Jeff at TvM points us to this excellent, thought-provoking, and – in the end – intensely frustrating piece on the GOP electorate’s second look (real or imagined) at John McCain.

McCain is the greatest frustration in my political life at the moment.  At least week’s debate party, I remember sitting, watching McCain speak, and thinking “damn – I wish I could vote for the guy!”. 

The Economist piece touches on McCain’s pros – and there are very, very many (emphases added):

Mr McCain is such a familiar figure that it is easy to forget how remarkable he is. He fought heroically in Vietnam, spending more than five years as a prisoner-of-war, when many other politicians of his generation discovered, like Dick Cheney, that they had “other priorities”. He has repeatedly risked his political career by backing unpopular causes. [Remember that – we’ll be returning to it – Ed].

Mr McCain’s qualifications extend beyond character. Take experience. His range of interests as a senator has been remarkable, extending from immigration to business regulation. He knows as much about foreign affairs and military issues as anybody in public life. Or take judgment. True, he has a reputation as a hothead. But he’s a hothead who cools down. He does not nurse grudges or agonise about vast conspiracies like some of his colleagues in the Senate. He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld’s sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming.

Again, we’ll return to that.

Mr McCain’s qualities are particularly striking if you contrast him with his leading rivals. His willingness to stick to his guns on divisive subjects such as immigration stands in sharp contrast to Mr Romney’s oily pandering. Mr Romney likes to claim that his views on topics such as gay rights and abortion have “evolved”. But they have evolved in a direction that is strikingly convenient—perhaps through intelligent design. Can a party that mocked John Kerry really march into battle behind their very own Massachusetts flip-flopper?

One can expect that Romney’s “soul-searching” would be closely examined.  As someone who’s “flip-flopped” – or, alternately, “found reason to change his mind” – on gun control, abortion, gay marriage, and liberalism itself in the past 25 years, I can truly respect both informed changes of mind as well as “sticking to one’s guns”.  And on many issues – the war, gun control, spending – McCain is on the side of the angels. 

So what’s wrong?

The Economist piece comes close, without quite hitting it:

So why have so many Republicans written off Mr McCain? There are two reasons—one bad, the other more reasonable. The bad reason is that they worry that he is not really one of them. Mr McCain has broken with Republican orthodoxy on everything from tax cuts to campaign finance to immigration. But look at his record more closely and you discover that he is a Republican in good standing. His fights with his fellow Republicans have been driven by his (usually justified) conviction that they were betraying Republican principles. He opposed Mr Bush’s tax cuts because he thought they would create a deficit. He led the charge against pork-barrel spending and lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff because he thought they undermined the principle of small government. Immigration is a genuine problem: he is seriously at odds with the bulk of his party on the issue, though many independents would go with his plan.

The Economist brushes past the whole “McCain-Feingold” thing as if it’s no big deal – and emphasizes McCain’s “republican” qualifications while ignoring the “conservative” ones that are so vital. To many of us who are driven by “first principles” first and foremost, McCain’s dodginess on McCain-Feingold (and the “Gang of 14” debacle) are offenses not against the party (with which many of us have a love-hate relationship at best) but against the principles we espouse…

…as, indeed, does McCain himself.  Albeit frustratingly inconsistently.

I want to like McCain.  If he were to repudiate McCain-Feingold, I’d be more than willing to give him a second look. 

But that’s a big “but”. 

The Westroads Mall in Omaha – site of Wednesday’s horrible spree-shooting – is a “gun free” zone:

Turns out that the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, where Robert Hawkins killed 8 with an SKS medium-powered rifle is, guess what, a Gun Free Zone.

For an overview of all the media discussing this fact, see GunPundit, Murdoc’s fledgling gun-oriented site.

From FoxNews:

But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn’t one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?

Show me a spree-killing, and as a rule I’ll show you a “gun free zone”.  The exceptions largely prove the rule, in fact.

The usual suspects are lining up to claim the usual BS (via Say Uncle), or in the case of this ignorant Australian knuckle-dragger, commit libel:

NEBRASKA, the farming state with the highest per capita gun ownership in the US, began the year with LB-454, a new state law allowing people 21 years and over to carry a concealed handgun pretty much wherever they go.

Applicants must pass a routine police check, complete a basic handgun training course (most are run by ex-cops) and pay $US100 ($115) for a five-year permit. It’s as simple as that.

Simpler still – the shooter used a rifle.  Not a concealed handgun. 

It is, in fact, as simple as that.

There might be some meaning to this tragic waste of life if all over the Cornhusk state [ ? ? ?- Ed] – the only US jurisdiction that still executes prisoners by frying them in the electric chair – the gun-culture penny was to finally drop.

Sadly, that is unlikely to be the case. Out in the American Midwest tragedies such as Westroads and the Virginia Tech massacre in April, when 32 people were killed [ Virginia’s in the Midwest?  Who knew? – Ed.], often serve to reinforce the convictions of gun nuts who believe that being armed is not just a constitutional right but goddamn common sense, too.

I’m sure a few people at “gun-free” Westroads Mall thought it might have made sense yesterday.

Take Chuck Zellers, a resident of the state capital, Lincoln, who wrote to his local newspaper, the Lincoln Journal Star, after the Virginia Tech slaughter to complain about an article in an Australian publication that had argued for stricter US gun control.

“Google Australian gun laws,” Mr Zellers urged his readers. “You will see several entries that, upon reading, dispel the notion that such stricter laws have reduced crime in that country. In fact, crime has risen in Australia since passing stricter laws.

As a Lincoln resident, Mr Zellers no doubt feels his freedoms have been violated by a local ordinance that denies convicted stalkers or anyone named in a protection order over the previous 10 years the right to a concealed weapon.

Is the columnist calilng Mr. Zellars a convicted stalker? 

Seems a bit…yellow?

After all, just down the road in Omaha no such restrictions exist.

And it is about as relevant as Mr. Nelson’s preeningly, gratingly ignorant column.

As a service to my audience, I provide you the following transcript.

It was surreptitiously recorded at a meeting of the Star/Tribune editorial board, sometime last week.  The source’s name can not be revealed, to protect her or his identity.  All names are redacted.

Transcript begins:

EDITOR A [MALE]:  It’s time to run another “Roodwip” story”.

COLUMNIST B[MALE] (Sotto voce, to COLUMNIST C [FEMALE]):  Psst – what’s “roodwip”?

COLUMNIST C [FEMALE] (Sotto voce):  “Republican” who’s disappointed with Pawlenty”.

EDITOR A: So – who do we use?  John Gunyou?

EDITOR D [FEMALE]:  We use him all the time.  Too much.  We’re getting lots of mail from people saying he was the “Republican” budget director for a “Republican” governor that governed to the left of the previous DFL governor.  I think we should broaden our base of “dissatisfied Republicans”

EDITOR A: Why?  Wingnut readers are all stupid!

COLUMNIST C: Yaaaaaay!  Stupid!

EDITOR E [MALE]: Be that as it may, the wingnuts aren’t the audience.  It’s the “undecided voter” we need to address.  They need to believe that there’s a genuine current within the GOP to oppose the likes of David Strom and Tim Pawlenty.

COLUMNIST C: Booooo!  Strom!  Booooooo!

EDITOR D [FEMALE]:  Have a drink, L__i.  No, I hear you.  The question is, we keep using the same ones, over and over and over.  We’ve got Gunyou…

COLUMNIST F [MALE]: …who’s kinda played out

EDITOR D:  …I agree.  And there’s Elmer Anderson…

COLUMNIST B: …who’s dead…

EDITOR D: …and Arne Carlson…

EDITOR A:  We cant’ use him.  He’s still the sitting governor!

EDITOR F:  Er, no sir, that’s Tim Pawlenty.  Carlson’s been out of office for nine years.  But Republican have pretty well abandoned him.  Who else can we get?

EDITOR D: Well, it’s not easy.  Most Republicans do support the governor, and even more support the “no taxes” line, even if they don’t explicitly support the Taxpayers’ League.

COLUMNIST C: Booooooo!

COLUMNIST B: But I read that Republicans are getting upset about that type of irresponsible leadership!

EDITOR F:  Er, N__k?  You actually wrote that column?

COLUMNIST B:  Oh.  Well…

EDITOR A:  We need to find another “disaffected Republican”.  Maybe we need to do like the New Republic did and have someone just make stuff up?

EDITOR D:  Well, that’s the contingency plan.  In the meantime, though, I have one guy in mind…

EDITOR A:  And he’s a Republican?

EDITOR D: Yes!

EDITOR A:  Who does nothing but bitch about Republicans?

EDITOR D: Of course!

EDITOR A: And espouses policies that are not one iota different than those of the DFL…?

COLUMNIST C:  Praise be unto the DFL!

EDITOR D:  Duh!

EDITOR A (as trumpets sound a fanfare): As it is written, so shall it be done!

EDITOR F:  Er, a simple “make it happen” would do…

EDITOR A (irate, as trumpets fall silent):  As it is written, so shall it be done!

I had no idea meetings went like that…

As further proof that sports journalism is to “journalism” as working at White Castle is to “Orthodox Judaism”, Stephen A. Smith is calling for censorship of bloggers.

In Part III of his interview with the Los Angeles Daily News‘ Tom Hofarth, Stephen A. reveals how he would fix journalism: Prevent bloggers from “disseminating information.” We understand that it originally had a laugh track.

“And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is …someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts.”

But note:  Stephen A. Smith would be an “expert” in the “journalism industry”, and be given a “format” to “disseminate” to the “masses”.  Because he’s “trained”.  You can tell by his command of the English language that he’s better than all of us in the “internet business”.

Sheesh.  Reading Stephen Smith is like listening to Clem Haskins speak.

It’s true: You will not find a writer who has more respect for the journalism industry than Smith … with the possible exception of the guy who replaced him at the Inquirer, from which Smith was dumped for not having enough respect for the journalism industry.

“Therefore, there’s a total disregard, a level of wrecklessness that ends up being a domino effect. And the people who suffer are the common viewers out there and, more importantly, those in the industry who haven’t been fortunate to get a radio or television deal and only rely on the written word. And now they’ve been sabotaged. Not because of me. Or like me. But because of the industry or the world has allowed the average joe to resemble a professional without any credentials whatsoever.”

We’re not sure how Smith would police his new blog-free society; probably with some sort of expansion of the Patriot Act. Bloggers would be rounded up and sent to Gitmo, there to be made to input guacamole recipes on Rachael Ray’s web site.

Of course, reading the guy’s writing is almost worse than getting waterboarded.

To:    Messrs. Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, McCain

From: Mitch Berg

Re:    Aaaargh

Gentlemen,

Please use the occasion of the New Hampshire caucuses to put Governor Huckabee out of our misery and make the media shut the hell up about him.

The forces pulling Mike Huckabee to the fore in Iowa are fizzling 1,300 miles to the east, where, in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney holds strong on issues and personal attributes — and unthreatened by the religion issue he’ll try to lay to rest in a speech tomorrow.

Romney, a Mormon, is being challenged in Iowa by Huckabee, a Baptist minister whose support has soared particularly in some core Republican groups there — evangelical Christians, conservatives and strong abortion opponents. But each of those groups is less plentiful in the New Hampshire electorate, and far more supportive of Romney.

Thank you.

This almost looks like Bsomething Michael Palin and Eric Idle would write and work on:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.

This is the latest in a long string of such media gaffes:

• In 1916, a New York Times reporter took a still-exiled Vladimir Lenin to a “Binge and Purge” club in Geneva, Switzerland.
• During a 1921 tour, a Village Voice editor paid a $360 bar tab at “Putch’s Bar and Grill” for a young Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.
• In 1997, an unnamed Star/Tribune reporter took a vacationing Mohammad Atta to the Minnesota State Fair, giving him $2000 (which was apparently spent entirely at the bumper cars).

I digress:

It was alleged that Mr Hamid told a BBC reporter that he would use the corporation’s money to pay a fine imposed by magistrates for a public order offence.

Thoughtful of them.

It’s ugly.

It’s suspect.

It’s not just a product of the most dismal age in bridge design (it opened in 1968), but it was even on the “B” list of bridges from that era; unlike the late 35W River Bridge – which opened the year before, but had the good fortune to connect urban Minnesota’s crown jewel, Downtown Minneapolis, with the north metro – the Lafayette connects a grimy, tumbledown stretch of the East Side with a utilitarian area of the West Side Flats – a canyon of state offices with Holman Field and the older downmarket ‘burbs to the southeast.

It looks like it could be found over any barge canal or toxic waste dump in North Jersey. It shudders.  It clogs tight during rush hour.  A utilitarian plate-girder span downstream from the golden age art-deco splendor of the Robert Street span and the reformist high-concept gloss of the Wabasha, the Lafayette is like a truck driver crashing an English department cocktail party.

And yet, there’s one part of the Lafayette Bridge that would be irreplaceable if they blew it up tomorrow. Right behind the late, lamented vista of downtown Minneapolis from the 35W Bridge, and the postcard view of downtown from the High Bridge, the view of Saint Paul at night from the Lafayette Bridge is one of the metro’s most striking scenes.

Viewing downtown Saint Paul from the High Bridge is like looking at a Summit Avenue mansion from…Summit Avenue; it’s the mansion’s best face, put forward for public consumption.

The same view from the Lafayette Bridge is like looking at the same mansion from the alleyway behind it. You are keenly aware of the working end of Saint Paul – railroad bridges, docks, bargeyards – as well as the scrum of turn-of-the-20th-century warehouses, cuts into the bluff, and bare infrastructure that pays (or paid) the rent for that “best face”.

The view is not online. I may have to fix that.

Tracy at Anti-Strib on Minneapolis top cop Tim Dolan’s, er, faux pas on the Loesch murder:

Police Chief Tim Dolan uses the letters to the editor page of the Red Star to squander what good will he had by trying to weasel out of the mess his department created by ruining the name of Mark Loesch.

Flashback:  the MPD tried to write off the Loesch murder – in which a fortysomething father of four was beaten to death on a nighttime bike ride through the Phillips neighborhood – as drug-related.  Loesch was trying to score weed, or so they hinted in public last month. 

I’ve never indulged, but it strikes me (and many of Tracy’s commenters) as highly unlikely that a successful middle-aged guy would be buying chiba from gang-bangers on the street; anyone who gets to be forty-something and hasn’t done jail time for buying drugs likely buys it from a long-trusted, safe source.   

 Keep this up and you’ll be gone in a year Tim.

Read the whole thing.

Bill over at the Salad reviews Until the Devil Knows You’re Dead:

Anyway, the movie finally starts and it’s about a family and some stuff happens and what-not and blah, blah, blah AND MARISA TOMEI IS NAKED A LOT!!!!!!! Haaaaaaa-le-lu-jah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Ha-Ha-Lay-Hey-Loooooo-Ya!!!!!

What an outstanding body! I mean movie. Marisa is 42 years old and she couldn’t possibly look any better. Yowza. Perhaps the best movie nudity since Phoebe Cates blessed my life for 15 seconds in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”.

(CLOSED CIRCUIT TO MY MALE READERS ONLY: High praise indeed.  END CLOSED CIRCUIT).

(CLOSED CIRCUIT TO MY KIDS:  I have no idea what movie he’s talking about.  END CLOSE CIRCUIT)

The movie – sez Bill – is otherwise good, not that it matters.

The rest of the post…well, it doesn’t live up to the pullquote.  Yagh.

It was Saturday, December 5, 1987.

I’d balanced my checkbook the previous Wednesday. Or tried. It’d earned about $75 in November. Things were getting dicey.

I needed to come up with something to help me stretch my voice-over and freelance writing income.

I looked in the Strib, and saw an ad; a company was looking for nightclub and wedding disk jockeys.

Of course, I’d always hated DJ bars; to my point of view, bars, should either have bands, jukeboxes, or nothing.

But money was money. And hadn’t I been a DJ at a bunch of radio station?

How hard could it possibly be?

I called the number in the ad; the guy told me to come out to Burnsville on Saturday afternoon for an interview.

I drove out to Burnsville, pulling into a leafy cul-de-sac.  I knocked on the door.  A pudgy guy with spiky, gelled hair answered the door.  “Hi.  I’m Biff”. [The name, obviously, is changed].  Biff invited me in.
The house – your standard Burnsville mini-mansion – was almost bare of furniture.  The living room had two armchairs, a TV on a cardboard packing box, and scattered piles of sound and light gear; amps, mixers, speakers, standards.  The kitchen, over the little bar area, looked messy and yet fairly bare.  The guy looked like he was running a DJ service out of his house.

“So”, said Biff in a Minnesota accent, “tell me about your experience as a DJ”.

I ran through my radio background, as well as my time as a musician.

“Do you know how to beat-mix?”

I sat for a split second.  “I know the basics”, I answered, thinking he was talking about cross-fading.

He looked like he thought I was completely clueless – as, as events showed, I was.

But we continued to talk, and he must have seen something he liked.  He explained his company’s operation; they had a couple of mobile rigs that worked weddings and parties, and they also supplied DJs to a bunch of area bars.

“We might start you out in one of our outlying bars”, he said, looking more or less thoughtful.  He told me to call back early next week.

We shook hands. I drove back to Saint Paul, hoping for a break that’d at least stretch my income a bit.

Just while I waited for another radio gig.  No more.

The other day, I sat in on a conference call with some people from the Norm Coleman campaign, as they rolled out their “Franken Flip-Flops On Iraq” video.

And, having interviewed the Senator on this very subject in the past, I jumped one step ahead of the local Sorosphere; playing the devil’s advocate, I asked the campaign staffer “How would the Senator answer charges that he, himself, has held contradictory positions on the war?”

The answer, of course…

…well, we’ll get back to that.  Because the counterspin has begun. 

Minnesota’s most reliable DFL mouthpieces (except Lori Sturdevant), MNPublius, bring exactly the spin I predicted:

Today Norm Coleman did what any guy afraid of his own record on an issue does: attack the other guy for his record. Coleman is trying his darndest to turn people’s attention away from his abysmal record on this war (he’s gone so far as to convert the whole frontpage of his campaign site to an ad for the webclip) that he’s, apparently, taken to editing together disparate clips from Franken’s past.

Let’s take a moment to make sure we’re clear, here; Coleman’s “abysmal record” has nothing to do with the complaints conservatives might have – about Coleman’s tepid stance on the surge, for example.  The conservative complaints are misguided, in my opinion; while I think Coleman was wrong on the surge (he’s a Senator trying to influence operational decisions, which I think is a poor idea, albeit his right to try as a citizen and legislator), he’s been strong on pretty much every other aspect of the war – including areas that much of the rest of  Congress is afraid to touch, like Iran, the UN, and the fallout of the Oil for Food program.

The closest Coleman’s come to a “flip flop” is his principled – and wrong – votes on the surge.  Mistakes happen.  I give him a “90”, and tell him to go forth and sin no more.

So given that MNPublius is a reliable barometer of the “very-left-but-not-crazy” wing of the DFL, let’s check out their defense of Franken:

Alright, so, the first claim is that Franken has both supported and opposed a timeline for withdrawal but if you take a look at the record you’ll find out (and I might point out that Franken hasn’t attempted to hide this) that his position in favor of a timeline wasn’t formed until late 2006. He has said repeatedly that he became convinced of the need for a timetable during the tumultuous year of 2006, with its waves of sectarian violence and the lack of political progress. He has since made a timeline part of his campaign platform on Iraq.

Now, I don’t necessarily look at “flip-flopping” – sometimes also known as “changing ones’ mind after a rational reappraisal” of something – as a bad thing.  It’d be against interest, for starters.  I “flip-flopped” on being a liberal, 20-odd years ago, after all.  If humans didn’t reappraise things based on evolving knowledge and experience, our hands would all be covered with third-degree burns from the hot stoves we continue testing with our fingers, lest we “flip flop” on trusting our eyes.

No, changing ones’ mind isn’t a bad thing.  Changing ones’ mind from a smart stance to a dumb one – like “giving the terrorists and militias a hard date when it’ll be safe to come out of the cellar and resume their depredations without fear of a US soldier putting a laser-guided missile up your rectum” – however, is.

The second claim here is that Franken has held multiple positions on cutting off funding for the war. This one’s pretty easy to debunk because the guy’s always held the exact same position: that Congress should force the President to establish an exit strategy as a condition of further funding. If the President refused to do so, he would be “cutting off the funding for the troops.” Since that’s not a move the President would make, it would force him to accept the terms of the funding – namely, withdrawal. Moreover, I think this is a plan that most Americans can and would support.

Leave aside that the latest polling shows otherwise (when in the echo chamber, it can take a while for the actual sound to change), that’d be another example of “changing ones’ mind to a stupid position”.

Franken has acknowledged that he never spoke out against the war before it began, and he has acknowledged becoming a vocal critic of the war since. He’s not afraid of his record but stands by it. Which is maybe why he doesn’t feel the need to counterpoint the Coleman spin machine and is maybe why Coleman feels the need to throw these distractions out into the web. I mean, if you had Coleman’s record would you do anything else?

The difference:

• Coleman has made erroneous tangents from a basic core of support for the war – a platform on which he was elected.
• Franken’s positions have evolved from “I don’t know yet” to “I’m going to cater to the nutroots’ most fevered delusions”.

That kinda sums it up, to me.

Today’s my first anniversary on the job.

It’s kinda a  big deal to me.

I’ve spent most of the last fifteen years as a contractor.  “Contracting” is sort of like “being a temp”; it pays better, but it has about the same job security.  Contractors are usually hired to work on specific projects.  And, as those of you in the business world know, a project is only as secure as its’ project is in-demand, or its’ sponsor is powerful and decisive.

And in the past few years I’ve worked for some pretty superfluous projects and/or wussy project sponsors, apparently; several of my projects wound up getting de-funded, or (almost more irritating) going into a sort of long-term funding hibernation; the work still needed to be done, but the powers that be didn’t quite want it done yet.  Hence, I wound up on the beach, for periods ranging from two days to that hellish stretch of 2003 where I did not a lick of paid work for five months, and worked at a bare subsistence level on 3-7-day long projects for six months more. 

Upshot being that in the last fifteen years, I’ve worked at a total of 24 different jobs, ranging from a week to two years, averaging 6.4 months. 

But I’m an employee now, and have been for a year.  I ride a bus (or, weather and schedule permitting, my bike) to the same office every day; I have for the past year, and – as much as part of me still likes the chase of being a “free-lancer”, “consultant”, contractor or temp – I kinda hope I keep doing it for a while longer.

So – see ya in the salt mines!

Now the Robert Street Bridge? That’s Saint Paul.

The Robert Street Bridge, completed in the mid-twenties, has something for everyone – history geeks, engineering geeks, aesthetics geeks, you name it.
From the Minnesota Historical Society:

The Robert Street Bridge is a reinforced concrete, multiple-arch bridge. The Robert Street Bridge is historically significant as an outstanding example of an unaltered, monumental, multi-span, reinforced concrete arch bridge. It is the product of a very complex engineering design process to enable this bridge to be built in this location with its established vehicular, railroad, streetcar and river-navigation demands. The resulting bridge includes a monumental reinforced concrete rainbow arch, by far the largest in Minnesota. The bridge is outstanding not only for its engineering, but for its aesthetic effect in the overall design of the bridge.

As someone who has to design things (or at least software), I can imagine those engineers back in 1921, getting all tingly at the challenge; to fit a bridge over an existing road (Shepard), and the all-important barge channel, and the Greasy Black Railroad Lift Bridge, and make it aesthetically work and serve as a monument to the wisdom of the people who were paying for it.

It’s another one of those roads…:

…where you can almost imagine Al Capone rolling down the street on his way to the Wabasha Caves speakeasy.

But you have to imagine pretty hard, at least on parts of Robert Street. Because in addition to a monument to Saint Paul’s glory years – from James J. Hill through the thirties – it and the street it carries are a tour through all that is wondrous and strong and quirky and all that is depressing and ugly about Saint Paul.

Start on the West Side (for non-Saint-Paulites, the “West Side” is actually south of downtown, and sits astride the hypothetical north-south line that bisects the city; it’s the part of Saint Paul on the west bank of the Mississippi), on the bluff high above the river, up at Robert and Annapolis. The neighborhood seems to have changed since the twenties only to make a nod to the fifties; it’s a close-knit neighborhood of corner markets and neighborhood bars, where “TV repair shops” still repair televisions for frugal locals. In a city that’s been called “fifteen small towns with one mayor”, it’s one of the originals.

Go down the monumental double ramp on Robert, down the bluff, past Concord Street Cesar Chavez Boulevard. You’re in the heart of the second-latest of the city’s great immigrant neighborhoods, centered around Nuestra Señora De Guadalupe church, which have welcomed wave after wave of newbies and their stores, bars, parties and passions to Saint Paul.

Keep going, over the West Side Flats, past the drab warehouses and offices, including the Palace of Incompetence Comcast office and the big USBank Westside Flats office, a huge building that started to reverse decades of architectural rot by at least taking a nod at the area’s past (paid for by tax increment financing that, ironically, emptied USBank employees out of several downtown offices, contributing to downtown’s spiral).

Then, over the bridge, and into downtown.

You can see hints of Saint Paul’s heritage – the City Hall skyscraper, the Pioneer and Endicott buildings – and some of its downfall, the detritus of the “Capitol Center” concept. “Capitol Center” was an Urban-Renewal-era “vision” document from the mid-fifties that, in keeping with the tenor of the era, sought to gut downtown to save it. It guided downtown’s “redevelopment” – some might say “destruction” – from the fifties through the eighties. So between Fourth Street and Seventh, from Wabasha to Sibley, the old downtown that had seen James J. Hill and Al Capone’s glory days – 3-5 stories tall, brownstone and limestone – was gutted. In its place came…progress. Excrescences like the Dayton’s/Marshall Fields/Macy’s building, with all the charm of a Brookdale anchor tenant – a big tan cube that’s more parking ramp than store. White elephants like Town Square and the World Trade Center and Galtier Plaza, and cold, oppressive misfires like the American Bank Bremer tower, mixing it up with gems like the Osborn/Ecolab tower, the Saint Paul Hartford, and so on.

So as you cross the river and drive up Robert, you pass horrors like the Kellogg Square apartments (with all the external charm of a bridge abutment), the Securian tower (a cement bunker of a skyscraper), the Met Council building, and the USBank Center – the worst detritus of the Capitol Center plan. But, like the Robert Street Bridge, there are holdouts; the nineteenth-century splendor of the Pioneer and Endicott buildings, empty (their USBank employees fleeing down Robert to the West Side Flats) as they await the Republican National Convention and the hordes of media, flaks and party functionaries that’ll fill it for a hopeful couple of months; the Golden Rule, a shiny, highly renovated art-deco holdout that has done unto downtown and should have good done unto it; the 401 Building, a shiny new edifice that at least tries to take a nod to the past.

And thence, past parking ramps and blah (or, like the dark-blue aquariium-like Metro Square, atrocious) government offices to its terminus on Capitol Heights.

It’s everything Saint Paul was, a bit of everything bad that’s been done to it, and a shard or two of hope.

The murder of Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor was a senseless, stupid tragedy, of course.  It seems to have been a hot burglary gone horribly awry; the four suspects apparently broke into Taylor’s Fort Meyers (FL) home intending to pilfer stuff.  Taylor surprised them, they allegedly shot him, and he died after apparently bleeding out.

The story has many victims – Taylor’s son and family, friends and teammates. 

And, farther down the list of victims, we can add “rationality” and “logic”.

I don’t turn to Sports Illustrated for informed commentary about politics or current events.  But stupidity is stupidity is stupidity:

A sad part of the story, of course, is a child growing up fatherless, for no good reason. But another sad part, and one that will make good people across the NFL cringe, is that [Taylor’s teammate Chris] Samuels, a gentlemen among gentleman, will be applying for a permit to own a gun this week.

Um…huh?

Taking responsibility for defending oneself from society’s scum is the opposite of being a “gentleman among gentlemen?”

That someone would take it upon him/herself to resist being a victim, to tacitly tell the world’s criminal scum “I will be at the very least a speed bump, if not a surprise bridge abutment, on your road as a thug” is a “sad part of the story?”

“I was always scared of guns growing up,” Samuels said. “But this situation has told me I need one. I’d rather be prepared than to be like Sean was, and not have a gun in his house when he really needed it. I’m going to go through all the proper procedures, get a license, get training for it, and have it in my house, where I lay my head at night.

Reading between the lines, it’d seem Samuels is going to get a Florida carry permit – which, like the system in Minnesota (and 35 other states) requires the applicant to show a clean criminal, substance abuse and violent mental illness record, and take a training course to enforce competence and knowledge of applicable law.

Tragedy?  Hell, no – it’s a victory.  When law-abiding citizen (and the piece in SI works overtime to show Samuels is not one of the caricaturish thugs that infest the NFL today) that decides to draw that line in the sand and say “me and mine are off limits, thugs”, it sends the message our society’s layer of criminal scum need to hear; that you are one bad choice from having your chest cavity blown out through your shoulder blades, and than you should think twice about your chosen vocation.

“I wish a lot of people thought like I did, that violence is bad. But unfortunately that’s not the way the world is. Sometimes the world is not a nice place. It’s sad I have to get a gun.”

And that’s yet another tragedy of Sean Taylor’s death.

No, it’s a rescue of three bits of good news from a senseless tragedy; he’s another armed, law-abiding citizen. 

 He’s a role model that other law-abiding citizens can use to get over the stigma that the nannymedia has labored to put on the law-abiding gun owner these last four decades.

And finally, it’s another journalist exposed as the patriarchal nannystater he is.

It’s pretty much a given that nobody appreciates this country like someone who left his/her old life to come here.  As a fourth-generation American, the grandson of people who were born here, I am deeply thankful for what we have in this nation – but not nearly so much as those who come here, sometimes leaving or risking all, do.

Indeed, there is nothing that warms the heart, shivers the spine and quivers the lip quite like seeing a swearing-in ceremony, where dozens, hundreds or thousands of newly-naturalized citizens take the Pledge of Allegiance, and take up permanent residence in the Shining City on the Hill.

And as a cherry on the sundae?  They’re turning into Republicans:

Previously, new citizens could be relied upon to vote Democratic by a ratio of up to 10 to one. But in San Diego this week there were indications that this could be changing.

“I’ve had several people here, Hispanic people, say ‘No, I’m a Republican’,” said Bill De Risa, a Democratic worker eagerly registering voters outside Golden Hall.

His colleague Mary Kennedy said that one woman had told her she wanted to be a Republican because of immigration policy.

“She felt the Democrats were too soft. She wanted higher fences. It’s a very polarising issue.”

The high fence – and wide, brightly-lit gate – draw comments:

“For a long time, immigration was OK,” said Sara Wright, 49, a seamstress from Mexico who arrived in the US legally in 1986.

“But now, no more. A lot of really bad people come from Mexico and commit crimes.

“People are coming in and having two, three, four babies and going on welfare. Some are making money here and spending it back in Mexico.

“That’s not right. They should go back to Mexico and get a permit.”

Mrs Wright, whose American-born husband Ed served in the US Navy, was one of 1,591 people from 89 countries who became citizens at a ceremony in San Diego’s Golden Hall on Tuesday.

Immigration:  Keep it safe, available and legal.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Waiting on a “conditional approval” for an FHA loan that’d lop about five points off my mortgage. 

So if any of you has a hotline to the powers that be – literal or metaphorical – on these things, I’d appreciate a good word.  I’ll eat my veggies every night. 

Joel Rosenberg notes a flock of durocs flying over 425 Portland:

 I’d definitely want further confirmation before declaring this an Official Flying Pig Sighting — but it’s possible that Nick Coleman has written a sensible column.

I think Joel may be right.  We may be witnessing that annual – maybe semiannual – phenomenon, the “good Nick Coleman column”.

Read it and judge for yourself.

And, if true, seek overhead cover.

Over at True North…

…Chief links to the Coleman campaign’s video on Al Franken’s ever-changing positions on Iraq:

This new Coleman ad is a pretty tough one for Al Franken to get past without yet another confirmation/contradiction of 1/2 of Franken’s previous statements. And look for that one to be contradicted again in a few months.

The campaign’s point – Franken isn’t so much “flip-flopping” as he is trying to simultaneously triangulate to every possible audience, from the “Defeat Now!” nutroots of the DFL’s Highland Park base to the outstate and East Side pro-life, pro-gun, “my daughter is a Marine” wing of the party.

Tucked under the Robert Street bridge (on which more tomorrow) is the span I affectionately have always called the Greasy Black Vertical-Lift Rail Bridge.

Oh, it has a real name and all – the St. Paul Union Pacific Vertical-lift Rail Bridge – but that hardly matters, does it?

Railroad bridges are as purely utilitarian as a structure can get; there’s not a scrap of wasted, ornamental or decorative metal anywhere on this bridge.

Wikipedia says:

It was built in 1913 and was designed by Waddell & Harrington. In 1925, the north end of the bridge was raised about 16 feet to tie in with tracks that served the St. Paul Union Depot yard.

Now, I’m kind of a fumblefinger as a handyman. Raising a bridge?

The bridge was originally built by the Chicago Great Western Railroad, which later became part of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. The Robert Street Bridge, built later in 1926, had to be carefully engineered around the railroad bridge.

With results that are, frankly, kinda cool – but we’ll get to that tomorrow.

In April 1997, high water on the Mississippi River reached the bottom of the span. The Union Pacific Railroad spotted a train of hopper cars laden with rocks on the bridge to help anchor it and keep it from being washed away.

Truth be told, the Greasy Black Vertical-lift Rail Bridge isn’t all that interesting on its own. It’s the efforts made to work around it that are kinda cool.

But we’ll get to that tomorrow.

So I got a copy of Lileks’ new book, Gastroanomalies.

How funny is it?

Bun had a bad week last week, topped off with a pretty terrible Sunday.  She was in a terrible mood Sunday afternoon.

And then she cracked it open and started reading…

…and in about five minutes, was in a wonderful mood by sixteen-year-old girl standards.

Gastroanomalies – hard-cover psychiatry!

So with a nod to my old friend James, go buy a copy.

Lori Sturdevant’s column this week is titled “If economy goes south, is Minnesota prepared?”

I thought on reading the headline “by Minnesota, surely she means the people of this state; the productive sector; the ones that actually pay the revenues in to the state to keep the government (aka the big parasitic appendage that drags the rest of the economy)“.  Right?

Oh, who was I trying to kid.  When she says “Minnesota”…

The state’s $739 million revenue downturn through June 2009, forecast Friday, came as no surprise to the budget reporters in the Capitol basement — schooled as we’ve been by the long, strong run of finance commissioners who have served Minnesota through the years. They’ve taught us well that this state’s revenue stream is wickedly variable. It floods in good times — or it used to, before the 1999-2000 income tax cuts — and it dries up quickly during

…she means government.

As to the media beating the “recession” drumbeat…Kiiiiiiing?

I was going through the checkout at the store on Sunday.

The woman at the till, wearing a hijab scarf but speaking with a Minnesota accent, pointed at the package of bologna. “Could you pick it up and put it in the bag for me?”

“Huh?”

“It’s pork. I can’t touch pork”, she said, smiling. “Can you…”

I thought about responding “No, it’s plastic.  You can touch plastic, ya?”

I thought, then again, about asking “you do realize that it’s just a tiny little film of overdramatic imams in Minneapolis that are knotted up about check-out girls touching pork products swathed in blisterpak, right?”
I shrugged, and picked up the package. She scanned it, and I put it in the bag.

Katie Kieffer writes to note that the St. Thomas Register has Latest E an online edition,  Katie (and her sister, current editor Amy) has been fighting the good fight at St. Thomas for the past four years.
They don’t get a heck of a lot of support from St. Thomas – while the school is not the most hidebound liberal campus in town, it’s still hardly conservative-friendly.

And they’re fund-raising, too.  So if you have a couple of bucks to spare for intellectual freedom on campus, they’d love to hear from you.

Charlie Quimby notes…:

In a mostly comic post about Democratic plants among questioners in the recent CNN/YouTube GOP debate, Mitch Berg says:

[1] Seriously – dimes’ll getcha dollars that the “gun nuts” were plants (no real conservative would toss a shotgun through the air), and the “bible-waver” was a performance artist and Kucinich supporter.

The “no real conservative” part is debatable as a way of ascertaining facts,

(also, it was a broad joke, but I digress)

but it wasn’t hard for me to check out Jay Fox to confirm Mitch’s supposition. He’s a film student who apparently thought he was submitting a comedy short.

Fox got laughs as well as howls of protest — from gun lovers and haters alike. And CNN got more egg on its screen.

Since the debate, I’ve had to change the filters and oil the bearings in my BS detector.  It got that much of a workout.

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” – Ed and I will be in next, from 1-3. I bet we’ll be talking Minnesota politics, among other things, with Barry Casselman…
• 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!