Go over Ed’s and wish him good luck on his career change.

On Monday, I start my new full-time position with Blog Talk Radio as Political Director and will provide full-time commentary through my blog and my new daily BTR show. The phrase “dream come true” is hackneyed, but in this case the cliché applies.

BTR is making a good investment!

Changing careers can feel like stepping off the end of a dock with a blindfold on.  I’ve changed careers twice (like Ed, now); I was lucky the first time, in that going from radio to technical writing was a huge step up in pay and stability.  Changing from that into what I do now – Human Experience Design – was much more a leap of faith, since it was a market that hadn’t really taken off in the Twin Cities when I made the jump (although, gratifyingly, it has in the nine years since).

Jumping from service management to Blog Talk Radio, of course, is a huge leap of faith, but Ed’s the kind of guy who’ll make it work.

But everyone wish him good luck anyway!

Chad the Elder had me nervous for a moment there.

In the past week, the house of cards has collapsed of its own febrile weight.  The Duke Lacrosse Rape case is no more.  There was no there, there.  Mike Nifong apparently ginned the whole thing up based on a fraudulent story, in a (successful) bid to pander for votes.

It has been, as a lawyer acquaintance noted, one of the most devastating shut-downs in the history of American jurisprudence, that rare case of misconduct so grotesque it may well take down an elected prosecutor.  Go ahead, look and see how common that is.

Jeff Fecke – local rent-a-blogger who works for “Minnesota Monitor”, the local plutolefty group blog, for which he took a “pledge” to be a good, balanced journalist – has been among the most vitriolic in condemning not only the accused, but those who assailed DA Nifong for what increasingly seemed to be gross misconduct (as, eventually, turned out to be fact), and in the end men as a gender.

Now, nobody’s accused Jeff of being the most discerning blogger.  Last fall, when local conservative bloggers launched charges [as yet unanswered] that Minnesota Monitor was supported by George Soros and other left-of-center plutocrats, Jeff responded with a photoshopped “cartoon” of local conservative bloggers, including me; (To be fair, he’s a better cartoonist than Ken Avidor.  To be fairer, neither of them is as visually or comedically talented as Swiftee). The balloon over my head has me saying something like “I’ll do what I always do – lead off with an unsubstantiated allegation” (or words to that effect.  I’m not going to go looking for it!).   

Cue Alannis Morrisette.

The subject of sexual assault rates an entire category on “Blog of the Moderate Left”, his long-running leftyblog; it includes many nuggets of wisdom (including putting the words “I am a rapist” in Vox Day’s mouth).

But on the issue of the Duke lacrosse case, he’s been modestly prolific – and immodestly absolutist in his conclusions.

On the third indictment, last fall:

A team captain.  Cue defense whining about how this is totally a witch hunt.

Interesting, since I thought Nifong was only trying this case to win the primary.

That’d be one of the “snarks by negation” that leftyblogs have perfected – and by “perfected” I mean “beat to death to the point where it’s become a stylistic cliche almost too depressing to mock anymore”.

Ironic in retrospect, though, huh?

On the news that one of the [formerly] accused had been convicted of assault against a gay guy:

I don’t know if either suspect is guilty [of the rape charge].  (I have my suspicions.)  But it does appear that these weren’t poor, innocent naifs who got set up by a scheming, drunk, black stripper.

Ah.  The old “it appears to me” standard.

On the first two arrests:

Well, I guess the case isn’t wholly without merit after all:  

Two 20-year-old Duke University lacrosse players were arrested early Tuesday on charges of raping and kidnapping a stripper hired to dance at an off-campus party.

Reade Seligmann posted a $400,000 bond and Collin Finnerty was in the process of doing so for the same amount, said Col. George Naylor of the Durham County jail. By posting bond, the players avoided making an initial court appearance later in the day.

Now, of course, we enter the twilight phase where there’ll be plenty of ad hominem attacks launched against the victim, because that’s how you defend an accused rapist–by turning the tables and smearing the accuser.  I wonder why rape is underreported?

I wonder why fraudulent charges aren’t reported often enough? 

On the lack of DNA evidence that was the first big hole in Nifong’s “Case”:

Orenthal James Simpson is almost certainly guilty of having killed two people, but a jury of his peers felt differently, and thus he walks free today, hunting for the “real killer” on golf courses throughout America.

Keep this in mind as people try to tell you that the absence of DNA evidence in the Duke Lacrosse rape case is proof that the men are innocent, and the woman is lying

If OJ did it, a bunch of privileged white kids must have done it!

Back before there were any arrests – back when it was just the “victim’s” word against every college kid (race indeterminate) in the greater Duke area, Jeff – perhaps overestimating his blog’s reach – called out:

There is no honor in covering up rape. Ever. So long as you remain silent, three rapists remain free–and so long as you remain silent, you give your assent that this is okay.

And that makes you almost as bad as them.

Got that?  It’s all our our fault!

That was as far as I could get. 

So, leftybloggers; Jeff Fecke indicted and convicted not only the Duke Lacrosse players – and a good chunk of male American to boot.

When comes the part that a “journalist” would get to next?  Apologizing for the slander on the characters of the three who were wrongly charged?  Apologizing for denying them the slim dignity that all accused in this country are supposed to be accorded – the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty?

Apologizing for denying them, over the past year, the one courtesy the media – every journalist – is supposed to accord the accused in this country; referring to their alleged guilt, rather than stating it as a proven fact?

Where is the justice?

(more…)

I never cared much for Imus.  I can’t say that I’ve listened to him more than a half a dozen times, ever; he never really took off in the Twin Cities (Pointless disclosure: Salem Radio engaged Imus for the morning shift at the re-tooled AM1570 within the past couple of weeks).  I’ve always found his phlegmy, gargly-sounding voice unlistenable; as someone who grew up in the business, I’ve always found the old-school, big-name “shock jocks” (from back when that term meant something) to be deeply distasteful people; and as he developed as a reliable liberal outlet in a medium run by conservatives, I found him (counterintuitively) less and less interesting.

So he’s gone.  Whoop di doo.

Of course, the scandal that led to his demise (?) teaches all the wrong lessons. 

Jason Whitlock writing in the Kansas City Star sums up the real importance of Imus’ demise, and the way it went down.   You need to read the whole thing – but I’m going to excerpt big chunks of it anyway.

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

Exactly.

William Raspberry wrote an excellent column about 15 years ago, officially consigning the petty racism of name-calling to the “Pathetic, Ignore” bin (and I’d love to find that article online somewhere).  Long story short: anyone who thinks that ignorant morons calling black people naughty names is teh biggest problem facing blacks in America today – or even an important one – is deluded. 

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

The only question I have; which bigots? 

Jackson and Sharpton, who believe Blacks in America deserve no better from their “leadership” to wallow in the sort of petty victimhood afforded by a statement as dumb (dumb!) as Imus’?

Or the casual, de facto bigots who control so much of African-American culture in America:

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

If the misogyny and self-loathing in hip-hop were to be directed self-directed at any other ethnic group, psychologists would queue up around the figurative block to try to find the cause of such a cultural dissociation.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

The thesis – that mainstream black culture has become Black America’s worst enemy?

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

There is nothing quite as depressing as watching the various “Apollo” comedy specials and tours.  And while Chapelle is funny (in the same way that “Borat” was funny – in a way that I kind of didn’t like myself for finding funny, in many ways), you watch it knowing that behind all comedy is some form of pain or another – and the sense that the “pain” behind the likes of Chapelle and the less-tony black comic community is self-hatred.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

Worse than a distraction; it’s going to give some of the lesser lights of the “civil rights movement” a sense they’ve “won” something, while the real problems just grind on and on.

And those real problems, more and more, drive Mercedes and wear lots o’ bling:

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

…No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

Read the whole thing.

And ask yourself; with Imus gone but Fitty Cent and Snoop Dogg still acting out a stereotype more corrosive than Stepin’ Fetchit (because nobody seriously aspired to be Mr. Fetchit, while a generation of kids now use the word “pimp” as an adjective of approval), what’s really changed?

 UPDATE:  Flash at Centrisity adds 2,000-odd words to the subject.

Let’s look at some violations of civil liberties.

1. Secret police infiltrating crowds, provoking violence that the authorities use as a pretext to arrest and lock up hordes of innocent protesters.
2. Dissenters are threatened with expulsion from school for voicing unpopular views, their grades suffering, their speakers barred from campuses – while mainstream “dissenters” and speakers with far more radical, divisive views are not only welcomed, but lauded.
3. Protesters penned into tiny areas, far from the scene they’re trying to protest.
4. Grass-roots groups forbidden from buying advertising related to their issues for weeks or months before a campaign.
5. Protesters swept away from the locations and routes that the objects of their dissent will travel and stay in.
6. Protesters kept across the street from the object of their demonstration, penned (under threat of arrest and incarceration) into a small, remote area, unable to make eye contact with those against (and for) whom they are demonstrating.
7. Undercover cops and feds aggressively targeting dissenting groups who intend to commit “civil disobedience”.
8. A right guaranteed under the Constitution is dishonored, shaved away, trampled underfoot.
9. Saint Paul under lockdown, with any sign of political dissent seen as a cause to arrest and detain the “dissenter”.
10. A government bureaucracy enforcing “balance” on the airwaves, forcing (under threat of governent sanction) radio stations to curtail partisan programming.

Can you tell the difference between these ten gross violations of civil liberty?

I can. 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are things the fringe-left in the Twin Cities are positing as their worries for the Republican National Convention, which is coming up in about 18 months. All of them, in the fevered imaginations of these fringies, are like bayonets aimed at the civil liberties of left-of-center protesters who will gather in their hordes for the RNC. And all of them, as far as anyone knows, are pure imagination (beyond the measures the Secret Service takes to safeguard all presidents, regardless of their party).

2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are all real-life infringements on civil liberties that are in effect or proposed throughout and within the US right now – campus speech codes, McCain/Feingold, restrictions placed on anti-abortion protesters at Planned Parenthood clinics, gun control measures that attack the law-abiding gun owner, and the mainstream Democrat push to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine” to muzzle talk radio.

I don’t like any of them.

I just wanna make sure we’re clear on that.

———-

I’m a genuine civil libertarian. I’m a constitutional constructionist. I support all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights; hands off my speech, my church, my group, my firearms; keep your troops and unwarranted searches out of my house; don’t take my property, life or liberty without fair, due process, and keep your federal government out of my state, local and personal decisions.

I am demonstrably more fervent about genuine civil liberty than the vast majority of those who’ve been caterwauling about the issue since John Ashkkkroft was sworn in as Attorney General (before which most of them thought “libertarians” were toothless banjo-playing redneck tax protesters). I ran for office as a big-L Libertarian, in 1998). My credentials as a “civil rights first” conservative are vastly more solid than those of the “quit being rude to terror suspects” sect of the movement that’s been grabbing the headlines for the past few years.

So for the record; protest. Dissent. Go to the marketplace of ideas with vats of roiling ire.

And remember, always – your rights (like mine) end where mine begin. There is no right not to be offended (and have no fear, I’ll mix it up with any of you, and win every time, rhetorically speaking), and I certainly don’t ask not to be. Neither should you, of course.

———-

It should come as no surprise that the St. Paul City Council – dominated by a hard-left faction that makes Paul Wellstone look like Barry Goldwater – has officially rolled out the welcome mat for the demonstrators:

The St. Paul City Council says protesters will be welcome when the Republican National Convention comes to town.

The council agreed the city should greet protesters “with the same respect and honor accorded to conventioneers.” It voted unanimously Wednesday to create a special committee to oversee demonstrations.

I’m not aware that any convention city has ever passed a special resolution welcoming protesters – which, if true (please let me know if it’s not) sends the message that the City Council is partial to the protesters rather than the conventiongoers.

Which (take note, potential RNC delegates) should surprise nobody in this town.

But you’ll note that the resolution doesn’t differentiate between civil, peaceful protesters and the other kind; the kind that thinks violence is, itself, a statement; the kind that, awash in outrage at the Administration, thinks the ends justify the means; the kind that shows up at WTO meetings throwing rocks (like girls french soccer players) and trashing stores.

In fact, if you talk with the fringe-left as they voice their concerns for their own civil liberties, you’ll note that they never acknowledge that these people exist. Neither, for that matter, does the mainstream media in covering the “Anti-war” protest movement.

It’s almost as if they don’t want to know they exist.

You’d be forgiven for asking at this point “do they?”

Let’s talk about that tomorrow.

Saint Paul School Board member Al Oertwig resigns after his login ID was associated with someone viewing child pr0n on a publicly-owned computer:

 “According to the police report, [Metro State] university security officers called St. Paul police to the library after a patron told a security officer earlier in the day that a man was watching porn on a computer and pointed him out.

The officer approached the man and saw him watching a pornographic video of what appeared to be three adult men and three boys, the report said.

When the officer tapped the man on the shoulder and told him to log off, the man apologized, gathered his belongings and began to leave. The officer told the man to stop, but he ran away, the report said.

(Aside:  A guy resembling the fiftysomething Oertwig got away from a Saint Paul cop?  Huh?)

Security officers pulled the computer’s processor, found the library identification number of the man who had logged in and linked it to Oertwig, the report said. They also obtained images from security cameras of the man entering and leaving the library.

A security officer told police he could identify the man. The police report didn’t indicate whether investigators have asked the officer to confirm whether the man was Oertwig.

Oertwig is, of course, innocent until proven guilty.

Via MDE

Among people who care about, or at least listen to music, the argument is eternal; were the eighties a vast wasteland, or among the greatest periods of the rock and roll era?

The answer, of course, is “neither”.

Music – specifically, genres of music – conform only loosely with calendar decades. But there are most definitely eras in music, periods when popular music had dynamics that acted differently on each other, to help create music that was more – or, often, less – memorable.

And in American/Western popular music in the past fifty-five or so years, the two main dynamics have been the style and relative dynamism of “White Music” and “Black Music”. The different styles of “White” music (starting with country, rockabilly and folk) and “Black” music (R and B, Blues, Jazz, early Rock and Roll) have spent the past sixty years (as regards the rock and roll era) mixing and mingling and, occasionally, returning to their neutral corners; each of those movements affected popular music; generally, the parts of popular music that were the most dynamic and interesting were the parts where “White” and “Black” styles mixed and mingled the most, a place that’s changed, or even flashed into and out of existence, from time to time throughout the past fifty or sixty years.

So, with an aim toward retiring the whole, age-old, misleading “what decade is better” meme, let’s look at how popular music has really ebbed and flowed; in cycles of 5-7 years driven by events, rather than in ten year cycles driven by the calendar.

By the way, I’m only looking at mass-market popular music, here. Keep your observations on the vitality of Finnish Zombie Metal to yourselves.

Era: Pre-Rock and Roll (1948-1953)

• Events: World War II ends; veterans start creating the “baby boom”.
• White Music: Traditional pop music, with some light jazz/big band overtones. Peggy Lee, the Lettermen and other traditional, factory pop prevail.
• Black Music: R and B, and the first “rock and roll” – still heavily blues based – starts percolating. Very few mainstream white artists copied it (although the likes of Pat Boone did, in fact, start to cover R and B in a very “cleaned-up” form)
• Results: Largely-forgotten music, either because it was outside traditional marketing (black) or just pretty forgettable (white).

Era: Early Rock and Roll (1954-1958)

• Events: With the Eisenhower era in full bloom, and the Greatest Generation becoming established and running a very stable, prosperous ship, kids – including the nascent “Baby Boom” – were developing the spare time and disposable money to develop a “youth culture” with – for the first time – it’s own music.
• Black Music: R and B morphed into what white kids recognized (and can still recognize) as “rock and roll”, as the likes of Chuck Berry started overtly influencing white artists…
• White Music: …like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and so on, who brought black music to a white mass audience (and opened up the white mass-market audience for black artists’ own work) for the first time.
• Results: The first golden age of Rock and Roll, caused by the mixing and mingling of white and black music and the first “youth” culture in history.

The Brill Building Era (1958-1962)

• Events: The world got a little crazier, with the Soviets launching Sputnik and the Cold War threatening for the first time to reach out and touch Americans at home. The Eisenhower era ends in a recession.
• White Music: After Elvis is drafted (the legend goes), white popular music re-trenched into its pre-1953 pattern, with sanitized pop artists like Fabian, Bobby Rydell and the like performing very traditional pop (with very well-scrubbed R’nB overtones).
• Black Music: Back underground!  A new generation of black performers – James Brown, Sam Cooke – as well as the Motown label, were just getting started.
• Results: Largely-forgettable pop music, memorable more for its novelty acts than its hits.

The Golden Age of the 45 (1962-1968)

• Events: Youth culture metastasized as the boomers went to high school, then college.
• White Music: The Beach Boys dragged pop back from its nadir. Bob Dylan makes folk music a big business. The Beatles re-packaged R’nB, the Rolling Stones put blues on the Top Forty, and suddenly “Black” music was the mainstream…
• Black Music: …even when performedy by black artists. Jimi Hendrix puts the blues on the Top Forty, and Motown and Stax/Volt bring R’nB to a mass audience.
• Results: Black and white music cross-pollinate, spawning the most creative period yet in popular music.

The Album Age (1968-1972)

• Events: The protest movement begets the “Summer of Love”, which begat the descent of (the most-publicized part of) boomer “youth culture” into navel-gazing, self-referential irrelevance.
• White Music: Awash in drugs and self-referential navel-gazing, white music splinters into shades of ultra-white (the singer-songwriter genre with its sublime and ridiculous extremes), drug-induced-stupid (the Doors), art-rock (sublime examples like The Who, ridiculous ones like Emerson Lake and Palmer) and blues-influenced music (Cream, Led Zeppelin) that would eventually morph into “metal”.
• Black Music: As Hendrix drugs himself into irrelevance, Motown and Stax/Volt pulls away from crossover with white music, creating a golden age of R’nB – the peak of Motown and Stax/Volt’s sales, influence and creativity, with the likes of Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Otis Redding the Stylistics and others driving the agenda.
• Results: As the boomer “youth culture” splintered, so did music as a whole, as black and white music both fragmented into niches that would reflect their audiences, and be reflected in their genres.

The Malaise Era (1973-1979)

• Events: As western civilization tried to commit suicide, music became both more escapist and more fragmented.
• White Music: Escapist pop both loud (glitter rock, Bachmann-Turner Overdrive, Boston, Foreigner), not so loud (America, Captain and Tenille, Fleetwood Mac) and inane (Alan O’Day, Rupert Holmes, the Starland Vocal Band) dominated the Top40 charts. The only real sources of dynamism, besides the punk/new-wave breakout that started in the early seventies and peaked in about ’77, was the loved/hated cross-pollination…
• Black Music: …with black/gay disco music, itself a product of R and B’s collapse into excess.
• Results: The golden age of the Big Rock Star, the Top Forty Hit, and the homogenization of radio.

The Alternative Era (1980-1986)

• Events: Ronald Reagan engaged the Soviets and put the “F*** Yeah!” back into “America”. The malaise lifted. American culture got a new lease on life.
• White Music: The splintering of punk and new wave, as well as a rapid plummet in the cost of technology, brought an unprecedented wave of creativity. The seventies pop establishment was pushed aside; artists like Dire Straits, Talking Heads, The Cars, the Police and Tom Petty, fringey underground figures in 1978, dominated the charts by 1982. Pop, Rock and R’nB mixed and matched and interbred in a thousand different styles.  One of the best R’nB/Dance Rock bands was six Australians; one of the best rock and roll bands of the era…
• Black Music: …was also one of the best and most influential R’nB bands of the era, with two black guys, two white guys and two white women led by a 5’4″ black guy from Minneapolis blurring the lines between rock, pop and R’nB so adeptly that huge swathes of the pop audience stopped keeping track. The first big rap hit was performed by three white guys from Brooklyn; the next, by a couple of black guys who looped a white band who got started by dressing up the the blues and R’nB in glitter-rock clothes.
• Results: The best, most creative era in pop music since Sergeant Pepper, a time when black and white and pop and rock and dance and metal and everything in-between mixed and matched and interbred and just plain made things fun.

The Style-Over-Substance Era (1987-1992)

• Events: The Berlin Wall fell. History ended.
• White Music: Hair metal supplanted the variants of new wave, synth-pop, roots/heartland rock and power pop that had dominated the charts during the Reagan administration. Grunge came, grumped about, and flamed out in a depressive “poof”.
• Black Music: Black music morphed into primarily hip-hop, and ceded rock to the white boys. And with the likes of Public Enemy, NWA and the DOC, became a hell of a lot more interesting than the white music of the era.
• Results: Unbelieveably dull. Seriously. “Kill Me” dull.

The Return Of The Seventies (1993-2000)

• Events: With history all over, people could focus on having fun. Unfortunately, if you judge by the music of the era, they failed.
• White Music: In the pre-Ipod, pre-Napster era, white music returned to the seventies. From the boy bands (N*SYNC, Backstreet boys) to pop-rock (Alanis Morissette, Gin Blossoms), “safe” was the word.
• Black Music: R and B and hip-hop became almost inseparably intertwined – and almost-insufferably dull. The inventiveness of Public Enemy and the wry combativeness of NWA was replaced with the dull, thudding thuggishness of…well, just about everything in the genre.
• Results: Rock and roll was dead. Pop music was largely no more interesting, in general, than it had been between 1957 and 1963.

The IPod Era (2000-Present)

• Events: History started again.
• White And Black Music: Everything is available for free. While major label music is safer and more constrained than ever, technology promises (and so far it’s just a promise) to let musicians outflank the major-label system.
• Results: Damned if I know.

So as we see, there really are no “decades” in popular music, merely cycles of 4-7 years. The best of those cycles – 1954-1958, 1962-1968 and 1980-1986 – were times when the usual divides between “white” and “black”, and “underground” and “mass market” got scrambled beyond conventional recognition.

The other times? Business as usual.

That should settle that question once and for all.

Per my post yesterday, I went to last night’s meeting of the Saint Paul School Board.  There, I met Swiftee from “Pair O’ Dice”. 

The mission?  Speak out against the movement by a well-heeled pressure group to ban or hinder military recruiters from Saint Paul School property. 

The actual “public response” portion of the agenda was shorter than I’d expected.  Aside from Swiftee and I (and a woman who was there to testify about an issue that was both unrelated and deeply familiar), the only speakers were a couple of not-overly-articulate kids from “Youth Against War and Racism”, supported by a couple of rows of Volvo (or Subaru)-driving, alpaca-wearing, Whole Foods-shopping, patchouli-reeking, puerile-placard-bearing pro-dictatorship “anti-war” activist types.

It’s always a pleasure to watch Tom Swift engage the School Board.  What he lacks in Ciceronian polish, he makes up for in passion.  It was – as always – a joy to watch Ann Carroll, Swiftee’s nemesis on the board, shrink down behind the desk when Tom teed up.

The fun, as Tom relates, was after the public hearing was over.  The rows of “activists” noisily got up and stampeded for the door like a bunch of Grateful Dead fans who’d heard there was a bag of Fritos in the rest room; Tom and I quietly left via the side door.

And then it got weird:

After receiving a few handshakes from parents and military vets, we were accosted by a young guy with a “Free Palestine” button on his coat who wanted to have a little dialogue with us…sure, I’ll play!

While we listened to his “Haliburton owns the military” spiel…

 Talking with “Eric” was, indeed, of a piece with a pattern I’ve observed in many attempts to engage these people in a rational debate.  When confronted by facts, they inevitably squiggle away into bizarre conspiracy theories and fanciful self-aggrandizing victimization operas. 

Of course, that’s among the ones that make some pretense of rationality, which to be fair, Eric tried.  Others, as I noted in my coverage of the pro-terrorist “Anti-war” demonstration last month, have let the surly bonds of civility slip, as Tom relates.

… a live, breathing specimen of one of Mitch’s patented “smug, alpaca wearing, Volvo driving, tofu and beansprout eating, prematurely grey” female moonbats cruised by to spin the propeller on her tinfoil hat for us by (loudly) proclaiming that George Bush had “arranged” the 9/11 attacks.

As her pencil-necked life partner shuffled her quickly out of smackdown range, with her screaming incoherently all the while (I think it had something to do with chimpyMcbushitler but I can’t be sure), “Free Palestine” informed us that she was frustrated and felt powerless. 

Swiftee is too charitable.  The woman – a late 40-early-50-something who ooozed “college educated government/non-profit worker”, although that’s just a first impression – had veins bulging from her face; she was howling in an ululating tone that suggested she genuinely felt horrified to confront dissent.  “Why don’t you go to Iraq yourself”, she snivelled as her partner shuffled her, all a-vapor, toward their Volvo. 

“So only the military gets to speak?” I yelled after her – but I let her go.  Confronting actual reason would have probably given her a stroke.

I turned back to “Eric”.

“So”, he said, affecting a moist, unctuous, lecturing tone, “how do you rationalize the fact that our military isn’t democratic, but it’s supposedly spreading democracy around the world?”

I stood, stunned.  Swiftee, to his credit, took a whack at it.  Finally, words came to me.

“Of course the military isn’t ‘democratic’ – but it’s controlled by civilians, who are elected.  The military isn’t controlled by a fascist dictatorship”.

“Eric” affected that “gotcha” look that the rhetorically dim take on, looking a bit like a toddler that’d made a really good pants.  “How do you know it’s not a fascist dictatorship”.

“Oh, for chrissake…”, I started, taking a deep breath, ready to lay into him.

Swiftee was, well, swifter.  “I gotta go”, he said, taking his leave.  It was, in retrospect, the right call.

I can’t wait to do it again!

 Even NPR has noticed – the huge, factory-model school is earning serious detractors.

I did not know, however, that the idea really was too dumb for anyone but an Ivy Leaguer to hatch:

Forty years ago, former Harvard President James Bryant Conant argued that it made no sense to have thousands of small secondary schools. He pushed for the consolidation of those schools into big ones –- like Northwestern High School in Baltimore, where NPR has reported a series of stories this year.

Bryant thought that big, comprehensive high schools were the best way to educate the hordes of baby boomers headed for high school and college. But four decades after Northwestern opened, the school is a dinosaur: It’s one of only three remaining comprehensive schools in Baltimore.

 The story goes on to note that people – institutions, even – are having second thoughts:

 

One argument for the comprehensive high school was economic: Those big educational shopping malls were supposed to cut back on administrative costs. That would allow them to offer Advanced Placement courses, a football team and arts programs, all under one roof.

But big schools created new problems: the violence and intimidation that come when thousands of teenagers are bunched together. Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University says smaller schools actually reduce overhead.

“In a large high school, you’re going to have more security guards, more coaches,” she notes. She says smaller schools tend to be safer, so they need fewer staffers devoted to keeping order.

The whole thing is worth a read.

(Via commenter Johnathan, in a previous thread)

Just in time for the DFL’s latest attempt to fan tax-hiking hysteria about tranportation (by way of ginning up bogus support for a potemkin “Transit” system), comes word that…

…congestion is easing?

…yesterday the Minnesota Department of Transportation issued a press release with this headline: “Twin Cities-area congestion decreases for third year in a row.” MnDOT says additional lanes on stretches of Hwys. 100, 394 and 494, as well as on I-94 just east of St. Paul, have helped reduce the number of “congested miles” from 277 to 267. (A congested mile is defined as a mile of traffic moving slower than 45 miles per hour.) The next round of construction (Crosstown, anyone?) means that “there could be a rise in congestion rates” between now and when the projects are completed, Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnau says. But the hope is that the long-term gain will be worth the pain.

The source – the Strib’s “Roadguy” blog – is asking for reader feedback about congestion around the metro.

I’m blessedly removed from the issue; after almost a decade and a half of commuting from Saint Paul to places like Eden Prairie, Chanhassen, Minnetonka and Maple Grove, I’m actually bussing downtown – almost literally a door-to-door commute of 20 minutes these days.

Still, it seemed to me that either the process of blasting my way out to the western ‘burbs and back was getting easier in the past few years, or I was getting more patient.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It’s an aphorism that’s become a cliche, and for good reason; it’s so applicable to so many things.

In the first seven parts of this series, I detailed a string of events that helped me on the way from being a public school proponent to a solid detractor.

But like jalapeno peppers in a burrito, the events were just the accents, the major mile markers along the way that tipped the hand of the underlying context. The refried beans…well, there were plenty of them, too.

The tipping point for me wasn’t the gruelling parent-teacher conference about my daughter’s “failure” to comply with her school’s demand for emotional transparency. It wasn’t even chasing my son down to the police station to find out if he was going to be charged with making a “terroristic threat”, and the Kafkaesque nightmare that followed.

The tipping point – the moment when I officially gave up on the public school system – was a meeting with my son’s fifth-grade teacher, a social worker, the assistant principal, and two or three special ed specialists.

For the umpteenth meeting, I heard the refrain I’d been hearing non-stop since Kindergarten; Zam’s a bright boy, but…

But. But he didn’t sit still when he was told to. But when the teacher said it was time for math, he kept reading. But when the system said zig, he zagged.

Not that he didn’t know the material; merely that he didn’t learn it according to a schedule set down in a curriculum planner’s office intended to be the least common denominator for teaching a class of 28 kids.

I lost it.

“So the problem”, I said, too depressed to really care about decorum, “is that school is a factory. The factory is designed to turn out thousands of identical sausages. Each of those sausages must be identically-shaped. If any of those sausages doesn’t fall into the assigned shape, fast enough, you take the sausage off the assembly line and call it “special” and and send it the subliminal, but really overt, message that he’s an abnormal bit of sausage. And you take that little bit of sausage aside so it doesn’t gum up the assembly line for all the other bits of sausage”.

Probably not a moment that the Saint Paul Public Schools are going to put on their brochure. I was exhausted and depressed…

…and realizing, bit by bit, that “school” has very little to do with teaching children.

(more…)

King smacks Tarryl Clark:

“The impact of ‘No New Taxes’ is clear,” said Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud. “Someone else has to pick up the tab. That’s not honest and not fair, particularly to the middle class.”

Pick up what tab? Sure, if you assume all spending must be done, somebody has to pay. But you don’t have to spend. Spending is a choice, be it your eating out budget ($96/day) or the higher education budget. YOU ORDERED THE SPENDING, IT’S YOUR TAB. You have misstated this case ever since your inflation dishonesty.

That’s a huge bit of baggage in Minnesota’s public life; this notion, set in motion during the “Minnesota Miracle” (the 30-year stretch in Minnesota when Republicans acted like Democrats) that whatever someone can attach to “public good” is instantly and permanently “worth” whatever its promoters want to spend, damn the consequences and opportunity costs.

The Saint Paul School Board is going to debate, again, a resolution by a left-wing boutique pressure group to try to hamper military recruiters on Saint Paul school property.

A source close to the issue says

The superintendent [says] there may be protesters there from the left. While they got the opt out form expanded, they are angry they did not get the recruiter ban from cafeterias. I suspect there has been pressure on the board to reconsider that issue at tomorrow night’s meeting.

Proof that madness doesn’t necessarily reign supreme at the SPPS…:

I believe the superintendent is frustrated that [the school board is]  spending so much time on this issue and not on the issues of student achievement. I fully agree with her, and I know you do to.

And there’s a call to action, here:

I know this is short notice, but if any of you can come to them meeting by  6p.m. tomorrow to hear debate and be prepared to speak at 6:30 — if the left starts the attack at the podium. If they appear, do not sign up to speak until they have thrown the first punch. Otherwise they will have the last say …Let them speak first, then sign up. Or, ask if the sign up sheet is broken down by pro and con.If for some reason they don’t speak, and the debate seems to be controlled, then don’t inflame them. But…this time we will need to. Plus, we must force our differences with the left on this issue and drag them kicking and screaming back to the center.

I’m mostly healthy and rarin’ to go, this time.  I’ll be there. Think what you want about the military – but when it comes to giving opportunity to the working-class, minority and immigrant students that the district serves so very very badly, the military has the best record around. The “student” group – and the board members who are carrying their water, Tom Goldstein and Ann Carroll – are upper-middle-class, Highland Park/Crocus Hill/Mac-Groveland limo paleoliberals who care about people of color, immigrants and the poor – the people who are most likely to see the military as a path to opportunity – only as far as they provide them a political sinecure.  They need to be put back in their place.

So I’ll see you there.

Yesterday, I took a swipe at the Butthead of American cinema, Quentin Tarantino.

My tastes in movies don’t run to Tarantino – I figure if I want to watch contrived homages to seventies grade-D movies, I’ll watch Mystery Science Theatre, see the real thing in its most appropriate context, and save eight bucks.
Tracy at Anti-Strib took his best shot at a Pauline Kael impression by way of voicing his umbrage:

[I go] on to underscore [my] thundering ignorance by disparaging Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill (no mention of 1 or 2. He probably only saw 1 and thought the ending sucked!) and, worst of all, Reservoir Dogs!

Now, let’s be perfectly straight here; I didn’t disparage any of these movies; merely said that they, Pulp and Dogs and the entire flock of Bills, and Tarantino’s entire oeuvre, bore me stiff.

I have long suspected that most people who are really into music have absolutley [sic] no taste, Berg proves it today. These guys that get wood over hearing some grungy, stoned garage band are obviously too damned dense, or just plain stoned, to get the complex elegance of a truely [sic] great movie.

I must assume the “wood” he’s referring to is the cello I’ve been playing for 34 years, presumably playing along with stoned garage bands (though I can’t remember, having apparently been sniffing glue the whole time).

I digress:

Events like this add to my understanding of how the other small, lonely, boring people live. They obviously are too emotionally and intellectually stunted to appreciate a thing like a fine movie, an aged cigar or an excellent wine. I’d feel a tiny bit sad for them if they weren’t so smug about seeing “the Mat’s” [sic] back for [sic] they never [sic] made it big.

Indeed, I have not recently wasted a weekend curled in a fetal position in front of a DVD player, guzzling cheap blends from the MGM discount rack and smoking all the oxygen out of my brain as I watch my umpteenth Tarentino Marathon. Guilty as charged.

If you do have to interact with a musicophile, be sure to use small words and keep your sentences simple.

Especially if you’re talking to us in Italian.

Grunting is probably the prefered [sic] mode of communication. They most liley [sic] can’t hear you anyway, as they have destroyed their hearing by climbing numberous [sic] Marshall stacks for assinine [sic] stage diving.

So let me get this straight? Tracy is pulling the culcha card – drawing his line in the sand to defend civilization and culture against the drooling barbarians – on behalf of Grindhouse?

Not choosing Hitchcock or Hawks or Ford or Godard as the bastion of culture against the rabble, but Quentin Tarentino, who is the film equivalent of The Doors – flashy, culty and utterly intellectually and emotionally barren and contrived?

Tracy must have gotten into some bad cigars. We’ll forgive him.

The number one item on all the morning shows today?

Don Imus.

Especially on the Today show; NBC has a financial relationship with Imus, who simulcasts his morning show on MSNBC.

Call me a cynic, but I say lLook for Imus’ numbers to boom after his “two week suspension”.

In fact, look for his return to be the most heavily hyped event in the history of radio.

So what’s the best way to get a great deal on air fares for a flight that’s within the next week?

No, it’s not for me.

What approach to take to the leftysphere’s latest bit of navel-gazing self-absorption, “Blogs Against Theocracy?”

Detailed, logical destruction of the premise?

it is painful, frustrating, and annoying to read such ignorant drivel. In the past I’ve written numerous posts on the “theocracy canard” in a futile attempt to address this misconception. But for the radical fringe of the secular left–the Chomskyites, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, Rosie O’Donnell–reason and logic are like kryptonite. Because they live on emotion what they feel is what is true, regardless of facts and reality.

The theophobes, however, are a bit unique in that they embrace an infantile brand of libertarian socialism.* Like other leftists, they tend to advocate for collectivist government solutions. But their support ends when government interferes with their “rights” to do as they please. This is why they hate–and hate is not too strong a word–people who refuse to keep their religious beliefs in the closet. Christians, in particular, are considered a group that is always trying to impose their bourgeois standard of morality on society despite how it makes some people feel.

Or satirical, comic mockery of the premise?

I Blog Against Theocracy because I am not afraid to proclaim to all who hear it “I do not believe in Al Gore!” I Blog Against Theocracy because I refuse to accept prophecies of drowning polar bears simply because Al Gore featured an animated dramatization of one in some stupid movie. I Blog Against Theocracy because they label me “sinner” for refusing to drive a speck car and running the air conditioning on 90 degree days while demurring to purchase salvation through “offsets” and “carbon credits”. I Blog Against Theocracy because I am free and I have the innate ability to think critically!

I Blog Against Theocracy because Al Gore and his robotic acolytes have caused more misery to those with common sense than all the wars in history combined.

Logic or mockery? Mockery? Logic?

Oh, mockery it is!

Do we want to live in a world where two plus two equals six? Where a total may not only be less than the sum of its parts, but that can be declared a Good Thing? Where reason itself is cast adrift in the name of faith in untested, untestable, unempirical, “faith”-based solutions to life’s problems?

Not for me! No way, Johann!

And I’m sure you all feel the same. But that’s not why I’m blogging against Theocracy today. I’m blogging because of all the morons who Don’t Think It Can Happen Here.

It can! It can can canny can can can!

Minnesota is being led by a cabal of theosophists, who, in the absence of proof, are demanding that we adopt a faith-based approach to governing our state! Even though there’s never been any empirical proof that you can “pay for a better Minnesota”, even though there’s no evidence that a shortage of money is causing the state’s education system to fail, that single-payer healthcare is anything but a bureaucratic power grab, you – we – are being asked to suspend logic and dig into our wallets – upon threat of government sanction – to pay for it!

And if you don’t go along with their faith-based beliefs, they become abusive – they attack your character, they accuse you of hating children and promoting mediocrity!

Even though there’s no evidence whatsoever that giving them twice as much money as they already have will do a damn bit of good!

I blog against theocracy because it is worse than genocide!

As I’ve noted in the past, when I want badly-thought-out analysis of events that substitutes snark for logic, I turn to area leftyblogger Cucking Stool.

And I usually turn right away, because – sheesh, it’d be like fisking the senile or the handicapped.

But Mr. Stool’s outdone himself this time, going past merely dumb and swerving into broad, group-based character assassination, commenting about local conservative bloggers’ attacks on Al Franken’s old anti-gay “jokes”:

Geez, you go on vacation for a couple of weeks, and when you get back, there’s been a sea change in where the parties stand.

That, or  you really weren’t very sure of it before  you went on vacation, Cuck. 

 Conservative bloggers are now the defenders of gays and lesbians. Several right-wing bloggers are attacking Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken for some skits and comments he made more than 30 years ago that they, with their finely tuned sensitivities, construe as possibly antigay.

Really, Cuck?  The crack about our “sensitivities” aside, perhaps you’d like to favor your readers with some sort of link to what the bloggers are talking about?

So they can – y’know – make up their own minds?

That’s quite a change from when the Republican Party was trying to use same-sex marriage and gay adoption as wedge issues. It seems like just yesterday that the GOP caucus in St. Paul was trying to put the gay marriage issue on the ballot to gin up voter turnout

I’m a conservative, and I have been for decades.  Among my beliefs – marriage is a guy and girl thing.  And also fraught, but I digress.  I oppose gay marriage.

And yet, 20 years ago, I got involved in a gay bashing incident.   If you take Stool’s puerile stereotype seriously, you’ll know how I reacted – by piling on and helping beat the crap out of the gay guy.

But wait!  I didn’t!  I got involved on the side of the gay guy, the victim of the incident.

How could that be?  Doesn’t that go completely against the stereotype?  On what basis can someone like Mr. Stool judge me, if not by stereotype?

Y’see, Cuck, that’d be the difference between Republicans and Democrats; while many conservatives have sincere beliefs about what marriage is, we still stand up for the dignity of the individuals.   

 and that überconservative pinup girl Ann Coulter was calling a Democratic presidential candidate a “faggot.”

And you’ll recall – and you’ll have to recall, because Stoolster won’t tell you – that it was conservative bloggers that cut Coulter the loosest the fastest.  This blog included.

If Ann Coulter didn’t exist, the lefty media would have to create her. 

Indeed, as Cuck has shown in this piece, the do.  Over and over again.

Since these bloggers are now courageous champions for civil rights for gays and lesbians, it won’t be long before they call on Sen. Norm Coleman to repudiate his vote for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and hate-crimes legislation.

Uh, you see, Stool, there again you miss the point.  Standing against character assassination of gays (to say nothing of violence) isn’t the same as debasing the definition of marriage (many conservatives, myself included, support civil union legislation while wanting to defend traditional marriage); hate-crimes legislation is broadly stupid, and deserves to be opposed by anyone who believes in genuine civil liberty. 

It wouldn’t be a Cucking Stool post without a dumb snark – the too-frequent tack of the dim left,  the unintentional irony of slamming bigotry by employing it.

Wait for it…

Wait…for…it…

They’ve seen the progressive light. I mean, that has to be it. The only other explanation would be craven hypocrisy, and that certainly couldn’t be the case.

Numbnuts!  If you can’t see the difference between defending traditional marriage and defending people against scabrous character assassination, then you shouldn’t be using terms like “craven hypocrisy”.  You might hurt yourself.

UPDATE:  My bad.  This piece of logically-retarded, snarky, moronic bilge wasn’t written by Cucking Stool.  It was written by Tim O’Brien of the Strib.  Y’know – the paper where the editors and gatekeepers are supposed to help make sure the content isn’t, y’know, puerile and dim.

My apologies to Mr Stool.

A commenter at IMAO who claimes to be a former Iran hostage speaks out:

As my screenname indicates, I can speak with Complete Moral Authority ™ on this issue.

On the day of the takeover, the Marines were outnumbered at least 1000 to 1. We held the consulate and the communications vault for over 12 hours, helping to destroy equipment and classified material. We were under STRICT orders not to fire our weapons or pop gas grenades (too late for that last one..hee, hee, hee). We were eventually told that we were on or own and to make a break for it. The monkeys even put one of the diplomats in front of the comm vault peep eye with a pistol to their head and threatened to kill them unless the door was opened. It wasn’t and they didn’t. Once all the material was destroyed the doors were opened and they all got the crap beat out of them.

When we were first taken, the Iranians took us into a room individually and asked us to sign a statement denouncing the US policy in Iran, Israel, the Shah, etc. The Marines signed with names such as Michael Mouse, Chesty Puller, Dan Daly (google the last two…Marine Corps legends), Harry Butz, etc.

Read the whole thing.

Johnny Hart – the cartoonist who created BC among other strips – is dead at 76.

BC – which used Hart’s evangelical Christianity as source material – was a canary in the PC coalmine; its various religious messages were getting censored by major newspapers long before it was the norm.

Michelle Malkin has a collection of memoria for Hart.

The most pathetic things in the world:

• Listening to old guys from Georgia who swear the “south’s gonna rise again”.
• Martin Short
• Minnesota DFLers who pine for the good old days when Republicans and Democrats worked together…by acting like Democrats.

Of course I’m talking about Lori Sturdevant, who wrote Sunday to pine for the mythical past:

Jim Pederson, upon whose good head and heart various DFL officeholders and the Minnesota Historical Society have relied for decades, added last week to my store of state political lore. Did I know, he asked, that nearly every DFL (then “liberal”) legislator who voted for the huge 1971 tax increase won reelection in 1972?

It was news to me, I said — thanking him for courteously (and correctly!) assuming that I am too young to have covered the 1972 election, rather than too addled to recall the results.

The crack researchers at the Legislative Reference Library confirmed it: In October 1971, at the end of a marathon special session, 75 liberals (46 in the House, 29 in the Senate) voted for the biggest income and sales tax hike in state history, in exchange for lower property taxes and more money for schools.

One might wonder if Sturdevant knows if anything else…anything else at all – might have possibly changed since then?

We’ll get back to that.

Every legislative seat was on the ballot the next year. The Legislature did not meet in 1972, so there was no chance to fog voters’ memories with new business. In the 1972 election, Republican President Richard Nixon was romping to easy victory — even in blue Minnesota. Those taxapalooza DFLers were politically exposed and vulnerable.

Yet all but four of those who sought reelection won.

The parallel to current events is unavoidable. Property taxes are rising, schools are hurting, and the Legislature’s DFLers (most of them, anyway) are responding with proposals to raise the income tax.

History might be urging today’s DFLers to press on. If there was no penalty at the polls for voting for the Big One, how much safer is it now to embrace tax increases that are much smaller as a percentage of the state budget? Further, no Republican presidential candidate for ’08 looks nearly as formidable as Nixon was in ’72.

Nixon, formidable?  The only thing that made Nixon “formidable” was the Democrat meltdown – having the “peace at any cost” wing of the party anoint McGovern as the nominee. 

No parallel there, is there?

But I’d counsel DFLers against getting too giddy over this history lesson. There are at least two fairly crucial differences between then and now. One: Tim Pawlenty is no Wendell Anderson.

The Republican hockey-playing governor of 2007 never behaved less like the DFL hockey-playing governor of 1971 than he did last week. Pawlenty mounted a radio offensive against the raising any and all state taxes. In the spot, a narrator accuses DFL legislators of going on a “trip to the all-you-can-eat buffet.” The governor’s voice pleads: “Please, call your legislators and tell them, you’re taxed enough.”

And that’s the part that Sturdevant got really wrong.

Because has soft as Pawlenty has always been on bedrock conservative issues – he’s always been a pragmatist, and I don’t think he’d take that as an insult! – something did happen between 1971 and 2007 that makes Sturdevant’s vision ever more of a hallucination.

It was 1980.

Oh, the Reagan Revolution initially bypassed Minnesota; it took  until 2002 for genuine conservatism to play more than a spoiler role in this state.  But by 2002, the Taxpayers League and Brian Sullivan were able to make Tim Pawlenty – the ur-pragmatist – see that edging to the right was the way to go.

The dynamics have changed since 1980; the primary motivator for most people isn’t so much “getting government off your back” as it was when Reagan ran for office, as it is “security first”; people want their nation, their streets, their jobs and their homes to be secure, which is supposed to be government’s job. 

 People are – or should be, to quote Little Steven, “sick and tired of paying for s**t [they] never get”.  Ergo:

That’s so, only if you can tolerate what Pawlenty’s own budget shows is coming in 2010-11: a decrease in state funding for schools.

It’d be interesting to see if the average Minnesotan really believes giving the schools more money is ever going to do any good.

Which leads to Difference Two: Larry Pogemiller, the new DFL Senate Majority Leader, is no Stan Holmquist.

Holmquist, the last Republican (then “conservative”) to lead a Senate majority, was Anderson’s quiet ally in forging what became known as the Minnesota Miracle. Holmquist spent summer and fall of 1971 looking for ways to satisfy both his conservative caucus and the liberal governor. Their political alliance that year became a personal friendship that lasted until Holmquist’s death in 2003.

Sturdevant is dreaming.  Republicans were not  especially conservative, even nationwide, in 1971, and even less so in Minnesota.  Beaten down by decades of Democrat control going back to the thirties, the mainstream of the GOP – in Minnesota more than most places – was content to go along and get along with the Dems. 

Which may sound perfectly fine to people, like Sturdevant, who pine for the days when the whole state got in lockstep behind, essentially, their high-tax, high-“service” vision for this state.   But the GOP in those days – especially in Minnesota – didn’t see being an alternative to that vision as a part of its mission.  And it’s disingenuous of Sturdevant and the rest of the dozey mopes pining for the glory days of the “Minnesota Miracle” to pretend otherwise.

By contrast, it does not appear that Pawlenty and Pogey have become pals, quiet or otherwise. Pogemiller’s Senate has seemed intent on pulling the plug on two of Pawlenty’s favorite Term One accomplishments, for reasons that look like political spite. The rural business tax breaks known as JOBZ and the teacher performance pay plan called Q-Comp are at risk of being frozen at DFL hands.

If that’s how Pogemiller means to soften up Pawlenty for a nice friendly season of negotiation, I’d hate to see how he’d provoke a fight.

Sturdevant misses the irony of it all.

The “Minnesota Miracle” – or at least the legendary version of it, the one that the likes of Sturdevant and Nick Coleman pine for without, apparently, understanding it at all – depended on having a quiet, acquiescent second party in this state, one too afflicted by Stockholm Syndrome to resist. 

We don’t have that in Minnesota anymore.  And while that means big government has to work harder to tax us all back to the stone age, it is a good thing for genuine representative democracy.

One wonders what Sturdevant values more.

Tarantino gets spanked in a disastrous opening for Grindhouse:

…major players in the movie capital were talking about the utter collapse at the box office of Grindhouse, that double-feature from celebrated directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. (I had wondered here if the movie could live up to the Weinsteins’ hype.) Despite decent reviews, the hard “R”-rated pic filled with blood and violence took in just $12 million this weekend — nowhere near even the lowest $20 mil opening predicted (or the $25 mil debut anticipated after midnight sneaks were arranged in major cities). blades1.jpgThe weekend take was far, far below the openings for, say, Rodriguez’s Sin City ($29.1 mil) or Tarantino’s Kill Bill 1 ($22 mil) and 2 ($25.1 mil).

Be advised:  I detest Quentin Tarantino.  I didn’t like Reservoir Dogs.  I mildly disliked Pulp Fiction.   I hated Kill Bill with a cordial passion.  And everything I’ve ever read about Quentin Tarantino makes me hope his next movie is the new generation’s Ishtar.

Gack.

By way of reading Emily’s birthday post at TXP,  I noted that Saturday was the 39th anniversary of an obscure death that I remember almost as clearly as that of Martin Luther King, two days earlier…:

Motor racing world champion Jim Clark was killed in a car crash during a race.

Jimmy Clark was a “champion” in the same sense that Tiger Woods is a “Good Golfer”.

Perhaps the greatest Formula 1 driver ever, he passed the unbreakable records of Fangio and Nuvolare in only eight years of professional racing.   Ayrton Senna and Jackie Stewart both passed his win record – but both of them raced longer careers and busier schedules.

A natural talent, Clark’s record in F1 may be equalled, but there’s never be another.

And there’ll never be a car as cool as the 1.5l 1965 Lotus F1…

But it’s pretty cool anyway.

Easter is, always, my favorite time of the year. Much as I love Christmas and Thanksgiving (and I do – for very different reasons), and as hard as it is to resist the temptation to yell “Hey, Atheists – eat flaming hot redemption!, Easter is still the place to which all spiritual and emotional roads lead.

So may God bless you and your families this Easter.