Shot In The Dark

Crushing of Dissent - Minneapolis-Style

Via "Minneapolis Upside Down", we see that Minneapolis City Councilman Don Samuels and mayor R.T. Rybak favor free speech.

Well, the right kind of free speech, anyway...:

Samuels in particular emerged as an unapologetic opponent of unsupervised free speech . Rybak made clear his desire to censor cable access television. If Republicans had spewed this bilge, Democrats would come unglued, crying out against the assault on civil liberties. [And Twin Cities leftybloggers would snark as if their lives depended on it. - Ed]

Mark these words from Herr Samuels:

. . .While I do value our freedoms. . . there are some of them that our community has not demonstrated the responsibility to bear. . . and. . .one, for me, would be certain freedoms within this new electronic category which has been as lethal as the guns that are pervasive on our streets. . . . I don't think that we have demonstrated the capability to deal with this freedom, neither by the ones who perpetrate it as weapons or by the ones of us who are called upon to oversee the responsible utilization of these media.

Until that day comes, and until, personally speaking, I . . . cease to be a victim of the irresponsible use and incapacity to supervise the freedoms that are now brought to us by these incredible advances in technology, I will have to vote against--and again, again, and again--until we demonstrate responsibility and supervising capability for our new freedom.

The writer, Loosestife, adds some details:

A little context is in order here. Samuels clearly still smarts from the nasty election tussle that he went through in order to defeat Natalie Johnson-Lee for the 5th Ward seat he now holds. Samuels was not without fault in that fight, but "Pain is the eye of the beholder," as Mr. Samuels' new friend "Tough-Love" Tim Pawlenty has said.

If one watches the broadcast of this City Council meeting...one learns that Samuels is wielding his own privileged free speech as a weapon against civil libertarian 10th Ward representative Ralph Remington, who persisted in calling the Don on his bullshit.

This is a feud to watch--the complaint against Samuels, and the source of the "unbridled" free speech at his expense has been his insensitivity to African-Americans. Will African-American Remington and Jamaican immigrant Samuels play out some of the antagonisms still smoldering from the 5th Ward race?

Samuels speech set up comments by the Mayor wherein he makes clear his wish to rein in the free speech of City supported cable access--in the name of protecting his buddy, Samuels.

In classic management stylee, Rybak first says that "we" (meaning management) haven't done our job and then attacks the " people who run that television" for not doing their job in "fixing" the unbridled free speech of cable access programming. I can tell you from experience that there is more to come. Bosses don't talk this way without intending to f**k with the designated underlings. If you support public access television, start sending your notes to Mr. Rybak now.

For starters - if you support public access TV as a venue for free speech, you are insane; CATV exists by government charter, and is phenomenally prone to interference - and, if my days at Saint Paul Cable Access were any guide, are driven by an agenda that is fundamentally friendly to the likes of Rybak in the first place. Blogs remain the only genuinely, reliably independent grassroots media.

But forget that for now. There's a key principle at stake here; two powerful agents of Minneapolis' DFL-dominated one-party system (shaddap, Greens; you're not different enough in terms of end-effect from Minnepolis DFlers for it to count) have expressed a hostility to free, open speech.

If you live in Minneapolis, are you going to stand for this?

Fighting Crime: Not Up Minneapolis' Alley

Minneapolis is in the midst of an almost-record-setting crime wave that has bucked the national trend toward lower crime.

One answer? Make it illegal to walk through other people's alleys:

The proposal would prohibit anyone from walking in an alley who doesn't live on that block or who isn't a guest of someone who does. Police, paramedics and firefighters would be exempt, as would garbage haulers, meter readers, code inspectors and others whose jobs take them there.

In fact, it will affect mainly the law-abiding. Me? I love walking down alleys; you see more interesting stuff, usually, on a block's back alley.

Like most such measures, this would seem to be designed more to make city officials feel good than to actually do anything about crime. As some people in Minneapolis have figured out:

On a sun-rich Friday afternoon, Gordon Anderson walked down the paved alley on the 3400 block of Lyndale Avenue S. He said he has lived on the block for 20 years and that everyone in the neighborhood walks down alleys.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he said. "The whole country seems to be going to the Soviet Union, I'll tell you that."

Mr. Anderson, you are more correct than you think.

Of course, once the pointy-headed academics sound off...

Alleys originally were service entrances for houses, but architect Frank Lloyd Wright and other influences led to wider and shallower houses with garage entrances at the front of the lots, said Ann Forsyth of the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota.

"An alley tends to be blocked off from view," Forsyth said. "There's not often a real reason for people to be walking out there except to do anti- social things."

Really?

Like...walking?

Like talking with one's neighbors?

Minneapolis already has an ordinance that prohibits motorists from using alleys to bypass traffic congestion on city streets.

Wow.

A city that can plan so thoroughly as to allow the cops to bust someone for driving down an alley to escape gridlock (oops) can't figure out they need to keep police on the streets in the Red Zone?

Almost Inevitable

A few developments on the story of the TV shows that are stinging online predators:

• My misgivings had teeth: a court has ruled that the charges won't stick, at least in a Phoenix case that might have wider ramifications. There actually has to be a minor involved, and hte law also frowns on citizen groups, rather than cops, stinging the pervs. Bummer.
• I could have sworn I saw a promo for a series involving stings of online pervs. Anyone else see this?

One step back, and one step, on the other hand, back.

Worst Tech Ideas

For those of us who worked in high-tech, the dotcom boom was a little like the stadium siege "debate"; eventually, some dumb idea would leak through and suck you in.

Reading about The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Timebrought it all back to me.

I'd almost forgotten about some of the "winners" in this poll. Softram? Pointcast? The DiVX DVD? Windows ME? Bob?

I'm truly amazed, however, that neither of my dot-bombs made the list.

The first, in 1997, was for a website that "paid" you to read spam. The theory was this: you would fill out a "profile" explaining your personal interests, shopping habits and so on. The "Service" would send you targeted ads (in a proprietary viewer that'd occupy the top ribbon of your web browser) and direct email (on a website that worked like a webmail viewer). If you clicked on an ad or opened an email, the advertiser paid you.

And by "Paid", we mean at a rate that'd make an illegal immigrant turn up his nose and run away. A few of us figured it out once; if you clicked on ads 10 hours a day for a five day week, you'd make 20 dollars. Assuming your dialup connection would load six ads a minute. And assuming that 8,000 merchants would send you new ads every week. The scary part? That company convinced a lot of genuine heavy hitters to leave good jobs with real companies selling actual products.

Now, I'm going to go towel off with my Pets.com stock certificates.

I fully realize that once I make a joke about Pets.com, I will - no, will - get an email saying either:

• "My grandfather shot himself after losing his entire fortune on Pets.com"
• "Hey, don't you know that via a very obscure derivative, those of us who held onto our Pets.com stock are now multimillionaires?"

I am, respectively, shocked and overawed if that's the case, and please accept my condolences and/or amazement.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Elder linked to a work of staggering genius by John J. Miller - the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs of all time.

#1 on the list, naturally, is the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" - which happens to be among my three favorite songs of all time.

The list - and its companion list, presumably of songs 50 through 101 - makes a few stretchy calls ("Faithfully" by Journey? Surely you jest) and a few great grabs over the wall ("Bodies" by the Pistols? "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Stone? Awesome!), as well as lots of too-obvious-to-miss calls ("Taxman").

Read the original and the update, and you be the judge.

However - and please pass the word to Miler - any such list that fails to include "Due to Gun Control" by Willy DeVille is just plain wrong.

And JB Doubtless responds:

What a crock! Won't Get Fooled Again is about hippie disillusionment with the "Revolution."

J.B. knows The Who about as well as he knows the bagpipes. Pete Townsend embraced commercial success like few rockers before or since; The Who Sell Out lampooned rock critics and fans who, like crits and fanboys before and since, derided their favorite bands at the point where they began to succeed. This is the mark of a hippie?

Hippie? Pete Townsend kicked Abby Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock, precisely because he had no time for any of Hoffman's dozey yippie BS!

There aint a damn thing conservative about that song.

On the contrary: its' point - that there is no utopia, that anyone who claims to be able to create one is going to eventually screw you, and that at the end of the day the things around you - your friends and your family, your faith - are the only things that you can count on - is the most conservative point there is.

In its own way, it is more conservative than every allegedly-conservative "country" song spoonfed into the market in the past five years. There is no rational question about it.

Calling the list a stretch is too kind. Now on the country side there is no question as to what the songs mean. "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American Way"--that doesn't need a lot of nuanced understanding (and weed) to comprehend.

An if you put it to an oompah beat and sing it in German, you need even less nuance!

Oh, Yeah...

...like you couldn't see this coming...

Wetterling: "Echoooo (echoooo echoooooooo)"

Andy at Bachman Vs. Wetterling notes that the "Issues Page" on Wetterling's website is completely blank:

She’s running for Congress, for a seat she has already run for, in a District she already ran in. The issues are simple, and fixing a webpage is even easier.

I state again, what is Wetterling afraid of? Is she now going to revamp her issues now that the left wing race for the DFL endorsement is over?

That is a great question.

To get a DFL endorsement requires that you run somewhere to the left of Chairman Mao. To win a Senate seat in Minnesota increasingly requires one to be in the center, at the very least.

Where does Wetterling stand on issues?

I mean, besides childrens' welfare?

Still Curious

I've been asking the same question in this space for years, now.

I'll ask again.

Democrats: What do you stand for?

Your leaders can't articulate anything, and haven't for decades. We know you're against the President - fair enough.

What else?

And I don't mean the sort of pie-in-the-sky, feet firmly in the clouds BS that could just as easily come from a Green or an Independence Party loony.

No, give us specifics. If you get into the White House, or get a majority in either or both houses, what can the nation expect?

Leave a comment. BS will be taunted without mercy.

Cheer Up, Anders Gyllenhaal

My business is booming, yours is circling the drain, says the Financial Times:

The internet will this year overtake national newspapers to become the third biggest advertising medium by spend, according to authoritative forecasts.

By the end of 2007, internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers, the number two medium, but will still be well short of television, the biggest outlet in the £12bn-a-year media advertising market.

Yeah, it's the UK, but it'll happen here, too.

Just saying, Anders; I'm gonna need a caddy someday. Once I learn golf.

All is not lost.

Distrust But Verify

It was interesting over the weekend, watching some of the Sunday morning methane-fest participants become ever-more fully invested in the rehabilitation of Algore. Watching the McLaughlin Group on Sunday, I was getting ready to turn a hose on Eleanor Clift, who rhapsodized on how his gaining weight has given him even more gravitas as he moves to the left. Thank heavens for Tony Blankley, who noted that Gore is, was, and shall ever more be the worst campaigner on the national political scene today.

But I was curious about this bit here: it's been noted for half a decade that "environmentalist" Algore flies about in small, fuel-guzzling, pollution spewing jets, and caroms from event to event in a motorcade of Chevy Suburbans.

He said he was "carbon neutral" himself and he tried to offset any plane flight or car journey by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere".

Verifiable...how?

And he "purchases" these reductions?

Isn't that sort of like becoming "fat-neutral" by eating three McDonald's double cheeseburgers, but sponsoring someone in running a marathon?

Seriously - doesn't this exactly confirm the conservative-populist saw about people like Gore and his former boss, the Clintons - "Reforming" things for the little people that they can't' quite be bothered to partake in themselves?

"Purchasing" reductions?

Hey, can I pay someone to not gamble, drink, bang hookers and shoot smack, so I can get away with it?

Undue Consideration

I almost choked when I read Kate Parry's latest piece, tidying up a mess Sid Hartmann made:

It's a dangerous thing for anyone to assume the motives of another person. No one can read another's mind or look into their heart.

For a journalist to do that and print the assumption without checking it out is beyond dangerous. It's unprofessional, risky behavior that can damage the newspaper's credibility.

Assumptions about other peoples' motivations?

Ms. Parry; perhaps you think Nick Coleman is still with the Pioneer Press?

Just curious...

Murtha: Judge, Jury, Jailer

Most of the conservative blogosphere has noted that the Haditha incident, if true in its specifics, is a horrible thing, and a big moral black eye to our war effort.

Most, also, have noted the unseemly speed with which the media has accepted John Murtha as judge, jury and jailer:

In the United States, we have a civil and military court system that relies on an investigatory and judicial process to make determinations based on evidence. The system is not served by such grand pronouncements of horror and guilt without the accuser even having read the investigative report.

Mr. Murtha's position is particularly suspect when he is quoted by news services as saying that the strain of deployment "has caused them [the Marines] to crack in situations like this." Not only is he certain of the Marines' guilt but he claims to know the cause, which he conveniently attributes to a policy he opposes.

Members of the U.S. military serving in Iraq need more than Mr. Murtha's pseudo-sympathy. They need leaders to stand with them even in the hardest of times. Let the courts decide if these Marines are guilty. They haven't even been charged with a crime yet, so it is premature to presume their guilt -- unless that presumption is tied to a political motive.

One would wish we could get beyond politics over this sort of thing.

It'd be a futile wish, unfortunately.

A Broken Chanter Reed...

...scuppered my big memorial day plan.

More on that in a bit.

Much of Minnesota will focus on the big Memeorial Day observances, especially those at Fort Snelling, where thousands of our veterans are buried.

There are other memorials, of course.

In January 1945, the submarine U.S.S. Swordfish was sunk in action on a "special mission" near Okinawa.

Nobody knows exactly how it sank; it might have been a depth charge attack from a Japanese plane or ship, or it could have struck a mine. 89 officers and men disappeared with the sub. As in the case of 21 of the 52 US subs lost during WWII (42 of them due to enemy action), with around 1,700 men aboard them, the Swordfish is listed "missing"; it went out on a mission, and just stopped reporting in one day. Nobody knows for sure where any of them sank or why, and it's likely as not nobody ever will.

After the war, an association of US submarine veterans set up memorials to one of the sunken or missing subs in every state.

Minnesota's contribution, in Como Park in Saint Paul, is to the Swordfish.

Every year, the US Submarine Veterans association leaves flowers at the monument (as in the image above).

I'd hoped to play Amazing Grace there, today. Maybe next year.

Remember our veterans today.

Minnesota Tea Party

MN Tea Party.

Join it.

Peggy Lee

My hometown, Jamestown ND, spawned a number of famous poeple - Western writer Louis L'Amour, disc jockey Shadoe Stevens (older brother of the guy who got me into radio, as it happens), California Angels center fielder Darren Erstad...

...and Peggy Lee, who was actually born about a block from the house I grew up in, and where my Dad still lives.

Scott Johnson pays homage:

Lee had an improbably winding path to success from her hometown of Jamestown, North Dakota, to Fargo (where she took on her show business name), to Minneapolis and St. Louis, and to Chicago, where she was discovered by Benny Goodman at the moment he needed a replacement for Helen Forrest. In between St. Louis and Chicago were a couple of premature attempts on Hollywood. Once she caught on with Goodman in 1941, however, she never looked back.

She wrote several of her most successful songs, such as "It's a Good Day." She equally owned the songs she covered, including of course Little Willie John's "Fever" and the Leiber-Stoller composition "Is That All There Is?" They carry her personal stamp every bit as much as her own numbers.

Call it adolescent self-centeredness, but I never really started appreciating Lee's music until this past year or so.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Kelly The Patriette - whose husband is in Iraq with the MN National Guard - is expecting.

No, any day now:

Still no baby here yet. My due date was yesterday and not even a contraction. Ho hum. I am trying to rest as much as I can, since I know that at any moment, my rest may come to a swift end, but I am getting anxious to meet my daughter! I'm hoping she'll make her appearance before the end of the week, but we'll see.

Note to Kelly: It won't be the last time you wait for her...

The East Side of Life

I made it to Joe Hansen's wake last night.

I missed all the radio guys - I saw most of KSTP-AM's staff had signed the guest book when I got there.

I'd never met Joe's family, although there was a guy there that was pretty obviously Joe's brother.

The funeral home was out on White Bear Avenue, out on Saint Paul's East Side. If you're not from the Twins - or even just Saint Paul - the East Side is a different world; you feel in so many ways like you've dropped into the 1960's. And not the Haight Ashbury sixties, mind you - the real decade, with corner groceries and generations-long family loyalties and taverns where guys have worn the grooves from their butts into the naugahyde stools. Never too tony, never too awful, always a little run down and tough, always with a big heart.

If you knew Joe Hansen, of course, the guy just screamed East Side; something about his vaguely-Chicago accent even marked him, in my accent-obsessed mind. The mementoes at the wake - hockey pictures, class photos, and so on - recalled Tom Mischke's classic observance of East Side life; "People on the East Side just play hockey, work on cars and drink beer!".

I've been gratified by the response to my piece on Hansen yesterday - especially by the postings by other people.

In particular, I loved this piece:

Reading the story of Hanson's life and career, I was struck by a sudden case of "what if." You see, I too, once chased the dream called radio. As a young man, I spent more than five years in the medium, working my way through college as a disc jockey, newscaster and football play-by-play man at small market stations in the south and Mid-West. During that interlude, I covered much of the same territory described by Mitch Berg; long nights and weekends at some podunk station in the middle of nowhere, spinning records or making sure that some syndicated program aired at the right time.

...

If the work environment was bad, wages were usually worse. Rush Limbaugh was reportedly fired seven times in his early broadcast career, and found himself (at age 30) earning far less money than he had a decade earlier, as a morning DJ in Pittsburgh. Another broadcast icon, Sean Hannity, earned $1,000 a month as a talk show host in Huntsville, AL in the late 1980s--about the same thing I earned as a radio news director at the start of that decade. Of course, that was a step up from my first, full-time radio job, fresh out of college, with a bachelor's degree in journalism. That gig paid a princely $900 a month--in 1979.

But there was always the dream. Most of us had a mental image of our career, a path that would carry us from the small markets to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, preferably by the age of 30. For me, a couple of years at the local tea kettle station would get me to Little Rock, Shreveport, Springfield, or Jackson, MS. From there, I'd try to land a job in Memphis, Birmingham, or Nashville, followed by a stint in St. Louis, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, or Dallas. After that, a coveted gig at WLS, WABC, or KHJ, and big-money radio stardom. Sure, it was a pipedream, but it was something to keep you going when payday at your 1,000 watt AM station was two days away, and you had $1.50 in your pocket.

It's impossible to explain the seductiveness of a business that treats people so very badly. It's like having an abusive wench as the first great love of you life (indeed, that's how I describe my on-and-largely-off 13 year radio career; my first love. Goodness knows I rebounded hard enough when she dumped me.

And like when that first love dumps you, you learn things. I'm thankful in many ways that I was in radio first; the business teaches you to never assume you'll have a job, much less counting on one - and above all, to keep yourself marketable. It's a lesson a lot of people could stand to learn.

Which was a tough lesson when I was 17 and getting whacked for the first time (of six), but tough lessons are still good ones.

Read the whole thing; it's like a time machine back into my own life, in its own way...

Forget About Those Surly Bonds

Listened to Sam Seder filling on the Janeane Garawful show last night.

His thesis? That the government is going to take down a corrupt Democrat for every corrupt Republican that surfaces.

"If it weren't for all those corrupt Republicans, they wouldn't have anything on us!"

Doesn't seem like much of a defense.

Or a talk show.

The Road Warrior: RIP Joe Hansen

Someone left a comment today, and I finally confirmed it: Joe Hanson has passed away. I don't know any of the details yet, but I can certainly guess.

We'll come back to that, maybe, later.

I worked with Joe twice - at KDWB-AM, back in 1990-92, and again for the first year when he was the engineer/producer for the Northern Alliance. He's most familiar to people in the Twins, of course, as Tom Mischke's producer "The Jackal", and especially as Jason Lewis' longtime producer and foil.

Joe was an anachronism in so many ways. I hesitate to write that; it's a whack upside the head to think someone who's roughly your own age could be an "anachronism" of any sort. But that was Joe. We started in radio at more or less the same time - and by "time", I mean "Geological epoch", a time when radio stations by law required someone in the studio every moment they were on the air, even if only to watch the needle bob while Larry King's show droned on, and to fire off commercials in the era before computers became (putatively) reliable enough to do the job. An epoch where bright-eyed kids just out of Brown Institute with their freshly-ironed First Class licenses would mingle at innumerable small-town stations with guys who'd been in the racket for, I dunno, 15 or 20 years; guys who'd started in similar stations a decade or two earlier; guys whose early talent and drive took them a ways up the food chain, from places like Blue Earth Minnesota and Cody Wyoming and Virginia Minnesota and Rapid City South Dakota to places like Duluth or Sioux City or Billings, and then maybe for a glorious, overextended, overheated year or six months or six weeks maybe to Phoenix or Columbus or the Twin Cities. There, a stint on evenings or graveyards would shine in their memories like a long-lost love, a brief interlude in their lives where they'd step out of a studio into the city lights, look at the skyline in the distance (or around them), light up a Lucky and drive to the bar and feel for a brief stretch of their lives like they were on the brink of making "it" in the big show.

The stories usually continued the same way; a change in program directors (or, sometimes, just a badly-timed bender or fight or on-air blooper) led to an abrupt firing, a few weeks of tending bar or working at a gas station while frantically calling old colleagues, finally rustling up a job working evenings in Duluth or Lincoln, Nebraska or Bismark, and thence to Butte Montana or Aberdeen South Dakota, and then...to the stool next to yours, soaking up the hard stuff, puffing on the Luckies.

You don't see many guys like that in the business anymore; satellite programming and "voice tracking" (hiring a big-market voice talent to do the interstitial bits between songs, which are then spliced together by computer) gutted the market for low and mid-level disk jockeys; changing FCC regulations and ubiquitous computers removed the need to have a "board op" on the premises (indeed today some stations are completely unmanned, 24/7).

Joe had already been a "road warrior" when we met at KDWB-AM in 1990; he'd worked all over Minnesota. Contacts had gotten him a job as a board operator at KDWB-AM - a miserable,slumming gig, watching the needle bob and playing commercials during satellite-fed oldies programming from LA. It kept Joe in the smokes and drinks, barely. He was irrepressible, of course - the guy could drink Atomizer under the table and have room left over for another Frater of your choice - but he was a happy (if extremely boisterous) drunk, as I remember (and having been to a couple of KDWB Christmas parties, I do remember).

But it was there that Joe met Steve Konrad, program director at KSTP from 1991 to today (with a six-odd-year break in the middle). Joe was nothing if not a solid journeyman board operator, something KSTP hadn't had many of in years of hiring twinks just out of Brown Institute. Joe got Mischke started, and then moved over to any journeyman board jock's dream gig; producing Jason Lewis. The relationship was reportedly one of those that you dream about when you're plugging away at crap jobs like KDWB-AM - Joe had a solid role in the show's success, he was rewarded (by producer/engineer standards) well for it, and he developed a solid personal relationship with Lewis himself, truly a rare thing in the back-biting world of talk radio.

I met Joe the night I filled in for Bob Davis in 2003. It had to have been a personal peak; the money - for once in the straitened career of a road warrior - was mighty good, and the Lewis show was in peak form. Like all things in radio, it could not last.

I was privileged to work with Joe again, at the Patriot, for the first 12-odd months of the NARN. But I was worried, too; you could tell all was not well. He was working as a telemarketer for the State GOP. Joe's drinking hadn't slacked off at all. He started calling in late for shifts, and finally missed one entirely. Like all radio gigs, it ended with a telephoned pink slip.

Rumor (unconfirmed) had it that he lasted about a day at KTLK, for about the same reasons.

Sic transit gloria radio.

Radio is different these days; pasty computer programmers have replaced the board operators; talk show "producers" are mostly rank greenhorns (and they don't "produce" jack, or if they do they do it in the haphazard way of people trying to practice a craft they've never been properly taught - a role that people like Joe used to have at stations like...

...well, all of them.

All the best, Joe.

After The Walls Fell

Westover, in yesterday's PiPress and his blog, correctly characterizes the stadium debate as government winning a long (over a decade) siege; like being the last man standing at the Somme:

History is written by the winners. The Twins stadium is being called a "victory," which it is for those who believe the vitality of a community lies in the goodies government can deliver rather than in the industry of its citizens. It's a defeat for those who create the wealth used to build the stadium.

Make no mistake, all of you "Republicans" who voted to support this atrocity; it will be held against you in a court of public opinion. You may be able to BS people who don't pay much attention to these things with your ofay rationalizations; being able to BS people make syo no better than a DFLer. Please act accordingly.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman's National Great River Park, turning St. Paul into "one of the most beautiful cities in the nation," and creating a "more urban, more natural, more connected environment." I wrote that the mayor might be using his mayoral power to impose a vision on the community. Before the column even appeared the mayor confirmed it.

"We're no longer just going to allow anyone to make an independent judgment about what should happen in the city of St. Paul," the Pioneer Press quotes him as saying. "There has to be a community vision developed, and then we will proceed based on that vision."

Given the Twins success, is there any doubt that his vision, eventually, will come to pass?

In a dank grave somewhere in Beijing, Mao is smiling.

Seriously, all you "Republicans" who voted for the stadium: as much as we hector the left on "unintended consequences", have you even thought about the consequences of your actions? You have given boundless encouragement to the tax and spend set that still dominates so much of our state.

All of you - people who'd recoil at the notion of promoting "Social Engineering" - have given carte blanche to the social engineers.

Is there any doubt it's going to happen? Or that light rail along the Central Corridor is a done deal? Or that a plethora of "vibrant mixed-use developments" will replace organic neighborhoods?

Resistance may be futile, but it is the only option for people of integrity. For them, the Twins stadium legislation is neither a victory nor a compromise; it is a defeat. Perhaps communities, like individuals, can consume only so much cake before they start to feel sick. We can only hope.

Resistance is not futile. It's just incredibly complicated.

We - people who actually care about limited government - need to continue the work that Tim Pawlenty started four years ago (and seemingly gave up on last year); not just tinkering with the window-dressing of government, but changing the way Minnesotans see the government/human relationship.

This could be the first day of the rest of a miserable life - or it could be the point where we bottom out and start heading back up.

I vote for up.

Which means, unfortunately, that some of you rationalizing "Republicans" need to be voted out.

Nominations for the wall of shame?

What If They Have a Pointed Stick?

In the UK, it's not only illegal for the law-abiding citizen to own a gun; the citizens's right to self-defense has not only been grossly circumscribed; bad as these are, it's at least theoretically possible that citizens could be kept safe (if grossly oppressed) if the police and courts actually caught and prosecuted criminals.

Uh-oh. The Brit Home Office - in charge of domestic law enforcement among other things - has instructed cops to start letting petty felons and gross misdemeanors go with a warning, under certain circumstances:

Some serious offences - including burglary of a shop or office, threatening to kill, actual bodily harm, and possession of Class A drugs such as heroin or cocaine - may now be dealt with by caution if police decide that would be the best approach.

And a string of crimes including common assault, threatening behaviour, sex with an underage girl or boy, and taking a car without its owner's consent, should normally be dealt with by a caution, the circular said.

The Home Office instruction applies to offenders who have admitted their guilt but who have no criminal record.

They are also likely to be able to show mitigating factors to lessen the seriousness of their crime.

The instruction to abandon court prosecutions in more cases - even for people who admit to having carried out serious crimes - comes in the wake of repeated attempts by ministers and senior judges to persuade the courts to send fewer criminals to jail.

The reason, of course? The bureaucracy can't stuff any more people into the UK's prisons.

The Home Office circular to police forces has been sent amid a Government drive to reduce the number of cases coming before the courts.

A number of crimes - notably shoplifting - are now regularly dealt with by fixed penalty notices similar to a parking fine.

A whole range of offenders who admit traffic and more minor criminal offences will in future have their cases "processed" by new Government bureaucracies rather than by the courts.

At the same time judges and magistrates have been bombarded with instructions from the senior judiciary to send fewer criminals to jail.

Burglars and muggers should be spared prison more often, courts have been told, and last week sentencing authorities ordered a further "raising of the custody threshold" to keep out of prison more offenders who would in the past have been given up to a year in jail.

Wonks are involved, natch:

The new instructions to police on how to keep criminals out of the courts altogether are given in a 'Gravity Factor Matrix'.

This breaks down offences into four categories, with the most serious rated as four and the least serious as one.

For criminals over 18, who admit offences ranked at the third level of seriousness, the instruction is: "Normally charge but a simple caution may be appropriate if first offence".

Officers dealing with those who admit level two crimes are told: "Normally simple caution for a first offence but a charge may be appropriate if (there are) previous convictions or appropriate to circumstances."

The Home Office said the guidance had been circulated nationally because there had been regional anomalies in the way offenders were dealt with and these needed to be removed.

Disarmed populace; self-defence denied; criminals running amok; authorities not only impotent, but codifying their impotence?

Hm. Sounds like a city in a county whose top prosecutor is running for Senate...

Joel Rosenberg's LiveJournal

Warm-Hearted Condolences

The father of CH Truth, from the MOB blog Cold Hearted Truth, has passed away after a battle with cancer.

Condolences and prayers for the Truth family.

With Friends Like This...

Jimmy Carter endorses Bush's immigration policy:

Former president Carter, a Democrat and frequent critic of
President Bush, sees eye-to-eye with him on immigration.
ADVERTISEMENT

Carter on Wednesday called the Republican president's commitment to immigration reform "quite admirable," saying he agrees with Bush's support of a system that would eventually grant citizenship to some illegals

Tony Snow has his work cut out for him.

Lewis

After months of rumors, it's looking official - Jason Lewis is bound for KTLK.

Maybe. Probably.

Nobody local has announced anything, but he's announced it on his show on WBT in Charleston:

"...I guess it was a Biblical passage that said 'this too shall pass'." Jason started. "I've got an announcement today that is very difficult to utter...but I've reached the decision with my family that it's time to go home." Jason stressed that his decision was a personal one, and is not related to any perceived pressure from elected officials or station management.
(Listen to his entire statement below in the Show Audio Section) Jason will continue to work through the end of his contract, which ends in October, or until WBT management can indentify the new host

On the one hand, it'll be good to see another nail pounded in the coffin of the "Conservative talk is dead" theory (and, in fact, that Lewis is a hot property tends to scupper the idea in the first place).

On the other hand, Beatle Bumper Friday gives me an almost uncontrollable urge to have Sex Pistol Saturday.

The real question: When will Lewis air? The natural assumption is PM drive (replacing Janecek and Lambert,) - but lore had it Lewis left KSTP at least partly to get out of working drives and evenings while his children are little.

Bumping Pat Kessler's 9-noon show? Possible - but there's not as much sales revenue in mid-days as in the drives, and it's not hard to imagine that Lewis is going to be charging a bundle.

It should be interesting.

(Via Brad Carlson)

Minneapolis City Council to Blog?

Part of the Minneapolis City Council is thinking about running blogs:

Perhaps not surprisingly, four of the five authors are first-term council members. Some of them, like the Eighth Ward's Elizabeth Glidden, expressed excitement about being able to communicate with constiuents in a manner more fluid and immediate than, say, electronic newsletters. And others, like Gordon's aide Garwood, pointed out that with a comments section, the blogs would be more of a forum for council members to hear from the people for a change.

You iknow what'd be better than comments? Trackback - so that Minneapolis' constituents can see what other blogs are writing. I wonder if the City of Minneapolis wants to expose its constituents to the writing of the likes of Rambix and Anti-Strib.

This was what concerned some of the more luddite-leaning members of the ways and means committee. Diane Hofstede (Third Ward), for instance, worried about defamation of character lawsuits. [Luddite? It's realistic! Read any of the Twin Cities' leftyblogs for a day or two! - Ed.] And Sandy Colvin Roy (12th Ward) joined in with a chorus of concern. "My ears are still ringing," Colvin Roy said, "from the lawsuit we're still facing on the red-light cameras."

All the more reason to install the blogs; it might cure some of the City Council's tone-deafness and insularity, the stuff that led to stupid calls like the red light cameras, Robert Olson, and any support for things like R.T. Rybek's policies in the first place.

Still, most concerns were assuaged--comments sections can be patrolled and controlled, after all--and the committee approved the resolution and sent it on to the full council.

Access and instant accountability?

Revolutionary!

It's probably too "progressive" for the City of Minneapolis.

Return Of The Blues (Saloon)?

In the eighties and early nineties, the Blues Saloon gave malevolent dives a good name.

The saloon - a grungy open room that felt like a converted barn, above a pizzeria at the corner of Thomas and Western, deep in heart of Frogtown - booked music from the national blues circuit; it was the best place in town to hear the blues.

It also had a weekly open stage jam that welcomed all manner of amateurs and slumming pros. I used to bring my guitar and/or harmonica down from time to time.

It closed, as do all the great bars; it became a lesbian bar.

Maybe the owners are seeing the error of their ways; they're dipping their finger back in the Blues biz:

Except that Club Moonlight Magic hasn't actually changed its name back to Blues Saloon. The joint is merely booking blues acts once again, on the first, second, and third Fridays of every month ($5 Cover Charge; the last night of the month is a lesbian-friendly dance night), with the www.bluessaloon.net web site advertising the bar to old regulars. (There are also rumors of a Wednesday blues jam.)

Who says prayer doesn't work?

What Made Minnesota?

What made Minnesota what it is?

I have to ask. Oh, I have my opinion. It'd be an interesting debate to have with people who are qualified to hold it.

I ask because it became an issue: Minnesota Politics, a local leftyblog, brought it up in trying to ding on last Sunday's Katherine Kersten column in the Strib, on Minnesota's slow demographic climb to the right.

Aren't we lucky? Two kolumns to read today. The second is about how Minnesota is now a "Purple" state, instead of a Democratic "Blue" one. Uh-huh.

True, party self-identification is at parity, and the state is not as Democratic as it used to be. But I hardly doubt a grand Republican revolution is going to occur.

Perhaps the writer means "I hardly believe..." in a GOP revolution, which is irrelevant - demographic shifts are usually evolutionary.

(Tangent: Why are local leftybloggers so unbelieveably snide toward Katherine Kersten? No, I'm not talking about attacks on her actual facts, like the various NARN and MOB blogs have carried out against the likes of Nick Coleman and Dan Rather - something few leftybloggers manage, because so few of them are qualified to do it. No, it's the snarky ad-homina, delivered with all the supple dexterity of a German jazz band. C'mon, leftybloggers - it's not like every other columnist in town isn't one variety of DFLer, Green, Socialist, Wobbly or Maoist. Does dissent and disagreement threaten you that badly?)

Anyway, the writer goes on, taking us to the crux of the gist:

The key lies in this statement from a CAE conservative: "When I speak to Republican groups, I'm always amazed at the number of people who, like me, have come from other states, where -- for example -- taxes are much lower. They say, 'It doesn't have to be like this.' "

Think about that. All these people are coming here from other states to enjoy the things that Minnesota has. A good education system. Parks and natural resources. High employment. Good health care coverage. All of the things that make Minnesota ranked consistently as one of the best places to live. And all things that cost money and take a community to create.

Let's look at each of these for a moment; the statement leads us up to the main point, here.

It's true - people, yours truly included, move here for a reason. It's par for the course to claim that it's Minnesota's high tax rate that gets us "a better Minnesota". But let's look at each of the things the writer mentions.

Education - so how do you measure? Because by most of the benchmarks that people use to gauge public education, Minnesota shares the top spot - with North Dakota, which spends 1/3 less on public education (and has, proportionally, just as many problems with special education and urban issues as Minnesota does, given the vastly smaller tax base). Minnesota's educcation system is no better than North Dakota's - it merely costs more.

Natural resources - I hardly think government can claim credit for them. God or fate or the ineluctible forces of science put them here. Conserving them is a tiny part of the state budget.

High employement - well, we're lucky in that department. We're lucky to have a strongish private sector. But high taxes as a general rule inhibit employment and job creation, not enhance it (exceptions exist; they are exceptions, and frequently poor investments when you sort through the numbers.

Health coverage - we'll come back to that.

The writer says all these things take money and a strong community. We'll come back to that, too. And it won't take long.

I doubt that most Republicans who move here consciously think about pillaging Minnesota, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that Annette Meeks [Or perhaps you mean Katherine Kersten? --Ed.] is demonstrating.

I'd be tempted to write the conclusion off to the same sort of sloppiness that led the writer to the misquote - but it does, in fact, sum up a big part of the DFL's myopia, and the reason so many of us are not "happy to bend over for the budget pay for a better Minnesota"; the DFL, like the writer, sees the citizen as a consumer of direct and indirect government benefits rather than as someone who adds to the vitality that makes the rest of it possible via that taxes that actually pay for the "better Minnesota".

We're almost there!

The things that make Minnesota great did not spring up out of nowhere. It took the entire community to decide to pay more for the things that really matter, to stick together and try to improve everybody's life.

Yes. And no. And hell no.

First of all - yes. Some of the things that made Minnesota liveable did spring precisely out of nowhere - or at least predated the Minnesota DFL tax and spend machine by a few hundred millenia. The melting glaciers cut channels that became the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, and left fertile soil watered by plenty of rain (by plains standards). Settlement patterns, the Civil War and other policies that predated Minnesota as an organized government happily conspired to make Minnesota a key staging point for raw materials (grain, lumber, taconite) heading to market, and for capital heading back, and made Minnesota more prosperous, and more diversely so, than any of the states to the West.

Minnesota also had the advantage - or curse - of being controlled by Scandinavians. The Scandinavian village tradition is intensely communitarian. Scandinavian communities, whatever their size and government, tend to be communitarian, cohesive and controlling; at their worst, they are passive-aggressive dens of back-biting vipers; at their best, places that look out for their own. This tradition led both to the DFL's home-cooked soft socialism on the one hand, and to the sharp focus on schools, roads, liveability as well as mind-numbing conformity and passive-aggressive control found in the suburbs that the urban DFL so hates - but also so totally uphold the communitarian traditions that, through other venues, led as directly to the "Better Minnesota" as did 40 years of DFL hegemony.

In short: Don't mistake "community" for "Government". Minnesota had "Community" before we had "DFL", taxes or snarky lawn signs.

These are the things that don't exist in Mississippi, Texas, or any of the other states that these people are coming here from.

Those comparisons are among the DFL's dumbest.

For starters, people live in all of those states, voluntarily, for a reason. The DFL seems to believe that reason is "They are dumb". Few ideas are harder to dislodge from a DFLer's head.

And yet given the DFL's fixation on parsing histories of victimization, you'd think they'd be able to home directly in on the "root cause" of this disparity. The South originally developed along almost feudal lines; plantation owners held enormously disporportionate social as well as political and financial sway. Slaves were literally chattel, of course - and poor whites weren't much better off. Lodged in a rigid social system that differed only in window-dressing from the rigid British caste system that spawned it, a poor white guy's prospects of stability, much less advancement and wealth, were minimal. Southern whites were bred to a system of ingrained hopelessness less rigid than that of the slaves - but debilitating and dysfunctional in ways that still dog the south. A poor Norwegian farmer or Finnish miner in Minnesota in 1880 could count on respect from his community if he spent a lifetime working hard; a poor Irish immigrant in Chicago could build a business; a poor rancher in Wyoming could, with luck and hard work, become a wealthy rancher. But a poor white in the South, class-bound as the South was, could only look forward to remaining white trash. The Civil War, of course, wiped away the plantations - but not the aristocracy, and certainly not the dysfunction. Scandinavian communities were back-biting and passive-aggressive, but they were egalitarian. Southern communities were hierarchical, rigid, and provided little impetus to think as a community (which is why you can eat off the streets in Bemidji, and why you find broken-down cars in the yards in Pascagoula).

All by way of saying that you could take the Minnesota bureaucracy and tax system, pick it up and airlift it to Mississippi or Alabama and install it, taxes and all - and not change a single thing.

Because "community" does not equal "government". It goes deeper than that. Much deeper than it's convenient for the DFL to remember.

They seek to enjoy what they did not have, and yet they also seek to destroy what makes it possible.

Patent buncombe. Minnesota's communitarianism runs deeper than a tax rate.

After several years of Republican control in the governor's mansion and the legislature, people are beginning to see this. "No new taxes" doesn't mean a better life, it means larger class sizes, more money to go to state parks, and bottlenecks on the freeway.

If the Republicans who come here want to create the Alabama of the north, people aren't going to be fooled.

Well, they won't - but not in the way the writer figures.

Republicans know - for the most part, anyway - that our taxes are not only not the panacaea for the "better Minnesota" - in fact, there is only feeble correlation.

Most Minnesotans agree that schools, roads and the University are a good thing. Hence, their budgets have not (shut up, MFT) changed appreciably in four years, except to rise (if at a rate lower than the entrenched bureaucracy demanded).

Many of us realize that boundless "generosity" in the form of entitlements that subsidize poverty while discouraging acheivement - sacred cows to the left - do not give us a "better Minnesota".

More and more of us - to the urban school districts' chagrin - realize that more money has never given us better schools. We realize that under the PR icing, things like billion dollar trolley lines that benefit nobody but government commuters, shoppers and processional bingedrinkers are not parts of a "better Minnesota"; that keeping open state colleges whose reasons to exist vanished thirty years ago benefits only more state employees; that being ripe sucks for an entrenched, arrogant bureaucracy that exerts disproportionate, moronic control over vast swathes of Minnesota life is not "Better", and in fact losing it would create a nice uptick in Minnesota's quality of life.

Let me put it another way: If you put a village of Mississipians on one desert island, and a town full of Minnesotans on another - neither with an external government of any sort - you can be pretty sure that after a year both villages would likely resemble Minnesota and Mississippi towns, no matter what.

A "Better Minnesota" is no more about taxes than "Mississippi" is about too much chewing tobacco and cheap beer.

Gavel to Gavel

The NARN will be appearing live at the 2006 Minnesota State GOP convention.

Long Suffering Jay Larson has the press release:

WWTC (AM1280 The Patriot) to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of Minnesota Republican Convention

Eagan, Minn. (May 22, 2006)- WWTC, AM1280 The Patriot, and KYCR, AM1570 The Patriot II, will be providing extended broadcast coverage live from the Minnesota Republican Convention on June 1-3, 2006. The live broadcasts will include interviews with delegates and candidates from the party, in addition to airing the major candidate speeches during the convention.

Tentative broadcast schedule:
Thursday, June 1, 2006, 5:00p.m.-9:00p.m. (Continuous coverage on KYCR and hourly updates on WWTC)
**Including acceptance speech of Congressman Mark Kennedy**

Friday, June 2, 2006, 1:00p.m.-9:00p.m. (Continuous coverage on KYCR and hourly updates on WWTC)
**Including address by Senator Norm Coleman**

Saturday, June 3, 2006, 9:00a.m.-1:00p.m. (Continuous coverage onWWTC)
**Including speech by Governor Tim Pawlenty **

The broadcast will be anchored by members of the Patriot’s Northern Alliance Radio team. The Northern Alliance team can regularly be heard each Saturday on AM1280 The Patriot, from 11:00a.m.-3:00p.m.

AM1280 The Patriot and AM1570 The Patriot II are owned by Salem Communications Corporation. Salem Communications Corporation is the leading provider of Christian and family theme radio programming, magazines, and online resources for over 25 years.

Join next Thursday, Friday and Saturday on AM1280 The Patriot and AM1570 "The Deuce", from the opening gun to the checkered flag, and celebrate Minnesota's oncoming redness.

At Least Contract Selig

Batgirl, one of the essential baseball blogs, quotes from my close personal friend, Sid Hartman:

..."When [baseball financial consultant] Bob Starkey called me with the good news Sunday morning, I felt like I did when we got our stadium here [in Milwaukee]," Selig said. "That's how much it meant, because that's the last thing in the world anybody ever wanted to do, to think of no Twins in Minnesota."

Is that the last thing you wanted before or after contracting the team? Just checking.

Bud, really, shut up. No one likes you. The last thing we need is any reminders of your stadium strong-arm tactics. Go away, leave us alone, and let us enjoy our new stadium, because as much as BG wants and loves this new stadium, reminding us that we succumbed to your blackmail makes even BG throw up in her mouth a little bit.

I hate it when that happens.

No, the whole "consortium of cartel business and big government combine to jam pork-barrel spending down our throats" thing.

Congrats to the Fraters...

...on being named Powerline's blog of the week:

The Fraters guys are humorists, trivia champs, beer drinkers and insightful commentators on local and national news stories.

I have no idea what sort of incriminating video would star John Hinderaker, but I'm sure it's been returned to him now.

'grats, guys!

It's Christmas in May...

...for Hugh Hewitt, with this admission from the Elder:

When I return to the bar, I recoil in horror as I see one of our cats, Lola, standing with her hind paws on a bar stool, her face on the bar, tongue in my Martini. Tongue in my Martini!?!? It wasn't like she just had a sample sip out of curiosity either. She was lapping it up like a saucer of milk. Unbelievable.

My cat loves beer.

Real beer. Not Budweiser.

Please Stand By

I'd hoped to have my podcast up and running today - but things have been too busy at home at work.

I'm shooting for next week.

I'm also shooting to have it not stink.

End The Quagmire

The "War on Drugs" has killed more Americans than Vietnam. There is evidence that it kills more people every year in the United States than have died in Iraq in three years - or than died on 9/11. Every year.

Most of those deaths come from the violence between dealers and gangs protecting their markets, from dealers killing customers and other dealers, and from addicts who resort to violence to get money to feed their habits.

The "War on Drugs" has sapped more of our civil liberties than any other episode in recent history; the groundwork for easy wiretaps, no-knock warrants, property forfeiture laws and the erosion of the Fourth Amendment was laid during the crack hysteria of the '90s.

As Steve Chapman notes, it doesn't have to be that way:

As it happens, no fewer than 11 states on this side of the border have made the decision not to bother filling their prisons with recreational potheads. Among them are not only states like California and Oregon, which you might expect, but states like North Carolina and Mississippi, which you might not. About 100 million Americans live in places where pot has been decriminalized.

Maybe there are planeloads of college kids who travel to Maine or Minnesota to spend each spring break hitting a bong, but if so, it's a well-kept secret. In fact, the most noticeable thing about states that have decriminalized marijuana is that they're not -- noticeable, that is.

Looking at these places, says University of Maryland economist Peter Reuter, "You can't tell the difference from how many people use marijuana." A 1999 report commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences found "there is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use."

Not everyone is in complete agreement. Rosalie Pacula, codirector of the Drug Policy Research Center at the RAND Corp., a California think tank, says her research indicates decriminalization does tend to lead to higher use. But by her measures, the effect is small.

Why isn't the media asking questions about this?

Comments...

...are down again. Some sort of error in my MT-Blacklist spamblocker.

Anyone know how to deal with this?

And the first person who says "upgrade to MT3" gets a rhetorical wedgie. I know. Actually, I'm torn between MT3 and Wordpress.

Naturally, both of them are fine tools (or so I'm told); they are also tools only someone who dinks around with Linux modules for fun can install.

Blah.

Kerry on Immigration

Ra ntburg has the 2004 loser.

And - this should be a shock - he's waffling!

Mitch Needs Life: The "24" Files

As mentioned earlier, I went the better part of six years without a video store membership.

In the five weeks or so since, I've gotten to the last disk of season 4 of "24". I'm on episode 93 of 96.

So far, I've been able to suspend my disbelief about a lot of things; how everything in LA is a ten minute drive from everything else (not even in Fargo, buddy), how everything in the US Southwest is 20 minutes away by helicopter, and how a group of geeks in a basement in LA can find every bit of information in the world via computer.

The only scent of genuine shark so far? Terrorists capture parts of the nuclear "Football" in the California desert. Within the hour, their accomplices are able to ambush a military nuclear weapons convoy in Iowa (Iowa?), at a time when US forces were on heightened alert.

Mitch: Right Again

Roller Coaster attacks its riders at Valleyfair, damn near killing a car full of them:

The officials said the accident on the Wild Thing happened at about 4:25 p.m. when the rear car separated from a train at the slowdown before entering the ride station.

The Wild Thing reaches speeds of up to 74 mph, but it would have been braking and going much slower at that point, said park spokesman Bill Von Bank.

One witness described hearing a "screeching noise" followed by a lot of screaming, according to KSTP-TV.

Sources say the thing squealed like an anti-smoking activist.

I have always hated rollercoasters. Yet again, I was right.

Yuck.

No Cigar

(Note: This post was originally from yesterday. But it's fun, and I've added an update, so I'm bumping it to today).

We all remember the great albums of all time - music that you associate with great moments in your life, or with (or as) great cultural events, or important for whatever reason; albums and singles that satisfy deeply and completely.

This post is not about those albums.

It seems that after every groundbreaking album (or a string of them, for the lucky artist) comes the big letdown - the follow-up that just doesn't follow up; the album from which you expected much, and got not enough.

Bearing in mind that most art disappoints in some way or another, here's my short list of nominations for the most disappointing albums ever.

• The Envoy, Warren Zevon - Recovering from alcoholism is supposed to be a good thing. But The Envoy, Zevon's first post-sobriety album, was a transition that just herked along. Following the magificent live Stand in the Fire live album - in its blotto drunken-hazy glory, one of the best live rock and roll albums ever - and the hilarious Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, one of the Zevoniest albums ever, Envoy felt like watching a fighter who hadn't been training; Zevon tried a bunch of his old moves, but there was no snap to the punches. Zevon grew into sobriety and made some more great albums; The Envoy wasn't one of them.
• Across a Crowded Room, Richard Thompson - Thompson, fresh off back-to-back classic triumphs Shoot Out The Lights (his last album with ex-wife Linda) and Hand of Kindness (still one of the best albums in a career full of classics), Thompson changed labels. Polydor wanted Thompson - either the world's funniest depressing song writer, or the most depressing funny song writer, and in either case the world's greatest living guitar player) to recoup their investment - so he set out to write an album that was, by his oddball standards, commercial and poppy. Now, I'm not one of those who quibbles with artists going for the bucks - the Replacments got better when they ditched the indie scene and went for the fence - but for someone who wanted the quirky wit and cliffhanger emotional choppiness of the previous albums, it just didn't deliver.
• Tusk, Fleetwood Mac - I wasn't a Mac fan in the late seventies or early eighties. I didn't really learn to appreciate them until the last ten years or so, and then only barely. But now, as then, the followup to Rumors was a bloated, self-indulgent letdown, and proof that Lindsay Buckingham needed a foil. Badly.
• Face Dances, The Who - I was a Who fan in high school. No, that's not right; I was a Who fanatic in high school. I don't know how many copies of Who's Next, Quadrophenia, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, Who By Numbers and Who Are You I went through. Glorious, angsty, hilarious, angry - perfect. Then Keith Moon up and died, and the band took three years to write and release Face Dances with journeyman drummer Kenny Jones. To the fanatic who desperately wanted his idols to come back swinging, it all felt tired, rote, like Pete Townsend was groping to find the thread after the death of Moon. The first Who album where I didn't sit down and learn every single song on guitar. I figured it had to get better.
• It's Hard, The Who - I was wrong.
• Human Touch, Bruce Springsteen - It'd been four years since the wonderful Tunnel of Love. Springsteen had broken up the E Street Band, married Patti Scialfa, moved to LA, and run - for good reason - away from the megasuccess of Born in the USA, and the period when he was among the biggest stars in the world. Then in 1991, he staged his big comeback - two simultaneous albums combined with a tour with a new band. The unpolished Lucky Town, recorded mostly by Springsteen himself in his home studio, was fun - but Human Touch, cut mostly with LA session musicians, was mostly emotionally limp, overproduced, underinteresting. Again, the first Springsteen album where I didn't learn how to play every single song on the album within a week.
• Fiona, Fiona - Don't get me wrong; I didn't expect a whole lot from mid-eighties rock thrush "Fiona". But the first exposure, via the song "Talk to Me" in this gloriously dumb, silly, kitchy eighties time capsule video complete with guitarists in red leather pants and visuals pilfered by the boxload from Miami Vice, at least sounded like it had potential - Joplin-y vocals and a bluesy sultriness that, at least with the video turned off, clicked pretty well. You'd have thought at least one other song on her debut album would have been non-laughable. You'd have thought wrong. Or at least I did. Worst eight bucks I ever spent.
• Flip, Nils Lofgren - Nils Lofgren was always the great unknown rocker. After starting at age 17 with Neil Young, Lofgren went onto release a string of classic albums in the early and mid seventies, followed by years of journeyman, also-ran status. One of the great guitar players in rock history, he was one of the great shoulda-beens. In the early eighties, he seemed to be poised on the brink again, with a superb 1981 album, Night Fades Away. So when Springsteen rang him up to replace Miami Steve "Little Steven" "Silvio Dante" Van Zandt in 1984 on the E Street Band's mammoth Born in the USA tour, Lofgren got the kind of exposure that you can't pay for. Millions saw what thousands of us had known for years; Lofgren was one of the great living guitar players. So - with this huuuuuge publicity push behind him, whe does he release? Flip, one of the limpest efforts in a stellar career. Should have been called "Choke". UPDATE: An emailer correctly notes that Flip was Lofgren's second choke; after a couple of widely-acclaimed albums in the seventies, he followed up with the abysmal, disco-influenced I Came To Dance. What Nils has as a guitarist, he lacks as a judge of management.

Nominations are open.

UPDATE AND BUMP: I'm having fun with this. And I just remembered one of the biggest examples of all:

• Voice of America, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul - Steve Van Zandt, longtime guitarist for the E Street Band and the Asbury Jukes, recorded his first solo album in 1982, the absolutely sublime "Men Without Women". The album featured Van Zandt on guitar, Gary Tallent and former Plasmatic Jean Bouvoir on bass, Max Weinberg and former Young Rascal Dino Danelli on drums, Danny Federici and former Rascal Felix Cavaliere on keyboards, and the Asbury Jukes horn section (many of whom later joined the "Max Weinberg Seven" on the Conan O'Brien show). The album, a wonderful homage to Stax/Volt soul music, was gloriously low-tech; it was recorded in one day, with the band gathered in a circle around a couple of microphones and doing the songs live, in just a few takes, with Van Zandt adding very few overdubs later. "Save Me", "Forever", "Lying in a Bed of Fire", "Until The Good Is Gone", "I've Been Waiting" and the title cut were the standouts, but the whole effort clicked like few others, ever. A glorious album, raw and passionate, one of my five favorite records of all time. So what did Van Zandt follow up with? 1984's dreary Voice of America. Gone were the horns (Van Zandt ditched r'nb for garage-punk) and the soul; replacing it was the creeping realization that Van Zandt only had one emotional note (to say nothing of VOA's sledgehammer-subtle far-left politics). The best that could be said about VOA is that it was better than the three follow-up albums, Freedom No Compromise, Revolution, and Born Again Savage, which swapped styles (dance and worldbeat) but sounded exactly the same, but more dull; it was a good thing Van Zandt had "Silvio Dante" and the reformed E Street Band to fall back on.

Bachmann Opponents Favor Censorship

Even though bloggers won some of the same protections from speech-rationing laws that the dead tree media enjoys (and, hello John McCain and Russ Feingold, that the First Amendment supposedly grants all of us), some local agendabloggers apparently are pining for the soothing balm of government intervention to do their work for them.

Eva Young over at The Dump (a site that has featured crude photoshops of Senator Bachmann in Nazi regalia, and which is more given to ad-hominem than discussion) notes the creation by a group of District Six bloggers (Winger, Jules, and the indispensible Jeff Kouba and Andy "Triple A" Aplikowski) of the "Bachmann Vs. Wetterling blog - an indepenent, grass-roots effort by a group of citizens, some of whom are GOP activists - and plaintively asks "Will Bachmann v Wetterling Show Up on Bachmann's FEC Reports".

Then, after an off-topic wander through an unrelated Jeff Kouba statement, she asks again: "Will any of the bloggers show up on Michele Bachmann's FEC reports?"

Well, since the FEC has ruled that blogs don't count as campaign contributions, I'd suspect not.

But since Eva and the rest of the Dump crowd are running and tattling to teacher bringing it up, I have to ask: have Bachmann's various opponents listed The Dump as a contribution? And since The Dump is so conscientious about these things on the parts of other bloggers, have the Dumpers declared themselves a contribution, since they are no less so than the campaign groupblog?

And why is The Dump advocating censorship? Because listing blogs as a campaign contribution, and making them subject to the FEC's burgeoning array of speech rationing laws most certainly is censorship, albeit wityh a dull, bureaucratic face rather than a black marker.

Patty Wetterling: Do you favor subjecting your opponents to speech-rationing laws, as your de facto supporters suggest?

Enquiring minds may or may not want to know - but I bet they don't get their answers at The Dump (beyond the inevitable rambling ad-hominem).

Bush: Still Clever?

As re this week's immigration fracas, here's my unlikely-but-entertaining theory.

Immigration is, demographically, a third-rail type of issue; if the President comes down too hard on illegals, he risks (say GOP critics) alienating parts of 13% of the population for the next couple of generations. Presidents make good symbols for peoples' electoral wrath.

In the meantime, history shows us that people are incredibly reticent about taking anger about national issues out on their local congresspeople.

Bush, knowing he doesn't have to run for re-election, puts a soft face on for the issue, and uses his keystone speech on the issue earlier this week as a moderating statement - angering a base he no longer needs...

...and giving the Congresspeople who do need the base an opportunity to step out, take the lead on the issue, and earn some of the approval that the GOP-controlled Congress has lost (it currently trails the President's lousy numbers).

So - Bush eats the anger on the issue to insulate the party from accusations of being too hard-line, and lets Congress earn the goodwill from the base (and indeed 2/3 of the population - including, one supposes, plenty of undecideds and blue-collar Democrat voters) for actually doing the job (to the extent that the job can actually get done).

It's just a theory.

Put Up Or Shut Up

When it comes to immigration, I've always been in the "Tall fence, wide gate" camp; make the nation difficult-to-impossible to enter illegally, while making the byzantine INS immigration process - designed to make the IRS and city building codes look rational - simpler and more transparent (while, I must emphasize, making English the official language as well). I've always felt that this nation took an absurd amount of pride in the openness of our borders; too many Americans, I think, mix up the blessings of a demilitarized border with those of a functionally-nonexistant one. The open border, in this age of asymmetric warfare, is an anachronism.

Some say that stance makes me a "wimp on immigration"; others say it makes me a racist. They're all wrong, of course.

I noted with relief - after Bush's awful performance earlier this week - that Congress is rapidly moving to toughen up Bush's plan, adding fences, roadblocks and sensors to the border.
Hugh notes that it's now time for the anti-immigration crowd to deliver, and deliver big:

Two Democratic incumbents facing re-election --Maria Cantwell of Washington State and Robert Menendez of New Jersey-- voted against the Sessions Amendment which mandates 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers.

So if the Minutemen spokespeople are correct, the opponents of Cantwell and Menendez should not only sweep to victory in the fall, they should also be gathering enormous support from the rank and file.

Those opponents are:

Mike McGavick in Washington State (you can contribute online here)

and

Tom Kean in New Jersey (you can contribute online here.)

If the "toguh [sic] on illegal immigration" caucus is as strong as its proponents say it is, McGavick and Kean will be attracting thousands of new supporters in the next couple of days.

Let's hope so. I've been a fan of Keane in particular for almost twenty years (although his performance on the 9/11 commission disappointed me); he'd be a huge improvement for the Jersey delegation.

So, closed-border folks; time to pony up. It's your turn.

Oh, OK. Our turn.

Open Letter to A-Klo's Employees

Amy Klobuchar is apparently a difficult boss, according to KvM and Michael Brodkorb:

Known for her “hostile work environment”, the Hennepin County Attorney is known to have few friends among Local 2938 membership as evidenced by the unanimous vote of the Executive Board of 2938 to urge the parent union to withold endorsement of the ’self-absorbed’ Klobuchar.

Brodkorb, the Minnesota Democrat Exposer, offering Klobuchar's employees a safe haven to lodge a public complaint:

Dear hard working, but silenced employees of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office,

It is increasingly clear that a letter from your local union representing employees of Amy Klobuchar, which asks the state AFSCME organization to avoid endorsing Ms. Klobuchar in her United States Senate run, has become a persistent thorn in Amy's side, so much so that the letter was recently removed from your union’s Web site.

Up to this point, perhaps out of a fear of retribution, the one group that we have heard very little from is you, the very union workers Amy Klobuchar has denigrated, mistreated, and taken for granted as she has taken credit for your hard work.

This is an open letter to you, the dedicated workers whose voice has been silenced as Amy continues her campaign of arrogance and self promotion.

If you are a member of AFSCME Local 2938 or even a non-union employee who has had the displeasure of working for Amy Klobuchar, I want to provide you with a forum to safely air your grievances, tell your horror stories or otherwise broadcast the difficulties you have experienced working for the overbearing, self-aggrandizing Amy Klobuchar.

Write to mike at minnesotademocratsexposed at the domain hotmail dot com.

If you can't stand her as a boss, think about her confiming judges, making budget decisions, and driving foreign policy...

Gang of Four: "Destroy Capitalist Lapdogs from Target!"

If there's been a success story in the Twin Cities, it's the journey of University Avenue over the past twenty years - from blighted, seedy strip to fairly thriving area; east of Lexington, waves of Asian immigrants have taken over whole blocks, and are renovating the place to a degree that amazes people who remember the area from the mid-eighties.

West of Hamline, the area is dominated by big box retailers - Rainbow, Cub, Borders, Menards, Walmart - who have brought jobs and retail to the area that most other city neighborhoods don't have. While there are legitimate economic concerns about the impact big box retailers have on small local economies, the fact is that nobody was moving businesses to the Midway before the Midway Center started expanding fifteen years ago. The center has played a pivotal role in the boom in jobs and property values that we've seen in the Midway in the last decade or so.

Of course, things like free-market jobs and property values make the Gang of Four on the St. Paul City Council - Jay Benanav, Kathy Lantry, Dave Thune and Debbie Montgomery - sad.

There's a Target store at Hamline and Uni; it's small and old by Target standards. Target is trying to upgrade these older stores in high-density areas to the new Super Target model - which earn a lot more per square foot (and, for those of us who buy food, has the best grocery prices I've seen among the majors) than the older, smaller stores. Target bought out a Sheraton that abuts its lot, with an aim to expanding their site.

And big expansion means big pork for the Gang of Four's big constituents.

They were close to a deal, y'see. And then...:

Council Member Jay Benanav asked to delay the vote one week on behalf of fellow Council Member Debbie Montgomery, who was huddled in her office with several Target representatives. The two spearheaded a last-ditch effort to win several commitments — such as set percentages of minority contractors — from the retailing giant in exchange for the right to build a 184,000-square-foot grocery and retail outlet in St. Paul's Midway area.

"If Target doesn't move off their current position, I'm not going to vote for it," Benanav said after the meeting. "I was sitting in the council meeting thinking it was done. … They had given up enough that I was ready to support it."

Benanav would not say just why the vote was delayed, but it appears to be over the wording of a resolution approving the deal.

Target representatives left City Hall without commenting, but the company released a strongly worded statement later in the evening.

"We are disappointed that at the 11th hour the City Council delayed approval on the site plan for the Midway SuperTarget. In our experience, we've never been subjected to such unrelated mandates placed upon a $30 million privately financed project," the company said, adding that it worked with the community and that the project would benefit the area.

"We have serious concerns when elected officials use that process to limit competition or pursue agendum that works to the detriment of the guests and communities that we strive to serve. … Further delays and such mandates will jeopardize this project."

Both sides are playing hardball, of course.

But it's going to be interesting seeing how this project proceeds.

I've Been Waiting...

...such a long time for a White House press ecretary who could take the likes of Helen Thomas (links site with video) and make her look like the bloviating embarassment she is.

Thank God for Tony Snow.

Stop Digging

Minneapolis DFL delegates rebel against the school board at the city convention (Minneapolis being a one-party town, the convention is the only election that matters).

They opted to dump current board president Joseph Erickson:

Erickson said his bid was affected by factors that have beset the district, including five years of budget cuts caused by falling enrollment that also prompted school closings, and the hiring and ouster of former Superintendent Thandiwe Peebles with a cost of $250,0000.

He disagreed with the complaints of some parents that he was arrogant. He said that as an Augsburg College professor his inclination is to teach. That means sharing some of the knowledge he’s learned as a board member when contacted by parents on issues, rather than simply nodding and agreeing.

I don't know Erickson - I've never dealt with the Minneapolis district - but I bet I know what that means.

At any rate, I'm starting to see where the root cause of the Minneapolis public schools' problems might be:

The party gave first-ballot endorsement to Costain, a veteran organizer, and political newcomer Stewart. Williams and Madden were just below the 60 percent of delegates needed after the first ballot.

Costain and Stewart appealed to the convention to endorse a full slate before adjourning; delegates added Williams on the second ballot. When remaining candidates Jill Davis, Polly Harrison-Townsend and Erickson dropped out, Madden was endorsed by acclamation.

Most endorsees combined backing from labor and from the progressive Take Action Minnesota, the same combination that sent political rookies Peggy Flanagan and Lydia Lee to the board in 2004.

Hm. Let's see: board dominated by single party. Single party dominated by union hacks and "progressive" firebrands.

What could go wrong in a situation like that?

Smoke Filled Schoolroom

EdAction warns that the comprehensive list of intrusive pre-school programs we warned you about is still very much alive in this session:

Last week, Rep. Doug Meslow (R-White Bear Lake), House author of the Nanny State provisions, predicted, "Don't count early childhood out yet." In other words, Meslow expects to have a good shot at getting it passed, in spite of the fact that this $23 million package was not approved by a single House committee this session. How can this happen? Here's how, and we fear a betrayal is brewing.

The greatest concern is that the Governor, the Speaker of the House, and the Majority Leader of the Senate could make a closed door, backroom deal among themselves, and the conferees would be forced to deliver. You are now forewarned that a deal like this could be in the making. Such a deal would directly betray the citizens, and especially the parents of young children, in this state who have elected men and women to represent them. These leaders must be reminded that they represent the families of Minnesota, not powerful insiders who like to call the shots behind closed doors

To think much of anything about the educational/industrial complex is about education or children is at best naive.

Counting On Ignorance

The funny part is that Nick Coleman once said, with a straight (metaphorical, printed) face, that he's better than bloggers because he "knows stuff".

It's not so funny when you realize that he believes it.

It's scary when you remember that there are still people out there who believe it.

Today, our purported lack of diplomacy:

America used to have a genius for winning friends around the world, one nation at a time.

The implication? Today, we're not.

Of course, it's crap. The US' foreign relations have ebbed and flowed all over the place. We were at the brink of war with our biggest ally, Britain, and our biggest fake ally, France, in the 1860's. In the '80's, the parts of Western Europe that have been prospering from the end of the Cold War were protesting against...the policies that led to the end of the Cold War. In the '70's and '80s, India - today a lynchpin of our Asia policy and, while very aware of its self-interest, one of our biggest allies - was flirting with socialism and actively prodding US influence in the region.

Just saying - getting history lessons from Nick Coleman is like getitng sports talk from me.

Now we're ticking them off, from Mexico to Norway. Norway? Yes.

Let's do Mexico first. President Bush is sending the National Guard, which has had nothing to do lately, to "defend" the border with Mexico. [Note: When Nick Coleman uses scare quotes, pay attention; he intends "sarcasm" - Ed.] Unfortunately, this reminds Mexicans of the Pancho Villa days back in 1915, when Gen. Black Jack Pershing and his troops went to the Mexican border and forgot where the U.S. stopped and Mexico began.

I wonder - does Coleman seriously believe the Mexican government thinks that securing our own border is the same as sending a raid deep into Mexico to catch bandits (that were operating with the collusion of corrupt Mexican government officials 90 years ago)?

Does Coleman think that his readers, much less the Mexican government, are stupid enough to equate the two?

This Syttende Mai, the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution that led to Norway's independence, we must sadly cross off Norway from our shrinking list of friends.

"Cross them off?"

No. When they expel our ambassador and start sending terrorists to the US, then we "cross them off".

Stoltenberg earned the wrath of the White House by winning election on a promise to withdraw Norway's troops from Iraq, thus depriving the Coalition of the Willing of its strategic force of Fighting Norskes.

Coleman intends to be sarcastic; I doubt he knows what "strategic" means. Norway, being a cold, rugged country, has troops (especially their special forces) that are among the best in the world at fighting in, er, cold rugged country. Like Afghanistan. Where Norway's special forces fought alongside US, British, Australian, German, Canadian, Danish and other troops.

And Norway is a NATO member. So having a socialist run partly on withdrawing from the coalition is not something the President should be expected to reward.

Still, Gov. Tim Pawlenty might be wise to protect his appeal to Minnesota's Norwegian voting bloc (second in size, behind the Germans). Pawlenty should return the snub to Norway by refusing any more bogus visits from Vice President Dick Cheney. The veep made a fundraising run to Wayzata Monday, covering his money haul with a fig leaf of respectability by meeting with National Guard troops, some of whom were thinking, "Mexico?" while others of stern Viking blood may well have been thinking, "Hands off Norway, Dick."

More likely scenario: Since Minnesota's Norwegians - and I'm one of them (half of my grandparents were Minnesota Norwegians) became Americans several generations ago, and since the National Guardsmen are probably among the huge percentage of the American people who want the border secured, they are more likely thinking "Hands off that keyboard, Coleman" .

Or they should be. In fact, I'll make that part of my personal mission.

With all that going on, it's lucky that vigilant Minnesotans had the strength and the time to outlaw the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish or any language but English.

Rep. Marty Seifert, who I call "Cannonball," was outraged to find that Lakeville -- 125 miles as the crow flies from his home in Marshall -- had a school principal who was reciting the pledge in Spanish after first doing it in English...Thank God for Cannonball. If it weren't for him, we'd be saying it in Norwegian next.

Nah. The Norwegians learned it in English. It helped them learn the rest of our language.

Just like all immigrants should do.

On the other hand, perhaps it'd have been better if Nick Coleman's allegedly-Irish anscestors had spoken only Gaelic, and passed it on, and ghettoized their offspring in a linguistic Gaelic enclave.

Maybe he'd still be there.

His knowledge of history wouldn't be any worse if he couldn't read English, anyway...

TV Notes

1. The series finale for Will and Grace is, apparently, tonight.

   I have never seen the show. Well, I take that back - I saw a grand total of ten minutes from three different episodes. Each of the scenes I saw involved a very stereotyped gay guy making a very stereotyped gay joke in a very - yep - stereotypes gay voice. Did I miss anything?

2. There's going to be an ER season finale. I honestly thought ER went off the air five years ago.

That is all.

Syttende Mai

Today is the 101st anniversary of the liberation of Norway, celebrated by Norwegians the world over as Syttende Mai.

Norway had been bludgeoned by centuries of corrupt, brutal Swedish and Danish rule. The Swedes exploited the native ingenuity, productivity and industriousness of their Norwegian vassals in all the most grotesque ways imaginable, treating Norway as it's national farm field, ATM machine and military for hire for generations; Norway was in effect a mercantilist colony of Sweden in the worst sense of the term, imposing confiscatory taxes on exports to countries other than Sweden, and fixing prices in Sweden for Norwegian goods at starvation rates. Norway's compliance was ensured via the keeping of thousands of hostages, and the presence of the brutal, thuggish Swedish Sjånefjørnørpolizaarnet secret police, who roamed the streets beating and killing dissidents with impunity. Scandinavian stoicism allowed the people to bear the burden for a long time.

But it had to end.

Finally, in 1905, Norway's citizens had had enough. A group of democratic revolutionaries, the Demikråteraevølutinaretskørperet, organized in Trondheim, and on May 15, rose up and took the city's Rådenhøs or City Hall, liberated hundreds of emaciated captives from the Sjånefjørnørpolizaarnet holding camp, and drove the Swedes from the city.

The Swedes responded, sending their elite, feared Køngsstrnørmetrøpen cavalry in their black uniforms and horned Viking helmets, to retake the city and exact their revenge.

At town meetings throughout Norway that night, worried citizens gathered in town squares, worried about the revenge that that bloodthirsty Swedes would exact for the humiliation. At the nadir of the meeting, Rolf Trygve Rybåk - a petty government functionary from Oslo - resolved that the Norwegians should apologize to the Swedes and beg for mercy. Rybåk, a gifted speaker (but not, apparently, much else), nearly had the crowd convinced to throw down their weapons (mostly boathooks and pitchforks) and to re-submit to Swedish rule and hope for the best.

But in a pivotal moment, Jårl Båkkehølm - a fisherman from Kristiansund - rose and, in a speech (which, rumor had it, later inspired both J.R. Tolkein in writing the inspirational "Men of the West" speech in "Return of the King" as well as the writers of Braveheart), explaimed in his curious northern dialect "De Sverigse hunde kann ønser Haerings i øndere Fiske løysten, bott njett ønsere Vrijhijd!"

Inflamed, the crowd poured into the streets (and as word of Båkkehølm's speech spread through the nation, the scene spread nationwide); Swedish garrisons were run out of towns throughout Norway, fleeing to the Swedish border in disarray. Finally, in a climactic battle in the northern Oslo suburb of Hvardågerten, the Norwegians' ragtag militia led by Båkkehølm met the Køngsstrnørmetrøpen in an apocalyptic battle that spilled through the streets of Oslo. Men, women and children first manned the barricades as waves of Swedish troops charged through the waves of gunfire from the ranks of levelled Norwegian rifles - and then, taking up the arms of the fallen, charged, driving the Swedes from the city and then the nation; the Swedes dropped so many rifles that the Norwegians actually paved their roads with them (the last Gevaehrsroødet, or "Rifle Road", wasn't finally paved with asphalt until 1966). The defeat was a national humiliation for the Swedes - so much so that it is never taught or even spoken of in Swedish schools or history books. It shattered Swedish confidence so severely that the nation descended into the consoling balm of debilitating socialism.

Båkkehølm, victorious, declared a national day of celebration for the nation's newfound independence and freedom from Swedish despotism; the outpouring of national joy was a cathartic release that was said to have inspired Tolkein's portrayal of Aragorn's accession to the throne, fifty years later. Båkkehølm also extended the defeated Swedes an olive branch which, combined with the institutional denial that enveloped the Swedish state, led to a century of amicability between the two Scandinavian states.

"Rybåk" became a colloqial Norwegian synonym for defeatism, placation of tyranny, and abjuration of duty that was only eclipsed a generation later, by Vidkun Quisling. Rybåk emigrated to America, where he disappeared from the Norwegian radar.

So today we Norwegians celebrate our heritage, our freedom, and the legacy of sacrifice which led to it.

Skol!

Note: Except for the date and holiday, everything I wrote above, down to the tiniest detail, is false.

The real story of Syttende Mai, Norway's Norwegian Constitution Day, is a little more prosaic and pacific - although Norway has rolled the official celebration of its liberation from the Nazis, actually May 8, into Syttenda Mai, so I'm not that far off...

Hamsters Run Wild

You are someone who's widely regarded as obsessive to the point of nonsensical.

You run a single-issue blog on a "divisive" political "issue".

You've surrounded yourself with puerile intellectual also-rans who are deeply - and misguidedly - in love with their own meager talents.

Your blog has trafficked in hallucination, ad-hominem, shoddy reporting and innuendo from day one - a natural byproduct of your convenient, self-indulgent sense of ethics.

The blogospheric audience - being party to an intensely meritocratic system - is ignoring you in droves.

What to do?

Write breathless, giggly stories full of false, specious or misleading claims about other, higher-volume bloggers, in hopes of boosting your anemic traffic.

You know - bloggers who didn't piddle their credibility away behind some bushes. The ones that didn't dress their sense of ethics up in a Nazi uniform for yuks.

Good luck with that.

That is all.

Hey, Ho, Let's Go

I checked out Rock and Roll High School at the video store the other day. The lure of perhaps the dumbest fun movie - or the dumbest fun movie - of all time (not to mention P.J. Soles) won out, and I sat with the kids and watched it for the first time since I was in (non-rock-and-roll) high school.

Now, growing up with me around, my kids know something about The Ramones. But as we watched R'nRHS, I think maybe a little bit of the glorious, dumb fun of old school punk - before killjoys like Henry Rollins went and made it all serious and dull - got through to them.

Oddly, Jim Walsh had the same experience. His piece in the Blotter ends...:

Near the end of the movie, my son saw the kids in the crowd holding signs. He asked me what "Gabba-gabba-hey" meant. I did my best.

Like I said, you don't know if anything gets through, or if you're too permissive, too tough, too lame, too Failure Father. The weekend and all its activities passed. We didn't talk about the movie again. But just now, as I'm getting ready to go off on a field trip with him and his class to the riverbank, I noticed a serious letter from school taped up on the fridge. In black ink at the top, there's a scribble of, "Gabba-gabba-hey!"

It made me laugh out loud.

The whole thing is worth a read - at least, if you've ever tried to get that little bit of your adolescence across to one of your kids...

The State of Twin Cities Talk Radio, 2006

It's been two years since I did the last "State of Twin Cities Talk Radio" (a "tradition" I started in 2003). I was busy last year, certainly - and the fact was, not much had changed between 2004 and early 2005.

Late last year, of course, that changed; Clear Channel and KSTP caught the common delusion that conservative talk was dead, contemporaneous with Clear Channel calling in its markers and bringing Limbaugh over to a brand-"new" talk station, KTLK-FM, the Cities' second FM talk operation, and the first to have any chance of breaking out of the "background noise" in terms of ratings.

This year, I examine - or in some cases, rudely dismiss - the following stations:

• KSTP-AM - KSTP, on losing Limbaugh, drank the koolaid and ran with the consultants line that conservative and political talk was dead. They hired Willie Clark, shuffled Tom Mischke, downplayed politics - and today, are getting a little over half the numbers they were a few years back. Note to program director and former colleague Steve Konrad: Have your people call my people.
  
• KTNF - It was a rough year for Janet Robert's station. First Nick Coleman and then Wild Wendy departed. Air America executives distanced themselves from Janet Robert's operation. A tiny audience, pathetic sales, and bad ratings culminating in a winter-book ratings collapse capped off the year's events at the little station that, in the end, didnt' so much "Make Big Brother Cry For Mama" as "Made Republicans Giggle Derisively". There's the skid marks, there's the wreckage - nothing more to see here, folks. Move along.
• WWTC - The station - which broadcasts the Northern Alliance Radio Network, to dislose fully - had a very stable year, and a fairly good one. Sources in the industry tell us that among the key talk radio demographic (males 25-49), "The Patriot" is giving its much larger competitors much more of a headache than they'd banked on, sort of belying the notion that conservative talk was dead.
  
• WCCO - The sun rises in the east, and WCCO remains the same.
  
• KNOW - The Jabba the Hut of Twin Cities media. They opened the new expansion to their broadcast and HQ facility in downtown Saint Paul this past year; by 2025, they will need their own freeway exit or light rail line. Otherwise, nothing's really changed.
  
• KTLK - Maybe Clear Channel Communications - the media conglomerate that owns KTLK and KFAN - knows something we don't. Maybe, given their immense clout, they are planning on engineering a coup at the FCC and reinstating the Fairness Doctrine - the pre-1987 dictum that required all talk radio to be "balanced". Maybe they know that their investment in this middle-of-the-road, milquetoast lineup (except, of course, Limbaugh) will pay off when the rest of the market is forced to ditch successful, partisan hosts. That would make sense; KTLK-FM is a loss leader! Otherwise, though, the station -which subscribes wholeheartedly to last year's radio management "conservative radio is dead" fad - wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. That must be it.
  
• KFAN - Try as I might - and I have - I can not drum up the faintest scintilla of interest in sports radio. Seriously. I get more pleasure from watching paint peel. But nobody said Clear Channel was stupid. The Fan is a solid performer in its niche.
  FM107 - "Chick Talk 107", KSTP's, ahem, sister station actually passed KTNF, the Air America affiliate. The station has built a bit of an audience in the past two years, climbing out of the one-point cellar (to a 1.3 in the last book). I'm not sure if it's because the format is taking off (after three or four extremely lean years) or because KSTP's ongoing hemorrhage is bound to splatter a few listeners on its corporate neighbor.

On to the show by show reviews.

Morning Drive

• KSTP-AM -Willie Clark - You know your show's a mess when even your promos - which, like movie trailers, are supposed to be your best material - are so dull. Clark is the kind of talk show you used to hear in places like Bismark; intended to offend nobody, they interest nobody, either. Does not mix with operating heavy equipment or taking high doses of antidepressants.
  
• KTNF - Rachel Maddow - The only of of FrankenNet's hosts who actually has developed an almost worthwhile style on her own (I said "worthwhile"; shut up, Mike Malloy). Leave out the dimbulb fever swamp politics for a moment; Maddow would actually be less dull than most material on public radio.
  
• WWTC - Bill Bennett - Bennett should be on mid-days. He sounds like the professor that you were occasional drinking buddies with back in college; personable, interesting, and Bennett's obviously a smart guy when he's out of the casino. But it just doesn't connect for me, personally, in the morning.
  
• WCCO - Dave Lee - The heir to Boone and Erickson must have the least challenging job in all of radio; present the info. There's really no there there, but it's a pleasant enough vaccuum. Yes, it is still your grandfather's WCCO, at least in the morning.
  
• KNOW - Morning Edition - Cathy Wurzer presents homogenized, pasteurized, sanitized N/MPR product. Miss a day? Don't sweat it; it'll be the same "Morning Edition" tomorrow.
  
• KTLK - Van and Cheryl Thunder and Cheryl Kelly Guest and Andrew Colton - My confusion is understandable; they sound like a mid-market "morning zoo", sans music. I've been able to drag myself to listen to this show maybe three times. The fourth will be an accident.
  
• KFAN - The Power Trip - Alleluiah - a sports show that sucks less than most other sports radio shows. I'll cop to it; I rarely follow sports, and it was an especial effort to listen to any of the Fan's shows. But it goes to show ya - after a decade of trying, at least something on the Fan is broadcast-quality.
  
• FM107 - The Punnets - Ian Punnett has his fans. I've never really been one of them. In some ways he's the Twin Cities' Dennis Prager - without the gravitas. Part of the problem is that while his various morning shows have been perfectly fine (Ian and his wife Margery do a modestly pleasant show), I really, really couldn't stand him filling in for Art Bell; it's probably colored my perception of him.

Mid-Morning

• KSTP-AM -Bob Davis - One of the better morning shows of this bunch. Nothing extremely special - it won't change your life - but Davis is a solid, journeyman host who knows how to do radio.
  
• KTNF - Stephanie Miller - The best "talent" on Air America Minnesota...isn't from Air America. Miller is on the Jones Network, a stablemate of Fast Eddie Schultz. Like Schultz, Miller is competent, does decent radio - and her politics are straight out of James Carville.
  
• WWTC - Laura Ingraham - Laura, as noted last time, has the finest production team in talk radio. They are truly a marvel to listen to - and their vamps with Laura at the beginning of most hours are truly great. Which helps make up for the fact that Ingraham is one of the worst interviewers, and perhaps the very worst call-handler, in major-league syndicated talk radio.
  
• WCCO - Pat Miles and Susie Jones - When TV people do radio, you often get the sense that they're slumming; you know they're slumming; they know you know they're slumming. Furthermore, you can tell they're TV people - they don't have "radio" deliveries (we'll come back to this. Oh, yes we will); it's like they have to compensate for the lack of a camera crew to talk to. Someone who sounds perfectly natural talking on camera will sound broad and a little stilted on just a mike. Miles' show is innocuous and, like everything else on the WCCO lineup, seems planned for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. That, or a play that ssumes people miss the doctrine and are willing to tune in for it.
  
• KNOW - Midmorning with Keri Miller - Unchanged since the last report; Miller was a refreshing change from the self-adoring Catherine Lanpher back then, and she still is. Yet another TV person, with all the drawbacks, although Miller's style fits the unctuousness of MPR better than it would in the 'mersh world.
  
• KTLK - Pat Kessler - Remember what I said about TV people on radio? Kessler's got it. One of the market's better TV political reporters, Kessler seems to be having a hard time figuring out how to address his audience - and a harder one trying to figure out what his show is. Political insider-talk? Loosen your collar and get some yuks talk? WCCO-lite? It could be any of them but - something KTLK-FM's management ought to figure out - you can't do all three at the same time.
  
• KFAN - PA and Dubay - I know the guys have fans out there. I really do. And I can understand why they like them. But I have incredibly little patience for sports radio, and it shows whenever I try to listen to PA and Dubay. I can't make myself tolerate more than a couple of minutes. Like someone taking a rat tail file to my eyes.
  
• FM107 - Kevyn and Colleen - Kevyn Burger remains about the only listenable show on FM107.

Mid-Day

• KSTP-AM -Rosenbaum and O'Connell - Ron and Mark are pioneers. No, really; back when KSTP was considered "conservative", with the likes of Limbaugh and Lewis turning in respectable numbers, this pair painstakingly avoided taking partisan stances. They were a couple of years ahead of the trend that swept KSTP and KTLK.
  
• KTNF - Al Franken - I honestly listen to Franken looking for some redeeming value. I even try to rememeber what it was like being a liberal, to try to sympathize with what he says. It doesn't work. Franken remains a one-note singer, a one-trick pony; kudos, I guess, for milking two years of seven-digit salaries by packaging The Nation and Daily Kos. Nice work if you can get it.
  
• WWTC - Dennis Prager - Listening to Prager is hard work. So is learning a musical instrument or a foreign language, or planting a garden, or mastering a craft. It's just that some days, you just don't want to bite off that kind of intellectual heavy lifting. When you're in the mood - and Prager's flamboyantly-variant topic choices click with you - it's a fascinating three hours. The "Happiness Hour" in particular, every Friday, is among the finest hours of radio anywhere; almost too good for radio.
  
• WCCO - Jack Rice - From Rice's bio page: "Jack is a former CIA Special Agent and Field Operations Officer as well as a former prosecuting attorney and trial lawyer. He is also a frequent contributor to NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, WCCO-TV and other media outlets around the country. As if that weren't enough, he writes frequently for newspapers and magazines". This would be cool - if Rice were allowed to have a point of view. Or maybe he has one - it's not apparent to me. He's "Expert Radio"; but expertise doesn't make radio consistently compelling; a coherent point of view does. WCCO's "all things to all people" philosophy doesn't cotton to that.
  
• KNOW - Midday with Gary Eichten - What must it be like to be Gary Eichten? On the air all these years (no - a l l t h e s e y e a r s) without ever voicing an opinion of his own - I can't imagine.
  
• KTLK - Rush Limbaugh - It's superfluous to talk about Limbaugh's impact; he is to talk radio what Elvis Presley was to popular music. The big question is, how long is Rush going to stick with it, and what kind of industry will he leave when he finally hangs up the headphones? The industry sort of ate its seed corn in the eighties and nineties, filling up its lineups with syndicated programs on Limbaugh's model and neglecting to train the next generation of hosts. Oh, he's still the master.
  
• KFAN - Dan "The Common Man" Cole - I've tried. Oh, Lord, I've tried. But try as I may, I can't work up a reason to care about Cole's show. So I won't.
  
• FM107 - The Satellite Sisters - When the true tale of this Clinton-era CIA program - which isolated a group of sisters in separate cities and altered their DNA via radiation to create the most segmented, cloying, and aggressively dull program on the air, people will be truly outraged. Too dull for public radio, which was the Sisters' first radio home.

Afternoon Drive

• KSTP-AM -Joe Soucheray - Souch has been on autopilot since Americans were saying "Monica who?" Don't get me wrong - "autopilot" that delivers numbers is better (for one's station and bottom line) than creativity that goes unheard. But Soucheray bores me stiff.
  
• KSTP-AM -Tom Mischke - Gotta give Mischke points; he took his "promotion" to late-afternoon/early evening and ran hard with it. It's not the same Broadcast we've all grown to love over the past ten years. Perhaps that's a good thing; maybe Mischke needs to have his own world shaken up a little bit. But making Mischke's stream-of-consciousness meander actually hit posts and play traffic reports and earn money is like using a Faberge egg to pound nails; perhaps it's doable, but you miss a lot.
  
• KTNF - Fast Eddie Schultz - Unchanged since last time; still the only talent on KTNF that would make it without massive, partisan subsidy; still a fourth-rate Rush Limbaugh knockoff; still probably a liberal of convenience.
  
• KTNF - Randi Rhodes - Even if Randi Rhodes were a conservative, I would revile her. She is everything that is wrong with talk radio from either perspective. Shallow, uninformed, cheaply manipulative, pointlessly inflammatory, and just plain stupid.
  
• WWTC - Michael Medved - What can I say about Medved that I haven't already? A photographic memory for detail, a sharp, incisive interviewer, and an intellectual firebrand - who makes you feel almost too dumb to listen, sometimes.
  
• WWTC - Hugh Hewitt - Hugh is almost an anachronism, a throwback, I sometimes think, to an era when talk radio was about issues and interviewing and news. I think Hewitt's relentless, infectious enthusiasm put at least a point on the board for the GOP in '04.
  
• WCCO - Don Shelby - The curse of the TV personality on the air returns. Shelby has gotten better - like Kessler, he's an engaging personality. But at the end of the day, it's still the same topic-go-round that WCCO has been doing since buffalo roamed the plains.
  
• KNOW - All Things Considered - Ditching the somnambulent David Molpus from the local leg of the show is the best thing they could have done (short of rehiring Lorna Benson).
  
• KTLK - Sean Hannity - I have never been able to stand Hannity. Still can't.
  
• KTLK - Lambert and Janecek - The show combines two ideas that never, Never, NEVER - well, very rarely - work; guy'n'gal shows, and political ping pong matches. Don't get me wrong; men and women do share airtime on shows up and down the dial. But one of them is the lead, and one (or more) of the others are supporting characters . And the political ping-pong shows tend to turn into so much self-cancelling noise. There's a reason that shows like Hannity and Colmes and Crossfire succeed(ed); because Hannity bitchslaps the greasy weasel Colmes like Suge Knight tackling Clay Aiken, and because Pat Buchanan used to make mulch out of Pat Haden. There was a dominant player. Once Crossfire switched to having hosts that were about equal in power (as well as obnoxiousness), it was all over; too boring to listen to. Lambert and Janecek tries to do both; serve as a co-equal guy'n'gal show, and a political food fight. It doesn't work because when a show is focused around slapping points back and forth, between Republicans and Liberals and between Men and Women, nothing really comes through. Neither Lambert nor Janecek are able to develop a personality that comes through. The pair is - and I never thought I'd say this about Brian Lambert - more than the sum of its parts. They'd be better as two shows; let either or both of them state a thought, develop it, and try to engage the listener. Because the ping pong match doesn't do it.
  
• KFAN - Chad Hartman - I've heard Hartman maybe three times. Each time, it felt like I was in a lecture on emergency medicine; I had no idea sports was such serious friggin' business..
  
• KFAN - Dan Barreiro - I started doing a review of Barreiro, and the biggest thing I noticed was...well, before I get to that, let me explain something about Dan Barreiro; he worked for many years as a sports columnist at...er, before I get to that, have you ever wondered why they call them "columnists"? Like, columns? Roman columns? Hey, before I forget, what about those generals who were knocking on the President? That's some food for...say, speaking of food, there's this new Polish place in Northeast Minneapolis that makes the best ham sandwich...and speaking of ham, did you check out Ben Affleck? What's up with that...hey, while we're on the subject, what about that Katie Holmes? Do you think she was actually pregnant? She's a scientologist, which means, no drugs...which is never a problem for the drug gangs in South Minneapolis. What's up with that? Did you catch the Seinfeld re-run last night? I'm so glad I got cable...speaking of cable, time to take a break!
  
• FM107 - Lorie and Julia - This remains the shrillest waste of time in Twin Cities radio. Oh, they're spunky women, so they'll get more their obligatory annual write-up in the Strib entertainment section - "we're different from all that other talk radio because we're...women, dammit! And we have sex! We're like Desperate Housewives, only we interview authors rather than bang the gardener! But boy, would we! If we had one!". Like listening to a couple of 19 year old admin assistants in the next cube talk about their grocery lists.

Evenings

• KSTP-AM -Dave Thompson - Somewhere in the great radio dictionary, under "Journeyman", there's a picture of Thompson. Dave has improved a lot over the years; when he's loose and relaxed, he's darn good. You might get the impression you've heard the show before; Thompson is not an original talent. But he does a solid job - which is why he's been KSTP's gap-plugger for what seems like 25 years.
  
• KTNF - Janeane Garofalo - A lot like Franken. Except that she's an angry woman. Dreary, dull, unlistenable.
  
• WWTC - Michael Savage - Here's the thing about Savage; listening to him is like reading about Michael Wittman in "Panzer Aces". Wittman was an SS non-com and then officer in World War II, and became the highest-scoring tank ace of all time. You read his story and are amazed by the skill the man brought to the deadly craft of maneuvering a Tiger tank against Russian, British and American tanks and armored vehicles, knocking out a whopping 200-odd enemy tanks in his career. You nod and go "wow - that's a skillful tank commander". Then you remember - "He's an SS officer" - you feel a little dirty admiring him for his craft. So too with Savage; as a radio guy, I listen to his technique - Savage is an artist, and his medium is pushing buttons - and sit, agog, at the sheer talk-radio technique of it all. Then I remember - he's talking total crap, and the odds are better than even he knows it and is laughing all the way to the bank.
  
• WCCO - Mike Max - I gotta hand it to Max - he's the kind of story you used to look to WCCO for. Started in the sports department as an intern back when I was a flunky at KSTP; I knew him by name, although we've certainly never met. The show - when it appears (it gets pre-empted by a lot of evening sportscasts) is listenable, knowledgeable, not at all bad for sports radio. In fact, it's one of few places where WCCO's middle-of-the-roadiness is an advantage; the sports guy doesn't feel he has to be crustier, more cynical, more outrageous than other sports commentators to stand out. Gotta confess, if I'm stuck on a desert island with a radio, and also a mafioso holding a Desert Eagle in my face threatening to kill me if I don't listen to some kind of sports radio, I'd to with Max. Probably.
  
• KNOW - The World - It is, indeed.
  
• KTLK - Dan Conry - Hey, did joo know that Cawnry was from Noo Yawk? No kiddin'! An' if youse didn't, you'se gonna hearabouddit at least a couple a' times a night. Fuhgeddaboutit. On the upside, Conry understands radio better than anyone else on KTLK; he knows how to keep a show moving. He should be further up in the station's lineup.
  
• KFAN - Who cares? - Sports, I suppose. Pffft.

  Night Shift

  
  
  • KSTP-AM -George Noory - A cut-rate Art Bell. Can't stand Bell. Noory is irredeemable.
    
  • KTNF - Mike Malloy - Like "Democratic Underground", but on the air. Malloy is the exposed bile duct of the fever swamp. Or maybe it's colon.
    
  • WWTC - Jerry Doyle - Did you know Doyle used to be an actor? No, seriously! And that he was on Babylon 5? Well, if you don't know, you can tune in on any given ten minute segment and hear it.
    
  • WCCO - Al Malmberg - I think Malmberg must be a spy who got left out in the cold - a Soviet sleeper (ironic foreshadowing intended) sent to the US in the sixties to host an innocuous radio show that would draw no attention, until the Red Horde decided to invade one midnight. Then, as the populace would tune in to the Good Neighbor for info, Malmberg would be there to put us all to sleep, allowing the Red Horde to conquer us with comic impunity.
  That's it for this year.
  Posted by Mitch at 05:06 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBack

About Liberty

I was going to write about the seeming contradiction between being a defense conservative and a small-l libertarian.

Swiftee did it better.
.

A printable part that so much of the left and media (pardon the redundancy) keep forgetting:

Clinton's attack on the fifth amendment under the guise of the "war on drugs" was unparalled in the history of this country..but I'll be damned if I can remember any lefty raising the alarm then.

Which is not a matter of saying "you guys did it first" so much as reminding you all to keep things in perspective. The Clinton Adminstration cashiered rafts of civil liberties...to fight drugs?

Remember when drugs seemed important?

Free To Decide (Based On Skewed Information)

Tim Rutten wrenches his shoulder while patting the deadtree media on the back.

It starts out about the NSA "scandal":

There are several indications that many — perhaps a majority of people — are unbothered by the White House's recourse to these measures in the unavoidable conflict with terrorists. That's beside the point, which is that — to a degree unknown in previous conflicts — people have been given the opportunity to decide whether or not they are troubled, which is precisely the function of a free press.

Which would be true, if the media - especially at the editorial level - presented either the unvarnished facts or admitted the biases that drove the choices it made in presenting the story.

Without either of those, you're getting no basis for "choice" - just propaganda.

Rutten descends into bathos:

It is worth considering, moreover, that only newspapers have the will, resources and venues in which this sort of journalism can be accomplished on readers' behalf. To an extent too little discussed, the future of the news media is the future of American democracy.

No.

The future of our current, mainstream media is that of just another institution.

Rutten believes that the current institution of the mainstream media - the set of printing presses and transmitters and satellites that have been the status quo for the past fifty years - are the only bulwark between democracy and fascism; that if the mainstream media were to disappear and leave a vaccuum, nothing would fill it.

Which is, er, "Fake but accurate"...
http://www.savagerepublican.com/2006/05/imperial-hubris.php
(Via Savage Republican)

Well, Sort Of A Right...

The DFL attack machine is spooling up for a summer offensive against Michele Bachmann - a social-conservative state senator who is out front in opposing gay marriage, and the GOP's new nominee to run for the Kennedy seat in the US House.

The DFL - one of whose important constituencies is gays - does not support gay marriage.

Craig Westover - who, being a larger-"L" libertarian than I, supports gay marriage on limited-government principle - skewers the DFL for the hushed double-standard:

Patty Wetterling's stance, and that of the DFL in general, is that they believe the same as Michele -- "marriage" is (and ought to be) the union of one man and one woman -- but Bachmann is evil for bringing it up.

If that is not the case, and Wetterling and the DFL believe that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right and ought to be legalized, why weren't they raising the issue before Bachmann proposed the opposite?

Because they're cynics who want the gays' votes, but not the fallout that'd come from giving them their issue?

Read the whole thing.

Strib Stories: Now with All-new "Specifics"!

The Strib - which stands to benefit from a new ballpark - is supporting the new Twins, Go-Gos and Vikings stadia.

They're flogging the results of a new Minnesota Poll (and we all know how accurate those are) that shows that Minnesotans are more willing, mirabile dictu, to support a stadium if other people are paying for it.

When folks who live outside the Twin Cities area were asked in the most recent Star Tribune Minnesota Poll whether they approved in general of spending public money for a new Minnesota Twins stadium, an overwhelming 72 percent said "no" and 25 percent said "yes."

But when those same people were presented with the specifics of a ballpark that would be financed only by Hennepin County taxpayers, the numbers changed dramatically. Disapproval dropped to 48 percent and approval reached 40 percent among outstate respondents.

Hardly a shock, I guess.

But the article itself - especially its title, "Specifics boost stadium support, poll finds" - are interesting.

Ah, Strib. So specifics change poll numbers?

Glad they've discovered that, after 20-odd years of mindlessly parrotting statistics like "80% of Americans favor gun control" (portrayed as widespread support for a ban that "specifics" show about a fifth of the people support).

Or writing "the conservative base is deserting Bush" without listing specifics like circumstances and alternatives.

The Strib Poll: The Baghdad Bob of measurement.

And The Question Is...?

Rasmussen - via Gandelman - notes that even the Rasmussen poll (lately the most accurate presidential poll, and the one where Bush has done the best) is looking bad for Bush:

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That's the lowest level of approval ever measured by Rasmussen Reports.

Sixty percent (60%) disapprove of Bush's job performance, the highest level ever recorded.

I'd love to see the question they were asked.

Looking at the way the results are phrase - "approval" and "disapproval" of the way the President has done his job - I'd assume the question is something like "Do you approve of the way the President is doing his job?"

If someone were to call me up and ask me that question, I'd probably be in that sixty-percent of disapprovers.

I suspect if you asked the six guys on the various NARN broadcasts, you'd be pretty close to sixty percent disapproval, too.

The President and his administration have botched so many things; they let a waffling, often-RINO Congress bog down his agenda; he has let the media and the Democrats (pardon the redundancy) control the message on countless stories, from Iraq to Katrina to immigration to Joe Wilson. And at the end of the day, he spends too much money - exactly as all of us Forbes people said he would back in 2000.

So yeah - I disapprove of the job he and his staff have been doing. It almost feels as if the President's staff, from Rove on down, took an extended break after the gruelling '04 race - the last extended period the President seemed to act like the President we know - and never really came back.

So yeah - if you ask Americans, especially committed conservatives, how they feel about the job Bush has been doing, we're going to be trending negative. It's been a negative year.

But ask a different question next: Would you prefer someone else in office right now? Algore? Kerry? Hillary!?, McCain, Giuliani? Nancy "The Velociraptor" Pelosi?

Someone should ask conservatives that question.

Open Letter to Janet Robert

May 14, 2006

Janet,

Mitch Berg here.

I know you're not having the best year over at KTNF, Air America Minnesota; your local lineup, such as it was (the plodding, orthodox, puerile Nick Coleman and the shrill, shallow Wendy Wilde) pretty much evaporated, and the network to which you're hitched is failing - and snubbing you all the way down. Your station is losing numbers (are you still in single points, or have you dropped into the sub-1-point range yet?), and after two years your "sales department" has been unable to sell your station to anyone but trade unions, Indian casinos, and vegan cafes.

The big pool is, which is going to tank first; Air America, or KTNF?

But since I know you read this blog for advice about broadcasting, I'm going to offer you a serious suggestion:

Put some local leftybloggers on the air.

Sort of like AM1280 did for the Northern Alliance - find a couple of local leftybloggers who are interested, put them on on the weekend, and plug 'em. It'd do wonders to differentiate your station from the vast, mindless mass of Air America affiliates. Let's face it, Air America's broadcast lineup isn't doing you any favors; they're dumb, and they do bad radio - but they are hideously expensive!

No, I can't tell you which local leftybloggers to ask, or even if any of them would have any aptitude for it. But John Hunt, Brian Acker and Patrick Campion at AM1280 didn't have a whole lot more to go on than that when they greenlighted the NARN two years ago, either, and yet it seems to have worked out for them fairly well.

And you'd have some advantages that AM1280 and the NARN and conservative radio in general never have. Remember when Fast Eddie Schultz was on six stations, and the Today show had him on ("the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh?")? You know Deb Caulfield Rybak would write a fawning puff piece that'd end up on Page E-1 of the Strib before you got the first week's broadcasting done! The "Liberal Bloggers" would be hailed as the saviors of local radio long before the NARN gets a single column inch in the local dailies!

No, I'm serious, Janet - give it a shot. The only thing you'd need to invest is your valuable airtime. (Chuckle stifled).

So have your people call my people. I can point you to a couple of leftybloggers who might not sound like whiny adolescents on the air, and who might not get the FCC on your case.

Let's talk.

Sincerely,

Mitch

The Choice

Kennedy: "Cut taxes, defend the nation, get government out of peoples' lives".

Kennedy's opponents: "Look! A Photoshopped fish!"

Bring on November!

Sedation Needed?

Rew from PowerLiberal is one of those leftybloggers - and we have a good supply of them in the area - with whom you can have a semi-rational debate (although if you get two glasses of wine in you and you'll never finish a sentence, but that's OK); compared to wastes of suet like TBogg, she's downright agreeable.

So I'll chalk this next bit here up to the overexcitement that comes from being in the thick of things:

Ths is an important process, this is where we beging to beat Michele Bachmann, she brings to the campaign wedge issues, she brings the things that make democracy stop.

Um, how's that again?

Make democracy "stop?"

Hint to lefties (and while Rew and Smarty might actually know this, the aftermath of the '00 and '04 elections showed that all too many Democrats don't): Just because the majority disagrees with you don't mean democracy has "stopped"; just that you've lost.

Which Wetterling will do.

Boy - I hope someone kicks off a Bachman Vs. Wetterling blog...

...Oh, Look!

DFL CD6 Delegates: Cancel Those Movie Plans

Second Ballot: Elwin "The Tink" Tinklenberg picks up four votes.

Let the blood and the patchoulie flow through the Monticello Community Center!

SITD: Soon In All-New "Audio"!

I'll be kicking off a podcast pretty quick here.

I'm not going to be recycling bits from the radio show (although pullquotes might pop up on occasion); it's going to be all-original stuff, one new 'cast a week. Target date for starting up is (gulp, fingers crossed) Monday the 22nd.

It should be about 5-10 minutes, depending on how much quiet time I can scratch up around the house in a week...

Attention, Outraged "Libertarian" Democrats

It's terrible that the NSA might be surveiling Americans' phone calls. Assuming, of course, that this is happening without a duly-obtained court warrant. Which, naturally, you're all assuming.

Now, let's not mince words; I know most of you didn't start giving a rat's patoot about civil liberties (other than abortion and the right to expose ones' privates under the aegis of "art") until John Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General. I remember during the Bush I and Clinton years, when you rolled your eyes at us big and small-L libertarians' talk of slippery slopes and government excess; it was the golden age of the "tinfoil hat" joke. When we yakked about things like Craig Livingstones' pilfering of FBI files of the Clintons' enemies, and their gobbling up of wiretap, property forfeiture and eavesdropping powers under the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 Terrorism bills, you clucked "don't be paranoid".

But I'm glad you've finally joined the real world, and have become concerned about government's excessive access to your information.

So what shall we do?

Let's leave arcanities like rolling back the excesses of the Crime Bill and the Terrorism Act aside. Howzabout we shut down the government's biggest window into our personal lives, the entree to more federal oppression than any other body of law, in or out of the world of terrorism?

How about we scrap the current income tax, and replace it with either a flat or national sales tax, rebated to preserve "progressivism" (oops - to get the rebate, one will need to divulge personal information! We can compromise there, right) in the tax code?

I mean, you care about preserving peoples' privacy, right?

Return of the Comments

Fixed it.

Tink: Stinking Thinking On Brink of Sinking

Gary at KvM on the 6th CD race: and El Tinklenberg - Patty Wetterling's main challenge for the DFL nod:

Any serious analysis that had CD-6 “in play” was contingent on Elwyn Tinklenberg gaining his party’s endorsement and brandishing his centrist credentials to the largely conservative folks of the northern exurbs that comprise the 6th.

Today’s pronouncement by Tinklenberg — that he would support impeachment of President Bush — may be talking dirty to the DFL delegates who will congregate in Monticello this weekend — but also gives Mrs. Bachmann an issue with which she would beat Mr. Tinklenberg like a rented mule all autumn long in a district that went 57% for the President.

This is good.

That's the kind of tinfoil-hat BS that'll play to the Kathleen Soliah wing of the DFL in the metro. Gary's right - people in the Sixth will probably have no time for that.

Of course, I'd imagine that he's counting on nobody in the Sixth hearing about it...

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXVII

Life had settled into a modestly pleasant routine.

I was happily living in a basement in a nice little bungalow in South Minneapolis, with a total of five women, three of whom I'd gone to college with.

Life had improved a lot when I got my first raise; I'd been promoted sometime in late March or early April from "Intern" to "Associate Producer" of the Don Vogel Show. The title came with money - I was up to $4.25 an hour!

Laughable? Sure. But I was paying $135 for rent, my car was paid for (and insurance was fairly cheap for me), the commute bill had dropped down to $80 a month, and I made the occasional extra buck or two producing hockey games; I actually lived relatively large.

But not as large as I thought I could. From my introduction the previous fall, I'd learned that I kind of liked talk radio. And I'd heard stories - almost rumors - of political conservatives doing talk shows in other cities. I looked around - Morning guy Mike Edwards was center to slightly left (not that he ever had an opinion), Geoff Charles was a libertine, syndies Owen Spann and Michael "Not the singer, not the beer expert" Jackson both swerved left, Joe Soucheray was a Randy Kelly-style DFLer in those days, Pat Reusse was a seething commie, and while Don Vogel didn't care much for politics, he trended toward the left and didn't like Ronald Reagan at all.

I knew what the "Fairness Doctrine" was all about. I saw an opportunity.

I went to talk with the boss, general manager Scott Meier. "This station could use a conservative host".

Meier looked at me - wild-haired, looking for all the world like James Honeyman-Scott (heroin addiction and all) - and said "I'll think about it".

I went into the production meeting afterwards, and told Vogel. "Cool! Our own fire-breathing gun nut!"

"Meier doesn't sound too thrilled".

"Well, I'll talk with him..."

I left it at that.

The other part of my routine; I'd built a "recording studio". I had a Fostex X-15 four-track cassette player, my guitars (the '60 Fender Jazzmaster, an Ibanez SG with Seymour Duncan "Jeff Beck" pickups that played better than any Gibson SG I've ever played), my acoustic, a bass, and a Crumar T-1 organ that I'd picked up at one of Knut Koupee's "Sunglasses Sales" (trade in a pair of sunglasses for an awesome deal on gear - the organ cost $50) which when miked properly and with a certain suspension of disbelief did a better-than-fair Hammond B3 impression. and a $100 drum machine.

I rigged the whole mess up in a corner of my basement hovel, and started learning how to do demo tapes on my own - from 7PM until 10PM every night (when the housemates insisted I turn the guitars down) I laid down tracks, and from 10 to 2-ish in the morning I tried bouncing and mixing and editing tracks to make my little four tracks sound bigger.

And I started writing music. Oh, in high school and college, I'd fantasized about being a rock star, and written a couple of puerile ditties. But for the first time in my life, I started writing music - writing anything, really - with a certain amount of drive and discipline.

Life was getting fairly good.

The War On Charter Schools

The NYTimes goes after charter schools in yesterday's editorial.

The charter school movement began with the tantalizing promise that independently operated schools would outperform their traditional counterparts — if they could only be exempted from state regulations while receiving public money. It hasn't quite worked out that way. With charter laws now on the books in about 40 states and thousands of schools up and running, the problem has turned out to be too little state oversight, not too much.

The whole thing turns around the word "outperform".

We'll come back to that.

Even states with disastrously low-performing charter systems can point to a handful of outstanding schools. But several studies have shown that on the whole, charter schools perform no better than other public schools. Beyond that, some states have opened so many charter programs so quickly that they can barely count them, let alone monitor student performance. Where charters have clearly failed, the states often lack the political will — or even a process — for closing them down.

Performance. Success. Failure.

Defined...how?

The oversight issue has become crucial since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires students in charter schools to meet the same standards as students in traditional schools.

Ding ding ding ding.

In other words, we're judging schools by the context of "No Child Left Behind", which relies on massive batteries of standardized testing to compare schools' "achievement" - in other words, to compare their ability to teach to the test.

Is that a valid comparison?

Charter schools, even in Minnesota, face fairly rocky road; many of them fail financially in their first years of operation (in the same way public schools would fail if they had to operate on their own).

But given that charter schools are an option many parents seek out when they've had enough with the public system, it might be better to measure individual student progress over time, compared with their time in the public system. Given the editorial's observation in the second paragraph that charters perform "No better" - meaning, one might presume, "No worse" - than public schools, of course, that would be the place to look for a difference. If the average grade in a public and a charter school is (to pick an absurdly oversimplified example) "C", but the kids from the charter all had "D"s when they were in the public system, it's an improvement. Right?

The whole thing is worth a mildly infuriating read.

Observation...

...on watching Seasons 1-3 of 24: "The security guards at CTU are just like redshirts on Star Trek; expendable".

Observation on watching Season 4: They finally made it official and gave 'em red shirts.

Almost As Good As Comments

Learned Foot, pitching in to help while my comment section is down, has opened up a comment thread for any of my commenters that might need a place to leave a thought.

Enjoy.

Open Letter to Dateline

I just sent this. Let's see if I get an answer:

I'm Mitch Berg. I'm a blogger (shotinthedark.info) and radio talk show host (northernallianceradio.com).

I saw Chris Hansen's piece on Today this morning, plugging your "To Catch a Predator" piece.

Hansen noted that the Fort Meyers police department was very aggressive in dealing with the subjects of your interviews when they moved in to make their arrests because, in Hansen's words, "Florida has relatively loose concealed carry laws".

Given that concealed carry permit holders nationwide commit crimes at less than 1% of national averages, I have to ask: did the Fort Meyers Police arrest any concealed carry permit holders as a result of your sting?

Thanks in advance,

Mitch Berg
Shot In The Dark
The Northern Alliance Radio Network

I won't hold my breath.

Perverted Reality

I saw a promo this morning on Today for a Dateline story, "To Catch a Predator".

It's at least the second in a series, in which the show stings online predators:

1. Decoys go to online chat rooms posing as underage girls and boys.
2. They lure the guys - aged 21 into their late forties, in the current episode - with promises of sex with the underage decoy.
3. The guys come to the house Dateline has rented for the ambush zone.
4. They drop the sting; the decoy is an actor, and they are on film.
5. They interview the suspects.
6. The local cops then move in and make the arrest.

On the one hand, I'm happy to see these people being stung. Good riddance (assuming they're tried and convicted).

And the stories are intensely affecting; I feel my skin crawl watching them.

On the other hand, this is the second in the series of such reports. And we're into sweeps - one of the periods when ratings are measured.

The first time was news. This time, it's a perverted reality show; the pornography of creepy Schadenfreude.

The Accidental Geek

Item 1: My comment section is still down.

In a sense it's a good thing; I'm finally able to catch up on eliminating comment spam. But I do miss the back and forth.

Since Moveable Type 2.x is pretty much deadware - it's been unsupported for over a year - I'm probably going to have to upgrade. The battle is between Moveable Type 3.x and Wordpress so far.

I didn't get into blogging to have to muck about with system management. I'm learning a bit - but it's irritating...

Item 2: That being said, I'm having to do a lot more geekery. I'm going to be launching a Podcast in the next few weeks. I'm hoping to make it a little different than most podcasts out there. More later - I'm still developing the idea - which means a lot of tweaking technical things; a new website, audio recording stuff on my computer, and figuring out how to do the whole pod thing. More over the next week or two (much of it is contingent on getting the blog itself figured out).

Stay, er, tuned.

Party People

Tony Garcia - who's made a stir by his criticism of Sixth District GOP House nominee Sen. Michele Bachmann - responds to his critics, and to me:

Some of you let your partisanship overwhelm your ethical center and ignore the facts.

Let's stop right there.

I like Tony. He writes a good blog. "Race to the Right" is an excellent talk show. Like most conservatives, I agree with him probably 85-90% of the time.

And - as laboriously noted elsewhere, I live in CD4 and have no dog in the race - until they go to Washington, when I have a huge dog in the running.

But arguing by proclaiming you, alone, stand for ethics, and your opponents stand only for party, is...presumptuous?

Allowing for the fact that I don't live in the district, and haven't stayed up on the minutiae of the race, here are the "ethical" issues I see brought up about Bachmann (at least, the ones that rise above the fever-swamp hallucinations of the "Dump Bachmann" group therapy project):

1. Bulldozing the nomination process. Bachmann's supporters are alleged to have bum-rushed the caucuses and BPOU conventions, and gamed the convention rules system to try to steal a march on her opponents. Now, if I were not a Bachmann convention delegate, I'd be upset. If I were a voter who viewed the natterings of party wonks with the sort bored bemusement that I suspect most of the world does, I suspect I'm thinking "so what?" An unpardonable offense to wonks isn't even a trifle in the real world. Question: Why should this matter to voters? And before you say "ethics matter", please show me where any of this rises to the level of needing to matter to voters? Bachmann the blocking and tackling and organizing well - and that's the stuff that actually win races. She plays politics hard and sometimes a little rough? Honestly, I've seen nothing here that makes Bachmann anything other than a female, Republican Lyndon Johnson, at the very worst.
2. Cable bills? Yeah, I'd be interested in hearing the story. But it's not news that, since being an elected legislator pays less (often a lot less) than many legislators' civilian jobs, that many of them push the limits of the expense policy. Which is not to excuse it - I'm the fiscal conservative, remember? - but I suspect that if you tossed every legislator that had a questionable expense report, you'd run out of candidates pretty fast. And again - the voter might be forgiven for saying "So what? Where's something that affect the job she'd do representing me in Washington?"

Do I want my elected representatives - the Republican ones, anyway - to be ethical? Absolutely.

Do I think anything that Tony Garcia and Bachmann's other detractors have brought up rise to the level of interesting anyone who's not a wonk or a compulsive CPA?

I'm not convinced.

Detractors: State the case in terms that matter to people who have never been to a GOP convention.

Instead you choose to attack the dissenter. I expect that. It is the new page of the GOP playbook (well, I saw it added last year by Kennedy supporters and Eibensteiner supporters, so 'new' is relative).

Tony, it's a page in the playbook of every organization...

What I will say quickly is to Mitch's post.
We're at war. We're also nursing a strong, vibrant economic recovery. Both of them can and will go straight to hell if the Democrats and their "happy to pay for a better _____" take over the House. For all their caterwauling about Bush's deficits, a Democrat Congress (and we're not talking Clinton/Lieberman/DLC Demcrats, these days - remember that!) would drag us back to the glory days of Tip O'Neill faster than you can say "national malaise".

Sorry, the responsibility of the delegates was to take that kind of stuff into consideration. Electability I believe is the general category. Ethics is another major category (one that the GOP has been casting aside recently). Each candidate was asked if there was anything in their backgrounds, past or present, that would embarrass the GOP should it be made public. Bachmann answered "No" and the committee knew that was a lie.

And, as I said - I remain to be convinced that anything that anyone has said affects Bachmann's electability by the general public.

They had the opportunity to not forward Bachmann's name for endorsement and from what my source inside that committee reported that was close to happening. The only reason it didn't was for fear of their own personal safety the exact wording was, "we would not make it out of this building alive", and was mostly toungue in cheek. I don't think they actually meant they'd be killed.

That would be an ethical lapse.

There is a danger in Speaker Pelosi actually coming to fruition. If that happens it is not my fault, but the fault of the endorsing convention.

Well, the general election will tell.

The Che of the '00s

Wretchard has an excellent article on the romanticization - and, for news purposes, commodification - of thugs and murderers as pseudo-celebrities on the left.

Read the whole thing - but the end caught my attention:

Though he died nearly forty years ago Che, from a media perspective, is thoroughly modern. He is so modern it would be possible to argue that both Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi are simple extensions of his great archetype. Zarqawi, for example, is by almost any measure a complete military failure unless one counts massacring women and children as some kind of martial accomplishment [As were both Guevara and Castro]. Zarqawi is even incapable of clearing a stoppage from a light machinegun he fires on video. But no matter, because it is the video not the machinegun which is the real weapon. It is the T-shirt graphic not the man depicted on the T-shirt which is important. News no longer describes war; it is war which inscribes news.

War - and the people who wage and profit from it.

And no, that doesn't mean "Halliburton".

Eighth District Bloggers

Flash pointed me to a couple of Eighth District-based blogs: "Erik" at Almost on the Range, and D.N.H. at Duluth Politics.

On the one hand, I wonder if the Twin Cities mainstream media that queued up to hatchet-job Grams in '00 will pay attention to this outstate race?

On the other hand, the Duluth media can't be a whole lot better (can it?); building a blogswarm in the Eighth District can only help.

No Comment

Not sure why my comments aren't working.

Any MT2.x gurus left out there?

(echo echo echo)

Might be time to switch or upgrade...?

For The Party

Like me, Craig Westover doesn't live in the Sixth CD.

Like me, he wrote in favor of Phil Krinkie in the CD6 GOP nomination chase.

And like me, he supports Bachmann - even as he disagrees with some of her stances:

Party loyalty means trying to make one’s party better; not the kind of blind allegiance the commenter obviously has to all things non-Bachmann. As I said in my column endorsing Krinkie, Michele holds solid conservative ideas on issues that count. Sure she has some “dumb” positions, but if she had all the "correct" answers, she’d be hobby columnist instead of a politician.

Picking a political candidate is not based on 40 key points of compatibility. To borrow a thought from Virginia Postrel, former editor of Reason Magazine, I’m voting for a candidate, not a mother. I’m not required to stand for everything Michele Bachmann stands for; when I disagree with her, I’ll say so. But given the options being suggested by the DFL, at this point in time, Bachmann’s the best choice.

I don't share Bachmann's zeal about gay marriage (I grudgingly support civil unions); I detest abortion, but regard it as a state issue; I acknowledge her fiscal conservatism, but want her to make it more a part of the nuts 'n bolts of her candidacy.

And while I (or someone like me, since I live in the benighted CD4) disagree with Bachmann on those and other issues, the fact is that that mini-Mitch is much more likely to be able to get a point across to Bachmann than to any of the DFL's likely nominees.

Westoveradds:

At least her supporters are smart enough to engage people that disagree with her, rather than giving them a swift kick to their respective groins.

For the past month, people who are fair-to-bearish on Bachmann have noted that the Senator's opponents are going to come out of the woodwork; Bachmann's personality, beliefs and (selected parts of her) record will become the focus of the campaign.

They figured, I think, that this was a bad thing.

I'm not at all sure of that. First of all, her opponents have tried this sort of smearing since her Maple River Education days. It's never worked. And her "highest-profile" detractors to day - the "Dump Bachmann" blog - bring a snide, overheated puerility to the issue that's unlikely to fly with voters older than fifth grade who don't share the authors' monomania about gay marriage. Eva Young is capable of some responsible reporting; unfortunately for her, she intersperses buries it with sensationalistic hallucinations (the silly "spying in the bushes" claims from last spring) and "When did you stop beating your wife"-type trifles. Calling it "better" than the efforts of her puerile, scatology-crazed co-"writers" is praise by faint damnation.

I've said it for a year now - knowing what we know now, Bachmann's most-fevered opponents will be a benefit, not a hindrance.

Grams Vs. The Machine: District 8 GOPBloggers

Rod Grams' hat is in the ring.

The former Senator, bumped from office in 2000 by Mark Dayton, didn't run a great '00 campaign - but he was also the victim of one of the most scurrilous press hatchet campaigns in Minnesota political history. The Strib and the rest of the local establishment media harped on some issues in Grams' life - some of them Grams himself (issues of the kind the media call passe when the perp is Democrat Bill Clinton), but more troublingly many related to his son Morgan - a young man of whom Grams had not had custody since his divorce, and whose behavior, irresponsible as it was, only reflected on Grams through the most tortuous possible logical gymnastics on the press' part.

Of course, that was long before there was an alternative media to speak of.

So here's the big question: who are the bloggers in the Eighth District? This campaign needs someone like the indispensable KvM in the Senate race, or the many blogs covering CD6.

So - anyone outstate?

Maybe it's time for that MOB party in Duluth...

In Search Of A Market

Noted in Harpers; the Is raelis have developed a featherless chicken:

Israeli scientists unveiled their new genetically modified featherless chickens, which are supposed to be cheaper to kill, as they need not be plucked, though the naked birds have been unable to mate, because the males cannot flap their wings, and they are vulnerable to mosquito attacks and disease, and they fall down stunned if they happen to wander out into the sunlight.

I found this via AbbaGav, an Israeli blogger, who wrote on noting :

Hat tip to the anonymous AbbaGav surfer -- from Sudan! -- who found me via a search for pictures of these poor beasts.

I have to wonder about the state of the Global Zionist Conspiracy™ when some guy from the Sudan finds out about our Genetically Modified Chicken Plot™ before I do! Did I do something to tick the Elders off? What, they don't trust me? As if the moment I found out about some exciting new plot for world domination I'd just go and slap it up right away on the internet. As if!

Oh, and sorry dude, I still don't have any poultry [pr0n], but thanks for stopping by.

Every time I think my commenters are weird...

Franken: Sum Of All Fever Dreams

Al Franken, campaigning for Senate fundraising for Democrats in Rochester, says the Dems can win - on values:

comedian Al Franken told the crowd that Democrats now have a chance to regain control of Congress and the Minnesota Legislature.

"There is nothing we can't do with a really good election, and I believe we are going to win on values," Franken said.

Good thing the writer, from the Rochester newspaper, specified that Franken was a "comedian" when he said that.

Values?

Those values, he said, include providing health care to all American children, increasing funds for education and being fiscally responsible.

Socialized healthcare and pouring money down the federal education rathole aren't "values", they're "bribes tossed to the undiscerning hamsters that vote for entitlements".

As to fiscal responsibility; anyone wonder, after a hypothetical (heaven forfend) Dem victory, how long it'll take the "happy to pay..." crowd to trot out the Tip O'Neil legacy?

Republicans, Franken said, have failed to live up to the promises made in the 1994 "Contract With America" as evidenced recent ethics scandals.

"This is a corrupt government," Franken said. "(Republicans) said, 'If we don't keep this contract, throw us out.' We are going to throw them out."

The violations of the "Contract" have made a lot of us in the GOP angry over the years.

The Dems are hardly the ones to lecture us about ethics.

Franken's visit comes as local Democrats gear up for what promises to be a heated election season. Although Rochester had long been a Republican stronghold, Democrats in 2004 scored two major victories with the elections of Andy Welti and Tina Liebling to the Minnesota House. Welti and Liebling are up for re-election this fall, and Democrats hope to gain more seats.

You never know. When the GOP is spending money like DFLers crack whores with stolen gold cards on things like stadiums (and taxes to float them), anything can happen.

Throughout his speech, Franken cracked plenty of jokes while also taking aim at the Bush administration. He said Democrats need to explain to voters where they stand, and that Democrats could create their own contract with voters.

Wouldn't that be interesting?

What would be in a DFL "contract" with voters, especially in Minnesota? "We promise an impotent nation, a depressed economy, and full subsidy of Incan lesbian body art. If you're ever not happy to pay for a 'better Minnesota', we will call you ugly, scatological names."

Well, I'm not a professional comedian. I'm sure Franken can do better:

"It could be called the 'Contract on Republicans,'" he joked.

Or not.

After listening to Franken's speech, Rochester resident Laura Askelin said the event shows the Democratic Party's growing influence in Olmsted County.

"It shows how strong our party is that people like Al Franken want to come here," she said.

Maybe.

More likely, it shows that Franken is bucking to spread his name outside the metro.

I wonder why that could be?

Not Tops

Not feeling great today. Posting will be minimal to light until later.

Ugh

Night Writer on his trip back through time...

...via the "movie" Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring the Gee Gees and ..Peter Frampton?

Read the whole thing. But this bit caught me up short:

I was just about to turn the tv off when the camera started panning the pre-"We Are the World" assembly, challenging my ability to recognize these people from nearly 30 years ago. OMG, is that Johnny Winter? What's he doing in this abomination? Rick Derringer and Nils Lofgren [Whaaaa? - Ed.] — what, did the producers have photos of you with teen-age girls? Wasn't that Jackson Browne, or only Keith Carradine? Hey, there's that other guy with my name, and Hank Williams, Jr! Bowser from Sha-Na-Na? They must have been offering free food at the recording session and he walked in. Whoa, there's Heart from back when they were still good-looking, and a low-miles Bonnie Raitt! Leif Garret, go back to your room NOW, young man. They even had Dr. John and Robert Palmer in there, no doubt to ensure that no matter how stupid the filming was, the cast party was smoking.

Nils Lofgren?

Yep.

Say it ain't so, Nils...

Viva La Grams

KvM on the other big news over the weekend; former Rep and Senator Rod Grams winning the endorsement in the Eighth to run against paleo-porker Jim Oberstar:

the Senator’s selfless decision to challenge Oberstar means that the Republican party will have a candidate of stature to contest a district that last sent a Republican to Washington before the earth cooled.

Simply put, that means good things for both Congressman Kennedy and Governor Pawlenty. If Grams can boost GOP turnout in the 8th just fractionally — even a couple percentage points — it would pay enormous dividends for Republican statewide office seekers.

In a race that will see both Senate campaigns seeking a 1/10th of a percentage point advantage wherever it can be found, Grams bid for the 8th could prove more than significant — it could be decisive.

Newsrooms all over the Twin Cities are now humming as reporters stand to sea, looking for more dirt on Morgan Grams.

But this time it shouldn't matter.

Six Redux

It was an interesting weekend. Either the world came to an end, or we're on the brink of something great.

Big stuff, for a little GOP district convention.

The Sixth District GOP endorsed Michele Bachmann to run for Congress in the Sixth District.

Bachmann was a polarizing figure when she stepped onto the scene with the Maple River Education Coalition, over a decade ago - and nothing's changed.

I don't live in the Sixth, so there's no point in my "endorsing" anyone. I'm a fiscal conservative above all else, so I thought Krinkie was the candidate I wanted most to see in Congress. Someone who lives in the Sixth wrote me last week to try to set me straight:

...My impression was that Phil Krinkie's sole appeal was as a fiscal conservative. As you said, we certainly need more fiscal conservatives in Washington, moreso in the Senate. The trouble with the fiscal conservative message was that all 4 candidates could make that claim. If that's your only issue, it's hard to see that resonating with delegates.

I got the impression at the precinct caucus & at the Benton County Convention that people liked him but that they just weren't that excited about him. I'd lump Jim Knoblach into that category. That contrasts greatly with the energy Esmay's & Bachmann's supporters showed.

There's something to that, of course. Conventions aren't about vision (not to say that Bachmann and Esmay don't have any), they're about blocking and tackling.

Let me explain why I supported Michelle Bachmann. When she visited our church, I was impressed with her speaking ability & in her direct approach in answering our questions. We've all heard politicians give long, winding, seemingly going nowhere answers to questions. Michelle's answers started off on point & ended that way.

I also liked how steadfast she was in her positions. They were obviously well thought out & logical. It's obvious that she doesn't stick her wetted finger in the air to decide which side of an issue she'll come down on. (I love that quality in GWB's approach to the GWOT, too.)

Gotta say that about Bachmann; she seems to mince few words.

It's been my observation that GOP congressmen & senators generally believe in the right things but have difficulty explaining why they believe what they believe. That's where Michelle's strength lies. I also think that Jay Esmay is capable of making that same appeal. I hope he runs for Minnesota state senate to replace Tarryl Clark, who, unfortunately, 'represents' me in the Minnesota senate. If he ran there, he'd beat her badly.

Allow me to throw my full support behind that idea. Jay, have your people call our people.

So - Bachmann is a straight shooter, says my emailer.

Tony Garcia - of Always Right, Usually Correct and Race To The Right - would beg to differ.

This woman is far from the model of morality that she and her lemming followers want you to believe. She is a nasty, black-hearted woman. Behind the scenes she even worse. She is a compulsive liar who will say ANYTHING to get what she needs...truth and facts be damned...Seriously, this woman is so bad for the state and the country that I see less danger in electing Patty Wetterling than in electing Michele Bachmann. And expect that to be something I repeat often during the election cycle.

Fair enough.

Then expect me to repeat this often, as well: While I know Tony (and, from the sound of things, many other people in the Sixth) have their reservations with Bachmann, they need to think outside their district for a bit.

We're at war. We're also nursing a strong, vibrant economic recovery. Both of them can and will go straight to hell if the Democrats and their "happy to pay for a better _____" take over the House. For all their caterwauling about Bush's deficits, a Democrat Congress (and we're not talking Clinton/Lieberman/DLC Demcrats, these days - remember that!) would drag us back to the glory days of Tip O'Neill faster than you can say "national malaise".

So unless you have photos of Michele Bachmann clubbing baby seals - that is to say, unless your complaints about Bachmann rise well above the level of standard political bickering, the kind of inside-baseball wonkery that will not matter in 100 years - then do what you need to to fix your district. But keep your eye on the big picture - which is what Congress is supposed to be about.

Because while Patty Wetterling herself might not plunge the Middle East into chaos and shiv the economic recovery in the groin, the Democrat majority of which she'd be a part most definitely would.

And if that's not enough for you, ye who live in right-leaning districts with platoons of great GOP candidates in reserve and a long history of voting Republican, at least pay a thought to those of us who are battling it out in the Godforsaken wastes of the Fourth and Fifth Districts, who keep plugging away if only to draw DFL resources away from your races, which are normally considered "safe" enough for us to not have to spend too much on. We can't get a GOP rep in Congress; you have to do it for us.

Don't blow it.

The Official Best Blog In The Upper Midwest...

...is Jay Reding.

If you're not reading him daily, it's your loss. There's no other way to put it.

(Thanks for the answer, Jay!)

Audio Geek Question

So up until the last time my laptop was in the shop, I could do this:

• Run audio through the sound card - say, a streaming video or audio clip from Youtube or Political Teen or whatever.
• while running Adobe Audition (an audio recorder/editor program), I'd arm a track and hit "Record".
• Auditoion would record the sound; I'd get a waveform, and it'd play back just fine.

Now, I just get the faintest ghost of a track - I get almost no waveform on the track, and I get an extremely faint playback, almost like running line-level into a speaker.

Is there some setting I'm missing somewhere?

I won't blame the DFL for this.

Thanks in advance.

Surprise of the Day

Here's everything you need to know about the Strib when covering politics; it's only cheap politics is a Republican does it.

This time, it's Rep. Phil "Dr. No" Krinkie, candidate for the 6th District GOP US House nomination:

Here's all Minnesotans need to know about the $1 billion tax cut proposed Wednesday by state House tax chair Phil Krinkie, R-Lino Lakes:

• Krinkie made his proposal three days before he stands for endorsement at the Sixth District GOP congressional convention.

On behalf of all overtaxed Minnesotans, I don't care if he proposed it to pay off a poker debt. Tax cuts are, all other things being equal, good.

• Serious tax proposals at the 2006 Legislature were made weeks ago.

Better late than never.

• The only tax relief Krinkie proposes for this year would come in the form of rebate checks mailed the month before the November election

I'll need it in November, too.

-- and then only if a Supreme Court challenge to the "health impact fee" on cigarettes goes the state's way.

Sounds like better odds than the State Lottery, frankly.

• The remainder of his proposal promises tax cuts starting in 2008. It amounts to asking the 2006 Legislature to start setting the 2008-09 state budget.

This Legislature is having enough trouble doing this year's business. It shouldn't even try to tackle next year's too.

Absolutely wrong.

Getting a line drawn in the sand early - setting the vision - should be what a conservative Republican does, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in session or out.

Dateless Dweebs Worldwide: "This Is The Greatest Day In History"

Those crafty South Koreans haved answered many a 30-something Dorito-fed video-game-addicted socially-challenged sad sack's dreams:

The world's first female android:

EveR-1, a combination of Eve and robot, looks just like a Korean female in her early 20s including her shape that is benchmarked against the nation's model.

The human-sized robot can understand 400 words and make eye contact while talking via her lips that are synchronized with the pronunciation of words.

Fifteen tiny motors embedded into her silicon face enable her to make a total of four expressions in tune with as many sentiments _ joy, anger, sorrow and happiness.

From a distance, the android could be confused with a real, flesh and blood human being, according to [team leader Moon-hong] Baeg.

Her face has four expressions, and she understands 400 words, making her a better blogger than Maryscott O'Connor.

Found Art

As always, I'll give credit where it's due; amid all the homespun yuk yuks in htis morning's Coleman column, this bit here:

This is classic St. Paul:

People arrive with low expectations, but stumble upon greatness. They aren't sure where they are, and they can't explain how they got there. But they can't wait to get back.

It was certainly true for me.

But this bit here was interesting:

One last word: Actor John C. Reilly also praised St. Paul, saying, "No one will beep at you" if you sit in your car at a green light and fail to move.

Reilly is one of my favorite actors. But I don't know what town he was in.

Note to John C. Reily; ask the man who knows.

Could this be another "Dayton's Card" moment?

Nick: Just watch the light!

Wandering Into The Sights

Westover on the likely denouement of the stadium debate. And it's not pretty:

Unless the DFL blinks, and Sen Steve Kelley the author of the 7-county metro bill [which would spread the stadium tax over the entire metro, and use it to fund transportation as well] doesn't blink (see Q-Comp), if the House GOP is dead-set on delivering a ballpark, look for the "compromise" to be a Twins Stadium (no Vikes) and a 7-country tax something less than .5 percent but includes transportation funding. If not, the campaign rhetoric is the Democrats support the right of the people to the vote; the Republicans failed to deliver on their promise of a new Twins stadium.

Compromise on principle, and you shouldn’t expect things to turn out well in the end.

Open letter to all of you GOP reps who stood with your mikes in your hand and bellowed "Leeets juuuuuust geeeeeet thiiiiiis doooooone" during last week's sessions; why would a conservative vote for you, again?

Throwing Crude Oil On A Fire

Jonah Goldberg on the "gas price crisis":

At a time when a) the second-largest oil producer in the world — Iran — is engulfed in nuclear messianic nationalism; b) Iraq is, shall we say, a somewhat unstable oil producer; c) we have few oil refineries, and many of them are undergoing maintenance that was postponed because of Hurricane Katrina; and d) China's economy grew at an oil-sucking 10% in the first quarter while our own grew at an astounding 4.8%, the brain trust in Washington is stunned, stunned, that gas prices are going up. It must be a conspiracy!

No doubt we can soon expect a major investigation into the disturbing reports that bears are using our woodlands as a toilet.

Look at the bright side, lefties; the "crisis" will do what thirty years of caterwaulilng about government initiatives and CAFE standards couldn't; get Americans serious about alternative fuels. When you hear the red meat, Budweiser and football crowd on the KSTP Morning Show talking approvingly about hybrid cars, you know you're approaching a tipping point.

All of this brings to mind T.S. Eliot's observation that no causes are truly lost because no causes are ever truly won. Although poverty is the natural human condition whose only proven remedy is the market, whenever enough voters get mad at the market, politicians can be counted on to play up popular paranoia about powerful "unseen forces" exploiting ordinary folk.

Why, this week, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) even conjured the specter of those old devils, the "robber barons." "Sadly," she declared with barely suppressed glee, "we are now living in a new era of robber barons." Pelosi, who is more of a student of polls and left-wing blogs than history, probably doesn't much care that the modern stereotype of the robber baron as rapacious economic predator is more a product of the collectivist spirit of the New Deal than of the 19th century. "The Robber Barons," an error-filled 1934 tract written by a socialist named Matthew Josephson, was intended to pump up Depression-plagued readers with bile about "economic royalists" blocking social progress. Josephson was inspired by Honore de Balzac's witticism that "behind every great fortune lies a great crime." The statist playbook, it seems, is never out of print.

Question: Who are the "robber barons" profiting most from oil prices?

Hugh Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and the dictators of the other eight of the 14 top oil-producing nations.

Note to Nancy Pelosi: Hold some hearings on that, k?

Enough Rope

Victor Davis Hanson on dealing with Ahmadinejad:

The good news is that Iran, like all ossified societies in the current era of globalized communications, is unstable. The eighth-century theocrats in charge there could find their own citizens questioning whether a bomb is worth international ostracism and the threat of military strikes.

That's the big question, isn't it?

I remember interviewing Michael Ledeen on the NARN a while ago. His position is that Iranian society has changed much since 1979; while the cosmopolitans in Teheran benefitted greatly from the Shah's (forced) westernization and favored liberal, western democracy in the wake of the Shah, the peasantry in greater Iran had not - and they were sympathetic to the fundamentalist mullahs. This, says Ledeen, has changed.

I certainly hope so. It was a broad swathe of Iranian society that put Khomeini in power, it'll take a similarly broad swathe to remove his heirs (and puppets, counting Ahmadinejad).

At the same time, what's happening now in Iraq must be of great concern to the Iranian leadership. Jawad al-Maliki, the new Iraqi prime minister, for example, is a nationalist. He, like other Iraqi Shiites, has shown he is not willing to be an Iranian pawn. As Ahmadinejad promotes death, how will Iranians react to images from Iraq of life-affirming free citizens in a new democracy?

In other words, will Iraq's new liberality prove more destabilizing to Iran than Ahmadinejad's agents can to Iraq? As Iraq's 300,000-strong army emerges as a well-trained and equipped force, one suspects the answer is yes.

One must hope.

As well as one must hope that:

• ...our country can resist the temptation to cut and run, and
• ...people can start to see that as regards putting pressure on terror-supporting dictatorships like Iran, Syria and Saudia Arabia, the "neocon" agenda of building democracy can be seen as a success (if not at the moment an easy one).

Hansen:

Notice: George Bush has been relatively silent during the crisis; Ahmadinejad is the one losing his composure on center stage. Nearly daily he shouts to the cameras about wiping Israel off the map or unleashing his Islamic terrorists throughout the globe.

In the brief present window between Iran's enrichment and its final step to weapons-grade production, we must keep calm and give Ahmadinejad even more rope to hang himself. As his present hysteria grows, exasperated Europeans or jittery neighbors in the region may even prod the U.S. to take action - indeed, to be a little more unilateral and preemptive in letting the Iranians know that their acquisition of a nuclear weapon will never happen.

For now, our best peaceful weapon in the little time that we have left is, oddly, our own quiet and hope that a democratizing Iraq stabilizes, and in turn destabilizes undemocratic Iran. So let the loud Ahmadinejad continue to make our case why such a psychopath cannot be allowed to become nuclear. Meanwhile, give confident multilateral internationalists their long-awaited chance at diplomacy, and prepare for the worst.

My big question: given that one of our most successful weapons in toppling the Communists in eastern Europe in the eighties was the covert support sent to labor unions in the East (the unlikely-sounding alliance between Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II with Layne Kirkland of the AFL-CIO, one of the great unsung collaborations of the era, in supporting the Solidarnosc union movement in Poland), why is the US not funnelling money and support to Iranian trade unions - they being among the people most dismally affected by the Mullahcracy, and the ones (besides those in power) with the most to lose from Ahmadinejad's cataclysmic vision?

Where can a guy go to help an Iranian union?

What's In A Grade?

The Headline in the Strib:

State's Education Tech Grade dips to a D

The story says:

When it comes to technology, it seems that seven years is enough time to go from trend-setting to obsolete.

Minnesota finds itself in unusual territory -- second-to-last place -- in a new ranking of technology in schools. The report by Education Week, a national education publication, gave Minnesota a D for the access teachers and students have to educational technology.

It's an almost total reversal from 1999, when an earlier Education Week report on technology showed Minnesota outpacing much of the country in wiring its schools.

And that comes from whom?

Education Week - a magazine that is, if not a full organ of the National Education Association, at least a full-blown parasite on the public education lobby.

What next - "State Doesn't Provide Enough Free Booze", sourced from Modern Drunkard?

Barb LeFevre

It was forty years ago this morning that Dad drove Mom to the hospital. I was happy enough; I got to have Grandma Bea stay with me!

Dad went to work - as he did while Mom was in labor for all three of us.

I'm not sure how I passed the day - I was three, so the state hadn't jammed me into a "Pre-K" program yet - but later in the day, Grandma told me I had a sister.

I was probably happy, blissfully unaware of the terror that the term "little sister" inspires in better-informed older brothers.

I think it was two days later they brought you home - and probably a week after that that you first taddled on me for something or other.

Anyway - happy birthday, Barb! And any time you wanna swap kids for a few weeks, just holler.

No. Please. Holler.

Dear Legislature: Thank You

I support Governor Pawlenty on most things - but some of his olive branches to the mushy middle and dim left just baffle me.

His move to increase pre-kindergarten assessment is one of them.

It baffles the Strib, too - naturally, for different reasons:

Instead, the measure has provided a case study on the limits of gubernatorial influence on this Legislature. In the House, Pawlenty's bill got caught in the crossfire of social conservatives who said it went too far, DFLers who thought it didn't go far enough, and rural legislators opposed to a formula change that would shift a small share of outstate Head Start funds to the metro area. When the bill stalled, House leaders opted not to pull the procedural strings that would get it moving again.

But old legislative hands have a saying: "No bill is dead until they've been home three days." Steps that would improve the education of Minnesota's 3- and 4-year-olds are alive in the Senate. They can still become law this year.

Oh, goody.

Make no mistake about it; these bills have little to do with "educating" children, and everything to do with labelling them even earlier in life than they already are, and making them more compliant product to jam through the system.

Now, I seriously favor abolishing elementary school, so kindergarden (at least the kindergarden used as part of the "K12" system) is on my long list of things to get rid of, to say nothing of "pre-K" programs. The fact that they're make-work programs for the teachers union is the least of the problems.

The Strib continues:

At a minimum, this Legislature should:

• Reinstate and expand the assessment of kindergartners' readiness for school. In 2002-04, kindergartners were sampled for assessment, giving the whole state a picture of their preparation but not allowing districts to see how their own children were faring. That's crucial information for every community.

• Fund an intervention program for kindergartners found "not ready" under the assessment.

Oh, lovely.

$o - create program$ to $end teacher$ after a "problem" - five year old children who, go figger, don't want to have their butt$ jammed into chair$ at that exact moment of their live$?

What next? A program to beat that love of sunny days and playing with insects out of them?

Really - what is "readiness" for kindergarden? I remember the tests my kids took; it screened them for developmental issues, most of which related to the circumstances under which they'd been raised. The subseqent 12 years of school can't fix that - what makes anyone thing the schools themselves will?

• Launch the development of a quality rating system that would let parents know whether their child-care provider, be it center- or home-based, adequately prepares children for kindergarten.

The better to insure that they're used to being poked, prodded, and herded about, earlier and earlier.

So a rare thanks to our legislature; your inertia has bought our children at least a few more months of childhood.

Dollar Bill Meets Pre-written Column Nick

Nick Coleman takes a perfectly rote swipe at Bill McGuire, CEO of United Healthcare, and longtime highest-paid executive in Minnesota.

Minor disclosure; I used to work at UHC, in 1994-95.

Bill McGuire has been CEO at UHC for, if memory serves, nearly twenty years. In the late eighties, the company nearly went under - its stock value dropped well under a dollar. Since then, the company has grown - it was in the #300s on the Fortune 500 when I worked there a dozen years ago, and it's at 37 today.

McGuire's salary, including bonuses and stock options valued in the year of their issue, has been about $50 million a year ever since the nineties.

And I'm guessing that a stock option issued in 1989, when the shares were going for under a couple bucks a share, might be worth a lot today, with the price in the fifties after three or four splits, might be worth a whoooole lot.

Check out UHC's market performance over the past five years; 10 million in options issued in 1999 are worth 50 million now.

Why is that? Because Bill McGuire has built an extremely successful business. This benefits McGuire - and the company's 30,000-odd employees, and the hundreds of institutional investors (including union pension funds) that are building their members' retirements...

...aah, but never let that get in the way of a
Nick Coleman rant.

He was at the UHC office for their shareholder meeting yesterday. But he might as well have been in some grimy barber shop on West Seventh. All the usual stereotypes still apply:

It was another retired teacher -- one from Minneapolis -- [shakes head - Ed.] who brought up that number.

Larry Larson, who taught math at Southwest High, was the only one to break through the love bubble at Doc's meeting. After taking questions from worshipful shareholders, McGuire was about to end the meeting when Larson, 68, came up to the microphone.

Your stock options are "obscene," Larson said, his voice quaking as if he stood before the Wise and Wonderful Oz. "Maybe you were caught up in this greed," he said, adding that he hoped McGuire would have "many more sleepless nights."

No. McGuire makes a lot of money. Perhaps too much - who knows? - but anything into ten digits is a product of the same success that is paying (Mr. Coleman fails to note) for Mr. Larson's retirement (and that of Mr. Larson's co-retirees; teachers unions are heavily, and happily, invested in UHC.

Loud applause followed Larson's candid outburst. Then the meeting ended. Not a hair on McGuire's head was mussed.

The Doc apologized, though. In a tiny way. He said he was sorry the company had come under a spotlight, which is something he might have worried about when he was grabbing stock options.

One wonders if Coleman would give the same grilling to some grandma who'd bought a bunch of IBM stock sixty years ago and watched it appreciate and split and sometimes boom, making her a millionaire.

Any bets on that?

And he was sorry he couldn't respond to "some questions related to options." Again, no (SE)C-word.

Well, I, too, want to apologize. In my April 21 column, I said nurses would have had to start working at the time of Christ to have earned an amount equal to what McGuire has "accumulated" each and every year at UnitedHealth.

But after more math work, I have determined that a registered nurse (at an annual salary of $58,000) would have had to have begun working 500 years before Christ, back when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon.

So we're supposed to trust a guy who can't do long division to talk about a guy who's engineered two decades of meteoric stock performance - benfitting the community (UHC is one of the most aggressive employers and promoters of minorities, women and the disadvangaged in the Twin Cities), their customers (most of the company's business is wrapped up in providing affordable employee health care to businesses) and, it is likely, Coleman himself - I'd be amazed if the McClatchy pension fund hasn't been glomming onto UHC stock for a long time).

McGuire also told the shareholders that, "with perfect hindsight, we perhaps should've moved earlier" to cut off the billions flowing uphill from health care.

But all is well now. The perks have been throttled back. No blame here. New guidelines in place. Only in hindsight.

How else is one to learn that success, to people like Nick Coleman, is a crime?

Make no mistake; many companies pay their CEOs way too much. I myself look at fifty-million dollar annual takeaways a bit askance. But the real problem is with companies that dish it out for the suits while failing. That is not the case with UHC; if it were, the shareholder meeting would not have had to wait for a retired teacher from Minneapolis to get the ire flowing.

In the hall overlooking the ducks, there was a rusty iron sculpture that looked like a nonfunctioning gyroscope or a broken navigating device.

Maybe it was a moral compass.

I'll leave it to the reader to discuss which is worse - the fact that Coleman can't do long division, or that he abuses metaphors so gratuitously. I've been in UHC's new lobby. It's not rusty, it's bronze.

And it's a globe, not a compass.

To represent the whole world.

You know - that place where Nick Coleman is the worst columnist.

Who?

Bob Collins at Polinaut on the unspoken factor, allege some, in the future of blogs as a medium:

The unrecognize factor in calculating where this medium is going, however, is the effect of blogger burnout. Most of them simply don't last too long.

Blogging is hard. Mainstream media is no picnic either, but you get to go home at the end of the day and, most of the time, there's more than one of you. Oh, and you get paid.

Bloggers don't have that luxury. With a few exceptions, they have to come up with their own ideas, research whatever needs researching, and then find the time in their lives to actually write. And then do that four or five times a day.

When you get right down to it, not many people can sustain that. A voice today, is gone tomorrow.

I've been doing this for four years. I've seen a lot of blogs come and go - some of them dearly lamented.

I'd suspect that a lot of blogs are going to burn out sooner than later. A motivated blogger can go his or her first 12-18 months on pure novelty and momentum (a not-so-motivated blogger can get through 2-10 posts before pooping out) - and the 2004 election spawned a lot of blogs. We're getting to the expiration date for quite a few of the efforts that launched back then.

Who does Collins mourn?:

All of that is a preamble to telling you that Backbone Minnesota's voice is the latest to fall silent.

Four months, 200-odd posts.

Collins casts a wide net indeed.

The Six

I live in the Fourth Congessional District. My congressional race is going to be pretty dull, most likely. Oh, I'll do my best to get Obi Sium - a very sharp guy, an Eritrean who has lived in the district for decades, a very smart, genial, conservative fella - out in front of the district, currently represented by Betty McCollum. Now, I promised my neighbor Flash that I'd try to ennoble the race a bit by refraining from calling Representative McCollum an interchangeable party machine hack; by refusing to refer to her as an empty skirt; by not saying that in a debate between McCollum and a set of wind-up chattering teeth, the teeth won on speaker points and content. I will honor that commitment.

At any rate, the Fourth is not going to be much fun - but it's mine.

The Sixth, of course, is where the fun is. King and Andy actually live in the Sixth District, so their opinions actually count.

I never "endorse" on this blog - because, duh, I'm just Mitch Berg, and nobody cares who I support (but for a couple of people who voted for my cat Nosemarie for mayor last fall; that is about the extent of my personal political clout).

But when it comes to the Sixth, I've got my preferences.

I've long called the Sixth an "embarassment of riches" for GOP voters - which, come convention time, isn't necessarily a good thing.

I've interviewed each of the four candidates - Sen. Michele Bachmann, Jay Esmay, Rep. Jim Knoblauch and Rep. Phil Krinkie - at least once. I'm modestly familiar with each of them. I would take any of them in Congress over any of their potential opponents (and no, I don't always say that about every Republican, although, duh, I'm a Republican for a reason).

But the Sixth has to choose one candidate.

Jay Esmay is a sharp, smart guy. He learns fast. He's got a big future in politics ahead of him. He's a very dark horse going into the Six convention; I think he's set himself up for a solid run for the State legislature, paving the way for a return to the Congressional scrum someday. I think we'll see more of him, if he's interested.

Knoblach is the consummate legislative mechanic. That's what he's famous for - and by "Famous", I mean among wonks and people who follow politics very closely. I think the MNGOP desperately needs him in the House; I don't think he has the name recognition in the eastern 2/3 of the district to win. Knoblach's campaign will dispute that - it's their job - but I don't see the word getting down to the northern suburbs' GOP delegates, much less the general electorate. I just can't see him winning the general. (Knoblach supporters - feel free to set me straight).

Michele Bachmann is one of my favorite Senators, if only because she drives fundamentalist social liberals so very, very insane. She turns rooms full of pious DFLers into sputtering lunatics; bashing Bachmann was a cottage industry among the frothy left long before Eva Young started the blog that, in its own way, has probably contributed as much to Bachmann's success as any other new media source. She is the poster child for social conservatism in the metro, and one gets the impression she enjoys it. Her keystone issue is gay marriage.

Phil Krinkie is one of my favorite representatives; he's a budget hawk nonpareil, a classic conservative. What Bachmann does to the pro-lifers, Krinkie does to those DFLers who are "happy to pay for a better Minnesota", the ones that hemorrage out their ears at the mention of "David Strom" - he speaks up for those of us whose Minnesota is just fine right now, and after 40 years expect a quantity discount.

Marriage is, and should be, a state issue; I suspect that legalizing gay marriage would fly like a rock in Congress even without Michele Bachmann. The budget? Well, goodness knows the GOP needs help growing a backbone on spending. "Dr. No" Krinkie has backbone.

If I lived in the Sixth and were going to the convention, I'd give the nod to Krinkie. It'd be a tough call, but in the end it's out-of-control spending that poses a clear, present danger to this nation's well-being. Gay Marriage isn't.

UPDATE: Andy from Residual Forces may not have had a date in twelve years, but he's endorsing Krinkie.

The Amazing Race

For the first time since...er, 1996, I think, the GOP nomination race is an actual competition. Unlike 1996, we in the GOP have something to lose.

And while the Democrats are obliging us by, so far, proposing a platform that demands impeachment of Bush even after he's removed from office, withdrawal of US forces from New Orleans, and reparations to descendant of slaves disenfranchised by whites, of indians disenfranchised by whites, of Italians dislocated by Poles, of Dutch ejected from New York by Brits, and of Lenapes swindled out of Manhattan by the Dutch, it will soon be incumbent upon us to pick a nominee to duke it out for the Presidency.

And it's there that it gets interesting. The GOP front-runners so far seem to be Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and George Allen (get out of here, Bill Frist; you will be lucky to be elected dogcatcher at a GOP convention, any more).

My question to Republican conservatives - given the choice between having to compromise on one or more issues of the conservative gospel and "settle" for a possibly-imperfect president (by conservative standards) to get an "electable" candidate, or face the notion of losing power altogether and spending 4-8 years under a Democrat who will be demonstraby worse, what do you do? What, if anything, do you compromise on?

Because some of it is inevitable - and some of it's acceptable. Reagan once said that if somone agrees with you on 80% of the issues, it's prudent to not worry about the other 20%.

So what about the current crop of GOP front-runners?:

1. Mitt Romney has at least nominal cross-ballot appeal; he got elected in crypto-maoist Massachussetts. Of course, Arne Carlson got elected in Minnesota (back when Minnesota meant Minnesota, liberally-speaking), so that's not necessarily a good thing. Romney's not Carlson bad, of course. But he's pro-"choice", he's mushy on the second amendment, and his record in Massachussetts shows that he might have the potential to take and run with the worst of Bush's current spending-mania.
2. George Allen is a favorite among conservatives. In a convention held purely among Hugh Hewitt listeners, I have no doubt that he'd win the nomination. Then, of course, the problem would turn to denying the vote in November '08 to all non-Hewitt listeners, since I'm not seeing George Allen having either name recognition outside the conservative base or the kind of Reagan-ian vision that sells actual conservatism to mainstreet America (and even if he did, I'm not seeing a Gingrich-ian or Reagan-ian impulse in the party at large to spread such a gospel).
3. Giuliani is arguably the most electable Republican of all. His record of holding the line on government growth in NYC would be something new to the party after eight years of Bush and the current pack of hamsters in DC. Of course, you'd have to give ground on abortion and the second amendment. Pragmatically, of course, neither should be problems with a president, since both should be state issues, and hopefully Roe will be torched shortly and allow the issue back where it belongs.
4. John McCain is good on spending, adequate on national security. Beyond that? His "I'd trade the first amendment for good government" crack on top of a decade of promoting speech rationing should earn him a deserved exile.

So, Republicans - there's the bargain. What do you bargain away to keep a Hillary!, an Algore, a John Kerry out of the White House in '08?

Press Releases

Jess sends a press release:

Three bloggers today launched a joint venture to feed their shared 'American Idol' obsession. This new blog -- the American Midol Blog -- will be updated at a frenzied pace, and will feature news, gossip and what Jess of Blind Cavefish calls "totally bitchy commentary."

I have one of my own:

Mitch Berg today announced that, for the fifth (sixth? Fourth? How many?) straight season, he has not seen a single episode of "American Idol".

"I can barely find time to watch 24 on DVD", noted Berg.

"AI" joins "Friends", "Frazier", "Joey", "Home Improvement", "Commander In Chief", "Will and Grace", "Real World", "CSI", "Roseanne", and "NYPD Blue" on the list of hit programs of which he has never seen a full episode.

I would, however, love to have a job like Simon Cowell's...

Chickenlogicians

I'll start with a tangent.

It's a good thing I have Cap'n Ed and King on the air with me on the NARN show. They are both very diligent in reminding me that when I slag on leftyblogs that there are exceptions to the rule; when I refer to leftybloggers who've been comedically outmaneuvered as "shrieking like a cagefull of poo-flinging monkeys", both were very conscientious about reminding me that there are exceptions. Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, Jeralynn Meritt, Flash - they tend to be able to separate the fever from the swamp.

Now, "Mr. Sponge" - who writes or has written for a number of regional leftyblogs (side note: I'm starting to think that there are really only about ten regional leftybloggers; each of them seems to write for five or six other blogs) - tries but occasionally fails to meet that standard. Writing in Mnisinformed Mnimalcomprehension Minvolved, he took a shot at my take on Ed's "101st Fighting Keyboards" bit (side note 3: Damn, I love that bit. Leftybloggers - who predominantly seem to operate under the conceit that only the left is funny - are reacting to the defusing of their scandalous little slur like someone farted at a Wellstone memorial observance).

It's easiest to explain how by kyping one of leftyblogdom's few non-scatological memes, "The Shorter [fill in a blogger whose style you're about to try to caricature]". I present you with: "The Shorter Sponge", in a hypothetical posting war with "Mr. Red", a fictional rightwing blogger.

"Mr Red is an assnozzle who desperately needs a laxative"
Posted by Mr. Sponge, 5AM, May 1, 2006

[Extensive posting proving non-assnozzlitude and alaxativity]
Posted By Mr. Red, 6AM, May 1, 2006

"Oh, I meant "assnozzle" in the good way".
Posted by Mr. Sponge, 7AM, May 1, 2006.

So, too, with yesterday's response to my "Fighting Keyboard" post.

First things first: the "chickenhawk" slur is the mark of the intellectually bankrupt, of people who can't frame an argument that's not thoroughly ad-hominem.

Sponge isn't intellectually bankrupt; he just needs to restructure some debts and quit floating checks.

His post today takes my piece from Friday - in which I expressed and reiterated a certain amount of humble regret over a road not taken 20-25 years ago - and, in the way of leftybloggers and, well, jumps around like a poo-flinging monkey.

On my note that on 9/11 I was 38, with two kids and a crap knee, Sponge notes:

Note to Mitch: this is the sacrifice thing everybody always talks about. If it were as easy as sending an email to Captain Ed and patching up a chickenhawk jpeg to a website, anyone could do it.)

Gosh, Sponge. Do you think so?

(Apparently he does - throughout his post, Sponge seems to assume that anyone involved in the "101st" thinks the joke is in any way analogous to miltiary service. ("Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a midwest call center manager/blogger is comparing a hastily put-together jpeg and internet list with actual military recruitment.", Sponge? Is that really what Ed was doing? Because either Ed is stupid for saying such a thing, or you're taking target practice at little straw Charlies. I've met Ed, and he's no dummy, so I guess you should be sure to wear ear protection - to go along with the "logic" protection you must have worn while writing your little screed). I urge Mr. Sponge to take that up with Baldilocks, the Jarhead, the Sailor, and the other milbloggers and veterans who are laughing along with Ed; they might set him straight).

Sorry, Sponge; by your leave, dumping the kids and joining the military wasn't an option (at least in part because I had no place to dump them). Ah, but there is no choice, no personal decision no matter how difficult, that can't be jammed into a set of smug preconceptions, in the world of the Sponge.

My first response to Mr. Sponge is...well, anatomically improbable, and in any case not up to the rigid standards of decorum obtaining on this blog.

On further thought, a better one would be "read more carefully, Sponge, and check your prejudices at the door". I mean, thanks for your service, naturally, but you're way off on this one.

But reading carefully would take all the fun out of being a leftyblogger, wouldn't it?

My Favorite Cheap Thrill...

...is watching writers for boutique freebie-zines getting beaten senseless with clubs.

The above is intended as satire, just like this bit here.

But to be fair, I think Steve Perry might have figured out something that some of us have known about the City Pages for a long time.

Steve Perry got his shorts scorched, as he noted notged last Thursday:

Having read a lot of comments and emails in the last 12 hours from readers who've seen the lives of loved ones wrecked or ended by meth, I think the readers were ahead of us on this one. I still believe that there was a legitimate point to be made about the dangers of overhyping meth or any other drug of the hour, as I said yesterday. That was why I approved the item. But if you're going to make that point regarding meth, it deserves some careful qualification--clearly, meth is not just any drug in the way it takes hold of many users--and in retrospect, casting it as a gag item in the Best of the Twin Cities issue was not the way to make the point.

Sounds good.

Hey, comedy is ugly. And sometimes stupid. I'm as guilty as the next guy; I feel Perry's pain.

More interesting though; Perry feels someone else's pain...:

If you've read this paper to any extent at all, you know that there are plenty of people whose feet we relish putting to the fire. Drug casualties and their loved ones aren't among them. What makes me feel worse, frankly, is that we have always worked hard in our news and features section to avoid the class biases and blind spots that shape way too much of the news coverage available today.

The City Pages has always known its target audience; lilywhite, living in Downtown, Uptown or Dinkytown, left of center, college-educated; to reach that audience, their assembled a staff of...well, the same thing.

And that's made them a tad myopic, as Perry seems to note:

What I mean is that we try regularly to tell stories that cast a light on people most media don't bother with, since those people don't belong to the most desirable ad/demographic niches.

Unless, in this case, those "people the media don't bother with" are lower and lower-middle class people from unfashionable, rural, exurban and suburban America.

Am I reading too much into Perry's mea culpa? No - he puts it into almost as many words:

And we blew it on that score here, in my view. Would we have published a satiric item about meth if it were tearing through the city neighborhoods where we live in the way it's tearing through many small towns and suburbs? No, I can't imagine we would; I can't imagine it would even occur to us to do so. We're sorry for the blind spot we put on display, and for the pain it clearly caused for many readers.

I've joked for years about the classism and label-driven myopia of the City Pages' staff; for years, I joked that their annual "Best of the Twin Cities" edition might be more accurately named "Best of Uptown, Downtown and Dinkytown", since it seemed their staff rarely left those neighborhoods.

But who knows. Maybe the whole flap'll teach the CP's editorial crowd that there are actual real people, rather than convenient stereotypes, out there west of Wirth Parkway and south of 36th Street.

Maybe. I'll still take the "under" on that bet.

The Back Door

It's very hard to get a gun in Minneapolis - as long as you've never committed a crime in your life and are committed to acting within the bounds of the law.

The City of Minneapolis has shut down all but one of the gun shops within city limits over the past 20 years (as has Saint Paul) - and that last remaining shop, Koscielski's on Chicago Avenue, is not allowed to actually sell guns, the last I checked.

Of course - as we Second Amendment activists have been warning all along - finding a gun remains a trivial matter, as the Strib notes:

A confidential 2005 report by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, obtained from sources outside the ATF, draws a portrait of the growing illegal marketplace for guns in the Twin Cities.

It describes how from January 2004 to last August, authorities traced nearly 1,200 firearms in Minneapolis involved in criminal investigations.

The report also says that nearly 200 guns recovered during Minneapolis crime investigations in the past 18 months were sold by at least seven legitimate gun retailers in the Twin Cities.

Unstated in the report; the criminal records of those from whom the firearms were confiscated.

People in Minneapolis caught with the guns typically used straw buyers -- without a criminal record -- to buy guns from retailers that wound up being used in crimes.

This brings up all sorts of questions.

For starters - traditionally, guns on the black market, at least the cheap 'n dirty ones favored by criminal scum, have been cheaper than guns bought through legitimate dealers. Does this mean that the price of black market firearms is rising to the point where buying guns from the legit market is a better deal? Or does it mean that criminals are confident in their ability to operate with impunity in Minneapolis?

In its investigation of a gang called the Shotgun Crips, for example, the task force has seized about 30 guns, according to an ATF summary prepared for the Star Tribune...
Some of the women are shown on surveillance cameras inside a local gun store being directed to buy certain weapons, investigators say. In one scene on tape, a couple leave after peering into a gun case, and within an hour, the woman returns to make the purchase.

Unmentioned by the Strib report: Where did these "Shotgun Crips" come from? Why did they move to Minnesota in the first place?

Why do you think?

It's not about gangs controlling turf there, he says. It's about controlling drug trafficking and backing up their operation with force.

One recent evening, [Minneapolis police weapons task force sergeant Greg] Freeman swung back toward 26th and Dupont Avenues N. Petty crack deals were going down, and kids on bikes with cell phones were hustling to get to the corner to sell a foil pulled from their sweatshirts.

But he had bigger targets in mind than going after a $50 crack deal.

"It's like herding cats to go after that," he said.

This is Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis.

Oh, the report turns it's attention outstate, of course...:

Word had spread to Minneapolis, investigators say, that if you wanted to get a steady supply of guns, Schiley's sales were worth the drive. The retired refinery worker from St. Paul bought handguns at other garage sales, then sold them for between $125 and $250, depending on the weapon's make.

Two men from Minneapolis became his regular customers and bought at least 40 handguns from him, he said in an interview last week.

"They were turning around down there and selling them for $500," he said. "I kept asking what they were doing, and they said they had some friends who need a little home protection."

When confronted this year by ATF and FBI agents assigned to the police task force, Schiley said he realized he had broken the law. He acknowledges now that his regulars were buying more guns than the average person.

"I guess they were using me to get the guns," he said. "The way they've (law enforcement officials) explained it to me -- yeah, I was breaking the law."

Schiley was indicted two weeks ago in federal court for selling firearms without a license. Weapons he sold have turned up in about a dozen gun-related crimes, police say.

Schiley's going to go to jail, and deservedly so.

But here's a question; why didn't this trade in illegal guns coming in from bucolic Pillager turn the greater Pillager area into a criminal cesspool? Do Pillagerites need to worry about gang-banging scum shooting at random on their main street?

No. It took people from a gang of criminal vermin to turn the garage-sale guns - inert pieces of metal - into a problem on the streets of Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis.

So why do these pieces of filth still roam our streets, virtually unimpeded? Is it the fault of the Minneapolis Police Department? No - despite a quarter-century of lousy choices for chief of the beleaguered department, the cops in Minneapolis do their best.

No. The problem comes from upstream.

RT Rybak and the city council, and their predecessors in the office, bear their share of the blame.

It's the city and county law-enforcement leadership whose job it is to make the streets safer.

And at the end of the day, Minneapolis is a city where the law-abiding person has to jump through uncountable hoops for the means defend him or herself from criminal scum, and is yet no safer today than their were 15 years ago, even as crime nationwide plummets.

This is Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis.

Pro-Dictatorship

As protest season starts up, and the Twin Cities' streets fill with the aroma of patchouli oil, and the clattering of angry baby-boomers' walkers, and the adenoidal shrieks of Macalester students chanting, it's worth going over one of the key definitions in my personal lexicon.

In recent weeks, I've gotten comments and emails in this and other fora criticizing me for referring to anti-war protesters as "pro-dictatorship" or "pro-Hussein". That is, say the critics, not their motivation.

My answer: perhaps it's not what drives them as individuals.

But if I were to launch a protest against, say, traffic signs and stoplights - say, for purelky aesthetic reasons - it may be true that my motivations might not be to cause more traffic deaths. But more traffic deaths would be the inevitable result of my crusade, whatever my motivations.

Fact: Saddam Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people (many times the number killed in the current war - perhaps an order of magnitude more).

Fact: There was no chance to remove this murderous dictator from power by peaceful means. The UN was impotent (as they are in any crisis), and the sanctions were serving in many ways (as the Oil For Food Scandal investigation has shown) to reinforce Hussein's political (if not military) power. Not only was was Hussein's power secure (thanks to George W. Bush's United-Nations-backed betrayal of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs in 1991-1992), but even Hussein's eventual passing from the scene offered no known, plausible chance of relief; his sons' positions were fairly secure, and in any event that of the Ba'ath Party was completely so.

Fact: The only thing that cut Hussein/Ba'ath party rule short was the invasion.

The protesters oppose the war. The war removed the dictator. Ergo, intentionally or not, the protestors oppose the removal of the dictator, by accident if not by design.

(Leave aside the protesters who mindlessly intone "at least Hussein was elected" - and while they might be a minority, maybe, they are most certainly out there).

This is not to impugn the morality of most of the protesters in any way (that can only be assessed on an individual basis - and yes, I will do the assessing); it is, however, intended to show the unintended (?) logical result of their beliefs.

No war? Happy dictator.

There's really no way around it.

Buzzard, Meet Hawk

Wendy Wilde - semi-coherent lefty talk show host and mold refugee - is thnking about running for [fellow Jamestownb, ND native] Jim Ramstad's seat in Congress:

Wilde, a DFLer, planned to announce her candidacy in the 3rd Congressional District on Saturday.

Wilde - whose real name is Wendy Pareene - has worked for WCCO Radio and recently for Air America Minnesota. The DFL Party's endorsing convention is May 6.

Ramstad, a Republican, is serving his eighth term in congress.

Jim, have your people call my people. It'd be my pleasure to help pound a stake through Wild Wendy's shrill little electoral heart.

(Via The Elder)

I'm Hoping...

that this is just a testing error...

Same Goes For the U Of M

(Via Blackfive)