Shot In The Dark

Currahee!

Yep. I thought about joining the service. Three times.

The first, I was 17. I thought - very seriously - about joining the Army and going to Germany. A combination of a National Merit scholarship and my mother getting a job at a local college (which meant a huge tuition break) made going to school economically irresistable (since the Army would have largely been a college money thing). So I passed.

Four years later, I pondered it again. Just out of college and without a lot of prospects, I thought - and talked extensively with a recruiter - about joining the Army and going into counterintelligence. I kept the idea going even after I moved to the Twin Cities. One thing led to another. Life happened.

The last time was in 1990. The Navy Reserve had a program to try to enlist people who had some civilian vocational experience; there was something of a need for people who did what I did at the time. My fiance and soon-to-be ex-wife talked me out of it. Them's the breaks.

On 9/11 I was a 38 year old single parent with a crap knee; hardly what the service would have called a prime prospect. Today I'm 43, and less so. If I'd been unencumbered, would I have tried to join the service? Absolutely. And if I were a whole lot better looking, I'd get that Jolie chick away from Brad Pitt, too. Dang skippy.

Now, as my friends and Derek, as well as Frank from IMAO have noted, one of the drooling left's more tiresome memes is that anyone who supports the war but didn't serve in the military is in some way nefarious. Some irrevocably dim people have made the accusation about me directly. It doesn't faze me; lesser minds have to resort to bigger slanders to make up for their lack of intellectual firepower. That said, it hardly cut me to the quick.

But I join Frank, Derek and Ed in taking Markos "Screw 'Em" Moulitsas' most treasured slur and turning it on its head.

Ed kicks things off:

First of all, the term "fighting keyboardist" describes our efforts pretty well, and we think the pseudo-military terminology is pretty danged amusing. Derek himself designed the logo.

hawk01.jpgAnd why the chicken hawk? When we looked into it, it turns out that the chicken hawk is a pretty impressive predator. It's the largest of its family. This species vigorously defends its territory, getting even more aggressive when the conditions get harshest. It adapts to all climates. Most impressively, it feeds on chickens, mice, and rats.

I'm in.

I'll start painting Derek's logo on the side of my virtual tank.

freedomdogs.com

A Chicken Hawk is nothing to poke fun at, especially if you are a chicken pecking about aimlessly in the dirt.

The Sullivan Legacy

Remember 2002?

Tim Pawlenty was facing off against Brian Sullivan in the run for the GOP nomination for Governor. Conservatives - and I'm one - thought that years in the legislature had sanded off any right-leaning edge that Pawlenty might have had, and turned him into yet another get-along-to-go-along pseudocon.

The run against Brian Sullivan changed all that; Pawlenty had to race to the right to get the nomination against Sullivan, a serious conservative with significant support in the base.

Was Sullivan electable as mayor? Who knows - but he served his purpose, forcing Pawlenty to at least talk like a conservative, and to go into office with some conservative arrows in the quiver.

Four years later, Pawlenty's record is mixed, but mixed favorably, I think; his "Health Impact Fee" legerdemain and cave-in on the stadium were bad, but on the other hand he managed to balance (or, depending on the court case, almost balance) the Ventura Deficit, which pundits in 2003 were saying would take the better part of the decade to resolve, while sticking to the bulk of his "no new taxes" pledge.

Not perfect, but better than the alternative; can you imagine if we'd elected Tim Penny, much less Roger Moe?

Still, there are issues; this cave-in to back-door taxes (to say nothing of the trampling of the spirit of the law) with the Twins Stadium issue is enough to give you pause, if you value limited, accountable government.

I was talking with Wog from Wog's Blog last night, and he floated the idea that some local bloggers aren't too thrilled with; Sue Jeffers, erstwile Libertarian party candidate for Governor, should go for the nomination.

Not because I think she can beat Pawlenty, much less win the general election. But if there's a groundswell on the small-l libertarian side of Pawlenty's base, it can only help. The small-l libertarian and fiscal conservative factions in the state GOP can't be ignored in favor of the social conservatives, the "pragmatists" and the stadium crowd; it'd be a bad assuming Pawlenty could go on to face a unified, exercised DFL in November.

So I'd love to see Jeffers make a run for it; even more, I'd love to see that factor force Pawlenty back to the right.

That could the greatest contribution Sue Jeffers and her supporters could make to Minnesota in this election.

Events Happen In Real Time

Funniest YouTube vid ever..."Guys Watching 24".

They got it almost perfect...

Charlie's In The Perimeter

Today's Strib editorial unleashes lots of dramatic, pejorative imagery.

Substance? Not so much:

Minnesota's abortion foes are masters of strategy. Skilled at the frontal attack, they're also adept at waiting in the tall grass for a last-minute leap.

What are they? Tigers? The Viet Cong?

What is this "sneakiness"?

From the tales being told, it seems this may be leap-year at the Legislature: Rumors are flying that Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life hopes to slip 11th-hour baggage into the Senate's supplemental spending bill.

This sort of stealth should be resisted on principle alone. The requirement that bills move through the Legislature along a prescribed path is the gold standard of Minnesota lawmaking -- meant to ward off caprice and carelessness.

Any thinking Minnesota taxpayer (i.e., any of them without one of those Bend Over For The Budget! "Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota" signs in their yard) should double-over with laughter on reading that. Or in agony.

We learned this during the debate over the Minnesota Personal Protection Act; the "Filament" connecting amendments and the bills to which they're attached is often ludicrously picayune. That's one of the reasons Mike Hatch, no friend of the gun owner, went to court in favor of the MPPA - because had the law been struck down based on the disconnect between the amendment and the bill to which it attached, virtually every spending bill in the past thirty years could have been attacked, a true nightmare for state lawmakers and judges. For the Strib editorial board - people who "know stuff" - to say such a thing with a straight face must be deliberately disingenuous, and can only be intended to deceive the audience.

But enough of that - let's go back to the "tigers and Viet Cong sneaking through the woods":

In fact, this year's MCCL bill -- which hasn't been heard or approved by a single Senate committee -- couldn't possibly find its way to the floor without special help from the Senate Rules Committee. That couldn't happen without a nod from Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, who chairs the panel.

But there's no reason to nod, for there's nothing in this year's MCCL grab bag Minnesotans need or want.

Really?

Why not?

The aptly named Abortion Regulation Act would demand more data on judicial rulings that allow abortion-seeking minors to sidestep the state's parental notification law. It would also require that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Right. We want to know more about cases where children who can't buy alcohol, sign a contract, play "cops 'n robbers" in school or buy spray paint are getting abortions, and prevent trainwrecks like South Dakota's commuting abortionists. The problems is...?

But we'll come back to that. Why is this bill such a danger?

Those two changes may seem innocuous, but the third is positively revolutionary: It would topple the Minnesota Supreme Court's 1995 ruling in Doe vs. Gomez, which determined that state health programs for the poor must pay for abortions just as they cover other medical procedures.

If passed, the new law would surely end up before a state Supreme Court whose composition has changed dramatically since the Gomez decision. Abortion foes' hope is the evaporation of the legal cornerstone of abortion rights in Minnesota.

Gosh, who'd have thunk it; Legislators doing their job.

That's a worrisome wish -- one the Minnesota Senate should not rush to embrace, especially in the absence of due process.

Buncombe.

The process is exactly the same as the one that's been used to fund an avalanche of state spending; if the process is "due" enough for them, it's good enough for this bill.

But apparently the Strib - which has supported separate-but-unequal First Amendment rights for anti-death activists, in supporting the restrictions on pro-life demonstrations - wants them to play by different rules in the Legislature, too.

Doltish and Unbalanced

Letter in todays' Strib:

So Fox News anchor Tony Snow is set to replace Scott McClellan as White House press secretary. I'm sure his first order of business will be to decry the liberal media bias.

PETE FRIED, MINNEAPOLIS

Pete! Bubbie!

Snow will be working as a press secretary. His job will not be to "parrot" the administration's line, but to form it.

It's the job of every American, on both sides of the aisle that cares about a free society, to decry...not liberal bias, but the dishonest liberal bias that tries to pass itself off as mainstream and objective.

Go forth and sin no more.

The Empty Skirt

Andy Aplikowski clobbers A-Klo over at KVM.

Frequently-Asked Questions

I thought it was time to share some of the reader emails I've been getting lately:

Mitch,

What ARE you, some kind of bullshit artist?
-- Ernie Van Stronk, North Oaks

Nope, Ernie. If I write it or say it, it is to the best of my knowledge true. You might not agree with it. I might even be wrong. But to imply some systematic deception is pretty lame.

Bring the game, buddy.

How can you call yourself a conservative and still be a Bruce Springsteen fan? Don't you know that he's a socialist? Don't you know that he supported John Kerry? Don't you know that he just did an album of Pete Seeger songs and that Pete Seeger was an avowed COMMUNIST?

You're no conservative. I just don't buy it.

-- J.B. Dubious, Deephaven

Oh, this again?

OK, here's your assignment: listen to Born to Run. Please detail any "socialist" messages, whether overt or subliminal. Get back to me on that.

You just parret GOP talking points, you rediculous looser!
-- Anna Kevidor, Saint Peter

No, I happen to agree with the GOP about a lot of issues. That's why I'm a Republican,y'see.

Not all issues; Bush spends too much, and under that conservative exterior , Tim Pawlenty has the heart of a moderate, I think, and it comes out at some of the worst times. The metro-area GOP seems to have given up on the inner city, even though it can never control this state until it makes a better showing in the Twin Cities (and when we do, we will truly control the state). The metro GOP is short-sighted and myopic.

Didn't you hear the other guy? Bruce Springsteen is a socialist!
-- B.J. Dibbles, Farmington

So? I don't ask artists for political ideas, and I don't ask politicans for advice on music!

In a market with so many anonymous bloggers, you are one who'd truly benefit from being anonymous.
-- Dan, Nowhere

In a houseful of anonymous men, the guy with a name is king.

Or something like that.

Springsteen's a socialist! Socialist! Socialist!
-- Jinky Bongaard, Doubletree, New Mexico

So what, so what, so what?

I can only respond with this photo of Johnny Cash flipping off the camera.

Yeah, it wasn't Johnny Cash, it was Johnny Rotten. Cry me a river.

Adios FEMA?

Critics insist that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is corrupt, incompetent, and combines the worst aspects of unthinking, irrational bureaucracy with the exigencies of dealing with huge natural and man-made catastrophe.

It was the early 1990s, and the critics were regarded as "right-wing wackoes".

Of course, they were right, according to Senate investigators.

FEMA is a bureaucracy; bureaucracies don't react to fast-changing situations well.

The solution? Another bureaucracy:

It would replace FEMA with a new National Preparedness and Response Authority whose head would report to the homeland security secretary but serve as the president's top adviser for national emergency management, akin to the military role served by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It would reunify disaster preparedness and response activities that Chertoff decoupled. It also envisions a stronger national preparedness system with regional coordinators, a larger role for the National Guard and the Defense Department and more money for training, planning and exercises.

That should fix everything.

Substitution?

Sheila O'Malley has apparently gotten a young Paula Poundstone Julie Andrews to fill in for her for this Monday's performance of her "74 Facts And One Lie".

If you're in the greater Manhattan area, check out the show, and say hi to Paula Julie. Or Sheila. Or whomever.

Congratulations Are In Order

There's been a cavalcade of awards today!

Congrats to Nihilist in Golf Pants, the City Pages' Best Conservative Blog of 2006!

Congrats also to Kool Aid Report for winning NAMBLA's "Throbbing Excellence" award!

Special kudos to Ed for the North Korean News Service's "Running Lapdog" award for the third straight year!

And finally, a special "attaboy" to Swiftee for racking up the National Guild of Alernative Magazine Cartoonists' annual "Certificate of Envy" award for his genre-beating cartoon craftsmanship.

It was a huge day for the MOB!

I Do Like Mondays

Today is the twentieth anniversary of Chernobyl...

...but, on a happier note, it is the thirtieth anniversary (Sisyphus reminds us) of Rick Monday's immortal "Flag Grabbing" incident:

Powerline had a retrospective last year that goes over the incident - and its importance - fairly well. And - I'd forgotten about this - I wrote about it last year.

Now For Today's Surprise

The good news: Nick Coleman occasionally writes a good column.

The bad news: one gets the impression he doesn't know it when he does.

His column this morning attacks the legislature's current plan for a Twins stadium:

What if the Legislature passes a law to make Hennepin County residents pay for a nuclear power plant in Minnetonka? What if legislators from Minnetonka and Hennepin County oppose the plan, but are outnumbered by lawmakers from the other 86 counties who want nuclear power without having to pay for the plant? And what if the governor (who was elected on an anti-nuke platform) signs the bill? What do we call that?
Representative democracy? Corporate government? Or just plain tyranny?

You make the call.

Coleman is right, to an extent; representative government is supposed to protect the minority from the majority.

It's why we have things like the bicameral legislature and the Electoral College, which protect minorities in this country from the untrammelled power of the majority...

...and which Coleman's editorial board favors eliminating. To be fair, I've not heard Coleman speak about the Electoral College (unlike certain lesser bloggers, I don't assume silence equals aquiescence), but I do know that after 2000, it was the DFLers like Coleman who were most likely to favor absolute majority elections.

Coleman has sided with the minority on hobbling the right of the majority to keep and bear arms, down to supporting a minority of legislators who opposed a strong majority on the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, and stonewalled it for two years using legislative legerdemain.

Coleman is unstinting in his condemnation of a group - the Taxpayers League - which has opposed all such tax scams, calling them the "Tax Evader's League" for wanting to control the culture of legislative and fiscal entitlement that hobbles this state with a lot more dubious tax scams than just a ballpark rammed down Minneapolis' throat.

So it's good to see Coleman sides with the embattled minority against an overreaching majority. Don't forget the rest of us embattled minorities while you're at it, nnkay?

Depressing

I was going to pillory today's Letter of the Day over at the Strib.

But Foot already did it better.

Can't Fool 'Em

Harry Reid's success at transforming himself into a liberal (albeit a more stable one than, say, Howard Dean) is doing wonders for his career...

...except among his constituents:

No minority leader has so dominated the Senate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1953-54," conservative columnist Robert Novak, who has covered the Beltway for decades, wrote last week, citing Reid's ability to hold up immigration reform and a bill to bail out companies with asbestos liabilities.

But Reid's national stature among activist Democrats, concentrated on the blue-state coasts, carries risks for him at home, analysts say. His consistent opposition to President Bush and his need to mollify the liberals in his party is costing him in Nevada, where polls show he has lost support since becoming minority leader.

Although Reid, who won re-election in 2004 and still has four years in his term, said in an interview that he pays no attention to polls, his actions in Nevada during the two-week Easter recess suggested that he is keenly aware of his vulnerabilities. He spoke to groups that carry at least a patina of conservatism - chambers of commerce, police and firefighters, religious groups, military men and women, district attorneys.

Reid touted national security, faith-based solutions and anti-gang measures. In front of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, he reminded the audience of his support last year for legislation long sought by conservatives that made it harder to declare bankruptcy.

This nothing new.

So many western Democrats, used to life before the alternative media, have lived a double existence. Senators like Kent Conrad (D-ND), Ex-senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), Reid, and others were able to insulate their DC liberalism from the folks back home, mixing relatively conservative messages to the locals with the healthy dollops of pork, especially in the form of agricultural subsidies, enough to keep the criticism muted to nonexistent.

John Thune's defeat of Tom Dashcle was a signature moment in the upending of this system; hopefully North Dakota's GOP can rally to defeat Kent Conrad and (in '08, if memory serves) Byron Dorgan, who is virtually a Daschle doppleganger.

It's Midday on a School Day. Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

The pro-Hussein movement is at it again

**COLLEGE NOT COMBAT!
Solidarity Against War and Anti-Immigrant Racism

What?

Not against Meat, too?

TWIN CITIES STUDENT
** W A L K O U T **
Friday April 28

NOON RALLY at University of Minnesota, Northrop Plaza
(map: http://yawr.org/april28/map.html )
** High schoolers: leave class 10:30am. Bus, carpool, or march to U of M rally [Note to my kids; no, you will not]
* Rally followed by march through downtown Minneapolis to…
* Free Concert at 3pm at MCTC by Loring Park, featuring Desdamona, Kanser, I Self Divine, The Elementals, A New Day, Two Wurds, more. Bring a bag lunch.

I won't need the lunch, but the bag my come in handy.

Do they have demands? They're a bunch of angry college kids. Whaddya think?

We are walking out to demand:
* END the occupation of Iraq NOW! to fund education and social needs [Leaving aside the boundless racism inherent in that statmenet - hasn't bottomless funding done so much good for both!]
* NO! to military recruitment in our schools [Absurd - and racist and classist too. The military is a traditional route to education and skills training for the poor, minorities and immigrants. The military should be barred from school no sooner than ]
* YES! to equal access to higher education [I've always been curious about this. What do they mean by "equal access?" Regardless of money? We have that. Or do they mean regardless of academic merit or, for that matter, aptitude or desire to even seek it in the first place? What if a kid WANTS to be a mechanic or a soldier or a cosmetologist? ]
* YES! to living wage jobs for youth ["Living wage jobs" for "youth"? Most "youth" don't "live" on their own; they don't need a "living wage". The ones that do - most likely - do so because of very dubious choices of their own (or of their parents). And mandating a "living wage" inevitably means there will be fewer jobs for "youth". By the way, I can listen to fingers on chalk boards all day long, but "youth" as a noun, especially referring to the entire mass of juveniles, has always rubbed me the wrong way]
* STOP racist attacks on immigrants and civil liberties [Like "enforcing the law?"]

Reading the list of organizers and supporters is like finding a copy of a poster from the '60s...:

Organized by:
** Youth Against War and Racism / 612.760.1980 / http://yawr.org
** U of M Anti-War Organizing League / http://www.tc.umn.edu/~awol / / < umnawol@gmail.com >
** Socialist Alternative / 612.226.9129 / http://www.socialistalternative.org /
** MCTC Students Against War and Racism / < ellaac@hotmail.com >

Endorsed by: La Raza Student Cultural Center, Women's Student Activist Collective ["Collective"? Wow. And what happened to the Student Women Kulaks, anyway?], Equal Access Coalition, Belfry Center for Social and Cultural Activities [The joke here would be too easy. I'll pass.], Anti-War Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Is "Freedom Road Socialism" like "Vibrant Life Mortuary?"], Daybreak Newspaper, North Country Co-op, Arise! Books and Resource Collective, Welfare Rights Committee, Counter-Propaganda Coalition, Green Party (4th and 5th Districts), Twin Cities Peace Campaign

I'm goign to have a couple of correspondents on duty in a couple of schools. I'm going to see what the teachers in Saint Paul and Minneapolis have to say - or do - about this.

Destruction of GOP Alert!

Several black activists plan to join members of the Minutemen Project to protest illegal immigration, which organizer Ted Hayes touted as the “biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery...Hayes, a homeless activist, alleged that most homeless people in Los Angeles are black and illegal immigration compounds the problem since blacks refuse to accept the "slave wages" that many illegal immigrants accept..."While all Americans are suffering from this invasion, we blacks are suffering the most," Hayes said. "We feel like the leaders promoting this issue are being insensitive. This country wasn't built on the backs of immigrants like [amnesty proponent] (Villaraigosa) says. It was built on the back of West African slaves."

Base splits over immigration; it's not just for Republicans anymore.

How Bad It's Gotten

Back in 1986 when gangs first came to the Twin Cities (at least for the first time since Prohibition), it was a huge shock to the locals. I moved to South Minneapolis just blocks from where Minneapolis' first identified gang victim - teenager Christine Kreitz, as I recall - was shot, execution-style, at (cue Chris Rock) Martin Luther King Park.

Things escalated from there - and within the year, Curtis Sliwa had brought the Guardian Angels to the Twin Cities. I covered the Saint Paul chapter for one of the neighborhood papers during their brief tour in 1988 (they probably didn't walk a whole lot more patrols than the one I observed); Minneapolis, with more problems, at least technically kept a chapter for a couple of years. Their high-water mark was "shutting down" the Cecil Newman project, in North Minneapolis, in 1986, to squeeze out the project's burgeoning drug trade.

During the height of the Newman stunt, I was working at KSTP-AM. We needed a guest to talk about the Angels' side of things. I called the Minneapolis office. The phone rang once.

"Guardian Angels". The voice on the other end had a brisk New York curl to it.

"Curt Sliwa please".

"Speaking".

The Angels - and especiallly Sliwa - are never far from whereever the media are looking. What the BatLight was to Batman, headlines about crime are to Sliwa, who (according to Rambix and the Nordeaster) are thinking about re-establishing themselves in Minneapolis.

Due to the Minneapolis political leadership void, people are looking for help where they can find it. And sometimes that help can be from long-distance.

Sad.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I firmly support the idea of the Angels; I'm deeply disappointed (if not especially surprised) that civic culture in Minneapolis is so passive as to need an outside group to come in and do the job.

Indeed, it's a problem throughout the city's culture; the last three police chiefs were all imports (two, including the ludicrous Tony Bouza, from New York, and the recently departed Bill McManus from Dayton).

The real solution? Issue automatic weapons and shoot to kill licenses to neighborhood block clubs.

Or at least ditch the one-party machine that has run the city for three generations.

If You Don't Eat Your Meat, You Can't Drink the Bong Water

The letter of the day - for both this blog and the Strib - appeared in the Strib this morning. The author is one Mark Anderrson:

I was shocked to hear that Macalester's student government allotted student funds to hold a festival (later canceled by college officials) for the legalization of marijuana. It's not the political stance that shocks me. I am a Macalester graduate from '01. As a first-year student at Mac in '97, some fellow classmates and I tried to start the Macalester Meat Eating Society. Needless to say it came as no surprise to me that the Mac student government from that time denied our charter, saying that our club was [wait for it...wait for it...]discriminatory. I expected nothing less from such a liberal school.

It'd say that's pretty dang discerning for a Mac grad...

What shocks me about today's news is how things have changed in such a short period of time. Apparently First Amendment rights are worth protecting for clubs promoting the legalization of narcotics but not for people who choose to eat meat.

Mark wins today's prize - a genuine "Wellstone - Accident, or...?" protest sign. Thanks for playing!

Vacuable

Among Twin Cities conservative pundits, I'm not among the City Pages' harshest critics. Oh, I've torn them the occasional new one, but I've also cut them some slack over the years; they have historically done a great job of reportorial blocking and tackling on the kinds of stories you just don't see in the dailies. There are some good writers still there.

Or the last time I read them there were. Hard to say, to be honest - I also very rarely read the CP any more.

Rambix is tired of giving breaks - and I can see why:

Back in the day, City Pages had some redeeming value. They reported stories the MSM wouldn't touch; many of which were very insightful, interesting, and just plain fun to read.

Those days are gone, as I noted in this post from 7/6/05. The weekly paper's crack reporting has morphed into propagandizing for liberal, socialist, and "alternative lifestyle" causes.

The City Pages of today also exhibits an unseemly envy of conservatives. No opportunity to demonize the right is lost. Having no positive values of their own to uphold, they try to fill their moral vacuum with hatred and bile directed at those with whom they disagree rather than challenge their opponents on substance. This is the modus operandi of the left.

The latest targets are big: Powerline and Governor Pawlenty.

The source - since the exit of Mark "Norwegianity" Gisleson from the paper's blog - is fairly predictable:

City Pages writer Mike Mosedale took the time to pick out a particular word which has appeared in Powerline a number of time: "execrable".

Yes, that's the point of the blog entry: To point out how many times the word "execrable" has been used by the boys at Powerline.

Rambix quotes a Blotter piece by Mosedale:

An execrable fetish at Powerline

The boys at Powerline have fallen in love with the adjective "execrable." They just can't stop, um, excreting the word. Maybe this is due to a garden variety case of pundit fatigue. Between their daily blog posts, regular cable TV appearances and ceaseless efforts to combat the sinister forces of liberalism (not to mention their day jobs as high powered attorneys), Minnesota's leading conservative bloggers certainly keep a very busy schedule. They probably don't have the time to pry open a thesaurus in search of a synonym. Or maybe their use of the term is simply symptomatic of being in a state of constant indignation--an affliction evident to even the most casual Powerline reader.

Rambix:

This is important stuff. Thanks, Mike. Can we expect a follow-up report on the frequency of use of the word "the"?

Oh, we can do better than that.

Perhaps a report on, say, "angry white" (42 occurrences)? Or "Angry White Guy"? (32 dings)? Or perhaps all 18 instances of "Whitebread"? (this last never actually referring to bread made from bleached wheat, by the way).

"Suburban" pops up 11,600 times in the CP - and not always in re the Suburban World theater.

By the way, Mr. Mosedale, I personally overuse the word "vacuous". And I'm about to do it again.

Note To UN: Connect The Dots

I was listening to NPR as I was driving my daughter to school today. NPR news had a story about a part of the Gaza Strip that is suffering economically since Israel shut down the main freight route to the area (to combat, it is mentioned obliquely, the hordes of terrorists that used it). (Note to Palestinians: quit electing people whose only campaign promise is to continue attacking your larger, intensely militarily competent neighbor).

The interviewee, by the way, is a Palestinian, an enemployed metalworker whose wife brings in $200 a month, of which half goes to rent a cinder block refugee camp shack (run, naturally, by the deeply-corrupt Palestinian Authority). His children (including oldest boy, who's been hanging around a mosque and talking about wanting to be a martyr) are living on bread and tea.

At one point the piece notes the crash in produce prices; paraphrasing, they say that there's no way for the area's vegetable farms to get their products out; produce sells for a song.

Not 40 seconds later, the interviewer talks with a UN adminstrator who notes that the UN is running through its budget for the food giveaways they hold for families in the region...

...

...um...

...

...I'm not a PhD economist or anything, but...

...um...

...oh, never mind.

School Shooting Foiled

School shooting in Kansas - on the anniversary of Columbine and Hitler's birthday - foiled by internet busybodies.

Five students were arrested today in a foiled shooting plot at Riverton High School in southeast Kansas. The arrests came after details of the plan appeared on the social networking Web site MySpace.com.
Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Norman says deputies found guns,
ammunition, knives and encoded messages in the bedroom of one of the youths. The youths, all males, range in age from 16 to 18.
The sheriff says he'll ask the prosecutor to file charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Norman says officials at the high school began investigating on Tuesday after learning that a threatening message had been posted on the Web site by a student.
The message discussed the significance of April 20: Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School attack in Colorado. In that case, two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher, wounded 24 others, then took their own lives.

"Myspace.com" users reported the conspirators - who were apparently in no danger of growing up to become master criminals, blabbing about their plan on the 'net.

But it's irrelevant, of course. The school had a "Zero Tolerance for Guns" policy, plus the federal "Gun Free Schools" law. The students would have had to have left their guns 1000 feet from the building. Duh.

Three Cheers for Wang Wenyi

At least something interrupted the sham of the visit of Chinese president Hu Jintao - the world's biggest surviving communist, debaser of capitalism, and driver of China's current massive self-genocide.

Sacked

The deeply dim Steve Sack touches on an issue...:

...in the same sense that Prussians touch on funk.

It's true; in a perfect world, I'd be all for sending troops to Sudan to stanch the bleeding in Darfur - or, for that matter, to perp-walk the entire marxist abomination of a Khartoum government to a date with a convenient court. Or wall.

But look at Sack's (usual, hamfisted) imagery; the guy behind the "radar" exhibits all the usual shorthand for "Ugly American" that hacks like Sack always use; mind by comic strip, body by Krispy Kreme.

But if success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, then abominations like Sudan were conceived in brothels. Nearly a century of British colonialism (which was small-l liberal and enlightened compared to neighboring Italian, German, French and German colonizers) was followed by a gigantistic socialist government (for a largely Bronze-age economy) followed by a vicious Marxist regime which is currently amalgamating with the worst of sharia rule.

So who's responsibility is it?

Sudan is by Europe's basement door - and, not coincidentally, European ideals are responsible for creating the mess in Sudan, dumping radical socialism onto a society and economy barely removed from tribalism.

Would it kill the Euros to clean up their mess, in their backyard, with their (let's be honest) UN?

From the "Things I Could Have Used 25 Years Ago" List...

...the Geek Prom moves to Saint Paul.

The prom - for geeks 21 and over - celebrates...er, geeks:

If hearing, "Hey, four-eyes!" still gives you a twinge of dread, if you've ever worn floodwater pants with red socks, if you lettered only in Rocket Club or collected molds and fungi, this is your dance -- your chance to feel normal. Even cool.

Orchestra in the house!

Irrational Exuberance

Local Leftyblogger The Wege joins with a chorus of leftybloggers to yip like a pack of chihuahuas about Hugh Hewitt's knees at the news that Hewitt's traffic is off:

Golden State hacks the numbers and Hugh Hewitt just isn't as popular as he used to be.

The article, by disgraced LATimes columnist and leftyblogger Michael Hiltzik, purports to show Hewitt's traffic off by 20%.

Hiltzik's article, unfortunately, is wrong.

I defy anyone to see a 20% decline in this data. Alexa summarizes the chart as a 2% increase in HughHewitt.com’s average reach over the last three months (to 124 per million). His traffic rank remains essentially unchanged as well (3 month change of -415 to his current rank of 18,957).

In short — Hiltzik’s premise doesn’t hold water.

Sitemeter's stats are notoriously hinky; my own Sitemeter is routintely 30-35% short of my server logs.

Which is about how far short of a full story Hiltzik apparently was.

A Saying For Our Times

From Katie @ Yucky Salad:

...no one ever said life was gonna be all rainbows and barfing only during prime time.

This should go in Bartlett's.

GOP: Not Dead Yet

I've noted in this space before - every year, there's an issue or two that the punditry breathlessly slaver is going to "kill the GOP".

In 2002 it was Gay Marriage, which was supposed to rip the social conservative wing of the GOP asunder from the libertarians. Didn't happen.

In 2003, it was the budget. Some of us are still exercised about it, and there may have to be a reckoning about finances in the party one day - but the party is fine.

Last year it was the whole "life" issue, springing from the Terry Schiavo case, which was Libcons facing off against SocCons again. And yet we endured.

This year, the killer du jour is immigration.

Only this one isn't killing us either:

In a political season when most of the news has been bad for Republicans, the Congressional debate over immigration has produced a bit of movement in favor of the GOP.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey found that 37% of Americans now trust Republicans more than Democrats on the issue of immigration. Just 31% trust the Democrats more.

In late March, the two parties were perceived equally on the topic, with 38% favoring the GOP and 37% preferring the Democrats.

Americans remain divided on the issue itself. Just 41% favor letting immigrants move towards citizenship by paying a fine, paying back taxes, and learning to speak English. Forty-two percent (42%) are opposed.

There's good news, here...

Another earlier survey found that two-thirds of Americans believe it doesn't make sense to debate new immigration laws until we can first control our borders and enforce existing laws.

...and not-so-good news:

That same survey found that 40% of Americans favor "forcibly" requiring all 11 million illegal immigrants to leave the United States.

It'd be interesting to see the social, political and cultural affiliations of those 40%.

Concerns

Bob Collins at Polinaut notes the results of an MPR poll on voter concerns in the upcoming elections.

The ranking of first choices is as follows, for both federal and state races:

SENATE AND HOUSE

Republican rankings (first choice)
1. National security
2. Abortion
3. Taxes
4. Immigration
5. War in Iraq
6. Federal budget
7. Health care
8. Social security
9. Energy
10.Patriot Act

Democrats (first choice)
1. War in Iraq
2. Health care
3. Federal budget
4. Global warming
5. National resources/environment
6. Ethics
7. Energy
8. Abortion
9. Early childhood education
10. Higher education

STATE-LEVEL

Democrats
1. K-12 funding
2. Health care
3. Early childhood education
4. Transportation
5. Natural resources/environment
6. Higher education
7. Gay marriage
8. Energy
9. Budget
10.Local government aid

Republicans
1. Taxes
2. Gay marriage
3. Abortion
4. Budget
5. K-12 funding
6. Health care
7. Crime
8. Immigratin [sic]
9. Higher education
10. Stadiums

None of those are terribly surprising,

Well, some of them are.

It's interesting that "Gay marriage" turned up on the Democrat list, but not the GOPer one. [UPDATE: DOH! Yes it does! Friends don't let friends blog without coffee] It kind of kills off 2003's "crisis that will destroy the GOP", I'd suspect. That being said, I get the sense that the issue is not directed inward at the party any more.

Interesting, I think, that Immigration doesn't get on the list at any level with Democrats. More on that later.

Collins goes on to note:

...keep in mind that's just a list of what people's first choice is. When you drill down a bit and look at other issues they're interested in, it gets a bit more fascinating. Atop that list is electoral reform.

Ugh.

Whenever government talks about "reform", I get nervous. They did such a wonderful job with campaign finances.

Granted, government doesn't always screw up - welfare reform was a good idea, one that Minnesota should try someday. But can Minnesota "reform" its electoral system without bollixing things completely?

One of the bills that's languished up at the Capitol this year -- and gotten no spotlight at all -- is one that would reduce the size of the Legislature and make it so some members of the Senate are up for election every other year.

The Senate bit is good; I'm undecided on reducting the Legislature, but can be convinced.

There's also the possibility of instant run-off voting.

Ugh.

Subsidizing Failure

Republicans and Democrat - well, quite a few of each - agree that "corporate welfare", the direct or indirect subsidy of business by taxpayers through direct cash payouts, tax breaks or deferments - is generally a bad idea. Of course, for most people their opposition breaks down when they get to their pet project or interest, but as a very general rule, "Corporate Welfare" gets people on edge.

The notion of subsidizing poverty - of making being poor a tenable option for life, sometimes called "welfare" - gets a little hinkier. Classic conservatives think that private charity is the best way to answer the religious call to care for the poor, while not using (or using less) taxpayer money to subsidize poverty, knowing that if you pay for something, you'll get more of it - and we are indeed paying for poverty. Democrats at their most idealistic think that it's society's duty to take care of the poor (and at their most cynical know they are buying a dependant class of long-term voters).

So what about subsidizing lousy government?

When Tim Pawlenty took office, he had to take some stern measures to balance the budget after the profligate irresponsibility of the Ventura years. One of the measures that drew the most flak was his cuts in aid to local governments. In Minnesota, the state imposes a relatively high tax load, and returns some of it to cities and counties; ostensibly, cities and counties are supposed to be able to tax less, while providing a high level of "service". It's BS, of course - it allows local government to live large without having to explain the taxes for the large living to its constituents. Pawlenty's cuts changed that, forcing local officials to have to go to their own constituents and be accountable for their own spending, without the power of the Legislature and the arrogant, all-stomping might of the Minnesota Department of Revenue behind them.

Now, as the Saint from Fraters notes, we've found another way to subsidize failure - by sending two million dollars in state money to Minneapolis to pay for more cops:

This is how dysfunctional political systems (and politicians) endure. Instead of allowing them to fail on their own momentum and forcing the citizens to experience the consequences of supporting them, someone else comes in (or is dragged in) to bail them out. So, instead of the Mayor and City Council being held accountable by the voters for not having enough money to pay for the police they need (and from having to ask themselves why crime is so high in their city in the first place), they can go merrily on spending millions on priorities such as grass covered city hall roofs and baseball stadiums and enforcing smoking bans and the Kyoto Protocol (not to mention having a genuine culture of corruption) with zero electoral consequences.

It is a law of economics, what you subsidize, you get more of. And it looks like the Twin Cities is going to have surplus of RT Rybak and Minneapolis liberalism for a long time to come.

Exactly.

The citizens of Minnesota keep bailing out Minneapolis, so they feel free to keep electing irresponsible hamsters like Sharon Sayles-Belton and RT Rybak to office.

If Minneapolis had to live or die by its own decisions, maybe they'd start electing grownups.

Rails Is Rails. Lies Is Lies.

There was a time when rail mass transit made sense.

Eighty or ninety years ago - when my grandfather Oscar Berg was working as a conductor on the Como Avenue trolley line, urban mass transit made sense; the lines had been built with nearly-free right of way, were built amid cities whose layouts and demography suited (and drove) rail transit, at a time when people in the served cities where business was either built alongside the rail lines, or whose factories and offices served as the lines' destinations.

After World War II, a combination of the market (as returning GIs sought to build their own lives in the new 'burbs, growing outside the reach of the rail lines) and social engineering (as the "urban renewal" craze consumed city governments nationwide, causing unintentional consequences that are still harming cities) and government/business manipulation of the market (as a cartel of government, big oil, big car, and big tire convinced cities in the throes of "urban renewal" that rails were bad, and roads were good) combined to strip the rails from almost all major cities.

In the past thirty-odd years, cities have been trying to recapture their glory days (and, ostensibly, cure congestion) by returning to the idea of rail mass transit. Unfortunately, the train has left the station, as it were; an idea that made boundless sense sixty years ago, using rights of way that were fully amortized and rolling stock and support systems that were cheap by the standards of the day, makes a lot less sense in an era when rights of way must be purchased and rolling stock and infrastructure is a specialty purchase (frequently an import). Urban rail systems that were pretty much self-supporting in the 1920's are considered "successful" today if, like the Ventura Trolley in Minneapolis, they lose money at "best case" rates rather than "worst case".

For that reason, I've always opposed most rail transit. There's one exception; commuter rail - lines like the upcoming Northstar and the proposed Red Rocks lines (connecting the northwest and east metros to the downtowns, respectively, using existing rails and rights of way) which, under some scenarios (admittedly, not the ones that the current plans foresee, using variables like purchasing used rolling stock) could break even over a period of time. Not great (the Taxpayers League has some fairly dismal projections for North Star) but vastly better than current Light Rail projections under all scenarios, especially inasmuch as they do something neither the current Ventura Trolley nor the proposed Central Corridor line between the downtowns plans to do - move people from where they are to where they need to be.

One option that some transit pundits - and a mixed bag of politicians, from conservative Michele Bachmann to green wackjob Dean Zimmerman - have trotted out is the notion of "Personal Rail Transit". PRT is a utopian-sounding idea - small, taxi-sized cars taking groups of 1-4 people directly to destinations - which has its theoretical advantages, but many pragmatic problems. Worst of all, its price estimates are seductively - and unrealistically - low, while its technical challenges look fairly daunting. But at the end of the day, it's just another rail system; just another big-government spending program; just another attempt to engineer society.

I've opposed public investiment in PRT for some time now. Not to the extent that I've mentioned them in this space, of course. Transit is a very minor issue to me, personally; its the kind of issue that uberwonks like to canoodle over, the kind of people who enjoy going to zoning and planning meetings. Something's gotta give in my schedule; transit wonkery is one of them.

Local short-bus Photoshop wanker Ken Avidor assumes that lack of interest implies support. Of course, by that "logic", I've also supported Area 51, building pyramids over the cities to increase life span, a 300,000 seat youth soccer stadium, and Larry Pogemiller.

But, not to let facts get in the way, Avidor and Eva Young, proprietor of the "Dump Bachmann" blog (to which I refuse to link due to various ethical lapses on Young's part in the past) have linked me, in a "cartoon" about PRT supporters, to support of Personal Rail Transit.

It's not true, of course. On the comment thread thread (if you're interested, you can find it), I offer a correction, noting repeatedly that I am not a PRT supporter. Avidor responds by...changing the subject. Repeatedly. The simple fact of my complete opposition to PRT is made perfectly clear, to no apparent avail.

The untrue assertion remains on the blog.

Among many others, of course; Young and her minions frequently refer to me as a Michele Bachmann supporter. This is also unsubstantiated - partly because as a (very minor) media figure, it'd be inappropriate for me to do so, partly because I live in the Fourth CD and have nothing to do with life in the Sixth, and partly because even if I did live in the Sixth my mind would still not be made up, and would not be locked on Bachmann in any case; there are other candidates in that district (Krinkie, especially) who are very strong on issues that matter a lot to me. You can read anything you want into that - although you shouldn't read as much into it as Eva and her not-especially-gifted blogmates do.

One wonders - what does it take for the truth to come out on Eva Young's "Dump Bachmann" blog?

And if they're incapable of correcting something this simple - correcting an utterly, demonstrably false conveyance of support for something I documentably oppose - what does this say about Young's many, many other factually-querulous assertions? The supposed "incidents" in the bathroom in Scandia? The supposed "spying through the bushes" incident?

If The Dump can't get the simple, demonstrable facts straight, what can one assume about her splashier claims?

Do facts count?

(Side bet: Look for a change in subject when and if they respond. It would seem to be the only weapon in their rhetorical arsenal).

UPDATE: I win the bet!

A commenter notes that Avidor has written:

Mitch Berg is embarrassed by Michele Bachmann. He confessed he doesn't want to be "lumped in with proponents" of PRT in the comment section to this post.

As I predicted, a change of subject, and an inept one at that.

There was no "embarassment" stated or implied - merely a demand that The Dump get its facts straight.

This, they seem unable, or unwilling, to do, preferring childish word games to an honest admission of error.

Draw your own conclusions (especially you media figures that keep giving The Dump a walk on things like fact-checking).

A Step On The Road To Toast

Handwriting experts link Saddam Hussein - the former dictator of Iraq, and the leader so many on the American left seem to feel preferable to the chaos of democracy for all those inconvenient brown people - to Dujail death warrants:

Saddam Hussein personally signed documents ordering the killing of 148 Shia villagers in Dujail in 1982, handwriting experts have concluded.

He and seven co-accused face charges for their alleged role in the killings after an assassination attempt.

Prosecutors have presented thousands of documents to the court to try to prove a paper trail exists linking the former Iraqi leader directly to the killings.

Wonder if Ramsey Clark is still on the case?

Defence lawyers have insisted the signatures are a forgery.

They have also contested the impartiality of the handwriting experts, who they say are linked to Iraq's current interior ministry.

If the law is against you, argue facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If both are against you, argue like hell.

It's a big moment - assuming you believe the prosecution.

Yost Blogs

Mark Yost - until last week an associate editor at the PiPress - has entered the world of blogging.

Showing perhaps more ambition than sense (heh), Yost has actually teed up two blogs - Iraq Heroes and The Home Front. Both cover war-related news in a way that the mainstream media, ahem, can't quite find the space or motivation to do.

Now, Mark, you need to work on that blogroll. Ahem.

(Via Nihilist)

Weather 9, Mitch 2

Home sick today. Posting will be light for now.

Wide Awake In America

I average around 5-6 hours of sleep per night.

On the upside, that's better than the four hours I managed in college. On the other hand, "sleep deprivation" has become another one of those "health causes" that the well-meaning take up (until the cause is seized by the less well-meaning; I fully expect the Saint Paul City Council to propose a tax on people who sleep less than eight hours a night, and another on those who sleep more than eight hours...).

The good news, though - I may have (yet again) been right all along:

A six-year study Kripke headed up of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102 showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep.

The study also speculates that the "Sleep Deprivation" meme was started by...drug manufacturers:

The risk from taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month was not much less than the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says.

Those who took sleeping pills nightly had a greater risk of death than those who took them occasionally, but the latter risk was still 10 to 15 percent higher than it was among people who never took sleeping pills. Sleeping pills appear unsafe in any amount, Kripke writes in his online book, "The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills."

"There is really no evidence that the average 8-hour sleeper functions better than the average 6- or 7-hour sleeper," Kripke says, on the basis of his ongoing psychiatric practice with patients along with research, including the large study of a million adults (called the Cancer Prevention Study II).

And he suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are more successful.

The Cancer Prevention Study II even showed that people with serious insomnia or who only get 3.5 hours of sleep per night, live longer than people who get more than 7.5 hours.

I'd laugh the smug, self-satisfied chuckle of the vindicated...

...but I'm too tired.

Dayton: The Worst

Time Magazine has announced its list of the "best" and "worst" Senators.

The list itself is somewhat suspect; sure, it takes a putative whack at balance (the ten "bests" include three conservatives, four liberals and three, er, oh, what the heck, "moderates". But any "best Senators" list that includes Olympia Snowe and Ted Kennedy would seem more focused on bringing home the pork than on any greater goals of statesmanship or leadership.

But it's nice to know that we all agree on one thing; Mark Dayton is in a class below the rest.

Time mentioned the infamous Brave Sir Robin incident, where Dayton closed his DC office and urged Minnesotans not to visit the Capitol, a stunt so deeply, abidingly moronic that even Time couldn't ignore it from a liberal.

I didn't even know about this bit here:

In February Dayton, 59, made another notable blunder. The Mayo Clinic, which is in Rochester, Minn., was opposed to a South Dakota — based company's plan to expand its railroads into Rochester because it would mean dozens of trains passing by the clinic each day. Dayton told FORTUNE magazine the Mayo Clinic is 'worth a hell of a lot more than the whole state of South Dakota.' He later apologized for the remark.

Inside the Senate, Dayton has passed few bills partly because some are too liberal for the Republican-controlled body, including one that would have created a Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

My only regret with Dayton is that he isn't running for re-election. I would love to see Mark Kennedy club him (electorally) like a baby seal.

(Via MDE)

Tables Turned?

I've known some angry people in my life.

There is no anger quite like people who think that their lives are completely out of their control, and that "the system" is immutably against them.

I remember during the darkest years of the Clinton Adminstration, after the '94 "Crime" Bill seemed to be another step in logrolling our Second Amendment rights back to Red Chinese levels; while most gun owners reacted the way they're supposed to (the NRA zoomed to unprecedented membership and power; other groups, including Minnesota's Concealed Carry Reform Now, coalesced around the line in the sand. But there was a thin film whose fears led to anger, and whose anger led to irrational, fervid extremes. They felt disenfranchised...no, worse. They felt like the system had yanked their rights bodily away from them, and there was no recourse short of...what? Violence, armed resistance, a millenial libertarianism.

Hang around a father's rights organization for a while, and you'll see the same sort of thing. Many divorced fathers have a lot to be angry about, of course; they are genuinely powerless against a system that has rules that nobody explains to them at the beginning - and holds their ignorance against them throughout the rest of their childrens' childhoods. Talk with some of these guys; they're paying 25-50% of their income (sometimes more), with zero guarantee of ever seeing their children; painted as deadbeats (or having it assumed that that's what they're going to be if given half a chance), stripped of drivers and professional licenses if they fall behind or spend any time unemployed, they have reasons to be angry - and many of 'em seethe with it, if you hang around with 'em long enough.

It's not hard to find the deeply angry.

It's just unusual to find it among people who have lived a life of deep, abiding privilege, and whose only cause to anger is that the democratic process didn't break their way.

The WaPo found one.

The story of Maryscott O'Connor has been bouncing around the blogosphere since last week:

But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about.

"Powerlessness" is O'Connor's explanation. "This is born of powerlessness..."It has come to the point where the worst people on Earth are running the Earth." And now, "I have become one of those people with all the bumper stickers on their car," she says. "I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart.

"I'm insane with rage and grief.

"But I also feel more connected than I ever have.""

We all know the type, of course; ranging from the frothing Kossacks and Atrioids who bay at the moon over conspiracy theories to the likes of smug, pudgy Ollie Willis, who is too angry to think.

But here's the part that is funny; Mark "The Wege" Gisleson thinks there's no comparison:

So let us off to Truth Laid Bear where the numbers of links in don't lie (unless it's to downgrade a liberal blog ranking or upgrade a wingnut site). Unhinged wingnuts first:

2. Michelle Malkin
4. Power Line
5. Little Green Footballs
6. Captain's Quarters
9. Hugh Hewitt

These are the top wingnut blogs (I ignored #1, Instapundit, because he mostly just links to hate and tries to avoid directly peddling it).

Question: If a conservative reads the phone book in the forest, and no liberal is there to hear it, is it still "hate"?)

No, I'm serious; Read through Powerline, Hugh, Ed and Michelle; the prose is measured (and usable in polite society), the points clear generally supported by evidence - in other words, they make an argument, sans the ad-homina, the shrieking invective (that's their detractors' turf), the vein-popping rage.

Read Kos, Atrios, Ollie Willis - even the reference to the five conservative bloggers itself, long on ad-hominem, short on anything that would convince the non-koolaid-guzzler that Michelle Malkin or Ed Morrissey is a hate-choked rage-o-holic (or even as much of one as their detractors).

Just saying - the "I know you are, but what am I?" defense isn't all it's cracked up to be.

A Little Help, Here?

Rambix is trolling for ideas to deal with the quagmire in Minneapolis:

What's the solution for violent crime in Minneapolis? No one seems to have the right answer, although a lot of people have opinions.

Maybe it's time to solicit ideas from the general public. There's a fair chance that some of Minneapolis' leadership monitors this blog, among others, so maybe you can have an impact. Post some ideas in the comments to this post if you like. Replacing Mayor Rybak and the entire City Council and letting Governor Pawlenty pick their replacements is a good idea, but unfeasible, so don't offer that.

After the news of the past week or two, I'm tempted to suggest "require all law-abiding citizens to carry assault weapons", but I'm sure there's something more subtle out there.

Hope

Nick Coleman writes about Easter on Rice Street.

Rice Street, for non-Saint Paulites, is a toilet; from University Avenue all the way up to the border with Roseville, Rice Street is a morass of skeezy bars and junkyards and blight - a little piece of Minneapolis in a part of Saint Paul that has defied the city's generally good trends, home both to nihilistic gang-bangery and blue-collar white moronism (a couple of beating deaths of black guys at biker bars over the years punctuate the endless stories of drug killings, violence, and general awfulness).

Coleman writes about a group of Lutherans who are going to demonstrate this morning on the street:

That's Easter for you: Resurrection for a street corner, or a city, or the human heart. Or maybe nothing. If we don't believe it could happen, why bother?...You don't have to be anything at all, religiously speaking, to appreciate the courage of that.

"We have come to expect violence and death," Pastor Tjornehoj says. "But despair is not the last word. That's the great Easter surprise: 'He is risen.' This is a powerful day. As people of faith, we sing and dance on a grave. We come for a funeral, but we will find the tomb is empty.

True. Christ came to save us, and redeemed us by his rising.

But Rice Street? Doesn't it just seem so...hopeless?

And so, this Easter, a band of bagpipe-playing Lutherans will risk appearing naïve to celebrate the victory of their Lord in one of the places where hope is a rare commodity.

Only if you constrict your focus to asymptote.

Because hope is all over the place, if you look.

Rice has, reportedly, always been a tough street. And since Urban Renewal and the driving of I-94 through the traditionally black Rondo neighborhood gutted the central core of Saint Paul, it's only gotten worse.

But right around the corner, on University Avenue, is all kinds of hope. Refugees from genocidal hellholes in Southeast Asia have taken over most of University, from Rice up to Lexington. They've done a great job of revitalizing what was, twenty years ago, a blighted morass. People fled genocide, torture, shallow graves and a life of slavery for...what?

Hope. Just around the corner from Nick Coleman's colony of misery.

Turn left at University, again at Lafayette, and again on Payne. Hmong and Eritreans fled revenge, chemical weapons, and politically-driven starvation, to flee to...Swede Hollow and Dayton's Bluff. To hope.

Rice Street, in the shadow of the Capitol, is a monument to the the limits of Minnesota's "Better Life through Better Government" philosophy that obtained here from the forties through the nineties.

And University, around the corner, is a reminder of hope - not in welfare checks and entitlements and programs, but in the hope in what American really offers.

It doesn't take a baloney detector to see Rice Street needs to be cleaned up; it's one of Saint Paul's most miserable main drags.

But don't let it blind you to the fact that hope is all over the place.

Overqualified To Write For Kos...

...that's me.

Because I can actually write in English and all:

English Genius You scored 92% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go! Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it! For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 21% on Beginner You scored higher than 34% on Intermediate You scored higher than 61% on Advanced You scored higher than 92% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Easter Dinner Buying Spree

Lasagna. Bruschette. Sauteed green beans. Cheesecake.

Evening, Day

Went to "Drinking Moderately" down the street at Flash's place last night.

Now, it's called "Drinking Moderately", but one must note that

• Most people there drank pretty heavily (myself excluded), and
• The conservatives were outnumbered pretty much the whole evening

But it was a lot of fun anyway.

Holding down the right side, briefly at least, was Tracy from Anti-Strib. Also joining us were Rew and Smartie from Powerliberal, 'Wege from Norwegianity (the beloved MNOb didn't show - that we know of. Hmmmm) and, a surprise to me, Chris Dykstra from several different sites.

It was actually a lot of fun. We'll have to do it again sometime. More to come later...

...because I have to get out to the station to do the show. The Volume I guys are on the air with Mike Nelson, and Ed and King and I have some fun stuff to talk about too.

Join us!

Not Really Tax Day

...but it doesn't matter. Uncharacteristically for me, I got my taxes done in February.

I said "uncharacteristically". For many years, I was not just a proud last-minute filer - I occasionally didn't start my taxes until 9PM on the 15th.

That was, of course, before I had things like self-employment and mortgage interest and so on - but the fact is, there were a few years where I was one of those guys who'd be parking half a block from the post office at 9PM on the 15th because I couldn't get closer, or even in the long line of cars on Kellogg Boulevard at 11:50something PM on deadline night tossing my envelope into a bag held by a USPS employee as I drove past. Twice.

Know how someone with a bad hangover will start pounding bloody maries at 6AM to try to take their mind off their misery? Chad has discovered the financial equivalent:

What a difference a year, and the birth of my son, make. Instead of having to write a hefty check to the IRS, we're actually getting a refund. Granted a very small refund on the exorbitant amount of OUR money that the guvamint had already confiscated, but a refund nonetheless. Believe you me, it beats the hell out of suffering the abuse of having to pay EVEN MORE into the system as we have in the past.

The refund, natch, ends up being about 3% of what you spent on the kid, of course, but all in all it's nice to get...

Bloodbath?

Rumor has it that the Pioneer Press just let its "editorial staff" go.

Calls to a number of editorial staff phone numbers are met by a voice message from an anonymous woman saying "[so and so] no longer works at the Pioneer Press...", and directing the caller to a backup number.

More to come.

UPDATE: You can calm down, Twin Cities - Laura Billings would seem to be safe.

However, Glenda Holste and our friend Mark Yost would seem to have been caught in the dragnet.

Can You Hear Me Now? No? What?

Nancy from Protestwarrior sends:

Speak Up for a Better World - Working Assets Wireless

Speak up for a better world - get a FREE cell phone, a great plan, and FREE shipping from Working Assets. We donate 1% of your wireless charges to progressive causes at no extra cost to you. Since 1985, we have raised over $50 million for groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and many more. Find out more now.

We partner with a leading carrier to provide you with an all-digital national network. You can travel coast to coast and be assured of reliable wireless service. Find out more about this special offer now!

LeftyCom: works like any other wireless system - but it makes your voice sound shrill and adenoidal.

It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This

Laptop: Work.

Desktop: Season 2 of 24.

It works.

Adios, Ford

There are times I'm very, very glad that I grew up in a field as psychotically unstable as radio. The first time I got fired (not for cause, of course) was at age 17. It was a lesson that always caused a little dissonance with my father and I, who was a high school teacher and never, that I can recall, worried about a job going away. I, on the other hand, learned bright and early that jobs are nothing you can count on - and that loyalty to a company was like faith in a flat earth.

It's a lesson all of society should learn:

The first time Denny Dickhausen heard a rumor that the Ford plant in St. Paul would close was his first week on the job -- 36 years ago.

The recurring rumor finally became fact Thursday, and Dickhausen, 59, said it was like losing his home.

"I grew old at the Ford Motor Company," he said. "I'm still in shock. It's a very sad day."..."It's the young ones I feel sorry for," said Dickhausen, who works as a janitor and equipment cleaner.

"I was thinking of retiring the first of the year, anyway, but I haven't made up my mind yet," he added.

He'd advise his younger co-workers to get some retraining: "Get something you can count on," he said. "Be a pipefitter, or be a welder

There's a huge swathe of our society that believes, still, that if you get a job in a big manufacturing business with a union, you're set for life; that you've done all the vocational learning you'll ever need; settle down for forty years of fishing.

It's not so, of course. And it never has been throughout human history, except for the brief period where manufacturing was king and unions managed to set themselves up in a symbiotic (and ultimately untenable) relationship with management.

It's a word to the wise; take some time out from your recreational and social life and figure out what it takes to become and stay marketable, if your job should happen to disappear.

Good luck, Ford guys.

Attention, Party People (Jamestown High School Edition)

The following is addressed to my classmates from the Jamestown (North Dakota) High School Class of 1981.

The artist formerly known as Ruth Newman, and the other artist eternally known as Krueg, are putting together a 25th reunion this summer.

(Note to non-JHS people: A 25th reunion is unheard of at our old high school. Reunions come in ten year increments, a tradition as solid as the 70-foot-tall cement buffalo that overlooks the city, an interval handed down on Mount Sinai as the long-lost 11th Commandment - or so it's believed in Jamestown, ND. To have a reunion at a more-frequent interval will be regarded like putting mole sauce on lutefisk, or making low-fat Fleischkuechle. This is, as Johnny Carson would have called it, "Weird, Wild Stuff". But I dig it, and in any case, I digress).

Anyway, TAFKARN notes that the plan, currently, is as follows:

Friday June 30 - informal Bon Fire - somewhere- TBD
Golf Sat. - if enough interest
Eagles Saturday Night July 1st, 2006

As luck has it, I'll be in Jamestown that week anyway, so everyone is in luck. Except those of you who really didn't like me much, and you know who you are.

But for the rest of you - probably 245 of the 252 of us - I'll hope to see you all there! If you're one of the JHS '81 mob who reads this blog and doesn't have The Artist Formerly Known As Ruth Newman's address, leave a comment or send an email to (comments at shotinthedark dot info), and I'll get everyone in touch with everyone.

I also hereby open the floor to nominations (specific JND locations) for the informal bonfire. I should put certain former teachers' living rooms off limits, just to be safe...

Anyway - hope to hear from a bunch of you!

UPDATE: Commenter Doug caught me. The Buffalo isn't 70 feet tall. It's a little under 30 feet.

But if you climb through its mouth, it leads you to a tunnel that runs down the right foreleg to a tunnel that leads you underground to a formerly-secret chamber that was used as a top-secret government emergency headquarters. In 1962, Allen Dulles met with Andrey Gromyko in that room to help resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. After the Cold War, the room served variously as a teen center, holding facility for terror suspects, and today is a coffee shop, "Buffalo Mouth Coffee", one of Jamestown's finer coffee joints.

Just...Sad

Sextuplets really zerotuplets:

The couple's dramatic story had holes in it from the start - from their mysterious withholding of information for more than a month to the unanimous response of area hospitals that they hadn't helped deliver the newborns.

On Tuesday, authorities said the mystery had been solved - the entire tale was deemed a hoax aimed at tapping the generosity of others to pay the couple's mounting bills.

Er, that alien I said was living in my basement? Never mind.

Feel The Throb

You could see the glee on Matt Lauer's face when he announced it: a politician was going to slag the Administration's Iraq policy:

But this politician isn't a Democrat; it's former Republican congressman Newt Gingrich!Wow.

I don't recall them taking Gingrich so seriously ten years ago...

Posted by Mitch at 07:05 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

Director Gets Golden Parachute; Minneapolis Citizens Get Golden...Parachute Bill

MDE notes that the Minneapolis Teachers Pension Fund director is getting a golden parachute...

...for leaving a billion dollars in obligations unfunded:

The executive director of the Minneapolis Teachers Retirement Fun Association received a "golden parachute" for running a pension fund that has $1 billion in unfunded pension obligations...With plans for the merger progressing, the Minneapolis teachers pension board in March extended the contract of its executive director, Karen Kilberg, a year beyond the date when the fund would cease to exist under the merger. It also granted her a six-month severance. The entire package is worth $215,000." Source: Star Tribune, April 12, 2006

Kilberg is going to collect a paycheck until July 1, 2007, from an organization that will probably no longer exist in a month.

Why is this a problem?

"But during 10 years when Kilberg directed the fund, it earned less from investments than most large government pension funds in Minnesota, according to calculations by the commission. The Minneapolis fund earned $218 million less from 1994 to 2004 than it would have earned had it performed as well as the State Board of Investment, which handles money for the Teachers Retirement Association.

Read the whole thing.

It Takes An Idea

Margaret Martin notes a TV show that my daughter hooked me on:

My latest guilty pleasure is a show on the discovery channel called It Takes a Thief. It features two guys, supposedly once burglars who served time and now one’s a security expert and the other is a school teacher. (I wonder if he got his record expunged or the school district he’s in doesn’t do any criminal background checks?) Anyhow, these two guys (along with a camera crew) convince a homeowner to allow them to try to break into their house and if they succeed, to give them a bunch of new security equiptment, including an alarm system, locks and other stuff. The homeowners usually admit that their homes have security flaws but have some combination of beliefs that (a) they could kick any robber’s ass, should one try to get in the house, (b) the knife they keep in a nightstand will help them fend off robbers, (c) Fido will protect them (d) the neighbors will call the police.

Once the homeowner signs on, the fun begins.

The show is fascinating.

And it gets the old noggin' turning. Which of my old vices could I turn into a lucrative Discovery Channel gig?

• It Takes A Guitar Player - Former guitar geek rates your band, gives you gear to help your band suck less.
• It Takes A Club DJ - Former club jock rates your bar by sampling your top-rail stock and hitting on your female customers.
• It Takes A Divorced Guy - Mitch will sit around your house (breakfast and dinner, please) and critique you and your spouse's relationship

I'm liking this...

Klobuchar: Henco Heart Frauds!

First Ringer, writing at KvM, notes that not only is Amy "A-Klo" Klobuchar a joke as a criminal prosecutor - she's a joke as far as securing the integrity of the electoral system:

Don’t add Amy Klobuchar to the ranks of those deeply concerned about voter fraud this November, if her record is any indication. Klobuchar significantly weakened the sentence of ACORN activist Joshua Reed in December of 2004 after Reed was caught with fraudulent voter registration cards. Klobuchar’s rationale for a lighter sentence?:

Klobuchar said Reed never intended to use the 18 forgeries to allow anyone to vote more than once. Instead, his motivation was to fraudulently increase his earnings from the fee he was paid to register new voters, she said.

‘He did that to get money from ACORN … He was trying to get some extra cash for registering voters,’ Klobuchar said.

No one’s suggesting Reed, a 19-year old St. Louis Park resident at the time, should have been permanently exposed to Minnesota’s penal system by a cellmate named Bubba, but 60 days in a county workhouse followed by 15 days of community service doesn’t exactly send a message of being tough on voter fraud. It’ll be curious to see for whom—if anyone—Mr. Reed will be volunteering his services this fall.

And if they've learned their lesson about hiding their forgeries more cleverly.

OK...Just One More Time

From the who'da thunk it department: rumors of "guest worker"/amnesty programs spark a surge in illegal immigration:

The shelter's manager, Francisco Loureiro, said he has not seen such a rush of migrants since 1986, when the United States allowed 2.6 million illegal residents to get American citizenship.
advertisement
Click Me!

This time, the draw is a bill before the U.S. Senate that could legalize some of the 11 million people now illegally in the United States while tightening border security. Migrants are hurrying to cross over in time to qualify for a possible guest-worker program - and before the journey becomes even harder.

"Every time there is talk in the north of legalizing migrants, people get their hopes up, but they don't realize how hard it will be to cross," Loureiro said.

Economics 101; subsidizing law-breaking results in a surplus of law-breaking.

Don't Look Now, But...

Education Minnesota - the teachers' union - is running an ad campaign dim-witted and factually-devoid enough to have been designed by Ken Avidor. You know the one I'm talking about - the one with the pasty sixtysomething Dick Cheney impersonator campaigning on promises to gut education?

Matt Abe notes that Pat Kessler of Channel 4 (and KTLK-FM) has taken a meat cleaver to the campaign's message:

One of its TV ads features an older, white male politician (read: Republican) on the campaign trail, saying, "Minnesota schools have stood with the best for long enough. It's time to slash education spending and lower standards. Mediocrity, mediocrity, mediocrity."

Kessler responds, "In fact, Minnesota spent $6.6 billion on school last year. It will spend $6.9 billion this year...Educators complain because the state didn't keep up with inflation, they have to cut school budgets to make up the difference."

As to the inference of "mediocrity" during the Pawlenty administration, Kessler notes, "Minnesota ranks number 16 in the nation in money spent per pupil; number one in college ACT scores; and number one in high school graduation rates."

I don't expect this to show up as an example of "critical thinking" in your kid's mass communications class, but feel free to suggest it.

Kudos to Kessler - not a great talk show host, but one of the Twin Cities' better reporters - and to Abe, whose blog is one of the better edblogs in the business, and an essential read on the subject.

Submitted Without Comment

Via Red this piece by Bill at INDC, a review of Mike Durant's In the Company of Heroes, caught me.

Durant was an Army Blackhawk pilot who was shot down during the battle in Mogadishu, Somalia immortalized in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down. Two Delta Force commandos, Gary Gordon and Randy Schughart, earned posthumous Congressional Medals of Honor by defending the injured Durant against thousands of attackers; Durant was giving a speech in Gordan's hometown:

In honoring these men, I always remind my listeners that I probably would not have survived if not for a soldier named Gary Gordan and his friend Randy Schughart, who were both posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroic actions in Mogadishu. In 1994, I myself was reminded that such men are not just born with these qualities of courage but are at times inspired to emulate them. I had been invited to Gary Gordon's hometown of Lincoln, Maine, to participate in honoring his memory with a ceremony and monument to his courage and professionalism. In order to prepare some remarks for my statement, I got a book on the Medal of Honor from the local library. The book was full of interesting historical facts, and its record of heroic deeds was quite overwhelming. But when I got to the back of the book, what I found truly astounded me. There, located in a small pocket, was the library checkout card. Apparently, the book had been checked out only a few times since its publication, and the last reader had taken it home almost twenty years before. The last person to sign out that book on the Congressional Medal of Honor would in fact become the next recipient of our nation's highest military award, a young teenager named Gary Gordan.

Quagmire In Minneapolis, Part XXXVI

A shooting at a Wendy's in south Minneapolis leaves two wounded:

Minneapolis police are searching for two teenagers after a double shooting at a fast food restaurant in south Minneapolis late Monday night.

This particular Wendys is the one that Joel Rosenberg's family frequents:

Sounds very much like an intramural thing among gangbangers, but innocents can get hit by stray bullets. (All in all, the Crips, Vice Lords, Bloods, etc. are not overly reknowned for the efficacy of their handgun safety training program, despite the new advances in aiming technology.)

(Err... the bit about the sights is a joke. The bit about the shooting isn't.)

What advances in aiming technology?

You'll have to go to Joel's site to see that.

About 20 years ago, during Minneapolis' first spate of gang shootings, a Minneapolis cop told me that the safest place to be during a gang shootout was the target; the worst place was as an innocent bystander, 45 degrees off the line of fire (the night before my conversation, a boy in an apartment half a block away from a cross-street shoot out had been hit and paralyzed).

Gangbangers the world over can thank John Woo for teaching thugs the world over that it's cool to hold guns on their sides...

It's All In The Skin Color

Doug Grow never met a DFL fringe cause he didn't like.

No matter how dumb, as we see in today's column about Governor Pawlenty's violence summit at the mansion.

Grow:

Missing from the meeting? People of color. There were 13 people discussing issues of public safety in diverse Minneapolis. All were white.

Don Samuels was available. In fact, Samuels, who as a City Council member heads the council's public safety committee, stood outside the governor's mansion while the meeting was going on.

"But they wouldn't allow an African- American man from the public safety committee into the big house," he said.

Samuels resorts to the now-almost-inevitable slavery analogy - and Grow dutifully parrots it.

The real answer, most likely, is this: The meeting was intended for people who can do something about the problem. Samuels is, most likely, not a part of that solution. He, as a member of the DFL machine that has turned Minneapolis into a contender for crime capitol of the nation, may well be part of the problem.

Whatever his skin color.

According to Samuels, Rybak had asked him Thursday to attend the meeting. But on Friday morning he was told by the mayor that the governor had uninvited him.

At a news conference after the meeting, the governor was asked why Samuels was left outside.

"Well, we had a number of people requesting to be at the meeting, ranging from other lawyers to other council members to other law enforcement," Pawlenty said.

So let me get this straight; Rybak invited Samuels to Pawlenty's meeting?

My scenario (unattributed, and conjured entirely from my own suspicions): Rybak wanted to bring some more DFL "muscle" to the meeting, to defend the city's miserable status quo and dubious ability to fix things.

The governor wasn't going to get railroaded, and he doesn't care what the assembly of DFL hacks and their kept men in the media call him in retribution.

In the meantime, Samuels' exclusion was more than a personal slight.

"There are deeply systematic problems," Samuels said. "Those problems are not going to be solved by homogenous groups. I don't have a magic bullet to solve what's going on. But I have insights that no one in that room could have."

They are deeply systematic problems, indeed - and Samuels is part of the system.

Samuels doesn't object to the Band-Aid fixes to social wounds that came from Friday's session. The governor and mayor announced that more officers will be patrolling downtown streets this summer because of a $2 million boost in state aid.

But Samuels said it's naive to believe a few more cops solves anything long term.

"The violence was random, but it also was predictable," said Samuels of the killings in Uptown and on Block E. "We have to deal with the predictable aspect."

Um...hence the cops downtown and uptown, where we predict the violence will be?

What exactly is Samuels saying? That violence is "predictable'...why? On what basis does Samuels predict violence? Because of systemic problems facing minority communities?

What do minority communities think of that?

Oh, to be fair, that may not have been what Samuels was talking about (although I can't imagine what he is talking about). But the Governor is talking about fixing systemic problems, too:

Brian McClung, the governor's spokesman, said there will be future meetings to deal with larger issues. High on the list of priorities, he said, are meetings with judges to discuss keeping bad people in prison.

That'd be a big systemic problem, all right. And naturally, not the one Samuels (and Grow) care about:

But that won't make our city safer, either, Samuels said.

"The solution is not the number of cops," Samuels said. "It's not more prisons. It's a change of heart."

What's difficult is that the change of heart must come from the people in power.

"You cannot hold anyone accountable if they think you don't care," Samuels said. "Neglect and abuse makes people angry. Abandonment makes them enraged, and that's what we're dealing with. You have to stop the rhetoric about accountability until you demonstrate love."

Ah. I was right the first time.

The quote needs to be reiterated: "You can't hold someone accountable if they think you don't care".

Someone kills you? If you didn't care, it's a wash.

This is Don Samuels' and Doug Grow's Minneapolis.

My Father The Steamroller

Like Lileks, I've been catching up on 24, starting with the first season. It's amazing; my son practically pushes me out the door to get to the store for the next installment (I'm up to 4PM, the fourth of the six DVDs for the season).

The show, as noted all over the blogosphere, is of course brilliant; tautly-written, well-acted, and with a twitchy style that doesn't so much leave you with cliffhangers as it swings you around like you're hanging onto the back of a swerving car.

But I think there's more to it than that.

I've written for years about the perception of men in society; in too much popular entertainment, the model for men - fathers, especially - was set with "The Honeymooners" and "The Flintstones"; Hubby/Dad was a loveable incompetent. Even on the most "family-friendly" networks - I'm thinking the endless, benign, cookie-cutter assembly-line "Disney Channel Movies", especially - Dad is usually a well-meaning lunk (who'd be nothing without Mom), who might occasionally make the right call (with a lot of help from wife and kids, natch). Others are worse; the poor schlub in the Comcast commercial who has to beg his daughter and wife for the access code to his program echoes a zillion castrati in innumerable ads, doomed to an eternity of impotent humiliation. That, of course, is when he's present at all. Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin have a lot more fun than most of us do, at least.

School starts 'em out young, of course; the public school system is feminized to a fault, and trained (says Christina Hoff Summers noted in The War on Boys) to regard a boy's emerging masculinity not as a personality trait to be honed and polished, but a condition to be treated and, if possible, cured.

So today, too much of our popular culture - not to mention legal system, our educational establishment, and so many other institutions in our society - echoes Margaret Mead's infamous imprecation; "Men are a biological necessity and a social accident."

You have to dig way back in our primordial psychological ooze, it seems, to get back to the notion biology and/or God and/or blind luck had in mind for the various genders - especially the notion of Dad being, imperfect as he may be, the family's protector - at least, as far as popular culture is concerned.

But I have a hunch it's a little closer to the surface for a lot of us.

I have had a few moments in my life - the infamous drive-by, and the time my son saw people following him home from school - where the urge to find the perps and deal with them medievally was overwhelming (in fact, I'm happy to say, it did overwhelm me once; I did manage to find the group of vermin that shot at my house, prowling around my street, and chased them clean out of the neighborhood, never to be seen again. Yes, it was dumb. And I'd do it again tomorrow. I mean, it's a good thing I didn't catch them - all I had was a baseball bat in the bed of my pickup. But I suppose seeing a big, howlin' mad guy in a pickup racing up behind their little Tercel gave them pause. Good. Little bastards).

And at no time was the urge - sublimated, naturally - stronger than on and immediately after 9/11. The threat - to our nation and to our families - was not abstract in the least. I'd suspect quite a few guys yearned to barrellass over the Afghan border - or into Crips country, or wherever - in a decked out 'burban and dish a little medievalism.

The character of Jack Bauer is, naturally, incredibly imperfect; like most of us, he has standards and goals and beliefs - and occasionally has to fall well short of them to get the job done. He has a bratty daughter and (during Season 1, anyway) a wife whose agenda is more and more incongruent with his, both of whom he loves dearly, both of whom he realizes he badly serves in so many ways...sound familiar, anyone?

The difference is, when all of that is threatened - by the same things that, abstractly, threaten all of us and our families, forces (be they a violent world or institutional perfidy or whatever) beyond our control, Jack Bauer gets to fix things. Now. His daughter may not mind him, his bosses may be a variety of institutional vipers, the problems facing him may not be readily apparent - but at the end of the day, with the help of his wits and training and raw computing power and the good folks at SIG, he pulls the situation - and his family - back from the brink.

I think that's a big part of the reason 24 is so popular; beyond the production values, it echoes the deep-seated (and maybe deeply-hidden) desire in the hearts of lots of men - fathers, I bet, especially - to fill that biological, promordial drive to keep what's yours safe from the saber tooth tiger or the burglar or the multinational terrorist cell; to be able to tell the world "don't f*ck with me or mine" and make it stick.

The Exile of the Maroon

I'm not sure which is funnier; that a group of fans of the cancelled Marc Maron show (formerly Frankennet's morning host) have set up their their own website...

Good Morning philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor, lurking conservatives.... Welcome to new refuge of displaced morning seditionists. Even if Morning Sedition is gone, we still have a lot of work to do, and a government to take back. And we damn well are gonna have a good time doing it.

...um, yeah...

...or that Marc Maron is going back on the air:

Brendan McDonald, Jim Earl and I have been working hard out here in the land where dreams come to die. We've been building the show, doing test shows, recording comedy bits, intros, outros, Jim songs (yes), finding new guests, and waiting to get on the air. It looks like we'll have a launch date next week.

KTLK's ratings are, by the way, atrocious - .9 overall, and Air America's late night lineup (Mike Malloy) around a 1.0.

Which is where Maron wants to go:

The show will be live here in LA from 10PM-12AM. I have no control over what the network does as far as making the show available. I assume that KTLK AM 1150 will offer a live stream but I also know that is too late for folks on the east coast.

Apparently all the execs at Air America assure him they'll call back:

I know there were initially plans to use material from my show on the morning shows but we've sent stuff we've recorded to New York and they don't seem to be using it. We'll see what happens when the show gets going.

Yes, Marc. I'm sure we will.

Kind of reminds of the scene in Hitchhiker's Guide where the race of people on the "doomed planet" planned two waves of spaceships to evacuate their world. They built one spaceship for the first wave, filled it with all their most useless members, and sent it away, assuring them that the second wave was coming any day now.

"Suuure, Marc. Send us your skits. Send 'em to my other email address, mkay?"

Maron from 10 to midnight? Sure makes me all tingly.

For Whom The Bell Rings

Sorry to see The First Ringer, one of the best regional blogs out there, is calling it quits.

The Ringer was a daily read, one of the best writers and most incisive commentators out there.

He'll continue blogging at KvM, so hopefully his talents won't be lost to us during the upcoming campaign season.

The Ringer notes:

I’ve wrestled with this decision for many months but if I’ve learned anything about blogging is that it’s best suited within the confines of a routine. One’s life has to be, to make a generalization, settled to some extent in order to blog.

Well, here's hoping the routine finds you again, Ringer.

Note To Immigration Protesters

Thanks.

Y'all are going to re-unite the GOP yet.

(Via Kevin "Eckernet" Ecker.

Just Like Heaven

Saturday night was one of the nights that remind me why I live in Minnesota, and in Saint Paul.

After the show, I had a house full of kids over, hanging out with my son. They were busy having a dart-gun fight in the back yard (take that, Rebecca Thoman!), so I ran out on some errands around dusk.

I got out of the car in the parking lot at my local shopping center, and just stopped. The exhaust from the cars and trucks on Snelling mixed with something else - the smell of spring. Grass, woodfire barbeques in the distance, flowers here and there, all on a bed of perfectly warm air that, after the cold snap of a month ago, felt like May breaking out. The sky to the west was a deep indigo blue, the breeze a soft waft that carried the smell of leaves and somebody's hamburgers across the street. My car - so recently a salt-crusted greenish-gray mess - looked like it had been polished to a Rolls-Royce-like sheen in the moonlight; it looked smooth and almost soft, like it was jello on wheels. The light made everything look and feel good. I stood in the parking lot and watched the sky for a few moments.

I picked up some goodies for the kids - and then, on impulse, stepped into a video store. I haven't had a rental account in a vid store in years, as in "since before I got divorced." I was delighted to see you can rent some of the TV series you miss watching! And that the talking picture comes in a box in your house, too!

I rented half of the first season of "24", and I think I got to 5AM (show time, not real time) by the time I turned in on Saturday, and into the 9AM hour by last night. So that's what the fuss is about. Now I'm going to have to find
87 more hours to catch the rest of the series, now. Thanks for nothin', Joel Surnow.

Plus, I rented Blue, the Krystof Kieslawski film with Juliette Binoche. It's one of my favorites, ever - in my top five, along with Casablanca among a few others. I have to watch it every couple of years (along with this Kieslawski joint), just because.

That'll be tonight, prolly.

So it seems spring has sprung. Much as I love winter, it's nice to see it back again.

Polinaut's Question: Late To The Station

Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio does "Polinaut", covering regional/national politics.

Almost a week ago, Collins asked bloggers to disclose their connections to political campaigns, given that we just got some of the same immunity from speech rationing laws that the media enjoy:

Now that the FEC has decided not to treat bloggers as potential independent expenditures and allow them the freedom to say what they want and do what they want, perhaps it's safe to answer these questions...-1- Are you paid in any way by a campaign or candidate?

-2- Do you consult with campaign officials or party officials as to how the content on your site can be most beneficial to a particular candidate or party?

-3- Are you as an individual paid by a campaign or affiliated with an organization or company that has as a client, a particular campaign or political party?

There's nothing wrong, mind you, with either 1 or 2 or 3. I just think it would be interesting to find out what bloggers are independent, and which ones actually are working with or for a campaign.

Now, First Ringer, Triple A, Bogus Doug and Foot already responded - like, a week ago, and pretty definitively in most cases.

But I've never been afraid to be a day late and a dollar short.

Bob,

Good questions. My answers:
Am I paid by any campaign? - Heh. I wish. No, I'm not. Never have been. I do, however, have a category on my blog, "Disclosure", in which I list everything I receive as a result of this blog. It's been consideration for speeches at district fundraisers, mostly - I've gotten three dinners and probably four adult beverages, so far.

Do I consult with campaign officials about how my site's content can benefit them? - Nope. No. I have advised campaigns and party officials on how best to leverage blogs. Every opinion I write about a candidates is purely my own.

Am I as an individual paid by a campaign or affiliated with an organization or company that has as a client, a particular campaign or political party? - No. Doy. Of course not.

Now Bob - why do you assume that for *any* of us it was *ever* "unsafe" to answer those questions?

There seems to be an unstated assumption on the part of much of the exempt media that we bloggers are on the take - that there's no WAY we can all be organic. Nick Coleman spent much of 2004 insinuating as much, and Bob's question (inadvertently or not) does the same.

Now, Bob Collins, a question for you. Inasmuch as:

• During the early stages of the '02 Senate campaign, MPR was caught selling/swapping mailing lists to the Wellstone campaign,
• MPR gets a small but significant portion of its budget from federal and state taxpayers - and is thus committed to supporting a big-spending, big-government agenda very much at odds with the GOP and quite congruent with the DFL
• A wide variety of MPR employees have gone from MPR to jobs associated either indirectly (Katherine Lanpher) or directly (Karen Louise Booth) with the Democratic party

...when will MPR show the same level of commitment to openness about its political biases and backing that bloggers routinely show?

Whose financial roots and influences, indeed, need more scrutiny - we bloggers, or MPR itself?

(By the way - someone tell Bob Garfield that he can cut the crap and change his show's title from "On The Media" to "Conservatives Are Ickypoopy").

By the way, thanks for the plug.

Crispy

The Fraters and Rocketman interviewed Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Conservatives, the book and the movement.

He obligingly wrote (and the Fraters duly linked) a "Crunchy Conservative Manifesto">Crunchy Conservative Manifesto on NRO.

I'm always interested in these things. I figured it was worth a look. What's this all about?

I have to confess; I've heard Dreher talk for an aggregate total of maybe ten minutes, ever, on this subject. I don't have a lot of preconceptions, other than the notion that I like the idea of conservation-conscious conservatism

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

Well, isn't that always true of people you disagree with - you always see what other people do wrong so clearly?

I digress:

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

"Life aint' nothin' but bitchez and money". "Get rich or die trying". "Life ain't nothing but Benzos and Hos". None of these were written by Pat Buchanan.

It's fair, I think, to say that all of American society is "too focused" on these things. But it's even fairer to say that conservatism should be an exception; conservatives should strive for more. Too many don't.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

True.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

No. It's about the same. Culture drives economics, but a solid economy pays for leisure and free mental bandwidth it takes to affect culture. If the economy stinks, real people are too busy making ends meet to care about politics or culture, leaving those domains to the people who have the time to devote exclusively to such things - and they tend to be liberals.

But to the extent that many conservatives eschew the cultural debate (beyond subjects like gay marriage and abortion), and indeed seem grossly uncomfortable dealing with culture as a broad issue, it's true that we conservatives need a broader focus on culture.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

Very true - and beyond that, fundamentally not-very-Christian (for the Christian conservatives).

Few things bug me like "conservatives" who consider it a duty to burn as much gas, to pick an example, as possible.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

"Almost" always?

Not sure if old medicine fits, but he did say "almost", didn't he?

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

Again, very generally true - although both are to be striven for.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

Very true.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”

True - with Happy Hour a close second.

10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

True.

That's, what? 75%?

While I disagree with some of the things Dreher says, it does touch on a few of the things that bother me the most about many other conservatives; the rejection of the notion of stewardship (I've met people who would never dream of not balancing their check books, who figure that just becausae the earth will repair itself after the most egregious abuse, that egregious abuse is OK), the fear in some quarters of any form of culture tonier than Toby Keith, and the sticking of fingers in ears and yelling "Lalalalala" when anyone mentions the possibility that consolidating the entire economy into a short list of big-box stores isn't a good idea being the three examples that pop immediately to mind.

Worth a critical read.

Today on NARN

Join us today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network (11AM-3PM, AM1280 in the Twin Cities, or on the internet.

John Hinderaker, Brian Ward and Chad The Elder will be interviewing Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Conservative, apparently on how to keep that crunchy conservative goodness all fresh.

Then, Ed, King and I will be talking with Rob Fulton of the Ramsey County Public Health department about the county's preparations for a possible bird flu pandemic.

Tune in!

Audio Op

My neighbor Flash, from Centristy, is going to be interviewing Barack Obama later today:

If all goes well, I'll have the transcript up on Monday, hopefully with a couple photos.

So, what ONE question would you ask the Senator, if you had this opportunity.

One question? Sorry, Flash - one question is never enough for an interview.

Here's the list:

1. The Democrats are currently split into two major wings - the barking moonbats and the remains of the Clintonistas. You seem to be trying to reach out to both, simultaneously. How do you plan to fix the party?
2. Polling shows that, whatever the President's problem du jour, the Democrats finish somewhere below Britney Spears on the quesiton "who do you trust to defend the nation/prosecute the war on terror?" How do you plan on addressing this?
3. No, I mean with specifics.
4. OK, Mr. "Democrats are the party of the people" - do you plan on rolling back the McCain-Feingold speech rationing laws?
5. OK, so you Democrats have had your fun. You've spent six years dinging at Bush's tax cuts - which are largely responsible for the economy's current robustness. How ya gonna follow that?
6. I said with specifics!

That's a good start.

Have fun, Flash!

Candid Camera

NBC says their "Candid Camera" stunt at a NASCAR race (parading "moslem-looking" men around to see if they'd, er, get discriminated against) is perfectly legit news:

There is nothing new about the technique of witnessing the experience of someone who might be discriminated against in a public setting. Government agencies and journalists do it all the time to explore important issues like potential discrimination in real estate, employment and public services. For this story, we also wanted to take a look at large public gatherings, including sporting events.

Dateline has barely begun its reporting on this topic. We can assure you that what we broadcast, if anything, will be fair and accurate.

Of course it will. Because it's the news.

Of course, this is an interesting idea.

We should get some people in NASCAR duds, mullets and sh*tkickers to try to walk around NBC's headquarters. I bet the reactions would be a whole lot more overt than Dateline's stunt.

Perhaps a guy could dress as a conservative - business suit, shiny shoes - and wander around the Macalester College campus for a bit?

NBC: "Heeere, Bigot bigot bigot..."

NBC is outlooking for bigots.

Rebuffed in trying to find anti-arab bigots at a NASCAR race, Dateline NBC prowls the world looking for every possible permutation of bigotry.

'

Via Michelle Malkin

Gene Pitney

Gene Pitney is dead at 65.

Tom Spaundling notes

An early example of the singer/songwriter, Pitney had more success as a writer than a performer in the U.S. Ricky Nelson had a huge hit with "Hello, Mary Lou", the Crystals cut his "He's A Rebel", and Pitney wrote "Today's Teardrops", the B-side to Roy Orbison's million-selling "Blue Angel". His cover of a Jagger/Richards song, "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday", was the Rolling Stones' first appearance on a U.S. chart. Pitney was introduced to Mick and Keith by their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, and subsequently played maracas on the Stones' version of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away", and piano on other tracks.

In 1961, while working with legendary producer Phil Spector, he recorded the song that was to be his breakthrough hit,"Town Without Pity". The title track from the film of the same name, "Pity" was a hit record in 1962.

A Town Without Pity is, by the way, an amazing movie - not to be missed.

Pitney was an amazing singer. Trivia note: My old colleague and the most talented bass player I have ever met, Dave Elvin (with whom I worked on the Don Vogel Show twenty years ago), played as a sideman on one of Pitney's tours of Australia in the late eighties. Must have been amazing.

(Side note: one wonders how many obituary writers have spent their careers waiting to unleash the header "A Town Without Pitney")

(Via Scott Johnson).

Half-Clear On The Concept?

Transplanted Noo Yawker Katherine Macdonald writes the Strib about downtown's decay:

As a recent transplant from New York City, I can tell you honestly that the Block E area all the way to where Gameworks is resembles how Times Square used to look in the 1970s. (Do not even get me started on Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak's response to the shooting there.)

No, Nancy - please, do start on Rybak!

Because Rybak is to Minneapolis what David Dinkins was to New York City; a cookie-cutter product of a one-party system that has run the city for two or three generations, a system that systematically strips politicians of the guts it takes to address problems like we're seeing now in Minneapolis (or culls the ones with the guts and the vision from the herd, leaving only eunuchs and special-interest streetwalkers in the mayor's office and City Council).

What's worse? Minneapolis' "weak mayor" system makes it very difficult for a Guiliani-like figure to rise in Minneapolis; the mayor has relatively little power (compared to Saint Paul, especially, where the mayor wields much more oomph). Now - what do you suppose the odds are that eight Rudy Giulianis will simultaneously rise through the ranks of the (special-interest-hobbled) Minneapolis DFL, win election (one to the Mayor's office and seven to win the majority in the Council), and start making the tough choices and doing what needs to be done to stanch the city's bleeding?

Yes, Minneapolis needs more police and, yes, we need a "no tolerance" policy on criminals, but what about transforming downtown to be rid of the dingy bars, seedy strip clubs and obviously dangerous movie theater?

Oh, Katherine - you'll love this! Block E was the city's attempt at transformation! The old Block E was a famously blighted, deliriously seedy block of strip joints, peep shows, and Moby Dick's, neither the most famous nor the most dangrous bar in town - but the most famous dangerous bar and the most dangrous famous bar by a long shot, a place where you could yell "It's A Raid! on Saturday night and year 300 pounds of metal hit the floor, whose bouncers ripped arms off of people like they were kids tearing apart moths...

...well, I digress. The City Of Minneapolis, in its insub-finite wisdom, figured that dropping a food court and multiplex from a suburban mall into the middle of historically-seedy Hennepin Avenue would bring scads of tourists and their money, rather than giving the gang-banging vermin who'd made City Center a urban-atmosphere slalom course for the past twenty years a new pasture to poop on.

So Ms. McDonald - the Block E you see was Minneapolis' attempt to do to Hennepin Avenue and the old Gateway what Giuliani did with Times Square - only substituting money, marketing, and eminent domain for law-enforcement and adherence to a coherent vision.

This is not at all how I imagined downtown Minneapolis to be when moving here. How about some of the ritzier folks in the "safer" neighborhoods stepping in and doing something about this? Let's clean it up and get those folks who like to play with guns out of here.

One wonders what Ms. Macdonald would have them do.

I have visions of Al Franken, in from his Lake Of The Isles digs, wandering the skyway with a Maglite and a can of mace.

Sorry, Ms. MacD. I digress again. Most of the "ritzy folks" that are left in Minneapolis voted enthusiastically for the system you have now.

E-Lynching?

A couple of days ago, I ran a piece - along with a slew of other conservative bloggers - on remarks allegedly made by Prof. Eric Pianka which, a detractor claimed, showed Pianka eagerly looked forward to a pandemic wiping out 90% of the world's population. The initial report - circulated on Drudge - purported that Pianka was giddy with glee at the prospect.

It was red meat for the conservative blogosphere, a class A example of academic arrogance run amok. It was the kind of thing we love to pound on.

And it was wrong - or, according to the transcript of his original speech, so it seems.

Oh, it certainly seems Pianka has some odd ideas of his own:

Here's China. How would you like to live there? Look at all those little window A/Cs. They've got power. (Garbled). Humans can be packed in. There's China. You want to live like a termite? Are we termites? Come on. I want to be up on top of the hill where that chair is and I want to have some space around me.

Now cartoonists have had fun with this. People don't seem to care. We still allow you people to have more than two kids. Our tax system is completely backwards. We encourage you. We give you a discount for having kids. You should have to pay more when you have your first kid you pay more taxes. When you have your second kid you pay a lot more taxes, and when you have your third kid you don't get anything back, they take it all. Our tax system is bad; it's backwards.

And this:

Here's one more little upbeat thing, and unfortunately this isn't very much of an up, Herman Daly has identified the big problem, which is our economy. It's basically completely flawed. You've heard the politicians talk about the growing economy. Our economy is based on the principal of a chain letter, a pyramid scheme. They cannot work. The bubbles always burst. And the bubble is going to burst.

And it's bursting right now in terms of the oil. The price of gasoline isn't going to go down again. You need to get rich from this...He wants the economy to be sustainable, and he has the idea of an equilibrium economy. In an equilibrium economy, every one of us would leave this earth in exactly the same shape it was when we came into it. None of us are doing that. None of us.

Uh, mainstream economists think he's a nut, he's a kook — they just ignore him. Mainstream economists, the economists that advise our politic (political) figures, have believed completely in grow, grow, grow growth-mania — impossible economics.

So if your have a leaning towards economics here's a challenge for you. Economics has to be reinvented. Herman Daly's published four books on it. He has to get some people on his side. People have to think. They can't just keep behaving like sheep thinking resources are ever expanding. They've got to realize that the resources are ever retracting, and we're running out of everything that matters. And I mean everything — oil, food, clean air, clean water.

To give you a brief idea - the guy still takes Paul Ehrlich seriously. Y'know, Paul Ehrlich - the guy who said India was going to be a famine-wracked wasteland by 1980, the guy who said America would see food riots by the mid-eighties.

But one thing he didn't do, if you read the transcript, was cackle with glee as reported in the initial piece.

Longtime commenter Thorley Winston noted:

Mitch, rather than being upset with Pianka OVER SOMETHING THAT HE NEVER SAID, we ought to be royally pissed off that (a) an a$$hole like Forrest Mims smeared someone and (b) so many on our side of the aisle were so quick to believe this smear because it fit within their own worldview over what they think is the dominant culture within many universities...We do our own side more harm than good by piling on to say nothing of the harm to the country and scientific inquiry in general when we allow this sort of garbage to go on unchallenged or worse, perpetuated by people on our side of the aisle.

Very true.

There is more than enough factual material to criticize out there.

And I apologize for joining the mob. Getting logrolled is one thing; joining in the logrolling, to say the least, is chagrinning.

Wages Of Deceit

The left - and the media - whipped a fair chunk of the nation into a frenzy last autumn in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, passing on rumors as news, and closing ranks behind Democrat mayor Ray Nagin and governor Kathleen Blanco. The negigence of the local and state officials was, in effect, covered up (but for the efforts of the alternative media); the tales of corruption-siphoned money and plans left unimplemented at the local and state levels buried beneath lurid, tall tales of carnage in the Superdome and an Antoinette-like legend of the feds leaving New Orleans to die.

It's been my belief all along that the Democrats - at least, the extreme wing of the party that's gained such sway over the party in the past five years - are playing the "Big Lie" game; repeat a lie (or enough lies) often enough that they become accepted as truth. Actually, it's simpler than that; they just have to toss enough out there, scattershot, to convince enough of their own people and the muddle-headed undecided to keep the true believers in an eternal state of conflict with...everyone else.

It seems that, as regards disasters (natural or man-made), it's working.

Someone posted this email on a Saint Paul politics email forum:The Iraq war?

OK, I digress. Or she digressed. Anyway, yes; the plan (according to some of the public health people I've talked with - is that one is pretty much on one's own.

As, indeed, one pretty much always is. I grew up in North Dakota; a family had to be prepared to go it alone for days at a time in case a blizzard whipped up. A good blizzard could keep a farm or small town isolated from the rest of the world for days. It's a fact of life; one's foremost responsibility in life is to protect one's family. More on that below.

I liked the > government support when we had Democrats in charge - > grump, grump!

One wonders - how would suspect a Democrat administration would treat an epidemic any differently. But the decay of this nation's Civil Defense infrastructure was, to say the least, a bipartisan piece of negligence - one that to some extent we're paying for now.

I say "bipartisan" in the interest of seeking clarity - but the whole notion that Civil Defense should be abandoned came from the idea that nuclear war was the disaster for which we planned, and it was unsurvivable (so said the naysayers), ergo why bother planning or preparing for any problem?

1) Will city water and sewage still be working?

One should ALWAYS assume that city services can go south on you. Even in the best of times, city utilities can pack up. Over the winter, a benzine spill left the city of Harbin, China without city water for weeks. To say "it couldn't happen here" is foolish optimism. It is prudent to keep a couple of days worth of drinking water stored up even in the best of times.

5) Can we organize food and water drop offs for houses with really sick people?

I'd suspect that depends on who "we" is. It's a good time to be a
member of a church (inclusively stated; synogogues, mosques, ashraams, temples, covens and cabals all qualify). They have always served that role, and odds are good that, just as in New Orleans, they'll continue to.

Here's the part that I really really frosted my cookies:

Last I
> heard, the Bush federal pandemic plans were to shoot people.

And...

The federal government kept help OUT of New Orleans.

I just sat, slack-jawed, for a moment or two after I read that.

It's hard to read this as anything but proof that the Big Lie strategy is "working" in the sense that it's created (among those zealous or dim enough to be persuaded) that the Feds - the most inertia-prone institution in this nation - are prone to swinging from unquestioning benificence to unbridled malignancy over the change of a president; worse, that people (some people, anyway) believe the tall tales passed by an dubiously-competent media (cannibalism, firefights in the streets of NOLA and so on) in the bag for a local and state government whose own incompetence and corruption led to people dying the buses that were supposed to carry them to safety marinaded in flood waters.

With a potential pandemic coming on, frankly, one of my biggest worries is that we have a people still conditioned, largely, to believe the news media. And the media showed, during Katrina, that they don't deserve that trust. I do NOT trust the mainstream media to get the truth of this story out. I also have my doubts about government at ALL levels.

Which is why I ask questions.

The letter continued:

I think we should have a plan the does not invite the federal government, allow Canada to help instead.

If, heaven forfend, the bird flu (or some other disease) makes the leap and becomes a human epidemic, it'll be interesting to see how Canadian socialized medicine - already creaking under the load of providing routine care to Canadians - copes with the epidemic (which will certainly not respect borders), or, for that matter, if we'll hear the truth about the Canadian response from our mainstream media.

It doesn't matter what party you believe in, or what letter your elected officials put after their name; government is government is government, and keeping YOU, as an individual, alive is not the top item on its agenda (preserving *order* is; the two goals are not always the same); on a good day, it's #2. You are ALWAYS, at the end of the day, on your own.

Which doesn't stop me from asking questions of our government. More on that tomorrow.

A Nation of Drama Queens?

Conservative talk radio is abuzz with the story; a Manhattan cineplex pulled the trailer for the movie United 93 because, according to Newsweek, it's all just too soon:

In New York City, where 9/11 remains an open wound, the response was even more dramatic. The AMC Loews theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints. "One lady was crying," says one of the theater's managers, Kevin Adjodha. "She was saying we shouldn't have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong ... I don't think people are ready for this."

Or, as the Defamer (motto: "We're big, but we're not necessarily bright") says:

A theater in New York City has yanked the trailer for Universal's United 93 over concerns that people aren't ready for Hollywood to lend its trademark delicate touch to a national tragedy still fresh in people's minds, even if the movie is being released later this month one way or the other. The studio, however, isn't planning to recall or alter the preview footage, feeling it's a "responsible" and "fair" representation of the totally non-exploitative entertainment product to follow.

One wonders if Syriana or Fahrenheit 911 qualified as "non-exploitative entertainment product".

Concerns about the trailer aside, the most important question isn't really if America is "ready" for a movie about the terrorist attacks--it's if we're ready for what will inevitably follow if the movie's box office reveals mainstream acceptance of the industry's 9-11-centered projects. Should United 93 open big, prepare yourselves for a romantic comedy about the unlikely chemistry between a charming conspiracy theorist (played by Charlie Sheen, naturally) and Reese Witherspoon's young, spunky widow of the attacks.

Y'know, I have little doubt that someone in Hollywood is watching the returns from United 93 for that exact reason.

I also have little doubt that it'd go over like an Arianna Huffington centerfold anywhere between Bakersfield and the Hudson River (the "Defamer"'s assumptiosn aside).

It's a Crazy Day

Family-maintenance stuff going on. Light blogging until later.

'Grats, Ed!

Ed talks us through a typical day in his life:

...I came to Washington DC tonight. The Week Magazine selected me as Blogger of the Year...my friends from Power Line...The magazine flew me out here ...put me up at an excellent hotel...Andrew Mellon Auditorium...Nick Kristof...Mike Luckovich...I rode over to the dinner with Nick...had an opportunity to talk to him...We were joined by Michael Massing...Mark Tapscott and Jonathan Last joined me...my Weekly Standard editor ...Paul Mirengoff from Power Line was on hand ...John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay...made for great company during the predinner drinks. Arianna Huffington...Michael Massing...Tony Blankley ...made a point to tell me how much he enjoys the blog...Margaret Carlson from Time gave me a splendid introduction...the plethora of Michaels back stage -- Luckovich, Massing, Mike McCurry...Saddam...

Keep plugging away, there, Ed!

And, sincerely - congratulations!

Export Sanity Now

Nat Hentoff notes the NYTimes' odd juxtaposition - running an editorial condemning the government of Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur...:

"After the Holocaust, the world vowed it wouldn't stand back and allow genocide to happen again. Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda showed how empty that promise was. . . . Is this really what we have come to? The United Nations has described the carnage as the world's biggest humanitarian crisis but continues to prove itself completely useless at doing anything to stop it.

"In the Security Council, China protects Sudan. Europe, for its part, has been inert."

...while accepting a large, full-color advertisment (and $900,000) from that same government, extolling the virtues of Sudan as an investment opportunity.

Hentoff quotes Nick Kristoff:

"It is brutally demoralizing for people in these villages to be hunted down as if they were wild beasts, to have their children pulled from their arms and thrown into burning huts. But we should be just as demoralized by our own indifference. The shame belongs not to the good people of Darfur and Chad, but to ourselves."

Hentoff, for his part, is publicizing a rally to draw attention to the genocide:

The organizers and participants in the April 30 Washington "Rally to Stop Genocide" are, to say the least, not indifferent. And by April 30, the Save Darfur Coalition expects to have at least a million postcards to send to George W. Bush from its Million Voices postcards campaign (you can sign an electronic Million Voices card at savedarfur.org: click on "Million Voices for Darfur"). This is the postcard:

"Dear President Bush: During your first year in the White House, you wrote in the margins of a report on the Rwandan genocide, ' Not on my watch.' I urge you to live up to those words by using the power of your office to support a stronger multinational force to protect the civilians of Darfur."

The president is making a lot of speeches to lift his poll ratings. Can't he find time for one to save the survivors in Darfur?

Here's hoping.

It's enough to make one cynical:

The New York Times says it took nearly a million dollars from bloody Khartoum in its "strong belief" that "all pages of the paper . . . must remain open to the free flow of ideas . . . [but] we do not endorse the politics . . . or actions . . . or the character of [the country's] leaders."

I won't be surprised— although no less disgusted— to see a bountiful special advertising Times supplement paid for by Robert Mugabe on how the people of Zimbabwe enjoy unprecedented prosperity and a free press under his deeply compassionate reign. That should cost $2 million.

Consistency in fighting genocidal, eliminationist totalitarianism at all levels - the media, the UN, the feds, and throughout society in general - would be truly priceless.

Yeah, This Will Fix Things`

Couric leaves Today.

The bold move simultaneously forces NBC to find a new team for "Today," television's most profitable news program, and gives CBS News President Sean McManus a major success in his effort to lure more stars to his beleaguered news organization.

Right. That's what news needs. Star power.

Meredith Vieira of the daytime chat show "The View" has emerged as the leading candidate to team with Lauer. Vieira, a former CBS News reporter who won a Daytime Emmy as host of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," had previously turned down offers to return to news since joining "The View."

I actually have to look closely to tell the difference between Couric and Vieira.

Wait'll John Stewart Gets A Hold Of This

The Strib asks Minnesota's leading epidemiologists whether they're stockpiling food and supplies against the bird flu epidemic.

The answers - and the article as a whole - are sobering:

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota
Stockpiling? Yes.

Favorite item: His backyard well.

Advice: Stockpile prescription drugs.

Osterholm, an infectious- disease specialist and a guru on disaster planning, takes all this advice with several large grains of salt.

"It's a lot about reassurance," he said. Health officials are trying to "scare people into their wits, not out of them," he said. But at the same time, governments don't want people to lose hope and do nothing. There are no easy answers, he said. For example, there is no point in stockpiling unless you plan to stay in your house.

"And we have no idea for how long," he said. If you think you will self-quarantine, then the whole family has to do it. If even one person goes to work they'll likely bring home an infection, he said.

As I noted a couple of years ago, I probably have a couple weeks' supply of food in my house just from random overbuying of canned goods.

The more interesting question - what are some of our larger local public institutions doing to plan for the apparently-inevitable pandemic.

More on that later.

Hear The Horsemen

On the other hand, perhaps apocalypse is right around the corner:

An Indian movie director said he hopes to persuade Paris Hilton to play the role of Nobel laureate and prospective Catholic Saint, Mother Teresa, in an upcoming film.

"Her features resemble Mother Teresa," director T. Rajeevnath told AFP from the southwestern coastal state of Kerala.

The filmmaker said Hilton is on his shortlist after a computer-generated image showed a close facial match between the hotel heiress and the Albanian-born nun.

I suppose if they could make Courtney Love look classy, anything's possible...

Pianka Pianka Burnin' Hate

It takes a lot to make me angry,

Really, really angry.

The guy in this story succeeds with flying colors.

There was a Tom Clancy novel - Rainbow Six, I think - where a group of supremely arrogant domestic ecoterrorists engineered a supervirus to wipe out most of mankind (except for them, of course), leaving the earth to return to its pristine state (except for them, of course).

Too far-fetched?

Hardly.

A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead.

"Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine"; Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his "doomsday talk", a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization.

Though his statements are admittedly bold, he's not without abundant advocates. But what may set this revered biologist apart from other doomsday soothsayers is this: Humanity's collapse is a notion he embraces.

Indeed, his words deal, very literally, on a life-and-death scale, yet he smiles and jokes candidly throughout the lecture. Disseminating a message many would call morbid, Pianka's warnings are centered upon awareness rather than fear.

"Awareness" that he gets off on death, I suspect.

I guess there are two types of people in the world; people who want or try to prevent catastrophe, and scum who enjoy the thought of it.

I know how some of you get cranky whenever I suggest that academics should be questioned - by students or other mere non-tenured mortals - on what they teach.

But I sincerely, truly hope to have the chance to debate this gabbling moron someday.

UPDATE: Pianka claims he was taken "out of context".

His chief critic disagrees:

Pianka said that doesn't mean he wants most humans to die.

However, Forrest Mims, an amateur scientist, author and chairman of the Texas Academy of Science's environmental science section, told The Associated Press there was no mistaking Pianka's disdain for humans and desire for their elimination in the speech he heard.

"He wishes for it. He hopes for it. He laughs about it. He jokes about it," Mims said. "It's got to happen because we are the scourge of humanity."

Pianka was expressing his own opinion, University of Texas spokesman Don Hale said.

"Dr. Pianka has First Amendment rights to express his point of view," Hale said. "We have plenty of faculty with a lot of different points of view and they have the right to express that point of view, but they're expressing their personal point of view."

Stop it, Hale. This is not a Free Speech issue. Nobody's saying that he has no right to speak.

Merely that wishing for the death of 90% of humanity makes him a worthless piece of demi-human crap.

Simple.

Soldier of Waaaaah

Michael Medved's famous quote about the original Basic Instinct, "basically, it stinks", by most accounts applies in spades to its sequel, Basic Instinct II, which is currently strangling itself at the box office.

To director Paul Verhoeven - who has directed classics (Soldier of Orange, Robocop) as well as stinkers ( Showgirls, Starship Troopers), there's only one possible explanation; President Bush and those dang conservatives:

Paul Verhoeven, director of the first "Basic Instinct" (which scored $353 million worldwide) as well as the widely ridiculed "Showgirls" (now regarded as something of a camp classic), attributes the genre's demise to the current American political climate.

"Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," said the Dutch native. "Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends."

Scribe Nicholas Meyer, who was an uncredited writer on 1987's seminal sex-fueled cautionary tale "Fatal Attraction," agrees, noting that the genre's downfall coincides with the ascent of the conservative political movement.

"We're in a big puritanical mode," he said. "Now, it's like the McCarthy era, except it's not 'Are you a communist?' but 'Have you ever put sex in a movie?'"

Hm. Where can I find transcripts of those hearings?

Paul? Nick?

Could it be there's another explanation?

For producer JC Spink, the genre's demise has little to do with politics, scripts or willing talent and everything to do with the Internet, which became ubiquitous in American homes around the same time studio executives were suffering through such debacles as "Body of Evidence," "Showgirls" and "Jade."

"Why pay $10 to see something at the movies that you can see for free on the Internet?" Spink asked. "I think the genre is suffering because sex is more pervasive in our society now than it was 10 years ago, from Vanity Fair ads to reality TV. I mean, there's porn stars on reality TV."

I suppose that's Bush's fault, too?

An Eternity of Melchizedek?

In the latest Wu-Tang Clan news, Jackie Harvey Lloyd Grove notes:

Wu-Tang Clan founder Robert Diggs — aka RZA (pronounced "rizza") — just settled his sticky divorce from his wife of nearly six years, Eboni Mills. Court papers filed in New Jersey indicate that within months of his July 2000 marriage to Mills — with whom he has four children — two different women had his kids out of wedlock.

Raindia Diggs was born March 27, 2000, and Pranda Diggs was born Aug. 1, 2000...

I'm not one of those people - usually but not always conservatives - who rip on the sometimes-fanciful names that people - actors and entertainers as well as, stereotypically, some afro-American parents - give their kids. You wanna have some fun with your kids' names? As long as you live in a community that will, for the next 60-100 years, be very forgiving and understanding of your flight of fancy, go ahead and name your child "Scout" or "Apple" or...

...and the children of RZA and Mills have equally interesting names: Shaquasia, Melchizedek, Understanding and Eternity Diggs. Attorneys for both parties declined to comment...

...presumably as re the divorce, but with names like that perhaps the toddlers have already retained counsel.

As should Grove himself:

...but I wish everybody involved understanding for eternity.

That's gonna cost you.

You Have To Fold The Meat To Get It On The Bread

Minneapolis education dollars in action:

The Peeblesmobile is history as far as Minneapolis public schools are concerned.

The district turned the Cadillac SUV once leased by former superintendent Thandiwe Peebles over to a dealer earlier this month. The district paid the dealer $9,788 to buy out the remainder of the 48-month lease.

The district assumed responsibility for the vehicle, originally valued at $48,860, as part of the buyout of Peebles' contract that accompanied her Jan. 27 resignation. That decision aroused considerable public comment.

It astounds me; the same people who huff and puff about "CEO pay" are the same ones that seem to want to keep pumping money into school systems...that spend it on things like this.

I'm far from the first to note that urban superintendants are being treated like sports or showbiz stars these days; salaries (by public-employee standards) is are high and booming (PDF file). New Saint Paul superintendant Meria Carstarphen earned $170K in her previous job as "accountability officer" at the DC Public Schools (aside; do the DC schools have a reputation for being "accountable?" Everything I hear says a better word is "crappy"), and given that she's been named to the job before the contract was negotiated, that's gotta put her in a pretty good bargaining position. And then - like Harvey (six years) and Minneapolis' Thandiwe Peebles (less than a year) they're off to their next job (at a hefty raise), work undone.

To enact any meaningful change, a Superintendent would have to break through a lot of inertia; the unions, the school board (with the exception of Tom Conlon, a radical-DFL fiefdom), and so on. Given that none of them spend enough time to even affect the problems that afflict our schools, much less improve things, why the superstar treatment?

I didn't follow the reign of Thandiwe Peebles very closely. But I'll predict the following for Meria Carstarphen:

• She's gone in three years
• She'll add to the bureaucracy
• She'll launch a PR and lobbying campaign to show how short of money her over-half-billion-dollar district is
• When and if she doesn't get a bump as big as she wants, she'll lay off more teachers
• She'll trumpet minuscule increases in test scores as signs she's succeeding
• Those reports will ignore the fact that the scores are rising largely because lower-scoring kids are dropping out, especially low-scoring minority students
• She'll be gone in three years

Let's check back in a few years.

The Eddie Principle

We've encountered North Dakota's Fast Eddie Schultz before. He's the former conservative talk show host who turned liberal a few years back, to great acclaim and personal gain.

Did I say acclaim? In February of 2004 - six weeks before FrankennetAir America went on the air - Schultz' show was featured on the Today Show as "The left's next answer to Rush Limbaugh". He had, on that day, about six stations, mostly in tiny markets.

It's been uphill for Schultz since then - he airs in about 100 markets, including some large ones. As I've noted before, he's not generally as bad as Air America; he's actually paid some radio dues and learned how talk radio is done.

Still, as Brian Maloney shows, Fast Eddie and his people can play just as fast and loose with facts as his larger, more-capitalized counterparts.

Maloney quotes an LATimes puffpiece on Fast Eddie:

Still the competitor he was on the football field, Schultz's ready smile tightens when he talks about winning his time slot in major markets and proving the naysayers wrong. He would like the world to know that, according to the latest industry ratings, he is beating Sean Hannity head to head in San Diego, Denver, Seattle and Miami — and doing so with a tiny staff and a budget of less than $1 million a year. His national audience is approaching 2 million. (In Los Angeles, after a year on KTLK, his number of listeners has doubled and is estimated at just under 100,000.)

Unmentioned, as Maloney notes: KTLK's ratings "doubled" from a near-vanishing .3 to a merely untenable .8.

Schultz has watched ruefully as Christian broadcasting companies have bought stations in Phoenix, Missoula, Mont., and Charleston, S.C., where he was on the air and sent him packing. Protesting Mormons drove him off a station in Salt Lake City after only three weeks.

That's just too much.

Maloney retorts:

Regarding Christians working to knock off Schultz and liberal radio, that's a kooky conspiracy theory. It should have been edited out of the story.

Christian networks are buying up stations all over the place; it's a booming business. In many cases, they're the same kind of low-power, frequently unrated AM stations that also carry programs like Air America and Schultz (1330AM in the Twin Cities, Janet Robert's original frequency, was a good example, being bought by a Catholic network even before AA aired, meaning AA and Schultz had to change frequencies twice before settling, for now, at 950). Christian radio audiences - sort of like AM1280's audience - tend to have the sort of demographics and listening habits that can make an otherwise-marginal AM station into a fairly profitable investment.

Read the entire Maloney piece.

US Out Of Minneapolis

Rambix reports on a shooting/murder in downtown Minneapolis - hours ahead of the Deadtrees, as usual.

A commenter quips "So now going to a movie on a Friday night constitutes a high-risk lifestyle".

So it seems.

Crazy Day

Off to the 66B GOP convention, to which I'm a delegate.

It'll be a brief appearance, of course - gotta get out to White Bear Lake Superstore for today's show with Ed. C'mon out and buy a car!

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXVII

It was moving day. I was leaving my first apartment and moving into a house I was going to share with a bunch of women I'd gone to college with, down by Lake Harriett.

I took the day off from work, and started packing. It didn't take me long. When I moved to the Cities everything I had fit into a couple of bags. I'd added a couple in the last five months. My mattress lashed onto the roof of my car. my guitars, per usual, rode in the passenger seat. Everything I owned still fit into my '73 Malibu - just not as easily as it used to.

I drove over to the new place, over on Wentworth Avenue, in the mid-forties. Home sweet home was a semi-finished basement; panel walls, linoleum tile floor, a gas heater. That was about it.

It took me a grand total of about ninety minutes to load my stuff, drive from 38th and Minnehaha to the forties on Wentworth, unload, and pop the cork on a bottle of Stroh's. I was done with all of it by about 9AM.

Then, the girls showed up. They were moving, respectively, from Burnsville, Bloomington and Forest Lake. And they had vans full of stuff.

I drove one of their parents' vans on probably four trips that day; drive, load, drive, unload. I hadn't learned it in college, but it became clear in spades that day; women collect lots of stuff.

By the end of the day, my dingy basement was a blessed oasis of minimalism.

And it was all mine!

And the #5 Problem That Would Be Solved...

...by reading Nihilist, according to Jess at Blind Cavefish...

Me: What did you see?

Julie: [In a tone that suggests I won't know what she's talking about] Brokeback Mountain? Have you seen it?

Me: Yeah. Did you like it?

Julie: I did. I had never heard of, though. [Hot Irish Boyfriend] picked it out.

Me: Wait, you've never heard of Brokeback Mountain?

Julie: No. Should I have?