Eric Black and his “Black Ink” blog are picking up and moving over to MinnPost.com – but not without leaving an answer we’ve been looking for for a very long time – something I asked him (in his interview on the NARN last March, when he left the Strib), as well as every other Minnesota Monitor staffer with whom I ever came in contact (emphasis added):

I’ve always meant to write piece titled “Who Pays Me?” Never got around to it. But if I had, I would have said that I was working under a contract with the Center for Independent Media (CIM), a Wasington-based non-profit, which is the parent organization of the Monitor and three other similar state-based sites. And I would have said that the silly attack meme of some conservative bloggers that the Monitor was staffed by George Soros sock puppets was nonsense.

“Nonsense” – meaning there was no truth to the claim that George Soros backed the Center for Independent Media (which, at the risk of repeating myself, started life in offices sublet from Soros’ attack-PR firm Media Matters for America).  Right?

Because that’s what “nonsense” and “silly attack meme” mean.  Right?   

Soros’ foundation is one of several that contribute to the CIM so I guess I have some Soros money in my checking account,

Er…OK.  So the “silly” “nonsense” claim was actually true, then?

And do you think that if, say, Powerline or Ed Morrissey or I got so much as a nickel of money from Halliburton, or Richard Mellon Scaife or Rupert Murdoch, that the crack staffs of the MinnPost or Minnesota Monitor or or the Daily Mold would let it pass?

Black adds:

but I was never asked, pressured or even encouraged to promote any particular point of view and the same goes for the Monitor’s other writers.

Sounds good, right? 

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci of Kool Aid Report, who drew my attention to the piece, notes a hole in that idea big enough to drive the entire MinnPost office through:

Say your house has a mouse infestation. And further assume that you are an old-timey sort that doesn’t believe in exterminators or mouse traps. So instead, you buy a cat.

Do you have to tell a cat to go hunt the mice?

 Of course not. 

I always get a kick out of commenters who accuse me of “parroting GOP talking points”.  There is no C-list blogger in the Twin Cities who is farther off the Republican party’s official radar than I am.  I don’t get invites to the press conferences.  I get press releases only intermittently, and usually from campaigns – rarely if ever from the party proper. 

And yet I’m a conservative, almost-always Republican blogger.  Not because I’m on a payroll, but because I believe in the ideals of the GOP and the Conservative movement.  Nobody pays me to do it (outside the odd advertiser) – I do it because it’s what I believe.

So if some right-leaning sugardaddy group of right leaning sugardaddies wanted to come to town and pay a bunch of bloggers to generate propaganda, I have a six-year-deep clip file to put in front of them. 

Every member of the Minnesota Monitor was recruited because they are a reliable, left-leaning voice.  They are paid their “stipends” (at one point, $1,500 a month – unheard of for most E-list bloggers) because they will deliver what is expected of them.  The notion that any of them are going to go maverick and turn into low-tax, pro-defense, law-and-order conservatives on the Monitor‘s dime is absurd.  Eric Black retains some plausible deniability, here, but I think he’s made his actual sympathies pretty clear (as is his right!) since he left the Strib; one suspects, for example, that had Doug Tice left the Strib, the Monitor/CIM would not have have come calling.  Conservative bloggers need not have applied to the Center for Independent Media.

Tucci continues:

And it bears mentioning here in a non-parenthetical paragraph that this is the very first time anywhere in the year and change history of MinniMoni that anyone connected with that website has admitted as much. Why?

“Why”, indeed, on a couple of levels.

For over a year, MinMon’s management and staff reacted in every possible way to questions about the CIM’s backing – every way save one.  They obfuscated.  They misdirected.  They changed the subject.  They threw out cutesy tangents and scampered away.  Their supporters denied any Soros connection, ever more vehemently.  And yet it was true all along (not that there was any doubt or mystery to the question).

And why does Black admit it (couched in an attack on the “silly” but true “attack” meme) as he’s cleaning out his desk?

UPDATE:  Welcome Cap’n Ed’s readers, and any Instapundit readers that’ve leaked through this far into the story!

I’d like to direct you to Learned Foot, who was on this several hours before I was, and in three years of blogging hasn’t had an Instalanche (remember them?); a Ed-a-lanche and a secondary Instalanche can’t be a bad way to roll into the holidays, though.

Over at David’s Medienkritik – a bilingual blog about the European, mainly German, media – David (or Ray?) writes:

Imagine you are an American correspondent in Germany. You are encouraged by your editors to report only the most extreme, outrageous, strange and dark sides of German society. Your publication chooses to ignore the 97% of issues that bring Germans and Americans together and instead focus on the 3% that most divide the two nations – such as attitudes towards prostitution, social welfare, guns, etc. This seedy sensationalism sells – and that is exactly what your editors are after. For that reason, they also strongly encourage you to write whatever you can on Neo-Nazi violence – not because the issue is genuinely troubling – (and it is) – but because it brings good ratings and reaffirms your readership’s dark stereotypes of the Vaterland.

Beyond that – your editors oblige you to bring stories only on a narrow band of pet issues that they have predetermined are of “interest” to the readership. (In fact, you may have been specially selected for your job because you have a an ideological propensity to dislike Germany and favor stories that make Germany look bad.) When you arrive in Berlin, you discover that Germany isn’t quite the awful place you expected and – because you are a free spirit – the urge is great to report on the many complex aspects of German society. Predictably, however, your editors discourage any independent ideas that might shed a different (you might say balanced) light on things.

The pet issues and big politics are all they want. In particular, the editors want to demonstrate that Germany is a nation infatuated with pornography, cursed by extreme alcoholism and blighted by racist attitudes towards non-Germans…The editors supplement your work by sprinkling-in stories cut-and-pasted from news wires on Germans behaving badly worldwide. You eventually realize that intellectual honesty takes a distant backseat to the pet-issue template devised by your editors…Not surprisingly, the most “self-critical” Germans – those with a particular talent for shamelessly bashing their own nation and people – are held up as heroic dissenters and showered with awards by your publication and others like it.

[Hm.  Sort of like how the only Republicans that the Strib paints in a decent light are the ones that vote like DFLers?  This is sounding familiar]

Finally – because quite a few other publications share the same general ideology of your own and follow the same pattern of reporting – it is not beyond the pale for your editors to proclaim that you represent the “mainstream” of American media and that you are largely fair and unbiased in reporting on Germany.

It’s a trick question, natch:

Turn the mirror around…

Now let us turn this script around. The above is a reflection of how certain influential segments of German media have operated for years now. The latest Amerika-Korrespondent for Stern magazine – Jan Christoph Wiechmann – offers an excellent example. One of his more recent articles is entitled: “Weapons Trade in the USA: An AR-15 with your Coffee?” The opening paragraph reads:

“In Europe one usually receives a cookie with their coffee. In the USA it is an assault rifle: In the Texan solitude, waitresses with highly teased hair offer the things for sale in weapon shops camouflaged as cafes. Normal daily life in Bush-Country.“

The article paints a picture of daily life in the USA that is neither typical nor normal

Read the whole thing.

(Auf Deutsch, wenn Du willst…)

As Fred Barnes notes, the biggest battle in the most important theatre of the Iraq war – inside the Beltway – has been an upset win for the President:

An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached. Think about this a moment. Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House, it seemed likely they’d succeed in limiting or ending the Iraq war, probably by setting a firm timetable for withdrawal of American troops. After all, both President Bush and the war itself were highly unpopular. The Democratic triumph in the election made that clear, even to those who doubted opinion polls. And Democrats made the anti-Iraq crusade their top priority in the new Congress. Now, the 70-vote approval of the war by the Senate represents the breathtaking dimension of their failure.

How close – and how big an upset – was it?  Barnes notes the number of anti-war measures the majority spawned off in its first few months – and the number of Republicans that jumped ship, and the narrowness of the defeats.

But what if one of the anti-war measures had passed? True, Bush would have vetoed it and chances are Senate Republicans would have mustered the 34 votes to sustain his veto. But congressional passage of a bill limiting the war would have been politically disastrous even if it didn’t go into effect. It would have undercut the president, galvanized the opposition, and most likely prompted a stampede of congressional Republicans away from support for the war.

Everything changed, of course, when General David Petraeus, the Iraq commander, testified before Congress in September. He said there had been measurable success in reducing violence in iraq, including a sharp drop in American casualties. Since January, Petraeus had been carrying out the new Iraq policy that Bush had announced in January to add troops – the so-called surge – and implement a new counterinsurgency strategy. By the time the Senate voted on Tuesday, the decline in violence in Iraq had become more dramatic.

Read the whole thing.

And then I read things like this…:

Lynne Spears’ book about parenting has been delayed indefinitely, her publisher said Wednesday…She declined to comment on whether the delay was connected to the revelation that Spears’ 16-year-old daughter, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant.

…and I think “maybe not”.

On the one hand, I love the way the Democrats are starting to squeal about the Clintons’ dirty tricks and misleading spin – once they’re aimed at Democrats.

On the other hand, as squealing goes, the video here is mighty funny.

I’ve read articles more or less exactly like this one, from Insight News, a local Afro-American community paper, since I was probably ten years old (although few of those pieces have buried the lede as far as this one, down in paragraph nine or ten.  For your convenience, I’ll try to exhume the lede for you):

According to the State Council on Black Minnesotans, as of the year 2000 census, Blacks make up approximately 18.03% of Minneapolis and 11.71% of St. Paul. However, the number of Blacks in Minneapolis accounted for 40.12% of the Black population statewide, while the St. Paul population accounted for 19.565% statewide.

Minnesota blacks are concentrated in the metro – got it.

Now come the all-important Minnesota incarceration rates, and according to Tom Johnson, former Hennepin County Attorney and current president of the Council on Crime and Justice, “We know for example that in 1999 in Hennepin County you had [a number equal to] over half of all African-American males between eighteen and thirty arrested in that one year.”

It’s the “Blacks are overincarcerated” meme.

And it’s true.  The number,and per capita rates, are astounding, and a national scandal – one that should shame…

…well, lots and lots of people.  Almost forty years worth of leaders, in both the black and white communities.

But we’ll get back to that.

(And what’s this “[a number equal to] over half of all African-American males between eighteen and thirty arrested” number supposed to mean?  Could the writer even pretend to give this statistic some meaning?  Does it mean “half of all black males in Henco were arrested?”, or does it mean “Five percent were arrested ten times each?”, or…)

The reaction by some is that the police are patrolling in minority neighborhoods whether they are Hmong, Native American, Hispanic, Somali or African-American, because that is where the majority of the crimes are occurring.

But according to Johnson, the numbers do not support this: “To use who is arrested as a gauge to make a decision about who is committing crime isn’t accurate or fair.”

Er…why?

I mean, could we be bothered with some evidence of this claim? Because it’s a big one and, given that North Minneapolis and Frogtown and Phillips  and Dayton’s Bluff seem to be where most of the crime in the cities themselves happens, I’d be interested in knowing – both as a city resident and someone who is concerned about equality in our society, exactly how that’s “inaccurate and unfair”.

Because from where I sit, it sounds like lawyer weasel-words.

Others look to racial profiling – where police stop Black people just because of the color of their skin – as a potential cause for increased incarceration rates for African Americans.

In a study conducted over a six-month period in 2000, Minneapolis police stopped Black drivers at a rate of more than twice the numbers in their population, and an examination of St. Paul police records showed a similar trend.

Question for those “others” that look to racial profiling; are these “stops” (as opposed to arrests for specific incidents of crime) converted into convictions?  Is there any evidence that these convictions are based on wholesale fraud?

Because if there is evidence of masses of Afro-American citizens being framed and railroaded, we do have a scandal here.

Consequently, when studies show further that once they are in the Hennepin County or Ramsey County criminal justice system, Blacks are more likely to be charged with certain crimes like drug offenses, and Blacks are more likely to serve time in jail.

And again – and I ask this knowing I’m skirting on the edge of the usual, tiresome charges of “racism” by the usual bleating classes – is there any evidence that this likelihood of being charged is disconnected with a likelihood of having actually offended?

The resulting statistics equate to Blacks in Minnesota having the highest incarceration rates in the country as compared to whites. In addition, seven out of every ten inmates who leave prison come back, so the question then becomes: what, if anything, can be done about this alarming trend?

The article – incoherent as it often is – focuses on recidivism programs.  Which is, I suppose, more manageable than, say, trying to reverse the damage caused by forty years of debilitating nannystatism, which began about the time 400 years of slavery and discrimination ended.

Sean Aqui from Midtopia – a gratifyingly prolific MOB blog – notes that our new surveillance culture may have officially gone too far:

Welcome to Buhl, Minn. Population 1,000. It’s a small, sleepy community where nothing much ever happens. Indeed, it disbanded its police force in 1999.

Which is why it clearly needs surveillance cameras to keep the peace.

Local law enforcement officials are pushing a plan to place six surveillance cameras around this Iron Range town of less than a thousand people.

Sgt. Pat McKenzie of the St. Louis County Sheriff’s office, which has overseen law enforcement in Buhl since the city disbanded its police department in 1999, said it’d be a tool for solving and deterring crime. But some residents are asking: What crime?

Scratch your head, ask “why?”…

…and read Midtopia more often. It’s a great, and undertrafficked, blog.

Katie (?) from Yucky Salad notes:

Pamela Anderson has filed for divorce from Rick Solomon, whom she married 2 months ago fresh from her divorce from Kid Rock after a 5 month union.

The woman is actually making a mockery of divorce.

She may be the best thing to have ever happened to marriage. 

Sort of.

(Extra kudos to Katie for coining the epithet “dern goblet”.  I’m gonna use it).

What is…:

1. …your most unusual talent?: I have an uncanny knack for standing in front of the elevator door that will eventually be the one that opens.
2. …The Best Dunn Bros?: I love love love the one on Fifth and Wabasha.
3. …the worst holiday song?: Gotta be the very hip lounge-y version of “Sleigh Ride”. Johnny Mathis, maybe? Doesn’t matter – whomever it is, it sounds like Bill Murray doing his classic “Lounge Singer” bit.
4. …the most overrated underground singer in history?: Male: Henry Rollins. Female: Peaches (the Canadian X-rated techno “singer”, not the one of “…and Herb” fame).
5. …the best Law and Order cop lineup?: There’ve been so many. At the moment, my short list is Jerry Orbach/Chris Noth (L’nO), Vincent D’Onofrio/Kathryn Erbe (CI), Chris Noth/Annabella Sciorra (CI).
6. …the best Law and Order attorney lineup?: I will always like Sam Waterston/Jill Hennessey the best, although Courtney Vance/Diane Neal (when she was still a redhead) is moving up fast.
7. …your New Year’s Resolution short list, so far?: Same as last year; bike to work every day I can, including all summer. Get into better shape. I’m so far ahead of where I was last year, it’s not even funny; I’m hoping I can make a great year of it this time around.
8. …your greatest food weakness?: Garlic bread in any of its many permutations.
9. …the most-overrated comedian ever?: That changes very, very often, but this time of year, every year, it’s gotta be Lewis Black. Why does Comedy Central think his dyspeptic end-of-year wrapup is ever funny?
10. …your least-favorite holiday food?: Divinity.

Fred Thompson counters Ron Paul’s “Boston Tea Party” fundraising effort:

Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson today, upon hearing that rival Ron Paul’s supporters had raised $6 million in 24 hours to commemorate the Boston Tea Party, called on his supporters to match that figure in gun purchases before Christmas to mark George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Trenton.

“I’m tired of running around the country raising money that I just have to hand over to the same mainstream media companies that ignore my campaign,” said the former senator from Tennessee. “We’ve done enough this year to support the so-called free press of the first amendment. Let’s give a boost to our friends who make it possible for us to exercise our second amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

Yeah, Fred!  That’ll…um…

(sigh)

Oh, well.  If only it weren’t Scrappleface.

“Employing weasel-speak as a roundabout justification to just keep on raising taxes”.  It’s a long, cumbersome phrase.

So when I say “Sturdevanting”, you know that’s what I’m talking about.  OK?

Speaking of which; I’ve noticed that a lot of car dealerships along University Avenue have closed in recent years.  We’re in danger of losing those well-paid, skilled jobs, and the tax-paying employees that do them, to other states, unless we find a way to subsidize car lots with state money.

Sounds ridiculous?

No, don’t worry.  I’m only Sturdevanting.

And so, as it happens, is Lori Sturdevant:

The president of a 160-employee engineering firm [demanded a hike in transportation spending] so forcefully at a state Chamber of Commerce Grow Minnesota! luncheon on Dec. 4 that some of his listeners likely had trouble swallowing their mousse dessert.

“We need to find a dedicated funding source for transportation” above and beyond the 20-cent-per-gallon gas tax, said Bret Weiss, president of WSB & Associates. “The governor needs to get behind it and get something done.”

WSB and Associates?  And they are…?:

Last week at his Golden Valley office, near proud displays of his firm’s local work, Weiss elaborated: Minnesota is on the verge of losing a sizable number of good-paying construction and engineering jobs to other states.

Construction professionals stayed in Minnesota in recent years despite the state’s refusal to spend more on transportation, because a hot housing market and business boom kept them occupied. That changed with the economic cycle, he said. Unless the state steps up transportation funding in 2008, “it’s going to become very clear to everybody that there are no dollars out there” to sustain the industry.

So in other words:  subsidize the construction and engineering industries.

Wait a few years to boost transportation spending, and contracts of necessity will go to national engineering and construction firms, he predicted. That won’t produce nearly the desired ripple through the Minnesota economy that spending now on locally based firms would.

“We need to be smarter about this,” he said. Smarter means not just more spending but the more-consistent spending over time that can anchor good jobs here.

So if the big worry is that out of state firms will come to Minnesota to bid on projects that don’t exist today, then why aren’t Minnesota firms bidding on out-of-state projects now?

“I’m not asking anybody to give me anything just because I’m a Minnesotan.

Well, let’s be clear; that’s exactly what you’re asking for!  You want the state to pony up for transportation spending purely to keep jobs – and, incidentally, give your companies a ready, flush market – in Minnesota.

I’m saying: At least give me a shot. I can bring a lot of employees into this state, and those are great jobs. … Why not try to foster this industry here, as we do so many others?”

Translated: “This state got into the subsidy business decades ago.  So even though the state has slowed down the giveaway machine, we want our piece of the pie”.

Shorter translation:  “I’m Sturdevanting”.

Perhaps y’all remember me. I’m one of those guys you used to read about; I make decent money, live within my means. Work is good and steady (knock wood). My credit rating has a few dings – I’m still cleaning up from a year of near-unemployment and some dodgy contracting work, but all in all I’m not doing that badly.

I bought the house as – I’ll let you take a moment to absorb this – a place to raise kids. I’ve been here 14 years, and I fully expect to have my grandkids over for Christmas in (takes a deep breath) ten or fifteen years. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. Most of all, I’m not one of those guys who uses his house as an ATM. The balance on my mortgage is about 3/4 of what my house was appraised at.

NOTE: That’s “3/4”, as in “75%”. Not “100%”, like the loans some of you were approving like Las Vegas marriages until recently. Not 135%, which is what some of the loans you approved last year have turned into in the past few months. Nope. Just a simple, workadaddy, hugamommy 75%.

So let’s get this straight, between you, me, and your potted plant; for the last couple of years, while you were busy approving deals that render this story just barely this side of the “reality/comedy” curve, “investing” money like a crack whore “invests” with a stolen Gold Card, I was plugging away, trying to build equity, doing the best I could.

So don’t take your hangover over your years of crappy decisions on other borrowers out on me, toots.

That is all.

I’m going to guess that this little flap resolves itself – one way or another…:

Former Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight threatened to leave his model wife Adrianne Curry when she posed for sexy lesbian photos – as a birthday gift.

…just in time for May sweeps.

I’ll take “trial separation, resulting in ecstatic but reserved reunion during November sweeps” for $20.

 (Via KAR)

Via pianomomsicle; a meme:

1. What’s your favorite song about growing up? “The River” by Springsteen.
2. What’s your favorite song about cars or driving? “Racing In The Streets” by – yep – Springsteen. Although it’s more about…well, growing up. Or more like “being ambushed by the realization that you’re an adult now”. But I’m going to list it here, because the first two verses are about drag-racing. The song always kills me.
3. What’s your favorite song whose title is a person’s name? Um, “Rosalita” by…yeah, Springsteen.
4. What’s your favorite get-up-and-dance song? All right, a non-Springsteen entry. That’d be “Shotgun” by Junior Walker and the All-Stars (although Springsteen has covered it). Or “It’s A Long Way To The Top” by AC/DC.
5. What’s your favorite novelty song? “Raspberry Beret” by the Hindu Love Gods. Honorable mention – a thrash-punk version of Prince’s “Kiss” that is lost to history. That, and/or Killdozer’s version of “I Am, I Said”.

That is all.

Andrew Sullivan is my blogfather, as I’ve noted in many, many places.  I started Shot In The Dark hours after reading “The Dish” for the first time, inspired by his take (at the time) on events and by the newfound technology that allowed any schlump with an internet connection to hang out a shingle as a pundit.

And while I’ve become estranged from my blogfather, as his true, not-very-conservative (or, rather, “conservative” that bears no relation to my own flavor of the movement) beliefs took over his presentation – I’ve honestly read The Daily Dish maybe twice in the last four years – I’ve always kept that notion in the back of my head; he’s this blog’s Dad.

And now, I’m done.  Sullivan shows us he’s working for the other side, in his rationalization for “endorsing” Ron Paul:  

I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time – the great question of the last six years – Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain’s position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.

Read the whole thing, if only to pound a stake through the heart of whatever admiration you may once have had for the guy.

So I took a final walk around the house, getting ready for the appraisal.  Could be neater, but nothing drastically wrong (other than the sick kids spotted in their bedrooms, roiling with delirium from the same wretched soul-scarring crud I had last week). 

All was, within my normal tolerances, fairly well.

The appraiser came. 

20-minute walkaround.  A few questions.  No biggie.  Much pre-appraisal stress dissipates.

I bid him adieu (we pass on the handshake, given all the sick kids).

I walk upstairs.

And notice that at some time between the walkaround and 25 minutes hence, the dog had – for the first time in years – left a “present” at the foot of my bed.

The over/under on “before” or “after” the appraiser walked through is about even. 

OK.  I’m laughing about it now. 

I mean, what else am I gonna do?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an episode where a WalMart cashier politely, genially asked me to pass a pack of bologna in front of the scanner for her.

“No bigs”, I figured. Odd, in that “don’t touch pork even if it’s in a blister pack” is one of those rulings by a small, rather extreme group of imams in the Twin Cities that aren’t recognized – indeed, draw chin-scratching – from Quranic authorities elsewhere. But whatever – I ran the offending product over the scanner – not much different than my not scheduling late-Friday meetings with my highly-orthodox Jewish colleague, or leaving cattle at home in my IT shop.

No biggie. I paid it not much further thought.

Except that yesterday, I was at WalMart again. And I saw the cashier.

One thing I omitted from the original post; the cashier is hot. Smokin’ hot. Yowwwww hot. She was wearing a headscarf, and an ensemble of Walmart-cashier duds that were stretched to maximum, tight effect.
I nodded, and she grinned. With her fully-visible face.

Now, let’s be clear here:  I don’t care that she’s attractive.  Indeed, in the interest of making a better society, putting up with attractive women is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.  You can thank me later.  And a smile is a very good thing.

I just thought it was odd – the cashier is utterly punctilious about observing the most picayune edict of a group of fringe imams when it comes to handling pork, but as re the whole “female modesty” thing, she’s completely out-of-mosque (and yes, some of the Somali women who work at WalMart do wear the full robe ensemble)?

I can hardly make it up fast enough.

Of course, as Ed and Katherine show us today, you have to try to, anyway.

I’m hoping to take the kids to New York this coming spring to attend my stepson’s wedding.

Of course, there’s a certain amount of culture shock, going from Saint Paul to New York…

…well, no. There’s usually some of it for people who come from New York to Saint Paul, but I’ve observed rather little of it from people going the other way. The big sticking point would seem to be language.

So – for the children – I’m going to present this brief primer on translating key Minnesota terms to New York-style English.

You’re welcome, kids:

Minnesota term: “You betcha”
New York translation: “Fuhgeddaboutit”

Minnesota term: “Oofda”
New York translation: “Mo********er!”

Minnesota term: “Sheesh, it’s cold”
New York translation: “Jeezus H. Christ, the Yankees suck”

Minnesota term: “Diablo Cody”
New York translation: “Brett Easton Ellis”

That is all.

St. Louis Park’s “groundbreaking” municipal wi-fi is no-fi:

The City Council will vote Monday on whether to find Arinc — the Wi-Fi system’s Maryland-based contractor — in default of its contract, in part because the project is months behind schedule.

Last spring, the city told residents to expect service by June.

This summer, it told them to expect service by fall.

This fall, it said to expect service by Nov. 30.

Now, the city isn’t even guessing.

Because it is considering legal action against Arinc, “the city is no longer able to provide a current project or service availability schedule,” the city’s website reads.

The city is “very seriously” considering suing Arinc, said spokesman Jamie Zwilling.

Of course, cities throughout the metro have drunk the “digital divide” koolaid; some have added the “green” chaser.  Minneapolis is working on its own wi-fi system; Saint Paul has been fighting (and, given that it’s not selected a contractor, I’d say winning) the wi-fi battle for months.

The council held a closed-door meeting Dec. 3 to discuss the possibility of a lawsuit and what effect it might have on the project’s completion.

I’m guessing “totally scupper”, but what do I know. I’m just an IT geek.  Not a city bureaucrat/”visionary”.

Trying for months and months.

Still can’t find “Caroline” by Kirsty MacColl, anywhere.  At all.

For that matter, her classic Electric Landlady is nowhere in evidence online.

Note to whomever makes these decisions; there’s a lot more to the late MacColl than “They Don’t Know About Us” and “Fairytale of New York”.

That is all.

Background: I’m not the handiest guy in the world.

Oh, I can do what I need to do. I worked part of my way through college as a stagehand, which involved basic carpentry and being a bit of an electrician. I learned what I needed to, practiced it constantly, and got to be fairly good at it – and then forgot most of it pretty promptly. Or at least the practical stuff; I could still do the intellectual part of it, like designing a lighting plot, pretty capably, I think. And hanging Leakos ain’t brain surgery, if you catch my drift. But still, other than my brief stint as a roofer and sider after college, I’ve never done a whole lot in the building trades.

But I have an appraisal tomorrow, with an aim toward refinancing my house.

Between being not-that-handy, and the, er, tumult of the past few years – well, there’s some “deferred maintenance” around the Berg house. And a whooooole bunch of it came off the “deferred” list; it’s stuff that’ll sidetrack an FHA appraisal. Nothing serious (that I know of, please, dear G*d), but stuff that I can fix.

In theory. Have I mentioned, I’m not much of a handyman?

Well, this weekend it was time to do what I do best; fake being things I’m not.

I shook off last week’s flu/cold/crud the best I could (although the kids are both pretty well stricken), and put together my “to do” list:

1. Repair my back porch, and put up a stair railing. FHA appraisals are pretty humorless about railings. Gotta have ’em. And my back porch was a rotting mess; it was actually missing the bottom step. So I ripped out the old steps, replaced some rotted braces, and finally put up a railing. A really, really, rinky-dink railing that qualifies as a “railing” in the same way that Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony was “truthful”, but it should pass muster (until such time as I tear the entire back stoop down and replace it – hopefully in the next 15 months).
2. Add a railing to my basement stairs. There’s never been one. The FHA, she don’t care. So up went the railing.
3. Fix the basement toilet: It ain’t pretty – nobody’s used it in years – but it works. Done.
4. Replace the light fixture in my bedroom. I hate light fixtures. Still doesn’t work. My have to play dumb tomorrow.
5. Fix a couple of holes in some plaster walls: Done.
6. Fix the lock on my cellar-to-the-back-yard door. Done.
7. Replace two panes of glass on one of my old windows that my son broke a few years back. I had no idea how easy cutting glass was! I actually like that part of the job.
8. Replace the peeling linoleum on my bathroom floor. Almost done!
9. Prime over some, er, “art” my son left during a brief spate of grafitti-mongering. In the hallway. Words were had.

The final tally: Five trips to Menard’s, one to Home Depot.

Gotta finish the glass, and then, er, “tidy up” a bit.

Naturally, among your various prayers, karmic imprecations and other wishes for people in real, genuine need around the world – the people of Iraq, the Burmese, the Venezuelans and Cubans and Dharfuris – if you could squeeze in another word for me, I’d much appreciate it. The last bout seems to have worked, so far – I’m actually in the running for a mighty decent loan. It’d solve a lot of problems.

(And let’s hope a feel better tomorrow.  Blaaaagh)

Thanks!

Listening to “Morning Edition” this morning.

Diana Naiad – “Marketplace”‘s sports-biz commentator – talking about the National Football League and its “best of times/worst of times” year to date:

“…and Brett Favre is as well-known an athlete as Mohammed Ali at his peak”.

!!!

At his peak, Mohammed Ali was better-known than any world leader, everywhere on the planet; he was more identifiable around the globe than Richard Nixon, at their respective peaks.  Does Ms. Naiad honestly think that kids in Lagos and Rangoon know Brett Favre better than they know, say, George W. Bush?

Don’t get me wrong – I love the Favre story.   But let’s not get too carried away.

Hillary Clinton wraps herself…

…in the Second Amendment?

What else to make of the latest press release from Senator Clinton’s campaign, touting Senator Obama’s one-time support of “banning all handguns” as evidence that calls Mr. Obama’s “electability” into question?

Well, it’s a pleasure to welcome Mrs. Clinton to the Second Amendment side of the debate. It’s a new development; back in 2000, when Mrs. Clinton was running for Senate, she backed the “Million Mom March” for gun control, and, according to CNN, told the Newspaper Association of America, “We have to do more to stand up to those who refuse to believe the reality that guns do kill and that common-sense gun measures can make a difference.” When she ran for re-election in 2006, she earned a rating of “F” from the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund.

Well, the news isn’t all “good”.  Indeed, it’s really a sign that Bill wasn’t the only out-of-control triangulator in the family.

Still…:

For some the gun issue is about the Constitution; for Mrs. Clinton, it’s apparently about “electability.” We’re less concerned about her motive than amused to see our senator attacking Mr. Obama from the right over the right-to-keep-and-bear-arms…here’s an example of the way in which the prospect of confronting voters in an election pulls a politician closer to a mainstream policy position.

At least until January of ’08…

If this is the best criticism the House GOP leadership can come up with – “they’re just as bad as we were” – then the national GOP’s problems may not be over…:

On Tuesday afternoon, House Minority Leader John Boehner lashed out at the Democrats who control Congress, accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi of using strong-arm, partisan tactics to force through legislation without attempting to negotiate with GOP lawmakers. Of course, as Boehner himself acknowledged, the Democratic strategy has virtually mirrored Republican tactics when they controlled the House.

NPR host Robert Siegel asked the Ohio lawmaker about his pledge earlier this year that Republicans would work with Democrats in addressing issues important to the country: “What evidence of that has there been so far, since you’ve been leader?”

“Well, unfortunately, Robert, there hasn’t been any,” Boehner confided, although he insisted the unfriendly atmosphere in Washington was not the GOP’s fault. “I was hopeful that Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t make some of the mistakes that the Republican majority made by overreaching and going it alone. But what we’ve seen all year is an effort to overreach, to only consider what the Democrat majority wants to do.”

True as far as it goes – and I’ve loved the richness of the irony; when not in power, the Dems (and their media flak friends) decry “partisanship”; when they’re in office, it’s their way or the highway.

But Boehner…oh, my.  Blah.

Upside:  I made it to work.

Downside:  Not sure it can last. 

Posting will be zephyr-light.  I might dig out a few pieces from my “drafts” folder, but we’ll see.

Discuss.