…after Christmas.

It’s a Christmas poem by SaintPaulicy that should chill the heart of all Saint Paulites.

Last May, I reported on an absurd lawsuit by Minneapolis taxi owners to cap the number of cab licenses in the city…on Fifth Amendment grounds:

owners of Minneapolis cab licenses, who’ve benefitted immensely from government regulations artificially driving down the supply of cabs in Minneapolis, are sueing on Fifth Amendment grounds to protect a “right” to income that exists only because of government intervention!

The owners’ “logic”; government adding more licenses was a “taking”.  Never mind that they “took” something – a monopoly – that existed only due to government action.

King reports that the madness is over:

The case of Minneapolis taxi cab licenses (previously reported here) has now been dismissed by a judge, making it possible for free entry into the Minneapolis cab market. The Institute for Justice is doing a bang-up job for economic liberty and has brought the immigrant groups that sought entry into the cab market a nice Christmas gift.

Sometimes it feels like the good guys never win in court.  Nice to see it works, sometimes.

Tom Cruise.

How do people think of him in the US? Good actor, but kind of a nutjob, what with all the bouncing around and the silent childbirth and the Scientology?

I’m probably not far off, right?

I’m not sure how much weight to give a single newspaper column (albeit a column in a relatively conservative paper by regional standards), but it’d seem Cruise’s decision to do a movie about Claus Von Stauffenberg – the Prussian Junker officer who tried and barely failed to assassinate Hitler – is resonating among Germans:

Es bedurfte eines Querdenkers, um dieses Vorurteil zu durchbrechen. Es bedurfte eines Weltstars, um sich damit im Ausland Gehör zu verschaffen. Durch seine Entscheidung, Graf Stauffenberg sein Gesicht zu leihen, wird Tom Cruise das Bild, das die Welt sich von uns Deutschen macht, verändern. Das Ansehen des Landes zu retten, gerade auch im Ausland, war einer der wichtigsten Beweggründe Stauffenbergs bei seiner Tat. Durch Tom Cruises mutige Entscheidung, diese Rolle zu spielen, wird Stauffenbergs Anliegen auf mittelbare Weise doch noch verwirklicht. Eine breite Öffentlichkeit wird anhand seiner Geschichte verstehen, dass man sich dem Unmenschlichen widersetzen kann, und dass Heldenmut und eine menschliche Haltung noch wichtiger sind als der Erfolg einer Tat.

What? You took Spanish like the rest of the “path of least resistance” crowd? OK, auf Englisch:

It took an unconventional thinker to break through this prejudice. It required a world-class superstar to get that message to audiences abroad. With his decision to lend Graf von Stauffenberg a face, Tom Cruise will change the image that the world has of us Germans. To rescue the image of his country – especially abroad – was one of the key motives Stauffenberg had for his deeds [attempting to assassinate Hitler]. Because of Cruise’s courageous decision to play this role, he has indirectly fulfilled Stauffenberg’s intentions. Based on his story, a huge audience will come to understand that one can oppose inhumanity, and that a hero’s courage and nobility are even more important than the success of his deeds.

So I’ve wondered for years – how badly do the Germans want the world to ignore, or at least temper their view of, the Holocaust and World War II?

It’s true – there were Germans who resisted the Nazis.  Unlike Stauffenberg – who planted a bomb that came within an unlucky fluke of killing Hitler in mid-war, and who died for his efforts – most died, unlamented, in concentration camps or Gestapo prisons.  Some fled Germany (and some of them turned around and fought with the Allies).  They were a thin film among the German people, many of whom were enthusiastic Nazis, very many of whom (if you believe Goldhagen) were culturally and theologically anti-semitic, most of whom acquiesced with Naziism for whatever reason.

But I’ve known a zillion Germans.  I speak, or at least spoke, the language well enough to get past just the words.  Germany’s done a lot to purge itself of the mindset that led to its many, many sins (as even Goldhagen noted in the afterword to Hitler’s Willing Executioners).  So I can’t say that I blame them for wanting to show some part of the other side of their culture.

I can’t wait to see it, honestly.
(Via ModVoice)

Fraters notes a piece by Kim Strassel that sums up my big problem with Huckabee (emphasis added by me):

Since the beginning of 2007, the Democratic National Committee has released 102 direct attacks on Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani has warranted 78; John McCain 68; Fred Thompson 21. Mike Huckabee? Four. The most recent of these landed back in March. GOP voters may not have examined Mr. Huckabee’s record, but the left has–and they love what they see.

The optimist and idealist in me wants to believe that the Media are just acting like Lori Sturdevant; lifting up the Republicans who act the most like Democrats (only to cut them down without mercy the moment they turn into actual Republicans.

The cynic in me counters; would the media be pushing a Republican they couldn’t turn around and destroy?

Elder:

Democrats love the smell of Huckabee’s ethical lapses in the past. It smells like victory.

Don’t buy it, Republicans. The media is setting Huckabee – and swing voters – for a big, fat, Hillary slapshot.

I’ve said it before; part of me wants to be able to support John McCain.

In many, many ways, he’s the best conservative of the bunch.  And, as Ed notes (in re a poll that shows him with the lowest negatives among the GOP field):

John McCain may get the best bump from this poll. People wonder whether he could win a Republican primary, but he has the lowest opposition numbers in both the general population and the unaffiliated population. His -6% in the latter group makes him the most electable among the front-runners of both parties. In a race where no one has captured the passion of the electorate, it could be enough of an edge for McCain to make the electability argument his own.

And, I suspect, he could fix that whole “nomination” thing in three not-simple-at-all steps:  repudiating the McCain-Feingold laws, getting religion on immigration, and making some kind of amend or another on the whole Gang of Fourteen thing.

Even two out of three would go a long way.

I want to support McCain, in many ways, sooooo badly.  And yet those three things are killers.

…what’s funnier; that someone apparently hacked a computer in orthodox-puritanical Iran, to display pornograhic images on an LCD billboard…

…or listening to the Iranian guys filming the display (pretty much NSFW) hoot and holler like a bunch of junior high kids who just found a Playboy in the alley.

Shane MacGowan turns 50 today, believe it or not. And ten years ago, I’d have never believed it.

And no, he’s not slacked off the booze one bit:

It’s a milestone most people thought Shane MacGowan would never live to see. But on Christmas Day the legendary Pogues hellraiser will celebrate his 50th birthday.And as the booze-loving Irishman raises (presumably several) glasses to toast his half-century tomorrow, he is determined that the party will carry on right into the New Year.

Why break the habit of a lifetime?

Read the whole thing. Learn about MacGowan’s teeth.

Ugh.

From the 2,000 year old blogger Luke:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ^[a] the Lord.

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

…will be pretty nonexistant.

Merry Christmas, all!

I’ll say this – it’s not the weirdest Christmas video of all time. Half of the Sex Pistols and 3/4 of Thin Lizzie doing a rum-sodden Christmas carol.

Or at least a lyp-sync of one.

Of course, no Top40 Christmas would be complete without this, or for that matter this.

And of course, Christmas isn’t Christmas without this. And yes, I do miss Kirsty MacColl more every year.

Well, no lip-synching this idea: Merry Christmas, all!

Christmas, for me, is a challenge.  And I mean that in a good way.

And I don’t just mean in a theological way – although Easter is the real existential throw-down, Christmas issues challenges to the believer as well.

But for me, the challenge is to both feel and exhibit the spirit of Christmas – really, the plural spirits of Christmas, sacred and social and secular.  And I’m not pollyanna enough not to know that the pressure is there; theologically, the believer wants the season to be a revelation to him/her and the whole family; socially, the pressure is on to be happy, dammit.  For many, the holidays dredge up iffy-to-terrible family memories – I’m lucky that way.  For people with families, the pressure is there to make sure the kids have a memorable time, one that they’ll remember fondly to their own kids, and grandkids, long after we’re gone.  And the idea of failing on any of those fronts – wallowing in childhood angst, feeling stressed and depressed, worrying about the memories you’re leaving your kids – is enough to shave a couple of inches off the top of any holiday joy you might be trying to feel.

It was years ago, surrounded in holiday-time angst and years before I ever heard Dennis Prager do his “Happiness Hour”, that I decided “Bullshit”.  No matter what the financial stress or personal turmoil, I was going to enjoy Christmas, first and foremost, period, end of sentence.  I would put aside whatever angst befell me, and just focus on what mattered; the two vexing-but-wonderful kids that God blessed me with, my extended family, the great blessings I have in my life, and above all the birth of Christ.

And so too this year.  The vexations are there; teenagers, mortgage sweats, the onset of a busy, busy year. 

But the blessings outweigh them logarithmically.  And there is so much to be happy about.

So from Bun, Zam, Clu, Nosemarie, Candy and I, may you have a blessed Christmas season.  If you’re one of my Christian readers, God bless.  If you believe in something else, please accept a big Care package of goodwill, care of the Savior I’m celebrating.  If you believe in nothing, well – have a good couple of days off.  You deserve it too.

If you’re one of my readers serving this country this Christmas, especially overseas, please accept my sincere thanks and the hopes that the New Year will see you home, safe, with your various missions a lot closer to accomplished. 

And thank you all for another great year on this blog.  Having an audience for my little musings, ponderings and rantings is a gift every single day.  Thank you.

OK, so Da Bearss aren’t going downtown this season, most likely.

But day-um:

With strong gusty winds, intermittent snow showers and a wind chill reading of 18 degrees below zero, you expected to see a penguin waddle onto the field Sunday at Soldier Field.

But the Bears seemed perfectly comfortable in the Arctic-like conditions, hammering the rival Green Bay Packers 35-7 in a game that was just as lopsided as the final score indicated.

And this bit here feels like old times:

Chicago’s defense and special teams dominated in the second half. After Alex Brown’s interception set up Kyle Orton’s 3-yard TD pass to Desmond Clark, Charles Tillman blocked Jon Ryan’s punt and Corey Graham returned it 7 yards for his first career touchdown.

And to all of us who still worship at the shrine of Butkus, there was elation in Mudville:

Brian Urlacher later put an exclamation point on the blowout early by returning a Brett Favre interception 85 yards for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter. It was Urlacher’s third TD in eight NFL seasons and first on an interception return.

If Ditka woulda suited up at tight end, it woulda been 235-7.

OK, so next year, Da Bearss are going all the way.

It was Wednesday, December 23, 1987.  I’d negotiated a couple of days off from the various bars I’d been working to take my first Christmas at my parents’ place since 1984.

CLOSED CIRCUIT TO MY KIDS:  Skip past the next couple of paragraphs, until you get to the part where it says “KIDS MAY REJOIN THIS POST”.

My guitar player Casey – a fellow Jamestown native – and I carpooled it back to Jamestown for Christmas.

I used to carpool back to Jamestown with a couple of different friends, back then.  My pal Rich and I used to go in on a sixpack of Summit (brand new on the market back then) and drink one every 100 miles, on the road.  Kept us nice and cool for long summer trips.  (Duly noted:  It was stupid, and illegal as hell.  We were 24 and immortal.  So sue us all). 

Casey?  Well, he was a bit more of a drinker than Rich and I, at that time of his life (but then, weren’t we all?).  When I picked him up at his place in Minneapolis, at about four in the afternoon, he brought out a case of Carlings and a pint of peppermint schnapps.

We rolled up Lyndale and out onto I94, heading west, doing our best to bypass the morass of construction on US12, which – someday waaaaay off in the future – was going to be something called “I394”, but at the moment was merely a huge traffic cluster-hug.

We talked about music as we trundled west through the freezing night (below zero, if I remember correctly, although everything that winter seemed like it was below zero).  As the sun set, Casey broke out the beer.  

The rule of thumb – when I was driving back to Jamestown with Rich, and being a “responsible” drinking driver – was one beer every 100 miles.  No more, no faster.

Casey got a running start, popping a couple before I got into them. 

By the time we got to Fargo, we were down to maybe ten beers; I’d had four or five; we were both pretty impaired.

And then it started.  One of the things that had broken up the original band was that Casey and Bill  – and me, I guess, in retrospect – were two-stage drunks.  

• Stage 1:  Jolly, gregarious, happy. 
• Stage 2:  Ugly, belligerent, self-pitying.

Stage 2 kicked in just past Fargo, about eight at night. 

“Mark and Bill don’t like playing with you.  They say you’re a control freak…”, he said.  “They’d like to try a different band”. 

And on.  And on.

I sat, getting more and more numb, only partly from the cheap beer.  Casey kept on talking about how the rest of the band  just plain didn’t like playing with me.  I got quieter and quieter.  Eventually I didn’t respond; I’d take the occasional sip of beer, and sank further and further into my chair.  It would be probably fifteen years before I heard the term “shame spiral”, but I was in one.

We cracked the bottle of Schnapps around Tower City, trading swigs as we rolled across the drift prairie.  Driving across the prairie at night always felt like space travel; besides the occasional cars, the only visible light was the stars and lights from the farmhouses we were passing – and on a dark enough night, sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.

Finally – around 10PM – we pulled into Jamestown.  There were two beers left, and the schnapps was pretty low.  I drove to Casey’s parents’ place…

…and I stumbled as I got out of the car to open the trunk so he could get his stuff.  I was kinda blotto.  It had snuck up on me, but when it finally caught me, it caught me but good.

“So“, I thought as I drove away, keenly aware I shouldn’t be driving at all, “that’s it, then?  The band is toast?”  Things had been pretty awful for a while, but over?

I felt like my stomach sank into my shoes.

Depressed out of my mind, I drove over to Perkins to get some coffee and greasy onion rings and sober up a bit before I went to my parents’ place.   Of the things I’d moved to the Twin Cities to find two years before – a good job, a band, and a cool girlfriend – I’d peaked at two out of three.  And I was back down to zero. 

Square one.

I sat in the same Perkins I’d sat in a few years ago, on a dozen nearly-identical frigid nights, wondering the same things I’d wondered before I left Jamestown in the first place.  What am I going to do when I grow up?  Is there a place out there where I really belong?

I’d always thought so, before.  On this Wednesday night, I wasn’t so sure. 

I’d given it a mighty shot, and – as it seemed as I sat swirling ketchup with piece of onion ring – whiffed. 

Whiffed badly.

KIDS MAY REJOIN THIS POST.

And then I drove to my parents’ house, and had a joyous reunion.

Katherine Kersten – the best general columnist in the Twin Cities – on the U of M’s continuing effort to expunge Christmas, Christ and Christianity from the U’s public consciousness:

December office parties of any kind are now suspect at our state’s flagship institution of higher education.

The problem, explain [U of M Human Resources orc Dee Ann] Bonebright and [Office of System Academic Administration bureaucrat Julie] Sweitzer in their memo, is that “celebrations held in December tend to make people think of Christmas, whatever the theme.” And who knows where that could lead?

Due to what they call “seasonal creep,” warn Bonebright and Sweitzer, “an event that is meant to be a seasonal celebration [with no allusion to Christmas] suddenly looks very Christmasy when decorated with green and red.”

And here I thought seasonal creep referred to that guy who can’t keep his hands to himself or his nose out of the punch bowl.

Anyway, don’t suppose that including acknowledgements of Hannukah and Kwanzaa can keep an event from looking too Christmasy. That sort of inclusiveness, say Bonebright and Sweitzer, can be seen as “insensitive” and “won’t change the underlying message.”

Like what? Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men?

The U’s burearcrats seem to think that people’s productivity will plummet if they are exposed to – try to keep this straight – people with different worldviews.  People with different traditions, who celebrate different things.  That Moslems, Hindi, or Atheists will be so paralyzed with ire at the notion of people celebrating a Christian (and, these days, secular as well) tradition that they’ll turn into sullen lumps.

Which makes one wonder how a Moslem, Hindu or Atheist manages to do anything at all, in our out of work, in a nation that’s at least nominally 85+% Christian.

Kersten:

But Christmas or holiday parties, or whatever you call them, have a very different purpose. They remind us that life is about more than spreadsheets — that there’s a world beyond the office where real human beings laugh, talk about their families, and share the interests that give their lives meaning, fun and joy.

If we forget this, we risk sucking everything warm and human out of this wonderful season of the year.

The only “warmth” that seems to matter to the U – and much of the rest of official Minnesota – is that tingly feeling you get when nothing, ever, offends anyone, no matter how hard one reaches for it.

My stepson – my ex-wife’s son from her first marriage – is getting married in New York next April.

He and his fiance were in town on Friday for a bridal shower. Bun and I drove out to Saint Louis Park to attend (Zam, being a typical 14 year old, was more interested in going to the party at the Rec Center than hanging around a condo with a bunch of grownups, even if it included his brother and future sister-in-law. Although he did call as the party was breaking up – Rec had let out early, and could I please drive back to Saint Paul through the freezing rain and come and get him and bring him out to the party? He’s so cute…)

Pardon a little reminiscence, here.

I was Will’s stepfather from age nine to about 17 or so. He graduated from high school roughly about the time of the divorce. I haven’t seen him much since then – not so much through alienation as the scrum of life for a couple of adults in fairly different worlds.

Will’s always been a fairly amazing guy. Blazingly sharp as a kid, he was also a very typical teenager; an awful lot like Zam, in fact, they look very similar when they sleep and act kinda alike when they’re awake (and are equally hard to wake up, come to think of it).

After high school, he took a part-time job with a store in a local “move it yourself” chain. The store – on University Avenue, in Frogtown – was a tumbledown wreck, a dysfunctional mess. Will started as a part-time employee, and in six months was not only managing the place, but had turned it into the region’s star performer. I talked with another store manager in the chain after Will had been there a year and a half or so; “You’re Will‘s stepdad?”, the guy exclaimed. “He’s a rock star in the region!”

He met his fiance, Eve, back in high school. The idealist in me sees the kind of story you want to see in this day and age; they met, they got together, they dated for years; even after she moved back to New York, they had a commuter relationship for several years (and it worked!), he finally moved to New York a few years ago (aided by the company, where he was considered such a key performer that they gave him a regional management job in their Metro NYC office when he said he wanted to move), they got engaged.

The cynic in me thinks…

…oh, who cares what the cynic thinks. I’m going to shut him up for a while.

Anyway. I’m proud of him. And happy for him.

Will has one thing I really envy; having lived in one place into his early twenties, he has one, big, close-knit group of friends, the same people who’ve been in his life since way back when I knew him. It was fun seeing them all again, all grown-up and…adult, in a way that I’d never expected ten-odd years ago. I talked with some of them for the first time in close to ten years; scatterbrained teenagers had turned into…

…well, all manner of adults. Noah – Will’s main pal back then, with whom Will got into all sorts of scrapes and trouble and plenty of fun as well, is a construction project manager (he does a ton of work for a former employer; we know some of the same people), married, with a one-year-old.

It kinda gave me some hope, I thought, after I got home and dealt with another day of Zam-related turmoil.

…
And the cold whack upside the head of realizing that Will is almost exactly the same age, now, as I was when I met his mother. Was I really that…young, then?

Don’t start singing “The Circle of Life” on me, capisce?

Anyway – congrats, Will and Eve. Can’t wait for the wedding.

The NARN – all six hours – are taking the day off for Christmas today.

The Stroms will apparently be on the air from 9-11, for your weekend live conservative radio fix, though.

From all of us at the Northern Alliance Radio Network, may you have a blessed Christmas.

Ed (channeling Powerline), notes that Anderson Cooper’s big “gotcha” from the debate a few weeks ago, re Giuliani’s alleged misuse of security funds to escort his now-wife, then-mistress about, has come a-cropper.

Not that you’d know it from the Times’ “coverage” of this fact:

The New York Times exonerates Rudy Giuliani from charges that he moved travel expenses around through subsidiary agencies in order to hide his affair with his now-wife, Judith. People looking for that exoneration on their feedreaders will find themselves frustrated. Not only did the Times bury the story on one of its blogs, it put it in a graphic format that doesn’t allow for copy-and-paste. In fact, it isn’t even shown as an entry on the blog itself:

I expect the Times to start printing corrections on the undersides of pieces of used chewing gum, at this rate. 

Of course, even a front-page report on this wouldn’t unring the bell; the damage has been done, and it has been considerable. It looks like the Times wanted to make sure none of it got undone. (via Power Line)

Nope.  No liberal media here.

I used to joke about it; someday, even the hard left won’t be able to deny that Ronald Reagan changed history by setting in motion the events that brought down the USSR.

And when Hollywood and The Media realized this, they’d set in motion the machinery to claim credit for it themselves.

And thus we have Charlie Wilson’s War:

This is progress. With “Charlie Wilson’s War,” a trio of liberal Hollywood A-listers — director Mike Nichols, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and actor-producer Tom Hanks — have made a movie that acknowledges the evil of Soviet communism, celebrates Cold War hawkishness and more or less decries the post-Vietnam evisceration of U.S. intelligence services.

Hey, by 2027, we may even get a film about American war heroes in Iraq.

I do want to see the movie; left-symp filtering aside, it’s one of the great – and heretofore uncovered – subjects of my lifetime; the collapse of the USSR, decried as impossible by the left even as late as 1991, a fait accompli by the time Bill Clinton took office.

It’s possible, too, that the filmmakers have fashioned a new genre of Washington-based drama, one that combines detail-laden high seriousness about geopolitics with the screwball sensibility and smart dialogue of Preston Sturges.

Perhaps.  There’s no denying that Aaron Sorkin is as talented a writer as he is a smug Hollywood liberal.  It’s a maddening conflict for a conservative who loves good art and a good story. 

I’ll have to try to see it over the weekend, and give my review after the holidays…

When even Susan Lenfestey gets on board and declares the surge a success, you know you’re onto something.  Right?

Well, surely the Dems do know there’s something there; they’re phrasing that something as “we never doubted the US military’s ability to pull this off.

Except, as Jeff Kouba catalogues, they surely did:

Here’s the intrepid Susan Lenfestey on how she of course duh! never doubted The Surge would work:

Fair enough. We’re all exhausted from the divisiveness of this war, so in the holiday spirit — and with my fingers crossed — I’ll take a break from the rancor and say what he wants to hear: The Surge is Working.

But the doubt was never about the prowess and might of the American military, or that adding more troops would offer short-term security. …

The doubt was never about the prowess and might of the American military?

*bemused, a puzzled look tugs at his brow*

In the 12/3 issue of the The Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery did a tremendous job of logging the many statements made by Lefties concerned their solid belief in the inevitable success of The Surge.

Jeff pulls out a number of examples showing that, on the hard (and not-so-hard) left, there most definitely were doubts! 

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t all those examples at least a vague, nebulous indication that perhaps our patriotic Democratic Left harbored at least a few, secretly held, never voiced in public niggling doubts about The Surge?

Read both pieces.

Two morons in Sartell pin a woman to the bar and cut off her underwear…:

The two men walk over to the woman, seated at the bar, and Baumgardner pulled out a pocketknife, while Puhalla held her down on the bar by her wrists and forearms.

Baumgardner walked around her from the back, reached in her pants and cut each side of her underwear. At this time, she said, another man came up to her, poked at her chest, and said they should cut that off next. She believed the third man was referring to her bra.

…as a bunch of other “men” stood by:

She yelled for help several times and asked for the bartender to intervene, but he said, “I can’t or they will make things worse for me.” She said there were up to six other men in the bar at the time, and none of them came to her aid either.

During the altercation she lost her shoes. Eventually, she ran barefoot into the bathroom, attempting to hold up her pants.

For the two perps, jail – with ripped underwear – is probably just barely too good for ’em.

For the other “men” involved?  Being forced to spend every night at the “Dam Bar” in Sartell is probably punishment enough, assuming it passes Eighth Amendment muster.

Our friends at the Minnesota Voters Alliance – including regular NARN guest Andy Cilek – have taken the first step in their battle to try to stop the Instant Runoff Voting juggernaut, which has already absorbed Minneapolis and threatens Saint Paul.

A group called the Minnesota Voters Alliance filed suit Thursday in Hennepin County District Court seeking to keep instant-runoff voting from starting up in Minneapolis.

The group’s lawyer, Erick Kaardal, cited an opinion from Attorney General Lori Swanson saying the system of ranking candidates by preference probably isn’t permitted by the state Constitution. That opinion, issued this year, stopped short of calling the system unconstitutional.

Kaardal also referenced a 1915 state Supreme Court case that struck down a Duluth system that ranked candidates.

All the best to the Minnesota Voters Alliance.

I have objections to Instant Runoff, too. But they’re not personal; it’s just business.

———-

Background: I analyze systems – software, hardware, processes, print publications, what have you – to empirically determine how *usable* they are.

And speaking not as a partisan, but as a professional whose entire line of work involves figuring how to make things easier for real people to use, there’s a truism at work whenever people design systems; the designer *always* thinks he/she has designed something
so intuitive that someone’d have to be an idiot not to be able to figure out how to do it. It’s true for programmers writing websites, for executives designing processes for other people, for engineers building freeway ramps, for architects designing public spaces; *everyone* designs things to be blazingly intuitive – to other programmers, executives, engineers or architects.

And when those programmers, managers and engineers watch real people in controlled usability tests actually trying to do real-world things with those websites, processes, ramps and spaces, and making mistakes and doing things they were not intended to to, they tend to have one of the following reactions:

• “Nobody’s that stupid!” But it’s not usually a matter of stupidity. It’s human nature – especially if that human is not a programmer, executive, engineer or architect.
• “It’ll never happen in real life!” But it just did!
• “Wow. Who knew? We gotta redesign this!” These are the good ones…

Allowing that everyone who’s stumping for IRV expresses it via rose-colored glasses (that, too, is human nature), I can see several places where confusion is potentially built into the system.

Allow me to walk through a fairly simple conundrum that faces usability people and, by the way, real people using real systems, drawn not from political ideology (of ANY sort!), but from the experience of someone who has had to ask these questions of programmers, executives and engineers for a living for the past decade:

IRV proponents respond “but it’s simple! You just rank your preferences!”

So when “simply” ranking, say, five candidates from top to bottom, do you number them 1-5, or 5-1?

Remember – in many Asian cultures, 1 is “better” than 5, while many people think bigger numbers are “better” than smaller numbers (like a hockey score).

And if you answer “that’ll be explained in the instructions”, please bear in mind that people – REAL people – tend not to read instructional writing, and retain even less for any amount of time. So – how do you make sure everyone gets the directions the same way? Verbal instructions from poll staff? (Mightn’t those be potentially legally-problematic?)

Will people be able to cast “Tie” votes if they have no preference? Rank everyone “1” (or “5”), or rank five candidates “1,2,2,2,3” or “1,1,3,3,5?”? (If you don’t think people will try, think again!) What’ll happen to the ballots if people try to do that? More importantly, how will people KNOW the consequences of trying that, whatever they are, and whether it’s OK or (emphatically) not?

On what medium do they cast their vote – a paper ballot? Marked with what? Pencil? If they change their mind before submitting the ballot, how are changes made? Erasing numbers? How does one know, for audit purposes, WHO erased the number, then? What if they do a poor job of erasing (with older people with arthritic hands, this is not uncommon); how are ambiguities caused by poor erasing and faint handwriting resolved? How about people who don’t erase, but scribble or overwrite? And let’s not forget that immigrants frequently write numbers differently than Americans do; I run into this myself, since I usually use German numbering, and sometimes people read my “1”s as “7”s, and my “7s” as “4”s (I cross my 7s, European-style); how are these ambiguities to be resolved? And if the answer is “by telling immigrants to make sure they use American numbers”, do you realize the problems you’ll run into?

Indeed, how are the votes of the handicapped to be tallied? How would someone with, say, arthritic hands vote? (I won’t even ask the obvious question about voting for the blind; I’ll have to assume SOMEONE’s on top of that one).

And none of this even touches on the issue of “how the ballots are designed”. And that is a huge issue. Remember – whomever designed the infamous Broward County Butterfly Ballot thought they had a perfectly workable, usable design!

———-

Bear in mind that NONE of the issues I raised above is, in my decade’s experience as a usability geek, outlandish, or even especially far-fetched; certainly none of them are remotely political. These are the sorts of issues someone in my field EXPECTS to see when ANY new system intersects with new users. Smart system owners run usability tests before their system “goes live”, and fix the issues they encounter. Dumb ones…well, thank goodness for them, since usability disasters keep me employed.

I’d be very interested in seeing a real, live, end-to-end, empirical test of an IRV system and all of its components – the ranking system, the ballot and media, the counting process, the system of explaining the process to new voters in various languages – and seeing how it REALLY works in a reasonably-complex, contested polling. (I say “contested” for a reason, by the way; IRV seems to have only been tried in locales with relatively monobloc politics, from what I’ve seen. Without trying to judge the politics themselves, professionally speaking, that’s not necessarily a thorough workout).

I think we owe ourselves a Christmas present:

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs

That’s us – right?

Via Michael Yon, General Barry McCaffrey reports on the situation in Iraq.

Conclusions:

The dysfunctional central government of Iraq, the warring Shia/Sunni/Kurdish factions, and the unworkable Iraqi constitution will only be put right by the Iraqis in their own time—and in their own way. It is entirely credible that a functioning Iraqi state will slowly emerge from the bottom up…with a small US military and diplomatic presence holding together in loose fashion the central government. The US must also hold at bay Iraq’s neighbors from the desperate mischief they might cause that could lead to all out Civil War with regional involvement.

A successful withdrawal from Iraq with the emergence of a responsible unified Iraqi nation is vitally important to the security of the American people and the Mid-East. We are clearly no longer on a downward spiral. However, the ultimate outcome is still quite seriously in doubt.

Read the whole, detailed, even-handed thing.

It was Monday, December 21, 1987.

The DJ service loved me.

I picked up beat-mixing fast. All my years of music paid off in spades; as much as the other guys at the company kvetched about it, it really wasn’t that hard:

• With the first record playing, start the second record in “cue” (playing only in the headphones).
• Speed up the second record (or slow down the first one) one notch, roughly, for every beat-per-minute difference.
• Get the two records so that the snare, high-hat or bass hit, and kept, hitting, at exactly the same time; change the speed on one or both records to get them into sync or, if needed, drag the second record with your thumb (or speed it up by twirling it a little near the spindle) or crank the speed way faster or slower for an instant, to get the beats hitting precisely together.
• With the beats in sync, turn up the volume on the second record, and fade out the first.

And voila – it was a dance party.

It helped that I had a good voice for working a room, and a decent sense of how to work a crowd. The bartenders and owners liked me, since I kept a decent crowd on the floor – and a dancing house is a drinking and tipping house.

City Limits loved me; my second bar, “Jams”, in Brooklyn Center, seemed to dig me as well.

For a quick ‘n dirty, in and out temporary gig, it looked like it’d pay the bills until a radio gig came through.

———-

Liz and Brenda had moved out at the beginning of October. I’d advertised for roommates.

I got two.

“Chris” was a clean-cut, very scandinavian-looking fellow – handsome, blond, outdoorsy-looking. And he had his share of the deposit ready to go.

“Wyatt”, on the other hand, looked like one of the backup singers in “Color Me Badd”; tall, with “Zorba the Greek” good looks and a neatly-trimmed Guido beard, he confessed he’d just gotten out of Hazelden after a run-in with the law after a brief bout of using drugs. He and I hit it off, though. He peeled off his $166 for the deposit, and moved in as Liz and Brenda were moving out.

So by October 5, I had roommates. Whew. Being on the hook for $500 a month would have been a problem.

———-

Let’s back up a minute.

I never had a lot of luck with roommates. Back in college, in my three years in the dorms, I had…:

• one roommate – a bit of an alcoholic – who knocked up his girlfriend, and skipped town.
• another with serious drug and alcohol problems who tried to kill himself with one of my knives (turned out he was dialing with repressed homosexuality; once he came out of the closet, he was a pretty happy camper. This was long after he left college).
• one roommate who…well, I never saw. He had a girlfriend pretty much the whole year. In fact, all three roommates were barely in evidence; #3 was gone the whole time, #2 left school around semester time, and the rabbit died for #1 in mid-October; in every case, in effect, I got a private room for the price of a double occupancy.

After that? My first roommate wasn’t bad. In the next house, with the five women, one was addicted to pain pills. Among the next group, one was a borderline alcoholic, and the other…well, who knew?

But it was a whole new slate of people.

———-

Well, Chris turned out to have deep-seated emotional problems. He “worked” two hours a day, setting up the salad bar at the Wendy’s on University Avenue (until he got fired, around Thanksgiving). He was on total mental disability, otherwise. He earned extra money by stealing clothing from Daytons’, and using their “no questions asked” return policy to return the clothing for a refund. Some days, frozen by panic attacks, he wouldn’t leave the house (hence the firing). Most nights, he’d sit with his cat in his room, when he wasn’t going out trolling for underage skeeze (he was a handsome devil).

Wyatt? Well, it took about a month for the house to smell like pot. By Thanksgiving, bottles were piling up, and I had to stick to buying clear liquor and transferring it into water jugs to keep him from stealing it. And he missed his share of the December rent payment; he’d lost his job as a carpenter for being too drunk to come to work four days running.

———-

At least I had the band.

Well, sort of.

We finally kicked Casey out of the band; he was drinking too much, and he got belligerent when he got drunk. Which conflicted with Bill the drummer, who also got belligerent when he got drunk, and history shows there’s only room for one drunk in a band.

But Casey and I were pals, so we came up with a solomonic solution in mid-October; two bands, sharing the rhythm section. Casey, Mark and Bill were one band, while Bill and Mark and I had a different one. We had a few gigs. Life was all right…

…except that the drunken belligerence started the morph into a sort of communal hopelessness about the odds of ever getting out of the basement, and playing places better than “Fernando’s”.

Casey called, and asked if he might carpool with me back to Jamestown for Christmas. I said “sure, why not?”

I needed the break, after all.

Last June, Martin Treptow shot Landen Beard.

Beard – an undercover Robbinsdale cop – was alleged (by Treptow and eyewitnesses) to have been in a road-raging snit.

The rest of the story is very much in contention, although according to witnesses it seems to have gone a little something like this:

1. Treptow, in an SUV with his pregnant wife and two small children, and Beard, in a sporty little red car, exchanged gestures, words, and aggressive maneuvering.
2. Treptow pulls up to a stoplight – behind another car, in the right lane. 
3. Beard pulls up next to him, on the right.
4. Words are exchanged. What words? We’re not entirely sure, but more on that later.
5. Someone pulls a gun. Who drew first – Treptow, in his SUV full of kids, boxed in at a stoplight, or Landen Beard? We don’t know – not officially.  More below.
6. Martin Treptow fired three shots, wounding Beard about as superficially as is possible under the circumstances.
7. He then drove to a convenience store and reported the shooting, per state law in self-defense cases, apparently not knowing that Beard was an undercover cop.
8. Dozens of cops from every possible jurisdiction (rumors that cops sped in from Inver Grove Heights and Owatonna are apparently unfounded) responded, apparently believing Martin Treptow was John Dillinger sprung from the grave.
9. Treptow was arrested, and taken to the Anoka County jail, where…
10. …the next day, he was released. No arraignment, no charges. He didn’t even have his Concealed Carry permit revoked – which would have taken the Anoka sheriff five minutes, and is basically pro forma in cases when there’s the faintest doubt. Which – after a day of interviewing witnesses, there apparently was not.
11. And from that first 911 call, at 37 seconds after 2:36PM on June 7, the Treptows’ story has stayed rock-solid consistent, while that of Officer Landen Beard has…well, pretty much remained as undercover as he and all of official Minnesota has claimed he was at that moment.

It apparently took six months to introduce doubt into the case; the Anoka County grand jury yesterday indicted Martin Treptow. Joel Rosenberg has the whole, depressing story:

Well, the book has been thrown at Martin S. Treptow. He’s been charged in Anoka County, with:

1. Drive by shooting. MS 609.66 subd 1e(b) — felony, up to ten years.

2. Reckless discharge in municipality sub 1a(3) — ditto, up to two years.

3. Terrorist threats. 609.713 sub (1) — ditto.

We’ll see what the next step in the railroading of Treptow and the whitewashing of Beard is tomorrow, when Landen Beard appears in Anoka County Court to have his wrist slapped.

Given the recent revelations that the “investigators” in the case have gone to the Saint Paul PD to dig up dirt about…not Martin, but Rebecca Treptow, it looks to the casual observer like the Anoka County “justice” system is covering the backs of their Robbinsdale PD colleagues.

Beard’s indictment is scheduled for today. We’ll see what happens.

Remember – the jury has the final word on this case. This is far from over.

Or it should be.  Martin Treptow isn’t loaded – not even close.  And this case could embarass the hell out of the Robbinsdale PD and, given its behavior for the past six months, Anoka as well.  My two cents:  Anoka County is throwing the book at Treptow, dredging up the worst possible assortment of felonies (and absurd ones, at that), to try to induce him to take a plea bargain rather than spend his family’s entire future defending himself against the combined weight of every law enforcement agency in the Metro.  If Treptow takes the plea, then the story of Officer Landen Beard, and all of the questions his behavior that day introduce into the story, disappear. 

And those questions are big, nasty ones, if you believe in running a police department with a reputation for integrity: 

1. Why was Landen Beard – a Robbinsdale officere – operating undercover in Anoka? 
2. Who initiated, and carried on, the “road rage” incident?
3. Given that one of the three big rules of shooting is “know what your backstop is”, why did Landen Beard point a pistol at a pregnant woman and a car with two small children in the back?
4. Who drew their gun first – Beard or Treptow? 
5. If the Anoka Sheriff thought Martin Treptow’s story was convincing enough to let him go on June 8, without even the inconvenience of suspending his carry permit, and yet the Grand Jury “found” evidence of three felonies, who dropped the ball?  Or was it a ball drop at all?

My hunch – and that’s all it is – is that the various jurisdictions involved know that the answers aren’t pretty, and want to do whatever they can to shut Treptow up and get the answers sealed in a court file, never to surface during the careers of anyone in office today.

Again, just a hunch.

If you’d like to help…:

Martin and Rebecca Treptow
Anoka Hennepin Credit Union,
3505 Northdale Blvd. N.W.
Coon Rapids, MN 55448.

UPDATE:  Joel isn’t the only local blog covering things.  Doug at Northern Muckraker – one of the most-improved blogs in the area – has been writing about the Treptow case:

Remember how I had previously written about Fox9 News’s coverage, and how they conveniently forgot to mention Beard’s name in their coverage of the story while putting Treptow’s name and face all over their airwaves, and how they also neglected to disclose their little conflict of interest, as Beard was the fiance (and now, apparently, the spouse) of one of their employees? The games continue, apparently.

Watch this clip of the update report Fox9 did this evening on the story. Notice how they have lots of video shots of Treptow, and how they manage to show a slow pan of the page of the indictment showing his name and full address, not once, but twice, in the report. No “1600 block of Pennsylania Avenue” courtesy for Mr. Treptow, as that is usually how addresses of presumed innocent people are reported.  

  And Flash at Centrisity shows that it’s not just a partisan thing:

I am ready for a rant, but will hold off until Beard faces the music today

As Joel notes, “the music” will likely be an indictment for double-parking. 

Stay tuned. 

UPDATE 2:  I added Point 11 to the timeline, the ugly questions, and bumped the story to the top of the blog for today.

UPDATE 3: Joel Rosenberg emails (and posts at his blog, I see) that Officer Beard’s been indicted:

One count of Terroristic Threats (felony, just in case there’s some gross misdemeanor); case moved to Washington County; next court date Feb 14.  My correspondent is sitting in on the press conference (whose?  I dunno) right now, but will scan the indictment and tell me more later…Treptow’s lawyer not in courtroom; Beard appeared with a bunch of supportive cops in doorkicker gear, to pat him on the shoulder, shake his hand, and wish him well. 

Bumped up again.