Flying solo today – Ed’s home with the First Mate.
First hour – Connecting Reagan with the British sailors’ controversy.
Second – more Saint Paul school banning recruiters!
NARN Today
Reply
Monthly Archives: March 2007
At About This Moment…
…26 years ago, I was unloading a bass amp from a pickup truck outside Jamestown High School. The school’s stage band had just played a noon-hour gig at a Rotary Club meeting, and was coming back to school. It was a warm, pleasant March day, my senior year of high school, and I really wasn’t interested in going back to class. I was much more interested in chatting up this really hot trumpet player…
Suddenly, someone said out the door – “President Reagan’s been shot“.
I was still a Democrat back then, and had been very nervous about Reagan winning the presidency; I figured he’d reinstitute a draft and have us all fighting in Saudi Arabia before I could get to college. I didn’t cheer on getting the news, of course (someone in the band did, although I can’t remember and don’t care who it was), while others groaned; to most of the kids, it didn’t matter that much.
Still, Reagan’s behavior during and after the crisis helped accelerate my slide to the right.
More on that later…
Sgt. Neil Duncan – Benefit
The story:
Army Sgt. Neil Duncan, from Maple Grove, MN, was severely injured in Afghanistan on December 5, 2005 when an improvised explosive device (IED) ripped through his Humvee. Neil was seriously wounded as a result of the explosion. He lost both of his legs, shattered his jaw, broke his elbow and hand, and sustained multiple shrapnel wounds. Within a week of the attack, Neil was transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC where he began the long road of recovery.
Neil went through more than 20 surgeries, rigorous physical and occupational therapy along with dental reconstruction over the last 14 months at Walter Reed. However, through his mental/physical strength and determination, Neil has overcome this huge hurdle as he is now able to do things he was once able to enjoy.
The story – which you should read on his website – is a sobering, inspiring read.
Anyway, Sgt. Duncan needs some help:
The benefit is scheduled for Saturday, April 21, 2007 from 2-6 p.m. at the American Legion in Osseo, Minnesota. It will be open to the public and seeks to raise money to help Neil make the difficult adjustments that lie ahead, such as buying a house and adapting it to his specific needs. The event is being organized primarily by Neil’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law who are actively seeking contributions from the public as well as from private organizations who want to be a part of this noble cause.
All donations are welcomed. Both cash donations as well as donations for the silent auction are being requested. All contributions -big or small- will be gratefully appreciated. “We know that people live very busy and active lives. Anything ranging from a gift card to a coffee shop, to a round of golf at a golf course, even tickets to a special event will be a hit!” Minnesotans are saddened that Neil’s life has taken such a dramatic turn as a result of the explosion, yet Neil’s family is confident that Minnesotans’ heartfelt compassion will be reflected in their generosity.
I’m going to try, hard, to get out there. Hope you can, too.
It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XLVIII
Jazzed from the weekend – great first date, moved into a cool new place, word that my band would be opening for “Hanover Fist” at the Entry, my interview with Ernst Zündel was the best (and infuriating and controversial) I’d ever done – I drove to work on Monday morning, March 30, 1987. I was too “up” to even feel tired from having been on the air until 4AM.
I was on top of the world.
I walked into the station, and back to the little mail alley behind the generators to check my mail bin. I saw Doug Westerman, the station’s sports producer.
“How’s it going, Doug”.
“Time to start saving pennies”.
I remember wrinkling up my face – Doug was usually pretty upbeat about things. “Howzat?”
“Rumor has it they’re going to fire everyone”.
I stood for a moment, felt my jaw tighten, and noticed my stomach curdling into a sour, painful ball.
Insult To Injury To More Insult
A few years back, in response to the “epidemic” of “deadbeat dads”, a slew of government agencies embarked on a raft of programs to teach fathers “how to be responsible” as parents. The goal? Well, no, it wasn’t some warm ‘n fuzzy desire to make sure every kid grew up with warm memories of Dad.
No, it was to make sure that guys – even though they were and are discriminated against in custody trials, and subject to being “guilty until proven innocent” by the domestic abuse industry, even though it’s a known fact that as many as 50% of domestic abuse allegations brought during divorce proceedings are false – were both able and motivated (or just shamed) into keeping up their child support payments. Especially those owed to various county government bodies from whom their childrens’ mothers were receiving welfare payments, naturally.
Prejudicial? Sure. Degrading to most men, especially men who are non-custodial parents, the vast majority of whom work their asses off to do what they can (and what their childrens’ mothers will allow, in the worst cases) for their kids? Absolutely.
But there’s money involved. So the pants-wetting class among the professional feminist movement is getting involved, wanting women to get a piece of the action.
It’s called the Promoting Responsible Fatherhood Initiative, and the Bush administration doles out up to $50 million annually to fund its programs to build job skills and help fathers connect better with their children. But the National Organization for Women says the effort is illegal because it’s only about men.
NOW and Legal Momentum, another advocacy group, filed complaints yesterday with the Department of Health and Human Services alleging sex discrimination in the initiative that is funding about 100 programs this year.
Cute.
Are NOW and “Legal Momentum” moving to reduce some of the abject discrimination against men in family court? Trying, perhaps, to remove the punitive aspects of child support enforcement? Maybe even moving to enact Presumption of Joint Physical Custody legislation nationwide, so that parenting rather than finances drive family court settlements?
The complaints cite 34 programs, including one run by the District and two others in the Washington area, that, they say, do not offer the services to women. That, the groups say, violates Title IX, the law that prevents sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and is best known for forcing universities to offer comparable sports programs for men and women.
“What we’re asking them to do is to make sure that the grantees provide equal services to women and men,” said Kathy Rodgers, president of Legal Momentum. “It should be a parenthood initiative.”
Yeah, I’m sure a lot of women – who win 90% of custody cases in “winner takes all” states, and who are the recipients of the vast preponderance of “child support” payments, will be lining up to get into programs that scold and cajole men parents to step up to their obligations.
Oh, wait – maybe they just want the money!
Another group under fire is the Latin American Youth Center in the District, which got a $250,000 annual grant to provide 30 young fathers a year with job training, language classes and parenting skills. But women can enroll, too, said Lori Kaplan, the executive director.
“It doesn’t mean that anywhere along the line our moms are getting excluded,” she said.
The big difference, of course, is that welfare pretty much does exclude able-bodied men who have children who don’t live with them. Much of welfare, today, is indeed targeted at single mothers – women who become single parents either because the system:
- subsidizes illegitimate parenthood
- forces men out of the family before the family can get welfare
- grants, almost exclusively, full custody to women who are frequently unable to support families on their own – and then subsidizes their lifestyle (and administers the fathers’ child support payments).
I didn’t see NOW complaining about that.
Let me know if I missed something.
Happy To Cut The Crap For A Better Minnesota
Gary Gross provides the whole world a public service, enshrining this remark by Saint Paul DFL legislator Cy Thao – an ultraliberal H’mong solon – for all posterity:
Today, at a committee hearing, Cy Thao told Steve “When you guys win, you get to keep your money. When we win, we take your money.” This was Thao’s explanation as to how the DFL plans on paying for all the spending increases they promised their special interest friends.
Note to state GOP organizers; we need to get 10,000 signs printed that say:
When you guys win, you get to keep your money.
When we win, we take your money
Cy Thao (DFL St. Paul), 2007
Please tell me you’re on this.
(Via King)
Stupid Celebrity Watch
John Mellencamp on yesterday’s KQ Morning Show, talking about why the US prospered so much during the Baby Boom’s childhood:
(paraphrasing very closely)
During World War II, we bombed everyone else back to the Stone Age! That’s why we prospered! There was no competition!
Ah, Coogs. Silly, silly Coogs. We did it, huh? If the US hadn’t been so damn trigger happy, World War II would have worked out for everyone?
Ah, well. We’ll always have Scarecrow and Lonesome Jubilee.
Schmuck.
It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XLVII
It was Sunday, March 29, 1987.
It had been the best month of my life.
The month had started with our production of the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament. KSTP-AM was the flagship station for a statewide network; Mark Boyle called the games; Bruce Gordon was down on the benches and in the locker rooms with a mobile mike; I was either up in the booth, rotating board-op duty with Rob Pendelton and Dave Elvin, or roaming the St. Paul Civic Center looking for interviews for Bruce. Highlights of the night:
- Grabbing the MVP for the winning team (Bloomington Jefferson, I think) out of a setup for Channel 4 and getting him on the air (making me very much persona non grata with the Channel 4 sports people, but who cared? Even the terminally-crusty Boyle, with whom I had a relationship based mostly on ribbing and needling, said I did a great job.
- For the championship game, we’d been told the puck would drop at 7:30. At 7:18, the referee skated out onto the ice, puck in hand, and someone annnounced in the press booth that the game was going to start at 7:20. Rob Pendelton and I looked at the schedule sheet from the tournament staff – seven friggin’ thirty! No time to file an appeal, though – as Rob got things set up at the studio and Dave raced out to get Boyle onto the mike, I got on the line and called to the affiliates that we were starting ten minutes early – in, like, one minute. And via the grace of God and adrenaline, we pulled it off; Boyle called the drop, and as far as we knew, most of the stations down the line had gotten my loud, fast call, dispensed with their pre-game shows, and gotten online. Success, sometimes, is not letting them see how close you came to really screwing the pooch…
- Going out to Doyle’s in South Minneapolis after the game with Rob, Mark, Bruce and Dave.
It was one of those nights when everything just felt right. Like…I’d arrived, sort of.
A Few Weeks Later, it was Tuesday, March 17. It was an arrival of a different kind.
My band had landed a coveted “New Band Night” slot at the Seventh Street Entry. Of course, they were “coveted” only because the Entry was the place to see and be seen. It certainly wasn’t the money; “New Band Night” bands got 45 minutes, $20, and a couple of free drink tickets (and 10 slots on the guest list).
But this was no ordinary New Band Night. The day had started auspiciously – on the way to work, I’d gotten one of the first copies of U2’s new album The Joshua Tree out of the box at Garage D’Or Records, at 26th and Nicollet, and had been marinading my brain to “In God’s Country” – still one of my favorite songs of all time – all day long.
The key at New Band Night was timing. We got a key part of the timing right – we were the first band to show up, so we were the last band of the evening. Everything built up to us! (Those of you who’ve played New Band Night know that there’s an implied snicker there…).
But that bit of timing was bolstered by the part we had no control over; it was, indeed, Saint Patrick’s Day. Partly, it got my bass player and drummer good ‘n jazzed – they were both 100% Irish. The big break, though, was that Boiled In Lead always played the First Avenue main stage on Saint Pat’s day. Which meant a huge crowd in the Main Room. Which meant…
…pandemonium.
The first three acts that night were…acceptable. But the crowd was huge; most people can only handle so much purely-Irish folk music before they need a breather, so the Entry – a converted bus station luggage handling room – was jammed to the rafters with curious, Gaelic-fatigued people.
And then we took the stage.
And it was the best night I’ve ever had playing to a crowd in my life.
For the first time in our three gigs, we were clicking on all eight cylinders. We played ten songs. To this day, I remember the set list:
- Tiger Tiger (Bill the drummer’s song – yes, it was a William Blake reference. I told you he was Irish).
- Five Bucks and a Transfer (My song about having…well, the title says it. It shamelessly stole the beat from The Pretenders’ “Message of Love”, but it was a way better song, if I say so myself. And I do say so myself).
- Switchyard Blues (think The Who covering Mose Allison. I played a VERY mean harmonica that night)
- Espresso Casey (Casey the other guitar player’s ode to working in a crappy coffee shop back before everyone was doing it)
- Ride Shotgun (wherein I pilfed the riff to “Jackson Cage” and the harmony guitar part from Big Country’s “Tall Ships Go” to grand effect)
- Blood On The Bricks (the Iron City Houserockers’ classic)
- Oh Suzanne (a bald-faced mash note)
- Fourth Of July (a song I still play at the occasional open stage night)
- Long Gray Wire (a song I’d written in about five minutes in the car on the way to practice one night. Still one of the coolest experiences of my life. Great tune, too)
- Great Northern Avenue (a song I’ve quoted on this blog before, and still by a long shot the favorite song I’ve ever written)
The crowd – well, they didn’t know what to do. Our nerves still had us playing a little fast, and we were very loud and raw-sounding. But we were tight – finally playing like a band, instead of four guys. We were tight and sharp enough that of the people in the crowd started slam-dancing; we probably were bordering on speed-punk noise and tempo. I windmilled and jumped about the place and cut my finger open on my pickup switch and bled all over the damn place (just like Pete Townsend! I was so jazzed about that injury!). I left it all out there on the stage that night.
I don’t think I’ve had a night like that, ever, in my life before, and very, very few since.
Whatever. The response was immense, the crowd dug us, and, best of all, a guy with a band that had just had a regional hit in Chicago talked with us after the gig, wondering if we’d be interested in opening for them in June.
I started allowing myself to think “maybe this rock and roll thing could work”.
Things Were Happening On The Side. I’d put together a tape of some of my voice-over work, at KSTP as well as at the stations I’d worked in high school. An agent had called me back – blazingly fast – and asked if I wanted to go do a spot. The strange part – they needed someone who could do in industrial training video – in a Canadian accent. Having grown up listening to CBW Radio in Winnipeg (the closest my mom could find to NPR in North Dakota in those days), I refrained from asking “why not hire a Canadian” – in fact, I didn’t to think aboot it loang to fit it into my sssshedule, eh? I earned a wondrous $200 for about four hours’ work. I figured I could learn to like this.
When I’d Moved To The Twin Cities, I’d wanted three things; a fun job, a good band, and a cool girlfriend. The job was going great. The band – well, you know.
And Saturday night – the night before – I had my first date in probably nine months. Someone funny, cute, interesting, smart…someone who seemed to get me…
Oh, there was plenty of potential.
The lease on the house in South Minneapolis was up on April 1, and the five roommates and I were ready to call it quits. Friction had been building, and I think we’d all had enough of each other.
As luck’d have it, another college friend of mine (let’s call her “Liz”) and her pal from high school (how about we call her “Brenda”) were tired of living in their crummy apartment down by Saint Kate’s, so we found our dream joint together; a duplex in Saint Paul. Perfect for all of us – it was 1/3 the commute to KSTP for me, it was close to where High School Friend was going to college, and it would allow everyone a bit more of a personal life.
It was Sunday, and after a strenuous weekend of moving (for them; everything I owned in the world fit into two trips in my Jeep), we were moved in. It was a side-by-side duplex on Minnehaha Avenue near Snelling in Saint Paul.
It was a beautiful old place; neat woodwork, fun neighborhood, plenty of room for everyone. And best of all – the rent was $500 a month, which, split three ways, allowed my monthly paycheck to stretch a loooong way.
Although I noticed some of the neighbors giving us the stinky eye as we wandered around the block. I filed that question in the back of my mind.
My Producer Mojo was boiling red hot. I pitched an idea to Geoff Charles and Dave Elvin – the “Talk Radio Beach Party”. The idea – set us up on a beach somewhere in the Twin Cities from 3 to 6PM. Do the show in swim suits and sandals. Invite our guests to appear dressed appropriately. Book a band to play. Get some food out there.
They loved it. In short order, we found a beach (Phalen, not far from the station), the food (Church’s Fried Chicken!), a date (end of May), and a band (I called and booked The Clams, on whose drummer I had a monstrous crush).
We were gonna be so friggin hot.
Finally – the Mitch Berg Show was kicking ass. Sunday night (or Monday morning, really) March 29, I interviewed Ernst Zündel, a German native who was among the world’s foremost Holocaust deniers.
We had a slam-bang 60 minute interview that was among the most fun times of my life; we had people claiming to be JDL calling to threaten Zündel, people claiming to be Aryan Nations calling to threaten to kill me (although my last name is Berg, I’m as Jewish as a bacon cheeseburger. However, Alan Berg’s murderers were pretty new in jail at this point, so I didn’t totally laugh it off. But I did play it for all it was worth), and a call board so busy that it seemed to hop and skitter from the static electricity.
Needless to say, it went on my audition reel…that I was planning to send to a radio head-hunter that had called me at the office a week ago, wondering if I’d be open to a full-time talk-host gig at a station in Orlando, Florida.
“Yes”, I said, looking at my paltry Hubbard paycheck, “I believe I’d be interested”.
This, I was keeping under my hat.
So to sum up: My daily commute cut from 17 to seven miles, my bills lowered, me living out of the basement for the first time in a year and a half, my band taking off, the show clicking, the radio career starting to click…
…life was damned fine.
As Tom Petty might say, “the sky was the limit”.
And we all know how that song turned out.
GI Joe Goes GOP?
Word has it Colonel Joe Repya is going to run for State GOP Chair.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Joe Repya is announcing a run for the state Republic Party Chairman. Repya tells KNSI news the reason why he’s running is the state needs leadership and the downward trend of losing Republican seats needs to stop. Repya will make the announcement at the capital April 11th at 10 in the morning. No word if the current chair, Ron Carey will run for reelection.
It’s going to be an interesting month to be a Republican.
I personally have no dog in the race for state GOP chair. I worked for one of Ron Eibensteiner’s companies when this blog started (not, I should note, a successful company, although its certainly wasn’t Eibensteiner’s fault), and always admired him. I thought he deserved better than the party gave him after the ’04 election. Current chair Ron Carey excites strong emotions in some, but also has eloquent defenders.
I think fate dealt Carey lemons, to an extent – it was a lousy cycle even for great Republicans with long track records (see Phil Krinkie); the 2006 cycle was a “test of leadership” in the same way that the sinking of the Titanic was a “test of seamanship”; it was hard to make much of a positive showing. That being said, Minnesota Republicans needn’t have suffered that bad a debacle, either.
And of course I admire Colonel Repya.
I haven’t made up my mind yet.
I suspect this’ll be a big topic on NARN Volume III (“The Final Word“) this Saturday.
Has Anyone Seen Ryan Rhodes?
Because I’m thinking he’s in big trouble:
A Scottish company has been slammed for inviting customers to “send a poo” to an Englishman on St George’s Day.
Edinburgh-based firm PostaPoo.com is selling plastic “realistic poo” to send to “your favourite (or least favourite) Englishman” to mark April 23.
Customers are given the choice between human or dog-style excrement, wrapped in tissue paper along with a personal message set beside the English flag.
Some people can’t take a joke:
But members of the English Democrats Party, which is campaigning for an English Parliament, questioned the stunt’s legality.
Robin Tilbrook, the party’s national chairman, said: “The company’s website says they will not send this so-called ‘practical joke’ if the message is deemed threatening, racist, homophobic, or displays religious bigotry.
“It appears to me to be threatening, possibly racist and without question bigoted. It’s certainly offensive and possibly an offence.”
Racist? Hoo-boy.
Anyway, let’s check.
Yep. Still there. Whew.
Good Thing It’s Friday
If it weren’t Friday today, I swear, I’d walk down to the High Bridge and just end it all right now.
Thank goodness it’s Friday, though.
Gwynne Dwyer Is Unclear On The Concept
Gwynne Dwyer, a reporter-without-portfolio living in the UK, shows that he learned foreign policy the same place everyone on the left seems to have learned it.
His thesis, after quoting an American officer who noted that American rules of engagement would have allowed our sailors and Marines to have fought back:
Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then. The 15 British sailors and marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for “questioning” last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it had been one of Erik Horner’s boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war…So there they are, eight sailors and seven marines in two rubber boats, with personal weapons and no protection whatever, sitting about a foot above the water, surrounded by six or seven Iranian attack boats with mounted machine guns. “Defend yourself” by opening fire, and after a single long burst from half a dozen heavy machine-guns there will be 14 dead young men and one dead young woman in two rapidly sinking inflatables, and your country will be at war. Seems a bit pointless, really.
By itself? Of course.
But the real lesson is much larger.
28 years ago, when the world was accustomed to the US acting impotently, the Iranians had no qualms about taking Americans hostage, and making political hay out of it.
We taught them that lesson twenty years ago, when they tried to close the Straits of Hormuz with boats not unlike the ones that captured the Brit sailors. The Navy showed up. Boats started getting blown up. An Iranian minesweeper “accidentally” got burned to the waterline (it was made of wood, to help defend against magnetic mines) by a flare launched from a passing American submarine.
The lesson – the one Dwyer misses completely – was learned a while ago; Today? When the Iranians wanted to make political hay with hostages, they knew better than to grab Yanks.
Our sailors were not faced with the decision to surrender or die this week, because the US long ago made the decision to face Iranian aggression with resolve.
UPDATE: Elder is right. Blah.
Little Joys of Urban Life: A Tale of Two Lunchtimes
March 27, 2006: Walk down the long, beige hall of the long, beige McOfficePlex in the beige western suburb, to the beige break room, to nuke a can of soup that was, if memory serves, beige (corn chowder). Sit at cube, listen to the hum of the HVAC, dream of having oxygen in my brain, look forward to four hours of phone meetings capped with a forty-minute drive home.
March 27, 2007: Walk out the front door of the office onto a busy, downtown street. Grab a sandwich and a newspaper, walk to the riverfront. Grab a bench, read, eat, soak up the sun, feel the thrum of the traffic re-energize me, breathe, watch the river go by. Walk back to the office, design stuff, look forward to my ten-minute commute home.
Fireworks
Couldn’t make it to last night’s Saint Paul School Board meeting.
Swiftee could, though (I’m adding my own emphasis here).
Board member Tom Goldstein spoke at length about his objections to the presence of military recruiters on school property; he barely made an effort to conceal his contempt for the two US Navy Master Chief Petty officers present.
He said that he was of a mind to make their job as hard as possible and went on at length about his objections to the war in Iraq. He also said that he “didn’t care if the war was not a school board issue”.
The district’s tanking test scores and dismal graduation rates bear him out on that fact.
Board member Tom Conlon, as ever the lone voice of sanity, pointed out that the board’s time would be better spent pursuing an improvement in the districts academic achievement
For starters, thank goodness for Tom Conlon; Swiftee’s right. If you follow the Saint Paul School Board long enough, you start to think that Tom is the only one in the bunch whose head isn’t swaddled in tinfoil.
But let’s look into this issue.
A small, vocal, and (because the board is so very hard-left) very well-connected group of students, parents and advocates in Saint Paul – almost universally white, upper-middle-class, and DFL – are voicing their distaste for the military. Their own kids are safe, of course – Saint Paul allows parents to sign an opt-out form that forbids recruiters from talking to their children.
But they want to make sure that no children are exposed to [what they regard as] the big, bad, evil US military.
These same people are leading a push to keep the services’ Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) programs out of the schools. These programs – whose enrollment is heavily if not mosty minority, in Saint Paul – teach discipline, self-respect (as opposed to self-esteem – a distinction that few in the SPPS seem to recognize), and organization; they also provide an entree into college-level ROTC programs, which may be the best chance for many of these kids to afford college. In exchange for five years in the military, these kids – many from the sort of straitened circumstances that the programs’ detractors merely drive past on the way to their yoga classes – can get a college education, and more importantly a good start in adult life.
But there are uniforms involved, so the granola-chomping, Whole-Foods-shopping, Highland-Park-dwelling detractors wrinkle their noses, and call their pet school board members to complain.
This battle is a class struggle, all right. It pits the patrician inner-city DFL against the people in this city that regard military service as an honor, or a gateway to opportunity, or one’s privilege as an American citizen.
Ironic, isn’t it? The Democrat “Farmer Labor” party stands, yet again, against the values of the farmers and the workers?
As no public comment was allowed at the meeting yesterday, I will be on the lookout for the next meeting on this subject. Suffice to say I will not miss the next one.
Lie Down With Dogs
My daughter’s charter school – like many urban charter schools – is run by rabid Democrats.
This doesn’t faze me. In picking a school, I care as little about the teachers’ personal politics as I do about their taste in music. Institutional politics is another thing altogether – but the institution’s politics, while institutional (and ergo a tad left of center for my taste), aren’t a major issue. My kids’ charter schools both deliver the best education my kids – especially my daughter – have ever had. That’s what counts.
Of course, as DFL/Teachers’ Union shill Nick Coleman crowed the other day, the DFL-dominated legislature (nothing but a group of markers for the state’s educational establishment), tired of the competition from charter schools, wants to cap the number of these highly-successful operations.
The Senate voted on the cap bill. And a funny thing happened.
I got this letter, forwarded from my daughter’s advisor, from the state charter school organization:
If your Senator is listed below as voting to lift the Cap on Charter Schools, please write a “thank you” letter to the individual. Also, please make sure to thank all of the six democrats who showed their support of charters by voting against the cap.
True, as far as it goes but, um, hello? Teaching moment here?
How about telling your largely-Volvo-driving, Whole Foods-shopping, Al-Gore-worshipping membership that maybe, just maybe, the DFL hates what you we all stand for, and ask them to cross their party lines and thank the Republicans who stood up for our cause?
SENATORS WHO VOTED TO LIFT THE CAP ON CHARTER SCHOOLS:
Republicans:
- Day, Dick
- Dille, Steve
- Fischbach, Michelle L.
- Frederickson, Dennis R.
- Gerlach, Chris
- Gimse, Joe
- Hann, David W.
- Ingebrigtsen, Bill G.
- Johnson, Debbie J.
- Jungbauer, Michael J.
- Koch, Amy T.
- Koering, Paul, E.
- Limmer, Warren
- Michel, Geoff
- Neuville, Thomas M.
- Olson, Gen
- Ortman, Julianne E.
- Pariseau, Pat
- Robling, Claire A.
- Rosen, Julie A.
- Senjem, David H.
- Vandeveer, Ray
- Wergin, Betsy L.Democrats:
- Cohen, Richard J.
- Erickson Ropes, Sharon L.
- Metzen, James P.
- Rest, Ann H.
- Scheid, Linda
- Torres Ray, Patricia
If your Senator is listed below as voting for the Cap on Charter Schools, please write a letter of disappointment in the vote to your Senator.
ACTION REQUEST –
SENATORS WHO VOTED TO KEEP THE CAP ON CHARTER SCHOOLS:
Democrats:
- Anderson, Ellen R.
- Olseen, Rick E.
- Bakk, Thomas M.
- Olson, Mary A.
- Berglin, Linda
- Pappas, Sandra L.
- Betzold, Don
- Pogemiller, Lawrence J.
- Bonoff, Terri E.
- Prettner Solon, Yvonne
- Carlson, Jim
- Rummel, Sandy
- Chaudhary, Satveer S.
- Saltzman, Kathy L.
- Clark, Tarryl
- Saxhaug, Tom
- Dibble, D. Scott
- Sheran, Kathy
- Doll, John
- Sieben, Katie
- Kubly, Gary W.
- Skoe, Rod
- Langseth, Keith
- Skogen, Dan
- Larson, Dan
- Sparks, Dan
- Latz, Ron
- Stumpf, LeRoy A.
- Lourey, Tony
- Tomassoni, David J.
- Lynch, Ann
- Vickerman, Jim
- Marty, John
- Wiger, Charles W.
- Moua, Mee
Catch that?
Except for six DFLers – of whose motivations I’m unsure, but for whose actions I’m thankful – the DFL voted a straight ticket to…
…to what?
To protect the Teacher’s Union’s monopoly on education. To constrict school choice. To tell those parents and groups who, dissatisfied with the results we’re getting from the public system (and unable to either homeschool or put our kids in private schools), decide to find a better option “like it or lump it”.
The rationalizations I’ve heard for this “cap” are ludicrous; “We want more oversight on charter schools?” Show me a public school that would survive if it had to balance its own books!
Here y’go, fellow charter school supporters. Your party (and I’m comfortable in saying that most of you, at both of my kids’ schools, are DFLers at the very least) has screwed you us.
What are you going to do about it?
My Letter to Senator Ellen Anderson
I wrote this letter to my senator, Ellen Anderson (DFL, District 66), about her deeply-misguided vote on capping Charter Schools:
Senator Anderson,
I’m Mitch Berg. I’m a constituent of yours. And while I’m not only a Republican, a talk show host (at AM1280), a conservative blogger (www.shotinthedark.info) and a member of Concealed Carry Reform Now, I’ll have you know that you are (but for Randy Kelly and Norm Coleman) the only DFLer I’ve voted for in the past 20 years (once, and based entirely on your constituent service record; while I agree with you on nearly nothing, you are indeed excellent at that).
However, I need to talk about your vote on capping Charter Schools. Since you have spent so much of your political career as an advocate for children, I urge you to reconsider your very intensely misguided vote.
I pulled both of my children out of the Saint Paul Public Schools last year; with my daughter, they were merely incompetent. With my son, I’d call the situation more akin to child abuse.
I enrolled them both in charter schools. Freed from the absurd, Helleresque approach of the public schools, both have blossomed – my daughter’s GPA zoomed from 1.2 to 3.4 in one semester.
I’m like a shocking number of parents who, disgusted by the institutional inertia of the public schools (many of them immigrants and minorities, for whom good education is a pathway out of poverty) have seceded from the public schools FOR OUR CHILDREN’S EDUCATIONAL, INTELLECTUAL SURVIVAL.
I would *like* you to reconsider and renounce your vote on this subject. Absent that fantasy, I’d like to know your rationale for this vote.
I think I do, actually – you, like most of the DFL, are utterly beholden to the teacher’s union. Your assistant said it might have had something to do with “oversight”, which is absurd, since nearly no public school would survive according the standards that charters must meet!
At any rate, I look forward to hearing from you and/or your staff.
Mitchell Berg
Minnehaha at Pascal.
I’ll keep you posted.
Fight The Power
As I discussed with the St. Paul School Board’s Tom Conlon last weekend on the NARN, elements on the board want to restrict access to St. Paul students on the part of military recruiters.
Swiftee – a longtime gadfly of the board – is leading everyone interested in speaking out against this move at this afternoon’s board meeting.
It’s at 4:30, at the SPPS headquarters fortress at 360 Colborne in Saint Paul.
I’m going to try to be there.
UPDATE: Couldn’t swing it. But Swiftee could.
This Is Your Terrorist. This Is Your Terrorist On Stress.
Leftyblog “Needlenose” wrote about Arkanasas Democrat Mark Pryor’s dim-bulb “Double-dog secret withdrawal date” (secrecy guaranteed because, y’know, we’re only going to tell Congress and the Iraqi Government) – the same one I wrote about earlier.
The Nose’s comment:
Sen. Pryor, here’s a secret for you: The “enemy” is already biding their time and waiting for us to leave, save for those who are already providing chaos and mayhem.
Further proof, were any needed, that Democrats are not to be trusted with the keys to the family car.
Listen up, Nose: There’s a huge difference between “biding your time” and “waiting” for us to leave when there’s not only a chance of having a helicopter send hollow-charge wake-up call through your window in the middle of the night, or bounce your rubble with a JDAM from the middle of nowhere, or have a squad of Marines barging through your door at some un-allah-ly hour, but even more so when there’s no end in sight. When you wake up knowing today could be your last, and that terrorists don’t usually get to rotate home after a year, and that every morning is going to be the same, and the stress of knowing it’s not going to change until you are dead (an ongoing stress that eventually wears down even the most fanatical fighter, causing the kind of mistakes that land those virgins)…
…as opposed to knowing that if you can just hang on, hold out, keep your head low until the Labor Day weekend in a year and a half. Or, better yet, waking up in a country, or province, where the government is entirely sympathetic to you, where you can walk down to the market for some babaganouj and pide and use the phone and sit at a sidewalk cafe table with the guy who’s making your fake documents, and not worry that an SAS team is going to be mounting your head on a wall if you don’t watch your back.
Sort of like Afghanistan, and Iraq, both were.
The galling part, of course, is that the Dems – the ones making all the noise, anyway – don’t believe that’s a problem. Or don’t know any better.
I don’t know what’s worse.
Baby, Even The Pwn3ed Hacks Get Lucky Sometimes
Learned Foot beats the Minnesota Money Monitor – a local lefty rentablog that used to share quarters with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America”, but has no connection with ’em, nosirreebob, and which responds to all criticism or questioning by either a) giggling and changing the subject or b) calling their attacker a “hack” and giggling and changing the subject – like Mohammed Ali beating Joe Bugner.
Read it and weep for the local lefty rentablog community.
March 27, 1968
It was the biggest news in my then five-year-old life; the big, hulking old Gladstone Hotel, the architectural lynchpin of the north end of Jamestown’s downtown (the part north of the tracks), an old hotel dating from the 1880’s that had hosted presidents and foreign royalty, had caught fire.
I knew it had to be big; as I walked with Dad out to our ’60 Mercury, bits of charred newspaper and stationery fell from the sky. Our house was probably ten blocks from the blaze.
We drove down toward the tracks, parked somewhere near an abnormally-crowded First Avenue, and walked in front of Gun and Reel Sports, and stood with a crowd of gawkers and watched the old hotel blazing away, all three floors being fully consumed, flames licking out the windows and smoke billowing out the roof. Several other buildings, small businesses around the old hotel, were also on fire. I remember (or at least I think I remember) seeing Bob Richardson, who ten years later would hire me for my first radio job, broadcasting live from the street.
And I also remember waving toward the top floor of Jamestown Hospital, dimly visible over the trees and through the smoke, thinking that my new little brother, Jim, might just see me saying “hi” for the first time. Dad had told me sometime before we left to see the fire that I had a new baby brother (Mom had left for the hospital the previous day, which didn’t faze me, since Grandma was staying over, and whenever Grandma came over there were cookies and lefse and other goodies!).
In that slower-paced time, it took him a couple of days to come home – I remember waiting on the front steps for him, on a gorgeous, balmy, late-March day, a scene my dad managed to capture on film that is happily preserved on DVD today.
The funny part? While my parents’ wish – like that of every parent – that I grow up to have a kid just like me may or may not have come true, Karma (or “what goes around comes around”) has certainly given me a cosmic re-run; Bun and Zam are about the same age gap and distribution as my little sister Barb and little brother Jim – and they have the precise same relationship. They – brother and sister or daughter and son – can be ripping each others’ hair out one minute and giggling with maniacal delight the next. And then the cycle repeats. And repeats.
And slowly, I go mad. Again.
Not that I mind it all that much worse now than I did then.
Anyway – happy birthday, Jim!
The Loathsome Anniversary
Ryan Sager in the NYSun about the fifth birthday of the McCain-Feingold speech rationing law:
…the folks who brought us the bill known colloquially as McCain-Feingold will be taking a wildly undeserved victory lap this week. After all the big promises leading up to the passage of McCain-Feingold, one is tempted to resort to the phrase “moving the goal posts.” But, in truth, the more apt simile would be that the reformers’ arguments are like bumper bowling: So long as they roll the ball in the right direction and manage not to hit anyone in the face, they get to feel good about themselves.
Take as a prime example of the reformers’ boasting a statement put out yesterday by the Reform Institute, a non-profit group affiliated with Senator McCain of Arizona. The statement claims that BCRA has “succeeded in its objectives.” How so? It “significantly reduced the corrupting influence of campaign contributions and enhanced the participation of small donors in the process.”
This, Sager notes, is patent rubbish for a couple of reasons:
As to the first part, that corruption has been reduced, this is a simple assertion, with not a single piece of evidence to back it up. There’s a reason for that: There is no evidence. By what metric does one measure “corruption”? Mr. McCain and his crew couldn’t define it before they passed McCain-Feingold; they can’t define it now; and, thus, there’s no way to measure it.
Indeed. The only thing McCain-Feingold was ever designed to deal with was a generalized, nonspecific distaste for “money in politics”. McCain-Feingold merely shuffled who got the money and how.
As for the enhanced participation of small donors in the political process, here’s a question: If Messrs. McCain and Feingold took credit for water running downhill, would that mean they could slap it on their resumes? Small donors are participating more in politics because politicians are learning how to harness the Internet. So, unless Mr. McCain invented the Internet — and not Al Gore as we all learned in our civics textbooks — no one ought to be attributing this development to BCRA.
Worst of all, McCain-Feingold added a level of bureaucracy to free political speech that anyone who cares about civil liberty (I’m looking at all of you Democrats who became instant “libertarians” the moment John Ashcroft was sworn into office!) should find nauseating.
The former senator from Tennessee, Fred Thompson, who championed McCain-Feingold, promised that it would “help challengers reach a threshold of credibility when they want to challenge us in these races.” Putting aside the ludicrous notion that 535 incumbent politicians sat down and tried to write a piece of legislation that would make it harder to get reelected, five years later there’s no evidence electoral competition has increased. Sure, control of Congress turned over. But anyone who attributes the 2006 election to McCain-Feingold, as opposed to Bush-Cheney-Hastert-Frist, is delusional.
Strike one to Thompson, who had better back the hell away from his support for McCain-Feingold if he wants my support for President.
Double Dog Idea
One of the reasons Republicans oppose setting a withdrawal date is that it’ll give terrorists a date to scrawl into their Franklin Covey planners; “Lay Low Until Today!”. They can lay low, hang out in Pakistan, sell naan bread and read “female knee” pr0n until the day after that date, and then go back to work unimpeded by the US military.
One of the special little men the Democrat voters of this country sent to office has an extra special idea – cut and run, but don’t tell anyone exactly when!
In one of the more unusual proposals to emerge in the Senate debate on Iraq withdrawal, Sen. Mark Pryor wants to keep any plans for bringing troops home a secret.The Arkansas Democrat is a key holdout on his party’s proposal to approve $122 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a goal of March 31, 2008, for winding up military operations in Iraq. Unlike the plan’s Republican opponents, Pryor wants a withdrawal deadline of some kind.
Leave aside that pullling 140,000 troops out of a country isn’t something one does literally on a single selected date (has anyone explained this to Rep. Pryor?) – his plan for keeping the secret…:
He just doesn’t want anyone outside the White House, Congress and the Iraqi government to know what it is.
Ah. That kind of secret.
Democrats; still not ready to run a country.
Terrorists: Rep. Ellison Has Scheduled An Appointment For You
The people of the Fifth Congressional District sent Keith Ellison to Congress.
That’s how democracy works.
I don’t care that he was the most “progressive” candidate for the job; people have the right to vote for anyone they want.
I care not in the least that he is Moslem. It is entirely possible that electing a Moslem to that most mainstream of American institutions, the Congress, is exactly one of the messages we need to send to Islam around the world – the ideal that in America, through work and study and peaceful (if, in Ellison’s case, often irate and prickly) coexistence with one’s fellow man, one can achieve liberty, comfort and spiritual freedom and fulfillment. Granted, this would have been a lot more convincing had Ellison had cuddled up with the likes of CAIR, and people associated with funding terrorism, before and during the election.
I do care that Ellison, like most of the Democrat majority in Congress, is Ka danger to the long-term peace in the Middle East and, eventually, America:
The people of Fifth District sent me to Washington to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home. On Friday, I voted to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by voting to prohibit the building of permanent U.S. bases and setting timetables for the withdrawal of our troops. I voted to oppose the presidents policy of war without end.
Let’s be perfectly clear here; Ellison voted to opposed the president’s policy of war until the job is done.
Look – even conservatives are upset about the way much of the last few years of this war has gone. The surge would seem to be meeting at least encouraging initial success; it seems to be answering some questions left long unanswered in Iraq (I remember one commenter in this space, grinning like a toddler who’d just made a big pants; “what do you mean, reign Moqtada Al-Sadr in? He’s in control! There’s nothing we can do about it!” Sic transit gloria thug). Why didn’t we do this two years ago? Three years? Suffice to say, many of us are looking for answers.
Keith Ellison and his voters aren’t among them. They have a much simpler “solution”:
Residents of the Fifth District made the war the most important issue in the November election. For the first time since the war began in 2003, the war has an end date and Congress is confronting the president. This Congress has held over 90 oversight hearings on Iraq; the previous Congress held none. Folks who phoned and wrote their legislators, attended vigils, marched and prayed for peace made this possible.
Unlike most anti-war Democrats, Ellison may actually be right.
For most of the Democrats in Congress, my question remains – if you had such an all-fired mandate from the people to get us out of Iraq, then why haven’t you forced the issue? Why wasn’t it in your first 100 hours, if it was such a statistical sure thing?
Because it wasn’t, of course. American people are dissatisfied with the war. That dissatisfaction takes many forms. The smug plush-bottom Unitarian yoohoos I met last week at the pro-terrorism rally, the ones who wouldn’t fight if a group of thugs pointed AK47s at the crowd, want to not only bring the troops home, but discharge them from the service and pound their rifles into plowshares (which they’d use to decorate the walls of their condos, since none of them knows which end of a plow you milk a tofu cow with).
And then there are people who are deeply dissatisfied with the way the war itself is being carried out – who wondered if today’s surge, as welcome a development as it’s been, shouldn’t have been done first, rather than last.
Y’know – people like me.
People who look at statements like this, and realize that one of the two major parties can’t be trusted with the keys to the car:
Now, we must keep up the pressure to turn our country away from arrogance and death toward promise and life. This vote is only one more step toward peace.
Disengaging in Iraq would not mean peace…oh, wait. Ellison is going to say something factual:
We have a lot of work to do to make this step meaningful.
Finally, the sweet waft of truth.
Yes, there is a lot of work to do to make the step meaningful.
First, there’s the little matter of convincing the Sunni Ba’athists and Al-Quaeda – the people who saw other peoples’ heads off – that the day after our withdrawal date isn’t a fine day to come back from Chechnya and pick up the job where they left off.
There’s the complicated bit about figuring out how not to have the parts of Iraq that aren’t Sunni or Al Quaeda – the Shi’ites – form immense militias for their own protection, and start ethnically-cleansing the parts where the two groups meet. Y’know – the part we’re just starting to gain control of right now.
There’s the matter of having our departure not followed by money, toys and activists from Iran, it’s proxy Syria and, for that matter, Saudi Arabia flowing into the country to keep Iraq nice and unstable, and to take pressure off their own regimes.
Finally, there’s the ultimate bit – figuring out how to co-exist with the terrorist safe haven that Iraq would inevitably become if we pulled out before the job (killing terrorists) was done.
Given that any thought, Representative Ellison?
President Bush intends to veto this bill. His veto will be an admission that he plans to establish permanent military bases in Iraq and continue the war without end. By his veto, Bush will prove that he has no intention of letting the Iraqi people run their own country and has no intention of honoring the lives and service of the sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers who are fighting his war. His veto will mean that the deaths, American and Iraqi, mean little to him.
I want to save that bit there for the next election. I want to print it on signs and wave it around outside the next batch of Ellison rallies. This statement shows that Ellison is either an idiot, or that he’s cynical enough to think that his voters are.
When the president calls for a “clean” appropriations bill, he is asking for a blank check to continue current policy. I will absolutely oppose any “clean” appropriation bill.
Good. You keep that up. It’s good to have some Democrats putting their cards on the table. Granted, most of the rest of Pelosi’s majority doesn’t have the guts to do that – because they know the real facts behind the polls.
Americans dislike the war because they dislike not winning. We – and I’m one of them – dislike sacrifice without result.
We also dislike sacrifice in vain.
There is still much to do. People working for peace have led us this far. Some of us disagreed on strategy this time, but I assure you I have not wavered from doing all I can to stop this war. Together, we must carry the soldiers and their families at the top of our attention at all times and demand the same from our leaders.
Great message, Rep. Ellison.
Let’s see how it plays outside the Fifth CD.
Sign The Terrorists Have Won
A German judge cites the Quran in handing down a verdict:
A German judge has stirred a storm of protest here by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim wife’s request for a fast-track divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.
In a remarkable ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse.
Here’s my prediction; given that radical Islam in America is using the Twin Cities as its testbed for slipping Moslem religious law into American life – the Flying Imams, Target Cashiers Against Pork, and the cabbies who won’t carry booze – I have to wonder if we’re not going to see someone trying to push a case just like this, right here, and very soon.
(Via David’s Medienkritik)
I Don’t Wanna Go Off On A Rant, Here, But…
Dennis Miller – one of my five all-time favorite comics – starts his latest venture, a radio talk show, today (coincidentally, just in time for the re-christening of AM1570, the Patriot’s sister station, as the “Talk of the West Metro”. Miller appears from 9-noon on 1570).
Good news?
Maybe. I’ve commented in the past about how standup comics and talk radio really don’t mix. Much of Air America’s initial, ballyhooed lineup was former standups – Marc Maron, Janeane Garofalo, Lizzzzzz Winstead, Al Franken, Sam Seder. Let’s give credit where it’s due – all of them but Seder were quite successful at comedy. The qualifier – they were successful in their element, working on a stage in front of a crowd, giving them instant feedback (or, in Franken’s case, as a writer, which is another medium entirely).
And, like most comics who try to do talk radio – a very different medium requiring a very different energy and focus – all of them were disastrous flops on the air.
On the other hand, Miller is one of the best at what he does – blazingly-literate, funny-in-a-byzantine-intricate-way commentary about people and events. He’s vastly better at comedy that could translate to talk radio than Franken, Garofalo or Maron. And he’s been edging closer to the radio medium – via his great HBO series and his failed stabs at Monday Night Football and his CNBC show – for most of a decade, now. If there were a standup comic who could do talk radio – who might have learned how to make the transition from talking to a room full of people to talking to a microphone and a slate of phone callers and an audience that one must imagine rather than see – it could be Miller.
And he’s a libertarian conservative. That’s going to help, of course; liberal talk was and remains DOA, while conservative talk promises to surge as the next election cycle approaches. Miller should be in his element.
Brian Maloney on the challenges Miller faces:
An astounding glut of syndicated weekday fare, with far more programs than the market can support.
True, but that’s been the case for years, and is hardly a reason not to give it a try. I mean, it’s only money, right?
That is, indeed, a strange choice. Far better, I’d think, to run Miller either in the morning slot, against the likes of Laura Ingraham and Bill Bennett, or perhaps as an alternative in the afternoon to Sean Hannity.
True – including here in the Twin Cities; 1570 is a smaller, more niche-oriented signal (albeit much better-placed now than during its years as “the Patriot II”, broadcasting shows that didn’t quite make the cut for AM1280). Maloney correctly notes that these small stations are notorious for tape-delaying shows, making it impossible for people in their markets to call in and participate (and accordingly lowering listenership). AM1570 will be running the show live in the Twin Cities, which is a very good thing – but 1570 is, at best, a very new project (as in, on its first day today!), and is a smaller, weaker signal than even AM1280.
We’ll see! As I noted above, Miller might be a more auspicious candidate for this than the vast majority of comics – indeed, more than any comic I can personally think of at the moment. But having some solid radio experience on his production team will help a lot, too (presuming Miller breaks from traditional standup comic form and can actually listen to their advice…)
Always a good point; from Soupy Sales to James Hightower to Al Franken, the radio landscape is littered with the carcasses of celebs who were “the next big thing” (or more recently “the alternative to Limbaugh”). But I think Miller has paid more applicable dues in the business than any of the others; he’s in the right place (right of center!) and, arguably, at the right time.
Handicaps aside – and there are some big ones – I think Miller stands a chance.