Shot In The Dark

Hewitt and Beinart - In The Same Room!

Join the whole Northern Alliance at the Patriot Forum,Thursday 2/10, for the debate between Hugh Hewitt and Peter Beinart.

Click here for tickets; it's going to be at the Downtown Minneapolis Hilton, which is always a lot of fun. And...it's Hewitt v. Beinart!. C'mon, folks!

We NARNies will be sitting near the front - and we'd love to see you all there!

Silence of the Churls

Hugh Hewitt finished the job I started yesterday, trawling the leftyblogs for comment on the election.

Over at TalkingPointsMemo, silence. At The Daily Kos at this hour, the lead post is on Sadr shunning the vote. "So, not all Shias are happy with the Election it seems," is the conclusion. Matthew Ygleisas is posting on the vice president's parka, and is silent on the voting. Atrios has lots of cat-blogging and snippiness. Kevin Drum has nothing recent either. A few posts dow there is a link to a story on the ring around Zarqawi closing and the comment "We've heard this before from the Iraqis, and it hasn't been true yet. Still, here's hoping it pans out this time."

Some of these, I noted yesterday.

Pat on the back to local lefty groupblog New Patriot, who at least wished the Iraqis luck, which is better their doughy, petulant national consorts managed.

Silence of the Shills

Surely the Strib Editorial pages will have some opinion about the single biggest story of the past week, won't they?

Let's do check.

[Crickets chirping

However, the Strib duly notes that the French approve of the election.

I was getting worried.

Scramble for Illegitimacy

Podhoretz on the Democrat reaction to the Iraqi election:

Case in point: the junior Eeyore from Massachusetts, John Forbes Kerry, who had the distinct misfortune of being booked onto "Meet the Press" yesterday only 90 minutes after the polls closed in Iraq — and couldn't think of a thing to say that didn't sound negative.

On the upside - a fair number of leftybloggers obeyed the old dictum, "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing".

And then there's Kerry.

How'd you like to be an Iraqi, hearing this from the guy who came within three million votes of "leading" the United States?:

No one in the United States should try to overhype this election," said the man who actually came within 3 million votes of becoming the leader of the Free World back in November.

No? How about "underhyping"? How about belittling it? How about acting as though it doesn't matter all that much? That's what Kerry did, and in so doing, revealed yet again that he has the emotional intelligence of a pet rock and the political judgment of a . . . well, of a John Kerry.

At the worst possible time to express pessimistic skepticism, Kerry did just that. The election only had a "kind of legitimacy," he said. He said he "was for the election taking place" (how big of him!), but then said that "it's gone as expected."

Hey, wait a second. If it went as Kerry "expected," how could he have been "for the election taking place" — since the election only had, in his view, a "kind of legitimacy"?

I mean, who would want an election with only a "kind of legitimacy"?

Is Kerry perhaps saying he was for the election before he was against it?

No doubt.

Some other things remain the same; Kerry's got more mysterious foreign leaders in his camp:

In a truly jaw-dropping moment, he told Tim Russert approvingly of his conversations with those self-same Arab leaders — Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan among them — who expressed concerns about the Bush administration's approach in Iraq.

Kerry seems to believe that the autocrats and oligarchs in the region are actually rooting for the creation of a democracy in their midst — and want to help the United States make it happen.

Okay, what politician wants to join Kerry in pooh-poohing an election in which at least 8 million Iraqis braved death to cast a ballot? What politician wants to cite Mubarak and Abdullah in support of that position?

Hillary? Hillary, are you there?

Wow, suddenly it's so quiet in here you can hear crickets chirping.

Unfortunately, it's not quiet enough.

NARN Post: Blowing No Smoke

Ryan Pacyga, attorney for Minnesotans Against Smoking Bans, has posted an article at the Northern Alliance Radio Network site.

MASB is going to be trying to file a restraining order against the various municipal smoking bans in the near future.

Please read the post, and comment. We'd love to hear from you.

This is part of a new feature - having NARN guests discuss their topics on the NARN blog.

Check it out!

Current Impressions

So I spent most of the weekend listening to 89.3 The Current.

Upside: It sounds like listening to someone else's IPod.

Downside: That someone else is a 32-year-old mid-level bureaucrat at the Department of Education who graduated ten years ago from MacAlester with a degree in anthropology, has a huge collection of techno and Radiohead knockoffs but is especially (perhaps excessively) proud of his forcedly-ironic collection of Andy Williams records, spent a summer stuffing envelopes for Paul Wellstone, drives a Volvo with about 200,000 miles on it, lives in an apartment in Northeast Minneapolis with his girlfriend, a painfully-skinny bottle-blond vegan with intense issues with her parents who grew up in Bloomington but hates hates hates the 'burbs and and is working on her masters in Women's Studies and works as a temp at a company whose very existence she despises, whom he met while stuffing envelopes for Howard Dean, and with whom he frequently argues about who cried harder at the Wellstone memorial, because they don't dare argue about how she considers all sex to be rape, so he is deeply frustrated, but being of Scandinavian descent he feels he probably deserves it. And it's the third IPod he's lost.

Voting Rights

Steven Vincent, author of "Into the Red Zone", one of the essential books about the situation in Iraq, also writes In the Red Zone, another of the essential blogs about Iraq today.

After interviewing Vincent - who described himself as a New York liberal who has never been much of a George Bush fan - he has become one of my favorite pundits, period.

Read ITRZ's excellent election coverage. THere are several posts, and they're excellent.

And then read the analysis.

Vincent notes:

What to look for in the next few days: Sunni voting results from areas not under threat of terrorism. If we can determine that Sunnis would have voted if not in fear of their lives, then we can gauge the measure of their committment to democracy. If, as I suspect, it is high, then we must immediately replace the concept of a "Sunni boycott" with "Sunni vote suppression." Boycotts are voluntary acts of non-participation; suppression is when you use force to prevent someone from acting. And if terrorists and their clerical allies suppressed voting, then doesn't that "de-legitimize" their claim to represent Sunni Arabs? In this case, contending that Sunnis didn't vote because they supported Zarqawi and the Muslim Scholars Association would be like saying blacks didn't vote in the post-bellum South because they agreed with Jim Crow and the KKK.

Vincent has also had the stomach to surf some of the leftybloggers.

He quotes Kos:

And what of our friends on the Left? I'm sorry they can't share in our joy--because there is no reason they should not. Alas, like the Muslim Scholars Association, they, too, decided to "boycott" the elections. For example, here is what the great lefty website Daily Kos had to say yesterday:

The war is long past lost. Time to pack it in, and save the lives of our men and women in uniform that will otherwise face a barrage of bullets and RPG rounds during their extended stay in the desert.

Clearly, Dean-shill Marko Zuniga has an odd perception of liberalism. On a day when millions of Iraqi citizens stood up against the specter of fascism to exercise their rights as free and dignified human beings, Zuniga claims the election is "simply an exercise in pretty pictures." Tell that to the Iraqis who danced and cried for joy at the chance to vote, Mr. Zuniga. Tell that to people who have suffered for decades under a tyrant whose crimes were brutal to the point of madness. Tell that to the men and women who died to make this day a reality.

Kos' reaction to the election may be worse than his infamous "screw 'em" column; in last spring's outrage, he spat on the graves of four volunteers; today, he has crapped on 1,400 US and coalition graves, the unmarked mass graves of a million Iraqis killed by Hussein, and the self-determining future of the vast majority of 25 million living Iraqis.

Screw him.

Posted by Mitch at 06:25 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Franker

Luke Francl of the New Patriot writes:

Johnathan Miller reports that John Hinderaker said that it was "pretty clear" that "the Left has lined up behind the terrorists."

Miller went on to say:

I agree. I also agree that the Right has lined up behind the Nazi pedophile crackheads, but what are you gonna do?

The first thing you "gonna" do is show us any quotes of Republicans actually taking stances in support of Nazi pedophile crackheads.

I'm the last person who is going to say that any individual lefty supports the terrorists as such.

But read these quotes:

• We don’t know whether in the long run the Iraqi people are better off, and the most important thing is we don’t know whether we’re better off." - Howard Dean
• This country of ours has committed the most serious act of aggression in its history - Ramsey Clark
  
• "Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy." - Harry Belafonte
  
• The war in Iraq has become a war against the American occupation...The U.S. military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution...... The nations in the Middle East are independent, except for Iraq, which began the 20th century under Ottoman occupation and is now beginning the 21st century under American occupation. - Ted Kennedy
  
• I believe that if we, ah, remove our military presence, and are there as members of a multinational, um, peacekeeping organization, then the other countries will come forward. - Lynn Woolsey
  
• You're increasing the number of forces, the number of tanks over there. How can this have anything to do but to escalate the level of violence, the opposition of Iraqis, intensify the hatred across the Arab world to the United States, and more atrocities? How can this have any result other than to put us deeper into this situation and make the conditions there worse for our forces and for our nation and for the world? - "Senator" Mark Dayton
• The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. - Michael Moore
• "It is hard to say that something is legitimate when whole portions of the country can't vote and doesn't vote" - John Kerry

I could go on - and in fact, I have been going on on this blog for years, now.

But that's not the point.

Read the above, and the myriad quotes just like them. Consider the clout that the likes of Moore and Kerry and Kennedy have within the Democratic party and on the left in general. Then put yourself in the position of a terrorist: does this tend to make you think that you're going to be getting a shot at reinstating your power in Iraq, sooner or later? Put yourself in the position of an Iraqi voter - knowing that one of the most dangerous things in the world to be for the past century is a moderate Arab - and ask yourself what that says about America's commitment to keeping the thugs out of office?

With the sort of exquisite rhetorical flourish that seems to be a hallmark of leftyblogs, Francl finishes:

I don't think it's out of line to say: F**k you, as***le.

To be fair, Luke, Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore and Lynn Woolsey and Jerry Nadler and a legion of other dim, pathetic, fascism-coddling bulbs pretty well f***ed you.

Midway, Kursk, El Alamein, The Atlantic, the Election

Let's tie the election to some history.

Work with me here.

World War Two turned on four key battles:

• Midway, where an outnumbered US force sank the bulk of the Japanese carrier fleet, destroying their ability to control the initiative in the Pacific
• While Stalingrad, where the German Sixth Army was surrounded and wiped out, turned back the deepest German penetration into Russia, the defeat at Kursk thwarted the last German attempt to gain the initiative on the Eastern Front.
• At El Alamein, the British sent the Germans reeling back from their high-water mark and ended the threat to the Suez canal, effectively the beginning of the end of the German effort in the West
• In 1942, the Allies finally started figuring out how to sink U-boats faster than they could be built, ending German threat to strangle Britain's economy.

And yet the war continued for 2-3 years after each of these battles: After Midway came the bloody hell of the Solomons, Tarawa, Peleliu, Guam, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, with hundreds of thousands of casualties. After Kursk, the Russian Front ate millions of lives for two more years. El Alamein was followed by Kasserine, Salerno, Dieppe, Anzio, the Volturno, D-Day, the Battle of France, Market-Garden, the Scheldt, the Huertgen, the Rhine Crossings - all supremely difficult and bloody. U-boats sank thousands of ships after 1942, and Britain's economy didn't recover from the submarine depredations until the 1950's.

All by way of saying that "turning point" doesnt mean "end of the war". A lot of dim leftybloggers seem to think that any rational commentator on the right is saying that - by way, no doubt, of being able to crow with sick partisan joy when there are problems of any sort in a few months.

Yet in hindsight, the outcome was in no doubt after each of those four pivotal battles of World War II, subsequent bloodshed notwithstanding.

And I suspect - and obviously, can not prove - that hindsight will regard this past season's two elections in the same light; turning points in the war on terror. There will be bloodshed, even fiascoes and debacles (the Huertgen miasma happened two years after El Alamein) - but the genie, if you will, is out of the bottle in the Moslem and Arab worlds.

To link this to another war - the Cold War - I wager than in ten years, we'll see the same reconstruction of history over this election that we've seen in the last decade over the Cold War; the sort of "the fall of the USSR was inevitable" caterwauling that the lefty media have fallen back on to try to expiate their short-sightedness in the '70s and '80s. Perhaps in ten years we'll learn how inevitable Arab and Moslem democracy was - no doubt thanks to the foresightedness of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy.

History is interesting, viewed from the middle of it.

Just Imagine You're In Taos

Chris Allbritton is a roving journalist without portfolio who is in Iraq now, and blogging from Baghdad. He's been getting quoted on a number of leftyblogs:

So far, not as much violence as everybody feared. The question is why? Is the insurgency taking a pass on this one? (It's possible. Our sources in the insurgency say the election will make no difference to them, so why expend a lot of energy?)

Right, but others' sources in the insurgency indicated that they wanted to do a full-court press against the election. Was it one, the other, or both? And are the "sources" saving face over what is, for them, a defeat (as the similar election in the '90s in Algeria in the end turned out to be)?

Is the insurgency much weaker than previously thought? Or is the level of security sufficient to keep it in check?

If that's the case, then that is discouraging, too, because the measures that have kept today safe (so far) are truly draconian. No driving, dusk to dawn curfews, states of emergency. If that's what it takes to provide security in Iraq, why erase one police state only to replace it with another?Er, I dunno - to lay the groundwork for ending the police state forever, and thwart those who want to have one eternally?

Steven Vincent at "In the Red Zone" adds:

Beneath this tactless, heartless passage, they post a photo of a U.S. soldier in sunglasses. Message received: the U.S. has formed a police state similar to Saddam's regime. Tell that to the Marines, folks.

Hah.

The Numbers

Joe Carter breaks down the numbers from the election in Iraq that you probably won't see elsewhere:

# Population of Texas: 22,118,509
# Population of Iraq: 25,374,691
# Percentage of eligible voters in Texas who voted in the November 2004 election: 52.2
# Percentage of eligible voters in Iraq who voted in the January 2005 election (estimated): 60
# Highest percentage of voter turnout ever recorded in the U.S.: 65
# Estimated number of Iraqis living in the U.S. who are eligible to vote: 250,000
# Estimated number of Americans stationed in Iraq who were eligible to vote: 145,000
# Number of qualified political parties listed on the ballot in California: 7
# Number of qualified political parties listed on the ballot in Iraq: 111
# Number of international observers for the 2004 election in the U.S.: 92
# Number of international observers for the 2005 election in Iraq: 0
# Number of election observers Canada sent for the Ukraine elections: 500

Submitted without comment.

The Goalposts Move Again

I watched, dumfounded, as Jed Babbin and Congressperson Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) had what may have been the most surreal segment I've ever seen.

Family errands precluded my blogging about it until now - but fortunately Ed was on the stick, and posts the money shot from the transcript.

This part is had me actually shouting at the TV:

BABBIN:...The President has it right, and with all due respect, Congresswoman, you have it so vastly, vastly wrong, it's hard to even begin to describe. People have been asking, the President has been asking the international community to come in and help in Iraq for almost two years now. The fact is that no matter how much wishful thinking we have, they're not going to come! We can go to the UN until the cows come home, and these people are not going to send in humanitarian relief, they're not going to send in engineers, they're not going to pay for things. These people have abandoned democracy, and to say that we're going to have some sort of miraculous recovery at the United Nations or that the eunuchs of Old Europe will come riding to our rescue is simply disingenuous.

W: Well, I disagree with you. Actually, I believe that if we, ah, remove our military presence, and are there as members of a multinational, um, peacekeeping organization, then the other countries will come forward. Actually, I heard an interview with a leader in France saying that's exactly what they would be pleased to do.

B: If I could jump back in there for a minute, you're saying that Iraq's neighbors are going to come in and help? Syria and Iran, which are backing the insurgency? I mean, you can't seriously suggest that the neighboring nations are going to come to the aid of Iraq when they're doing everything they can in desperation to try to prevent democracy!

W: Part of that, I believe, has a lot to do with our military presence, the United States looking like occupiers. Now that this election is behind us, we should help the Iraqi people put their government together for the Iraqi people. But that means we don't put together the infrastructure through US corporations so that Halliburton makes all the profit and the benefit instead of the Iraqi people.

Ah. If it only weren't for our military, the insurgents would pack up and go home.

I'm having flashbacks to the eighties, when my "peace" activist classmates sincerely believed that if we only pulled our troops out of Western Europe, the Russians would leave East Germany and Poland.

Some things - like the wishful ignorance of the far, far left - never change.

A Thousand Words In All Languages

Diary from Baghdad posts this:

Maybe ten thousand words.

Mutton

The increasingly irrelevant Oliver Willis whines:

Wizbang attacks me.
So does the idiotic and childish Jeff Goldstein (in a post whose vitriol makes Freepers seem calm and collected). My only question is, how much soap does it take to completely scrub off the feces you guys throw around?

I'll just submit this without further comment.

The hell I will.

Read Wizbang and Goldstein's pieces. Are they dismissive? Perhaps vitriolic or childish? Sure.

But read Goldstein's piece, and go through a couple of weeks' worth of Willis' perfunctory, childish output - the equal in every way of the most vapid of the Freepers Willis constantly harps on - and tell me the point Goldstein makes amid the obvious anger...:

Left unanswered, as always, is not only HOW such a stupid regime could pull this off—but of course WHY, if they have such world-controlling superpowers, they wouldn’t just put those powers to work to ensure that the elections actually were “real” and fair.

But then, who can explain the motivations of pure evil?

...isn't right.

Willis continues:

Pardon me if I've had enough of these Iraqi "turning points". I work in Washington, D.C. so I can't just pretend and make the terrorists go away like the other sheep.

Help me out here - what's the latin term for "non sequitur"? I keep forgetting.

So many responses:

• So now Oliver Willis does link Iraq with potential terror in the US?
• How does your geography make your opinion worth more than anyone else's?
• Oh, what the hell, let's count for geography, Oliver. Since you voluntarily choose to live somewhere near a potential target, let's weight your "writing" more heavily than those of us who don't. Fine. Accord these guys and this and this and this and this and this and this and this the same consideration. To do otherwise would be inconsistent, or as Willis might say, "Hypocritical and dumb".
• No, I'll not "pardon" you for having "had enough" of turning points. You are on the wrong side of history, as your intellectual forebears were twenty years ago. And as the democracy you so fear starts taking hold, bit by bit over the next decade, we'll be reminding you. Assuming any of us reads you by then, which if the dull headache that going throug the last week of your postings has given me is any indication, is probably a stretchy assumption.

Why does Oliver Willis hate people who are seeking freedom?

From The Front

Neil Prakash at Armor Geddon - a tank platoon commander in Iraq, by the way - writes:

The soldiers of 2-63 AR BN are out there hardening the election sites and working around the clock to provide security for the Iraqis. I'm pretty excited about being out there for something historical. Not all my soldiers can be out there but I have guys begging to be taken out in sector. Seeing how bad these locals want the elections to happen has been pretty inspiring for us. I will be posting photos of the guys laying wire and dropping barriers when I have more time, probably after elections are over.

When the history of this election is written, the role of the coalition's troops - providing security while trying to remain as invisible as possible - is going to be some great reading.

Start the Revolution Without Me

Iraq the Model has, naturally, some of the most moving coverage of the election.

I loved this part, which verges on poetry:

I still recall the first group of comments that came to this blog 14 months ago when many of the readers asked "The Model?"… "Model for what?"
Take a look today to meet the model of courage and human desire to achieve freedom; people walking across the fire to cast their votes.

Could any model match this one!? Could any bravery match the Iraqis'!?
Let the remaining tyrants of the world learn the lesson from this day.

The media is reporting only explosions and suicide attacks that killed and injured many Iraqis s far but this hasn't stopped the Iraqis from marching towards their voting stations with more determination. Iraqis have truly raced the sun.

I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants.
I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".

Yes brothers, proceed and fill the box!
These are stories that will be written on the brightest pages of history.

He's right - depending on who writes the history books, of course.

Up All Night

I was up very late watching the Iraqi elections.

Perhaps the most interesting piece I saw - for a couple hours, on Fox - was Geraldo Rivera, standing on the roof of a building in Baghdad that was apparently a lookout post and strongpoint used by guys from the First Cavalry Division. Rivera was surrounded by GIs, most of whose attention was focused on the city around them. The camera provided the definitive tableau of the evening; below, people streaming through the streets; above, Apaches circling like carnivorous dragonflies, looking for prey.

Rivera was effusive, almost over the edge with apparent emotion about the scene below, watching people below streaming through the vehicle-free streets, some waving Iraqi flags) and playing video of joyous voters lining up and casting ballots. At times, he professed to be on the verge of tearing up - Rivera's past makes me, perhaps unfortunately, cynical about such professions, and yet I felt the same, watching the footage of people standing in line, holding their kids, as Iraqi cops searched them for weapons, grinning from ear to ear as they left the polls, dancing and clapping and giving thumbs-up signs to the cameras

Rivera's effusion led to the funniest moment of the night. There was an explosion in the middle distance, as he was in the midst of praising the election, the process, the voters. Rivera, not skipping a beat: "There was an explosion - but that's not the focus here today...", he said, returning to topic. Around him, the First Cav GIs moved to the parapet, and scanned the city intently, and the expression on one grunt's face said "the HELL it's not the focus, reporter-boy...

Rivera also said "this is like the fall of the Berlin Wall" - and on that point, he was right. The fall of the Wall was just the beginning, and so is this election. It was the beginning of a tough stretch - but nobody would take it back. [UPDATE: Almost nobody]

As I write this, the reports read that there were over 40 dead yesterday, all Iraqis, mostly cops and soldiers and the eight homicide bombers. May G-d bless the Iraqi people, especially democracy's martyrs; for the other eight, I hope he has other plans.

UPDATE: Johnny Dollar has the transcript of some of Rivera's report, via Deacon at Powerline.

Why Do They Hate Democracy [*]?

Leftyblogger, George Soros employee [he's an employee of Media Matters, which is floated by George Soros] Oliver Willis:

You know, I really wish Iraq were having an honest, safe, real election. But that isn't happening, and that's a shame. Even if you were and are opposed to this war, as I am, you would wish the Bush people would do things right just for the simple reason that it would help our standing in the world. But they can' even do that.

News flash, Ollie; this is the right thing. The Iraqis are getting a fairer election, it seems, than the people of Milwaukee, and value the opportunity, turning out in amazing numbers, more than most Americans.

Leftypolitician, George Soros project and failed presidential candidate John Kerry:

Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., sounded a note of caution in an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press."

"It is hard to say that something is legitimate when whole portions of the country can't vote and doesn't vote," Kerry said.

I guess the 1866 and 1872 US elections should be recalled, right?

I suppose the disenfranchisement of Nazi and neonazi parties since 1945 has illegitimated every German election of the postwar era?

Elsewhere among the leftyblogs: Soros employee Duncan Atrios Black has, it seems, hardly a word so far to say about the election. In fact, over the past week, a quick scan of Atrios' traffic shows very little talk about the biggest story of the year so far: an attempt to defend Ted Kennedy's vile statements (par for Atrios' morally-disconnected course) and this odd bon mot:

I do find the wall to wall Iraq election coverage (of Iraqi expats anyway) rather surreal, mostly because the Afghanistan election was largely ignored.

And why would Mr. Black suppose that was? Because the Afghan election didn't bleed, hence it didn't lead? Because the blue-state media is desperately hoping beyond hope that this election turns into a debacle?

As a (predictable) counterweight to the ludicrous Willis and the perfunctory Black, Matt Yglesias is broadly reasonable, although he still hopes to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:

It's time to prepare for three weeks of gloating from the hawks before they realize that nothing has really changed and they return to previous hawk practice of not mentioning Iraq. The interesting thing to watch, I think, will be whether or not Shiite political unity starts to break down now that the elections are behind us.

Not mentioning Iraq? It's "our" number one topic; remember the Inauguration? And where has anyone said that it's going to be easy starting tomorrow?

Josh "ua Micah" Marshall seems to be completely silent.

The Iraqi election isn't the end of the war. It's the Battle of Midway. More on this later.

Why do they think all those inconveniently brown-skinned people don't want freedom?

* The title is satiric. Dimbulbbloggers like Willis frequently will find a tidbit of seeming inconsistency on, for example, an Administration trial balloon ostensibly impacting veteran's benefits, and entitle the post "Why Does Bush Hate The Military". I explain this so that you don't have to read Willis' blog. That's taking one for the team. Don't say I never did anything for you.

GOP District 59

I spoke at a meeting for the District 59 GOP last night. District 59 covers much of northeast and southeast Minneapolis - deep in the heart of moonbat Minneapolis.

My speech - on why the new media should matter to them, an embattled little GOP BPOU in the middle of the DFL wasteland - seemed to go over pretty well. I had a great time talking with everyone in attendance, including the inimitable and ubiquitous Pink Monkeybird, a member of the caucus. They've already started their effort to unseat Larry Pogemiller in '06; prospective candidate Sandy Burt (I hope I'm not butchering the name, I didn't actually get her biz card) spoke, along with the Governor's Chief of Staff, Dan McElroy and State Senator Chris Gerlach.

Disclosure: I was paid two drinks and a dinner. Look out, Kos.

All About Disclosure

I'm adding a new category to my menu, "Disclosure". This category will link the reader to everything I need to disclose about any payments in cash, kind or swag to this blog.

Hopes and Prayers

I join with Saint and King in praying - and asking for your prayers - for Captain Ed's wife, the First Mate.

She needs a pancreatic transplant - and came very close to getting one last night.

Ed has been writing about the situation as it developed.

Best wishes to all - including the family of the donor, as usual anonymous.

Radio For Idiots

Hinderaker reports on his appearance on FrankenNet today. "I can say without hesitation that it was the stupidest interview I have ever been involved in," says Rocket Man, and he's been involved in some very stupid radio.

To be fair, though, this was only the third-stupidest bit of radio I've heard; Nick Coleman's fill-in for Wild Wendy topped the list, while every other Wild Wendy show comes in second. Every day. In perpetuity. (To be fair, I've heard her show four times. To be fairer, it was probably two too many).

Rocket Man followed Nick Coleman, apparently. Money quote:

Coleman triumphantly claimed to have caught TCF chairman Bill Cooper in a lie; Cooper was quoted as saying that he didn't even know about Power Line "until the Time article." But Coleman quoted from an article in the Grand Forks, North Dakota newspaper which predated Coleman's column, in which the Trunk said that Cooper "has been very supportive" of his work. Franken seemed to think this was a good point. What neither Coleman nor Franken understood, however, is that there have been two Time articles about us. The first one was in September, after the Dan Rather episode, when we were on the magazine's cover. It was the first Time article that alerted Mr. Cooper to the existence of this site.

Coleman really needs to be more careful about throwing around these careless accusations.

Cue dramatic theme.

If Nick Coleman were a cub reporter making these kinds of boneheaded errors - and he's made a long string of them, just in re the Powerline story - he'd have been looking for a job with the Sun-Sailor chain quite a while ago.

Brian "Saint Paul" Ward has observations as well.

It's Only Rock And Roll

A commenter in yesterday's thread about MPR's new Alt-pop station left me a link to this piece from yesterday's Strib about the new station, saying "It's quite sophmoric, sounding like someone who never listened to MPR's classical station before. All of the cliches are thrown out, and we really are quite stupid for listening to radio before MPR saved us all."

Sophomoric and ignorant? Let me at it!

The writer, Paul Scott, is listed as a writer from Rochester.

We'll get to that in a minute. First, some history.

I moved to the Twin Cities in 1985, right after I graduated from college. The reason I stated was that I wanted a job that didn't involve diesel mechanics or teaching high school English in North Dakota. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those things, but it just wasn't me. The unstated reason? I wanted to be a rock and roller. 1985 was the apex of a great decade in Twin Cities music, and I wanted in on it worse than anything in the world. I had my mission; to be the next Paul Westerberg. Or Joe Grushecky. Or Joe Strummer. Well, really all of them, rolled together. I played a mean guitar, a solid harmonica, basic bass, and feeble but enthusiastic keyboards, owned a little four-track cassette deck and a drum machine, and over the course of 1986 probably wrote 120 songs and recorded at least as many demo tapes. I played in bands - "Tenants Union", "Joe Public", and my favorite, the short-lived but glorious "Supreme Soviet of Love".

Upside: I met everyone. I shot pool at the CC Club with the guys that became Soul Asylum. I met Pete Jesperson, the guy who put the Replacements on the map. I interviewed Husker Freaking Du. I had Larry Sahagian and Skip Waslaski on my old show, on KSTP (you either know who they are, or you don't). I had Bob Stinson hit me up for cocaine. And my bands actually got a little bit of transient buzz going, for a few months back in '87. Downside: It was very transient. We were dreadfully unhip and proud of it - but that was no way to get written up in the Twin Cities Reader. We were either ten years after our time, or six years before it. We made no money, got sick of dealing with each other, got depressed, drank too much, and eventually became subjects for "Behind the Music", if BTM covered really unsuccessful bands.

I mention this to establish bona fides; I love music. All music - or, to be more accurate, the best 5% of all music. Hip music, unhip music, hip-hop (I was a rap DJ for a while), classical, bluegrass, punk, disco, whatever. And I get around on enough musical instruments to make the Waterboys blanche [1], so I move my mind, and my ass doth indeed follow.

Summation: Mitch loves music. Lots of it, of all kinds.

Onward to Mr. Scott's article. Later in the piece, Mr. Scott says:

You do not need to be a music snob to have felt in the last 10 years a claustrophobic, quiet despair over this collapsing of your choices for new songs to lift your mood.

And then, Mr. Scott goes on to state his bona fides as...a music snob:

As the media companies kept trying to winnow the pickings in favor of more money, it seemed as if the radio has become a strange either/or choice between sanctimonious country music for suburban parents and hypersexed party music for their kids...To listeners who spent the 1980s having to listen to Huey Lewis instead of the Clash, the 1990s having to hear No Doubt instead of the Cocteau Twins, and the start of this decade listening to whichever hip hop or American Idol or corporate country act had wormed its way through the gatekeepers of media consolidation, the feeling that I might be able to discover unexpected beauty by turning on the radio was a strange wonder, a spark of hope after years of alienation.

Perhaps I'm spoiled for purposes of this subject by having worked in radio for too long in my earlier life - but I think it's interesting that so many people who refer to KCMP as something to "cheer them up", to bring "spark" and "hope" and "unexpected beauty" from their listening, as if turning on MPR is like going to a museum.

Not that I haven't found beauty and spark on the radio - there's a post of its own in that subject - but the idea of hanging so much of your psychic well-being seems a tad rash. And the idea of expecting taxpayers to pay for it is a tad presumptuous. More on that later.

Oh - and the Cocteau Twins sucked chunks through a straw; easily among the most overrated music of the '80s and '90s.

Mr. Scott flits past the subject of the economics of radio, without actually addressing, or seemingly knowing anything about, it:

I realize that alternative music stations have come and gone before, but this time something feels different. As a listener you always had the feeling that previous efforts at alternative music in Minnesota were but an accountant's calculation away from an overnight format-switch to Enrique Iglesias. Of those few alternative music stations that do exist today, most are limited to the Twin Cities -- as if all the out state needs is Toby Keith and the hog report last week -- or see Bruce Hornsby as some sort of ambitious offering, or come squawking out of college stations or community programming outlets with a four-block radius.

Goodness, why would people in a rural area want to listen to hog reports, for heaven's sake? It's not like farm commodity prices are their income or anything.

But, like I said: Scott brushes up against a small truth, without quite hitting it (or realizing he's done it, I suspect): MPR's decision is about economics, no less than any decision made by the boogyman Halliburton Clear Channel would be. KCMP is also "an accountant's calculation away from format switch", too. The format change only happened, I'm going to posit, because the same generation of people who were too swamped with student loans and working at entry-level jobs to be an economically-viable enough demographic to support "Rev105" ten years ago, are now in stable jobs, probably thinking about buying houses and having kids - but still young enough to feel that blazingly dramatic, adolescent tie between music and love, sex, fun, the opposite sex, all the dramatic little details of life that seem so searingly vital when you're 19...

...all the things that go into calculating what a business does with a radio station. MPR sees an audience with disposable income and (important for a public station) political clout that exists at age 29, but not age 19. And they, with no less cynical, bottom-line focused calculation than Clear Channel, are moving to get their piece of that money - and, as that generation graduates from Chino Latino and Wilco to Volvos and free-range alpaca, usher them into the "life member" fold at MPR, listening to the next generations of Terry Grosses and Garrison Keillors.

KCMP's not about music. It's about Bill Kling's retirement plan.

No big surprise, right? But I get the feeling that to some people in KCMP's audience, it is.

Speaking of big surprises; I'm amazed at the ludicrous quality of writing and maddening ignorance that seems to get people in the door on the Strib's op-ed page these days. Mr. Scott is a depressing example:

But you can't really even call a station like the new KCMP "alternative." That's because, in an Orwellian act of appropriation, even the very phrase "alternative music" has long since became just another commodity. [Note to Mr. Scott - it was never anything BUT an identifier for a commodity] Some time ago the music industry took a generic descriptive referencing anything not big-budget music, and decided it meant one simple thing: sour and affected 20-something guitar rock. [Yes. From the very beginning of the use the phrase - back when I was a sour, disaffected twentysomething guitar rocker.]

I will spare you my amateur music criticism [Yes!] other than to say that once in the early 1990s there was an actual alternative musician named Liz Phair, a Chicago novice who recorded her bad guitar playing and good songs on home equipment, producing a volatile, minorly revolutionary and still engaging underground sensation called "Exile in Guyville." You had to turn on a college station to learn about her, but in a way she has never duplicated since, she sang about a previously impervious category of men as cartoons, and quite effectively so.["Minorly revolutionary?" MINORLY? And I heard Phair on 93.7 "The Edge", constantly.]

[And weren't you going to spare us the amateur music criticism?]

[For that matter, wasn't this article supposed to be about KCMP, not Mr. Scott's dubious recollections of '90's pseudo-underground music? Do any actual editors work at the Strib anymore?]

Today there are surely artists just as arresting as Liz Phair used to be (Wilco, the now-defunct Hang-Ups and the Jayhawks are all that come to my parenthood-compromised mind), but instead of playing these bands, the music industry offers only facsimile versions of Liz Phair, corporate Girl Rockers like Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson who seem only to whine. When I hear their stuff I pity our daughters.

Which is fine, but then as the father of a teenage daughter, I'm here to tell ya, they pretty much listen to whatever crap they want. Just like we did when we were 13.

And for the rest of us? How are we to expose ourselves (and our poor benighted daughters) to better music? By bellying up to that great musical trough, radio, and gobbling up whatever they (be "they" Clear Channel or MPR or Radio K or Radio Rey) in their infinite wisdom, deign to feed us?

Or using that nifty new thang, the Internet, and jumping outside the boundaries Clear Channel or Bill Kling put on our listening? By doing to music radio what we do to newspapers - ignore them and turn to blogs and the real alternatives for news, music, entertainment, enlightenment...

Speaking of which:

The idea that Public Radio would venture beyond "All Things Considered" and the lesser-known works of Dvorak to offer an alternative to popular music is so sensible, both as a business and cultural decision, it is remarkable it took so long. It is also a concession to the changing climate for original music in this country.

Dvorak's work isn't an alternative to Good Charlotte?

And make no mistake - KCMP is a concession to nothing. For all the caterwauling about MPR being a public good, Bill Kling is a consummate businessman. It's a recognition that there's a class of thirtysomethings out there plenty of money; in business terms, a market. In cynical terms, a flock to be sheared. In music terms, a paying audience.

Nothing more.

There presumably was a time when the music industry was some sort of meritocracy, and the only music in need of preservation through publicly funded airwaves was that of classical composers who have been dead for centuries, thus making them unavailable for photo shoots.

Today however, you have to begin looking at any music that has not been sanctioned by media giants such as Clear Channel as you would the Brazilian rain forest...Once you leave your 20s, tire of the smoke in your clothes and have to get up in the morning, you can't hear local bands in the bars anymore, nor can you then buy their goods, lacking a radio station with the courage to introduce them.

I am listening to KCMP as I write this sentence. Monday, on its first day of operation, I heard Radiohead and Chet Baker, Bob Dylan and the Owls. No focus-grouped music-biz genres, just pretty good music unacceptable to the forces that would have us hear only Clay Aiken and Alicia Keys.

Oh, make no mistake; KCMP will be programmed. The focus group will be one that's more like you, Mr. Scott - a group that likes lots of different music. That's a good thing - they're like me, too, most likely. But rest assured, while they will play a broad cross section of music (acceptable to thirty-something white middle class people with money), it will never, ever be programmed to turn off anyone (who is thirty-something, white, and middle class with money).

Oh, yeah - Radiohead sucks, too.

[1] In descending order of competence: Guitar, cello, bass, harmonica, mandolin, bagpipes, drums, keyboards, pennywhistle and curan.

Friends of Democracy

Friends of Democracy is providing Iraqi election coverage.

According to Jim Hake of Spirit of America:

This project has
been to provide a ground-level view of the elections from the people
and bloggers of Iraq (yes, I know, bloggers are people, too). There
are lots of good reports already on the Friends of Democracy site at
http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info

The information is not "candy coated" - it simply does more than
emphasize terrorism and violence. It provides good news and bad.

I'll be linking them frequently. Please check 'em out.

Election Jones

The Times of London's Richard Beeston reports on something about which the American media is curiously silent: the enthusiasm with which Iraqis are approaching the upcoming election.

You mean there's news other than terror attacks?:

Notwithstanding insurgent terror aimed at wrecking the polls, there is finally a palpable sense in Baghdad, and other Iraqi cities, that the country is entering a new era.

At the Babylon Hotel tribal sheikhs in long gowns and Arab headdress gathered to hear politicians extol the virtues of Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, who was being touted as the only man with the strength and will to solve Iraq’s numerous problems.

They've clearly learned much from American politics and politicians...:

Elsewhere street urchins were discovering that democracy can pay. They have been hired en masse to put up posters and billboards on every wall space available...

...including, apparently, Phyllis Kahn:

... and probably paid a little extra to tear down the slogans of rival politicians.

After I started this, I saw that Ed had commented on the Beeston piece as well.

Contrast this with the image of Baghdad we receive daily from American media, most of whom can't or won't staff the city with their own reporters. Americans are told over and over again that the city is so wracked with violence that Iraq's largest city can't possibly be included in its first parliamentary election. And yet here we have plenty of political activity, even celebrations of it, occurring out in the open. None of the above happened spontaneously, after all; they needed some planning and publicity to succeed.

It shows that the Iraqis have the courage to see the elections through, as they clearly understand that the only way to truly set themselves free is to take power into their own hands.

True.

And for all that, I think that for all the justifiable importance of this election, the real test will be the next one; the success of the first election and parliament, and the Sunni realization that the Shi'a majority won't exact revenge on them through the electoral and legislative process, will be among the real keys to the starving out of the terrorists, as they have been in Algeria since their pivotal election - every bit as important as this one - in the nineties.

Tomorrow on NARN

Tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Ahmad Qoloushi, a Kuwaiti student at a college in California, who was told by a professor that he should seek psychological help - for appreciating and admiring America's legacy!
• Ryan Pacyga, attorney working against the smoking ban.

Plus the Week In Review and the Third Hour of Mystery.

Noon-3 tomorrow on AM1280 The Patriot, as well as online.

Quixote

This year is the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote.

Let's take a moment to think about that.

(Via Red)

Simon Jenkins in the Times of London writes about Cervantes' novel, often called the first novel of all:

I have no quarrel with Einstein. The mobsters of Big Science have declared him master of the Universe. His brain was measured and his shoes embalmed. Women wrote him letters wanting to have his babies. His thoughts are installed in Newton’s temple and not found wanting. Einstein is cool.

But if Einstein had not existed, physics would sooner or later have invented him. I am sure of that. His theory of relativity was an understanding of nature. It lay over the cosmic horizon, awaiting discovery by the first genius to pass its way. Einstein was its Columbus.

Not so Miguel de Cervantes. He surveyed the landscape of post-medieval Europe and asked, but where is Man? He grasped at valour, love, loyalty, triumph and mortification and, like his contemporary, Shakespeare, compressed them in a human frame. He told a tale like no other man. If Cervantes had not existed, he could not have been invented. There would be a hole in the tapestry of Europe

And of the whole west.

Don Quixote is supposedly the most popular novel in history. The Don was worshipped by Sterne, Goethe, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Kafka and Melville. Two years ago his saga was voted the best novel of all time by the world’s “hundred top writers”.

Ah, them again.

Still, I can't argue. Quixote is to the novel, and to western literature, what Bach was to western music; the standard that all those that came after aped, transcended, tried to peck away at, admired.

Millions have come to regard Quixote as a friend for life. Like Cervantes, they have slaved in the galleys at Lepanto and emerged with only their dreams to live for. Like Quixote they have hoped beyond hope and loved beyond love. All of us sometimes see windmills as giants, and giants as windmills. Everyone has a knight errant within them, guiding his lance and turning the most humble career into a noble crusade. Like Quixote we long to leap on life’s stage, to warm Mimi’s frozen hand or stay Othello’s dagger. We imagine that frump in the Tube as the matchless Dulcinea, at least until Tottenham Court Road.

And so tomorrow when I walk through the screen designs for the Accounts Payable Report Page, I'll do that little bit to push back the forces of darkness and barbarism from the world of cost accounting software; the human spirit will leap just that tiny bit in response.

Re-read the whole thing. I think I will, now.

We Hate You. Keep The Money Coming.

Luke Francl at New Patriotis joining in the local leftyblog and columnist obsession regarding Powerline.

No, it's not "Why do these guys kick so much ass, and how can we do some of that ourselves".

It's "When does Scott Johnson blog?", with a little dose of "How does that First Amendment thing work, anyway?"

TCF is removing advertising from another publication: the City Pages.

Althought I don't bank at TCF, and never have, I'm more and more tempted to put some money there every day.

CP published a followup to their earlier story about the Nick Coleman/Powerline feud called TCFU. In response, TCF pulled advertising from the weekly: "Given the extremely mean and dispiriting articles that your paper is printing about TCF (latest article titled "TCFU"), we are not going to advertise with your paper."

Damn, it's getting to be quite the thing. What do I have to do to get added to the TCF "enemies list"?

The checklist is fairly simple:

1. Write a publication that TCF cares enough about to advertise in in the first place
2. Write stuff that defames the bank and its employees.

Seriously - Francl's use of the term "Enemies List" implies (to those of us who pay attention to such things) that he thinks TCF's action is primarily political.

Let's allow that there might be a political undertone to it; we'll come back to that.

The main reason is, the Strib and the City Pages are just plain bad business for TCF. If I were a TCF shareholder, and knew that they were spending advertising dollars at newspapers that were actively trying to attack the bank I partly own, I'd be pissed.

It's in the next part that Francl steps in it:

As we noted here, parts of Coleman's anti-Powerline rant were totally accurate, like that Scott Johnson blogs at work. Johnson refuses to comment, but the evidence at this point is incontestable.

Incontestable.

And completely, utterly, absolutely, depressingly irrelevant. Francl notes a local leftyblogger (and apparent OCD sufferer) who compiled a table breaking down all of Scott Johnson's post times over the past three years, noting that abouta fifth were during "work hours", and asks:

Why, then, does Bill Cooper deny this? Mike Mosedale writes, "When contacted by City Pages, Cooper said he had checked into the matter of Johnson's blogging routine and found that the Big Trunk--Johnson's blogging nom de guerre--'didn't do any of this at work.'" Riiight.

"Riiight"?

Hard to argue with logic like this.

Francl - and Mosedale, whose City Pages article last week was hatchety enough to make Nick Coleman actually look good - seem to have difficulty with one key concept: Scott Johnson - a friend of mine, after this past few years - works a helluvva lot more than forty hours a week. His performance is measured and evaluated by TCF's legal status; as a Vice President and General Counsel, he's responsible for making sure that the bank navigates a complex regulatory and business environment with as few legal problems as possible.

So for the benefit of all you leftybloggers and City Pages "reporters", let's do this little quiz. Keep track of your answers:

Question `: What do you think TCF President Bill Cooper is most likely to consider when evaluating his Vice President and Chief Legal Counsel's performance?

1. Keystrokes per Hour
2. Time spent "punched in" at the mechanical clock in the break room
3. Amount of money lost to lawsuits and other, legally-avoidable costs?

Question 2: What do you think the duties of the Vice President and Chief Legal Counsel at TCF involve?

1. Quickly and courteously answering the phone and answering customer legal questions
2. Maintaining a production of at least 20 briefs per hour.
3. Developing, implementing and leading the legal strategy that allows one of Minnesota's biggest corporations to operate in a complex regulatory and legal environment, and supervising the legal department and its ongoing, highly complex litigation

Question 3: What do you suppose Scott Johnson's work day is like?

1. In around 9:10AM, out for a smoke break at 9:40, another at 11:00, out to the skyway for lunch and some shopping at 12 sharp, back at 1:15, smoke break at 2:30, another at 4, and out at 4:45
2. In at 8:30, out at 5, off to the lake at 4PM every Friday.
3. In early, out late, taking home work, working on weekends - with the odd break for the occasional blog post.

Scoring: Each "1" answer is one point, each "2" is 2 points, etc.

If you got:

• 8+ Points: The turnip truck is far in the past.
• 5-7 points: Less blogging. More reading.
• 3-4 points: You work at "One Potato Two", but if you keep working on your screeds about the labor theory of value and you're positive the City Pages will publish your article on your friends' electronica website.

If you're reading the New Patriot post, you might be asking yourself, "where's the logical conclusion? What are they driving at here?

Well, in this next paragraph comes the payoff:

The over-reaction comes from Bill Cooper and TCF. Businesses can use their advertising might however they choose. But they shouldn't expect to be regarded neutrally when they throw their weight around politically.

OK, I lied. There was no logical conclusion.

What is the piece about? Is Scott Johnson a slacker? Pffft.

Is Bill Cooper "overreacting?" Neither Mosedale's hatchet job nor Francl's post explain why, if so; if I'm running a business and the media outlet I support with my ad dollar actively attacks my business, I'm pulling my dollar so fast that the vaccuum the sudden vacancy creates will cause eardrums to pop. They have no prima facie right to my advertising dollar.

Is TCF's action political? Only if "not wanting to be actively attacked by our advertising outlet" is inherently political.

New Patriot and City Pages management - let's try a little experiment. Take out a blogad on Shot In The Dark. Then, I will tell my readers to stop reading you and to never patronize your advertisers. How will you react?

Try it. Operators are standing by.

What's So Funny 'Bout Thinking Endless Bacharach Homage is Dull?

When I was a kid, a young Bears fan growing up in North Dakota, the Vikings fans were, if anything, worse than the Vikings fans in Minnesota - "My team, right or wrong".

I used to think they were bad - until I grew up a bit, and encountered Elvis Costello fans.

Don't get me wrong; I loved everything he did through Armed Forces, and odd bits and pieces after that. I liked Spike, or maybe just "Veronica", but for the most part everything after "Get Happy" just seemed...

...dull?

It was always hard to explain, especially when trying to explain it over the fevered jeering of the true believers.

Finally - validation of a sort:

I had some new Costello, which isn’t bad – it just isn’t very interesting. I suppose this makes me one of those fans who’s not willing to follow the artist in a new direction, but I’ve never believed that you have to trot after your favorites no matter where they go. In the case of Costello, well, he’s been pushing the same cold loaf of meat through the mid-tempo grinder for too many years, and even when he gets back to his “roots” – under-produced stuff with thrashing drums and reasonably coherent melodies – it’s just a reminder of how satisfying his stuff used to be right away.

(Ducking)

Meet the New MPR - Same As the Old MPR

WCAL - formerly the best classical station in Minnesota, by a long, long stretch - is gone, replaced by the new pop potpourri, 89.3 The Current.

I have publicly lamented WCAL's demise; comparing WCAL to MPR's classical outlet, KSJN, in classical terms, was like comparing the late Rev105 to KS95. Their programming was vastly more challenging and interesting - for the occasional but knowledgeable classical listener, it was a delight of constant surprises.

On the upside: "The Current" promises to be the same thing, only with rock/pop/current music.

But remember; consider the source.

Lorika from Secret Farm reviews the station.

She says:

The Current has put me in an optimistic mood. I feel like music is alive again, things are looking up, there is hope for real radio after all. Clear Channel won't own everything. First Air America, and now the Current, what did we do to deserve such radio gems?

First: We didn't do anything to "deserve" Air America. Andrea Yates, perhaps, but not the rest of us. But that's the subject of an upcoming post.

And music is alive, with or without a radio station. In fact, technology is, slowly but surely, allowing musicians to do with the industry what bloggers have been doing to the media; outflank it, get their material out thre without needing the imprimatur of labels and big radio (which is why I'm looking forward to being able to get my old Supreme Soviet of Love stuff online one of these days).

But yeah, 89.3 is a lot of fun. No mistake - I enjoy it. It's vaulted into first place among my choices for music stations after, like, a day, for those days when I'm in the mood for music - which is something I'll have to re-cultivate after more or less falling out of the music radio habit over the past ten years. Truly, aside from KFAI's bluegrass show and the occasional times when KUOM's music doesn't sound like random collections of cell-phone beep tones, I really haven't listened to a lot of music radio in a long time. Talk in all its guises - from the Patriot through MPR - has been a lot more engaging for a long time (although I can only listen to the comically-inept Wendy Wild as a purgative).

So yeah, I'll listen.

But here's the rub:

So I invite you all now, to get out your credit cards (I did say radevangelist) and support this fresh new voice of quirky independence. It doesn't matter where you live, they have CD quality streaming audio. If we don't want to live in a Walmart world, we need to put our money where our ears are, and support Public broadcasting.

And there's the big catch; several straight "alternative" stations have failed in the Twin Cities because - here's a shock - there's no money in it. The alt-rock audience didn't have, and spend, enough money to support the advertisers that were needed to keep any of the earlier attempts - Rev105, the various attempts at 93.7 and 105, the old and terribly-misguided KABL - afloat for any length of time. The fabled local alt community was sort of a legend in its own mind, commercially speaking.

But this is MPR; government radio! And there's the big problem; not just that it's the big, evil empire, or even that MPR is so terribly in the bag with the political left in Minnesota.

No, it's the fact that MPR, led by Bill Kling, has led a long campaign to make sure that all of the listener, and foundation, and tax money that's on the table for publicly-supported broadcasting, goes to them , MPR alone. MPR gobbles up funding to expand an already-expansive network, add to their already-luxuriant studios and offices and heavily-overpadded staffing - at the expense of the smaller community-supported stations like KMOJ and KFAI which serve less well-to-do communities (or, for that matter, the original WCAL). And of course, Bill Kling is an inveterate foe of low-power FM radio, which would allow small community groups to set up their own, pirate-yet-legal radio stations for not much more than you spend for a hi-def TV.

MPR loves diverse public radio - as long as they control it all.

So I'll listen to 89.3. I'll tap my feet and sing along. I'll listen to the stream when I can, and use that listening as inspiration for probably way too many I-Tunes trips.

But for all of you who, like Ms. Lorika, say things like "Clear Channel won't own everything..." - MPR is the Clear Channel of Minnesota; an all-gobbling behemoth that operates in its own purely commercial self-interest. Its programming may (occasionally) be more interesting; its grasping, mediocritizing self-interest isn't really that much different.

Lid Blown

Tim Blair links to Tim Cavanaugh, who has dug up the pre-and-post Iraq statements of a number of key, mostly lefty, pundits.

Interesting reading.

Zero Tolerance - Bloom is Off

Texas is finally taking a look at the "Zero Tolerance" policies that have swept through schools in the past decade.

It's about time.

The Texas Legislature is seeking parental feedback - and getting it:

Fred Hink of Katy Zero Tolerance, a group dedicated to protecting parents' rights in the discipline process, said these practices not only lack common sense, they do not appropriately address issues such as disability considerations, due process and the long-range effects of placing children in alternative education programs.

People in the educational-industrial complex respond "But discipline in schools is tough! We need to have consistent policies!" To which I respond:

1. You're elevating consistency above common sense.
2. Is discipline tough? Well, what are the variables that affect discipline? School size? Demographics? Tolerance Levels? Parental Involvement? Certainty of effective punishment?

   Changing which of those will have the mot effect on school discipline? Bear in mind that excessive punishments meted out due to a hidebound, process-manic system may make "sense" of a sort across a group (I actually doubt this, but for sake of argument let's run with it), but,as documented on Zero Intelligence day in and day out, do an awful lot of damage to individual children.

   Posted by Mitch at 07:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Hamster Herd

Condi Rice won confirmation as Secretary of State today, by an 85-13 vote.

Voting against?

• Ted Kennedy (MA): He knows the party is going to swing to the left, and he's swinging with it.
• Evan Bayh(IN): Ditto. Bayh is frequently listed as a dark-horse for the ticket in '08. No harm in getting out front on this.
• Barbara Boxer (CA): Ditto again, although her horse is lighter (as is her intellectual gravitas)
• Robert Byrd (WV): He ain't votin' for no cullud wimmin.
• Mark Dayton (MN): Because Howard Dean pulled the string attached to his chin.
• Richard Durbin (IL)
• Tom Harkin (IA): Just to feel relevant again, I guess.
• Frank Lautenberg (NJ): He's fallen and he can't get up.
• Carl Levin (MI)
• Daniel Akaka (HI)
• Jack Reed (RI)
• Jim Jeffords (VT): Just to show how "independent" he is, I guess.

I suspect that, during childhood, each of these 13 disgraces to the Senate were prone to taking their toys and going home when they didn't get their way.

Iraq Election Predictions

As Cap'n Ed noted yesterday, there's evidence that the terrorists in Iraq - operating in similar fashion to their ideological forebears in Algeria in the '90s - are going to throw a full-court press against the election, targeting poll workers, polling stations, voters themselves, and the troops (especially Iraqi troops) defending them.

Predictions:

• Attacks will be as scarce as hen's teeth outside the Sunni Triangle and Mosul, barring perhaps a few spoiler attacks in places like Basra.
• Coverage of that fact in the western media will be even scarcer.
• The vote in 2/3 of Iraq will run as smoothly as it did in Afghanistan - e.g., more smoothly and honestly than in, say, Milwaukee.
• That 2/3 of Iraq will recieve 0/3 of the news coverage on any major American news outlet.
• The fact that Sunnis will end up an minority in the new Parliament will be portrayed as "disenfranchisement" by at least one major American news outlet.
• At least one major liberal blogger will compare Sunnis to Democrats; I wouldn't bet against phraseology like "Ohio 2004/Sunni Triangle 2005".
• Oh, yeah. They'll get good turnout in the Triangle, and great turnout elsewhere. Everyone but the left's pundits will consider it a success.
• But you'll never see the "s" word on the American media.

Good luck to all the good guys - Iraqi, American, Brit, Polish, Dutch, Bulgarian, Korean, whatever. Especially the Iraqis. They have a formidable array of opponents dedicated to keeping them in the thrall of gangsters and thugs; some wear keffiyeh and carry RPGs through the alleys of Ramadi; others wear Brooks Brothers and carry cell phones through gleaming office buildings in Manhattan.

The Hamster Speaks

Courtesy of the New Pats, I see that Mark "Senator Chicken Little" Dayton has spoken out against Condi Rice.

Let me preface my review by saying Senator Dayton has to give Babs Boxer solid competition for the title of Dumbest Senator.

And I still think Dayton gets the nod.

Naturally, I'll let you be the judge:

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise today to also oppose the nomination of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State.

I do so, because she misled me about the situation in Iraq before and after the congressional resolution in October, 2002, authorizing that war, a resolution that I opposed. She misled other members of Congress about the situation in Iraq, members who have said that they would have opposed that resolution if they had been told the truth. And she misled the people of Minnesota and Americans everywhere about the situation in Iraq, before and after that war began.

Let's stop here for a moment.

Rice was using the same intelligence everyone had. Including her predecessor.

Dayton is dinging Rice for not being clairvoyant.

It is a war in which 1,372 American soldiers have lost their lives and over 10,000 have been wounded, many of them maimed for life. Thousands more have been scarred emotionally and physically. All of their families and many thousands of other American families whose loved ones are now serving in Iraq, who are suffering serious financial and family hardships, who must wonder and worry every day and night for a year or longer whether their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are still alive, will stay alive, and wonder when they will be coming home.

Naturally, not a word about the troops who want to make damn sure that some liberal hamster back home doesn't render their comrades' sacrifice in vain.

For many, the answer is not soon enough. I read in today's Washington Post that the army is planning to keep its current troop strength in Iraq at 120,000 for at least two more years. I did not learn that information as a member of Congress. I did not learn it as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where I regularly attend public hearings, classified meetings, and top secret briefings. I did not learn it from the U.S. military command in Iraq, with whom I met in Baghdad last month. I read it in The Washington Post.

So what does this tell us about Mark Dayton?

That the Armed Services Committee sandbags him because he's an idiot? That the military command regards him as an ignorant hamster (as he showed during his consummately idiotic stint on the 9/11 Commission) that is best kept away from the pointy objects?

Would that it were true. More likely, it means Mark Dayton is content to spin unconfirmed stories from the WaPo that contradict what he's learned on The Hill.

Just as I read last weekend that the Secretary of Defense has created his own new espionage arm by -- quote -- "reinterpreting an existing law." Without informing most, if any, members of Congress and by reportedly -- quote -- "reprogramming funds appropriated for other purposes."

Er, right. Because the Secretary of Defense is given executive discretion to do his job, and because the CIA isn't delivering the goods while DOD intelligence is - a problem that will get worse as the 9/11 Commission recommendations are implemented. The SecDef isn't a bag boy for the Senate, Mr. Dayton.Just as I learned last weekend by reading The New York Times that secret U.S. commando units are operating in this country based on the administration's reinterpretation of another law.So secret, the information is available in public; from the Times:

"But the Northern Command document that mentions Power Geyser is marked "unclassified." The document states that the purpose of the Department of Defense's contingency planning for the inauguration is to provide "unity of D.O.D. effort to contribute to a safe and secure environment for the 2005 inauguration."

The Northern Command missions include deterring an attack or mitigating its consequences, and coordinating with the Special Operations Command.

In a telephone interview from his home in Vermont, Mr. Arkin said the military's reaction to the disclosure of the counterterrorism plan and its operating units reflected "the silliness of calling something that's obvious, classified." ".

The military frequently, and under strictly controlled circumstances, assists law enforcement. The "Secret Commandos", according to the Times, were part of the security for the Inauguration - just as they were reportedly part of the security for the '02 Winter Olympics.

In other words, Senator Dayton - it's nothing new, it's not a conspiracy, and it's not a sign that the Administration is operating outside the law. Get over it.

I might as well skip all the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings and meetings and top secret briefings and just read the papers. And thank goodness for a free and vigilant press to ferret out the truth and to report the truth, because we cannot get the truth from this administration.

Yeah, Senator. Trust the media, whatever you do.

Dr. Rice stated in a television interview on December 8, 2002, as the Administration was launching its campaign to scare the American people and stampede Congress about Saddam Hussein's supposedly urgent threat to our national security. She shrewdly invoked the ultimate threat that he possessed or would soon possess nuclear weapons. She said that day -- quote -- "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Which, Mr. Dayton, you lying piece of filth, was exactly the threat Bill Clinton reacted against when he took military action against Iraq in 1998.

I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It's wrong. It's undemocratic, it's un-American, and it's dangerous. It is very, very dangerous. And it is occurring far too frequently in this administration. And this Congress, this Senate must demand that it stop now.

So now "mistake" equals "lie"?

In other words, when Senator Dayton closed his DC office and scampered like a scared bunny back to Minnesota, he wasn't "overreacting"; by his "logic", he was lying.

(Although there are those who contend he did the whole stunt to free up his staff to campaign for Kerry in Minnesota - in which case, he was lying by any conventional definition of the term).

My vote against this nomination is my statement that this administration's lying must stop now. I urge my colleagues to join me in this demand, Democrats, Republicans, independents; we are all, all of us, first and foremost Americans. We must be told the truth, if we're to govern our country and to preserve our world, and that's why we must vote against this nomination.

Nonsense, "Senator" Dayton. You're voting against Dr. Rice because the little string that moves your jaw is jerking.

I am rededicating myself to seeing you retire in two years.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

John O'Sullivan learning from defeat, Democrat-style.

This part was interesting:

So when Senator Edward Kennedy charged out to defeat the reformers [at the Democratic National Committee] last week — issuing the clarion call that the Democrats could not win with "pale issues and timid voices" — the old liberal war-horse found that the battle had been won before his arrival. He trumpeted away gamely enough, advocating a quite unrealistic expansion of social programs, and sat down to modified rapture. The Democrats were nervously realizing that, unless something dramatic happens, they will remain firmly committed to policies and attitudes that have lost them the last three elections.

It was reminiscent of the liberal judge who announced from the bench that although he had recently been mugged, he would nonetheless continue to impose short sentences — at which a passer-by yelled: "Mug him again." What the Democrats need is for someone to shout "Mug them again."

Someone's been doing it - millions of them, in fact.

Think about it. If every person that voted Democrat in 2000 had stayed Democrat last November, and the 2/3 of the Nader voters that deserted Nader and the Greens came back to the Dems from whence they came, John Kerry should have won.

So where did they go?

Naturally, it's not people voting with their feet that get the attention. I liked this part...:

Unfortunately for them, that will be neither the media nor the other cultural elites in American life. Indeed, they will continue to mislead the Democrats about the relative popularity of Democrat and Republican policies, in part because they mislead themselves on the same topics.

You might say that there are two political spectrums in America today — an elite spectrum and a popular spectrum.

...which is something another commentator noted last fall.

The elite spectrum has the Democrats in the center, the voters on the center-right, and the Republicans on the far right. Thus when some judicial appointee is discovered to have criticized racial preferences, he is described by the New York Times or CBS News as "out of the mainstream" even though about two thirds of the electorate is opposed to preferences too.

Democrats are enamored of elitism. It goes well beyond Hollywood; how many times have you heard Blue-staters carp about the relative purported levels of education between the Red and Blue states (while ignoring that illiteracy is much higher in Blue states as well)?The same dismissive treatment is meted out to public figures who criticize the U.N., call for more defense spending, advocate "workfare," express pro-life views, oppose gay marriage, and so on [Don't even get me started on gun control - Ed.]. All are marginalized as extreme or wayward in the establishment media. As the example of racial preferences suggests, however, these judgments reflect elite opinion rather than the views of the American electorate.

When we look at the latter, a very different arrangement of political players begins to emerge. The popular spectrum of political opinion has the Democrats and liberal elites on the Left, the Republicans in the middle, and the voters out to their Right. Worth a read.

Staying the Heavy Hand

I won't mince words - Bill Clinton bugged me. In retrospect, he had his good side - once he got spanked in '94 and had to stifle his inner liberal and run to the relative center, anyway.

But the worst aspects of his administration, to me, were centered on the person of Janet Reno.

The immolation of the Branch Davidians, the institution of the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act, which actually enacted most of the abuses that the left spent the last three years waiting for Ashcroft and the "Patriot Act" to bring to their lives.

But perhaps the most galling was the Elian Gonzalez flap. You remember the story: Boy survives shipwreck, comes to America, is taken in by relatives in Little Havana. Father in Castro's Cuba wants the boy back - and even though the US Government has never been anything but dilatory in standing up for the rights of fathers in the United States to get children back that were illegally taken overseas by others, they jumped to the defense of that father's rights, throwing the full weight of the justice department at the Cuban family, and eventually a battalion of federal agents as well.

The feds behaved in an irresponsible, heavy-handed way, says a lawsuit against the Feds:

A trial opened Monday in a $3 million-plus lawsuit by 13 people who say they were injured or traumatized when federal agents seized a screaming Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives' home.
The opening witness was neighbor Maria Riera, who testified that she clutched her chest and thought she was dying when an agent doused her with tear gas during the April 22, 2000, raid to reunite the 6-year-old boy with his father in Cuba.

The 13 neighbors and protesters are seeking up to $250,000 each, claiming that agents used excessive force during the armed raid.

"I was stopped by a gentleman on my left approaching me with a shotgun," said Riera, who lived across the street from the home where the boy had lived since shortly after he was rescued from a shipwreck on Thanksgiving Day 1999.

She said a black-garbed agent wearing a mask ordered her to "stand back" or he would shoot, adding a word of profanity. She said she complied, but a second agent approached with a gas gun as she stood in her driveway and left her in a gray cloud of tear gas.

A total of 108 people sued over the raid, but U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore limited the case to people who were not on the Gonzalez family property and were beyond police barricades.

Elian, now 11, was one of three survivors of a shipwreck that killed his mother.

The raid took place after the family refused to return the boy so he could be taken back to Cuba.

I wish them well.

He's Back

Tim Blair has not only recovered from a comment-spam attack that took his site off the air...

...but has a much better-looking site in the bargain.

Now we can work on finding and dissecting spammers...

Grossly Insensitive...

...but kinda funny in a sick, sick way, this Volkswagen ad has got to get the aggressively sensitive community in a tizzy - and, if legit, make me think about buying a VW.

Naturally, as seems to always be the case in these litigious times, it's not legit.

Drat the luck.

Ah, well. Wouldn't want to offend the suicide bomber community.

(Via Cold Fury

Firstest with the Yostest

Mark Yost of the PiPress wrote a piece about the NARN in today's paper.

Yost was at the party on Saturday, where he gathered some of his material:

In attendance was the Nihilist in Golf Pants, Chad The Elder, Saint Paul, Captain Ed, Atomizer...King Banaian (his real name)...

Wouldn't it have been cool if the rest of the Northern Alliance had been there?

Drop on by and give the piece a read.

Quote Of The Day

From an acquaintance of mine, from another email forum:

Went into a coughing fit in court and had to come down to the press room for a lozenge...Eager as I am for any little green harbinger of spring, I'm not sure mucus counts.

Not sure if I need to "credit" this or not, or if he wants me to...

They're Everywhere

The North Dakota State Legislature has adopted blogging. Five state legislators and the legislature itself are running blogs during this session (which, in North Dakota, happens every other year).

Tim Mathern [D-Fargo] is by far the most prolific of the half-dozen blogging members; it reads like...

...like any new blogger!

Seriously, it's something the MN Legislature should try (and, naturally, I'd be happy to consult with any legislators that'd like to try...)

My Letter to On The Media

In the extended entry (click below) is the letter I wrote to OTM regarding my post below.

Any bets on whether I get a response?

Here goes:

In re your "Chilled Out" piece, about Rathergate: This piece was so over-the-top in its systematic dishonesty that I had to double-check to make sure it wasn't an over-broad parody.

The Garfield piece states that the Thornburgh/Boccardi report found no evidence of political bias. But Bob Garfield never mentioned that the commission didn't *look* for any evidence of bias, either. Garfield's statement implies a conclusion that doesn't exist.

The piece was chock full of other inaccuracies (the TANG allegations, the Boston Globe and AP pieces were pretty seriously questioned at the very least as well), but the overall sense the piece presents is that it's the *media* and the *Democrats* that are the victims in this scandal - that catching a major network letting "journalistic standards" slip, again and again, (inevitably in stories going after Republicans) is actually a GOP conspiracy to conquer the media. This reeks of whining at best, dishonesty at worst.

Bob Garfield is blowing smoke up his Volvo-driving audience's free-range Alpaca skirts.

I'm a blogger, one of the "scoundrels and screwups who delivered that impunity on a silver platter"; I co-host a weekend talk show with two of the drivers of this story, "Time's" bloggers of the year John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson. This piece would be a puff piece if it came from an overtly-biased op-ed columnist; that it comes from NPR's putative media "criticism" show is comically galling.

Finally - I'd like to invite Mr Garfield to come on our program. We air every Saturday from noon-3PM central time. Please let us know; we'd love to discuss OTM's take on this issue.

Having written many a "letter to the editor" to NPR over the years, I know better than to expect an answer.

Believe it or not, a regular listener,

Mitch Berg
www.shotinthedark.info

Lipstick On A Pig

NPR's "Eye On The Media" is, purportedly, public radio's media watchdog program.

More like a yapping little Jack Russell, as we see in their transcript of the Memogate fallout.

Money quote:

BOB GARFIELD: Well, okay. We have the answers. Or, at least, some of them. According to the independent investigation of Memogate, CBS News rushed to the air with a haphazardly reported story about the president's National Guard Service without knowing if the memos cited in the story were real or fake. The tally of repercussions: four producers fired, Dan Rather giving up his evening news anchor chair, and cackles of delight from the political right, who claim vindication in their mantra that CBS News and the like have it in for the president and the GOP.

"I think," said Republican political consultant Keith Apple, "it's a warning to the rest of the media." Yeah. A warning. "Straighten up and fly...right."

Well, don't expect the Fox Newsification of CBS, but also don't expect that shelved 60 Minutes report on the bogus Iraq-Niger uranium deal to air any time soon.

Got that? CBS gets caught with its pants down - and according to Bob Garfield, it's CBS and the left that are the victims!

It's worth noting that the panel found no evidence of political bias -- just shoddy reporting in the race for a big scoop.

It'd also be worth noting, for NPR's alpaca-clad, Volvo-driving, Wellstone-worshipping masses, that the Thornburgh/Boccardi report never really looked into the issue; Garfield's exculpation is a bit premature. It's also worth noting that the underlying story about favoritism for Lieutenant George Bush during the Vietnam War has been amply documented by other news organizations --notably the Boston Globe and Associated Press. It's also worth noting that the Memogate investigation itself never determined that the disputed memos were forged.And, of course, it's also been amply refuted, and when Garfield says the report "never determined" the memos were forged, it was in the sense of "didn't say it in as many words".

Doesn't really matter. What the public will see is smoking gun evidence of media bias, which means that any lies and misdeeds of the GOP, when exposed by an occasionally vigilant press, can be more easily dismissed.

No. What we're seeing here is Bob Garfield blowing smoke up his comfortably liberal audience's skirts.

It's the modified O.J. defense -- it's the "bias" card. Pay no attention to my footprints, my flight from prosecution and the victims' blood in my car -- you're out to get me because I'm..."Republican."

Let's turn this around. What is Bob Garfield doing? Trying to turn the very real debunking of the documents - a spectacular piece of group journalism - into a mob of peasants with pitchforks and torches, all politics and no fact.

Never mind that the administration's notion of answering to the public is, as we learned last week, to bribe columnists to print propaganda.

Is Bob Garfield suggesting Armstrong Williams is connected to Memogate?

Never mind the press's constitutional role as watchdog over every government in power. Never mind truth. The reality is O.J. was acquitted.

"Never Mind the Truth". A perfect subtitle to this piece.

It's hard to know whom to resent more, the Bush administration, now freer than ever to hide from public scrutiny or the scoundrels and screwups who delivered that impunity on a silver platter.

I had to check the URL to make sure this piece wasn't an over-the-top parody. Check for yourself.

To Bob Garfield, it's the media and Democrats who are the victims in Rathergate. This is their version of being media critics.

This is your tax dollar in action.

Congrats!

Kelly the Patriette has some big news.

Her boyfriend fiance is on his way to Afghanistan - and will hopefully be blogging from the scene.

Congrats to Kelly and Josh, and best wishes from the whole staff and management at Shot In The Dark.

My Pal Grasshopper

I have a pal. His name is...well, that's not important. We all called him "Grasshopper".

Not because he was a Kung Fu master or anything; far from it. He continually got his ass kicked in fight after fight...

...but, again, that's not important.

I remember back in college, on a frigid, January day where the high probably topped out at -20F with a howling wind. We were going on a road trip.

Like a good North Dakota guy, I packed a bag of snickers, a box of scrap candles, a couple of blankets, and a thermite grenade for signalling.

Grasshopper saw me packing the supplies in my trunk, and started laughing in his peculiar, sarcastic fashion. "Oh, so you're going to be out there sitting in a snowdrift, eating snickers bars and huddled under a blanket, waiting for help to arrive?"

"Er, yeah".

Grasshopper snorted theatrically. "Woo hooo! Paranoia alert!"

It wasn't the last time.

Later that year, during the summer, he had "Atomic Cafe" popped in his VCR for the twentieth straight evening when we heard the sirens blowing - the high warble of the "Tornado Warning" signal. His girlfriend and I started for the basement.

"So what are you telling me?" he asked as he lolled back in his ratty Barcalounger in his Cheetoh-stained Bon Jovi T-shirt, "that you're going to sit down in that basement while the tornado goes overhead?"

"Um, yeah?"

He snorted theatrically. "Wow. You are paranoid! Hiding in the friggin' basement!"

A few years passed. We met at a reunion; after the festivities on campus, we met at a house down in the valley.

Around 2AM, someone turned to me and asked "Do you smell rotten eggs?"

I thought for a second - before the realization cut through my mild buzz. "Gas leak!"

The word spread fast; people put out their cigarettes and ducked out the door quickly - all but Grasshopper, who stood in the living room, holding an unlit cigar and a beer, laughing with the sort of incontinent sloppiness people have when they're bombed. "You're all going to wait out on the lawn? Hahahahaha!", he guffawed, pointing at all of us.

We'll wait on the punch line.

The American Left - or at least the part of it represented in the media and show business - are a lot like ol' Grasshopper, except less likely to show up with a twelve-pack on a Friday night.

----

There seems to be this attitude among a lot of people on the left, especially the "opinion-making" set; without your society's approval, much less existance, you are nothing.

One of the worst - and best - examples ever was a lousy 1983 movie, The Survivors, with Walter Matthau and Robin Williams. In the movie, the two characters witness a robbery, and have reason to believe the robbers are going to try to rub out any witnesses.

Williams goes to Vermont and joins a survivalist group - a group portrayed, in the days before "militia" became a self-contained stereotype to the left, the way one would expect a blue-stater to portray something like that; stupid, aggressively ignorant, rabidly fundamentalist, over-the-top caricature of "gun culture" long before Sarah Brady made it an industry - basically every Blue State slur of flyover-land, 17 years before it became a cottage industry.

Matthau, playing a crusty Manhattanite, reacts the way a crusty Manhattanite always does, in Hollywood; by being crustily rude and rudely crusty; by acting like a New Yorker always acts in such broad caricatures.

Naturally, when the robbers come to cover their tracks, Williams' guns and dubious back-country skills end in comic embarassment; a whack from Matthau's briefcase does more damage than hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The lesson? That Manhattanites that toe the stereotypical line are the real survivors (never mind the fact that the lifestyle could never exist without one of the greatest human-support infrastructures in the history of the world to prop it up), and that only the depraved and ignorant step outside of (Manhattan) societal norms to solve problems, including the sometimes-gnarly problem of self-preservation.

----------

The movie was, of course, an extension of an attitude that a lot of people - people I maintain hew closely to the Red/Blue, Serious/Silly, Faith/Fantasy-based lines that currently define our Two Americas - seem to have: That self-preservation is deviant.

During the fifties and early sixties, hundreds of thousands of people built fallout shelters (and a few thousand even built blast shelters) against the possibility of a nuclear attack. During the seventies and eighties, other people - Hollywood, comedians, whatever - made fun of them. And of the notion of trying to survive a nuclear war. No, they didn't make fun of the science involved - indeed, in reading and watching the artifacts of the era, few to none of them understood any of the physics of fallout radiation. No, the ridcule was reserved for the notion that anyone would try, or even entertain the notion of trying, to survive a nuclear attack. "Without society", the ultimate conclusion seemed to be, "...really, what are you worth?" And for millions of people, the debate ended then and there.

At times, it seems like a segment of our society revels in its impending victimhood, the potential for its own extinction - and, worse, denigrates those who don't in the crudest, broadest possible terms. Nowhere is that more apparent, and indicative of the Blue/Red, Silly/Serious divide, than in the gun control debate.

I've known many a New Yorker, District-of-Columbian and Bostonite who's not only made what strike my Western conscience as absurd attempts to appease and conform to street violence (carrying money in their running shorts, carrying a "Dummy" wallet with a few bucks and a cancelled credit card to give to muggers in the hope of sating them). All of which strikes me as madness - putting your life in the hands of the dubious sensibilities of someone who is out robbing people in the streets, but that'is fine, and a personal choice they can certainly make, assuming they allow me to make my own choice, too...

...but there's where things break down. The adaptations seem to be invariably accompanied by a contempt for those who choose to be less passive in meeting crime. You've heard the slurs - the morally retarded ones ("gun owners are compensating from something, giggle giggle"), the empirically-ludicrous ones ("you're more likely to have your gun used against you"), and the just plain stupid ones ("Gun owners are giving in to fear!").

Leave aside the fact - and it is a fact - that resisting violent crime with a handgun is statistically vastly more successful than without; it's not about facts.

Ditto the flap from 2002 when the Department of Homeland Security released a set of suggestions for building a "safe room" in the home out of duct tape and plastic sheeting, against the possibility of a chemical or radiological attack.

Would the idea work? Well, it's what the state of Israel, for whom WMDs are not a comical, abstract threat, recommends to its people; one presumes they take the notion seriously.

At the most, the idea is supposed to provide a last-ditch protection from the immediate effects of a chemical or radiological attack, assuming one doesn't have the ability to get out of the way (which, in densely-populated urban areas, is a very fair assumption).

Naturally, the response was giggly incredulity - not so much at the empirical assumptions behind the initiative. Indeed, I heard no scientific criticism that, in context, was remotely valid. But let's ignore for a moment the empirical debate (Why not? The other side already does!). The big kvetch seems to be at the idea that anyone would try - as if the notion of self-preservation loses validity if society itself is endangered.

If you'd gotten on an airplane in 1993 and made a point of checking over your cabin-mates, warning the pilot to lock his doors, and confiding that you wanted to make sure nobody hijacked the plane and rammed it into a skyscraper, and if anyone tried you were going to fight back, people - especially the people who chortle at the notion of self-defense or "safe rooms" - would have rolled their eyes and called you paranoid. I might have even joined them. I mean, how uncool would that have been?

The fact that that person was right, and the eye-rollers were wrong, doesn't alter the invinicble smugness of those who giggle at the efforts of those who take self-preservation seriously today. The ones that were giggling at the cautions traveller in 1993 are the ones who are demanding to know why the government didn't anticipate exactly what happened on 9/11 today.

----------------

Grasshopper lit his cigar as he giggled at us, standing across the street. "Paranoid, I tell ya..."

FOOOOM went the house, as the gas ignited and exploded.

When the dust cleared, Grasshopper stood in the middle of what had been the living room. The walls and roof were gone, and Grasshopper stood holding a blackened match, clutching a splay-ended cigar in his teeth, his hair on end and singed, wide-eyed, looking a bit like Wile E. Coyote.

"Guys?" he whined as the blackened match fell to the floor, "Why didn't you guys tell me this could happen?"

Well, That Was Wierd

For some reason, Moveable Type lost the last 2/3 of a post I've written - twice now.

Could I have blown it, twice?

Grrr.

Lenfestation

Question: If you're supposed to be guilty, and you keep laughing, does that make you a bad person?

We've run into Susan Lenfestey before; she's credited as a "Minneapolis Writer" at the bottom of her latest piece in the Strib. I think "Minneapolis Writer" could become a synonym for "dour, harping, one who uses pessimism and phony as a club to beat you into submission."

It's time to party.

As the families of bomb-flattened Fallujah huddle in make-shift refugee camps, drinking from sewage-filled streams, Iraqi policy mastermind Paul Wolfowitz fastens the last stud into his starched collar.

Just for the fun of it, I searched Google for any reference in any news article to people in Fallujah having to drink sewage. You be the judge - I found 21 articles, mostly referrals to Lenfestey's article itself.

As the Iraq Survey Group ends its search for WMD, concluding that there was no imminent mushroom cloud or even a smoking gun, Condi Rice draws herself a hot bath.

So does Bill Clinton. So do the former managing editors at NPR, CNN and the New York Times. So does Bill Clinton.

As Sgt. Kevin Benderman, an Army mechanic with nine years of service, refuses a second deployment to Iraq, saying, "You just don't know how bad it is," Colin Powell pours himself a drink.

Let me try this: "As the remains of the Kurdish family, still bleeding from their fatal machine-gun wounds, were pushed into the mass grave by the bulldozer, Susan Lenfestey poured herself a bowl of free-range granola"

Hm. Not so much fun. I don't get it.

As Specialist Charles A. Graner, miscreant and major-domo of Abu Ghraib, shuffles off to prison, Donald Rumsfeld straightens the black tie of his tux.

Side issue here: what is the Latin term for Non-Sequitur again? I can never remember my latin terms...

As the 9/11 widow tucks her children into bed, wondering why the recommendations made in "The 9/11 Commission Report" weren't implemented, Tom Ridge tightens his cummerbund.

911 WIDOW: "If only there'd been more bureaucracy...oh, I can't go on..."

As prisoners charged with no crimes, and given no recourse, languish in the hellhole of Guantanamo Bay, torture apologist Alberto Gonzales clicks his cufflinks into place.

Lenfestey's right. We shouldn't capture and detain terrorists as prisoners; since the Geneva Convention allows us to line them up and shoot them as spies, that's what we should do.

That's what the law says, after all.

As Dan Rather retires in disgrace over forged documents, former CIA Director George Tenet, proponent of forged documents about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear program, adjusts the Medal of Freedom around his neck.

Key difference, of which Lenfestey's audience is probably ignorant; people at CBS knew they were forgeries, or at least didn't do anything to verify them.

As the working mother in Chicago wonders how to keep her child from being left behind now that her special-ed program has been cut, Armstrong Williams polishes his shoes.

I suppose that in Susan Lenfestey's special little world, Armstrong Williams got an invite to the inauguration...

As Valerie Plame walks away from a distinguished career as a CIA "operative," destroyed when her identity was revealed by columnist Robert Novak, Mr. Novak walks to his limo.

You mean the top-secret super agent Valerie Plame? Who was involved in, let's be honest, her husband's scam?

As Osama bin Laden chuckles in his cave to see America's fortunes sink in the morass of Iraq and as fresh recruits to his cause multiply like flies, Dick Cheney pops the cork on a bottle of Dom Perignon.

The funny part of that sentence is that Susan Lenfestey likely doesn't get the unintentional irony of it all.

As America's trade gap surges and the red ink in the national debt bleeds to a record level, Treasury Secretary Paul Snow finishes shaving and dabs at a spot of blood on his chin.

Call Amnesty International; Susan Lenfestey is torturing metaphors.

As Pfc. Francis Obaji, oldest son of an immigrant Nigerian family, is zipped into a body bag for the sad journey home, Laura Bush zips up her Oscar de la Renta gown.

"As a terrorist hacks away at the connective tissue of a hostage's neck, Susan Lenfestey hacks away at specious comparisons".

And as his corporate pals slide their millions across the table to dance at his ball, forgetting for a moment the bottom line that forces them to ship jobs overseas, George W. Bush pulls on his snakeskin boots.

And after reading this piece, I was tempted to wear boots, too.

Susan Lenfestey is a Minneapolis writer.

No, let's keep on going:

As Susan Lenfestey claims to be a writer, a real writer's piece is rejected.

As an Iraqi policeman howls with pain after being wounded while defending a group of election workers, Strib readers howl with rage at the crap the Strib editorial board foists on them.

As a US doctor grows weary after hours of treating the innocent civilian victims of a terrorist bomb, Strib readers grow weary of being lectured to by illiterate chuzzlewits like Susan Farging Lenfestey.

As Afghans risk their lives to wait in line for hours to vote in the first election in 5,000 years, Star/Tribune readers wait for moments on hold to cancel their subscriptions.

Mitch Berg is a Saint Paul blogger

Further MOB Wrapup

Saint Paul notes in Fraters Libertas:

And it didn't end until the wee small hours when a few of the stalwarts attempted a gang blog conversion of Mitch Berg to the one, true church. Perhaps the only mission not accomplished all night.

Not so!

Swayed by the logic of the tablefull of stalwarts, especially the mention that the church was the one founded by Saint Peter himself, I am now a member of the original, accept-no-imitations church - the Greek Orthoox. Opa!.

Saint also wrote about the blogging conference at Harvard:

Jay [Rosen] at the close says Bill Buzenberg of Minn. Public Radio raised a most important point when he said his reporters are learning that the audience knows things.

We know things! Who knew? Is that anything close to "knowing stuff"? I think so. But it's just too bad MPR had to go all the way to Boston to find that out. Hopefully we'll see them at the next MOB event. But I want to make a good impression, so please, everybody, until further notice, don't forget things.

Y'know, it's not like I didn't try. I sent invites to three different MPR people.

That does it - next time, I'm inviting Buizenberg directly.

Armor Plated

Lieutenant Neil Prakash is a lieutenant in the First Infantry Division, a tank platoon leader, an Indian , the son of two doctors, a Silver Star winner, and the author of Armor Geddon, one of my favorite new milblogs and a fascinating look at the tanker's war in Iraq.

Well worth a read.

RIP Johnny Carson

I came late to the table as a Johnny Carson fan.

When I was a kid, Carson had a big strike against him; he was the show my friends' parents watched. So uncool.

That, and I never really watched much TV as a kid, even through college. It wasn't until after college, when I had a schedule and a TV of my own, that I occasionally flipped on the Tonight Show, and saw what all the fuss had been about. From then - probably '86 until Carson signed off as the show's host in '92 - Carson was an intermittent pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless:

His quickness and his ability to handle an audience were impressive. When his jokes missed their target, the smooth Carson won over a groaning studio audience with a clever look or sly, self-deprecating remark.

As someone who started in broadcasting, looking the fractiousness and factionalization and decentralization of the modern media (of which this blog is an enthusiastic part), seeing the breadth of Carson's influence at his peak is an amazing time capsule:

Politics provided monologue fodder for him as he skewered lawmakers of every stripe, mirroring the mood of voters. His Watergate jabs at President Nixon were seen as cementing Nixon's fall from office in 1974.

He made presidential history again in July 1988 when he had then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton (news - web sites) on his show a few days after Clinton came under widespread ridicule for a boring speech at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton traded quips with Carson and played "Summertime" on the saxophone in what was hailed as a stunning comeback.

Carson died today at age 79.

UPDATE: Lists of other blogs on Carson's passing found here and here.

Down With The MOB

I tried to think of a highlight for last night's Minnesota Organization of Bloggers party at Keegans. I couldn't, really; the whole evening was a long highlight.

While I thought about wearing "jammies", per Jo's suggestion (in my case, more like sweatpants and a wife-beater T), I figured "why ruin anyone's dinner" - so Jo and Cathy had that market all to themselves. Cathy also has a great listing of everyone there; I was too sick to want to bother with keeping track last night...

...although I'll try in a bit.

I counted a little over 80 people there at the peak of the party, around 7:30PM; I counted from memory at least 20 people that either left earlier or came later, so I think it's a fair bet that 100 people showed up over the course of the night.

I think it was the first time in my life that more than one person bought me a drink (thanks Laura and Rob) or something to eat (a million thanx to the very perceptive Gary from Dayton V. Kennedy for the boxty, which seems to have become my Keegans' claim to fame).

I know I'm going to miss a bunch of people, but I'll give this my best shot.

In addition to Brian, Chad, Atomizer and JB from Fraters, Captain Ed, King Banaian, Scott Johnson from Powerline, Warrior Monk and Eloise from Spitbull, Lileks and the famed Giant Swede, we met Senator Michele Bachman (and her husband and two daughters), Norm Coleman's regional affairs director John Halverson, Chris Caywood from Soldiers' Angels, Jeremy "Kodiak" Kienitz (Bob Davis' producer at KSTP-AM) as well as Tom Mischke's producer (Damn, I forgot the name...), Mindy the non-blogging media lawyer, David Strom and Margaret Martin of the Taxpayers League and Our House, Mark Yost and Craig Westover from the Pioneer Press, and a woman from the City Pages whose name, alas, eludes me.

Not to mention Doug and Ellen, Bill from Kool-Aid Report, Gary from Dayton V. Kennedy (and his wife, who got a custom-made blog name from Saint, which will hopefully be appearing soon), Noodles from People's Republic of Minnesota, Mary from It's Noon Somewhere, Kathy from Cake Eater Chronicles, Kelly from Patriette along with her boyfriend, who's on his way to Afghanistan and will (Kelly tells us) be blogging from there (and Kelly, you'd better send us the link when it goes live), Ryan "Rambling" Rhodes and (if memory serves, and I apologize if it doesn't) Caroline, DC from Brainstorming, John "Policy Guy" LaPlante, Anoka Flash from Centrisity, Andy Keith from Centerfeud (oddly, despite a very concerted effort to invite lefty bloggers to the event, the only ones to bite were Andy, Flash and the woman from the City Pages. C'mon, we don't bite...), pundit-at-large Sarah Janecek, John from Crazy But Able, Larry Colson and Laura Hemler from Bush Cheney '04, as well as a number of folks who identified themselves as fans - Rob, the Hansons, a couple of Protest Warriors (again, sorry - I was running on three cylinders last night, on top of being terrible with names in the first place), and a bunch of friends and relatives of all the above.

More will come back to me, I'm sure.

Thanks to all for showing up. It was a great time; we'll be doing it again. It'll be a lot of fun in the summer, when the sidewalk seating is open, and I'm not periodically hacking my lungs out...

NARN Today, MOB Tonight

Huge day today.

First, on the NARN show, we'll be talking with Craig Westover and Susan Mische about school choice. Then a little radio and blog history with Mark Yost of the Pioneer Press, as well as the Week In Review.

Then, off to Keegans for the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers party. If you read, write, detest or follow blogs - be there! 5-9PM (follow the Keegans link for a map and directions), although I'm sure if people want to stay late Terry Keegan will work something out.

You Know Who You Are, Part V

You were the guy in the black Blazer who came barreling up behind me on Snelling Avenue last night. The road had not been plowed, and there was a solid six inches of snow; so my front wheels were fighting me for control of the car.

You, on the other hand, were driving like it was high noon on a bone-dry July Saturday. You sailed up behind me, tailgated in the ice and snow for a few hundred yards, flashed your highs, and then did a petulant little swerve into the passing lane...

...where you promptly turned nearly sideways on the ice. I am a better driver than you, so I had left plenty of room between us. You recovered, and went through a very red light.

You are probably a native Minnesotan, proudly exclaiming "I've been driving in this stuff since I was 16". I have news for you, pallie; you and your brothers and sisters and neighbors were crappy drivers then, and you're crappy drivers now.

That is all.

Is This The Best You've Got?

Snowstorm. Pfft.

I didn't even button my jacket.

This was the Oliver Willis of "snowstorms".

MOB Psychology

One more weekday reminder; make sure you get into town for the second, semiannual "Minnesota Organization of Bloggers" party at Keegans Irish Pub in Northeast Minneapolis, tomorrow (Saturday) evening, 5-9 PM.

We have a dizzying number of people planning on showing up; a who's who of upper-Midwest bloggers, media people, political scenesters...

...and above all, fans of all the above.

I stress this; there is no political focus (or, if the July party is any indication, content of any sort) involved; this is completely ecumenical. There is no agenda, there will be no speeches (unless Elder starts mixing whiskey and beer again), no name tags, no BS of any sort. Just bloggers, and blog fans, united by the things that draw all people together: great company, a warm place on a chilly night, and lip-smacking good drinkin'. We had a huge turnout last time; this one looks to be much bigger.

So whoeever you are, please, come on down.

I'll be there bright 'n early, wrapped around a pint of Smithwicks. I hope to see you there, doing more or less the same!

The Power To Move

Peggy Noonan had a lukewarm review of the President's inaugural speech.

I didn't hear the speech proper, other than a few excerpts on Hewitt's show last night. I read the transcript - but 3/4 of a speech is in its delivery, so that hardly counts. I have no idea, in short, what to say about Bush's speech as a whole.

But I have a lukewarm review of Peggy Noonan's article.

No, not as a person; she's one of my favorite conservative writers.

But the review? Not so much:

There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Are "the most moving speeches" indeed "grounded"?

In his "Dunkirk" speech - one of the greatest speeches in the English or any other language - Churchill exhorted Britain to resist Hitler on the beaches, in the streets, on the landing-grounds, to never surrender. By most rational measures, the speech was insanity, to say nothing of "over the top". Did it lose anything for not being "grounded?"

Please.

Was Kennedy's "To the Moon" speech any less inspirational for its' fantastic, "over the top" nature?

As overplayed as it is these days, Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" focused on the improbable. Did it lose its ability to move because of the improbability?

Did Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate - which demanded what seemed in 1988 to be impossible, the fall of the Berlin Wall - "mission-inebriated?"

Good speeches are grounded, and impart what is possible. Great speeches impart vision, and make the impossible thinkable.

Hitler never crossed those beaches. We made it to the moon. Black Americans vote and go to college and serve in the highest levels of government. The Wall is torn down.

So why the hell not shout out for liberty? If not yesterday, when? If not to inspire not one nation but two, then why?

I'm going to listen to the speech tonight. But I'm going to applaud it now.

Playing What If

I heard Dennis Prager interviewing that noted right-wing tool William Shawcross today, in re his new book, Allies: The U.S., Britain, and Europe, and the War in Iraq, one of a small but fascinating number of books by liberal pundits that praise and support the President's efforts in Iraq.

The author noted something I'd remembered, but rarely heard in as many words, especially from someone from the left.

Bill Clinton was, allegedly, ready to take military action in Iraq - more serious military action than the constant bombing and sparring with Iraqi SAMs that occurred from '91 to '03. According to Shawcross, Lewinskigate was the only thing that prevented him from taking that action. In retrospect, he certainly rattled a saber or two, both in the media (his fulminations about Hussein's expulsion of the weapons inspectors) and policy (making regime change a US policy goal in '98).

This brings up several questions, for several different audiences.:

All you liberals out there, especially those of you who declared Iraqi Freedom a dead issue before the first tank crossed the berm; would you have supported Clinton in such an undertaking? How do you think it would have been different than the one we have now?
• To my military readers, especially you lifers out there (Fingers, I'm talkin' to you...); how would the military of 1998 stacked up against the military of '03-'05 in the kind of war we're facing today?
• Do you think the GOP would have subjected Clinton to the sort of ill-informed, spiteful, ignorant carping that the Democrats are inflicting on the nation over our current war? Why?

Please leave a comment.

Based on What?

A bunch of local leftyblogs have been sounding off on a number of issues - social security, history, gun control and so on. They raise lots of questions - the two big ones being "when will leftybloggers learn how to state a logical argument?" and "you do realize I have facts on my side, too, don't you?", but there are others that deserve to be, and will be, addressed.

And I want to post about each issue; a little discussion could be fun, in theory.

But today's busy as hell, so I'm going to shoot for some fun instead.

We need a nice, derisive nickname.

The lefty blogosphere has taken to referring to themselves as "the reality-based community", a wishful jape at the term "faith-based community", delivered generally with an air of smug derision that is rarely warranted by the actual argument at hand.

Now, I prefer to meet such trifles with fact, logic and reason. And I usually do.

But my inner fourth-grader refuses to let the bait go uneaten.

My best efforts for a trifle of a moniker for the left, to be delivered with tongue-in-cheek arrogance, so far include:

• "The Fantasy-Based Community": If I could have a buck for every leftyblogger who spelled out long, involved reasons that "there's no way Kerry can lose this election", or "Bush stole the election! The exit polls prove it!", I could pick up the whole liquor tab for the MOB party at Keegans tomorrow. The lefty blogosphere is an echo chamber nonpareil, which makes for a lot of fun chortling after the fact. The name works for me, but can we do better?
• "The Snark-Based Community": I mean, come on. That's all Atrios, Lil' Ollie Willis, Kos and the giggly fratboys at Pandagon do. Ever. Long quote, short giggly snark. Lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum. Even the better national leftyblogs - I'm lookin' at you, Matt Yglesias - are succumbing more and more. It fits, dinnit?
• "The Anger-Based Community": Read a sample of typical leftyblogs (and yes, there are certainly exceptions, maybe more than not, but I'm talking the bigs, here); tell me you can't see veins bulging between the lines.

But you know what they say - 2,000 heads are better than one. Especially when mine is up to its asch in a last-minute project and I'm looking at a lost weekend of political talk and blog networking a la Guinness.

So I'm tossing this one open. What's the new official name for the __________-based Community?

Entries close tonight.

Nascent?

Luke Francl at New Patriot says in re the inauguration:

But 2004 was the first time you ever had to face the nascent Organized Left. You've been working on your organization for 30 years, and we've only just begun.

Perhaps. And a student of history knows that underestimating ones' opponent is the biggest mistake one can make (although that'd seem to apply more to Democrats lately).

But I have to wonder: this "nascent organization" delivered a lower percentage of the vote (especially given that the Democrats retrieved the Nader voters since 2000) than they did four years ago. Republican areas are growing faster than Democrat-leaning ones. And, by the wya, we haven't been organizing for 30 years; six is more like it.

But by all means, keep organizing.

Browned Off

I'm not sure what surprises me the most; that "Murphy Brown" is considered a classic comedy, or that it's only been off the air for six years. I was always under the impression that it got cancelled in mid-95.

Shows what happens when you don't pay any attention to TV>

Neal Justin commemorates Murphy Brown's ascent to "classic"-hood- marked, these days, by being included on the "TV Land" Lineup, which I've never watched, so it's completely opaque to me:

gets to use the title "classic television" because it lasted 10 years and picked up more Emmys than "Seinfeld" and "Friends" combined. But while viewers decades from now will be barking out "No soup for you!" and rooting for Rachel and Ross, "Brown" already gets treated like a creaky relic, even though it stopped producing new episodes only six years ago.

I think I saw the show five or six times during its run; I recall a chuckle or two. I won't tune out MXC for it...

But the image of Brown cradling a baby boy (played by Haley Joel Osment in later years) remains the show's most indelible image.

"I think it hurt the show," said Charles Kimbrough, who played repressed anchor Jim Dial, referring to the single-motherhood storyline. "It blew up a lot bigger than anyone thought, and suddenly everyone looked at the show in a different way. We always loved the topical stuff and loved the politically engaged material.

"But it was a sitcom. It was a show about pretend people doing work. And suddenly we had this big, kind of real issue out of something that really involved a single professional woman wanting to have a baby out of wedlock, which was part of Murphy's character. She has to come to terms with that. That made perfect sense within the story, but suddenly it was kind of engraved in stone. It became a big political statement."

And nothing dates faster than yesterday's politics. Seriously - I remember the Quayle flap; Quayle jokes aside, he was right.

Justin notes that the show has a reverence for journalists that seems like a thirties throwback these days.

Return of Wog

Wog is back after several harrowing months away from the keyboard.

The story - which has unfolded on Wog's Blog for the past six months or so - is a harrowing one; illness, alcoholism, a DWI (to which the illness was a contributing factor), and more.

And his run-in with the legal system:

If I didn't know better, I'd consider myself lucky. But several months in institutions where I met plenty of really "bad guys" gave me countless anecdotes about how those who have done what I've done, and a lot worse, have gotten off more lightly.

The legal system - and the perversions that pressure groups like MADD have foisted upon it - are the subject for a slew of upcoming posts.

But you needn't wait. Read Wog - and welcome him back to blogging.

Noted in Passing

Powerline gets in Time Magazine. Cap'n Ed is in the NYPost (or is it the NYSun? Probably both).

Me? As Atomizer over at Fraters points out, the Frats, King and I made it into the Dassel-Cokato Enterprise Dispatch, in an opinion piece by staff writer Roz Kohls:

There are several really good Minnesota blogs. Since I’m a conservative Republican I like to read not only, Powerline, but Captain’s Quarters, Jay Reding, Shot in The Dark (also out of the Twin Cities,) Fraters Libertas (out of St. Paul,) and SCSU Scholars, (out of St. Cloud.)

Cathy in the Wright is another blog I read. It is by a woman from somewhere right here in Wright County although I have never figured out exactly where she is. Recently she wrote about a walk she took by a river near her home, but it didn’t say which river. [I feel yer pain, Ms. Kohls; a whole generation of investigative bloggers has tried and failed to pin down Cathy's whereabouts. No dice. Although I'm told she'll be at the MOB Blog Party this Saturday...]

The two best out-of-state blogs that I read are The Corner at National Review Online and Hugh Hewitt, who is in California.

Reading blogs is addictive, so be careful. Once you start, it is very difficult to stop. You’ll notice your list of favorite sites gets longer and longer.

So who will become Dassel's premiere blogger? Who's gonna blow the roof off of...er, whatever needs its roof blown off in Cokato?

Stay tuned. And thanks, Ms. Kohls!

Throwing a Chair On the Radio Loses Something

Jerry Springer is getting a liberal talk show, in Cincinnati.

Springer, who will continue to host his more raucous TV show, called the war in Iraq immoral, saying it appeared to be focused on determining whether Iraq's Shiite majority or Sunni minority will be in charge as the country tries to grow into independence.

"Would you be willing to have your son or daughter die for that?" Springer said.

Springer politely received those who called in to his radio show, in contrast to the conflict-oriented style of his TV show.

Some see the radio show as a springboard for the Democrat's possible return to politics in 2006, although Springer has declined to comment on that issue.

We could see that coming.

Flash at Centrisity - from whom I got the story - notes:

I'm not sure this is the guy the Left wants presenting their message, but if it makes the Right a little on edge, maybe it won't be all that bad.

The qualifier is "if".

Springer is like Michael Savage - a walking caricature of his philosophy. If I were a liberal talk radio fan, I'd be cringeing a bit today.

I mean, in the rare moments I wasn't cringing about FrankenNet or, locally, the Janet Roberts station.

Come to think of it, Springer might be a step up.

In The Interest of Civility

Via Swiftee, we see the testing of the Inaugural fireworks display intended to reach out to his harshest blue-state critics:

By way of reaching out on my own, I have one thing I need to say to all the secessionists, anyone who ever referred to "Jesusland" or "God, Guns and Gays", or who ever forwarded one of the bogus surveys showing blue-state intelligence was supposedly higher than that in red states:

The "dumb guy" beat you! Twice!

Thanks. And to all the rest of you - Republican, Democrat-but-sane or whatever - happy Inauguration day!

But Not For The Peasants

Michael Moore's bodyguard was arrested for carrying a gun at JFK Airport.

Filmmaker Michael Moore's (search) bodyguard was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon in New York's JFK airport Wednesday night.

Police took Patrick Burke, who says Moore employs him, into custody after he declared he was carrying a firearm at a ticket counter. Burke is licensed to carry a firearm in Florida and California, but not in New York. Burke was taken to Queens central booking and could potentially be charged with a felony for the incident.

Moore's 2003 Oscar-winning film "Bowling for Columbine" criticizes what Moore calls America's "culture of fear" and its obsession with guns.

Moore joins a list of pro-victim-disarmament (or silent on the issue) luminaries, including "Punch Sulzberger, Robert DeNiro, Donald Trump, Howard Stern, Harvey Keitel, Steven Seagal, Winthrop Rockefeller, Bill Cosby, Tommy Mottola, Joan Rivers, Buddy Hackett, Chazz Palminteri, Don Imus, and William F. Buckley, Jr, who piddle on the average schlemiel's right to self-defense - but who feel the need to get a carry permit in New York (and have the connections to get the permit) in New York City. Add to that the celebs like Rosie O'Donnell who tear at the Second Amendment, but who retain armed bodyguards (because with them, it's not a "climate of fear",it's just prudence...)

Bomb Threat

An anonymous caller has the Feds and the government of Boston good and spooked:

Massachusetts law enforcement officials were notified of the threat at 5:30 a.m. today through the FBI and Boston Police Joint Terrorist Task Force.

The threat was serious enough that Mayor Menino ordered the Fire Commissioner and the state's Homeland Security Chief into his office at City Hall, where they met with officials from the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a high-ranking city official told the Herald.

``They are desperately trying to piece it together,'' said the offial, who added that if the threat is real it is ``very scary.''

A company that trains explosive-sniffing dogs said it was alerted that the canines would be searching for a ``dirty bomb,'' a New York City law enforcement official said yesterday.

Lest you start to regret making fun of people who stocked up on plastic sheeting and duct tape...

The Massachusetts investigator said much of the man's information sounds far-fetched and investigators have some doubts about the caller's validity because he has not identified himself.

The article goes on to note that much of the story is fishy; ``It's very weird. Even if (the Iraqis and Chinese) were going to do something why would they be blabbing to the yahoo smuggling them across the border? You have to wonder if they screwed him on a deal but you have to treat it seriously and the issue is how do you put it out to the public and not get everybody (in a panic)?'' I'm guessing the answer is "by taking things on the Drudge Report with a grain of salt?"

More - or, come to think of it, hopefully less - later.

No Class

From the AP:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted Wednesday to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state after two days of hearings in which she faced strenuous Democratic assaults on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq.

Pending approval by the full Senate, Rice would be the first black woman to hold the job. She was confirmed by a 16-2 vote with Democrats John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California voting no.

Nice to see Kerry showed up, anyway.

What? Us Worry?

Example of Groupthink in action; watch the big leftybloggers spread a trope.

Last year, it was "There were never any WMDs, and we always knew it" - this despite Bill Clinton and most of the mainstream media's statements throughout the late '90s that they knew they were there, hence the dispatch of the various inspectors, etc.

This year? Pay no attention to the crisis behind the curtain, say the leftybloggers and the left-wing media. There is no Social Security Crisis. Never has been. Never will be.

Now, I just knew I recalled Democrats invoking the "C" word - Crisis! - during the Clinton Administration.

Thanks to John Henke at QandO, we now know.

The leftybloggers, and the likes of Paul Krugman, are contradicting a decade of Clinton-era pronouncements, according to this piece of essential reporting from QandO (via Ed):

That's the Party Line: "There is no Social Security crisis". Indeed, there's even a website--www.ThereIsNoCrisis.com--dedicated to promulgating that idea.

Krugman claims the SSA has been co-opted into the impending crisis effort by the Bush administration, but--as Luskin pointed out recently--in 1998, the Social Security Administration was saying "It is important to address the financing of both the OASI and DI programs soon..."

And they weren't the only ones warning of an impending crisis. "No Social Security crisis"? My, how times have changed.

• "Gene Sperling - Clinton Economic Advisor": "this is a chance for both parties to actually show ... that we are saving more to meet the Social Security crisis in the future. If we don't do this, then we are just putting those burdens on a future generation."
• Kenneth S. Apfel, Commissioner of Social Security: "Although there is no immediate financial crisis, the time to act is now in order to prevent a crisis from ever occurring."
• Senator Kohl - Democrat: Wisconsin [March 22, 2000]: "Comprehensive Social Security Reform is still necessary. Today's changes will do nothing to hold off the coming crisis that will begin when we start drawing down the Social Security Trust fund in 2014. Congress needs to deal with this soon, otherwise we are shirking our duty to the American people."
• WHITE HOUSE RELEASE [October 30, 1998] -- "It is normally impossible for any democracy to tackle long-term problems while the crisis is still only on the horizon. Putting the surplus off-limits until we address saving Social Security provides a strong impetus for all of us to do something to solve a fiscal challenge early so we can prevent a crisis later."

QandO's John Henke then reels off a laundry list of Bill Clinton's evocations of the "C" word.

Question: Are any of the big-league leftybloggers capable of honesty?

Things You Never Hear Mitch Berg Say

From today's Bleat:

Last year you had a sale. I stocked up. I bought 15 bottles of liquid soap and placed them in the cabinet. The shampoo, being more dear, was purchased in a smaller quantity. I bought more as I ran out, leaving my reserve stock intact.

Last week you had another sale. The shampoos for the Aromatherapy line were discounted by 75%. I knew instantly what this meant: you had discontinued the product...

...to keep the line going while eliminating a crucial element of the aroma profile is an act of colossal arrogance and cruelty, knowing as you do that no other shampoo in the store meshes with such ease and familiar grace into the Eucalyptus Spearmint line. It goes without saying that the era of having a shower with identically sized and labeled bottles is over, and shall not come again...

...I have a year’s supply of liquid soap, which I will use as ever. I will refill the empty shampoo bottles with Suave. Do you understand? ...it comes down to Suave poured in your containers, not in the hopes you will not be unduly pained, but in the fervent desire that you will be pained unutterably, and go to your graves nursing the wound.

Damn ye, sirs. Damn ye.

Although for what it's worth, I wish the same thing on the morons who replaced Nesbitt's with Minute Maid.

Idiotstakes

We have a donnybrook here.

On the one hand, we here in Minnesota have ample reason to believe our "senior" "senator", Mark Dayton, is an idiot. A big idiot.

Yet Hugh and especially Generalissimo Duane make a pretty fair case that Babs Boxer is at least as dumb. I must confess, the circumstantial evidence is strong:

And if you're going to become the voice of diplomacy -- this is just a helpful point -- when Senator Voinovich mentioned the issue of tsunami relief, you said -- your first words were, "The tsunami was a wonderful opportunity for us." Now, the tsunami was one of the worst tragedies of our lifetime -- one of the worst -- and it's going to have a 10-year impact on rebuilding that area. I was very disappointed in your statement. I think you blew the opportunity. You mention it as part of one sentence.

The obvious question; who is dumber, Boxer or Dayton?

It's a tough, tough call. I don't think it's just hometown provincialism that tells me Dayton gets the nod, but I can be convinced.

Forget debating Peter Beinart, Hugh. When you come to the cities, you and your staff can duke it out with the NARN to award the "Dumbest Senator" title.

We may have to handicap you a few points...

Mob Law

Don't forget - be at Keegans this Saturday, 5-9, for the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers' semi-annual Blogger Bash. Bloggers, media people, politicians - and above all, fans of all the above!

Drop me a line if you're thinking about showing: "party (at the domain) northernallianceradio (and then a dot) com".

We'd love to see you there!

Humanizing the Beast

Keirón Allen is a photographer and journalist working in Afghanistan.

Humanising a beast - the American military, from the less-than-propitiously named "Opendemocracy" site, is a fascinating photo-essay, with an equally-fascinating narrative:

I was keen on this visit to Afghanistan to avoid adding to the number of "death and destruction" pictures and look for images of “hope and humour� in the hope of humanising both sides. This chapter, one of five in total, looks at the American military. Initially sceptical of this beast, my experience of the troops at the forward area of Khost (near the Pakistan border, and former al-Qaida stronghold) was one at odds with the view held by most people I meet in the west. Yes, they were expert at killing and capturing the enemy, but they were also accomplished at being policemen and diplomats. 19-year-old soldiers were learning Dari and Pashtu. These soldiers held the dual belief that they were fighting for both the dead in downtown Manhattan and the people of Afghanistan.

Worth a look.

Mad As Hell

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan commands a battalion of the 12th Cavalry, part of the First Cavalry Division, currently serving in Iraq.

He writes perhaps the most passionate, emotional evisceration of the media's blinkered coverage of Iraq that I've yet read. It's stark, it's realistic (war is hell), it's impassioned in a way field-grade officers rarely come across in public press pronouncements - and in the end, it guts most of what the war's opponents have been harping on for this past year.

Ryan assaults the press' endless, relentless, aggressive pessimism about the war:

From where I sit in Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well. We are not under attack by the enemy; on the contrary, we are taking the fight to him daily and have him on the ropes. In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five-hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction. As elements from all four services complete the absolute annihilation of the insurgent forces remaining in Fallujah, the area around the former insurgent stronghold is more peaceful than it has been for more than a year.

This is a point that is completely lost on most left-wing critics of the war, who - I'll be polite - are usually completely illiterate on all matters military. Holding the initiative - the real initiative, the one on the battlefield - is what matters in the long run.

And we do hold it, where it matters - on the battlefield. But you'd never know that from the media's coverage.

The number of attacks in the greater Al Anbar Province is down by at least 70-80 percent from late October — before Operation Al Fajar began. The enemy in this area is completely defeated, but not completely gone. Final eradication of the pockets of insurgents will take some time, as it always does, but the fact remains that the central geographic stronghold of the insurgents is now under friendly control. That sounds a lot like success to me. Given all of this, why don't the papers lead with "Coalition Crushes Remaining Pockets of Insurgents" or "Enemy Forces Resort to Suicide Bombings of Civilians"? This would paint a far more accurate picture of the enemy's predicament over here. Instead, headlines focus almost exclusively on our hardships.

We'll come back to this.

The terrorists' almost-sympathetic treatment in the western media doesn't escape notice:

What about the media's portrayal of the enemy? Why do these ruthless murderers, kidnappers and thieves get a pass when it comes to their actions? What did the the media show or tell us about Margaret Hassoon, the director of C.A.R.E. in Iraq and an Iraqi citizen, who was kidnapped, brutally tortured and left disemboweled on a street in Fallujah? Did anyone in the press show these images over and over to emphasize the moral failings of the enemy as they did with the soldiers at Abu Ghuraib? Did anyone show the world how this enemy had huge stockpiles of weapons in schools and mosques, or how he used these protected places as sanctuaries for planning and fighting in Fallujah and the rest of Iraq? Are people of the world getting the complete story? The answer again is no! What the world got instead were repeated images of a battle-weary Marine who made a quick decision to use lethal force and who immediately was tried in the world press. Was this one act really illustrative of the overall action in Fallujah? No, but the Marine video clip was shown an average of four times each hour on just about every major TV news channel for a week. This is how the world views our efforts over here and stories like this without a counter continually serve as propaganda victories for the enemy. Al Jazeera isn't showing the film of the CARE worker, but is showing the clip of the Marine. Earlier this year, the Iraqi government banned Al Jazeera from the country for its inaccurate reporting. Wonder where they get their information now? Well, if you go to the Internet, you'll find a web link from the Al Jazeera home page to CNN's home page. Very interesting.

The enemy uses the impression - or lack of impression - of their real nature and aims to win the only battle still attainable to them - the one for the western media:

What noticeably was missing were accounts of the atrocities committed by the Mehdi Militia — Muqtada Al Sadr's band of henchmen. While the media was busy bashing the Coalition, Muqtada's boys were kidnapping policemen, city council members and anyone else accused of supporting the Coalition or the new government, trying them in a kangaroo court based on Islamic Shari'a law, then brutally torturing and executing them for their "crimes." What the media didn't show or write about were the two hundred-plus headless bodies found in the main mosque there, or the body that was put into a bread oven and baked. Nor did they show the world the hundreds of thousands of mortar, artillery and small arms rounds found within the "sacred" walls of the mosque. Also missing from the coverage was the huge cache of weapons found in Muqtada's "political" headquarters nearby. No, none of this made it to the screen or to print. All anyone showed were the few chipped tiles on the dome of the mosque and discussion centered on how we, the Coalition, had somehow done wrong. Score another one for the enemy's propaganda machine.

Ryan is onto the trick that's fooled so much of the historically-illiterate American and Western left:

Did it ever occur to the media that this type of notoriety is just what the terrorists want and need? Every headline they grab is a victory for them. Those who have read the ancient Chinese military theorist and army general Sun Tzu will recall the philosophy of "Kill one, scare ten thousand" as the basic theory behind the strategy of terrorism. Through fear, the terrorist can then manipulate the behavior of the masses. The media allows the terrorist to use relatively small but spectacular events that directly affect very few, and spread them around the world to scare millions. What about the thousands of things that go right every day and are never reported? Complete a multi-million-dollar sewer project and no one wants to cover it, but let one car bomb go off and it makes headlines. With each headline, the enemy scores another point and the good-guys lose one. This method of scoring slowly is eroding domestic and international support while fueling the enemy's cause.

I believe one of the reasons for this shallow and subjective reporting is that many reporters never actually cover the events they report on. This is a point of growing concern within the Coalition. It appears many members of the media are hesitant to venture beyond the relative safety of the so-called "International Zone" in downtown Baghdad, or similar "safe havens" in other large cities. Because terrorists and other thugs wisely target western media members and others for kidnappings or attacks, the westerners stay close to their quarters. This has the effect of holding the media captive in cities and keeps them away from the broader truth that lies outside their view. With the press thus cornered, the terrorists easily feed their unwitting captives a thin gruel of anarchy, one spoonful each day. A car bomb at the entry point to the International Zone one day, a few mortars the next, maybe a kidnapping or two thrown in. All delivered to the doorsteps of those who will gladly accept it without having to leave their hotel rooms — how convenient.

The scene is repeated all too often: an attack takes place in Baghdad and the morning sounds are punctuated by a large explosion and a rising cloud of smoke. Sirens wail in the distance and photographers dash to the scene a few miles away. Within the hour, stern-faced reporters confidently stare into the camera while standing on the balcony of their tenth-floor Baghdad hotel room, their back to the city and a distant smoke plume rising behind them. More mayhem in Gotham City they intone, and just in time for the morning news. There is a transparent reason why the majority of car bombings and other major events take place before noon Baghdad-time; any later and the event would miss the start of the morning news cycle on the U.S. east coast. These terrorists aren't stupid; they know just what to do to scare the masses and when to do it. An important key to their plan is manipulation of the news media. But, at least the reporters in Iraq are gathering information and filing their stories, regardless of whether or the stories are in perspective. Much worse are the "talking heads" who sit in studios or offices back home and pontificate about how badly things are going when they never have been to Iraq and only occasionally leave Manhattan.

I'm no soldier. Never have been. I have read a lot of military history, natch - and trying to pick a part of the left's relentless drumming of mis/disinformation that galls one the worst is very difficult.

But a solid contender would have to be the smug interjection of the ill-informed pundits that insist an "exit strategy" is what we really, really need.

The only "exit strategy" that matters was that of the platoon sergeant in Saving Private Ryan; "The only way home is through Berlin".

You'd think the pundits could pick up on that one; it was in a movie and everything.

Colonel Ryan's take is longer, and more complete:

Also bothersome are references by "experts" on how "long" this war is taking. I've read that in the world of manufacturing, you can have only two of the following three qualities when developing a product — cheap, fast or good. You can produce something cheap and fast, but it won't be good; good and fast, but it won't be cheap; good and cheap, but it won't be fast. In this case, we want the result to be good and we want it at the lowest cost in human lives. Given this set of conditions, one can expect this war is to take a while, and rightfully so. Creating a democracy in Iraq not only will require a change in the political system, but the economic system as well. Study of examples of similar socio-economic changes that took place in countries like Chile, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia and other countries with oppressive Socialist dictatorships shows that it took seven to ten years to move those countries to where they are now. There are many lessons to be learned from these transfomations, the most important of which is that change doesn't come easily, even without an insurgency going on. Maybe the experts should take a look at all of the work that has gone into stabilizing Bosnia-Herzegovina over the last 10 years. We are just at the eighteen-month mark in Iraq, a place far more oppressive than Bosnia ever was. If previous examples are any comparison, there will be no quick solutions here, but that should be no surprise to an analyst who has done his or her homework.

Read Col. Ryan's entire essay. It's essential.

Then print it out, roll it up into a stick, and use it to whack the next person you meet who says the war in Iraq is lost, and that we need to just get out.

More on Reaganmas

I've gotten a few questions about the overall vision for the Reaganmas holiday. I'll try to clear up a few of them:

• It would, of course, be an ironic departure from the Reagan Legacy for Reaganmas to be a big, mandatory national holiday; naturally, it should be personal and voluntary.
• The traditional fare for Reaganmas? Jelly beans and beef, washed down with Grenadine (we may have to work on the cuisine part).
• There should be some sort of fireworks display; five minutes prior to the display, there should be an announcement: "In five minutes, we start the fireworks".
• Your party should go over budget, and yet leave you richer than when you started.

Other holiday ideas are eagerly solicited.

Hersh and the Fantasy-Based Community

Seymour Hersh is back, talking about defense.

When Seymour Hersh says "jump", the Fantasy-Based Community asks "off what?"

The Pentagon is responding to Hersh's piece in the New Yorker in which he claimed US Special Forces and the CIA are operating inside Iran, getting ready (so the Fantasy-Based Community fervently believes) to open a new front in the war.

Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed...By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history” novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present” that he has developed in several recent articles.

Michelle Malkin points us to the DOD response, including this item:

* Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

Read the rest of the response.I don't know. Part of me hopes the US is active inside Iran; in fact, I can hardly imagine we're not doing something, at some level.

While it's unlikely that a DOD response is going to satiate the koolaid-drinkers who are chanting Hersh's conclusions throughout the lefty blogosphere, the holes in the story make me wonder - is someone in the DOD feeding Hersh bogus information to discredit him?

Or is he just that sloppy?

After the Hysteria

Who could have seen this coming.

Who, oh who?

Who indeed?

Laura Billings notes the story that's been popping up elsewhere, although - amazingly enough - not nearly as prominently as its predecessor last fall.

There's too much flu vaccine.

Those long lines of hacking old people and runny-nosed toddlers vying for just 50 million doses — half what the country ordered — have now given way to nearly empty waiting rooms and nurses who ask you, unprompted, if they can interest you in an armful of vaccine.

Wow. How could that have happened?

Perhaps because of the mindless hysteria generated by people like Laura Billings' husband earlier in the season?

From the "Talk Talk" File

I had almost thought the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had gone out of business.

No such luck. Their annoying little "Doomsday Clock" is still ticking - and, amazingly, it's at seven minutes 'til Midnight! Closer than during the Cuban Missile Crisis!

Nosuchblog reports:

The idea, I think, is that nuclear proliferation has increased uncertainty, and nuclear use by a rogue state or terrorist group has increased.

But the notion that civilization is closer to destruction than it was in 1963, 3 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, is total poppycock.

It reflects the political biases and intellectual obsolescence of the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" more than it reflects any version of reality.

While unprovoked first use of a nuclear device, somewhere in the world, may be more likely than in 1963 because more different actors have access to the technology than in 1963, such use is far, far less likely to result in a massive exchange between superpowers than it was during the cold war. The more likely scenario is terrorist employment of an improvised or surplus device, resulting in a "fizzle". It would make a mess, and it would change the world, but it wouldn't mean armageddon, which was a real possibility during the cold war.

But the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" had the clock at three minutes to midnight during the Reagan administration, suggesting nuclear war was more likely in the 1980s than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was a little suspicious as well.

The BOAS is one of a long list of lefty pundits and pressure groups that are distinguished by never, ever being right about anything - but yet remain prominent.

Nineteen Days...

...until Reaganmas.

For those of you who've not been following, February 6 is the birthdate of Ronald Reagan.

For the past three years or so, I've been observing Reaganmas both in my home - taking the kids out to eat (if only McDonald's) and talking with them about the importance of Reagan in their life today - and at work (where I bring in a plate of cupcakes or some such to celebrate the day).

Now, with Reagan's passing, the holiday takes on more importance; it's not entirely tongue-in-cheek anymore.

So I renew my quest, one of the notions that sparked me to start this blog almost three years ago; to remind you all to join me in spreading the word of our next national holiday.

Dead Terrorist Bounce

My NARN homie King Banaian from SCSU Scholars isn't as sanguine as I came across this morning in re the Iraqi economy:

First, even if the 52% number was hit for 2004 -- a figure over which there should be some skepticism -- it is a bounce off of a very low number. The war reduced GDP in Iraq by 35% according to the interim government's letter to the IMF (in which it sought aid), so hitting that number puts us at the end of 2004 at 98.8% of the level at the end of 2002. This in a country with a population growth rate of 3% and per capita GDP around $800/year, is not a good thing. The growth ahead depends largely on Iraq bouncing back to production levels around 3 million barrels per day, from the 1 mbpd after the war ended. So far, that doesn't appear to be happening.

And there has to be some sense that the people are sharing in the new wealth. Suppose we had an investment boom in Iraq in 2001 induced by Saddam building 10,000 new statues of his own likeness. Would the average Iraqi feel better? Certainly not. So there's an investment boom today, but where's the money coming from, and who is guiding its use in rebuilding the Iraqi economy -- workers and businesspeople? The interim government? The Americans? That's a key question, and not one for which we have a very good answer right now.

There are, of course, a paragraph's worth of asterisks to be added to the news I blogged about earlier.

However, I have to ask; where does a Dead Cat Bounce end, and recovery begin? As King himself notes, the story didn't answer a lot of the questions about the nature of the investment or the recovery; so while we don't know that the news is good, we also would be mistaken in insisting it's not.

King is right; the economies of Eastern Europe all showed healthy growth immediately after the fall of the USSR; most truly had noplace to go but up. After that, some implemented more command-oriented, socialist (or kleptocratic) economies, while others (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic) embraced something more market-y and are relatively prosperous today.

So is Iraq seeing a Dead Skunk bounce, or more of a Dead Terrorist bounce? I'm not sure we know yet.

Heart of Redness

Have you ever noticed that the Blue media only decide to portray the Red states as humans, rather than facile stereotypes, after the election?

David Von Drehle of the WaPo convoyed through Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, easily steering clear of any Blue counties, and reports back to his DC readers that yes, there really was more to the election than "God, Guns 'n Gays" - and that people in Red states seem vaguely humanoid.

Von Drehle - a onetime Colorado native, as he points out in the article - isn't unaware of the cultural divide that his paper helps create:

We met Bruce Owen outside Abilene, Kan. He invited us into his home, introduced us to his wife, Donna -- and then seemed to wish he hadn't. He told us he rarely saw people like himself portrayed in "the media," except as objects of derision.

He had a point there.

All I could answer was that we were tired of hearing pundits tell us about "Red America" and wanted a firsthand look. For months, the passions had been running awfully high. A lot of Democrats seemed settled on the belief that Bush supporters were stupid and selfish and sanctimonious, when they weren't downright religious fanatics and bigots.

He also notes that his own current home, in the District of Columbia, voted for Kerry by a 10:1 ratio. Von Drehle never connected the two ideas - who, indeed, are the fanatics and bigots?

The article is an interesting read, nonetheless. My big question: What's the motivation?

I actually found it, I think. But on the way, there were questions. So many of them...

Von Drehle feels - correctly, I'd imagine - the need to translate to his audience that there are some very different motivations in action here:

One of the first things worth noting about the Red Sea is that people live there because they like it. (Several people proudly pointed out to me that there are no houses on the market in Waco.) This basic fact strikes wonder in some city dwellers, who live in cities because they love cities. They love the bustle, the myriad options, the surprises and the jolts and the competition. It can require a leap of imagination to perceive that there are people who seek precisely the opposite, and not just on weekends and vacations.

And many people not only never make that leap of imagination - but they assume that the difference in outlook is a sign of some sort of diminished capacity. Von Drehle's piece might dispel that assumption for some, and it might not; the question is, where was this little social olive branch before the election?

And about those motivations:

I suppose there are no great surprises there -- these views represent many of the strands that have been collected over the past generation into the political camp we call "conservative." But the focus on this common label may obscure the individual nature of these voting decisions. I met regular churchgoers and people who attend church seldom if ever. I met young libertarians and elderly prims. I met a wealthy man and a man unemployed and deeply in debt. I met people who admire Bush and people who have little regard for him.

I imagine this might disappoint those people who seek a large and unified explanation of something as important as a presidential election. How much more satisfying it is -- especially for those who make a living from explaining elections in catchy sound bites -- to conjure up overarching themes, towering trends, looming like alps over an election. Nothing sells like a big trend story, whether the trend is "right-wing backlash" or "values revival."

A fair point. I should be happy the mainstream media bothers to try to put a human face on the Red/Blue divide at all.

The piece points out some other media-related issues as well; Red state peoples' stances on discrete political issues frequently have motivations that people in Georgetown just can't grasp.

Example: Remember the Bush Administration's plan to return EPA limits on arsenic in drinking water to pre-Clinton-Administration levels? Levels which were already infinitesimally low? Republicans - red-staters, natch - supported Bush. During the first year of Bush's administration, before 9/11 when stories like that still made the news, that support was portrayed in the eastern press as callousness about the environment.

So where was this kind of reporting back then?

"I'm the village water officer," Stuhr explained. "For more than 100 years, we've lived with arsenic in our water. It is a naturally occurring element. It isn't contamination -- it's natural."

During the Clinton administration, the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the amount of arsenic allowed in water, from 50 parts-per-billion to 10. "Now all over Nebraska, villages are having to build new water treatment plants to remove a naturally occurring element," Stuhr said, which costs "millions of dollars."

Does Washington pay? I asked.

"They'll loan us the money," Stuhr answered. "And whose money is it to begin with? And once we get the arsenic out, why, then we have a hazardous waste problem, because there is nowhere to dispose of it."

Bush would like to restore the previous standard. You might recall that many Democrats howled that Bush was willing to poison people, but in these parts, Bush's proposal was greeted as simple common sense.

Merv Ocken: "The problem comes in when you try to pass one law that will apply to everyone all across the country. In New York or Washington, certain laws might make sense. But you get out here, where there's sometimes just two people living in an entire section, and it's different."

Why was the WaPo above showing the actual impact of that proposal four years ago?

Along the way of his journey, Von Drehle did a little juggling of numbers, and found some little truths:

There are 30 states -- including all the Red Sea states -- in which married couples form a majority of all households. Bush won 22 of the 30, by an average of 21 percentage points. The eight that went for Kerry were very narrow victories, an average of five points. Utah, with the highest percentage of married folks, gave Bush his largest ratio of victory: 71 to 26.

In nine states, there are equal numbers of households headed by married and unmarried people. Sure enough, Bush and Kerry split them evenly, four for Bush and five for Kerry -- and by middling margins, too: an average 16 points where Bush won, 11 points where Kerry won.

Of the 11 states, plus the District of Columbia, where married couples form a minority of all households, Kerry won seven, by a jaw-dropping average of 24 percentage points. Bush won five, by the relatively skimpy average margin of nine points. The District, with the lowest percentage of married folks, gave Kerry his biggest win: 90 to 9.

One could dream up all sorts of theories about this. Married people have, on average, a more stable financial situation. They have, on average, more avenues of support in times of trouble. You might say that marriage involves the surrender of certain personal liberties in favor of creating lasting institutions. You might say marriage favors stability over experimentation. All of these might point, on average, to a more conservative disposition.

All I know for sure are the numbers. Only voters can explain the whys and wherefores.

So we kept driving.

To his credit, Von Drehle might have popped a smug bubble or two, pointing out the Plains' rather tumultuous political past, and the sometimes crazy contradictions that past left behind:

Before the trip, I heard a lot about a book that claimed to explain how people like Joyce Smith and Bruce Owen and Paul Kern and those ECU students have been tricked by the moneyed class into voting against their own best interests. I found a copy of What's the Matter With Kansas? at a bookstore in Ada and began reading it as we resumed our southward journey.

The author, Thomas Frank, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Kansas City and received a PhD in cultural criticism from the University of Chicago. His book is a lament for the lost prairie Populism of years gone by -- not the Ku Klux Klan aspect, which he never mentions, but the capitalist-scourging aspect of William Jennings Bryan and the Farmer's Alliance.

In Frank's view, if Red Sea residents knew what was good for them, they would vote for capitalist-scourging Populists today. But they don't know what's good for them, Frank explains, because of "a species of derangement." The deranged people of the Midwest are no longer able to make "certain mental connections about the world," because those once-"reliable leftists" have been deluded into caring about moral issues.

I marveled at Frank's discovery of a strong leftist tradition in Kansas, a state that has voted for the Republicans in 30 of the 36 presidential elections since 1860, including twice against Franklin D. Roosevelt. And I thought maybe Bryan, a fundamentalist Christian who denounced Darwin's theories of evolution at the famous Scopes trial, might have a lot in common with some of the so-called values voters of 2004. But Frank kept me reading until it was too dark to read anymore.

Von Drehle erred in choosing Frank for his source on the subject - Frank is an idiot. But there's a history, there; the Prairie Populists and Grangers of the 1890's led to the Non-Partisan League and other Depression-era populist/radical groups that tried to radicalize the farm states in the thirties, which led to a legacy as diverse as our huge farm programs, or states as conservative as North Dakota operating instititions as socialistic as the State Bank and the State Mill and Elevator, or regions as Red as the northern plains sending legislators as Blue as George McGovern, Tom Daschle, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan to Washington.

Still, I'll give him a "B" for effort.

Von Drehle concludes, via noting that Kerry spent very little time and money in the Red states, virtually none on the Plains:

After a campaign in which the Democrat made very little effort to seek their votes, the Red Sea folks decided to cast their ballots in large numbers for George W. Bush. Something he said or did struck a chord with some note of their own political music. Maybe it was the feeling that bureaucrats just don't get it. Or the idea that elitists hold the heartland in contempt. Maybe it was the worry that traditions are under attack. Maybe it was the view that coastal culture is an enemy, not a friend, in the effort to raise children. For some, it was the feeling of authenticity and apparent horse sense. The attitude toward land and resources that comes from living amid an abundance of both. The significance of personal faith.

In short, I found ordinary people with various motivations, sundry stories, personal beliefs, custom-made decisions.

...

One afternoon, about 3 o'clock, we turned off Kansas highway 15, down a mud track in an expanse of nowhere. We stopped and got out of the car. The sun was low in the south; its rays arrived languidly and aslant through the gray, tufted stubble of a cornfield. When the engine stopped ticking, a lark began to sing nearby, and as my ears grew attuned to the silence I noticed steers bawling in the middle distance and a human voice, audible but indistinct, riding the wind toward us from a long way off. A pair of pheasants sauntered past without looking our way.

At the edge of a lion-tan pasture stood an old gate topped with a weathered W. But I guess we weren't in the mood for heavy-handed symbolism. Sometimes a W is just a W. Instead, I studied a small circle of grass covered with the feathers of a hawk-killed bird, and listened to the pianissimo hum of truck tires over a highway a mile distant.

Turning slowly where I stood, I took in the whole 360-degree horizon, which bisected the curve of sky like the base of a snow globe. And for a moment it felt like we were in a world apart, so distinct and separate did this lonely sheet of earth appear. But I knew that if we set off and kept going, we'd meet up eventually with Blue America. In a tangible sense, even after this bitter election, something connected this land to that one, something more durable than fear and loathing, though it was beyond my view. An industry has been set up to convince us otherwise, but I'm here to tell you that a person can get from there to here, and here to there. Maybe next time, the Democrats might give it a try.

In that light, I looked again, and the world seemed to float off in every direction toward new beginnings and fresh possibilities.

Von Drehle hints at an interesting question: Which is more likely to make the translation?

If John Kerry had tried to sell his message, and the message of Blue America, deep in the heart of the Plains, would it have resonated? Would it resonate more than a concerted, integrated Republican effort to sell conservative values in, say, the inner city? This past election saw, if not a sea change, at least some flaking in the traditional blue coalition; Hispanics and Jews crossed over to the GOP in record numbers.

Which message is more likely to cross over?

You Educational Dollars' Worth

So Big Trunk, Rocket Man, Deacon, and their classmate Paul Gambaccini went to Dartmouth...

...and they all wound up in weekend radio?

So much for the benefits of an Ivy League education. Sheesh.

The Lid's Been Blown Off

In the wake of the Armstrong Williams scandal - during which we learned that Markos "Screw 'em" Moulitsas of the Daily Kos' idea of "full disclosure" involves non-full disclosure - we learn what key conservative bloggers have been earning.

This includes the Powerguys:

PowerLine
Diamond Jack luxury cruise of the Detroit River

Must be those "powerful righty friends" Nick Coleman was yammering about.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never received a dime for any of my opinions. And that's probably justifiable.

The Invisible Boom?

What if Iraq's economy boomed, but the western major media ignored it?

This bit from ABC has some numbers.

It says:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts a post-conflict economic boom in Iraq this year and in 2005 but admits lending to the country is a big risk because of the fighting and huge debt.

The IMF cleared a $US463 million loan to Iraq on September 29.

The organisation says the Iraqi gross domestic product (GDP), or total economic output, should soar 52 per cent this year.

Then 17 per cent in 2005 and 9 per cent a year on average from 2006 to 2009.

The IMF says oil output should climb from 2.1 million barrels per day this year to 3.5 million by 2009.

Unstated; there would be no way to project such a boom if the vast majority of Iraq weren't in relatively good shape.

Naturally, there are security issues; duh. But booms are not symptoms on nations where the majority of the workers and businesspeople are worried about getting blown up on the way to work in the morning.

As to the debt - perhaps the UN and the French can pony up some of their oil for food lucre?

The debt- owed mostly to Arab and European nations as well as India, Japan and Korea - comes to roughly 16 times Iraq's current GDP. The US has already written off its share of Iraq's debt; the French apparently have not.

Thoughts on the Vikings' Loss

1. Now that the Vikings' annual humiliation is over, bring on the pitchers and catchers.

2. Next year, Da Bears are going downtown, baybee. All the way.

I've been predicting that every year for the past 35. Unlike all you Vikings fans, I've been right once.

If Only...

...P.J. O'Rourke were Dubya's speechwriter, as in his Alternative Inaugural Address from the Weekly Standard.

Intro:

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I had intended to reach out to all of you and bring a divided nation together. But I changed my mind. America isn't divided by political ethos or ethnic origin. America isn't divided by region or religion. America is divided by jerks. Who wants to bring a bunch of jerks together with the rest of us? Let them stew in Berkeley, Boston, and Ann Arbor.

Conclusion:

The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.

Read the rest of it.

Bloggers On The Air

A quick read of Lakeshore Laments shows that the idea of using bloggers as, to coin a phrase, insta-pundits on talk radio is spreading, slowly but surely:

Been invited to appear tomorrow morning on "The Charlie Sykes Show" with other Wisconsin bloggers such as Owen from Boots & Sabers and possibly a couple of other guys as we do a round table. From the looks of it there will be four of us.

And he gives out a prop!

This feels a lot like the Northern Alliance Radio Network gang (Captain Ed, Hugh Hewitt, Lileks, Powerline, and others). [Ahem...] A bunch of bloggers getting together on the radio. And it's a great show (12-3 PM on Saturdays on the web) too.

Thanks for the kudos, but guys, you have to be more on the stick with the promotions; we'd have loved to have given y'all a plug in advance, which is when they do you some good!

So all you new-media people - please keep us NARN guys posted about your appearances. We'd love to help get the word out.

Cold Fury

While Hugh Hewitt made a great case for boycotting Target during the holidays for their barring of the Salvation Army from their parking lots, I have a much, much better reason.

I live in Minnesota. While Minnesota isn't as cold as my native North Dakota, it gets a tad brisk here, too. And it occurred to me as our current "cold snap" (currently -6F at 9:45AM) began that I haven't bought a winter coat in forever. I've been making do, piling layers of sweatshirts, T-shirts and shirts under an oilskin jacket that I've had for about 12 years; the oilskin, which is basically oil-impregnated canvas, is wonderfully water-and-windproof, but oilskin tends to show every single scratch and scuff. The jacket looks like a pair of shoes that a litter of puppies have been playing with. Time, maybe, for something nicer.

So I went to Target.

Spring styles. Shorts. Swimsuits were being put out on the shelves. It was January 13, and, said the employees I asked, Target had cleared its winter clothing out.

On January 13, in Saint Paul, MN, as the first and (probably) last cold wave of the year was just getting rolling.

"Most people buy their winter coats early in the season" said one young woman who was busily unpacking a pallet of sunscreen.

"Yabbut, what about people who lose coats, or they get stolen, or...?" The question trailed off into the ether as the Beach Boys played in the background.

Note to Target: I hate you.

(Yep, I went to the WalMart across the street. They were sold out)

Get Happy!

First: The Minnesota left-leaning group blog New Patriot is undergoing an unprecedented surge in activity, managing (among the blog's ten writers) seven posts in four days!

Keep it up, guys! (*)

Luke Francl is back with a question: Why are conservatives so angry?

His post starts:

This one's for the conservatives in the audience [Berg looks around, scans horizon, then slowly raises hand]. Help me out.

Why are y'all so angry all the time?

That's simple. We're not.

As has been noted in the past year, studies have shown the Republicans tend to be happier, smarter, and have better sex lives than Democrats; hardly symptoms of repressed rage. If these be the wages of anger, then by all means knee me in the groin and call me a Fabian.

The claim is absurd. But it wasn't always.

There was a time when conservatives did seem angry. The latter years of the George H. W. Bush administration, and the first couple of years of Clinton's term, were kind of harrowing, if you were a conservative; between Bush's at-best lukewarm grasp of conservative principle and the national party's rush to the social center on many hot-button conservative issues (the sell-out on gun control in '94 was a key example), it was easy to feel as if the good times were over, as if Reagan was already forgotten. I, Mr. Chill himself, was angry; I left the GOP, and for five somewhat misbegotten years joined the Libertarian party.

It was the one - say again, one - time when conservatism came anywhere close to playing to its "angry white guy" stereotype. To some extent, conservatives had only themselves to blame, of course; hard-core ideological conservatism is no more adept at turning out voters than Liberarian purists are; the ideologues had gotten spoiled by eight years of Reagan (who was both a conservative and was capable of winning and governing). It was the nadir of post-Reagan conservatism, so far. And it ended after '96.

So Francl's not completely wrong - just nine years late.

After the Dole debacle, conservatives got serious. They took stock of the situation. And in the runup to 2000, the movement took a hot, steaming purgative and rid itself of a foaming pile of anger, the Buchanan "wing" of the party. The remaining, less ideologically-simon-pure but more pragmatic movement won the election in 2000, 2002, and this past November.

And it's never been about anger to those people, not that I've seen (and I have seen). It's about having a mission, and accomplishing it.

Back to Francl's question:

If it's not one thing, it's another...you're mad at Nick Coleman, the "MSM", labor unions, DemoRATS, civil rights activists, France, socialists (all 12 of them)...

Francl is using a form of logic most often associated with "everyone's first spouse"; there's another word for it. We'll get to it in a bit.

Because as I said, we're not angry. I was more involved in this past election and with conservatism in general than at any time in my life, via the blog, the show, and the campaign. And the anger, compared to ten years ago, was infinitesimal. There was truly motivation; it was more the "we got a big job to do" variety than the snarling anger that Francl seems to conjure. And yes, we bloggers staked out our turf, calling out the likes of Coleman and the media for their disingenuity, sloppiness and bias with alacrity; we called "thuggery" when union members started busting GOPers heads, we noted (correctly) that France has never actually been a US ally and that they were on the take from Hussein...in short, we called it as we saw it, and backed ourselves up with the facts (try it!). (By the way - unlike, I suspect, most of the NewPat staff, I'm a former union member; we'll return to this thought in a bit, too).

Anger, no. The conservatives I met - and I met a helluvva lot - were less "Thelma and Louise" and more "Blues Brothers". We were on a Mission from God, delivered with a wink and a smile. (Note to text-parsing conspiracists: Merry Christmas).

But oy, did we ever run into it. The bottled vitriol of Democratic Underground, the snarling fulminations dressed as cool snarkiness of the big leftybloggers, the thuggy "union" guys patrolling the State Fair, the condescension, the post-election paranoid fantasies of secession and the pseudo-intellectual autoeroticism of the endless surveys that "proved" that blue states were smarter, better, and yet more put-upon than the red states...

...in short, anger. To be polite.

So back to Francl; I suggest he's engaging in that timeless emotional defense of the non-lead dog, "Projection"; taking the trait in your own psyche that most scares or shames you, and pasting it onto a scapegoat.

It's just a theory, I'm going to run with it for a bit.

What's your issue? You just won a tight election that validated your world view, you control all three branches of government, made gay marriage illegal in a dozen states [several of them "blue", by the way - they keep forgetting that], you've got this awesome war against evil, or Islamofascism, or whatever, that's going really well. And hell, most of you are rich (I'm looking at the Powerline guys, here.).

Y'know, liberal bloggers in general, and the NewPats in particular, seem to operate with this huge chip on their shoulders about relative wealth. This keeps coming up whenever they talk about us, and especially about Powerline.

Most of us are rich? Hm. I'm a single parent who works very hard to stay in the middle class. Twelve years ago, my family and I were living on government cheese, I was donating plasma to buy diapers, fought off eviction by the skin of our teeth, and I spent a year learning to spot unmarked police cars because I couldn't afford either license tabs or car insurance, yet still had to drive to work. Then in '03, I spent ten months scrambling for change under bus seats to keep a roof over my kids' heads. I've seen no evidence that any of the New Patriot bloggers have ever lacked wealth to the extent I did. And yet I was a Republican.

Cue the trite retorts!

I think y'all should chill out. Maybe watch some movies, indoctrinate your kids about the evils of collective bargaining, take a vacation. Maybe look into some anti-anxiety medication (your doctor can help you out with that one).

But as the studies - and my own observations - have shown, we're not the ones that need it. We're happier, healthier, smarter, we get more and better bootay, and we won. We, as a group, are chilling just fine.

Projection? You be the judge.

(*) Kid=must!

UPDATE: The commenter is correct: "Projection", not "Transference", was the term I was looking for. I changed it in the post, which is otherwise unchanged.

Submitted Without Comment

A group is digging through evidence of old, discontinued weapons programs:

THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.

Must. Remain. Silent.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable.

One wonders if making them uninhabitable with high explosives might not work better.

The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.

Hint to the "Sunshine Project": Try North Korea.

Democracy Denied: Day 168

Flash is right; as lousy as I feel, I'm following this story; a group of civil rights groups are appealing Judge John Finley's decision last summer that temporarily stayed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, our "concealed carry" law that went about 15 months without a single problem and with at least one violent crime stymied. They're being opposed by a group of groups who favor the empowerment of criminals...

...well, yeah. I said that. That's what they're doing. Repealing the MPPA tells criminals that their safety is more important than that of the average Minnesotan, and that the state doesn't trust the average citizen with the means to defend themselves. You can embroider it all you want, but that's the substance of it.

Anyway, with that in play, it's good to see Joel Rosenberg's blog back in action after a bit of a hiatus; it's the essential Minnesota Right to Bear Arms blog. He's the one-stop source for the best information about the MPPA, as well as the author of the essential book for permit applicants.

And he's in top form, gutting the Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota's latest crock of bilge.

Flash is correct; I'll be following this as it develops.

Nick Coleman's Long Lost Child

What can I say about the City Pages?

Pro: Their graphics people are as cool as ever:

Illustration: City Pages

And when they stick to reporting the facts, they do some great journalism. That's a fact.

Con: When they swerve into opinion, anything goes.

For example, this piece by Mike Mosedale, which purports to tell the story of TCF's withdrawal of advertising from the Strib. The article fumbles so many key pieces of simple fact-checking, it might has well have been written by Coleman himself.

Hmmmm...

(Via Swanblog and Fraters)

This appeared in last week's 'Pages:

Last week, Bill Cooper, the chief executive of TCF Bank, fired off an angry letter in which he vowed that "TCF will never spend another dollar on advertising in the Star Tribune as long as I am chairman." Of course, Cooper, the former head of the state Republican Party, is known as something of a hothead. Last year, he spent about $10,000 to overturn a ticket he was issued for speeding on a snowmobile on Lake Minnetonka. [Objection: Relevance?]

Still, what could have rendered him so indignant that he would find it necessary to divorce one of the state's largest financial institutions from its biggest newspaper? Two words: Nick Coleman. More specifically, a December 29 piece in which the Strib columnist assailed as "extreme" the local bloggers who are behind Time magazine's blog of the year, Power Line.

For the past month or so, the unreconstructed Minnesota liberal Coleman has been engaged in a mutual shin-kicking contest with the neo-cons at Power Line. In various posts, the Power Line bloggers have called Coleman "the Star Tribune's worst columnist," "a partisan hack," and "a prevaricating scoundrel."

Mosedale omits, of course, that Powerline (and the whole Northern Alliance) have backed up those claims over and over and over and over again this past year. A reasonable person might look at the evidence, which blogs present, and the Star Tribune and City Pages won't, and realize there's a reason we keep piling on the man.

But a reasonable person reading the City Pages and who does not read blogs only has Mosedale's account to go by - and it's a misleading account, indeed.

The shin-kicking has been going on for years, with occasional fits and starts; it peaked last summer, with Strib editor Jim Boyd's imfamous article defaming Powerline, followed in the early autumn by Coleman dismissing with contempt the very bloggers he so viciously (and desperately) attacked last month.

Perhaps Mosedale needs to read a blog or two?

When the feud spilled into the vast right-wing echo chamber known as the blogosphere [You gonna take that, New Patriot?], the tone became even nastier. (David Strom, president of the Taxpayers League, set the bar lowest, declaring on his blog that Coleman "is a prick. An asshole. A shitty writer.")

In his end-of-the-year column, Coleman produced some vitriol of his own.

Mosedale makes this sound like a tit-for-tat pissing match. Perhaps Coleman thinks it is - my exchange with him in December related to an abortive attempt to book him on the Northern Alliance Radio Network show makes it sound like he thinks it's personal.

It's not. We, the Northern Alliance as a group, have been attacking Coleman for years, now, for his myopic presentation of Minnesota political issues, his ludicrously hamfisted depiction of Republicans and conservatives, his high-handed arrogance in dealing with anyone who disagrees with him, and his shoddy writing.

Above all, oh lordy, the shoddy writing.

After all that, really, I doubt if any of us cares to get personal.

Mosedale starts to swerve toward the story...:

Noting that one of the Power Line bloggers, a St. Paul lawyer named Scott Johnson, works for TCF, Coleman implied that Johnson's superiors at TCF might be bankrolling Power Line.

...without actually hitting it. Coleman implied that Powerline was on the take from prominent Republicans, and not reporting it. Blog readers probably know this, as well as Powerline's other charges against Coleman; Mosedale's readers don't get to learn this.

Near the end of the column, Coleman mused on the possibility of withdrawing piles of money from TCF.

That pushed Cooper over the edge. "To suggest that customers of TCF Bank should move their money because of a TCF employee's blogging activities (an exercise of free speech) is just wrong," Cooper harrumphed in his letter to the Strib.

So is it right for TCF to financially punish the Strib when Nick Coleman exercises his free speech?

Is it right? It's their money! The Strib has to earn its advertisers!

Free speech is speech free of government censorship; it does not mean that it is free of consequence, as long as that consequence is within the bounds of the law. Sponsorship is not an entitlement, it's a voluntary contract!

Let's try to keep this straight:

• Scott Johnson was writing in his capacity as a private citizen. Not an agent of TCF.
• Nick Coleman was writing in his capacity as a Strib employee - their star columnist.
• Nick Coleman was calling on people to boycott TCF, an entity completely unrelated to Scott Johnson or Powerline.
• Asking people to boycott TCF because of the unrelated speech of Nick Coleman would be like me telling people to drop the Strib because Nick Coleman cut me off in traffic at 2AM; it would really have nothing to do with the Strib; the Strib would be well within their rights to pull their ads from Shot In The Dark, if they had any.

Is it "right" to expect TCF to keep giving money to a company that has (by extension) called for people to pull their money out?Before you DFLers answer that, think; your pensions may well have some TCF stock salted away. Nick Coleman is attacking your future; it's Bill Cooper's job to protect it.

Mike Mosedale seems ignorant of all this.

Yes, in Cooper's view. "What Nick Coleman said about TCF isn't true. We don't have anything to do with that [Power Line]." Cooper asserted that he'd never even heard of the Power Line blog before the honor from Time. "I still haven't read it. So why am I drawn into this thing? Why is TCF brought into it?"

Mosedale doesn't answer this. I'd like to know what he thinks about this. If you're a City Pages staffer, please convey to Mr. Mosedale my invitation to answer the question.

If you believe media gossip, the yanked TCF ads will cost the Strib some $250,000. Cooper said he doesn't know the precise dollar figure. Strib editor Anders Gyllenhaal declined to answer financial questions.

Meanwhile, the Power Line blogger known as Big Trunk--TCF's Scott Johnson--has posted a five-point demand that Coleman retract his "false and defamatory" statements. Then, perhaps in the hope that Cooper might one day start reading Power Line, the Big Trunk affixed his lips to the boss's ass. "Bill Cooper," he wrote in a post excoriating Coleman, "is one of my heroes."

Trunk "...affixed his lips..."?

Mike; are you auditioning for Coleman's job? Do you know something we don't?

Bill Cooper's story is an inspiring one, if you can put your "bosses versus the proletariat" stereotypes aside for a moment...oh, I know that's a big "if" for some of you, isn't it? Clinker is, I've seen Scott Johnson relate the story, and I know something you don't; Johnson's admiration for Cooper is genuine.

Which is more than we can say for most of Mike Mosedale's story.

Wow. If only the City Pages were a blog...

Speaking For So Many Of Us

Varifrank, by his own account, said something to a room full of Euros that a lot of us have had on our mind lately.

If this story is true, then please add my attaboy to the chorus.

(Via Red)

The money excerpt:

Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:

" See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier..."

After which he and many of my Euro collegues laughed out loud.

and then they looked at me. I wasn't laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.

I'm afraid I was "unprofessional", I let it loose -

"Hmmm, let's see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?

Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?

Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?

Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?

Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?

Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?

Well "Franz", us peasants in America call that kind of ship an "Aircraft Carrier". We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that's right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us.

Do you know who those people were? that's right Franz, Europeans.

Theres is a French Aircraft carrier? where is it? Right where it belongs! In France of course! Oh why should the French Navy dirty their uniforms helping people on the other side of the globe. How Simplesse...

The day an American has to move a European out of the way to help in some part of the world it will be a great day in the world, you sniggering little f**knob..."

The room fell silent. My hindi friend then said quietly to the Euros:

"Can you let your hatred of George Bush end for just one minute? There are people dying! And what are your countries doing? Amazon.com has helped more than France has. You all have a role to play in the world, why can't you see that? Thank God for the US Navy, they dont have to come and help, but they are. They helped you once and you should all thank God they did. They didnt have to, and no one but them would have done so. I'm ashamed of you all..."

He left the room, shaking and in tears. The frustration of being on the other side of the globe, unable to do anything to assist and faced with people who could not set aside their asininity long enough to reach out and help was too much for him to bear. I just shook my head and left. The Euros stood speechless.

My sentiments exactly.

And here in the Twin Cities, you don't even need to look for Euros to get motivated for the same tirade.

Grasping For Equivalence

I'm going to take a moment to praise the Minnesota Democrat "Farmer" Labor party.

When you, Mr. or Ms. DFL, grasp for myths to support your party's stances, you pick nice, dumb local ones, like "wouldn't it be great if Minnesota Republicans were as nice as they were back in the sixties and seventies, when we all worked together toward a common good", that sort of fairly harmless twaddle. It's almost refreshing, when you read what your national cousins are doing.

This via Mark Steyn, with my emphasis added:

the Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by Agence France-Presse as the ''Democratic former presidential hopeful,'' led 400 other Democrats in a protest outside Congress. Presidential-wise, they may be former but they're still hopeful. So they were wearing orange, the color of the election protesters in Ukraine, who overturned their own stolen election with an ''orange revolution.''

On the one hand, I'm sickened by the notion of a PR whore like Jackson trying to co-opt the efforts of the likes of the Ukrainian protesters.

On the other...

I have to think that at least 51% of Americans are too smart to do anything but heckle this:

Now, on the one hand it's very brave for the Rhymin' Reverend to lead an orange protest. There is no rhyme for the word ''orange.'' Irving Berlin tried and the best he could manage was ''door-hinge,'' which just about works in certain boroughs of New York but would make an unreliable jingle for the Rhymin' Rev to bellow at Bush from outside the White House:

''We're here, we're orange

We're pushing at your door-hinge . . .''

On the other hand, what's he really saying? That Americans are in the same situation as Ukrainians? That their election was stolen? In Ukraine, the one side poisoned the other side's candidate. His face broke out and his hair turned gray. John Kerry's hair is fabulous and for much of the campaign his glowing moisturized skin looked like an orange revolution all by itself.

The far left has shown itself particularly inept at choosing role models. When they're not giving the GOP Christmas presents like Michael Moore's "Springtime in Baghdad" (the Theresienstadt of 21st-century Potemkin media shams), they're doing things like...well, Jackson's moronic charade, performing olympic-caliber logical gymnastics to create moral equivalancies between a people struggling for their first taste of genuine democracy and a bunch of Ohio machine politicians who can't find a way to jigger the vote more than a percent no matter how hard they try.

Which is a gift to the rest of us; I can't imagine the majority of the American people are that dumb.

New Patriot Supports Defamation and Big Money!

"New Patriot" is a local lefty group blog (although of the group of ten listed writers, usually only three or four ever post anything).

Today, one of the group's more capable writers, Luke Francl, comes out in support of defamation, hatchet-jobbery, and irresponsible journalism.

We know who the left's friends are!

Let's go back in history a bit; last month, Nick Coleman wrote a snide, cowardly poison-pen congratulation to Powerline on being named Time's "Blog of the Year", in which he harped endlessly on Scott "the Big Trunk" Johnson's job as Vice President of Twin Cities Federal Bank. It included a lot of sort of high-impact journalism we've all come to expect from Coleman (smirky remarks about the Powerguys' genitalia, natch), all of which led up to the following:

2) "We keep it very much separate from our day jobs," said Hinderaker, meaning the boys don't blog at work.

But they do. Johnson recently had time at his bank job to post a despicable item sliming Sen. Mark Dayton. If I had the money they think I do, I'd put it all in TCF. Then I'd pull it out.

Never mind that a) the post about Dayton was neither despicable nor untrue, and b) if Scott Johnson is a bank vice president, it's a fair bet that he earns his keep.

The column, naturally, prompted a (tiny) number of the lumpen drones who for whatever reason value Coleman's opinion to withdraw their money and write nastygrams to Twin Cities Federal.

The bank's president, Bill Cooper - a self-made tycoon who makes Horatio Alger look like John Kerry, who is a former chair of the state GOP - got word not only of the small molehill of discontent, but of the breadth and depth of Nick Coleman's defamation (including this little number: "...does Powerline or its mighty righty allies take money from political parties, campaigns or well-heeled benefactors who hope to affect Minnesota's politics from behind the scenes? We don't know, and they don't have to say, a demonstrably false statement). Coleman no doubt figured his little jibe was supposed to harm Johnson's position at the bank. It backfired: Cooper pulled all TCF advertising - over $200,000 worth - from the Strib.

Enter Luke Francl:

Due to a series of circumstances involving U of M licensing deals and general laziness, I have a TCF Bank account. Even after I learned TCF employees are Minnesota's largest donor to the Republican Party, I kept it. I think it's time to switch. [What a fine plan! I think I'll withhold money from organizations that give the most money to the DFL...oops, wait, they're all tax-supported! ]

In an absolutely bizarre move, the CEO of TCF is pulling all advertising from the Star Tribune (reputed to cost the paper $250,000) due to the ongoing Nick Coleman/Power Line feud (Chris posted some thoughts on this last week). Scott "Big Trunk" Johnson is a VP at TCF.

And Bill Cooper is a man of character, and Nick Coleman is a hack.

The most interesting thing to come out of this whole flap is the realization, uncovered via Powerline's pursuit of a retraction of Coleman's false and defamatory statements, that nobody at the Strib actually seems to edit or fact-check Coleman's columns! For all of his bloviation about the mechanisms of responsibility built into the newspaper system, Coleman is actually less accountable than a good blogger. In the world of the mainstream media, money talks, comments walk. You can write letters to the editor to the Strib until you're blue in the face; unlike a good blog, none of them will ever have an iota of effect. With the mainstream media, you need to have money, lots of it, in the system to have your voice heard. Bill Cooper does.

Or did.

So finally, blessedly, a mainstream media outlet is suffering some consequences for the irresponsibility of one of its stable of dim-witted hacks.

So, Luke Francl and your New Pat pals; is that the system you want to perpetuate? A system where only big money gets heard? The current system, the one that props up the likes of Coleman? The one you're colluding with right now, out of some Pavlovian reaction to the presence of acronyms like "GOP" and "VP" in the story?

I thought you guys were supposed to be the anti-big-money iconoclasts?

Dave's Not Here, Man

The doctor calls it "Viral Bronchitis", and says I've gotta ride it out.

So while my kids both have minor colds with coughing and sore throats, I'm horribly short of breath and I have a hacking cough that occasionally gets so violent that I've pulled every muscle in my torso.

Upside: Occasionally I cough so hard that I enter a state of oxygen-deprived euphoria. It's the only "high" I've ever really gotten; I never did weed or coke, in fact. But coughing?

I'm sure there's a health problem associated with that sort of coughing. Be gentle before you bogart my buzz...

New Nation?

Howard Fineman's new piece on the MSNBC site ends:

In this situation, the last thing the AMMP (American Major Media Party - read the piece, it's explained early on) needed was to aim wildly at the president — and not only miss, but be seen as having a political motivation in attacking in the first place. Were Dan Rather and Mary Mapes after the truth or victory when they broadcast their egregiously sloppy story about Bush's National Guard Service? The moment it made air it began to fall apart, and eventually was shredded by factions within the AMMP itself, conservative national outlets and by the new opposition party that is emerging: The Blogger Nation. It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the "media" has any credibility.

How does Fineman reach that conclusion?

Read the whole piece. It's excellent.

Not that there aren't a few clinkers:

Some Republicans learned how to manipulate the AMMP, especially its growing obsession with personalities — and its desire to be regarded as even-handed. The objective wasn't to win the AMMP's approval, but to isolate it by uncoupling its longterm relationship with the Democrats.

There may have been, in the idealistic heart of a lot of reporters twenty and twenty-five years ago, a desire to be even-handed. In fact, most of the reporters I know still feel that way - they just have no idea where to start covering conservative issues, who to talk to or what conservatism really means beyond the stereotypes of their academic, professional and social circles.

Anyway - read the Fineman piece...

Tsunami Aid: The Big Push

Captain Ed's Tsunami Relief effort is wrapping up. He's blown his original goals to pieces, but they can aways use more!

Please help out any way you can.

Blah, Day Three

I'm feeling a little better. Last night I had the deep, hacking cough that had me thinking I had pneumonia for a while - but it's a lot better today.

Daughter - uncharacteristically - is the difficult one. Gotta take her to the doctor today.

Haven't woken the son up yet. Keep your fingers crossed.

Men Vs. Mad Avenue

Miss O'Hara has a post today on a subject I've been noodling about getting back into for quite a while:

I just saw one of the worst spots of 2004, a Chrysler spot. (The fact that I despise DCX does not hurt.)

It shows a rugged, dusty man standing in the desert, his motorcycle broken down along the side of an empty highway. A minivan pulls up, and a sweatpants-wearing, ponytailed woman asks, "Out of gas?" After a nod to the affirmative, the woman opens the back door of her minivan, pushes all of the seats down, puts the motorcycle into the car, straps it down, and they prepare to drive off.

Which is when we get the kicker. In a moment apparently intended to elicit laughs from viewers, our grungy heroine turns to the crumb-cruncher in the backseat and says, with a viciously Hillary-like snidely sneering look and tone, "Daddy just haaaaaad to get a motorcycle - didn't he?"

The subject is Madison Avenue's continual neutering of the American male via advertising - and the Chrysler spot isn't the worst. For that we turn to:

SCENE: Living room. Doughy, sclubby guy in football jersey is sitting watching a football game. Impossibly hot wife approaches.

WIFE: Did you get the car insurance taken care of?

HUSBAND: (Proud, doomed smile): Yep!

WIFE: (Looks at statement) Did you check it against other providers?

HUSBAND: (Crestfallen, shakes head)

WIFE: How about customer service?

TV: "Whoah, he bobbles the ball!"

HUSBAND: (Shakes head, dejected)

WIFE: (With smug, smirky grin, hands phone to husband, walks away. HUSBAND whimpers).

Now, these ads may have a method to their madness; women may make the car and insurance-buying decisions; sucking up to them may be good business.

But what does this tell boys in our society? "This is what you have to look forward to; a life of working away like a good little boy, but having your intelligence and dignity denigrated because of your gender". Combine that with the message boys get in schools - "Boyhood's natural exhuberance and competitiveness and energy are things that, with enough time and medication, we can overcome" - what do you think you'll get?

A situation even worse than the one we have, where boys make up less than half of college students, and where the lag in life expectancy between men and women continues to grow.

The way popular culture, advertising, the media, the law and academia treat men in our society is a subject I've been wanting to find the time to write in vastly more detail about since the election. Much more advertising like this, and I think I'll find a way to make the time.

I shouldn't have to wait long.

The Top

One question I have from my reading of the Thornburgh/Boccardi report so far; why did the firings and demanded resignations stop where they did?

Not that I think Heyward and Moonves can long survive this fracas anyway:

"This should never have happened," said Leslie Moonves, the CBS chairman who announced the dismissals of four executives yesterday in the wake of an independent panel's report. The panel found that the "60 Minutes" program that dealt with President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard was unfair and misleading after being rushed to broadcast without proper vetting.

"This is a rude awakening for CBS News," Mr. Moonves said, "and the CBS News culture has to change."

What exactly that will mean is still uncertain, though several staff members reported the morale in the department to be devastatingly low. "We are all sad and miserable," said one CBS production staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect against criticism from superiors at the network.

Can either of these men lead a serious news operation anymore?

That High Pressure Hose, Again

For a second day, I feel like crap.

Crap, in this case, that's been warmed over to the point that I can probably function at work, but still crap.

The kids and I were all home yesterday; today, I think we'll all be underway, but it won't be pretty...

Interrogation

Heather MacDonald, in City Journal, has a has a fascinating piece on the background of the "torture" debate.

Army doctrine gives interrogators 16 “approaches� to induce prisoners of war to divulge critical information. Sporting names like “Pride and Ego Down� and “Fear Up Harsh,� these approaches aim to exploit a detainee’s self-love, allegiance to or resentment of comrades, or sense of futility. Applied in the right combination, they will work on nearly everyone, the intelligence soldiers had learned in their training.

But the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. “Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,� writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors “not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.�

Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture—a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

Even if a prisoner had not previously studied American detention policies before arriving at Kandahar, he soon figured them out. “It became very clear very early on to the detainees that the Americans were just going to have them sit there,� recalls interrogator Joe Martin (a pseudonym). “They realized: ‘The Americans will give us our Holy Book, they’ll draw lines on the floor showing us where to pray, we’ll get three meals a day with fresh fruit, do Jazzercise with the guards, . . . we can wait them out.’ �

The terrorists we face are unlike previous prisoners of war:

Army doctrine gives interrogators 16 “approaches” to induce prisoners of war to divulge critical information. Sporting names like “Pride and Ego Down” and “Fear Up Harsh,” these approaches aim to exploit a detainee’s self-love, allegiance to or resentment of comrades, or sense of futility. Applied in the right combination, they will work on nearly everyone, the intelligence soldiers had learned in their training.

But the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. “Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,” writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors “not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.”

Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture—a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

Even if a prisoner had not previously studied American detention policies before arriving at Kandahar, he soon figured them out. “It became very clear very early on to the detainees that the Americans were just going to have them sit there,” recalls interrogator Joe Martin (a pseudonym). “They realized: ‘The Americans will give us our Holy Book, they’ll draw lines on the floor showing us where to pray, we’ll get three meals a day with fresh fruit, do Jazzercise with the guards, . . . we can wait them out.’ ”

In other words, the Pentagon's lawyers have instituted rules designed to pass muster in an American civilian court.

Which is, in fact, part of the problem:

Joe Martin—a crack interrogator who discovered that a top al-Qaida leader, whom Pakistan claimed to have in custody, was still at large and directing the Afghani resistance—explains the psychological effect of stress: “Let’s say a detainee comes into the interrogation booth and he’s had resistance training. He knows that I’m completely handcuffed and that I can’t do anything to him. If I throw a temper tantrum, lift him onto his knees, and walk out, you can feel his uncertainty level rise dramatically. He’s been told: ‘They won’t physically touch you,’ and now you have. The point is not to beat him up but to introduce the reality into his mind that he doesn’t know where your limit is.” Grabbing someone by the top of the collar has had a more profound effect on the outcome of questioning than any actual torture could have, Martin maintains. “The guy knows: You just broke your own rules, and that’s scary. He might demand to talk to my supervisor. I’ll respond: ‘There are no supervisors here,’ and give him a maniacal smile.”

Did I mention civilian courts?

Gitmo personnel disagreed sharply over what tools interrogators could legally use. The FBI took the most conservative position. When a bureau agent questioning Mohamedou Ould Slahi—a Mauritanian al-Qaida operative who had recruited two of the 9/11 pilots—was getting nothing of value, an army interrogator suggested, “Why don’t you mention to him that conspiracy is a capital offense?” “That would be a violation of the Convention Against Torture,” shot back the agent—on the theory that any covert threat inflicts “severe mental pain.” Never mind that district attorneys and police detectives routinely invoke the possibility of harsh criminal penalties to get criminals to confess. Federal prosecutors in New York have even been known to remind suspects that they are more likely to keep their teeth and not end up as sex slaves by pleading to a federal offense, thus avoiding New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Using such a method against an al-Qaida jihadist, by contrast, would be branded a serious humanitarian breach.

The whole piece is fascinating, especially in light of the massive disinformation accompanying the Gonzalez confirmation.

Lipstick On A Pig

The Strib gets behind the Palestinian election:

Hope walks on tiptoes in the Middle East, but it took a giant step on Sunday when Palestinians went to the polls and elected a new president, Mahmoud Abbas. Polling was fair and orderly, voters turned out in large numbers, the winner is a respected leader with international stature, and there was essentially no disruption by militant Islamist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Which would make sense, since he is in effect their representative, but I digress.

Naturally, the Strib would seem to be whitewashing the situation:

Palestinian voters turned out at the polls in unexpectedly low numbers in many parts of the West Bank and encountered confusion at East Jerusalem polling stations in today’s elections to name the first successor to long-time leader Yasser Arafat, according to international monitors, Palestinian officials and visits by The Washington Post.

“It’s as if two different elections are going on,” said Leslie Campbell, Middle East director of the U.S.-government-funded National Democratic Institute, one of dozens of international election monitoring groups. “Jerusalem has been a big problem. Everywhere else, preliminary reports are that things are going very well.”

Even though Palestinians encountered few problems at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, according to monitors and election officials, turnout in the presidential election ranged from extremely light to moderate in towns and villages.

At the Islamic Secondary School for Boys in this northern West Bank city of Nablus, 190 of 1,395 registered voters — about 14 percent of those eligible— had cast their ballots by midafternoon.

Never mind. The Strib is following the script; the Palestinian elections are democracy in action, while this month's Iraqi elections (just watch their coverage, which will faithfully parrot orthodox anti-Bush spin) will be a sham.

Network Dead Pool

About five years ago, someone - no, I don't remember who - predicted that one of the big three networks would not survive in the news business past the next decade.

This, today, from Drudge:

CBS source to Tuesday NY TIMES: 'We have no juice. We're a dying business, and this didn't help us. Some people feel like CBS News could be out of business in five years'

On the one hand - it's Drudge.

On the other hand, it seems like some of the gas is leaking out of the major networ balloon. More and more people don't regard it as news, or use it as a source.

More later.

Swing, Miss

I haven't yet read the entire Thornburgh/Boccardi report, although I will.

Having skimmed, and read many other reports (most notably Hugh and Michelle Malkin's day-long series, the big question seems to be why did the report seem to go to such lengths to avoid calling "Bias".

Hewitt put it well:

The Panel might have at least released all of Napes' e-mails instead of selectively quoting from them. It might have at least provided explicit details on Mapes' "mystery source" from whom "[o]n August 23, and seemingly out of the blue, Mapes learned that a never-before-seen document might be in the possession of Lieutenant Colonel Burkett and that it might shed new light on the President's Guard service." (p. 44.) (Could that source have really been Linda Starr?)

The Panel might have given us some idea of the background of free-lance journalist Michael Smith, whose back-and-forth with Mapes on August 31 and September 1 provides the best glimpse of motive the Panel ever references: "What if there was a person who might have some information that could possibly change the momentum of an election but we need to get an ASAP book deal to help us get the information? Smith e-mailed Mapes on the 31rst. "Mapes responded in an e-mail to Smith's proposal, stating 'that looks good, hypothetically speaking of course,'" the report tells us on page 86, but it does not tell us what else Mapes said in that e-mail. Smith writes back to Mapes: "Just in case Burkett asks -- let me make sure I have this right. This is our plan: If he shows us some leg, we are going to talk to him about his options in the following areas: 1) Security, 2)Publishing, 2A) (related topics of 'taking care of him' with money) and 3)forcing Kerry campaign 62 to acknowledge his wisdom and strategic abilities...If his leg is sexy and useful then we are going to do whatever it takes to help him in those areas."

The Report then notes: "The Panel has discovered no written response by Mapes to this e-mail." (p.86)

How convenient. Instead of the missing 18 minutes, we have the missing e-mail(s).

It's almost like they pushed it to the brink of getting to the "b" word, and then backed off at the last second.

Blah

I have one of those colds or fevers where it feels like someone's running a high-pressure hose into my sinuses.

More later. Maybe.

Spring Cleaning: Searching For Something

Periodically it's fun to see what search engine phrases bring people to "Shot In The Dark".

And sometimes it's frightening.

This is a piece from early 2004 that I found while cleaning out my old drafts. I'm finishing and running a few of these. Call it lazy, call it recycling, call it Gladys, but it seemed like a thought I wanted to finish.

"unfit for command" tops the list: I'm apparently a source just via association with Ed and Powerline.

On the other hand, "Katherine Lanpher" drew a couple hundred searches, "naked guys" 61, and of all things "alix kendall" - the Channel 9 morning show anchor - 32 more, apparently based on me saying she was way hot back in 2002. (Not that I wasn't right - but 32 hits?)

Bree Schuette, the woman in Doug Grow's sob story from earlier in the summer, drew 26 hits. Former FrankenNet star, and unaccountably righteous babe Sue Ellicott brought 21 here.

But "ground rule triple"? "shafting the poles?"

I'm flattered to be among those searched for "conservative rockers", but "cathy wurzer"?

Someone was having a bad day: "here at the spawn of satan convention in boston trackback". No, actually two people were having a bad day.

As to "maltese whores", "melissa maerz", "criminals are normal"and "18 year old guys naked" - I leave you to your own devices.

Comparative Society

Diplomad notes the differences in various societies toward relief aid:

In Western countries, we see not only governments pledging sizable sums of money, but private individuals, as well. I can't count, for example, the number of letters, emails, and calls we have received from private Americans wanting to help in anyway they can to save lives. All across America, Australia, and Europe private citizens have raised enormous sums for tsunami relief. Local branches of American companies have raised large amounts of money and donated expensive machinery and other supplies to the effort. At the Embassy, we have seen American staff voluntarily cancel leave plans (often at considerable financial cost); cut short vacations; and volunteer for duties such as manning phones in our 24 hr. opcenter; helping load and unload trucks and C-130s; or spending days working and sleeping under exceptionally grim conditions in the areas most affected. And, of course, Australian and American military personnel, at great monetary cost and personal risk, have led the way in the massive relief effort underway.

I see, however, no outpouring of support in most of the world's countries. The oil-rich Arabs? Where are they? But most frustrating and even angering is the lack of concern exhibited by average and elite members of the societies most directly affected. This was driven home in the course of an interminable meeting a few days ago discussing some silly resolution or another calling on the UN to appoint a "Special Representative for Tsunami Relief." A relatively senior Sri Lankan official leaned over and said to me, "Why do we want to bother with this? We all know you Americans will do everything." A nice compliment, I suppose, but on reflection a sad commentary not only about the rest of the world but presumably about Sri Lanka, itself. One would expect the affected countries to take the lead in relief efforts. None of the most seriously affected countries (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives) is a dirt poor country; all have well-established governments and national identities.

In Jakarta, aside from flags at half-staff, we have seen no signs of mourning for the victims: while employees and dependents of the American embassy spent their holiday loading trucks and putting together medicine kits, the city's inhabitants went ahead with New Year's parties; nightclubs and shopping centers are full; and regular television programming continues. At least 120,000 of their fellow countrymen are dead, and Indonesians hardly talk about it, much less engage in massive charitable efforts. The exceptionally wealthy businessmen of the capital -- and the country boasts several billionaires -- haven't made large donations to the cause of Sumatran relief; a few scattered NGOs have done a bit, but there are no well-organized drives to raise funds and supplies. We have seen nothing akin to what happened in the USA following the 9/11 atrocity, or the hurricanes in Florida of this past year.

The Sri Lankan's words echo in my mind every day, ""Why do we want to bother with this? We all know you Americans will do everything."

But what about the UN?

Worth a read.

The Disembodied Voice from the Edge of Sanity

I remember when I was growing up in North Dakota, in my mid-teens, starting out in the radio business. I had never really heard of "talk radio", per se - it was a very different thing in 1980. We didn't hear much "mainstream" talk radio, other than Larry King on some ghosty AM station in the distance at night.

Beyond that, the only "talk radio" we'd hear was the occasional talk show on the occasional small, onely little station in the sticks - and it's odd, now that I mention it, that there was a time when AM radio often sounded that way; late at night when the signals would ghost and skip and intermingle, you'd envision some little shack at the end of some lonely, frozen prairie road, manned (back in the days when radio stations were manned, by law) by some lonely old husk at the end of a miserable, unfulfilling career (or some punk, like me, at the beginning of one), playing programs on vinyl records.

And on some of those little, lonely stations, late at night, you'd hear them; preachers with shrill, abrasive southern accents, preaching jeremiads against the "Jee-Yews" and the "Homo-SECKshulls" and the "Commanists", spotting conspiracy around every corner, painting a picture of a nasty, ugly, hateful world that the broadcaster and his audience shouldn't feel too bad about leaving someday.

I'd almost forgotten about that brand of radio - until Saturday night. I flipped past Air America.

The host, Mike Malloy, was...that voice.

The rage and hatred at the administration and at conservatives was so close to the surface, at time his voice dissolved into a strangled grunt in mid-sentence. Twice.

Which makes me wonder- is there a liberal talk host in the country that doesn't get time on Air America? If that's how far down they have to dig...

Whew

It looks like Hosting Matter is up for now.

Rumor has it Hosting Matters - my web host, as well as the host for Instapundit, Powerline, Captain Ed, Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin and a slew of other sites - has been the target of a massive Denial of Service hack.

Someone - I'm told it was a commenter on Little Green Footballs - noted that having all those big bloggers on one host is like having all the P-40s lined up on the runway at Hickam Field on December 7th.

We'll see if it stays up long enough to get some stuff posted.

The Death of Feminism

Boxer lied, Boxer cried.

NARN Tomorrow

Make sure you tune in for the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow, Noon-3 Central time on AM1280 The Patriot in the Twin Cities, or via the web.

Vote Early And Often

First things first; I'm bummed that my entries in the Generalissimo's "Where in the Blog is Hugh's Book" photoshop contest didn't make the top ten finalists. But not very; I stink at Photoshop. Partly because I don't own Photoshop, or even Paintshop Pro (my favorite graphics program, in that I can actually understand how to use it) at the moment, and had to do both entries in MS Paint. Partly because I'm just not a graphics guy. Still, I liked both of my entries:

#99 (for out of towners, that's the statue of Mary Tyler Moore, tossing her cap on the spot in front of the old Daytons store where she shot the scene from the billboard of her show).

and #219 - (Hate to mess with JB Doubtless' favorite band, but comedy must go on).

See why I'm not a graphics guy?

Anyway, check out all 325 entries on this page (which takes a while to load, and is not recommended for dialup; Duane's going to need to take a second job to pay his bandwidth this month).

However, make sure you get in and vote for your favorite in the top ten. Of particular interest, local graphics geniuses Freedom Dogs, with the #10 entry.

Tsunami Aid

Captain's Quarters and Cap'n Ed have been working on raising money for tsunami relief.

Please visit Ed's link and give. The fundraising is going on through the 12th, and it's going well - but it can always be better!

Kick Me On The Bus

If dad did one thing right (he did many things right, but work with me here), he always lived close by school. It was a natural thing, of course; he was a high school teacher, and we lived in a small town, so there was little reason not to. We lived five blocks from my elementary school, and four from the junior and senior high (which were in the same building). Better still? My grandmother lived a block from the high school - so Dad and I could frequently run over to Grandma's for lunch.

So in all my years of elementary, junior and senior high, I never once had to ride the bus to school. I walked. Every day, rain, shine or blizzard.

And that whole "not taking the bus" thing is something that, in seeing my own kids' experiences, I've become more and more thankful for.

This story on Sheila's blog reminded me of a similar incident with my own kids.

My son was in second grade; my daughter, fourth. They went to the same elementary school at the time; my ex-wife and I had put them there because we liked the program, which was one of the best-rated in the whole Saint Paul system. Downside: It was a long bus ride, from the Midway all the way to the North End, probably eight miles via the freeway. They were just about the first kids picked up and the last dropped off, so it was a long haul on the bus.

In the late fall, my son started acting afraid to get on the bus. "What's the matter?", I asked.

"Genesis [name changed to protect the guilty] has been picking fights". I turned to my daughter. "What's going on?" She nodded. "She's getting in Sam's face, trying to get him to fight. She's being a little b*tch".

After I scolded her for her language, and complimented them both for their restraint, I told them "Make sure you don't hit her, and tell me if there are any problems".

That night, my son came home nearly in tears. Genesis had been tormenting him, to and from school, mercilessly. The driver had done nothing when my daughter tried to get his attention.

The next morning, I went to the school and talked with the Assistant Principal, the administrator in charge of bus discipline, and explained what had been happening.

"Did Sam say who was doing this?"

I mentioned Genesis.

"Ah, said the Assistant Principal with a knowing look on her face. "She's a little African-American girl. They have a different standard for female aggression. We need to be sensitive to that."

I stood, dumbfounded. I response formed in my head; I pondered whether or not to use it. Do I want to regret NOT saying this the rest of my life?", I asked myself. No. I don't.

"Maam, my kids are descended from Vikings. They're used to standing up in their longboats, and looting and pillaging everything in their path. Shall we be sensitive to that cultural standard, as well?"

The Assistant Principal looked shocked for a moment. She looked at me, puzzled, as if the thought had never occurred to her.

Then she nodded. "I see your point. I'll talk with Genesis".

That was the last problem we had.

Vultures

The ever-more-essential Diplomad skewers the UN's roving disaster bureaucracy.

Seeing these UNocrats perched at the table, whispering to each other, back-slapping, shaking hands, they seemed like a periodic reunion of old cynical Mafia chieftains or mercenaries who run into each other in different hot spots, as they move from one slaughter to another, "How are you? Haven't seen you since Bosnia . . .." As the hours wore on, however, and I nervously doodled in my note pad, shifted in my chair, looked at my watch, and thought about all the real work I had to do that evening, I decided that, no, labeling them mafiosos or mercenaries was much too kind. They seemed more to be the progeny resulting from a mating between a mad oracle and a giant carrion-eater. They were akin to some sort of ancient mythical Greco-Roman-Aztec-Wes Craven-Egyptian-bird-god that demands constant sacrifice and feeding, and speaks in riddles which only it can solve. Yes, I decided, the UNocrats are great hideous vultures, roused from their caves in the European Alps and in the cement canyons and peaks of Manhattan by the stench of death in the Turd World. They leisurely take flight toward the smell of death; circle, and then swoop down, screeching UNintelligble nonsense. They arrive and immediately force others, e.g., the American tax payer, to build them new exclusive nests in the midst of poverty, and make themselves fat on the flesh of the dead. My friends, allow The Diplomad to present to you The High Priest Vulture Elite (HPVE).

It goes on.

Spring Cleaning: All Your Eggs In One Basket

This is a piece from early 2004 that I found while cleaning out my old drafts. I'm finishing and running a few of these. Call it lazy, call it recycling, call it Gladys, but it seemed like a thought I wanted to finish.

I've been chewing on this one for a while. Since last February, I think.

Last spring, I caught about half an hour of Dennis Prager. I don't get to listen to Prager much, smack dab in the middle of my work day as he is. He's become something of an esoteric character on talk radio - an old-school intellectual in a field of button-pushers. Which is fine - when he delves in the same depth into a topic that fascinates me, it's great.

But the other day, he started me thinking. Usually, that process ends with me agreeing with him. This time, not so much.

He was talking about the left's howling with glee over an article that showed that abstinence-only sex education had "failed".

Prager noted - correctly - that it was a "failure" only if you looked at the numbers exactly one way; expressed in terms of teenage pregnancy rates (which don't differ much) and overall sexual activity. Prager noted that kids who took abstinence-only sex ed did, in fact, tend to wait longer before becoming sexually active - on the average, as I recall, 18 months. This, Prager noted - again, correctly - is a good thing; that 18 months is a whole extra world in terms of maturity. Not enough, but every bit helps. Prager also noted that kids whose school-based sex ed focused on abstinence had statistically fewer sex partners before marriage - which is good for physical as well as emotional health.

So far, so good.

Then, Prager noted that abstinence-only graduates tend to marry, on average, much earlier than graduates of other programs. This, Prager said, is a good thing.

I had to think about that one.

Did Prager mean that early marriage, in and of itself, is a good goal? I'd have to disagree.

Prager's implication: Marriage, and damn the torpedoes!

It seems shortsighted to me.

There've been studies of kids and their attitudes toward marriage and sexuality. Now, children and teenagers who grow up with some level of religious faith are more likely to put off the onset of sexual activity - but it doesn't slow the onset of adolescent horniness one iota. I didn't need a study to tell me that - I remember it all too well.

And these kids are the ones that will abstain until marriage - but, the studies say, will marry much earlier than other people; making sex "legal" is a large part of the motivation for those early marriages.

But early marriage has its problems, too.

Sex makes babies. Babies make families. And families freeze your life exactly where it was when the child was born; for the most part, once you have kids, your path is pretty well set for the foreseeable future. You may have dreamed of being a film director - but once you have that family to pay for, if you're working as a restaurant manager, the chances are pretty good you'll be in the restaurant business 18 years later. Which is not to knock the hospitality business, not at all. But if your heart and soul lie somewhere other than where you're working when you got married at 18 (as did quite a few of my high school classmates, and as do a lot of small town kids) or 20 or 22, you stand a very good chance of being a very unhappy, unfulfilled-feeling 30-year-old.

I know the feeling, of course; I didn't get married young, thank God (I was 27), but it was at a lousy time of my life, the middle of a debilitating four-year long depression. Kids didn't just follow fast (my daughter, now 13, was a honeymoon baby), but I married a prefab family; my stepson was 9 when I married his mother.

Once I got along with the matter of working through the depression, there was the little matter of earning a living. I'd always hated the high tech industry - but with kids to feed (my son was born 18 months later), it was a better option than what I was doing. And 12 years later, I'm still in high tech; enjoying it, but it's not what I would have wished for.

That being said, I was older, had a degree, and had lived a fair chunk of life before my life entered its' child-rearing freeze-frame. I've often wondered; what becomes of the kids who get married at 18, partly because they just don't want to wait anymore?

Well, I've seen it happen; friends from high school, from small towns around my hometown, and from college who got married right away, most of them either virgins when they walked up the aisle or (much more common, given the number of shotgun weddings) at least having been when they met their spouses. They had little education, little time to really find where they belonged in the world, and little idea of themselves as people.

And I've met a number of them in the years since. Happy as they were to be with the one they loved, to be starting families, and to be finally getting some!!!!! at 18 or 20 or 22, many were equally...not miserable, mostly, but unhappy, pondering the roads not taken, without the education and life experience to really know how to fill in that big, yawning blank. Some seemed wistful; some seemed to drink a lot; some had a divorce or two under their belts by age 28 or 31 or 37; a joyous minority seemed as happy as the day they walked down the aisle.

Am I advocating sex before marriage? Certainly not; I doubt you find many fathers of teenagers who do. But early marriage as a goal in and of itself is, it seems, as big a mistake for almost everyone as too-early sex; it leads to a lot of the same problems for everyone involved, except of course the children that result.

I need to have a word with this Prager fellow.

Spring Cleaning

I do a pretty fair amount of writing. Most of what I write appears here on the blog.

I also start a lot of posts that either:

• become outdated before I finish them
• lose my interest
• I just forget about in the crush of events

I looked through my "drafts" list last night; over 200 posts since I switched the site to Movable Type last April. To keep the numbers in some perspective, I've actually posted about 1,300 articles since then. You'd think my squib rate would be higher, wouldn't you?

Anyway, some of the posts were very time-sensitive, especially those dealing with the campaign. I probably deleted 75-85 of them.

Some were too cryptic to do anything with; online notes like "Cockroach Thugs" and a link to an article that doesnt' exist anymore. I whacked probably 50 of them.

Some were just krep. I diced probably 30-40 of those.

And after all that, there were a few that remained - pieces that still meant something, were not completely outdated, and re-sparked a germ of one idea or another in my mind. I'm going to be recycling some of those in the next few weeks, under the heading "Spring Cleaning".

I'll keep running them until I get bored or distracted. Could be six weeks, could be later today. We'll see.

Daddy Needs New Shoes

The Democrats are pondering leaving Terry McAuliffe in charge at the DNC.

None of the early candidates for chairman has gained momentum. Some potential candidates - Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Democratic activist Harold Ickes and former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman - have dropped out.

Democratic Party spokesman Jano Cabrera said, "The chairman appreciates being asked to stay, but for now he remains focused on handing over a modernized, mobilized and debt-free Democratic Party."

Please, Democrats. Please, please please let TerryMac re-up.

Yates Conviction Overturned

Andrea Yates, convicted of capital murder in the drowning deaths of her five children, has had her convictions overturned.

Apparently, a forensic psychiatrist - the pseudocelebrity shrink Park Dietz - involved in the prosecution allegedly provided false testimony.

More on this later.

Fixed

Saint from the Fraters ran a correction for a mistake they ran. According to a Coleman email to Jim Geraghty:

My "stepmother", Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star when I worked at the Minneapolis Tribune. I never worked for the Minneapolis Star. The papers were completely separate until their merger in 1982.

Error found, error corrected:

The statement appearing on Fraters Libertas about Coleman's employment at the "Minneapolis Star" was a mistake - therefore, arguably, so was a further elaboration about his career being in "lockstep coordination with that of his stepmother." It's incorrect and we apologize for the error. A correction will appear in that archived post.

Boom. There it is.

It took a matter of few minutes for the Fraters to correct their error.

Compare that with the chinese fire drill that Powerline is going through to get the Strib to correct Coleman's string of defamatory "errors" last week.

When will the reading public learn from the Strib that Coleman "erred" in saying Powerline was on the Claremont payroll or got money for its opinion? That he "erred" in reporting that Alabama had rejected a constitutional amendment to remove segregationist language as a slur on Republicans, when in fact it was protest against a back-door tax hike?

When will the Strib apologize for foisting a columnist on the world whose idea of media criticism is giggly sex-organ jokes?

The Fraters show how the blogosphere, with its instant revision and immediate accountability, is supposed to work. The Strib, in the Coleman saga, shows everything that is wrong with the mainstream media; accountable to nobody, answerable to standards that have meaning in the yeshiva-like academic setting of the elite editorial board but, oddly, have little to do with getting the truth to the public.

Dilbert, Writ Deadly

Why does the UN's imprimatur lend any legitimacy to anything, much less disaster relief?

On the ground, they appear to be ripped straight from Scott Adams' imagination:

A close reading of the UK's Department for International Development's (DFID) brilliantly detailed daily reports of activity in the affected regions also reveals that UN officials are working hard at planning to work -- and estimating the need for work -- rather than actually delivering aid on the ground.

All of which is a bit chilling, since the UN is positioning itself as the primary carrier of aid relief to the region and has been critical of the "core group" response led the the US and Australia.

In the meantime - like in any project in the business world - it's the "core group" that's actually getting the work done:

The picture that is emerging from the work on the ground -- where even NGOs such as Oxfam say they are moving around the countries on military helicopters, rather than through self-sourced transport -- is increasingly one in which foreign aid budgets might most effectively be diverted to support military operations, dressed in their own uniforms, rather than "going blue" and falling into line behind UN "leadership."

By the way, read the daily reports from the UK's Department for International Development, referenced above. Fascinating, frequently and pointedly detailed stuff.

Details? Well, the UN keeps hitting up the "core group" for things they need to carry out relief operations. Things like...just about everything?

7. Following request from Jan Egeland, UN Under Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs, the UK has agreed to provide C17 aircraft to improve
capacity and effectiveness of UN operations in the region.
8. DFID is on standby to respond to need from imminent MSF and UNICEF
assessments in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
9. DFID arrangements continue for the mobilisation of 3 KA32 helicopters for rapid deployment to be placed at the disposal of UN operations in Banda Aceh.
Examining possibility of further medium lift helicopter assets.
10. The RAF have made available an aircraft as requested by the UN for tasks in Sri Lanka and/or the Maldives. A cargo has been provisionally identified for a first flight, from Delhi to Colombo. The RAF will decide the aircraft type once the
load is confirmed. UN in Colombo will identify further tasks.

Ad this detail (page 7) was interesting (emphasis added):

25. The UN Security Phase in Banda Aceh is Phase Three. The UN Security Phase
for the rest of Aceh is Phase Four. The UN Minimum Operating Security
Standards (MOSS) for those phases must, by UN rules, be implemented. In
particular these place conditions on staff movement and telecommunications
requirements. COMMENT: The MOSS requirements are considerable and will
inevitably impose further delays as the UN struggles to become fully operational.

The UK DFID's reports are fascinating reading, by the way.

Song I Sing To My Kids

I am the boss of you now,
I am the boss of you now,
I am the boss of you now,
and I AM that big...

Wired in Saint Paul

The Saint Paul City Council is pondering setting up some sort of city-wide high-speed internet access.

This being Saint Paul, naturally, they're talking big-government solutions:

"We don't know what the end result will be, but we want to do everything possible to make the Internet affordable and available," said [Council member Dave] Thune, who introduced the resolution. "Everything is on the table, from city ownership of a service to a nonprofit owning it."

The city? Or a non-profit beholden to the same people who control the city? "You can have any color you like, as long as it's black...OR gray!"

Laura Billings has a response to the idea in today's PiPress.

...Is it really so bad living in the dark?

No, no, I'm not a Luddite. I ordered half of my Christmas presents on eBay. I'm absolutely addicted to iTunes. And I can certainly see why civic leaders worry about the so-called "digital divide" when half of all families with incomes above $75,000 have broadband, and half of families with incomes below $30,000 don't have so much as a 56k modem.

Even so, when I hear citywide-wireless proponents across the country talking about technology serving as a means for greater civic engagement, I have to wonder if the sort of community involvement spawned by the Internet is actually what they're after.

Consider, for instance, the e-mail I got from a reader who, in a surge of such civic engagement and outrage about what he considered to be a "slam" on the Peppermint Patty statue in Rice Park, wrote to me to tell me the tremendous error of my ways.

She goes on to tell the sort of story familiar to anyone who has any sort of public profile; a nutbar sends a bunch of increasingly abusive emails...

Perhaps the City Council members most in favor of widespread wireless do not get the sort of e-mail we do at the newspaper. But when everyone has access, believe me, they will. They might want to be more careful what they wish for.

Well, that's been a big theme this past year, hasn't it - the power of people on the internet to afflict the comfortable (in terms of status and media and political privilege, in this case) and comfort the afflicted? Ms. Billings' husband, the ever-less-defensible Nick Coleman, is the new Buggywhip, the imperial columnist, accountable to nobody - who's suddenly accountable to everyone.

Think that wouldn't do the Saint Paul City Council [motto: We're not quite as nuts as Minneapolis] a lot of good?

Billings shares her husband's faith in the commoner, by the way:

I love the notion that wider wireless access might inspire St. Paulites to solve their family Scrabble squabbles by going online to the Oxford English Dictionary. But I've visited the public library enough to know what people tend to use easy Internet access for - looking at porn. It would certainly be more convenient to look at porn at an Internet hot spot near a public school, rec center or government building, but I'm not sure that's really progress.

Those peasants and their urges.

But the real question is this; should the government get into the ISP business?

Leave aside the Big Brother aspects of the question (although in Saint Paul, one should never leave them aside for long; Nick Coleman's brother Chris is a front-runner for the Mayor's office next election); do you want your internet services run by the same people (and means) that run the Violations Bureau? Or run the same way MPR or Ramsey Action Program are run? Or one of those city-granted franchise monopolies that make cable service such a great deal?

People compare the internet to roads, by way of saying "Of COURSE the government has a role in building public goods". But leave aside the debate over whether roads and transit might be better run by private ventures; the internet, and private internet services, doesn't require the same mobilization of capital that it takes to plant billions of tons of concrete across the landscape. It's just wires, and private companies do wires just fine, and don't cost the taxpayers anything.

City internet is a dumb idea.

UPDATE: Flash at Centrisity agrees:

When I first read about the idea, I asked myself; "Self, do we have an Internet access problem in St. Paul that needs to be resolved through public intervention. Is the market not supporting the demand?"

The answer to both questions was NO! Which leads me to the next question. Did the St. Paul City Council bother asking themselves those two questions?

That's called "broad agreement".

By the way - please visit his blog in droves. After his crack yesterday, I think a "mitchalanche" would be fun. In all seriousness, it's one of the most improved blogs of the past year, and I mean that in a good way.

Next...

...they'll try to tell you that the '84 election was stolen.

I mean, how much farther down can they go?

Why I Love Ann Coulter, Part II

Most of us are raised to be painstakingly civil. Worse, most of us scandinavian midwesterners are trained from birth to be thoroughly conflict-averse. And when you're a conservative in Minnesota, you're probably working on recovering from four decades of political Stockholm Syndrome, as you slowly train yourself to realize that Arne Carlson, "R" aside, was closer to Jimmy Carter than Ronald Reagan.

It's hard to be an assertive conservative, in short.

And yet, at the back of your mind as you confront some of the idiocy of mainstream liberalism, there's a voice in the back of your head - my college major advisor called it "the imp of the perverse" - that tells you "Grab that moron by the scruff of the neck and kick his ass!". Oh, yes, you're a well-trained midwestern conservative, and you stifle that voice. You bottle up the pure ridicule you feel for your dimbulb opponent. But you so desperately want to let it fly, just once.

And that's why we need Ann Coulter. She's the catharsis our inner conservative needs, the one to go ahead just do it, to just to ahead and say the sort of things that so many on the left feel no compunctions about saying.

Only - this is important - she's usually right:

"I'm thinking about putting up a reward on my Web page for any liberal who will mention either Afghanistan or the Kurds," she said. "I mean, 85 percent of Iraq is free, it's beautiful - we have about 300 troops patrolling the entire Kurdish area. These poor beleaguered Kurds are free, are happy, are dancing in the streets, and liberals simply won't mention them. I certainly thought Afghanistan was going to be a tougher nut to crack than Iraq- the Russians couldn't take Afghanistan! They've basically been at war for a hundred years—even when nobody’s there, they're at war with one another. We took Afghanistan in a month, and now they've had elections and women vote, and they didn’t vote for some crazy lunatic mullahs. So that's a pretty good year."

Oodles of observations follow.

Crossfired

CNN gasses Tucker Carlson, pseudoconservative commentator from "Crossfire", which rumor has it is the first step toward cancelling the show.

Good riddance to both.

I have to confess; I have not been able to stomach Crossfire in years. Its first few seasons were interesting - something different - but for at least the last ten years, it's been an abominable waste of time. Since Paul Begala and James Carville joined the cast, it's been worse - it's been a symptom of all that's wrong with American mainstream media political coverage, a ridiculous, pointelessly argumentative, artificial brouhaha. I dont' care why they're cancelling Crossfire, but I'm glad that they are.

And could they have found a less aggressive conservative than Tucker Carlson? Of all the people to put up against those morons Begala and Carvile, why that hamster?

Let's just say, a la Scrappleface, that I've done my mourning in advance.

Kennt Nichts

Of my eight great-grandparents, I think only two were born in the US (and, if memory serves, one in Canada). While all my grandparents were born in the US, I think two of them may have grown up speaking other languages.

Speaking of other languages, I speak German pretty fluently, took Latin and Spanish in high school and can still read both, can get around in Dutch well enough to order beer and read the newspaper, and am going to learn Russian one of these days.

There. The bona fides are out of the way. Now, on to the thesis.

Als Journalist, Nick Coleman ist ein fabelhafte Metzger."

There's a bill in the House that'd require public assistance recipients learn English:

As documented in a recent study by the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, the mood of many Minnesotans, especially in "exurbia," has turned increasingly hostile toward immigrants and refugees. Many people who have never met an immigrant other than at a convenience store service counter want them to stop with all the foreign gibberish and learn to talk the local lingo. Pronto. ("Pronto" is Italian, but let's skip over that).

Which brings me to a Know-Nothing proposal from a 28-year-old state representative named Brad Finstad. I don't usually pick on kids who are still wet behind the ears, but this one deserves a spanking [Note to Fraters: Literary pennies from heaven]. Young Bradley, a second-term Republican from New Ulm, wants to require new arrivals to learn English in a year or lose their state benefits. I'd like to see Bradley learn a new language in a year...

Ironically, he follows that by saying "Gott im Himmel", which is, not to pick nits, incorrect in German. So perhaps we should wait for Rep. "Young Bradley" Finstad and Coleman to learn another language. But I digress.

The whole piece leads up to this little rant at the end:

One hundred years ago, during the first year of our beautiful State Capitol, Col. Colvill [Commander of the legendary First Minnesota Regiment, singularly and as a group among the great heroes of the Civil War] was supposed to lead a procession carrying the First Minnesota's battle flags from the old Capitol building to the new one for installation in the rotunda. But the old warhorse, who was badly wounded at Gettysburg, died in his sleep the night before. Instead of bearing his bullet-torn battle flags, he was carried into the Capitol himself and laid in state -- the first Minnesotan given that honor -- while former comrades filed past his casket.

I want you to think about that next time you bump into the colonel's statue, Bradley. Did all of the veterans who mourned Colvill's passing 100 year ago speak English?

At that time in history, it's very likely they didn't.

But - and this is a key distinction, for all of you who take Nick Coleman seriously - they served their country, demonstrating their attachment to and love for the United States with their very lives.

There is a legitimate concern that we are repeating the same mistakes the Europeans have made; handing over boundless public largesse to immigrants many of whom are not, in turn, demonstrating any loyalty to the nation that's feeding and housing them, and eventually letting them at a standard of living they could never achieve in their native countries. The Germans of New Ulm (and, for that matter, my hometown) showed their allegiance to this nation, and the society that adopted them, by joining the Army (as did, indeed, my ex-father-in-law, who spoke German until age eight and served with distinction in the Navy during WWII); is it too much to ask that the new immigrants merely make a serious effort to learn to get by in English?

Learn the language; be loyal to the nation. It doesn't seem that much to ask, does it?

Join the military, learn the language; immigrants routinely do one, the other or both to assimilate to this nation. Pity Nick Coleman can't seem to manage either.

UPDATE: Ryan hauls off on Coleman, too, and he's a lot funnier than I am.

Watch Those Heels

An acquaintance - one who is curiously antipathic toward bloggers - posted a message to an email forum this morning, titled "Bloggergate!", and gleefully linking to this Corey Pein piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, purporting to debunk the role of bloggers in contributing to the fall of Dan Rather and the shredding of the TANG Documents story.

I said I'd take some time to shred the Pein piece myself; predictably, Powerline beat me to it; their piece beats the Pein article like a bongo drum. Read both.

What do I have to add?

Where to start?

The CJR piece, in trying to impugn the alternative media's conclusions about Bill Burkett (the former Texas Army Guardsman and Democrat activist with a grudge against Bush and the Guard), notes:

many suppositions about Burkett are based on standards that were not applied evenly across the board. In November and December the first entry for “Bill Burkett” in Google, the most popular reference tool of the twenty-first century, was on a blog called Fried Man. It classifies Burkett as a member of the “loony left,” based on his Web posts. In these, Burkett says corporations will strip Iraq, obliquely compares Bush to Napoleon and “Adolf,” and calls for the defense of constitutional principles. These supposedly damning rants, alluded to in USA Today, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, are not really any loonier than an essay in Harper’s or a conversation at a Democratic party gathering during the campaign. While Burkett doesn’t like the president, many people in America share that opinion, and the sentiment doesn’t make him a forger.

Huh?

I'm trying to remember - what's the Latin term for Non-Sequitur again?

Sentiment doesn't make you a forger, indeed; if it did, I'd have an All Access pass to every Donnas concert in the Twin Cities.

But the little matter of the documents not even remotely plausibly being authentic? Quite another matter.

And the plausibility of the documents themselves? Pein sounds off:

Many of the typographic critiques were similarly flawed. Would-be gumshoes typed up documents on their computers and fooled around with the images in Photoshop until their creation matched the originals. Someone remembered something his ex-military uncle told him, others recalled the quirks of an IBM typewriter not seen for twenty years. There was little new evidence and lots of pure speculation. But the speculation framed the story for the working press.

There was, indeed, speculation. And hyperbole. And wrong guesses, and some just-plain BS in the storm of blogger commentary.

And in and among all of that, a couple of rock-solid threads:

• It was possible, via a series of events about as likely as Katie Couric getting a called third strike against Alejandro Rodriguez, for the documents to have been produced by a typewriter - as in a typewriter, a model that was highly unlikely to be found in a TANG orderly room in the seventies.
• The content of the documents themselves - especially the references to the then-retired General Buck Staut - made even that possibility seem remote

Pein doesn't deign to address that.

Relatives of the officers involved, and some of the officers themselves, deny the allegations from the memosPein doesn't address any of this.

So the story in Rathergate was not that there was a lot of faulty information out there; it's that the hard core of the story, synthesized from the input of thousands of people, each with a small piece of the puzzle, found a story that the major media was couldn't, or wouldn't.

Is this story a big smoking gun against blogs and their contribution to the reformation of the media? Only if you accept unsupported, incomplete and frankly amateurish spin presented under the imprimatur of an institution with a vested interest in upholdint the pre-blog status quo.

In other words - no.

Posted by Mitch at 06:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Inanity

In what will be my final word on the subject, Mark Gisleson has a sort of non-repsonsive response to my post the other day, about his frankly dim little piece about the Northern Alliance's lack of apparent religious faith.

Did he answer the questions the Captain, King and I raised about his East-German-shoddy research? His myopic standard of "measuring" Christianity? The absurdity of his initial premise?

Pffft. No. He just knows the name "Powerline" is a Christian reference.

Powerline so obviously not being a Christian blog…nearly 21,000 links suggest otherwise, and no, powerlineblog.com does not predate most of them. Powerline is a well-established metaphor for the power of god, etc., and it’s impossible to think Messrs. Hindrocket, Johnson, Deacon what al. were oblivious to that tie in.

I won't argue about the "impossible to think" part; Gisleson seems to find many things "inconceivable" in the full Vizzinian sense of the term.

However, the name Powerline, according to a conversation with Rocket Man last January, came from one of his daughters.

Also "inconceivable" is his math. I'll confess - I did goad Gisleson a bit on Monday by saying his piece was a troll for hits. My inner fourth-grader exults; the goad worked:

Truth is I did it just for all the extra eyeballs, driving my traffic up from the previous 2005 high of 821 visits on New Year’s Day to a whopping 955 visits on January 3!

955? Indeed. What happened on Monday?

We're a juggernaut, I tells ya!

Welcome to the sausage factory, Norwegianity readers. Mark Gisleson may have the "'nads" for armed revolt - but 'nads make lousy weapons.

Out.

Whew

My hosting company, Hosting Matters, is usually impeccable. I highly recommend them.

But there was some sort of oops this morning, which led to Shot In The Dark (as well as Captain Ed, also an HM client) going off the air for a few hours.

Democrat blogs around the Twin Cities reported that their referral traffic was way off. Sorry, guys!

MacGyver, USMC

It starts out as a typical military SNAFU story: Marine in Iraq gets a care packate intended for a female Marine, complete with, er, feminine products.

And it's there that the story gets interesting.

As luck would have it he grabbed the tampons, and My son said everyone was teasing him about "not forgetting his feminine hygiene products". My son said things were going well, and then the convoy was ambushed. He said a Marine in the convoy was shot. He said the wound was pretty clean, but it was deep. He said they were administering first aid but couldn't get the bleeding to slow down, and someone said, "Hey use Marine X’s tampons". My son said they put the tampon in the wound. At this point my son profoundly told me, "Mom did you know that tampons expand?" ) "Well, yeah!". They successfully slowed the bleeding and got the guy medical attention. When they went to check on him later the surgeon told them, "You guys saved his life". If you hadn't stopped that bleeding he would have bled to death. My son said, "Mom, the tampons sent by the Marine Moms by mistake saved a Marines life." At this point I asked him, "Well what did you do with the rest of the tampons?" He said, "Oh, we divided them up and we all have them in our flak jackets, and I kept two for our first aid kit".

Add your own punch line.

"It's 0-2...and Sandberg parks it in the furniture!"

Ryne Sandberg, legendary Cubbie, gets into Cooperstown on the third try.

Sandberg, the 1984 National League MVP for the Chicago Cubs, was picked by 393 voters. He appeared on 76.2 percent of ballots, just above the 75 percent cutoff (387). Sandberg received 49.2 percent in 2003 and 61.1 percent last year, when he fell 71 votes short.

"There's been some tremendous, tremendous players that waited longer than I had to wait to get into the Hall of Fame," Sandberg said. "And so, I don't think that's it's ever too late, and I don't think it diminishes the honor at all. You're either in the Hall of Fame or you're not."

And he is.

And the world is that tiny bit better tonight.

Dinner!

Sheila O'Malley published her fantasy dinner invite list; I was happy to see I'd wangled an invite. But I read it, in her section on...:

THE BLOGGERS

I am choosing these folks merely because it would be FIREWORKS if we all got together at the same time. Er ... May 6, 2005, right Emily??

Emily

Bill

CW

Dan

Mitch

The world would never recover from such a meeting of the minds.

...and wondered "whatever could she mean?" Oh, hell, I'll just bring the appetizer and figure it out then.

Dinner invites, you say? Oh, why not?

Sheila divides her list into authors, bloggers, historical figures and artists. I'll add musicians.

THE AUTHORS

Leo Tolstoii. I have a TON of questions to ask that guy.

Hemingway. Because he was an interesting character. And I'd love to see Tolstoii pimp-slap him.

William Shakespeare. Historians say he just wrote. He rarely revised; he was apparently a first-draft kind of guy. Any good blogger could learn a lot from that.

Thomas Paine. The godfather of Bloggers.

P.J. O'Rourke - If you have to ask...

THE BLOGGERS - Well, I've already had dinner with most of my favorite bloggers - Lileks, Hewitt, Generalissimo Duane, the Big Trunk and Rocket Man, Ed, the Elder, Saint, King and Spitbull. The MOB Blog Party on 1/22 should get me in touch with more (hint, hint).

Beyond them, and the obvious choices (Red, Michele Catalano, the DuToits), there's one must-make invite; the elusive Wretchard from the Belmont Club.

THE HISTORICAL FIGURES

Winston Churchill - Part of it is the whole genius who changed history thing. Part of it is the notion of Hemingway and Churchill at the same table.

James Watt - One of the great self-taught geniuses of the Edinburgh Renaissance, a true Renaissance man, inventor of the practical steam engine; could probably help me get my stupid dish washer to run properly.

Theodore Roosevelt - Partly because he's an underrated renaissance man. Partly so he could smack down...

...Arne Carlson - ...and prove that just because someone puts an "R" in front of their name doesn't make them a Republican. I'd let Carlson bus the tables, but I'd be afraid he'd impose a tax hike to cover the costs.

James Madison - Another of the original bloggers.

THE ARTISTS

Lord Byron - mainly to see the inevitable boxing match between him and Roosevelt.

J.M.W. Turner - Another genius of the Edinburgh Renaissance; could come up with the right color for my dining room.

Humphrey Bogart - Duh.

MUSICIANS

Leo Fender - Not really a musician - but the genius behind half the great guitars of the past fifty years. Popular culcha owes a debt to Leo Fender.

Joe Grushecky - The guy is the blogger of musicians; a teacher by day, he's the leader of the Iron City Houserockers by night and on the weekends. As I've gotten older, I've gotten less interested in the twenty-something rock stars I used to want to be; it's easy when you're 24. It's hard to be a rocker when you're 54, and harder still when you have kids and a day job. Leave aside that the Houserockers were one of the ten best bands of the eighties; he's even more impressive as a schlemiel who just keeps on playing. When I start my next band, I'll have him to thank.

Emmylou Harris - Duh.

Shane MacGowan - Partly because nobody will have to be self-conscious about how much they drink (which should help Churchill open up a bit). Partly because he's an amazing talent. Partly because him and Hemingway could have an epic drinking contest.

If You Think It's Scrappleface, But It's Not...

From the UK's Independent:

As the international aid effort grows and George Bush launches a fresh appeal, we ask politicians and commentators if 2005 might see a new determination to tackle global poverty.

It's interesting, I suppose, that the pool of commentators they selected covers (for the most part) the full intellectual range, from "The US has screwed up the world so bad, it's all futile" to "The US has screwed up the world so bad onlygranting the UN full power can fix it. .

Read the piece. You count 'em up.

We can divide the response into:

Commentators Who Pine For the Sweet Surrender of Servitude:

TONY BENN, Former cabinet minister

It may make people realise that the UN needs to be well-equipped and funded. If people diverted money from weapons and war, we have the technology and money to be able to help - if we decide to do that. [And nobody diverts money like the UN!--Ed.]

Commentators Whose Overwrought Idealism Would Make the Late Paul Wellstone Blanche:

THE RIGHT REV TIM STEVENS, Bishop of Leicester

I am hopeful, but we must see a real commitment to changing the economic relationships between the West and the poorer countries. As well as charitable giving, we need to tackle these fundamental issues. [Like you mean the tendency of the poorer countries to espouse authoritarian governments that piddle on the rule of law and property rights, and then beg for help from the UN? That fundamental issue? Just checking -- Ed.]

KANYA KING, Founder, Mobo awards

No longer can we exist in isolation when we see lives and livelihoods being destroyed. All of us need to be pro-active to change things, but we have shown that public opinion and the media can influence government. [Influence it to do what? -- Ed.]

STEPHEN TINDALE, Executive director, Greenpeace

It seems churlish to say it, but while it's relatively easy for most of us to give £50, it would be much harder for us to make the changes in our modern lifestyles that are needed if we are to move to a fairer world. [What "lifestyle changes"? May I suggest being less churlish?--Ed.]

SIR JONATHON PORRITT, Environmentalist

The response reveals a deep sense of empathy that could be of lasting value. If it is just a philanthropic flash, then we have seen those before, but if people gain a sense of their interdependence, we will be better off. ["Gain a sense of their interdependence...?" Yep. Just like the Spaniards learned about their interdependence after 9/11...--Ed.]

SIR RICHARD BRANSON, Entrepreneur

I think that politicians must realise that people do care about these issues and want them to do more. If 2005 could become the year when people make a real effort, then it could make a real difference. [Uh oh. A plutocrat thinks "people" "want" politicians to "do more". Danger. Hold on to your wallets--Ed.]

Commentators Who Parrot Michael Moore:

RORY BREMNER, Comedian

On an individual level, it is not just about what we are prepared to give, but what we are prepared to give up. Having left Afghanistan and Iraq in their wake, can our leaders be trusted to fight a war on poverty? [Using Afghanistan as an example? Pretty damn well -- Ed]

BILL BAILEY, Comedian

It was the same after 11 September. Everyone said it was a great opportunity to try to understand the world but it was used by the US as a reason to go on a rampaging adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq. [Followed by that rampaging Afghan election, and the adventurous Iraqi one that's coming up in four weeks--Ed.]

DINOS CHAPMAN, Artist

Western capitalism demands that people must be impoverished. I cannot think that anything will change this year, because we are the ones who have made the world the way it is. I don't believe in altruism. [And European intellectual tradition demands that "artists" be intellectually impoverished, ironically enough--Ed.]

SUE MACGREGOR, Broadcaster

I hope politicians will take note of the public reaction. But it is difficult to tell whether it will do anything to change the way politicians see things, when our own Prime Minister chose not to break his holiday. [...Or when blow-dried Sue MacGregor didn't drop what she was doing to fly to the scene, for that matter--Ed.]

Commentators Who Just Want to Crank the Cure and Light Up:

MO MOWLAM, Former cabinet minister

I think most people will simply forget. Some charities say people will even forget how much they pledged to give. I wish it would change our attitudes to other people in other countries, but I'm afraid that it won't. [Not only that, but they've already forgotten Mo Mowlam--Ed.]

J G BALLARD, Novelist

It would be one of the biggest breakthroughs mankind has ever experienced if we pooled our wealth in order to look after the poorer people of the world. Sadly, I don't think it will happen. ["pooling our weath to look after the poor" worked so well in the USSR, after all--Ed.]

Commentators With Some Common Sense:

DR GHAYASUDDIN SIDDIQUI, Leader of Muslim Parliament

Compassion, care and concern for mankind joins each of us - whatever our faith or ethnicity. The tragedy has shown there is a formula on which all mankind can be united to help each other. Mankind has moved forward. ["Now if only the UN had coordinated that move forward, it would have been valid" -- Every Leftist]

LORD HURD OF WESTWELL, Former foreign secretary

The danger is that resources which might have gone to Africa will go to this instead. While huge publicity continues to be given to the tsunami, human beings are killing each other in Iraq, and places like Darfur. [Bingo. "Tragedy of the Month"-style philanthropy - think "We Are The World" - serves only to make people like...well, like most of the commentators in this article feel good. Will there be any long-term change - for example, focusing media attention on the real problems in these places? Or holding the UN accountable for its boundless waste and corruption?--Ed.]

SIR MAX HASTINGS, Journalist and historian

We have to bear in mind that we have been here before. There have been tragedies before, and many fine things have been said, a lot of them by the US. We just have to hope that in this case they will follow through. [The estimable Lord Hastings is a great historian; one wonders what kind of "follow through" he's referring to--Ed.]

You be the judge.

Missed Opportunity

Via the relief effort, with emphasis added:

U.S. helicopters yesterday rescued dozens of desperate and weak tsunami survivors — including a young girl clutching a stuffed Snoopy — as the American military relief operation reached out to remote areas of Indonesia with cartons of food and water.
The United States, now spearheading the relief effort, is delivering more supplies than any other nation. A U.S. warship strike group carrying thousands more Marines is on the way to help.

Just think how much better the situation would be if the president had held a press conference.

The death toll would be back in the high five digits, I'll bet.

Grand Disillusion

Naseer Flayih Hasan is an Iraqi, with a fascinating piece in Frontpage magazine.

A few questions to keep in mind before we read it:

• Lefties: You say you "support the troops but oppose the war". OK. It's illogical and makes no sense to most of the troops, but fine, let's accept that for now. So why can you also not seem to oppose the war but support the Iraqi people?
• Since so many of the leading lights of your movement are actively giving comfort, if not aid, to the terrorists who wish to either return to the golden days of Ba'athism (complete with plastic shredders, rape rooms, childrens' prisons and mass graves) or establish an Islamic caliphate (with Sharia, stonings of gays, death to fornicating women - not men - and institutionalized, eliminationalist anti-Semitism), tell me; where does your distaste for George W. Bush spill over into wishing the worst for all those inconveniently swarthy peole we've just freed from slavery?
• If it were Republicans who were actively hindering the pursuit of freedom for all those inconveniently swarthy people whose liberty your movement so completely abjures, why would it not be racism?

Read Mr. Hasan's piece, and think about your answers.

Hasan notes:

Because of our isolation, most of us had little idea or sense about life beyond our borders.

We did believe, however, that democracy and human rights were important factors in Western civilization. So it came as a shock to us when millions of people began demonstrating across the world against America’s build-up to the invasion of our country. We supposed the protests were by people who had no idea about the terrible atrocities that the regime had inflicted upon us for decades. We assumed that once they learned what had happened in Iraq, they would change their minds, or modify their opposition to the war.

My first clue that this would not happen was a few weeks after Baghdad fell.

One wonders how Michael Moore's blather about the Ba'athists being the new Minutemen plays over there.

My first clue that this would not happen was a few weeks after Baghdad fell. I had befriended a French reporter who had begun to realize that the situation in Iraq was not how the international media or the so-called “peace camp” described it. I noticed, however, that whenever he tried to voice his doubts to colleagues, they argued that he was wrong. Soon afterwards, I met a Dutch woman on Mutinabi Street, where booksellers lay out their wares on Friday morning. I asked her how long she’d been in Iraq and, through a translator, she answered, “Three months.”

“So you were here during the war?”

“Yes!” she said. “To see the crimes of the Americans!”

I was stunned. After a moment, I replied, “What about the crimes of the regime? It killed millions of Iraqis. Do you know that if the regime was still in power, the conversation we’re having now would result in our torture or death?”

Her face turned red and she angrily responded, “Soon will come the day that the Americans will do worse.” She then went on to accuse me of not knowing what the true facts were in Iraq—and that she could see the situation better than me!

So - the Iraqis (to much of the American and international left) are both incapable of appreciating liberty, and can not be trusted to relate what they have seen with their own eyes - or blood.

Hasan:

And so I have become disillusioned, at least with the Leftists I met in Iraq. So noble in their rhetoric, they looked to the stars, yet ignored what was happening around them, caring only about what was inside their minds. So glorious in their ideals, their thoughts were inflexible and their deeds unnecessary, even harmful. In the end, they proved to me how dogma and fanaticism had transform peace activists into—lifeless peace “statues.”

In other words; real liberty for real people - real people who've endured the most ghastly possible suffering - is not as important to these people as the victory of their ideology.

Mr. Hasan is learning.

Life Ain't Nothing But Benzos and Hos

Stanley Crouch, in the NY Daily News, on a rebellion in the Afro-American media against hip-hop's images of women.

The most successful black women's magazine, Essence, is in the middle of a campaign that could have monumental cultural significance.
Essence is taking on the slut images and verbal abuse projected onto black women by hip hop lyrics and videos.

The magazine is the first powerful presence in the black media with the courage to examine the cultural pollution that is too often excused because of the wealth it brings to knuckleheads and amoral executives.

It's high time.

Says Crouch:

When asked how the magazine decided to take a stand, the editor, Diane Weathers said, "We started looking at the media war on young girls, the hypersexualization that keeps pushing them in sexual directions at younger and younger ages."

Things got deeper, she says, because, "We started talking at the office about all this hatred in rap song after rap song, and once we started, the subject kept coming up because women were incapable of getting it off their minds."

At a listening session that Weathers and the other staffers had with entertainment editor Cori Murray, "We found the rap lyrics astonishing, brutal, misogynistic. ... So we said we were going to pull no punches, especially since women were constantly being assaulted."

I used to work as a rap DJ, and I still listen to lots of music of all genres. And it feels strange, looking back on the warped but funny misogyny of NWA's A Bitch Iz A Bitch as a symptom of a kinder, gentler era.

Cry Jackboot

Minnesota Senate District 42 DFL has a bit of a hyperbole problem:

The illustration (click to enlarge) was screen-captured from their site Monday night.

Nice to see them bringing civility back to politics. And I almost laughed pop up my nose, seeing the little count comparing "Attacks" to "News and Events" right below the graf saying "if the boot fits".

Dolts.

Blog Party

Just a reminder; the next MOB (Minnesota Organization of Bloggers) party will be at Keegans, January 22 from 5-9PM.

A constellation of local bloggers (left, right and don't care), media figures, politicians, and (most importantly) everyone else is going to be there, united by by the common bond of Irish beer.

Hope to see you there! (Leave a comment if you're interested)

Wrong To Be Righted

Sheila O'Malley's "The Sheila Variations" is currently in second place in Blogmechanics' Best of Blogs Award voting.

Take a moment and go vote to fix that, k?

Definition of Insanity

Insanity has been defined as making the same mistake over and over, and expecting a different result each time.

San Francisco is insane.

The city that bucked state law and sanctioned gay marriage (search) is now taking aim at the constitutional right to bear arms (search) by proposing a ban in San Francisco on private ownership of all handguns.

"When you get guns out of people's homes and off the streets, it means that that gun is not going to be used in a shooting that kills someone, whether a murder or an accidental shooting," said Chris Daly, supervisor of San Francisco.

Or, Mr (?) Daly fails to note, self-defense.

Where have we heard this before?

(Via Jo)

In Washington, DC:

Washington, D.C., banned handguns in response to its skyrocketing homicide rate in 1976. But nearly three decades later, it had more murders per capita than any other city its size.

And in Chicago, New York and Detroit:

20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.

And in the United Kingdom...:

In the period of 1997 through 2001 [the four years after the UK banned firearms], homicide rose 19% in the UK while it fell 12% in the USA. (6) Violent crime incidents rose 26% in the UK while falling 12% in the USA. (7) Robbery rates rose 92% in the UK and fell 15% in the USA. (8)

...and Oz:

OBSERVABLE FACT, AFTER 12 MONTHS OF DATA:

* Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2%
* Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6%
* Australia-wide, armed-robberies are up 44% (yes, FORTY-FOUR PERCENT)
* In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300%
* Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in homicides-with-firearms (changed dramatically in the past 12 months)
* Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in armed-robbery-with-firearms (changed dramatically in the past 12 months)
* There has been a dramatic increase in breakins-and-assaults-of- the-elderly
* At the time of the ban, the Prime Minister said "self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm"
* From 1910 to present, homicides in Australia had averaged about 1.8-per-100,000 or lower, a safe society by any standard.
* The ban has destroyed Australia's standings in some international sport shooting competitions
* The membership of the Australian Sports Shooting Association has risen to 112,000, a 200% increase, in response to the ban and as an attempt to organize against further controls, which are expected.
* Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in "safety" has been observed after such monumental effort and expense was successfully expended in "ridding society of guns". Their response has been to "wait longer".

Nothing succeeds like success, I guess. Back to San Francisco:

Opponents are already planning lawsuits, but argue that even if it does pass, this ban won't stop crime as law-abiding citizens give up their guns while the criminals flock to a city that ensures they won't be shot at by the people they're robbing.

"And what's going to happen if this passes is people in San Francisco are going to be deprived of their ability to defend themselves," Michel said.

Well, not quite. Robbery, rape, assault and murder will be redefined as "Hate Crimes". That'll show 'em.

In all seriousness:

"I don't feel like I need to own a gun to protect myself. Certainly, I am a high-profile elected official and now a lot of gun owners don't like me individually, but if I'm in a situation where I feel threatened, I'll call the police," Daly said.

Ah. So perhaps Mr (?) Daly can enjoy the same response that DC residents (similarly disarmed) currently do

According to the Metropolitan Police Department's fiscal 2005 budget performance report, the average response time for the highest-priority calls [murder, armed robbery and shooting in progress calls] was 8 minutes, 25 seconds in fiscal 2003. It was 7 minutes, 19 seconds in fiscal 2002, and 7 minutes, 47 seconds in fiscal 2001.

But certainly things aren't that bad in San Francisco, right?

Wrong!

San Francisco, which also measures response times like Boston, took 10 minutes to respond to priority calls last year despite a population of 776,733 and 2,449 police officers

That's about a minute and a half worse than DC's already wretched time, and more than enough time for a victim to bleed out while lying in the gutter clutching his or her cell phone.

Keep up the good work, San Francisco.

Faith

Mark Gisleson is a local leftyblogger...

...no. That does a disservice to the good local leftybloggers, the Centrisities and even some of the less intensely whiny folks from New Patriot that do the Minnesota left some semblance of justice online.

No. Mark Gisleson would seem to be a sort of Walter Mitty-cum-Che Guevara; he's the fella who fantasized about starting an armed revolution if Bush won the election; he refers to conservative bloggers as "wingnuts", by the bye.

On his blog, he asks:

Steve Gilliard reminds us that the most dangerous wingnuts aren’t calculating political opportunists so much as they are Bible-thumping literalists who have an inordinate capacity for outright fantasy when there is no other way to tether their beliefs to terra firma. Case in point: Did man coexist with the dinosaurs?

...

And now that I’m thinking about it, do we even know if the Northern Alliance is comprised of Christians, or are they just being politically manipulative, talking Jesus once in a while to help keep the coalition in line?

Wow. Didn't know we had a "coalition". We're bigger than we thought!

But then Gisleson - who claims to be an atheist - notes:

Shot in the Dark: nothing on the blog but a search of the archives pulled up 19 posts referencing Jesus. That’s going all the way back to July 2002, and includes a velvet Jesus painting (for Gov. Jesse) and the fascinating thought that Wellstone could no more have been laid low by an inexperienced pilot any more than Jesus could have choked on a a blinz. Frankly, the nineteen matches include a lot of instances of Mitch quoting other people talking about Jesus, usually in a highly polticized way. Is this a Christian blog? No more so than Norwegianity.

Aside from Gisleson's dubious command of reading comprehension and dishonest selective quoting (the full quote was "Of course, one's prophet and martyr mustn't die of mundane causes: Wellstone could no more have been laid low by an inexperienced pilot any more than Jesus could have choked on a a blinz or Joan of Arc could have stepped in front of a moving draftwagon. No, martyrs must die martyr's deaths. And those who oppose the martyrs are the infidels, and nothing is too awful for them", quite different than Gisleson would have had you believe), is there a point there? Is counting Jesuses...er, Jesi...er, references to our Lord and Savior a worthwhile measure of a blogger's faith?

Well, only if you have a noxious caricature to reinforce.

Is this a "Christian Blog"? No. And U2 is not a "Christian band", and CS Lewis is not a "Christian author". Bono is a Christian with a band. Lewis was a Christian who wrote - and whose writing frequently intersected with faith. And I'm a Christian.

In Corinthians (I think...yep, I'm pretty sure it's Corinthians...I think...), it says that people are called to God with a variety of gifts; one of mine has never been especial articulation about my faith. As glib, and sometimes fluent, as I can be about many things in my life, my faith isn't one of them. I have never felt, for the most part, that my faith was of much interest to a wide audience, beyond the fact that it exists and is a huge, vitally important part of my life.

Gisleson's metric - counting references to "Jesus" - is lazy and induces mad strawmen, of course, just as would be a simple count of references to Christian, Buddhist, or for that matter Satan. But if wordcounts are what flips your toupee, one could have searched for Presbyterian or my dissent with my denomination's national political policies (in a post prominently displayed among my "best shots") not to mention the section called "Faiths and their Followers - crackerjack reporting, Mark!

Beyond that, there's the little point that this is a politics and current events blog. Not a religion blog. It's a subtle point, I know.

Is my faith of any importance to the reader? Nobody's asked. There are many better bloggers on the subject of faith: Joe Carter, Hugh, LaShawn Barber, Jared Keller, Stones Cry Out, even Miss O'Hara to name a few from my blogroll. They've got that Corinthian gift of having things to say about faith that people could conceivably want to read. Want to read about my personal experience in faith? Ask me.

Is it of importance to my blogging? Gisleson asks:

Could it be that it’s difficult to trash talk liberals when Jesus is in the room? Or is Jesus no more relevant to their daily lives than he is to mine?

Question: What is is that anyone thinks I've said on this blog, ever, for which I should seek God's forgiveness? Because as a general rule, I try only to post things for which I'll respect myself in the morning. Am I perfect? No, but I'm forgiven.

Gisleson also applies the same (trite) metric to measuring the Christianity of the rest of the Northern Alliance and Hugh, committing this particular howing boner:

Powerline, whose very name is a reference to evangelical Christianity, didn’t fare well. No Jesus on the front page, and only 31 references to the main man since June 2002. But don’t you love that Israeli flag they have flying on page one!

Let's stop here. I've talked with the Powerguys; "Powerline" is not a religious reference. Gisleson is in loopdieland.

Never mind. Both points might be addressed by the fact that at least one Powerguy (Scott Johnson) has referenced being Jewish on the blog many times, including recent days (I can't recall if Paul "Deacon" Mirengoff is Jewish; the name says "oy, yes", but I won't assume).

To go back to Gisleson's original question - do "we" use faith to keep "the coalition" in line - no. While I can't speak for the rest of the guys (and the Northern Alliance includes, by my count, a couple of observant Catholics, a Lutheran, a Presbyterian, somewhere between one and three Jews, a Drunkard, a few of indeterminate faith...a mixed bag), I think it's a safe bet that it has more to do with keeping ourselves "in line" than any "coalition"; for that, all we have is our magnetic charisma.

But for those who are curious; I'm a Christian. I worship at the Presbyterian Church, because I believe John Knox' theology is the best, clearest, least obtrusive framework for Christian fellowship there is (leaving aside the rank idiocy of the PCUSA's General Assembly). I have had one very profound religious experience - I'll write about it someday. I try to act like a Christian should act; I don't always, but I try. My faith has sustained me through the most wretched times of my life, and through the good times as well. I credit Christ for my living a life, so far, that is not especially full of regret. It's a long, long story.

Does it prevent me from trash-talking liberals? For starters, they usually start it. And the Ten Commandments enjoin me from bearing false witness; I am pretty usually found telling the truth.

God has blessed me vastly more than I deserve; I want to pass as many of them on as I can.

Like the extra hits that Mark Gisleson will get from this link; like most lefty blogs in the Twin Cities, their hit counts spike sharply when the NARN links 'em. Glad to help! Bless you, Mark!

Now get to work on that reading comprehension!

Perfect is the Enemy of Good

Steven Vincent - author of the fascinating book "Into The Red Zone", and the nearly eponymous blog, on the upcoming elections:

Will the Iraqi elections be "free?" Possibly not by the standards of Jimmy Carter or U.N. officials; certainly not the lights of the anti-war camp who, unthreatened by fascist paramilitaries, reactionary psychopaths and random acts of unspeakable violence, make a fetish of their own moral purity. But we, who support this war, should not allow they, who do not, let the perfect defeat the good. What will happen in Iraq on January 30 will not be ideal. It will not be neat or completely satisfactory. But after the horrors the Iraqi people have suffered, and continue to endure, it will be good. Perhaps, like the Emancipation Proclamation, it will be miraculous.

The double standard is indeed yawning.

"Good enough" was good enough for Bill Clinton in Kosovo and Bosnia and Haiti; it eluded him in Rwanda. But only perfection would satisfy Bush's critics in Iraq.

Speaking of imperfect solutions to intractable problems:

We might further pause to consider what happened nearly 150 years ago. How, culminating decades of mounting tension, the rebel shelling of Fort Sumter precipitated a war that nearly destroyed the United States, yet led, with the Union's victory, to the 14th Amendment and the legal--if not practical--abolishment of slavery. We might reflect, as well, on the difficult period of the Reconstruction. Then, as now, a "foreign" army "occupied" a defeated nation; then, as now, hooded paramilitaries called the Ku Klux Klan "resisted" the occupiers and sought to terrorize people back into slavery; then, as now, the process of freedom met numerous setbacks and failures--and to many, the process is not yet complete. We might also ponder the fact, contra the arguments of the anti-war camp, democracy can--and has been--imposed on a recalcitrant population at the point of a gun.

Another parallel: Lincoln never had an "exit strategy" as re the newly-freed slaves; he just freed them. The Iraqi people had been enslaved for thirty years; the Africans in America, 400.

Vincent continues:

The liberation and reconstruction of Iraq is part of a larger conflict against Islamofascism. Just as, say, the Union drive across Tennessee contributed to the demise of slavery, so too victory in Iraq will help roll back the tide of tribal and religious oppression that has gripped the Middle East (often, unfortunately, with our blessing and assistance.) This is another way of saying that at the base of this war lie fundamental concepts of freedom and dignity. Or, to put it more simply, the battle for Iraq's future is a matter of human rights. It is a moral, as much as a military, conflict.

To discredit America's commitment to Iraq, many leftists liken it to Vietnam, knowing full well the chilling effect memories of the Southeast Asian "quagmire" have on public opinion. We should contest their rhetoric with analogies to the Civil War, whose no less chilling memories find noble meaning in the moral imperative of the conflict. The war--never wholly popular in the North--may not have started for the purpose of freeing enslaved peoples, but, guided by Lincoln's vision and eloquence, that's how it ended.

This is brilliant.

You need to read Vincent's book, by the way; it is one of the best books about Iraq I've yet seen.

Shark Attack

Wondering what's going on with the bizarre, Chicago-like recount in Washington?

You need to read Sound Politics. Stefan Sharkansky - with whom we spoke during last Saturday's NARN show - is putting together a fairly damning case.

Read it; if you're not outraged, you should be.

Bla bla bla bla...

...bla bla bla Vikings lose but get into playoffs bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. Yawn. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

One month until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

Breaking News

Currently interviewing Stephan Sharkansky about the irregularities in the Washington vote.

NARN Today

Tune in to the NARN show today.

First hours - week in review. Second hour - 2004 was a Very Good Year (for us, anyway). Third hour: Your chance to criticize the NARN, plus a very special guest.

Tune in - AM1280 from noon to 3PM, or via the website!

So After All That Whining...

...about how underwhelming I find New Years Eve, I went and had a great time.

I caved in to the kids' desire to go to, as Lileks calls it, "Chuck E. Farging Cheese". The kids played video games. I sat and admired the people who could work amid that din without going postal. I haven't been in a CEFC in probably close to ten years - if anything, the experience has gotten cheesier (and the pizza less so).

Then it was off to Landmark Center, where the city had set up an ice rink. The kids skated for about an hour and a half, and struck up a huge game of all-in tag while I talked with some of the other parents and swilled cocoa between the rink and the warming tent.

It was a wonderful time, all in all.

So just forget everything I said about New Years. Til next year, anyway.

Postcards from Hell

India Uncut blogger Amit Varma blogs from the midst of the tsunami's rubble field.

Horrifying, to be sure. Fascinating, too, in a grim way, watching the way government fails in extremis.