They Think We're Idiots

I don't mind if people disagree with me, or with policies I believe in. But I do mind if their arguments are completely incoherent. Which brings us to Steve Chapman's op-ed in this morning's Strib. Steve Chapman seems to think...
Posted by Mitch on October 13, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Trust Nobody Official

When counting on government officials for information about emergencies, remember; their first order of business, always, is to keep order, rather than protect you or your family. Earlier this week, Saint Louis Park high school closed down, ostensibly due to...
Posted by Mitch on October 04, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

With Friends Like This...

Jimmy Carter endorses Bush's immigration policy:Former president Carter, a Democrat and frequent critic of President Bush, sees eye-to-eye with him on immigration. ADVERTISEMENT Carter on Wednesday called the Republican president's commitment to immigration reform "quite admirable," saying he agrees with...
Posted by Mitch on May 25, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Overqualified To Write For Kos...

...that's me. Because I can actually write in English and all: English Genius You scored 92% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert! You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You...
Posted by Mitch on April 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

My Father The Steamroller

Like Lileks, I've been catching up on 24, starting with the first season. It's amazing; my son practically pushes me out the door to get to the store for the next installment (I'm up to 4PM, the fourth of the...
Posted by Mitch on April 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (23) | TrackBack

Note To Immigration Protesters

Thanks. Y'all are going to re-unite the GOP yet. (Via Kevin "Eckernet" Ecker....
Posted by Mitch on April 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (56) | TrackBack

Crispy

The Fraters and Rocketman interviewed Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Conservatives, the book and the movement. He obligingly wrote (and the Fraters duly linked) a "Crunchy Conservative Manifesto">Crunchy Conservative Manifesto on NRO. I'm always interested in these things. I figured...
Posted by Mitch on April 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (23) | TrackBack

Southern Accents

The south takes a lot of hits here in Minnesota. To be fair, the South deserves a few shots. Southern culture has a very violent undercurrent to it; parts of the rural south have higher murder rates than the worst...
Posted by Mitch on March 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (29) | TrackBack

Practicing Cultural Sensitivity

The Religious Policeman, a fascinating Saudi expat blog, covers a Saudi response to the Cartoon Crisis:Meanwhile, in a strange land far away, someone has had A GOOD IDEA. The ******-based Foundation for Increasing Islamic Awareness Among Foreign Communities has announced...
Posted by Mitch on February 20, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (41) | TrackBack

I Could Read...

...this sort of stuff all day long, if someone would pay me for it......
Posted by Mitch on January 19, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Blind Fear

I grew up in a little town in North Dakota. I had, probably, the closest thing to a Beaver Cleaver childhood that anyone's had in the past forty years. Doors didn't get locked much, I played around the neighborhood from...
Posted by Mitch on January 16, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (40) | TrackBack

Words of Wisdom

Via Ramblin' Rhodes:I think genital tasering may be in order if you're trying to step out of an airliner in mid-flight for a smoke, or if you're trying to dry a urine-soaked mattress with a hair dryer. You need to...
Posted by Mitch on November 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Market Forces

In his book The Psychology of Everyday Things, Don Norman - who's more or less the father of user-centered design - tells a story about a university that was building some new real estate, and wanted to figure out where...
Posted by Mitch on November 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The New McCarthyism

Deroy Murdock on the ongoing offensive against conservative belief buried in the politicization - call it the Wellstonization - of Rosa Parks' funeral. hen the late Rosa Parks was laid to rest Wednesday at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery, Americans also paid...
Posted by Mitch on November 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Dropped From The Menu

Time to stop drinking cow urine:The agent that causes mad cow disease, scrapie and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk may sometimes be spread through urine, Swiss researchers reported on Thursday. They found that, under certain conditions in mice,...
Posted by Mitch on October 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

What Worships In Vegas...

Sisyphus at Nihilist In Golf Pants is in Vegas, and notes:Many people don’t realize it, but Las Vegas does have Churches. In fact, the Catholic Cathedral of Las Vegas is located right on the strip (near the Wynn casino). Las...
Posted by Mitch on September 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

I Make A Point...

...of never paying attention to celebrity trials. On the day the OJ verdict was delivered, I cloistered myself (along with my co-workers) away from radios, the internet, everything. I was past not caring; I aggressively detested the whole charade to...
Posted by Mitch on June 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Could Be Worse

Democrats like to jape at the Bush healthcare plan; "Pray you don't get sick". Berg's Corollary: Pray you don't get sick in a country with socialized medicine. David Asman on his encounter with Britain's healthcare system:When I covered Latin America...
Posted by Mitch on June 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Ten Million Acres Of Blah

One thing I noticed when I moved to the Twin Cities: suburbs all looked the same. They're all beige, white, or some other innocuous color; not only does a trip through Maple Grove feel like a drive through cubeland, but...
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Note to Duane Patterson

Via whomever runs this blog, I found this piece on Laleh Seddigh, the first Iranian woman auto racer and, now, Iranian national racing champion. Pardon the Powerline-like swerve into cheesecake:...
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Pride and Fear

America is a nation of immigrants. Saint Paul has been an immigrants city more than most, at least in the Midwest. And no immigrants stories affect me more than those of the thousands of H'mong who settled in the Twin...
Posted by Mitch on May 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Gratitude

While at the undisclosed location last Saturday, the PiPress' Mark Yost gave me a heads-up about an article he was working on - a piece about a Dakota County man, a native of the UK, who has spent the last...
Posted by Mitch on May 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Training The Business Process Consultants of the Future!

Because of some odd quirk in my school's tradition, I couldn't get on the speech team until I was a junior in high school. So I spent a year on the debate team. Jay Kisch and I kicked tush at...
Posted by Mitch on May 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Random Inspiration

One of my life's great blessings over the past year has been Dennis Prager's "Happiness Hour". Once a week, Prager takes an hour to talk about the real physical, moral and emotional benefits and implications of making the decision to...
Posted by Mitch on April 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Minimum Rage

I remember minimum wage. Oh, sure - in high school, I made $2.90 an hour. And my first 'real' job out of college, interning at KSTP-AM, paid $3.35 - this, back when my rent was $110 a month, was something...
Posted by Mitch on March 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Language Geeks: Ua Mau Blog Post

I don't believe I've ever encountered an anglo fluent in Tahitian before. Cigarette Smoking Man from Cancer World not only claims to be, but gives a lesson. Cool stuff....
Posted by Mitch on March 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Give Us Your Tired Ethnic Dustups...

Laura Billings, from Thursday's column, on being married to a guy who beats you over the head with "Irish":I was married on St. Patrick's Day eve. The hymn was Irish. Yeats wrote the poem. Little girls in ivory and green...
Posted by Mitch on March 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (23) | TrackBack

Kiss This, I'm Oirish

Patrick Belton is actually Irish. Not "Oirish". The distinction?...
Posted by Mitch on March 17, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Beautiful Despair

There wasn't a lot of music in my house growing up. Dad had learned one song on the piano back during WWII, and was hailed by one of his fellow English teachers as the world's most tone-deaf singer. Mom had...
Posted by Mitch on March 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Stealing Liberal

At the beginning of "Rattle and Hum", as the Edge plays the intro riff to "Helter Skelter", Bono yells "Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles. We're here to steal it back!" Dean Esmay reminds me - it's time...
Posted by Mitch on March 01, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Autopsy

John Leo on why liberalism has become irrelevant to so many Americans:Liberals have been slow to grasp the mainstream reaction to the no-values culture, chalking it up to Karl Rove, sinister fundamentalists, racism, or the stupidity of the American voter....
Posted by Mitch on February 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Die Einzige Sprachpunkt!

When I was liveblogging/broadfisking the Nick Coleman show yesterday, I noted something that, inexplicably, I let slip. It's really the biggest story of the whole adventure....
Posted by Mitch on February 22, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Transformation

Christo's "The Gates" - in which the artist has hung 7,500 orange, er, sheets from trees and poles in Central Park - is billed as a transformation - the "reclamation" of the space. John "J-Po" Podhoretz comments:But there is a...
Posted by Mitch on February 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Beneath Contempt

Are you, like many Minnesotans, tired of having your taxes jacked up endlessly by a legislature that cares more about feeding the state bureaucracy than about your family's bottom line? Did you send a buck or two to the Taxpayer's...
Posted by Mitch on February 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Random Notes to Lefty Commentators

Just a few notes:Lefty Bloggers: I realize that Atrios and Ollie Willis and the giggly fratboys at Pandagon use the term all the time, and that probably gives it the imprimatur of authority that assuages your hive mentality soothes your...
Posted by Mitch on February 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (14) | TrackBack

One False Idea

I was listening to MPR the other day. "All Things Considered" had a bit on a non-profit group that was presenting an "opera" in Fargo, "One False Move". The opera addressed female bullying. "Ironic", I thought....
Posted by Mitch on February 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Quixote

This year is the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote. Let's take a moment to think about that. (Via Red)...
Posted by Mitch on January 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Heart of Redness

Have you ever noticed that the Blue media only decide to portray the Red states as humans, rather than facile stereotypes, after the election? David Von Drehle of the WaPo convoyed through Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, easily steering clear of...
Posted by Mitch on January 17, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Get Happy!

First: The Minnesota left-leaning group blog New Patriot is undergoing an unprecedented surge in activity, managing (among the blog's ten writers) seven posts in four days! Keep it up, guys! (*) Luke Francl is back with a question: Why are...
Posted by Mitch on January 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Men Vs. Mad Avenue

Miss O'Hara has a post today on a subject I've been noodling about getting back into for quite a while:I just saw one of the worst spots of 2004, a Chrysler spot. (The fact that I despise DCX does not...
Posted by Mitch on January 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (63) | TrackBack

Life Ain't Nothing But Benzos and Hos

Stanley Crouch, in the NY Daily News, on a rebellion in the Afro-American media against hip-hop's images of women. The most successful black women's magazine, Essence, is in the middle of a campaign that could have monumental cultural significance. Essence...
Posted by Mitch on January 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Instincts

The people of Sri Lanka were brutalized by the tsunami. The animals, oddly, seem to have rode it out fairy well. This piece in Slate explains why. It's a fascinating story....
Posted by Mitch on December 31, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Gays For Bush

Rich Tafel, former leader of the Log Cabin Republicans, notes that Bush doubled his showing among gays from 2000. He discusses why:Gays who voted for President Bush had a simple logic. They recognized that both candidates opposed gay marriage for...
Posted by Mitch on December 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Delusions of Hauteur

I never much cared for the suburbs; I grew up in rural America, and if I wanna live in a small town, I'll go to a <real one. But I leap to the 'burbs' defense in this piece; the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Posted by Mitch on December 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Unintended Consequences

First things first: Harassment of women is a bad thing. Don't do it. I sure don't. Second things second: the way women get harassed on the street in major cities, especially places like New York and Chicago, is a disgrace....
Posted by Mitch on December 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Leaving Europe

On a continent full of craven one-worlders, the Dutch always were a quiet exception. In 1983, I went with my college choir to Europe. We learned one national anthem; Wilhelmus Van Nassouwe, the Dutch national hymn. "It's wierd", said the...
Posted by Mitch on December 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Noted in Passing

We all know that the less TV you watch, the more engaged your brain becomes. So perhaps this should perhaps have come as no surprise....
Posted by Mitch on December 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mas Latinos?

I'm a Republican. I live in the city. And one of my (political) life's eternal frustrations is not so much conservatives' inability to reach out to blacks, latinos and asians - people like Brett Schundler show that it's doable -...
Posted by Mitch on December 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Conservatives and Culture

Vox Day makes a great point in re the thread between Joe Carter, the Elder and I from Wednesday. It's about culture; Carter decried the lack of it on talk radio; I agreed. Vox adds:That being said, the one thing...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Feeling Queasy Already

This just looks...icky. I'm not above the occasional burger, but - ugh. I'd be nauseous and off my game for a week after one of these. And yet, I'm drawn to defend it. Why?...
Posted by Mitch on November 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

If You Think It's Scrappleface, But It's Not

I read this story. Then I read it again. And a third time. And I figured "It just has to be a parody, a clever hoax planted by a wry Republican hoaxter. But for the life of me, I can't...
Posted by Mitch on November 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

The Gap

MyDD is - how to say this - a big leftyblog that seems to suck less than most of the big leftyblogs, on initial read. Readin this piece, on a Brad Carson story in TNR, you can sense the complete...
Posted by Mitch on November 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Idealistic Story for a Cynical Age

A heart-rendingly poignant Veteran's Day Story from Hugh Hewitt....
Posted by Mitch on November 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Blue State Scrooges

While rabid pro-Blue-state pundits complain (mistakenly) that the Red states are a net drag on taxes, as Powerline shows, the story on charitable giving is much different. Hint; no Blue state ranks in the top half in the US. Minnesota...
Posted by Mitch on November 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

New Patriot Business Strategy: Sell At A Loss, Make It Up With Volume!

I figured it was only a matter of time before some leftyblog or another tripped over this story, about Twin Cities retail giant Best Buy. The story's been around for a year, although this incarnation in the WSJ is a...
Posted by Mitch on November 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Projection

A friend of mine noticed something in a friend of his (whom I also know), that I'd been noticing in a number of people that I mercilessly mock. Friend-of-friend is a died-in-the-wool Minnesota liberal. This friend-of-a-friend had had a dream...
Posted by Mitch on November 08, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Hypersensitive?

Not everyone likes Halloween. Gotta confess, it's not my favorite holiday, either. But the kids have fun, right? But a school district in Washington has children witches?" href="http://zerointelligence.net/archives/000217.php">canceled Halloween - because it bothers wiccans:There will be no dressing up and...
Posted by Mitch on October 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

And the #1 Sign That Our Society Over-Medicates

Found in a spam comment (which has been deleted):Valium is the best muscle relaxant and ant-anxiety medication.I have enough anxiety of my own, thanks....
Posted by Mitch on October 28, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How Far We've Fallen?

Are Americans dumber than we used to be? I mean, Americans as a whole? Jeff Jacoby wonders about it....
Posted by Mitch on October 25, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Debate kickoff

8:00 - John "Rocket Man" Hinderaker got the crowd pretty cranked up - so now that we're on the air, it's like sitting in the "Rocky Horror Picture Show". 8:07 - you should have heard the crowd when Bush invoked...
Posted by Mitch on October 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cowboys

James Holmes at The American Thinker asks: If the US are cowboys at diplomacy, what does that make the Europeans?Our friends across the Atlantic ought to think seriously before using the Western as a metaphor for international relations. They might...
Posted by Mitch on October 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Dogs On Main Street Howl

Dear Bruce Springsteen, I'm Mitch Berg. I've been a huge fan of yours for about 25 years. I'm missing your concert tonight. It'll be the first time in my adult life I'll have done that on purpose. Not that you...
Posted by Mitch on October 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

All You Need To See

Chumley points us to a a cartoon that pretty much sums things up......
Posted by Mitch on October 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Kerry's True Multilateralism

Safire has a great editorial on the terrorists newest, most ghastly propaganda weapon, their current ritual of kidnapping/ransom demand/publicized murder....
Posted by Mitch on September 28, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

What You REALLY Mean...

Joe Carter has a fantastic post on reading between the lines He gets most of the basics....
Posted by Mitch on September 27, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Sympathy Stocks: Buy

Much has been made - at least among conservative and 9/11 blogs - about the phenomenon of the Security Mom - mothers whose prime motivation in this election is the security of their families and children. It's a phenomenon being...
Posted by Mitch on September 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Damnation with Faint Praise Part II

Miss O'Hara points us to a WaPo/ABC poll with some interesting context. Kerry has a 36% approval rating. How does that compare with other public figures?...
Posted by Mitch on September 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Signs of Agreement?

Pious Agnostic has a double-header today - this fascinating comparison, and this rather hopeful-sounding story:These guys were soiled from a day's labor, their clothes covered with sawdust. We struck up a conversation as we waited. They were tree-trimmers from Mobile,...
Posted by Mitch on September 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Projection and Transference

Elder from Fraters sends me this link, entitled Talking Back To Hate Radio. We at hate radio are always delighted when people talk back - but don't be surprised if we talk back, back....
Posted by Mitch on August 25, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

I Wish...

...that I could think of things like this! on the fly....
Posted by Mitch on August 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

American Rhetoric

I've been wanting something like this to become available for years - a web archive of the great speeches of American history. Some transcripts, some re-creations, some actual recordings - for an oratory junkie like myself, it's a great find....
Posted by Mitch on August 04, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Dog Bites Dog

There was an an ordination in Minneapolis yesterday A new minister - who happens to be gay - was being ordained:Swathed in a white robe with a rope cinched about his waist, Jay Wiesner stood in silence Sunday afternoon as...
Posted by Mitch on July 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Cultural Watershed

This is the first time I've seen this analogy from a major pundit:The Commission is so desperate to maintain the illusion that it's conclusions can be trusted that it is denying the parrot is dead. I'll know my generation has...
Posted by Mitch on July 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

"So We...Can..Tor...Ment...YOU!"

Back in third grade if I was sick, Mom and Dad would bring me home a bottle of Seven Up and a Mad Magazine. Dunno what Lileks' excuse was, but for one reason or another, he exhumed the one edition...
Posted by Mitch on July 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Like Jane Goodall

I've written many times in this space about the wierd juxtaposition one gets, being a conservative in a liberal place like St. Paul. But what if you really dove into the heart of the left? Doug from Bogus Gold, a...
Posted by Mitch on July 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Simple Choices

Victor Davis Hanson the real story, not only of the Hussein trial, but of the war itself. The piece is aptly titled "Civilization vs. Trivia - Sometimes life’s choices are simple". It's appropriate....
Posted by Mitch on July 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kulcha And Stuff

Via Red and Terry Teachout, the top 100 cultural choices, assuming one had to choose....
Posted by Mitch on July 07, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Happy Father's Day
Love, Whiny Feminists

I've mentioned it before - I'm a divorced single father. Through one means or another, my kids have spent most of the last five years with me - and for the 3-4 years before the divorce, I did the bulk...
Posted by Mitch on June 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9)

How Might My Monologue Have Gone?

So one of these years, I hope to do a real, proper Bloomsday - the annual worldwide celebration of James Joyce in the context of one of the protagonists from Ulysses, held on June 16, the fictional day in the...
Posted by Mitch on June 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7)

Trolley Dead Pool

The Ventura Trolley - the light rail line connecting downtown Minneapolis with the Airport and the Mall - will be opening in the next couple of weeks. I predict blood flowing through the gutters. Unlike Wes Skoglund, my prediction will...
Posted by Mitch on June 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7)

Wonder In The Commonplace

Check here and in the next couple of hundred posts for an amazing list of thoughts, sayings and aphorisms. Best of all: Franklin Covey has mutilated very few of them. Since I'm someone whose greatest source of aphoristic advice is...
Posted by Mitch on May 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Sullivan on Cooke

Sullivan on Cooke - Andrew Sullivan comments on the retirement of Alistair Cooke from the BBC. It was an oasis of calm, fascination, and piercing intelligence. How he sustained that quality for so long is awe-inspiring. He was still at...
Posted by Mitch on March 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Perspectives on Specs

Perspectives on Specs - The visual art gene skipped a generation in my family, from my mother and my sister to my kids. I have no aptitude at drawinag or painting - my artistic abilities are purely musical and, arguably,...
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Better Living Through Steel -

Better Living Through Steel - Sometimes, I think I could dive into the study of American culture from 1945 to 1955 with a Lileks-like devotion. It's a period that fascinates me; for all everone talks about the way the world...
Posted by Mitch on February 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Misplaced Priorities

Misplaced Priorities - When the President is offering amnesty and the benefits of near-citizenship to illegal aliens to sneak across our undefended border with our "friend" Mexico, and yet our Coast Guard is still intercepting Cubans who risk death, sharks,...
Posted by Mitch on February 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Change Of Heart

I've had a couple of them, as regards capital punishment. When I was a liberal, of course, I opposed it. When I became a conservative, I inherited a bit of support for the death penalty. Then, for years, I was...
Posted by Mitch on February 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Saud Off

Given their immense wealth, it's sometimes hard to remember that Saudi Arabia is really a jury-rigged country. Formerly a rump province of the Ottoman Empire, it became a nation purely by decree of the League of Nations. Those post World...
Posted by Mitch on January 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

In Praise of Flaws

Every time I read David Warren (on my blogroll on the right), I find myself drawing into one of his fascinating intellectual odysseys which prompts thought far beyond the scope of the original article. Such is his current essay, "In...
Posted by Mitch on January 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Patriot Survey -

Patriot Survey - AM1280 The Patriot - the Twin Cities "other" conservative talkradio station, featuring Hewitt, Medved, Ingraham and the rest of the Salem Radio lineup - is taking an online survey. Check it out. Vote for more local programming....
Posted by Mitch on January 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Latino Slide=

The Latino Slide - Powerline notes this:A telephone survey of likely Latino voters in California by PRM Consulting finds President Bush enjoying a 65% approval rating. 74% approve of his handling of the war on terror, and 58% are happy...
Posted by Mitch on January 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Sakajawea Revolution

One women, twelve dozen legally-valid spellings... ...and a dollar coin that didn't get its due. At least, not in most of the country. Brian from Boviosity states an eloquent case for the dollar coin:I really like the Sacagawea $1...
Posted by Mitch on January 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Gays In Minnesota

The latest Minnesota Poll shows that a majority of Minnesotans reject gay clergy and consider homosexuality a sin. This was interesting, following as it did last week's Time/CBS poll that showed similar results nationwide. Says the Strib:"Most Minnesotans believe it...
Posted by Mitch on December 26, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Yes, Virginia

ScrappleFace has a holiday classic.Yes, Virginia, there is a United States of America. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy....
Posted by Mitch on December 24, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Two Out Of Three Idiots

Spoons notes: "George Blyther and Woodrow Johnson, a 60-year-old retired bureaucrat and and a 70-year-old retired gas-station attendant, respectively, have concluded that John Hinkley is pyschologically fit to be released from the mental hospital where he has been kept...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Leadership

Yo, wazzup, ma hizzomies and hizzos? OG Mitch B kicking da noyeeeze... ...er, sorry. I, like many of the kids today, have been sucked up by the commercialization of gangsta culture. It's pretty irresistable - watching MTV and BET, seeing...
Posted by Mitch on October 10, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Pushing the Idea Across the Synapses

- Conservatism - and conservative beliefs - aren't for the casual thinker. Notice that I didn't necessarily say "conservatives are smarter than liberals"; that'd be the type of arrogance that, if you're not careful, will turn you into Al...
Posted by Mitch on September 19, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Mirror Image

In the sixties, the anti-war movement started with small groups of dedicated radical organizers on the college campuses, and grew to eventually include thousands of fairly regular people. Today's anti-war movement is the same thing. Only completely backwards, shrinking from...
Posted by Mitch on August 10, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Indictment

David Horowitz has a scathing rebuke of the organizers of last weekend's rallies for totalitarianism. He discusses the organizers' Stalinist sympathies, and their over-generosity in figuring the attendance. But he also does something I've seen nobody else do -...
Posted by Mitch on January 21, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

MADD About You

One group whose influence has always frightened me is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Their absolutist views combined with their incredibly coercive philosophy on engineering society through their emotional - but often fact-challenged - approach to policy makes them both a...
Posted by Mitch on December 09, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Soccer Moms with Uzis

This may be the biggest sea change from this month's election: Women aren't necessarily utterly reliable Democrat voters. As noted in Washington Post article by Tom Edsall, women's attitudes changed drastically after September 11:The post-9/11 climate has helped the GOP...
Posted by Mitch on November 29, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Son in Marines, Part II - the Kipling Years

Like much of the Blogosphere, Rantburg is writing on this story - of the Volvo-Drivin' upper-middle-class Bostonite whose son joined the Marines. And he (I presume it was him) added this, with a nod to Kipling:We are patricians of...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

More Attitude

Eric Raymond of Armed and Dangerous, who is presumably not a Democrat, has written a marvelous article on what a truly responsible Democrat party would look and act like. The highlights:Support war on Iraq, but insist on nation-building afterwards......
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Attitude

A few weeks ago, we talked about the hatred some Democrats seem to feel for Republicans, or any other form of dissent. Discussing that can quickly slide into the absurd. But on a more personal level - I've observed that...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Mulligan

Laura Billings writes in today's Pioneer Press about the Augusta National Golf Course controversy. Augusta doesn't admit women. Unlike a lot of Twin Cities' columnists, Billings does seem to notice that the free market will one day sort this all...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Serving the Nation

Frank Schaeffer is a Boston-area novelist - a self-described "Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping" American brahmin, whose kids went to private schools and whose neighbors regarded military service as...something other people do. Then, his youngest boy joined the Marine Corps. It had...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Hate Crime

A british writer for the conservative "Telegraph" was jailed on hate crime charges - namely:Mr Page, 61, was detained in a police cell after being interviewed about remarks made by him at a country fair at Frampton-upon-Severn, Glos, on Sept...
Posted by Mitch on November 23, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Idiot Conspiracies

The blogosphere has been examining the left's incoherent rage, as expressed on the one hand by "serious" writers like Keillor, Ivins, Moyers - and, on the other hand, the tattered criers in the "Democrat Street"; on the web and elsewhere:"...
Posted by Mitch on November 22, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Courtesy

Peggy Noonan, on what the ostracism of smokers says about modern-day liberals:I think it is an insufficiently commented-upon irony that cigarette prohibition and the public shaming it entails is the work of modern liberals. They're supposed to be the...
Posted by Mitch on November 21, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Quote of the Day

"But it is a bit troubling that we're excited and happy when university presidents endorse free speech, isn't it?" Glenn Reynolds. And now, I'm going home....
Posted by Mitch on November 19, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Barbarians At the Gates?

Instapundit is carrying an interesting discussion about how civilized societies fight barbarians - with Al Quaeda and the Islamofascists filling the role of barbarians. Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit )says:Civilized societies have always won against barbarians ever since the industrial revolution...
Posted by Mitch on November 19, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Wrinkle

According to a new book by an Atlantic Monthly writer, some New York firefighters were busy looting stores even before the towers fell.In the recently released, "American Ground," [author William] Langewiesche writes about a fire ladder truck recovered from the...
Posted by Mitch on November 18, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Social Middle

President Bush again steers clear of the excesses of the far right. Dems don't get this; Bush is governing using the best lesson from all the 12-step groups. Take what you need, leave the rest. He's governing using many...
Posted by Mitch on November 15, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Kicking and Screaming

Many colleges and universities have long barred the US military from recruiting or conducting ROTC courses on campus. Several years back, the Feds enacted a rule that would bar federal funding from institutions (including private ones) that forbade military recruiting....
Posted by Mitch on November 11, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

It's Veterans Day - My

My ex-father-in-law, a Navy vet from WWII and survivor of many wartime scrapes aboard his ship, passed away last January. And with that, yet another link to the Greatest Generation (and the Greatest War) passes too. That generation has been...
Posted by Mitch on November 11, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

It's September 12th

It's September 12th - ...and it seems we've all survived. The Code Orange security alert seems (as of 4PM on the eleventh) to have been like all the others (I say, hoping Murphy's Law doesn't take over because of it...)...
Posted by Mitch on September 11, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

What's a Republican?

I suggested on the Minnesota Politics mailing list (and repeat here), that since the era of the "big tent" party might be wheezing to a close, perhaps the GOP needs to focus on the "small tent" issues that truly...
Posted by Mitch on February 08, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

So what makes a Republican?

I'm going to start putting together the list, and settling this thing once and for all :-). But here's one litmus test I suggest. No support for Speech Rationing. (AKA "Campagn Finance Reform"). Not only does "CFR" silence conservatives and...
Posted by Mitch on February 08, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)