A Medford, Oregon teacher is filing a test case against a school district’s power to bar teachers with carry permits from bringing their guns to school for their, and their students’, protection:

There is a state statute that prohibits local governments – including school boards – from restricting possession of firearms by concealed firearm permit holders,” Leuenberger said.

Leuenberger said the teacher wishes to remain anonymous and he will list her name as “Jane Doe” in the complaint. When contacted by the Mail Tribune, the teacher said she wants anonymity because she fears for her and her daughter’s safety.

Leuenberger said the woman has divorced her husband and obtained a restraining order against him.

A woman in danger!  Why, there are non-profit foundations who deal with that sort of thing!  Surely a woman who wants to empower herself against abuse should rate some trust from the system.

No?

No!

The woman contacted the lawyer and the Oregon Firearms Federation after school officials approached her about rumors that she was carrying a weapon. Schools attorney Tim Gerking [Hahahaha! – Ed] said the teacher denied the accusation, but officials reminded her about the district policy.

“It’s our responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for our students and a safe working environment for our employees,” Gerking said in an interview late last week. “We feel that would not be fostered by allowing folks, whether they have the authority or not, to bring weapons onto campus, in particular firearms – loaded firearms.”

Yes.  Because goodness knows what might happen if a law-abiding citizen had a gun on campus.

Kevin Starrett, executive director of the firearms federation, said he had been looking for a case like this one so he could challenge schools’ prohibition of firearms.

“We were approached by the individual because she had been threatened by the school district,” Starrett said. “It was just a perfect opportunity for us to get some judicial resolution to this.”

Though the Medford teacher wants the gun to protect herself from an ex-husband, Starrett said armed teachers could prevent school shootings.

“I worry about people being gunned down like dogs because they’ve been denied the right to have their self-defense firearm,” Starrett said.

Nah.  Could never happen.  Didn’t you hear, Mr. Starrett?  Schools are gun-free!

(Via John LaPlante)

I guess I wasn’t the only one who had a problem with Direct Buy…

 (Via Elder)

Conservatives dominate talk radio.  And they dominate the smart half of the blogosphere.

Chief at True North/Freedom Dogs writes, quoting Patrick Ruffini:

The second fact is that conservative blogs, excluding Free Republic/Lucianne/etc. for a moment, serve a fundamentally different audience than the netroots. They’re more elite, focused on policy, and interested in the execution of the war. What was going on when conservative blogs first boomed? 9/11 and the American response to it. And discussions of the size of the conservative blogosphere (strictly defined) should take into account the fact that there are only so many people who can digest the kind of almost-scholarly analysis that happens in places like Power Line, Captain’s Quarters, and Red State. The conservative blogosphere today is what the liberal blogosphere would have been if elite bloggers like Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias had remained the dominant voices.This is not meant to be self-congratulatory. In fact, I think it’s probably a serious limitation in the size of our blogosphere, to the extent that’s a concern. If you want to be bigger, you’re not necessarily going to like the people you have to let in to make it happen.

I think Ruffini misses a key point – and a key point that anyone involved in the conservative alternative media should understand in their marrow, instinctively.

Why doesn’t liberal talk radio work?  Because lefties already have the networks, most of the cable news outlets, virtually the entire dead-tree media, and NPR.  They don’t need it – at least, not in the traditional media.  Conservative talk radio filled a niche that had gone begging since the dawn of the big political split; a place for the conservative id to come out and shout and throw things, in a way they couldn’t do at their jobs and in their homes.

But while the traditional media are liberal, they are also very top-down.  Their “gatekeepers” keep the unwashed rabble – even their own – from getting on the air or into print.  So the Sorosphere – the Kos Kidz and Atrios and Democrat Underground and Jesus General – are to the left what Michael Savage is to the right; a place for the nattering, madding horde to gather and vent. 

In the meantime, the conservative blogosphere fills a role, too, in the hands of the likes of Powerline and Ed and Michelle Malkin; an outlet for our best and brightest, which outflanks the traditional media that had frozen them out for so long. 

Ruffini:

 If and when that were to happen, the elite flavor of many leading conservative blogs today would give way to more freewheeling Daily Kos and Free Republic-like sites and comment areas.

Maybe – if there were a need for such a thing.

A need, I suggest, that does not exist. 

Chief, quoting Ruffini:

Finally and here is the larger point that I agree with Ruffini on is “if you want to start a new blog that will get read, your best bet is 1) obsessively cover 2008 and be good at it, and 2) fill a niche, especially one covering local politics True North will do just this. Bookmark us and keep coming back. I also think conservative blogosphere has misread the marketplace. To make a wild overgeneralization here, policy is boring and politics is interesting. By blogging about policy, you choose to be boring (and that’s ok). There is probably a much bigger marketplace for people focused on elections, especially in even numbered years.

Policy is boring (unless John LaPlante is writing about it); but politics is connected to the pocketbook and the future of this nation; it’s something people get emotionally involved with. 

And the emotional involvement is what people tune in, or click your link, for.

One of the things I love about 21st century capitalism is that I can shop when, where, how, and if I want to.  I can go to the Midway Cub at 11 on Saturday if I want to see plenty of my fellow human beings, or to Byerly’s at 4AM if I want fewer of them, or to Aldi if I want to feel a lot better about my life’s course, or to SimonDelivers if I don’t want to see anyone at all.  I can buy hard drives or tabasco sauce or a boat online, or go to the Farmer’s Market and buy vegetables and put ’em in the burlap bag I brought to save the hassle. 

I love it because it’s the opposite of the whole Eastern-Bloc socialist system where one shopped when the powers that be sent the merchandise – or one missed the merchandise!

So as a rule, when merchants call and say “if you’d like such-and-such a deal, be here on Saturday Morning at 9AM”, I tell them to relieve themselves up a rope. 

But I also have a very old house that needs some remodeling over the next couple of years.  And a former girlfriend’s parents were members of one of those wholesale warehouse places, and told me about the amazing deals they got on pretty much everything.  Of course, these were the kind of people who built new houses because they were bored with their old houses, but…whatever.  Simple fact:  I need stuff, and since I’m half Norwegian and probably a quarter Scottish, I want it cheap.

So I got a call from “Direct Buy Showroom” last week.  The young lady on the phone ran down a long list of the deals that one could get if one were a member.  Decent deals, as far as it went…but more later.

She also said that the “showings” were by invitation only, and asked if I were available Saturday morning for about 90 minutes.  As it happened, I was – I needed to go to White Bear to do the Saturday broadcast at the Superstore.  So it wasn’t out of my way, per se.  I’m always a little loathe to devote 90 minutes to anything that doesn’t involve work, kids, earning money or having fun, but I ignored that little voice in the back of my head, and accepted.

I drove up to the McOfficePlex in White Bear precisely on time – 8:45 AM – and went inside. 

A brief aside, here; I can’t stand most salesmen.  I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of them, and they can be really great people as people – but when they switch into “sales” mode on me, and try to “sell” me something, I shut down.  And I don’t care how slick they are, how polished their approach – I can always tell when someone is trying to convince me to pay more than I would on my own, for something I don’t need all that bad.  Always. 

But no worries – the guy they sicced on me was neither slick nor polished.  His suit pants bagged out in back; I tried to think charitably; maybe he’d lost 50 pounds entirely on his butt.  He also had that air of “I’m doing sales on Saturday mornings because my real job isn’t panning out for me.”  Whatever – he sat me down, got some coffee, and started chatting me up.  Of course, when sales guys start chatting you up, you know you’re being chatted up to try to set you up for a sale.  And since I knew I was in the room for the long haul, I figured I’d have some fun; so I started chatting him up in return.  I was right; he was a Lutheran minister…er, wait.  He was a “consultant” to Lutheran churches.  And things were a little slow.  And…

…well, I started to tune out, when the sales manager came around and told us it was time for the big presentation. 

Minister guy and two other salespeople brought four of us – a woman whose attitude screamed “accounting execuchick”, and a couple that looked prosperously blue-collar – into a room with a big-screen TV in the front.  A guy that looked for all the world like Dr. Craig from Saint Elsewhere walked to the front of a room, and spent the next hour alternating his pitch with a video about the store.  And the deals – an average of 43% off of retail – did sound good (assuming one ever pays retail for anything, or even tends to buy things brand-new, which I should add at this point I rarely if ever do).   His pet example: a “high quality” dining room table that ran $3,000 at the retail store would cost a member…$1,800. 

$1,800 for a table?  Isn’t that what estate sales are for?  I have only spent over $1,800 for a handful of cars in my life; I’ve never spent more than a sixth of that on a given piece of furniture!

Key to the whole thing, I knew, was that they only sold to “members”.  And as the elapsed time crept up toward an hour, I thought – “the longer they delay telling you how much the “membership” costs, the worse it’s gonna be”.  I started tallying up the things I need to do – build a patio, new cabinets and floors in the bathroom and kitchen, lots of paint, refinishing a bunch of hardwood floors – and tried to figure out the break-even point.  I figured a couple of hundred bucks for a “membership” could be pretty well worth it. 

Finally – at about the hour mark – the guy cut to the chase.  The initial membership term was 10.5 years.  “Think about how much retail markup you pay in ten years!”, he exhorted us, splattering numbers on a whiteboard like a Pollock painting, somehow arriving at a figure in the mid five-digit range.

“Now, before I go on”, he continued, “due to our agreement with the manufacturers, our deal is this; if  you walk out of here today without becoming a member, we can never offer you the membership again.  That’s to safeguard our relationship with the manufacturers…”

He then wrote the price for the initial term on the whiteboard. 

$5,900. 

I raised my hand.  “So, we gotta come up with six thousand dollars today to join your little club?”

“Yes”.

Execuchick spoke up; “And that’s it?  If we don’t do it now, that’s it?”

“Yes”.

Both of us got up and walked out.  I was tempted to leave with a hearty “the only reason I have  any money is that I never spend $1,800 for a dining room table, much less $3,000“, but I stuck with a simple “I just don’t spend $6,000 without budgeting it way in advance”.

The guy didn’t seem to bat an eye.  I got the feeling they expect to have half of their prospects walk out in a huff.

Which made me wonder, as I drove to a coffee shop to get ready for the NARN broadcast – after all that, they find enough people who can impulse-spend $6,000 to keep their little showroom open?

Two Americas, indeed.  I’m trying to figure out if those Two Americas are rich/poor, or thrifty/spendthrift, or smart/gullible, or pennywise-poundfoolish/smart, or what.

Join the Twin Cities’ anti-surrender community at a counterprotest at the “peace” march 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. 

We share a city with some…”interesting” people. 

Lassie at True North notes that the “9/11 Truthers” are setting up shop over in Minneapolis:

 This Tuesday, September 11, many will reflect and say a prayer in remembrance or honor those who lost their lives in the wake of 9/11/2001. Then, there are those who think 9/11 was an inside job — the 9/11 Truthers. They plan to show their film “9/11 Press for Truth” and act out with some street theater in Minneapolis, with Coleen Rowley, former FBI agent.

Spend an evening celebrating our freedom of expression thru music, dance and spoken word (open mic time, too.)

Learn about the case for impeachment, find out about the campaign for a US Department of Peace, and discover great ways to work for change right here in Minneapolis…

Speakers Include: Coleen Rowley, former FBI agent and Time person of the year 2003, Marv Davidoff founder of the Honeywell Project…

If there ever was a better opportunity (or duty) to crash a party, this is it.

Hm.  Some parties, I’d like to crash.

Others, I’m happy to let stew in the fetid backwash of what Dostoevskii might have called their “brain fever”.

Joel Rosenberg notes a cruel, capricious irony in a brutal local crime:

Thom Pham, the owner of Azia, was mugged on Tuesday.  There were apparently six to eight attackers; fortunately, he only was “hospitalized with blunt force trauma to the head, lacerations to the skull and face, broken orbital (eye socket), concussion and severe bleeding.”

 Azia’s a nice place.  Had a date there once.  But I doubt I’d go back – and not entirely because of the prices.  No, I noticed the same thing Joel did:

I’ve never eaten at Azia; it’s one of the very few restaurants in Minneapolis that still has those silly No Guns signs up, and I prefer to spend my money where there’s no formal or informal suggestion that either the customers or the staff have been disarmed for the convenience of garboons.

 For those of you from out of state:  Minnesota’s “shall issue” law was accompanied by a requirement saying that stores or businesses that wanted to exclude the law-abiding gun owner from their premises needed to post a sign to that effect on their doors.  The first months after the passage of the Personal Protection Act saw a number of stores get posted, but the custom withered away pretty quickly; most proprietors realized that the law-abiding gun owner was both a non-risk and a pretty good customer; others responded to the reactions of long-time customers who, it turned out, were getting permits and donning concealed holsters and libertarian scruples.

Mr. Pham’s place – marooned in the deepest, darkest, dankest DFL-sodden part of The Wedge neighborhood in Minneapolis – no doubt earned the odd kudo from the occasional frumpy “the state is my mother”-type local resident. 

So I wonder if the irony is lost on Mr. Pham?

Hey, Thom?  I’ve got an offer: take down the silly signs, buy Felicia and me dinner, and the class is on me.

Mr. Pham:  Joel’s class is as good as Azia’s food.  And that’s saying something on both counts.

Go for it.

Slow Joe Biden knows how to win a war.  Oh, yes he does.

Not like any of those soldiers or anything:

President Bush’s war strategy is failing and the top military commander in iraq is “dead flat wrong” for warning against major changes, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Sunday.

“Dead flat wrong…” about…what?

“The reality is that although there’s been some mild security progress, there is in fact no security in Baghdad or Anbar province where I was dealing with the most serious problem, sectarian violence,” said Biden, a 2008 presidential candidate who recently returned from Iraq. 

Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were scheduled to testify before four congressional committees, including Biden’s, on Monday and Tuesday. Lawmakers will hear how the commander and the diplomat assess progress in Iraq and offer recommendations about the course of war strategy…Petraeus and Crocker will say the buildup of 30,000 troops, which bring the current U.S. total to nearly 170,000, is working better than any previous effort to quell the insurgency and restore stability. The officials also disputed suggestions that Petraeus and Crocker would recommend anything more than a symbolic reduction in troop levels and then only in the spring.

Biden, signaling that tough questioning awaits the pair from majority Democrats and moderate Republicans, said Petraeus’ assessment missed the point. Biden, D-Del., said focusing on a political solution, such as by creating more local control, was the only way to foster national reconciliation among warring factions.

“I really respect him, but I think he’s dead flat wrong,” Biden said.

Creating political control in a situation where people are afraid to go to work in the morning is…

…well, almost too stupid to be Joe Biden.  This is Barbara Boxer-level cretinism.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I “The First Team” – John, Brian and Chad – will kick things off from 11-1. 
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assignment.  I’ll will be out at White Bear Lake Superstore, from 1-3.  During the second hour, we’ll be talking about the upcoming counterprotest at the “anti-war” rally. 
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King and Michael will 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!

A few weeks ago, I proposed a contest to pick Minnesota’s most unintentionally-funny leftyblog. 

I haven’t had time to put the poll together – but events today have given the idea some added impetus.

Minnesota’s dullest-witted leftyblog, “MNBlue”, has uncorked a howler.  Written by one “Grace Kelly” – long known to Saint Paul politics followers as a rhetorical acid trip – it addresses the Republican National Committee’s deposit of two million dollars into an inner-city Saint Paul bank, to help give loans to help clean up the inner city in the year before the convention:

The Star & Tribune publishes “Political parties give money for host cities’ trouble: Political parties provide loans and volunteerism to create civic goodwill ahead of conventions.” Dear Randy Furst(author) and Star Tribune, “give money” and “deposit money in the bank”, is not the same thing – not even close! 

Actually, given that the money was deposited in a zero-interest account – they’re just letting it sit there, for the bank and community’s benefit – and that the bank will be able to use the interest (well into six figures in the next year) to help capitalize more improvements in the neighborhood, and that a dollar so invested can create multiple dollars of effect as it circulates through the community?  Um, yeah.  It’s “even close”. 

Not until the second paragraph does the article actually state the real information, “the party is depositing $2 million in St. Paul’s University Bank to make capital available for loans to repair dilapidated homes. Ultimately, the committee will take the money back to pay expenses, but in the meantime the bank can use it.”

(warning, maximum sarcasm)

*** deposit money in a bank until I need it back ****

That’s the Republican party’s idea of helping out local communities and creating civic goodwill! Arggggh!

Yes.

And, as luck would have it, it’s the Democratic Party’s idea, too:

Wishing to build goodwill among American Indians and the broader Denver community, the Democratic National Convention Committee is helping [Denver-based] Native American Bank increase its portfolio of small-business loans.

The committee deposited $2 million into a zero-interest account at the Denver-based bank Wednesday morning and said it would leave the money there until late spring.

“It’s very important to us that the convention is a team effort,” said Leah Daughtry, the DNCC’s chief executive, before handing over the check.

MNBlue.  It features a bunch of Minnesota’s most rhetorically-incontinent writers (Kelly, Eric “Big E” Pusey, and Andy “Mister Furious” Driscoll for good measure), and the most baroque comment section security to boot.

But facts?   Not so much.

Too. Stupid. To.  Fisk.

A group of people who support the troops, and want the world to know that not all of the Twin Cities agrees with the anti-war, pro-surrender agenda, will be staging a counterprotest at the “peace” march on September 15.

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 – it’s one of Saint Paul’s coolest places, in a lot of ways)

The park – a memorial to Minnesotans who served in the Civil War – 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. 

Some Minnesota conservative bloggers intensely oppose the idea of a special session; they want to hold Pawlenty to the letter of his “No New Taxes” pledge.

Others can see some political benefit to Pawlenty calling a limited special session and looking all statesmanly.

I’d like to suggest a compromise; have the special session (limited solely to rebuilding the bridge), contingent upon one condition:  force Larry Pogemiller to bark like a dog.

I think it’d make everyone happy.

How counterinsurgency war is fought, courtesy of the Times of London.

It’s a classic counterinsurgency war story, led by an American armor officer who got his start in Special Forces (which, above all, has practiced exactly this kind of asymmetric warfare since it was founded in the 1950’s) a Captain Patriquin – who led a long, patient, less-than-martial-looking effort to recruit, cajole and co-opt the sheikhs of Ramadi to turn against the Al-Quaeda thugs who’d take control of the city:

He was a big man, moustachioed, ex-Special Forces, fluent in Arabic and engaged in what was then a revolutionary experiment for a US military renowned for busting doors down. He and a small group from the First Brigade Combat Team, part of the 1st Armoured Division, were assiduously courting the local sheikhs – tribal leaders – over endless cups of tea and cigarettes…

The Captain practiced some other aspects of counterinsurgency – things that don’t occur in the much-hyped GAO report on the country:

Captain Patriquin may have offered more than mere words. His main interlocutor, Sheikh Abdul Sittar Bezea al-Rishawi, told The Times that he gave them guns and ammunition too. The sheikhs did rise up. They formed a movement called the Anbar Awakening, led by Sheikh Sittar. They persuaded thousands of their tribesmen to join the Iraqi police, which was practically defunct thanks to al-Qaeda death threats, and to work with the reviled US troops. The US military built a string of combat outposts (COPs) throughout a city that had previously been a no-go area, and through a combination of Iraqi local knowledge and American firepower they gradually regained control of Ramadi, district by district, until the last al-Qaeda fighters were expelled in three pitched battles in March. What happened in Ramadi was later replicated throughout much of Anbar province.

The effect?

Ramadi’s transformation is breathtaking. Shortly before I arrived last November masked al-Qaeda fighters had brazenly marched through the city centre, pronouncing it the capital of a new Islamic caliphate. The US military was still having to fight its way into the city through a gauntlet of snipers, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Fifty US soldiers had been killed in the previous five months alone. I spent 24 hours huddled inside Eagles Nest, a tiny COP overlooking the derelict football stadium, listening to gunfire, explosions and the thump of mortars. The city was a ruin, with no water, electricity or functioning government. Those of its 400,000 terrified inhabitants who had not fled cowered indoors as fighting raged around them.

Today Ramadi is scarcely recognisable. Scores of shattered buildings testify to the fury of past battles, but those who fled the violence are now returning. Pedestrians, cars and motorbike rickshaws throng the streets. More than 700 shops and businesses have reopened. Restaurants stay open late into the evening. People sit outside smoking hookahs, listening to music, wearing shorts – practices that al-Qaeda banned. Women walk around with uncovered faces. Children wave at US Humvees. Eagles’ Nest, a heavily fortified warren of commandeered houses, is abandoned and the stadium hosts football matches.

“Al-Qaeda is gone. Everybody is happy,” said Mohammed Ramadan, 38, a stallholder in the souk who witnessed four executions. “It was fear, pure fear. Nobody wanted to help them but you had to do what they told you.”

And the article notes that, rewarding as it is, the job is risky:

Captain Patriquin, 32, a father of three young children, was killed by a roadside bomb days after I left Ramadi last winter. Sheikh Sittar wept when told the news. He and several tribal leaders attended his memorial service. Captain Patriquin “was an extraordinary man who played a very, very important role,” he told The Times.

For what it’s worth, my condolences to the Captain’s family.

And yet – the surge (combined with, I suggest, the even-more-important change in how the military is fighting the insurgency) seems to be giving next week’s report from General Petraeus the most optimistic backdrop we’ve had reason to see for years.

While I watch very little TV, I’ve become mildly interested in the endless, dare I say “cookiecutter”, bunch of Bravo “reality” shows – Project Runway, Top Chef, that hair salon show whose name eludes me, and the like – that involve taking a group of people in a very competitive, haute kind of craft career and winnowing them down, a la Survivor, to a championship over the course of a couple of months.

The shows all have the same kind of formula; hosted by an otherworldly-hot woman (Heidi Klum, Padma Lakshmi) assisted by a lovable-in-an-irritating-a***ole-kind-of-way guy (Tim Gunn, Tom Colicchio), with a series of guest judges and tons and tons of product placement, yadda yadda.

But the key part of the formula; the shows all focus toward the “Final Three” or the “Final Four”, on the last episode or two.  And that final group, in all of these Bravo “reality” shows, always consists of:

1. The blazingly talented, usually gay, guy
2. The improbably hot, very talented woman
3. The highly-talented a***ole.

The prototype, of course, was Season 2 of Project Runway: after a few weeks, it became obvious that egregious a***ole Santino was being carried along, prevailing over many better designers even though he frequently deserved to be tossed; he made such a compelling a***ole and the show’s story arc (if not actual clothing design) benefitted from the chaos and drama he provided. 

This week?  It’s Top Chef.  I figured I’d try to get the formula figured out bright and early, but leave myself some wiggle room.

My predictions on week one:

Talented Guy: Tre (backup:  Brian) (Sorry, guys – Dale, the loveable gay guy, is being kept around for a late-round sympathy toss)

Cute Talented Woman: Camille (the way hot Puerto Rican chef) (backup: Casey) (Although I rooted for Brooklyn’s Lia, she was just too girl-next-door from the very beginning). 

Token übertalented A***hole: Howie, the New Yorker from Miami (backup: Hung, the gratingly-arrogant but incredibly talented Vietnamese guy)

 So – as of the Final Six, all of my first choices are gone – all of my backups are in the running.

Sort of like my system for betting horses, now that I think about it…

Me?  Got the kids to school.

Gary Miller?  Had coffee with Giuliani…

…at St. Paul’s Parkview Cafe. 

For 20 minutes Hizzoner sat at our table and fielded questions about hockey, Senator Coleman, conservative approaches to rebuilding the infrastructure, supply-side tax policy and illegal immigration while a throng of local print and broadcast media looked on.

Ahead of the TCMSM, per usual.

Be watching for video at Race42008.

Politico on the Dems’ emerging Iraq quagmire:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are calculating that it is futile to continue their months-long campaign to force an immediate end to the war, particularly after Republicans and a few Democrats returned from the summer recess intent on opposing legislation mandating a strict timetable for pulling out U.S. troops.

The change is both rhetorical and substantive. Reid and others are increasingly talking of “bipartisan compromise,” while top Democrats are reworking legislation erasing a date certain for ending the military operation. The strategic shift is certain to anger some war critics, but it reflects the reality that Democrats lack the votes to force President Bush’s hand.

“We are trying to manage expectations that we can’t end the war today or next week or next month,” said one Democrat involved in the discussions. “We have to make sure everyone understands that.”

Said another aide involved in the process: “Despite the months of debate, and all the votes, and all the ads and everything, we have not been able to break the Republicans. They are still with Bush, and that’s the reality here.”

But that’s so…verbose? 

Yeah.  Verbose.

Let’s say the same thing, the way Chuckles Schumer might have:

And let me be clear, the withdrawal of troops and emergence of peace in Iraq will happen despite the Democrats and the “peace movement”, not because of the Democrats and the “peace movement”. The inability of Democrat legislators to give the people of Iraq and America the faintest reason to believe they were serious about terrorism said to these tribes, here and there, “we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves”.

Much more concise, doncha think?

More later.

Matt Abe (who regularly writes at Northstar Liberty) notes a bit of a milestone for the NARN (Volume III “The Final Word” in this case) over on True North today…:

 On last Saturday’s Northern Alliance Radio Network show, “The Final Word” with King Banaian and Michael Brodkorb (broadcast on AM 1280 The Patriot), Brian Sullivan endorsed Mitt Romney for president.

…and explains why it’s significant for those new to the politics of our swingy state:

Sullivan, the current Republican National Committeeman from Minnesota, ran against Tim Pawlenty for the Republican endorsement for governor in 2002, which culminated in a legendary, overnight ballot battle royale (ask me to tell you about it someday, it was my first state convention and I was a Sullivan delegate). He has maintained a behind-the-scenes profile since then, with occasional appearances on Almanac as the conservative voice on the political panel. In spite of his unsuccessful endorsement bid, Sullivan is still a favorite son among many Minnesota conservatives.

Matt is right – and also too parsimonious with the details.  Brian Sullivan played the most important role in Minnesota politics that I’ve seen performed by a non-elected official or candidate; his strong, well-organized drive for the nomination forced Tim Pawlenty – theretofore a fairly moderate, pragmatic legislative fixer – to the right.  I think it’s fair to say that without Brian Sullivan, there’d have been no “No New Taxes” pledge, and none of of the fallout (almost all beneficial) from it.

So Sullivan’s endorsement carries some weight in this state, especially on the eve of Fred Thompson’s presumed entry into the presidential race this week. Sullivan said that for him, it came down to two candidates, Romney and Thompson.

“I feel both are good conservatives,” said Sullivan, “that would support the principles that I believe in, and I think that many conservatives in Minnesota believe in, it came down to who would I hire? Who is it that has actually accomplished something, made a difference, made progress against tough goals, it’s Romney.”

Matt also catches one wry irony:

“In some ways I think that Thompson has become the Republican Party’s [Barack] Obama, in the sense that not that much is known about him, he’s clearly a very good speaker, he’s an appealing personality, but his track record as a Senator, you could argue, isn’t very strong…he’s going to have to be able to be more than just a good candidate, but actually convince folks that he can lead the charge.”

Interestingly, aside from his business experience, Sullivan’s critics made much the same arguements in 2002 about Sullivan, who never held elected office.

Matt notes that many higher-ups in the MNGOP seem to be following the herd to Romney – which is at least an encouraging sign that the front office is starting to back away from its commitments to McCain that go back about a year or so:

Brodkorb reported that joining Sullivan in endorsing Romney this week were former Republican National Committeepersons Evie Axdahl, Jack Meeks, and Republican Party of Minnesota Treasurer Tony Sutton.

Go to TN and read the whole thing.

I’m not sure what to make of Chuck Schumer’s quote from yesterday:

And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves

Forget about political tone-deafness (and any purple-state GOP leader who doesn’t have that quote posted on signs and T-shirts and bumper stickers by week’s end should be cashiered for incompetence) for a moment; the quote betrays (or utilizes) a complete ignorance of history.  Convincing the locals to do the fighting for you is the mark of successful counterinsurgency warfare; departing from that (as the US did in Vietnam under Kennedy and Johnson, to its eternal chagrin) is a recipe for disaster.  Kaplan in Imperial Grunts quoted innumerable Special Forces and Marines who said exactly that.  Ed put it well:

Remember when the criticism of the Bush administration was that they didn’t understand the complex social structure of tribal life in Iraq? Remember when we heard nothing but how Bush and the US were bulls in a china shop, insulting tribal leaders and forcing them into the insurgencies?

Exactly.  We’re doing the job right – belatedly, to be sure (to our chagrin) but according to fairly clear lessons from military history.

So – is Schumer merely a historical illiterate?

Or is he (as I suggested on the Hewitt show yesterday) just making sure that the Big Lie – “the surge is a failure” – hits the news cycle before Petraeus comes to town, so that the Administration and Pentagon’s good news actually looks like damage control to those who still get their information from the evening news (and anyone who votes for Chuckles Schumer numbers gullibility as the least of their problems)?

First things first: Joel Rosenberg brought up a great point in two comments in this thread the other day; no police department is immune from causing problems such as the ones Minneapolis had last Friday at the “Critical Mass” rally-turned-riot.

Mitch, I think the perception in the worst — and numerically small, but dominant — culture of the MPD is that they’re collectively utterly untouchable, and that what the peons think of as misbehavior has so long gone without consequence that there’s no need to worry about it. It’s how you get things like a cop booking a guy in on a non-existent crime (civilian possession of hollowpoints); the one that got drunk, decided to recreationally tune up a guy in a bar, took it outside and got beaten up and his gun taken, and got a couple of days off with pay; etc.

Those are hardly the only examples; they’re the ones that come to mind without having to violate some innocent’s privacy.

Or, to put it cynically, when one’s motto is “l’etat, c’est moi,” one doesn’t pay much attention to the subtleties of the latest polling.

Now, I’ve shared my misgivings about the upper-management of Minneapolis’ police department in the past. And while I know an awful lot of excellent officers on the MPD, the department does have a history of having had some bad apples that have caused all sorts of problems. They don’t have the most sympathetic reputation.

Which, along with Joel’s comment, started me thinking: what if the rioters were counting on that fact?

And I thought back to the other day, when I was at the anarkids’ “press conference”. I received a copy of the anarkids’ prepared statement about the bike rally riot.

There was a passage in the statement that caught my eye; it seemed almost incongruous in context…:

The RNC Welcoming Committe (RNC-WC), a group hosting the pReNC, gave a public speech before the ride exhorting riders to avoid confrontation throughout the weekend.

…and I filed the thought away for later.

“Later” arrived some time after reading Joel’s comment…

…and getting the following email yesterday. Over on an e-democracy discussion group, a friend and occasional interviewee of mine – who has never been mistaken for a conservative – wrote about the riots (with me adding occasional emphasis):

The way I read this situation is that we have first hand reports of
people they had never seen before making grandiose statements about what to do when the cops show up, something that has never been an issue with CM before. And then the cops do show up – in force, coordinated with the Deputies. Someone had tipped them off that a riot was about to happen.

Who tipped them off?

Why, the rioters, of course.

That part seemed incongruous to me at the time; for something like the “Critical Mass” rally to go from bucolic meander to riot inside a week? For the cops to have a bear in the air and cars standing by? For fifty cops to show up when the first disturbance call went out (although believe me – I understand why cops respond so quickly to “officer needs assistance” calls)?

That’s the way it used to work in Miami. You take a crowd of peace-loving citizens and start a riot by giving the cops an anonymous tip that there will be a riot. If you have police department that is known to to Neanderthal at the slightest provocation, it’s an easy gig to arrange. Then you have a whole bunch of middle class white people who have their dresses bloodied because they are no longer virgins when it comes to rioting. You want the middle class white people pissed off as all Hell at the cops for their awful brutality. You want them on *your* side when the big show comes to town. You want their resources and their money and their bodies, all for your cause.

Why would you do that?

It’s called “radicalizing”.

In my article on the subject, and in various communications with others on the situation, I’ve used different words – that the riot makes the anarkids and their lilywhite liberal supporters feel like victims, thereby justifying whatever means they want to bring to bear in protest.

And if I were looking to create exactly such an incident, what Metro police department would I pick as…my mark, for lack of a better term?

I use the term “mark” because that’s where the email was leading:

In short, Minneapolis got played. Bigtime. The rubes who fell for this
routine are nothing less than suckers. I’m especially mad at the cops for
falling for this, but they’ve never showed that they had too much in the
way of sense before so it’s not much of a surprise.

And then, this part here – which brought my attention directly back to that Anarkid press release about the big speech telling the Critical Massers to “stay peaceful”:

What I am quite sure of is that this WILL happen in Saint Paul sometime in
the near future. Any of you who attend a peace rally or any other thing
will suddenly hear someone shouting about how to conduct yourself in the event of a major police action. That’s the warning shot. They do this because they want you to flee to avoid arrest.

And, according to the Anarkids’ own press release, that’s exactly what they got:

Nearly twenty squad cars arrived on the scene. Over forty police created a line formation in which they advanced on bikers, arresting, and brutalizing those who fell behind.

If this correspondent is right – and some reading about crowd/mob psychology is on my agenda here – it’d seem that the Anarkids have taken charge of the public agenda. They even seem to know the political turf pretty well:

I heard that there was a similar incident in the works two months ago in Saint Paul, but our cops didn’t over-react enough to start the appropriate riot. If that is true, good for them. Having the best led and best paid police force in the state is doing us well.

Of course, even the best cops – and I share the correspondent’s regard for the SPPD – get worn down. And the Anarkids would seem to know that:

Remember, above all else – this isn’t about you. It’s not about your rights or your person or anything like that. It’s about finding fresh meat to put into the grinder to get a really big riot going. They will have to stir things up a lot if they are going to have a big show one year from now, and that means radicalizing a lot of people. That also means beating down Saint Paul’s finest and getting them battle-weary.

Don’t play that game. It’s not yours to win. Stay cool, stay smart.

True for all of us, really, on both sides of the fence – since any counter-protests will no doubt be met with provocations designed to play equally into their plans.

Something to keep in mind for the 9/15 counterprotests.

The other day, commenter J. Ewing – who is a frequent dissident from this forum’s dominant paradigm – left a comment in my thread about the launch of True North:

But what I just don’t get is how, without taking a “principled stand” that candidates of one party (say, for example, the GOP) will do a better job of advancing your principles than those of another party.

The answer is, of course, that True North is not “non-partisan”.  We are overtly partisan; our “party” is First-Principles-based Conservatism.  Not the GOP. 

A simple look at the roster of bloggers writing for True North should tell the tale; True North includes a list of people who are conservative activists and Republican sympathizers, and even functionaries. 

But the blog is not, and emphatically will never be, an organ of the GOP. The GOP needs its feet held in the fire when it comes to the First Principles that drive us, no different than the DFL (only the DFL is much farther-gone). 

Looking at the roster of contributors, it’s pretty obvious that most of us are Republicans of one form or another, and all of us are conservatives. Most of us are Republicans because we believe in those first principles, and that the GOP (at its best, anyway – and don’t all of us join political parties because of the best they represent?) best supports them.

So we’re explicitly partisan.  We are just not part of the Republican party.

There are two reasons to declare yourself or your organization “non-partisan”:

1. To exercise, with integrity, an intent to disavow  politcal postures of any sort.  This is the philosophy of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, which actively eschews politics (even though most of its members are conservatives) in order to remain open to bloggers of all types.
2. To disingenuously claim non-partisanship to make an expressly partisan agenda seem benign, like “Growth for Justice” and its contributors. 

To do so – for a group of active, gleefully unrepentant conservatives – would be as disingenuous as Joel Kramer’s claims of centricity.

Mr. Ewing continues:

Yes, you can do a heck of a good job being “nonpartisan and purely educational,” as the Taxpayers League is, but at some point you need to start putting the education into an actual practicum– “field work”– to get anything done, right? What’s wrong with partisanship, if it gets you where you want to go?

And that’s what True North is really all about; making the turn from opinion to action.

But that comes a little later.

Over at TN, Swiftee notes a sad event involving an involuntarily-key figure in the history of the Twin Cities center-right blogosphere…:

 It seems that [former Saint Paul school principal Zelma] Wiley has passed away…I’d like to express my sincere sympathies to the family of Zelma Wiley.

…and the “columnist” who dragged her into the public eye:

 I firmly believe that she had the best interests of her students in mind when she agreed to work with Nick Coleman, She could not have known that Nick had a well deserved reputation of a shameless panderer and prevaricator and I don’t think that she deserved the abuse that rightfully belonged to Coleman.

My condolences to Ms. Wiley’s family; she was the principal of my daughter’s first school, and in my conversations with her she was always a courteous person who, to be fair, inherited a very difficult task (Maxfield is in one of St. Paul’s worst neighborhoods), and did the very best she could.

The other day, in the comment thread for Joe Bodell’s incisive investigative piece on True North, a commenter noted:

The real question is when MinnMo is going to get their radio show up.

Oh, my.  That, I’d almost pay to hear.  Once.

 OPENING JINGLE (Performed by a group of studio musicians earning union scale): “MinnMonitor – on the air!”

(ten seconds of dead air).

 OPENING JINGLE: “MinnMonitor – on the air!”

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Like, totally hello!  This is Minnesota Monitor Radio on Air America, like, Minnesota…”

 (five seconds of dead air)

…and I’d like to introduce the guys on the show.  We’ve got Andy Birkey…

ANDY BIRKEY: “I’m Andy Birkey…”

ROBIN “REW MARTY: “…and Eric Black”

ERIC BLACK: “Greetings”

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Joe Bodell”

JOE BODELL: “Robin!  I just ran a packet trace on John Hinderaker’s furnace, and found that his carbon footprint is actually higher than his golf handicap!”

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “…”Paul” from “Eyeteeth”…”

PAUL SCHMELZER: “Yo”

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “And, finally, the guy on the staff with actual radio experience from about 200 appearances on the Jeff Heaney show, Jeff Fecke”

JEFF FECKE: “Thank you.  As I always say, we must pay any price, bear any burden, to spread liberty and freedom”. 

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Like totally!  So our first topic of the day is, like, the Republican National Convention…”

ANDY BIRKEY: “It will affect gays more”.

ABDI AYNTE: “No, it will affect Moslems more”

ANDY BIRKEY: “That’s absurd!  Republicans hate gays more than they hate Moslems”

ABDI AYNTE: “That is rediculous!  They hate Muslims more than they hate gays!”

JOE BODELL OR JEFF FECKE: “Actually, they hate the troops even more”.

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Was that Paul or Jeff talking?”

JOE BODELL: “Beats me”

JEFF FECKE: “I have no idea”.

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Let’s take a caller.  In Minneapolis, it’s Eva.  Eva, welcome to MinnMon on the Air!”

EVA: “Read my blog”

(Five seconds of dead air)

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Totally!  Thanks for your call!  Next topic…”

JOE BODELL: “Just a minute, Robin. I ran a skiptrace on the ATM packets going from Karl Rove’s Blackberry to the RNC’s server in Virginia, and cross-indexed the results with derivatives of an IPMask Subnet to Supernet refluxogram, and it appears that the Republican National Convention is going to be held in…”

(Three seconds of dead air)

JOE BODELL: “…Bloomington.”

ERIC BLACK: (wearily) “It’s actually going to be in Saint Paul”

JOE BODELL: “No, look here – I printed it out”.

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Let’s take another call.  Eva, on line 2, you’re totally on MinnMonn on the Air”

EVA: “Read my blog”.

(Nine seconds of dead air)

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “Yeah!”

JEFF FECKE: “When it comes to the RNC, it’s like Franklin D Roosevelt said to me; the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

ERIC BLACK: “OK, that’s enough, Fecke.  That was said in FDR’s inauguration speech, and he died over thirty years before you were born.  How are you attributing that to a direct conversation?”

(22 seconds of dead air)

JEFF FECKE: “I’ve spoken with my editor, and she’s advised me not to comment”

JOE BODELL: “Oh, we’re totally porked”

ABDI AYNTE: “That is an anti-Muslim statement.  You must apologize.”

PAUL SCHMELZER: “Dude, we’re all on the same team…”.

ROBIN “REW” MARTY: “It’s time for totally a break!  We’ll be back after this word from our sponsors, Juan’s Balloon Animals, and Kites are Us!

On the other hand, Air American couldn’t possibly do much worse than the somnolent Mark Heaney show they run every afternoon.

Eric Black, at his new blog, jumps into the battle to spin the upcoming Petraeus report:

The Washington Post reports this morning that a GAO report, due out Tuesday, will find that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks that Congress and the Bush Administration had established to measure military and political progress.

It’s hard to escape politics, selective perception and confirmation bias when discussing the question of progress in Iraq, especially during the current run-up to the big September presentations by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

But if there’s anyone I would trust to call it straight, it would be the GAO.

Black went on:

When I read a few weeks ago that the GAO was doing its own study of the Iraq situation (at the request of Congress) I counted on it to be the unbiased assessment available. When I just read the Post story, I was disappointed to learn that the GAO will only be studying the 18 benchmarks.

As I previously fulminated, for those focused on the big question of how things are going for the U.S. mission in Iraq, these benchmarks are overrated. The benchmarks focus only on things the Iraqi government is supposed to do to facilitate the much-ballyhooed but not very visible national reconciliation among the various population groups.

Indeed – a casual study of counterinsurgency warfare shows that the GAO’s benchmarks, while of importance to those for whom the quality of a national government is the measure of success, are virtually meaningless in measuring success in the mission that will, for the immediate future, be the only one that really matters in Iraq; securiting the citizens; driving Al Quaeda out; cutting down on internecine ethnic/religious cleansing; killing or co-opting the religious death squads; getting the the point where “The Iraqi Street” doesn’t need to worry about being killed, having his children burned alive before his eyes, being gang-raped, for the crime of walking the street. 

As in all counterinsurgencies, government factions can negotiate until the paint peels from the conference room walls; none of it means anything until the “street” believes it’s safe.

I’d be more impressed when the results are real in ways that affect the safety our troops and of the well being of the Iraqi people. For example, when the number of attacks on the troops is down, likewise the number of Americans and Iraqis getting killed, plus the unemployment rate in Iraq.

Black – knowingly or not – invokes an irreconcilable paradox.

Focusing on the “number of attacks on the troops” is what got us into this mess in the first place.  Since Beirut and Mogadishu, the US military has focused on “force protection” to a degree that Robert Kaplan, quoting Special Forces troops in Afghanistan, called “debilitating”.  For the first three years of the counterinsurgency, the US military became so focused on “force protection” that it would seem to have  gotten neither safety nor victory; by going, essentially, on the defensive, we ceded control of much of the “Iraqi street” to the terrorists, death squads and thugs – which made most of Iraq a safe haven from which to…

…launch more attacks on our troops.

It’s only been by putting our troops in harm’s way, taking the initiative from the enemy, that casualties have dropped and, more importantly, people in places like Anbar are starting to sense the security that will give them, someday, the mental bandwidth to fuss about things like oil revenue and the Rights of Man. It’s also paradoxical that by taking the war to the enemy, one saves lives in the long run.

 I’ll be impressed by measurable progress toward the reconstruction of the Iraqi infrastructure,  an increase in how much oil is being produced and how many hours a day Baghdad has electricity.

And yet trying to get to any of that without making the people of Iraq secure is like trying to drive to Chicago before you’ve changed your flat tire.

It is a lamentable fact that the Administration – the Pentagon, really – allowed this to happen for three years.

It is to the Administration’s credit that things have finally changed. 

That the Administration’s opponents have never had a better idea in either case shows their unfitness to lead this nation in a time of war. 

Bob Collins at Polinaut notes the launch of two politics-oriented blogs this past week:

…tomorrow, as near as I can tell, a bunch of conservative bloggers are adding True North to their repertoire. I believe the link — when it debuts on Saturday, will be here.

Thanks for the hat tip, Bob!

However, I had to comment on this next bit:

Eric Black, the high priest of political blogging in Minnesota (formerly The Big Question) has launched Eric Black Ink.

Well, kudos to Mr. Black, with whom I disagree on much political, but for whom I have the utmost regard. 

But Bob – “high priest” of Minnesota poliblogging?

I mean, maybe if John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Ed Morrissey and Michael Brodkorb are respectively the Dalai Lama, Pope, Archbishop and Billy Graham of Minnesota political blogging.  Maybe.

Otherwise…?

Category:  Scenarios you’ve always thought sounded fun.

Topic:  Going through a carwash on foot.

Answer: Negative:

A car wash employee got entangled in the giant, automatic brushes and died, authorities said.

Police were investigating the death of Ricardo Alberto Martinez, 18, but foul play wasn’t suspected.

Damn.

In all seriousness, my sincere condolences to the Martinez family.