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!