Shot In The Dark

Big Day

Starting new gig today. No details forthcoming - it's with a good-sized company in the north suburbs - but early indications are it's the kind of project I've been looking for for a while.

So much to write about today - and no time to do it.

More later.

Guilty

Rodriguez guilty of murder in the death of Dru Sjodin:

Next, the jury in the case will have to decide whether the facts of the case are such that Rodriguez is eligible for the death penalty. If it decides that the case is eligible for death penalty, jurors will choose between death or life without parole for the Crookston, Minn., native.

One way or the other, he's off the streets for good.

One crime too late, of course.

A Thousand Responses

I took the laptop back to its vendor - a computer superstore who shall remained unnamed, but which relies on acronyms and abbrevations for its title, and which shall henceforth be known as "The Loathsome Vendor".

I'm complaining to the service manager because this laptop has been in the shop six times in 15 months. The computer is, thankfully, under extended warranty - for about 11 more months.

"Well, now you see why people buy extended warranties!"

WHAT MITCH SAID: (Shrug). "OK".

WHAT MITCH SHOULD HAVE SAID: "Because you sell crappy products that self-destruct faster than a Crispin Glover/Kevin Federline inspirational speaking tour?"

A Thousand Things To Do

Oh, yeah - enjoying a "day off" between jobs. Took a new position (starting tomorrow) for what should amount to both a fair chunk more money and a much more interesting gig.

Of course, I have to:

• Get the paperwork for my new insurance, 401K and direct deposit in
• Get the kids ready for school
• Do a ton of house and yard work
• Go grocery shopping
• Get things ready for the new job

So why am I sitting in the coffee shop?

Good question.

More blogging, hopefully, later today. Tons of news - and meta-news - to get to.

A Thousand Amens

Elder:

Why is it not okay to talk about terrorism to advance your political situation, but perfectly acceptable, in fact laudable, to talk about a natural disaster to achieve the same goal?...It's revealing to note that while the good folks at MoveOn.org have pledged to "never forget" Hurricane Katrina, they don't seem nearly as interested in memorializing another anniversary that's just around the corner.

Simple.

Democrats hate it when America portrays itself as anything other than a sick, decaying giant that desperately needs to be put (or put itself) in its place.

A Thousand Clenched Fists Haikus

Laptop still in shop.
Home desktop? Bad motherboard.
Posting will be light.

(Kudos to Ryan,
who stopped poop-blogging a sec
to suggest haiku...)

A Thousand Spams

My spam-blocker was, ahem, blocking all comments earlier in the week. I disabled it...

...and have been inundated by spam.

Given my ongoing problems getting WordPress to do anything but mock me mutely from out on my server, I'm getting desperate here.

A Thousand Days

It's been a thousand days since Dru Sjodin was kidnapped and murdered, allegedly by Alfonso Rodriguez.

Today the case goes to the jury:

Holding Dru Sjodin's ripped pink shirt before jurors Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley urged them to find Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. guilty of kidnapping her and causing her death.

"All the evidence combines to form an overwhelming case that Alfonso Rodriguez kidnapped Dru Sjodin and caused her death," Wrigley said in an impassioned, hourlong closing statement.

Closing statements verged on theatre:

A spray of tiny specks of Sjodin's blood found in Rodriguez's car "was Dru's voice, shouting out -- 'I was here. He forced me here,' " Wrigley said.

"Can you feel her strength?" he asked the jurors. "Can you feel it? Dru put up a fight."

A lawyer friend once told me what lawyers are (allegedly) taught in law school: "If the law is against you, argue facts. If the facts are against you, argue law. If the law and facts are against you, argue like hell.

Sjodin's blood was found in Rodriguez' car. The federal kidnapping statute cares not a jot where Dru Sjodin died.

Robert Hoy is arguing like hell:

"They cannot prove that Dru Sjodin was alive when transportation began," he said. He suggested that Sjodin could have been grabbed in the parking lot, assaulted and killed -- but not carried off alive to rural Minnesota and thus not kidnapped, as the federal law defines the crime.

"In all likelihood, her clothing was removed in the vehicle," Hoy said, referring to how Sjodin was nude from the waist down when her body was found outside Crookston on April 17, 2004.

"There was a struggle. Dru got cut. She gets bruised. Perhaps she gets stabbed to death. It's entirely possible that after she was in his automobile, she died of suffocation with the bag over her head."

The killing "was unintentional," Hoy said, continuing with the hypothetical scenario. "He needed to get rid of the body, so he transported the body to someplace where he could dispose of it."

While I opposed the death penalty on basic principle, that principle is "the innocent might be executed". While my principle remains unchanged, if Alfonso Rodriguez is found guilty and sentenced to death, I won't shed a single tear.

Unfiskable

I finally got a chance to listen to "Minnesota Matters", over on the local FrankenNet affiliate, AM950.

The good news (if you're a leftyradio fan - and the latest ratings show that there are several dozen of you out there); they suck less than their "live", local predecessors, Nick Coleman and Wild Wendy. Coleman combined the unctuousness of his column with the flailing incompetence of someone who thinks he knows radio, but demonstrably doesn't. Wilde was worse, of course - shrill, shallow, relentlessly dull.

Bob Hill and Mark Heaney do the one-hour daily show as a freebie, from 5-6. I don't know which is which - but they bring both a certain naive enthusiasm and just enough "Radio 101" polish (naming the station and the show in and out of breaks, resetting topics, etc) to not sound like the complete train wreck that Nick Coleman was.

The bad news for leftyradio fans: They still have to talk with liberals.

Yesterday, they interviewed Colleen Rowley, who is running against John Kline in the Second District.

Talking point: "Go to Kline's web site. Look for his takes on issues. Nothing!"

Of course, John Kline has four years in Congress. His record on the issues should be pretty darn clear - although it'd be nice if Kline would post some positions. But then, Rowley herself never addresses issues at less than a 50,000 foot, feet-in-the-clouds conceptual level, either - as opposed to Kline, who has a long voting record on every conceivable issue.

Oh, and on the David Bailey issue - where a Rowley volunteer and current head of "earned" media - walked into the Kline office and tried to give a patently, baldy illegal contribution to the Kline campaign - a trick straight out of the DFL playbook - her response was (paraphrasing closely) "See? How awful is politics when John Kline attacks unpaid campaign volunteers!".

Mindless propaganda? They have that too, interviewing Matt from local leftyblog MNPublius about the Zogby poll that shows Mike Hatch beating Tim Pawlenty for governor, and with Amy Klobuchar up by seven over Mark Kennedy. Unmentioned, of course - Zogby is a bought-and-paid-for Democrat shop these days, and the poll's methodology is apparently no more proven than the loathsome Minnesota Poll.

So as far as content goes, "Minnesota Matters" is no worse than any Twin Cities leftyblog (heh heh) and makes for better radio than anything Janet Robert has tried before.

Which is, of course, damnation by faint praise. But faint praise is more than Janet Robert's FrankenNet affiliate has earned in three years of existence. Limited, qualified, muffled, mildly-chuckled kudos to all involved.

Ryan and Foot, Take Note

Normblog links us to the world's first all-limerick dictionary - in which all definitions are user-submitted five-line rhymes.

No, really:

Autochthon
An autochthon is something that's found
In a place that is in or around
The location where it
Was first formed. I'll admit
The word native's less painful to sound.

Yes, I'm going to join. Why do you ask?

It's gotta be more fun that writing for Wikipedia!

(Via Sheila)

Foreshadowing

Israel makes it official - they're taking Iran very seriously:

Israel has appointed a top general to oversee a war against Iran, prompting speculation that it is preparing for possible military action against Tehran's nuclear program.
Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, Israel's air force chief, will be overall commander for the "Iran front," military sources told the London Sunday Telegraph.
News of the appointment comes just days before a United Nations deadline expires for Iran to give up its nuclear program, which Western governments fear will be used to produce atomic weapons. Despite Iran's offer last week to engage in "serious talks" on the matter, Israel fears even more than other Western nations that the offer is simply to buy time for Tehran to secure all the technology it needs to build the bomb.

For Gen. Shkedy, it's not just a professional matter:

Gen. Shkedy, 49, is the son of Holocaust survivors and has a picture in his office of an Israeli F-15 flying over Auschwitz.

Hummus for thought.

Hoppin' Mad - For Music!

Via Chad, I see that Summit Brewing is brewing up some serious fun:

This year we are celebrating our 20th year in business and beer takes center stage! On September 30th, Noon-10pm the brewery will move its headquarters to Harriet Island to celebrate our anniversary with Cake, Soul Asylum, The Suburbs, Richard Thompson [I am so there] , Tapes 'n Tapes [I am so not there] , The Alarmists, Big George Jackson, Minnesota Pipes & Drums [I am so back there].

Tickets will go on sale August 7th at the brewery and through Ticketworks.com.

They used to have this party at the brewery itself - which is the only downside of having it at Harriet Island.

Other things that are happening during 2006 to celebrate our anniversary include the introduction of Summit Extra Special Bitter. Available July 1, Summit ESB will be brewed in the UK style with plenty of interesting hops and a beautiful malt finish. Look for this beer in a special 20th Anniversary twelve pack.

Summit Brewing, of course, founded by Mark Stutrud - further proof of all the great things in life brought to you by people who escape Jamestown, ND.

Lori Sturdevant's Selective Amnesia

Joseph Goebbels famously said that if you repeat a big lie often enough, people will eventually believe it.

My corollary (via Orwell, I suppose) - if you ignore an inconvenient truth long enough, it'll fade from popular memory.

Which is just one of the fisking moments in yesterday's Lori Sturdevant column.

Did you know that nasty, "partisan" politics started in 2000?

These two new books sound an alarm about decisionmaking trends in Washington, just in time for a midterm congressional election that holds the greatest potential in more than a decade to alter the lineup of congressional decisionmakers.

"Fight Club" focuses on the U.S. House and showcases Eilperin's skill as an interviewer. She holds the Republican majority to account, but debunks the notion that all it will take to restore healthy deliberation to the House is a return to Democratic control.

Catch that?

The Demcrats are the masters of "healthy deliberation".

All that stonewalling against Reagan? The way they buried George H.W. Bush's attempts at reform?

Never happened, in Lori Sturdevant's world...

...no, wait. That's not fair...

...no, wait. It is fair, but not nearly the whole story. The partisan media wants to erase the volumes of examples that refute their thesis by pretenting it never happened. By pretending that politics before 2000 (or maybe 1994) was a smart, deliberative, gentlemanperson's pastime.

What they want most of all is a return to the world that existed in the United States from about 1945 to 1980 (and in Minnesota until 1998); a world where Democrats ruled, and where Republicans basically acted like Democrats with better suits. Never mind all that pesky history in between 1980 and 2000 (and between 1998 and 2002, here in Minnesota).

A world where everyone falls obediently into line behind their flag.

But only if they can get rid of all of us pesky dissidents, first:

"We're not going back to the fair way of doing things," the venerable Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., told her. "Democrats will say [to Republicans], you did it, now you bastards enjoy it."

I haven't read the book in question, so I have no idea if Julia Eilperin's book ignores all of political history before 2000 (or 1994), or if Lori Sturdevant merely finds it inconvenient.

"Broken Branch," the more scholarly tome, scolds both chambers. It details how Republican leaders have denied a meaningful lawmaking role to minority Democrats and their own moderate members. The results, they say, have been a run of bad legislation, a heyday for special interests, unchecked presidential power, and the disgust and effective disenfranchisement of millions of Americans.

The disconnect is painfully obvious.

To some of us, politics is about electing candidates who represent what we believe. These candidates then go to Saint Paul or Washington and argue their case against people who believe other things. Depending on how many people representing each belief are meeting, and how effective they are at pressing their (and their constituents') cases (or, with Bill Frist in mind, how ineffective), some form of compromise emerges.

In the world of Lori Sturdevant and her ilk (and the Strib is not only crowded with such, but supports even more of same), it's different; the people realize by acclamation a monolithic vision that's "best for them", and elect leaders (sometimes from hereditary dynasties) who all fall in line behind that vision. The vision - a "better Minnesota" built by constant government intervention, one where government is the active or even primary engine of "progress", in this case -guides all politics, all public discourse. Any who don't share that vision are "partisan" and "divisive".

See how it works?

Want proof? Sturdevant continues:

Both books argue for change in the way congressional districts are drawn. Gerrymandering -- the practice of drawing political maps for partisan advantage -- is out of control, and should be reined in, the authors argue. One possibility: Take the task out of state legislators' hands, and give it to independent commissions.

That's right - we'll have experts do the job.

Experts appointed by whom? People who share the vision!

I wonder if Lori Sturdevant felt this way back before 1990, when decades of gerrymandered DFL control was extended for another decade by "moderate" "Republican" Arne Carlson, who caved in to give the DFL an apportionment that vastly overstated their influence in the Twin Cities suburbs, effectively extending DFL control of the House and of our Congressional delegation for a decade.

Anyone recall, by any chance, Sturdevant's feelings about this - dare we say - partisan manipulation of the process?

Seeing Light

Posting might be a little light; my laptop is back in the shop.

Oh, the plans I have for my next tax refund...

Trivial Pursuit. Meaningful Goal

I'm off to Keegans for tonight's Trivia smackdown to benefit Soldiers' Angels.

C'mon down, join in the fun, pop a few bucks for a great cause, and try out Keegans' wonderful food and (especially) drink (mmmm - Boddingtons!). The fun should start around nine PM.

See you there!

Iranians Seize Oil Rig

An Iranian Navy vessel has seized a Romanian oil rig in the Gulf

Why care?:

One clear purpose behind Iran's seizure of the Romanian rig was a show of force. Heinrich Matthee, Iran analyst for London's Control Risk Group, has noted that storming the rig "sends a message that Iran can project its power and could interfere in oil production." But there is also a gamesmanship aspect to Iran's actions. With each defiant move that Iran has made, Western countries have done little or nothing to push back. As Iran is not held accountable for such actions as backing Hizballah in its war against Israel and denying IAEA inspectors access to key nuclear sites, it comes to believe -- with reason -- that it will have more leeway in the way it operates in the future. If there is no real repercussion to Iran's seizure of the Romanian rig, then Iran will have further expanded the boundaries for its future actions.

"But there were no Iranians on any of the 9/11 planes!"

Western countries have no apparent strategy for dealing with Iran at this point, but the question of how to begin pushing back in response to these provocative actions is a critical one.

Hitler tested the West with an escalating series of provocations designed to sound out the West's ability and willingness to oppose his clearly-stated strategy; the seizure of the Rheinland, the Anschluss, the annexation of Sudetenland and then Czechoslovakia, and finally the invasion of Poland itself.

Question: Has Ahmadi-nejad telegraphed his strategy any less clearly than did Hitler in Mein Kampf?

Friday Funnies On My Mind

Swiftee announces the return of the Twin Cities' best blog cartoon, the classic Friday Funnies.

Have I mentioned that I'm a "reformed Wellstonian"?

This Is Why I Love Blogs

Let's start this post at the end, with the moral of the story. To wit:

Whenever anyone in a Star/Tribune editorial, letter-to-the-editor, or even news article refers to themselves as a "reformed Republican", and then spouts a stream of DFL-approved talking points, be very suspicious.

We've run into this before: a cursory Googling of "reformed Republicans" reveals a record that'd make Jeff Fecke reach to protect his wallet. A blogswarm of locals did this most recently last month, when we showed via documentary evidence that the people in the "Growth and Justice" open letter were "bipartisan" in the same sense that Bill Clinton "never had sex with that woman".

The whole "reformed Republican" bit is a piece of rhetorical abuse - and a symptom of a movement that can't think of a reason of its own to support it. Instead, they say "Look - we don't support it, and either does this person". It's stupid - comically so.

Today, Learned Foot exposes some of Nick Coleman's "reformed Republicans":

Whenever I see a purported "Republican" dissatisfied with This Administration in Letters to the Editor or in a NonMonkey column, I automatically get suspicious. It's a cute little persuasive trick that almost always collapses when you do a little research.

Which he, and his readers, do.

I won't spoil the ending - read Foot's article for that - but let's say that, once again, Nick Coleman is shown to be disingenuous.

What - you expected three good columns in a row?

It's Hard Out Here For A Skeeze

Horgen also notes the highlight of the social season, if you're a jagoff:

till, there's no doubt that Spin's 1st Annual Pimp 'n' Ho Bash will be one of the biggest and craziest club nights of the summer. To top it off, the superclub will have former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman, left, on hand as host. While downtown clubs always have theme nights, Spin is taking this one pretty seriously. The best pimp and ho win a free trip to Las Vegas for the annual Pimp 'n' Ho Bash at Orleans Arena.

Pimp 'n' Ho Bash.

Up next - how to choose between "Meth Addicts Turned to Armed Robbery" night, and the "Best Crack Whore" contest.

I hate it when the two compete!

Hard-Hitting Journalism Lives

I wonder - did the Strib's Tom Horgen's boss owe him a favor?

Or did Horgen win a drawing?

I only ask because every time the news media cover something like theopening of the new Block E "Hooters" bar/restaurant, some reporter has to try to make the story look like news.

And they try so hard:

So here I am. Most everyone in Hooters on a recent Saturday night is here to look at the girls. I've come to look at the guys, looking at the girls.

I've brought reinforcements: Three women, curious to observe the goings-on in this palace of male hedonism. They've heard the stories. And before we're even seated, one can't help but blurt out:

"That girl doesn't have big hooters, she's probably a 'B' cup."

Indeed.

Well, like Hooters' "food" itself, it's all in the presentation.

(Or so I've been told)

Oh, did I mention the zip lines? You know, those taut wires from which you can hang things, and zing 'em to the other side? Instead of a server just skipping your order over to the kitchen, the Hooters girls get to climb up on a stool at the end of the bar, attach the order to the zip line and hurl it across into the kitchen.

What's the purpose of this elaborate procedure? Maximum boobage, of course.

How does Tom Horgen go back to covering...

...Oh, wait. Never mind.

Let's Play Trivia!

As Chad notes, tonight is the big trivia contest at Keegan's, a benefit for Soldiers' Angels.

There is, by the way, room for one more team; contact Chad (the link is in the story linked above).

Chad also handicaps the nine teams currently scheduled; he somewhat self-servingly makes the Fraters' team 12-1 dogs, the better to frame a comeback from the humiliation of two years ago (when Team Fraters was beaten not only by the winners (Atomizer's mom, Mike Nelson's wife, et al) and the runners-up (Captain Ed, AM1280's Chumley Wonderbar and Kevin Cash and I) and team Hewitt (with Medved, Lileks, the Crazy Uke and Hewitt), but if memory serves were even blanked by the likes of David Strom, Pink Monkeybird, Kevin Ecker, and even Kevin McKay, dyspeptic leftyblogger.

Still, making themselves 12-1 dogs - the better to frame an upset - is self-serving; the Fraters have won a slew of trivia challenges. No, the real shift in odds is with Ed and my team; Ed's health problems and my own personal, er, turmoil put our odds around 20-1. Yeah, that's it.

If we win, it'll be a yuuuuuuuuuuuge upset.

Anyway, hope you can show up. If you start a team ($25/participant contribution to Soldiers' Angels), good; otherwise, just come on down, pony up for the Angels, and join us for a great time!

Imitation Is Flattering

The City Pages runs interference for Air America Minnesota, in an interesting but moderately puffy piece by the generally-excellent Paul Demko.

I haven't paid much any attention to AAo'M since Wild Wendy hit the turnstiles. The national shows mostly stink, the network is circling the drain, and without local programming (bad as Nick Coleman and Wild Wendy were), what's the point?

Of course, they do apparently have a local show, of sorts, now - Minnesota Matters.

And I noticed this bit here, with emphasis added:

When 'Minnesota Matters' was started in February, for instance, there were initially five volunteer hosts. The idea was to try out an array of personalities and figure out what would work best for the long term. Among those hosting the show was Hamline University political science professor David Schultz.

Dave Schultz? It'd be like having the Center for Science in the Public Interest locked in your glove box, hectoring away at you.

But go back a minute; volunteer hosts, local petty luminaries from the local Democrat scene.

Where have we heard this before? I mean, besides here?

The NARN, of course.

A couple of key differences; Janet Robert has apprently been able to find liberal "hosts" with nothing to do during the day but host a prime-time (afternoon drive) talk show for free. We NARN guys all have day jobs and families, so it's not an option...

...but it'd sure be fun to go head-to-head with Mark Heaney and Bob Hill.

Oh, and by the way, when Paul Demko recites station propaganda like "According to a survey conducted earlier this year by the Media Audit, 91 percent of the station's audience is Caucasian, while 83 percent is male. Roughly 70 percent of Air America's listeners are at least 45 years old, and 60 percent have household incomes of greater than $75,000", you might ask yourself when the station plans on running some advertising that'd appeal to that demographic?

Because it's not on the station now. If AAo'M is such a desirable demographic, why aren't the sponsors queueing up - the way they do at the Patriot, whose demographics are similar to slightly more upmarket?

(Hat tip to Nancy @ PW)

MOB Party: Outreach

First, the facts: The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers third annual Summerpalooza is coming up on Saturday, September 9, starting around sevenish at Keegan's Pub.

I say again - the MOB is rigorously non-partisan. We welcome everyone, regardless of politics (and of course non-political bloggers are welcome as well). Of course, most of the attendees trend right of center - because most of the Twin Cities' political blogs do, and because liberalism is dying a slow death - but it doesn't matter, because it's not a political get-together.

This notion seems to give some people some trouble.

I noticed that "Kevin M" at (the inopporunely named) "Insomnia Report" has taken notice:

Now, while I enjoy the tacit admission that they need liberals to get their parties hopping [Um, yeah. Sounds like a Green party meeting could bust out.] (similar to the way they need liberals so that they have something to complain about on their websites), I have to say that this isn’t the way to get my people to hang out with you. You can’t help but think of high-school. Mitch seems like he's trying to come off like he’s the captain of the football team or something, standing up in the cafeteria and announcing “Dudes! My parents are out of town, so we jocks are having ourselves a PARTY! It’ll be awesome! Even you band nerds ought to show up, even though you’re only stupid band nerds! You bunch of band nerds, you’ll probably be busy cleaning your flutes or something band nerdish like that, but you’d come if only you weren’t such a bunch of band nerds!”

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

I'm not sure how many times I've seen this analogy on leftyblogs, but it's gotta be at least half a dozen times; conservatives are the biiiig baaaaad jocks, liberals are the persecuted nerds.

I wouldn't know, of course; I was the orchestra nerd (who played guitar in my own band, eventually) who hated coaches and didn't do team sports after like ninth grade (but did win a state Speech championship). But John Hughes didn't model his little myths after my school for a reason - and eventually most of us, jocks and geeks and burnouts and cheerleaders alike, let it all go.

I’m sorry, but to draw liberals into a barful of bilious conservatives, you need to be suaver [???], more self-effacing. Make it worth our while. For instance, will there be organic vegan wraps available? Will folk legend Joan Baez be performing? What about a table selling handmade crafts from Ecuador? If you’re going to stereotype us, at least do it flatteringly. You’ve got to woo us, dammit!

Wooing?

OK. If you're done cleaning your flute, come on down. If I don't spot ya a Guinness, someone else will.

And the MOB parties are not only nonpartisan, they're about as "bilious" as one of Flash's "Drinking Moderately" parties.

At least the ones that Tild doesn't show up at.

Wrapped In War

In an earlier thread, I attacked the au courant lefty notion that democracy is inimical to non-western societies. I cited India as an example. An argument could be made that the 300 years of the Raj may have westernized India. That is partially true - if you count the subcontinent's ruling, administrative and military classes. But as we've seen in Africa, Asia and Latin America, westernizing the oligarchy and military guarantees no liberalism. Uganda and Zimbabwe, if anything, were more westernized - in terms of the surface indicators - than India. And India went a long way toward rejecting much of its British and Western legacy from the fifties into the seventies, when it tried to align with Sukarno's "Third World" movement, falling in some ways into the Soviet sphere of influence in the seventies. Its membership in the Third World was almost made grimly permament in the sixties and seventies, as famine and corruption prompted pr0nographer of doom Paul Ehrlich to declare India doomed.

In that thread a fellow named Fulcrum, a regular (and civil!) liberal commenter, asked "how you give someone the present of democracy...in the wrapping paper of war"?

How can we count the ways?

• Germany - After an abortive attempt in 1918, the west turned Germany into a small and large-L liberal democracy at gunpoint. In virtually no time, Germany was converted from the third-most-prolific mass-murdering nation in history into a constitutionally-pacifist nation with a constitution very nearly as robust as that of the US.
• Japan - We converted a crypto-barbaric personality-cult state-cum-military dictatorship into one of the world's great humanitarian forces. Douglas MacArthur wrote a Constitution that stands up alongside the US Constitution, given the circumstances.
• Italy - From fascist (literally!) state to robus democracy - at bayonet point.
• South Korea - World War II - which brought heavy damage to the Korean peninsula - freed the Koreans from brutal Japanese rule. The Korean War secured the freedom of a nation that has been at best an imperfect democracy - but is improving. And the fact is, it's easier to become a "good" democracy if you start as a "bad" democracy than if you are, say, North Korea.
• The Philippines - The Philippines are another imperfect democracy. But they've come a long way since Reagan ushered Marcos from the scene - to say nothing of their lot under the Japanese, from which they were freed by...yep, war. Not diplomacy.
• Israel - the Jewish state was founded in guerilla war, and ensured its existence only via force of vastly-outnumbered arms.
  
• Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France - Their freedom - their right to be a liberal (Liberal) democracy - was not secured by negotiation!
• Greece - Another imperfect democracy, but it has what it has in the first place via several wars; one to free itself from the Turks, another to defend itself from the Italians. World War II liberated it from the Germans, and then another ugly guerilla war stayed the Communist attempt to institute yet another dictatorship. Again - while Greek democracy has been deeply imperfect, it's been better than the alternatives. And without successive wars, it would not have existed.
• Taiwan, Malaysia - All of these are dicey democracies at best. All are improving in short, fitful steps. All of them owe whatever democracy they have to one war or another - the Chinese Civil War, World War II and the British effort to repel defeat guerrillas and Indonesian infiltrators, respectively.

Count the Cold War?

• Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia - countries with liberal traditions, to be sure, but it took WWII and the Cold War to bring them out into the open.
• ,Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia - Nations with not much democratic tradition to speak of that were freed successively by WWII and the Cold War, and who now determine their own courses.
• Slovenia - World War II freed them from the Nazis. The Cold War eventually freed them from the Soviets and then from Tito. And then, they defended their newfound, pro-Western democracy from the Serbs in a brief war; the UN and NATO were, as usual, worthless.

And let's not forget - not only was our own democracy instituted via war (against a nation whose own democracy resulted indirectly from many wars), but we fought yet another war to, among other things, assure democracy for 12% of the people.

And lest we forget - while countries like Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not democratic in any sense we'd want to live under, all have liberalized (in the context of their histories and regions) entirely due to war. Perfect? No.

Better than the altenrnative? To disagree, you'd have to believe Fidel Castro is a great populist leader...

...oh. Never mind.

Party People. All Parties

Another reminder - the third annual MOB Summerpalooza is at Keegan's Pub on Saturday, September 9. An RSVP isn't necessary, but feel free to drop me one at northernallianceparty@hotmail.com anyway, so I can get a count of the attendees in advance.

By the way, the MOB is rigorously non-partisan. We encourage leftybloggers to show up - in fact, we go out of our way to invite them. They tend to stick to themselves, at liberals-only parties like "Drinking Liberally", where they practice their mutual hobbies of swearing, frothing, and regurgitating conspiracy theories. We figure if they get out a little more, it'll be good for them.

Of course, usually when I invite the bigger leftybloggers, I get some sort of excuse: "Oh, that date is Gus Hall's Birthday" or "That's the exhibit opens, commemorating the Northfield Barrista Strike of 1998" or some such.

Just saying, leftybloggers - come on down. It's a lot of fun - and by fun, I don't just mean swearing and frothing.

Like Butter. Moldy, Sour Butter.

She's retired, but she's not necessarily out of it:

Expect an announcement late today that Barbra Streisand will be performing at Xcel energy center on Sunday Nov. 12.

The poor should have fun at uber-liberal Streisand's gig:

Look for the top ticket price to be about $400.

I can hardly wait to read the liveblog...

Things That Could Make Mitch Go Green

The Tesla Roadster, built on a Lotus chassis:

Slide into the thinly padded driver’s seat of the Tesla and it looks and feels very familiar. That’s not surprising since the car’s chassis and many interior bits are shared with Lotus. But twist the key and things get strange. Of course my brain knows this is an electric car but I still wait for a starter to crank over a highly stressed internal combustion sports car engine. It doesn’t happen. It’s all quiet until a small dash light illuminates and tells you its “on” and a faint “click” from behind my head says it’s ready to go. Weird.

The Tesla’s transmission has two speeds but for our drive, the car was purposely locked in Second. Step on the gas, whoops, I mean the accelerator, and it scoots away nearly silently in a rush of instant torque. First gear would essentially double that torque, but unless we were racing a Vette or a Viper, Second is enough. Even without the lower First gear the Tesla really hauls. Tesla’s claim of running 0-60 in around 4 seconds sounds plausible. You squirt through traffic holes without the hesitation—it’s absolutely always in meat of the powerband. And all you hear from the powertrain is a hushed turbine-like wail from behind your head. Ferraris and Lamborghinis are known for making great noises. But the Tesla plays it’s own tune and it’s a futuristically cool one.

When AM1280 gets its evaluation car, I'm so there.

Not Advisable

An East Side theft victim retaliates by shooting the thief.

The original alleged crime took place on a bus on the East Side when two louts snatched a chain from the neck of another man. The first victim followed the thief off the bus, and apparently shot him.

Police examined video images from the bus surveillance cameras and released several of the images in hopes that someone would contact them with information about the shooter.

"The suspect being sought may have been the victim of a theft and followed a young man from the bus," said police spokesman Tom Walsh. "Soon after, one shot was heard."

Police don't believe that the shooting victim and the suspect knew each other before boarding the bus. Tuesday's development was the first hint at a back story.

The "victim" was just the kind of guy we love to share a city with, of course:

In the footage, the pair are seen craning their necks and apparently sizing up the passenger seated ahead of them, the source said. The two also are seen passing a gun between them, the source said.

One of the two is then seen grabbing the man's neck chain and running off the bus and out of camera range, with the theft victim following behind.

The man believed to be the thief was then shot in the side, just below his arm, and the shooting suspect fled on foot.

The police are looking for tips:

Walsh said he understands that some people may be reluctant to call with information about a theft victim turned shooter.

But police hope they ask themselves an important question, he said: "Is a gold chain around your neck worth killing someone over?"

Sgt. Walsh - an excellent office whom I've known for years - is doing his job. You don't want people shooting people over petty thefts. And I'll bet dollars to donuts the shooter has a rap sheet, too (although I'm sure Rebecca Thoman and Robert Lillehaug will try to blame this on the Minnesota Personal Protection Act).

But maybe if enough of the scum that plague our city did die trying to grab gold chains (illegal as that is, and as utterly as it violates Minnesota law regarding self-defense), or if a few drive-by shootings were answered with hails of fire from nearby houses, or if the next gang shootout were met with a line of citizens with automatic weapons sweeping across the street killing every gang-banging piece of sh_t in their path and then disappearing into the dark, unseen by the law-abiding, beleaguered citizens in the nearby houses...

...never mind. I must need more coffee. Have no idea where that came from.

Take a carry permit class. Get a permit. Learn the laws of self-defense.

Let's Give This A Try

All the local lefties are reading "Pharyngula", a blog by a dyspeptic biology prof from, um, Mankato Morris.

So I figured I'd give it a shot, in this bit about, of all people, Vox Day.

Corruption and wingnut Christianity seem to go hand in hand.

Really?

This from a "biology professor?"

There's a causal link between the two? Or, perhaps, was the conclusion made in advance?

We pay this guy to teach science?

Wow. That didn't last long.

Who is served by imprisoning Eric Rudolph?

I read this the other day:

Published: August 17, 2006

The portrait of prisoner Eric Rudolph (Star Tribune, Aug. 14), demonstrated just how much of a waste the penal system can be.

It is easy for a prisoner to claim remorse and rehabilitation after the fact, after killing some people and blowing up the Olympics. What makes Rudolph unique is he demonstrated personal excellence in the decades he spent as a anti-abortion crusader, Christian Identity militant and freelance commando.

Now he sits in an overcrowded prison at taxpayer expense. And what is accomplished? A movement sees their hero and standardbearer a few times a year. Meanwhile, Rudolph passes the days by picking up trash and watching television. Even more ridiculous, he is classified as an intensely supervised inmate - lotsa luck! - an escape threat and a potential danger to the general, non-aboriton-providing public.

Criminal justice advocates argue that Rudolpph got what he deserved. His supporters maintain that she never even should have been prosecuted, given that he was just defending the lives of the unborn from murderers. Many others don't remember the turbulent 1990s and probably don't care one way or the other. They don't care! What else is the penal system for but to reflect public opinion?

Whatever one's position, you must admit that Rudolph's present situation is one of pure waste, with nothing being accomplished whatsoever. Very sad.

BUD DuGLAY, APPLE VALLEY

Now, I personally find the notion of releasing Rudolph - who has been convicted of bombing the '96 Olympics, and is serving four consecutive life terms for a number of deaths caused by bombing the games and abortion clinics, among other things - distasteful to the point of noxious. I say this to head off the inevitable "wow, you wengnuts support Rudelph!".

But it would make as much sense as freeing Soliah, right?

(Via the Strib)

(Note to those who are too tightly wound to really exist in the wild: The above was a satrical rewrite of an actual letter to to Strib. It was done to satirize the overweening, self-serving myopia of the weasels who think that just because Sarah Jane Olson Kathleen Soliah spent 15 years as a prissy DFL housewife she should get a walk for trying to kill cops and participating in a robbery where someone - a person who deserved freedom vastly more than Soliah - was murdered in cold blood. The weasels with whom I share this city. The weasels who, in some cases, run this city.

Yes, it's satire.

Flags Of Our Fellow Citizens

The passing of Joe Rosenthal - the war photographer who took the immortal shot of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi - prompted a number of emails to Scott Johnson at Powerline, including this bit:

The last surviving member of the first flag-raising at Iwo Jima is a Minneapolis resident--Charles Lindberg.

Let the record show that Charles Lindberg is a native of Linton, North Dakota. He is a retired electrician who lives, if memory serves, in New Hope.

He wrote a book in the fifties or early sixties about his experience in the Marines before, after, and especially during the Iwo Jima campaign that made him an unwitting American icon. The book has been out of print for several generations, now. It's written in the awkward, pre-college-level prose of someone who grew up on a farm, worked with his hands, and spent his formative years fighting his through hell; plain, direct, not fancy in the least. But I read it in high school, and it had a huge impact on me - the story of someone who, as a kid not much older than me from a place not much different (or far-removed) from my own hometown, had done something quite extraordinary.

It'd be quite a job to find the book - I'd suspect it would be buried deep in the innards of the Minneapolis, Saint Paul or U of M library systems, if you can find it at all.

The Racism of No Expectations

Heard from some talking head interviewed on MPR's Keri Miller Show last week:

TALKING HEAD (I'm paraphrasing closely): "We may have to come to terms with the fact that outside the Western world most human culture is not a fertile place to plant democracy".

MITCH (yelling at radio): "How about India?"

Seriously. There are places on this planet more suited, historically and culturally, than India. That's the point, of course; if you'd have asked 200 years ago, or 60 or even 30 years ago, "will India ever be fertile soil for democracy?", the answer would have been "Bwahahahaha".

They had one advantage; they were colonized by one of two colonial powers in history that ever developed an interested in exporting liberal democracy to its posessions (the US was the other, to the extent that we were "Colonial" at all). Other than that? A tribal/imperial history led to 300 years of colonial autarchy followed by military dictatorship followed by fabian personality cult followed by near-anarchy.

And yet today India, while imperfect, is the world's largest democracy. They struggle with big problems - but for the most part, they do it successfully and, here's the fun part, as a democratic nation.

It takes time, patience, an attention span...

...I'll write faster for any liberals who may still be with me.

Taking On All Comers

Chad the Elder notes that Friday is the big day - the biennial Trivia Smackdown:

A mere five days remain unil the Ultimate Trivia Showdown II: Ralphie's Revenge event takes place at Keegan's Irish Pub in Minneapolis. And a mere two places remain for teams to participate. If you don't want to be left on the sidelines, you need to act quickly. Send me an e-mail (rightwinger23@hotmail.com) with the name of your team and the four players participating.

It's $100 a team - $25 per playa, if you prefer. It's for a great cause, of course - proceeds go to Soldiers Angels.

I'll be playing on a team with Captain Ed, Mike from St. Paul (a Jeopardy veteran) and the inimitable Inge. I need to mention (since neither Hugh nor Chad will) that Ed and I are the defending champions of this series; we took the 2004 title (along with then-teammates Chumley Wonderbar and Kevin Cash) over Hewitt and Michael Medved.

Contact Chad if you want one of the last two team (eight player) availabilities. And if you don't want to play, at least stop by, have a drink, meet Hugh and the rest of the crowd, and drop a buck or two off for Soldiers' Angels.

Hope to see you there!

Moron Mail

Boy, some of those letters to the editor the Strib prints...

For example, today's example, a queazily-selective, half-thought screed from a a Geoff Nunberg, shows that almost anyone can get a letter in the Strib, no matter now badly-written and logically-specious, as long as you ding on the Administration:

It wasn't the first time President Bush had described the United States as at war with "Islamic fascists." But coming in his remarks about the arrests of two dozen terror suspects in Britain last week, the phrase signaled that the administration was shopping for new language to defend its policies at a time when the evocations of the "war on terror" don't seem to stem rising doubts about the wisdom of "staying the course" in Iraq.

Hence the appeal of using "Islamo-fascism," as people often call it, which links the current conflict to images from the last "just war": Nazi tanks rolling into Poland and France, spineless collaborators sapping the national will, Winston Churchill glaring defiantly over his cigar, the black ink spreading across the maps of Europe and Asia in Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" newsreels.

Mr. Nunberg; we've been using the phrase since about September 12.

Nunberg briefly flirts with fact...:

Squint in just the right way and the parallels are easy to see. In a speech at the National Press Club last month, GOP Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania raised the specter of the Islamists' dreams of "a new, global caliphate where Islamic fascism will rule mankind," and he reminded the audience that "we had no problem understanding that Nazism and fascism were evil, racist empires. We must now bring the same clarity to the war against Islamic fascism."

So far so good.

Then, Mr. Nunberg swerves - inevitably, as Strib letters to the editor inevitably must, into lefty orthodoxy:

In that picture of things, last week's arrests in Britain are connected to the Iraq occupation as immediately as the London Blitz was to Stalingrad during the last great anti-fascist struggle. Those were the connections Vice President Dick Cheney was presuming when he said that Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary would embolden the "Al-Qaida types" who are trying to "break the will of the American people."

But...:

Actually, the term "Islamo-fascism," if taken literally, doesn't make sense. The "fascist" part might fit Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with its militaristic nationalism, its secret police and its silly peaked officers' hats. But there was nothing "Islamo" about the regime; Iraq's Baathists tried to make the state the real object of the people's devotion.

That's why it's odd to describe repressive theocracies like the Taliban as fascist -- just as it would be for Savonarola's Florence, John Calvin's Geneva or the Spain of the Inquisition, all of which reduced the state to an instrument for enforcing God's will.

Mr. Nunberg takes a mighty swing at the truth, and whiffs bigtime. Of course, he's not alone; the left as a whole has a hard time grasping what this is all about.

In fact, Nunberg trumpets this very fact next:

The Islamic world doesn't seem to offer very fertile soil for fascist cults of the state. In a 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey, majorities in most Muslim nations said their loyalty to Islam came before their loyalty as citizens.

Bingo.

Lefties like letter-writer Nunberg get hung up on the traditional definition of "Fascism" - by conventional usage, "nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" - all of which applies - and ignore the "Islamo-" modifier.

No, really:

But in the mouths of the neocons, "fascist" is just an evocative label for people who are fanatical, intolerant and generally creepy. In fact, that was pretty much what the word stood for among the 1960s radicals, who used it as a one-size-fits-all epithet for the Nixon administration, American capitalism, the police, reserved concert seating and all other varieties of social control that disinclined them to work on Maggie's farm no more.

Right, but "neocons" are smarter than hippies.

The use of "fascist" is perfectly appropriate. Rather than nation or race, Islamofascism exalts Islam and all its attachments - sharia and jihad - and certainly the forcible suppression of opposition (which is, indeed, the radical definition of the word jihad itself).

Nunberg writes intellectual checks that his facts can't cash:

Back then, conservatives derided the left for using "fascism" so promiscuously.

With good reason! Then as now, to the dedicated lefty the Center of the American Experiment, the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church were "fascist".

To the "Neocon", the definition ends with the sharia-flaunting, Buddha-dynamiting, gay-stoning Taliban, the girl-lynching, suicide-bomber-supporting Iranian Mullahs, and so on.

See a distinction yet?

Point being, letter-writer Nunberg is not qualified to preach...:

And it may be that Americans are particularly vulnerable to using "fascism" sloppily, never having experienced the real thing close up.

I dunno. September 11 was a good introduction.

But like "terror," and "evil" before it, "Islamic fascism" has the effect of reducing a complex story to a simple fable. It effaces the differences among ex-Baathists, Al-Qaida and Shiite mullahs; Chechens and Kashmiris; Hezbollah, Hamas and British-born Asians allegedly making bombs in a London suburb.

Which is a distinction without a meaningful difference.

Hitler and Mussolini were not the same breed of fascism; they both had to be destroyed, of course. The difference had meaning - Mussolini's state was not as totalitarian - but in the thick of a war, the distinction wasn't so important.

The distinction matters - except to letter-writers like Nunberg, and by extension the letter editors at the Strib who think such opinions are compelling enough to inflict on the rest of us.
G
UPDATE: Oops, my bad - I see that Nunberg wasn't a letter to the editor!:

Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information. His new book, "Talking Right," is about politics and language.

Doh!

Who knew? I mean, it sounded like the same half-thought-out, facile bilge you read on every leftyblog...

He wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.

Ah. That explains it.

Steele

One of the biggest frustrations I have in being a Republican is the sense that the Fourth District GOP - to say nothing of the state party - have abandoned the inner-city. Of course, it'd be a dumb move for the party; while the state is continually edging to the right, we will never really control this state until we make a significant dent in the city.

In Maryland, they perhaps don't have a choice; the Maryland GOP probably has to conquer Baltimore to have a prayer of winning. I'm not sure - I don't live there, it's a hunch.

But with the Michael Steel campaign, they seem to be making headway with the "urban" constituency ("urban" is of course the media code word for "black").

Rap mogul Russell Simmons is on board with Steele:

"These are both people who not only built extremely successful companies but companies that are actively involved in their communities," Mr. [Steele spokesman Doug] Heye said. "It goes to what Mr. Steele talks about in building legacy wealth."
Mr. Simmons, who often has used his music empire to advance liberal political activism, has backed the Republican administration in Maryland.
He applauded Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, in February 2005 for winning over black voters with urban initiatives, especially criminal-justice reforms, and raising the Republican Party's profile among blacks nationwide.
"He raised the whole party up," Mr. Simmons said at the time. "He makes every Republican open for discussion" among black voters. Mr. Simmons campaigned in 2002 for Mr. Ehrlich's Democratic rival, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and said he initially had negative impressions of both Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Steele. But he says the Ehrlich administration has demonstrated that both men "should be held up to the light as examples" of Republican leaders who are committed to all of their constituents.

I'm not thrilled about Steele's alleged crabwalk away from the President - but we have examples of that in our own backyard to deal with.

But given that most of this nation's phenomenal population growth is coming from minorities (even if you subtract illegal aliens), it's time conservatives got serious about getting the rest of this nation on board.

Goodness knows the inner city needs it.

Party Up!

Mark this date in your calendar right now: Saturday, September 9.

That's the date of the next MOB party. The party will be at Keegan's Irish Pub. The fair's over, school will have started, and the nights will still be gorgeous.

The the big thing is to make sure everyone gets their invite.

So - here it is. Please come.

Do us a favor - send an RSVP to "northernallianceparty@hotmail.com". If you're a MOB member, you'll be getting a personal email about it (assuming I can find your email address anywhere), but don't wait for me - just send the email so we can get a prelim count of attendees.

It's going to be the party to kick off the season!

Details, times and directions will follow shortly.

Brigham For Senate

Longtime MOBster and graphic artist to the stars Derek Brigham is running for State Senate.

Derek's a very sharp guy. Best of all, he's a guy who has a life and living outside of government; he's no professional politician.

Which is more than you can say for Ann Rest, his district's eleventy-teen term incumbent. You can tell a lot about her by her friends. When the special interests of Minnesota say "jump", Ann Rest says "off what?"

If you live in 45, please get out and help Derek. He'd be a great state senator.

UPDATE: Fixed the link.

Listening To The Enemy

Established in advance: National Public Radio and Minnesota Public Radio should not get subsidized with taxpayer money. Both are fully capable of being self-supported (even if it means they might have to trim some of the fat from their budgets - and make no mistake, there is fat to be trimmed. Even public broadcasting staff admit privately that public broadcasting is full of unproductive hangers-on; a Twin Cities Public TV staffer once told me that 25% of her co-workers were "deadwood" who played computer games all day and really didn't do much. MPR and NPR operations are lavishly-staffed, and staff work at Minnesota Public Radio was high even before the wage scales in commercial radio went into freefall. And you don't think MPR is perhaps a bit too healthy, go to downtown Saint Paul, stand at the corner of 7th and Exchange, gaze upon the Taj Ma Kling (the massive, gold-plated expansion to MPR's already-immense home facility) and think about it for a bit.

But since I involuntarily pony up for MPR and NPR, I have no qualms about giving it a listen.

And there's stuff I actually like:

• Prairie Home Companion - Yes, Garrison Keillor is a bigot, a six-foot-tall slug of suet that covers one of the most preeningly-arrogant, corrosively-nasty personalities in this city. But PHC is, and remains, wonderful; usually funny, occasionally brilliant, with impeccable taste in music. And his "Lake Wobegone" monologues grab you by the liver, especially if you grew up Scandinavian in a small town. I hold my nose, call it wonderful, and look for my next opportunity to smack down Keillor's puerile, sophomoric political writing.
• Speaking of Faith - The best thing anywhere currently in american media on the subject of religion. Host Christa Tippett doesn't inject a lot of personality into the discussion - which is fortunate given the subject matter, and appropriate given than most public radio hosts have none. Instead, she brings an incisive intelligence to interviewing theologians, writers and thinkers about all the world's faiths, and about all of life's issues with which faith intersects. This is one of very few programs on Public Radio that is genuinely educational; a genuinely wonderful program.
• American Routes - Downside: A production of Louisiana Public Radio, it focuses understandably but excessively on Louisiana music. Upside: the show still covers the roots of American music - and the links between different styles - with happy, eclectic thoroughness. Nick Spitzer's interview with Tom Waits was one of the best "star" interviews I've ever heard.
• This American Life - Sure, you get tired of the forced eclecticism of the incidental music. And Sarah Vowell just isn't that interesting. But the show at its best is some of the most affecting radio anywhere. Talk show hosts and disc jockeys have mastered radio as a craft - but TAL has (so far) the title for the art of radio as literature, short story and journalism (in the classic sense of the term, as opposed to what they teach in J-school).
• Honorable Mention: There was a show that apparently ran for years, but not in the Twin Cities, in which an actor played Thomas Jefferson commenting on today's news and events from the founding father's perspective. Never heard it - but thought the idea was very worth a listen.

Of course, it's not all good.

The worst shows on M/NPR?

• On The Media - Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone's "analysis" of the media wallows in casual bias, acting all the while shocked, shocked they tell you, at signs of bias in...the media. Except for them. OTM should, by all rights, be an Air America program. Anyone who thinks Fox News is biased should be forced to listen to OTM while high on Sodium Pentathal, and obliged to confess in writing/on video the real truth. Among all of NPR's lineup, this show may be the most perfectly tuned to speak to its audience's stereotypically-self-glorified self-image. I truly resent any of my tax money going to support this piece of crappy, agenda-driven radio.
• Anything involving Juan Williams.
• Terry Gross - I mean, as someone who's worked in the business, I have to congratulate anyone who can eke out a gig for as long as Terry Gross has. But for someone who's built a career, and a niche, out of interviewing people, Terry Gross seems grossly lacking as an interviewer; stammering, easily thrown off-beat, easily-flustered...which brings up another question. MPR makes no bones about the fact that it is heavily-produced; interviews on other shows are routinely and heavily edited to excise oopses, smooth out rough spots, remove dead-ends, and make the whole thing sound slick and polished (in fact, Bob Garfield on "On The Media" did an interesting segment where he played a "before and after" of one interview segment; the "before" sounded like Kris Krok trying to talk with a nuclear physicist, with stammers and false starts and Garfield umming and ahhhing like he was just out of radio school; the "after" made him sound like, well, an MPR host). So; if they edit Terry Gross to make her sound more polished and cogent, why doens't it work? And if they don't, why don't they hire someone who can do live interviewing well?

When they stop taking my tax money, I'll stop criticizing.

Fresh off losing their almost-half-century sinecure as the Minnesota Twins' flagship station, WCCO adds Eleanor Mondale to their lineup.

Mondale - the daughter of former vice president Walter Mondale, who back in 1989 was sort of the Paris Hilton of the Twin Cities media scene - should keep the farmers in Motley thoroughly scandalized:

"Here is a gal with worldly experience who is connected to the entertainment world, political and corporate business leaders," said station General Manager Mary Niemeyer, "We could make a ton of money auctioning off her Rolodex."

The jokes practically write themselves:

• WCCO will probably need that money.
• Listening to the auction might be more interesting than Mondale's show itself.

The article continues:

The daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale was more modest. "I'm not going to come in and start saying, 'Here's my dad and here's my dad's friend,' " she said (former President Jimmy Carter was a guest during her recent audition). "Susie and I are equal partners; we have an amazing opportunity to create our own new show."

She's not going to say "Here's my dad and here's his friend" - because she's got the Strib, which has carried the water for the various Mondale clan members for decades.

Program director Wendy Paulson said the chemistry between Mondale and Jones "was so amazing that Eleanor seemed the obvious choice."

Submitted for your approval: Anyone who keeps Al Malmberg on the air is unqualified to judge "amazing chemistry".

At least Mondale has one< thing to talk about that's worth listening to:

That statement wouldn't have been as easy to make at this time last year. Mondale was found to have two cancerous brain tumors and told that she only had six months to live. Her one option was surgery, but there was a good chance she would end up partially paralyzed. However, with the same verve that has made her a broadcasting standout, Mondale said she told her doctors, "Come on, I'm at the Mayo Clinic and you're all telling me I'm going to die? What are my other options?"

She chose a treatment of chemotherapy and radiation. By October, one tumor had vanished and the other was dismissed as nonthreatening.

"It was truly a miracle," she said. "Even the doctors were shocked."

I'll have to polish up my Eleanor Mondale impression.

It's strictly a verbal impression.

The Big Time

Regional bloggers have gotten over the thrill of making it into the Strib's "Blog House" [1].

But having one of our little mob of bloggers get into CJ's column (the Strib's gossip column)? That's a new one.

CJ covers Peg Kaplan (of the excellent local blog "what if?") in Sundayh's column, noting that Peg is sort of the Johan Santana of local bridge:

A couple of years ago, Kaplan was at a bridge tourney in Anaheim, Calif., where she landed a lovely hotel room. "Private, quiet, elegantly appointed. I was going to be there 10 days. Well, I'm there only five days," Kaplan recalled last week, "when I get the bill under the door. Thanks for staying. Sorry you have to go, blah, blah, blah. I call the front desk and say, 'I'm not leaving yet.' They said, 'Oh, yeah, you are. You told us you were leaving early.' "

Kaplan quickly figured out what was going on. " 'I like my room; I don't want to leave. Why do you need this room?' They said, 'Somebody's coming in.' I said, 'Put them in another room.' They said, 'We want your room.' "

A businesswoman to the core, Kaplan said that if they wanted to put her in a comparable room and comp the rest of her stay, she'd move. Done! "I had another lovely room. Guess who moved into my room? Bill. It was attached to a suite; he wanted the suite for entertaining.

"I always tell people, 'Bill Gates stayed in my bed. I wasn't there at the time but ...' "

And what do the elite of the bridge world do?

Kaplan just got back from a bridge tourney in Omaha with Gates and Buffet that was particularly fun "because a bunch of kids that are in Bill and Warren's program to learn bridge in schools were there, too. Bill and Warren donated $1 million for the school program. The students came from Georgia, Iowa and Nebraska to compete -- and then have burgers and fries with Bill and Warren. Warms my heart, as I love the game and want to see more and more kids pick it up."

Note to Bill and Warren; could I interest you in a program to promote inner-city blogging?

Yours from the inner city of Saint Paul...

[1] Does the Strib still publish "Blog House?" I haven't checked in months...

14:59

Heather McCartney is shocked to learn that without her soon-to-be-ex hubby Paul, she's not much of a celeb in the US:

"She's worried about being snubbed in Hollywood. People who wanted her when she was Lady McCartney just aren't calling her now. Her career is cold. No one is offering her anything."

A producer at the Larry King TV show, which Heather has guest-hosted twice, said King had no plans to interview her.

The producer said: "They haven't been in touch. Larry would like to have both of them on his show, but if he had a choice, he'd really like Paul. He's the big star in America. Now she's not with him, her currency as a celebrity has gone down sharply."

Huh. Who'da thunk it - from topless model to gold-digging trophy wife, and thence back to nowhere?

Hard to figure.

More Music Is Better

Atomizer saw my Big Country and Pretenders opens, and raised me with Big Black.

I raise him Throbbing Gristle.

Throbbing Gristle. Where can I go from here?

Where, oh where?

Fixing Oversights

After a couple days' thought, I realize that I left two glaring omissions from my Blogs I Read Every Day list on Friday. But I blame technology for one of them.

My list was of blogs I read on my computer, via a web browser, every day. I neglected to note that I do in fact read "Bogus" Doug Williams' Bogus Gold every day - but I have it ported directly to my cell phone. That way I can read every post as it is published.

Also among my daily reads are both of Eva Young's blogs, Dump Bachmann and her personal (and yet group) blog.

While I have in the past castigated Eva for having the ethics of a used-car salesman, there are three things to admire about Eva:

1. She never, ever misses the point of a joke. When someone tells a joke, she never treats it with breathless, frothing solemnity. Never.
2. She never takes herself too seriously. When a wave of commenters on this and other blogs lampooned her rigorous abstinence from link-whoring, her adamant refusal to copy and paste entire articles and comment sections from other blogs as a substitute for writing original material, and her impeccable command of English spelling in satirical comments under her name, she had a good laugh and moved on.
3. She never resorts to infantile name calling - and never repeats it, over and over and over again! Because she knows - indeed, lives the true essence of humor.
4. And of course, her "Dump Bachmann" blog is perhaps the best, most ingenious "black" parody campaign tool in history, perhaps the best money Michele Bachmann ever spent. I'm sure half of the Sixth District has looked at the crowd of semi-literates, dork-fingered wankers and logorrheacs who "contribute" to "Dump Bachmann", and recoiled at the thought of being associated with them by opposing Bachmann. Can you say "Congresswoman Bachmann"? I think so - and you can thank Eva and the poor schlubs she's duped into helping the Senator in this fiendishly clever plot.

Whoah! That's four things!

For those reasons, I must confess - if I were to find out that Ms. Young didn't read my blog daily, I would commit seppuku.

Anyway - I read both of these blogs every single day.

(OK, no. I do read Doug several times a week though - especially during tomato season. Or as he'd say lately, "F*cking tomato season)

I Stand Corrected

I once called Kris Krok the worst talk show host working in America today.

Having heard "Sterling" filling in for Mischke tonight, I realize I spoke too soon.

The most dreadful twenty minutes of radio I've ever heard. Worse than Jim Klobuchar ever was. Worse than Jack and Lorie. Worse than Wendy Wilde.

Worse than Krok.

Note to Steve Konrad (program director at KSTP-AM): I'll assume this is a cry for help.

Yet Another...

...long-time favorite of mine that I never knew had a video in the first place:

That'd be "Chance", by Big Country.

I could really blow a whole weekend on Youtube if I'm not careful.

Alpaca-Wearing, Pony-Tailed Volvo Drivers - Party Up!

There's gonna be a party - and all patchouli-wearing arrested-development Baby Boomers who pine for the sixties are invited!

STOPPING THE MERCHANTS OF DEATH
A Strategic Conference for Grassroots Activists

Calling all organizations working to expose and stop corporations' war making and war profiteering! Drawing upon the spirit, the experience and success of the Honeywell campaign, the War Resisters League is joining many other groups to sponsor a national networking and strategy conference.

"Spirit and Success".

Can't speak for the "spirit" of the decades-long "Honeywell Project", which has served mainly to cause groups of geriatric baby boomers to stand around the gates of local defense plants (formerly Honeywell, currently Alliant Tech Systems, or ATK) marinating in their own self-righteousness.

As to "Success" - ATK is a much smaller operation now than it was thirty years ago, but that had more to do with the end of the Cold War - which people like the "Honeywell Project" only delayed.

No, the only "Success" ascribable to the "Honeywell Project" is the small boom market it created for documentary film-makers in the nineties; all that government grant money financed a lot of bad hagiographic movies.

Purpose: To build a cohesive local and national anti-corporate movement and develop strategies for stopping the corporate "Merchants of Death."

I suspect they're not talking about Nasrallah, Ahmadi-nejad or Kim Jong-Il.

When: Friday, Sept. 29 - Oct. 2, 2006
Where: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN
RSVP: Simon Harak, WRL Anti-militarism Coordinator, amc@warresisters.org,
ph: 212-228-0450; Please RSVP by August 15, 2006

Doh!

Join us the whole weekend and honor Gandhi's Birthday, Oct. 2nd, in our nonviolent direct action at Alliant Techsystems (makers of depleted uranium). Nonviolent direct action training provided and strongly recommended.

Because when you let a bunch of patchouli-reeking leftists loose, you never know what they'll do if they're not "trained" properly.

SCHEDULE:
Friday, Sept. 29-Showing Eugene Jarecki's film, "Why We Fight" with possible Q.&A. with director, pending confirmation.$7

Saturday, Sept. 30-Strategy Conference ($35 registration fee)

Oh, if only...

Saturday Evening-Honeywell Campaign reunion. Join in with the songs, the stories, and the fun with some cool radicals from the Honeywell campaign and AlliantTech Campaign. Food and Drinks Provided.

Oh, maaaaan. I'm going to have to try to attend this.

Maybe if I don't shave or brush my teeth for a month...

Sunday, Oct. 1-Creating a Network

Sunday Evening-Concert and Rally (Students and Pre-Registration $10, Door $12)
Begins and ends with A.I.M.'s Vernon Bellecourt and Indian Drumming. Also: Utah Phillips (singer/songwriter), Winona LaDuke (former Vice-Presidential Candidate), Paul Krassner (Yippie co-founder, "Father of Satire"), Medea Benjamin (Global Exchange, Code Pink), Howard Zinn (tentative-Historian), Frida Berrigan (World Policy Institute, WRL), Sister Rita Steinhagen (SOA Watch), Marv Davidov (Freedom Rider, co-founder Honeywell), Prince Myshkins (Madison, WI, satirical group), Tom Bottolene and Pepperwolf (Alliant Action), Jack Nelson Pallmeyer (MN Congressional Candidate), Joanne Sheehan (War Resisters International).

All of this and Madison "satirical group" Prince Myshkins?

I'm all tingly.

Monday, Oct. 2-HAPPY BIRTHDAY GANDHI! Massive Nonviolent Direct Action at Alliant Techsystems.

Ah. Gandhi.

The guy who said Jews, to fight the Holocaust, should go to their deaths to teach those dang Nazis a lesson.

The guy about whom it was said it cost more to keep in showy poverty than to feed several regular families?

Dear ProtestWarrior: Please tell me y'all are going to be there...

We Got To Write The Powers That Be

I am the Northern Alliance's Minister of Funk.

Damnation by faint praise, perhaps - but as far as I know I'm among very few christian conservative republicans that has ever worked as a rap DJ. In my day, I was called the Best Bald, White, Father-of-Two Rap DJ in the Twin Cities. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only former rap DJ in all of conservative talk radio.

So while I recoil in a bizarre mash of boredom and revulsion at what 99% of hip-hop is today - bling, b*tchez, benzos, blah blah blah - there's a small slice of hip-hop from the past 25 years that I geniunely love. Run-DMC, Flash, Monie Love, Erik B and Rakeem, Digital Underground, Rob Base, NWA, the DOC, the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Qwest, Me Phi Me, old LL Cool J, Kanye West, Eminem, and most of all the great Public Enemy stuff from the late eighties - there's a lot of great stuff, and most of all it's all better than the nihilistic bilge that passes for most hip-hop today.

Established: I'm not a conservative who spurns rap by reflex.

Resolved: I'm not one to gag at the thought of the "Twin Cities Celebration of Hip Hop" festival, least of all at the behest of Tom Barnard and the KQ Morning Show. Barnard is a radio genius (yes, he is), not least of all because he reflects his audience's cultural icons (and does it naturally; people in the know tell me Barnard doesn't really like much of anything from after 1975).

So when Tom Barnard and the KQ Morning Crew start swerving into cultural criticism, I mentally turn the radio down. Barnard is about as articulate about rap as Phil Wise is about...anything.

And for all that, they're still better than Chris Riemenschneider's piece on the topic.

I don't give most music critics a lot of slack, of course; most of them are lousy writers whose facility as critics comes from partying with musicians. There are exceptions; Jim DeRogatis was a standout because he was a good writer and genuinely knew music.

I don't know if Chris Riemenschneider qualifies on either count because - in an admission that would have shocked me twenty years ago - I rarely read the music crit beat anymore. But this particular piece caught my eye.

My comments are inset in blue:

The KQRS-FM morning crew -- who, it goes without saying, know as much about hip-hop as Kanye West does about Lynyrd Skynyrd [But let's be honest; Barnard wasn't yakking so much about the music (not that he could, really) as much as mainstream hip-hop's well-deserved rep for thuggery, crass materialism and violence. What else does one need to know?] -- lambasted the Celebration on the air two weeks ago, after a man was shot outside Myth nightclub following the Lil' Wayne concert Aug. 8. Talk about guilty by non-association [Bollocks. The association is one those of us who live in the city have seen countless times; you get crowds of teenagers, many of them banger wannabees, together in one room and trouble erupts. Riemenschneider is either disingenuous or ignorant if he doesn't recognize that] .

Over a backdrop of gunshot noises, Tom Barnard & Co. went down the list of Celebration performers and ridiculed each name. You haven't heard the Spanish language butchered until you've heard Barnard pronounce Maria Isa. They also made fun of the nonprofit organization that puts it on, the youth-oriented Yo! the Movement [Well, it's kinda funny. It's argot, for starters. Argot is slang and jargon associated with a group of people - cockneys,soldiers, criminals, rappers, whatever. It's like a language within a language. And it's designed to exclude people who aren't part of the fraternity, while identifying and giving fraternity to those who are. It also sounds curious - faintly ridiculous, sometimes - to those who aren't part of the fraternity. Which Tom Barnard is not. Groovy, baby. Capisce? Ooorah - or is that Hooah?] . Then they predicted that there would be nine shootings at the event, three for each day. Oh, the laughs.

For the many, many local music fans and community activists who understand the Celebration's value, the stupidity of the KQ crew requires no explanation. But for those who don't know, their actions are comparable to a high school principal suspending a bunch of honor-roll students for being in the same gym class as some idiots who got into a fight [No, it's not. It's like questioning festival seating, in 1980.] .

"We've worked hard for five years to make this a positive event in every way," said Toki Wright, the local rapper and Yo! co-founder who directs the three-day festival.

Wright and the other young organizers behind the Celebration of Hip-Hop don't get any money/fame/glory off of the festival. They work their tail off so people their age and younger can experience the positive effects of hip-hop. You know: the powers of self-expression, working in a community, raising your voice, etc.

As someone who has attended three of the previous four Celebrations, I can definitively say they're extremely safe, wholesome (in a PG-13 way) and inspiring [Which is fine. More power to them. But you'd have to be a fool - or an overly-idealistic dogmatic music critic - to assume that the whole world is going to ignore hip-hop's larger image - an image the hip-hop industry pays a lot of money to promote, might I add.] . As someone who has attended a lot of KQ-sponsored events, I can also say that a crowd of break-dancing, baggy-pants-wearing kids watching Brother Ali is nowhere near as intimidating as beer-guzzling, mullet-headed 50-year-olds watching Ted Nugent or Alice Cooper. (Look, Mom, I can stereotype, too!) [Well, Chris, there was little doubt about that. But the simple fact is, not many people wind up shot, or dead, outside of REO Speedwagon gigs at the Fair. ]

Barnard's team might actually have done the Celebration a service, much like Monica Lewinsky did conservatives a favor. Even their timing was great.

Mainstream hip-hop is once again loaded with dim-witted thug rappers who glorify violence, or at least don't do much to denounce it. Case in point: Rick Ross' "Port of Miami," an album that went straight to Billboard's No. 1 last week, makes it sound as if life as a cocaine dealer in South Florida has never been better or more fun [Right. It was in the papers. So we should cut modern hip-hop a break with that in mind, right?] .

Wright staunchly believes, "You can't blame hip-hop for the bigger problems of society," but I don't think N.W.A.'s riotous commentaries from South Central L.A. can be equated to Ross' thug-praising party tracks from Miami [NWA's "riotous commentaries" - brilliantly done as they were - included uplifting bits like "F*ck Tha Police", "A Bitch Iz A Bitch", and lyrics like "AK-47 is tha tool, so dont' make me act the motherf*cking fool/me and you can go toe to toe, no maybe/I'm knocking niggaz off the block daily/yo weekly, monthly, yearly/til the punk motherf*ckas see clearly that I'm down with a capital CPT/boy don't f*ck with me..." ] . As for Lil' Wayne (who, coincidentally, was arrested on drug charges Monday), he's a culprit only of bland songs, not violent music, but his concert was still part of the lowest-common-denominator trend that pervades the genre nowadays [I'm sure that Chris Riemenschneider isn't edited in any way -more or less like Nick Coleman - which is why his piece manages to undercut its point and reinforce Barnard's point (which started the article looking justifiably weak, but is looking better and better, paragraph by paragraph] .

The Celebration of Hip-Hop is the highest common denominator [Knock wood!] . It's part of the solution. Its performers are thought provokers, not violence promoters. A lot of them are pretty amazing artists, too. Let's hope the one positive thing that comes out of the KQ crew's bashing is that more people will understand the difference.

Here's the difference that Chris Riemenschneider doesn't seem to understand; the artist on stage isn't really the issue. Crowds of idiots - race notwithstanding - are still idiots. It doesn't matter if they're a mob of drunk bikers outside the Whiskey, a clot of jacked up speed-metal kidz, a throng of hammered AC/DC fans (remember the kid who got stabbed to death outside the Met after an AC/DC gig in '86?), or a street full of teens flashing colors and showing what they got - are always something to be wary of.

Whatever the people on stage intended.

I wish the festival all the best.

Blogs I Read

Nobody need, of course, care what I read when I surf. But for those who do, here you go (and, by the way, I omit all the Northern Alliance blogs, all of which I read at least daily) - my daily, absolute, read-unless-I-have-a-family-health-emergency reads:

• Lileks - Duh.
• Rambix and the Red Star - One of the essential news sites in the region today. This is what a local news blog should be.
• Kool Aid Report - In a perfect world, Fox would put "Kool-Aid TV" opposite "The Daily Show". And it would pimp-slap John Stewart, ratings and content-wise. Alas, KAR is a blog. One you need to read daily.
• The Sheila Variations - Hard to even describe this blog; funny, furiously eclectic in an OCD kind of way (she's been writing excepts from every book she owns for what seems like a couple of years now - and I've read every one), with frequent bits of brilliance that grab you in your liver in a spasm of self-recognition. Plus a group of regular commenters that I'd love to be trapped in a ski lodge during a blizzard with.
• Radio Equalizer - Brian Maloney knows radio, especially national syndicated radio. He's an essential read if you, for whatever reason, care about these things...
• Cathy In The Wright - "Family Circus" if everyone in the family were pleasantly crazy. My favorite "home" blog in the whole world.
• Jay Reding - I've said it before - he should get ten times the traffic he does.
  
• MDE - Has replaced Drudge as my first news surf of the day.

Biggest loss of the year: Peace Like A River - My favorite "new" blog of the past year, Jeff Kouba has realigned his blogging to write at Security Watchtower. I understand - but it's everyone's loss.

I started writing the "Blogs I Visit 2-3 Times a Week" list, but it was going to be very long...

UPDATE AND OVERSIGHT: Naturally, Kennedy Vs. The Machine remains one of the best political blogs out there, especially among those focused on a single race.

To Santa: Thank You. Signed, Tabloids

An arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Just when you thought the whole ugly charade couldn't get any creepier...

I Prefer Dunn Brothers

20% of NYC Starbucks stores cited for health department violations including infestations of rodents, roaches and flies:

The complaints filed by Starbucks employees with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration focus on three stores - at Union Square East, E. Ninth St. and Second Ave., and E. 57th St. and Lexington Ave.

"I constantly have to deal with mice, cockroaches and fruit flies all over the place," said Tomer Malchi, 24, who works at the Union Square store. "The root of the problem is that we're never staffed properly to clean the place right and we never have the right equipment to clean the stores."

Starbucks responds that it's a shabby attempt to unionize the baristas:

Starbucks, which has refused to recognize the union, brushed off the allegations as "the latest tactic in an aggressive campaign against Starbucks and our partners that is designed to damage the credibility and good name of the company" by a "very small number" of current and former employees.

On the one hand, one would think that bugs is bugs; they're there, or they aren't. And it's NYC, where until the middle of the Giuliani era the roaches actually ran some parts of the Bronx.

On the other hand, "lookit how shortstaffed we are! We just can't clean up!" sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect from people trying to strongarm a company into unionizing.

Munich

Arthur Herman on last week's Munich moment:

"We have passed an awful milestone in our history," Winston Churchill said after the Munich agreement was signed. "Do not suppose this is the end . . . This is only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup that will be proffered to us year by year." Despite the failure of appeasement, Churchill still believed the Western democracies would make the "supreme recovery" and take up the banner for freedom again. The United States and the forces of democracy will recover from this debacle - even with a Democratic Congress in 2006 and a Democratic president in 2008. The reason will not be because Bush's opponents have a better strategy, or a clearer vision, or even a Winston Churchill waiting in the wings. It will be because our enemies will give us no choice.

Less than a year after Munich, Nazi panzers rolled into Poland. Instead of fighting a short, limited war over Czechoslovakia, the Western democracies ended up fighting a world war, the most destructive in history. The war with the mullahs of Iran is coming. It is only a question of whether it will be at a time or on a ground of our choosing, or theirs - and whether it is fought within the shadow of a mushroom cloud.

My biggest worry at this point; that too many governments - including our own - will look at the difficulties in Iraq (more or less common in fighting counterinsurgency wars) and presume that diplomacy is the better solution - or even a valid one - to terrorism.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015025.php

Stop Snivelling

I didn't even know this song had ever been on video.

(Below the fold)

Back in high school, everyone said I looked like James Honeyman-Scott, the guitar player...

The Final Word

King and Michael Brodkorb have the announcement - the Northern Alliance micro-media empire is expanding again.

King Banaian and Michael "Minnesota Democrat Exposer" Brodkorb will be hosting "NARN3 - The Final Word" on Saturdays from 3-5. Of course, NARN1 - John Hinderaker, Chad the Elder and Brian Ward - will remain in the 11-1 slot, and Captain Ed and I are still on from 1-3, on AM1280 The Patriot. And the podcasts will be available at Townhall.

Six solid hours of home-grown conservative programming, every Saturday (replayed Sunday nights starting at 7PM) - with more big announcements to come.

Stay tuned!

Back to School

Lileks writes about this time of year:

There’s always something about summer that increased the need to find a Special Friend, as though it would all be ruined if you passed the season without a humid interlude. But then you’d pin your hopes on fall: the time of fresh starts. (See also, spring, and summer.) You’d meet someone in class. Then you remembered you weren’t in school anymore.

You never shake that back-to-school feeling. Even the years between school and kids of your own, the turning of the leaves brings back the sense of industriousness and new situations. For most adults the emotion dims and dulls, as they all do, but sometimes you catch it full and bright.

I still do, every year.

It must be a chemical thing; once the sun gets below a certain point in the southern sky, I go to Cub and buy a tin of Nestle Quik. Why? Because every single first day of school when I was a child, I came home to a cup of Quik. And while I'm not big on tradition (see: my christmas ornament boxes), I do carry this one forward, and if I'm around my grandkids, I'll make sure my kids do the same. I have forgotten most of my first days of school - who I saw, what I brought with me, who I sat with - but I remember some of those glasses of Quik as clearly as if I were doing them now.

Even more powerful, though, is when the first snap of cool air floats in from the northwest, about the time it starts to visibly dim at nine. A little voice in the back of my head still wakes up and tells me "Time to pack up and move back to Watson Hall", my old dorm at Jamestown College. The old, tumbledown, mouse-ridden dorm was my home for three school years; in a school with no Greek system (we used frat boys for firewood), living in the musty, decrepit, isolated Watson was the closest thing to a fraternity the college offered. I genuinely looked forward to going back there every year...

...and 22 years after the last move, when I feel that first cool breeze and stare into the early dusk and start seeing all the kids moving in to Hamline University, up the street, I still do.

Bruno Kirby

Bruno Kirby dead at 57:

Born Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu in 1949 in New York City, he was the son of actor Bruce Kirby. His early work included the 1971 film "Young Graduates," as well as appearances on the television show "Room 222" and the made-for-TV movie "The Summer Without Boys."

In 1974, he scored a role in "The Godfather: Part II," which won several Academy Awards, including best picture. In the film, Kirby played young "Pete Clemenza," following Richard S. Castellano's role in the first installment.

Over the next few years, Kirby made various TV appearances, including "Fame" and "Hill Street Blues," before landing the role of "2nd Lt. Steven Hauk" in Robin William's "Good Morning, Vietnam."

I frequently find myself more interested in the character actors who work on the fringes of fame than in the leading men and women; their stories are often more interesting, at least these days.

UPDATE AND BUMP: My old friend Beeeej has an interest in this story, as noted in the comments:

Because my mother also has leukemia, every autumn my family and some family friends walk in an event called "Light the Night" to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If your readers are interested in helping out this very important cause - whether in memory of Bruno Kirby, or in honor of their own loved ones - they can visit my Light the Night page...to make a donation by credit card or find the address for sending checks. All donations are tax deductible, and moreover are much appreciated.

He's a lawyer, so you can trust him on the whole tax-deductibility thing, too.

Seriously - it's a very worthy cause.

I Hated Wham, Anyway

Ageing pop star and style icon George Michael has been accused of murdering a penned bear in a pen in northern Minnesota.

Inside word - his next song will be entitled "Wake Me Up Before You Kill a Helpless Animal".

Disgusting.

CORRECTION: The star accused of killing the penned bear is
country star Troy Gentry, of the group "Montgomery Gentry", rather than George Michael of the eighties pop band "Wham".

I sincerely regret the error.

Why (Power) Liberals Should Stick To Arguing About Who Cleversponge Likes Better

Yesterday, I posted a piece in which I agreed with Craig Westover's takedown of a particularly noxious, elitist comment on his blog - one which reflects a larger reality...

...well, we'll get to that.

"Smartie" from Powerliberal superimposed his partisan point of view, social prejudices and just-plain-naievete onto the argument, by way of completely missing the point.

why conservatives shouldn't be trusted with civil discourse

Because they get somebody you've never heard of to make a dumb statement. Then they immediately and hysterically extrapolate from that that EVEYONE THEY DISAGREE WITH AGREES WITH THAT STATEMENT AND MUST BE STOPPED.

No, Smarts. We "extrapolate" because it reflects a conceit that some of us have observed on the left - especially left-wing proponents of that most sacred of efty cows, the public school system and its' attendant academic establishment - for a long, long time.

Because it's not just a "dumb" statement by "someone" we've "never heard of". Westover's commenter sounded like dozens of public education supporters over the years - people who are neither dumb nor obscure nor, in some cases, of no influence on the lives of children.

The current, compulsory education system was instituted largely because society didn't trust the parents of immigrant families to raise their children to be good Americans, and wanted to counteract the influences of foreign politics and traditions, Catholicism and other things that society didn't want to encourage - and just plain knew better than parents about.

And you can call it anecdotal, but after having a couple of kids in various school systems for a total of (counting fingers and toes) 27 kid-years, I have a deep bench of stories of teachers, staffers, advocates and (especially) adminstrators who've said things identical in sentiment, and only marginally less dumb and offensive than what Westover's commenter said.

Some of them publish books.

We can come back to that later.

And then their ditto heads nod sagely.

Anyone who thinks I'm a "dittohead" of Westover's isn't paying attention.

And the nod may or may not be sage, but it comes from experience.

The only step left is to throw out the words "strawman" and "ad-hominem" against anyone who disagrees with them and then call it a smug self-satisfied day.

Nah. I just ignore it. What would they know?

Especially if they say things like...:

Call it the "Ward Churchill Process".

I'm trying to remember the latin term for non sequitur...

Blowing the Case

Steve Chapman opines in favor of extending the franchise to felons who've done their time:

We let ex-convicts marry, reproduce, buy beer, own property and drive. They don't lose their freedom of religion, their right against self-incrimination or their right not to have soldiers quartered in their homes in time of war. But in many places, the assumption is that they can't be trusted to help choose our leaders.

Many of them can be. The pleasures of long-term confinement serve to deter a lot of them from reverting to mischief. If we thought criminals could never be reformed, we wouldn't let them out of prison in the first place. If we regard voting as a commendable activity, we should encourage it among ex-convicts as a way of reintegrating them.

The felons who are incorrigible are not likely to exercise the franchise anyway. They're too busy stealing cars and mugging old ladies. The people hurt by the loss of voting rights are the ones who want to live normal, productive lives. All disenfranchisement does is inflict a humiliating disability on offenders trying to stay on the right track.

I agree, to an extent; I think people who've served their time and lived for a stretch as law-abiding citizens should get the franchise back. It's one of those things - ephemeral as it may seem - that can help mark a felon's return to the straight life.

But I suspect Steve Chapman's motivations are different:

The chief obstacle to change is not that the idea lacks merit, but that it could tilt the electoral balance. One study calculated that if all those 600,000 excluded felons had voted in Florida in 2000, Al Gore would have won the state and the presidency. So Republicans may be forgiven for a lack of enthusiasm.

Actually, I suspect Steve Chapman's enthusiasm for the idea is largely driven by this belief.

How can we tell?

In fact, though, most of those offenders probably wouldn't have voted, and it's by no means guaranteed they would go heavily Democratic anyway. With the recent plague of corporate corruption, who knows? Some correctional facilities may even become GOP strongholds.

Uh huh.

Two words: Kathleen Soliah.

Against Character?

Who wrote this?

So a minister with intimate knowledge of the inner city and its gangs is not worth engaging because, after putting in a 12-hour day on the North Side, he goes home to Brooklyn Park, which is ever so much further from the mean streets than are the placid waters of Lake Harriet.

Let's review: A mayoral news conference was spoiled by shouting. Not shooting. Shouting. Some parts of Minneapolis would love to just hear shouts. But not the mayor. He cut and ran.

"It's childish," says [Reverend] McAfee. "No one person speaks on behalf of all black people in Minneapolis. But if you're going to solve crime in north Minneapolis, you will have to deal with us, for one simple reason: We're not afraid to go out there and talk with people."

Or even to listen.

Was it:

1. Rambix
2. First Ringer
3. Nick Coleman

If you answered "3", you are probably as amazed as I am. For the first time in memory, Nick Coleman has written two columns that both made sense and didn't insult the intelligence.

Just saying.

My Laptop's Back...

...and you're gonna be in trouble.

Hey la, hey la, my laptop's back.

The Funny Part...

...is that in Minneapolis, having loonbat Dennis Kucinich come to town to support him probably won't cost racist DFL congressional candidate Keith Ellison a single vote.

Treating The Problem

The UK starts profiling Moslems:

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

I'm guessing by "ethnic or religious background" they're talking about the same one as the bunch that killed 3,000 Americans, 200 Australians, 200-odd Spaniards, hundreds of Brits and Indians and thousands of Iraqi?

The system would be much more sophisticated than simply picking out young men of Asian appearance. But it would cause outrage in the Muslim community because its members would be far more likely to be selected for extra checks.

Note to Islam; if you don't like this, how about repudiating terrorism and earning a worldful of goodwill?

Officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) have discussed the practicalities of introducing such a system with airport operators, including BAA. They believe that it would be more effective at identifying potential terrorists than the existing random searches.

They also say that it would greatly reduce queues at security gates, which caused lengthy delays at London airports yesterday for the fifth day running.

The left in America (I know I'm speaking generally, but I think it's justifiable) seems to think that the danger of another Tim McVeigh is every bit as serious, on a national policy level, as that of another Mohammad Atta.

They Put Up A Poster Saying "We Know More Than You"

Craig Westover posts a response to a comment from a post about education.

It sums up not only every reason the DFL must be kept from office in Minnesota, but in fact is a fine example of why I left the Democrat party, over twenty years ago:

So I guess that yes, I do lack a certain faith in individuals not in making decisions for themselves but in making decisions for their children which have enduring consequences. I think public schooling is a good way for society to safeguard its young and against the improvidential decisonmaking by their parents, just as I lack the confidence in individuals making providential decisions about their old age.

Westover adds, seemingly dumbfounded:

I won’t refute what is said here. It is a far more damning indictment of liberalism standing alone than any rebuttal would be.

Some liberals cover that intrinsic elitism better than others. But it is in education like no other issue where it comes out.

The Awful, Static-Free Truth

I haven't listened to KTLK much since its debut last January. But listening to Jason Lewis' opening week brought a bit of deja vu.

I remember hearing Limbaugh the first time on FM. And it, like Lewis' debut, reminded me of the first time I heard a Compact Disk.

I hated it.

It wasn't just that it was too clear - every single note and tone delivered with a teutonic, rigid "clarity" that was almost distracting - although that was a factor.

It was that, in the early days of the CD, so much of the art of recording was designed around the limitations of analog recording - and the techniques that artists used to work around those limitations were themselves an art, and an inspiring one at that; the art of making an imperfect, distorted, difficult medium work to your advantage. Phil Spector, Jimmy Iovine, Steve Lillywhite, Steve Cropper and a who's who of the world's great record producers grew up producing around -and with - the imperfections of analog recording, and even (in Spector's case) AM radio.

Likewise talk radio, which has always worked around AM's limitations to its advantage (not merely financial advantage, although that was a crucial part of talk radio's rise from the bottom of the ratings in the early nineties). Hearing a talk show in full audiophile clarity is...overkill? It's distracting.

I'm sure I"ll have to get used to it - Digital AM will one day be clearer than FM is today.

But I won't like it much.

Barry Hickethier

The bad news: Barry "Nordeaster" Hickethier is putting his excellent Water Cooler Wisdom blog on hiatus.

The good news: He's doing it in order to run for the Minnesota House of Representatives in Northeast Minneapolis' District 59A.

Barry's a very sharp guy who cares a lot about Northeast Minneapolis. Diane Loeffler - a nondescript DFL apparatchik who has to all appearances never had a job outside of government (let me check on that), currenty holds the seat. That needs to change.

If you live in 59A, you need to contact Barry and help out; if everyone converts a neighbor or two, this could be a great race. And if you don't? Well, visit his donations page; running a local race against a cog in the DFL machine is not just a battle against the candidate, but against the whole money machine that keeps the DFL in charge of the inner city.

Go, Barry!

But He's Our Bumbling, Loveable Criminal

Dean Zimmerman - former Green Party member of the Minneapolis City Council - has been convicted of federal corruption charges:

Zimmermann, who represented the city's sixth ward from 2001 to 2005, was charged in a federal indictment with four counts, three involving allegations that he took $7,200 in cash bribes from a property developer, Gary A. Carlson. He was convicted on three of the charges.

He was also accused of trying to solicit the small, nonprofit development group to build a retaining wall on the property of his former domestic partner, and when the group turned him down, of asking that it supply him with materials so he could build the wall.

But, according to Doug Grow, he was a loveable, bumbling criminal:

There are few things so wretched as a corrupt politician.

But I must confess, I have a big bias when it comes to Zimmermann. I see him as a bumbler, more than a crook. He was a poor but decent-hearted handyman before he stunned everyone, perhaps even himself, by being elected in 2001 to the City Council as a member of the Green Party.

He heads to prison a poor but decent-hearted man who ran his political life like he's run the rest of his life: With extreme casualness.

Ah.

Compare this, if you will, to the things Doug Grow wrote about, say, Rod Grams back in 2000, for the transgressions of a son Grams had only a limited role in raising, and had nothing to do with Grams' work as a representative of the people and trustee of the peoples' franchise.

Morgan Grams was a symbol of Rod Grams' ickiness as a person, according to Doug Grow and the rest of the Twin Cities' dead tree pundocracy. Even though Rod Grams was a rigorously ethical politician (and one who accomplished more in six years in office than did Paul Wellstone in twelve).

Dean Zimmerman - convicted graftmongering pettifogger? Well, he just couldn't help it!

Zimmermann is probably most guilty of being in over his head. In the summer of 2005, he was trying to raise money to pay for a legal fight against a city redistricting plan that had wiped out his ward; he was trying to raise money for a highly-competitive city council race and he was trying to do his job on the council.

Along came developer Gary Carlson, carrying cash and wearing a wire.

Zimmermann took the money. More sophisticated pols have other people who take the money in legal ways.

Over his head!

Trying to keep his ward from being wiped out!

Tricked - an innocent exploited! - by a baaad developer wearing a wire and carrying filthy, federal lucre!

Why, we're lucky he stopped at taking bribes! A lesser man might have shot up an elementary school! We're lucky it was Dean Zimmerman!

Note to Doug Grow: Zimmerman took bribes in exchange for votes. The end result: With Dean Zimmerman, money bought influence that mere voters coud not get.

Go ahead, Doug Grow (and Green Party); put a soft, mushy focus on that fact. Please.

Zimmermann and Heiser were at their home, waiting for the call that would tell them the jury had reached a verdict. As usual, they were surrounded by a gaggle of their grown children and friends.

"You worried?" Zimmermann was asked.

"Jenny does that for me," he said.

"We've got lots of people worrying," she said.

"Good, cuz I don't want to," he said.

There was laughter around the dining room table, where a steady stream of people were invited to help Zimmermann put together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a lovely cottage by a lake.

Zimmermann compared the wait for the jury verdict to a Zimmermann-family funeral back in his homeland, North Dakota.

"Everybody sits around, looks at the body and laughs and tells stories," he said.

He's just a folksy, regular guy - who happens to practice the same hippie politics Doug Grow has been waxing dreamy over for his entire career!

Never mind that he's been convicted of being a graftmongering pettifogger. Never mind that it's shown the Green Party, which sanctimoniously intones against the influence of money in politics, is not any better than the big parties - just more stupid about it.

Question: Do you think a convicted graftmongering pettifogger - no matter how loveable, no matter how human, no matter how loved by his family - would warrant the same gauzy focus from Doug Grow if he weren't a back-dated hippie who wallows in the same romanticized version of "the left" that Doug Grow's clip file bulges with?

I have no problem with portraying people as humans. I do have one when a columnist is as selective and myopic about it as Doug Grow is. And has always been. And will aways be.

George McGovern's Ghost

Slate magazine is worried.

Jacob Weisberg thinks there's a solid chance that Ned Lamont is a symptom of a gathering McGovernization in the Democratic party:

The Lamont-Lieberman battle was filled with echoes and parallels from the Vietnam era. Democratic reformers and anti-establishment insurgents weren't wrong about that conflict, either. Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue. In turning viciously on stalwarts of the Cold War era like Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson, anti-war insurgents called into question the Democratic Party's underlying commitment to challenging Communist expansion. The party's Vietnam-era drift away from issues of security and defense—and its association with a radical left hostile to the military and neutral in the fight between liberalism and communism—helped push a lot of Americans who didn't much like the Vietnam War into the arms of Richard Nixon.

Weisberg sees a way out for the Dems:

Whether Democrats can avoid playing their Vietnam video to the end depends on their ability to project military and diplomatic toughness in place of the elitism and anti-war purity represented in 2004 by Howard Dean and now by Ned Lamont. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner for 2008, is trying to walk this difficult line, continuing to express support for the war in principle while becoming increasingly strident in her criticism of its execution. As the congressional elections approach, many Republican candidates are fleeing Bush's embrace because of his Iraq-induced unpopularity. But Lamont's victory points to a way in which Bush's disastrous war could turn into an even bigger liability for the Democrats.

Noted in advance: This might be wishful thinking.

But can you see the new, Dean-and-Kossified Democratic party tolerating anyone being realistic, much less Kennedy/Truman/Johnson-level "tough", on terror?

I'll toss this open for discussion; what do you lefties propose to actually do about the war on terror?

And I'll tell ya what - I'll not only respectfully ask for any heckling from my right-wing commenters (the vast majority, doyyy) to be muted, but I'll make sure it stays that way.

So lefties, here you go; convince me. What is the left going to do about terror?

Doug Westerman Is A Genius

Oh, don't get me wrong. My former colleague (from KSTP-AM in the eighties) is actually a pretty regular guy (although as I recall from twenty years ago, he knows his sports backward and forward). He may, in fact, pop up in the "Twenty Years Ago Today" series, one of these days. But I may in fact be the first person to have ever called him a genius.

But he showed true mastery of his oeuvre, indeed his milieu, in his re-introduction of Jason Lewis to the Twin Cities market.

As I noted years ago, Lewis is the host I always wanted to be when I grew up (although I'd keep my own taste in music, thanks). Now, Jason is probably making a ton of money. AM1280 the Patriot is getting Hugh Hewitt for free (most syndicated commercial talk radio is free to the station these days) - and a little bird told me that Hewitt's audience beat the tar out of the late Lambert and Janecek show. Given the difference in cost incurred in getting the benefit, Lewis is going to have to get phenomenal numbers not only to beat Hewitt, but to justify the cost of the win.

To do that, it'd help to get a huge start.

Here's where the genius comes in.

Westerman - this kills me - waited to introduce Lewis until he faced eight solid broadcast days of Jed Babbin filling in for a vacationing Hewitt.

That's why Doug makes the big bucks.

Speaking of Lewis; listening to a couple of hours of his first week, I felt like I was 35 again. Because the show is exactly the same, down to the themes and the bumpers and pretty much everything but the absence of Joe Hansen, as it was when Bill Clinton was in office.

Procedure

I'll acknowledge all the usual caveats about this story in advance:

• I know - running a jail is hard. People in county lockups are not pleasant. Duly noted.
• Law enforcement is all about procedure. It has to be, or cops get raked over the coals in court, which is also all about procedure.
• We have no idea, yet, exactly why the Sherburne county sheriff's office brought Carl Moyle into the county lockup on Monday for not having an insurance card with him.
• When something tragic happens, it's in most officials' best interest to not be especially forthcoming to the media or the public.
• Finally, the best way not to get yourself killed in jail is not to go to jail.

Duly noted.

But the story itself makes me really mad.

While [Sherburne County Sheriff Bruce] Anderson declined to name him, authorities told Moyle's family members that the suspect was Bruce Christenson. He is a 28-year-old inmate at the Oak Park Heights prison who was taken to the Sherburne County Jail Tuesday morning for a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday on an assault charge.

Anderson said that with no known reason to put the suspect in isolation, he was placed in the general population, in a pod of 15 cells where Carl Moyle was.

Another news outlet had an interview with Sheriff Anderson in which it sounded more like (I'm paraphrasing here) "It wasn't my screwup" that put alleged perp Christianson - a piece of human trash for whom being eaten by mice is too good - in a cell with a guy with absolutely no history of violent behavior. Between the lines; "I followed procedure", and "it's not policy to need to know who is in the pokey for what".

Procedure and policy; they exist primarily so that people don't have to think (not always a bad thing; a family fire drill helps the kids get out of the house without thinking). They also exist to cover peoples' asses.

Disgraceful.

Agents Provocateurs

Captain Ed notes an apparent DFL scam to foist an illegal contribution on John Kline:

According to [Kline volunteer Diana] Bratlie, Bailey was initially rebuffed when he showed up at Kline's district office in Burnsville asking to make a cash contribution. Bailey was reportedly directed to Kline's campaign office in the same building, where he met with Bratlie.

In her letter, Bratlie said Bailey "was clearly trying to hide his identity" and then "began to withdraw cash to make a campaign donation."

Bratlie says she told Bailey that Kline's campaign does not accept cash donations, and he left.

I note this story because, at first blush, it seems to be straight from a (probably) unwritten DFL playbook; use DFL operatives to send ethically-squishy-looking contributions that can then be publicized as GOP ethical violations.

In October 2002, as I noted in a five part series I wrote about Mike Hatch and the American Bankers and Insurance scandal, this would appear to be nothing new for the DFL; have a "neutral" party send a fishy donation to the GOP.

Here's how it went down in 2002, according to an interview I conducted with then-MNGOP chair Ron Eibensteiner:

In August of 2002, says Eibensteiner, someone began calling the state GOP office, wanting to make a donation to the Pawlenty campaign "This guy calls, and says he wants to give $15,000 to Pawlenty. He says "I want to make a corporate contribution "We said "No, you can't do that!" says Eibensteiner. "My staff tells me this guy keeps insisting; We gave him the address for the RNSEC. But when the check came, it was addressed to the Minnesota Republican Party." After that, Eibensteiner says, staffers sent the $10,000 check to the RNSEC office in Washington. And that's it!", Eibensteiner concluded.

The "guy," according to Eibensteiner, was Ron Jerich.

Ron Jerich, of course, is an uber-lobbyist who's worked for candidates of all stripes - but in 2002, he was most noted for working with DFLers.

And how did it go down? According to Mike Hatch's testimony recorded a Legislative Auditor's report

That morning, I went over the Ron Jerich's home. He was acting as a host for a number of people who were door knocking for ... Senator [Jim] Metzen, and Representative Pugh. And when you do these door knocks, you show up and they hand you a map and a bunch of literature, and you drive out and knock on doors...And usually beforehand, the host...or hostess will have coffee and orange juice and some donuts. And which Val Jerich [Ron Jerich's wife] did have, what I recall was quite a spread.
In other words, a fairly typical campaign-season literature drop...And I was drinking coffee, talking to Ron Jerich, and noticed...We were in his office talking. And there was a bust of Ronald Regan (sic) on his desk. And I said, gee, that's an interesting bust. Why have you got Ronald Regan (sic)? And he said he just got it from the Republican Party for a ten thousand dollar contribution. I asked him why were you making a ten thousand dollar contribution, and he said that he had been retained by American Bankers Insurance Company...I said, well, what do you mean, the company? I mean, was it an officer of the company? Was it you? How did you...? And he said no, the company made the contributions. I said, well, how did they do that? And he said...and I said, more out of curiosity, how did you make a corporate contribution?

The thank-you letter - which the Legislative Auditor determined was an automated letter sent from the MNGOP office - just happened to wind up on Ron Jerich's table; Mike Hatch just happened to pick it up, and just happened to use it three months later to strongarm Pawlenty's Commerce Commissioner into coughing up political swag for Hatch's cronies, and to stir up a tempest-in-a-teapot "scandal" that ended up backfiring on Hatch (albeit not in the media, which dropped the story the moment the focus turned to Hatch).

So let's go over the story:

• Stranger comes in with a pile of money they want to contribute illegally
• GOP tells them "no thanks".
• Stranger is exposed as a DFL operative

The Minnesota GOP doesn't need crooks in its ranks; the DFL seem happy to provide them all.

With God On Our Side, Part III

A friend of mine emailed me the NYTimes piece about the Reverend Gregory Boyd, the Maplewood minister who rankled his congregation by removing overtly-"Republican" references from his services and church.

I wasn't quite sure how to react. On the one hand, I am, myself, uncomfortable with excessive politics in church (even though my faith drives my politics); while my faith leads me to what I think is a fairly obvious conclusion when it comes to politics, I am uncomfortable seeing the pulpit used for temporal politics.

It's the kind of story that will elicit tittering from the left, and outrage from some on the right - and the Strib certainly got a lot of mileage out of the story.

The author, NYTimes Religion beat reporter Laurie Goodstein, is also not known as a friend to traditional religion or, for that matter, Republicans - a point that virtually every commentary I've seen on this issue has skipped wholesale. Not that I necessarily believe that a writer's biases are the dispositive factor about a piece like this - but I notice that the NYTimes (and most of the mainstream media) coverage of evangelical politics is either sketchy or marinaded in stereotypes.

So what about the article?

Let's look:

Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.

The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

On the one hand, I applaud; I go to church to focus on things far beyond this world; while I can live with being hectored about temporal issues, I don't like it much.

But make no mistake - I take what I learn in church out into the world with me. My faith is right there behind my politics.

And so while I don't mind the gay marriage rally announcements and politicians being banished from the pulpit, there are some motivations worth questioning here. Boyd's or Goodstein's.

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

"Give up moralizing on sexual issues?"

Let's leave larger matters of theology aside; ignore for a moment the bits about the conundrum of Christians and war; defer talking about believers and nationalism (which brings up issues over which I'm genuinely ambivalent. For what reason does a church exist if not to "moralize" - to draw a line in the world's moral sand? And how is drawing that moral line - for those who choose or are drawn to belief - "losing the cross"?

I have to wonder if Ms. Goodstein isn't editorializing between the lines here: would Rev. Boyd's story have seen the light of day (as far as the NYTimes is concerned) had he merely softpedaled overt politics - or, given this next part, if she isn't exaggerating parts of his stance:

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal.

Whatever. The consequences of Rev. Boyd's stance are obvious:

The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.

“Most of my friends are believers,” said Shannon Staiger, a psychotherapist and church member, “and they think if you’re a believer, you’ll vote for Bush. And it’s scary to go against that.”

(Side note: "Scary". It's a term that I'm looking forward to seeing cashiered from the English language. I'm growing sick to death of people (of all political stripes, although it's most prevalent on the left) who think other peoples' expression of belief, political or religious, is "scary". Belief in anything requires you to put a piece of yourself out there, which is itself "scary"; nothing can be "scary"ier on its face than faith in God itself. Belief itself - in whatever - requires a thicker skin. Quit being scared, people).

Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical’s Lament.”

And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church,” which is based on his sermons.

“There is a lot of discontent brewing,” said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the “emerging church,” which is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

My discomfort with overt politics in church is a matter of repeated record.

And yet for many people, the values that ones' faith calls for are similar to the ones that they express politically because - you know where this is going, don't you? - their faith drives their politics. Despite "books" on the subject, the fact is that evangelicals are overwhelmingly right-of-center (whatever their churches' approaches to politics from the pulpit - and, by the way, evangelical churches are not only not monolithically Republican, but far from unanimous showcasing Republican messages from the pulpit.

Does Ms. Goodstein note this? Ever?

Or the fact that while the "emerging church" is generating heat from the top - from theologians and ministers who do things like write books on the subject, or can declaim from the pulpit and be heard, that the Christian Church in America in a broad sense (not just evangelicals) is reacting the same way Reverand Boyd's congregation aqt Wooddale has? Goodstein n otes that Wooddale Church has lost 1,000 members for not being "conservative enough" for some of its members; the larger story is that the liberal wings of the Episcopal, Lutheran, Catholic and other churches have been hemorraging members for a generation or two, losing them to the evangelical, "conservative-friendly" churches like Boyd's.

Perhaps it's not so much that people want their politics in church, as that they want their church not to repudiate the politics that so many of these people got from their faith. If they don't want their church to proclaim the US a Christian nation, at least they'd like to have the good wrought upon the nation by Christianity - and Christians like them - acknowledged rather than treated as a stealth perversion.

“More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

Submitted for your approval: The evangelical identity is not dominated by the religious right; the religious right is dominated by an evangelical identity.

And despite the best wishes of the "emerging church", or those whose "best case" vision of mainstream Christianity looks a lot more like Unitarianism than what most of the Christian Street would see, the bulk of the average worshippers in the pews are, at least to one extent or another, conservative on at least some of the major wedge issues, if not in their party politics; the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, regarded as a liberal church (with a General Assembly that on a bad day could pass for the Minneapolis City Council) was forced to abandon its plan to divest from Israel by an unexpected (!) groundswell of support for the Jewish state.

And this was from a "liberal" denomination.

Let's go back to Rev. Boyd:

Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board, but his words left some in his congregation stunned. Some said that he was disrespecting President Bush and the military, that he was soft on abortion or telling them not to vote.

“When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker,” said William Berggren, a lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years ago. “But we totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep.”

One question unanswered in Ms. Goodstein's column; how did this congregation full of staunch Republicans even end up in Rev. Boyd's church in the first place?

Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads a church that occupies a squat block-long building that was once a home improvement chain store.

The church grew from 40 members in 12 years, based in no small part on Mr. Boyd’s draw as an electrifying preacher who stuck closely to Scripture. He has degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, and he taught theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created a controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own denomination, the Baptist General Conference, mounted an effort to evict Mr. Boyd from the denomination and his teaching post, but he won that battle.

He is known among evangelicals for a bestselling book, “Letters From a Skeptic,” based on correspondence with his father, a leftist union organizer and a lifelong agnostic — an exchange that eventually persuaded his father to embrace Christianity.

Mr. Boyd said he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critique of the Republican Party or the religious right. He refuses to share his party affiliation, or whether he has one, for that reason. He said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry.”Another side note: It's here that the mainstream media pays the wages of the sin of its longstanding ideological slant. The same newspaper that says Reverend Boyd is non-partisan is the same one that notes conservatism as "extreme" and "partisan", while considering the left "moderate"; we don't know if this portrayal of Boyd is accurate. It might be, but I dont' trust Goodstein to tell us.

Let's take it at grudging face value for now. Boyd - no, Goodstein - notes this extreme, borderline-noxious example of the hijacking of the pulpit...:

He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

“I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’ ” he said in an interview.

Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year for a “freedom celebration.” Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending “your hard-earned money” [Why the scare quotes? -- Ed] on good causes.

The juxtaposition of the fighter planes and the cross is dramatic, and noxious even to me.

And I think Ms. Goodstein knows that, and wrote it fully aware of its impact.

Now, picture a similar scene; a megachurch projecting the image of a couple of gay guys exchanging wedding rings, and a woman prepping for an abortion, over the cross. That would generate a response, no?

Of course.

In the world of Laurie Goodstein - and her target demo, in an area where faith has shallower roots, statistically, than in most of the US - the faithful should be repulsed by the juxtaposition of patriotic imagery and faith more than that of the gay wedding and the abortion - even though nationalism isn't really much of a topic in the Bible (let's assume we accept the Bible as the basis for Christian belief, for argument's sake), while marriage and murder are.

Personal taste might bid some Christians to eschew overt patriotism in church. I"m one of them. But the other images directly attack key institutions of the faith.

Without making value judgements of my own, tell me - why does Laurie Goodstein suppose Rev. Boyd lost 20% of his congregation?

In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek “power over” others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

Question for Rev. Boyd: what is a committed Christian to do? Leave their party at the door? Or leave their faith outside the polling place, excise it from their civic life, pretend to be an atheist whenever any civic issue that might involve non-Christians comes up?

The former, I can do - have done, many times.

The latter is just plain silly. Nobody asks gays, Afro-Americans, or the handicapped to leave their identities out of their politics.

And while I started out the story as somewhat sympathetic to Rev. Boyd's stance, his assumption that I - we - seek "theocracy" is nothing short of insulting - on a par with "JFK can't be a good American and a good Catholic at the same time", to pick an example that American learned to chuckle in embarassment over nearly 50 years ago.

Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

“Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

"Perceived" violations?

I'm starting to see why Rev. Boyd had some problems.

Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than 50 staff members were laid off, he said.

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers...In the end, those who left tended to be white, middle-class suburbanites, church staff members said. In their place, the church has added more members who live in the surrounding community — African-Americans, Hispanics and Hmong immigrants from Laos.

Which is fine - leaving out the value-judgement inherent in Ms. Goodstein's inclusion of this factoid. But Goodstein comes to the crux next:

His congregation of about 4,000 is still digesting his message. Mr. Boyd arranged a forum on a recent Wednesday night to allow members to sound off on his new book. The reception was warm, but many of the 56 questions submitted in writing were pointed: Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent? Are you saying Christians should not join the military? How can Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden? Didn’t the church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?

One woman asked: “So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?”

Mr. Boyd responded: “I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.”

I'd be willing to meet Rev. Boyd halfway on this; a good person doesn't have to be a Christian.

But Rev. Boyd - and/or perhaps Ms. Goodstein - are doing the most overt label-slapping in this piece;

• Christians who dare to express their faith through politics are inherently a danger
• They are inevitably (so it seems, since no other alternative is presented), er, hell-bent on theocracy and domination.

It's a prejudice - a conceit - that the left that Laurie Goodstein represents, about a belief that exists only on a radical fringe, a part of American Christianity that nevertheless obsesses the likes of Laurie Goldstein. And like most such prejudices, it's wrong and ignorant.

Wrong and ignorant. They're two words that brush up against the idea of beating evangelicals over the head with conservatism...

...and smack Laurie Goodstein's article full in the jaw.

I remain ambivalent about mixing nationalism and faith. Laurie Goodstein's article gives me no reason to think about that issue at all - but should further stoke the thesis that the mainstream press at the very least doesn't understand faith, and at the most detests it.

Or at least detests it if it gets all uppity and votes.

I Gotcher Dialog Right Here

Eduardo...:

The school officials told me that I could not resign but that I would be fired if I did not withdraw my request. I said no.

At a compulsory meeting of faculty and students, I was denounced as a traitor and expelled.

I was kept in limbo — unable to leave, unable to work — for two years.

Then, in 1971, security forces came to my house. I was charged with ‘vagrancy’ and taken at gunpoint to a forced labor camp 50 miles outside of Havana.

For six weeks, my wife and children had no idea what had become of me.

I was made to work in the fields from dawn to dusk. We had little food and what we had was disgusting.

I stole potatoes and corn from the fields and ate them raw.

I ate grass and plant leaves for fiber and vitamins.

When a knife fight broke out in the food line, the man ahead of me was stabbed many times.

In the commotion, I stepped over his body and ate two servings of food.

That was a good day.

..., I'd like you to meet Bob, mushy-left dilettante from Coon Rapids:

Then the revolution came, bringing with it such things as land reform and educational opportunity. Today, Cubans are entitled to a free postsecondary education. Cuba has the highest literacy rate and the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America. It also provides its citizens with a level of medical care that would be the envy of many in this country.

My hope for the Cuban people is that they alone decide the course of their nation after Castro. My fear is that the U.S. government and corporate America will take it upon themselves to fill the gap -- leaving this beautiful island and its dignified inhabitants as a puppet state ripe for political and economic exploitation.

Discuss, please.

Dog Daze

Posting is a bit slow.

The bad news: the laptop is in the shop again. For the fifth time in 16 months.

The good news: There's a year of warranty left.

The bad news: I'm sure I'll need it.

The good news: The vendor has a policy; if the same part goes bad three times under warranty, they exchange the machine. And the mainboard is responsible for two of the five yaks so far.

The bad news: I'm sure they know that, and have an imperative to not find the same problem three times until next August.

Blah.

I'm also beginning to take some steps to fix the blog. Not sure what the problem is; various people have suggested that I shut down the right menu, especially the adserver links. I'm loathe to do that, because without those links, I don't run ads. Blogad income is going to be floating much of my Christmas spending this year, so it's not much of an option.

Hopefully things will be working as, er, advertised soon.

Happy Birthday!

My wife (at the time) went into labor at a promotional event for the station I was working at at the time. It was Monday night.

The contractions started - and stayed about every 15-25 minutes apart for the next 48 hours.

On Wednesday afternoon, August 7, finally, after a couple of sleepless nights, the contractions picked up speed - down to every two minutes. I raced my later-to-be ex-wife to Ramsey County Hospital, went to the maternity ward...

...where the contractions promptly dropped back to ten minutes. The resident - an exceedingly imperious Hindu woman who was clearly not used to answering questions - was adamant; if the contactions were over five minutes, we had to leave. Never mind that five minutes earlier the contractions had seemed damn-near steady. So home we went.

And the minute we walked in the door, the contractions dropped back down to ninety seconds. I slowly, painfully dragged her back down to the hospital.

The fun was just beginning.

The hardcore labor lasted about nine hours. It was all "back labor", which meant I spent the whole time pushing up under her back with both fists as hard as I could. By 3AM my arms were ready to fall off - I can't imagine what it must have like to be her.

Around three, they gave her a shot of morphine, and found me a chair to sleep in. We both crashed for about two hours, and kicked things off again around 5AM - when it all started over again.

By late morning, I was in a miasma of fatigue, my arms burning, my eyes gritty. So out of it, in fact, that it only dawned on me very slowly that the room was getting crowded. From one nurse, we'd jumped to seven doctors and half a dozen RNs. The baby'd gone into fetal distress; they were rushing to get her out before things got serious.

But out she came - and although her first apgar score was low from all the exertion she'd put into getting born (or, perhaps, not being born quite yet), her second, five minutes later, was perfect. They handed her to her mom, and then to me. She was perfect - a shock of red hair (that disappeared in a couple of days), and a tiny little button nose - and, harbinger of her teen years, she was already sleeping again.

That was fifteen years ago, this coming 12:20PM.

So let's recap:

• Delay
• Nobody can get her moving until she darn well wants to...
• Maximum pain and effort getting going
• Late, late, late
• Dramatic finish.

Yep. Nothing's changed.

Happy Birthday, Bun!

In All My Years...

...of being a born-again single, I don't think I ever came across quite like this.

Prize quote:

Can someone prepare for me some sort of chart or graph containing the following information: For every day of the week and for every possibly nightlifey location on each of those days, a rating of the probability that a goofy looking dude and his goofy looking friend could wander into the scene and begin making out with some slutty collegey-looking babes with minimal effort. I assume dance clubs would rank highly on this list of places, so a list for each day of the week of which ones are the most populated and the most meatmarkety would be helpful.

I don't mean to request information on legitimately trashy girls who are on drugs or are otherwise exceedingly ghetto. I'd like the girls to have sort of a collegey or suburban feel.

Bonus points for locations where the girls are both hot and slutty and yet also smart enough to be attracted to my "google" t-shirt.

At least, I hope I never came across like that.

Please?

I Hate My Blog

No, not the concept, or the content, or the process of getting up at 5AM to write the stuff most every day. I love that part of my blog.

No, it's the technical side. It's driving me nuts.

Some of you have noticed - the blog frequently cuts off in mid-load. Sometimes it gets down through a few days' worth of posts before it yaks (which means the right menu is gone). Sometimes it gets an article or two into it. And once in a while - like, a couple of times a day - it will cut off at the very beginning, so a blank white page loads.

Hate. Hate hate hate.

I've been trying to get WordPress installed for the past few weeks. Nothing seems to work. Now, blog tools are for the most part designed by and for people who love tinkering around with perl scripts and database definitions and bla bla di blaah-di bla. I'm not one of them. It's half the reason I haven't installed Linux on my home computers; too much futzing around, which would be fine if I genuinely enjoyed doing that, but I hate it.

So here's the deal; if there's a blogger out there who can give me a hand and get WB actually running on my server, I'll give your blog a week's worth of fawning pluggage (not that it doesn't deserve it anyway - truly - but I'm just saying, you got the quid, I got the pro quo.

All The Weight Of The World

When it comes to gun owners' rights, Nick Coleman is neither fish nor fowl. He's taken his little thwacks at gun owners - his classically-bad 1980's column where he fired an AK47 and then spent six column inches pinballing between whinging about the moral ramifications of semi-automatic guns and the moral gravity of it all, his endless puff pieces about anti-gun activists - but Doug Grow was always worse. Praise by faint damnation, indeed, but the truth.

I wondered who'd be the first Twin Cities lefty columnist to work the system for a cheap column.

I needn't have.

But along the way, Coleman introduces a few things into the column that I'm amazed to see in the Strib. Coleman is actually relatively reasonable and even-handed on the subject.

I bet Wes Skoglund is gonna have a cow.

Side note: I, for one, will glad when the Strib's current crap...er, crop of copy editors is packed off to the nursing home, looking at the slugline for Coleman's column:

A reluctant gunslinger feels the gravity of his new permit to pack

Gunslinger?

Pack?

It really parodies itself.

Onward to Coleman:

I thought it might be amusing to obtain a permit to carry a handgun, and to write about it on a slow summer news day. But now that I've done it, I'm afraid it doesn't seem so amusing anymore.

Yes, friend, that's a gun permit in my pocket. And on my shoulders? That's the weight of responsibility. No fun at all.

So does this mean that we can look forward to less glib flippancy about what a bunch of irresponsible wastrels we carry activists are?

Because we all have the same sense, too. Legal carry is no joke, it's not fun, and it's no laughing matter.

Coleman's bona-fides:

I have a love-hate thing with guns, but I am not one of those people who think all our problems will end if we melt all the guns into bad sculptures that can be erected as monuments to the politicians who commissioned them. When I was a kid, my dad (who shot a lot of crows while working on a highway crew in northern Minnesota) gave me a single-shot .22 caliber rifle perfect for shooting cans and bottles at the dump. My high school had a rifle range, and, later, I ambushed deer that I made into sausage.

But guns on the street are not recreational. When I drove to Robbinsdale to take a gun permit class at Bill's Gun Shop, I navigated through north Minneapolis, passing a corner where I had seen a murder victim on the sidewalk a few months earlier, as well as a day-care center where bullets have come through the windows. Bad guys have lots of guns. Letting the good guys carry them, too, makes sense.

I had to read that a couple of times.

I guess the fact that nobody edits Coleman has finally benfitted the world. That's right, Nick (and Nick's bosses), it does make sense.

But I hate that it has come to this.

That's a curious phrase.

Why?

In Minnesota, until 1974 - the Minnesota over which Nick's father presided as a very powerful politician, speaker of the House if memory serves - one needed no permit at all to carry a handgun in Minnesota, concealed or otherwise. How did crime then compare to today?

Were people any worse, morally, then than now? And by "people" I mean "law abiding folks who carried firearms for self-defense", by the way...

My instructor...walked me through the law and explained the Color Codes of Awareness.

Usually, he said, we exist in Condition White, oblivious of our surroundings and unconcerned for our safety. In Conditions Yellow and Orange, we become increasingly aware that something is wrong and danger is present. In Condition Red, we are ready for fight or flight. And if we have a gun permit, we are ready to shoot.

But only as a last resort. Sgt. Whaley told me that the smart thing is recognizing and avoiding trouble, not confronting it.

"Learning to shoot is not hard," Sgt. Whaley told me. "This is not about shooting. It's about self-protection. It's about avoiding situations."

Because "situations" come with consequences...State law (statute 609.065) says taking a life is justifiable when "necessary" to prevent "great bodily harm or death" from being inflicted. I have family I would protect at any cost. I can say yes.

But you have a duty to retreat from danger, if possible. You have to avoid voluntarily entering into confrontations. You need to choose non-lethal options, if available. And the threat must be immediate and carry the likelihood of death or great bodily harm.

It boils down to this: "If possible, don't use a gun. Run."

Whatever my criticisms of Coleman, I'm glad that the Strib finally acknowledged the fact that carry permit training is very sobering and useful, and turns out permittees who bely the "packing" and "Gunslinger" BS that their lazy copy editors (and, mostly, columnists) indulge in.

I guess - sound the alarm - I have to compliment Coleman so far.

We got down to the nitty-gritty: To carry a handgun, you must show you can shoot one.

You must shoot 50 rounds at a silhouette of a bad guy, receiving five points for each shot in the kill zone. Twenty shots are taken at a distance of 15 feet from the target, 20 shots from 25 feet, and 10 from 50 feet. Ten shots also must be fired one-handed, and, at each distance, you must re-load after five shots and fire five more within 60 seconds.

I scored 236 out of 250 -- 94 percent. A passing grade is 70 percent. My mom could do it.

Heh. I shot 96% - although as I admitted at the time, Stevie Wonder could have shot eighty. But good effort, Nick.

I still have some choices to make. Should I get a revolver or a pistol? A 9-millimeter, or a .38 Special that loads .357 Magnum rounds, for greater stopping power? I haven't made up my mind. But I'm not in a hurry. My wife might shoot me if I bring home a gun.

She has memorized the statistics about gun owners being more likely to shoot a family member than defend one, and she knows all about the legal guns that get stolen and end up being used in crimes. She really hates guns. And she's an excellent shot.

She's been to gun school, too.

Maybe she needs to go to journalism school. The "statistics" she's "memorized" about "gun owners being more likely to shoot a family member" are twaddle, and were proven so over a decade ago. If you leave out families with criminals, alcoholics, addicts and drug trade workers, and screen out "family members" who are abusing their spouses and "acquaintances" who are drug customers, a law-abiding schmuck like, well, Nick Coleman is about 400 times as likely to deter a crime as to be a victim.

But no matter. Welcome to the club, Nick.

Do you know what people at your newspaper, and people like Wes Skoglund, have been saying about people like us?

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXXIV

It was Thursday, August 7, 1986. The latest battle in the culture war had just been joined.

Some disk jockey somewhere had "back-masked" the theme for the "Mister Ed" show - played it backwards on a turntable or reel-to-reel tape deck. Somehow, "A horse is a horse is a horse of course, unless of course it is the hourse is the famous Mister Ed" turned into "Song to Satan".

Supposedly.

We were on the air that Thursday afternoon, taking calls on the topic. I was screening, Dave Elvin was on the board.

I listened to the purportedly-offending tape.

Mra mra mra mra sheeee ashoooaaaah uh shaaaaaaayn mooooaaaah mra mra mmmmmmmuaaaaa"

I just wasn't hearing it.

This was, of course, during they heyday of the Peters Brothers, Twin Cities-area evangelists whose assaults on satanic influences in rock and roll, movies and other pop culture made them national celebrities. Someone, somewhere in their church, had thought to play the "Mister Ed" theme backwards, found that little snippet of pseudo-scary sound, and made a big stink about it in the media. In a few weeks there'd another controversy, another book, another rumor...

We took a caller.

"Hey, Don - why don't you see if your new theme song has any satanic messages in it?"

Don chuckled. "Yeaaaaah. Good question..."

Dave Elvin didn't need to be told twice. He played the theme song onto a reel to reel tape on an off-air "audition" circuit (a feature on control boards that allows a moderately-talented operator to do two things at the same time). He recorded the song, then stopped the reel recorder, and swapped the reels. The tape was ready to play backwards. I passed the word to Don.

"Ladies and Gentlemen", Don started, "we're now going to investigate our new theme song for satanic messages". Dave rolled the tape.

Nud nud nud ah ma nud nod aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah ma...

Nothing remarkable.

"Oh, yeah", Don chuckled, "I hear something...satanic..." he vamped as the tape played, in the chuckle-y voice he had when something was on the verge of amusing him.

I listened carefully to the tape as Don talked.

Nud nud nud awwwwwwwwwwww, sit on my rod

"Dave!", I yelled. "It said 'sit on my rod'...". I punched the talkback button, into Don's headphones on the air. "Don! It said 'sit on my rod!".

Don chuckled. "We have word that there's a...message..."

Nud nud nud awwwwwwwwwwww, sit on my rod

Don caught it this time.

Don had several levels of laughter. There was his mild chuckle, when someting amused him. There was his explosive chucke - "g-HAAAAAAAAA" - when something caught him by surprise. And then there was the final, highest level; you'd hear a high-pitched wheeze, and then silence punctuated by a high-toned groan as Don struggled to regain control of his rampant funny bone.

We weren't doing much better in the control room. We had a few seconds of dead air, punctuated by Don's wheeze. Then Dave replayed the song again. And we heard it again:

Nud nud nud awwwwwwwwwwww, sit on my rod

And Don broke up again.

It took a few minutes, but Don finally got back on the mike. "Well, there you have it. Bill Kremlinger's Don Vogel theme has a backmasked message!"

Kremlinger called a few minutes later. "You're on to me", he chuckled.

Of course, it was random - Kremlinger's Vogel theme was the lowest-tech piece of "music" ever recorded.

I think of that every time someone swears they found some evil intent in something that someone else says...

Dust

I'm off in North Dakota for the day. Posting will be light until, most likely, later tonight.

I'm up here for some sort of thing involving the ashes of my grandparents; my mom's brother and sister and their spouses are in town, along with my brother and (so I hear) sister. I haven't seen my uncle in about thirty years, so this should be interesting.

I drove up last night after work (and after the squirrel-herding task of getting the kids over to their mom's and getting out of town). I actually enjoyed that part; driving across North Dakota at night is a singular pleasure. Watching the glorious purple/red sunset turn into an indigo sky that covers about 182 degrees above your head is a singular joy. And driving across the darkened prairie, with the scattered lights of farms and the occasional cluster of small towns around you, feels like flying through space, schussing between little galaxies...

More later.

Right Of The Dial

Air America moves to the New York radio equivalent of Siberia:

Next month, it is switching stations - to a weaker AM station, WWRL (1600 AM).

Al Franken and his lefty colleagues are leaving WLIB (1190 AM) apparently because they couldn't come up with enough cash for the owners, former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton and his son, Pierre.

That's gonna leave a mark. The farther right on the dial a station goes, the less range one gets from a given amount of power - an effect that's multiplied in dense urban environments with many radio stations. WWRL has the kind of wattage that AM1280 the Patriot would kill for in the Twin Cities; at 1600KHz in New York, it'll be even more an also-ran than WLIB was.

Oh, yeah - Air America, those guardians of multiculturalism, have knocked another station serving the Afro-Caribbean community off the air by changing WWRL's format.

The Best Music To...

I got this one from Red, natch.

What's a great late night song?
This is going to strike people as being out of character, but when it's 4AM and you're all lovesick and lonely and you're listening to an AM radio, there is no substitute for "Nights In White Satin" by the Moody Blues.

Name 5-10 wistful/bittersweet songs:
I Wish It Would Rain - the Four Tops
Forever - Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul
She Said - the Beatles
Wild Horses - the Rolling Stones
Be My Friend - Iron City Houserockers
Big Man In Town - The Four Seasons
Here Comes a Regular - The Replacements
Dover Beach - The Bangles

The 4 Best Songs Ever Written: I, like Sheila, will discount classical. I'll also count only the rock and roll era...
Calvary Cross - Richard Thompson
Darkness on the Edge of Town - Springsteen
God Only Knows - Beach Boys
Mohammed's Radio - Warren Zevon

3 Current Favorite Songs:
Do you mean favorite current songs? Or songs that I'm humming the most?
I don't have many favorite current songs...

Classic Early Evening Drinking Music:
It's A Long Way To The Top - AC/DC
Living After Midnight - Judas Priest

3 All Time Faves That Never Get Old To You
Even The Losers - Tom Petty
Bye Bye Love - The Cars
Little Mascara - The Replacements

Song You Want (or did) To Play At Your Wedding:
I have not a clue.

4 Records You Really Dug from 2005
Like Sheila, I have no idea what songs came from what years anymore.
"Low" by Kelly Clarkson (but I"ll bet that was like '03, wasn't it?)

Good Angry Songs:
I'll go along with Sheila on Father of Mine by Everclear and Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham
Not Ready To Make Nice - Dixie Chicks. Yeah, their politics are puerile and facile, but they are mighty good at what they do do well...
Bodies - Sex Pistols
Clampdown - the Clash
Marching On - The Alarm
I Wanna Destroy You - The Soft Boys

One of Your Favorite Lyrics:
Just one? Sheesh. So many candidates.

Here's one: On Great Northern Avenue somebody's playing
"Strawberry Fields" on the Radio. I dunno what it means.
It's hot out and sticky, and all I can figure is it's
something about growing up, and something about dreams.
It's one train pulls in, another pulls out.
The rails pull 'em together and send 'em on their way.
The old men on the bench spit into their coke bottles and
talk about how things have gone downhill since war 'til today.

They been here forever - I bet you they'd say

(Sha na na na) on Great Northern Avenue
The rails sing out "Danger"
The train it's waiting for me
Nothing ever changes.

On Great Northern Avenue it's me and my friends, on the
front porch of my dad's place, sittin' on the steps.
Got a six-pack between us and we're getting kinda itchy,
trying to figure out what we're gonna do next.
It's Friday on Great Northern, and they've rolled up the sidewalks, and we're
looking for another human face, to show 'em what we got.
The old men on the bench spit their chaw in the bottle, and yell
"Hey, kid - either sh*t or get off the pot!"

That's all I know. It's a small small world...

(Sha na na na) on Great Northern Avenue
The rails sing out "Danger"
The train it's waiting for me
Nothing ever changes.

On Great Northern, you can still see the stars,
but you can't hear your thinking when the train horn blows so loud.
On Great Northern, you can be a very big fish,
in a very small pond...

Great Northern turns into a highway.
The highway runs a thousand miles down to the sea,
past a city that's open all night long, where
I don't have to tell anybody I'm me.
On Great Northern tonight we'll be driving 'til morning,
driving 'round in circles, we don't even care.
On Great Northern you can watch the grass growing old.
You can see the end of the world from there.

And I know I'd be something, if I just wasn't there...

(Sha na na na) on Great Northern Avenue
The rails sing out "Danger"
The train it's waiting for me
Nothing ever changes.5 Cover Songs Arguably Better Than the Original:
Raspberry Beret - Hindu Love Gods
I Am, I Said - Killdozer
Walk Away Renee - Four Tops (this is not arguable)

Ironic Song to Brutally Murder Someone to in a movie:
Kiss Me - Sixpence None The Richer
Thank You - Dido
Great Dance Song You Maybe Never Realized Was a Great Dance song Back in the Day:
Jive Talking - Bee Gees
Hush - Deep Purple
Take Me To The River - Talking Heads

Good Albums To Workout To:
Never Mind The Bollocks, It's The Sex Pistols
The Ramones
The Clash's first album.

Good Album to Clean The House To:
Again, Never Mind the Bollocks. It's one of very few albums to which I can get into the cleaning mood.

Good Dining Music:
I have no idea!

Good Album To Have Sex To:
"Controversy" by Prince.
"Electric Ladyland", Hendrix
And, oddly enough, the single "I Need Love" by Sixpence None The Richer. Go figure.

A Good Album To Put You In the Mood (that is NOT Sade, Marvin Gaye or Barry White):
The Sam and Dave anthology.

Good Album To Sleep To:
I never sleep to music.

5 Good Rock Songs That You Can Dance To:
Like, Rock and Roll used to be all about dancing. "Rock", of course, was not. There are a zillion rock and roll songs to dance to, from "Jailhouse Rock" through "Pink Cadillac" to "Ain't Nothin' But A Houseparty". But if you want "rock", I'll give you rock.
Rock and Roll - Led Zeppelin
Run Like Hell - Pink Floyd (!)
Hush - Deep Purple
Long Live Rock - the Who
Rock and Roll All Night - Kiss

Song That Is Too Damn Sad:
End Of The Rainbow - Richard Thompson
To Daddy - Emmylou Harris

Great Love Song:
Beat The Retreat - Richard Thompson
Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris

An Album Full of Tenderness:
The Wind - Warren Zevon

Song To An Ex That Isn't Meanspirited:
Sandy - Springsteen

Song To An Ex That Is Kinda Meanspirited:
Already Gone - Eagles.

Song to Listen to While in The Country Looking at Stars:
Helpless - Neil Young.

Song to lose your Mind to:
Ah Leah! - Donnie Iris
Street Fighting Man - Rolling Stones (but especially Springsteen's version)

Song To Cry In Your Pillow to:
She'll Always Be 19 - Jimmy Kelly and the Choirboys
Jenny - Richard Thompson

Songs That Make You Feel Amped and Inspired:
Death Or Glory - The Clash

Great Semi-Obscure B-side:
Gotta be "Be True", the B-side of "Hungry Heart" by Springsteen. Amazing song.

Song That Makes You Miss Your Mom:
The "Mary Poppins" soundtrack (ironic) or anything from the movie "Doctor Zhivago".

That's Baby Makin' Music (No, Really):
Too many R'nB classics to name.

Criminally Underrated Band That Didn't Get Attention and Then Broke Up:
Too many to count - but the Iron City Houserockers were the best example.

Best Fuck You I Am a Teenager in Pain Song:
Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran et al.

Feel No Shame: Great Current Pop Songs:
Low - Kelly Clarkson. Can't say how much I love that song.

Album No One Would Expect You To Love:
I love so much different stuff, it's hard to say. Maybe a couple of Dixie Chicks albums.

Album No One Would Expect You To Dislike:
Red said it best: "I'm not wacky about most Jackson Browne. I love one or two of his songs - but the rest? No. This would probably surprise (and maybe hurt) some." Ditto.

My apathy toward Pink Floyd (except for the first half of "The Wall") probably counts.

Album No One Would Expect You To Really Know:
Diana Ross and the Supremes - Anthology

Emo Album You Actually Like:
Dunno the album. My daughter owns it, and it has one good song on it. "All American Rejects", I think. That's emo, right? Isn't it? Pfft. Who cares.

Good, But Overrated Cause Of Indie Revisionism:
That whole "Swing" revival a couple of years ago. Squirrel Nut Zippers? Cherry Poppin' Daddies? Brian Setzer Orchestra? Feh.

5 Desert Island Discs off the top of your head (30 sec clock):
Men Without Women - Little Steven
Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce
Unforgettable Fire - U2
The Crossing - Big Country
Roses In The Snow - Emmylou Harris

3 Contemporary Artists That Were Your Faves 10 Years Ago:
Hard to say. I wasn't in a position to pay much attention to music 10 years ago. Probably Gin Blossoms, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls...

Music That Makes You Feel Sophisticated:
Besides classical? Roxy Music, and any old Richard Thompson stuff (like when he was still married to Linda)

Fave Electronic Record You Own:
Building the Heathkit Model 50 PA Amplifier

Fave Hip-Hop Record You Own:
It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back - Public Enemy

Hip-Hop Song You Know All the Lyrics Too:
Jump Around - House of Pain
Cold Lampin' With Flavor - Public Enemy
Bring Tha Noize - Public Enemy
A Bitch Iz A Bitch - NWA
Straight Outta Compton - NWA

Random Album You Loved In High School But Are Afraid To Admit It:
Rocky Mountain High - John Denver. At least Sheila can relate.

Album You May Have Listened To More In Highschool than Any Other Album:
Who's Next - The Who. Millions of times.

If You Could Enter A Wrestling Ring to a Song It Would Be:
There's several piaobreachd (Scottish classical) bagpipe songs - martial thumper songs - that make me want to shred sheet metal in my teeth. One in particular whose name I don't remember (it's Scots Gaelic, so good luck), but many will do.

Album To Clear A Room With:
Dunno, but when I worked in bars, I used to kick "Theme from Flipper" to clear the floor at closing time.

New Day Rising

Saturday on the NARN is going to be a big one, for several reasons.

To kick things off, as Ed noted earlier today, he and King I will be moving our show to the 9 to 11AM slot - which is great, since there are more listeners and we get some of our Saturday back...

And we have just crawling with great stuff tomorrow:

• In the 9AM hour we'll be talking with Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, wife of the late Steven Vincent. She'll talk about Steven's work, her life since his murder, and the Steven Vincent Foundation she now leads.

  In the 10AM hour we'll be talking with State Senator and District Six congressional candidate Michele Bachmann. She's in one of the hottest, most-scrutinized races in the country, she's going to be facing the full brunt of the DFL machine (what, like Wild Wendy or Colleen Rowley have a chance?) this fall.

Turn on, tune in, call up!

Steven Vincent - 8/2/05

It was a year ago today that Steven Vincent died, murdered by islamofascist thugs in Basra, Iraq.

The Northern Alliance interviewed Vincent twice, including one that may have been his last radio interview before leaving the US for the last time - King had the definitive record of the talk. He was a fascinating interview; a lifelong liberal New York Democrat who became a terrorhawk while watching the towers fall. He was nobody's dogmatist; he was critical of the administration's approach to Iraq in many ways, but supported the liberation and the war on terror.

He was a genuinely independent voice and a keen mind with an uncanny ability to dive into a strange culture and come up with little bits of the truth that you'd never notice otherwise.

He's greatly missed.

Read Kesher Talk for an ongoing tribute to Vincent.

With God On Our Side, Part II

Commenter "Scott" left an excellent summation of the dilemma I, along with many other people of faith of both political stripes, face:

The problem with religion and politics is that both reside in some essential aspect of our being. The more that a person cares about one, the more likely it is that they will also care about the other. Politically liberal folk will generally drift to less rigorous faiths, or deny the faith completely. Politically conservative folk will drift to more conservative faith. And vice versa. A person's religious convictions will generally influence their political thought...The political choices for a Christian are pretty well defined along this line. How does a person who accepts biblical morality vote for platforms that want constitutional protection for every perversion known to man (hyperbole intended.)? And how does a biblical oriented person accept a foreign policy that refuses to confront, or at least recognize, that Communism or the current Islamic terrorism is determined to destroy us because we are Christians?

I agree.

And faith - my own, as well as in a larger sense - does affect where we fit in this world.

But I'd like to think it's an individual thing.

As I mentioned Monday, I am:

• A Christian, who has decided to remain...
• A member of the Presbyterian denomination, for theological rather than social or political reasons, and...
• Uncomfortable with mixing politics and faith - more so with mixing politics into faith - even though I am...
• Someone whose faith was a key part of becoming a conservative in the first place - ironically and perhaps counter-intuitively, more on the fiscal and foreign-policy sides than in terms of social conservatism, although I am a conservative libertarian on social issues.

The conundrum reared its head this past Easter. I took the kids to a large Presbyterian congregation in Saint Paul - one I've attended several times, although opted not to join, partly for logistical reasons, and partly...

...well, we'll get to that.

The church has a new paster ("new" since the last time I'd attended, anyway), and this was the first time I'd heard him preach. That's almost always a pleasure in the Presbyterian church, by the way; among mainline Protestant churches, the Presbyterians seem to put the most emphasis on having sermons and scripture messages that are both intellectually engaging and well-delivered. What can I say - Dad was a speech teacher. I give speaker points. I've never known a denomination to draw so many excellent orators who also engage the brain of the thinking, curious believer. I say this to separate them from the preaching of the charismatic, spirit-heavy Evangelical churches; Mac Hammond at the Living word megachurch is a master at this, by the way; mesmerising, intense, mixing judicious humor in with the fire, brimstone and salvation. The four times I saw Hammond preach, it felt like spiritual Chinese food; I left feeling good, but not...quite...full. There's an intellectual satisfaction to a good Presbyterian sermon that has no equivalent, for me, in any other denomination. Your mileage, of course, may vary, but that's what I'm down to after thirty years of looking.

The new minister'd done a great jobs with some things. The once-anemic choir was superb. His predecessor had used, among other things, Powerpoint for some of his sermon points - which, to me, is a lot like incorporating goats heads. Anyway, the slides were gone.

One thing that remained was a heavy-duty slathering of politics. The new minister poured it on, in spots - taking time in the sermon, the congregational prayers and his other comments to take stabs at not just the Iraq war, but at tax cuts and "get-tough" sentencing guidelines.

The Assistant Pastor - a dour, frizzy woman who'd been at the church for almost a decade if memory serves - stepped it up, using her pulpit during the Scripture reading to attack the war and, along the way, its supporters.

I sat with my kids, and thought - "How badly do I want to have to defend my political beliefs - which I try to keep more or less separate from my spiritual life, yet which are also informed by them - while trying to worship and find some sort of fellowship with God? For that matter, how much do I want to have a spiritual pastor (in the original Latin meaning of the term) who's going to actively undercut what I teach them about The World at home? Don't I have enough headaches dealing with that in the school system". It's not like dissent threatens me - if political differences bothered me, I'd never visit my mother, for crying out loud. But is there a reason for actively assaulting, mathematically, at least a third of your potential flock?

I sent the pastor an email with those concerns in it (which currently exists only on my broken home laptop).

The pastor - who will remain unnamed, along with his church - responded.

Thanks for your thoughtful email.
Sorry it has taken me so long to get unburied from an Easter backlog.

My sense is that we have a pretty strong contrast in how we understand the connections between faith and politics. Rather than argue my case that political
issues belong in the pulpit (though not the naked partisanship that characterizes so much of our civil discourse these days), I will simply acknowledge that we do talk about the political events and issues that effect people's lives.

Fair enough...

...except that the discussion itself was "nakedly partisan"; Iraq bad; taxes good.

...I believe part of the role of the church is to bring people together on important issues for respectful dialogue, education and action. (O.k. I am heading into making my argument :)

Right. Absolutely no argument there. None at all.

I'll leave aside whether the presentation of the issues in the Easter service was "respectful" or "educational"; it seemed to be given more as a statement of incontrovertible fact, if you're a believer. And again, I'm not one who shies away from a good debate; I mixed it up but good with at least a couple of former pastors on a variety of issues, and everyone came away the better for it.

And it's not like I can blame the guy for working the room; among the congregants are a number of very prominent DFL activists, people who ooze and froth politics from every pore.

So church supposed to be a feel-good pep rally for the politically-obsessed?

If so, fine.

It just didn't seem as much like an Easter service as mutual reinforcement - a political benediction, if you will.

And I don't even like it when I'm the one being mutually reinforced in church.

Of which more on Friday.

Everything But Sausage

Lisa Vincent - widow of Steven Vincent, the freelance journalist who was murdered a year ago by Islamonazi insurgents - is sending pizza and approval to the Israeli Defense Forces:

To honor and remember my beloved husband Steven Vincent, the freelance journalist kidnapped and murdered by Islamic fundamentalist thugs in Basra, Iraq on August 2, 2005, I send these pizzas as a tribute to your bravery, courage and dedication to the fight to rid the world of such monsters.

Steven adored pizza, and would have completely approved of the IDF response to Hezbollah's evil, so I thought this was the perfect tribute to both him and you. God bless you all, and may He keep you safe. Hope you enjoy the pizzas

She sent the 'za via Pizzaidf.org, which has been delivering pizza to the IDF for a few years now.

Vincent was a two-time guest on the NARN, one of the best author interviews we ever had. More later.

To Whomever Said...

...that I look like CNBC's Jim Cramer...

...my daughter agrees.

We were watching "Mad Money" the other night, and she said...well, that it was me.

Too weird.

Music Review

I loved Tapes 'n Tapes the first time I heard them...

...when there were called Something Fierce.

No, wait. I hated Something Fierce.

In fact, except for Diet of Worms, I think I've hated every band ever to come from St. Olaf College.

By the way - when at Twin Cities' rockcrit calls lyrics "elliptical", that's usually code for "badly, lazily, self-indulgently-written".

Never mind.

If Left-Wing Bloggers Were NYTimes Photo Editors

Chuck Olson of Blogumentary and The People's Patriotic Blogging Collective New Patriot takes a swipe at conservative bloggers.

Now, I've met Chuck a couple of times. Nice enough guy. His take on conservatives as photo editors is as subtle as a Serbian jazz combo, but like a lot of leftybloggers he's really not such a bad guy.

But the photo-editor bit? Well, in the interest of equal time...

When Charles "Little Green Footballs" Johnson wrote about the NYTimes' infamous photo series of Mahdi insurgents shooting at US troops...:

Incredible courage? Well, far be it for me to question such self-congratulatory enthusiasm, but it seems to me that actual “incredible courage” would have entailed, say, Joao Silva getting word to US troops, or his bumrushing the sniper and beating him unconscious with a heavy telephoto lens.

...Chuck wrote...:

That's right. Apparently, the right wing blogosphere thinks photographs of the enemy are a new development; a morally reprehensible act limited to the New York Times. Also, journalists should now take active part in the war and beat snipers with their weapons of choice (cameras, pens, laptops, etc.) rather than observe or report on events. Do not seek to document or understand - only seek to kill. [I think most of us would settle for journalists remembering what side won't behead them and mount their heads on pikes when the war is over and the "journalists'" use as a propaganda vehicle is exhausted - Ed]

What a sea of dangerously uninformed idiocy.

If a conservative blogger ordered a pizza in the woods and no liberal were there to hear it, would he still be dangerous and uninformed?

Anyway, let's take a shot at Chuck's game.

NY TIMES: U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Yet again, the President has sent US troops into a quagmire while the real enemy, Emperor Hirohito, remains at large.

NY TIMES: Karl Rove.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It burns us! Must kill, my precious...

NY TIMES: Fire in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Fucking tax cuts continue to fucking hurt the "Burned-out American" community.

Maybe if they were fucking selling Yellow Cakes.

Heh. Yellow fucking Cakes.

NY TIMES: "Removal from Gaza...we really feel her feelings."

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Who fucking dressed this girl? A conservative fucking fundamentalist?

NY TIMES: While Marines continued to push deep into a southern part of Falluja where the last elements of Mujahadeen fighters are holed up, four men surrendered saying they were students trying to escape the fight.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Did anyone fucking marandize him?

NY TIMES: Police use water canons to disperse rioters in Place de la Republique in central Paris on March 28, 2006.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: What? There was a Tapes and Tapes show at the Quest, and nobody told me? Douchebags.

NY TIMES: A man refuses to be evacuated from his home in New Orleans without his missing cat.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Oooh, I hope he's a fundamentalist! C'mon! Get him!

NY TIMES: "Life goes on amidst the rubble from the tsunami. Heart-wrenching."

LEFT WING BLOGGER: My parents spent $175,000 sending me to Macalester, and all I got was this lousy sarong.

NY TIMES: Prisoners sleep in cramped positions before being woken up at dawn inside an overcrowded cell in the Maula Prison in Lilongwe, Malawi, where certain cells have as many as 160 prisoners.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Conceptual performance art drives the wingnuts crazy.

Fucking fucking fucking fucking crazy.

NY TIMES: Phan Thi Kim Phuc, center, with her clothes torn off, fleed with other South Vietnamese children after a misdirected aerial napalm attack on June 8, 1972

RIGHTWINGER: More victims of fucking Governor Pawlenty's tax cuts.

NY TIMES: Iraqis chanted anti-American slogans in Falluja yesterday as burned bodies of Americans were suspended on a bridge over the Euphrates River.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: "Heh". That's what Kos said. "Heh".

No, wait. It was "Why does the President hate poor people?" That's it. Kos said it, and nobody says it like Kos. Why DOES the President hate...

No, wait. That wasn't it. What DID Kos say?

Help me here.

LEFT WING BLOGGER: Heh. Fist.

Fist fist fist.

Fist fist fist fist fist fist!

Fist!

Hahaha! Fist!

I could be a leftyblogger!

Well - after I lobotomize myself with a spork...

(joking. I'm a joker, I joke...)

Too Effective

Two weeks ago, the NARN did the annual Patriot Picnic. We drew about 200 people to Boom Island park, across the Mississippi and upstream from downtown Minneapolis. It's a beautiful park, in a beautiful place.

Of course, last year we drew nearly 700 people to a park in Eden Prairie. (The year before, 85 people journeyed to Prescott, Wisconsin for the first event, not counting station staff).

I wondered - why the drop?

The weather played a role, no doubt. The Patriot Thermometer showed 102 degrees at 2:30PM - and it was in the upper nineties in the shade, where the audience sat. I don't care how hardy, or how conservative you are - that's downright unpleasant; that anyone would come to an outdoor event on such a day is, to say the least, flattering.

Of course, Boom Island is a bit remote for some of the Patriot's audience, who tend to be based in the GOP-leaning west and south 'burbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul (where, it goes without saying, our signal is the strongest). And actually finding the park is a bit of a feat; if you're not comfortable navigating the twisty-turny maze of Northeast Minneapolis, it can be a bit of a challenge. I used to live in Nordeast, and it took me a while.

But I think fact that we were in Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis didn't help. The alternative media in the Twin Cities - especially Rambix - has done a great job of publicizing the criminal morass that plagues so much - too much - of Minneapolis.

Maybe too good a job.

Oh, don't get me wrong; Amy Klobuchar is a lousy County Attorney - although to be fair she's only continuing a catch-and-release system that was a national joke twenty years ago. When it comes to leading a city to clean itself up, R.T. Rybak is a nonentity - and it likely wouldn't matter if he weren't, given Minneapolis' weak-mayor, strong-council system that is dominated by special-interest activists, unless he were a Giuliani or Reagan-level leader, which he assuredly is not. And while the average Minneapolis cop on the street is as solidly conscientious as any, the MPD has been plagued with leadership that has reflected - or fled - the city's political leadership.

But one way or another Minneapolis' crime rate has zoomed ahead of that of the rest of Minnesota; despite the bleatings of establishment apologists, cuts in state aid to local police forces affected all of Minnesota relatively equally - but Minneapolis is alone in facing spiralling crime rates.

And yet.

R.T. Rybak caught a lot of flak for saying that most of Minneapolis' murder victims were involved in "high risk lifestyles". It was a dumb remark, sure to inflame those who remembered Tyesha Edwards (killed by a random shot from a piece of gang-banging scum while doing her homework in her family living room), or people killed while out for the evening on Block E or Uptown.

But Rybak was to an extent right; in America today, your odds of meeting a violent end are vastly higher if you're involved in gangs, the drug trade, or other such. If you're not, your odds are vanishingly low - enough so that when someone "beats" the odds, it rates publicity.

Crime in Minneapolis is booming. And yet in much of the city - the parts outside the Near North side, Phillips, and in the forties and above in South Minneapolis - things are fairly normal. Families live. Children play (except for the occasional unfortunate kid whose parents, gobsmacked by the hype, keep them in the house or yard; my block has one set of such unfortunates, three boys whose mother never lets them outside the yard despite the neighborhood's relatively very tranquil nature). People fire up the grill and crack a beer and mow the lawn in Minneapolis, the same as in Minneota or Minnetonka. In the whole inner city, people do...pretty much what they do everywhere else.

In fact, statistically the typical Patriot listener is much more likely to die from being T-boned at an intersection in Plymouth or Eden Prairie or Burnsville than at the wrong end of some gang-banger's gun.

On a statistical basis, what's most likely to get you killed in the next year: (A) living in Israel during the Intifada; (B) living in crime-ridden, inner-city Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh; or (C) living in the bucolic outer suburbs of those cities? The answer is overwhelmingly C. A recent study by University of Virginia professor William H. Lucy found that Americans' migration into sprawling outer suburbs is actually a huge cause of premature death. In the suburbs, you're less likely to be killed by a stranger--unless you count strangers driving cars. Residents of inner-city Houston, for example, face about a 1.5 in 10,000 chance of being killed in the coming year by either a murderous stranger or in an automobile accident. But in the Houston suburb of Montgomery County, residents are 50 percent more likely to die from one of those two causes because the incidence of automobile accidents is so much higher.

Sprawling, auto-dependent suburbs are unhealthy in other ways, too. In such an environment, almost no one walks--and for good reason. In 1999, 4,906 pedestrians died, 873 of them children under 14.

In 2003 - the most recent year available - 169 Minnesotans died of all violent causes. In that same year, 703 Minnesotans died in vehicle accidents.

But what about the children? In 2003, 28 children between 5 and 14 died of all accidental vehicular causes. None died of intentional violence.

Not surprisingly, metro areas marked by sprawling development and a high degree of auto dependency--Orlando, Tampa, West Palm Beach, and Memphis, among others--are the most dangerous regions to walk in.

Quibble about the article and the author if you want; do it elsewhere. Address the statistics first, though. Traffic deaths are measured by deaths per mile driven - and people in the 'burbs drive three times as much per capita than most people in the city. Present company excepted.

Crime in Minneapolis is a travesty; not only should Amy Klobuchar go, but there should be an accounting for the generations of single-party rule that have left the city such a magnet for crime.

But let's keep things in perspective, shall we? You can come to a party in northeast Minneapolis without your flak jacket.

(Although your handgun (and legal carry permit) are a good idea no matter where you are)

Roots of Discontent

Our good friends Ed and Mary Katherine Ham are involved in a fairly crucial fundraising effort. As Ed puts it:

We have selected fourteen Congressional races and four Senate races we see as critical and close enough to warrant organized support from our readers. On our donations page, we give a description of the races and the politics involved. We deliberately avoided races where Republicans either have a large edge or face weak opposition. Each of these races may well come down to the last $100 for campaigning efforts, and winning all eighteen would provide a tremendous boost for conservatives across the nation.

All of these candidates have our unanimous endorsement for their races. We hope that you will join us in supporting these fine candidates, and follow along as we raise money for them.

The Rightroots crew has picked a slate of US House and Senate races around the country that can be fairly deemed "key" and "vital" to retaining GOP control of Congress. Two of them are right here in Minnesota - Michele Bachmann's race in the Sixth, and Mark Kennedy's bid for Senate. It also includes Diane Irey's shot at toppling Jack Murtha, and Tom Keane's drive to get one of New Jersey's senate seats.

Go here to start - please chip loose a couple of bucks for a great political cause.

Remember - this isn't a donation to the Senate leadership which has screwed up so badly in the past year. This is a direct donation to solid conservative candidates that make a difference.

Hope you join me there.

Why Is It...

...that when Republicans act to make Republicans act like...Republicans, by shunning candidates that favor higher taxes, bigger government, porous borders, speech rationing and victim disarmament, we're "imposing purity tests", which is a "bad thing" that "chills dissent from the neocon/fundie/Rovian agenda"...

...but when the Kossacks launch a bit to politically lynch Joe Lieberman for being a relative moderate, it's a good thing?

Conundrum

Decisions, decisions.

The president's hiring of Tony Snow - a talk show host very adept at deflating the pretensions of the DC press corps - is a welcome change in Washington.

Perhaps it's time for Mitt Romney to do the same, in the wake of the "Tar baby" flap.

The decision - which media-deflating wag should he hire?

Should he hire Brian Maloney?

Or perhaps Learned Foot?

It's a tough call. Get on it, Mitt.

Partly Pregnant

In the early days of World War II, George Patton said (I'm paraphrasing here) that the goal of war was to find the enemy and kill him. Fast, brutally, and immediately. To kill as many as you could so fast that the rest of them would climb, shocked, out of their holes and surrender.

Patton is often painted as bloodthirsty - but the fact is he was in charge of taking an army of draftees - civilians with a few months' military training - and leading them into a battle for the world's life. And how do you drag someone from civilian life into a uniform and a chance of being killed, painfully and far from home?

Not by saying "We'll fight until we have a rational solution that everyone, American and Nazi and Japanese militarist, can live with.

The Jerusalem Post pleads for some of that same spirit:

If Israel does not eliminate Hizbullah's terrorist militia within Lebanon, not even the most "robust" international force will be able to do it. The Lebanese army, which Lebanese leaders promise will join Hizbullah in fighting Israeli ground forces, also certainly will not.

This fight is in Israel's hands. If Israel is making clear progress, the US will find a way to support ongoing military activity. If it looks like Israel is not serious or incapable of winning, US support will clearly evaporate, as will Israel's own determination to resist US dictates, however reluctant and wrongheaded.

The job of Israel's political and military leadership is to do what it takes to quickly demonstrate that it has the ability and will to win. Winning does not mean killing some Hizbullah fighters while leaving its leadership and its ability to dominate Lebanon intact.

Israel has a small advantage over America; the mortal nature of its struggle with Islamofascism and its anscestors has been obvious since its independence day, when its neighbors embarked on a six-decade battle to drive it into the sea - although even then many Israelis continue to believe peace is possible, if only they concede enough.

And that's after being attacked more or less constantly for six decades.

In the US, of course, we've been attacked on our own soil twice, with several more strikes overseas. Sad to say, it'll probably take a bunch more attacks before the US really takes this sort of thing seriously.

False Equivalence

Dick Bernard of Woodbury writes a letter to the editor that is a candidate for a Learned Footing:

On Dec. 6, 1941, with war raging around the world, the American people were apparently of no mood to join in -- until Dec. 7.

On Sept. 10, 2001, no war on terror had been declared, and the American people wouldn't have been interested in one.

Then came Sept. 11...Why should the mood be any different for Lebanese, Iraqis or people in other parts of the Arab world against the insane philosophy being exercised by the United States in this post-9/11 world?

Silly Dick.

The reason is that the Islamonazis are like the Japanese that bombed us at Pearl Harbor. They attacked the state of Israel the moment it became independent, and have been attacking the West ever since. It's been 58 years since then, 23 years since they attacked our Marine barracks in Beirut, 13 since their first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center, and five since 9/11. During all but the last five of those years, we - the West and Israel - at various times tried giving the Arabs just about everything they wanted, alternated with punishing specific ghastly trangressions. It wasn't until almost five years ago that the West - or part of it - got serious. It was as if the US waited until 1994 to respond to Pearl Harbor.

You don't bomb or threaten your way to peace; that part is crystal clear. All you are doing is ensuring that your enemy will become stronger and more determined

You also don't ram your enemy's planes into skyscrapers if you want peace.

Oh, wait. They don't want peace.

Sorry, Dick.

End of an Era

Adios, Viking Bar:

"The smoking ban did us in," said Mike Nelson, whose family has owned the bar for all of its 47 years...The Viking had endured a rough reputation over the decades because of occasionally violent incidents, including the stabbing of Nelson's brother, Scott, by a patron in 1996. However, it remained a favorite for blues and folk music fans, thanks in large part to regular Monday gigs by Murphy, his cohort Spider John Koerner and, recently, the Front Porch Swingin' Liquor Pigs.

"I and many other musicians passed out under the pool table," Murphy said. "It's one of the last outposts of West Bank music, and just a legendary bar. It's too bad it has to close."

I never played the Viking, but I spent many a Friday watching one hardscrabble blues or R'nB band playing on their tiny stage in front of their loud, hammered crowds.

Bummer.

They Can Keep Secrets

Screenwriter Mike Armstrong has a list of the secrets the mainstream media have been able to keep - and some they weren't:

Take a look at this list:

• "The Crying Game." Secret not revealed.

• Government phone-tapping program: Secret revealed.

• "The Sixth Sense." Secret not revealed.

• "The Village." Secret not revealed.

• Government banking surveillance program: Secret revealed.

• "The Usual Suspects." Secret not revealed.

• "Million Dollar Baby." Secret not revealed.

Five out of seven times isn't too shabby in my book.

Indeed! And it wasn't always easy!:

Vincent Canby wrote in his New York Times review: "The film's producers have pleaded with reviewers not to reveal important plot twists. ... More from me you will not get." True to his word, Canby took that secret to his grave. Only he and the millions of people who saw the movie knew that the female lead was actually a guy.

So - Hollywood is 5-2 on Armstrong's list...

And the other two times? Well, maybe these newspapers are just trying to ruin the big surprise ending for the terrorists. Is that so wrong?

Well, when you put it that way...

It's nice to know they have their limits.