Isaac Morehouse has a piece on his blog about the top ten benefits of regular blogging.

(The keen-eyed observer will note that Morehouse’s blog has had gaps of 3-11 months over its five year run – but the article is so good I don’t care):

1. Self Discipline – Like all disciplines, it makes you a better person; more in control of your schedule and habits. It is empowering to do something on a regular basis.

For one reason or another, getting up at 5:30 nearly every morning to write has become just a part of life.

2. Self Translation – You hold a set of beliefs and ideas about the world. You may not even know exactly what they are, but they exist. Blogging helps you translate those ideas into a form that you and others can use.

In the time I’ve been writing this blog, this has been true.  When I started writing Shot In The Dark, I was a conservative, and a modestly well-read one – but still, much of what I believed was unformed and squishy, and there were huge gaps in what I knew.

And both are still true, to some degree.  But much less so than before I started.

3. Self Education – You have no idea how much you know, or how capable you are of understanding and explaining things. Once you start blogging, you’ll be surprised to discover what a genius you are.

Well, maybe not “genius” – but I’ve learned a lot about a couple of issues – education, Astro-Turf groups and so on – that I’d never have had occasion to learn otherwise.

4. Observation – Every day you are taking in loads of sensory information. You see news clips, billboards, emails, people; you hear music, talk, etc. When you start to blog you learn to find meaning in the things your senses take in, and find story lines. You learn to observe.

And – this was cool – eventually you start finding the unexpected, hidden storylines.  That’s kinda fun.

5. Humor – The things noted above are often hilarious, you just don’t always realize it at the time. Regular blogging helps you recreate experiences you’ve had, which often reveals their hilariousness.

I’ll get back to you on that one.

6. Writing – Blogging ain’t great literature, but it can be. Any kind of writing regularly will improve your skills. Blogging will especially help you learn to be more concise and interesting.

Would that it were always true.  Or even true more often.

Still, I’ve seen examples of people who genuinely did improve as writers over time.

7. Self Knowledge – You may not know your area(s) of interest and expertise – regular blogging will help you discover what you are interested in and good at as you begin to see patterns and reoccurring themes in your posts.

Writing this blog has certainly opened up some interests I’d never have had otherwise.

8. Experimentation – Blogging allows you to be a pundit on any issue. You can comment on things you normally don’t have time or knowledge for. You are allowed to speculate and think out loud on a blog in ways that more formal media do not allow.

Heh .

9. Crash-testing – Blogging regularly will inevitably produce some pretty good writing. Blogging every day will help you get all kinds of stuff out, and then look back and see if any of it is worthy of refinement and publication elsewhere. It’s a great testing ground for ideas, themes, articles, outlines, etc.

I wouldn’t say it’s “inevitable” – but that’s very true.

And for me, it’s the best “show prep” there is.  The traditional rule of thumb in talk radio is “spend an hour of show prep for every hour you’re on the air”.  But in a typical week I’ll spend 5-10 hours writing, most of it about stuff I want to talk about on the air.  I don’t like to walk into the studio, sit down and start broadcasting cold – but I can.

10. Archiving – Regular blogging for just a year can result in hundreds of articles on hundreds of topics. You will develop an archive of your thoughts and a record of how they’ve evolved over time. When someone asks for your opinion on an issue you won’t have to start from scratch. You can send them a link to that time you expressed it so well.

Which is, of course, a two-edged sword.  After a long time writing, you generate a lot of material.  It’s hard to keep track of it all.  Sorting it into categories and adding tags helps; a decent search engine (thanks, WordPress!) helps too.

Anyway, Morehouse’s post on the one hand tells me things I’ve known for a while, and on the other hand codifies them in a handy “Top Ten”-style format for convenience.

After all that, it’s almost anticlimactic to say that today is this blog’s 11th birthday.  The yearly anniversaries up through ten were kind of a big deal – but after 11 years, writing this blog is more or less a part of life’s rhythm to me.

I started this blog thinking I’d be happy if I got five readers a week.  My daily audience is into four digits now, and has been there since about 2004, which never fails to astound me.

Anyway – thanks for stopping by all these years.

“Hey, why don’t you come over to teh MinnPost to debate?”:  For the same reason I don’t “debate” at MPR, Startribune.com or on much of any other website or blog.   Between my blog, Twitter and, I dunno, my freaking day job, not to mention trying to maintain a modestly-well-adjusted real life, I gotta draw the line somewhere.  I’ve given up a lot of online diversions lately .

And, let’s face it, the MinnPost’s comment section is about the same as the Strib’s these days; it’s all noise and no signal.  Both of them have come to represent the worst of online “discourse”; mostly people who hide behind anonymity to bellow with rage at people who are different than them.   Usenet Newsgroups phoned the Strib and MinnPost comment sections and told ’em to dial back the crazy.

Both are a waste of time.  I try not to waste time.

“Why do you oppose banning teh automatic weapins?”:  They’ve been mostly illegal since 1934.  Seriously – learn the issue before you try to regulate other peoples’ civil rights.

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  Nope. That is a reasonable “reasonable restriction”.

“If you debate at teh MinnPost you’ll lose!”:  In the same way a black guy walking into a Klan rally will “lose”.  I’ll get shouted down, sure.

But I won’t lose a “Debate”.

In fact, I may as well reiterate this; I’ll meet any liberal figure – blogger, talking head, pundit, reporter (oh, snap), politician, what have you – in an actual debate about anything we mutually care to debate about.  Guns are the hot topic these days – and on Second Amendment issues in particular, I’ll not only meet the libs in an actual debate, I’ll likely make their argument better than they can, before I destroy it.  I’m not limited to guns – we can talk education, taxes, transit, whatever.  I’m pretty solid on all of ’em.  On Second Amendment issues?  Let’s just say I’m confident.

Just saying.  Try me.

In a real debate, mind you; at a neutral location, with some basic “rules” (they don’t have to be all that formal, but shouting matches bore me) and we can go to town.

Recursive institutionalized (heh) pissing matches like “newspaper” comment sections don’t really make the cut, thanks.

“Why are you constantly bagging on the DFL leadership for not supporting gay marriage?  The effort against the Marriage Amendment wasn’t a referendum on gay marriage, after all.”:  That’s not the way “Minnesotans United For All Families” and the rest of the anti-Amendment crowd put it.  Their rhetoric – “we don’t have popularity contests on civil rights!” – wasn’t focused on the procedural battle over what does or doesn’t go into the Constitution.  It was over Adam and Steve and their picket fence.

For Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen not to jam a bill through the legislature that they control largely because of the campaign against the Amendment is intensely hypocritical.  For the people who voted for the DFL based on the Amendment not to demand better of the caucus they elected is a betrayal of Gay Minnesotans.  Now that the left-leaning PPP poll shows Minnesotans supporting gay marriage, there is no reason whatsoever for Bakk and Thissen not to jam this issue down.

Other than political cowardice and hypocrisy.

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  Asked and answered.  Nope.

“Hahahaha, Merg!  You won’t come to teh MinnPost to debate! You are teh coward!”:  Real debate.  Say when, where, and agree on the rules.  If you’ve got the cojones.  We all know what an “if” that is.

“But Mitch?  There’s a court case in Henco that’ll basically end in legalize gay marriage sooner or later.  Bakk and Thissen needn’t lift a finger”:  Well, there’s a profile in courage for you!

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  Er, I answered this twice already.  No.

“Mark G***eson says you’re like teh Lord Haw Haw?”:  I get called ugly things by people sitting at the back of the bus that also bark at the moon and have tinfoil wrapped around their heads.  I give ’em about the same weight.
“Hey, Merg!  The Second Amendment refers to “Militia”!  Are you in the National Guard?”:  I’m sorry – were you in treatment for the past five years or something?  The SCOTUS in Heller said “right of the people” means “people” – not government.  We – every able-bodied adult – are the militia.  That means you, me, and everyone around you that doesn’t have a disqualifying criminal record.

 “You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  Er, no.

“I’m sick of your arguments.  It’s time to re-consider what “reasonable restrictions” are!”:  Well, at face value, I’m with you.  Most of the restrictions that exist today – gun bans like in Chicago, bans on weapons based on cosmetic features – are utterly useless.  Let’s reconsider them!

But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?  This is sort of like the “new conversation about guns” from a few weeks back, which involved your side talking and my side shutting up.

You want to eliminate the Second Amendment, because you think that civilians shouldn’t have guns.  It disturbs your idea of the natural relationship between people and government, with citizens toiling away and a benevolent government protecting us, like a dutiful parent.  I believe that’s a noxious and repugnant idea of what government is supposed to be, and the Second Amendment helps keep it that way.

“Why don’t you write more about music and history?”:  Oh, I meant to over this past two months, trust me.  Real life – doing my little bit to defend a vital civil right – got in the way.  But there’s more to come.

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  Er…

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  It’s cold out, isn’t it?

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  There are no bones in ice cream.

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”:  That surely is a writing implement of immense magnitude.

“Why do you always show your opponents in these pieces to be addled, defective or not-so-bright?  Isn’t that a rather demeaning fiction?”:  You’ve never met my “critics”, have you?

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”: Um…

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”: …

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”: (facepalm)

“You oppose gun control?  So you think felons should have guns?”: …

NRA membership is booming:

The National Rifle Association has gained more than 100,000 new members in the past 18 days, the organization told POLITICO’s Playbook on Thursday.

The number of paid new members jumped from 4.1 million to 4.2 million during that time.

“Our goal is to get to 5 million before this debate is over,” the NRA told POLITICO’s Mike Allen.

The number is a record.

Another record?  For the first time, I’m one of them.  After decades of being a Second Amendment activist, I finally pulled the trigger and joined.

“We are willing to talk to policymakers about any reasonable proposals and plans,” an NRA official said in the Playbook report, regarding the upcoming meeting with Biden. “However, the NRA is hearing not just from Beltway elites and the chattering class, but real Americans all over the country that are hoping the NRA is not going to compromise on any of the principles of the Second Amendment, nor are we going to support banning guns. But we’re willing to listen.”

We’ll listen – but we’d be deluded to expect much in the way of common sense.

By the way, the piece comes from “Politico”, which writes:

To join the NRA, one must pay $25. In return, new members may choose to receive a “Rosewood Handle Knife, Black & Gold Duffel Bag or Digital Camo Duffel Bag,” the Playbook report said.

Huh.  I got a member card, a subscription to one of the house magazines, a sticker, and  an NRA shooting cap.  And I paid $35.

Must have been a Black Friday special…

A couple of quick notes here:

In addition to my usual light weekend posting schedule, posting on Monday and Tuesday will likely be very light.  It’s Christmas.  So sue me.  No, wait – I live in Saint Paul.  The Human Rights department just might.

But seriously?  Have a Merry Christmas if you’re of the Jesus Tribe, and a great long weekend otherwise!

The NARN will be on the air all this weekend.  Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about the new “Social Studies Standards”.  I’ll also be interviewing Representative Mary Franson (R Alexandria) about her effort to keep Minnesota informed about the push to unionize child-care providers.  Tune in from 1-3PM tomorrow!

Now, I’m not one of those people who’s crabbing about the way “Black Friday” has infringed on the sanctity of holidays.  Businesspeople have to do something to survive the Obama economy – and it’s the job of each and every person who believes in the sanctity of holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to lead from the front, as it were.

But I just wanted to say that after three days of hearing about and seeing people camping out in front of Target and Best Buy waiting for Black Friday in the wind and the snow, and seeing and hearing about people battling each other in the aisles last freaking night, I’m here, on the  morning after Thanksgiving; warm, drinking coffee, having a warm bowl of oatmeal, getting ready to go to work…

…watching all the chumps out for Black Friday.

Y’all do realize it’ll be generally cheaper later – right?

I wrote this for Thanksgiving ten years ago.

Which reminds me; I’m thankful that I’ve had this blog for ten years (not to mention my show for almost nine).

And, of course, each and every one of you in the audience.

==========

I moved from North Dakota to Minneapolis in October of 1985. It was a spur of the moment thing – in fact, it started with a drunken statement to a bunch of classmates at a college homecoming party two weeks earlier. It was five months after graduation, and they’d all come back to Jamestown (my hometown and college) with stories of their fun careers, fun cities, fun lives…

I was doing roofing and siding, wondering what the hell one did with an English degree. But after five or six gin and tonics, I found myself dancing with Monica Costello, and telling her “Yeah – I’m still here in Jamestown”. Really, she asked? “Yeah, but I’m moving”. Where, she asked. I thought about it for a second. “Minneapolis” seemed to be a place I could afford to get to. When, she asked. “Two weeks”, I blurted out without really thinking.

Damned if everyone didn’t remember that promise when we all sobered up. So – two weeks later, I loaded two duffel bags and a guitar into my ’73 Malibu, and I was off.

Six weeks later, it was Thanksgiving. I still had no job, I was broke and malnourished and cold. I’d had a few interviews, but no bites. I had dinner at a friend’s place. And on the way home, I drove downtown, and walked out onto the Central Avenue bridge, and looked out over the city in the dark. If you’ve never seen it, looking at downtown Minneapolis in the dark, when everything’s all lit up, is stunning; for someone just in off the prairie, it was like looking at Manhattan  I was cold, and scared out of my shorts about my short-term prospects – and for the first time, I felt strangely at home in this new city.

And every since then, Thanksgiving has seemed like the turning of the new year for me – the time when I reflect on the past year’s agonies and flubs and successes, and look forward to the next year. Much more so – for me anyway – than New Years’ Eve, which is more decompression from Christmas than anything.

I remember each Thanksgiving in the last 17 years – the giddiness of feeling like I was on the edge of something big in 1986, confident in my ability to pull it all together in ’87, shell-shocked and depressed and contemplating the implosion of my radio career in ’88, crazy in love in ’89, a harried but happy but broke newlywed in ’90, a new dad digging out of deep snowdrifts in ’91, broke and on the brink of eviction with two kids and another on the way in ’92, in a new house in ’93…wondering how long my marriage would last in ’98, being able to answer the question “not long at all” in ’99…

…and today. I sat for a while by the Cathedral of St. Paul, looking down Summit over downtown Saint Paul. The giddy, heady uncertainty of the thanksgivings of my first years as an adult, the throat-clutching terror of my divorce-era holidays, and the weary relief of my first thanksgivings as a divorced dad…well, little bits of all of them are still there. But there’s the emerging sense that my life really is mine, and that I’d better get on with it.

There’ve been so many good lists of things to be thankful for, from people as diverse as Michelle Malkin and Ted Nugent and Andrew Sullivan – and my own for that matter.

But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.

God bless you all. And if you don’t believe in God – well, bless yourself silly.

========

At some point this evening I’ll probably stop out on the Central Avenue bridge again.

Anyway – Happy Thankgiving, everyone!

I’m still on “vacation” from the blog.

Thanks to Ringer and Joe!

It’s been a few years since I’ve taken any time away from blogging.  I took a solid week back in 2003, as I recall, and maybe a couple of days in 2008.   That’s about it.

And this election was a real meatgrinder.  No doubt about it.  The day job’s a ton of work, and I’m fighting a fall bug of some kind.

So posting – at least, posting from me – will be light the rest of this week. Now, Ringer may sound off at some point here, and we may get a letter from Doakes, and we may even have someone altogether different writing here shortly – long story.

But I’m taking the rest of the week off.  Pretty much.

See you on the air on Saturday, and the blog will be back for real on Monday.

Here’s my biennial tradition – 100 reasons I’m voting for the Republicans, not the Democrats.

But this year, I’m not focusing just on the President.

Dan Lipp, HD65A

100. Because Dan’s a regular working guy from the neighborhood.

99. Dan is a Liberty guy.  He realizes, as all the smart ones do, that it’s not only through less government, but through rolling back some of the government we have, that this nation has any chance of prospering.

98. And the last thing the Midway needs is more DFL professional politicians telling us what regular working guys from the neighborhood need.

97. Because Rena Moran is one of those professional politicians…

96. …and one of the most extreme people in the Minnesota House.  Nothing useful will get done while her party is even close to influence.  And so I’ll be voting for Dan, and very, very much against Rena Moran.

Rick Karschnia, SD65

95. Because Rick comes from the world of business. And if there’s anything Saint Paul (to say nothing of our idiot legislature) needs, it’s more business people and fewer lawyers and professional career pols.

94. And while there are politicians in Minnesota more “professional” and “career” than DFL incumbent Sandy Pappas, it’s all pretty irrelevant.

93. Because Rick will be a Senator that votes for conservative and libertarian principle, at least conceptually in the mold of the Tea Party freshmen that did such a great job in the 2010-2011 sessions.

92. That stuff I said about Rena Moran being “extreme?”  She’s a a piker compared to Sandy Pappas.  If you look in the dictionary under “smug intransigence”, Sandy gets a two-page spread.

91. I’m voting for Rick and Dan because winning the Minnesota Legislature – keeping majorities in both chambers – will block Mark Dayton’s agenda.

90. Although it’s not Mark Dayton’s agenda.  Mark Dayton is really one of those disembodied brains kept alive in a jar, except he walks more or less under his own power.  But “his” agenda is really that of the unions and far-left plutocrats who own him in every meaningful way.

89. And defending our Legislative majorities will be a huge gut-shot to Dayton’s political future…

88. ….and help ensure he remains a one -term governor.

Tony Hernandez, MN CD4

87. I’m voting for Tony because he’s a Saint Paul guy with rock-solid integrity.

86. And because he’s done a great job of appealing both to liberty voters and conservative voters.

85. Because anyone that plans his wedding in mid-campaign is the kind of multi-tasker that can actually do things in DC.

84. Because his platform is the kind of thing that Americans of all political stripes should be able to agree with.  And that – not some kind of phony cross-aisle gesturing – is the essence of real bipartisanship.

83. And Betty McCollum is all about the empty gesture of bipartisanship…

82. …which doesn’t come close to covering the fact that she is among the most extreme, partisan Reps in the US Congress.

81. Because Tony’s a business guy, while Betty is a professional politician.

80. Because I’d rather have Tony working on writing up a new budget than Betty McCollum.

79. Because the Fourth Congressional District needs better.

78. Because Betty McCollum supported Obamacare, which is sending the health insurance premiums of working Minnesotans through the roof.

77. And because Tony will vote for repeal.

76. Because Betty McCollum supported the Central Corridor, which is gutting business in the Midway…

75. …while Tony knows better than that.

74. Because Tony is an independent thinker…

73…while Betty McCollum is a marionette whose strings are pulled by the Teachers Unions.

72. Because it’s a finger in the eye of all the blow-hard DFL jagoffs who bleat “this is a DFL town!”, as if having a one-party city is something to be proud of.

Kurt Bills, US Senate

71. Because Amy Klobuchar, media meme notwithstanding, is an extreme, partisan liberal.

70. Because a Bills win would give half the the Twin Cities media – which has cashed in much of what passed for its “integrity” to support the daughter of their ol’ buddy Jim Klobuchar – have a collective stroke over the loss.

69. Because Bills is a regular guy.

68. Because Bills is a Liberty candidate…

67…who endorsed Romney – because he realizes perfect IS the enemy of good enough!

66. And the Paulbots gave him holy hell for it.

65. Because for all her palaver, A-Klo is in the left-most third of the US Senate.

64. And this state is no longer a hard-blue state.  We don’t need two “progressives” in Washington; it makes us look stupid.

63. Because Klobuchar belongs to a party that believes you should spend first, and cover it with money exacted from “the rich” and, when that runs out, money borne down from heaven on unicorns.

62. Because the Chinese want you to vote for A-Klo.

61. As does Hugo Chavez.

60. Because I’d rather have Bills confirming our next Supreme Court justice than Klobuchar.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, President and Vice President

59. Because Mitt will crank open the big brass nozzle for domestic energy production.

58.  In so doing, Mitt will actually do the ultimate “green jobs progrlam”.  Here’s how – are you an environmentalist?  Then get used to the idea that “saving the environment’ is something that requires prosperity first and foremost.

57. And at this point in our history, that means “enough energy to fuel a prosperous economy”.

56. MItt gets that.

55. Barack Obama does not.  He believes that direct subsidy of untried technology will accomplish a “green revolution” by sheer brute financial force.  That’s never, ever worked. Ever.

54. Mitt will roll back – not stop, but positively roll back  – the orgy of regulation that Obama has unleashed in the past four years.

53. Obama will make good on his promise to President Medvedev; free of worrying about re-election, he’ll ratched up the war on small business that he started with a bang in the past four years…

52. …which have made the US a terrible place for small business.

51.  Romney will renew the Bush tax cuts.

50. Obama will sunset them – and add in many, many, many more of his own.

49.  Mitt has promised to enact the first cut in discretionary spending since the Reagan Administration – five percent.

48.  Don’t believe him?  See Messrs. Hernandez and Bills, above.  We can force him to make good on the promise (not that I think we’ll need to) – but we’ve gotta control Congress.

47. In fact, Romney will be the first president since Reagan fundamentally disposed to cutting discretionary spending.

46. Obama, naturally, will ratched up discretionary spending.

45.  Romney will put everything on the table – means-tests, raising retirement age, whatever – to reform Medicare and Social Security.

44.  Obama will try to scare people into carrying on with a doomed status quo.

43.  Because Romney will end the user of federal power to browbeat Catholics, Evangelicals and other principled people into paying for federal programs that mortally offend their – our – beliefs.

42. And Obama will supercharge the attack on religion.

41. Romney will end the ratcheting-up of the civil sacrament of abortion.

40. Obama will not.

39.  Obama’s Homeland Security secretary Napolitano has spent four years scapegoating all of the many petty dissidents whose rights are supposedly protected by the Constituition, putting pro-lifers, tax-reform advocates, second-amendment activists, “preppers”, school choice advocates and Tea Partiers on “terrorist” watch lists.

38. Romney is a member of a faith that has been persecuted for its beliefs in the past; I find it highly unlikely that he’ll continue to use the Federal government – especially Homeland Security – to persecute people who dissent from government in good faith.

35. And he damned sure knows “Religious Freedom” isn’t served by forcing religious institutions to pay for things that their beliefs hold morally repulsive;

34. Because Barack Obama has a long history of actively working for gun control.

33.  Because Mitt Romney may not be Ted Nugent, but he’ll get out of the way of the Second Amendment.

32. Because while racism motivates almost none of the opposition to Barack Obama, it motivates a massive amount of his support.

31.  Because of Sonia Sotomayor…

30.  …and Elena Kagan.

29. Because David Breyer is almost 76.

28. Ginsberg?  She’s 80.  And it’d be great to have those two replaced by responsible conservatives for the next 20 or 30 years.

27. And while I know not every Republican-appointed justice has turned out to be a legal originalist (hello, David Freaking Souder), it’s for sure that a John Kerry or Algore appointment would have been worse (and Roberts, as bad as his Obamacare decision was, may have done us a favor via the back door, calling OCare a tax issue rather than a Commerce Clause issue; at least tax issues are legislated rather than litigated).

26. Because Antonin Scalia is 76/

25. And so is Anthony Kennedy.

24. And you know what whomever Obama appoints will be a nightmare for the rest of most of our natural lives.

23. And the thought of both of them being replaced by liberal bobbleheads is too horrific to think of.

22. A Romney administration will treat “separation of powers” as a limit to be observed.

21. For the past four years, Obama has treated it as an obstacle to be breached.

20. Because while our nation needs to re-evaluate its defense strategy and the spending that supports it, we certainly do need a Navy larger than we had in 1917.

19. Because Obama has been shamelessly leaching credit from the SEALs who actually killed Bin Laden, and from the planners and intelligence people who made the mission possible.  Obama does indeed deserve credit for making the call (finally); that credit is paid in full.

18. Because Barack Obama bowed, scraped and deferred to every foreign leader that’d have him (except Queen Elizabeth), and seemed to be looking for more…

17. …and Romney just isn’t going to do that.

There are two immutable facts on this blog.

1. I make a point to write something every single weekday.   During the election season, it’s very frequently late-breaking political stuff.  Being a modestly reputable blogger, I hear a lot of things.  It’s fun.
2. That being said, I burn out hard by the end of an election season.  Every even-numbered year since I started this blog (except probably 2002), there’s a two-month stretch where I can scarcely stomach writing about politics.

So for the better part of two months, I want – and tryyyyyy – to write about anything but politics.

This year, I thought I’d try something new; plan to write a few non-political things during the swing time between election and session.

A couple of the things potentially on the agenda:

The Accidental Conservative:  It was about this time thirty years ago I seriously started wondering if I really was the liberal I’d always been.  But conservatives?  Those were…those people.  Not like me.  It was a weird time.  I may just dredge some of it up.

Bruce Springsteen:  America’s Greatest  Conservative  Songwriter:  In which I debunk the idea that Springsteen – his public political persona notwithstanding – is really a liberal songwriter.  Complete with music!

Notes To A Young Conservative:  It’s not easy being red.  Especially in a culture that glorifies much of what we disdain, and holds us to absurd standards that they don’t themselves observe.

Rethinking The Seventies:  When I was a teenager and twentysomething, I was an angry snot-nosed punk rocker (in every way but appearance).  And as part of that, I really, really disdained the popular music of the seventies – from the pop treacle on the radio to the superstars.  I spat at the mention of Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, California rock staples frpm Jackson Browne to the Eagles, Arena Rock (think Boston, Foreigner and the like), even the Beatles.  And R&B, I just didn’t get at all.    I’ll be digging through the archives and going over my long, sometimes comical reassessment of the decades music (and what a pretentious little twerp I was back then).

I figure if I mention ’em, I’ll actually do them.

Here are some of the questions that’ve come over the transom lately.

“Hahahaha!  Kurt Bills is going to lose!  That’s a loss for you!”:  Well, I am not on the ballot, so it’s not a loss for me. And I supported Severson at the convention.  Now, it is a fact that Kurt Bills would be a much better Senator than A-Klo; I support him, and will vote for him as many times as many times as Mark Ritchie will let me.  I’m praying – seriously – for an upset victory.  America’s future is not assured until modern “progressive” liberalism is peacefully extincted from politics, and getting Klobuchar out of the Senate would be a great step.  But this is going to be a tough race.  No doubt about it.

“Why don’t you shut up?  Minnesota votes Democrat!”:  OK, so what?  I still have a right to dissent.  So far. Chris Matthews notwithstanding.

“Why haven’t you taken on Michael Brodkorb!  You have no integrity”: Partly because there’s nothing to “take on”.  It’s a court case.  I don’t agree with Michael about everything, including inside-the-party politics, and I don’t endorse (or poke my nose into) his personal life choices, but he’s a friend of mine.  If you don’t like that, you’re free to give yourself a stroke fretting about it, but it won’t make any difference.   To the extent that the whole incident is portrayed as a symptom of the problems the MNGOP got itself into?  There’s a case to be made.  I don’t know, and my only real interest is in the party’s future.  Michael’s a brilliant political operator, and his career will no doubt resume its upward parabola.  If you have a problem with that, then say so.  Good luck; as long as Michael is a wedge within the GOP, he’ll be the media’s BFF (above and beyond his value as a source, which Michael earned). And if you have a problem with the fact that I’m letting other peoples’ personal dogs lie and moving on to the GOP’s future, grow some balls and quit the passive-aggressive sniping and take it up with me directly.  You’ll lose, but you’ll lose with some shred of honor.

“Hahaha, you are teh heppocreet!  When the polls were showing Obama ahead, you attacked them! But now that they’re showing Mittens in the lead, you are teh silent!  You are TEH HEPPOCREET!  You is sucks!”:  I don’t know that I’ve written a whole lot about the polls showing Romney ahead, but here’s the kicker;  the partisan turnout model of the polls are still mostly showing more Democrats than Republicans (Susquehanna poll in Pennsylvania and perhaps a few others excepted).

“So how about the Congressional and Legislative races?”: I think if Romney comes close to tying in Minneosta, we’ll hold the Legislature with votes to spare.  Some of the open seats in the ‘burbs are looking good, and the 8th CD is looking better.  And I hear rumors of another possible surprise outstate.  We shall see.

“Hahahah!  You are teh Springstein fan, but he’s endorsing Obeama! Hahaha, you looser!”:  This wasn’t even news in 2000, chuckles.  And stay tuned – because there’s a case that Springsteen may be America’s best conservative songwriter.  And there’s only one blogger that’s gonna tackle that job.  After the election.

“Hahahaha, you are teh Republican in Saint Paul!  You are teh PWN3D!”:  As Abraham Lincoln said, “the likelihood that he might fail ought not deter a man from a cause he believes just”.  And there is no more just cause than bringing democracy to Saint Paul.  It’s going to be a long job.  I’m not going anywhere.  (Because it’s impossible to sell a house in St. Paul).

“You support the Marriage Restriction Amendment?   You ave full of teh hate!”:  I”m ambivalent about the Amendment.  I don’t so much support it as I reject the arguments of most of its opponents.  More next week.  Probably.

“How about those Bears?”:  As I wrote a few years ago, the Bears are truly America’s barometer.  Stay tuned to their record over the nest few weeks.  It’ll be a kety barometer, not just for this election, but for the future of this nation and our civilization.

Yeah, I know – commuting in the winter sucks.  And shoveling and hauling kids to the bus stop and winter heating bills and spinouts and having the whole city shut down by blizzards are all trying.  I get that.

But given a choice between this reeking, stinking, bug-infested, malarial, allergy-ridden, dripping, moldy, plague-ship weather like we have now, and the crisp, bracing zip of a cool winter day – say, anything above 10 degrees – there is only one sane choice, now, isn’t there?

I’m not talking sloppy, dirty, road-boogery-y, long-overstayed-its-welcome, hacking cough and tickle in the back of the throat on top of cabin-fever-y February weather.  I’m talking December, maybe early January, when the pollen is a distant memory and the cold is just a cool, bracing tang in the air.

It’s a scientific fact that, in the long view, most peoples’ memories of winter are like this…

…while to most normal people, the kind of heat wave we’re in now is a lot more like this:

And the household pests!  In this kind of weather…:

…versus the winter:

Seriously, it’s hardly a choice.

Maybe it’s all the Beach Boys songs that are such a part of our shared cultural heritage.

Maybe it’s the residual effects of the American school system’s three months off in the summer.

Maybe it’s Madison Avenue’s effect on the cultural zeitgeist.

But Americans are supposed to love summer.

To Americans, summer is fun; barbecues, baseball, boating at the lake, fun fun fun in Daddy’s T-bird…

…and, fact is, I like all that.

But for most Americans, summer looks a lot more like this…

…with, on weeks like this, a heaping helping of this:

Don’t get me wrong.  I love summer – provided I can be violently physically active, preferably biking (with its built-in breeze).

But I’m:

• one of ten Minnesotans whose family didn’t accumulate some kind of lake property back in the fifties, so summer is a matter of trying to stay functional between bouts of  non-misery
• not a teacher
• battling hay fever that is intensely aggravated by the heat and humidity, so when I say “stob” I really mean “dode go”
• a cold weather baby

…and you can have this hot, steaming, humid, mangrove-swamp-dwelling dripping crap.

That is all.

One of the things I miss about my current job is that I can’t bike it to work.

Not that’s too far – the distance would be a nice challenge, and there are some park ‘n rides halfway there for days when I don’t want a challenge.

But there’s no place to take a shower at the office, or anywhere near it – the only gym close enough to even think about is still 3-4 miles away and, worse, would involve a pretty challenging route to get from the gym to the office, which means I’d need another shower when I got there.

Anyway, apropos not much, Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Driving downtown St. Paul this morning, it occurred to me there was one nice thing about the rain – it would keep the bicycle riders away. No sooner had the thought entered my head than a bicycle rider appeared.

It’s 7:15 a.m. It’s raining. It’s gloomy. I’m on Wabasha Street at 7th – smack downtown in rush hour traffic. This simple soul rides off the curb into traffic on a black mountain bike wearing a black helmet, black jacket, black pants and black shoes. Then he “splits” traffic riding up the dotted lines between cars stopped for a red light before sticking his black-clad arm out and swerving left in front of a truck to turn onto 5th, causing an accordion of nose-dives and brake lights cascading back toward the Capital.

He had a grubby yellow saddlebag slung on the portside of his rack and one tiny red light on his saddle, blinking like a firefly possessed by a demon; that’s it, that’s his safety system. Everybody else was supposed to be watching out for him between the sea of taillights, the drops on the windshield, the smear left by the wipers.

What.

An.

Idiot.

Smear – that’s about what I expected when he cut off that delivery van. I honestly think I would have stopped to get out and spit on him.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

That’s the problem with those Critical Mass riders; they try to do their same schtick when they are not a critical mass…

Tomorrow at noon on this blog, I’m going to do something I’ve never done in this space before.

See you then.

…or maybe it’s because I’ve been working in IT too long.

But almost every time I try to type the phrase “White Paper”, I end up typing “Shite Paper”.

I need to kick that error before it costs me.

Yesterday, in my piece “This Is Your Obama Recovery“, I looked at the math behind the unemployment numbers.  I concluded that when you subtract the unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Labor Force Participation numbers, the number of Americans working is two percentage points lower than it was when Barack Obama was inaugurated, and only a fifth of a point better than the “low point” of the recession (in uemployment terms), in October of 2009.

I reached the numbers by subtracting the unemployment figure from the participation figure; for example, in October of 2009, I subtracted the 10% unemployment rate from the 65% participation rate to get an overall employment rate of 55%.

A commenter at Hot Air – where Allahpundit was kind enough to run my post in its entirety – pointed out that I did the math wrong.  He was correct, of course; the unemployment rate is among those participating in the labor force, not the entire force.  I needed to recalculate, multiplying the BLS Labor Force Participation Rate  by the same month’s unemployment rate as supplied by the BLS.

It actually makes things worse for the Administration.

• January 2009:  7.8% unemployment among the 65.7% of people participating in the workforce meant 60.67% of the work force was working the day Barack Obama was inaugurated.
• October 2010 – lopping 10% unemployment from the 65% particpation rate leaves you 58.5% of the workforce at work on the month the unemployment rate supposedly bottomed.
• January 2012 – Three years after Obama took office, with the unemployment rate right about the point where Obama said that it’d peak with Porkulus?  8.3% unemployment among a 63.7% share of the workforce still in the workforce yields 58.41% of the labor force actually working.

So I was wrong.  We actually have a lower percentage of the work force actually working now than at the “low point” of the recession”, and two and a quarter points lower than when Obama took office.

I regret the error.

I hope America feels the same.

Posting will be light-ish today.

Tomorrow, of course, is another story.  We’ll have Rep. Michele Bachmann on the NARN, which is always a fun broadcast.

If you really need a time-killer, I’ll submit for your approval my list of my favorite SITD posts since 2006, although if you need to kill time that badly I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea.

Anyway – enjoy the Friday and the weekend, and tune in tomorrorw!

2612 weekdays of waking up at 5:30AM and writing til 7-ish.

520 weeks of following the Minnesota news cycle.

Two Presidential, three Gubernatorial, three Senate and 32 Congressional contests, plus five complete legislative election cycles and 11 Legislative sessions.  One wrestler ushered out of office; one Senatorial plane crash and two electoral train wrecks covered.  The decline of two major cities chronicled (keep checking back, that story’s not done).  One complete conversion, from conservative public school supporter to implacable enemy and charter school zealot.

A national convention, three major state conventions.

A couple of dozen Instalanches, and heaven knows how many Hot Air-alanches.

Two desktop and three laptop computers gone through, along with three blogging platforms and counting.

Hundreds of Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant and Brian Lambert columns and “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” memes disposed of.

Dozens of leftyblogger attacks met, trashed, humiliated and, in more than a few cases, out-lived.  One Soros publication outlasted.

Decades?  One.  So far.  Working on number two.

This one kinda snuck up on me; Shot In The Dark turns ten years old today.  And when I say “snuck up on me”, I mean, yeah – I knew after last year’s “ninth anniversary” that there would likely (God willing) be a tenth.  But I woke up this morning and it kinda smacked me upside the head.

I’ve told the story a bunch of times – including every year on this anniversary; I started this blog in 2002, at a time when, after fifteen years out of talk radio, with two kids and working at a failing dotcom, I was keenly feeling the absence of an outlet for my inner pundit.  I read an article in Time about the “New Breed of Conservative Intellectuals”, featuring – ahem – Andrew Sullivan.  The piece mentioned Sullivan’s main outlet – his “blog”.  There was a little sidebar piece on “What Is A Blog”, which led me to “Blogger.com”.  At home from work that night, I started the original Shot In The Dark.  And other than a week off at the end of 2003, and a few odd days off here and there, I think I’ve had something up every weekday, and most weekends, since then.  At the time, I plugged it on a couple of E-Democracy forums, and held steady at about 10 hits a day for the first nine months or so.

My traffic has grown, and remained, really big by regional standards since then.  But as I’ve said for years, I have always done it for me, and would still do it if I were my only traffic.  The blog has brought an avalanche of blessings, the greatest of which has been a great group of friends – Brian, Atomizer, Sisyphus and Chad (an email from Brian was the first indication I found that there were other bloggers in the Twin Cities, back in mid-2002), Ed, John and Scott, Mr. D, King Banaian (whose blog is offline for the duration of his legislative career, which for Minnesota’s sake had best be long and successful), Brad Carlson, Michael Brodkorb and his various successors at MDE, James Lileks, Learned Foot, Derek and Nancy and Guy and the whole crew over at the Dogs, Katie, Gary, Sheila, Pianomomsicle,  Ringer, Roosh, Bogus, and the entire True North syndicate, and the whole MOB, really, which led to the radio show (which is itself headed for an anniversary next month).  Beyond that, it’s been a long train of personal and intellectual growth – or maybe “growth” – and a constant introduction to opportunities that I’d never dreamed of ten years ago.

So I’d still do it just for myself – but I’m glad I don’t have to!

Anyway – thanks to all your regular readers, and the new friends (and occasionally adversaries) that’ve popped up over the past (gulp) decade.  God willing and with a tailwind, we can do it again!

KFAI Radio on the West Bank will be running an interview with me by Allison Herrera on their 9AM “Weekly News” show.  The subject was Voter ID.

KFAI reaching out for conservative counterpoint?  That’s not the KFAI I used to volunteer at!

I will try to tune in on the stream, work schedule permitting – although if there’s anything I hate more than hearing my recorded voice, it’s my voice as recorded after being filtered through a cheap cell phone.  But what the heck, I’m game.

Anyway, check it out.

It’s time once again for that grand tradition in Twin Cities blogging; it’s the sixth-annual, 2011 edition of the Shootie Awards.  These awards commend the worst – and, ever-so-rarely, the best – in Twin Cities (usually-but-not-always alternative) media.

And we’ll kick off the awards with the first statuette:

The Walter Winchell Award For Cool, Dispassionate Reportage – For 2011, it wasn’t hard to pick out the story that’d lead to someone getting the award; the Darren Evanovich shooting in Minneapolis last October, in which a Mr. Evanovich  was shot by a legally-armed citizen in self-defense, was tailor made to bring out the prejudices and provincialism – dare I say, “rant and slant” – in the Twin Cities media.  And as the Henco Attorney’s office investigated and kept the official story close to its institutional vest (turns out Evanovich and his sisters had allegedly done several such capers), and as the Twin Cities Second Amendment movement – the sole source of legitimate, unbiased information on gun-related news, I’m more convinced every day – waved its arms and yelled “Hey, there’s some facts that need reporting here!”, the Twin Cities media took ever-increasing liberties with un-released facts, including a touching portrait of Mr. Evanovich’s family from Channel 5’s Tim Cherno, and a high-level (and grossly-premature) second-guessing of the wisdom of Minnesota’s concealed-carry law from MPR’s generally-excellent Bob Collins.

But at the end of the day, the award was an easy one; it goes to the Strib’s Matt McKinney, who took the sparse info from the Minneapolis Police Department’s news release on the case, interspersed a lot of humanzing detail about Mr. Evanovich, and keystoned his report with the line of the year; that the shooter – still anonymous – had…:

…a state permit to carry a pistol, and he had one with him. He chased the robber behind a restaurant and shot him dead.

As Mr. D famously added, we could be grateful he didn’t add “…just to watch him die”, but really, would it have been necessary?

Two days after the story ran, Henco attorney Mike Freeman declared the shooter a hero, while tut-tutting that his actions should only be untertaken in the extreme – which drew a response of “d’ya think?” from every Twin Cities shooter.

The Gordon Jump “As God Is My Witness, I Thought Turkeys Could Fly” Award:  The living will at the Minnesota Independent finally ground on down to its “do not resuscitate” clause.  Three years after being shaved down to a skeleton crew, and after two years of doing not much but providing commentary on “Uptake” videos and writing about Bradlee Dean, the crew of “liberals with deep pockets” that kept the Mindy in the chips – and on salary – from its “Hey, Gang, let’s do a show (on George Soros’ dime!)” origins, through its Steve Perry/Erik Black/Paul Demko-sporting salad days, to its lonely and oblivious end, finally decided to call in the fire and pee on the dogs.

The Just Plain Too-Dumb-To-Fisk Award – In all my years of blogging, I’ve seen a lot of pretentious, entitled, stupid writing.

Only once have I seen something so completely bereft of insight and intelligence, yet so utterly clogged with smug entitlement, that I had literally nothing to say.

Hinda Mandell’s Strib op-ed last September, in which she found racism in coffee labelling, reset the counter on smug, entitled and parochial.  It was really too weird to be “so bad it’s funny”.  And if you followed that, you are probably too smart to read Hinda Mandell.  Or something.

The “When Did You Stop Beating Your Husband” Award for Innuendo-Based-Journalism – It’s one of the Twin Cities’ leftysphere’s favorite “journalistic” techniques; “cover” a “story” by “asking” loaded “questions” about the “subject” of one’s “reporting”, so as to imply there’s “substance” to the “reporting” beyond the “question” itself;.   And while it’s hard to filter through all the entries in this category – do Twin Cities leftybloggers have any other technique for reporting on stories that they don’t actually have the facts to close the deal on? (Doh!  Now I’m doing it!), it’s foremost practitioner is in no doubt whatsoever.  Award-winning jouralist Karl Bremer wins the award (!) and spikes the ball in the endzone with two “winning” entries in this elite category; his innuendo-laden mischaracterization of the status of Michele Bachmann’s law license last summer, distinguished by being nearly devoid of actual fact, and his breathless questions about Bradlee Dean’s association with a financial planner who was in trouble with the law (whom Bremer apparently wasn’t curious enough to find out was also in trouble with Dean – Dean had sued the subject of the story).

The Billy Graham “Blinding Flash Of Epiphany” Award For Renewed Interest In Absolute Moral Rectitude In Politicians – goes to every Twin Cities leftyblogger who, in 1997, bleated “It’s only sex!  Mooooove on!  Just mooooooooooove on!  Peoples’ personal lives aren’t of any political importance” in re the Clinton/Lewinski flap, but suddenly re-discovered their inner tittering moralistic junior high nerd when news of the Amy Koch fiasco blew up.

The Phoenix Woman Award For Excellence In Rhetoric – For this year, this award goes to AM950 host Matt McNeil for – I’ll try to be tactful, here – face-palmingly inappropriate response to the Breivik shootings in Norway on Twitter.  Further proving that if there was a “Fairness Doctrine” for doy, AM950 would be off the air.

The Mister O’Brien 2+2=5 Award For Analysis – This one goes to Minnesota Progressive Project’s Eric Pusey who, in the middle of complaining that nobody was covering the dreary, addled “Netroots Nation” and all the media were over at the companian, interesting, hospitable, babe-packed “Right Online” conference, noted for his blog’s brief national audience that the Strib is really a conservative tool.

The Tina Brown Award For Turning A Prestigious News Organization Into A Showy, Shallow, Shrill Joke – Goes this year, as every year, to Tina Brown for the job she’s done turning “Newsweek” into something no self-respecting grocery-store will stock next to the National Enquirer.  In this case, for out-doing Dump Bachmann at picking the least-flattering possible portrait of Michele Bachmann to further their ‘Journalism”, and doing it with such bald-faced aplomb that the National Organization of Women, which normally wouldn’t pee on Rep. Bachmann if she were on fire, objected.

The Quickster Award For Excellence In Blog-Product Launch Marketing – is almost as easy to judge this year.  What better time to put a capstone on a decade of frothy, often fact-challenged obsession with former activist, former State Senator, current Representative and Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann than when she’s riding high in the polls!  None!

But the crew at Wiley and Sons waited to publish The Madness Of Michele Bachmann,  a Hugh-Hewitt-like assemblage of eight years of blog posts by Eva Young, Ken “Avidor” Weiner and the award-winning Karl Bremer until Bachmann’s star had risen, set, and was calmly fermenting in the middle-to-bottom of the GOP presidential pack, and probably generating less interest (outside the rage-y bsessives that frequent The Dump) than Tim Pawenty.

The Cicero Demosthenes Award For Excellence In Political Rhetoric – This one is always a tough one.  Which Twin Cities leftyblogger has brought the most to the expansion of the glory of written English rhetoric?

The nominations were compelling indeed:

• “Two-Putt” Tommy Johnson, who raised “I know you are, but what am I?” to something of a low art form
• Karl Bremer and the “Did you stop beating your wife?” school of reporting (which see above)
• University of Minnesota professor Bill Gleason, who brought spam sites into their rightful place as news sources.

But as to the winner?  The choice wasn’t so much “who” as “why”.   “Robert Erickson”, the nom de douche of Nick Espinosa, achieved the simulacrum of “progressive” rhetoric on two different levels in the past year.  His mastery of the “Call and chant” form of speech, which he perfected at weeks and weeks of “Occupy MN” protests (he’s actually “Dieter” in this video here) was surpassed only by his pioneering of what is, truly, the dominant form of progressive rhetorical articulation; meeting ones’s opponents with a cloud of glitter.

You hear that?  It’s the ghost of Demosthenes.  He’s crying.  I’m sure it’s joy.  Really.

And finally, the award di tutti awardi of the Shooties lo these many years…:

The Charles Townsend Award, the keystone award of these entire festivities.  Charles Townsend was a British Parliamentarian in the 1770′s, whose response to the growing “Tea Party” in the colonies was a marvel of patrician contempt…

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

…was worthy of Larry Pogemiller or Nick Coleman.  Or Ryan Winkler.

On the Sunday, July 3 edition of the Esme Murphy show, Elliot Seid  – the capo for the Twin Cities Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said in re the state’s budget squabble, and the legislative majority’s unwillingness to accede to a 22% state spending increase, and tax hikes to match, in the middle of a recession, said “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem!”.

And that’s it for this year!  Bus your own tables on the way out – we had to lay off most of the union kitchen staff to make our budget – and we’ll see you for next year’s Shooties!

Sunday is New Years Day – and that means only one thing.

It’ll be the sixth annual Shootie Awards!

The awards – given every New Years Day since 2006, catalog the worst and worst-er in Twin Cities blogging.

Coming up on Sunday, here on Shot In The Dark.

Who who would make the perfect President of the United States?

Well, here’s what I think:

Economic Policy – the ideal President realizes the best thing government can do is get out of the way.  That cuts both ways – there’s no such thing as “too big to fail”.   Enforcing the laws that exist – against things like fraud and the like – is government’s proper role. And the goverment needs to get out of the systematic structural debt business.  Since jacking up taxes to pay for Obama’s level of spending would be ruinous to business, that means slashing goverment spending. Which is fine, because my ideal candidate realizes that…

Role of Government – …our government has poked its nose into a lot of areas where it has no business.  We could do without massive swathes of the Federal Government; the Departments of Education and Energy need to be abolished. We need a flat tax (on income above the poverty line, or some reasonable multiple of it).

Of course, every bit as important as the “role of government” is the “role of the citizen”.  Nearly half of Americans pay no taxes to the Feds.  The burden on the individual taxpayer needs to be lowered – but there need to be more of them.  Democracy can not work when a minority is working to pay the bills about the majority.

Oh, yeah – the Tenth Amendment needs to be taken seriously.

Law And Order  – Part of our crime problem is that we create so many criminals.  It’s time to end the war on drugs.  This would end the black market for drugs, which is the motivation for the criminal enterprises small and large that have gutted most of America’s cities and made poverty in America such uniquely and recently nasty and criminality-prone state.

Foreign Policy – Our policy toward our friends and allies are still mired in the days when we were the only nation that could stand up against Communism.  The Soviets are gone, the Europeans, Japanese and South Koreans have more than enough economic power to see to their own defense, and we should be out of that business.

We should also make it clear that while we seek redress of international grievances, we will not stand for the destruction of the democracies in Israel or Taiwan.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that the US needs to have

Defense – In the eighties, Edwin Luttwak wrote “The Pentagaon and the Art of War”, which argue that the US was spending an obscene amount of money to no visible goal; we were planning, essentially, to re-fight World War II.  And while the Pentagon updated its approach by the end of the Cold War, it’s time to do it again.  We need military – but what kind? What are America’s interests,and how are they best defended?

So what candidate best meets all of those criteria?

None of them, of course.

So I guess I’ll take my toys and go home.

It’s been a long, difficult year.  And this past couple of weeks have been doozies.

So I think I’m going to extend my Christmas break another day.

Have a happy holiday, everyone!

Merry Christmas from the whole staff at Shot In The Dark!

Picture courtesy Angryclown