Category: Deep Thoughts
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Animal Farm
In 2004, lefty commentator Thomas Frank published a book “What’s The Matter With Kansas” – which analyzed the growing conservative majority in America’s heartland… …in the most patronizing, contemptuous way I’d heard until the mainstream media’s response to the Tea Party five years later. Frank hammered on the idea that conservatives in the heartland were…
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False Authority
Joe Doakes of Como Park writes: See, this is why I hate lawyers who write social commentary:. They commit the most obvious logical fallacy and expect us to ignore the error but genuflect to their credentials. “As leaders of law firms, we write in our individual capacity.” What the Hell does that mean? Does that…
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All Of Life, From Zero To Eleven
Let’s imagine, if you will, a big knob or dial with a scale from 0 to 11. This dial measures… …well, anything, really. For purposes of this article, let’s measure “Liberty” – the prevalence of and respect for the rights to think, speak, act, work and prosper freely. Let’s say the numbers on the dial…
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The Problem With All Techno-Science Fiction
In other words, technology will eventually, inevitably act like an adolescent. I think.
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This Hits Us All Like A Car Crash
I just got the news that Chris Tiedeman – political PR guru extraordinaire, and a longtime friend of this blog – and his wife Sara were involved in a “serious” car accident last night. There are painfully few details. I’ll ask for your prayers, karmic imprecations, best wishes or whatever your world views call for.
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Defining
As it happens, APM’s “Public Insight Network” is asking about the same bit fof the State of the Union that stuck in my craw the other night. In his State of the Union Address to Congress, President Obama talked about what he called “the basic American promise” — that if people worked hard, they could afford…
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Some Good News
Jack Jablonski – the kid injured and potentially paralyzed after a hockey accident – is apparently moving his arms, which is a good sign: Eight days after a check sent the Benilde-St Margaret’s hockey player into the boards breaking his spinal cord and paralyzing him, Jablonski moved his arms. In an interview with several media members prior…
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Will The Real Conservative Please Stand Up, Part II – Dead Presidents
In a sense, this is one of the most glorious elections I’ve seen in a quarter century; for the first time, there is no “moderate” Republican. “But wait! Romney’s a moderate!”. Well, by some standards, and on some issues, sure. But as I started explaining Monday, there are really three main currents in American conservatism:…
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Every Time I Feel Just A Tad Sorry For Myself…
…I see a story like this, and just shut the hell up with my whining. (Via Amy Alkon)
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The Ostentatiously Alinski-matic Smear Machine
The Usual Suspects is one of my favorite movies. In the movie, the legendary arch-criminal and unseen (?) antagonist, the Turkish uber-villain Keyser Söze, operates by the adage that to win, you need to be willing to go further than your opponent is – whatever that means. To Söze, when his family was taken hostage by…
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A Day-Brightener
Every so often, I need something that reaffirms my faith that not everyone is trash. I mean besides the NY09 election results, of course. That was good too. No, I’m actually referring to this video, which you’ve no doubt seen: A group of bystanders rescue a motorcyclist who’d slid under (ow, ow, ow ow ow)…
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The Kids Aren’t Alright – Part I: Life Lessons
I’d have never thought so at the time – but one of the best things that ever happened to me was getting fired from my first radio job when I was 17. I’d have never thought so at the time. My first radio job was – not to be overdramatic- the first great love of…
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Cancer Doesn’t Know Who It’s Messing With
My friend Robin, who used to write the blog A Girl’s Gotta Vent, and has met a bunch of you at at least one MOB party, has a project going on – and it is, in fact, life or death: I /WE are working feverishly to save my sister in-law’, Lenecia Weisbender’s life. We have CANCER…
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Fractured Aphorisms
If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. If you toss a man a can of bait worms and tell him to figure it out, you feed him for life and give him the problem-solving skills he needs…
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I’m Not Going To Dig Too Deep For Symbolism Or Anything…
…but, well, heh: Lightning strikes the White House on Easter Sunday. No, it’s seriously funny…
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Neuropathological
Politics may not be rocket science, but apparently it is brain surgery. Understanding the genesis of political orientation has long been a subject of biological interest, with every few years a new study suggesting our ideological differences aren’t skin-deep, they’re sub-atomic. Add to the list the findings of the University College London, which takes the…
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Beyond The Factions…
I’ve been reading Pioneer Press columnist Ruben Rosario for years. I’ve applauded him a few times, and thrown the odd brickbat as well. But I’ll ask everyone to put any partisanship and stylistic differences aside to give him your prayers, wishes, or whatever your worldview calls for:] I left with a diagnosis of multiple myeloma,…
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I Laughed Until I Cried
I thought this just the other day: Read my blog. Er…
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The Depraved Gourmet
Call the dour Calvinism of my Scandinavian anscestry rearing its head, but the wave of epicureanism – the Food Network’s various paeons to gluttony – have always rubbed me the wrong way. Part of it is that the whole notion of glorifying ostentatious consumption strikes me as just wrong; you’re taking what you just plain…
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A Semiotician, A Rabbi And An Astrophysicist Walk Into A Bar…
This American Life, an NPR program, is a wildly mixed bag of a radio show; it’s frequently excellent, evocative, and sometimes leads you to some wondrous insights. For a show that is entirely by, for, and about upper-middle-class, college-educated, espresso-guzzling, Prius-driving white liberal hipsters, it’s very often worth the hour it takes to listen. Still,…
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All Wheel Drive Anxiety
I apologize. You see when it snows like this – you know, constant, fine, light snow, the roads get slippery and when you hit the gas you slip and slide. You sit and spin. The thing is…ever since I got this car with all-wheel-drive, when I hit the gas, I just go. Rain, snow, small…
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Words Are Inadequate
Since I haven’t done it, at least in writing, I’d like to send this note into the ether in the hopes that some of it skitters about the cosmos and finds its way to Rep. Giffords and her family, and those of the other victims of last Saturday’s shooting. To the families of the six…
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Whilst Going About Your Business
I wasn’t going to write about this until I saw he’d written about it first. Ryan Rhodes – who’s been running the “Rambling Rhodes” (among many other names) blog for about as long as anyone in Minnesota has been blogging, and has been a regular commenter on this blog ever since I’ve had comments –…
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To Air Is Human
Perhaps it’s the circle of radio life. The First Team of the Northern Alliance gets shown the door… …and Mark Dayton takes to the air: Gov. Mark Dayton plans to do a governor’s radio show soon. “I wish I could be on the air somewhere tomorrow,” Dayton said. “I can’t wait to get on the…