A few weeks ago, Michael Brodkorb at MDE broke the story – Minnesota’s DFLer Secretary of State Mark Ritchie was abusing the power of his office to get political contributions.

The local Sorosphere erupted in response:

• “He’s a GOP operative!”
• “Oh, yeah?  Well, at least Ritchie’s not Mary Kiffmeyer!”
• “Brodkorb’s on the GOP payroll!”
• “Tool!  Tool!  Tool tool tool!”
• “Brodkorb gets his money from the GOP!”

But lo and behold, that noted GOP organ the Strib notes that…

…Brodkorb was right!

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie now says that he personally gave his campaign a list of participants in a state-sponsored “civic engagement” program so it could send them a campaign newsletter that asked for a political contribution.

Ritchie, a DFLer, was elected on a platform of de-politicizing the office, which supervises elections. He has been under fire since two Republican activists who attended the office’s publicly funded event filed a complaint over having their e-mail addresses turned over to Ritchie’s political operation.

Previously, Ritchie had denied knowing how the campaign got the list. He now insists that it solicited contributions only to pay for the newsletter itself. But its text invites recipients to an upcoming campaign fundraiser.

Ritchie said on Tuesday that it was a mistake for his campaign to use the list and took responsibility, saying he has taken measures to ensure that people can easily “unsubscribe” from the newsletter and that it will from now on contain only news, not solicitations.

Wow.  Brodkorb was right!

(Or is that “The GOP was right”?  Hmmm.  Who knows?)

Minnesota Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles said Tuesday that his office has accumulated a significant amount of information regarding the complaint against Ritchie and was assessing the case.

Ruh-roh.

Ritchie, responding by e-mail while recuperating from a medical procedure, said Tuesday that he believes firewalls need to exist between taxpayer-funded programs and his campaign.

Yeah, you could say that.

Kudos, M-Brod.  Yet again, you’ve proven that the local Sorosphere is your beeyatch.

UPDATE AND FLASHBACK: Of course, Joe “Learned Foot’ Tucci notes that he had Ritchie’s number before “having Ritchie’s number” was cool.

Duane at Radioblogger, by way of dinging on the Dems’ latest attempt at a “Cut and Run” bill, writes:

A listener sent this picture and e-mail a little bit ago.

This is John Gebhardt in Iraq. His wife Mindy reports that this little girl’s entire family was executed. The insurgents intended on executing this little girl, too. In fact, they tried by shooting her in the head. But miraculously, this little girl lived, but is obviously suffering while her body tries to heal. She cries and moans incessantly, but John is able to calm her. The nurses where she’s being treated say John’s the only one she clings to. So John and this little Iraqi girl have slept for the last four nights in that chair so that she can continue to heal after her injury.

Not exactly Abu Ghraib-like, so it’s doubtful you’ll ever see this hit the nightly newscast.

Against this…:

Democratic Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is planning on trying once again this week to choke progress before it has a chance to thrive and prosper by passing legislation to give the military a quarter of the money needed to fund the effort in Iraq, and require that if the token dollar amount is appropriated, an orderly withdrawal begins immediately.

In other words, sending them a “hide ’til…” date.

…Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republicans ought to have a stronger hand to defeat this more than ever before because of the clear evidence of progress and success in Iraq. There is no need to change the course in Iraq, to use the tired phrase of Harry Reid, when the course in Iraq is working demonstrably. The Republicans should use the 60 vote rule to kill this legislation the moment it comes to the floor. Republicans would do well to show they are more determined to win than the Democrats are determined to declare defeat.

Senator Coleman…?

And once the bill is killed, it is imperative for George W. Bush to use the bully pulpit and call this stunt for what it is. He should go to the American people and start showing the progress that is being made, the progress that isn’t being shown in the mainstream media, and challenge the Congress directly to stop playing games with the American military while they are fighting, winning and making a real difference abroad, and pass a clean appropriations bill immediately. And he should keep saying it.

And that’d be the problem. The President and the Administration have been a consistent no-show in the PR battle.

The media has convened in the press room at Shot In The Dark world HQ.

The reporters are taking their seats. The buzz of anticipation settles into a tense quiet as Mr. Berg steps to the podium.

Let’s join the questioning:

———-

Reporter A (Minnesota Public Radio): Mr. Berg? It’s been noted that you’ve achieved the one thing that was standing between you and the putative “big time” – you’ve actually gotten your own stalker. Would you care to comment on this? And I have a followup

Mitch Berg: Well, on the one hand, yes – it would seem that I do have a stalker. Actually, a stalker and a half – I’ve noticed the the “Lloydletta” blog names me something like 11 times in the past two weeks.

[Assembled reporters laugh politely, if uneasily]

But in fact, yes – it would seem that former porn-mag temp Ken “Avidor” Weiner has fallen into that role, using one of his twenty blogs and, apparently, his video camera and mad editing skeelz to draw the attention of his adoring public…

[more laughter]

…yes, adoring public to me. So – “good” news, I have a stalker. The bad news? He’s a piss-poor one!

Reporter A (Minnesota Public Radio): So to follow up – do you have any comment for the record?

Mitch Berg: Well, my good friend Joe Tucci – whom Mr. Weiner managed to “out” last week as the real name behind “Learned Foot”, and can I say “hey, great research skeelz, that took you almost exactly three years!’ – put it well, I think:

All Weiner knows how to do is steal off others’ websites, indulge his (erroneous) stereotypes and piddle his crap all over the internet (notice how I didn’t mention Photoshop) . Why does…

What the hell?

I feel like such a looser loser. Is this how stalkers feel all the time?

I don’t know that anyone could put it better!

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): Er, Mr. Berg? Do you mind if we call you “Mitch?”

Mitch Berg: Sure. Or “Mister Berg” if you’re nasty.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): Mr. Berg, bloggers affiliated with your “stalker” Mr. Avidor…

Mitch Berg: …er, Miss? That’s “Mister Weiner”. “Avidor” was the name of an actual artist. It’d be like asking y’all to call me “Mister Hendrix” or “Mister Miller” after spending twenty years making a mockery of my real name. Anyway, carry on.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): …sorry. Anyway, they have made a small cottage industry of making up nicknames for you. You’re referred to sometimes as “Blogger Berg”…

Mitch Berg: …that would, in fact, be gramatically and factually correct. I am a blogger, and my name is Berg! One adjective, one noun.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): …and “Gasbag of the Midway”.

Mitch Berg: Given that I share this distict with Ellen Anderson and Jay Benanav, I must say that’s kind of an honor! Also…improbable.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): So do any of those names…I don’t know, faze you in any way?

Mitch Berg: I grew up a tall, scrawny, greasy-haired, uncoordinated, athletically-inept cello-playing brainiac and a Bears fan. I got called worse than that around the Thanksgiving dinner table.

[laughter]

Next question?

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit?

Mitch Berg: I’m actually on record opposing it.

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): But why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why, why why, Blogger Berg?

Mitch Berg: I’ve never supported it.

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): But why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why, why why, oh Gasbag?

Mitch Berg: Nope. Never.

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): But why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit…

[Reporter is tasered. By fellow reporters. His carried – with difficulty – from the hall.]

Mitch Berg: Next question?

Reporter D (Sixty Minutes): You make light of this purportered “stalker”…

Mitch Berg: …well, yeah, I do. This guy doesn’t have the balls to really do the job. He’s a gutless little moral, social and intellectual gimp who skulks around and makes photoshop “cartoons” and logically-and-factually-void proclamations because he can’t hold his own in a face to face…anything. Debate, discussion, fight, whatever. He’s nothing. Zero. I’ve wiped smarter opponents and bigger threats off the sole of my shoe walking through Mears Park.

Reporter E (Star/Tribune): Do you have any comment about Scott Johnson writing for True North along with Tom Swift, as our man “Avidor” reported in “Buzz.mn”?

Mitch Berg: …and Black Ink, and the Daily Kos, and the Daily Mole?

Reporter E (Star/Tribune): Er…yes.

Mitch Berg: OK. Three parts to my response.

1. Scott and Tom are both friends of mine. Ken “Avidor” Weiner isn’t fit to carry either of their gig bags, as a writer or a person.
2. Weiner’s big “point” against Tom is that he’s “nasty” – that he hits, he claims, below the belt. It’s crap, of course. But, um, so? Welcome to the blogosphere! It’s not like Weiner is a model of detached restraint! His beef is the same one Salieri had with Mozart; he realizes he’s not as good as either – or any – of the people he stalks.
3. Eric Black? Steve Perry? You share a local left-wing blogosphere with Ken “Avidor” Weiner and Kevin McKay and Mark “Revolutionary Gonads” Gisleson. By the standard that the Daily Mole and Black Ink are endorsing, you are guiltyi by association. Defend yourselves.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Sure, in the same way that a three-year-old “hit a nerve” when she colors on the walls!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: [Thinks] Or maybe in the same way as Andy Milonakis…no, not quite that bad.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Nope.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Nope-er.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Still no.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: I refer you to my friend John McGinley, who said it best.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: [yawns]

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: I will give my next response in sign language:

Reporter G (Ha’aretz): You’ve been very critical of the local leftymedia…
Mitch Berg: Look, when a hack like Karl Bremer can get coverage in the Daily Mole and Black Ink, for a baldfaced “guilt by association” smear, and get it with breathless credulity to boot, it should make people ask questions.

Last question…

Reporter H (E News): Any truth to the bit we read in the Strib’s Blog House that…

Mitch Berg: Probably not.

Thanks!

[Pandemonium as reporters race for their phones]

UPDATE:  Learned Foot is doing a post-conference poll on the issue at hand.

And then, as he says, let’s finish this.

Maloney The Radio Equalizer: Brian Maloney

While talk hosts and bloggers across the country have been pounding away on the subject, the Boston Globe hasn’t found room for a single mention of the ongoing anti- troops outrage in Cambridge.

Earlier this week, the rabidly anti- American city banned local Boy Scouts from collecting items for care packages destined for soldiers in Iraq, calling their efforts a “political statement”.

Proving that liberals really are against the troops, the resulting outrage has been covered extensively by talkers, including KSFO/ San Francisco hosts Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers, syndicated talker Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, Boston’s Howie Carr and many more.

Maloney overreaches, to be sure – not all liberals are against the troops. Far from it, indeed. But it does take me back to one of my most popular posts.

[cue the harps and the soft focus]

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy:

If You Believe: …that America has problems – huge problems – then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that America’s problems make it an inherently rotten concept, then maybe you should think about whether you’re living in the right place.

If You Believe: …that America’s projection of power around the world is immoral – then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that any projection of American power is inherely unjust because it’s America, then maybe you should be living in, say, Sweden? Just an idea.

If You Believe: …that capitalism is wrong because its inequalities are inherely unjust, then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that the free market is inherently, irrevocably evil, perhaps China would be a better fit? Just suggesting…

If You Believe: …that invading Iraq was wrong, then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that our temporary administration of Iraq is worse than Hussein’s 30 year reighn of horrors, then perhaps you should rot in hell we need to have an attitude adjustment.

Just a hunch.

In three years, I’ve found little reason to change it.

Not only does the new local deep-lefty-pocket-financed “Daily Mole” provide a shoddy knock-off of “citizen journalism”…

…it provides and even shoddier knockoff of our own regular (some might say chronic) commenter Angryclown.

Pathetic.  Even my commenters are better than the Mole’s “regular” contribs.

It truly is better here.

Smoke-free crusaders may now be at your door

One anti-smoking group will kick-start a campaign this week to encourage landlords to outlaw smoking in their buildings. While the program would be purely voluntary for now, some communities might follow two California cities by considering broader ordinances that would apply to multi-unit dwellings.Smoke-free groups are also considering pushes to restrict drivers who smoke with kids in their cars, park users who smoke and even cigarette-dangling youth-sport coaches. Still, condos and apartments appear to be the next battleground in the state’s smoking wars.

And after that, maybe they can go after people who talk on their cell phones in the rest room?

Maybe?

Because that is a scourge upon the land.

…before this happened.

How was it Carl Sagan described the US and USSR? “Two bald men in a room full of gasoline fighting over a comb with a blowtorch?”

That might have been it.

My daughter and I went to a “Level Three Sex Offender Community Notification Meeting” last week in the neighborhood. It was an educational experience.

While the thought that there’s a registered predator living in the neighborhood is disquieting, I was surprised – and put slightly more at ease – to learn that about 90% of Level Three offenders offend against either people they know (friends, co-workers) or their children. No, that’s not “good”, but offenses against complete strangers are rare.

Which isn’t to say I left the meeting feeling all warm and fuzzy. The offender – one of about ten in Saint Paul proper, and one of two in my neighborhood, although in a fairly far reach of the neighborhood – has been released from prison for the third time since doing his original bid for a sexual assault in 1997. He keeps getting tossed back…

…for failing to register.

The good news? The Saint Paul Police has a really good record at finding and re-arresting these people. The bad news? “Really Good” isn’t “Perfect”, and behind the “win/loss” stats, the “losses” sometimes add up to some pretty horrific crimes.

All by way of noting that USATODAY has noted the same phenomenon nationwide:

•Two-thirds of the states allow convicted sex offenders, including violent predators, to register as homeless or list a shelter or inexact location as long as they stay in touch with police.

•At least a dozen states list hundreds of sex offenders without specific addresses. California registered 2,716 as “transient.” Washington state listed 564 as homeless, but the number is probably much higher, says Carolyn Sanchez of the Washington State Patrol.

•Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maine and other states say the number of homeless sex offenders is rising. Landlords often won’t rent to them, and laws in dozens of states and hundreds of cities bar them from living near areas where kids play.

In fact, at least two of Saint Paul’s level three offenders live within two blocks of city playgrounds.

An exact count of convicted sex offenders who are homeless could not be done because not all state records are online. Some states do not list homeless as an address but allow shelters, post office boxes, highway mile markers and streets without house numbers.

In the 18 years since Jacob Wetterling’s kidnapping (a watershed event in this field, say the cops who spoke at the meeting last week), things have come a long way.

But I’m watching my street even more carefully these days.

It’s not just the Islamofascist variety that are causing problems along the southern border:

“They’ve got weapons, high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, Global Positioning Systems, spotters and can react faster than we are able to,” said Shawn P. Moran, a 10-year U.S. Border Patrol veteran who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego.

“And they have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line, with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles,” he said. “There are so many agent ‘rockings’ that few are even reported anymore. If we wrote them all up, that’s all we would be doing.”

Assaults against Border Patrol agents have more than doubled over the past two years, many by Mexico-based alien and drug gangs more inclined than ever to use violence as a means of ensuring success in the smuggling of people and contraband.

High fence.  Narrow gate.

A neighbor of mine points me to the same article Ann Althouse hit today, at the U of Wisconsin paper.  Students in the U of W system are allowed to keep their hunting guns on campus,  albeit secured by campus security:

Kooi loves to hunt and didn’t want to give up the sport at college. He’s one of about 115 UW-Stevens Point students who store their weapons — guns, knives, bows and arrows — on campus at a secure site controlled by campus police.

Six of the UW-System’s 13 four-year colleges, including UW-Madison, operate such sites, a nod to the prevalence and intensity of the state’s hunting culture. The storage sites are at their busiest right now with this weekend’s opening of the gun deer season.

Ann was sanguine about the news:

The University of Wisconsin is not a gun-free zone.

Wish I could share Ann’s enthusiasm.  The next graf highlights why:

Heightened security concerns following a shooting massacre in April at Virginia Tech have not derailed the storage sites. In fact, supporters say they are needed now more than ever to keep campuses safe.

While I’m happy that the U of W system has stuck a thumb in the eye of political correctness, that last bit makes no sense.  A shotgun locked in a police storage locker does absolutely no good against a Virginia-Tech-style shooting.

Perhaps worse, it’s persuading at least one group of kids that there’s a little liberty – the actual possession of your firearms – that it’s perfectly acceptable to give up if you’re a law-abiding citizen.

One or two steps up, one step back.  We can hope.

Embedded in one of Michael Yon’s Dispatches from a few weeks ago,

A ping-pong fad is sweeping through Fallujah.[Official U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Stephen M. DeBoard]

This is a truly wonderful sign.  No people that genuinely appreciate Table Tennis – the king of sports – can stay in the wilderness for too long.

Read the rest of the post, if you haven’t already.

Ken “Avidor” Weiner is apparently using the Strib’s “Buzz.mn” to carry on his obsession with trying to “smear” regional conservatives with the most tenuous possible “guilt” by association. 

Let’s see how many times the former Screw Magazine “art director” bobbles the “facts”:

Time Magazine named Powerline Blog of the Year in 2004. Perhaps as an indicator of how low the GOP has sunk,

Well, there’s one. True North is utterly unconnected with the Minnesota GOP.  Indeed, distance from the party is enshrined in the “Manifesto” I wrote for the site. 

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its publication to spread lies?

Powerline’s Scott Johnson has been reduced to blogging with Tom “Swiftee” Swift, one of the nastiest, sleaziest bloggers in Minnesota’s political blogosphere.

Tom is nasty – but as he’s never actually worked for Screw magazine, that accusation comes across as a bit…disingenuous?

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its official blog to carry on his vendettas? 

 If you have spent any time surfing Minnesota’s political blogs, you will have come across the nasty comments of MOB troll Tom Swift, alias “Swiftee”. Swiftee’s modus operandi is to make the blogosphere as creepy and scary as this picture he posted of himself on his blog.

Weiner then goes on, essentially, to whinge about how sad Swiftee’s cartoons (along with the fact that Swiftee is generally regarded as a better cartoonist than Weiner) make him.

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use their house blog as his therapeutic sounding board?

Someone buy Cake Eater Kathy a drink or ten:

Ahem

I Am Cancer Free!
Seriously.

No residual cancer in my chest, abdomen or pelvis. Also, no new cancer in my chest, abdomen or pelvis.

It’s all good, kids.

To paraphrase Dr. Academic, I’m as close to cured as I’m going to get.

Thanks for all of your support, my devoted Cake Eater readers. You’re a bunch of rock stars.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to go and get stinkin’ drunk.

Kudos to Kathy.  And whatever it was – God, physiology, capricious fate, the karmic imprecations of all of her fans – that got her here.

I might just have to tip one myself, here…

Chad at the Fraters notes notes one of the things Europeans have consistently gotten right – drinking.  Specifically, drinking laws.  Chad notes the lethal effect (on few, but tragedy has no minimum threshold) of the 21 minimum age:

Instead of trying to come up with a largely arbitrary age (why twenty-one and not twenty or twenty-two?) when you let people drink legally, why not make it the same age that we legally consider people adults, eighteen? But instead of making it a milestone for being able to drink as much as you want, let’s return it to an event that carries with it added responsibility along with its freedoms.

You’re eighteen. It’s time to grow up and act like an adult. It’s time to be serious about your life. You can drink and have fun, but you’ll be expected to drink like a adult.

You can vote and join the military at 18; you can help determine this nation’s governance, operate a machine gun (in the military), become a cop in some jurisdictions, start training in any number of medical and emergency-response trades…

…but you can’t drink?

In Europe, the “forbidden fruit” aspects of alcohol just don’t exist – and the punishments for inappropriate behavior are sure and strict (you don’t want to get busted for drunk driving anywhere in Europe).  Sure, Italian and Scottish footie fans get drunk and obnoxious – but does anyone think that imposing and jacking up a drinking age would change that?

Part of this would involve introducing alcohol at an earlier age in controlled settings. There’s no reason a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be taught how to enjoy a glass of wine or beer with the family at dinner. Alcohol shouldn’t be a taboo and drinking shouldn’t be all about getting loaded and acting stupid. Kids should be taught both the positive side and the peril of drinking. The message shouldn’t be all or nothing, that you’re either a teetotaler or an alcoholic. The path of moderation is one that far too few Americans discover until well past the time they should have.

What we’re doing now is clearly not working. You can further infantilize society by move the drinking age out again, you can prohibit people from drinking at midnight on their twenty-first birthday (as Minnesota does), and you can warn people all you want about the dangers of binge drinking. But until you change the culture of drinking in America and teach people how to drink responsibly before they reach adulthood, it’s not going to make a difference.

Chad is right.

On that anyway.  On the other hand (emphasis added)…

Eric Felten is a cocktail connuissuer

That’d be Connoisseur.  I mean, if you’re gonna be a foodie boozie, you’re gonna have to get that one straight, at least…

I’m all about the learning.

Jeff Kouba at TvM has a few pet peeves:

1) “Door Close” buttons on elevators that don’t work

2) Poorly done bridges in pop songs

3) Having to wait to pay for the food in restaurants. In a perfect world, you’d pay as soon as the food came so you could leave when you’re done.

4) Reporters who say “we’re following the story” when they really mean they’re hitting the Refresh button on The Drudge Report the same as you.

5) Bloggers who say “I reported” such and such when they just cut and pasted from an article online.

Or anyone – from bloggers up through Geraldo Rivera – who ever uses the phrase “this reporter” in any unironic sense.

6) Books with prologues.

7) Refrigerator doors that keep closing on you when you’re getting something out. Stop helping me. I’ll close the door myself.

8) Drivers who treat a crowded, rush hour freeway like the Grand Prix, just to go from two cars behind you to two cars ahead of you.

Hoooyeah. Absofrigginlutely.

A few additions of my own:

1. Pronouncing the word “processes” “Pro-ses-SEES”, with big emphasis on the last syllable.  Ick.
2. Anyone wearing those Celtic Thorn tattoos around their arm, that doesn’t have Celtic Warrior’s Union card in their wallet.
3. Guys in pageboy haircuts.  Thanksfully, this fad’s bus seems to have left the station.  For now.
4. Guys with pony tails and earrings.  Either one is acceptable.  Both are not.

And oh so many more.

UPDATE:  Justin emails:

> Also, here’s a linguistic pet-peeve of similar ilk: “matrix” instead of
> “chart” or “table.” Not every Excel spreadsheet is a “matrix.” I did
> four sems of calculus; I’ll show you a real matrix! 

Jeez, yeah.  I hate that one too.

Oh, yeah – and let me add to that:

Companies that incorporate “being 10 minutes late to meetings” into their corporate culture

and

Replacing “meetings” with “phone conferences”.  In my experience, no “meeting” that was comprised of people sitting around in headsets ever ended with anything getting done. 

That is all.

(Or…is it?)

Rosner at Ha’aretz notes that  the Democratic prez candidates sound a lot like…neocons.

But the even more amazing thing about the Pakistan chapter of the debate was the extent to which the Democratic candidates sounded almost like – well – neocons.Consider their praise for democracy and their insistence that the Bush administration should be pushing Pakistan’s President to allow elections in Pakistan to move forward. Consider the talk about how democracy in countries like Pakistan contributes to America’s national security (Clinton). Consider their practical dismissal of the danger attached to a destabilized Pakistan (Dodd was the exception, saying that “When you take the oath of office (for the presidency) January 20th, you promise to do two things: protect and defend the United States and protect yourselves from enemies foreign and domestic.”)

Interesting that the Administration has had to adopt – at least operationally – a more realpolitik-y approach on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, promoting stability and strong traditional institutions (like the sheikhs and tribes) over surface indications of democracy, for at least the time being, while the left is moving into the space the Administration has for the moment vacated.

Consider all their statements and you?ll reach one of two conclusions:
Either everything is politics, and when Bush does A (avoids pushing the Pakistani President) the Democrats must say B no matter what; or, as much as the Democrats want to deny it, the Bush years did influence the way they think about the world.

I’ll take (C):  All of the above, but with a healthy dollop of Bush Derangement slathered on top.

Last week, Lori Sturdevant’s synonym for “raising taxes” and “paying for DFL gigantism” was “Ideas”.

Here’s hoping the word “ideas” survives the brush with duckspeak. 

But we move onward.  This week, Ms. Sturdevant – the DFL’s highest-ranking PR flak in the Twin Cities, albeit one working undercover as a “columnist” at the Strib – tries to hijack the word “leadership”:

“Minnesota’s Leadership Drought” was the topic suggested to the dinner speaker at the Nov. 8 annual meeting of the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities.

Gives you a clue about the mood of this state’s midsize city mayors this fall, doesn’t it?

Why, yes.  Yes it does.

One might suspect that “mood” could also be expressed as “we miss the good old days, when we could count on the redistribution program called “Local Government Aid” to camouflage our spending, rather than to jack up taxes and take accountability for doing it ourselves“.

Onward:

The six mayors and one mayoral stand-in who came to the Capitol Thursday were no more charitable about the quality of leadership they’ve encountered of late in and around Cass Gilbert’s dome.

Their complaint: They are on the brink of enacting big property tax increases and cuts in city services next year — and they wouldn’t be in that ugly spot, if the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty had come to terms on a tax bill last May.

Well, to be accurate, the “terms” were pretty clear; no new ones.

It’s the likes of Sturdevant and the DFL (pardon the redundancy) that seem to be unclear on the concept. 

Pawlenty, being the guy with the “no new taxes” reputation and the power to call a special session, came in for the most pointed mayoral prodding.

“It just takes the governor doing what mayors do every day, and that’s bring people together and lead,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.

Well, to be fair to Pawlenty, he is leading.  The assembled mayors (only two of whom are named in the piece, since we’re on the subject of “accountability”) just don’t want to follow.

Which is their right – they were elected on their platforms, which, one might guess (and one would have to guess, since only Cook and Rybak are named), of providing more “services” but letting other people pay for them.

Strange, isn’t it, a few others muttered when the tape recorders were off, that a governor so resistant to state tax increases is so cavalier about city taxes going up and up.

Cavalier?

Hardly – or so I hope.  The small-government conservative in me hopes Pawlenty is on a considered path of pushing the bill for the gigantism of DFL-clogged city government back where the policies are set – in the various DFL-clogged City Halls of this state.

But I’m nothing if not an optimist.

I, like a lot of regional B- and C-list conservative blogs, have noticed a bit of a traffic slump this past few months.

Looking at my server logs over the weekend I’m happy to say – the drought is over.

Must be an election coming on…

(Naturally, the holiday week kinda crunches that…)

It’ll be my first National Ammo Day:

Monday, November 19th is National Ammo Day, described as a BUYcott of ammunition. The goal of National Ammo Day is to empty the ammunition from the shelves of your local gun store, sporting goods, or hardware store and put that ammunition in the hands of law-abiding citizens.According to the National Ammo Day website, each law-abiding supporter of the right to keep and bear arms is encouraged to buy 100 rounds of their favorite ammunition. Supporters are exhorted to make your support of the Second Amendment known–by voting with your dollars!

I’ll be dashing out for a box of .38 Special grannyloads.

I’ve written a lot about my mother’s father, Don Hall. 

In his almost ninety years, I learned a lot about him.  He’d been a superstar athlete at Jamestown College in the thirties; he’d worked on a CCC project to build the college stadium that still stands there.  He coached the last undefeated regular season/playoff/championship string (1940, Grand Forks Central) in the history of North Dakota high school hoops.  I drove with him at least once as he drove about the hinterlands of western North Dakota, selling drugs [*].  I had the benefit of being nearly forty when he died; I spent plenty of time with him; long enough to introduce him to his great-grandkids. 

I was never that lucky with my Dad’s father, Oscar Berg, who’d be celebrating his 114th birthday if he were alive today.  He – along with my grandmother – was the proprietor of “Berg Studio”, a photography shop in Jamestown for 30-odd years.  Oscar was a great photographer; some of his work still floats around central North Dakota, in thousands of senior photos and wedding pictures hanging on walls crammed with shots of peoples’ grand and great-grandparents, and panoramic shots of towns and National Guard units and Masonic Lodge picnics hanging in local museums and city halls.

He died, apparently of a heart attack, in March of 1942, leaving my grandma to run the photography studio and raise Dad.  I know him only from photographs; my brother Jim inherited the looks, the lucky sod (and my son Zam got his eyes, I think). 

He’d done a bunch of other things – I’m still not entirely sure about what, although I know he lived in Saint Paul for a while; my Dad has an old photo of him in a streetcar conductor’s uniform. 

 He was born on this date in 1893.  It’s strange, sometimes, thinking I’m just two generations removed from the nineteenth century. 

[*] to pharmacists, of course.

Sitting in Dunn Brothers downtown.

Trying to get onto KoolAid Report:

Access to the page:

http://koolaidreport.blogspot.com

… has been denied for the following reason:

Weighted phrase limit exceeded.

You are seeing this error because what you attempted to access appears to contain, or is labeled as containing, material that has been deemed inappropriate.

If you have any queries contact your ICT Co-ordinator or Network Manager.

Note to Dunn’s:

That is all.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I “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” – As this is written, Ed is stuck in Houston. I will be in next, from 1-3. Will there be a guest star? We’ll see.
• 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!

It is so good to have Fishsticks back blogging. 

Over at TrueNorth, he tackles last week’s Anti-Strib flap:

For the record, it’s ignorant, and in the character of “dump” blogs, it clouds an issue more than enlightens it. It is more embarrassing to the conservative audience it would support than to the people it attacks or the liberal left.

While as I noted last week I think Eberly has learned a lot from this dustup (more than any comparable leftyblogger would under similar circumstances; when was the last time you saw  a regional leftyblogger get called on the carpet by his own fellow bloggers for an ethical or moral lapse, much less actually acknowledge the problem the way Tracy did?), Westover agrees about the upshot:

Racist? I tend to reserve the “R” word for people that take action based on race, but the post certainly violates the conservative principle of judging individuals and not aggregating people by ethnicity or some other characteristic.

 Not to speak for either Westover or Eberly, but if you’re a first-principles conservative, that is among the most damning indictments of racism, casual or otherwise; that it treats people as groups and categories (to say nothing of wrongly) rather than as individuals.

There’s a discussion to be had there, naturally.

Of course, no discussion is needed about the left’s response; Fishsticks loads his cannon with grapeshot and lowers them to deck level in re Karl Bremer’s vacuous attack on all regional conservative bloggers and, incidentally, Eberly:

As to the responses that included my name, they are worthy of the original post – they do the same thing, aggregate everyone associated with the MOB with an ignorant idea that, in fact, violates conservative principles.
 
If anyone were interested in really busting the Anti-Strib post, he might have started a conversation about the Iroquois constitution.

Read the whole thing.  Welcome Fishsticks back.

And marvel at how much more lopsided the intellectual battle among the bloggers in this town just got.

Apropos nothing.

It just occurred to me that I’ve never used a Metallica reference for a post title.

Another life’s goal, accomplished.

I’m looking for the first instance of someone in lefty politics or the media taking this news out of context:

Attacks against British and Iraqi forces have plunged by 90 percent in southern Iraq since London withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, the commander of British forces there said.

The presence of British forces in downtown Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Maj. Gen. Graham Binns told reporters Thursday on a visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone.

I’m gonna watch for talking heads, leftybloggers and MSM stopping the report right there.

Of course, that wouldn’t be the whole story:

With an overwhelmingly Shiite population, Basra has not seen the level of sectarian violence that has torn Iraq apart since the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad.

But it has seen major fighting between insurgents and coalition troops, as well as between Shiite militias vying for control of the city and its security forces.

British officials expected a spike in such “intra-militia violence” after they pulled back from the city’s center, and were surprised to find none, Binns said.

And watch for this bit here…:

“That’s because the Sadrist militia is all powerful here — more powerful than Badr. If Badr was allowed to take on JAM in Basra, they’d lose pretty quickly,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

…to be portrayed as a failure, rather than a key part of fighting this sort of counterinsurgency; picking the most powerful, most stability-enhancing, most co-optable local faction and playing it against the others. It’s counterintuitive to people who are commited to democracy, now, including many neoconservatives. (Steven Vincent approached it suspiciously but clinically in his writing about the British zone; he was eventually murdered in Basra).