Jeffries - Remember what I said about Pat Miles being lightweight? Jeffries is worse. Still better than Kym Wylde, though.
- MPR - Midday with Gary Eichten - Still the best show that's ever been pieced together from random interviews and taped segments.
Early Afternoons
- WWTC - Michael Medved - As intellectual as Prager, but more listenable. Stresses taking callers that disagree - and then shreds them within an inch of their lives. Liberals barber endlessly about the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity - but Medved is the one they should worry about. Still, sometimes hard to listen to; you know you should be listening to Wagner, but somtimes you get tired of all the intellectual stimulation and need to listen to some Toby Keith. Still, just about the best thing on the air.
- FM107 - Kevyn Burger - Kevyn could easily be the best host on 107. She's hamstrung, I think, by the station's "all soccer-mom topics all the time" format. Still, the one host on 107 I think I could consistently enjoy. I say "could", because like 99-odd-percent of the Twin Cities' listening audence, I don't tune in.
- MPR -
All Edition Things AlmanacTalk Of The Nation - Still impeccably produced talk, guaranteed to offend nobody. Every time I remember Juan Williams, I thank the good lord for Neil Conan KSMM/WMIN - The O'Franken Factor - I've criticized this show so often, what's left to say? It's overproduced-yet-amateurish, overstaffed yet it sounds slapdash, Al Franken is a huge star and makes a million a year (maybe) and yet he doesn't have the skills that'd get him hired on his merits in Des Moines. If it were a conservative show it would still be a embarassment.
Afternoon Drive
- KSTP - Garage Logic - I used to enjoy Soucheray, before his endless recycling of the curmudgeon schtick got old. Then tiresome. Then beyond self-parody. Dull, dull, dull. The Rookie, I've come to realize, is the most underrated presence in Twin Cities radio - listening to him, I realize how much of the burden of this self-adulatory, self-indulgent institution rides on his shoulders.
- WWTC - Hugh Hewitt - Last year, I said "I should totally dig Hewitt. I'm still waiting for the blinding flash of Hewitt epiphany. UPDATE: I'm told that the flash of epiphany is inevitable." I was told right. Hewitt's show is just about the best current-events show on the air. He's as good an interviewer as there is on talk radio. He gets new media. Disclosure: I'm a bit in Hewitt's debt - he put a lot of oomph behind the original proposal for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. That has not change my opinion of his show.
- FM107 - Lori and Julia - I can listen to fingers scraping on chalkboards all day. But even if I couldn't, it would be better than this terminally-and-yet-interminably awful mess. The only show in town not better than Wyndye Wylde.
- WCCO - Don Shelby - I can't think of a single reason for this show.
- MPR - All Things Considered - They replaced Lorna Benson with the audibly-crusty David Molpus in the past year or so. It was the perfect move to sand off the last projecting bit of audible variety on this very, very staid-to-the-point-of-catatonia show.
- KSMM/WMIN - Ed Schultz - Imagine the Chinese wanted to build a knockoff of the stereotype of an American talk show host 0 loud, intellectually vapid, but adept at pushing buttons in a way that Wieyndieye Wieyelde and Al Franken just aren't, who automatically fills in with hours of endless prate and gabble of MoveOn-surplus talking points. That's it - the Chinese built a knockoff of Sean Hannity. There is no there there.
Evenings
- KSTP - Sean Hannity - He's like a right-wing Ed Schultz. He's more substantial - he's a smarter guy than Schultz - but at the end of the day, he's a talking point machine. They're talking points I largely agree with - but that doesn't make the show interesting.
- KSTP, next - Chris Krok - Someone who audibly wants to be Sean Hannity. Unfortunately, he has no apparent talent.
- WWTC - Savage Nation - OK, so the Chinese blew it makig their medicre, liberal copy, Ed Schultz. This time, they went over the top, and created a host that is calculated to push every button, all the time. That's Michael "Weiner" Savage. For those of you who thought Morton Downey was kind of restrained.
- FM107 - Dr. Joy Browne - There are still glaciers younger than Browne. Before Doctor Laura, before Sally Jesse, there was Joy.
- WCCO - Some sports show that I've never listened to, and likely never will.
- KSMM/WMIN - Janeane Garofalo. A college radio talk show. Only without the audience. Sam Seder is, unaccountably, even worse than Garofalo. A horrible show.
- KSTP - Mischke - Benefits, I think, fro its move to 10PM. Still my favorite night-time radio around.
- WCCO - Al Malmberg - In a category of its own. Beyond awful. It sounds like a parody of late-night talk shows; Malmberg, a seeminly-purely-middle of the road guy, brings less sizzle to a call-in segment than Gary Eichten. Stumbling, bumbing...words fail me. Could become a camp classic
- FM107 - Clark Howard - Consumer talk. Never heard it. Never will.
Send Money
Elder and Atomizer from Fraters Libertas are participating in the MS75 rollerbladathon this weekend.
Please visit the site and support them - it's a great cause.
Invisible Airwaves Crackle with Dreck...
I've had a bit of time to listen to FrankenNet lately, now that they've moved to new digs at AM1530 and AM740.
My mission this last few days was to listen to enough of it to be able to have an opinion.
Listen, folks - I've taken a few for the team before. But after this, you can't say I'm not dedicated to my readers. Oy, what bilge.
The Fraters took a swipe at them earlier today, noting their big advertising constituency:
Unions, hemp t-shirts, lawyers, sex, gambling, I think they've got all their core constituencies already covered. No wonder they've had such a hard time expanding their ad revenues.Indeed - look at their website - their listed sponsors are unions and tribal casinos.
Most interestingly - as someone noted in a comment to an earlier post on the subject - they're pimping for contributions.
You greedy right-wingers: You've had a monopoly on lying right-wing hate radio on at least 3 stations in the Twin Cities. Now its time to for one lefty station. And no, its not going off the air. Plenty of us are contributing $50 or $100 to keep it on the air (www.straightalkradio.com to contribute) in case it doesn't make it commerically, or just to expand its programming.Note to readers who might share this belief: Donations will not keep these two stations on the air if the ad market won't support it. If you knew the money that went into advertising at even a small local station, your nose hair would curl. Considering that all their major advertisers are basically soft money groups that are pimping for candidates before an election, I think it's a safe bet that donations aren't going to cut it.
Their CEO is Janet Robert, who two years ago used her boundlessly deep pockets to run an incredibly nasty campaign for Congress against Mark Kennedy; for a woman whose station bills itself as an alternative to conservative nastiness, she ran a campaign that would have fit in on Jerry Springer. It would be a cheap shot for me to call it a metaphor for liberal talk radio as a whole - so I'll let you do it. As it happens, Robert has some background in bad radio. She was the mind pocketbook behind the original 'Higher Ground Radio" - which aired last year and earlier this year on the old WMNN, until it was replaced by Al Franken (for about two months, until the station's sale was final and its change to an all-Catholic format was finalized). The show's host was local comedienne Colleen Kruse - but she wasn't the first choice - and the show had other problems as well:
Jeff Gerbino, a comedian who hosted “High Ground” on Minneapolis’ WMNN for the first two days of the show’s existence said the former Democratic candidate who created the show was forcing him to make it a “shameless plug for the DFL,” according to the Star Tribune newspaper.But wait! It was really centrist!
, Janet Robert, a wealthy attorney who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House last year, warned not to judge the show by the first two days. She told the paper the program was designed to be centrist and independent, and that “Jeff was the one that was trying to push us too far to the left...Gerbino, however, claims Robert was scheduling only Democrats on the show. Indeed, on the show’s second day, Nov. 25, one hour’s guests included: Sen. Mark Dayton, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, Attorney General Mike Hatch, a professor discussing the Democratic presidential field, state Rep. Tom Rukavina and author Al Franken – all Democrats, the paper reported. Gerbino described the hour as a “donkey telethon” and said Robert criticized him for not “gushing” enough over Dayton and Oberstar.Well, I think that's pretty dang centrist.
Liberal talk radio could succeed. In fact, it does - it's called NPR, and it does quite well, and could conceivably survive even if they didn't get government funding.
And there was a time when most talk radio was liberal, if not overtly so. National "middle of the road" hosts like Larry King and Michael Jackson were obviously, if not blatantly, left of center - and for every overt, "out" conservative like a Joe Pyne or Morton Downey Jr., there was a Tom Leykis or Geoff Charles.
Today, though, Air America is marketed entirely in the context of being the anti-Limbaugh. Read their website - they are fairly articulate (or try to be) about what they're not. But what are they, beyond the vaguest possible idea?
I listened to the Fast Eddie Schultz yesterday for a few minutes. In between unintentially ironic statements like "we liberals just have more fun than they do!" (delivered between rants about this or that incipient, conservative-based disaster - and I thought "if conservative talk radio unilaterally went silent for a week, and George Bush stayed in the White House and didn't say a public word, these people would have nothing to talk about. No real agenda. No material. Nothing". It's radio that seems, at the moment, to be entirely based on responding to conservative initiatives, from the now-seemingly-quaint (they're still in a knot about the Starr investigation) to the life-or-death (they're trying to exhume the sixties in re Iraq).
If the really great conservative hosts - the Limbaughs and the Lewises - have a great advantage, it's that they drive the discussion. Lesser talents - Franken, Rhodes, Schultz - and non-talents like Maron, Winstead and Wendy Wild basically pick up and natter over the crumbs they leave behind.
And it's that nattering that makes so much liberal talk radio so unlistenable - even if you leave ideology and politics completely out of the story, it's just badly done. If Al Franken and Wendy Wild were conservatives, they'd be just as bad.
And neither of them would have a radio job anywhere.
July 07, 2004
What Does Edwards Mean?
Joe Gandelman analyzes what Edwards likely means to the Kerry campaign.
Two of his seven points:
(3) The Political "It" Factor. Ronald Reagan had "it" with voters. John Kennedy had "it" with voters. So do John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Michael Dukakis was the "anti-it". George Bush, Dick Cheney, and John Kerry have their moments but don't have "it." Edwards has some of "it" (and tries hard to get and show "it"). And he'll be the only one to have it. QUESTION: Will it wear well? If "it" fizzles or becomes a bore Kerry made a poor choice since it's clearly one of the factors he wanted.Here's what I think; Kerry's main hope is to turn this into a(4) The SUSTAINED Republican Reaction and Democratic Reaction: The immediate reaction was Nirvana on the part of the Democrats and instant condemnation on the part of radio talk show hosts.
Yet on the Internet there was a more disapassionate analysis by conservative and liberal bloggers of Edwards than on radio talk shows, cable talk shows, etc.
If Internet pundits' cooler analysis prevails, the campaign will focus more on personalities (and both parties have segments that prefer a discussion of personalities rather than nuts-and-bolts issues) but if it remains a primary issue, Kerry's choice will prove to be a poor one.
If he can bring out the people who vote based on visceral reactions - e.g. if the silly agenda, the agenda that worries about things like looks and other "soccer mom" distractions - then he has a decent chance.
Here's the part that I laugh at; Democrats continue to think that Edwards will clobber Cheney in the Veep debates. I think Cheney will mop the floor with Edwards. I think Edwards' trial-lawyer-y theatrics won't play as well as Cheney's decades of real-world experience.
Kulcha And Stuff
Via Red and Terry Teachout, the top 100 cultural choices, assuming one had to choose.
1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Probably Astaire, although it's close.
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Sun, hands down.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington?Duke. He had such huge footprint over so much music.
4. Cats or dogs?Both. Won't choose.
5. Matisse or Picasso? Matisse, although the genre leaves me a little cold.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Keats. Just a seat-of-the-pants thing.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? Flannery O'Connor
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Casablanca. No question.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning?Pollock by a small splash.
11. The Who or the Stones? The Who. No question - one of the biggest bands in my life. I've never cared much for the Stones, although Exile rocks.
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath?I have to pick one? I guess citing Plath reels in the babes. I'll take Plath.
13. Trollope or Dickens? Dickens.
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Billie Holiday, although Ella is underrated.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy?Dostoevsky, but only by a nose.
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair?End of the Affair. But only barely.
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Balanchine.
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Never cared much for hot dogs, although a sauerkraut Polish with banana peppers and onions rocks. No, gimme the burgers.
19. Letterman or Leno? Letterman.
20. Wilco or Cat Power? Wilco.
21. Verdi or Wagner? That's like comparing artillery and gardening. How do you compare the two? Wagner, but I really reject the comparison.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Kelly.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash?Tough call. I love 'em both. I'll take Monroe, but barely.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis?Couldn't make the call.
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon BrandoAnother tough call. Probably Brando.
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Um - Tharp? Not familiar enough.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Rembrandt
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin?I'm a Tchaikowskii fanatic. Love it all. Which isn't to knock Chopin.
29. Red wine or white? If it's not a really good red, I like a spunky German white. Although I'm more a beer guy.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde?Coward. Love 'em both, but I just like Coward better.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? High Fidelity, if only because I could identify with it more; I've been a lovelorn drifter much longer than I've been a lovelorn assassin.
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Shostakovich.
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Nureyev, although dance is the art about which I'm least literate.
34. Constable or Turner? Turner! Oh, good lord, Turner! My favorite ever.
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Rio Bravo by a nose.
36. Comedy or tragedy? Comedy
37. Fall or spring? Winter. I mean, North Dakota winter, not these wussy Minnesota winters. Because spring is so much more precious after one. I take spring.
38. Manet or Monet? Monet. More subdued, which oddly enough seems a virtue in this genre.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? Simpsons. I have never seen the Sopranos. Not to say I don't want to.
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? The Gershwins, but it's not a clear choice.
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Conrad.
42. Sunset or sunrise? Love 'em both. Noon, I can do without.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Porter, but only barely.
44. Mac or PC? NeXT - in its day, the coolest computer ever. I have one, and I WISH it were still remotely current. It's not, of course. I have five Wintel boxes in in my house (three work), but as a GUI designer, I love Macs, and only wish I could financially justify one.
45. New York or Los Angeles? Never been to LA, but I still take New York
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? Don't know either.
47. Stax or Motown? Stax! Stax Stax Stax! Great as Motown was (especially the Four Tops), there's a raw, unpredictable quality to Stax that's just electric. Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Booker T, Otis Redding - all amazing stuff. If Stax had had the Tops, it'd have been the greatest label in history.
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? I never really liked Steely Dan, and I really only like the first three Elvis albums. I'll take Costello.
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Tie.
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Olivier.
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Only The Lonely, but it's close. What?
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown
54. Ghost World or Election? Election.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Min.
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?Daffy. He's an underrated genius.
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Modernism, but only because neoclassicism isn't offered.
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Spiderman! No contest.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Emmylou Harris going away. I've met Emmylou. She's one of a kind. If Emmylou didn't exist, we'd have to make her up..
60. Johnson or Boswell? Johnson.
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Austen. Not that it's a big issue.
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Van Dyke. Gleason was a genius, but one of those geniuses that always bugged me. Like Ernie Kovacs.
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Eames. I think.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Have never seen either. I'm unworthy.
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Don Giovanni, that dawg!
66. Blue or green? Green
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? MSND.
68. Ballet or opera?Opera, but only because I have a lot more to learn about ballet.
69. Film or live theater? Impossible to choose. It's like asking "which is better - a saw or a screwdriver?"
70. Acoustic or electric? Absurd question, but probably electric.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? North by Northwest.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Whistler, although only barely.
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Kundera.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? The Music Man. Oklahoma bugs me for some reason.
75. Sushi, yes or no? Yes, but I haven't been all that adventurous with it. Cali Roll rocks, but that's sorta the McDonald's cheeseburger of sushi.
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? Ross.
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Tennessee Williams.
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Only read a little bit of Portrait. Can't pick.
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Taylor. Sheesh.
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Wright, but it's a close call.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Probably Jones, but I'm not crazy about either. Jones loses a few points for the 2002 Grammies.
82. Watercolor or pastel? Watercolor
83. Bus or subway? We only have buses in the Cities (haven't ridden the Ventura Trolley yet), and they suck suck suck. I loved the subways in NYC, DC, London and Paris.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg?Stravinsky by a country mile.
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? Crunchy.
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Willa Cather.
87. Schubert or Mozart? Mozart
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? If this means "which decade would you live in", Twenties. I'm convinced I was born 50 years too late; I'd have loved to have been in on the golden age of Radio.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick?Huck.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? I've read more Mann (minored in German), and love him. Joyce is also great. Can't pick.
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? Hawkins.
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Whitman.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Gimme a break. Both. No compromise.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann?Tough call, but Aimee Mann. I find myself being more itnerested in her music over time. Haven't seen either of them live.
95. Italian or French cooking? Italian
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Piano
97. Anchovies, yes or no? On pizza? Yes. On pancakes? No.
98. Short novels or long ones? Good ones. Length doesn't matter.
99. Swing or bebop? Swing
100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"? Supper.
Discuss.
Brief Spark, then Darkness
As Jason Van Steenwyck reports, sometimes the media comes perilously close to enlightenment - as in this LATimes piece:
It is a sign of bravery, Skuta continues, for a Marine to enter a town smiling and waving after he was ambushed there the night before, and to do the same thing the next day....only to have their biases come raging forth at the last minute.But in turn, this altered 21st century version of Marine Corps gung-ho has created a different rub. The small, incremental gains that Marines believe, or hope, they are making in Iraq are not being acknowledged at home.
This is a nearly universal point of view among these infantry Marines at Al Asad. It is voiced not just in interviews, but also in casual conversations among themselves, often short-handed this way: "The media doesn't get it."
Like here:
The cliche comes easy, but the thoughts behind it are more complicated. In truth, Marines here have an exceedingly narrow window on the news: a morning BBC report on the chow hall television and random, usually stale, periodicals.Remember the scene from "All Quiet on the Western Front", where the protagonist returns home on leave? He's sitting at a sidewalk cafe, talking with a group of old men. They ask how things are going at the front. Protagonist says, basically, slow. The old men ask when the big breakthrough and drive to Paris is going to happen. The protagonist sighs, thinking of the carnage the goes along with taking 100 yards of enemy trenchline.
"Ah", say the old men. "Your problem is, you only see a small piece of the action from your trench. Now, if you had the big picture...like us...
As Eric Johnson wrote last week, the media seems to be the party looking at the war through blood-colored goggles.
Van Steenwyck continues:
I hate to break it to this reporter, but soldiers and Marines are not as ignorant as he thinks. A lot of them are better educated than most reporters. And all of them can read an issue of Time or Newsweek, and still be able to tell when the media is clueless--even if the magazine's a month old.Read the whole thing, naturally.Here's another newsflash: All of the Marines currently at Al Asad arrived there in January and February. They were home before that, and had unlimited access to media from home. The media didn't get it then, either.
Many of those Marines are actually on their second Iraq tours. So they fought the march to Baghdad, then went home for six months and saw how clueless the media was. And now they're back, seeing how things are now, AND how clueless the media is at the same time.
In addition, you have people like me, who spent a year in Iraq, and who still managed to keep up with the news via satellite, and had enough access to run a blog from Iraq, still telling you that you're not getting it. I wasn't the only one.
And now I'm back here, reading even more media, and you're still not getting it. In fact, you're getting worse!
If the townspeople are telling each other--almost UNANIMOUSLY--that the emporer has no clothes, it takes a pretty arrogant monarch to look down his nose at the unwashed grunts and haughtily dismiss their perception as 'a cliche,' or as the product of a 'narrow view' on the news.
Celsius 250
This piece, "Celsius 250: The Temperature at which Fat Burns", has certainly made the rounds.
Deservedly so.
July 06, 2004
College Radio, 2004
I listened to Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder on Air America last night.
They were interviewing some learned-sounding legal scholar, talking about Antonin Scalia's contribution to the Supreme Court.
They played a clip of Alan Dershowitz calling Scalia a "fascist".
Scholar went off on a three-minute explanation of how Scalia was not, in fact, a fascist, but a brilliant legal strategist who was making a huge contribution to the court, even though it was one he disagreed with.
Garofalo: "OK, but do you mind if I call him a fascist?"
What I wouldn't give to have a NARN/FrankenNet live, on-air smackdown...
Skool Daze
I don't really remember my college graduation speaker.
At the cash-strapped (at the time) little college I went to, the speaker was usually some poobah who'd given the school a load of money.
Our year was no exception. I don't remember his name; a little guy who'd just retired as a CEO of some company in Minneapolis, I think.
I remember the speech, though. To paraphrase: "You North Dakota kids really work hard. Employers appreciate that. I mean, not so much that you should start looking for the keys to the executive washroom or anything, but boy, we appreciate you...". It was one of the most insulting exercises I've ever attended - downright depressing.
Looking at who's speaking to all the kids these days, I don't feel so bad.
Via SCSU Scholars, this piece from Students for Academic Freedom, on the people speaking to this year's grads.
Bradley Whitford of “The West Wing” may have uttered the most honest words of this commencement season at University of Wisconsin. After deriding President Bush, he candidly told the crowd, “Now, you may think that I am inappropriately taking this opportunity to attack the president on a meaningless issue because of my particular political persuasion – and you would be correct.” Enough said.Read the whole depressing thing.
Love The Art. Ignore The Artist.
It's no secret. I'm a longtime, huge Bruce Springsteen fan.
Since I was 15 and discovered Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Springsteen's music has been the soundtrack percolating in the background of my life; Darkness illuminated many of the characters I grew up around. The River focused a lot of things that became very important in my life (the title cut and "Jackson Cage" were in the back of my mind as I realized I had to leave North Dakota), Nebraska underlay my own political conversion, Tunnel of Love and Human Touch showed me during the decay of my marriage that someone out there had felt the same way I was feeling. Naturally, The Rising was the best - maybe only - "September 12th" album out there.
The Rising was, itself, a fascinating case; if you'd have told me in, say, 1980 that an album that constantly reiterated the themes of faith, strength, hope, love and redemption would be the best album of 2002 (shut up, Norah Jones and the freakin' academy), I'd have said you were nuts. And if you'd have told me at the time at the same time that the Village Voice would pan the album, while the National Review's critic would lionize it for those exactly reasons, I'd have probably had you committed.
And yet...
In the "News" section of his website,
Springsteen reprints Algore's entire NYU speech - you know the one, the one where he foams at the mouth and bellows "George Bush Lied!" - while saying:
Al Gore gave one of the most important speeches I've heard in a long time. The issues it raises need to be considered by every American concerned with the direction our country is headed in. It's my pleasure to reprint it here for my fans.He also links to "moveon.org", a site we've been lambasting in this space for a couple of years now.
The only thing that's changed - the only actual disappointment in this whole episode - is that Springsteen used to keep himself pretty scrupulously out of politics; while the lefty press still crows about his repudiation of Reagan's attempt to appropriate Born in the USA twenty years ago, they forget that he slapped down Walter Mondale just as hard. To throw away twenty years of moral capital for...MoveOn? For Algore? Bad choice.
Beyond that, who cares? I'm still a fan. If I limited my listening to good conservatives, I'd be flitting back and forth between Johnny Ramone and Ted Nugent and country-western. Nothing wrong with any of them (except that I can't stand Nugent, and Johnny Ramone never sang much, and most country bores me stiff.
As I said in a post a long time ago, a lot of my biggest personal and cultural influences from the left had the biggest impact in turning me into a conservative. Springsteen would be another example; Nebraska's collection of drifters and dead-enders reacted with the rotten taste the Carter Administration left in my mouth and the decrepitude of the Democrat's foreign policy vision and many other influences, and left me...a conservative. Not that it was primary influence - music can influence your life, but certainly not musicians.
That may be the greatest satisfaction of this whole episode; as I've mentioned before on this blog, I credit many of my biggest leftist influences in my life - my parents, Joe Strummer, the minister that confirmed me, Springsteen, my college philosophy prof - as my biggest influences in becoming a conservative. And I have to hope that fact would mortify them.
The Case for Edwards
Who's Kerry's Veep choice?
Pfft. Probably Edwards.
At least one pundit is making a case for John Edwards.
I'm going to go out on a limb to predict that John Edwards is Kerry's VP pick. Let me walk you through how I've determined this.It's worth a read.Over the past few years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce here in Washington has been very vocal about reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits....Normally, the Chamber would stay out of the limelight and refrain from endorsing one candidate for the White House or the other (though they'd probably support one). However, if Kerry pick a class action trial lawyer like Edwards, the Chamber will oppose Kerry's candidacy...And John Kerry just threw down the gauntlet against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
I can't recall any Democratic Presidential candidate openly taunting the Chamber like that so early in an election...John Kerry is picking public fights with this organization even before he is officially nominated.
That means that Kerry knows that his pick for VP is so objectionable to the Chamber (and business in general) that he can expect no "live-and-let-live" approach from the business community. He is starting the fight he knows to be in the works...but he's doing it on his own terms.
July 05, 2004
Happy Birthday
Bruce Berg is my father. It's his birthday today.
I think every oldest son spends a good chunk of his life trying not to be his father. I know I spent a lot of time and energy in my teens and twenties trying to be anything but a high school English teacher, even as I knew that my Dad was the best teacher I ever had, or met. I fully expect my son to be the same.
It was a big conundrum for me, at one point; how do you show someone you love them when you're working so very hard trying not to be them?
Eventually I realized that I am a lot like Dad, anyway - I inherited my writing gene from him, certainly; I remember my father at my age, tapping away on his old typewriter at about the same times of day I find myself doing this blog today. And it turns out that his second "career" - writing columns for central North Dakota newspapers, doing editorials for North Dakota Public Radio - started at about the same time in his life that my blog and the Northern Alliance Radio Network started for me.
Anyway - happy birthday, Dad! And yes, I know - I could take up teaching, still...
Rationalizing Life
People who favor "choice" rationalize it in many different ways; most commonly, they quibble with the actual beginning of life, or more often the "Viability" of life.
Using this rationale, France and Germany allow abortion through the first seven and nine weeks, respectively, of pregnancy - a compromise between their "progressive" governments and large Catholic populations. The compromise is based on the notion of the "Viability" of life.
The key point being, nobody with a conscience - which includes most people this side of the lunatic fringe at NOW - wants to have the moral burden of killing babies, "viable" ones at least, on their conscience.
Which leads to perhaps the flippiest of Kerry's flops; he supports abortion, but believes life begins at conception.
The two ideas can only jibe one way; if you believe that "life", as defined by both biology and the Catholic Church around whose beliefs Kerry freestyles like a great jazz artist, begins at conception and that abortion is a right, then logically life is expendable.
Captain Ed has Kerry dialled in:
If life begins at conception, why then does Jon Kerry not only agree to allow abortion, but campaigns on its behalf? Does he care so little for human life and the souls of the unborn that he cheerfully sells them out for political gain? John Kerry was one of only 14 Senators who voted to continue the practice of partial-birth abortions, which take a fetus past the point of viability into the birth canal and kills it by sucking out its brain. How does that match up with a belief in life at conception?To anyone that thinks about it - it doesn't.
Rational compromise on abortion is both distasteful and, I think, necessary. But that compromise doesn't - can't - include Kerry's craven flip-flop. Life and death can not mix.
Skewering Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich has never been accused of being fair, balanced, accurate, or well-informed. She has, however, made high-gloss hatred of all things right of center into quite a little racket for herself.
As with her hatchet job over the weekend comparing George W. Bush with King George III.
Ehrenreich says:
George III is accused, for example, of "depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury." Our own George II has imprisoned two U.S. citizens — Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi — since 2002, without benefit of trials, legal counsel or any opportunity to challenge the evidence against them. Even die-hard Tories Scalia and Rehnquist recently judged such executive hauteur intolerable.Michelle Malkin takes her to historical task:
Reading Ehrenreich, one gets the impression that Hamdi and Padilla are the first Americans since King George III's time to be detained "without benefit of trials, legal counsel or any opportunity to challenge the evidence against them." In fact, such detentions have occurred at least twice in our history: (1) During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, then detained at least 13,000 suspected rebels and subversives. Those detained were not charged with crimes, were not allowed legal counsel, and were not given a hearing before a judge. (2) Within days of the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt approved the imposition of martial law in Hawaii, allowing military authorities there to detain hundreds of suspected subversives, mostly (but not exclusively) Japanese Americans. Again, those detained were not charged with a crime and were not given access to legal counsel.Read the whole thing.
Departing Controlled Flight
As I've said before, I used to be a Democrat. Like a lot of conservatives - including many of the best ones - I started my politically-aware life as a liberal of sorts.
I joke that America would be better off if America were a two-party system - Republicans and Libertarians. It is a joke. I keep telling myself...
...and I have to keep telling myself - because so much of the Democrat party these days seems to have completely departed the surly bonds of reason. It would be good to have a rational, reasonable, grown-up party on the other side of the aisle, if only because if you see a two-party system as a check and balance on the party in power, the current system is unworkable; it's like having a sane, rational, adult worker's output checked by a manic-depressive whose medication just isn't working.
Zell Miller agrees.
His article ends:
I still love the Democratic Party — the party of Roosevelt and Truman and Kennedy. But the more screaming and ranting I hear, the more I wonder whether those Democratic heroes of old would find much to be proud of today.It's the end - but it's also the theme.
I have been a proud member of the Democratic Party from the time I first breathed the Georgia mountain air. But lately I can barely recognize my once-great party. Between Al Gore's rants, Michael Moore's falsehoods, the felons-for-hire shenanigans of America Coming Together and Moveon.org's crazy conspiracy theories, the Democratic Party has become a coalition of the wild-eyed. Driven by a rabid desire to defeat President Bush, they seem eager to say and do anything to tear him apart.Fearless prediction - expect a full-bore campaign by the likes of Moore, Franken and MoveOn to tell us what kind of a Democrat Zell Miller isn't.All the loudmouthed liberals were recently shouting in unison. Gore accused Bush of deliberately deceiving the American people before the Iraq war. According to Gore, Bush made up connections between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein to dupe us into Iraq. But as with so much of what Gore has said recently, it's just not true.
Better Days
Last year, I spent four months completely unemployed, five more working little pick-up jobs at about 40 hours a month, and another working two little contract gigs that added up to probably 40 hours a week, before I finally landed a full-time consulting job. The job market during most of that time was pretty lame - but to paraphrase Reagan, a depression is when you're out of work, a complete recovery is when you get a job.
Since I'm back out on the job-hunting market, it's definitely an issue of interest.
The standard bleat from the left when the nascent Bush Boom is mentioned is "But...but the jobs being added are all crappy service jobs".
Not so, says Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation.
Money quote:
The economy added 112,000 payroll jobs in June, marking the tenth straight month of payroll employment growth. Over the past year, the economy has added nearly 1.5 million payroll jobs.The unemployment rate remains below that of most of the Clinton Administration, and would be lower - but the numbers are drawing a lot of the "Discouraged Workers" from the Clinton recession back out into the market.All service-providing sectors expanded, save government. Leading the payroll gains were two high-paying sectors: professional and business ( 39,000), and education and health ( 37,000). Critics will say that professional services includes temps, but temporary workers gains were less than one third of the net growth in that sector, and it is an error to assume that temporary jobs are sub-par.
The larger trend in the American labor force is summed up in a word: flexibility. That is partly reflected in temporary positions in which both the employer and employee can assess one another during a trial period—a matching model that is often utilized by highly valued software programmers. The trend also appears in the relentless surge in workers who prefer part-time employment, currently 19.5 million. In fact, there are 150,000 more part-timers by choice than one year ago, and 100,000 fewer part-timers who prefer full-time jobs.
Not that the media will report it this way, of course - but people will figure it out.
By the way - unlike last year's miasma of misery, where it took me three weeks to find my first lead. I already have shots at three or four jobs that are right up my alley, and have had two initial "screening" interviews - last year, I didn't get my first screener for an actual job for nearly a month. If all else fails, there's a significant chance that my old job will hire me back anyway, in anywhere from two weeks to two months. It wasn't an elimination, just a reorganization, during which the company suspended all contract work - which was what I was doing.
Not pleasant, but better than last year any way you slice it.
Knock wood.
Hollywood Remembers?
The other day on Tacitus, Democritus asked in an open thread what were peoples' favorite Cold War movies.
I had to think about it; there are quite a few choices, from the highbrow (Dr. Strangelove, Killing Fields, Burnt By The Sun) to the elliptical (Rocky IV, Road Warrior) to the lowbrow but entertaining (Red Dawn, War Games).
But no movie yet has tied up the whole story; there's been no epic, grand history of the Cold War, the type of thing one would think Hollywood would eat up.
Until, it seems, now.
Every so often someone in Hollywood uses his power to break the movie colony's rules. Consider this year's Total Eclipse. Odd as it may seem, this is the first serious American film set against the background of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, the deal that allied Europe's two totalitarian powers against the West and helped plunge the world into war. With an ally on the eastern front, Hitler sent his Panzers west while Stalin helped himself to the Baltic states and invaded Finland. A film like this could easily have turned out as big a didactic dud as the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's 1982 bomb, Inchon, with Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur. But this time the verisimilitude of the script, carried by some outstanding performances, is the source of the film's dramatic power.Sounds promising?Dustin Hoffman's persuasive portrayal of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin obviously emerges from his close study of how power and perversity converged in the dictator. Likewise, Jurgen Prochnow sparkles as Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, and so does Robert Duvall as Vyacheslav Molotov, his Soviet counterpart. Duvall's delivery of Molotov's line that "fascism is a matter of taste" is a key moment, and deserves at least as much admiration as Duvall's famous quip from Apocalypse Now about the smell of napalm in the morning. The Molotov speech has drawn some objections for being over the top, but it was not invented by screenwriter William Goldman (Marathon Man); it's an actual quote.
The more I read, the more I want to see it:
There has simply been nothing like it on the screen in six decades. It has taken that long for moviegoers to see Soviet forces invading Poland and meeting their Nazi counterparts. Audiences would likely be similarly surprised by cinematic treatments of Cuban prisons, the Khmer Rouge genocide, and the bloody campaigns of Ethiopia's Stalinist Col. Mengistu, all still awaiting attention from Hollywood.Ready to start pre-ordering tickets?Total Eclipse is rated PG-13 for violence, particularly graphic in some of the mass murder scenes, images of starving infants from Stalin's 1932 forced famine in the Ukraine, and the torture of dissidents. Director Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List) deftly cuts from the Moscow trials to the torture chambers of the Lubyanka. More controversial are the portrayals of American communists dur-ing the period of the Pact. They are shown here picketing the White House, calling President Roosevelt a warmonger, and demanding that America stay out of the "capitalist war" in Europe. Harvey Keitel turns in a powerful performance as American Communist boss Earl Browder, and Linda Hunt brings depth to Lillian Hellman, who, when Hitler attacks the USSR in September of 1939, actually did cry out, "The motherland has been invaded."
Painstakingly accurate and filled with historical surprises, this film is so refreshing, so remarkable, that even at 162 minutes it seems too short.
Never heard of Total Eclipse? It hasn't been produced or even written. In all likelihood, such a film has never even been contemplated, at least in Hollywood. Indeed, in the decade since the Berlin Wall fell, or even the decade before that, no Hollywood film has addressed the actual history of communism, the agony of the millions whose lives were poisoned by it, and the century of international deceit that obscured communist reality. The simple but startling truth is that the major conflict of our time, democracy versus Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism--what The New York Times recently called "the holy war of the 20th century"--is almost entirely missing from American cinema. It is as though since 1945, Hollywood had produced little or nothing about the victory of the Allies and the crimes of National Socialism. This void is all the stranger since the major conflict of our time would seem to be a natural draw for Hollywood.Read the whole thing.
The Cold War - every American was involved, it took forty years to settle, it split the nation at least once (a split with whose ramifications we're still dealing), the emotions and states on both side could not have been higher, the events tied every occurrence of the last 100 years together - it could be the Rings Trilogy several times over!
And yet the silence is deafening.
Michael Moore Is A Stupid White Liar
Brendan Nyhan writes an essential piece, yet another in a long series assailing Moore's veracity.
Reading comments on lefty blogs, there seems to be a consistent refrain: "At least Moore's movie is the truth".
Depends on what the meaning of "True" is.
Two Iraqs
So based on information they've gotten from the major media, a large part of the Amerian people believe that we've screwed up in Iraq.
But how is the media getting their infomation?
Eric Johnson is a Marine reservists who served in Iraq. He's written a piece that has thoroughly skewered a good chunk of the left's opinion in this area.
This section, though, is a money quote for its revelations of so much of the media's coverage of Iraq - in this case, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the WaPo's Baghdad bureau chief:
The grizzled foreign-desk veteran - who until 2000 was covering dot-com companies - now sits in judgment over a world-shaking issue, in a court whose rulings echo throughout the media landscape.It goes downhill from here - if you have faith in the major media, anyway.He finds the Bush administration guilty. Such a surprise. Before major combat operations were over, Chandrasekaran was already quoting Iraqis proclaiming the U.S. operation a failure.
Reading his dispatches from April 2003, you can already see his meta-narrative take shape: Basically, that the Americans are clumsy fools who don't know what they're doing, and Iraqis hate them. This meta-narrative informs his coverage and the coverage of the reporters he supervises, who rotate in and out of Iraq.
How do I know this? Because my fellow Marines and I witnessed it with our own eyes. Chandrasekaran showed up in the city of Kut last April, talked to a few of our officers and toured the city for a few hours. He then got back into his air-conditioned car and drove back to Baghdad to write about the local unrest.
Read it all, natch.
July 04, 2004
This Would Be Extreme
The editors of Shot In The Dark in no way condone this sort of thing, or even joking about it:
Not funny. Not funny at all.
UPDATE: Actually, it's really not funny; Charles Johnson at LGF has more:
Clowning around with a loaded weapon: check.Unbe-forbesing-lieveable.Not looking where the weapon is aimed, while clowning around: check.
Finger on trigger while performing above-mentioned stupid actions: check.
Pretending to be a credible candidate for President of the United States, while acting like a complete moron with a loaded weapon: check.
Kicking Dogs
Laura from the Hennepin County for Bush campaign writes:
Worked the Edina 4th of July Parade for Bush today and one Edina volunteer brought her beautiful golden retriever festooned with Bush placards. No sooner did the parade start than the dog was firmly kicked by a Kerry supporter. I kid you not a woman kicked our George Bush mascot dog. When asked “Did you just kick my dog?” the woman relied “Yes, I did! Get the hell out of here and get George Bush the hell out of here too!” Nice. Probably a member of PETA ironically enough.On the one hand, it's just pathetic; kicking a dog.
On the other...
Yes, during the Clinton Adminstration, there were Republicans who were unhinged by hatred for the Clintons.
But they were the extremes of the party. The mainstream of the GOP certainly didn't like Clinton - and for good reason - but there is no way to compare what the mainstream felt with the spittle-flecked, genuine hatred that seems to dominate the Democrats today.
I challenge anyone to show me genuine hated this widespread, say, eight years ago. Hint: Dissent does not equal hatred - the very existence of Rush Limbaugh does not in itself constitute hatred (much as the likes of Hillary! seem to think it does).
The challenge is out there. Prove me wrong.
Why Is America Great?
Jay Manifold lists four reasons you may not have thought of.
And they're good.
July 03, 2004
Happy Independence Weekend
Hope you all have a great weekend.
Tune in the Northern Alliance broadcast today - we're talking with Bob Leuci, after whom "Prince of the City" was modelled, plus the Week in Review and the Columnist Smackdown.
And beyond that, there's not much to say, other than this:
(Via Dissident Frogman)
Hacker Hellions Hamper Hewitt
As this is written, Hugh Hewitt's site has apparently been hacked.
Shawn Sarazing, who occasionally writes for the excellent The American Mind, wonders if perhaps Elder didn't pick up some M@d sKe3Lz over in China...
Brothers from Different Mothers?
Baldilocks shows the evidence.
July 02, 2004
Burn, Baby, Burn
Brendan Nyhan provides an extensive, exhaustive, point-by-point evisceration of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
It's long, it's incredibly detailed - and it's an essential read. Especially if you haven't learned not to take Moore seriously.
Well...
Nobody does a long-awaited return to blogging like Rachel Lucas.
I Don't Dare Hope
I don't think I've been good enough this year for this to pan out.
The National Draft Dean for VP Committee has not contacted either Dean or Kerry about its efforts, but it expects to approach the former Vermont governor before Democrats gather in Boston for the convention July 26.I can only dream."Howard Dean shifts the dynamics of the race," said Michael Meurer, co-chairman of the draft committee, who argued that Dean on the ticket would stop progressives from voting for independent candidate Ralph Nader (news - web sites).
Wait! Wait!
This week marked the first defection from Air America FrankenNet, as reported on the "blog" for Morning Sedition, the network's morning show.
PS: In case you haven't heard us say so on the air, Sue Ellicott has indeed opted to wake up at a human hour -- in order to become AAR's correspondent in the field. She'll be working for the entire network, so keep an ear out for her reports in the next few weeks!I'm sure it has nothing to do with the network's financial tailspin, or the fact that Morning Sedition is heard on the air in a small minority even of FrankenNet's affiliates.
Ellicot's departure is the first from among the air "talent" with which FrankenNet debuted, and reduces the network's righteous babe quotient to zero.
Dude, Where's My Suit?
Off to get ready for an interview.
More later today.
Damnation with Faint Self-Parody
The word for the day is "Arromediojeering".
Bear with me.
Doug Grow is a perfectly capable writer - in terms of actual writing talent, he puts Nick Coleman to fully unrequited shame.
And the Star-Tribune has many editors who are masters of their craft.
So one wonders how this column ever got printed. It swerves so far into self-parody, one wonders if the Strib's computer got hacked by the Fraters.
It's when you realize the answer is "no" that this article gets funny.
Grow begins:
Where's the outrage? Where are the political leaders? Where are the Minnesotans who used to believe so passionately in public education?And why would that be?The Minneapolis school board went about the business of again cutting the budget of the state's largest school district and laying off ever more teachers at its Tuesday afternoon meeting/wake.
These awful actions were greeted by apathy, mixed only with a little despair.
More on that in a bit.
Sharon Henry-Blythe, president of the board in what may be the most desperate time in the district's history, said she went home with an empty feeling in her stomach.Or maybe the endless...Hm. I'm looking for a word that combines "endless institutional arrogance", "enforced mediocrity", "hijacked priorities" and "misguided social engineering". I feel I need to find a way to sum up these concepts in one word, because the left has a hard time with concepts that take more than one word to summarize. For now, let's try "Arromediojeering". Let's start over."I keep waiting for some groundswell of anger," she said. "I keep waiting for people in the suburbs to join the people of Minneapolis in saying, 'Enough is enough. This is not what we're about.' "
But maybe it is what we're about. Maybe Minnesotans, once proud of the state's education system, have become comfortable with the idea that public education can take cuts, year after year.
Maybe Minnesotans got tired of the Minneapolis Schools' endless Arromediojeering. They tired of the institutional arrogance of the teachers' unions and the educational-industrial complex which resulted in ever-less learning for ever-more money, the enforced, one-size-fits-all mediocrity that public education has come to represent, the hijacked agenda that has the schools teaching values that many parents find repellent, and the social engineering that underlay the decline of the cities as well as the schools . At the same time, the system used the cities as a warehouse for the poor and using the schools to promote a culture of victimhood that makes the poor regard poverty as a virtue and victim status as an asset.
Y'know - the sort of thing that led the parents to flee to the 'burbs that Ms. Henry-Blythe so laments.
Bonnie Rosenfield, who for four years was a health teacher at Roosevelt High, was at home Tuesday night when she got her call from a teacher's union official.Assuming Doug Grow isn't projecting thoughts into "Bonnie Rosenfeld"'s head, let's ask; if that's true, why?"You're left feeling numb," she said.
In the hours since that call, a million thoughts have gone through Rosenfield's mind.
There were sweet thoughts: "I got a wedding invitation from one of my recent students," she said. "Something like that makes you know you must matter."
Thoughts of anger: She talked about legislative mandates from the feds that go unfunded and said there's little legislative support for urban schools in the Minnesota Legislature.
Because the schools, perhaps, have tried to set themselves up as a separate but equal level of government, perhaps?
Thoughts of futility: "It seems like there's very little appreciation for people in our society who work with kids. I just keep wondering: When is it that teachers became the bad guys?"They didn't. Their union, and the trite, trend-surfing, politicized administration they both work for and (often) support without question, however, are often perceived as the problem.
Doug Grow provides no reason not to.
And what-next thoughts. Rosenfield, 55, worked a dozen different jobs before following her longtime dream of teaching. She was a substitute teacher. Worked in a variety of capacities at Camp Snoopy at the Mall of America. Coached kids in gymnastics. Waited tables. Then the job at Roosevelt. Perhaps, she'll get called back, but at present there seems to be almost nothing to break the downward spiral in Minneapolis schools.Of course, this is misleading.This round of budget cuts was pushed by another drop in enrollment, this time an anticipated drop of 4,600 students. But Rosenfield rightly wonders if more cuts won't beget more enrollment decline.
The funding per student keeps rising. The number of students will drop, for inevitable demographic reasons. And, Grow's bloviations about the smon-pure motivations of the teachers and their bosses notwithstanding, the schools are a problem, and it's a problem that a lot of parents choose to avoid by leaving.
I say this as a conservative who was never much of a public school critic until very recently. We've been through this before.
It's the arromediojeering.
Here's where the self-parody shifts into high gear:
There were no silver linings to be found Wednesday at the Minneapolis teachers' union headquarters.So in other words, the system is:"Some are in tears when they call, some are frightened that they'll lose their home, some are wondering if there's a shot [at getting recalled]," said Louise Sundin. "We have to be honest. It's not like in the past where there was a good chance you would get recalled."
Most of the older teachers, Sundin said, have retired. Now 92 percent of the district's teachers have fewer than 20 years of experience; 80 percent have 15 years or less.
On the other hand, Sundin said, the downward enrollment trend hasn't hit bottom yet. Immigration, responsible for growth in the 1990s, has virtually stopped since 9/11. The NAACP lawsuit of four years ago resulted in the district losing about 500 students a year to suburban schools. The constant political pounding on the "failures" of public education has effectively undermined trust in public ed. Much of the new housing in the city is designed for older couples without children. Federal and state political leadership seem disinclined to do much but offer bromides.
- clogged with teachers who joined the system when the coming demographic bust was well-known - sort of like learning COBOL programming in 2000
- reacting to an ill-advised and transient immigration boom, exacerbated by the social-welfare system's tendency to warehouse the poor and immigrants in major cities, and the poor themselves moving to major cities with more generous benefits
- in complete denial that the welfare and union systems themselves are beyind so many of the problems
"It's all very disheartening," Sundin said.I'd imagine.
Henry-Blythe knows the board is taking some heat for delaying school closures, a money-saving option that could have been taken last winter. But the political realities at the time -- people involved in schools slated for closing were outraged -- dictated that the board needed to move slowly in closing school doors, she said.Remember that? The professional public consciences - remember this? - felt the symbolic gesture of keeping unneeded but sentimentalized school buildings open was more important than mere money.
So - how many teachers' jobs could have been saved had Ms. Henry-Blythe and the rest of the bright lights of the Minneapols School Board had the guts to stick to their guns?
School doors still will need to be closed. But, "demoralized" as she feels, Henry-Blythe still believes that old Minnesota, a place where people cared about public ed, will rally.
"It has to happen," she said.I think they are rallying. But they're rallying for the good of their children; they're moving to districts that aren't failing experiments in social engineering, where mediocrity and victimhood aren't considered birthrights, where the union as the good common sense not to try to govern, where administrations aren't arrogant in their assumption of entitlement; 'burbs, private schools, charter schools, anyplace but the great sacred cow of the Public School.
Places with less arromediogeering.
Essential Reading
Further proof that I need to have a political section in my blogroll.
Have a Great Weekend
Fourth of July always struck me as a strange holiday.
So many of our other holidays are built around notions of altruism, sacrifice, and faith. So, I suppose, is the Fourth of July - but unlike Memorial Day and Thanksgiving and Veterans Day, it's an out-and-out celebration, and it's not a religious observance like Chrismas or Easter.
Perhaps it merely tweaks my inborn Calvinistic sensibilities to have a party that's merely a party - I know that New Years especially does nothing for me.
Well, that's my matter. You all have a great Independence Day - remembering all the time why we celebrate it, if you please - and see you on Tuesday.
Left-Blogosphere Moderately Less Feckless
Fans of the "Big Quote/Little Sarcastic Sendoff" school of blogging can breathe easier - Jeff "Moderate Left" Fecke, while not remotely moderate, is at least breathing. His Blog of the Moderate Left is back after a ten-week hiatus (although it's hard to tell, since all his text comes out in white on the Firebird browser).
Welcome back, Jeff! Atrios' choir is back up to full strength!
July 01, 2004
No Chink Here
One suspects that if the terrorists tried to kidnap this female soldier, PFC Jessica Nicholson (and her M249 light machine gun "Camille"), they might pray to Allah the rest of the Army comes to rescue them in time:
“While other soldiers were searching a car, the driver had stepped out of the car and I was searching the driver. He didn’t have any weapons on his person,” she said.Read it all, natch.“The other soldiers checking the vehicle at first thought it was clear. Then one of the soldiers thought that something didn’t seem right. So, he searched the car again,” she added.
During the second search, the soldier spotted a grenade hidden behind the visor on the driver’s side. The soldier shouted, “Grenade!”
“I immediately got man down on the ground, face down, and I remember pressing his face into a sandbag,” Nicholson said.
She continued to hold him down until other soldiers came over and zip-cuffed the man.
Yet Another Blown Opportunity
I actually had this idea first.
Not that it's going on my resume or anything.
(Via Geoff Brown)
Spat
In terms of getting play over trivial issues in the local media, it's been a red-letter week for the Northern Alliance.
First, Powerline gets a free plug in the Strib. Then, the Plain Layne flap gets me writeups in the PiPress and the City Pages.
Now, the Fraters make an anonymous appearance in a Laura Billings column:
...especially those lonely guys who write withering and anonymous social commentary in their underpants.How did she know? Those PiPress people are everywhere!
Saint Paul responds:
According to reports, [Fraters' correspondent Man from Silver Mountain] does write exclusively in his skivvies, but so what? I think anyone who has the option to do that and chooses not to is the real weirdo.Fair enough.
The real question, of course - how did dead-tree columnists originally hatch the idea that bloggers are "lonely guys in their underwear?"
Envy, perhaps?
At any rate - read the whole thing.
Chink in the Armor
According to the excellent Rowan Scarborough, the terrorists in Iraq are reportedly on the lookout for a female American soldier to kidnap, hold hostage, and presumably murder.
“We have heard through intelligence channels that several extremist organizations are attempting to capture coalition servicemen and women,” said a senior military officer in Iraq. “We have instituted additional force protection methods to thwart these attempts.”Another defense source said there is an “edict, either on paper or as an order,” within terrorist networks to capture an American female service member.
My only question: Why did they wait so long?
This has been the biggest thing detractors of integration in the service warned about: if women were allowed into combat zones - or at least allowed in greater numbers and more roles than was the practice before the 1980's - that the image of women dying in action would be incredibly painful and divisive for the American people. And situations like this - where one or more American women could be brutalized by the same sub-human filth that has taken to butchering hostages in recent months - truly does strike at America's emotional heart. It's what leads pundits like, among many others, Vox Day to call for the abolition of women in combat - or near combat.
On the other hand, the presence of American women - armed, in uniform, part of a force that has serially humiliated Islamofascist troops in every face-to-face battle of this war (and in a lot of knife-to-throat battles we won't hear about for some time) might also have some value; as Moslem women see female role models, women who are soldiers, especially reservists who carry on civilian lives with freedoms to which they've nevver been exposed, it'll plant the seeds of the type of equity feminism that Islamic societies desperately need to join the 18th, to say nothing of 21st, centuries.
Of course, friends in the military have a variety of perspectives (Call for Fingers!), usually ranging from mildly opposed to absolutely opposed, depending on their own role's proximity to combat.
Comments?
Selective Prudity
Do you think you'd see any coverage of this story at the Democrat convention?
As New York gets ready for the GOP convention, Plastic Hallway notes this story in the New York Daily News (via the Billings Gazette):
With thousands of Republicans set to invade the city this summer, high-priced escorts and strippers are preparing for one grand old party.Emphasis added.
Now, the escort business always turns out in huge numbers for any major convention - the American Dental association, the Kiwanis, even the Democrats. I don't recall ever seeing a story talking about how the sex industry is getting ready for a Democrat convention.
Now, if you're a media apologist, now's about the point where you say "oh, it's just a typical human interest story - there is no political bias involved".
OK - where does this come from?
Clubs have started booking private parties for delegates anxious to ogle topless beauties after a day of watching fully clothed politicians boast about family values.Someone tell me you've seen a story that went "Prostitutes eschew working the Democrat convention. Experts say it's because the delegates spend all day whoring for special interests, and are too tired for the real thing at the end of the day".
Not holding my breath or anything.