Shot in the Dark

Category: Favorites – History

  • I Saw The World Change In The Blink Of An Eye

    It finally happened; I’m at an age when I get to spend time correcting younger people about the misconceptions some older people are giving them about “my” time. Maybe it’s just me – but I’ve been noting a little surge of questions – and revisionist answers – about the 1980s, lately. I’ll stick with the…

  • Breaking News: Retreat

    According to a very reliable source, a Minneapolis police officer reports that all Minneapolis police have been moved out of the Third Precinct to the Fourth, and told to “sit tight, do nothing”. And the police are – according to my source’s source – “pissed”.

  • Crowd Psychology

    Imagine this: It’s the middle of June, 1940. Germany has just conquered all of Europe. The British have just withdrawn their army from the continent, in a miraculous evacuation that was the only redeeming note in a catastrophic defeat. The army had left virtually all of its equipment – just about everything heavier than a…

  • What A Terrorist Wants

    SCENE:  December 8, 1941, in the well of the House of Representatives – in an alternate universe.    President Barack Delano Obama is addressing a joint emergency session of Congress. OBAMA:  Yesterday, December Seventh, 1941, is a day which will live in infamy. Now, let me be clear:  this attack did not represent the Real Japan.…

  • Jack Kemp

    There were three people who turned me into a conservative. Four, if you count Ronald Reagan.  But before I, who grew up very much a liberal, could embrace the idea of conservativsm that Ronald Reagan put out there – and let’s remember that to a liberal Ronald Reagan, especially the version of Reagan that liberals…

  • The Right Of The People

    By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court of the United States today ruled in the Heller case that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is exactly what the founding fathers intended; that a right “of the people” means “people”, not “the National Guard”. The court dealt forty years of erosion of civil liberties…

  • Happy Patriots Day!

    No, not the football team – the anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride to mobilize the militia against the British, and the Battles of Lexington and Concord. By bypassing the mainstream media and taking the word directly to the people, Revere was in a sense the first conservative blogger; indeed, had his horse been named “Blog”,…

  • Somewhere in Bosnia, 1996

    I crawled through the mud, a G3K carbine in one hand, a handful of slimy, suspect topsoil in the other, as the rain poured down.  The corner of a spare magazine cut into my hipbone as I slithered over a small clump of rocks, and back into a small coulee that led me up the…

  • Squadron Leader ‘Jimmy’ James

    I was – it should shock nobody – a big geek in elementary, junior and (most of) senior high school. I read. A lot. I had my library card maxed pretty continuously from when I got one – in 1970, at age six – until I graduated from high school. Mostly, I was a history…

  • My City Was Gone Different

    I’m a relatively rare critter; a conservative who lives in the inner city.  We’ve discussed this before in this blog; there are a lot of things I like about living in Saint Paul.  And there are a lot of things about life in the ‘burbs that I dislike enough to have made the decision fairly…

  • The Small War, Part II

    Let’s switch to Jeopardy mode for a bit: ANSWER: “We Can’t Win”. QUESTION: Choose from the following: “What did the left say about Vietnam?” “What did the left say about El Salvador?” “What did the left say about Afghanistan until the (real) Northern Alliance and the Special Forces rode into Kandahar?” “What does the medialeft…

  • The Small War, Part I

    I’m splitting this into two parts; once I started writing, I just couldn’t stop. I have a few things to establish before I get into my post proper. ———- Statement: Administration 2, Demcrats/media 1. We’ll come back to that. ———- For those of you who think I never pay the Demcrats a complement, stand by…

  • It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XL

    Tonight was the big night. Sunday, December 28, 1986. It was going to be a huge night on two fronts. The evening would kick off with my band’s first gig at Williams’ Uptown Bar on Hennepin in Minneapolis. Then, after load-out, I’d race out to KSTP to do my show. I was going to interview…

  • A Modest, Inexpensive, In Your Face Proposal

    Virtually everyting that any Minnesotan has ever done is the subject of some memorial or another. And yet the biggest single event of most of our lifetimes – the event that’s touched the most of us, for the better – goes unmemorialized. Minnesotans; it is time to build the Cold War Memorial. Think about it;…