From Red:

1. Is your second toe longer than your first?
I actually had to check.  They’re right about even.

2. Do you have a favorite type of pen?
I very rarely write with pens.  I’m a mechanical pencil guy.  But I love Pilot Fine-Liners; very fine, smooth rollerball, never snags the paper.  Also gel-pens, although I never actually buy them.  I have almost illegible handwriting no matter what I write with; people think I’m writing in Hebrew.

3. Look at your planner for March 14, what are you doing?
My daughter has an appointment, and there’s a standing team meeting that day.

I’m not kidding.

4. What color are your toenails usually?
Umm…toenail colored.  Usually.

5. What was the last thing you highlighted?
The Minnesota DFL’s logical vacuity?

Oh, OK.  Seriously, now.

I’m not a fundamentally organized person. I have to work at it. 

So one of my monday morning rituals at work is that I print off all of my meeting placeholders from Outlook, and highlight the subject, time and location.  I then paperclip the sheet to the file folder that holds the info related to the meeting, and put the folders on the marker-tray of my whiteboard, in order from left to right.  That way I can just grab them, and read where I’m supposed to be as I walk to the meeting.

No, I’m far from OCD; indeed, I’m probably neurotically disorganized.  Hence the highlighting.

6. What color are your bedroom curtains?
Sort of off-white.  I think.

7. What color are the seats in your car?
Sort of off-white.  I’m more sure about them.  They’re leather, and thank heavens they’re light-colored in the summer.

8. Have you ever had a black and white cat?
Two.  One that died three years ago, and one we got last year.  Unrelated, and yet almost identical.

9. What is the last thing you put a stamp on?
An amended tax return to the IRS.

10. Do you know anyone who lives in Wyoming?
Yes.  Who doesn’t?

11. Why did you withdraw cash from the ATM the last time?
Kids’ allowances!

12. Whose is the last baby that you held?
Good question – probably one of my own.  Or, possibly, one of his kids, when they were really little. 

“Holding babies” is a long story for me; I used to be terrified of it, when I was in my teens and early twenties.  They hated me; I never held a baby that didn’t immediately start squalling like I was jabbing it with a knitting needle.  Then I had my own, and got very comfortable with it. 

13. Unlucky #?
None!  But eight is my favorite.

14. Do you like Cinnamon toothpaste?
I’ve never seen or tried it.  But I think I would.  The hotter the better.

But then I’d dig garlic toothpaste, too. 

Mmmm.  Garlic.

15. What kind of car were you driving 2 years ago?
The same one I have now.  A Ford Taurus.

16. Pick one: Miami Hurricanes or Florida Gators?
The Bears.

17. Last time you went to Six Flags?
Never been to a Six Flags.  We have Valleyfair here, and the last time was probably two years ago.  I’m due.

18. Do you have any wallpaper in your house?
Bathroom – some fairly atrocious stuff that’s peeling faster than I can keep track of it.  I need to remove it.

And some stuff in my kitchen that everyone hates – yellowish off-tan with zillions of tiny stylized flowers.  When my daughter was little – like, two – I asked her what they were.  She said “suckers”.  I’ve been sentimentally attached to the stuff since then.  It DOES have to go, but I’ll probably keep a square of it in a little frame, for my own purely sentimental reasons.

19. Closest thing to you that is yellow?
My collection of legal pads, mostly full-up with notes.

20. Last person to give you a business card?
Some GOP operative at Keegans one night.

21. Who is the last person you wrote a check to?
Rainbow Foods, when I lost my check card a few months back.

22. Closest framed picture to you?
Me and my kids, from about ten years ago.

23. Last time you had someone cook for you?
Outside of a restaurant?  Good question.  Probably the last time I was dating someone halfways seriously.  Getting toward a year now.

24. Have you ever applied for welfare?
No.  I’ve been on unemployment three times (once for just one check), but never welfare.

25. How many emails do you have?
Counting everything, including a few I never use?  Probably seven or eight.

26. Last time you received flowers?
Opening night of Lion in Winter, my sophomore year in college.  I played Henry II, and if I say so myself, I was mighty good.   

27. Do you think the sanctity of marriage is meant for only a man & woman?
I don’t fundamentally see marriage as a civil contract; it’s a religious thing.  I’m not opposed to civil unions (a contract).  I used to actually try to find a reason to support gay marriage – but I can see no reason congruent with my religious beliefs that it makes sense. 

28. Do you play air guitar?
Air guitar, air keyboards (Hammond B-3, usually), air drums (and finger-drumming), and, lately, a HELL of a lot of air bass.

29. Has anyone ever proposed to you?
Yes.  But not marriage!

30. Do you take anything in your coffee?
Two Splenda and a dash of half and half.  Always.

31. Do you have any Willow Tree figurines?
Is this a message to terrorists?

32. What is/was your high school’s rival mascot?
The Magicians.  Not sure what their actual mascot was, but every time Minot came to town to play hockey, some of the locals would toss dead rabbits on the ice.  Magician…rabbit…

Oh, ask Kouba.

33. Last person you spoke to from high school?
Well, I have a gratifying number of high school friends who read this blog.  Does that count as “speaking?”

Mark showed up at the demonstration on Saturday.  We go back to about ninth grade:

 He’s on the far right.

34. Last time you used hand sanitizer?
The company I work for manufactures the stuff.  I get it for about 70% off at the company store. So while I almost never used it (outside of Satellites) before, I have it in the bathroom today.

35. Would you like to learn to play the drums?
I play the drums.  Not well, and it’s been a while, but with a little practice, I’d be serviceable.  My only “professional” experience was playing in a summer-stock production of Cabaret one year.

36. What color are the blinds in your living room?
White.

38. Last thing you read in the newspaper?
I flipped through the Pioneer Press the other day; I forget what I read.

39. What was the last pageant you attended?
My entire life is a rich pageant of wonder.

Otherwise, I’ve never been.

40. What is the last place you bought pizza from?
“Checkerboard Pizza” in the Midway.  Not bad.

41. Have you ever worn a crown?
In ninth grade, German Club threw a “Karnaval” party.  I wore the “prinz” crown for a bit.

42. What is the last thing you stapled?
User research forms for a meeting I have to run tomorrow.

43. Did you ever drink clear Pepsi?
One time.  Yick.

44. Are you ticklish?
At times.  It’s mostly psychological.

45. Last time you saw fireworks?
As the State Fair wrapped up.

46. Last time you had a Krispy Kreme doughnut?
Months ago – maybe last May?  Bought it at a gas station.  I don’t think I’ve had any since I started biking to work.

I think all the KK stores in the Twin Cities are closed now.

47. Who is the last person that left you a message & you actually returned it?
I usually return messages.  The last one was probably on my cell phone, from my son.

48. Last time you parked under a carport?
Never have!

49. Do you have a black dog?
Orange.  And before that, white with brown globs.

50 . Have you had your mid life crisis yet?
How do you define this?   I mean, I’ve been divorced for seven years, now, so it’s not like I’ve had forbidden longings I’ve had to sublimate to save my marriage.  I can’t afford to dash out and buy a Mitsubishi Eclipse. 

Not sure how you’d tell. 

51. Are you an aunt or uncle?
Yes, three four times over.

52. Who has the prettiest eyes that you know of?
My daugher’s.

53. What kind of soap or body wash do you use?
Soap:  Whatever’s on special.

Body Wash:  Whatever comes out of the faucet. 

54. Do you remember Ugly Kid Joe?
Gawd, yes.  I was at KDWB at the time, during their heyday (1991 or so).  Loved loved loved them.

55. Do you have a little black dress?
Where “dress” equals “handgun?”

Sure.

Jim Ramstad has always been an aggravating case.

On the one hand, I have some residual home-town loyalty going on.  Ramstad and I are both natives of Jamestown, ND. 

On the other hand, he’s the kind of Republican that makes Lori Sturdevant coo and giggle with girlish glee; a Republican that, when the chips are down, is as likely to vote with the Dems as with the GOP.  You know – one of those “responsible” Republicans (to the local media) who don’t bother with all of that “stiff-necked adherence to party principles” stuff.  (Oddly – for those of you from out of state – they don’t have any similar guideline for DFLers; to the Strib, John Kline is an “irresponsible extremist”, while Keith Ellison is mainstream). 

Ramstad is retiring.  And little birds are telling me that the Third CD Republicans want to endorse another “Moderate”, so scared are they of the district’s alleged purplish trends (even though the Third voted for both Bush and Pawlenty). 

Note to my readers in the Third District:  Rubbish.  This is the time to be bold.  To stand up for a strong message – for prosperity, security, and our culture. 

Now is the time for you – the conservatives in the Third District – to turn off Rush and get out in the street to work for an actual, first-principle conservative. 

Remember the Sixth District last year; the party orthodoxy preferred Jim Knoblauch (and to be fair, Jim would have made a great representative; indeed, any of the four candidates would have been better than Patty Wetterline).  But Michele Bachmann won by organizing, by getting her people out to the caucuses and voting for her in droves.

Conservatives in the Third CD need to do the same thing, or they’ll get stuck with another “moderate”.  And they need to do it soon.  While the Third, by all rights, should be solid conservative country, the party district establishment is a throwback to the old “Independent Republican” era.  Between Ramstad and Jim Frenzel, the district has been represented by “Moderates” – which in Minnesota GOP parlance means “people who missed the Reagan Revolution” – for a couple of decades now. 

You – the conservative in the Third – can change that.  We’re going to spend the next few weeks talking about exactly how.

Michelle Malkin really does sum it up perfectly sometimes.

Remember – there are three more days to make your choice known in the “Twin Cities’ Unintentially Funniest Leftyblog” contest – for the leftyblog that you are most likely to laugh at, rather than with. 

Voting will be open until Wednesday morning.

“All of them” is not an option.  Sorry.

While the local anti-genocide community was out at Triangle Park demonstrating against the “peace” movement (Jamie Delton has the best wrapup of blog coverage I’ve seen), Jack Langer was at a contemporaneous rally in Washington.

And he was…unimpressed?

The protestors, around 8,000 in all, soon lined up in marching formation. But there was some major organizational problem, and they remained in place for over an hour before setting out for the Capitol. Once the march began, it got about two blocks before organizers temporarily halted it, informing us through bullhorns that we had to allow large groups to catch up who were still back at Lafayette Park, unaware that the march had begun. I was mystified how so many people failed to notice thousands of banner-waving, drum playing, chanting protestors leave their vicinity.

The rest of the march was equally disorganized. The massive lead banner, stretching around 40 feet across the width of the protest, ripped in half, hindering the lead protestors’ efforts to hold a straight line. Then they had to endure a three-block stretch that was lined with around a thousand flag-waving, pro-American counter-protestors. The marchers at first tried to ignore the interlopers, but their self-control always seemed to break down right around the guy who was singing into a bullhorn “All we are saaaying, is give soap a chance.” Some heated exchanges ensued, but the cops maintained order and the marchers eventually arrived at the Capitol.

Yeah.  “Unimpressed” is the word.

They stopped at a wall, about waist-high, that separates the Capitol steps from a large field split by a walkway. Behind the wall stood a line of dozens of cops, some in riot gear. Sensing some action was about to break out, I rudely shoved my way to the wall. I was joined in the front row mostly by other, equally uncouth reporters, none us caring one iota about basic manners when a big story seemed about to break.

It was at this point that the “die-in” commenced. Hundreds of protestors lied down and, I suppose, pretended to be dead. I think the spectacle was somehow supposed to help end the Iraq War. After all, nothing conveys the dignity and solemnity of a noble cause like a “die-in” does.

And, hopefully a portent of things to come in Saint Paul…:

The anarchists really disappointed me. None of them jumped the wall. They portray themselves as the most militant wing of the antiwar movement, but they didn’t even have the guts displayed by the Code Pink grandmas. The anarchists claim to want a revolution, but apparently not a single one of them is willing to risk a misdemeanor arrest to achieve that glorious goal. Instead, they sufficed with yelling a lot of slogans about class war at the cops. This was ironic, seeing as the anarchists were almost certainly all college kids, while the cops were about the only working class people in the entire crowd.

Back “in the day” when I was a wanna-be punk rocker and weekend talk show host, I interviewed a bunch of kidz from the “Backroom Anarchist Center”, the old narky commune in Minneapolis, on my old graveyard shift talk show.  I took the liberty of checking into some of their bios.  To a kid, they were from upper-middle-class neighborhoods – Edina, Woodbury – and apparently going through some sort of rite of rebellious passage.  As I’ve written before – I’d kill to know what those kids are doing now, when they’re all in their late thirties.  Not living in the back of a van, I’ll hazard.

And in the end, what had the protestors achieved? Not much, it seems to me. I asked a cop about the fate of those arrested. He told me they’d be processed and then released, probably spending no more than a few hours in a holding cell. The entire spectacle was really just a kind of performance art, acted out for the benefit of a gullible media that laps up these exhibitions and presents them to the nation as if they reflect some meaningful social current.

I hope to spend the first  week of next September documenting the silliness.

I’ve gone back and forth with Syl Jones in this space for pretty much as long as I’ve had a blog.  As I’ve noted in the past, I probably disagree with Jones 80-odd percent of the time.  But even at his worst, at least he’s always written his own stuff. 

Not so much with his latest piece in the Strib, which is enough to make you wonder if he spent too much time “consulting” and writing plays to get to his monthly column, forcing him to dig through his “in” box and find something, anything to write about, leading him to an envelope full of Code Pink talking points or Nick Coleman’s liner notes.

No, really; see if you’ve seen this before:

The winner of the Most Arrogant Nation In The World award is clearly the United States of America. We are arrogant in our dealings with sovereign nations like Iraq. We are arrogant toward our own citizens. We are arrogant in assuming that we have a special place in history. We are arrogant in believing that all nations want and need our kind of democracy. So, let’s all reach around and pat ourselves on the back. We’ve won. “Arrogance Is U.S.,” and the whole world knows it.

Seriously!  Deja vu is setting in!

We insisted on putting our massive footprint in the heart of the Middle East, where we don’t belong. Arrogance.

Er, yeah.  We just felt like going there. 

Like, nothing else happened.  It was the national equivalent of a 50 year old mortgage broker buying a Miata. 

Nothing else to it. 

We lied to the world about WMDs,

…in the same sense that Syl Jones “lied to the world”  about the psychology of Christmas.  

Of course, perhaps Mr. Jones would say he wasn’t lying, merely operating from information that he “reasonably” believes to be correct? 

We told the world that we were fighting them “over there” so we don’t have to fight them “over here.” More arrogance.

Um…huh?

We sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan without the needed armaments and equipment.

So badly armed and equipped were they that they did in a month what the Soviet Union couldn’t do in a decade.  So ill-equipped, they advanced a thousand opposed miles in three weeks.

Jones is wrong – or, to use his “logic”, lying. 

Far from following the advice of those on the ground, as President Bush has repeatedly claimed, we ignored and vilified Gen. Eric Shinseki for saying that we needed at least 250,000 troops to stabilize Iraq.

Shinseki was likely wrong; we didn’t need more troops, we needed to employ the ones we had there better.  As we are doing now.

But it’s perhaps unfair to hold Jones too closely to his words on a subject he only dimlly comprehends (or, to use his own logic, “is lying about”). 

Everywhere we look in this war, the United States is on the defensive not because the enemy is overwhelmingly strong but because we were unprepared. Now, the president has announced modest troop withdrawals in order to buy time for himself and for his failed policy of converting Iraq into a democracy on the backs of American soldiers. No, scratch that. The goal keeps changing. We’ll settle for a brokered cessation of hostilities between the rival militias and movement toward a functional coalition government. Absolute arrogance.

Also known as “realism”. 

Suddenly that’s a bad thing?

Furthermore, we have no intention of leaving Iraq — ever. We are building the largest embassy in the history of the world in Baghdad. We will maintain a military foothold there even after the militias have been subdued because our geopolitical interests are underneath the ground: oil. With friends like us, who needs enemies? We pedal arrogance 24/7 — it’s who we are.

Yeah.  Ask the Germans.

Actually, keep the Germans on the line; Jones is straying onto their turf:

Finally, the misappropriation of language, a hallmark of totalitarianism, is another sign of our arrogance. Starting now, I’m taking the language back from its abusers.

Oh, good.  This oughtta be fun.

 The “surge” is an escalation of an ill-fated, badly planned and executed war.

It’s a change in approach to the war – one we should have undertaken years ago.   

“Vietnam” is a war we fought to prop up an anticommunist dictatorship, and it took over 50,000 American lives. “AWOL” is where Bush resided during part of that war. “Five deferments” refers to Dick Cheney’s ticket out of the Vietnam War. And “Mission Accomplished” means we didn’t do our homework. The fact that we do not seem to grasp these concepts does, indeed, make us look like the most arrogant nation on earth.

 If that assessment proves to be true, then the outcome will be more tragedy, less safety at home and abroad, and a resurgence of international scorn.

“Syl Jones recycles rewarmed MoveOn talking points” equals “national arrogance”?

Way to take that language back, Syl. 

Syl Jones, of Minnetonka, is a journalist, playwright and communications consultant.

And, apparently, desperately short of ideas.

…I missed the Emmy Awards telecast.

So if you counterprotest a “peace” rally, that must naturally mean you’re “pro-war” or “anti-peace”, right?

Nobody could be that juvenile or stupid.  Right?

Bear in mind, I’m an inherently civil guy.  While I don’t mind mixing it up with people (hence, I blog and host a talk show), I don’t especially relish conflict. 

But Ken Avidor is not a very bright person.  He may be the one person on earth who makes Eric Zaetsch look coherent.    The only person who seems actually too dumb to post on the Dump Bachmann site (note to Eva Young:  You got me.  When a site that draws 2,500 visitors a day mentions a site that draws maybe 100, it’s a sign that I’m desperate for traffic.  Good call).

It’s a shame, really, that Chuck Olson – who is an unapologetic lefty, but seems to be a relatively reasonable guy, and who interviewed me for the “Uptake” site, the  left-leaning videoblogger site that carries Avidor’s little peal of self indulgence, before the demonstration yesterday – has to be associated with such a hamster.

On the other hand – if the other side has to dig THAT far down to respond, it’s probably a sign of intellectual bankruptcy.  Redundant as the phrase is when Avidor is involved.

Note to lefty videobloggers:  If you want to get footage of me, just ask.  It’s not like I’m camera-shy.  You have only your argument to lose.  He says with a half-smile.

UPDATE: Mike McIntee and Chuck Olson note that Uptake has changed Avidor’s original headline.  I thank them for this. 

As to what to call us?  Good question.  Anti-pullout?  I gotta think about that.

And for those among you (Flash?  I’m talkin’ to you!) who will point out my occasional lapses into ire, referring to “peace” protesters as “pro-genocide”; enh.  Half of it’s a fair cop.  I’m human.  But the fact is, when the Vietnam protesters got their way, millions died.  Had the anti-Cold War protesters gotten theirs, hundreds of millions would still be beholden to Communism, languishing in the Gulag (and that the Russians seem to be headed back toward that state doesn’t take away from the magnificence of the freedoms that Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Slovenians and former East Germans now enjoy).  How are today’s protesters any different?

You answer that – and for my part, I’ll try to do as well as Mike and Chuck did, rhetoric-wise.

We drew (according to one count) about 30 people to yesterday’s counterprotest on John Ireland Boulevard.

It was a huge success.  Before I took off from the house Saturday morning, I had a hard count of maybe 18.   Getting nearly double that?  Awesome.

Of course, the point wasn’t to demonstrate.  Demonstrations don’t really affect policy in any way at all.  What they are, if you keep things in perspective, is a dandy social occasion; a time to get together and realize you’re not alone out there. 

Liberals and “activists” are like tuna (and, if it’s possible, please believe I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense); they travel in big groups, they get uneasy when they’re NOT in a big group, they have a hard time conceiving of existence that doesn’t involve big groups. 

Conservatives are like sharks; any one of us is a match for dozens of liberals, and our very presence at marches or school board meetings or community council elections provokes unreasoning fear, panic, irrationality and an “end justifies the means” mentality.  And we usually operate alone.  Conservatism is fundamentally a solitary thing; we usually come to the movement alone, or with a spouse.  Liberals have their marches and their union meetings and their poli-sci classes; our social impulses are usually carried out via talk radio and blogs, at work or while hauling kids to school.  Getting a group of five or more conservatives together for ANYTHING but an open bar is a major undertaking.

So I have neither the illusion of nor the desire to try to get thousands of conservatives out into the street next year for the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul.  But I do want to get dozens out on the street, and spotted around the city’s various choke points, with cameras and video and laptops and wireless cards, to make sure that the “demonstrators” are held accountable to the world for the actions of their, er, less-restrained fellows.

Like Brad Carlson did with this guy.

The left labors under the fantasy that there’ll be an equal amount of provocation from the left and the right.  My goal; to have the radical far left’s sins and crimes spread far and wide, in the event that their lunatic fringe misbehaves in Saint Paul this year.

And yes, I fully expect that the left will have its phalanxes of “citizen journalists” trooping through the streets with cameras, trying to do the same.

Hopefully we’re all going to be bored stiff.

Anyone wanna place bets on who’s gonna be busier?

Kermit, Brad, Dr. Jonz and Swiftee were there…

20 to 1?

Seems like a fair battle.

I had to take off before the actual fun started at the Cathedral and long John Ireland Boulevard in Saint Paul this morning – I had to get to the station to do the NARN show – but I’m told it was a great time.  Most of the lefties behaved (all of the counterprotesters, naturally, behaved impeccably), and our presence – for a bunch of people who are just not wired to stand around on a gorgeous Saturday waving signs and yelling – was way stronger than I expected.  I had hoped to draw 15-18 counterprotesters – by all accounts we doubled that. 

I’ll be linking to some of the other bloggers who were there – but this was a great start.

More later!

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I The Opening Act The First Team – John, Brian and Chad – will shoo the Stroms from the studio and kick things off from 11-1. 
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assignment again, and I’ll will be in next, from 1-3.  Talking about the demonstrations, the Petraeus testimony, and interviewing author Marc Howard (Behind Enemy Lines). Tune in!
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – Rep. Laura Brod will join Michael  to talk Minnesota trash after that until 5PM.

So join us on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, 11AM-5PM Central on AM1280 The Patriot, and at Townhall.com!

I announced this a few weeks ago.  What can I say – it’s been a meatgrinder of a couple of weeks. 

But anticipation is half the fun, now – isn’t it?

At any rate – click here to go and vote for the Twin Cities leftyblog that you are most likely to laugh at, rather than with.  Voting will be open until Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow’s the big day!

Join us at a counterprotest tomorrow, to join with fellow anti-terror, pro-troops Americans to counterprotest the “peace” rally in Saint Paul.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

The city’s North Side and Phillips neighborhoods are foetid cesspools of crime.

Gangs prowl downtown, fighting and shooting and intimidating pretty much at will.

The budget is a disaster.

Their last fire chief was tossed for being a Lothario…er, Lotharia?

But never let it be said Minneapolis’ City Council doesn’t have its priorities straight.  They’re working on banning wild animals from Minneapolis.

Barry Hickethier writes:

The Minneapolis City Council is considering amending an ordinance in a way that would ban any circus animals that are “wild by nature” (e.g. elephants, lions, tigers, etc.). This would in effect bring and end to the Minneapolis Zuhrah Shrine Circus. The amendment is sponsored by Cam Gordon and Ralph Remington. A .pdf of the ordinance with proposed amendment is here or you can link to it from this page.

The Shrine Circus raises tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for Shrine Children’s Hospitals. Last year, over 80,000 attended the Zuhrah Shrine Circus. Shrine Hospitals are a leader in spinal and burn injury care and research. In 2006, Shrine Hospitals attended to the needs of over 128,000 patients all at no cost to the patient or their family. The hospitals rely solely on donations through member dues, donations and fundraisers such as the Zuhrah Shrine Circus. Outlawing the circus will lead to a reduction in funding, which means children going untreated, research being cut or both.

Never a group to let untrammeled PC get in the way of doing what’s right, it’ll be fun to see what the Green/Looney dominated City Council ends up doing.

Bit by bit, my predictions for this season of Top Chef seem to be coming true. 

Although Brian gave us a bit of a scare last night, CJ was duly ejected (hahaha) from the airplane elimination challenge, as I suspected.

Remember – as I noted last week, these Bravo reality competition shows have a formula; by the final round (in TC’s case, a Final Four), they will always have:

• One highly-talented, frequently gay, guy.  (In Project Runway Season 2, which is my template for this theory, it was Daniel Vosovic, the blazingly-talented guy).
• One jerk.  In PR2, it was Santino, the imperious egomaniac with the Kim Thayil hairdo.
• One babe – Chloe Dao, in the case of PR2.  Dao was the eventual winner.

So I reiterate my prediction:

1. Brian will be the Talented Guy (with a possible, but I think unlikely, Dale upset).
2. Casey will fill the Babe role; indeed, I figured she was a lock once Camille and the long-shot (too girl-next-door-y, although I’d totally get her phone number) Lia got booted.  If I want to wax conspiratorial, I’d say that’d be why she won last night (remember – the producers play a major role in determining the results of each week’s competition, judges notwithstanding), even though Hung’s dish got arguably better reviews; the buzz among TC fans has been that Casey’s been eye candy, and she’d need a win or two to have some cred behind her trip to the finals). 
3. The Jerk?  Hung.  Doy. 
4. The fourth role in the Final Four?  Gotta be Sara, although I can see Dale squeaking into this more easily than the Talented Guy.

So that’s the big question for next week; does Dale upset either Brian or Sara and get to the finals? 

Someone – a relatively irritating person, actually – asked me a few weeks ago, “why are you a Republican?”

And it took me until after I actually responded to actually realize that there are two answers:

1. Because national security, limited government, prosperity, individual responsibilty and merit are my big issues – and since long before I became politically active, the Democrats have been systematically, aggressively wrong on every single one of those issues.
2. I’m not. 

And by that, I mean that “I’m not a member of the Minnesota Republican Party”. 

Except for a brief stretch where I was a co-chair of House District 66B, I never really have been. 

Partly it’s because of time.  People who are real serious party animals devote a lot of time to the party that I just don’t have. 

But part of it is that, while I’ve voted for maybe three non-Republicans in partisan elections in the past 20 years (and Jesse Ventura wasn’t one of them), I’ve gotten actually less involved with the party proper over the years.  It’s seemed like the party – at least, in my part of the state, the Fourth Congressional District – is more an obstacle to success than a vehicle to it.

In the Fourth, even though most of the voters are in Saint Paul and the northern subs like Roseville are hardly GOP strongholds.  It’s a situation that calls for some creativity, to say the least, given that St. Paul is saved from the distinction of being the most DFL-sodden city in Minnesota only by the existence of Minneapolis and Duluth. 

In election after election, the CD4 GOP pours its resources into the districts north of Highway 36, a “strategy” that leaves the party notoriously subject to the fickle sways of the mood in a bunch of purple districts (to Phil Krinkie’s chagrin last fall), while conceding the city in perpetuity to the Mongols DFL.  And whatever happens outstate or in the ‘burbs, this state will never really be a stable Red state until the GOP learns how to actually contend for the city itself. 

And it can be done!  Bret Schundler spent nine years as mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey (80% registered Democrats; 6% Republicans) in the nineties.  How is this done?  How did Schundler, in particular, do it?

Not by preaching GOP – but by preaching the first principles of the conservative movement; security; liberty; growth and prosperity; family; culture; limited government; how each of those affected the Jersey Citian’s property values, kids’ education, and odds of getting mugged or burgled.

So what does the Minnesota GOP not understand about this?

This is what attracted me to True North in the first place; to the best of my knowledge, it’s the only group blog around that’s dedicated – obsessive, indeed – about applying America’s first principles to government in Minnesota, as opposed to merely reiterating the GOP’s line, and doing for that idea what blogs in general do to things like the mainstream media; outflank them, obviate the need for gatekeepers, democratize things.  

And the Minnesota GOP desperately needs democratization. 

Not that most of us aren’t committed Republicans, or at least committed Republican voters – but the party is not the fount of all wisdom. 

That, of course, is why I so loudly applaud the various independent bloggers who write about affairs in their various GOP districts – SD63, SD35, SD44, SD45, the Chisago and Carver County GOP blog, some of them official party sites but most of them individual pundits who are working to change things from the ground up, starting at the GOP’s grassiest roots.

If I can accomplish one thing with True North, it’ll be to convince someone in every GOP district in the whole state to start up a blog – completely independent of the party – and start tackling their district’s issues, one by one, one on one. 

Sick of the alpaca-wearing, volvo-driving, relentlessly-self-righteous crowd having all the fun?

Join us at a counterprotest this coming Saturday, to join with fellow anti-terror, pro-troops Americans to counterprotest the “peace” rally in Saint Paul.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.  The park is ours from 10AM on.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

…the name of a Led Zeppelin song. 

It’s the one that goes “Grunk-grunk-grunk [pow] grunk-grunk-grunk, grunk-grunk-grunk, Graaaaaw, grunk-grunk-grunk, [pow, bump bump pow] “Oooooooh”, grunk-grunk-grunk [pow] grunk-grunk-grunk, grunk-grunk-grunk grunk grunk-grunk-grunk [pow, bump bump pow].

Any ideas?

Kerry Hogan at Smoothing Plane, preparing for Saturday’s counterprotest, notes:

Arguing with the deranged shows optimism but is futile. The unreasonable do not come to reason through reason. Humor and ridicule, that’s the ticket.

He’s also got some ideas for signs.

Please join us – the Twin Cities’ anti-surrender, anti-appeasement, anti-genocide community – at a counterprotest this coming Saturday. 

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)  We’ll be counterprotesting the Vietnam rally “Peace” march, which starts around noon-ish.  We’ll be getting to the park early in the morning.

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

…over at NIGP has a career with MoveOn.org awaiting him.

I’ve always written something about 9/11.  I stand by it all; I’m proud of some of it.

This year, I’ll let Michelle Malkin sum it up for me:

But remembrance without resistance to jihad and its enablers is a recipe for another 9/11. This is what fueled my first two books, on immigration enforcement and profiling. This is what fuels much of the work on this blog and at Hot Air. Not every American wears a military uniform. But every American has a role to play in protecting our homeland–not just from Muslim terrorists, but from their financiers, their public relations machine, their sharia-pimping activists, the anti-war goons, the civil liberties absolutists, and the academic apologists for our enemies.

The Left greets such a commitment with mockery and derision, preferring instead to suck its collective thumb, play the grievance card, and engage in hindsight hypocrisy.

As the most infamous of all Internet leftists once said: Screw them.

With a stick.

Red was across the Hudson as it all happened – and her writing about the whole thing helped reel me into her blog, years and years ago:

Behind me, pacing in the dark bar, was a guy on his cell phone. He had obviously gotten through to someone. Finally. I only heard snippets.

“So he called you? ….. When? …. Had he gone downstairs yet? …. What time was that? Yeah … he called me when the first plane hit … I told him to fucking get the hell out of there … So he was on his way out when he called?”

Snippets. Fragments of a story. A life.

A man missing. Like so many people were missing in those days. Every empty wall covered in “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?”

I heard the pain in the cell phone guy’s voice. But he was trying to keep it together. It was almost like when you know you need to cry, but you feel you can’t – and what happens to your voice when you’re holding all of that back. It gets tight, like a wire, rigid – but occasionally what’s going on inside you betrays you. There’s a waver in the voice, or you take a deep shaky breath … and there’s a tsunami there. Hovering above your head. Waiting for an opening.

And of course Lileks:

Six years.

It seemed right away like it would be a big war, three to four years – Afghanistan first, of course, then Iraq, then Iran. The idea that it would have stalled and ended up in diffuse oblique arguments about political timetables would have been immensely depressing. There was a model for this sort of thing, a template. Advance. But that requires cultural confidence, a loose agreement on the goals, the rationale, the nature of the enemy and the endgame. We don’t have those things. Imagine telling someone six years ago Iran would be allowed, by default, to make nuclear weapons. They would wonder what the hell we’d done with half a decade, plus change. What part of 25 years of Death to America didn’t we get, exactly?

For today, I have nothing to add that isn’t either specious or four or five years old.

The only commentary worth reading isn’t written; support it by supporting our troops. 

I figure – if Chad can have a “younger brother” who gets to say all the outrageous stuff over on Fraters, why shouldn’t I?

Anyway, I got this email today from my evil twin, Jed. 

I, like Mitch, am the foremost proponent of Free Speech you will ever meet (which makes sense, since – unlike all the lefties who’ve been caterwauling about “civil liberties” for the past seven years – mine, like Mitch’s as a talk show host, are legitimately under attack). 

Government should exert no restraint on reasonable free speech. 

But I have to ask; if Rodney King got whacked a hundred-odd times with billy clubs and batons for driving while black and high and lippy, couldn’t one capitol cop have spared one lousy whack upside the head of those shrieking, narcissistic crones who profaned Congress by shrieking their gibberish, yesterday?

Just one little smack across the face? 

Cuz I’d send the guy’s defense fund a couple of hundred bucks just to see it.

Again – that is my Evil Twin Jed speaking.  Jed and I don’t see eye to eye on everything.  But, evil though he may be, he’s my twin brother.

MITCH ADDS: While I’ve never been an Ike Skelton fan, I have to give him points for this:

The protesters “really p—- me off,” Skelton said, further characterizing them as “ass——s.” Rep. Duncan Hunter, the ranking Republican on the committee, then leaned over and drew Skelton into quieter conversation farther from the microphone, leaving Skelton’s further phraseology to the arena only of informed speculation.

Bonus:  you won’t hear the Republicans getting stricken with theatrical vapours for the next four years over Skelton’s remarks, as the Dems still are over Cheney’s equally-justifiable quip re Patrick Leahy (to whom Cheney’s advice still largely applies)

On this, the sixth anniversary of the attack that started it all, please join us – the Twin Cities’ anti-surrender, anti-appeasement, anti-genocide community – at a counterprotest this coming Saturday.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

If you’ve been reading this blog any length of time, you know that:

1. …my father, and both of my maternal grandparents, were teachers, as is my little sister (occasionally). All of them taught/teach/will teach soon in one public school system or another.
2. I have two kids (and spent the better part of a decade helping raise another kid, my stepson)
3. This past two years has seen my ex-wife and I pull both of our kids out of the public school system, after a decade-and-a-half long growing realization on my part that not only does the whole system, despite the best efforts of a lot of very good people, put education behind ideology, but that the very pedagogical model used in public (and most private and parochial) schools functions primarily to teach children that learning is a wretched chore.

Well, school’s started again. And Elder refers us to a piece by Tony Woodlief in Opinion Journal that I agree with as fiercely as I reject it.

Confused? Me too.

Another school year has sprung itself upon us, which is always an occasion for my wife, a former Detroit public-school teacher, and me to remind ourselves why we home-school. Part of the reason, in addition to my wife’s expertise in this area, can be found in Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions,” published 20 years ago. Mr. Sowell contrasted the “unconstrained vision” of utopians, who want to radically improve humankind, with the “constrained vision” of realists, who begin with the proposition that man is inherently self-interested, and not moldable into whatever form the high-minded types have in store for us once they get their itchy fingers on the levers of power. Mr. Sowell’s book has been influential among conservatives for its compelling explanation of the divide between people who want to reshape us–often via large intrusions on liberty–and those who believe that the purpose of government is to protect institutions (like markets and families) that channel our inherent selfishness into productive behavior. It is also a handy guide for parenting.

Parenting.  Yes, indeed.

Schooling?  Maybe not so much.

While some mothers and fathers stubbornly cling to the utopian beliefs of their childless years, the vision of humans as inherently sinful and selfish resonates with many of us who are parents. Nobody who’s stood between a toddler and the last cookie should still harbor a belief in the inherent virtue of mankind. An afternoon at the playground is apt to make one toss out the idealist Rousseau (“man is a compassionate and sensible being”) in favor of the more realistic Hobbes (“all mankind [is in] a perpetual and restless desire for power”). As a father of four sons, I’ve signed on to Mr. Sowell’s summation of a parent’s duty: “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”

Right. 

But that’s the parent’s job. 

Not the schools’. 

The constrained vision indicates that world harmony and universal satisfaction are mirages. People are innately selfish, and they’ll always desire more goodies. …While the unconstrained worldview teaches that traditions and customs are to be distrusted as holdovers from benighted generations, those of us with the constrained view believe it’s good to make our children address their elders properly, refrain from belching at the table and wear clothes that actually cover them. Mr. Sowell noted that some benefits from evolved societal rules can’t be articulated, because they’ve developed through trial and error over centuries. This reveals the sublime wisdom in that time-honored parental rejoinder: “Because I said so.”

It’s not surprising, then, to see Mr. Sowell approvingly cite Edmund Burke’s observation that traditions provide “wisdom without reflection.” This is lived out in our house by the dictum that parents are to be obeyed first, and politely questioned later.

Fair enough, so far.  It’s something toward which many of us strive… 

That seems oppressive to parents with the unconstrained worldview, who want to nurture Junior’s sense of autonomy and broad-minded reasoning. It’s awfully useful, however, when Junior is about to ride his bike into the path of an oncoming car. Obedience may be a dirty word in progressive schools and enlightened parenting circles, but it saves lives.

In the hands of a parent, authority and tradition are good things.

But when you turn the corner into insisting the schools should have that same authority – and that families and students owe the same kind of “obedience” to the school (and I’m not talking about behavior; I’m talking about blind obeisance to the current system of education), we wheel into the weeds.

Perhaps the fundamental purpose of schooling should be to liberate parents from the necessity of supporting our kids well past our retirement years. But regardless, this notion that humans are inherently angelic, and that it is society that corrupts them, is at the heart of much bad parenting, as well as inept schooling. Rather than help our children develop internal constraints that channel their energy and passion into productive enterprises, we end up teaching them that limits and discipline are for chumps.

Indeed.

But someone please show me, empirically, how the “sit your ass in a chair and learn what you’re told, when you’re told to learn it” model of education benefits anyone but that thin little film of children who, for whatever reason, are wired that way?