Maloney says Franken is bailing on Air America Radio:

We’re hearing that Al Franken is leaving Air America and giving up on talk radio, most likely for good.

His last day on the air will apparently be December 8. Already, a few libtalk stations have begun to leak word of Franken’s impending exit.

In the meantime, stations have been bailing out on Air America; five in the past week, according to Maloney.

It’s probably a fair time to go into the wayback machine and check up on my predictions.  On March 11, 2004 – about three weeks before the network aired – I predicted:

My predictions are as follows:

• “Uprising”: Comics are as stable as show poodles. I say the show has burned through both of its co-hosts in the first six months, and is “re-worked” by September 31.
• “Unfiltered”: Lilywhite Winstead is a snide, hip, too-cool-for-school comic. Chuck D is a hard-edged polemicist. Separately, neither invites conversation. Together, I see the show being as much fun as a MacAlester teach-in. I predict Chuck bails within six months.
• “O’Franken” – For starters; basing your show’s identity on a slap against your rival merely plays his game, and shows the…well, stupidity of FrankenNet’s executive suite. Second: I’m trying to figure out Al Franken’s reaction when he realizes his sidekick is Katherine Lanpher, the overrated dim-bulb of MPR fame. I say Lanpher’s out by March 21, 2005, and the show grinds to a halt by September 30, 2006.
• Randi Rhodes: Gone by March 31, 2005.
• “Majority Report”: Garofalo is an acquired taste when you’re watching her do comedy in a room; much of her appeal (and I’ll admit right here – she has appeal) is physical; her face is half of her act. Note to FrankenNet’s brain trust; on radio, nobody can see your face! I give it six months: By 9/30/04, Garofalo will be gone.
• Finally – FrankenNet will get a major re-tooling by September 31, 2004. Most of its original lineup will be gone as noted above. Its first major affiliate will switch formats by 3/31/05, and the network will be officially dead by 3/31/06.

Count on it.

So how’d I do?

• Oops – Marc Maron lasted a tad over two years, although the show went through some re-casting. Can’t win ’em all.
• Lizzzz Winstead indeed lasted a shade under a year.
• I predicted Lanpher’s exit by March of ’05, and that Franken would bail by 9/30/06.  Lanpher lasted six months longer than I called.  If Maloney’s story is accurate, I’ll have underestimated Franken’s staying power by a shade over two months.  Not bad.
• Garofalo?  Oops.  She lasted just shy of two years longer than I’d figured.  Guess standup isn’t doing as well as I’d figured.
• On the other hand, quite a number of major Air America affiliates changed formats within three months of airing.

So I think it’s time to start the dead pool.  Everyone sound off in the comments; what date do you think FrankenNet will finally assume room temperature?

Closest guess wins!

Lassie at Freedomdogs notes that the left is falready planning to try to disrupt the ’08 GOP Convention   here in Saint Paul:

Not placated after a major DFL win this election, area hippies are plotting street theater at the 2008 GOP Presidential Convention in St. Paul.

“[Executive Director of MN ACLU, Chuck] Samuelson said he expects the Minnesota ACLU eventually will get involved in lawsuits to guarantee convention access. He said he expects that authorities will be prepared to handle tens of thousands of arrests, possibly using a large venue to hold those arrested and process them.”

A “veteran” of ProtestWarrior and FreeRepublic, I remember reading reports of delegates harassed in New York. Hundreds of PWs and FRs joined to counter-protest agitators and escort delegates. Below, PWs got in front of unsuspecting protesters at their anti-war march:

Go to the Dogs to see the photos.

I’ve been in an extended conversation with a bunch of Democrats on a St. Paul politics discussion group. Over there, among the coterie of dedicated lefties, trying to distinguish between peaceful demonstrations (a perfectly fine thing) and violent provocation is completely fruitless; it would seem some of them (at least the more vocal ones) don’t think there is a difference.

As for me?  Bring on the peaceful protesters; it’ll be fun.  But keept he violent provocateurs in Seattle and San Francisco where they belong.

As to having a “large venue” for holding the scuzzbags that get arrested – rubbish.  Rent a bunch of barges on the Mississippi.  Put up tarps for shelter.  Violent provocation should have consequences.

And if the Saint Paul Police need a backup water cannon operator – you got my number.

More constructive, perhaps, is Protest Warrior’s idea.  Go read the Dogs!

(Read the whole series)

As I noted last week, I didn’t start out as an opponent of the public education system [1]. No, in fact the school system had to work pretty hard to make me what I am today – a fierce, intractable, and deeply cynical critic.

It really didn’t start that way.

One of the best things that happened to me in elementary school was my fifth grade teacher, Barry Buchholtz. He’d just graduated from college, after serving a hitch in the Navy, some of it in Vietnam. Buchholtz was a godsend for a group of fifth grade boys, used to being crammed into long, orderly rows for hours on end. He told war stories (he had quite a few), he taught us karate moves, he roughhoused with us (to the horror of the women who taught the other classes, he let us play “tackle pomp”, which was basically a playground cage match), he quarterbacked our sandlot football games, he let us play cops ‘n robbers and cowboys ‘n indians and whatnot, even letting us made toy guns out of branches and sticks.

And he was the best teacher ever, to a group of ten year old boys. Not just because he let a bunch of boys roughhouse – but because letting us out of those dank, airless classrooms and letting us run around and do things other than rote memorizing and listening to readings taught most of us that learning didn’t have to be utter drudgery.

He’d probably be fired today. But I digress.

“Utter Drudgery” may sound dramatic – and I largely didn’t mind school, because with a teacher for a father, I knew the value of playing the paper chase. I’d also learned to read early, which put me on the fast track for most of elementary school.

But I do remember the kids who didn’t have such a good time. Boys who couldn’t sit still in long rows on hard wooden seats (two of my classrooms as a kid still had the desks that were bolted into long rows on the floor) and were labeled “difficult”; kids whose blood sugar ran out about an hour before lunch; kids who reacted badly to the stale, stuffy, miserable air in our 1912 school building (which was later condemned and torn down). Boys who didn’t learn to read as fast as the other kids, for whatever reason. Kids who didn’t take to sitting in long, orderly rows for hours on end doing what someone else had planned out for them, day in, day out, year in,year out.
I remember during my senior year, talking with a friend who was a natural with machines. We’d been in first, second, fourth and fifth grades together. I had very fond memories of all the years (except fourth grade; I had the same fourth-grade teacher as my father had had. The woman, to say the least, was overdue for retirement). My pal denied remembering anything about first, second or fourth grades. I’d done well; he’d been labelled “not much of a student’ – and everyone knew it at the time! In fact, I pondered (years later) – everyone who’d had a rough time in school, or who’d dropped out, came as exactly no surprise at all to those of us who’d known them in elementary school. They just hadn’t fit in.

————-

A good chunk of the teachers, from fifth grade on (especially the males) had paddles hanging from their chalkboards. Many of them didn’t hesitate to use them; if a kid sassed off, left the room, or (in some cases) didn’t do his homework, they had carte blanche to swing away. And they did (although not, ever, with girls). My high school principal had been a Marine fighter pilot in WWII; his assistant in charge of discipline, was a 6’6 guy, also a former Marine, I think. The assistant would prowl the halls; guys who sassed him would be flung across the hall or stuffed into lockers. Smoking in the boys room couild earn you a “swirlie” (the AP would dunk heads in the toilet and flush, or so the rumor had it).

Now, I don’t support corporal punishment – and some teachers did abuse the “privilege”. But back then, I don’t recall a single instance of schools being “locked down”, or of any sort of hysteria over violence. Bring a toy gun to school? It’d get confiscated until your parents felt like picking it up. Sass a teacher? Get paddled, get detention (which, back then, was a solid, miserable hour after school). Draw on the walls? Stay after school and clean all the walls and desks, under the watchful eye of a teacher who was stuck in the building until 5 and not real happy about it.

In other words, dumb actions had dumb and immediate consequences. Consequences which most people eventually figured they could do without.

Consequences that didn’t punish the parents or every other student in the school.

I grew up, graduated, went to college, started a life, married a prefab family (my wife had a nine-year-old boy when we got married), and in 1990 became reacquainted with schools. I was still a big supporter.

After all – they’d done OK with me, hadn’t they?

(Read the whole series)

(more…)

When I was a kid, toy guns were not something you brought to school.

On the other hand, you didn’t bring any other toys to school, either. They were a distraction.

Nowadays, the biggest distraction is the idiots who run our school systems. Apple Valley schools have had a couple of students arrested for being insufficiently bright on school time:

Toy guns have landed two teenagers in Dakota County in serious trouble.

In one case, a 14-year-old Apple Valley student was arrested Thursday morning after twice firing plastic pellets from an air gun at students on a school bus.

Um, no, I’m not condoning this. The little dolt deserved to have the whole world come down on him. And an extent it did. But did it stop there?

According to a letter that district superintendent John Currie sent to parents Thursday, the boy first shot the air gun while he was on or outside a shuttle bus at Apple Valley High School. The bus driver was unaware of the incident at the time, Currie said.

The student then rode the bus to the School of Environmental Studies, where he allegedly again shot the air gun at students. The shuttle continued to the boy’s school, the Area Learning Center, where he was arrested.

On the one hand; a junior high kid has done something deeply, utterly stupid (and one might not suspect it’s the first time, since the kid attends ALC, which is school district shorthand for “We’ve had plenty of trouble with this kid already”. ALC is the educational gulag. More on that later.

On the other hand; the school sent a letter. To parents. A letter explaining to the parents of junior high kids that another junior high kid has done something really, really dumb.

And the story has made the front (online page) of the Strib!

We’ll get back to this. There was another incident. I’ve added emphasis:

In the other Dakota County case, a 15-year-old student at Hastings High School was charged Thursday with making terroristic threats, a felony, after telling other students he had a “hit list” with four names on it and planned to take a replica gun to school to frighten his targets.

The incidents that began at Apple Valley High School prompted school officials to lock down the School for Environmental Studies and the Area Learning Center briefly, Currie said.

A dolt and an overdramatic drama jack act like…dolts and overdramatic drama jacks, or, put another way, like adolescents. The proper response is to suspend them, maybe arrest them, deal with the situation.

But no. They locked down both schools, confining hundreds of kids to their airless, dismal classrooms, in a ritual that every student in a school today knows to mean “SOMEONE WITH A GUN!”

It’s a wonder anyone gets through our school systems without post-traumatic stress.

I repeat: Any gun owners who claim to be vigilant Second Amendment activists, who nonetheless voted Democrat in this past election, have only themselves to blame.

And yes, I will pile on.

Emboldened by the Dems’ success, the nearly-moribund “Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota” – which is a tiny cadre of well-off checkbook-activists masquerading as a grassroots group – is taking a shot at trying to regain some of the influence the anti-gun movement has lost in the past decade.

A little bird directed me to the CS“S”M website:

A couple of CSM gun-owning members are starting a hunters/gun
owners group composed of those individuals who are tired of
the NRA’s constant fighting against sensible gun regulations
designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and youth.

Do you believe in: a) universal background checks for all gun
sales to make it difficult for prohibited buyers to obtain guns;
b) working against illegal gun trafficking; c) openness in
record-keeping for gun sales, gun crimes and gun deaths and
injuries; and d) requiring gun owners to report stolen guns?

If so, please contact the CSM office at csm@endgunviolence.com

We’d love to have you join this newly forming group.

Let me translate into non-disingenuous English for you: “A couple of people who may or may not actually hunt but are ignorant about the Constitution have agreed to play along with our astroturf group’s historically, legally and morally illegitimate crusade to punish the law-abiding gun owner, based on a specious, discredited reading of the Constitution and the Democrats’ tiresome attempts to drive a wedge between Second Amendment activists and ignorant “sportsmen”. If you believe the law-abiding gun owner is at his/her heart a criminal waiting to happen with no real right to privacy, join us in helping to gut your rights!”

The little bird added:

And it’s pretty clear that an astro-turf group is being formed. To stop ’em, we need to gather as much public data on any people they “present” and show their ties to anti-gunners, if any such tie exists.

I’ll be putting in a request to CS“S”M for an interview – but don’t hold your breath. In three years of calling Rebecca Thoman (CS“S”M’s leader and one of its’ precious few members), I have yet to receive a call back, much less an answer to any questions. CS“S”M is, indeed, the most cowardly group in the history of Minnesota politics, hiding behind Wes “Lying Sack of Filth” Skoglund and Jane “Strict Mistress” Ranum‘s skirts and buying its influence the old-fashioned way – one check at a time.

Rebecca Thoman doesn’t have the guts to face serious questioning, because she knows she’s not equipped to respond to it. No gun control activist ever is.

The little bird continued:

“I’m hearing the DFL wants to end firearm law pre-emption, turning any deer hunter driving thru Minneapolis into a criminal.”

That’s been a pet project of the Metro DFL for almost two decades – eliminating the state’s pre-emption law that disallows cities from enacting stricter gun control laws than the state’s. Pawlenty will, of course, veto any such attempt…

…but that’s not the big issue. The fact is, if you’re a gun owner who cares about the Second Amendment and still voted DFL, you need to stop and think; is this the path you want to go down?

Remember – the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting; Congress could ban hunting tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect the Second Amendment in the least. It’s a wedge dreamed up by decades of Democrats; it should be a desperately dumb, ineffective wedge.

Let’s try to keep it that way, shall we?

The San Francisco School Board voted 4-2 yesterday to resolve to eliminate the Junior Reserve Office Training Corps (JROTC) program.

The resolution passed says the military’s ban on openly gay soldiers violates the school district’s equal rights policy for gays. The school district and the military currently share the $1.6 million annual cost of the program. About 1,600 San Francisco students participate in JROTC at seven high schools across the district.

Cadets and instructors who spoke at the meeting and rallied outside argued that the program teaches leadership, organizational skills, personal responsibility and other important values.

“This is where the kids feel safe, the one place they feel safe,” said Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor. “You’re going to take that away from them?”

Unmentioned in the story; the program is especially popular in heavily-minority inner city schools, among parents who can’t afford private schools but want something in their students’ day that instills some form of discipline, pride and self-respect (as opposed to self-esteem) among their students.

To his credit, mayor Gavin Newsom criticized the resolution:

Mayor Gavin Newsom called severing ties with the JROTC “a bad idea” that penalized students without having any practical effect on the Pentagon’s policy on gays in the military.

Indeed.

Now, here’s the dirty little secret; the left – awash as they claim to be in concern for the well-being of minority students – hate JROTC. There is a faction in the Saint Paul School Board and the Administration that is actively seeking to bar JROTC from St. Paul schools – not primarily because of “Don’t Ask…”, but because they just don’t like the military.

I’d love to get some Democrats on the local school board on record about this.

I’ve been wondering; if Rudy Giuliani made some sort of amend to the base for his anti-gun, pro-choice history, would he have a shot?

Jay Reding thinks so:

I’m quite convinced that the CW on Giuliani is wrong. He can win in the primaries by focusing on his stance on illegal immigration and national defense. The American people trust Giuliani right now, despite his sometimes checkered past. He’s one of the few candidates who can reach beyond the 49-51% divide between the political parties and attract voters on both sides of the aisle. There’s a whole lot to be said for a politician in that position, and only a few are capable of pulling that off.

More later.

Ann Coulter, noting the paucity of mainstream media coverage of Condi Rice’s achievements, wonders why Nancy “First Woman Speaker” Pelosi is big news at all:

But when Nancy Pelosi — another Democrat who married a multimillionaire — achieves the minor distinction of becoming the first female speaker of the House, The New York Times acts like she’s invented cold fusion.

There were two major articles breathlessly reporting Pelosi’s magnificent achievement as first female speaker and an op-ed by Bob Herbert, titled “Ms. Speaker and Other Trends.” Beatifying Pelosi as “the most powerful woman ever to sit in Congress,” Herbert began: “Sometimes you can actually feel the winds of history blowing.” There was a major Times profile of Pelosi, gushing that Pelosi was “on the brink of becoming the first female speaker.” (Isn’t she just the most independent little gal?)

So in addition to bringing back a cut-and-run national security strategy, tax-and-spend domestic policy and a no-enforcement immigration policy, the new Democratic Congress is apparently ushering in a return to feminist milestones.

Democrats: You women had better just be grateful!

The good news: Hatch lost the governor race. The Napoleon of the Range’s political career would seem over – scuttled, in part, by the same raging temper that made the Attorney General’s office such a pleasant place:

But on Wednesday, Hatch acknowledged that in the final days, “there were hiccups galore. A lot of things went wrong. I put my gaffe right up at the top.”

His “hiccup” was an outburst in which he called a reporter either a “Republican whore” or “hack,” a temper flash that came after punishing attacks that followed Dutcher’s blunder.

In defending Dutcher, Hatch said he made matters even worse at one point by telling his attackers to quit picking on a woman.

“I was thinking, don’t pick on the lieutenant governor, pick on me,” Hatch said. “But at one point I said don’t pick on a woman. That was a dumb, dumb, dumb comment to make.”

Ultimately, he said, that may have cost him more votes among liberals in the metro area than his original outburst.

And therein lies the better news: Hatch’s defeat may have also rid us for good of Judi Dutcher, former uberliberal Republican who changed parties, thus becoming the Most Qualfied Woman For An Office as far as the DFL was concerned, earning endless soft-focus praise that was only recently outstripped by Barack Obama.

Hopefully we’re done with that, now.

Blois Olson (who is apparently on track to be the “Larry Jacobs of the 2020’s”) notes:

Blois Olson, a co-publisher of Politics in Minnesota and a DFL commentator, said most in the DFL were “too happy about other wins” to be upset about Hatch’s defeat or his e-mail.

And, he said, he wouldn’t count either Hatch or Dutcher out for future runs.

“If a cat has nine lives,” Olson said, “a politician has at least 10.”

Blois: I think the metaphor you’re looking for involves garlic and wooden stakes through the heart.

Store clerk repels machete-wielding robber with own machete.

In Amy Klobuchar’s Minneapolis, she’d have gotten a stiffer charge than the robber.

When inaugurated to Congress in 1991, Paul Wellstone took the occasion of his first meeting with President George “41” Bush to harangue the president on the buildup for the Gulf War.  The President responded with the immortal aside “Who is this chickensh*t?”

The ongoing lesson of the moment, of course, had nothing to do with Wellstone’s courage (it was irrelevant); it related to his propensity to take a tradition that was there for the institution of the Senate, and make it all all about Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul.

Yesterday we saw our first Keith Keith Keith Keith Keith moment:

While his fellow incoming freshman were attending a private White House reception with President Bush Monday night, Rep.-elect Keith Ellison had what he considered a more important appointment to keep.

“I went to the AFL-CIO reception, because I wanted to meet and greet leaders of labor, and get to know them,” Ellison, D-Minn., said in an interview during a break from freshman orientation Tuesday. “Those are the people who I came here to support.”

“It wasn’t even a close call,” added Ellison, who is replacing the retiring Rep. Martin Sabo, a Democrat. “Maybe one day I’ll get to meet the president. He’s the president, and I respect him in his role as the president, but I have exceedingly sharp differences with him on a policy level.”

But the event, and the moment, weren’t about your policies, or the President’s, Ellison.  It was about the institution of the relationship between the Congress and the Executive – something much, much bigger, if you care about this nation’s history and future, than you, your policies or your party.

Perhaps it’s a way to show his constituents he’s not been seduced by the Beltway.  But a better time to show that would be in, say, a couple of years.

I’m betting “against”.

It was Sunday, November 16, 1986. I had gotten a ton of responses from my City Pages ad.

Oh, some of them were doozies. High school kids, guys just out of rehab, a stripper who figured she was Leta Ford…

…in short, people who answered every ad in the City Pages. Because not a one of them knew who Southside Johnny or Joe Grushecky were – and the one person who’d heard of Richard Thompson, thought he was heavily influenced by the Cure.

But after a week or so, I got a call from a guy, a drummer, who not only knew each of them – he and his brother, a bass player (!) owned a copy of Love’s So Tough, the Iron City Houserockers’ debut album.

I then spent a week and a half trying to find the drummer – his phone got cut off for a week or so, which was pretty typical for drummers, but still.

Finally – the week after Halloween – we got together. He came over to my basement hovel/studio on 46th and Wentworth, I popped a couple of beers, we talked music (he was into Springsteen, the Jukes, the Heartbreakers, the Clash, the Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, Thompson (good), as well as Lou Reed and the Screaming Blue Messiahs (not quite as good)). Then, finally, the moment of truth. I popped the demo cassette with the five best songs I’d written and recorded into the stereo.

He dug it.

I was getting pretty jazzed by this point. An instant rhythm section? Almost too good to be true.

We arranged to meet the following week – Saturday night, the 15th of November – at their older brother’s place, which doubled as a rehearsal space, which tripled as part of the basement of a warehouse in downtown Minneapolis. Better still? Older brother played guitar.

We wound up jamming, the four of us, until about 2AM, when my voice and fingers gave out. We agreed we had to give this a shot.

——

It was Sunday. A pretty typical winter Sunday, all in all; I drove out to the station that night for an anything-but-typical Mitch Berg Show.

My relationship with my “producer”/”engineer” Griff was, as noted before, dicey at best. One needed to keep him entertained, or he’d wander off to the transmitter shack and forget about screening calls. The sportscasts helped a lot. But he wanted more. He wanted to book guests.

Not just any guests. Guests that’d help out with his real career as a band agent.

So that night, we were going to be talking about Twin Cities Rock and Roll with an all-star panel; Skip Waslaski from Southern Thunder Sound, Larry Sahagian of the band “Urban Guerrillas”, and a couple of guys whose names I don’t remember…no, whose names I doubt I retained even then, but were members of one of Griff’s bands.

At least Griff was excited.

I don’t remember much of the interview, except that Skip knew everyone that had ever played in a band in the Twin Cities, and that Larry…well, in addition to playing in a band that made The Doors look like “Up With People”, Larry was the booker for a bar.

“So, Larry – I have this band…”

Last Tuesday was a buzzkill across the board; one of the biggest whacks upside the head was Phil Krinkie’s narrow (55 vote) loss.

Bob Collins at MPR’s Polinaut on a bump’n run City Pages interview with Krinkie:

City Pages interviews Phil Krinkie, who lost his re-election bid. He says he hopes for a stalemate and thinks the voters should be punished. That goes against the whole “let’s work together theme.”

Here’s the CP’s actual interview, quoting Krinkie:

“But I want to leave you with a quote from Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York. When he got beaten by David Dinkins, he said, ‘The voters have spoken and now they must be punished.’ I have a feeling that’s what may be in store for the people of Minnesota.”

Mr. Collins: Your version (“the voters should be punished”) implies a petulance that is absent from Krinkie’s actual statement.

Lott back as minority whip:

After an intense evening in which both men lobbied colleagues during floor votes, the Republican caucus elected Lott, a one-time whip and majority leader, by secret ballot. Lott will be the GOP’s second-in- command to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was elected unanimously to be the Senate minority leader in the new Congress.

With the midterm elections finished and Santorum, another candidate for the post, failing to win re-election, Lott cast himself as the more experienced candidate and the better choice for a job.

At least McConnell will replace Frist.  That’ll be an improvment, right?

Please?

Sheila observes that today is PJ O’Rourke’s birthday.

O’Rourke is, of course, one of the short list of writers who started me on the road from left to right, twenty-odd years ago (the others being Dostoevskii, Paul Johnson and Solzhenitzyn).

Red’s favorite O’Rourke quotes:

— A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

— Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.

— With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn’t think possible in today’s world. They have created a land of make-believe that’s worse than regular life.

— In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that’s fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn’t fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe.

— There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.

— To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.

— The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don’t know.

— Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, “You’re a disgusting, drunken mess.” And that’s a good description of a party, if it’s done right.

— Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don’t know much. Say it’s ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn’t ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids’ families? And what is tonight’s pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system.

— Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.

— It’s hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.

— People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don’t need politics, they have jobs.

— Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college.

And the one I’ve, perhaps predictably, loved since I saw it in Parliament of Whores: “I’m not a liberal, so I’m not an expert at stuff I know nothing about”. But the best O’Rourke of all – and perhaps the one still most applicable in this day of demands for multilateralism – is O’Rourke’s ringing defense of the cowboy diplomat, fifteen years before anyone called them that (below the fold).

(more…)

Note to legal bureaucrats; stupidity isn’t terrorism.

Not that what Rthese people did wasn’t gapingly, breathtakingly, invincibly stupid…:

According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, “making other passengers uncomfortable,” when a flight attendant asked them to stop.

“Persing was observed nuzzling or kissing Sewell on the neck, and … with his face pressed against Sewell’s vaginal area. During these actions, Sewell was observed smiling,” reads the indictment filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

So far, so good; a couple is getting frisky on the plane. Note to world; take it to the rest room.

But laws are all about more-or-less arbitrary thresholds:

On a second warning from the flight attendant, Persing snapped back threatening the flight attendant with “serious consequences” if he did not leave them alone.

The comment was enough to have the couple, both in their early 40s, arrested when the plane reached its destination in Raleigh, North Carolina, and charged with obstructing a flight attendant and with criminal association…Persing’s lawyer William Peregoy said his client was not feeling well when he placed his head on his companion’s lap, and that he only threatened the flight attendant with reporting him to his superiors on landing.

Note to the lawyers involved; we have an entire political party trying to trivialize the War On Terror. Please don’t contribute to it.

In reading Swiftee’s response to Michael Moore’s snark to disheartened conservatives, he said something that got me thinking:

You talk about “being in a funk”. Mikey, you cannot imagine our dismay when it became obvious that none of your big mouthed, anti-American buddies really didn’t have the balls to follow through with their childish little threats to leave the country in ’04, but we’ve gotten over it.

Hey – I don’t recall any conservatives threatening to leave the country if the election didn’t go their way.

I also didn’t hear anyone yapping about seceding from the union and joining a nation friendlier to conservative beliefs.

Hm. Not that I’d ever say such a thing, but it’d almost seem that conservatives care more about this country…

Perhaps being freed from the angst of being a political minority in a state he believes is “his” (for a couple of years, anyway) is helping. Or perhaps he’s just come to terms with the fact that he’s no political commentator.

But Nick Coleman has managed to write a column that skirts perilously close to a number of inconvenient truths.

He’s writing about Target Corporation’s plea for property tax relief from Hennepin County:

Luckily, when it comes to helping bail out billion-dollar outfits, Hennepin County sets the standard for compassion.

Earlier this year, the County Board came to the rescue of Carl (Big Pockets) Pohlad, handing him half a billion (a billion, when you count the interest taxpayers will pay). Hennepin County has become a beacon to the needy, and this important charity work has attracted other hungry billionaires, such as Zygi Wilf, who is thinking of getting in line for an $800 million stadium. I don’t know about you, but this kind of charity work makes me proud. When you can feel good by doing good, then you are on the right track. No corporation should be left behind.

Well, that’s kinda what happens when a group – a state, a church, a nation, whatever – gets into the habit of subsidizing things, to say nothing of picking and choosing what to subsidize.

Minnesota – and especially Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis – has always subsidized two things:

• Big Businesses – stadiums for billionaire team owners and millionaire players are only the latest in a long, fiscally gruesome record of turning over money and resources from those who have, to those who have more. From eminent domain land grabs (which took private property from business owners to give to…other business owners) led to the Best Buy and Target headquarters buildings in Richfield and Downtown Minneapolis, respectively; Tax Increment Financing (TIF), which is essentially eminent domain with money instead of land, has floated the development of countless businesses in the city and the ‘burbs. Some call it “corporate welfare”, to try to draw a specious equation between it and, say, entitlements paid out to the poor; let’s call it “Subsidizing Business” for right now, since the intended consequence to “subsidizing” something is to create a favorable environment for more of that something.
• Poverty: like every state (only moreso), Minnesota – especially Hennepin County – pays for people to be poor. It’s called “welfare”, since it’s supposed to look out for the “welfare” of the poor, but it is essentially “Subsidizing Poverty” – making poverty a viable lifestyle, and giving the poor a viable option to starving on the one hand (a good thing) or getting themselves out of poverty on the on the other (a bad thing). Sine any time you pay for something – in this case, paying for people to live at a just-good-enough level of poverty – you create more of that thing, both in terms of making it easier for people not to improve their own incomes (most people at any level of income will take the path of least resistance; why get out of poverty, when you’re being paid to stay at a level that’s bearable?). It’s a subsidy; we subsidize poverty.

Coleman:

Once upon a time, companies like Target were ashamed to ask for handouts from a government that had kids to feed and libraries to run and cops to hire. Thankfully, we no longer live in hard times. The welfare queens and their babies — it’s always, “Feed me, wah, wah, feed me!” with these kids — have been kicked off the welfare rolls to make room for worthier recipients.

Except that Minnesota never actually kicked anyone off of welfare. Oh, the state added the thinnest possible veneer of “workfare” and “up and off” windowdressing to its panoply of programs. But at the end of the day, Minnesota still has the most “generous” welfare benefits in the Midwest.

Now – if you accept that putting a bottomless pot of money in front of a bunch of billionaires will draw a parade of Wilfs and Pohlads and Targets and Best Buys begging for their piece of the freebie pie, what makes anyone think that the poor behave any differently? If you give away things, you’ll draw takers. If you make a habit of it, the crowd of takers will stick around for more.

Coleman snipes:

I don’t know why it took so long, but Minnesota finally has turned into the kind of welfare state worth having.

A corporate welfare state.

Coleman is too modest. Minnesota has always been a welfare subsidy state. It’s a big part of the state’s very mythology; from our “compassionate” welfare poverty subsidies to our “public/private partnerships” which provide corporate welfare subsidies to business, to the “Happy to Pay For A Better Minnesota” campaign which is welfare for government workers a plea for endless subsidy of the public class, Minnesota’s very “compassionate” ethos is built on taking money from those who earn it and giving it to those whom government, for whatever reason, favors.

And it’s something that Coleman, like his father before him, has enthusiastically supported at every turn…

…unless the welfare applicant has a corporate logo.

Joe Grushecky – of the late, great Iron City Houserockers – has a new album out.

DFL governor Tim Pawlenty took advantage of the post-election hangover to recite a list of DFL talking points:

“We all, I think, can chart a path toward universal coverage,” he said in a luncheon speech to a health reform conference in Minneapolis. “We’re going to have to move in stages. … We should start with covering all kids.”

Pawlenty also peppered his remarks with broad criticism of the nation’s current “tattered, outdated, inefficient” health care system and hard shots at health maintenance organizations (HMOs), prescription drug advertising and political meddling in health policy.

The DFL continues its drive to make heatlhcare unaffordable to anyone except via the good graces of government.

As Scott Johnson says:

So much is wrong with this propositon. I recoil from the arrogance of such instruction from public servants who have forgotten their jobs. Sorry, governor, but you aren’t the arbiter of the “wise decisions” of a free people.

UPDATE: My bad – Tim Pawlenty is, in fact, a Republican.

Wait until David Strom hears about this…

The Brady Campaign to “Prevent” Gun Violence

, by way of its mission to attack the Second Amendment, is working with speech-rationing “campaign finance reform activists to gut the First Amendment:

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, Nov. 1, asking the FEC to investigate whether the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America are in violation of Federal Election Commission regulations and Federal Election Campaign Laws.The complaint about the National Rifle Association asks the FEC to determine whether the NRA has engaged in prohibited activities, including electioneering on behalf of federal candidates, by expressly advocating the election or defeat of federal candidates in communications to the general public, beyond its membership, through its Web activities.

The complaint against the Gun Owners of America GOA is similar.

A couple 0f notes here:

• The Brady Factory’s influence among voters, which peaked in the early nineties (when the group had about 150,000 member versus 3 million at the time for the NRA) in terms of popular support, hasn’t so much swerved into the worlds of the media, the PR war, the courts and the bureaucracy as simply realized that that was its rational home. Brady knows it’s long lost the battle for America’s hearts and minds; they seek now only to grab America by the shorts and pull hard.
• All of you gun owners who stayed home or voted Constipendatarian because of your ire over ethanol subsidies or the picayune inner workings of a candidate’s immigration stance, or voted Democrat because you thought we needed a “change of course” or you thought “the GOP needs to get shook up”? This is your decision beginning to come home to roost.  The Dems are the party of Speech Rationing; McCain-Feingold was aimed at least partially at stifling the Second Amendment lobby, whose grassroots efforts had been so powerful in previous elections.

The Democrat gains are going to embolden the gun grabbers. Not that it’s going to be a complete disaster – even the Democrat leadership has learned that gun control is a complete nonstarter more than ten miles from either coast. But it does mean that we’re going to have to spend time and money to defend the progress of the past six years, rather than press ahead for further progress among friendly legislatures.

Thanks!

Via Joel Rosenberg

There are a few famous people from my hometown, Jamestown North Dakota; Peggy Lee, Louis L’Amour, Darren Erstad, MN Third District congressman Jim Ramstad, disc jockey Shadoe Stevens…

…and, in a deep dig into the trivia bank, Harley Venton, longtime character actor and former soap opera star, a former student of my dad’s. I’d always known Harley was one of those rare critters – a character actor that does pretty well.

I’d had no idea exactly how well he had done:

In 1983, ABC expressed interest in Venton for the role of David Addison in the show, Moonlighting. Venton screen-tested for the role of Addison in September 1984. Cybill Shepherd wanted Venton to play Addison, but producer Glen Gordon Caron ultimately gave the role role to Bruce Willis. Venton was the only other actor to be screen-tested, and that screen test can still be viewed on the DVD copy of the pilot for Moonlighting.

Wow. Who knew?

And while it’s hard to imagine anyo9ne but Willis in that role (and harder still to imagine Harley Venton starring in Die Hard), it’s pretty cool to hear about.

My blog’s been converted over to WordPress for about a week now.

Observations:

• A week without comment spam – after years of getting crushed by it – is almost unthinkable.
• Speaking of comments – if you’re a former commenter who’s been scared off by the “login” thing, don’t be. After your first comment is moderated and accepted, you don’t have to get moderated anymore (unless you’re a jerk and I ban you).
• And being able to post something to the future and have it publish itself automatically, without my having to physically “publish” it, is soooo cool.
• On the other hand, something in the CSS code makes impossible to embed YouTube containers (for video) without hosing up the page layout. Ideas eagerly accepted.

That is all.

From Our House:

What does a Democrat/DFL victory mean when

• All gay marriage bans passed but one, including Wisconsin’s more comprehensive civil unions ban? In Arizona, a similar ban was rejected by a tiny margin.
• Prop 2 passed in Michigan banning affirmative action?
• The death penalty advisory passed in WI?
• Arizona passed legislation requiring proof of citizenship for getting state benefits and for voting. Also passed bans on illegals getting bail on some felonies, being able to get money for civil suits in some cases.

As noted even as the counts rolled in – conservatism did just fine last Tuesday.

And I thought this bit was interesting:

Catholics and Evangelicals have been the backbone of the anti-abortion movement since it started. If this is now a settled question, where will they go next? The evangelicals and some Catholics will go on to other social issues, like banning gay marriage, homeschooling and educational choice related issues.

And that can only be a good thing.  While abortion is a solid moral issue (make no mistake, I oppose it), the issue as a whole has long settled into iron-clad categories:  A thin slice on either extreme either opposes it under even the most extreme medical circumstances or thinks it should be a sacrament for participation in society; thin layers of growing moderation follow as you drill your way inward to the vast majority of Americans.  Abortion is a wedge, all right – a wedge that in and of itself has worn out.  The votes to be gained (to speak cynically and politically) are all in the sub-issues; partial-birth, parental notification, etc.

Most Catholics however, may be in play and there have been widespread efforts on the part of the left to get them back, based on the “social teachings of the church.” This is a murky area, consisting of a particular interpretation of a couple of papal encyclicals, some of the documents of Vatican II and the writings of some theologians. Its been used to justify government action on issues like affordable housing and now even global warming. It’s been coming down the road for years and it may be here now.

It’s been one of the big theological stories ever since I was a kid; are the liberal American catholics going to split from the “conservative” Roman church?  What effect will it have?

Mainstream American Catholic churches have been following their mainstream Protestant cousins to the left for decades.  I think the political shakeout within the church and between the churches is going to be an interesting thing to watch over the next twenty years.

Recall how Tony Blair saved the Labor party from a certain death: he waited until he had seniority and then chucked all the old hard core trade unionists out of the party. The rest may be retired or may be biding their time after he retires in a year or so. But he did a good deal of housecleaning based on elements of the Conservatives’ policies that actually worked. Some people argue that if Bill Clinton hadn’t had so many personal weaknesses he might have been regarded similarly. We will just have to see how the ideological wars on both sides play out. It may well be that Conservatives will have roles to play in both parties.

Interesting concept – and a scary one, if you value conservatism.  Far better for conservatism to be a majority (or strong, obstreporous minority) in one party than a weak minority in two.

What do you think?

…please take some time out to think about those whose days are not so routine at the moment.