Shot In The Dark

Sign Me Up

Jim Farell of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association is launching a campaign to repeal Saint Paul's smoking ban.

Look for the flyers soon:

Images from the PiPress' "City Hall Scoop" blog, who has the story.

Jim Farrell, executive director of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association, sent a lengthy e-mail to the mayor and city attorney’s office -- and copied it to the Scoop -- to let the Coleman administration know what they’re up against if they campaign to support the ban.
(Coleman told the Pioneer Press in February that he would campaign against a repeal of the smoking ban he signed into law.)

I loved the Mayor's office's response:

The mayor’s office didn’t sound too alarmed today.
“Don’t vote angry,” said one staffer, looking over the flyers.

Oh, of course not.

Unless it's anger over, say, Randy Kelly endorsing George W. Bush. Then anger is fine, right, unnamed staffer?

Pfft. Anger is why most of us care about politics in the first place.

Blogswarm Update

All of you involved in the blogswarm: I intend to run the result of the blogswarm at the end of next week, when people have had time to do the work (ahem) and I'm back on the case.

What's Going On?

The NARN will be observing one of its two "best of" days tomorrow. We've been pretty good about taking two days completely off per year - Christmas weekend and the weekend of Independence Day. So too this year.

Lots of stuff happening in the next few weeks.

For starters - one week from today is the NARN Scotch Tasting at Keegan's. $25 bucks gets you an evening of sampling some of the best Scotch you will ever have. Now,I'm not a big Scotch drinker - anything less smooth than the is too much like gargling gasoline - but even I will have to drop in for a snort or two. Plus Mike Nelson will be in, both to sell cigars from his new business venture, and presumably to heckle the Fraters.

Then, on July 15, the penultimate event of the regular NARN season - the Patriot Picnic. This year, the Bright Spot of Red will be deep in the heart of the Sea of Dingy, Institutional Blue; we'll be doing the party at Boom Island Park, on the Mississippi slightly upstream from Downtown Minneapolis. It'll be a blast; a live NARN broadcast, plus free lunch for those of you who get there on time (I think the first 400 or so get the goodies), plus all the fun we had last year, getting a couple of hundred of our closest friends together in one place.

And Pink Monkeybird won't have as far to ride!

Crushing of Potential Dissent

You've read about it on blogs with bandwidth this past week; Amy Klobuchar, at a campaign event giving a speech at the Humphrey Institute, barred Mark Kennedy's people from recording her speech.

Bob Collins had his characteristically low-key take on events, and of course KvM is on the case, as is Mark Gisleson "staff" at Norwegianity "Blogs for Bell", who had a fine line that A-Klo could take to heart:

According to our consultant Walter Ludwig, his grandmother had this right. She said "the best thing about telling the truth is that you never have to remember what you've said."

Of course, in A-Klo's case it's even better - she just has to remember what "hero" Mark Dayton said.

KvM also asked the salient question, whilst quoting a letter Gary Miller received from the Humphrey Institute, where hte vent took place; their quote is in italics, below. Note for those of you out of state: the Hubert Humphrey Institute is a public policy tank and school at the University of Minnesota; despite being a public institution, it generally serves as a state-sponsored DFL propaganda mill and training camp):

The Klobuchar campaign asked there be no unauthorized video or audio recording of the event and we requested their wishes. If you’re interested in filming future appearances you should probably contact their campaign in advance. In inviting these political candidates, we work to provide a non-partisan or bi-partisan atmosphere that allows them to put their guard down as much as possible. As you can imagine, within these situations there may be some who choose to record appearances for negative reasons and I’m sure that’s why they made that decision.

What are they afraid of? More important, what gives them the right to turn a public event, into a campaign event?

Exactly.

The Humphrey Institute is a public institution. Why is Klobuchar able to impose private, campaign-imposed restrictions on free speech in a public place? To turn an ostensibly public (not campaign) event into her private recording session?

The Patricians, Part V

Part five of the Patricians for Peasant Responsibility plan to stick it to the pesky commoners:

That's why we support a strategy to Invest for Real Prosperity, developed by a dozen community leaders working with Growth and Justice. It would raise $2 billion more a year, to invest wisely in our state's future, with accountability for results. That's an average of one penny per dollar earned by Minnesotans.

Wow.

A dozen community "leaders"?

Who are these "leaders?" Because if they're "leaders", shouldn't all of us mere followers know who they are? Shouldn't they appear in the rhetorical public square riding a horse with a cockaded hat and a powdered wig, for us knaves to fall into line behind, singing our crude peasant work songs and carrying our hoes and spades on our shoulders, as we march out to do the work that the "leaders" have appointed for us?

I'm sorry. This paragraph in particular made me want to chunder - partly because of its rank arrogance ("you peasants and your "no new taxes" pledges can't run a state - get out of the way"), and partly because of the weaselly double-talk.

"Invest for Real Prosperity"? If the kind of prosperity that leaves me in a house and able to afford to send my kids to college isn't "real", I'm still waiting for the "Community leaders" to say what is.

The "plan" would spend one cent on every dollar earned by Minnesotans. They're banking - correctly - on the fact that most readers will see "one cent", and not the "Every dollar earned". In other words, they propose raising state taxes a percent, expressed across-the-board - and even more, considering they propose to focus these taxes on "rich" Minnesotans who make more than $45,000 a year.

And this "plan", by these "leaders", will be accountable for results? To whom? The other "leaders"? Seriously - weasel-talk. It'd be a government program. And if you need an illustration of exactly how "accountable" government can be when a powerful elite wants something, look at the stadium bills.

This Was The Week That Was

Last week I took a vacation. It was my first week off I've taken that didn't involve job hunting or house-painting since 1995. (Some of you may recall my week off during Christmas week of 2004. That truly did not count; it was part of a short layoff at my then-employer. Vacations without an income are no vacation at all).

And starting today, I'm off for another week.

I know. I know. Dumb.

It's been so long since I've had paid vacation (and spent it on other than a day here and a day there for kids' illnesses and the like) that I completely forgot about the iron rule of vacation: you pay ahead for the week before, and pay back the week after; you spend the preceding week getting all your work caught up and tucked in, and the week after you come back putting out all the fires that broke out while you were gone.

So this week - with a week of vacation behind me and a week in front - was really, really bad. It coincided with big due dates for a bunch of software releases - so I've been just buried. How buried?

Most of what I've published this week on the blog was written last weekend!

Blah. Anyway, I'm out on vacation again, although I see someone has scheduled some more meetings. I'll have some 'net access, so I'll be able to do some posting, albeit probably light.

Oh, yeah - it's summer!

I'm going to need a vacation from all of this "getting ready for vacation" crap.

Patricians: The Blogswarm (Part I)

Over at Ladies Logic and Savage Republican, the Lady Logician has started publishing her part of my blogswarm of the Growth for Justice patricians:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

If you're part of the swarm, send me your links.

And if you're not a blogger but are working on this, don't worry - I'll post your findings as well, on my blog.

Thanks.

The Patricians, Part IV

Taking a look at the next graf of the Patricians' scold to the peasants:

We need more transportation options, to stop the steady rise in traffic congestion.

One of the old saws among the transit-at-all-costs crowd is that "you can't build your way out of congestion".

This saw is actually true. If you build roads, people will move where the roads are - and they'll all pour out onto those roads at 7AM.

But if you're a marketeer, the same sentence holds; the stress is on the word "build". Look at the cities with the biggest, best-developed transit systems; New York and Chicago are transit dreams; their roads are nightmares, too.

The fact is, eveyr exercise we've had in transit-building so far has been a matter of building trains (or scheduling buses) to take people from where they want (or have) to live, to where their jobs are. Every morning, as the inbound freeways are clogged with finance managers and lawyers and HR directors driving downtown or to the Strip from Burnsville, the outbound buses are clogged with people going from their homes in south Minneapolis to their jobs at malls and garages and hotels in Eden Prairie and Bloomington.

So far, people find the inconvenience acceptable - or at least within the curve below which they continue to accept it rather than chuck it all.

But let's say that someday congestion worsens. Drastically. What then?

What do you suppose will happen first?

1. Government will develop the will - and coerce a tax-weary people - to condemn land and buy right of way and destroy enough businesses and neighborhoods to build enough transit to fill the bill, or...
2. Businesses, aware of how congestion is killing their bottom lines, start making allowances: moving the jobs to where the people are, or moving to where the people can afford to live by work, or making it easier for people to commute less. It's happening already - at my own company, people in many IT-related groups frequently work from home via the 'net, but many people telecommute from cities with neither company offices nor commutes; my own group has people from Duluth and Green Bay, employees, mind you, not remote contractors. All by way of saying the market will probably solve the congestion problem on its own, long before the Twin Cities manage to spend their way out of congestion.

   Of course, some of those solutions are not great for the Twin Cities; if companies move to Texas or North Dakota, that's jobs leaving the Twin Cities. Of course, that's been going on for years, and has seemed to slow only with the people who signed the open letter being ushered from power.

   And in any case, what the solutions will likely do - at least in the mid-term - is make the Twin Cities less valuable as a workplace, and lead companies to either move out or at least have fewer of their employees drive in. Which will take bodies off the roads, but will also reduce the tax and spending bases for the cities. Of course, there's no replacing the sheer infrastructure of a major city; there'll always be a Minneapolis, and for a very good reason. But as the economy continues switching from manufactured goods to information, the value of having a mass of bodies in a centralized location will (slowly) drop.

   Which, Now, given that most of the 203 signers of the open letter were DFLers (details coming soon), the party that depends on having masses of people conveyed to centralized locations by the good grace of government, might explain the push to "invest" in something that will only perpetuate the status quo - and then only if it works!

   Posted by Mitch at 05:00 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

The Patricians, Part II

Looking at the second paragraph of the Patricians Proud to Pay full page ad in the Strib last week:We need more Minnesotans to acquire postsecondary degrees so they earn enough sto support a family, and so our state can be a leader in the knowledge economy. And we need to start early - it's not acceptable that only half our kids show up ready for kindergarten Why the focus on post-secondary degrees?

I mean, leave aside the obvious - that most of the signatories are probably college grads (so college must be the only valid course through life) - and that colleges tend to be a great source of indoctrination to the saws and tropes of the left.

Why?

I mean, for many people, the best path to the kind of life they want involves something other than the things that college teaches. Some people are natural tinkerers - they build houses, fix watches, repair your car. Some people like to help others; they're nurses, LPNs, masseuses, dog groomers, house cleaners - these are not only fields that don't require an expensive college education (that, for many people, is a waste of time; it's just not them), but that frequently pay pretty darn well.

But I think there's another motive.

When my grandfather went to college (class of 1934), if memory serves, his whole four years cost under $800. That was, of course, a lot of money; Grandpa was, family legend has it, the son of a not-very-good farmer, so he got through school on athletic scholarships (I think some of his records still stand) and a lot of summer jobs. But back then the average yearly income was somewhere around $4,000; in today's dollars, picture paying $2,000 a year for a four-year private school in 2006, when the average income has dectupled.

My father went to the same school about 20 years later. I think he paid $2,000 for four years, if I remember correctly. The average American income was, if memory serves, around $8K - which, assuming my numbers are correct, means the price of a college education stayed fairly steady over those years.

Back then, of course, the only government money going into education was through the GI Bill. The Bill changed the face of American education; before World War II, the majority of Americans didn't finish high school; the vets flocked to higher education (and vocational education, of course - my ex-father-in-law turned his post-Navy training in cabinetmaking into a very successful career); their children mostly finished high school, and around 40% had college degrees.

And along the way, the notion started that without a college degree - any college degree - you weren't really a success. You weren't really hitting your potential. And the notion of higher education as a right and a public good started, complete with immense federal subsidies paying for what is, in effect, a limited supply of seats at colleges.

When I went to the same college in 1981-1985 - well into the era of massive subsidy - the school was a relative bargain at about $4K a year

And what happens when you subsidize the purchase of something whose supply is inherently limited?

The price of a year at a private, four-year institution rises to $21,235 - half of an average American's annual income, and a chunk vastly higher than a year of the same type of school cost twenty, fifty and seventy years ago. (My alma mater is still a relative bargain, with a year's tuition clocking out at $10,550). A year at a state school costs a student $5,491 (although the actual cost, less taxpayer subsidy, is close to what the private student pays directly), a large enough chunk of the family income.

So what's the goal of pumping even more money into the post-secondary ed machine?

Perhaps to make public colleges and universities - with a public agenda - the only form of post-secondary education the average student can afford?

Missile Derangement Syndrome

Try to understand my dilemma here.

I like Rew and Smartie from Powerliberal. I've met 'em a bunch of times at MOB events, Keegans, and at Flash's "Drinking Moderately" events. They're among the better regional leftyblogs. They did a great job covering the state DFL convention and the IP convention publicity event. They are less given to flights of raging pique and flagrant illogic than many of them, and they're both better-than-average writers in their circle.

And while correlation does not equal causation, I suspect that they have a better than even chance of slowly drifting to the right, one of these days. Not necessarily a Road to Damascus epiphany, but I think that someday, possibly after the pitter-patter of little feet invades the PowerHouse, one of these years. And Smartie will follow, of course, if he knows what's good for him.

The bad news: They have a way to go.

The good news: They're in good company.

Smartie posted on the upcoming anti-missile test:

If I was the Japanese I'd be a little concerned that the US was testing it's miserable failure missile defense system on a missile that would likely be passing right over my country.

He'd be...concerned?

On the one hand - the US. The nation that turned Japan from a genocidal dictatorship to one of the world's great democracies. The nation that brought small-l liberalism to people worldwide. The lone nation in the world that has the faintest chance in hell of designing and building a system that could protect us and our friends from missile attacks...

...vs. the "Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea", home of concentration camps and a starving people led by the world's last remaining Stalinist, a man who is building nuclear weapons for which he has no rational need.

That's right. Be nervous about the US.

Of course, Smartie is hardly alone.

Which is the scary part.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

I have so much stuff that's so close to being ready to publish; another "Twenty Years Ago", an update on the Blogswarm, another chapter in Patricianwatch, a slap at/partial exhonoration of some local leftybloggers...

...but I've been working on stuff for my "day job" since like 5AM.

More later. If there's enough caffeine in my building.

Make Nice, Dumb*ss

I like the Dixie Chicks. Like most stars, I am perfectly fine enjoying the music and ignoring the artists' politics, to a point (Vanessa Redgrave being an example of someone whose politics overshadowed her acting, to me).

But Pat Boone - yep, that Pat Boone, writing in Worldnet Daily - notes that:

An Internet acquaintance, Ashton Hardy, reminded me that Tokyo Rose's constant message, drafted for her by psychological warfare experts, always contained three main points:

Your president is lying to you.

The war is illegal and wrong.

You cannot win.

Interesting, isn't it? Oddly familiar, too. Of course, currently the Chicks have our own American media to do the broadcasting, which they do enthusiastically in the guise of "reporting the news." And the reporting, usually very favorable to the Chicklets, goes immediately around the world, translated into many languages for the Muslim world – and in English, to our GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh, our fine-feathered femmes insist they "support our troops" – while they demoralize them – but that's what Tokyo Rose did, too. She told our soldiers, sailors and Marines she was "on their side," too!

As a father of four girls, I hurt for the Ditsies. They haven't realized how unpatriotic and un-American they are. They have ultra-liberal friends around them who egg them on (pun not intended), and they're persuaded they're upholding free speech and promoting humanitarian interests. Like so many dissenters, they seem to think that if we just "make nice" with terrorists, wave peace signs and disavow war as an answer, everything will turn out fine.

If you crash a car because you weren't paying attention, the car is just as crashed as if you ran it into a lightpole on purpose.

Gold-plated Brickbats

First Ringer hammers Growth for Justice...

...on the facts...:

While individuals earning $300,000 would be hit for at least an additional $6,000, that’s not overly destructive or dramatic.

Of course, Minnesota’s tax rate is currently 7.85%, meaning earners at $300,000 are already paying $23,550. Add $6,000 and that’s nearly $30,000 in Minnesota taxes. And of course, Federal taxes over individuals earning slightly over $300,000 are $97,000, bringing the grand taxation total to roughly $127,000 per year. Oh, and that’s not including various city, county and school board taxes. But hey, anything under 40% of one’s gross income certainly isn’t their “fair share” is it?

...and the concept:

Bravo. Really, take another curtain call. Sure, most people hate when rich people—and I mean super rich people—complain about how tough times can be, but all of us at KvM are sure most Minnesotans love having the wealthy endorse raising taxes, include their own...I’m sure your proposal won’t be a “bracket breaker” for Minnesota’s top wage earners, encouraging more to establish residency in other states. And I’m sure that waves of your fellow Democrats are giddy with anticipation over getting asked how they feel about raising taxes on households at $45,000 and above. I know that Mike Hatch and Amy Klobuchar would love to discuss the topic at length. Probably even Matt Entenza, given that his wife signed the ad.

So thank you, Mr. Kramer. Thank you. If you ever need a favor, don’t hesitate to write. In the meantime, we’ll be anxiously awaiting your 2006 campaign efforts.

Ringer is right. We must not look gift horses in their foot-stuffed mouths.

It's a Dirty Job

In liberal Minnesota, the blogosphere of record is conservative.

Not that there aren't some decent leftybloggers in the state (although a distressing number of them are nasty, snarling, ill-tempered little schnauzers); there are. I've noted as much in this space.

But conservative bloggers are both bigger and, despite the fact that there is no concerted effort to "organize" them in any political sense, still a much more cohesive force.

The left wants to change all of that. How?

By throwing money at the situation.

I got a letter on Saturday from a local blogger who thought I'd be interested. That blogger was correct.

Here's the text of the letter, sent by a group called the "Center for Independant Media". It starts with a note from a regional leftyblogger (included below, although the name is removed), and reads (with my notes inset in blue):

Subject: Minnesota Blogging Coordinator Position/Center for Independent
Media
Date: 24Jun06 1:13pm

As we know, the progressive blogosphere here in Minnesota has some talented,
funny, and insightful folks working on our various issues [Really? Funny? Do tell. There are somw that write well, and a precious few that can put together a coherent argument. But - Funny? - Ed.]. But I've been struck that in blue state Minnesota, the bloggers on the right seem to have larger audiences and influence - something that has bothered me for a while [I wonder why that could be - that conservatives in "blue" Minnesota dominate the independent media? Why would that be? - Ed.]. I'm hoping this can change and have been working with the Center for Independent Media, which recently launched a pilot program in Colorado to help coordinate outreach with progressive bloggers and even hand out fellowships to deserving bloggers. They've decided that Minnesota would be a great place for their next pilot program and are in the process of hiring a state coordinator. I've been helping out with this process and have agreed to help get this position description circulated and to encourage people to look into it. If you're interested, get in touch with Ali and check out this opportunity. It's a part time position, so no one should think that they're ineligible necessarily because of other work commitments. This is a project they're looking to get off the ground very soon, so if you're interested, please move quickly.

[a local leftyblogger]

[Forwarded message below]

The Center for Independent Media is looking for a State Coordinator for their
six-month Minnesota blogosphere pilot program. The State Coordinator will
help build a progressive channel of communication, via blogs, with the goal of diversifying statewide debate and balancing conservative dominance in
traditional media. ["Conservative dominance"? The Strib, MPR, and WCCO are "conservative-dominated?" Really? Someone explain this to me? And then explain it to "Center for Independent Media"; it might explain why the conservative movement dominates alternative media, and does it entirely with people who do it for free. - Ed.]

In addition to blogging about state and local issues, the State Coordinator
will be responsible for all activity in the state, including outreach to bloggers, logistics and delivery of training and support, coordination of blogger
fellows in Minnesota, and fostering relationships between bloggers and other
progressive leaders within Minnesota.

The State Coordinator should have experience blogging, good ties within the state of Minnesota, and strong management and organizational skills. Above
all, the State Coordinator should have a strong commitment to progressive values and uncovering the truth. The State Coordinator position is a well paid and part-time venture, averaging 20 hours of work a week.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA

The Center for Independent Media is a not-for-profit organization that fosters diversity of ideas in the national debate by bringing talented and diverse
voices and ideas to the fore of our nation's discourse, through its fellowships, conferences, and research. Programs emphasize the importance of citizen-driven journalism as a critical founding principle of our nation, the positive role of democratically elected government in securing the common good and social welfare, and the continuing benefits of our founding culture of egalitarian government by the people, for the people. [So what group of "people" is funding this project to further a pro-statist alternative media, anyway? - Ed.]

The Center's fellowships and programs focus on blogs as a fast-growing exemplar of independent media that works to diversity the spectrum of ideas in
the national debate.

TO APPLY

Email *********@gmail.com. Please send an updated resume, brief history of
any blogging, organizing, political or volunteer activities, and up to 3 writing samples of your best blog and/or published work.

So can money fight passion?

We'll see, won't we?

Building The Beast: Mitch Builds a Liberal Talk Station That Doesn't Suck

Commenter and longtime friend Bill Haverberg left me a great question on Sunday in my ongoing retrospective on my situation twenty years ago:

Has the market changed, or would liberal talk radio be successful nowadays as well if it were done right? (FrankenNet notwithstanding - Franken and Kennedy are the only ones I can stand right now).

How would you design a successful (by market standards) liberal talk radio format?

Good question.

Let me take a shot at it.

Let's get rid of a few preconceptions, first: let us duly note in advance that National Public Radio already largely serves the "mainstream liberal" demographic as thoroughly as Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt serve the conservative audience.

And let me acknowledge Bill's key, apt codecil; how would I make this station succeed in the market?

Also, let's differentiate between building a successful talk station - a studio and a transmitter in a city somewhere - and a network an operation that syndicates programming to other stations. The strategies are different, although many of the challenges are the same. I'll try to cover both areas.

So it's a tall order. Fortunately, I'm a tall guy.

Here's what I'd do:

• Know my audience, and cater to it - National Public Radio knows its audience: White, upper-middle-class, middle-aged, college-educated (frequently but far-from-exclusively in soft sciences and liberal arts - and I say that as a proud holder of a BA in English with minors in History and German), socially left-of-center, affluent. To refer to my stereotype, the Volvo-driving, Alpaca-wearing, Wellstone-voting set. They serve that audience - its tastes, it sense of entitlement, its prejudices - very, very well. Rush Limbaugh does the same: middle-class, frequently but not always college-educated, middle-aged, Chevrolet-driving, family-heading social and fiscal conservatives. There's one of Air America's downfalls; who is it aiming at? Judging by the programming, the answer in a word is "Kossacks", overheated angry youngish white people from upmarket homes (and downmarket outlooks, given that they've escewed their generally-bourgeouis upbringings for a life of political frothing), who are given to conspiracy theory and spittle-flecked vituperation. Which, outside of DFL leadership, is not really a big audience. I'd aim for that swath of "liberals" that are neither overweening Keillor-slurping babyboomer caricatures nor the frothing cartoons of the Kos left - the "Regular guys 'n gals" who vote center-left, who don't live and breathe politics, and who like to be entertained as much as inflamed. The people who have concerns about worker's rights, wages, unions; the types who exert principled support for "reproductive rights" and "peace and justice" issues at home and abroad, but don't live and breathe them. A station aimed, in short, at people like Randy Kelly, at Flash, at my Dad, Bruce Berg, longtime public school teacher; JFK liberals, Truman Democrats, people whom Hubert Humphrey could behold and not puke from terror at what had befallen his party. I firmly believe there are enough of those people out there to make a go of a station.
• Entertain them - Here's where conservatives have it all over the left; they don't assume that "political talk radio" means yammering about politics all the damn time. Rush Limbaugh pokes as much fun as he expounds; he talks sports as fluently as anyone on ESPN (not that I care). Other conservative hosts - Hewitt, Medved, Prager, Ingraham, even Savage - remember that "all politics and no play makes Jack a dull boy", and mix in other elements, whether movie talk or essays on happiness or sports or anything but constant ire. For all the left's palaver about conservative talk's monochrome sound, it's left-wing talk that is a one-note chant. Oh, and when I refer to "humor" I don't mean the labored, snarky "comedy" produced by the staffs of "writers" working for FrankenNet; if your radio host needs a "writer" to entertain, then fire the host and put the writer on the air.
• Expunge the following terms from the air - "The Truth", "Wingnut", "Bush Stole the Election". Conservative talk - at least, most good conservative hosts - can engage the left without name-calling. I know, I can hear you right now, Angryclown and RickDFL - kindly give me examples more recent than "Feminazi" (1988), if you don't mind. Conservative talk (when it's good) is inviting; NPR is exclusive, but it's exclusive to an audience that is more than happy to pay the freight (or has enough clout to make their congresspeople do it for them); Frankennet combines a sort of rabid exclusivity (you really have to live and breathe that stuff to tolerate it) with an audience that scrambles for bus change. It's no way to run a radio network.
• Find some hosts that can carry on a coherent argument - That'll be tough, since liberalism itself is light on those, these days.

Now, who does that leave?

Of the entire A-list of liberal commercial talkers, only Ed Schulz comes remotely - and I do mean remotely - close to the model I'd shoot for. He is more of a self-styled populist than an ideological kossack, he's had to survive in ur-conservative Fargo for a long, long time, and he's got decent radio chops - for a liberal from Fargo. He was, in fact, a cut-rate Limbaugh clone before he switched suits and became an instaliberal a few years ago (launching him from Fargo to the bigs overnight. Almost literally. I mean, he got on the Today show when he still had only six affiliates, only one in a major market. So hungry is the left for a voice!).

Could the left in America generate someone like a Schulz, only...I dunno, good? Sure. The airwaves used to be full of 'em. Don Vogel was probably close, except that politics bored him silly except as a target for satire...

...which, come to think of it, would be a very good thing for this fledgeling station/network of mine.

So there you have it; start a station (or syndie service) that'd treat people like people rather than Move-On volunteers awaiting marching orders; play to the center left that are still the majority of Democrats (and are ever-more disenfrancised by the current party); laugh as much as you yell.

Seems simple to me...

The Patricians - Part I

It'd be hard to top the Kool Aid Report's splendid (and splendidly profane) kiss-off of the "Growth for Justice" open letter to Minnesota's querulous ripe sucks in last week's Strib; whether you prefer the NC17 version or the PG13 one, it beats the 203 patrician signatories pretty convincingly to a pulp, and sums up my reaction in all particulars pretty effectively.

But I'm going to do this anyway; I'm going to go over each of the eight "paragraphs" in their ad, one per day. Then, I'm going to do a little googling to give you a little background on some of the 200-odd patrician masters of the universe who have issued this prescription for stagnation for your own damn good, peasants.

Today, the first paragraph:

We're not investing as much as we used to - as a share of personal income, state and local government is about $3 billion smaller than a decade ago, and we're not investing as much as we used to

Did you catch that?

Turn it back around; the message is "If government's take on your income doesn't rise precisely with your own, you are a bad person. If you allow that take to shrink merely because your own paltry income shrinks, you are also a bad person".

As King Banaian pointed out on Saturday's show, "a decade ago" was 1996, the height of the Clinton Bubble, by the way; when the Dotcom boom was driving incomes - and taxes - to unprecedented heights, and giving the likes of Arne "RINO" Carlson unprecedented revenue...

...to pour into more programs. Never mind that the boom was transparently transient. Never mind that the term "business cycle" means "It turns around, dumbass"; income meant spending. Period.

We have a more responsible state government now - one that doesn't believe that the first order of the citizenry's business is to make sure, at all costs, that government grows as fast as government wants to grow.

Finally, of course, look at the real numbers. Our budget zoomed for the six years after 1996; Ventura spent money like Paris Hilton at an STD clinic. Why?

Because his advisors (Penny, Barkley) and closest political allies (Roger Moe, Matt Entenza) believed as the patricians in this deeply stupid ad do; that any state revenue, no matter how transient (or indeed illusory) must be spent. Now.

Minnesota's citizens - with a few exceptions - are doing vastly better now than they were ten years ago, and certainly better than four years ago, when the hangover from the Ventura Deficit hit with a vengeance. The exceptions, of course, are those whose livelihoods depend on a state that must never justify its existence...

...and those who are addicted to the raw political power required to create that sort of an environment.

Like the 203 patricians who signed this ad.

Tomorrow - the college myth.

Presbyterians: Back from the Brink of Madness

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA (PCUSA) voted overwhelmingly to abandon their two year old stated goal of divestment from Israel - a move that had been calculated to help label Israel as the new apartheid South Africa.

The new resolution - emailed to a number of interested bloggers and media by Larry Rued - now reads:

1. We acknowledge that the actions of the 216th General Assembly (2004) caused hurt and misunderstanding among many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion. We are grieved by the pain that this has caused, accept responsibility for the flaws in our process, and ask for a new season of mutual understanding and dialogue. [That is, of course, an understatement. The original resolution caused many mainstream Presbyterians to seriously question the politics of the General Assembly, and whether it should affect their own committment to the church.]

To these ends, we replace the instructions expressed in Item 12-01 (Minutes, 2004 Part I, pp. 64–66) Recommendation 7, which reads

“7. Refers to Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) with instructions to initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel, in accordance to General Assembly policy on social investing, and to make appropriate recommendations to the General Assembly Council for action.”

with the following:

“7. To urge that financial investments of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as they pertain to Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, be invested in only peaceful pursuits, and affirm that the customary corporate engagement process of the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investments of our denomination is the proper vehicle for achieving this goal.” [ This is the key change - and it's a reasonable one for a mainstream church. I don't expect the PCUSA to pump money into, say, this company, although it'd sure be cool]

2. Direct Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) to ensure that its strategies for engaging corporations with regard to Israeli and Palestinian territories

a. Reflect the application of fundamental principles of justice and peace common to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism that are appropriate to the practical realities of Israeli and Palestinian societies.

b. Reflect commitment to positive outcomes. [I have to wonder - especially given recent experience that is the subject of another posting - what some of the GA members would consider a "positive outcome" of, say, the war on terror - but I digress.]

c. Reflect awareness of potential impact upon the stability, future viability, and prosperity of both the Israeli and Palestinian economies.

d. Identify affirmative investment opportunities as they pertain to Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.

3. We call upon the church:

a. To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations for an end to all violence and terror against Palestinian and Israeli civilians.

b. To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations to end the occupation.

c. To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations towards the creation of a socially, economically, geographically, and politically viable and secure Palestinian state, alongside an equally viable and secure Israeli state, both of which have a right to exist. [That last clause is a good one. As a Presbyterian, I'd be a lot happier if the GA would call upon the Palestinian Authority to renounce the commitment to terrorism that is both the PA's main problem and, as it happens, something that the GA seems to refuse to acknowledge exists.]

d. To encourage and celebrate efforts by individual Presbyterians, congregations, and judicatories of our church to communicate directly and regularly with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, sponsor programs likely to improve relations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and engage in peacemaking in the Middle East. ["Peacemaking" - sanctimonious processions of white, liberal, upper-middle-class drones who prance about war zones while studiously avoiding the core causes of the war (in this case, a commitment to the destruction of Israel) - is a fairly harmless diversion for people who might otherwise spend their efforts on something both more productive and effective.]

4. The 217th General Assembly (2006) does not believe that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should tell a sovereign nation whether it can protect its borders or handle matters of national defense. The problem with the security wall, in 2004 and presently, is its location. The 217th General Assembly (2006) supports fair criticism of the security wall insofar as it illegally encroaches into the Palestinian territory and fails to follow the legally recognized borders of Israel since 1967 demarcated by the Green Line. To the extent that the security barrier violates Palestinian land that was not part of Israel prior to the 1967 war, the barrier should be dismantled and relocated. [Misguided as it is, this statement is a huge improvement over the original, which called for the entire wall to be razed.]

5. Recognizing that the situation on the ground in the Israel-Palestine area is rapidly changing, the General Assembly Council (GAC) is directed to carefully monitor ongoing developments of the situation in the Middle East and to examine the polices of the PC(USA) related to the Middle East, in order to make a comprehensive report to the 218th General Assembly (2008).

6. Instructs the Stated Clerk to communicate Recommendations 1. through 5. above to the United States’ president, vice president, secretary of state, and members of Congress; to Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the Middle East; to the membership of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); to leadership of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith bodies and denominations in the United States and the Middle East with whom we are in communication.

Comment: The Assembly received twenty-six overtures pertaining to the Middle East. The recommendation is the result of the General Assembly’s honest and sincere effort to address the issues and concerns that appeared in the overtures in a comprehensive and concise document.

Unstated - 3/4 of those 26 overtures were extremely harshly critical of the PCUSA's original 2004 resolution.

There is a long way to go - but this is encouraging.

Solomonia livebloggedthe proceedings, and, naturally, Scott from Powerline is on the case.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXX

My Malibu was dead.

No, not dead. Just terminal. I thought.

It was Wednesday, June 25, 1986. It had been a wettish spring, which meant my trusty '73 Malibu wouldn't start for love or money within eight hours of any precipitation. Which played hob with my job schedule.

This week had been the worst; I'd had to get rides to work with Rob Pendelton two straight mornings.

I figured it was time for a change.

I'd started fishing through the classifieds - and found my dream deal, a '78 Jeep CJ7 for a very nice price.

But it had a manual transmission.

I'd been driving for about seven years - but I'd never been in a straight stick before. The cars I'd learned to drive in - my dad's '73 Fury and, later, a '77 Bonneville - had been automatics.

I had tried once to drive a stick; at a radio station in Carrington, ND in 1982, I didn't have a car, and I needed to get to a remote broadcast. The secretary lent me her Chevette. I killed it 17 times getting out of the parking lot. It took me 25 minutes to drive the eight blocks of Carrington's main street to the Foster County Fairgrounds, site of the remote. I ended up pushing the 'vette into a parking spot and walking the last block through the fairgrounds.

Fortunately, one of my roommates had just bought a brand-new Toyota Celica; hot, gorgeous, and a five-on-the-floor. She offered to take me out and show me how to drive a straight stick.

Memories are dim; the salient ones:

• Grinding gears. "Mitch, could you not do that?"
• Killing the engine eight times in one block, trying to get out of first gear.
• Roommate looking at me, face green with impending illness, revulsion ill-concealed in her face.

She drove back to the house.

Undeterred, I called the owner. I needed a car, dagnabbit.

Mistaken Identity

One issue where I break with mainstream conservatism is capital punishment. Over the past thirty years, there has been a relative avalanche of people released from death row - after having been found guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" in their original trials - because of evidence that they were utterly innocent of the crimes for which they were condemned.

But death penalty proponents hold on to the idea that there has never been a proven case of an innocent person being executed.

That may be changing soon; the Chicago Tribune is publishing a three-part story about the 1989 execution of Carlos DeLuna for a fatal stabbing:

16 years after De Luna died by lethal injection, the Tribune has uncovered evidence strongly suggesting that the acquaintance he named, Carlos Hernandez, was the one who killed Lopez in 1983.

Ending years of silence, Hernandez's relatives and friends recounted how the violent felon repeatedly bragged that De Luna went to Death Row for a murder Hernandez committed.

The newspaper investigation, involving interviews with dozens of people and a review of thousands of pages of court records, shows the case was compromised by shaky eyewitness identification, sloppy police work and a failure to thoroughly pursue Hernandez as a possible suspect.

These revelations, which cast significant doubt over De Luna's conviction, were never heard by the jury.

The three=part series even one mistaken execution broaches serious questions about the systems governing capital punishment.

Another simple fact: life imprisonment costs less, is just as final and secure as are years on death row, and can be reversed.

As, indeed, death penalty convictions frequently are.

I plan on following the series, and its response, closely.

What If They Had a Convention and Nobody Cared?

Minnesota's Independence Party is sort of like Crispin Glover. Nobody knows why either of them got where they are.

Oh, with the IP it's not that complicated; back in a sillier, more trivial time when most Americans were oblivious to the threats that faced us as individuals and as a nation, Minnesotans accidentally turned an overgrown frat prank into a four-year experiment in pseudo-celebrity government, electing wrestler Jesse Ventura to serve as governor. The party who adopted him for name recognition as part of a plot to get five percent of the vote (which confers "Major party status" in Minnesota, complete with state funding and automatic ballot placement until such time as they fall below 5% for more than one election), then called the "Reform Party", the frazzled leftovers of Ross Perot's 1992 campaign, was traditionally down among the Libertarians and Socialist Workers in the great scheme of Minnesota politics. Ventura cared as much about the "Reform" party as he did about Hulk Hogan; within a year of his election, his apathy to Perot led the Minnesota delegation to split from the RP and rename themselves "Independence". Ventura, the only genuine personality in the party, engaged in absolutely no party-building, leaving that to the men that spent four years pulling his gubernatorial strings, Dean Barkley and Tim Penny. While Ventura maintained his national rep as a "libertarian conservative", he governed as a slightly-centrist DFLer, spending money like a crack whore with a stolen gold card and snuggling up to Roger Moe (or, perhaps more accurately, being snuggled up to Moe by Penny and Barkley).

Since Ventura's exit, the IP has clung to the ragged edges of legitimacy; they remained a "major party" after the 2002 election only via a legal technicality (which will likely expire after this election, barring an unlikely outpouring of people giving a damn about a "party" that doesn't include Jesse Ventura).

So I note that today was the IP convention only as a curiosity.

Oh, and to note that for all their palaver, the IP is, after all these years, still "DFL Lite":

3:44 - Peter Hutchinson speech begins. Most of the delagates in the crowd are waving Hutchinson signs. Thanks eveyone, and Wally the beerman (he's passing out water today). "Minnesotans know that politics in this state is broken, they want us to get things back on the right track....met a man who asked 'are you an incumbant?' 'no, sir, I'm a challenger.' 'Well then, I'm voting for you!.'"

Distracting us with 5 g's - guns, god, gays, gambling and gynocology. Now, they are adding Green cards.

When professional career bureaucrats - perfectly fitted in the IP - start insulting plebeian concerns with peasantries like the Second Amendment, the sanctity of marriage, the presence and centrality of faith in their lives, distaste with abortion and national security, you know they're out of touch with their subjects.

Er, would-be constituents.

Show of hands - who cares about the IP?

Too Close To Home

When I took my kids up to the observation deck of the Sears Tower - which, in a spate of juvenile black humor I called "the tallest building left in America", on April 5, 2002 - I pondered the possibility of a terrorist attack. I figured that that soon after 9/11, everyone's guard was up, and that an attack was exceedingly unlikely.

I was right, of course. But as time goes on, the temptation gets worse and worse...

as we found out today.

Seven people have been arrested in connection with a plot to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and other targets, the FBI said.

The arrests were made after a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area was raided by agents last night, a spokesman for the agency said.

The alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al Qaida or other foreign terrorist organisations.

The good news: the whole thing was apparently a sting.

The bad news? People are out there, and they're working - competently or not - on attacking us, still.

The worse news, in the world of Berg? It was about this time last Monday that the kids and I were up on the observation deck of the Sears Tower again.

So yes indeed, give them a fair trial. And if they're found guilty, send them to Guantanamo and teach them what "devils" really are. Or pound a cold chisel into their skulls. I don't care.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXIX

It was Monday, June 23, 1986. My audition tape had been sitting on Scott Meier's desk for well over a week.

I figured that was plenty of time. Today was the day to start the big push.

Assuming I could get to work.

My old '73 Malibu was hanging on, but was fading fast. Every rainstorm left it immobile for a day or so, until it dried out. An early-morning deluge left me calling Rob Pendelton for a lift to work. "I know, I know", I said as I got into his car, "I gotta get a different ride..."

I got to the station, did my board shift during the Michael Jackson show, and walked into the production meeting with Don and Dave. It was Monday, so Meier - the station's general manager and program director, would be in shortly.

Now, when I call Scott Meier a "program director", I don't mean in the sense that anyone who's ever worked in radio, especially in the bigs, could possibly relate to. At most "real" radio stations, the PD is an pseudo-deity of format knowledge, an all-powerful dictator who can make or break careers on a whim; a person whose entire careers hinges on the whims of a market's listening audience, and who passes that down to all who work for him, the station's "air [programming, production, whatever] department".

Meier, on the other hand, was a sales guy (although he'd had a brief air career) who got stuck with the job as a cost-cutting measure. He didn't know talk radio, and - this is the part that astounds "real" radio people - assumed that his staff could figure out the technicalities and do the job they were hired for better than he could.

And it worked. The station was getting the best ratings it'd gotten since it had gone all-talk in 1981. Which wasn't really saying much, but it was something.

The best thing about working at KSTP back then was its splendid isolation, on the edge of a swamp on Highway 61 (note to Bob Dylan fans - yes, that Highway 61) in north Maplewood, north of Saint Paul. The station sat in an old (as in 1930's-era) transmitter shack that had been remodeled with some offices, a kitchen, and a studio/control room and a couple of crude but useful production rooms. The station had moved out there about a year earlier; rumor had it that Hubbard Broadcasting wanted to unload the AM station. In those days when the "Fairness Doctrine" ruled and when Rush Limbaugh was still working in Sacramento, the "conventional wisdom" was that AM radio was a dying band, populated by losers broadcasting to geriatrics. The station, a 50,000 watt blowtorch, was apparently on the market for five million dollars - and was getting no takers. Hubbard broadcasting poured all of its resources into the properties it kept down on University Avenue in Saint Paul - Channel 5 (then the #2 station in town) and KS95 FM with its well-connected Program Director and morning guy Chuck Knapp. All of corporate's attention focused on the "downtown" properties downstairs from the executive offices. Out in Maplewood, we'd go months without hearing from anyone at corporate, except when the biweekly bag of paychecks arrived.

So we were pretty much left alone - to do what we had been hired to do, and to get the best numbers we could.

Bit by bit, it was working. Our Spring Arbitron book showed us in the mid 3-point range among people 12+, and better still among males aged 25-54, the key audience.

Things were good - which meant my timing was good, too.

Meier walked into the studio. "Hey guys".

"Hey, Scott. Listen to my tape?"

He nodded. "Yep".

"And...?"

"Interesting"

"So whatdya think?"

"There's possibilities".

Vogel chimed in. "Scott, you gotta put him on the air!"

"Yeah!", I added. "Put me in, coach! I'm ready to play!"

Vogel laughed his unrestrained cackle.

"Yeah", said Meier, "there's possibilities there. But I'll have to think about it..."

I pulled out the closest thing I had to a trump card: "And given that Edwards, Geoff Charles, Michael Jackson, Owen Span and Karen Booth are so far to the left, we have that whole Fairness Doctrine thing to think about..."

Meier nodded. "I'll think about it". He changed the subject to talk with Don about something or another. I didn't pay much attention. I was figuring how to press the issue further.

It wasn't everything that was on my mind, of course. I got home around 7 that night, spent an hour digging through the classifieds for cheap used cars...

...and then curled up in the basement with my "recording studio" for a couple of hours.

More on both later.

Submitted With Comment

OK, I think I finally got the hang of fixing my comment section.

And now that we got Zarquawi, I think the next bomb should go to whomever invented comment spam.

Yeah. I can dig it.

Look What They've Done With My 'Hood

I remember when I first moved to Minneapolis, in 1985. My first neighborhood, down in the upper thirties along Hiawatha and Minnehaha Avenues, was the kind of Minneapolis I'd heard about since I was a little kid; a working-class neighborhood, a place that hadn't changed a lot since the fifties.

Now comes word that Minneapolis' latest murder took place deep in the heart of that old neighborhood.

Fox 9 News reported that the Red Zone murder occurred in the Standish neighborhood of Minneapolis, which is in South Minneapolis. According to the reporter, the neighborhood was previously considered safe; in other words, here we go again.

Fearless prediction: RT Rybak and the Strib editorial staff will become obsessed with crime in Minneapolis when Kenwood (a posh neighborhood around Lake of the Isles) sees its first drive-by or drug execution.

Sweet Home Saint Paul

Back from Chicago, finally. It was fun, but it's great to be back.

Thanks to Learned Foot for doing such a great job filling in. It was fun to read, in my rare moments of computer access.

More later.

Crawling Towards the Finish Line

I believe my stint here at Shot in the Dark is almost finished.

[Wavy lines blur the picture, indicating a transition to a flashback.]

...this is pretty much it until Thursday.

[More wavy lines. Back to the present.]

Yep, this is it for me.

[Deafening noise as everybody sighs in relief together.]

Time to go down the checklist and see if I accomplished everything I set out to do this week here at Shot in the Dark:

* Gratuitous swipe at "The Blog House"...........Check.

* Gratuitous swipe at Hugh Hewitt.............Check.

* Gratuitous swipe at a local lefty blog............Check.

* Gratuitous swipe at Power Line..............Check.

* Make Shot in the Dark #1 for google search of "Iron Maiden saved western civilization"...................Check.

* Get linked by Polinaut, Captain Ed and Pajamas Media............Check. Check. Check.

(By way of comparison, in nearly two years of blogging at my other site, I've been linked to by Polinaut zero times, PM zero times, and Cpt. Ed twice. And one of those times was for merely participating in a charity poker tournament.)

* Gratuitously pimp my own blog............Check (and see above).

While this looks like an impressive list of accomplishments, there were a couple of things I was unable to do:

* Find Mitch's hidden cache of sarin gas.

* Liveblog Mitch's radio show on Saturday. (Think of it: I'd be liveblogging what Mitch was saying on the air. Mitch would have inevitably seen the liveblog and made some comment about it over the air, which would then have ended up reproduced in the liveblog ON HIS OWN SITE. Far out! The whole thing could have sucked us into some sort of trippy, mind-bending audio/blogular Mobius strip. It would have been sweet.)

In any event, I proclaim my guest run at Shot in the Dark a rousing success. Now it's my turn for a vacation. Big thanks to Bogus Doug for keeping the home fires burning, and to the Nihilist in Golf Pants for - er, I dunno - writing a post about Screech.

Oh, and one more thing:

Bruce Springsteen is irredeemably boring.

Later.

To Catch a 30 Share

You may have noticed that the relatively benign Entertainment-Masquerading-as-News vehicle "Dateline NBC" has recently morphed into the ubiquitous "To Catch a Predator." What initially appeared to be an ostensible (if voyeuristically creepy) public service, is now an ubiquitous ratings cash-cow franchise for NBC.

Last month, the Arizona Supreme Court issued an opinion that now casts the whole public service thing into doubt. The facts of Mejak v. Granville are familiar:

In April 2003, a local television news reporter, pretending to be a thirteen-year-old girl, engaged in Internet "chat room" discussions as part of an investigation into how the Internet can be used to lure minors for sexual contact. The petitioner, Jeremy Mejak, chatted online with the reporter, believing her to be a thirteen-year-old girl; and arranged to meet her for purposes of engaging in sexual conduct. When Mejak arrived at the agreed-upon location, he was greeted by news cameras. The police were given videotapes of the confrontation and transcripts of the online conversations. A grand jury indicted Mejak for violating A.R .S. § 13-3554.

Yeah, Dateline appears to be late to the fishing-for-child molesters game. But that's irrelevant.

What is relevant, is that Arizona law specifically provides who may conduct a sting operation(emphasis mine):

13-3554. Luring a minor for sexual exploitation; classification

A. A person commits luring a minor for sexual exploitation by offering or soliciting sexual conduct with another person knowing or having reason to know that the other person is a minor.

B. It is not a defense to a prosecution for a violation of this section that the other person was a peace officer posing as a minor.

Meaning that it is a defense if the other person is not a peace officer. (For you nonlawyers out there, the Cool Latin Legal Maxim for this is expressio unius est exclusio aterius: "the expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other.") The court went on to construe the section as a whole and found that the only other "lured" party that could subject a defendant to criminal liability is a minor.

The court then vacated the indictment against Mejak.

Oh, the court acknowledged that a defendant in circumstances such as this could still be charged with attempted luring of a minor. But attempt is a lesser felony carrying a lighter potential sentence.

And the defendant in this case was never charged with attempt.

So, back to the original premise: does this outcome (and the outcomes that would flow from similar laws which can undoubtedly be found in other jurisdictions) strip "To Catch a Predator" of its last redeeming quality (save for the smarmy "gotcha" entertainment factor)? Because if you've seen these shows, you'll notice that the type of people who tend to get nabbed for trying to hook up with kids on the internet tend to be unable to control their urges or learn from their previous experience - both personal and vicarious. I just don't think that these shows have much of a deterrent effect. Wouldn't law enforcement agencies be better off forming their own programs to do the exact same thing that Dateline is doing, but with the added benefit of being able to prosecute these vermin to the fullest extent?

Hell, if they videotaped the stings, the initiatives would pay for themselves tenfold.

(I've cross posted this at KAR since commenting here is fubar.)

UPDATE: Occam's Razor. I caught the first 10 minutes or so of TCAP last night. Apparently the local sheriff deputized the folks who were conducting the sting. They even had a cop participating in the bait chats. This, of course renders almost everything I wrote above nugatory (except for the creepy voyeurism thing). Forget I ever said it.

Chicago

I'm in Chicago right now, thoroughly enjoying being off the grid for a couple of days.

I'm staying in a pre-WWI condo in Wrigleyville, or just off Lakeshore (just in case that's not really what they call Wrigleyville, so all you Chicago readers can step off right now). Have seen most of the usual sights, will see the rest today. Plus Geno's.

I've said it a few times - if I were just getting out of college today, Chicago's where I'd probably try to move. What I'd do, I have no idea, but I love this place.

Anyway, back to the capable hands of...er, the Foot.

HELOC: The New Junk Bond

The local leftyblogs have taken after Minnesota US Senate candidate Mark Kennedy pretty ferociously in the past couple of weeks. Some days it was all Kennedy slime, all the time. The japes ranged anywhere from Kennedy's "sunny rhetoric" on Iraq to his record of voting, like totally, 97% with the President. (A Republican congressman from the most Republican district in the state voting along with a Republican president. That bastard.)

[Channeling Mitch]

But Smartie at Power Liberal - one of the more readable local lefty blogs - took a swipe at Kennedy that is easily my favorite:

Mark Kennedy has a home equity line of credit!!!!!!

We're supposed to trust our finances to a guy who apparently can't live within his means so he goes ahead and takes out what is widely considered a bad financial risk?

!!!!!!!

Perhaps it's a bad financial risk among those that have the financial chops of a typical liberal - at least it's "widely believed" that liberals can't handle money. As for everyone else who wants to remodel their homes, consolidate their debt at a lower (and tax-deductable rate), or reduce the down-payment on their home purchases while avoiding having PMI charges rolled into their monthly mortgage payments, HELOCs make perfect sense.

Unlike Smartie's post.

[/Channeling Mitch]

Hey! Roger! Leave Those Jews Alone!

So on the one hand, you've got a group of people that throughout their 5,000 or so year history have been slaughtered, enslaved, slaughtered, exiled, slaughtered, nearly exterminated and slaughtered, who are just trying to defend themselves in the least lethal manner possible.

On the other hand, you have yet another aging rock star who insists on putting himself on the wrong side of history:

Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters will give a concert in Israel, despite his opposition to the security fence Israel is building across the West Bank. After protests by Palestinians, he changed the venue from a park in Tel Aviv to Neveh Shalom, a mixed Arab-Jewish town near Jerusalem known as the "Village of Peace." The group's old hit song "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" has become an anthem of resistance to the barrier, with its lyrics changed to: "We don't need no occupation. We don't need no racist wall."

I wonder how this rewrite would fly:

"We don't need no jihadist pogroms. We don't need no PLO."

Naw. That'd be racist! Everybody knows that the security wall is intended to protect an illegal Israeli occupation of Muslim land. Where else would those poor Muslims go?

How Iron Maiden Saved Western Civilization

It's a compelling story. If you're interested, take the jump.

Actually, Iron Maiden didn't save western civilization. Well, maybe it did, but I couldn't tell you how. I just wanted to see how high I could get Mitch to jump out of his chair when seeing the phrase "How Iron Maiden Saved Western Civilization" on his blog.

How high, Mitch?

Truth? Out.

A few weeks ago, Jason Leopold a "reporter" for the ironically-named left-wing website "Truthout" published a sensational story that purported to confirm the impending criminal indictment of Karl Rove in the Valarie Plame case. The left-wing blogosphere was all atwitter to the point of sexual arousal at this "news." Everywhere you looked this story was being flogged, including in a comment thread on this very blog about some completely unrelated topic (probably Bruce Springsteen).

As we later found out, the only impending thing was Leopold's exposure as a fraud.

Excuse me for a moment while lose myself in reverie as I reminisce about that glorious day.

*sigh*

So Rove is off the hook. Dandy. But what about the rest of the story? What would compel someone who fancies himself a journalist to confidently run with a story that was so awfully and provably wrong?

Joe Lauria, writing for WaPo today has some unique personal insights into the Leopold's "mind."

And it ain't pretty:

I met Leopold once, three days before his Rove story ran, to discuss his recently published memoir, "News Junkie." It seems to be an honest record of neglect and abuse by his parents, felony conviction, cocaine addiction -- and deception in the practice of journalism.

Leopold says he gets the same rush from breaking a news story that he did from snorting cocaine. To get coke, he lied, cheated and stole. To get his scoops, he has done much the same. As long as it isn't illegal, he told me, he'll do whatever it takes to get a story, especially to nail a corrupt politician or businessman. "A scoop is a scoop," he trumpets in his memoir. "Other journalists all whine about ethics, but that's a load of crap."

It gets worse. Read the whole thing.

In the end of the piece, Lauria attempts a diagnosis of Leopold:

After reading his memoir -- and watching other journalists, such as Jayson Blair at the New York Times and Jack Kelley at USA Today, crash and burn for making up stories or breaking other rules of newsgathering -- I think there's something else at play here. Leopold is in too many ways a man of his times. These days it is about the reporter, not the story; the actor, not the play; the athlete, not the game. Leopold is a product of a narcissistic culture that has not stopped at journalism's door, a culture facilitated and expanded by the Internet.

In the end, whatever Jason Leopold's future, he got what he appears to be crying out for: attention.

Maybe. Or maybe he's just a creep.

Or worse.

High Road? What High Road?

The Fraters love to needle noted national radio personality and Cleveland Indians fan Hugh Hewitt about the seemingly perpetual funk that surrounds his chosen team. And I have to admit that now that I have access to a forum that Hewitt actually reads periodically, the temptation to pile on is compelling.

But I shall resist! If for no other reason than because I am a long-suffering Milwaukee Brewers Fan, who has walked in the same moccasins for lo these many years. I possess a large amount of empathy for others whose fate has dealt them a love for a team that is a perpetual also-ran. I think we could all stand to -

I've just been handed something. One moment please....

...

Oh look: the Brew Crew just swept the Indians. In dramatic and emotionally deflating fashion!

Two innings after almost hitting a go-ahead home run to left field, and one inning after Jeff Cirillo almost did the same, the Brewers' top slugger went in the opposite direction Sunday at Miller Park.

When the ninth-inning blast's 405-foot journey ended, Lee had a three-run homer to right-center and the Brewers had a 6-3 victory over Cleveland, a three-game series sweep and a .500 record for the first time since May 30.

Alas, it bears repeating one of the most commonly-uttered phrases in the English language:

It sucks to be a sports fan in Cleveland.

The Relay

Welcome to Instant Chat

SITDStaff: Mr. Foot?

SITDStaff: Allo, Foot?

10InchMissleMan: What??!!

SITDStaff: Mitch wants us to relay a msg to U

10InchMissleMan: OK. Shoot.

SITDStaff: He doesn't want you to get Shot in the Dark mentioned in the "Blog House".

10InchMissleMan: ???

SITDStaff: You know: that Saturday column in the Strib when that Moonbat Tim O'Brien summarizes the week that was in the blogosphere.

10InchMissleMan: ROTFLMAO!!! I know what the Blog House is. Why would he think I would ever get SITD mentioned in that column?

SITDStaff: Just passing his view along...

10InchMissleMan: I mean Mitch has been in the Blog House like - what? - 3 or 4 times. Me? Never. Why the hell would he worry about me?

SITDStaff: Like I said, just telling you what Mitch -

10InchMissleMan: You know, there are only 3 ways to get quoted in the Blog House: 1) Write the pithiest version of whichever left-wing trope is circulating the 'net at the time; 2) If you're a conservative, write something that can be stripped of its context in such a way that it can be used to portray you as a "coy racist"; or 3) Have a blog with an average daily traffic of 8 unique hits. None of those apply to me.

10InchMissleMan: Plus, I think Tim O'Brien probably has avoided reading my stuff since I wrote this.

SITDStaff: You mean to tell me that you have never written anything that can be used by a moonbat to present you in a false light? I call BS.

10InchMissleMan: Well, I'm sure I have, but it's usually so drenched in coarse language and disgusting imagery that it's unprintable in a mainstream newspaper.

SITDStaff: I see. I like the profanity angle. Go with it.

10InchMissleMan: Score!

OK...

...now I really am offline. I found a little bit of online access this morning, but barring any surprises, this is pretty much it until Thursday.

Enjoy!

The Only Good Republican...

To: The Alan Fine campaign
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Mortal Danger.

Alan,

I'm Mitch Berg. We met at the state GOP convention. You are the GOP's endorsed candidate to run in the Fifth Congressional District, which is normally equivalent to being a platoon's "endorsed candidate" to hold off the enemy to the last shot while the rest of the guys escape. Conditions this year - a DFL candidate with a radical Moslem, black-separatist, anti-semitic history, a primary fight, and a probable strong Greenie showing - give you a much better chance at a showing than most Republicans can have in your depressingly one-party district, but you know that you face a brutal battle.

And you know that I'm totally behind you. We're clear on that, right?

Now, about Lori Sturdevant's column. It sounds favorable enough, from the title ("GOP Might Learn From 5th District Candidate Fine") on down.

But let's look more closely:

Last weekend, as DFLers amassed in Rochester, the Minnesota Republican Party interrupted its patter of partisan criticism to post some breaking news on its website. The item: "Rise in Minneapolis crime topped Midwest, FBI says."
Regular consumers of GOP propaganda caught on right away: Minneapolis is a DFL town. As of last weekend, its chief criminal prosecutor, Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, is her party's endorsed candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Klobuchar's candidacy has made crime in the urban core an almost gleeful theme in Republican pronouncements. A whole page is devoted to the topic on the GOP's blame-Amy website, www.amysrecord.com.

[Note to Ms. Sturdevant: Perhaps you've heard of blogs? Independent writers who live in Minneapolis, and who are also writing about the crime wave? I suspect you have]

You'll look in vain there for mention of Republican-backed cuts in state aid to Minneapolis in 2003 and 2004, which prompted the shrinkage of the city's police force from about 900 to fewer than 800 today.

[And another aside; you'll look in vain in Lori Sturdevant's column for any mention that Minneapolis' police department was always too small, as a matter of long-term strategy -and that the Minneapolis Police Department shrank not because of Aid to Local Government budget cuts, but because of institutional unwillingness to either budget the remaining money appropriately, or to eat the political pain of raising their own taxes to get the same money they'd previously gotten, concealed deep within the state budget]

Neither does the page mention the 20 percent increase in adult prosecutions by Klobuchar's office in the past 18 months, over the comparable previous period. That increase outstrips the 15 percent increase in violent crime the city reported last year.

[Sorry, Alan. One last aside. Ms. Sturdevant seems to think that a 20 percent raise over "inadequate" trumps a 15 percent jump in "already shockingly high", or that we are all too stupid to know that prosecutions aren't the meaningful measurement here; Klobuchar has an entire department full of staff lawyers whose job that is. No, sentencing has been the problem in the Hennepin County Attorney's office, and it remains the problem. Sturdevant, you are really becoming too predictable. I digress]

Maybe those omissions and the page's tee-hee tone pass for campaign de rigueur in a state where geopolitical fault lines have widened into chasms.

Ironic, huh?

But I had to wonder: What if the party that aspires to dominate Minnesota the way it now dominates Washington didn't have a hole in its state map where Minneapolis should be? What if the state's Republican leaders saw big-city ills not as hammers with which to beat the opposition, but as shared problems that they have a responsibility to help solve?

If they did, wouldn't both Minneapolis and Minnesota benefit? Minneapolis is dealing with complex, high-stakes societal issues. They warrant the attention of more than one political team and the application of more than one set of ideas.

OK. Here's the beef.

Mr. Fine; Sturdevant is onto some things that you and I both agree on: The Minnesota GOP will never really control Minnesota until we make more serious inroads into the inner cities; the state GOP has neglected inner-city campaigning to a maddening extent, even as the city becomes more and more full of people who should be receptive to the GOP's message, immigrants who live in close-knit families and treasure free enterprise and crave an education for their children that will help them get ahead in the new country, people who largely keep faith close to the center of their lives. We Republicans should be hitting the inner cities hard - and, in my Fourth District as in your Fifth, our district party establishments make brave noises and concentrate their resources in Saint Louis Park and Shoreview.

And yet you have to know the DFL is terrified; if we ever do crack the code, they will never control Minnesota again.

Which is why people like Sturdevant want to lead you astray:

The whole state is affected when its biggest city suffers. But more than that, the whole state is ill-served when it is governed by a party that is concerned with less than the whole Minnesota enterprise. Such a party is prone to crafting winners-and-losers policies that pit one part of the state against another, to the ultimate detriment of all.

Why don't other Republicans talk about Minneapolis crime the way Alan Fine does?

[Note to Sturdevant: Because they're not running for office in a traditional DFL stronghold?]

Fine is the GOP's Fifth District congressional candidate. He's 44, a management consultant, author, lecturer at the Carlson School of Management, and a self-described "middle-ground candidate." He's the youngest of five brothers in a deep-rooted Minneapolis family. One of his brothers, Bob, is a DFLer who has spent nine years on the city's Park Board.

Unlike his state party, Fine does not do a blame-the-DFL litany on crime. His riff is about remedies. He links the recent spike to inadequate education, particularly of non-white young men. His position paper argues that to fight crime, society must fight illiteracy. He touts the results of a program in which he taught business skills to minority youth.

He even links crime-fighting to job-producing stem cell research at the University of Minnesota. "That gives hope to all the kids growing up in this community, that there will be good jobs waiting for them here when they grow up," he says.

Gotta love the parts of your message, Alan, that she focuses on: this program, that program...

Fine is a man on a mission to plug the hole in the Republican state map. This humble realist advises him to prepare for a multiyear task. It likely will take more than one congressional campaign to turn the depleted ranks of Minneapolis Republicans into a respected force. This year doesn't look like Fine's year -- not when the Republican president's cup of approval is down to the dregs and congressional seats the Republicans once considered safe suddenly look vulnerable.

While it may take several campaigns - something most of us inner city Republicans accept - Sturdevant's long history of being a couple of news cycles behind events is oozing back to the top.

Still, the Fifth District seat is open, with Rep. Martin Sabo retiring. The four (or more?) DFLers vying to succeed Sabo could wound themselves in the effort. The crime wave, the school funding crisis and the heaviest property tax burden in the state should soon have Minneapolis casting about for new ideas and alliances beyond the city's borders.

Come October, all of that might make Fine a Minneapolis Republican of more than usual interest -- even within his own party.

Mr. Fine: Sturdevant is hammering on the parts of your message that are most palatable to an all-but-paid DFL stooge.

You know the challenges you face. And more than many inner-city candidates, you know the compromises you will have to make to win in a district like the Fifth.

But beware the muted approval of stealth DFL hacks like Lori Sturdevant: they see an elephant; they want to to get on your knees and hold your nose in the air so you look like a RINO.

Murtha: Losing It?

Michelle Malkin has extensive evisceration of John Murtha's "Okinawa Plan".

This, from "Meet The Press":

REP MURTHA:...We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

MR. RUSSERT: But it’d be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it—you know, they—when I say Okinawa, I, I’m saying troops in Okinawa. When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly. And—and—when they don’t know we’re coming. There’s no question about it. And, and where those airplanes won’t—came from I can’t tell you, but, but I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t take very long for them to get in with cruise missiles or with, with fighter aircraft or, or attack aircraft, it doesn’t take any time at all. So we, we have done—this one particular operation, to say that that couldn’t have done, done—it was done from the outside, for heaven’s sakes.

Froggy at Blackfive notes, in the context of hypothetically mounting an attack on Zarquawi from Okinawa...:

The straight yellow line extending across the middle of China and Iran is the distance from Okinawa to Baghdad as the crow flies which is approximately 4200 nautical miles. Obviously, the Chinese and the Iranians wouldn't be cool with that, but let's just roll with it. The max combat range for the F-16 with external fuel tanks and 2000 lbs of ordnance is 740 nautical miles so that's like a minimum of SIX midair refuelings in EACH direction.

This little display is hardly worth putting together, but I did it to demostrate that this man is dangerously deluded and not at all serious about an issue of critical national security significance. He is out there in the MSM just winging it and not being called to account whatsoever for statements that are so outlandish and absurd that they defy all attempts at comprehension.

I'd add "doltish".

It'll be interesting to see how the Dems react to Murtha. After six months of exalting his absolute moral authority on the issue, how will they react to the fact that he's become a complete embarassment to anyone who can hold a rational thought on the issue?

So Over

Over at Nihilist in Golf Pants - a blog with eight or ten contributors that manages a post or two a day that I used to read daily - I find myself on the wrong end of a "Top 11 List" which searches for a sub for the Nihilist, and ends:

1. Of course, I would probably just get over myself and go on vacation without hiring a guest blogger

"Hiring?"

What is Foot telling these people?

OK, OK. I get it.

Nihilist, are you offended that I didn't ask you first?

Because if you can spare Sisyphus...

Submitted Without Comment

Not sure what's wrong with the comment section. I'll see if I can get it fixed.

(Yes, I know. I am supposed to be offline. Especially since I haven't had a week "offline" since December 2003. So sue me).

SITD Staff Chat: Not For Public Release

Welcome to Instant Chat
SITDStaff: You there, Mitch?
SITDStaff: Allo, Mitch?
MBerg: Yo. What's up?
SITDStaff: Got a minute?
MBerg: About a minute. I'm getting ready to head out of town. 'zup?
SITDStaff: Um, you booked "Learned Foot" as your substitute?
MBerg: Yepper!
SITDStaff: Um, why?
MBerg: Whaddya mean?
SITDStaff: Learned freaking Foot?
MBerg: ???
SITDStaff: Jeezawfriday, Mitch. What were you thinking?
MBerg: Um - vacation time? I mean, "MNObserver" wasn't available...
SITDStaff: You think this is some kind of joke?
MBerg: What's the beef?
SITDStaff: We'll probably get featured in "Blog House"
MBerg: ugh.
MBerg: Do what you have to to make sure it doesn't happen.
SITDStaff: Will do.

Shot in the Foot

Mitch asked me to keep the lights on here this week while he takes a well deserved vacation (Presumably to follow Bruce Springsteen around the country). If you like what you see from me, you can find more of my html-enhanced goodness at my regular blog, the Kool Aid Report. If you think I suck, then you'll probably want to avoid my other blog, Power Line.

In any event, I am profoundly honored that Mitch asked me to substitute for him. I will try to live up to the same high standards that has catapulted Mitch to his status as one of the brightest stars of the center-right blog constellation. In fact, I shall try to exceed those standards of excellence. To that end, you will see no fawning posts about the "genius" of Bruce Springsteen this week.

I think Mitch once told me that Michelle Malkin is a regular reader of Shot in the Dark. To avoid any awkward situations this may create, I'll just get this out the way right now:

Michelle, I'm flattered. Really, I am. But I'm happily married. I hope you understand. Thank you.

One more thing: since I'm taking over for Mitch this week on his blog, I assume that I need to sub for him on the Northern Alliance Radio Network as well.** So be sure to tune in to NARN II between 1 and 3 today. In the first hour, we'll be breaking down all the exciting World Cup soccer action from the past week. Then we will spend all of the second hour coming up with anagrams for "King Banaian". (Sneak preview: "Banana ink.")

** Just kidding. But it was worth it: you could almost hear the lump rising in Brian "St. Paul" Ward's throat. See ya' tomorrow, or, more likely, Monday.

Iraq, On The Record

The House voted on HR 861 today - expressing support for the Administration's appreciation of Iraq's importance in the War on Terro.

Minnesota's delegation voted mostly on party lines, with Democrat Colin Peterson crossing over to vote "yea" with Republicans Gutknecht, Kline, Ramstad and Kennedy.

DFLers Betty "Rubble" McCollum, Jim Oberstar and Martin Sabo expressed their sympathy for a return to dictatorship in Iraq.

Let's make sure we remember these votes in November.

Pomer

Technical Difficulties

A longtime detractor wrote me last week. To paraphrase, he said "Hahahahahahahaha, you're traficc is down! You rediculous looser!"

I had not checked it in quite some time - but sure enough, my Sitemeter stats are way off. I checked my server logs, though - still very strong. What's the problem?

Then I noticed - for some reason, over the last few weeks my web server has been chopping off the blog before it completely loads. And since the site meter is just about the last piece of code on the page, every time the page chops off I lose a tally on my counter.

Now, on the one hand, I don't care. I'd write this blog if I were the only audience.

On the other hand, Blogads - where I get all of the revenue from this site - uses Sitemeter stats to show incoming traffic - so the technical glitch is going to eventually hit my bottom line (such as it is - this blog averages about $50 a month).

Anyone have an idea as to why the server can't finish what it starts?

Zzzzzzzzzz

This has been the longest week.

Perhaps it's in keeping with next week's plans. I'm taking a vacation next week.

Now, this is kind of a big step for me. I spent most of the last four years in contracting jobs; this is the first time I've had paid time off since 2001. And back when I had PTO, I usually spent most of it staying home with sick kids.

So via a combination of situation and sickness, I have not actually taken a week off from work since 1995 - and, since I spent that week painting the house, I should add that I haven't had a week off that didn't involve housework or hunting for work (which is no vacation at all) since 1987. A few long weekends, yes - but no actual week-off vacations.

I'm taking Bun and Zam to an undisclosed location, leaving my cousins Guido and "No-neck" at the Berg house (they need the space to train their attack dogs).

Blogging, naturally, will be pretty light.

Or...will it?

Off Message?

Nick Coleman, on noting several surveys that show the Twin Cities are among the "smartest" metro areas, gives us too much information:

By the way, I admit to perusing Men's Health on occasion, because it has advice on how to keep a man's thighs firm and includes useful tips on such things as "Boost Your Foreplay Quotient," which is FQ for short.

I'm...

...uh...

...uhhhmmmmm...

I am willing to bet Minneapolis does not rank high on FQ lists, but Men's Health says it has lots of IQ. The mag ranked Minneapolis No. 1 based on the number of bachelor's degrees per capita, its number of universities, its SAT scores and its "creativity," which is hard to define, but you know we have it in buckets when you see how cleverly the city turns a 35 percent crime increase into a happy little 15 percent bump.

And Men's Health is not alone in bragging about the size of our brainpans. Last month, Kiplinger's Personal Finance rated Minneapolis-St. Paul as No. 2 in the country on its list of "smart places to live," which rated affordability and livability, and suggested that smart people gravitate toward cities such as ours.

Wow.

Weren't the Pawlenty tax cuts supposed to make Minnesota really stupid?

Culture of Corruption!

What will we do about powerful men with bottomless pockets who use their old-boy-network connections to gain disproportionate control of elected governments?

Who will speak against the culture of boundless, cynical corruption?

Wring The Lame Duck's Neck

I was going to hit the trifecta of really, really awful Strib editorials this week...

...but I can add nothing to Doug Williams' piece, which does to the editorial what Ving Rhames' pals with the "blowtorches and pliars" were going to do to the guy from whom Bruce Willis rescued Rhames in the shop basement in Pulp Fiction...

...OK. Ignore my simile, and just go read the whole thing.

Where Have We Heard This?

Yesterday's Strib editorial asks for something we plainly need...:

Along with more enforcement, plainer talk is required and deeper questions must be asked if violence is to be reversed.

So far so good.

Why, for example, did crime increase 10 times faster last year in Minneapolis than in St. Paul (a city that suffered similar budget cuts)? Why is violent crime one-third less likely in St. Paul than in Minneapolis? Is there a correlation between a surge of teen pregnancies in Hennepin County in the early 1990s and today's crime trends?

It's a start!

Let's keep asking the tough questions.

• That epidemic of illegitimate births in the 1990's - why did that happen? And before answering that, let's take a step back and think bigger; what led to Minneapolis having a much bigger-than-average population of poor post-adolescents, mostly hailing from impoverished families?
• What set of policies could have possibly led Minneapolis to simultaneously deal with the legacies of boundless, unlimited subsidy of poverty and a too-small, underbudgeted police department (in a city that nonethless levies very high taxes) and an incarceration rate for repeat felons that is a laughingstock nationwide?

What, oh what, policies indeed?

The Strib:

Why is crime rising far faster in Midwestern cities than in the South or on the coasts? What's the role of methamphetamine? Of family dysfunction? Of popular culture?

As we said last Sunday, Minneapolis is a city headed rapidly in both good and bad directions. The renewal of its cultural venues is impressive, as is the investment in luxury housing. But the jobs picture is bleak and poor neighborhoods are struggling. "I don't recognize much of the city I grew up in," City Council President Barbara Johnson lamented this week. These new crime numbers make even more urgent the need to reverse the downward spiral so that the whole city can once again claim its role as one of the nation's best urban places.

Yeah.

As long as it doesn't involve looking at the party, and the one-party machine, behind the curtain.

Leftybloggers have criticized me for blaming Minneapolis' crime wave on Amy "A-Klo" Klobuchar. They're right and wrong; I blame Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar for being a dilatory, indifferent prosecutor in a city that needs a Rudy Giuliani. But Klobuchar is just a symptom - the creation of a one-party political machine that has been setting Minneapolis up for this moment for generations. By giving a bottomless subsidy for poverty (including an unquestioning subsidy of the illegitimate childbirth that documentably the criminals of tomorrow) and systematically prioritizing its spending anywhere but law enforcement.

I almost laughed in noting that last point in the editorial:

Mayor R.T. Rybak's pledge to add 71 officers by summer's end still leaves a force far too small to cover both the response to crime and its prevention. A truly proactive department requires many more officers. For example, New York's police force is proportionally 2½ times larger than Minneapolis' for a city with a crime rate that's one-half lower.

This is, of course, a result of decisions the city made 20 and 30 years ago. Minneapolis has the tax burden of a much larger city, and the police force of a smaller one, thanks to calls the city's DFL machine made a generation ago.

The real answer to crime in Minneapolis - not only this current wave, but the next one and the one after that - is to smash the DFL machine in Minneapolis and elect a government whose priorities include protecting its citizens and making the real tough choices about the kind of future the city wants; that includes the choice between unquestioning subsidy of poverty (a choice Minneapolis made 50 years ago and clings to for dear life) or promotion of achievement.

The Strib - like the DFL machine for which it so shamelessly panders - doesn't want to ask you those tough questions...

Whizzing On Yoiur Parade

As Minnesota's unemployment figure drops to 3.7 percent - 1.3 below what they used to call "full employment" - the Strib's editorial board dings Pawlenty and his tax cuts because...because unemployment apparently isn't negative:

But the May employment numbers are not quite as good as they appear, and voters should read them carefully. As the Department of Employment and Economic Development pointed out, actual job creation in May was modest. The unemployment rate went down chiefly because some 9,000 Minnesotans simply stopped looking for work and weren't counted as jobless. Consider the bigger picture: The share of working-age Minnesotans with jobs is still lower than it was five years ago, when the last recession began, 70.4 percent vs. 73 percent.

No context, naturally, is given for these numbers. Why is the percentage lower? Are those extra 2.6 percent of the work force retired? On welfare? On chemotherapy at Mayo? Discouraged workers?

Just saying "not everyone has a job" without knowing why is fairly meaningless, except as a way to propagandize against a hated (by the Strib) governor and his policies.

While it's true that Minnesota has surpassed the nation in the pace of job creation during the last 12 months, it has underperformed the nation in job creation over the full period since the 2001 recession ended.

Perhaps - this is a theory (Kiiiiiiiiing?) because we didn't lose as many jobs as the rest of the nation during the recession? I mean, our unemployment was relatively mild (generally - personally, it was about 70% in '03)? It's a fairly key point, if true...

That's a sharp departure from the 1990s. Similarly, while Minnesota climbed up the state-by-state income rankings steadily during the 1990s, it has been stuck or falling in the income ranks since about 1999.

Er, because our income was already very high in the income ranks (IIRC) in the '90s, perhaps?

No one should give a governor too much blame or credit for these broad trends. The Minnesota economy is dynamic, complicated and mostly beyond the control of any one politician. But Pawlenty came to office promising that he would improve Minnesota's economic performance, and he has held the state to an austere budget regimen to achieve that goal.

The new Minnesota -- with a lower tax ranking and a leaner government -- may yet surpass the Minnesota of the 1990s, but so far its performance is nothing to boast about.

3.7% unemployment is nothing to boast about?

And that number doesn't give anywhere near the whole picture; while some sectors in Minnesota's job market might be lagging (auto manufacturing, I'm suspecting, will be a key one soon), others - health care, information technology - remain superheated and unable to find enough people.

The Strib - all the truth that's convenient for the DFL.

Area Denial

I'm usually not one to troll comment sections for material; I have more fun writing my own.

But for the second time in as many days, something popped up in a thread on PowerLiberal responding (in part) to a post in which I assailed Amy "A-Klo" Klobuchar:

The County Prosecutor is solely a REACTIVE position. Ideally, it's the job of the police to be proactive in preventing crime. Unfortunatley, the MPD is so understaffed and overwhelmed, that they're pretty much forced into a reactive mode.

Expect to see the Minneapolis DFL/Green junta toss a lot of this sort of rhetoric around in their attempt to get the worthless Klobuchar elected.

Let's tackle it a section at a time:

• The County Prosecutor is solely a REACTIVE position - That's right. And how the County Attorney "reacts" to crime has a lot to do with how crime trends in a jurisdiction. The most important factor in deterring crime is certainty of punishment. Hennepin County has been terrible in this regard for a long, long time; it's gotten a richly-justified repuation as a "catch and release" jurisdiction, one where the prosecution will plead away cases with far lighter penalties than in other areas.
• Ideally, it's the job of the police to be proactive in preventing crime. Unfortunatley, the MPD is so understaffed and overwhelmed, that they're pretty much forced into a reactive mode. - Right. And that's the DFL's fault, too. Back under the Fraser administration, the MPD decided to run the sort of department Darrell Gates ran in Los Angeles; undermanned, "lean and mean", lots of emphasis on brawny responses to problems. Minneapolis' PD was much smaller, per capita, than neighboring Saint Paul. Minneapolis opted also to have its department run by outsiders from authoritarian east coast police departments - New Yorker Tony Bouza, Suffolk County's Bob Olsen, Dayton's Bill McManus. And short-staffing one's police department, as successive DFL administrations have done, isn't something one fixes overnight; you can hire a cop tomorrow, but it'll be years before that policeman develops the experience and knowledge of the streets to really have an effect.

What do criminals expect? Given Minneapolis' execrabe record at sentencing felons, probably not a lot. The risk-to-reward comparison is pretty shallow.

Which is one key reason Minneapolis is so full of, y'know, criminals.

High-Water Mark

San Francisco gun ban struck down in court:

The ordinance targeted only city residents, meaning nonresidents in the city or even tourists were not banned from possessing or selling guns here.

Warren's decision was not unexpected. In 1982, a California appeals court nullified an almost identical San Francisco gun ban largely on grounds that the city cannot enact an ordinance that conflicts with state law.

By the way, commenters - hold the inevitable "Wow - a conservative praising an activist judge!" snark. This ruling enforces existing law; it doesn't write new law from the bench; unlike Judge Finley's decision that delayed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act for most of a year, it doesn't ignore vast swathes of inconvenient fact. It enforces state law; the voters of San Francisco do not pre-empt the voters of the rest of the state.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also is considering a challenge to a similar handgun ban in the District of Columbia that alleges the law violates a Second Amendment right of individuals to bear arms.

I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

But at least the stress level for San Francisco's criminal element has risen at least incrementally.

(Note: Most of us consider that a good thing).

Edging Toward The Exit?

Jerry Springer's TV show was that rarest of productions; something that started as self-parody right out of the gate. It is what it is; an institution of American dolt kitsch, sort of like the National Enquirer, pro wrestling and dwarf-tossing.

His radio show has no such sentimental connection; his radio program was a train wreck from day one (which was, for me, embarassing; I thought Springer might have had the chops to pull it off. Goes to show ya...).

And I've seen him speaking in settings unrelated to either - and he's seemed like a decent speaker, at least; wry, self-effacing...worth a listen.

Brian Maloney has observations about Jerry Springer's appearance at a talk radio/new media conference in NYC.

During a well- delivered speech entitled "The Fine Line Between Journalism and Showbiz", Springer said he wasn't sure exactly where, or if, he fit in at the liberal talk network. "While I may not be a Bush fan, I don't think he's the devil, either," said the notorious television trashmeister.

One frustrated company executive, who still supports the concept of liberal talk, told the Radio Equalizer shortly after Springer's speech that his own words should be a signal that it's time to give up on talk radio.

According to the obviously annoyed corporate suit, "he's the worst thing they've got, and he's bringing down the whole operation and ruining progressive talk radio for everybody else. Why doesn't he realize he needs to quit?"

After hearing his speech, we couldn't have agreed more. In this setting, he's very impressive, in a way we've never seen on television and certainly not on the radio, where Springer is a nightmare.

And Maloney asks:

On the radio, where is this Jerry Springer? During his talk shows, we've never heard even a trace of any of these qualities. And on television, he lets the flying chairs do the talking.

I doubt there'd be room for a Springer on FrankenNet.

Springer, in other words, seems (to Maloney) to be edging toward the center.

Positioning himself for a post-FrankenNet radio life?

Soon?

Arne Carlson's Thinking in Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis

The left in Minnesota gets sad when people call their politicians on their BS.

Lately, a number of them have gotten upset that conservatives are holding Amy "A-Klo" Klobuchar accountable for the hellhole of crime that Minneapolis has become.

Over at Powerliberal, Fecke leaves a comment:

It's almost like some higher level of government has cut aid to Minneapolis, thus causing them to have to belt-tighten, and forcing them not to hire more cops. If only I knew who it was who controlled the state and Federal government.

Oh, that poor city government!

Except that if that were the case, crime in Saint Paul, Rochester, Bloomington, Lakeville, Duluth, Mazeppa and Dilworth would have risen by 35% as well. The "cuts" in aid to local governments - which were never anything but a smokescreen to allow allow government to conceal spending by disconnecting it from its revenue source - affected all levels and sizes of city and state governments.

And yet it's Minneapolis that is turning into Mogadishu on the prairie. Why is that?

Because RT Rybak has tried to turn Minneapolis into a city that accepts first and asks questions later (even if "later" is after arrest), and Amy Klobuchar has turned Hennepin County into a place where criminals can count on being caught, slapped on the wrist, and released, over and over again, until their crimes become too serious to ignore.

Stabbing John Knox's Corpse, Part II

Two years ago, the General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church of the USA (PCUSA) started the process of trying to divest the church's investiments in Israel.

The effort was met with condemnation by the majority of mainstream Presbyterians, big and small.

The temporal affairs of the Presbyterian Church are run by a series of elected bodies; each church elects a Session; sessions send delegates to regional Presbyteries; the presbytery sends delegates in turn to the national General Assembly. Of course, the higher you go in the hierarchy, the farther left of center an elected official is likely to be.

Concerned Presbyterians notes that the GA is responding to criticism the way all political bodies do; by burying it in politics:

PCUSA Moderator Ufford-Chase, with unanimous approval of the General Assembly Council, has recommended the creation of a seven person study group to examine the Middle East issue for another two years. Under this proposal, the 34 divestment overtures advanced by individual churches through their presbyteries would be referred to committee. The Israel divestment resolution approved in 2004 would continue unabated while this study group does its work. Thus, the will of numerous anti-divestment presbyteries would be thwarted at least two more years, while national church leadership would continue to drain our coffers in pursuit of a biased political agenda.

CP notes the response we mainstream Presbyterians need to take:

Presbyterians, neither the Israeli Government nor the American Jewish Community can stop this assault on Israel. It is our problem – and our responsibility. With the General Assembly (GA) approaching June 15, now is the time for you to act by contacting the GA Commissioners from your presbytery. Please do not delay. Your 217th GA Commissioners’ names are listed here, and your presbytery office has the contact information for them. These Commissioners need to be informed that many concerned Presbyterians are opposed to referring these urgent overtures to a study group; they want the 2004 divestment resolution rescinded now.

It's time for Presbyterians to stop treating church elections like the rubberstamps they tend to be, and to fight back against the erosion of the church's traditions.

Presbyterianism in the US is historically closely linked to our democracy itself; John Knox' theology nurtured many of our founding fathers and the ethical institutions they founded, up to and including not only our democracy but the traditions of justice, property rights and other beliefs that made democracy tenable in the first place.

The church is worth fighting for. This is just the first hill to fight for.

The GA has not gotten a nickel of my money for two years. They won't until things change.

Yeats!

Nobody - not even my college major advisor, Dr. Blake, himself a yuuuuuge fan - writes about Irish literature like Sheila does. When she writes about Irish lit, I envision her with a big treasure chest full of scraps of paper, each with a quote or a poem or a passage scribbled on it, each well-worn from having been picked up and read and gone over, over and over again, as she's memorized them all but keeps reading them anyway just for the sheer joy of having them around. Sort of like Pokemon cards for an obsessive Irish book geek.

Today, a fantastic post observing the birthday of William Butler Yeats.

Just read it.

This Hardly Ever Happens

After months of leftyblogs insisting Rove was going to get perp-walked out of the White House at gunpoint...

...he's cleared:

"On June 12 2006, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove," [Rove attorney Robert] Luskin said in a statement. "We believe the special counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr Rove's conduct."

Leftyblogs: "But the exit polls said he was guilty! The fix is in! Conspiracy!"

I bet Randi Rhodes' head explodes.

Sorry, American Left. Another one got away.

Keillor: Still a Jag After All These Years

Deflating Garrison Keillor has been very, very good to me.

Don't get me wrong. I listen to Prairie Home Companion just about weekly. The music is usually great, and some of the comedy is pretty dang good. I like it. So sue me.

But in all things artistic, it is best to love the art and avoid the artist.

And with no "artist" is it as important as Garrison Keillor. I've dealt with him before, and my impressions are shared by many people who've worked with him; he's obsequious to his "betters", and, say reports from reliable sources, abusive and contemptuous to his subordinates.

He brings his sneering contempt for all those "lower" than him to his politics; poking holes in this has been very good to me (the linked post was my first Instalanche, and put this blog on the map).

Keillor's unleashed another doozy. I may take a poke at it in a bit here.

But there's no need to wait; Learned Foot tore Keillor's latest Strib column apart pretty convincingly.

Open Note to Minnesota DFLers on Endorsing Mike Hatch

Thank you.

Thank you so very, very much.

I thought Roger Moe was an awful endorsement for governor. Hatch is the same kind of old-school DFL apparatchik as Moe, with the added level of sleaze for which he is famous...

Minnesota has done very well under Pawlenty; four more years will be a great thing.

The Worst Intersection In Minnesota

This past Saturday evening as I headed for the freeway to go out for the evening, I saw a blazing mass of police whoopie lights - so many that I thought it could not be a traffic accident; there were at least a dozen police cars there. As I picked my way past a couple of them to get to the on-ramp to 94, I wondered if there might be someone holding a hostage in a nearby building or perhaps in a car.

But as I crossed Snelling, I saw the fire trucks, and a badly-crumpled car.

And I thought "not like you couldn't see that coming". That intersection - where Snelling passed over I94 - is the most dangerous intersection I've ever seen in the Twin Cities; something about it brings out the worst in Twin Cities drivers. The backups at the lights can get very long, especially during busy rush hours or during the State Fair, when cars can be backed out all the way onto the freeway. The lights flip back and forth with Jack Russell speed, allowing just a few cars to squirt through before settling the whole mass back in for another wait. In the meantime, the north-south traffic can be intolerable as well.

So many drivers - a shockingly high percentage - push the lights. While drivers will run red lights at almost every intersection, they take the most brazen chances at Snelling and 94. You are literally as likely to see someone running a red at this intersection as not. Every few years during slow news cycles, one news station or another does an "investigation" showing the number of light runners at this intersection (and the almost-as-bad one at Snelling and University, a few blocks north).

But nothing is ever done. While the Coleman adminstration is happy to make you pay for a better Saint Paul by putting speed traps on the Fairview underpass (a swooping four-lane dip under 94 that is almost impossible not to take at 40 or 50 mph, but is posted for 30, and often has cops with radar guns posted at the ends, even though to my knowleged accidents on the swoop are vanishingly rare), the scandal of this intersection is decades old.

Oh, this accident was especially tragic:

Adams, 33, and his son, Javis Adams Jr., 10, died at the scene at Snelling and Concordia Avenues. His daughter, niece and father remained hospitalized on Sunday.

His children had just come up to the Twin Cities a week ago to live with their father for the summer.

"He was a good son and good husband and an extraordinary father," Adams' mother, Caroline Trice, told KARE-TV. "Everybody knew him and everybody loved him, and took to him."

Chris Coleman - do you want to do something useful? Do something about this intersection.

Welcome To Adult Life. Duck

Shots fired outside a Minneapolis high school graduation - outside the Convention Center, one of downtown Minneapolis' crown jewels:

Several shots were fired Sunday night outside the Minneapolis Convention Center as people were leaving Patrick Henry High School's graduation ceremony, police said.

No one was struck, but one person claimed to have been injured as many in the crowd ran away from the shots, police spokesman Ron Reier said.

Some of the eight officers on hand for the event heard what were at least four gunshots, Reier said.

The quagmire in Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis deepens.

Today's S**t List: Rew

Robin "Powerliberal" Wright from an interview with a couple of DFL apparatchiks:

If you win what will be your song - NO SPRINGSTEEN

You are so toast.

Hatch Endorsed

DFLers endorse Attorney General Mike "Building a Better Minnesota Through More Aggressive Regulatory Lawsuits" Hatch in seven ballots.

Flash regarding opponent Steve Kelley:

He ran an honorable and positive campaign.

That's the last we'll see of that in the DFL Goober race. Hatch has a thing for playing dirty.

It's going to be six fun months.

Now That Was Fun

King Banaian was out today, and Cap'n Ed couldn't make it to the show for personal reasons. So for the first time in three years, and the second time in 19, I was on my own today on the NARN.

Well, not totally. John Hinderaker stuck around for a segment, and Brian "Saint Paul" Ward hung out for a whole hour. But the second hour was the first time I've done a solo hour on the NARN.

And boy, was it fun.

Not to say I don't need a helluvva lot of practice at it. Part of the problem was that I didn't know I was soloing until an hour or so before air. That's the way the cookie crumbles; one should always be ready to host a group show by oneself anyway, of course. So it's a lame excuse.

But, that said, it was still a total gas. Swiftee dug it (have no fear, Tom - your position as the MOB's "Mr Furious" is safe). King, Ed - the next time you wanna take a day off, don't worry.

(But group shows are more fun, anyway...)

Oops...

Now it's the sixth ballot, and Rew has unofficial results.

It's going to stay ugly.

Trench Warfare

With Lourey out, Attorney General Mike "I Can Regulate Your Entire Life" Hatch and Steve "Happy To Pay Your Money for a Better Minnesota" Kelley are in a near dead-heat.

Flash has the goodies; some of his permalinks are hosed, but he shows the fifth ballot is (rounding up) 50-47 for Hatch (with Kelley up from 34 in the fourth tally).

OK - it'd be fun to be there as a broadcaster. But it would hurt to be a delegate.

A New Giant...

...in local cartooning debuts.

Hey, he's better than Avidor.

DFL Convention Notes

While at the State GOP convention there was a brief flash of an idea that we might be able to broadcast from the State DFL convention. It fell through, alas - I would have loved to have made the trip - but I followed the polling via excellent liveblogging from Michael Brodkorb, Flash and Rew.

Just some scattered observations:

• Becky Lourey's big vision - as articulated in her withdrawal speech after the fourth ballot - was organic farming? Yeah, Becks - take that one to the streets this September/November. Go for it.
• MPR still uses Tim Penny as a commentator. His "commentary", both at the DFL and at last week's GOP convos, is nothing but an unpaid ad for the Ventura Independence "Party"; Penny can't squeeze out a sentence without mentioning Peter Hutchinson. Which is a good thing, since I sincerely doubt that more than a tiny fraction of the IP's "support" comes from Republicans. Speaking of which - why does anyone care what Tim Penny has to say?
• Speaking of MPR, I know someone down there reads this blog. Please - tell Tim Pugmeier to take coffee. Now. The guy is positively somnambulent.
• Patty Wetterling - Oh, my. I hate to say anything out of turn, but....oh, my. What a crummy stump speaker.
• No, wait - Lourey is worse
• I was so hoping to hear a Wild Wendy speech. But then, with people like Wetterling, Betty "Rubble" McCollum and Loury on the stand, Wilde might almost be listenable in comparison.

More observations as I continue to listen.

Assuming I do...

They Eat Their Own

Via MDE, Rew from PowerLiberal shows this Hatch hit piece against Steve Kelley.

It's a Girl!

Belated 'grats to Kelly the Patriette, who welcomed baby Amy this past week.

Something about reading about pregnancy on blogs makes it feel like the human gestation period is 22 months. It was, of course, not.

Congrats!

Unamerican

I am pretty demonastrably the biggest free-speech guy I know; indeed, my commitment to all ten amendents in the Bill of Rights is pretty unimpeachable.

And what I'm about to say doesn't change that fact one bit.

And I'm not one of those conservatives who will go about attacking the patriotism of people who disagree with me, just because they disagree with me. Never happened, never will.

But I listened to Michael Medved a moment ago, playing audio from Michael Berg (no relation - father of Zarquawi beheadee Nick Berg), and Jerry Springer, and Randi Rhodes. All said - in various words - that President Bush is worse than Zarquawi. Worse than Hussein. Responsible for more death than either, and Bin Laden thrown in to boot. The other Berg said words to the effect that it'd be better for Bush to die than Zarquawi.

So. I'll say it.

Whomever you are, say what you want. And call yourself what you want.

But if you think that America, and its efforts in the Middle East, are worse than a dictatorship that murdered hundreds of thousands of people (in abeyance of all evidence to the contrary), then yes - you are unpatriotic.

If you actively root for the enemy to win - with full knowledge of what "the enemy", with his ritual murders and burial alive of enemies and his testing of chemical weapons on civilian villages, represents - then yes, you are unamerican.

If you compare Zarquawi to Christ - as did a caller of Medved's - then yes, you should leave this country. No, I won't force you to; won't even mention it again. But you obviously should be in a country where black is white and evil is good (and, naturally, if you think good is evil and black is white in America, then what are you doing here, anyway? This country has not been favorable to your ilk since we declared slavery immoral)

If you think - and I know many of you do - that the head-sawers who hide among civilians and blow up children in the streets are "freedom fighters" against a US that is no better than the Nazis in any particular, then yes, you should not live in this nation. You should leave. You should not wrap yourself in anything the American flag represents. I don't care where - or if - you go. But I'll ask you - why are you here?

North Korea, Yemen, Myanmar and the Sudan call you, Randi and Michael and Jerry. You know so much about good and evil. Put it to the test.

Please.

Slime.

And before the less-able among you even thinks about saying it - each of the people mentioned above has the right to say anything they want.

So do I.

And I said it.

We'll see who is the defender of free speech, here.

It's Probably Not My Better Self...

...that thinks it's a good thing that Zarquawi didn't die right away:

Al-Zarqawi could barely speak when Iraqi police arrived at the scene of Wednesday's attack.

"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news conference.

U.S. and Polish forces [What? Polish? Aren't we a bunch of unilateral cowboys? - Ed] arrived intending to provide unspecified medical treatment, and al-Zarqawi was put on a stretcher, Caldwell said. The terrorist "attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher, everybody reached to insert him back. ... He died a short time later from the wounds suffered during the air strike.

"We did in fact see him alive," Caldwell said. "There was some sort of movement he had on the stretcher, and he did die a short time later."

Presumably with his head still attached to his body - which was more consideration than his victims got.

Prayers today for his victims and their families, both Iraqi and American.

Yes, vengeance is God's. But I'm going to root for it anyway.

We Don't Need Another Hero

The MNGOP posts this Flashvid (beware: it's a WinMedia file) of the record of Mark Dayton - Amy Klobuchar's "hero".

Some might label the video a "cheap shot". Au contraire; the video left a number of real doozies out.

Some of Dayton's votes - including the ones where A-Klo agrees - would be a great addition, though.

Non-Moron Mail

Every once in a while, the Strib publishes a letter to the editor on political matters that wouldn't embarass someone with an IQ above "plant life":

Thank you, President Bush! Thank you for having the courage to make unpopular decisions. Thank you for pursuing the War on Terror. Thank you for supporting freedom. Thank you for supporting our military. I am proud to celebrate this success along with our president and our military.

ROB HEWITT, RICHFIELD

Rob's a long-time reader and commenter. 'grats ,Rob!

Rybak Solves Crime Problem!

While RT Rybak has seemed utterly unable to deal with crime in his plagued city, he might have some help:

Teresa Skarman was nearby, walking home around 9 p.m. when the footsteps behind her got louder, closer.

Within seconds, a wild-eyed gangly looking man snatched her weathered red leather purse.

"Stop him! Stop him!" screamed the diminutive 55-year-old co-op grocery store bagger.

(Cue the action-movie theme music here.)

Using his super hearing powers, the mild-mannered Evans -- wearing orange tights, black boots and a cape -- instinctively dashed after the mugger along the 2000 block of Garfield Avenue S. in Minneapolis.

A delivery driver for eco-friendly Galactic Pizza who dresses like a superhero while working, Evans chased the robber for blocks, yelled out to two passersby who helped to trap the crook in an alley, then let him go in exchange for the purse.

No "BAM!" or "POW!" was necessary.

Superheroes.

And we thought Rybak didn't have a plan.

Priorities

Zarquawi? Zarquawi who?

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, didn't mean to be a spoilsport Thursday when he interrupted the bipartisan celebration over the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with an inopportune observation.

What about the man President Bush said he wanted "dead or alive" a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks?

"The best news will be when we hear that we've taken out Osama bin Laden -- the face of terrorism everywhere," said Nelson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Question: Has Osama Bin Laden killed anyone in the last four years? Has he led any more attacks? Planned a single operation?

Bin Laden's going to wind up like Zarquawi, on the wrong end of 500 pounds of laser-guided justice, one of these days. Until then, lefties, get your priorities straight. You take out the ones that are killing your soldiers, and interfering with your goals, as well as the ones that attacked you five years ago and are now hiding in a septic tank somewhere in Waziristan.

Christopher Hitchens knows this:

I think maybe a bit more on the front foot today, and yes, the most dangerous and most horrible terrorist in the world, and I don't exempt Mr. bin Laden from this, I mean, the vilest of the lot, is dead. And if the defeatists had been listened to, he would by now be the most famous Muslim warrior in the history of the world. They keep telling us that only by fighting these people do we give them credibility and make them powerful and so forth, that we create them. This is a complete lie. If we had retreated from Iraq, Zarqawi would have claimed victory over a superpower, and his name would be on T-shirts. In bazaars of illiterate, unfortunate, Muslim children all across the world, he'd be a hero. Instead, he's dog meat, which is what he ought to have been a long time ago.

When we get Bin Laden, it will be a great thing. But if you think finding someone who has lots of money, tens of thousands of supporters and years of experience in living underground is easy, run to the post office and check out how long some of the idiots on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list have been on the lam. Like this guy.

Killing a general - an active leader, like Zarquawi, unlike a neutered figurehead like Bin Laden - is a very good thing.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXVIII

It was my first summer in the Twin Cities - and life was looking fairly decent.

I was entering my third month living in the basement - and enjoying it a lot. My routine; get up around seven, take a bike ride, come home, nosh with the roommates, take a shower, drive out to KSTP...

...assuming my car worked. My '73 Malibu was acting weirder and weirder. It would flood on the flimsiest pretexts; I carried a BIG screwdriver with me to jam into the carb butterfly to let enough air in to start the car, something I had to do a couple of times a week. And for a day or so after a rainstorm, it wouldn't start at all.

Anyway, it was off to work around 10. I'd do a little guest booking as I ran the board for the Owen Span show, then go into the Vogel show production meeting.

The routine was always the same; whomever walked into the room last would say "I've been having trouble with my bank lately". One of the guys already there would say "Which bank is that?" The last person into the room would respond "The Sh*t P*ss F*ck bank..."

We'd start planning the show. We'd usually get a visit from our boss, Scott Meier, the general manager. Scott, in his mid-thirties at the time, was a very talented executive - he'd go on to start WFAN in New York, the nation's first all sports station, and also could fart on command.

"Scott", Dave Elvin would say as Meier stood in the studio, "fart!". Meier would let a little "frrrrp" fly with no more effort than clearning his throat, as Vogel laughed - giggled, really - with glee. "Do it again", Don would usually say, like a baby who's discovered tennis balls. Meier would let another one fly. No problem.

But this day, Sunday, June 8, was different.

I'd convinced Don that the station really, really needed a conservative talk show, if only to keep the FCC happy back in the days of the "Fairness Doctrine" . He pondered the notion for a few days. "Mitch", he finally said, "you need to get an audition tape to Meier. I'll help you".

So we arranged it. I picked him up at his house in North Saint Paul, and we drove to KSTP. We went into the studio - only I sat in the host's chair this time. I felt like the first time I sat in my Dad's car; the ratty swivel chair sat practically nose-to-nose with the glass window into the control room; there were controls for all four microphones in the room, plus the "telemixer" phone controller. I told the person on the board in the control room (who was running some syndicated show at the time) to patch the studio into a reel-to-reel deck and roll tape.

And we started talking. I forget what we talked about - politics of some kind, of course, I'm sure, but the tape is long lost. I also "took some calls" - I'd planted a couple of friends with a topic, and recorded a couple of brief flashes of phone interplay. It went well; I remember feeling exhilarated about it all. The whole thing took about an hour.

I drove Don home, and then came back to the studio. I curled up in a production room for about an hour, editing out the "umms" and "y'know"s. Then I dubbed the whole thing to a cassette tape, typed up a memo to Meier asking him to give it a listen, and stuffed the whole thing in his mailbox.

I drove home. The dice had been rolled.

Lie Down With The Pigs

Zarqawi is toast:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq with a $25 million bounty on his head, was killed when U.S. warplanes dropped 500-pound bombs on his isolated safehouse northeast of Baghdad, coalition officials said Thursday. His death was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi and several aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles from Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, officials said.

You don't suppose he was killed by bombs that saw the target's head off, do you?

No?

Oh well. Dead is dead.

Meet The New Sullivan

Sue Jeffers has switched to the GOP to mount a primary challenge against Governor Pawlenty.

Good.

First Ringer at KvM makes a point very similar to the one I made on the NARN show a while ago:

in the backdrop of two contentious DFL primaries for Governor and U.S. Senate, Jeffers’ small and severely underfunded bid will do little more than simultaneously give Pawlenty another opportunity to make amends with his base while perfectly positioning himself for November. The coming arguments from Mike Hatch, Peter Hutchinson, Ken Pentel and Minnesota’s mainstream media that Pawlenty is a right-wing extremist seem increasingly laughable—especially to the Gopher State’s numerous if persnickety independent voters—when the Governor is being savaged for not being sufficiently conservative.

Pushing Pawlenty to the right in September makes more sense that threatening his right in November. Whether Jeffers came to this conclusion by happenstance or deliberation matters little. The result is what matters and that’s an even better environment for a Pawlenty victory.

Look for Jeffers to push Pawlenty to the right in the primary, then drop out. Pawlenty, his ailing mojo with the base reinvigorated by the push rightward, will beat whomever the DFL fields this fall. It'll be a better margin than in '02.

And the Independence "party" will finally lose major party status. Adios.

MOB: Class of '06

I think I can say on behalf of my fellow Northern Alliance bloggers that one of the things of which we are most proud is the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. This non-partisan group has evolved into one of the most dynamic metacenters around and, unlike many previous "alliances", has remained a fairly vital force.

Now, things go in cycles, fits and starts. While the MOB has seen a pretty steady coming and going among member blogs, there have been peaks as wells as plateaux. One of the peaks was the "Class of '04", a big surge of blogs that started around two years ago. Many of the blogs that started back then - KvM, MDE, KAR, NiGP, Centrisity and others that got rolled out about that time have become essential daily reads (and I know I'm missing several others that I enjoy quite a bit).

Bear in mind, the MOB is non-partisan; the MOB doesn't fundamentally exist for political reasons, and in fact MOB parties are refreshingly non-political. Most of the MOB blogs are conservative/Republican, it's true; Minnesota is an epicenter for conservative blogging; a non-partisan blog alliance in Berkeley would probably have a plurality of leftyblogs. That being said, bloggers of all stripes are welcome.

So I have two points here:

First; if you have a new blog that needs a plug, leave a comment with a link (*).

Second: One of the highlights of the NARN/MOB year is the time around the State Fair. We usually have one of our semiannual MOB parties around then (plans currently pending); we also have a "New Blog Day" at the NARN broadcast at the State Fair, wherein we give new bloggers a chance to give themselves a plug live on the show. So - if you're thinking about starting a blog, you would do well to give yourself three months' head start and get rolling on it; it'd be cool to have a blog-in-progress all up and running by fair time, wouldn't it?

Of course it would!

* vandalism will be ruthlessly mutilated.

Daily (unintentional) Funny

"Staff" at "Blogsforbell" notes as re the California CD 50 election:

. It also appears that Brian Bilbray has just barely held on to Duke Cunningham's traditionally safe seat. [link] Chris Bowers points out that Busby lost to Cunningham by 22% in 2004, but to Bilbray by only 4.5%. Not a win, but a good litmus as to the kind of year Republicans can look forward to.

Well, let's be accurate; it's a litmus test of the kinds of races Republicans face in districts where their longtime representatives have gone to jail for multiple felonies.

I know. Details, details. KvM separates "Staff"'s wishful thinking from the facts:

To add insult to injury, Bilbray was a pariah in his own party who secured endorsement only because several candidates split the conservative vote. Even a Republican loathed by his own base could not manage to lose this race. Indeed, a third party candidate to the right of Bilbray secured nearly 4% of the vote total.

Democrat blogs; all the truth that's convenient.

BULLETIN! PENTEL ENDORSED! TECTONIC WAVES SHIFT!

BJ Hokanson, the Twin Cities blogosphere's most precocious adolescent, covers the MN Green Party convention:

Governor - Ken Pentel

Senate - Michael Cavlan

Attorney General - John Kolstad

He also notes:

Secondly, despite advocating for the non-white and non-male (in addition to the white and male, of course), it is still a rather obvious fact that these are three white dudes. This means that even the Republican ticket is going to be more diverse.

Dude. It always is. Dude.

I mean. Dude.

Ever been to a Green Party meeting? They are barely less white than GOP meetings, and their ideas are for the most part the product of white, privileged, over-educated, guilt-wracked people who spend less time on trying to survive so they have more time to Think Big Thoughts. And oy, what a drab, joyless, angry bunch they tend to be; it's like going to a very over-the-edge pentecostal church.

Anyway, congratulations, Ken Pentel. Here's to another comfortably-under-2% election!

Saved By The Bell

So I went and did a little vanity-Technorati last night to see who was linking to me, and why.

I notice the familiar Norwegian flag glyph of Mark Gisleson's "Norwegianity" blog. (Congratulations, by the way, Mr. Gisleson; you've gotten two years into the second Bush term and you have not been deported to a re-education camp yet, as you (or Steve Perry) predicted in '04 that you would be. Hang in there!). The article, as you see, is credited to "Norwegianity" at the blog "Norwegianity".

I clicked on the link.

Of course, there's the usual overheated, fact-free rhetoric:

readers who are new to blogs, it might be instructive to check out the Northern Alliance Radio Network's featured list of affiliated blogs, all of which are among the most heavily visited Minnesota websites:

Fraters Libertas

Power Line

SCSU Scholars

Captain's Quarters

Spitbull

Shot in the Dark

Hugh Hewitt

Hewitt is California-based, but serves as a spiritual godfather to the top Minnesota rightwing bloggers. These blogs are all good sources of information on the Republican state convention, and can be expected to be the first with GOP talking points this campaign season.

"Spiritual godfather"?

Um, no, that'd be Ronald Reagan. Hugh is a friend, and a benefactor within the radio business. But whatever.

If you take time to study these blogs, you won't have any questions why the U.S.A. has become such a deeply divided nation. These pro-war blogs salt our collective wounds and perpetuate disinformation about WMDs, Islamofascists and — most frightening of all — non-English speaking immigrants.

Ah. We're the reason the US is divided. Of course, feel free to show me any "disinformation" - or for that matter, "talking points"; accusing one's opponents of "reciting talking points" is the last refuge of someone who doesn't know your argument very well, or his.

Then I looked at the page header. Ford Bell?

"Norwegianity" is now Ford Bell's "Official Blog"?

Mr. Bell: who's been giving you campaign advice? Oh - and did you know that your "official campaign blog" is diddling around with a squabble between Tracy "Anti-Strib" Eberly and the exceedingly adolescent BJ Hokanson? Way to keep your "official blog" on message!

Oh, and about that "talking points" thing - Mark Gisleson converts his personal blog into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bell campaign, but the Northern Alliance passes on "talking points?"

That being said, if I were a DFLer, I would support Ford Bell with all my heart, soul, and pocketbook. He is clearly a better champion of the liberal values that made the DFL the powerhouse of change and the center of equality among peoples and races that it is today than Amy "A-Klo" Klobuchar.

Give to Ford Bell until it hurts! He's the man for the DFL!

Remember - They're the Smart Ones...

Via MDE, I caught this bit in a note on Democrat Underground - emphasis mine:

Bring a sign to education these people they are just giving their money to another Corporate Puppet

Oddly, it seems fully plausible that after a couple of years of MoveOn.org (and George Soros) involvement, "corporate puppet" just might be a proper, capitalized noun, by now...

Conservatives For Idusogie

Comes word via KvM that Peter Idusogie is going to contest the Senate race against Amy Klobuchar.

Idusogie - noted for his association with groups that are known for elevating the level of this state's political discourse - should make a fine Senator. In all sincere honesty, if I were still a liberal Peter Idusogie is exactly the kind of person I'd want to see running for Senate. He deserves the support of every real American.

I implore you, DFLers; give Idusogie his due!

Summertiiiiiiiime...and the living is...easy...

My favorite places in the Twin Cities, so far, to kill a couple of hours on a gorgeous summer night are:

• Pracna On Main - Sitting out on the sidewalk at Pracna, watching the river roll by on a balmy summer night, is just about the nicest time I can think of. Tugg's and Vic's, down the street, are up there, too, but there's something about Pracna...
• Fletchers - The Lake Minnetonka-front standby, complete with boat-up service, is a fun place to sit and watch the (staggeringly-wealthy) hoi-polloi doing their thing; sitting on the dock at sunset as the lake switches into night-time mode is a wonderful time.
• Keegan's - Parking out back on the Cigar Patio on a still, warm night, sucking down the Guinness and a nice cigar is one of my favorite summer getaways.
• Moscow On The Hill - The patio out back is one of my favorite summer stops.

Other suggestions?

Yes, I'm trolling.

This Is Good News

Few things will rile up a conversation quite like the question "what should kids learn?"

To some, "the basics" - reading, writing, math, and fairly straightforward history - are the focus. Others favor a less-focused curriculum focused on developing broader thinking.

My own beliefs are less than completely traditional - but whether you send your kids to a catholic military school or a curriculum-free "unschool" like the Sudbury School, I believe that one of the most important facets of a real education (as opposed to "schooling") is learning a foreign language. The benefits, even beyond the obvious, are immense; you can not learn a foreign language without learning about the culture - and nothing lances the boil of "multiculturalism" like actually understanding foreign culture! Foreign languages also have a demonstrable ability to help kids in, believe it or not, math; the logical pathways through the brain that help analyze and retain language are the same ones that support higher-order logic like math. Kids who start in foreign language immersion programs from kindergarten on up have documentably higher math scores as a group than kids who go to traditional schools.

And of course learning a language gives a student the abiliity to understand the world around him or her more broadly; it may be possible to find a bilingual bigot, but you have to look a lot harder than in the general population.

And so while I am deeply pessimistic about the future of public compulsory education in Minnesota, I think this story notes a praiseworthy trend:

Spurred by federal and state incentives and business support, some school principals and superintendents are retooling their world-language programs. The result: More languages are being taught in the state's public schools, but the mix is spotty depending on school budgets, parent interest and outside support.

"The whole world language situation in Minnesota is kind of in flux," said Gaelle Berg, world-language specialist for Minneapolis public schools.

Alice Seagren, Minnesota's education commissioner, said the state's world-language offerings "are in very stable, good shape" but that educators should be "more nimble" to handle changing priorities. Learning dialects spoken in India, for example, might be more important than developing a full-fledged Arabic program, she said.

Back to facts; among the first things that school districts gutted during the "budget cuts" after 2002 were language programs. I suspect the availability of federal money has at least as much to do with the renaissance and refocus of language programs as their pedogogical value.

Any port in a storm, I guess.

(And I wish my high school would've had Russian...)

A-Klo's Minneapolis

Suspected shooter of two at a Wendy's in Minneapolis had been in custody - but Amy Klobuchar's County Attorney's office declined to prosecute.

We're going to keep count, here...

Justice On The Block?

A source in the western suburbs sends me this bit of alarming news; ultraliberal Saint Paul city councilman Jay Benanav is pondering a run for judge.

At Risk

The greatest success (say those of us who have become detractors of the current educational system) of supporters of compulsory education is that they've convinced most of society that there is no better way to educate children than the current system - the "keep your ass in your seat for six hours a day and learn what you're told" model of education.

Even smart people.

Dementee does an audio-blog post on the subject of a charter school in Northfield which was closed down by the city's school board. Says the Strib report on the subject:

"I believe this is not the right program for a public school in this place and time and for our district," said board member Mike Berthelsen, who voted to withdraw the school's sponsorship. "Though (the school) can work and has worked for some students, we have an obligation to look out for all the students attending."

The Village School is a democratic, project-based charter school that receives about $500,000 annually in state funding. Students at the school choose when and what they want to learn, and they base their learning around projects such as growing tomatoes or building a boat.

School officials pride themselves on providing a home for at-risk students who struggle in a more traditional school environment. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, 32 percent of the students qualify as special education students and 55 percent are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, meaning they come from low-income families.

Dementee, in the podcast, makes a lot of the same objections that many people make over schools like The Village school (quoting from the podcast):

...the students at this school - "at risk students" - choose when and what they want to learn. Now since when are you going to give someone who ain't much of a student to begin with the responsibility to choose when and what they want to learn?

Since that - and not "adherence to arbitrary standards set down by a bureaucracy" - is what "education" is.

By what standard are these kids "not much of a student to begin with?" That's right, those of a system that values meek obedience and unquestioning compliance with arbitrary standards. Kids who don't adapt to raising your hand to go to the bathroom and marching about in long, slow lines and putting away your crayons when a teacher tells you the schedule says it's time to do math are promptly labelled as kids who "can't handle education".

Except it's nothing of the sort. They can't handle arbitrary, dogmatic control of their time by others, and "education" has nothing to do with it. It's "schooling", and there is a difference.

Schools like "Village" take their cues from schools like the Sudbury, Waldorf and Montessori, and are based around the idea that learning is something that kids do naturally if you just get out of the way.

For example, the most complex thing any human learns is how to communicate via verbal language. It is something so complex, even computers do it only with great difficulty. And yet nearly every four-year-old has mastered at least one language (and I've met H'mong kids who at five interpret English for their parents and grandparents). By comparison, the relatively bone simple task of reading - assigning meaning to symbols - is largely given over to the schools, and they do largely an awful job, if literacy rates and the number of kids in remedial reading classes is any indication. If kids were taught to speak by schools rather than by just being around parents, family and other kids, there'd be a huge market for remedial speaking classes and an avalanche of academic programs for "pediatric speech pathology" or some such.

Case in point: At the Sudbury school in Framingham Massachusetts, kids are never told when it's time to learn to read. Nobody panics if a student gets to age eight and can't read yet. Because they all do. Some teach themselves at age five. SOme learn from their friends or family members. For some, it doesn't click - until it does. And then they not only read - but they associate the process with not just a success, but a success that shows that education, the process of learning to learn and learning to value and enjoy it, isn't an endless, arbitrary exercise in self-abnegation. That student will have not only learned to read, but will have learned how to learn how to read. And it's a lesson they can apply to every other thing they will. need to learn in their lives.

It's why I, personally, favor abolishing elementary school completely. The only thing that kids learn in elementary school that the vast majority of them couldn't learn better on their own is how to sit for hours, how to ask permission to go to the bathroom, and - for the lucky ones that adapt well to having their lives controlled by arbitrary, dogmatic adults, how to work the system to their advantage.

Some education, huh?

Of course, some parents inevitably chime in "but how do they learn responsibility?"

Speaking when told to speak; working when told to work; stopping and changing subjects when told to stop and change subjects; going to the bathroom when told to go to the bathroom; having every single decision, every single day, being made by other people, except for the minimal, rudimentary decisions one makes to either comply or not - tell me, how can one find a worse system for teaching responsibility? Indeed, what separates the system I just described from prison - a system which intentionally strips away responsibility?

Charter schools are a bit of a crapshoot, but the Village school's problem wasn't its program; its administration may or may not have cut the mustard, but at the end of the day too many parents in the district continued to labor under the delusion that "schooling" - the model and process and endless, responsibility-denying routine of the compulsory school - is the same as "education".

It's not.

Gun Club Destroyed By "Vandals"

Got this simultaneously via email from some RKBA movement friends and from Joel Rosenberg's blog: A legal, taxpaying, fully-in-compliance-with-applicable-laws gun club in Faribault, MN was destroyed in a suspicious fire Friday night or Saturday morning:

June 3, 2006

The Faribault Rifle & Pistol Club grounds and facilities were destroyed last night or early this morning.

Sometime between 9:30 PM last night and 8:00 AM this morning the clubhouse and pistol target storage shed were fully destroyed by fire. The lock on the gate was broken open to gain entry. Also the scheduled USPSA Minnesota Sectional match for today was canceled due to all the stages that had been set-up were destroyed and the range was declared a “crime scene” by the State Fire Marshal.

The "vandals" were nothing if not thorough:

The club house and target shed were fully destroyed by fire and the 200 yard rifle shed was rammed by a vehicle damaging the shed. Each of the stages for the USPSA match was destroyed along with many of the props used in the stages. Each of the over 100 target stands used were flattened to the ground. Most of the other targets and props were also destroyed. All the props in the target shed were also destroyed when it was burnt to the ground. The club house and its contents were also fully destroyed.

Vandalism is always inopportune - but this incident was worse than most:

Approximately 40 shooters for the match were turned away at the gate. Some of the shooters were from out of state. More shooters were notified by cell phone if possible as they traveled to the match. Many of the shooters that did shown up wanted to set up a small match and shoot it with the remaining props to show support for the club but were not able to due to the range being declared a “Crime Scene”.

The vandals either were very, very thorough, or they have an eye for symbolism:

The criminals also pushed over the flag pole, still flying the American Flag. The flag could not be removed from the ground until the area is no longer a “Crime Scene”.

According to an emailer with detailed knowledge of the club and its history, "The Faribault Rifle & Pistol club had to fight the Rice County board like hell to get [the] new facility".

So - vandals?

The club has had some other vandalism over the last years. This was mainly spreading nails and glass at the entrance and the burning of the outhouses.

A source close to the club emails:

The club never had any problems before they moved to the new range. The club was at their old range for about 45 years. A landowner let them use the property for very little fee if any. The range was right on the outskirts of Faribault. The old landowner wanted to give the land to his son, the son wanted to use it for other purposes, and the club wanted to move further from town. The club then purchased the land they are currently on, about 15 miles from Faribault in a very rural area. Several people (some from the metro area) got together to oppose the range opening and delayed the conditional use permit for 2 years. In the end, a judge ordered the county to issue the permit and found the group opposing the range in contempt for the lies they told and fined them.

I wonder...

If it turns out that the "vandalism" was carried out by people with anti-gun sympathies, then it was done to advance a political agenda and intimidate (via financial loss, in this case) those who oppose that agenda. Isn't that the very definition of terrorism?

Or at least hate crime?

I hope these "people" are caught, convicted, and quartered with "Otis" the lonely lifer as soon as possible.

Debate for Me, Not For Thee

Star/Trib rationalization machine "Readers' Representative" Kate Parry:

Efforts to silence or weaken opposing voices mire our country in a paralyzing standoff.

Star/Trib "Blog House" writer Tim O'Brien:

Last month, we took a look at the time of day that Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed (8) was posting to his blog. For the month of March, the former research director for the Minnesota Republican Party -- who claims his blog "is not created, endorsed, sponsored, or authorized by any political party, candidate, or candidate's committee" -- posted 31 times on weekends, 47 times between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m., and 167 times between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays through Friday, generally considered work hours. The tally for April was 71 posts during the workday, 35 after hours.

His employer -- Weber Johnson PA, a public relations firm that has represented the Minnesota Republican Party, Sen. Norm Coleman, Rep. John Kline and Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- apparently doesn't mind an employee spending a big chunk of his workday posting and launching attacks against candidates and political parties opposing former (and current?) clients of the firm. It's almost as if it were part of his job description.

So who says Mr. Brodkorb's employer doesn't have a liberal policy on, say, posting during breaks? Over lunch or during lulls in the action? It happens - I've had such employers myself. Like Nick Coleman's attempt to get Scott Johnson fired for posting during "work hours" (a concept far more meaningful for union glumps like O'Brien than for people at regular companies that measure performance and assess accountability by, say, performance rather than adherence to arbitrary rules), it shows that the Strib can't fight Brodkorb (or any of us) on substance; they have to try to cut off our logistics.

Explain that "paralyzing standoff", won't you, Ms. Parry?

Tonight My Baby And Me Are Gonna Ride To The Sea

It was 28 years ago today that Darkness on the Edge of Town came out.

For the past 25 or so years, it's been my favorite album of all time.

Everyone remembers Born to Run, a timeless procession of suicide machines and old girlfriends and happy-go-lucky petty thugs and dresses flying in the wind and visionaries in parking lots dancing to late-night radio to the light of nearby billboards.

Darkness is the album for when the cruising's over, and you have to grow up and live your life for real.

There's a reason the album has stuck with me for almost thirty years - and why so many Bruce fans say that it, rather than Born to Run or The River or Nebraska, is their favorite Springsteen record.

There has never been a better record written about isolation - personal, geographical, cultural, and emotional - ever. Which may be why it resonated so much for a kid for North Dakota who desperately wanted to be elsewhere. In fact, "the Promised Land" is about exactly that:

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I'm just killing time
Working all day in my daddy's garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge

CHORUS
The dogs on Main Street howl
'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land

Foreigner and Black Sabbath never wrote about being stuck in a small town, bored out of your skull. I was sold.

The first cut, "Badlands", is a decoy; it's almost "Born to Run"-ish, with its gleefully-sloppy guitar/sax interplay, big beat (almost danceable, by Springsteen standards) and exhortation that "it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive". But after "Badlands" it's clear - being glad you're alive is no sin, but it's something you gotta work for. "Adam Raised a Cain", a brutal, plodding dirge, raises the ante; you can be glad you're alive, but your past wants its due:

"Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames
Adam raised a Cain...

"Something in the Night" reads like an obituary to the teenage dream; like an almost-thirty-year-old is driving down the same route he covered ten years earlier - maybe the route "through the mansions of glory", for all we know.

But he's alone, this time:

I'm riding down Kingsley,
figuring I'll get a drink
Turn the radio up loud,
so I don't have to think,
I take her to the floor,
looking for a moment when the world
seems right,
And I tear into the guts,
of something in the night.

...

Well nothing is forgotten or forgiven,
when it's your last time around,
and I've got stuff running 'round my head,
that I can't live down...

So it's been 28 years since I first heard the record, and about a quarter century since it's been among my 2-3 favorite records ever. For me, it's been a long stretch; a couple of careers, two and a half kids, a marriage that splintered like a Wal-mart dining room set, and a few dreams along the way that had to get wrapped up and put away for later, whenever "Later" is.

And at the end of it all - on the title and final cut on the album, the slow, mournful "Darkness on the Edge of Town" - a late-night tale by a guy who staked a big chunk of his life on a losing bet, a song that sounds like 4AM after a long bender, about the time when resignation gells into resolve:

Well, they're still racing out at The Trestles
but that blood never burned in her veins.
I hear she's got a house out on Fairview, now,
and a style she's trying to maintain...

He's been there. He's thought about it.

He's done:

Well, some folks are born into a good life,
and other folks get it anyway, anyhow.
And I lost my money and I lost my wife,
Them things don't seem to matter much to me now.
Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop
I'll be on that hill with everything I got
Where the lives are on the line, where dreams are found and lost,
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
in the darkness on the edge of town...

The album has stayed with me like none of Springsteen's other records - partly because I associate it so closely with that part of my adolescence when I was just starting to figure out who I was and where I belonged, but mostly because it's about things that are pretty timeless.

It aint' no sin to be glad you're alive. It's also something you have to earn:

Well everybody's got a hunger,
a hunger they can't resist.
There's so much that you want,
you deserve much more than this.
Well, if dreams came true, aw, wouldn't that be nice?
But this aint' no dream, we're living all through the night.
You want it? You take it, you pay the price...

So earn it.

For my money, there is no better album in the history of rock and roll.

Speech

I oppose the new law that bans protests at funerals.

Learned Foot supports it. No, not comedically. And he has an excellent post on the subject:

And here we have our competing interests: the state has its police power (i.e. keeping public order), and the people have the right to speak out - even unpleasantly. So the courts struck a balance. In public fora, the government is allowed to impose reasonable "time, place and manner" restrictions. These restrictions must be content neutral (that is, the law must apply to both Phelps (Democrat) and his ilk, as well as the counter-protest he (Democrat) would inevitably draw), specific to a legitimate and important government purpose, and provide alternative venues.

As far as I can tell this law does all three. Even though the law was passed in reaction to the Phelps (Democrat) Gang's stunts, if the law applies to all picketers it's constitutional. And it provides an alternate venue 1,000 feet away.

The important government interest? How about preventing a melee? Public order; just like prohibiting calls to riot - and a thousand other laws that nobody even gives a second thought about which can likewise be construed to "limit our freedoms" - are legitimate under the constitution. In an emotionally charged atmosphere like the one found at a funeral of a person who died way too young, violence is bound to happen sooner or later. You just know that one of these days Fred Phelps (Democrat) is going scream in the wrong person's face and wind up in the hospital. That won't happen here.

Which, come to think of it, is the one legitimate reason to oppose this law.

Read the whole thing.

Monroe At 80

Sheila O'Malley has a great piece on Marilyn Monroe, whose eightieth birthday it would have been today:

The photos below were from Bert Stern's famous last session with Marilyn - which involved her drinking champagne and rolling around naked in a big white bed. There are hundreds of photos from that shoot - all of them hypnotic. She is a chameleon. That's what's so amazing about her. So many beautiful women have only ONE LOOK. They need to arrange their faces into that ONE LOOK in order to continue to be beautiful. I mean, think about the practiced red carpet smiles of all the soulless little starlets parading about now. Monroe is, by any standards, gorgeous ... but it's amazing how alive she is, in print. Laughing, pensive, mischievous, serious, shy - all of it seems real, vital, in the moment, not rehearsed ... This is what it means to be a genius at being a model. And Marilyn was a genius - I'm not sure she was as an actress, but in terms of print work? Nobody even comes close to her abilities.

Read the whole thing (although if you're at work, be careful - there are some photos your boss might yip about)

The Other Kennedy, The Other Mark

Mark Kennedy won the GOP Senate nomination with just under 80% of the vote in one ballot last night.

About 15% of the delegates voted for Harold Shudlick, which is about three times what I'd expected. I suspect there was a bigger protest vote from the solid right than the party's leadership expected; there's a serious strain among the delegates, I think, that is piqued (if not angry) with Kennedy over some of his moves, however tentative, to the center (Anwar being a big one). I don't think it'll translate to the general.

We were off the air by the time the vote came out, and King and I had left the building (it was a school night and I had kids at home) long before Kennedy took the stage.

Ringer, however, was there:

From an endorsement introduction speech that last mere minutes, Kennedy moved on at tremendous length to highlight some of the differences with his “unnamed” DFL opponent, albeit with the disclaimer of attempting to run a campaign with “civility.” And true to his statement, Kennedy says very little negative…other than whispering Amy Klobuchar’s name to laughs, boos and hisses…in that order. Indeed, Kennedy’s harshed criticism of Klobuchar this evening didn’t even invoke her name as Kennedy spoke of the violence that has reintroduced itself to the streets of Minneapolis.

Kennedy stressed improving education while invoking his family’s history as educators themselves while noting his opposition to No Child Left Behind or any program that places “Washington bureaucrats” over the needs and wishes of local control. In all, Kennedy’s message, although not delivered with the same rhetorical talent, was Gipperesque in tone—a Gingrich Revolution-era, small government, local control agenda.

All and more with a healthy dolp of strong national security—“cutting and running may be a path but it’s the wrong path”—and Kennedy’s comments tonight will earn the scorn of traditional liberals and should earn the praise and vote of traditional conservatives.

Cue "The Machine".

Dolt Opens Blog: Nobody Cares

Some people can handle free speech. Others have a hard time with a simple, civil conversation [*].

Let me introduce you to "Liverspot", writer of "Minneapolis Upside Down", a leftyblog I linked for the first and last time yesterday. Lil' fella thinks I just discovered free speech.

He's wrong, of course.

I was a libertarian - small "l" and big - back when Democrats, Greens and Maoists all over Minnesota and the nation thought that little things like worrying about eroding civil rights was something done whilst wrapped in tinfoil.

But no. Lefties discovered civil liberty. They never existed until the left discovered them!

It was a big day for Upside Down yesterday as the right-wing blogosphere discovered my humble little pinko blog on the day that Tim Pawlenty announced that he is running for reelection.

Who would have known that the right-wing blog boys were such supporters of free speech? Apparently, it takes a Democratic "sin" to awaken a sense of justice in these boys.

Oh, lil' fella. If I'd had a blog in the nineties, when Clinton was dishing out wiretaps and wiping stains off dresses with the Tenth Amendment...

MUD is further proof that the Twin Cities' leftyblogosphere is largely a wasteland.

Oh, and not very bright, to boot:

Mitch Berg, my recently converted free speech advocate bitch at Shot to the Groin (or some such), was "so deliriously happy with Tim Pawlenty" on the day that Pawlenty floated this free speech tax.

Um, yeah - and I explained why. Not that "Lumpyslut" apparently trusts his "readership" to be able to read it and make up their minds for themselves. I wrote against the practice of giving meaningless, token fines to people arrested during "civil disobedience" - or rather, certain politically-correct forms of it. The whole point of "civil disobedience" is that you break a law and bear the consequences. But in the Twin Cities, it's a lot cheaper to protest against Bush or the War or against pro-life gatherings than it is to protest against, say, Planned Parenthood. When prosecutors have the discretion to charge some civil disobediants to the full extent of the law, and allow others to skate through the system with only token arrests and meaningless fines, it gives tacit approval to some speech, and taxes the rest. I praised Pawlenty's proposal for being even-handed.

If you're a MUD reaeder, you probably don't exist "Luckystool" didn't think you needed to know that.

One wonders what "Lickitung" had to say when pro-life protesters nation-and-statewide were subjected to different standards and rules than pro-"choice" demonstrators? Well, no - one does not wonder.

Case in point: When the city of Eagan barred protesters from picketing the fronts of homes of Northwest Airlines execs, I complained about that, too. Where was "Loofastash"?

(Oh, yeah - he makes an especially dim point about the "callouses" that Becky Lourey allegedly has and that I allegedly lack, as if that ennobles her speech in some way. Of course, it's also wrong; Lourey does not have more callouses on her hands than I do, neither literal (string instrument players are famous for them, in fact; I can not draw blood from any of my left-hand fingers) or, except for the loss of a child, metaphoric. But then, "Limpidtool" isn't burdened by dealing with facts. Why bother, with all those convenient stereotypes?)

Here's a guarantee: I will be fighting for free speech - the real thing, not the stylized, convenient version that people like "Lottaspackle" caterwaul about - long after people like him have followed their leadership back to "tinfoil" land.

(Apologies to Moses at "Yowling from the Fencepost": Your blog is not, after all, the biggest waste of time in the Twin Cities blogosphere).

UPDATE: I see that his name is in fact "Loosestrife", not "Liverspot" or whatever it was. It was an honest mistake; he rants like a cranky old drunk. My brain made a faulty association. I'm deeply sorry.

My bad. Sorry. Won't happen again.

[*] Nope. Not me. Some of my best friends are Democrats. I hang out at "Drinking Moderately", even having civil, interesting conversations with the likes of The Wege and Chris Dykstra.

"Lickspittle Loosestrife", I suspect, couldn't pull that off. Not that anyone would care.

Convention Liveblog

I'm here live at the MNGOP Convention with King Banaian and Long Suffering Jay Larson.

Let's see what happens...

We'll be on AM1570, "The Deuce".

Send us an email at the address
comments
at the address 'Northernallianceradio' dot 'com'.

UPDATE 6:48: Talking with First CD Rep Gil Gutknecht right now. Immigration is the issue.

Convention Wisdom

When I started my radio "career" in 1979, I had a number of things I dreamed of doing one day. Covering an election live was one - and Ed, King and I got to do that in '04.

Covering a war was another. What can I say? I was 16. Sue me.

Another one was covering a major political convention. OK, I had a national one in mind, but this weekend's state GOP convention counts.

And that's where we're going to be. From 5-9 tonight, 1-9 tomorrow, and 9AM to 1PM on Saturday, the NARN and the Patriot Insider will be providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the state GOP convention.

We'll be interviewing most of the State GOP figures that matter, from congressional candidates on up.

We'll be broadcasting on AM1570 The Patriot II. Click here to listen live, starting at 5PM today!

Exercise in Imagination

Remember when Saint Paul's only Republican mayor in recent memory, now-Senator Norm Coleman, ordered a clampdown on criticism of his administration's officials via any city-chartered media (such as the city's Cable Access network)?

And then do you remember what happened when he moved to bar law-abiding citizens from being around areas of the city where they had "no legitimate business"?

Do you remember how Democrats and civil libertarians marched on City Hall with rhetorical torches and pitchforks, demanding the city get out of the "legislating civil rights" business?

Well, of course you don't. Coleman did no such thing. He never would have.

But Minneapolis' is doing exactly that.

Now, as we've noted before, the vast majority of Democrats are people who thought "libertarian" meant "lined with tinfoil" until John Ashcroft was sworn into office; people who "listened" to Republican and libertarian concerns about the '94 Crime Bill, the '96 Counterterrorism Bill and the more odious aspects of the '90's drug war just long enough to roll their eyes and declare them paranoid delusions. These are people who largely think McCain-Feingold is a good thing, because they think speech should be rationed.

I wrote both of these stories earlier this week; both comment threads descended into picayune squabbles about Minneapolis crime rates.

Which are bad enough, but that dodges the question. As will the inevitable response, "I know your President does, but what do I?". Leaving aside that the President's actions are, so far, within the limits imposed on Presidential power by the Constitution and by Clinton era abuses-become-commonplace, it's still dodging the question.

DFLers - Rybak and Samuels are your people. Do civil liberties only count when a Republican is in power?

And what are you going to do about it?