Shot In The Dark

Katrina

Like much of the blogosphere, I'm going to spend tomorrow trying to help raise money for Hurricane Katrina relief.

Hugh recommends Samaritan's Purse, and Ed is all about Catholic Charities. We'll talk about more tomorrow.

MOB Get-Together!

Join us and the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers this Sunday at the Town Hall Brewery, at Seven Corners on the Minneapolis West Bank.

Great brew, great food, and a great time hanging out with your favorite fellow local bloggers.

Leave an RSVP, if you could please, with me (mail me at comments at the address shotinthedark, followed by dot info) or with any of the Fraters

The party is open to bloggers, non-bloggers, blog readers, blog-avoiders...really, anyone. Just let us know...

The Late Great KSTP

There's an old saying: "Dance with the one that brung ya".

KSTP was an ugly duckling station that was brought to the dance by a gleefully boisterous buffoon (political talk radio in general, not just Rush Limbaugh). Today, it's forgotten who brought them to the dance - or, in this case, made them profitable, and a genuine player in the local radio market.

I think it's going to cost 'em.

======

Do you remember KSTP-AM in 1988?

Probably not. Nobody else does, either. It was a disaster.

I worked at KSTP-AM from 1985-87; it was an era when people predicted AM radio was short for this world - "The date the AM band will shut down" was sort of an industry-wide dead-pool competition.

Hubbard Broadcasting - who own KSTP, (AM, FM and TV, as well as FM107, the local "chick talk" station) seemed dead-set on serving as AM's Kevorkian. The station itself served as a monument to the futility of dumb management; the six month stretch where we had no general manager or program director at the end of 1986, and the staff pretty much ran the shop ourselves, coincided with the best ratings the station ever had (a 4.5 share in the Summer '86 book).

Then, in one of Hubbard's constant cost-cutting spasms, they installed a truly wretched general manager - a famously dissipate alcoholic who wracked up (sources inside the station told me) seven sexual harassment suits in a year and a half.

But he cut the budget, all right. Including me and all the other producers (Dave Elvin, John Barnier, Allison Brown, Rob Pendelton) and most of the News department (Karen Booth, John Rivers, Peg Sneden) in April of 1987. Gradually, all the hosts - from the magnificently dissipate Geoff Charles to the supernaturally dull Mike Edwards - left the station, replaced by the "TalkRadio Auction" (whatever happened to Janice Basara, anyway? If you're out there, drop me a line, k?) and Mel "Mel Freakin' Jass" Jass, a series of no-name morning shows (including a former wresler and mid-level politician named Jesse Ventura), and afternoon shows ranging from the wonderful but hopelessly "inside" Bob Yates, to (IIRC) one James Lileks.

Then, in 1987-88, via the miracle of satellite, came a joyously bombastic voice from New York, bringing the first unabashedly partisan conservative voice (other than the "Mitch Berg Show", 1986-1987) heard on the air...ever.

Not that the station really understood Limbaugh, even then. KSTP retained a consultant in the late eighties and early nineties. I talked with him for a few hours; it was his theory that political talk radio was dead - that "irreverent" was the future of talk radio. His theory for the success of Limbaugh was that he was irreverent (he cited the old "Abortion Update" vaccuum cleaner sound effect), as opposed to tapping a vein of theretofore-unrequited conservatism; the future of talk radio, and KSTP, was irreverent, edgy - and not especially political. (Sound familiar?). He was responsible for the likes of Barbra Carlson, Turi Rider, Joel Schumacher (and, after I introduced him to his audition tape, Don Vogel's second incarnation in the Twin Cities. Yes, I claim credit for his tape getting heard. You heard it here first). And a series of fairly inept or uninspired management figures learned the great management lesson; having a solid product buys a lot of forgiveness. Limbaugh's numbers kept the lights on - and the station profitable - through a series of blunders that would have left a station with a less-solid keystone floundering in "Air America" territory. Babs and the Boys? Turi Ryder? Rosenbaum? Pffft. Didn't matter. It was like coaching a basketball team with Michael Jordan and eleven stumbling minor-leaguers; as long as Jordan (or Limbaugh) was there, it was still a fair match.

But by the time Limbaugh and Laura Schlesinger teamed with the curmudgeonly Joe Soucheray and the political animal Jason Lewis, the lesson was clear - politics plays, and pays - and the numbers, and money, started rolling in. KSTP's numbers started coalescing around the boistrous interloper and politics, politics, politics.

In retrospect, last week's statement by KSTP - that conservative talk radio isn't all that big a deal, really, and that people really want local issues, and are sick of partisanship - makes a lot more sense with yesterday's announcement that Clear Channel, which owns the rights to Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, is pulling the shows from KSTP and moving over to the current "Cool Jazz" station, 100.3 (which has averaged a format a year for the past decade or so, since its "Turn Your Knob to Bob" era).

Sources inside KSTP have told me for years - KSTP's Ginny Morris (a scion of the Hubbard family) has never been comfortable with the "political" label. It's never fit her; she's always seen (say the sources) KSTP and her station's legacy as being more along the lines of a traditional, WCCO-type middle of the road type station.

Well, she might get her wish. So now KSTP's gotta earn it.

Deborah Caulfield Rybak in yesterday's Strib:

Smooth jazz station KJZI, 100.3 FM, will disappear from Twin Cities FM airwaves next year when owner Clear Channel Communications replaces it with a new talk station featuring the political riffs of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, currently heard on KSTP, 1500 AM.

"Starting January 1, we will launch KTLK FM 100.3 that will feature Rush Limbaugh's live broadcast from 11 to 2 p.m. and, next August, Sean Hannity live from 2 to 5 p.m," Clear Channel's local vice president and general manager, Dan Seeman, said in an interview. KTLK will pick up Hannity's syndicated show when his contract with KSTP-AM expires next year. Limbaugh's contract with KSTP expires in December. Most other time slots -- including morning, midday and late afternoon shows -- will be filled with live, local, not-necessarily-political shows, Seeman.

"We're going to go out and hire the best talk show talent we can find, not the best conservative talk show host, or the best liberal, or the best car talk show host," he said. "What their political leanings are will be secondary to good talk shows."

Well, the NARN's not available, for what that's worth. Sorry, Dan.

Seriously, though...

Clear Channel decided to launch the new station in KJZI's place because the smooth-jazz format "had not performed as well as we'd hoped" during its two years on the air [No kidding? - Ed.], Seeman said. No staff reductions will be necessary because the new format will require even more personnel, he added.

Clear Channel's announcement comes two weeks after KSTP-AM executives said they were looking to redefine the station's relationships with both syndicated radio hosts. Over the past year, among listeners aged 25-54, Limbaugh's Arbitron ratings on KSTP had declined 43 percent; Hannity's 63 percent.

Seeman said the ratings drop didn't trouble him at all because political talk show ratings were "cyclical" in nature.

Seeman is a sharp guy.

KSTP's reaction?

KTLK's launch "does not come as a surprise to us," said KSTP general manager Todd Fisher in a memo to the station's staff, which he shared with the Star Tribune. The change "dovetailed with conversations we'd already been having about our future strategies and the state of syndication, particularly the conservative political shows that have shed much of their entertainment value," the memo said.

Prescience?

Or "The dog ate my homework" school of management excuses?

My money's on the dog. It's the kind of CYA one might expect from an executive lost a battle that was far out of his control (Clear Channel owns the rights to Limbaugh, and has first dibs on where he goes after any existing contracts run their courses). Also expected, from an executive that has been forced by corporate politics to put Limbaugh's broadcast - arguably, along with Joe Soucheray, the station's hard financial bedrock - into an untenable position, tape-delaying the entire broadcast an hour to fit between Rosenbaum/O'Connor in the morning and Soucheray at 3PM. Tape-delayed talk rarely performs as well as the live article, especially in major markets.

Fisher said the syndication changes will allow KSTP to pursue "our biggest goal -- to have a radio station that is live and local during the day, with little or no syndication. This is the first step in that happening." He said the station would announce its plans in the next few weeks.

So which is it? Is Clear Channel's yanking of their hottest properties a gut-shot to KSTP? Or was it part of some long-term Hubbard Plan to create a kinder, gentler, less partisan KSTP-AM?

I'm betting on gut-shot:

The launch of the new FM talk format also didn't come as a surprise to Carol Grothem, broadcast manager for Campbell Mithun ad agency. "Clear Channel has made these switches to FM talk station in other markets, such as Pittsburgh and San Antonio, and they're doing really well."

Seeman said putting talk stations on the FM band has been particularly good demographically. "We're drawing listeners who are five years younger than on the AM."

It makes strategic sense for Clear Channel to do this, of course; Limbaugh (and the much lesser talent, Hannity) are CC's bread and butter in the talk market. It was only a matter of time, really, once CC acquired Limbaugh.

My prediction? KTLK will be perfectly positioned to prosper when the next political season comes along and - pretty much inevitably - makes partisan political talk a hot property again.

KSTP's got its work cut out for it.

Does This Occur In Nature?

Jess from Blind Cavefish relates, approvingly, an experience with a guy who went to great lengths to get her phone number:

He'd looked me up in the yearbook and checked out what bus I got off of one morning. He then asked around until he found out that my high school was in Schenectady. He looked my last name up in the phone book. There were too many of them. He then looked up Laura, who had a more unusual last name than I did, and called the three listed until he got her on the last try. He explained who he was and asked for my phone number. I thought he was out of my league, and he went to all of that trouble just to get my phone number.

Just once, I'd like someone to jump through a hoop or two to get to know me again.

So I wonder, ladies - if a guy were to actually go to those lengths to get your phone number in this day and age, what exactly would he have to do to convince you he wasn't a stalker?

No, I'm just curious.

Unclear On The Concept

King Banaian takes the music meme from Monday and...

...cheats. He went and found some list of much cooler music from George Harrison only knows where.

C'mon, King - the whole fun of the meme was to pick through the dreadful Billboard Top 100 for the year and see what you remember!

So just for exhibition purposes (no wagering, please), I'll do King's list (from 1975, the year I graduated from sixth grade).

As before - bold=good, crossout=bad, underline is my favorite.

King, natch, crossed out the whole list. Understandable - it was a lousy year for Top40 music (as opposed to things like Born To Run, of which more tomorrow), but still...

Oh, I digress.

1. Love Will Keep Us Together, The Captain and Tennille
2. Rhinestone Cowboy, Glen Campbell
3. Philadelphia Freedom, Elton John
4. Before The Next Teardrop Falls, Freddy Fender
5. My Eyes Adored You, Frankie Valli
6. Shining Star, Earth, Wind and Fire
7. Fame, David Bowie (and I'm not even a big Bowie fan)
8. Laughter In The Rain, Neil Sedaka
9. One Of These Nights, Eagles
10. Thank God I'm A Country Boy, John Denver
11. Jive Talkin', Bee Gees (Yes, I'm serious)
12. Best Of My Love, Eagles
13. Lovin' You, Minnie Riperton
14. Kung Fu Fighting, Carl Douglas (cheesy but fun)
15. Black Water, Doobie Brothers
16. Ballroom Blitz, Sweet Glorious pop treacle.
17. (Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song, B.J. Thomas
18. He Don't Love You (Like I Love You), Tony Orlando and Dawn
19. At Seventeen, Janis Ian
20. Pick Up The Pieces, Average White Band
21. The Hustle, Van McCoy and The Soul City Symphony
22. Lady Marmalade, Labelle
23. Why Can't We Be Friends?, War
24. Love Wont Let Me Wait, Major Harris
25. Boogie On Reggae Woman, Stevie Wonder
26. Wasted Days And Wasted Nights, Freddy Fender
27. Fight The Power, Pt. 1, Isley Brothers
28. Angie Baby, Helen Reddy (Yes, I remember it)
29. Jackie Blue, Ozark Mountain Daredevils
30. Fire, Ohio Players
31. Magic, Pilot - Not a big favorite, but included an Ian Bairnson guitar part that was pretty cool. Ian Bairnson was one of the great unsung guitar players of the seventies, including the solo from Kate Bush's original "Wuthering Heights", one of the niftiest solos ever.
32. Please Mr. Postman, Carpenters
33. Sister Golden Hair, America
34. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Elton John
35. Mandy, Barry Manilow
36. Have You Never Been Mellow, Olivia Newton-John
37. Could It Be Magic, Barry Manilow
38. Cat's In The Cradle, Harry Chapin
39. Wildfire Michael Murphy
40. I'm Not Lisa, Jessi Colter
41. Listen To What The Man Said, Paul Mccartney and Wings
42. I'm Not In Love, 10cc
43. I Can Help, Billy Swan
44. Fallin' In Love, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds
45. Feelings, Morris Albert
46. Chevy Van, Sammy Johns, he says, wallowing in guilt.
47. When Will I Be Loved, Linda Ronstadt
48. You're The First, The Last, My Everthing, Barry White
49. Please Mr Please, Olivia Newton-John
50. You're No Good, Linda Ronstadt - I know, it's LINDA FECKING RONSTADT. I still love it.
51. Dynomite, Bazuka - AAAGH! MY EARS!
52. Walking In Rhythm, Blackbyrds
53. The Way We Were / Try To Remember, Gladys Knight and The Pips
54. Midnight Blue, Melissa Manchester
55. Don't Call Us, We'll Call You, Sugarloaf
56. Poetry Man, Phoebe Snow
57. How Long, Ace
58. Express, B.T. Express
59. That's The Way Of The World, Earth, Wind and Fire
60. Lady, Styx - I used to love this long, back in like seventh grade. Then it came to me, what a tvedt Dennis DeYoung is. I was cured.
61. Bad Time, Grand Funk
62. Only Women Bleed, Alice Cooper
63. Doctor's Orders, Carol Douglas
64. Get Down Tonight, K.C. and The Sunshine Band
65. You Are So Beautiful / It's A Sin When You Love Somebody, Joe Cocker
66. One Man Woman-One Woman Man, Paul Anka and Odia Coates
67. Feel Like Makin' Love, Bad Company - Of COURSE it's embarassing to say it. But it's true.
68. How Sweet It Is, James Taylor - I have never liked James Taylor, or anything about him.
69. Dance With Me, Orleans
70. Cut The Cake, Average White Band
71. Never Can Say Goodbye, Gloria Gaynor
72. I Don't Like To Sleep Alone, Paul Anka
73. Morning Side Of The Mountain, Donny and Marie Osmond
74. Some Kind Of Wonderful, Grand Funk
75. When Will I See You Again, Three Degrees
76. Get Down, Get Down (Get On The Floor), Joe Simon
77. I'm Sorry / Calypso, John Denver
78. Killer Queen, Queen
79. Shoeshine Boy, Eddie Kendricks
80. Do It (Til You're Satisfied), B.T. Express
81. Can't Get It Out Of My Head, Electric Light Orchestra - Don't know why, but always loved this one. And I can't stand ELO.
82. Sha-La-La (Makes Me Happy), Al Green
83. Lonely People, America
84. You Got The Love, Rufus
85. The Rockford Files, Mike Post - Yes!
86. It Only Takes A Minute, Tavares
87. No No Song / Snookeroo, Ringo Starr
88. Junior's Farm / Sally G, Paul McCartney and Wings
89. Bungle In The Jungle, Jethro Tull
90. Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance), Leo Sayer
91. Someone Saved My Life Tonight, Elton John - Does this make me a bad person? It's purely the arrangement and the hook.
92. Misty, Ray Stevens
93. Bad Blood, Neil Sedaka
94. Only Yesterday, Carpenters
95. I'm On Fire, Dwight Twilley Band
96. Only You, Ringo Starr
97. Third Rate Romance, Amazing Rhythm Aces - you can NOT tell me this isn't a great one.
98. You Aint Seen Nothin' Yet / Free Wheelin', Bachman-Turner Overdrive
99. Swearin' To God, Frankie Valli
100. Get Dancin', Disco Tex and The Sex-O-lettes

Missing The Signal

Nancy emails me this thread from Democrat Underground.

It seems that people are upset about the lousy reception for the Amateur Radio station.

The topic:

Anyone else having trouble tuning in to AAR?
I'm in a Saint Paul burb and we can't get AAR as of late.

The replies:

1. Currently seems to be a "best of" Mike Malloy. n/t

2. I've had trouble tuning in Schultz and Franken. I don't generally tune in late.
Glad you can get Malloy. I hope the trouble I'm having is a fluke ?

3. I should have added that I stream from the web.
I live in NYC and can't get their local AM signal. My original point was that you weren't missing anything.

4. late at night I cant get them, but its good during the day.

The really hilarious part? Look at the profiles of the people doing the posting:

mzmolly (Donating Member) (1000+ posts)

countmyvote4real (1000+ posts)

loveable liberal (Donating Member) (818 posts)

Demrock6 (345 posts)

Not that I'm laughing at any stereotypes. Nossir, not me.

Jeremiad

I started in radio back when every station had an Associated Press teletype clicking away in a newsroom.

Oh, yeah - I started in radio back when every station had a newsroom!

In that time, I saw a zillion forecasts, advisories, watches and warnings from the National Weather Service. They are dry, businesslike - "just the facts", if you will.

A commenter on Drezner's blog posted the National Weather Service's warning for Katrina:

WWUS74 KLIX 281550NPWLIXURGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA

1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

HURRICANE KATRINAA MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969. MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. ATLEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED.

CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATEADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...

AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK. POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...

BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEWCROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BEKILLED.AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEARHURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE..

.ARECERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTUREOUTSIDE!LAZ038-040-050-056>070-282100-ASSUMPTION-LIVINGSTON-LOWER JEFFERSON-LOWER LAFOURCHE-LOWER PLAQUEMINES-LOWER ST. BERNARD-LOWER TERREBONNE-ORLEANS-ST. CHARLES-ST. JAMES-ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST-ST. TAMMANY-TANGIPAHOA-UPPER JEFFERSON-UPPER LAFOURCHE-UPPER PLAQUEMINES-UPPER ST. BERNARD-UPPER TERREBONNE-1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005"

Almost a biblical jeremiad. Jarring, if you're used to reading the government's regular weather communications.

So that was what the fuss was about...

Smoking Ban Claims Three More Victims

Three of the key - and remaining - tenants on the Mall of America's Fourth Floor "entertainment" district have closed their doors.

And while marketing at the Mall of America is dicey (as the article says, it's hard to strike a balance between family-safe and crowd-drawing), the coup de grace came from...

...the smoking ban:

But the "final nail in the coffin" was Bloomington's smoking ban, said Richard Grones, founder of Cambridge Commercial Realty in Edina. Those who visited the fourth floor's dining establishments were told they had to step outside in the parking lot if they wanted a smoke. Some decided to take their business elsewhere.

"The smoking ban hurt all of us a lot more than we thought it would," said Andy Kostka, manager of the Hooters restaurant in the mall.

Exit Yecke

Cheri Pierson Yecke has left the GOP Sixth CD primary scramble to take a job in Jeb Bush's administration.

In a press release released about half an hour ago (also received at King's), Yecke announces:

Blaine—Cheri Pierson Yecke today announced that Florida Governor Jeb Bush has invited her to play a lead role on his education team. Yecke will end her Sixth Congressional District bid to help implement Governor Bush’s reform agenda.

“I am honored to have been asked by Governor Jeb Bush to be such a significant part of his education team,” said Yecke. “It is therefore with deep regret that I announce that I will no longer be a candidate for Minnesota’s sixth district Congressional seat.”

“I will be forever grateful to the many people who have given me support in this congressional race. The volunteers and delegates who have worked for me, and the donors who have sent financial support, have served to create a strong and dynamic campaign. However, the opportunity to work for Governor Jeb Bush on an issue for which I am so passionate is an honor I cannot pass up.”

I'd say it's going to be a less interesting race, now - but Krinkie, Bachmann and Knoblach will still make it an interesting year.

King notes:

I am a bit shocked, though her bid at the Congressional seat was probably against long odds with such a deep field of candidates...I am saddened, too, on a personal level, as I have come to know Cheri as a delightful and energetic mind with both wit and grace and conviction. She is not bashful about what she believes, and her forcefulness probably pushed a few people who might have supported her into quiescence due to the force of the people who attacked her. I know a few lefty bloggers who will be happy to help her pack her bags, along with the leadership of Education Minne$ota...Jeb Bush has made education a top priority among his initiatives with the A+ Plan and Voluntary Pre-K programs. It's a good state to be an innovator for education.

As, seemingly, opposed to Minnesota.

And now there are three frontrunners.

UPDATE: Gary at Kennedy Vs. The Machine notes:

not only does Cheri Yecke stand to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education should there be another vacancy during Bush’s second term, but that she will certainly serve in such a roll if one of the 2008 frontrunners for the Republican nomination, Senator George Allen, should achieve the presidency. Yecke served a senior role in Allen’s Education Department in the 90s and would do likewise during a would-be Allen Administration.

New Orleans Spared. Why?

It seems Hurricane Katrina may have swerved to miss New Orleans, sparing the nation a disaster of (weatherpundits assure us) epic proportion.

People want to know: Why?

The answer: after predicting in sequence that Wesley Clark, then Howard Dean couldn't lose the Democrat nomination, then that there was "no way Kerry loses" the election, Jeff Fecke spent yesterday predicting New Orleans' demise.

New Orleans: you owe Jeff bigtime.

Fair Enough

Chumley Wonderbar has the update on the weekend's activities at the Fair.

How's That Again?

Brenarlo at Taking Back North Dakota - the go-to blog in this other big Senate race next year - has this bit here, where Kent Conrad explicates the Democrat strategy in the War On Terror.

Typical sample:

What we need to get are the facts, straight facts, and then we need to evaluate what kind of progress will exist, when will we reach that point where the Iraqis can handle their own security. At that point, American troops don’t need to be involved in Iraq. The Iraqi people can and should, in my judgment, determine the future of Iraq.

So...we shouldn't put troops in Iraq until the Iraqis can handle it themselves?

Kent Conrad, Zen Koan.

Read it - and then send a buck or two to either the GOP to help unseat this buffoon.

The Next Battle?

While the Minnesota Personal Protection Act is law again, there are still challenges.

Darth Lillehaug still lurks on the legal outskirts, plotting how to get his next lawsuit to a tame, DFL-owned judge.

And there might be a more direct threat out there: law enforcement is trying to move the goalposts on instructor certification. The training that permit applicants receive is a big political football right now; the left knows that if they can constrict the supply of instructors, it'll drive up the cost and and difficulty of getting a permit. In the left can require every permit applicant to get trained by a graduate of the SAS CQB course, it'll make the entry requirmements perfectly absurd.

The next legislative session is going to be vital for concealed carry reform; we're going to have to fix the law to head off more lawsuits from well-heeled, clout-rich Edina churches, and beat back the attack on the instructors. Which means we're going to have to stay organized, and not relax. Not just yet.

Joel Rosenberg is starting a forum to help get us organized for the upcoming battle. Check it out - and stay tuned. The big victory is won - but as we see in Iraq, mopping up can be a bitch.

Swiftee: Artist

Swiftee's "Life In The Dumpster" - his crude, tasteless, scatological, juvenile whack at the endless, comical sanctimony that is "Dump Bachmann" - is a hit.

Or at least, it's reeled in a bunch of gullible cartoon geeks on this forum.

You can always tell when you've riled up an "artist"; they start sputtering about all the artistic dues they paid that you didn't, and credentials, and the background of your wretched little oeuvre.

Ken Avidor - a dismal little man whose space would seem to be the inept Photoshop - has his hackles in a bunch over last Friday's LID:

Great comic, Swiftee... I really mean it.

Can you tell us a little about your technique and your influences?

Who are your favorite political cartoonists?

What do you think of Ted Rall?

I'll take this:

His technique is a rejection - nay, an abnegation of traditional, bourgeois notions of "technique" as practiced by mainstream cartoon art. It dances on the grave of the outmoded, stale "looks like something" school of the form that less-interesting old-school "artists" like Rall and Avidor practice.

Clearly, his favorite political cartoonist is you, Ken Avidor.

The Rall influence should be obvious; Swiftee has taken Rall's lack of talent as either an artist or observer and turned them not only into virtues, but indeed statements themselves.

Modern cartooning has been racing to the bottom of the pond for decades. It must hurt to see someone like Swiftee beating you there by a couple of lengths.

I feel your pain.

Boycott the Copy Editors!

Katherine Kersten's new Strib Column ends:

These applicants, like Wal-Mart's current employees and loyal customers, are not dupes or fools. They are individuals struggling to get their small part of the American Dream. It's time, I'd say, for teachers unions to get back to improving our kids' academic performance, and leave the rest of us to shop and work where we want.

She's writing - unapologetically and disapprovingly, and very clearly - in opposition to the Teachers Union's "boycott" of WalMart. The unions are, on the face of it, upset about WalMart's policy on unionization:

The MFT, along with the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, is urging parents and teachers who shop for school supplies to boycott Wal-Mart, the nation's leading discount retailer. The unions claim that Wal-Mart workers' wages and benefits are too low.

Unstated in the union's palaver - they're really trying to take out their pound of flesh for John Walton's support of school vouchers, one of the NEA's great unforgiveable sins:

The family continues to use proceeds from their stock holdings to pump money into the Walton Family Foundation, which funds educational, policy and community groups. As in the past, the foundation directs millions of dollars to anti-labor groups and anti-public education efforts that have long been supported by John Walton, the quiet private checkbook behind the national voucher movement.

Pro-Voucher Movement

In 2002, the Foundation spent $28 million on the nation’s two largest private scholarship programs, which promote taxpayer-funded vouchers while supporting private and religious schools.

Another $300,000 helped the Institute for Justice, the right-wing legal group that defends voucher programs and attempts to knock down state constitutional barriers to vouchers. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which continues to challenge political activity by NEA and the Washington Education Association, received $200,000 to help pay its legal bills.

But the interesting part?

Look at the online headline for Kersten's column: Teachers should leave Wal-Mart alone. Ambiguous?

Or is it just me?

Music in '81

I caught this meme on Red's site - rate the music of the year you graduated from high school.

Red, I'm sure, has no idea how lucky she was she graduated from high school in 1985 (the year I got out of college). While music improved a lot between 1979 (the year I got my first radio job) and the beginning of the Reagan years, it's really incredible how much influence the DIY, punk, wave and especially the melding of white and black music had on music four years later.

(The idea, of course, is to go to Music Outfitters, enter the year you got out of high school in the search box, copy and paste it into a blog post or wherever, cross out the ones you don't like, bold the ones you do, and underline your favorite.

The scary part is, if I were doing Sheila's list, it'd be a LOT harder.

So here's the top 100 of 1981:

1. Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes
2. Endless Love, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie
3. Lady, Kenny Rogers
4. (Just Like) Starting Over, John Lennon
5. Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield
6. Celebration, Kool and The Gang
7. Kiss On My List, Daryl Hall and John Oates
8. I Love A Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbitt
9. 9 To 5, Dolly Parton
10. Keep On Loving You, REO Speedwagon
11. Theme From "Greatest American Hero", Joey Scarbury
12. Morning Train (Nine To Five), Sheena Easton
13. Being With You, Smokey Robinson
14. Queen Of Hearts, Juice Newton
15. Rapture, Blondie
16. A Woman Needs Love, Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
17. The Tide Is High, Blondie
18. Just The Two Of Us, Grover Washington Jr.
19. Slow Hand, Pointer Sisters
20. I Love You, Climax Blues Band
21. Woman, John Lennon
22. Sukiyaki, A Taste Of Honey
23. The Winner Takes It All, Abba
24. Medley, Stars On 45
25. Angel Of The Morning, Juice Newton
26.Love On The Rocks, Neil Diamond
27. Every Woman In The World, Air Supply
28. The One That You Love, Air Supply
29. Guilty, Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb
30. The Best Of Times, Styx
31. Elvira, Oak Ridge Boys
32. Take It On The Run, REO Speedwagon
33. No Gettin' Over Me, Ronnie Milsap
34. Living Outside Myself, Gino Vannelli
35. Woman In Love, Barbra Streisand
36. Boy From New York City, Manhattan Transfer
37. Urgent, Foreigner
38. Passion, Rod Stewart
39. Lady (You Bring Me Up), Commodores
40. Crying, Don Mclean
41. Hearts, Marty Balin
42. It's My Turn, Diana Ross
43. You Make My Dreams, Daryl Hall and John Oates
44. I Don't Need You, Kenny Rogers
45. How 'Bout Us, Champaign
46. Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Pat Benatar
47. The Breakup Song, Greg Kihn Band
48. Time, Alan Parsons Project
49. Hungry Heart, Bruce Springsteen
50. Sweetheart, Franke and The Knockouts
51. Someone's Knockin', Terri Gibbs
52. More Than I Can Say, Leo Sayer
53. Together, Tierra
54. Too Much Time On My Hands, Styx
55. What Are We Doin' In Love, Dottie West
56. Who's Crying Now, Journey
57. De Do Do Do, De Da Da, Police
58. This Little Girl, Gary U.S. Bonds
59. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Stevie Nicks With Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
60. Giving It Up For Your Love, Delbert McClinton
61. A Little In Love, Cliff Richard
62. America, Neil Diamond
63. Ain't Even Done With The Night, John Cougar
64. Arthur's Theme, Christopher Cross
65. Another One Bites The Dust, Queen
66. Games People Play, Alan Parsons Project
67. I Can't Stand It, Eric Clapton
68. While You See A Chance, Steve Winwood
69. Master Blaster, Stevie Wonder
70. Hello Again, Neil Diamond
71. Don't Stand So Close To Me, Police
72. Hey Nineteen, Steely Dan
73. I Ain't Gonna Stand For It, Stevie Wonder
74. All Those Years Ago, George Harrison
75. Step By Step, Eddie Rabbitt
76. The Stroke, Billy Squier (an intensely guilty pleasure)
77. Feels So Right, Alabama
78. Sweet Baby, Stanley Clarke and George Duke
79. Same Old Lang Syne, Dan Fogelberg
80. Cool Love, Pablo Cruise
81. Hold On Tight, ELO
82. It's Now Or Never, John Schneider
83. Treat Me Right, Pat Benatar
84. Winning, Santana
85. What Kind Of Fool, Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb
86. Watching The Wheels, John Lennon
87. Tell It Like It Is, Heart
88. Smoky Mountain Rain, Ronnie Milsap
89. I Made It Through The Rain, Barry Manilow
90.You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', Daryl Hall and John Oates
91. Suddenly, Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard
92. For Your Eyes Only, Sheena Easton
93. The Beach Boys Medley, Beach Boys
94. Whip It, Devo
95. Modern Girl, Sheena Easton
96. Really Wanna Know You, Gary Wright
97. Seven Year Ache, Rosanne Cash
98. I'm Coming Out, Diana Ross
99. Miss Sun, Boz Scaggs
100. Time Is Time, Andy Gibb (also intensely guilty)

1981 was kind of the last year of the Seventies; Barbra Streisand has three entries in the charts (which was, if I recall, more than she had the rest of her career), disco is still a factor (Diana Ross, Barry Gibb), the last dribbles of the Country Pop fad of the late seventies (Alabama, Eddie Rabbit, Juice Newton, Kenny Rogers, Ronnie Milsap) are oozing through the year, and the last gasps of gloppy seventies-style pop-rock (Styx, Pablo Cruise, Marty Balin, Grover Washington) polluted the airwaves.

The nouveau regime was also present, both the genuine article (Devo, the Police) and a bunch of seventies staples who applied the style like a form of musical plastic surgery (Kim Carnes' "Betty Davis Eyes" slathered on synths and synthclaps like Norma Desmond trowelling on pan makeup, Andy Gibb's "Time Is Time" sounded gloriously uncomfortable, First British Invasion holdover Cliff Richard was surprisingly good, and of course Rick Springfield and Pat Benetar).

Two years earlier, Barbra Streisand was on the cover of Rolling Stone, and Dire Straits, the Cars and the Police were breezy incongruities on the Top Forty. Two years later, U2, the Alarm, Big Country, the Clash, Thomas Dolby, INXS, the Pretenders, Madness and a vast slew of wave, post-punk and do-it-yourself synth pop dominated the charts, and the likes of Streisand, Carly Simon and Gary Wright vanished to the novelty circuit.

It was also the last year that John Mellencamp completely, irredeemably sucked, as well as the last year where there were as many Bruce Springsteen covers on the charts as songs by Bruce himself ("Hungry Heart", Gary U.S. Bonds' wonderful "This Little Girl")

I'd forgotten that Roseanne Cash's gorgeous "Seven Year Ache" was that old - or that Alan Parsons' dreary "Time" was that young...

Highlights and lowlights:

• I remember thinking "There's no way Styx can get worse than Paradise Theater". We were, of course, three years away from "Mr. Roboto".
• Being the year after John Lennon was murdered (or "assassinated", as Rolling Stone kept saying), you couldn't escape him. Unfortunately, I didn't like Lennon's post-Beatles catalog then, I like it less now, and even then Double Fantasy was a dismal record. It surprises me how many Lennon singles there are on the charts; they all sounded the same to me back then; I think I started singing "Woman", I'd finish with "Watching the Wheels"...
• I know what you're thinking; Mitch, you punk leviathan you, picked Steve Friggin' Winwood's "While You See A Chance" as your favorite song of the year? You betcha. Partly because it was a cool song, partly because it fluidly mixed old keyboards (Hammond B-3, Rhodes Piano) with electronic keys (the synth sax and horn parts), and partly because it was an epochal moment. I was about to ask a major crushgrrl out to prom; I put it off a few minutes - during which time one of my best friends asked her. That song still roils through my mind when I'm pondering an borderline-impulsive move.

I envy all you damn kids who graduated in 1982 or '83. Now there were some years in music!

(On the other hand, I pity anyone who got out of school in 1979, 1989, 1994 or 2001...)

Call Me Duke

Via Doug at BoGold, the great Leading Man test.

This one's a little more fun than most, actually...'

John Wayne You scored 69% Tough, 14% Roguish, 9% Friendly, and 9% Charming!

You, my friend, are a man's man, the original true grit, one tough talking, swaggering son of a bitch. You're not a bad guy, on the contrary, you're the ultimate good guy, but you're one tough character, rough and tumble, ready for anything. You call the shots and go your own way, and if some screwy dame is willing to accept your terms, that's just fine by you. Otherwise, you'll just hit the open trail and stay true to yourself. You stand up for what you believe and can handle any situation, usually by rushing into the thick of the action. You're not polished and you're not overly warm, but you're a straight shooter and a real stand up guy. Co-stars include Lauren Bacall and Maureen O'Hara, tough broads who can take care of themselves. Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the Classic Dames Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 95% on Tough You scored higher than 65% on Roguish You scored higher than 8% on Friendly You scored higher than 4% on Charming

Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid

Melting Down

We had a great time talking with Saint Paul Mayor Randy Kelly on the NARN show at the fair yesterday.

I think we'll be talking to Mayor Kelly for another four years.

For starters, the Saint Paul DFL is...er, melting down over Kelly's independant endorsment of President Bush last year, acting like a bunch of fourth-graders, taking their toys and going home:

Party officers voted this week to nix an invitation Kielkopf extended to Kelly, even though he considers himself a supporter of former City Council Member and DFL endorsee Chris Coleman.

"I think the party that we're trying to build on the East Side should be a big-tent party and be open to people," Kielkopf says. "What does this tell all those Democrats that are going to vote for Mayor Kelly? That we don't want them? It just makes it that much harder."

If you're not from Saint Paul, the local DFL can be bewildering. The stereotype of the city party is the relentlessly sanctimonious, Volvo-driving, MPR-listening, free-range-Alpaca-wearing, Kathleen-Soliah-supporting, Wellstone-sign-in-yard-after-two-years-not-removin g, sixties-pining, politically-correct-to-a-fault frump. But the East Side DFL is a little more bumptious - the pro-union, pro-USA party that John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman and Scoop Jackson might recognize.

So what is the City DFL telling the East Siders who support their guy Kelly?

My vote: "Shut up and think when we tell you to think".

The snub is a sign of how bitter the feelings seem to be over Kelly's independent ways. Last year, he barnstormed the state campaigning for Republican President Bush. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman were headliners at a Summit Avenue fundraiser for the mayor earlier this month.

The First Ringer - whose analysis should be the envy of the entire Twin Cities media - notes:

Angst among St. Paul’s liberal base is so deeply intertwined with the race that not one, but two attempts at forcing a recall of Kelly have been launched by a pair of identical twins, Dan and Dave Duddingston, who picketed Kelly’s bi-partisan fundraiser with lawnsigns reading ”Republican Randy.” If the Kelly/Coleman battle has become a theatre of the absurd, apparently we’ve found the comic relief.

Coleman, the Duddingston twins and others certainly have their right to be upset over Kelly’s presidential pick and in a city as overwhelming DFL as St. Paul, it’s an assumed winning position to flaunt one’s liberal credentials. Only St. Paul hasn’t elected an endorsed Democrat since the Berlin Wall was still standing and has elected fiscally moderate-to-conservative candidates including---gulp---one Republican [Technically, Norm Coleman was a Democrat both times he was elected - but that didn't last long - Ed.]. If purity was the only test for St. Paul voters, the other night’s debate could have been resolved with cutting the candidates to see who bled the bluest.

I wonder - when will the Saint Paul DFL figure it out? Saint Paul's stereotype is almost the same sort of caricature as Minneapolis' - but the fact is, there's a reservoir of common sense that has led the actual voters to tap fiscally-moderate, socially-conservative DFLers who either play to the GOP or actually eventually join it.

The Shorter Eva Young

"Michele Bachmann (looser, Stillwater) hasn't perfected innerstellar travel yet. I wonder why?"

" Blogger Berg hasn't asked her why not yet; why do you seppose that is?"

Ready For Duck Season

Neil "Red Six" Prakash, a tank platoon leader in Iraq, writes the excellent "Armor Geddon" blog. He's back in country now, and writing regularly again.

The latest installment - a few of the facts of life when it comes to getting supplies in the Army, and the search for a 120mm (that's 4.7 inch wide) buckshot round for his tanks.

Ingmar Bergman: More Fun Than Nick Coleman

After the NARN show today at the Minnesota State Fair, I walked around the Great Minnesota Get-Together with Brian "Saint Paul" Ward from Fraters and Swiftee from Pair O' Dice.

It was not just your typical jaunt around the fair with a couple of guys, though. No. We were on a mission.

In his column late this past week, Nick Coleman was noticing a throbbing undercurrent:

Ever since 9/11, there has been an edge to the fair, a throbbing anxiety that has murmured just below the sound of screams and compressed air machines. But this year, it has seeped in a little deeper, becoming an actual undercurrent of discord.

So as we trolled from beer garden to bierstube, we were in search of that throb; looking to surf that undercurrent.

The State Fair is, in Nick Coleman's world, a miasma of incipient misery. And we had to find it; to comprehend it; to own it, to roll it in our fingers like a fine cigar, to truly be the throb, to become the discordant cataract.

Like the lost kids in Simon and Garfunkel's America, we set off to find...

...the Real Fair.

Like pilgrims tracing the steps of Joyce through Dublin on Bloomsday, Brian, Swiftee and I walked reverently into the Horticulture building, where Minnesotans...:

...go to catch a glimpse of ourselves, to find out how we're doing, to look in the mirror and check the mood of Minnesota. No one person can take it all in, and not even the combined effort of every newspaper and TV station in town can quite capture the mood. But after a first stroll around the fair Thursday, I say: The mood is not good.

Once inside:

I had just left the crop art exhibit in the Horticulture Building, where I found the usual depictions of celebrities and pop icons -- from portraits of Pope John Paul II to one of Johnny Cash, amusingly composed entirely of various seeds all of which, befitting the man, are black.

(...and, befitting the column, induce flatus)

But there were edgier works, too, including a life-size immigrant worker scarecrow. The champion scarecrow wears a sombrero and a crucifix, has a face made of burlap and has a pamphlet in his pocket about how to learn English. Created by Laura Burlis of Minneapolis, this scarecrow isn't about the fears that trouble crows. It's about the ones that trouble America.

One award-winning crop-art display was a miniature military cemetery, complete with a seed-art Old Glory and gnarled trees standing amid a somber scene of graves laid out in rows. Each grave, bearing a painted number, was represented by an upturned lima bean. "In Tribute," was the title given by artist Steve Dahlberg of Minneapolis, who added: "1,863 casualties as of 8-20-05."

Dahlberg put the finishing touches on his work last Saturday. By the time the fair opened, 11 more had died, including another Minnesotan.

While standing in front of "In Tribute", I asked a bystander, Weldon Kruczynski of Dassel, if he felt a throbbing anxiety, an actual undercurrent of discord.

"I feel something throbbing", he said sourly, heading for the exit.

We headed out onto the street, in front of the Leinie Lodge, following the column's deft flow:

I stood at attention Thursday as National Guard soldiers raised the American flag outside the Leinie Lodge and we observed a moment of silence. Nearby, in a familiar tableau that was unsettling, a man lay flat on his back in the intersection of Dan Patch Avenue and Cosgrove Street, attended by ambulance workers while a small crowd gathered. I was thinking of lima beans.

Looking for inspiration, I pondered the chubby little legumes too.

I walked into the street, where another man was lying flat on his back.

"Pardon me, sir; are you noticing an undercurrent of actual discord? Perhaps some throbbing anxiety?"

"No", said the man, Evan Young of Mazeppa. "Feeling pretty good, right now!"

Foiled. No throb. No current.

The three of us meandered past the National Guard booth, seeking throb:

You wouldn't know there was a war on over at the National Guard booth

...which is ironic, given that you wouldn't know there was an investigation of Air America going on in the Strib, either, but again, I digress:

But it is always left to artists to tell the truth

(...since goodness knows the media won't...)

One provocative art exhibit is an installation of communion wafers by St. Paul artist Margaret Hilger. The piece is called, "In God's Name: America's Holy War," and consists of hundreds of wafers spilling onto an altar, each printed with a date, presumably the dates of troop deaths in Iraq. Many visitors passed "America's Holy War" without reacting, perhaps missing the message. Others stopped in their tracks.

"It's a very good statement," said Lucille Matousek of Mankato. "We are sacrificing our young people for nothing, in a pseudo-religious war."

Lana Thormodsgaard of Colorado, who was in town to see her three Twin Cities-area sons, was knocked almost speechless. She felt "assaulted" by Hilger's work at first, but after staring at it for a while, it started to make more sense to her.

"We are in a spiritual war," she said. "It's exactly what God did when he sent Jesus into the world. He declared war on the principalities and powers of the Evil One. It is a holy war."

I don't know if that's what the artist intended (I couldn't reach Hilger). But there is not just food on a stick at the fair. There is also food for thought. No one ever said a fair is just fun and Ferris wheels.

No, indeed.

The Minnesota State Fair is a miasmic quagmire of misery, all throbbing anxieties and heaving discords - and none of the three of us were clever enough to find them.

Or so we thought. But then we wandered into the Labor Pavilion; the anxiety throbbed; the discord flowed like a...well, a hidden undercurrent.

Swiftee: "I feel the throbbing anxiety".

Saint: "And the undercurrent of discord!"

We wandered to the DFL booth.

Saint: "Throbbing!"

Swiftee: "Discord!"

We retreated to the Leinie Lodge again, satisfied on the one hand that we'd found the throb and the current - indeed, that we'd found the point or purpose to a Nick Coleman column at all!

The Minnesota State Fair: Bring your Prozac!

(If you're not attending in the company of Nick Coleman, or planning to read him before entering the Fairgrounds, disregard the above advice...)

Got Giggles?

With the addition of Ken Avidor to the roster the "Dump Bachmann" blog is officially a hate site; Avidor's crude photoshops of Michele Bachmann posing with Adolph Hitler, were they written about a liberal by a Republican, would most likely be met by legal action.

And I have to wonder - in what will be my last posted pondering of the subject - what's the fuss? Avidor's sophomoric japes are actually the high point of his oeuvre (hah hah); his photoshop "skills" would get laughed off of Fark.

And why bother? If you want sophomoric and crude (delivered without that noxious miasma of self-importance!), check out Swiftee's Friday Funnies!

State Fair Challenge

If you're politically-inclined (or especially if you're not), and you're on your way to the Minnesota State Fair over the next week and a half, do me a favor, would you please?

Stop by the various party booths - the GOP's barn and the DFL's tractorium - and tell me which feels better?

Which one puts out the air uf understated desperation?

Just curious.

I've just been noticing - among my DFL friends, it seems like there's a sort of extended, low-grade panic going on. Last November's Minnesota results and the yammering of the last session notwithstanding, the GOP just seems more confident these days.

So check it out. Then enjoy the Fair!

Get Together

Join the NARN today and tomorrow at the Minnesota State Fair.

Today, we'll be talking with Mark Stutrud, president of Summit Brewing company. Check in - we'll have some audience-participation going on.

Saint Paul's mayor Randy Kelly will be stopping by on his way to the DFL ice cream booth.

And we'll have the inaugural Scotch Egg Eating contest, as well as our award-winning Fair Parade coverage.

Tomorrow? Check in later today.

Sheehan: Follow The Money

A Bay area TV station followed Cindy Sheehan through a day at Camp Casey:

Cindy Sheehan kneels before a cross with her son's name on it, touches his picture, wipes her tears. It's an outpouring of emotion that is part of a scheduled news event organized daily for the television radio and print reporters who crowd in to capture a mother's grief.

They also follow the money to Camp Casey:

Leading the group is Fenton Communications employee Michele Mulkey, based in San Francisco. Fenton specializes in public relations for liberal non profits.

Their bills are being paid by True Majority, a non-profit set up by Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry's ice cream fame.

Ben Cohen: "People are willing to listen to her and we want to do as much as we can to make her voice heard."

Cohen's liberal group has teamed up with Berkeley-based moveon.org, an anti-Bush group co-founded by Joan Blades.

Earlier this month, MoveOn.org helped organize anti-war vigils in support of Cindy Sheehan. Current Democratic National Party chair Howard Dean's organization, Democracy for America, is also involved. As is the more radical anti-war group Code Pink, organized by San Francisco's Medea Benjamin.

Money quote?:

Gold Star mother Karen Meredith went to Crawford from Mt. View. Her son Ken Ballard died last year.

Karen Meredith: "Sometimes things don't feel quite right to me. They don't feel wrong but maybe that's how they do it in the marketing business."

ABC7's Mark Matthew: "You feel you're part of a marketing business?"

Karen Meredith: "Possibly. Yeah I think so."

Read the whole thing.

Bleagh, Part II

I mentioned turmoil yesterday.

The programming staff at the company I work at is about six months behind on work - hence, there's not much need for analysis and design, since all design work will be obsolete by the time anyone can implement it.

So my contract ends today.

I'm waiting on news from one company at which I had an interview earlier this week (seemed like a good one - we'll see) and interviews for two more positions, hopefully next week. Plus, there are a few more interesting gigs popping up out there, too.

However, if your company is looking for an Information Architect/Usability Engineer/User Experience Designer, drop me a line...

Exposed

The flapdoodle over the identity - or purported identity - of Minnesota Democrat Exposer prompted me to try to go to the source.

That's right - the first-ever, exlusive interview with the elusive MDE.

Naturally, it was an email interview - MDE is famously reticent about revealing the faintest iota of personal information.

1. So what CAN you tell us about you? Nothing.

2. Why the secret identity? Anonymity is very powerful. I decided when I started my blog that I wanted people to attack my message and not the messenger. By keeping my identity secret, it allows me to focus on my message without any concern about attacks on me, the messenger. The only restriction I placed on myself is that I would not post lies and silly rumors. I did not want to use my anonymity as a license to launch false attacks on Democrats. Lies can be dismissed, but the truth is very stubborn.

3. To what means have fans - or non-fans - gone to try to figure your identity out? Fake interview requests, fake invitations to “private” meetings to talk about an exclusive story. People have asked me to call them to talk about a tip they received. I am sure some of these request were sincere, but I know some were a trap. AM 1500 spent an hour one day asking for me to call in for an interview. I just can’t do it.

4. Your anonymity seems to goad some of your detractors. Tell me about the feedback you get from Minnesota Democrats. I have received more compliments that criticisms. The best complaint was "did you know that every time someone in Mexico flushes the toilet, a blog like this one ends up in America?" I have had threats of violence, lawsuits, and getting my house burned down. I don’t take it very seriously.

5. What's been the highlight of your blogging career so far? It’s all the money I make! Seriously, the highlights of my short blogging career are when people read my blog and comment. This interview is also a highlight. This is the first interview I have granted and it is because I respect your work. When I first visited “Shot in the Dark” I thought, “holy s***”, this is great.

6. Lowlight? Typos. I went through a streak were I kept posting the wrong date when I sourced an article. I think it was my good friend Minnesota Lefty Liberal who kept pointing out my mistakes.

7. Do you ever see yourself coming out of the cold? No, I will never publicly admit who I am. The decision to remain anonymous has its pluses and minuses. I have already explained the pluses. The minuses are I can never take credit for my work. I can’t accept interview requests from television and radio stations. I can’t talk with other bloggers or go to social events and say “I am M.D.E!” I miss that interaction. Mitch, I would like to call you and ask for advice, but I can’t. I would enjoy going to the Thursday night trivia contests at Keegan’s Irish Pub, but I just can’t. I know my blog will never gain the acceptance of established bloggers because I of my anonymity. I wish they could ignore my anonymity and focus on my work product. Maybe someday I will earn their respect.

8. Have you ever gotten any response from some of those who have been the targets of your posts? Anything juicy? Yes. This was a recent response “Go f*** yourselves, right wing fascist c****ucker GOP s**t eaters.” I don’t know if you will post that, but it’s real.

9. What is the hardest part of being anonymous when digging for the kind of dirt you get? I'd imagine that it has to cause some inconveniences at the very least. The toughest part is getting people to trust me as a source. I am asking them to identify themselves, but I am still anonymous.

I have been working on one source for three months. It wasn't until they
started seeing newspapers using my blog as a source did they agree to
provide me with information.

10. You do a cooperative blog, MN Left and Right with "Trillin", of MNLeftyLiberal. What brought that on, and why? MN Lefty Liberal and I have has some very public fights and we agreed to run a blog together to try and provide a balanced debate. I haven’t done a good job of keeping up my end of the bargain, but I will. MN Lefty Liberal is a very good blog. It’s too good sometimes.

11. Describe the social circle in your own (highly classified) life. Any MN Democrats? I don’t hang out with Democrats. My social life is me sitting in front of my computer eating a Hot Pocket. [Merry Christmas, Laura Billings - Ed.]

12. What's your motivation? You've staked out a pretty narrow niche, but a very aggressive one. When I started blogging I was aware of my limitations. I couldn’t produce a quality blog if I focused on politics in general. I needed a specific target and a specific mission. Minnesota Democrats are such easy targets. Look at my recent success of exposing their story editing. The Minnesota DFL was editing stories about Kennedy’s campaign editing stories. How dumb can you be? Did they not think I and others would be watching their website? I have caught the DFL with their pants numerous times and I will catch them again.

13. Describe the Minnesota DFL in 20 words or less. The DFL is like an old-car. It still runs, but it has dents, the paint doesn’t match and it needs a major tune-up.

14. Do you read any liberal or DFL-leaning blogs? I am a big fan of liberal blogs. Aside from MN Lefty Liberal, MN GOP Watch is a great blog. I think its run by a high school kid. I am in awe of the work they do, especially Patrick’s. When I was in high school I couldn’t tie my shoes, but this guy sticks a thorn in the side of Minnesota Republicans on a daily basis. You have to respect that. North Star Politics is tough on my blog, but I read it 6 times a day. It’s run by a full-time student. I can’t imagine what the work product would be if this person was able to blog full-time. I hope he/she is becoming a doctor so they stay in school for a long time. A new blog I have been reading is Minnesota Blue. It’s run by a 15 YEAR-OLD KID! I hope his parents are proud of him because he is good. When I was 15, I couldn’t ride a bike and learning to tie my shoes was a long-term goal. A new blog that is a pain in the ass is DFL Governor .

15. Being an anonymous blogger with such a fine focus seems like a pretty self-limiting niche. Do you see yourself carrying on MDE in, say, five years? Where do you go from here? I can’t imagine shutting down Minnesota Democrats Exposed. My short-term goal is to earn the respect of mainstream media outlets and other bloggers so they republish my posts. Since I won’t reveal my identity, my blog’s acceptance is limited.

16. What would be your dream headline? “MINNESOTA DEMOCRATS EXPOSED NIGHT AT ALARY’S”

17. Anything you want to tell Mike Hatch? If Mike Hatch knew how much I know about him, he wouldn’t run for governor. He has no idea what’s coming.

18. Anything you want to tell Matt Entenza? I seek permission from Matt Entenza so I could ask his wife for a loan. I would like to add some features to Minnesota Democrats Exposed.

19. So when you've exposed enough Minnesota Democrats, what do you think they're going to do? Clean up their act, or what? In a perfect world, where does MDE's work lead us to? The Minnesota DFL is not shutting down. There will always be Democrats in Minnesota. In my perfect world, Minnesota Democrats will still do stupid things that provide the material for my blog.

20. What blogs do you read? Aside from big boys from the Northern Alliance, Kennedy v. The Machine , The First Ring, Residual Forces, and Republican Minnesota are my daily reads. Their writing is at a level I hope to be at someday.

Everyone Is MDE

I've been reading Shawn Towle's "Checks And Balances" off and on for years, now.

On the one hand, I have to hand it to Towle, being able to make money (any money) doing a paid web-based political newsletter in the age of the blog.

And I have to hand him more, since he seems to be able to do it with the lowest copy-editing standards I've seen this side of Democratic Underground.

The other day, Towle thought he'd figured out the identity of Minnesota's most elusive pundit, the "Minnesota Democrat Exposer". Much imitated, MDE arouses boundless irrational ire among DFLers. "MNPublius" writes:

If MDE is getting all his information from the Republican Party, then he is being sponsored by the Party in my book. There are two implications to this:

1) MDE is just a partisan hack, and should be treated accordingly.

2) Without knowing what information is coming from the GOP Party itself, and what is original MDE material (we would know if MDE was honest about this "operative" and his relationship with him/her) I have to assume that everything he posts is coming from the Republican Party and therefore that Party is responsible for the rumors, false claims and slander that is a staple of MDE's site.

That seems, of course, to be a staple of the left's response to conservative blogging; cry "Partisan Hack!", and say "that's that".

Recently, MDE published a piece claiming that Senate DFL leader Matt Entenza had hired a private eye to investigate Attorney General Mike Hatch.

The left were not amused.

Towle's "expose":

Minnesota Democrats Exposed (Exposed)

If you google the name Jerome Plagge you will find information on his activity in the blogsphere for Republican Senate District 63 (Richfield). There is also a link to a story from his blog about living a red life in a blue district on something called blogshares.com. As one delves a little deeper you see that in blogshares.com Minnesota Democrats Exposed is one of the most traded blog shares.

So recent information that has come our way is the Jerome Plagge is the person behind Minnesota Democrats Exposed. It will be interesting to see if now the anonymous source behind MDE either confirms or denies this idea. We encourage the folks at MDE to contact us and tell it how it is.

The Minnesota left was not amused by MDE's news...

...but the Minnesota right certainly is getting a yuk or two out of Towle's claim that Jerry Plagge - who writes the SD63 blog - is MDE.

Most of us in the MOB have met Jerry Plagge; he makes periodic appearances at Keegans. Doug from BoGold relates:

This is amusing for multiple reasons. The first is, I have met Jerry Plagge. He's not terribly anonymous, nor secretive about his political leanings or opinions. That's why he already has a blog for writing about them.

Kool Aid Report decided to get into the sleuthing business:

OK, here's the wrap up based on all the cicumstantial evidence KAR has uncovered.

The following people are not MDE:

LearnedFoot
V-Toed Bill
Dementee
Jerry Plagge
MDE

The following people are MDE:

The Head of Alfredo Garcia
Bogus Doug a/k/a Gerry Daly
Mrs. Bogus Doug a/k/a Mrs. Daly
"Conservative Minnesota"
"vikingvx"
Tom Swift a/k/a Ian Mykal
Flash
You

Gary Miller at Kennedy Vs. The Machine, however, has the litmus test figured out:

FWIW, The Millers are spending the Labor Day weekend in southern Minnesota camping and drinking Schell’s beer with the Plagge family. No internet connection will be available at our campsite and, last I checked, no Wi-Fi is yet available at state parks.

If MDE goes dormant over the holiday, the moonbats may just have found their guy! Alternatively, nk2134 [the commenter that "broke" the story of the MDE/Plagge link] may want to investigate how Blogshares work before revealing his/her ignorance.

And finally, Plagge himself:Trust me he is not me and I am not himThe final word? I tend to doubt it.

Posted by Mitch at 06:32 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Bleagh

Immense personal turmoil today.

More later.

Upcoming Events

Tomorrow, I'll post my interview with the most controversial figure in the Minnesota blogosphere, the Minnesota Democrat Exposer.

This weekend, the NARN will be at the Minnesota State Fair both Saturday and Sunday. We have a very full agenda - more to come later.

Hope to see you at the fair!

Tragic Illiteracy

Yesterday, I said the Strib's unsigned editorial was a ripe specimen.

The flies circling this morning's effort can be seen for miles, in comparison.

It's about Pat Robertson's outburst the other day calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, which I condemned on Tuesday.

The left, naturally, is piling on; nothing excites the droogs of the left like an "out" conservative Christian getting uppity.

OK. I've buried Robertson. Now, I'm going to praise him.

No, not what he said - but the basic idea. Chavez is going to be a big, ugly thorn in America's side, sooner than later. Assassination - not such a good idea. But some sort of pressure on Venezuela's incipient dictator can only be a good thing.

Because while I'm not a huge Robertson fan (to say the least), I figure if the likes of the Strib Editorial Board are lining up against a guy, even a guy like Robertson deserves someone covering his six.

Given the absurdity of his more famous quotations, one can only hope that Pat Robertson's television viewers don't think he gets his ideas straight from the top, as it were. His declarations seem clearly to be born of his own mind. Indeed, the host of the Christian Broadcast Network's "The 700 Club" made the point quite tellingly on Monday in urging that U.S. agents assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

That's not a strategy the pacifist from Nazareth -- himself a victim of state-sponsored murder -- would likely endorse, and it ought to dismay Robertson's followers as readily as his detractors.

But first, can we record our dismay at the Strib's historical illiteracy? Jesus's crucifixion was ordered by a religious body, at least according to the Gospels (in which Pontius Pilate merely confirmed the sentence passed by the Sanhedrin).

Details, details:

Denominations may differ on the meaning of the Christian message, but few preachers embrace selective slaughter as a noble means to an honorable end.

But then, it seems unlikely Robertson was calling for a group of ministers to carry out the assassination, doesn't it?

Yet Robertson did just that on Monday: "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him," he told his viewers, "I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war." That exhortation casts evangelism in a whole new light.

It says absolutely nothing about evangelism.

By the way, the Strib seems undecided on what it's trying to say:

Robertson's words were plainly foolish, but listeners should guard against making too much of them.

Huh?

What? To leave more room for the Strib to do it?

Best Music Review Ever

Lileks:

It contains two near-fatal doses of Joan Baez, each of which contain such concentrated hippieness you could soak it in vat of Curtis LeMay’s urine and it would never dissolve.

I'm still wondering if "Curtis LeMay's Urine" is a wacky enough name to get booked at the Seventh Street Entry anymore.

Yet Another Exception

The prosecution in Idaho plans to ask for the death penalty for Jeffrey Duncan, accused of murdering three people in a plot to abduct kids for sexual gratification,

Before the hearing, Douglas said he believes Duncan can get a fair trial in Kootenai County, despite three months of intense publicity about the killings and simultaneous abductions of Shasta Groene, 8, and Dylan Groene, 9, from their home.

The story then reinforces that publicity:

Shasta was rescued early July 2 while eating with Duncan at a Denny's restaurant here. Dylan's body was found a few days later in Montana.

Duncan, 42, is charged with killing Shasta and Dylan's mother, Brenda Groene, 40; her boyfriend Mark McKenzie, 37; and her 13-year-old son Slade.

Authorities contend he watched their home along Interstate 90 for days, then entered the night of May 15-16, tied up the three victims — the basis for the three kidnapping charges — and beat them to death with a hammer.

Court documents allege he then held Shasta and her brother for weeks at a campsite in Montana where he molested them and eventually killed the little boy.

While I have long opposed the death penalty for one and only one reason (the likelihood of executing the innocent), I do most sincerely look forward to the day when we can be certain beyond a rational doubt about guilt or innocence, so we can kill vermin like this with the cleanest possible conscience.

Oh, and despite my opposition, I'll probably look the other way if they convict him fairly and kill him. Just saying.

Wog Goes To The Protest

He attended the pro-Sheehan vigil at the U of M last week.

He took pictures, too.

Worldviews

King Banaian points us to this year's Beloit College Mindset List, which purports to enlighten us on what the new generation of students regard as their baseline reality.

You know the survey; it's the one that enlightens us with things like:

2. They don't remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.
3. Heart-lung transplants have always been possible.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
5. Boston has been working on the "The Big Dig" all their lives.
6. With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a tie.
7. Pay-Per-View television has always been an option.
8. They never had the fun of being thrown into the back of a station wagon with six others.
9. Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other.
10. They are more familiar with Greg Gumbel than with Bryant Gumbel.

Interesting? Certainly.

But certainly not the whole story.

There are other things that are integral part of their worldviews - things that Beloit College missed:

76. "I Feel Your Pain" has always been an expression of cynicism.

77. Snoop refers to a rapper, not a Beagle.

78. "Heyyyyy" has always been Rosie O'Donnell, not Arthur Fonzarelli.

79. Alan Funt" Didn't he used to do that show that Ashton Kutcher invented!

80. Bob Dole has always been a Viagra pitchman.

More?

Posted by Mitch at 06:27 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Into The Event Hole

Apropos nothing:

Air America Minnesota's "Events and News Page" has not been updated in two months.

I presume that means their July 30 remote at Diamond Bluff wasn't, shall we say, the feel good hit of the summer?

However, a contact tells me the Amateur Radio station is looking to make a splash at the State Fair:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Be a Part of Air America Minnesota at the State Fair!
Booth is now open until 9:00 pm!
August 22, 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- Get your free tickets and a t-shirt!
-- Become active, get involved in your newest progressive talk radio station!

Air America Minnesota is still looking for energetic volunteers to staff the booth at the State Fair!

The hours have expanded for our State Fair Booth and volunteers are needed until 9:00 pm. If you can spare four hours after work, please contact Raleigh at the AM950 office at 952-[number redacted] immediately!!

Get your free tickets and a t-shirt!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Volunteers?

It's a for-profit operation!

A for profit enterprise is begging people to devote their personal free time to help them...earn a profit?

Isn't it ironic that a station whose local ad base is largely labor and trade unions is not even paying non-union wages, but is in fact demanding free labor?

I'd love to hear from a "volunteer".

Assailable

Today's Strib editorial is a particularly ripe specimen.

It cites the likes of Cindy Sheehan and Becky Lourey as the new face of the antiwar movement.

Thirty-five years ago, the antiwar movement was typified by a long-haired, scruffy young male of draftable age, burning his draft card.

A new antiwar movement is being born this summer on a Texas roadside. It presents a much different face -- feminine, older, wiser, and filled with grief and righteous indignation. The face is that of mothers who lost sons and daughters in Iraq, first Cindy Sheehan of California, and now more, including Minnesota state Sen. Becky Lourey.

I presume this means no more six-foot-tall Rumsfeld puppets?

The editorial continues:

The moral authority of the blossoming movement's face is undeniable and, despite concerted conservative efforts to discredit it, unassailable. Even those who disagree with the antiwar encampment's contention that the war in Iraq is delivering none of its promised gains for this country are obliged to concede that Sheehan and other Gold Star mothers have the right to express their sorrow and anger as they see fit.

The First Amendment does indeed guarantee them the right to free speech...

...but let's back up and talk about moral assailability.

As a force for setting national policy? A mother's grief is most definitely assailable. Personal emotion is a lousy driver for policy, no matter whose emotion or what the issue.

The Strib - like a lot of the left - confuses the right's unwillingness (for the most part) to insult Cindy Sheehan's grief or attack her right to speech with wariness about the rectitude of her cause, and its applicability to the larger war.

Make no mistake about it - when it comes to setting policy in the War On Terror, Sheehan and Lourey are dead wrong.

To these mothers' credit, they see fit to grieve in silence no longer. Their witness is that stubborn adherence to a failed policy is not patriotism, and that the sacrifice of fallen sons and daughters is not dishonored by an admission that their assignment was flawed, and needs revision.

Lourey, who spent three days at the protest site dubbed Camp Casey outside President Bush's ranch, offers the antiwar movement a powerful voice -- one capable of attracting national attention if this summer's grass-roots combustion in Crawford catches lasting fire.

Which, it would seem, it's not; last week's Rasmussen Poll showed Sheehan isn't going over well at all outside the Blue Counties, and poorly as well among military families.

Who, apparently, aren't regarded as morally unassailable.

Both personally and politically, the DFL state senator from Kerrick commands respect. Lourey, 62, is an indefatigable 15-year legislator admired for her warmth, passion and lawmaking skill. She and her husband raised 12 children, eight of them adopted, while establishing a successful family business. She is as riveting a speaker as exists in Minnesota's liberal camp.

Lourey fell silent in the weeks after her Army pilot son Matt was shot down and killed near Baghdad in June. Her grief's quiet phase appears to have ended. We expect that she now has much to say that, in coming weeks, Americans should hear.

Possible - and, unlike the mass of military parents who support the President and his policy, Senator Loury can be assured of constant, uncritical, fawning coverage in the mainstream media, especially the Strib.

The Strib will, by the way, give itself a hernia, straining as hard as it does to find a Vietnam parallel:

The Minnesota contingent at Camp Casey also included DFL Second District congressional candidate Coleen Rowley, the former FBI agent and whistleblower on the agency's inept handling of tips about the terror plot that became 9/11. Rowley's participation drew out U.S. Rep. John Kline, the Second District incumbent whom Rowley is challenging.

Kline faulted Lourey, Rowley and other war protesters. Their action "is harmful to the morale of the soldiers, and it encourages the enemy," he said on a visit to the Star Tribune.

To Americans past a certain age, the accusation is familiar. It echoes the rhetoric that hawks used to try to stifle the antiwar movement that burgeoned during the Vietnam War, especially after the Tet offensive in 1968, when Americans came together in large numbers to change this nation's policy in Southeast Asia.

Of course, the hawks were right; the Tet Offensive was a military victory (the Viet Cong was not capable of operating in the field for the rest of the war; the "Guerrillas" in the South for the next five years were mostly North Vietnamese regulars in civilian clothes. Hey, there's an Iraq parallel!) - but the left succeeded in selling it to the media (personified by Walter Cronkite) as a defeat; that perception was all that crossed the threshold of the US news media.

Just like today. Or, to paraphrase the Strib, "to American conservatives and people with the faintest knowledge of history and the cynical, selective memory of the media, the accusation is familiar".

Suggesting that protesters have insufficient concern for American troops was an easy charge to level against draft-dodging youth, and it probably is to be expected as congressional campaign season gets underway. But it does not ring true when aimed at parents who raised children so patriotic that they volunteered for military service.

But, like the fly-infested, sandal-shod protesters of the Strib editors' youth, the parents' grief is being used by forces larger, more subtle, and less telegenic; the likes of Michael Moore, MoveOn, Code Pink, ANSWER and the radical left that is slowly squatting in the DNC building.

Such parents understand what support for those sons and daughters requires. They know that it does not require blind loyalty to bad policy.

But what if the loyalty isn't blind?

Has the Strib considered the possibility that it's not?

Dumb question, right?

Think Mystically, Act Disingenuously

On The Media is National Public Radio's media analysis show.

It also tends to be a relentless cheerleader for the media establishment, what Captain Ed calls the "Exempt Media" in their battle against the philistines of the
blogosphere. It has a smug little habit of tittering at out-of-context renditions of conservative criticism of the media, while ignoring substantive complaints. Far from a media "watchdog" show, it is more of a mutual admiration society for the mainstream media.

Last Sunday's broadcast (audio and transcript) ushered them into new territory; blinkered sexism and first-degree murder of context.

The story - a hagiography of Cindy Sheehan and the media event surrounding her - carefully excises any of the political context behind "Sheehan's" stunt.

REPORTER: It started out as a grieving mom on a lawn chair demanding to see the President; now Cindy Sheehan, speaking for the nation's anti war movement. Tonight we're live from Crawford, Texas with Cindy Sheehan.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What should we do about Mother? Discrediting her is frustrating work. You can hear it in Rush Limbaugh's voice.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real. It's, it's nothing more than an attempt. It's the latest
effort made by the coordinated left.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But defending her is as easy as apple pie. Air America's Randy Rhodes.

RANDY RHODES: God forbid the story gets out that Cindy Sheehan is just a mom.

Carefully excised; Cindy Sheehan is "just a mom", but MoveOn and CodePink and Michael Moore? They don't exist!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: As her conservative critics find evidence in past statements to besmirch her name, liberal fact checkers seek to clear it, demonstrating just how the Drudge Report took her word seemingly praising the President when they met last year out of context, how she never said her son died for Israel. [This, we're supposed to accept, unsourced, out of
pure faith in those unnamed "liberal fact checkers". All hail the media! Seriously - was this ever proven?-- Ed.] And as the argument grows louder, those talk show hosts who decline to condemn or canonize her only make it worse by taking the only other available route they know. They punditize her.
MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked her to compare the campaign in Afghanistan to Iraq and she didn't make a distinction.

CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, now, well, then we should have gone after al Qaeda and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: But that's where they were being harbored. That's where they were headquartered. Shouldn't we go after their headquarters? Doesn't that
make sense?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It would have been better if she'd simply kept mum, and she probably knows that.

CINDY SHEEHAN: I'm not a strategist. I'm not a military strategist.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: She's just a mom.

She's the leader of a huuuuuge movement that is knocking of the gates of the President's ranch! She's the soul of a nation's grief and doubt! Never mind that she's been hijacked by the likes of Michael Moore and David Duke - she is morally untouchable (in Mo Dowd's special little world).

But when the box's sharper tacks call her on her statements...

...she's "just a mom".

And mindful of charges of political exploitation, Sheehan has bid the activists in her midst to take a back seat. She's moving camp closer to the President, courtesy of a kindly Crawford neighbor, and only moms and some dads get to go.

So she's "just a mom" - but the activists were in the front seat, anyway?

And...um..."some dads?"

Some background; to the left, the family is the mother and "her" children. Fathers are, as übersociallefty Margaret Meade famously quipped, "a biological necessity but a social accident" to the not-so-radical left. A look at one system that the institutional left runs from the core outward - the family court and child support systems - are a clear indicator of how the institutional left regards the role of the father.

Brooke Gladstone talks with Jean Bethke Elshtain - a feminist scolar who's taken a lot of flak from the left, as it happens, for her support of the war on terror.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Why should a mother have more moral authority on a particular issue than a father or the average person on the street?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's a cultural thing, a very old cultural thing, the spiritual power projected on the bond between mother and child, a kind of purity that transcends politics and repels partisan attack, no matter how harsh. Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Political Mothers, says that a mother's moral authority only increases when her child dies.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: And there's something that kicks in when you think mother child. You think of someone young, vulnerable, dependent.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Sculpted by Michelangelo, perhaps?

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Yes, exactly. The image of the suffering mother, the image of Madonna and child. And you don't think of a grownup adult son who re-enlisted to fight a war.

So there's a brief nod to reality, before the report veers back into feminist orthodoxy:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The mothers who finally brought an end to the notorious dirty war in Argentina made powerful use of that imagery. From 1976 to '83, people disappeared off the streets of Argentina every day, many young students, never heard from again. The mothers of the disappeared began to gather on Thursdays in a Buenos Aires square, walking in pairs, because it was illegal to assemble in groups, without their husbands, because it was not safe for them. Diana Taylor is the author of Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's Dirty War.

DIANA TAYLOR: There's a deep investment in the
maternal in every society, and that's why it's so
potent, because it's not an attack that's coming from
the outside; it's coming from the very fiber of that
society.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In Argentina, political activism was
strictly forbidden but the grieving mothers, at least
while they stayed in the square, were seemingly
untouchable.

DIANA TAYLOR: They looked like matronly middle aged women. They wore flat shoes, and they started carrying the ID cards of their missing children, saying, these people existed, they've disappeared, we don't know where they are; you know where they are, we want you to be held accountable.

Right. The mothers of the depeparacidos were very effective; not as a matter of some innate power of their gender, but because they were the best means available - the only people who could protest without fear of being disappeared themselves.

Far, far removed from the likes of Cindy Sheehan, whose adult son volunteered for service in Iraq.

But never mind; this isn't about facts. This is about mythologizing the identity-feminists' view of mothers in society, in order to prop up the legitimacy of Cindy Sheehan, facts and context be damned.
Gladstone talks with a series of friendly witnesses:

DIANA TAYLOR: And if you also look at what happened with the families here of 9/11, when they went to testify before the Commission [At least, the ones who went to flog a political agenda - ed], they were also carrying those photographs of their children. So these were a kind of a strategy that they had all taken up from the mother's movement in Argentina.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In 2000, Diana Dees Thomases organized the Million Mom March for stronger gun control regulations, one of the biggest protest marches in U.S. history.

DIANA DEES THOMASES: I wish I could tell you that I was a scholar of women's movements, but I wasn't. What I learned at the Million Mom March, and I really didn't have any background on this until the Million Mom March, that women are natural organizers after they have children. Suddenly you're organizing carpools, you're organizing field trips, you're on the PTA. Suddenly moms are joining the NAACP. Issues that affect them become more important, I think, once you have children.

What of the fact that the "9/11 Families" were, like Sheehan, a front? Or that the "Million Moms" (who href="http://www.shotinthedark.info/archives/005334.html">never fielded more than a 150,00 people, if that, and
whose "innate organizing ability" led them to the brink of bankruptcy) were both ineffective, factually bankrupt and the object of ridicule by people with more basis in fact than ideological alliance?

What of it?

Says Gladstone:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But eventually the mothers, defined in these movements as mothers and only as mothers...

Bingo! There again; the pseudo-mystical claptrap is, once again, about the infantilization of women!

"They're just mothers..."? Go back to the inception of the Million Mom March. They were not "Just mothers". They were women - hear them roar!

Gladstone is trying to reinforce the point that motherhood infers some mystical aura to the woman waving her child's picture about. The disingenuity of the point is apparent when she juxtaposes Bethke Elshtain...:

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Over time, the symbolic appearance of grieving mothers in the public square begins to lose its force, and in a sense you've made your point. Now politics has to take over.

...with the Million Mom March...:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But beware! The gun lobby accused the Million Mom March of playing politics when it found a common cause with political allies.

...ignoring - or perhaps never having known - the fact that the "Million Moms" were a politically-based pressure group from the start, something perhaps the mushy, "journalistic" left wasn't equipped to see or inclined to care about - but the "gun lobby" was! The claptrap about the mystical role of the mother was as much of a smokescreen then as it is with Cindy Sheehan today.

Gladstone, probably unknowingly, tips her hand:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And therein lies the dilemma for mothers and mothers' movements. They are powerful because they are perceived as pure. They grab attention across the political spectrum precisely because they transcend politics.

Why, and to whom, are they "perceived as pure?" And who presents that image of purity - without, as Gladstone demonstrates, any critical question whatsoever?

But the political arena is where change happens. A madonna has no place there. Once she enters, she's no purer than Dad. (GUITAR MUSIC AND SINGING)

"No purer than Dad?"

For starters - do they know how objectionable this is to fathers? People who love their children exactly as much as mothers do?

The idea that Motherhood implies some holy status that transcends logic or honesty or facts is absurd.

Think mystically. Act disingenuously.

Posted by Mitch at 12:03 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Shocking Admission

Sheila O'Malley admits:

sometimes I like to dance around my room and lip synch to Kelly Clarkson.

The post is actually about the Stans, the former Soviet nations in central Asia.

We oughtta get her and King together over a beer or two...

Evidence of Frivolity

The Twin Cities' religious left is standing up for the right of the church to impose its will on the rest of the state of Minnesota.

The Strib:

Does [the language on the "Concealed Weapons Banned In This Building" signs] interfere with the freedom of religion?

It was a central point of debate in a Hennepin County courtroom Monday as the state faced a challenge to its updated but still-controversial gun law.

The case, which also focuses on whether religious institutions may ban guns in their parking lots or in their buildings while being used by tenants, is making its second run in the court system. A similar challenge was brought against a 2003 version of the law, but arguments about the religious questions still lingered when a Ramsey County judge ruled that the law was improperly passed by the Legislature.

Hennepin Judge Marilyn Brown Rosenbaum ruled that the old law shouldn't apply to religious institutions. A similar law was signed this year.

The Strib report glosses over a few details of the Brown Rosenbaum ruling, which I reported on two years ago:

She issued a restraining order allowing churches to use non-state-approved wording, typeface and print size in advising worshippers not to bring guns to church. This was the tempest that the Edina Community Lutheran Church (which numbers, among its many well-heeled DFL worshippers, former US Attorney and DFL Gubernatorial hopeful David Lillehaug, who was back at work doing the party's bidding in this case) yanked out of the teapot.

Here's the nub of the gyst: lawyers for a couple of well-heeled, clout-heavy, fashionably old-money Minnesota-lefty churches want to change the law passed by the peoples' representatives to match their peculiar, pointillistic, seemingly abiblical notion of intraparish communication:

Attorneys for two Twin Cities churches asked Judge LaJune Lange to issue a temporary injunction against some of the law's requirements as they apply to religious institutions.

David Lillehaug, attorney for the Edina Community Lutheran Church, and Marshall Tanick, representing the Unity Church of St. Paul, argued that requirements to put up signs using a specific size, typeface and language were infringing on the churches' religious messages. Such requirements make the state an editor over the churches' message, Lillehaug argued.

Question for Darth Lillehaug: Are churches allowed to change the wording on their Handicapped Parking signs to match some roepenumbrial [1] biblical stricture? Are they allowed to edit that into, say, tongues?

How about the "Mininmum Wage" poster that the church must display somewhere that employees congregate, if they have paid employees? The OSHA-mandated wording on their cleaning solvents?

Wordings on these sorts of things exist to eliminate ambiguities, whether in safety or legal matters. If churches are allowed to fiddle with the wording of the notices - or with their placement, or to not place the notice at all - it could have the effect of causing me to inadvertently criminalize myself, should I carry a concealed, permitted handgun onto their premises, just as if they were to translate their handicapped parking notices into Koine Greek so they could rack up parking fines from parishioners who only spoke Aramaic and Latin.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Ragatz argued that the law mandates that those signs contain state language and also allows churches to add religious language. He said that using the state-mandated, religiously neutral words is not a substantial burden and does not cause irreparable harm, two legal standards the churches must prove to get the injunction.

Next - the Champions of the Overprivileged want to impose their well-heeled, smug faith on everyone!

Lillehaug and Tanick argued that religious institutions shouldn't be prohibited from banning guns in parking lots, either. Those areas are used to further religious missions when people talk about services on the way to their cars or when a church holds an event in a parking lot, they argued.

Where does that stop?

Speaking as a Christian - nothing in our society protects us from being offended. And while a church may argue that guns have no place in a sanctuary during a service (which I'd respect by never attending the church), nothing about the law-abiding exercise of ones right to carry a concealed handgun impinges in any way, much less in the form of "irreparable harm", the ability of people to discuss religious services as they walk to their cars.

If the judge buys this, it will be time to storm the courthouse with pitchforks.

Oh, yeah - and the law is already way ahead of the Champions of the Well-Heeled:

Ragatz argued that when a church is holding an activity in the parking lot for a religious purpose, it may ban guns under the law.

Lillehaug and Tanick also argued that by not allowing landlords to ban tenants and their visitors from carrying guns, the law burdens religious organizations. Edina Community Lutheran Church lets a day care use its space, for instance. And Unity Church makes space available to be used as a homeless shelter.

Would the homeless be considered temporary tenants from whom the church couldn't ban guns? Tanick asked. Ragatz argued that they would clearly be considered church guests and that gun bans could be enforced.

Yep.

Church homeless shelters aren't allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion, either. Shall churches be allowed to cherrypick which legally-entitled rights they're allowed to express bigotry toward?

By the way, I'm sure this will be a problem, as they deal with the mass of homeless people who have clean criminal records, drivers licenses, $150+ to spend on concealed carry training, $100 for the permit application, and $100-1000 for a pistol. Of this I'm sure. And the homeless who don't have permits, but do have concealed handguns, are already breaking the law.

I'll be watching this, naturally.

[1] Roepenumbrial: Adjective: A right, tradition or stricture conjured from the whole cloth for self-serving reasons. From the "penumbra" found in the "Roe v. Wade" court decision.

Party On! And On! And On!

Attending an obscure little Liberal Arts college on the prairie, I always wondered what it would be like going to one of the "legendary" party schools (which, in that place and time, were Moorhead State University in Moorhead, MN, and King's own Saint Cloud State.

We're notified today of the real big leagues:

Top 10 party schools

1. University of Wisconsin-Madison

2. Ohio University, Athens

3. Lehigh University in Pennsylvania

4. University of California, Santa Barbara

5. State University of New York at Albany

6. Indiana University-Bloomington

7. University of Mississippi

8. University of Iowa

9. University of Massachusetts-Amherst

10. Loyola University New Orleans

Go Badgers!

Naturally, this is Not A Good Thing:

Schools often criticize the list, while the American Medical Association has urged Princeton Review to stop putting it out, saying it legitimizes students' drinking.

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley dismissed the report as "junk science that results in a day of national media coverage."

Much easier to blame the messengers than to, say, actually provide consequences to excessive partying; fines, sanctions, suspensions and expulsions.

Couldn't have that, could we?

Burying the Lede - in Dung!

Sean Penn "reports" from Iran:

We were sitting in Nayeb restaurant in central Tehran. I’d been holding a piss through the hours of prayer service. So after I ordered my lunch, I excused myself to the men’s room. “Men’s” was written in Farsi above, and “Manly” in English below. I stepped into the water closet, grateful to just have a piss. If I’d had more serious business there, it would’ve been a squat job with no hook for one’s jacket. Now, that would’ve been manly.

After lunch we had an appointment with Mehdi Rafsanjani, a campaign director and son of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

And his section header?:

For better and worse, U.S. is a role model

Don't you dare call him unpatriotic.

Or an inept journalist who is being used as a propaganda mouthpiece, in case you were of half a mind to...

What News?

Remember last spring, when the Army (alone among the armed services) fell short of its recruiting goals?

Today, Ralph Peters in the NYPost notes that news of the military's demise was greatly exaggerated:

Now, as the fiscal year nears an end, the Army's numbers look great. Especially in combat units and Iraq, soldiers are re-enlisting at record levels. And you don't hear a whisper about it from the "mainstream media." For all the left's understandable concern to reinforce the message that it "supports the troops", their hard-left leadership - as we noted last week - holds the military's rank and file in utter contempt (and reserves worse for its generals, whom Hollywood has long caricatured as bloodthirsty amoral closeted fascists, except when the likes of Anthony Zinni and Hugh Shelton support their talking points).

And, Peters notes, you can expect no better this time:

Of course, we'll hear stammering about an "army of mercenaries"— naive, uneducated kids lured by the promise of big retention bonuses. That's another lie told by the elite to excuse themselves from serving our country in uniform.

The young men and women who have been through the crucible of combat — often on repeated deployments — are hardly naive.

And, notes Peters, they are re-enlisting in immense numbers, in proportion to their units' time in combat.

Their education levels exceed the American average. And, as of Aug. 2, the Army had spent a 2005 total of only $347 million on Selective Re-enlistment Bonuses — that's weekend walking-around money for America's Fortune 500 CEOs.

Big bucks for risking your life? Not hardly. Only 60 percent of soldiers get any re-enlistment bonus. For the overwhelming number whose skills merit an extra incentive, bonuses runs between $6,000 and $12,400 per year of contracted service — per year of facing death, wounds, separation from family and uncertainty as to whether you'll ever see that family again.

A total of 643 soldiers with very special capabilities, from special operators to doctors, got an average payment of $57,000 — a fraction of what the private sector offers them for doing the same jobs at far less risk.

No, they don't do it for the money.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Mitch at 12:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The New Front

David Frum - via Brian Preston at Malkin's blog - notes that the real front in the Iraq war today is right here in the US.

The president could have made news yesterday by itemizing the reasons to regard Iraq more positively than most journalists do. He could have ticked off some of the achievements daily posted on the centcom.mil site. (Here's the latest.) He could have teased details even out of the mainstream media. (Mickey Kaus the other day noted that the reliably dour Robin Wright of the Washington Post casually mentioned in the course of her latest down-beater that Iraq has gone on a car-buying boom that has put a million new cars on the road since liberation. Kaus: "A 'car-buying boom'--another shocking failure! Don't they know about global warming?")

Or, alternatively, the president could have skipped the good news and delivered a blood, sweat, toils, and tears speech: Yes things are hard, harder in fact than expected, but the stakes remain enormous - and here is why we must win, and why I am determined to fight this thing through to victory. That would be powerful too.

As it is, though, he says nothing, and is perceived to say nothing, and soon nobody will be listening at all, if anybody still is.

As Preston notes, the war in Iraq - to the terrorists, anyway - is the secondary front. The real front is on America's front pages and evening newscasts. Preston notes the architect of this idea, perhaps the most radical and successful asymmetrical warrior in history, 20-50 years before Osama Bin Laden became the catchall keyword for the subject:

We lost Vietnam because it was the first post-modern war theatre, and we failed to appreciate that. One man did appreciate it, though, but unfortunately for us he commanded the other side. His name was General Vo Nguyen Giap, and he commanded the North Vietnamese army from the 1950s through the 1970s. In that time he defeated in succession France (at that time a world power), the United States (a superpower) and China (a rising regional power). The latter is especially interesting--Giap studied infowar under Mao Zedong in the 1930s. He used Mao's own tactics, improved by Giap's brilliance and extensive experience against us, against Mao's own creation, Communist China. Giap managed to defeat three nations whose military capabilities were vastly superior to his own. He may have been the 20th Century's most intelligent general.

Giap understood that you could lose every military battle - and after Dien Bien Phu, he did - and still win the war.

Bin Laden and his lieutenants are no doubt familiar with Giap. Editors and producers in America's newsrooms no doubt think Giap is a type of noodle soup or a bargain brand of jeans.

Open Letter to Pat Robertson

To: Pat Robertson
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

Pat,

I'm not one of those shrinking violet Christians who think that we should keep our faith safely tucked away on Sunday mornings. I don't, can't, won't believe that ones' faith has no place in public life. I'm far from the Christian left, both theologically and politically.

I'm certainly not one of those who habitually parses the statements of even fundamentalist Southern Christian leaders looking for things to consider objectionable. For every dumb thing Jerry Falwell has said and done, there are several countervailing good things.

That being said, please - take your inner Tom Clancy and gag him:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.

Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States' duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

The pisser, Pat, is that you're right to a point; Chavez is a dictator in the making, a Marxist throwback borne into office on a sea of thug shoulders. He's hostile to the US, and and could easily start If he starts suspending elections, we will need to destablize him, and work to get a better, friendlier - and, should be need arise, more democratic - leader into office.

But calling for assassinations in your capacity as as a Christian leader? All you're doing is giving the slavering droogs of the left lots of cheap ammo.

Just stop.

Box o' Dox

Is there a smoking gun in "Box 30-JGR/Judges (3)"?

Stay tuned.

The three worst temp jobs of my life:

1. I spent about a month working as a skip tracer for a student loan collection company. Actually, the job itself wasn't so awful - I got to play detective, sort of, trying to find people who owed money on their student loans. But it was right after another company had gone out of business, stiffing me for a couple of thousand dollars, right about the time my son was born, leaving me fighting eviction and power shutoff notices - so the stress was out of this world. Worse, I took the day off after my son was born - and got a solid chewing-out from the temp service. Worst of all was my time with the full time staff - mostly middle-aged women who'd gotten married too early, commuted into downtown Saint Paul from the far redneck exurbs and earned maybe $8.00 an hour. It was the most dismal, depressing time I can imagine.
2. Working as an essay reader for a company that graded student tests. This, during the depths of the '92 recession, was a "sweatshop for people with degrees", requiring one to read reams of essays written for competency exams. We applied, hamfistedly and perfunctorily, the standards - set up by a corporation run by as moronic a bunch of bucketheads as I've ever met - with all the grace and concern for student learning as a group of East German motor vehicle department lifers.
3. For six months, I worked for a "litigation support" company - reading reams of corporate documents uncovered through the discovery process for a major lawsuit. In this case, it was a suit by a bunch of power companies against another power company that was trying to build a nuclear power plant, and doing a very bad job of it. The original scope - four reactors at a cost of $1 billion - had decayed into a single reactor for $4 billion.

   Here's the gig; in big lawsuits, lawyers file "Discovery" against their opponents, meaning they're supposed to turn over copies of all relevant documentation for examination. The standard tactic to frustrate this is for the lawyers to send teams of paralegals through the offices and vaults and photocopy every piece of paper in every file in every office in the company, almost literally burying the opposing attorney in paperwork.

   This litigation support firm had to digest seven semi-trailers full of paperwork (as I recall - and I know one regular reader/commenter can probably correct me on that number). 140 tons of photocopies. To do this, they enlisted a team of people to attach file numbers to each page, enter them into a computer system (this was in 1992, when things weren't quite as sophisticated as today) to create a database record of each page, and then...

   ...sit down and read every single page of that 140 tons, and assign codes and comments to help lawyers and paralegals sort the content later on.

So for six months, I sat, eight hours a day, and read "Release for Test" reports for seismically-rated pipe hangers, filed in triplicate in 1972, photocopied in quintuplicate in 1992. I burned through a stack four feet tall of "Release for Test" reports. And when I finished that, I moved on to inspection receipts for cold-leg water feed pipe stock. And after that, to reports documenting the testing of non-critical wiring in the Auxiliary Equipment building.

It was around this time I started drinking eight 16-ounce mugs of office coffee a day. My stomach never settled and my eye developed a tic, and I realized I'd never make it as a lawyer.

So Hugh and Duane's "Box o' Dox" program - where individual bloggers adopt boxes of the dox dump that the Reagan Library unleashed last week - brings back all sorts of memories from the past.

I need coffee.

==============

If you're looking for a smoking gun, the 35 pages of dox in Box 30-JGR/Judges (3), you're pretty much out of luck. The "box" consists of two documents.

First is a paper, "PROMITING THE PRESIDENT'S POLICIES THROUGH LEGAL ADVOCACY: AN ETHICAL IMPERATIVE OF THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY, an address before the Federal Bar Association by Bruce E. Fein, delivered on May 13, 1983 at the Vista Hotel in Washington. Mr. Fein spoke/wrote about the application of canons of ethics to the practice of government law.

A key point:

A government attorney's concept of fair or just public policy may diverge substnatially from that held by the President or the attorney's other superiors in the Executive Branch. Thus EC7-14 seems to endow a government attorney with a right to refust to support a broad spectrum of legitimate..."

And that's it. Because for some reason, only the odd pages of this 12 page speech are included. At any rate, there is no indication as to what Roberts' beliefs are; he doesn't turn up (at least, not in any form I can recognize) in the eighty footnotes appended to the end of the paper (or, shall I say, the half of them that I can see).

The rest of the "box" is a photocopy of an article from the July/August, 1983 edition of The American Lawyer, "Federal District Judges: The Best and Worst". It lists...well, the best and worst federal judges, district by district. Roberts is not mentioned (Harold Green of PATCO and AT&T breakup fame was the "Best", June Greene was the worst judge in the DC circuit).

Browsing the file, however, gives some interesting dirt on the judicial history of the Eighth Circuit, which includes the Dakotas, Nebraska, and the whoel line of states from Minnesota south to Arkansas. Miles Lord is a serious candidate for "worst" due to his streak of populism that prompted him to bend the definition of "class action" beyond recognition:

In a recent sex discrimination action against the University of Minnesota, Lord allowed th class to be defined so broadly that it included even women who never applied to the university faculty because they feared they might be discriminated against.

The box is an interesting read.

Unless you're looking to beat up Judge Roberts, of course.

Identity Theft

I can't stand it when people appropriate "America's Children" for some hair-brained left-wing cause. My children are "America's Children", true - but they're my children, first and foremost. Keep your mitts off them. I find it deeply offensive.

How much worse for the families of those whose children - adults, who volunteered for the military - died in the service of our country, only to have their names and legacies hijacked by the Peace Creeps at Code Pink and MoveOn?

One man has had enough.

Gary Qualls' son, Louis, a Marine, was killed last autumn in Iraq::

A patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up [in Crawford, TX] Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch.

The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall...Qualls' frustration with the anti-war demonstrators erupted last week when he removed a cross bearing his son's name that was among hundreds the group had put up along the road to Bush's ranch.

Qualls called the protesters' views disrespectful to soldiers, and said he had to yank out two more crosses after protesters kept replacing them.By the way, the Peace Creeps' views are apparently fairly brittle:

He and others at "Fort Qualls" have asked for a debate with those at the Crawford Peace House, which is helping Sheehan.

It's unclear if that will happen. But a member of Gold Star Families for Peace, co-founded by Sheehan and comprised of relatives of fallen soldiers, said her group would not participate.

"We're asking for a meeting with the president, period," said Michelle DeFord, whose 37-year-old son, Sgt. David W. Johnson, was in the Army National Guard from Oregon when he was killed in Iraq last fall. "We don't want to debate with people who don't understand our point of view."

But...but...they do! Intimately!

What is it they "don't understand?"

The opposition to the Peace Creeps is growing; last week's polling showed that Americans' for/against numbers were running 31/38 against Sheehan; among military families, it was 30/48.

This ties in with a piece I'm writing for tomorrow; "On The Media", NPR's apologium for the left-wing media establishment, ran a sick, sexist, politically-fraught little paeon to Sheehan and the other mothers in Crawford, in which the presence - and grief - of the fathers of the fallen was cheapened, derogated, derided ("When you sully a mother's grief with politics, then she's just like a father"), one of the most vile pieces of bilge I've ever listened to. Expect a detailed fiskin when the transcript is released tomorrow.

Posted by Mitch at 12:02 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Wishful Thinking In The Strib

Deborah Caulfield Rybak at the Strib writes about the Strib's fondest dream.

Sorry to pop your bubble, though, Deb Anders. You're reading it all wrong.

(Kool Aid Report also wrote on the subject)

Caulfield-Rybak:

Twin Cities listeners have been tuning out political talk radio.

Locally, conservative-talk icon Rush Limbaugh's show has lost 43 percent of its audience among 25- to 54-year-olds in the past year. Sean Hannity's show is down a whopping 63 percent. The shift is serious enough that "we're weighing where these shows fit for us in the future," according to Todd Fisher, general manager at KSTP (1500 AM), which carries both syndicated programs.

Unstated: KSTP-AM was never comfortable with the "conservative" label, anyway. Ginny Morris - the station's General Manager, and a scion of the Hubbard family broadcasting empire - has always been skittish about having the station identified as "conservative". Sources of mine inside KSTP have reported to me that Morris frequently chews out hosts who push conservatism too far; "We have to live in this town!", is, according to these sources, a common imprecation.

And if you look at the lineup, it shows. On the overtly conservative side of things are the local Bob Davis, and syndicated hosts Limbaugh and Hannity. Midday dynasty Joe Soucheray is "conservative" in a social sense, but he's more a curmudgeon than an ideologue. On the other side - Ron Rosenbaum and Mark O'Connell are center-leftish, Kris Krok (whose ratings the article goes on to sniff about) has damped his initial conservatism into more of a crabby, all-assaulting dyspepsia, and Tommy Mischke (brilliant a talent as he is) has never been mistaken for anyone to the right of John Marty. The station's only overt, "out", firebreathing conservative, Jason Lewis, is long gone; Hannity is a dicey radio talent at best (although his show is very well-produced) and Limbaugh...

...we'll come back to Limbaugh.

So when Caulfield-Rybak says "Conservative radio is losing listeners", she really means "KSTP is losing listeners.

Many Americans also are switching the dial. While ratings for political talk radio typically drop the year after an election, experts around the country sense something else in the air. Many metro listeners are turning to local, often sports-oriented shows.

"We're not sure yet what's really going on," said talk radio veteran Ken Kohl, Clear Channel's director of news and talk programming for northern California. "In general, the talk shows that are succeeding are ones that haven't been reliving the election, or constantly harping on the polarization between liberals and conservatives."Kohl doesn't give any context (or, at any rate, Caulfield-Rybak doesn't pass any on to the reader); we don't know what shows work or don't in Northern California for Clear Channel.

Kohl thinks many listeners have tuned out because of "war fatigue. I don't think a lot of people want to talk or hear about the war at this point"

Let's stop for a moment.

We're eight months past the roughest, most divisive election in living memory. People - by which I mean "people", not reporters or media consultants (or bloggers who write about both) are tired of politics. It's natural for them to tune over to entertainment or sports, at the moment.

Locally, listeners tuned into sports in greater numbers this spring. Weekday ratings at sports-talk station KFAN (1130 AM) are up 37 percent among listeners ages 25 to 54 compared with a year ago, while KSTP-AM is down 33 percent.

A look at individual shows reflects much sharper contrasts. Limbaugh's show, which airs Monday through Friday from noon to 3 p.m. on KSTP, dropped from a 7.6 percent share of listeners ages 25 to 54 in spring 2004 to 4.3 this spring. Sean Hannity's 6-8 p.m. show dropped from 6.3 to 2.3 percent.

In contrast, KFAN has seen its afternoon lineup of Dan (Common Man) Cole, Chad Hartman and Dan Barreiro post audience gains of 24 to 32 percent. Both WCCO (830 AM) and KFAN have made gains in the 26 to 29 percent range during the 6-8 p.m. time period.

[Note, Ms. Caulfield-Rybak: What were KFAN's actual numbers? I mean, I know them - but your audience doesn't. They know Chad and Dan gained 30 percent - but you didn't deem fit to tell them that KFAN's numbers - a 2.8 in adults overall - are still only about 60% of KSTP-AM's overall share - or that that KSTP-AM's advertising demographics are still better than the Fan's. These things matter!]

And it's not like this is new, either; sports radio got its start as a national phenomenon during the late nineties, when people tired of the Clinton Impeachment scandals. It bores me still, of course, but it's escapist entertainment for some. As to me? Hell, I'm even starting to find where the music stations are on my radio, for a change. Even I look for an escape from politics and war talk, sometimes.

For now.

Now - in a year, when all the '06 campaign is in full swing?

Hold those bets.

By the way, Caulfield-Rybak either doesn't research much, or doesn't think you need to know that this bit here...:Local partisan talker Chris Krok, whose show follows Hannity's, has less than 1 percent of the age-25-to-54 audience, too low to even register a rating point....ignores the fact that Krok's numbers are indeed atrocious - but he's been crab-walking away from that "partisan" label for a while now, as he noted in the comments for this thread on this blog last spring:

I'm not a Conservative. I approach each issue as everyone should: Open-minded. Imagine that!

Chris Krok
"KROKTALK"
Weeknights from 8-10pm
AM 1500 KSTP St Paul/Minneapolis
Listen Online at www.am1500.com
Posted by: Chris Krok at March 19, 2005 12:57 PM

Of course, it's all about money:

It isn't just a matter of politics, said Carol Grothem, broadcast manager for the Campbell Mithun ad agency. She suggested listeners may be turning more toward local talent and issues, and away from syndicated shows.

She pointed to healthy ratings for WCCO and its afternoon and morning drive-time hosts: "Don Shelby had good numbers and Dave Lee is consistent. I think local is what listeners want."

Well, Ms. Grothem, I'd like to introduce you to some friends of mine.

By the way, the article notes as an afterthought:

The ratings shift hasn't affected partisan radio stations such as WWTC (1280 AM), known as the Patriot, or KTNF (950 AM), home to Air America programming, including Al Franken's weekday show. Both have maintained relatively stable, if small, audience shares of about 1 to 1.5 percent.

Caulfield-Rybak leaves out a lot. For starters, the Patriot's advertising demographics are the best in town - the audience has money, which trumps numbers to a huge extent. Air America Minnesota's numbers are about half the Patriot's, and the demographics are even worse - the liberals with money already tune into MPR.

Franken is an exception, however. Locally, the Minnesota native has increased his audience share to 2.4 percent of listeners ages 25 to 54, compared with 1.3 last year.

Unmentioned: Franken's numbers, for a network that's gotten endless fawning hype since it's debut, catering to an audience that has boundless ability to listen during that time of day, in a state where 51% of the people voted for John Kerry, are miserable; a complete embarassment. Janet Robert should hide her head in shame that her flagship "talent" is getting numbers comparable to the syndicated, unpromoted Michael Medved show.

Behind the news - and this is opinion, but I'll stand by it; the Strib wants conservative talk radio to wither away. It wants to create an impression that it already is. But look back in the Strib archives; I'll bet Mars Bars to M&Ms that if you look six months after the '92, '94, '96, '98 and 2000 elections, you'll find similar stories about similar dips in the numbers.

There is nothing new under the sun. Less so in radio.

Dump Bachmann Blog Abdicates Any Claim To Legitimacy

If you've read this blog at all, you know that I don't have a lot of regard for the Dump Bachmann blog, a project of a group of local anti-Bachmann activists who are in a case of perpetual vapors over Bachmann's social conservatism. (For non-Minnesotans, Michele Bachmann is a state Senator from exurban Stillwater, who is running for the US House in MN District Six; a staunch, outspoken social conservative who has led the way on pro-life, education choice and defense of traditional marriage issues, she has a long history of sending the orthodox left into sputtering fits of rage).

The blog - which features a highly overheated, Winchellesque style (even borrowing Matt Drudge's most irritating Winchellism, "Developing", in wholesale lots), a twist of playground rhetoric (it is in the curious habit of referring to this blog as "Whine in the Dark", which means that if we got together we could call the blog "Whining to Shoot a Dump In The Dark", I guess) and a penchant for trying to make news out of out-of-context or irrelevant snippets (a photo purporting to show Bachmann "spying" on a gay rally which fairly clearly showed nothing of the sort, a day spent picking up trash along a piece of road the Senator had adopted, at a time of year when all adopted highways, in my personal experience, are a mess) has always skated a fine line between sensationalistic gossip and the lower reaches of yellow journalism.

But Friday, the blog drank the Koolaid, excreted it, and threw it in the face of the electorate.

Eva Young was proud to announce:

David DeGrio and Ken Avidor have joined the Dump Bachmann blog as contributors...Ken Avidor is a cartoonist who maintains the Michele Bachmann Fun Page.

The "Fun Page", of course, is a page full of precious twaddle that'd embarass a moderately precocious sixth-grader, the kind of chuckleheaded, witless scatology that most of us outgrow by junior high; giggly photoshops like this:

Read the rest, if you're really bored and want to get even more cynical about the left's very, very shallow gene pool (Hugh's comments about the dire state of lefty humor from last week are hereby proven). The presence of the puerile Avidor cheapens an enterprise that could hardly take cheaper shots if they tried.

I notice, by the way, that the picture he had last spring - of Senator Bachmann in a stormtrooper/dominatrix outfit, has disappeared. Apparently Mr. Avidor's balls don't match his gargantuan...er...um..."wit". In fact, dominatrix pix seem to be a theme; a lesser blogger would make a jape about Mr. Avidor's social life. Fortunately, I'm not a lesser blogger.

With this "addition" to her "staff", Eva Young is officially scraping the ground below the bottom of the barrel. The campaign has gone from "ugly", straight past "sleazy" to "depraved". While I never had much regard for her sense of ethics (after this episode, where she splashed my private email address around among over a dozen gay websites), I figured there were still some things below her and her blog.

I'm the first to admit it; I was wrong. Nothing is too low. Ken Avidor's "Fun Page" is a turd on the sidewalk of the shining city on the hill.

Although I don't actually live in the Sixth CD, and don't personally agree with everything Michele Bachmann stands for, I'm tempted to work for her election just on principle after this.

"Dump Bachmann" supporters; it's time to be heard. Do you stand behind this slime? If so, say so - or condemn it. The voters of the Sixth District have a right to know who's coming in from outside their district to "help out". And if you're a conservative blogger and you know someone who takes the "Dump" seriously, please ask them - in light of this "Development" - why.

Slime is slime.

Feel free to comment.

While I encourage an open dialogue in my comment section, be advised I will gleefully mangle any comments that I consider abusive or insulting. Knock yourselves out.

I would also like to try to make this clear - I harbor no personal animosity toward any of the authors of the blog; to quote Brando, "It's only business. Nothing personal".

Sheehan: In Case You Missed It

I haven't written a whole lot about Cindy Sheehan. She's a grieving parent. My imagination stalls out at the notion of trying to comprehend the grief of a bereaved parent, especially the parent of a child killed in a war.

People asked - repeatedly - as in, over and over - "why are you bringing up her divorce filing? It's not germane!" The question betrays either a gap in reading comprehension, or an ideologically-based inability to follow an argument; my posting questioned Dang If I Know's take on the filing. It seemed fishy. It had nothing whatever to do with Sheehan.

In fact, I've not questioned Cindy Sheehan in the least. Just her handlers.

Until now.

Sheehan made this statement to Nightline:

he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel.

Her latest statement - to the Huffpo - omits the Israel and dirty Jew Neocon references, but she's not really out of the anti-semitic woods:

Instead, she embarrasses America when she says the United States is "morally repugnant," "imperialistic," "isn't worth dying for," will "never leave Iraq," and that her son died for "a neo-con agenda to benefit Israel." That last remark was included in an e-mail to ABC's "Nightline," which Sheehan says was an unauthorized insertion into her e-mail by a man close to her with his own agenda. This might be true, but it sounds like her version of a "Weapons of Mass Destruction" story.

She denied using the anti-Israel language (while not disavowing the sentiments), but similar statements can be found on Sheehan-friendly sites, such as electroniciraq.net, which has a firsthand report of an Aug. 9 speech she made to Veterans for Peace in Dallas.

Now, Sheehan is either off to California to be with her ailing mother or abandoning her vigil, depending on whom you ask. A the same time, polls are showing Americans are broadly opposed to Sheehan's circus - by which I mean the circus that Michael Moore, David Duke, MoveOn and Code Pink have built around the poor woman.

Here's an interesting question: if Sheehan's story is losing the sympathy of the American people (even after allowing for ideological differences in poll respondents), will the likes of MoveOn and Code Pink stay the course? If "Camp Casey" becomes the political liability that the Rasmussen poll is starting to indicate it might be, how long will they keep their wagon hitched to Ms. Sheehan?

Will Sheehan be kicked to the cross-bedecked curb?

Posted by Mitch at 07:34 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Let's See...

...if we can get Ms magazine behind this idea: Take Your Daughter to Shoot Day.

Litmus of Rage

Dean Barnett wrote an interesting bit in yesterday's Standard, on the new Democrat litmus test.

It starts with the Special Election in Ohio, in which an extremely vituperative (but not very Democrat) Democrat ran up against a fairly middle-of-the-road Republican.

Barnett's thesis - that the leftyblog establishment, the überblogs like Kos and Atrios, are ushering in an era in Democrat politics where appearances - rhetorically, here - matter more than the message itself:

DOES HACKETT'S RHETORIC portend the Democratic politics of the future as politicians try to sound angry enough to please the party's e-base [bloggers like Kos]? Don't bet against it. As Republican political consultant Mike Murphy observes, "The liberal blogosphere continues to grow in power," while acidly likening the situation to an "8 year-old with a machine gun."

Look at blogs like Kos and Atrios and Jesus General - blogs that get, among them, immense traffic, and feature a tone (and a quality of writing) that would fit in with foul-mouthed semi-liberate rabble-rousing conservative blogs near the bottom of the food chain; snarky rather than logical, absolutist rather than political.

While just a few weeks ago it seemed that liberal bloggers wanted Democratic politicians to mirror not just their rhetoric, but their substantive politics as well, the Hackett campaign suggests something else entirely: In spite of being a moderate, bloggers fell in love with Hackett based on little more than a shared fondness for juvenile insults and a mutual loathing of George W. Bush.

Indeed, prominent left-wing bloggers such as Steve Gilliard and Markos Moulitsas are in the process of formulating and promulgating a "litmus test" for Democratic politicians that is literally--and intentionally--devoid of any substantive issues. Instead, the emphasis is exclusively on style. A few of the newly-minted litmus test's requirements are that the candidate "make it clear that he opposes Bush and the Republicans, . . . act like he wants to win, . . . not distance himself from the party [and] be proud to be a Democrat."

On the one hand, someone understands that form leads function, that the rhetorical packaging of an idea can matter more to people than the idea itself. Maybe it's the influence of George Lakoff, a Chomskyite linguist retained by the Democrats to figure out how to win by (Mitch puts his linguistics hat on) attacking the language itself.

Of course, I have to hope that packaging such ideas in a form like the Daily Kos, Eschaton is a good way to ensure that the vast majority of Americans never see them; they may be a huge echo chamber by blogosphere standards, but they're still an echo chamber.

Radio Station Tag Lines We Really Like

You know radio station tag lines - the ones you see on the ads, and hear in all the station sweeps between songs.

I figure stations could benefit by being honest with their tag lines.

I'm here to help.

Cities 97 (the "adult alternative" station): "We were playing the Bo-Deans before anyone else, and we'll be playing them long after everyone else has stopped".

KS95 - "Music your department secretary sings at karaoke bars after five jello shots".

KDWB (the "Top40" station) - "Smells Like Junior High!"

KQRS (the local "Classic Rock" behemoth) - "No, the Who only had two songs, ever. Shut up and listen".

Air America Minnesota - "Making Big Brother Cry For Mama Briefly Giggle with Derision and Pity"

KSTP-AM - "On autopilot since 1998!"
Minnesota Public Radio - "Why yes, the average Minnesotan is a college-educated, Volvo-driving, alpaca-wearing 55-year-old government employee! And darn proud of it!"

Jack FM (104.1) - "Sorry, Ma. Forgot to take out the crap".

KBEM (a city-owned jazz and traffic station) - "Maybe if we're reaaaaal quiet, nobody will notice we have a budget..."

KFAI (supremely eclectic community/public station on the maniacally polyglot West Bank) - "Stick it to da man, mon. But get a pledge first".

UPDATE: "Uncle Dynamite" wondered if I were perhaps afraid to put up a sweeper for AM1280 The Patriot.

Um, no.

"AM1280. They put Hinderaker, Banaian, Morrissey, Elder, Ward and Berg on the air. G*d only knows what they're capable of. Be afraid. "

I live to serve.

Musta Got It From Jane

Ted Turner is visiting North Korea:

"Robert Edward Turner, chairman of the Turner Foundation INC. of the United States, and his party ... arrived here," said the Korean Central News Agency, monitored here.

South Korean officials said Turner was visiting the Stalinist state to discuss a project to turn the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas into a nature reserve.

Read it again.

While North Korea butchers its own citizens in concentration camps that, in scale, rival the Gulag, and starves them in a ghastly, intentional famine (while the leadership lives a lifestyle that Caligula or, perhaps, Turner himself might envy), Turner wants to talk about planting trees between the Stalinist North and the modestly Democratic South?

He will visit an international environmental forum on the project here early next week, they said.

Suppose Turner's worried about toxic emissions?

I'm ashamed to share a nation with Ted Turner.

Fishy?

UPDATED AND BUMPED UP: Michelle Malkin is passing on an image (sent to her by Dang If I Know), which purports to show a divorce filing between Cindy and Patrick Sheehan.

Cindy Sheehan, of course, is the woman whom the likes of MoveOn.org are using to stage a protest at the President's ranch, in Crawford, Texas.

The filing - which appears on the Solano County Courts website - begins:

Report Selection Criteria

Case ID: FFL087021
Docket Start Date:
Docket Ending Date:

Case Description

Case ID: FFL087021 - SHEEHAN, PATRICK VS. CINDY
Filing Date: Friday , August 12th, 2005
Type: D - Dissolution without kids
Status: none

On the one hand, it's on a county website.

On the other hand - and I base this purely on personal experience - the phrase "dissolution without kids" just doesn't pass the smell test. A legal filing wouldn't use such colloquial language. Of course, this web page isn't a filing - it's just a web notification.

I'll try to confirm this.

UPDATE MONDAY MID-DAY: I've been emailed by a lawyer who has checked into the case:

I did an independent search following links through the California courts' websites, and it's legit.

Fair enough.

All is not well at the Sheehan house. Now, losing a child causes a lot of divorces, and it's impossible to say whether this is due to Mrs. Sheehan's grandstanding or to the stress of their son's death - or both.

John Lundell

It saddens me to note that John Lundell passed away over the weekend.

Former Twin Cities traffic reporter John Lundell - a familiar rush hour voice for many motorists - died suddenly at home on Saturday night, WCCO Radio reported today. He was 52.

Lundell was the voice of radio traffic reports for more than 25 years on a number of local stations...Lundell was a graduate of Minnehaha Academy and Brown Institute, WCCO reported. Funeral arrangements are pending.

In an industry full of crushingly dysfunctional people, John Lundell was a good, genuine, stand up guy.

I knew John during the mid-eighties, when he ran the local Metro Traffic affiliate. He ran a difficult business - providing moment by moment traffic feeds to dozens of radio stations - and ran it very well. And yet he was never too busy to say hi, to catch up on things, to grab a few minutes between appointments or reports to chat you up about how things were going.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Lundell family.

FrankenNet and the MSM: Finally!

The Washington Post finally hauls off on Air America in the Gloria Wise scandal (although as the reporter notes, "Like everyone else who has paid attention - this excluded the New York Times for the first 16 days after the story broke - the people who work for New York's attorney general understand the scandal that flushed hundreds of poor Bronx kids out of summer camp and back to their tenement stoops by its proper name: the Air America Radio Network Scandal") with the report we've been waiting for for almost three weeks:

Details of the transfers remain vague. But most now believe the total was almost $900,000. The transfers - you'll note we assiduously are avoiding calling them "loans" - appear to have been arranged by Evan Cohen, who at the time was propitiously (for him and Air America) the development director for Gloria Wise and a founding director of the fledgling liberal talk-show network.

Cohen no longer holds either position. No one even seems to know where to find him. For truth-seekers (which until Friday excluded the completely uninterested New York Times), that's discouraging. For Air America and its avid supporters, though, it constitutes superb cover.

It was Cohen! We couldn't stop him! He was crazy!

Snap!

The WaPo finally shows some of the smack that we know they don't just reserve for, say Republicans or Bob Novak.

Oh ye of little faith! The mainstream east coat media will get tough on its own!

Air America put up a statement on its Web site referring to "the allegations of mismanagement and corruption" at Gloria Wise. Like the financial mess has nothing to do with its beneficiaries.

Left unsaid in the Air America version of reality, though, is that with the exception of Cohen and one other principal, the current owners of Air America are largely the same people who owned the network when Cohen was leading its fund-raising charge.

Oh, they've changed the company name. They've rearranged a few deck chairs. But the legal distinctions they have erected are in place precisely to protect them from the responsibility to pay off the debts, including the Gloria Wise "loans," incurred while Cohen was working side by side with them.

After the NYTimes' paltry, tardy effort last week - involving bowdlerized references and a Dowdified quote from Al Franken - it's good to even see some actual reporting going on:

On July 19, 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported about what it called Air America's "restructuring."

Along with Air America Chief Executive Doug Kreeger, original Air America investors Anita and Sheldon Drobny formed a new ownership group, Piquant LLC, the Tribune reported.

Tribune reporter John Cook wrote: "The purpose of the transaction is twofold: to eliminate (founding investor Evan) Cohen and his partner Rex Sorensen's shares in the company and to insulate the cash-strapped network from any debt or other obligation that Cohen may have incurred."

Now, what might those debts and other obligations include? Hmmmm.

Thanks, east coast media! My faith is restored.

UPDATE: OK, I lied. The story was actually a Doug MacEachern op-ed from the Arizona Republic.

What, you thought the WaPo would cover this?

That's Not Sylly - That's Stupid!

Can you smell it? There's a foul and horrid odor in the air, and those with sensitive noses had better hold their yaps. Because the emperor has neither clothes, nose, taste or editorial ability and you, hapless subscriber to the Star/Tribune, are expected to read the semi-literate tripe their columnists dish out to you without complaint, lest your hive-minded neighbors consider you a wingnut.

Huh? Oh. Syl Jones has another column in the Strib. And every column of his is a lesson anew; whatever horrors of language that Laura Billings and Glenda Holste and Kim Ode and even the master himself, Nick Coleman, inflict on us, they are mere acolytes sitting at the feet of the mighty (awful) Syl Jones.

He's upset.

Can you smell it? There's a deep and abiding stench in the air and those with sensitive olfactory organs had better keep quiet. Because the emperor has no nose and you, loyal subject, are expected to inhale without frowning or mouthing off. There's a war going on. People are dying. Somewhere in a cave, shady people are planning to end civilization as we know it. So shut up, you anti-American pig.

It's almost a cliche, now, barely worth mentioning - the alleged "persecuted iconoclastic protester" operating on the payroll of the biggest news outlet in the state, while that same paper's editorial pages squelch dissenting commentary and attack those who would dare to fact check the Most Holy Strib, while claiming to worry about censorship.

I said "almost".

That's the implicit message nearly everywhere we turn. Still, it's hard to ignore the horrible stench of world leadership putrefaction. Not just political leadership, although the moral decay at work in international centers from Afghanistan to Niger to the United States is stunning. [Niger and Afghanistan are "international centers"? - Ed.] Everywhere the paradigm of leadership is breaking down, including the corporate world, where many with authority refuse to accept responsibility.

You see it at the state level, where the people's business has taken a backseat to an ideological imperative expressed by a "no more taxes" mantra. Good leaders would long ago have explained that when a people refuse to pay for what they need, they inevitably get what we're getting: bad schools, inadequate infrastructure, increased crime and generalized despair.

Except that for a generation, we paid and paid and paid, under the successive generations of Humphreys and Mondales and Carlsons. And paid some more under Ventura.

By the way, Syl - does the teacher's union know you're criticizing the schools?

It's obvious too at the very top, when a president of the United States can give the finger to the media without apologizing and the media allow him to get away with it.

Er...Syl?

While you and Nick Coleman are apparently dim and querulous enough to fall for that, the general consensus for the last week or two has been that it was his thumb. The vulgarity of this administration has always been clear to me. Using American kids as cannon fodder to prove that Donald Rumsfeld's theory of limited war is right strikes me as criminal, right up there with the glib pronouncement that, "You go to war with the Army you have and not the Army you want."Uh...

...Syl?

You prefer to be stuck with unlimited wars?

And how is Rumsfeld's statement wrong?

Can you answer that, Syl?

SYL?

What's most intriguing about this new brand of vulgar conservativism -- from Vice President Dick Cheney's use of the F word to skanky Ann Coulter's diatribes

Skanky?

Feminists, would you care to take this one? I mean, Ann Coulter is a woman who should be model for all feminists - unabashedly forthright, unafraid of the patriarchy, and brazenly feminine, no different than feminist icons like Madonna or Courtney Love or Helen Thomas.

And while we're at it, feminists, Jones' term "skanky" imposes a derogatory patriarchal slur on being unabashedly feminine and sexual. That's just wrong - isn't it, feminists?

Feminists?

FEMINISTS?

Lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it turns out, was just the beginning. They also want you to swallow the story that Karl Rove, aka Turd Blossom, didn't violate federal law by leaking Valerie Plame's name to the press.

Turd Blossom?

Syl Jones is a Professional Writer, don't you know.

And what are we to make of excuses now on offer for the self-described prince of darkness, Bob Novak, who not only wrote the original story about the leak but ended up swearing on national television?In one sentence, "turd blossom". In the next, a case of the vapors over Bob Novak's outburst?

This is family values spelled with a BS, the sort of hypocritical hooliganism reminiscent of Dick Nixon's gang.

My head reels with my inability to even get my arms around the disingenuousness of an obscenely inept "writer" and "playwrite" like Syl Jones playing at outrage over "hypocrisy" over "family values" - as if adults don't make mistakes.

Both Rove and Novak ought to go to prison where they and Tom DeLay could presumably employ their conservative credentials to avoid emasculation. But they won't do time because there is no leadership, no justice, no shame -- and it stinks.

And because neither of them committed a crime.

But we'll get back to that.

Because there's a bigger question here; why does the Strib employ Syl Jones? Indeed, in a community with plenty of completely qualified black writers, why is it that the only two writing for the Star/Tribune (a paper that is so knotted up about PC that for years it wouldn't mention the full names of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians) are the vacuous CJ and the...words fail...cartoonishly, dismally, mind-warpingly dim Syl Jones?

If I were a Black writer, I'd be pissed.

Posted by Mitch at 06:53 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Great Raid

Scott Johnson reviews The Great Raid, a movie based in part on the book Ghost Soldiers, the amazing (and to me theretofore unknown) story of a US Ranger battalion that staged an amazing rescue of 500 American POWs far behind Japanese lines during World War II.

More tellingly, Scott reviews the reviewers, including Steven Holden from "Rotten Tomatos":

Its scenes of torture and murder also unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend.

Contrary to the implication of Holden's statement, however, I don't think that the brutalization of American soldiers by the Japanese in the Pacific has ever been depicted anywhere near faithfully in a Hollywood film before.

Indeed. Two observations:

1. Scott's right. I'm a big war movie buff, and I don't think I've seen a movie that did for Japanese atrocities against American POWs what Private Ryan did for D-Day, or Schindler's List did for the Holocaust.

2. Furthermore, Hollywood has been more than stinting in its treatment of anti-American atrocities, at least since the 1960's. One of the best war movies of the past 30 years was Lionel Chetwynd's Hanoi Hilton, a 1987 movie about the experiences of American POWs in North Vietnam. It was an unblinking look not only at torture and humiliation - but at the men who withstood it, in some cases for nearly a decade, and at the reasons they were successful at bearing up under it; their training, and their senses of duty and honor.

   Naturally, Hollywood reacted like someone had left a steaming pile on the buffet table. Part of it, I'm sure, was the swipe that the film took at Jane Fonda (although all the names in the film were changed, the major characters were recognizable - including the pseudo-Fonda character) - but mostly because it extolled the virtues that the right reveres, and that the left nervously shies away from.

   Expect no better - cinematic virtues aside, and I'll be the judge there - from Hollywood and the lefty media's response to The Great Raid.

   Posted by Mitch at 06:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Hither And Yon

War correspondent Michael Yon - who's doing some of the best war journalism I've read so far in this war - will be on Pundit Radio Network tonight.

Cooler still, he's going to be on the NARN next Saturday, around 1PM, live from Mosul, Iraq, barring any problems.

Join us!

Woux Houx

I had a great week, largely due to a Captainlanche and a lot of traffic related, I presume, to the Coleman "story". My week's traffic had a really nice spike this week, which put me in the top thousand on the Bear Ecosystem for the first time since there were less than a thousand blogs on the list. Pretty cool!

In the meantime, the traffic (which only includes HTTP hits, not RSS readings) moved me (for today only, I'm sure) up to #256 overall in traffic on the Bear system.

On the one hand, I don't care much about traffic. I'd be just as happy doing this blog if I was getting eight hits a day, like I was at this time three years ago.

On the other hand, it's nice seeing I have more readers than some people out there.

Thanks to all of you who stop by! And if you're looking to take out some Blogads, by all means let me know...

UPDATE: On the one hand, I'm up to #254 today.

On the other hand, I see that South Knox Bubba's farewell page is getting more more traffic than I am...

"Cancer Is A Jerk, And I Hate It"

I only know Dan Champion through his blog, "Popping Culture". And the main theme of the blog for as long as I've read it has been Dan's fight with cancer. Dan, his blog and his attitude have been a sobering inspiration for a long time now.

Dan passed away yesterday. Please keep your thoughts and prayers with his family.

And do yourself a favor and flip back through some of his writing.

All About Nick

Eva Young asked "Why not mention Flash's story on this [on Shot In The Dark]?

Oh, good lord.

Because in between my bouts of blogging (5AM, my lunch break and occasionally in the evening) I do things like work, do stuff with my kids, socialize, eat, grab a workout and a swim, go on the occasional date...y'know, try to have a normal life. The blog is not a job, or an obsession, or a 24/7 hobby. Yes, I'm more productive than a lot of bloggers that DO treat it as an obsession (and vastly less productive than some obsessive bloggers I could name, naturally), but it's a fairly small part of my life.

However, Flash has done a great job of digging into this story, and has a lot of interesting internal paperwork that shows a little about life inside Janet Roberts' radio empire - stuff that tends to confirm what my own source told me about the situation.

As Flash and I have both noted, Janet Robert forbids her local hosts from talking about gun control and abortion - Robert is one of those rare pro-Second-Amendment, pro-life ultraliberals. Which is an odd stricture; those two topics are among the reddest meat on the talk radio platter. Roberts' internal memo (Flash got a copy from someone) says "It is the policy of JR Broadcasting that discussion around these issues tend to be more sensationalistic than substantial." Well, I'm sure at JR broadcasting they WOULD be, but if one can't deal with a little topical friction, one shouldn't be in the talk radio business.

Saturday Plans

The NARN will be at White Bear Lake Superstore again today.

It's a beautiful day to buy a car! Come on out!

Routing Around the Damage

Buried in this story about possible threatened terrorist attacks on our around the September 11 anniversary is an interesting bit of good news/bad news:

The Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. have stepped up their ability to collect and analyze information on possible threats and spread it quickly to federal, state and local officials.

But some local law enforcement officials say they are still not getting all of the information they need from the federal government, leading some police departments to form their own informal intelligence network to share terrorist information.

The bad news: the 9/11 commission's vaunted centralization of federal-level intelligence has seemingly added another level of bureaucracy to the collection and dissemination of information that at least partially counters any efficiencies gained by creating the "czar" and his attendant level of bureaucracy.

The good news? Local law enforcement is able to decentralize itself, and create a network that routes information around the roadblock.

Yes, I know. That's a pollyannaish view; it's an improvement made in the breach. And yet the fact that it happens at all is a good thing.

Or at least better than the alternative.

Monkey Vs. Bile-Merchant

Brian "Saint Paul" Ward tips us off to the City Pages' confirmation of a story that I believe I broke earlier this week: Nick Coleman's Air America Minnesota FrankenNet program is really, gone. It's really most sincerely gone.

Brian points us to Corey Anderson's piece in the City Pages' Blotter blog.

Anderson:

In a brief e-mail exchange, Air America Minnesota's general manager Janet Robert said she was "very excited to be offering the full three hours of Morning Sedition"--a national program--"followed by three hours of the Wendy Wilde Show." She seemed less excited to talk about Coleman's departure, and declined to discuss personnel matters. Coleman, however, befitting a man who is paid to mouth off in print, showed no inclination to hold his tongue.

More on this in a bit.

In a telephone conversation with City Pages, Nick Coleman cited "ongoing management interference" as his main reason for leaving the left-leaning talk station after only six months. Coleman describes a work environment where Robert regularly imposed content restrictions. "Gays, guns, and abortion" were off-limits, Coleman says.

On the one hand, after reading Nick Coleman's columns for the past several years, you know to take everything he says with a grain canister block of salt.

However, other well-placed sources say that Janet Robert does indeed ask her air staff to soft-pedal abortion and second amendment talk - partly because Ms. Robert is allegedly pro-life and pro-right to keep and bear arms, and partly because she knows both issues are losers for the Democrats.

As to gays - I rarely listened to more than a few minutes of the show where Coleman wasn't didn't make some sort of homophobic reference to people he disagreed with. Bloggers are a "daisy chain", all "butt-buddies", John Hinderaker should serve on a submarine (titter titter), Michele Bachmann was a lesbian, and on, and on. Truth is, the few times I listened to Coleman for more than a few minutes were among the most concentrated doses of juvenile homophobia I can recall since junior high gym class.

And he was expected to minimize the airtime he devoted to the war in Iraq, which he claims Robert supports.

If so, he failed miserably - Coleman inflicted untold ill-informed blather about the war on his audience.

Coleman was also chided for criticizing Democrats, including Sen. Mark Dayton and tycoon Vance Opperman, instead of reciting the prepared Democratic talking points.

Hey, he's nobody's monkey. Right?

Now, into the inside baseball:

Coleman says conditions worsened when Robert fired his producer, local radio veteran Joe Palan, without discussing the matter with the radio host.

Janet Robert strenuously denies most of Coleman's claims. She did not interfere with Coleman's choice of topics, she says, including any criticism of the war in Iraq. (She states that she, too, opposes it.) "We do not censor anybody on this radio station," Robert says. On the Joe Palan matter, Roberts says simply, "He quit." She repeats, too, "I don't discuss personnel matters."

An inside source familiar with both Janet Roberts' management style and the departure of the show's producer, Joe Palan told me that Palan was not only fired, but that Janet Roberts apparently reads this blog; things I'd written in this space apparently turned up in various conversations around the station. Note to Ms. Robert: I'm happy to work as a consultant for your station, and in fact could probably do you people a lot of good. I charge $200 an hour. Have your people call my people.

But let's go back to talking about Coleman. Coleman has a short, rocky radio pedigree; he hosted a weekend show at KSTP for several years. While Coleman claims to have left, sources inside KSTP said he was in fact let go.

Which is no big deal - you never quit a job in radio. You're not even part of the fraternity until you've been diced at least once. Getting gassed is not a badge of dishonor in the business, unless it was for very gross cause - which "creative differences" or "not being what the Program Director had in mind" are not.

But Coleman is showing a bit of his inexperience here in this piece:

Even so, personnel matters seem to be what led to Coleman's departure, with the final straw coming on the day Coleman's wife gave birth to their third son. Coleman describes an e-mail from the station manager, which he says reneged on a verbal agreement for a six-month contract that was to start July 1. What Robert demanded instead, Coleman maintains, was a more restrictive contract that would include monthly evaluations, a seven-day versus 30-day dismissal clause, and immediate compliance with management directives concerning topics, tone, guests, and guest hosts.

In radio, "verbal agreements" are worth less than written contracts, which are worth as much as toilet paper (since you can use the contract for toilet paper). Don't get me wrong; if I were paying the freight for a radio station (as Janet Robert must be, since FrankenNet Minnesota's ad base is audibly paltry), and an employee were flouting my rules (without a commensurate increase in ratings), I'd yank the leash too. Coleman's show was awful. I used to rip on Cubby the Producer - what fun is major-market radio without a little internecine smack talk? - and their on-air banter desperately needed some polish, but with Cubby gone, the show actually not only got worse; the wheels came completely off. Coleman was as inept a host as I've heard; lousy voice, terrible delivery, thin-skinned, shrill - awful in every way.

And inexperienced? Well, one of the cardinal rules in the business is that when you get diced, you do not rip on your former employer. It tends to get future employers edgy about you. Which means Coleman has given up on the radio business, or he's going to need to.

Oh, yeah - I frequently mention that Coleman seems to live in a fantasy world. Exhibit A:

For his tenure as weekday morning-show host, Coleman received "embarrassingly low pay," in the low five-figure range--lower, he says, than union wages at a station he described as "pro-union."

Of course, the union (AFTRA, I think) has been a complete non-factor in Twin Cities radio for nearly thirty years. Outside of WCCO (and MPR, which pays union-scale wages although it is not unionized), nobody gets union scale in this town - unless their ratings and sales are really, really good, and then they get paid way, way more than "unions scale".

"If I'm going to be put on a leash, I'm leaving," Coleman says. Is there a slot for a man with strong opinions to talk about gays, gun, and abortion on The Patriot?

That slot is filled by six guys who not only have strong opinions about gays, guns, God, abortion, adoption, music, society, the culture war, baseball, television, politics and food - but (and this is important) who don't sound like they just had dental work done on the air.

By the way - Nick Coleman has been invited on the Northern Alliance Radio Network show several times. Apparently his "opinions" aren't strong enough to stand up to a couple of guys who write withering commentary in their underpants and talk about it on the air.

But don't worry, Nick - from what I've been hearing, the station isn't going to outlive your show by a whole lot.

Wes Skoglund Was Right

There are people creeping around Minneapolis who want to kill people.

Oh, they're not concealed carry permit-holders, of course. No, they're the ones that Wes Skoglund wasn't verbally worried about during last spring's caterwauling about the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

Five children have been shot in Minneapolis in recent weeks - none have died, thank God, but if this pattern continues it's only a matter of time before Minneapolis gets its next Tyesha Edwards , another Daneisha Gillum.

Back in 1986, when Minneapolis was going through its first burst of gang violence, a Minneapolis cop told me the safest place to be during a gang shooting is the target. He was being sarcastic - sort of. That week, as two groups of gang-bangers blazed away at each other across a Northside street, the only injury was a boy in a second-floor apartment, a block away and 45 degrees off the line of fire, who was (if memory serves) paralyzed.

It's only gotten worse:

Carisa Opdahl's eyes grew big when she heard about the 3-year-old boy shot by a stray bullet as he walked out of a Minneapolis store with his mom and little sister this week.

"It's terrible," she said. "Why would they do that? Why don't they stay in their own neighborhoods and hurt people?"

She speaks with such mature bravado because two weeks ago the 12-year-old girl was also hit by fragments from a bullet meant for a group of young men hanging out at a nearby corner. Carisa was sitting on her front step with friends and relatives after a play date when one of the bullets went inches above their heads and into the house.

In the past six weeks, Minneapolis police have scrambled to the scenes of five children hit by crossfire. All will recover, but a 15-year-old girl remains hospitalized with a slug in her chest. Police say the victims were inches away from becoming the next Tyesha Edwards, the 11-year-old girl killed in 2002 by a stray bullet as she did homework in her Minneapolis house.

Minnesota is a welfare state - the one with among the nation's most generous benefits.

Subsidizing anything will increase the supply of that thing. In this case, we subsidize poverty. That brings more poor people to where the money is. The government, especially the factions in it that are stakeholders in the welfare system we have today, will deny it, and slather the debate with carefully-culled statistic to downplay the issue - but if you live in either of the inner Twin Cities, you can see what's going on; the subsidy of poverty brings more of the poor to the state. And the state warehouses the poor in the inner city.

Where criminals prey on them.

It could come from economic pressure, said activist Ron Edwards. If somebody doesn't have a job or is making minimum wage and has to decide if they can afford to pay the rent or buy food, it becomes a 24-hour stress factor with no time for relaxation, he said. Throw in the recent rise in gasoline prices, which affects all classes and races, he said.

Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many of the shooters are working for any wage, much less minimum?

The NYTimes Has Always Investigated Air America, Winston

According to Michelle Malkin, the NYT is finally looking at the Air America scandal.

Sort of:

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past the featured stories.

Aha! There it is:

Bronx Boys Club's Finances Investigated

Of course, it's as tepid a piece of reporting as you might suspect of the NYTimes on Air America. Malkin catalogues the misquotes and omissions - read it all.

Brian Maloney has more:

To remove Franken's words and ignore key elements of this story, shows the New York Times has learned very little from its recent credibility scandals.

We kept our expectations low for good reasons, it turns out.

The Times did one thing, however: forcing liberals to come up with new excuses to cover for Air America.

No longer can they say it's a "made-up story", now that their newspaper has finally covered it, weeks after they should have.

That shuffling sound you hear is a thousand leftybloggers backtracking.

Coverage

The Fraters have been writing a lot about Michael Yon's coverage from Iraq.

So I'm going to jump on the bandwagon. Money quote:

After seeing the damaged Stryker, and being unable to visualize how human bodies would have to be arrayed in order to fit in what was left of it, I had to ask. I found Mark Bush and asked him how they all escaped being killed.

Without hesitation, Mark looked straight at me and said: "We had angels watching us."

My face must have given away skepticism, so he said to me, "Mike, did you see what it did to the Stryker?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, there is no other way to explain how we survived, except that Plum and Rat [a pair of platoon-mates who'd been killed in action earlier] were there, and they stopped the blast. I know they were there. Plum and Rat held up their hands to save us. They stopped the blast. They were there."

Read the rest of it. It'll make sense.

Rhubarb?

Remember the "Bachmann in the Bushes" flap from last April? Where along-range photo allegedly showed Senator Bachmann "spying" on a gay rights rally in plain view of the crowd, with a big sergeant-at-arms type standing next to her?

Over at Kool Aid Report, there might - possibly - be new wrinkle to the story. "The Head of Alfredo Garcia" posts an email, purportedly from a reader and witness to the event:

I remember that day. I was downtown taking care of some business at the Department of Revenue building. I was walking past the Capitol, noticed a rally, and saw Senator Bachmann sitting on the curb. I know the Senator, I've seen her at events around Stillwater before. She's my mother's Senator. She looked like she was sitting and messing with her shoes. But ther'es no way she could have been spying, since she faced away from the rally. She looked like her feet were bothering her. I know that feeling!

In the last day I've read some of the coverage of this incident in some of the other "blogs" (Dump Bachmann, Eleventh Street, New Patriot, Kool-Aid, Shot In The Dark) and I'm astounded that anyone would look at the photo and at the scene I saw and call it "spying through the bushes" or whatever. I wonder if any of them were there, or saw what I saw, and remained silent about it? It makes no sense to me. It seems wrong.

I have no idea what's right - the whole story from the anti-Bachmann crowd seems too stupid to be real, and Bachmann just isn't that dumb. On the other hand, the email is very sparsely attributed.

Which, on balance, is good enough for me. I don't live in the Sixth District, so it's irrelevant to me, but if I did it'd be a tough choice - I like all of the GOP candidates, for one reason or another. But if you can judge a candidate by the self-righteous viciousness of her opponents, Michele Bachmann must be a great stateswoman indeed (It's worth noting that the only person I've banned from this blog in nearly two years came over here from the "Dump Bachmann" blog.)

I'm going to just sit back and watch the fur fly.

A Family Matter

I haven't spent any time covering the Cindy Sheehan story. There's no way to win, really - criticizing a parent who has lost a child is a bad move. And she has every right to believe and say what she wants, and protest in any legal way open to her. Her agenda matters nought to me - although the agendas of the groups that have wrapped themselves in Sheehan's stunt are cynical in the extreme.

Interesting, though, to note that the rest of Sheenan's family has apparently spoken out, according to Drudge:

In response to questions regarding the Cindy Sheehan/Crawford Texas issue: Sheehan Family Statement:

The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.

Sincerely,

Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins.

It's going to be an awkward Christmas at the Sheehan house...

Cinderella Man

I saw Cinderella Man at the dollar theater last night.

I'm terrible at writing movie reviews, so I'm just going to give you a disjointed list of bullet point impressions.

• The boxing scenes were amazing, especially the sound effects. Rocky (the original one) has always been the gold standard of fight choreography for me, but this was better.
• It was interesting looking at Max Baer, and thinking "That's Jethro Bodine's father".
• Baer's character was played as sort of the Mr. T or Ivan Drago of the 1930's. He was portrayed as a star-tripping thug, with very little conscience over the fact that he'd killed "Two men" in the ring. One of the movie's key scenes shows Crowe's Jim Braddock watching film of Baer knocking out Frankie Campbell, who died of a brain hemorrhage later on. Baer is shown as having very little conscience about the event - even taunting Braddock with the possibility before their title bout.

  But the truth may have been very different:

  Baer fought Frankie Campbell (brother of Brooklyn Dodgers Hall Of Famer Adolph Camilli) on August 25, 1930 in San Francisco and knocked him out. Campbell never regained consciousness. After lying on the canvas for nearly an hour, an ambulance finally transported Campbell to a nearby hospital where he eventually died of extensive brain hemorrages. An autopsy revealed that Baer's devastating blows had knocked Campbell's entire brain loose from the connective tissue holding it in place within his cranium. This fatality shocked Baer; according to his son, Max Baer, Jr., he cried and had nightmares over the incident for decades afterwards. He was charged with manslaughter. Although he was eventually acquitted of all charges, the California State Boxing Commission still banned him from any in-ring activity within their state for the next year. He gave purses from succeeding bouts to Campbell's family, but lost four of his next six fights. He fared better when Jack Dempsey took him under his wing, and Baer put Campbell's children through college.

  And while I've been hearing about the Lewis/Schmeling bouts for most of my life, I had no idea that Baer had some history in the area:

  Baer beat the likes of Walter Cobb and Kingfish Levinsky. In 1933, he boxed Max Schmeling (with a Star of David embroidered on his trunks [1], which he swore to wear in every bout thereafter) at Yankee Stadium, dominating the rugged German fighter into the tenth round when the referee stopped the match.

  Because he defeated Hitler's favorite, and had some Jewish ancestry, he became a hero to the Jewish people.

• Dramatic license aside, the depiction of the Great Depression was outstanding - Braddock's scenes of waiting to try to find jobs on the docks, waiting in the relief line, heating their awful apartment with candles and sending their kids to live with relatives when they got sick and the power got shut off...I'm very tempted to make my kids go later this week.
• The depiction of '30s New York (and Bergen, New Jersey) were also fascinating. I can see why the likes of Lileks are so fascinated with urban architecture - the way cities looked and felt and smelled back then, and their slow but steady evolution, is something that fascinates me more and more. The atmospherics are fantasic.

I give it three shots in the dark...

Oh, Great

I hate hate hate spending money when I don't have to.

My household still has a 13" TV. I just don't watch that much TV, and the little portable serves the family's needs just fine.

Until Congress gets into the act, anyway:

Lawmakers this fall expect to set a deadline, probably Jan. 1, 2009, to end conventional television broadcasts and let tens of millions of U.S. sets go dark.

To watch the tube after that, you'll need to subscribe to cable or satellite, buy a digital TV set, or get a converter box that lets regular sets receive the new digital broadcasts

In other words, Congress has given the electronics industry a four year license to gouge for all they're worth; TV addicts will have to go to them for digital TVs, naturally, and with a hard shutoff date providing an "imperative" to buy, the demand curve is artificially raised - which, against a supply curve they control, is an Econ 101 exercise in jacking the public.

Unless you don't watch TV at all. Which is where I might be headed.

Two Point Reversal?

Now, isn't this...:

A man police described as a would-be robber died Tuesday night in St. Paul after he was shot with his own gun while struggling with his intended victim, authorities said.

...what the anti-gun crowd say is going to happen to people who try to defend themselves?

Desperate for Dirt

Chris Dykstra from the NewPats writes:

, Mitch, ...thank you...for teaching me and my kids...What a Putz...Chris Dykstra [is].

Well, no, but he pulled a similar bit of legerdemain with something I wrote (in the sense that I wrote the words, albeit not in this order):

Chris Dykstra is right and his critics pretty much wrong.

His point?

Well, the left has its undies in a knot that Mark Kennedy's campaign allegedly did some creative editing of an AP story on him.

Dykstra's go for the kill line:

And thank you Congressman Mark Kennedy! Thank you for teaching me and my kids such a gol darn good trick!

What? Leaving lines out of stories?

Nah. Not a "Bushie" thing at all. To wit:

• The Mainstream Media excise all references to the fact that 70% of Iraq is relatively peaceful, and that the constitutional process is stricken with a nasty case of free people arguing politics.
• They also are omitting every reference to Air America's gross larceny of government money
• They are, however, trying to fob an appearance of impropriety off on John Roberts' son's adoption.
• During the election, they couldn't be bothered to cover the swift-boat full of holes in the John Kerry campaign.
• The economy is thrumming along rather nicely, and yet the mainstream media has excised all reference of it from their coverage.

Just saying, Chris - your kids have plenty of teachers when it comes to creative editing. Some of them are institutions that spin themselves as the high priests of knowledge and veracity, even.

Just saying.

Warm Up Those Credit Cards

A group of British applied mathematicians have reduced at least one part of dating to a mathematical model...

A team of applied mathematicians created a sequential calculation as a model of dating. The new study, designed to explore the role of gift-giving in courtship, appears online in the biological science journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

According to the model's creator, Robert Seymour, a math professor at the university, this model reduces dating to a collection of numbers.

The researchers assigned points to an array of courtship behaviors, including gift-giving. The computer considered the hypothetical facts, mulled over a few variables and calculated which behaviors would result in the highest score for the imaginary male or female dater.

This is what applied mathematicians do. They look at these kinds of outcomes and interpret them in a biological framework.

Because the goal was to understand the role of gift-giving, the researchers varied the type of gift the man could give. (Political correctness aside, it was a given that the man was the pursuer and gift-giver.)

...a model whose results will surprise absolutely nobody.

Oh, just read it.

Where Were These Guys When I Needed Them?

As noted earlier, one of my few diversions when I was working in bars was picking holes in the stories of the hordes of people who, at last call, claimed to be former SEALs, Green Berets, Deltas, Recon Marines, CIA SOG agents, "Undercover" narcotics agents, FBI agents...

...the whole works. I exaggerate a bit - but some of my most vivid memeories from that exceedingly un-vivid time of my life was the sheer number of drunk morons who got off on pretending to be something they weren't. I was pretty good at it - I've read enough and had enough friends in the actual military that I can usually find the hole in the story (after six or seven drinks, it's rarely all that challenging).

Interesting to see that there are some people who do it as a job:

The FBI's [Special Agent Thomas A.] Cottone estimates that for every actual Navy Seal today, at least 300 people falsely claim to be one [Hmmm? - Ed.. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society in Mount Pleasant, S.C., suspects that the number of people who falsely claim to have received a Medal of Honor is more than double the 124 living recipients.

There was a time, back when the military was out of favor in society, when the joke was that ten million baby boomers claimed to have been among the 400,000 people at Woodstock.

Today, with the military enjoying the greatest respect in living memory in our society, it's natural that everyone wants in on the action, whether they earned it or not:

Naturally, some of the real veterans are getting concerned about the trend:

The Department of Veterans Affairs will prosecute only those military impostors who try to register for veterans' benefits. Law enforcement lacks the resources to investigate all but the most aggravated situations...At the same time, military discharge papers and Purple Hearts can be bought on eBay by the dozen.

Concerned with a burgeoning army of dissemblers, actual veterans and other are turning to the Internet to stop the fakers in their tracks. POWnetwork.org, HomeOfHeroes.com, AuthentiSEAL.org and VeriSEAL.org, among other Web sites, provide concerned citizens with a free investigation into a person's military status. AuthentiSEAL.org and VeriSEAL.org neither solicit nor accept funds. POWnetwork.org and HomeOfHeroes.com both have some sponsors but the vast majority of their funding comes out of their founders' own pockets. None of them make a profit from their endeavors.

Oh, could I have used that...

Entente

Via Powerline, I read Lawrence Kudlow's new piece on the emerging US alliance with India:

In what could become the world's most significant 21st-century strategic alliance, a strengthened partnership is forming between the two largest English-speaking democracies: the United States and India. President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cemented bilateral ties in recent White House talks, paving the way for greater trade, investment and technological collaboration. In time and with the cooperation of other friendly powers in the region -- notably, Japan and Australia -- this new alliance could emerge as an essential counterweight to China. Essentially, it will be an Anglospheric alliance in Asia and the Pacific Rim.

It would fit both nations' self-interests nicely; the Indians don't get along with the Chinese, and we will probably be facing off against them on one front or another sooner or later. Hopefully peacefully.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, commenting on the multipoint joint statement issued after the White House meeting, declared the two countries had forged "a broad global partnership of the likes that we've not seen with India since India's founding in 1947."

Which has been one of the great benefits of the end of the Cold War; when socialism (no jokes about the Bush spending spree here please) took its big black eye, some nations - India included - were smart enough to see which way the wind was blowing.

Read the whole thing.

FrankenPirate

Heard on a regional broadcasting bulletin board:

Someone is rebroadcasting Air America on 105.5 [FM].

Heard this today while I was out and about. Weak signal in the Midway area, mixing with 'The River' out of St. Peter.

I assume this is an unlicensed operation (?)

In other words, someone is (allegedly) using an unlicensed transmitter to broadcast Air America programming, apparently in Saint Paul, on an unauthorized frequency.

I'll be checking this out on Wednesday.

While I tend to doubt that Air America is responsible for (or knows about) the pirate broadcast, it's interesting that someone out there feels their programming is important enough to risk the wrath of the FCC to bring to...part of Saint Paul.

Another Tax Hike

The precedent's been set; if you chisel money out of the unpopular, it's not really a tax. It's a "fee" charged against being in the wrong group, having the wrong pastime...

...or being in the wrong place at the wrong time after a drink too many:

Prosecutors' discretion should be eliminated in drunken-driving cases, and all drivers above the legal limit should be charged, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and a state senator said Tuesday.

"The governor's position is common sense. The governor thinks the law should be enforced the way it's written," said Brian McClung, spokesman for Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

The law is straightforward. Anyone driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent should be charged with driving while intoxicated, McClung said.

It's a perfect position for Pawlenty - he gets to sound tough on crime...

...while the more-rigorous enforcement of the very dubious .08 limit brings in more money.

I disagree completely with the .08 blood alcohol limit. An honest look at the statistics shows that the vast majority of problems with drunk drivers - arrests, accidents, fatalities - are associated with drivers with much higher blood alcohol levels.

No, make no mistake about it - the .08 limit was never instituted to increase safety; if the government were concerned with safety, they'd work harder to keep repeat offenders (people who are caught driving with blood alcohol levels in the mid-.1 range). The .08 limit gives police the discretion to suck more people into the DUI mill; they pull someone over for an expired tab or a broken taillight but no sign of erratic driving (because they were not driving erratically!), they smell a little beer, they spring into action...

...to the state and counties' immense material benefit.

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, prosecutorial discretion is the long-standing norm for drunken-driving cases -- up to a point. The new issue is the lower threshold for drunken driving in Minnesota. It dropped from 0.10 to 0.08 percent on Aug. 1.

When the threshold dropped, Minneapolis and other cities adjusted the point at which they would consider charging drivers with a lesser careless-driving offense instead of a drunken-driving offense.

In Minneapolis, that number dropped from 0.12 to 0.10 percent. Heffern said. In order to qualify for the careless-driving offense, three other conditions had to be met: The offense was the driver's first, there was no accident and the driver did not refuse a breath test.

I've criticized the .08 standard for years, for mainly this reason; it has nothing to do with safety.

It has everything to do with criminalizing otherwise-safe levels of drinking (for MADD) and opening a new market (for government).

Never Whistle On Graves

It was 25 years ago this week that I first got fired from a radio job.

Now, bear in mind that you rarely if ever quit a job in radio on your own volition; I worked at eight stations in 13 years, and only walked out under my own power twice. Never for cause, of course; two stations were bought or went out of business, and the rest involved new management deciding to whack everyone and start over - which is pretty much SOP in the business.

Key Lesson One: Murphy Never Sleeps.
Key Lesson Two: While I don't believe in Karma, I do believe that what goes around comes around.

So I never, ever gloat over the changing vocational fortunes of others in the business. You never know when the grim, martini-odored, coke-snorting, perfectly-coiffed radio reaper is going to take a whack at your gig.

So just the facts: Nick Coleman is gone at Air America Minnesota.

It started with a bit of standard boilerplate on their website stating Coleman was out on parental leave.

But over this past week, the station's schedule page was rebuilt, and Coleman's show wasn't a part of it.

A phone call to the KTNF office earlier today confirmed it: Coleman's show is history.

I asked "So is he returning"

The woman on the other end of the line sounded uncomfortable. "We're going ahead with plans for a new morning show", she replied.

Ow. I used to hate it when that happened.

Allow me to be the first to say it: Bummer. Coleman's show - wrenched from the talking points memo and clogged with unrequited bile as it was - was always a great source of material for this blog, usually funny (if rarely intentionally so).

Good thing he never quit his day job!

My Party, Right or Wrong?

The Kool Aid Report has long been one of my favorite MOB blogs (and it's hard to pick favorites - so many of them are excellent).

But there's a thread going on there now that makes me a little nervous. Part of me wants to chalk it up to the KAR's audience - but after three years of running a blog, I know better than that.

As much as certain chuzzlewits try to paint it otherwise, we NARN bloggers (and most MOB bloggers, really) are pretty independent of the party.

You can be in the party, and not agree with everything the party says or does. I've sat on the floor and fulminated with other delegates as it seemed the central committee (in the Fourth and at State) hijacked the proceedings. I've groused as the party put forth hamsters like Arne Carlson. And I've pointed my finger at the Fourth District leadership and wondered why they continually gave up on everything south of Larpenteur Avenue.

That last is an issue close to my heart, of course; I'm "represented" by Betty "I'm A Teacher's Union Robot!" McCollum, a woman every bit as dumb as Barbara Boxer but with a much lower profile.

So I wish I, as a GOP activist, had the choices they have up north in the Sixth District, where Phil Krinkie, Cherie Pierson Yecke, Chuck Jim Knoblach and Michele Bachmann are duking it out for the nomination to replace Mark Kennedy. All four of them are great candidates; I've met all of them except Knoblach at least half a dozen times each, and I'd be happy to have any of them as my representative at any level (says the guy who's "represented" by Alice "The Phantom" Hausman in the State House, Ellen "Womenandtheirchildren" Anderson in the State Senate, and McCollum).

"The Head of Alfredo Garcia" wrote earlier this week, criticizing his choice of GOP candidates:

I'm a Republican. I have been all my life. I vote straight ticket. Why be a wimp? But I live in the Sixth Congressional District, and I have to tell you, I'm dreading this next race.

We have a race of total clowns running in this district!

What are our choices? Phil Krinkie. Sounds like an elf. He's a policy wonk. Not bad, but for Congress?

Cheri Pierson Yecke. A one trick pony if there ever was one. All education, all the time. I just dont' see it...And my one-time front runner (for my vote anyway), Michele Bachmann. I have to admit, I used to support her, big-time.

But some of the stuff about her lately kind of distrubs me. Sure, she's more of a social conservative than I'd want in a perfect world. But she seems almost erratic lately.

Like the scene where she was spying on the gay rally at the capitol? Too weird. Like, why? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Of course I disagree: Phil Krinkie and Cheri Yecke are both amply qualified to serve in Congress, I don't know much about Knoblach but I'm told he's good, and I think Michele Bachmann has come up on the wrong end of a pack of slavering zealots who genuinely detest social conservatism in all ways, shapes and forms. Who would I vote for if I were attending the CD6 Convention? I don't know - it'd be a very tough call. But only until the gavel rang down - because I'd vote for any of them over any DFLer, any "moderate" Republican (read: Stealth DFLer), any "Independence Party" drone (read: DFL Lite) - anyone!

So what's the response? A purge?

To avoid this from getting too personal, I'll submit my delemma to our readers. Should The Head of Alfredo Garcia get booted from KAR?

Nah.

The party's got to be able to question itself.

If the Party can't withstand questioning from within, how will it ever withstand questioning from the enemy?

However, "Head" - I have to ask; if you guys in the Sixth feel you have too many candidates, please, please - send us a couple down in the Fourth.

Even one would be nice.

Bleeding in Denver

Marc Cohn - songwriter, pianist and the writer of long-time Cities 97 warhorse song "Walking In Memphis", was shot in the head in a parking ramp in Denver.

A Grammy-winning musician and husband of ABC news reporter Elizabeth Vargas was treated at a hospital and released Monday after being shot in the head during an attempted carjacking following a performance.

Marc Cohn, who had a hit with the song "Walking in Memphis" and won the Grammy for best new artist in 1992, was struck in the temple Sunday night when a man fired into his band's van in a parking garage. A suspect was being sought.

The suspect, by the way, is nobody to laugh at.

I highlight this story mainly because of how I got there. On Drudge, the link to the story is written:

Husband of ABCNEWS anchor Elizabeth Vargas shot in head...

You know your career needs a jolt when you get second-bill to a B-list ABC anchor in a story about your own shooting.

Evolved

The squabble is eternal; Evolution, or Creationism?

Like, apparently, Lileks, I've always wondered what the problem was:

I have never found religion and cosmology to be in conflict, which is why the [Intelligent Design] debate is boring. It’s like a debate that seeks to prove whether cats or forklifts exist.

Uh - how about both?

HERETIC!

I've always wondered why the two are always forcibly separated in the minds of the habitually-dogmatic.

Of course, if you're a biblical literalist, it's no great shakes - the world has to be 6,000 years old (give or take a few) and have been created in seven days, or your worldview is rendered groundless.

But I'm not a literalist. At least not about the first couple of books of the Bible. We'll come back to that.

Fundamentalist evolutionists, of course, are famously arrogant and dismissive of any notion that science can't give us all the answers. The existence of God, unempirical as that is, would be as big a problem to the scientific fundamentalist as the multi-billion-year-old universe is to the Biblical literalist. And to neither, it seems, is any compromise possible; one is either a believer or not, a person of reason or a yokel. Makes no sense.

Lileks continues:

I have no doubt about evolution – a recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed a study of some eggs laid down over many tens of thousands of years. Some low-life creature of little significance. The eggs showed how the creatures had adapted to changes in the predator population – growing spikes, losing them, growing them again. The article also pointed out variances within evolutionary biology camps, how they reacted to the data, and pointed out that it’s hardly a monolithic block staffed with unwavering acolytes. Opinions differ. Except, of course, for the idea that evolution occurs, which would seem to be a prerequisite for being an evolutionary biologist. But not one of the scholars asked the why behind the why, and I wouldn’t expect them too. Not their job.

And the why behind the why is the most interesting part, and the part that, for all their empiricism, the fundamantalist evolutionists ascribe as surely to faith in dogma as the most rock-ribbed creationist. "Something did it, we don't know what, but...", they say, and the topic peters out. The farther back science digs into the promordial ooze, the bigger the questions get. To say "science just hasn't figured it out yet" is no less a cop-out than saying "'cuz Jesus told me so!".

For Creationists, the question is more direct: God put a world here. He made that world seem to obey certain chemical, physical and biological patters - "rules", if you will, things that bespeak a certain systematic order to things. Now - do you think God, in all his infinite wisdom, would set up a world replete with these biological, chemical and physical systems that, themselves, are a wonder worthy of God himself - and make everything that (according to those systems He himself created) appears to be over 6,000 (give or take) years old...what? A vast practical joke? The cosmological equivalent of short-sheeting the intellectual beds of His people? I believe God has a sense of humor - how else do you explain Rexella Van Impe? - but making the entire structure and shape of His creation a josh? Just doesn't add up to me.

The usual response from the social and philosophical left is "no biggie. Teach science in science class, and creation in religion class". And that's so very wrong. Lileks:

Is that the job of high-school teachers? At some point, yes; I think any class could profit from philosophical exploration of the origins of life. And that’s all ID is to me, really: the possibility that the universe as a cause, that it was, for lack of better terms, summoned by volition. I know, I know – analogies are always imperfect, flattering to the believers and annoying to the disputers, but the world is like a newspaper: you either think that someone put it together, or you think that letters were thrown into a building and somehow they all arranged themselves in the form of editorials and recipes.

There was a time, not all that long ago (geologically speaking, anyway) when science and philosophy not only co-existed, but caused each other to thrive. The greatest explosion in science and philosophy of all time - the period between 1815 and 1850 or so - was carried out by people who, in many cases, melded science, philosophy, art and religion. All benefitted. To divorce the "how" from the larger "why" flatters those for whom the "how" is the be-all and end-all - but again, that's as great a leap of faith as any that religion ever asks - as Lileks says:

I just hesitate to say that we have it all figured out, and everything above and around and below is simply clockwork crafted by the hand of chance. I find the heavens, for example, indescribably beautiful – but why? The telescopes peer into the beyond, and the pictures are lush and awesome – am I reacting to some instinctive awe of the skies? Well, early man didn’t see star nurseries in the night sky. There is no cultural bias for finding beauty in a gaseous nebula (unless your culture teaches you to disregard the eyes over the words in the holy books, which is another matter.) All I know is that it is impossible for me to behold the natural world without seeing the hand of God – and that I stop myself there, because everything after that is dogma and schism and debate. The questions get in the way. The questions are natural; the questions are right and necessary, but annoyingly human. Be still, and know that I ROCK!

I see nothing in Evolution that doesn't uphold the notion of God, if not the literalist interpretation of His creation in the Bible.

Whew

Discovery lands.

Meow

Oh, no. She's back:

CHRISTINA AGUILERA has warned pop rival BRITNEY SPEARS not to expect a comeback after her baby is born - because she's "let herself go" too much to reclaim her sex symbol status.

The DIRRTY singer is horrified by the deterioration in Spears' appearance since she announced she's expecting her husband KEVIN FEDERLINE's child earlier this year (05).

And Aguilera hopes the TOXIC star will be content with motherhood, because she doubts she'll ever be a pop star again.

Brittinalera are the Elizabeth Taylor of the 21st century.

She says, "She's let herself go. I can't see a comeback on the cards."

It could very well be. Having kids'll mess with the career plans.

But then you have to wonder why Aguilera is uncorking something like this. Her career's been nothing to yap about lately either. Maybe she thinks returning to the glory days of ripping on Brit is going to revive her sales?

I'm sure my daughter will fill me in on it soon enough...

Could Be Worse...

The ongoing discussion of the casting of Rosie O'Donnell as Golde in the Broaday Fiddler On The Roof got me thinking; O'Donnell as Golde is bad.

But it could (he says with typical Scandinavian stoicism) be worse.

My list of roles for which Rosie O'Donnell would be even more mis-cast than as Golde:

1. Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard
2. Ilse Lund in Casablanca
3. Josey in Josey and the Pussycats
4. Sarah Connor in Terminator
5. Sugar Kane Kowalczyk in Some Like It Hot

See? You have no idea how lucky we are!

Divesting

Last year, when the Presbyterian Church first started talking about divesting from Israel, I reacted with a bit of ill-concealed but justified ire.

Now they've gone through with it:

A Presbyterian committee accused five companies Friday of contributing to "ongoing violence that plagues Israel and Palestine" and pledged to use the church's multimillion-dollar stock holdings in the businesses to pressure them to stop.

The move follows a vote last year by leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to put economic pressure on companies that profit from Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza.

The vote had outraged Jewish groups, who said the strategy was biased and failed to recognize Israel's right to defend itself, and the tensions worsened after other Protestant bodies adopted similar tactics.

Jewish leaders are deeply disturbed that the campaigns threatening divestment essentially borrow from the 1980s movement against South African apartheid.

Presbyterian leaders insisted Friday that divestment would be only a last resort, if discussions with corporate leaders and lobbying stockholders failed.

"We are initiating a slow, deliberate process," said Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, who works with the Presbyterian Mission Responsibility through Investment Committee. The goal is to convince corporations to "change their business practices which inflict harm on the innocent."

I'm so angry I could pimp-slap a deacon.

I grew up in the Presbyterian Church. As an adult, I returned to it for reasons that were largely theological (the Presbyterian Church's basic tenets, to me, cut to the basics of what being a Christian is all about), and partly political (John Knox's core principles were, among major Christian denominations, the most consistent with being an American, in my view).

So make no mistake about it - I'm a Presbyterian; I've looked at other denominations repeatedly over the past twenty-odd years, and to me they all come up short.

However, I feel safe in saying I will never set foot in a PCUSA Church again. Because while the central core of the Presbyterian Church is a work of great beauty, its political structure in the United States is a pathetic, co-opted, relativistic sham.

Presbyterian ministers - and I know at least two of you read this blog regularly - how do you answer to your congregation for the General Assembly's actions? I'm dying to hear the rationalization from someone who actually has to interact with parishioners daily.

The Presbyterians targeted five companies in particular:

• Caterpillar Inc
• Citigroup
• ITT Industries Inc
• Motorola Inc
• United Technologies Corp.

The next time I'm in the market for a bulldozer, credit card, night vision goggles or a thermal imaging system, you know where I'm going.

Ministers - please step up here.

The Whole System's Out of Order

In Minnesota, we elect most judges - including State Supreme Court justices.

As part of the judicial elections, Minnesota has maintained the willfully-naive fiction that judicial races are non-partisan; that judges are not supposed to cite any political stances in running for their benches. Thus, Minnesotans are officially to be unaware of, for example, SCOM justice (and former Viking defensive lineman) Alan Page's deep DFL connections and thoroughly left-of-center outlook, or the sympathies of many elected judges, all of which are well-known to the lawyers who practice before them - but which they are enjoined from telling us at election time.

Or were, until now.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/191/5547855.html

Katherine Kersten covers the Eighth Circuit opinion, which changed the rules:

Most Minnesotans pay scant attention to our state's judicial elections. Chances are, we see the wholly unfamiliar names of candidates for judgeships on the ballot, shrug our shoulders -- befuddled -- and skip them.

Or, in my case, write in family members and pets; if there's doubt about votes being counted, I can check with the registrar

But last week, the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals radically altered our state's rules on judicial elections. Now those races are likely to take on the rough and tumble of political campaigns.

The court found that Minnesota rules that prevent judges from aligning with political parties or personally soliciting campaign funds are an unconstitutional bar on free speech. The decision follows a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that rejected similar Minnesota rules prohibiting judicial candidates from talking about "disputed issues." Both decisions will affect courts across the nation, since dozens of states elect judges in some way.Naturally, there are two sides to the debate:

Some Minnesotans are celebrating the Eighth Circuit decision, saying we'll finally learn something about the legal philosophies behind the names on the ballot. Others are concerned about outside influences on judicial independence. Both sides have plausible arguments.

But some arguments are more plausible than others.

While the people of Minnesota have been heretofore kept legally in the dark about judicial candidates' views, you can bet that when political insiders like Mike Hatch and David Lillehaug ponder where or when to file their various lawsuits, they know perfectly well which judges will toe which lines.

"People power" can indeed ensure judicial accountability. In 1986, California voters threw out Chief Justice Rose Bird, who had repeatedly refused to apply California's death penalty law.

But to vote intelligently, people must know how judges view the law, and elections should offer judicial incumbents and challengers as level a playing field as possible.

The Eighth Circuit labeled Minnesota's rules "remarkably pro-incumbent." Our system is so stacked in favor of incumbents that few sitting judges are ever challenged and fewer still are defeated.

Furthermore, while judges have been enjoined from discussing their views, the parties are not; in 2000, when Greg Wersal (a judicial candidate who has been a sort of walking test-case for this issue for years) ran for a seat, the DFL turned out to make sure the voters knew he was a pro-life conservative.

It's a good decision. By a group of appointed judges, no less.

Loudmouth On The Roof

When I think of Golde from Fiddler On The Roof, I think of someone who embodies the endless, stoic forbearance of the Jews of Eastern Europe.

Who better to cast for the role on Broadway than the symbol of meso-American self-indulgence?

next month Ms. O'Donnell will step into a role that not only will give her supporters and detractors plenty to talk about, but also surely ranks as one of the boldest bits of replacement casting in Broadway history. Beginning on Sept. 20 at the Minskoff Theater, Ms. O'Donnell, a brassy Irish-American comedian from Long Island, will play Golde, the long-suffering wife and devoted mother in "Fiddler on the Roof," the 1964 classic of life in the shtetl.

That Ms. O'Donnell will play opposite Harvey Fierstein - whose casting as the daughter-laden dairyman Tevye last winter also raised a few eyebrows among musical-theater traditionalists - makes it truly an Only on Broadway moment, where two openly gay and outspoken actors will play husband and wife in a musical all about the breaking of traditions.

Aside: I'm sure that's the first time that's happened on Broadway.

Sheila's reviewing it in advance:

Please, God.
No.

I beg of you.

No.

On the one hand, if I were an actor I'd be bunged at the thought.

But I'm not. And since I'm a connoisseur of forced, almost sarcastic irony, I think the casting is a fine move.

Up next: Justin Timberlake in Schindler's List: The Musical!

I See Foucaultian People

Someone's working on getting PhD in Air Guitar:

MEET madcap Amanda Griffiths of Chorlton, the PhD student who is studying for a doctorate - in air guitar.

Amanda is researching the phenomena of playing along to famous electric guitar solos with nothing more in your hands than a fistful of fresh air as part of her doctorate at the University of Salford.

And the 32-year-old is even a special guest at the Air Guitar World Championships held in Oulu, where she will give a lecture on the subject.

I've wondered for years; should I go back to grad school someday?

I mean, on the one hand having a PhD would have little bearing on the work I do or how I do it.

On the other; it's sure be great for those NARN episodes when King is all "I'm the only academic! I'm the only academic!".

Oh, yeah. I'm getting that PhD in Air Guitar.

My dissertation; the Physics Of the Windmill.

Her love of the invisible instrument first became serious in 2002 when she came fourth in the UK championships.

Her success inspired her to study the subject in more detail - leading to the invitation to attend the multi-national competition.

Amanda said: “It’s an honour to be asked to lecture at what is the biggest event in any air guitarist’s calendar.

Well, until you get to the Nobel conference.

Name This Newspaper

Quick - to which newspaper does this excerpt refer?

"Unlike the founding generation of penny press entrepreneurs, Henry Raymond ahd no links to teh Trades. He came t work for Horace Greeley straight from college, then moved to James Watson Webb's Courier and Enquirer, where he rose to be come managing editor. Here Raymond established solid conservative credentials by attacking socialism (a "stupendous humbug") in a six-months print duel with his former employer. In 1849 he was elelcted as a Whig to the Assemgbly. In 1851, as a leader of what Bennett called the "Wall Street clique", the thirt=-year=old Raymond was chosen as speaker.

That summer a group of Whig bankers surveyed the penny press field with diaffected eyes. Bennet's Herald seemed too flamboyant, the Sun to blepeian, and Horace Greeley, though a stalwart Whig, had dedicated teh to promoting soc ial justice "causes". The dailies' collective prosperity, however, suggested there might be room for another penny press --- more agreeably conservative in style and politics. The Whig magnates, accordingly, chose the reliably orthodox Raymond to found the _____ (the eight to bear that name). They raised $110,000, making the _____ the most amply funded newcomer in American journalism.

Raymond acquired a [printing press], hired a large staff, and joined the Associated Press. He also set out the establish a clear identity for the ___, one professing objetivity, detachment and bourgeois respectability. The paper's first issue, in September, 1851, declared, with unmistakable reference to Greeley's tubthumping, that "we shall make it a point to get into a passion as rarely as possible". Raymond's mix of prudent politics, good manners and sober design found a readership at once -- ten thousand in ten days -- drawn, he claimed, from "business men at their stores" and "the most respectable families in town." Advertisers flocked in, circulation doubled, and the ___ replaced the Tribune as the favored organ of New York Whiggery.

Guesses?

The un-named, sober, objective, detached paper (in 1851) was the New York Times, naturally.

The paper that spent last week trying to unseal John Roberts' adoption records.

Excerpt taken from "Gotham", by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace.

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Swiftee Throws Down

You know it's going to be an interesting thread when it ends:

It's just that simple. I'm waiting scumbag.

Normally, I don't get involved in blog squabbles. They tend to be tiresome, and differ in no details from the USENET squabbles, which differ not an iota in turn from fourth-grade playground rhubarbs.

But Tom Swift has made an offer to one of his commenters:

If I'm wrong, because I would have called you a filthy, damned liar in error, and because I would have cast doubt on a true hero (not you in any case), I'll post a sincere appology here and anywhere else you want me to...

....then I'll shut this blog down for good.

Someone that Tom calls "Dumpster Dan" (I wonder if it's the Dan that I banned from this blog?) apparently attacked Tom for his Navy service, and then cited the example of a relative of his who...well, I'll let the participants tell the story.

Tom passes on something he received from "Dumpster Dan" in a comment:

Dumpster Dan _____ of _______, Minnesota said:

Regarding the Navy and recruitment...My Uncle Tom volunteered and served on a sub in WWII. His sub was damaged by Japanese fire and was forced to surface surrounded by Japanese ships.

According to the records released to my grandparents and stories from my other uncles and aunts, it was common practice for the first American captured in a situation like this to be executed as a show of superiority and to send a message to the rest of the sailors.

My Uncle volunteered to be the first person out the hatch and he was immediately beheaded.

He was posthumously awarded the Navy's highest honors for leadership, valor and bravery.

Quite the story eh? Well I'm saying that's all it is..a story..no I'm saying it's a lie.

First point: The US Navy lost 52 diesel boats in WWII, all of them documented. I’ll be damned if I can find any record of a US Submarine having surrendered to the Japanese intact or of any submariners being captured coming “out of the hatch”.

A couple of points before I cut to the nub of the gyst:

1. When I worked in bars, I frequently ran into guys claiming all sorts of military experiences. At last call, a little adventure could (maybe) help close the deal for some guy scrambling for one last shot at a meaningful two-hour relationship. I figured "what the heck - if claiming to have been a Force Recon Marine or a Green Beret gets that pathetic drunken jag a little whoopdiedoo for the evening, it's her dumb luck..."
2. However, people who use militaria to beat other people over the head - either their own fancied service or that of relatives - bother me.
3. People who make stuff up out of the whole cloth bother me a whooooole lot more

So Swiftee wants to find out more about this "Uncle Tom", whose circumstances "Dan" describes:"If you think I'm going to volunteer identifying information to a psychopath like you, you're nuts. If you really feel the need play Sherlock Holmes, Here ya go... He was killed in In October, 1943 according to my Mom.As Swiftee notes, one US Submarine was lost in October of 1943 - the old USS S-44, a World War I-vintage boat which had had a very hectic career. There was one Navy Cross issued to a member of the S-44 - however, that was a year earlier, to its former commanding officer. Whose name was not Tom.

There were four men named "Tom" or "Thomas" on the S-44 when it sank in October of 1943:

1. Tom Cleverdon, Chief Pharmacist's Mate
2. Thomas O. Cooper, Seaman Second Class
3. Tommie L. Goodin, Fireman Third Class
4. Thomas O. Cooper, Seaman Second Class

None of them won Navy Crosses.

A further Google search - and a search of online Naval records - shows references to anyone being beheaded after being rescued from a US submarine.

If you have any further help for Swiftee, please let him know...

UPDATE: The story's been completed over at Swiftee's. Allow me to express my sympathy for the Cleverdon family's loss, my thanks for their family members' service to this country (not to mention Tom Swift's), my belief that the "story" was the product of generational embellishment (these things happen), and my ongoing fascination with unmasking those who dissemble about such things. Of which more in a later post.

Posted by Mitch at 11:16 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Some Good News

The Russian submariners are OK:

Seven submarine crew members trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean were rescued Sunday after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled the vessel.

The seven crew members, whose oxygen supplies had been dwindling amid underwater temperatures in the mid-40s, appeared to be in satisfactory condition, naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said. The seven were being examined by ship medics, he said.

The sub surfaced late Sunday afternoon, some three days after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast on Thursday.

Whew.

Rescue In The Works

The Russians - with Brit and American help - are going to take a shot at rescuing their mini-sub, currently trapped in 600 feet of water somewhere in the Pacific.

Swiftee knows more than the average bear about the subject.

Allam

Here's the Hannah Allam column I referenced on the air.

Say It Ain't So, Arthur!

Arthur Chrenkoff is retiring his blog due to professional conflicts.

Hopefully someone will take over his Good News from Afghanistan and Iraq beat.

I Smell Racket

Why is it...

No. Let me start over and put the proper emphasis in place.

Why in the freaking friggin' fecking freak does "An Everlasting Love by Natalie Cole not only have to be in the theatre and TV trailers of every single romantic comedy that comes out, but in fact associated with every single reference to romance in our media and culture today?

I've heard it on the trailers for at least four different romantic comedies in the past year or so, plus on all of those damned damned damned "E-Harmony" ads that are every-fecking-where on radio and TV today (almost making me yearn for the equally-ubiquitous fake-acoustic-blues riff they used to inexplicably use), and before that on the ads for Match.com, which were just about as grating, plus a few other non-movie, non-match site ads. Those same, irritating, trying-to-be-soulful-but-coming-across-as-chirpy-cum-constipated women:

"This will be!
An everLASting love!
THIS will be!
An ever LASting love for Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

No, this is serious. I mean, I've seen the trailers for the new John Cusack/Diane Lane movie, where the two apparently meet via an online personals ad.

I love John Cusack.

I love Diane Lane.

I've tried online personals.

It should be a slam-dunk, getting me in there, even though it's a total chick flick. Right?

Wrong! Because the ads and trailers all feature that same...same...same...song:

"This will be!
An everLASting love!
THIS will be!
An ever LASting love for Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

And I will not go! Because while in years of working in radio I probably heard the song dozens of times, and found it innocuous and unmemorable, nowadays I associate it with sappy, trite, saccharine, not to mention relentless repetition.

And I hate that!

Questions for everyone involved:

• Hollywood: I'm told - by a fairly reliable source - that there might have been another song or two sometime during the history of pop music that might have expressed happiness and hope at a blooming romance. Turn those crack research staffs loose.
• Madison Avenue: When advertising a light romantic comedy, it's best to not leave the potential audience wanting to hack your leading couple to death. I mean, it takes a lot to get me to walk away from a Keira Knightley movie - but I did! And why? That Demonic Chirpy Song!.
• The Entertainment Law Bar: Is this song so ubiquitous because it's passed into the public domain? If so, could we file an action to give the rights back to whomever had them? Or assign them to, say, someone with really horrible P.R. value, like the American Nazi Party, so even Hollywood knows enough to stay away from it much less pay for it?

We can do this, people. Please.

Ugh

Few things seem more nightmarish than this scenario, currently unfolding in the Pacific:

A Russian mini-submarine carrying seven sailors snagged on a fishing net and was stuck 625 feet down on the Pacific floor today with only enough air for crewmen to survive one day, and the United States was rushing an unmanned vehicle there to help in rescue efforts.

However, it was unclear whether there was enough oxygen aboard the mini-sub to keep the crew alive long enough for the remote-controlled U.S. vehicle to reach them from its base in San Diego.

Ugh. Feeling claustrophobic already.

"There is air remaining on the underwater apparatus for a day — one day,'' he said at about 6 a.m. EDT. "The operation continues. We have a day, and intensive, active measures will be taken to rescue the AS-28 vessel and the people aboard.''

Prayers or whatever you believe in are in order. It'd be a great thing to have a win in the "Submarine Rescue" catagory.

I believe this would be the deepest rescue in history (bubbleheads, please set me straight).

I Don't Think So

I took another of those web quizzes - "Which Star Trek Character Are You?"

Take the Star Trek Quiz

I Don't. THINK...so. It seems...unlikely. VERY...unlikely.

Vincent

King has our last interview with Stephen Vincent up over at his site (and it'll be moving to the NARN site shortly).

King asks you to please download it before listening - it'll save a lot of load on his server. It's an eighteen minute interview, about 5mb.

Vincent will be sorely missed.

Inevitable: Death, Taxes, Rebecca Thoman Being A Dim Bulb

Rebecca Thoman - president of Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota, an astroturf lobbying group composed primarily of Volvo-driving, alpaca-clad, Utne-reading Highland Park matrons, and politicians trying to curry favor with same - has a letter in today's Strib.

In the same alternate universe in which CFS"S"M is a legitimate grassroots group, Rebecca Thoman is a cogent, capable commentator.

Court was inevitable

The state of Minnesota is being dragged back into court because our legislators and governor cared more about serving a narrow interest group than they did about respecting religious freedom when they reinstated concealed-carry.

Which is, of course, baked wind.

Rights don't impose on other rights. Nothing - nothing - about my exercise of the right to self-defense affects your relationship with God. And your freedom of worship doesn't extend to allowing whatever aesthetic revulsion you might feel about legal ownership and the legal right to defend oneself extend outside your sanctuary. Not that I will ever patronize a church that restricts concealed carry, anyway.

Lawmakers were told that if religious institutions' concerns weren't addressed another lawsuit was inevitable. But they chose to reject common-sense amendments that would have rectified the problem. They let their fear of the gun lobby prevail.

On the one hand, the "fear" is justified; the people of Minnesota turned out most of the legislators that opposed the bill (outside the core metro area, anyway).

And more germane to Ms. Thoman's point, they chose to avoid adding loopholes to the law that unscrupulous or overly-dim city governments could re-expand into prohibition.

Here's the applicable section of the law, with emphasis added:

11.6 Subd. 17. [POSTING; TRESPASS.] (a) A person carrying a
11.7 firearm on or about his or her person or clothes under a permit
11.8 or otherwise who remains at a private establishment knowing that
11.9 the operator of the establishment or its agent has made a
11.10 reasonable request that firearms not be brought into the
11.11 establishment may be ordered to leave the premises. A person
11.12 who fails to leave when so requested is guilty of a petty
11.13 misdemeanor. The fine for a first offense must not exceed $25.
11.14 Notwithstanding section 609.531, a firearm carried in violation
11.15 of this subdivision is not subject to forfeiture.
11.16 (b) As used in this subdivision, the terms in this
11.17 paragraph have the meanings given.
11.18 (1) "Reasonable request" means a request made under the
11.19 following circumstances:
11.20 (i) the requester has prominently posted a conspicuous sign
11.21 at every entrance to the establishment containing the following
11.22 language: "(INDICATE IDENTITY OF OPERATOR) BANS GUNS IN THESE
11.23 PREMISES."; and or
11.24 (ii) the requester or its the requester's agent personally
11.25 informs the person of the posted request that guns are
11.26 prohibited in the premises and demands compliance. 11.27 (2) "Prominently" means readily visible and within four
11.28 feet laterally of the entrance with the bottom of the sign at a
11.29 height of four to six feet above the floor.
11.30 (3) "Conspicuous" means lettering in black arial typeface
11.31 at least 1-1/2 inches in height against a bright contrasting
11.32 background that is at least 187 square inches in area.
11.33 (4) "Private establishment" means a building, structure, or
11.34 portion thereof that is owned, leased, controlled, or operated
11.35 by a nongovernmental entity for a nongovernmental purpose.
11.36 (c) The owner or operator of a private establishment may
12.1 not prohibit the lawful carry or possession of firearms in a
12.2 parking facility or parking area.
12.3 (d) This subdivision does not apply to private residences.
12.4 The lawful possessor of a private residence may prohibit
12.5 firearms, and provide notice thereof, in any lawful manner.
12.6 (e) A landlord may not restrict the lawful carry or
12.7 possession of firearms by tenants or their guests.
12.8 (f) Notwithstanding any inconsistent provisions in section
12.9 609.605, this subdivision sets forth the exclusive criteria to
12.10 notify a permit holder when otherwise lawful firearm possession
12.11 is not allowed in a private establishment and sets forth the
12.12 exclusive penalty for such activity.
12.13 (g) This subdivision does not apply to:
12.14 (1) an on-duty active licensed peace officer; or
12.15 (2) a security guard acting in the course and scope of
12.16 employment.

Fairly simple, no? You tell people not to carry on your (church's) property. They don't. It's simple.

The religious organizations involved in these petty, self-aggrandizing suits have no theological justification, much less a political or legal one. Indeed - awash in smug self-righteousness, they are at the very least dupes of politically-ambitious parishioners who are manipulating the fears of their fellows. At worst, they're engaged in the mortal sin of pride - awash in pietistic hubris, they want to break the rest of the community to their self-righteous will.

Minnesotans shouldn't be surprised that we have another expensive legal battle on our hands; it was our elected officials' choice.

Right.

The choice they were elected to make.

The choice they made in greater numbers than two years ago.

The choice that plump-with-phony-piety chuzzlewits like Rebecca Thoman and her ilk want to nullify by edict from a tame judge.

If you want to keep fighting this battle, Rebecca Thoman, you've got the right enemy right here.

By the way - I have twice called Rebecca Thoman to invite her on the Northern Alliance Radio Network. She hasn't even had the courtesy to return my call, much less the courage to accept.

Typical - a cowardly leader for a cowardly movement.

Letter To Nick Coleman

Brian, from Boviosity, writes re Nick Coleman's case of the vapors over the alleged (and apparently nonexistant) flip-off:

Special for Nick C: When a real man, like President Bush, for instance, flips you the bird, YOU'LL KNOW IT. They're not the furtive little wankers you like to surround yourself with.

Here's a sample, from another real man, and I think of Nicky and his ilk
every time I see it.

Someone stop him! He's flipping off all Americans!

Finger This

Powerline covers Nick Coleman's vapid "Finger" column which I covered yesterday. Scott's piece includes one of Coleman's typically-classy email responses to a reader.

The commenters who noted that it wasn't a middle finger, but rather the President's thumb, were apparently correct, according to Olberman:

...a finger would be funnier, but according to those who were there it's his thumb.

Hm.

So, Nick (and I know both you and your boss at the station read this): If the President's alledged off-flipping were an insult to the entire media, what is it when a hack columnist runs with a hoax?

Meat

Nobody likes a huge hamburger more than me.

No, that's not true. Probably 2/3 of the population likes a huge hamburger more than I do. I have teetered on the brink of vegetarianism a few times - and have only held back because although I'm aware of all the health benefits, I find eating meat to be a wonderful way to express man's dominion over lesser creatures. [1]

But more than a half pound of beef at a sitting is going to cause trouble, as they say. There's a fine tipping point when it comes to beef - up to eight ounces, good time. 8.5 ounces and beyond? It's gonna get ugly.

But a perfect burger is a wonder to behold, still - one of the great American art forms.

Jeremy Iggers, the Strib food critic, undertook the mission of finding the city's best burger. Poor SOB.

[1] Oh, relax, PETA. I'm a kidder. I kid. Don't firebomb my house.

The piece goes over the concomitant fads of the super-huge burger and the mini-burgers that are popping up at happy hours around the city.

I was glad to see my suspicions were confirmed over this offender:

Worst of the jumbos was Hardee's Monster Thickburger, whose two gray-brown slabs of processed animal protein were nearly flavorless -- or what flavor they had was drowned out by the cloying flavor of processed cheese.

Check the rest of them out on your own.

But this one - oh, lordy, this sounds good:

My overall current favorite, though, is the Korean barbecue bacon burger I had recently at the Craftsman in south Minneapolis. It's a thick, juicy hand-formed patty topped with Wisconsin white Cheddar, with the added flavors of green onion, basil, cilantro and daikon radish.

Oh, that sounds soooo good. I may have to try it.

Assuming, of course, I can put up with a chef who wants to be my social conscience:

Originally, this was served as a half-pounder, but when Mike Phillips took over recently as chef, he cut the size down from 8 ounces to 6, as well as the price from $11 to $10. The jumbo burgers are "just overkill," said Phillips.

"We saw a lot of people taking leftovers home. I don't know if anyone needs to eat that much red meat. I would like to see people leave the restaurant happy but not overfed."

Erhm...OK. I'll give it a shot.

(Oh, and Keegans makes a wonderful - if regular-sized - burger. Hope to see you there tonight.)

My Apologies

To: Roger Hedgecock
From: Mitch Berg
Subject: Apologies

Mr. Hedgecock,

Please accept my sincere apologies.

While I'm only very intermittently able to hear the Rush Limbaugh program due to my work schedule, I have gotten into the habit of turning to something - anything - else when I hear your voice. I used to mutter under my breath "He's gotta be the worst talk show host in San Diego".

I was mistaken

I was listening to the Fast Eddie Schultz show whilst running an errand today, and I caught Stacy Taylor, the erstwhile morning guy at KLSD.

Oh, sweet ghost of Marconi, spare me. What a dreadful, vapid, waste of bandwidth; all of the style of Nick Coleman combined with the incisive, reliable content of a Mike Malloy. To call him "dreadful" would be to insult things that are genuinely full of dread.

My apologies again, Mr. Hedgecock. No hard feelings. It's just business.

Mitch Berg

Scratch Another Good Guy

Nail Mahmoud died this morning.

Mahmoud's case has drawn some attention because last month, he and his brother broke up a robbery at their convenience store in suburban Apple Valley, Minnesota:

Mahmoud refused to open the safe, and he and his brother, Norman, struggled with the two men. During the struggle, the weapon, which turned out to be a BB gun, fell to the floor. The two men fled, and police were called.

Someone else came to the store on Monday evening:

A customer found Mahmoud of Burnsville lying behind the counter of the Quick Stop 66 convenience store at 213 County Road 42 in Apple Valley about 10:30 p.m. Monday. Mahmoud had been shot in the head.

The story didn't mention whether anything was taken in Monday's robbery, but it did drop in this bit here:

Monday was not the first time Mahmoud had had trouble at the store, but police said they do not believe the shooting was tied to a July 24 incident...

...which was the robbery the Mahmouds resisted.

I know - the police have their reasons for saying and not saying what they do.

But in placid Apple Valley - a beige-and-tan bedroom 'burb that could easily serve as the filming location for a suburban parody movie - the notion that the same guy in the same store could get randomly hit twice inside a month beggars my Saint Paulite imagination. (Apple Valleyites, please stop me if I'm wrong, and County Road 42 has turned into a mean street). While few details are available, it just doesn't pass the smell test to me.

My condolences to the Mahmoud family.

Wages Of Kelo

Dafydd Ab Hugh, writing at CQ, cites a Deb Saunders column in the SanFranChron about another gross misuse (to untrained legal mind) of eminent domain.

A LETTER on the front of what used to be Revelli Tires in Oakland warns: "Eminent domain unfair. To learn all about the abuses of eminent domain, please go to www.castlecoalition.org. Educate yourself. Pay attention. You could be next."

John Revelli wrote the note after the City of Oakland evicted him on July 1 from his own property - and a business run by his family since 1949 -- so that a private developer could build apartments on his land.

Others - Dafydd, mainly - have written about this case better than I; read his post.

But there was another part I found interesting.

Saunders:

I plead guilty to gushing back in 1999 about Mayor Jerry Brown's plan to add 6,000 units of housing to the downtown area -- and with private money. I never dreamed, however, that Oakland would evict successful, blight-free businesses so that private developers could make more money.

That's the problem. The projects that end up using eminent domain are always portrayed as win-wins. Big governments employ big-time P.R. flaks to slather the ideas in mounds of syrupy goodness that hide the downside - the fact that people and businesses are going to be uprooted in droves.

Saunders, chagrinned:

What to do? Outraged Oaklanders can contact those who voted to seize these two properties: City Council Members Jane Brunner, Henry Chang, Nancy Nadel, Jean Quan and Ignacio De La Fuente. (Danny Wan is no longer on the council. Larry Reid voted "no.")

And they'll reverse themselves? Really?

No. What to do is elect government officials who respect genuine property rights, and who will institute laws that define "public good" to strict, rigidly-enforced guidelines (that don't include "more tax money by whatever means is a public good").

Stephen Vincent Murdered

Author Stephen Vincent was kidnapped and murdered in Basra, Iraq.

A US freelance reporter, Steven Vincent, has been shot dead by unknown gunmen in Basra, southern Iraq, police have said.

Mr Vincent was abducted with his female Iraqi translator at gun point by men in a police car on Tuesday.

His bullet-riddled body was found on the side of a highway south of the city a few hours later.

Vincent was the author of "Into The Red Zone", his chronicle of his first trip through Iraq, alone, posing as a Yugoslav journalist. He wrote the In The Red Zone blog. He'd been a guest on the NARN twice, and they were two of the best interviews we ever had.

It appears he may have made some influential enemies:

In a recent New York Times article, Mr Vincent wrote that Basra's police force had been infiltrated by Shia militants.

He quoted a senior Iraqi police lieutenant saying some officers were behind many of the killings of former Baath party members in Basra.

Vincent was highly critical of the British administration of the Basra area; the British practice, derived from their colonial background, is to pick the local faction they most want in charge and let them do the enforcing for them. Vincent exposed many of the problems in this approach.

My personal condolences to the Vincent family.

Love and Fear

Letter in today's PiPress, from Ann McGlyn of North Saint Paul:

Hip-hip-hooray for Canada for joining the noble ranks of Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium by legalizing gay marriage. When will the "land of the free" catch up to this truly fair and just ideology?

So all that speech, worship, press, innocent-until-proven-guilty mumbo jumbo just doesn't count?

Or will stunted conservatives continue to ram selected rights down our throats?

Like an archaeologist, I'm trying to carefully peel off the various levels of grinding stupidity in that sentence. Because someone believes that marriage is supposed to be a between a man and a woman, they are not "wrong" or "dissenting" or "someone who has a different point of view", but "Stunted?" How do you share a polling station with the rest of us, Ann?

What "Rights" have conservatives "rammed down your throat?" And is something that's "rammed" a right at all?

Who picks these letters, anyway?

Let's open our minds, our hearts and our courts to recognize same-sex marriage and grant equal rights to all civil unions in the U.S.

(Screeech).

Whoah. I thought you were talking about marriage. Let's rewind to the top of the letter: "...by legalizing gay marriage...this truly fair and just ideology..."

Yep. But now it's Civil Unions - something many conservatives at least grudgingly favor (including me).

Which is it? Or do you know?

If you are reading this in disgust, what are you afraid of? Psychologists, philosophers and theologians agree that we act out of love and fear. Which is it for you?

Like for most people, both. I love to ridicule chuzzlewitted half-thoughts like this letter. And I fear the fact that Ann McGlyn's vote counts just as much as someone who has a coherent thought or two.

I choose love.

Well, it might be a better idea than more letter-writing.

No Stand-Ins Needed

Nick Coleman is back.

In more ways than one.

Coleman has the vapors over the president allegedly flipping off "the media" (even going so far as to video from an obscure leftyblog in the process).

And in Nick Coleman's world, if you're flipping off the media, well...

...I'll let Nick explain it:

Bush, it seems, has given the press the presidential bird, a digital message of the kind you see exchanged between angry drivers at stop signs. At least we know where we stand.

Finally?

Mr "I Know Stuff" has taken nearly five ever-lovin' years to figure out where he the media stands with this Administration?

George Bush, who promised to change the tone in Washington and restore dignity to the highest office in the land, deliberately flipped off the press.

I'll say it.

Thank you, George Bush. I wish you'd do it more. The tone did indeed change in Washington; the wailing of a thousand agenda-driven hacks become more and more shrill. The modern mainstream "elite" media - the self-proclaimed high priests of knowledge, the Imperial Media - perform a function in our society (badly), but there is no need to scrape and bow to them like they run the country.

In solidarity, I'm flipping off the Strib Online even as we speak.

That's his right, even if it makes him the only born-again man whose favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ who flips people off like a sailor.

It's called "sin". It happens.

But the press -- we whipped dogs and disreputable stand-ins for the American people -- didn't even raise a whimper.

Huh?

"Stand-ins for the American people?"

No. The press is solopsistic, self-referential, self-reverential, and a business. Not a holy calling. Not a noble crusade for the truth. It's a job; people explaining what happened (supposedly).

A president showing disdain for the media is nothing new. But doing it with a contemptuous gesture that is offensive to millions does not just insult the press. It insults anyone who relies on the press to tell us what our leaders are doing. When presidents flip off the press, Americans get the finger.

There you have it; the most arrogant, stupid thing Nick Coleman has said.

(So far this year).

No, Nick. No, self-proclaimed high priests of knowledge. You do not represent this country; we elect people to do that. If the president flips off an elected representative, like Betty McCollum...well, bad example. But whatever - the press doesn't represent me (or anyone who wants unvarnished fact) any more than Johnson and Johnson or Nike or Enron does.

Did I mention the left was getting the vapors? Coleman quotes John Aravosis of the left of center Americablog:

"The president thinks his conservative moral beliefs should be shoved down our throats. Then he flips people off. He's a phony. That's the story. I don't know about you, but my priest doesn't run around in public flipping people off."

Aravosis, and Coleman, are mixing apples and axles.

If some moron cuts you off on the road, or if a bunch of empty Brooks Brothers suits consistently flog their agenda at your expense, anger knows no political alignment. It happens. I do it, the President does it, I'd suspect Mother Theresa did it once or twice.

Anyone who cares about the role of the press in a free society might worry when a president dismisses the press with an emperor's crude gesture.

Sorry, Nick.

It's a gesture any working stiff knows - and, for the most part, lets slide.

But maybe it was only a thumb. I'd like to believe that. Yes, the president gave the press a thumbs up! He really likes us! Just a thumb! The longest thumb we ever have seen.

Right in the eye.

Nick Coleman: Drama Queen.

Look Back In Hunger

It occurs to me that I haven't really done a rundown of last Saturday's picnic.

Thanks to all of you that came out - it was a blast! Cap'n Ed had a pretty good recap.

It was a very bright, hot, sunny day - and I think the seats in the ampitheatre emptied when Brian "Saint Paul" Ward offered the crowd a chance to sit in the shade onstage. There was a pretty fair little crowd gathered there all day.

Of course, between that little crowd and the teeming throng up at the food tent, we were told we drew somewhere around 600 people. It's not the biggest event that AM1280 has thrown with the NARN - that was last fall's Third Debate Party - with for a mid-summer event with no presidential election going on, it was huge.

We interviewed District Six Congressman and Senate candidate Mark Kennedy. I have to say, I was impressed. Kennedy has a reputation as someone who'll do his homework - and when we talked with him at the Fair last summer, one area where he needed work was in dealing with the media in face-to-face interviews. He's done his homework - he was relaxed and in complete command on Saturday, and just plain sounded good. Whatever he's been doing, he needs to keep going.

Ed mentioned our little troll problem - a guy dressed as a caricature of a Patriot fan (tricorner hat, a bible verse t-shirt) tried to corner Rep. Kennedy on a couple of questions. Kennedy handily beat the questions back - and the followup. Then, I continued the interview - as the troll kept trying to yell his question loudly enough to be heard on the air (it didn't work).

Anyway, it was a blast, and I can hardly wait for the next one.

In the meantime, I've not heard from anyone who attended the local FrankenNet affiliate's party at Diamond Bluff - but after four days, there is no reference to it on their website. That can't be good.

Bar Tricks

Back when I worked in bars, I noticed a certain phenomenon: around last call, there was a phenomenal number of former SEALs, CIA operatives and undercover cops at the bar.

Every schlub staggering around, hammered out of his gourd, would walk up to you; "Back when I wazh in the CORR - that's Marine Corps, y'know..."

And so I took to giving a subtle little quiz; it went a little like this:

DRUNK: "I wush in the SEALs!"

MITCH: "Yeah? Cool! What was your rate and rating?"

DRUNK: [Deer in headlights look] "Er, my rate was tops, and I had very high ratings".

Which of course meant that he was lying - in the Navy, Rate and Rating mean "Rank" and "Specialty".

Alternate approach:

DRUNK: "I wazh in the MAREEN Corps".

MITCH: "Cool. What was the Sixth General Order?"

DRUNK: "I gotta go get a drink".

In a lifetime of knowing former Marines, I have yet to meet any Marine, serving or former, who couldn't rattle off all eleven General Orders from memory (and yes, I did memorize #6, purely to trip up imposters: "To recieve, obey, and pass on to the sentry who relieves me, all orders from the Commanding Oficer, Officer Of the Day, and officers, and noncomissioned officers of the guard only.")Yes, that was what I called "fun" back when I worked in bars...

No Stand-Ins Needed

Nick Coleman is back.

In more ways than one.

Coleman has the vapors over the president allegedly flipping off "the media" (even going so far as to video from an obscure leftyblog in the process).

And in Nick Coleman's world, if you're flipping off the media, well...

...I'll let Nick explain it:

Bush, it seems, has given the press the presidential bird, a digital message of the kind you see exchanged between angry drivers at stop signs. At least we know where we stand.

Finally?

Mr "I Know Stuff" has taken nearly five ever-lovin' years to figure out where he the media stands with this Administration?

George Bush, who promised to change the tone in Washington and restore dignity to the highest office in the land, deliberately flipped off the press.

I'll say it.

Thank you, George Bush. I wish you'd do it more. The tone did indeed change in Washington; the wailing of a thousand agenda-driven hacks become more and more shrill. The modern mainstream "elite" media - the self-proclaimed high priests of knowledge, the Imperial Media - perform a function in our society (badly), but there is no need to scrape and bow to them like they run the country.

In solidarity, I'm flipping off the Strib Online even as we speak.

That's his right, even if it makes him the only born-again man whose favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ who flips people off like a sailor.

It's called "sin". It happens.

But the press -- we whipped dogs and disreputable stand-ins for the American people -- didn't even raise a whimper.

Huh?

"Stand-ins for the American people?"

No. The press is solopsistic, self-referential, self-reverential, and a business. Not a holy calling. Not a noble crusade for the truth. It's a job; people explaining what happened (supposedly).

A president showing disdain for the media is nothing new. But doing it with a contemptuous gesture that is offensive to millions does not just insult the press. It insults anyone who relies on the press to tell us what our leaders are doing. When presidents flip off the press, Americans get the finger.

There you have it; the most arrogant, stupid thing Nick Coleman has said.

(So far this year).

No, Nick. No, self-proclaimed high priests of knowledge. You do not represent this country; we elect people to do that. If the president flips off Betty McCollum...well, bad example. But whatever - the press doesn't represent me (or anyone who wants unvarnished fact) any more than Johnson and Johnson does.

Did I mention the left was getting the vapors? Coleman quotes John Aravosis of the left of center Americablog:

"The president thinks his conservative moral beliefs should be shoved down our throats. Then he flips people off. He's a phony. That's the story. I don't know about you, but my priest doesn't run around in public flipping people off."

Aravosis, and Coleman, are mixing apples and axles.

If some moron cuts you off on the road, or if a bunch of empty Brooks Brothers suits consistently flog their agenda at your expense, anger knows no political alignment. It happens. I do it, the President does it, I'd suspect Mother Theresa did it once or twice.

Anyone who cares about the role of the press in a free society might worry when a president dismisses the press with an emperor's crude gesture.

Sorry, Nick.

It's a gesture any working stiff knows - and, for the most part, lets slide.

But maybe it was only a thumb. I'd like to believe that. Yes, the president gave the press a thumbs up! He really likes us! Just a thumb! The longest thumb we ever have seen.

Right in the eye.

Nick Coleman: Drama Queen.

Posted by Mitch at 05:49 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack