I’ve spent a bit of time in the past few weeks catching up on reading my leftyblogs.

And owwwie – my trip through the fever swamp has left me covered with bug bites and woodticks. There are some nutbars out there – and I’m not talking the fringey soloblogs, even; the Minnesota Monitor seems to have made a concerted effort to transform from an incompetent news organization to a laughable “Gawker”-style rantblog; while even Nick Coleman in his “prime” didn’t provide this much material, it eventually feels like playing football against six-year-olds; it’s easy to run up a score, but too easy to be really satisfying.

So it’s usually fun to read Charlie Quimby over at “Across the Great Divide”; he’s a lefty but he’s not dumb.

And so I flipped over there, and saw the latest headline: “Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?”

Ow. Talk about whiplash.

Here’s a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?

That’s have to be one mighty enterprising PhD student. While a parent’s religion might certainly be an element into an investigation into a murder, I don’t recall that a parent’s voting record has, for anyone this side of Kathleen Soliah.

Seriously; have you ever seen a story that kicked off:

A Framingham mother of three, active in her Massachusetts Democratic Party caucus, strangled her toddler yesterday.

Mary Noel Bilkosky-Mullins-Stoppard, 42, of Framingham, was booked on charges of murder yesterday.

Neighbors describe her as “a committed liberal.” “While most of us believe in a woman’s right to choose – I mean, duh – Mary Noel was very committed to the cause – almost like a fundamentalist”, said Bilkosky-Mullins-Stoppard’s neighbor, Ian Micah Schlumberg-Rossellini, interviewed at the local organic food market for this story.

You’ve never seen it, have you?

And you never will!

Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.

(You can spare me the comments about abortion.

Well, actually, that enforces a certain myopia on the debate, doesn’t it? If one wants to discuss attitudes toward crime, life and death, and murder based on politics, why leave out the biggest single issue signalling group attitudes toward the value of life; that among most fundie Christians, a life has to do something very wrong to deserve being erased, while among the left, it’s (very generally) the opposite.

But OK. I’ll try to stay on Charlie’s topic here.

In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.

Whoah, Charlie! The whiplash is killing me!

OK. You found a piece that hit a bunch of the hot buttons that lefties find weird; fundamental Christianity, home schooling, healing by faith. Let’s limit our focus, shall we – Homeschooling is rarely lethal (indeed, it works better than school education in nearly every possible instance), and faith-healing is a very fraught issue to which I’m rather close, via this couple, both of whom were professors of mine in college. It’s a different, and much more complex, issue than Charlie’s focus.

Quimby started talking about Andrea Yates, who actively murdered her children – hardly the same thing.

In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.

I’m not sure what Charlie’s trying to get at, here. Was he insane for clubbing his family to death? Or for claiming they’re in heaven? Or is the latter just snarky “evidence” of insanity, in case the whole “bludgeoning” thing didn’t convince you? Indeed, does belief in heaven make you either fundamentalist or insane?

Well, send a truck for me, Charlie. I believe they’re in heaven, too. Most of the people in this country’d probably agree.

Indeed, if you went out on the street and picked 100 people at random, almost anywhere in this country (shaddap about Berkeley), 90 of them would likely be one variety of Christian or another, and would hope at the very least there’s a heaven for the innocent victims of the insane. And while “fundamentalist” is a continuum rather than an association with standards and membership cards, probably around nine people of that sample would call themselves some kind of fundamentalist.
But Charlie’s digression has caused me to digress as well. It’s no excuse, but…

And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.

I’ve looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven’t found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn’t look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you’re sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.

Anyone offended yet?

No, just confused. Since most people of mainstream faith hold the concurrent belief that the same act that’d send your kids to heaven wil send you to a place under complete DFL control hell, Charlie’s implied conclusion (“fundamentalism helps predispose people to murderous lunacy” might not be word-perfect, but it’s close enough, given Charlie’s post’s title) makes less sense than saying, perhaps, that concluding “someone whose personality is defective enough to kill their children is newsworthy; if that same person is a fundamentalist, it’s newsworthy and indulges the urge to bash fundamentalists and/or people of faith in general”.

Oh, not to worry; Charlie is only yanking our chains. Right?

Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.

But it’s hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.

Well, most of the Islamofascist suicide bombers were hoping Kerry would win.
Hey, if Charlie gets to half-seriously yank chains, why not I?

But OK. Since Charlie can “half-seriously” connect correlation and causation based on an infinitesimally-tiny sampling of crimes, linked with either mental illness (the Yates and Iowa murders) or a sect of Islam that actively promotes murder, or a combination of the two (the cabbie and his daughter), why not join into the fun.

What’s the murder capitol of Minnesota? North Minneapolis and the Phillips Neighborhood on the south side.

Who did they vote for in ’04?

Well, I saw a lot more “Kerry” stickers over there.

Or to paraphrase Charlie, it’s hard to shake that whenever I see news of a neighorhood ruined by drug trafficking, where honest citizens are afraid to go out at night, Democrat bumper stickers show up pretty regularly; “WWJD” and NRA stickers and Milton Friedman T-shirts and, well, visible manifestations of religious faith, not so much.

Another question; is fundamentalism equally likely to cause society to devalue the life of the fundamentalist?

Onward…

Dan Stover tipped his hand bright and early with the title of his blog – but he’s been cranking out good stuff, regularly, for over three years now, which on the blogosphere is an eternity.

His weekly “Best of the MOB” feature – which has apparently been running for a while – is a great introduction to some of the MOB blogs that might get lost in the shuffle. And he comes up with angles for things that I just don’t see from anyone else.

No, that’s a good thing; here’s one, on the Spitzer resignation’s “runway” impact:

For today, though, what was fasciniating was this picture on the home page of FoxNews.com this morning.

On the right is Mr. & Mrs. Spitzer, and on the left is Mr. & Mrs. Jim McGreevey (former NJ governor), as they appeared in their respective press conferences they held for their respective sex scandals.Do you think the DNC has their own scandal style consultant(s)? That could be a full time job for someone.

I can’t wait for Spitzer’s “I am a Pervert-American” speech.

Northern Alliance Wannabe? Well, getting on the air is a bolt-from-the-blue bit of serendipity, but Dan’s got quite a thing going on his own. And if you’re not reading it, you should be.

Last week, it occurred to me that I used to make a really religious point of linking out to people that I enjoy reading.  Back in about 2003, I was extremely conscientious about it; I was aware of the debt I owed to bigger blogs that had sent tons and tons of traffic my way earlier in this blog’s history, and put me where I am (which is pretty much the “C” list of blogs; Ed and Powerline and Lileks are obviously up on the “A” list, the household names; Michael Brodkorb and PZ Meyers are probably on the “B” list, big solid regional blogs that are key, nationally-known players within their niches.  Me?  I’m just a solid regional blog with 2,500 unique visitors a day.  Nothing to be ashamed about at all, since it’s about 2,490 more than I ever expected.

Of course, there’s a pack of usual suspects I link to constantly; KAR, TvM, Red, and a a bunch of others.  And the bigs, of course – HAir and the Powerguys and of course my NARN mates at Fraters, MDE and the Scholaz.

But there are a zillion other blogs out there, and it’d be really cool if a lot of them got a ton more traffic than they did, because they have something to say and a great way of saying it.

So I’ll be doing that for the next few weeks.  Just because.

The District 49B GOP continued the revolt againt the Sturdevant Republicans.

After denying endorsement to RINO Kathy Tingelstad last month, the district GOP endorsed an actual conservative.

Brad Carlson was there:

Cimenski was voted the nominee over two other prospective candidates in our House District’s nominating convention this morning. In an impassioned nomination speech, he vowed to embrace the core conservative principles of the GOP which were abandoned by the likes of Rep. Tingelstad, who herself was in the audience. In fact, Tingelstad received verbal daggers from all three prospective nominees for her vote to override Governor Tim Pawlenty’s veto of the Transportation bill. There is no question that the citizens in 49B are still smarting from that vote.

In continuing his speech, Cimenski talked of returning public service to the grassroots level.

I don’t believe in this idea that you have to choose a Republican candidate to endorse who’s so-called “more electable”, even if they’re not most in line with the platform. This is what has happened to our party the past eight years, and look where we are now.

And you can’t go wrong in a room full of conservatives if you occasionally invoke the philosophy of our finest President

If I may borrow a quote from Ronald Reagan and put a Minnesota twist on it: We don’t have a $935 million deficit because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a $935 million dollar deficit because we spend too much.

Brad notes that the DFL is going to fight like hell to pick up this district – and if they do, they’ll consider it a validation of the idea that Republicans should go back to the bad old days, before 1998, where the part stuffered from Stockholm Syndrome and were largely only DFLers with better suits.

So it’s time to fight like hell right back.

Closed Circuit to Flash:  what do Hillary, FoxNews, and the Northern Alliance have in common? (*)

I have a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today than before last Tuesday’s meeting — and it’s a very favorable one indeed.

That’s right; Richard Mellon Scaife!

The conspiracy deepens!

OK.  All non-Flash readers may rejoin this conversation.

(more…)

Angela Merkel begins what could be an avalanche of world leaders opting to skip the opening ceremony at the Bejing Olympics.

As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown’s determination to attend the Olympics.

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.

“The presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate,” Tusk said. “I do not intend to take part.”

Question to ponder; would this have happened three years ago, before the conservative (by Euro standards) wave that swept Sarkozy and Merkel into office (and reinforced the  small-“l” liberal governents of Klaus and Tusk)?

If Merkel and others do not attend the opening ceremony, it is likely to reinforce a growing sense in China that the Olympics is being used to vilify the host.China had hoped to use the games to highlight its economic development and growing openness. But it is increasingly proving an opportunity for critics to bash China’s one-party political system, human rights abuses, treatment of minorities and tightly controlled media.

Wow, China.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I “The First Team” – Chad, John and Brian will do their thing from 11-1  They’ll be talking with Ross Bernstein about his series of books on the “honor codes” in professional sports.  Should be a short broadcast.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is back! Let’s face it – no shortage of material this week.  We’ll be talking about the new state-run healthcare legislation with a few of the people who’ve been working with the Governor on the subject.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King joins Michael from 3-5.  They’ll be talking with the organizer of the SWMinnU appearance by Ward Churchill.  This oughtta be good.

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. On the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

Steve “Mister Furious” Perry – former journalist, now Soros minion and “editor” of the Minnesota Monitor, is sad.

He and his minions – in this case, Karl Bremer – tried to play the “public activism” game earlier this week (or, to be accurate, continued his decade-long obession with sliming his bete noire, Rep. Michele Bachmann). And as we all know, one of the wages of public activism is that the public gets their cut at you.

And Perry is trying to cut back. But now that he’s dealing with people who play the game better than he does, it’s just…not…working:

After a scheduled appearance by the pro-war veterans’ group Vets for Freedom

Well, there’s a gutless little slur for ya, right outta the gate!

“Pro-war?” Guess Perry hasn’t read David Bellavia’s book, or heard the guy speak. Simple fact; there’s nobody on earth more anti-war, as a concept and as a fact, than someone who’s spent time in combat. Bellavia is no GOP stooge; his book is pretty forthright about his own beliefs, as well as those of his fellow grunts (he talks with admiration about one of his squad’s fire-team leaders, a Polish-American who hated Bush and Rumsfeld with a passion that might yet land him a Soros stipend of his own).

Pro-war? Tell it to Bellavia’s face.

The websites Look True North and Minnesota Majority posted letter generators for writing to Bremer that include his photograph and, for a time, included his home addresses and home and work phone numbers as well. (Cached screen grab with personal data removed here.)

And True North removed that information almost immediately.

(And yeah, I condemn anyone who threatened Karl Bremer, assuming it happened – which is a hell of a lot more than Bremer would do for me or anyone who’d ever spoken out against him, I guarantee you.  I believe that people should be able to separate their activism and their private life; I’ve respected people on that count pretty religiously; Karl Bremer’s associates have not).

On Tuesday evening, right-wing KTLK-FM talk host Jason Lewis had the following exchange with a caller (emphasis added):…

Jason Lewis: I don’t lead a jihad against individuals unless they happen to be in the public arena. Of course, you could make the argument this guy’s now in the public arena. But if citizens are truly fed up with a small minority of socialist kooks in Stillwater, led by this Karl Bremer character who’s got a bizarre obsession with Michele Bachmann, I can’t be held accountable for what citizens might come up with. If you want to let this guy know you think he’s a bum, that’s up to you. I’m just saying that people ought to know his name, because he’s the guy, the ringleader, in Veterans for Peace and all this, that literally are censoring veterans.

Yep.

So – so what?

We continue the transcription:

Lewis: Yeah, right. Well, the problem with these protesters–the problem they’ve got is, they entered the public arena…Karl Bremer has been out there putting his name in the papers in his letters to the editor bashing Michele Bachmann. So he is now a public person, and hence he’s going to take the slings and arrows just like he hands them out. Long overdue, to be sure.

And again – so what?

Mr. Perry: Is Jason wrong?

Is Karl Bremer – a very frequent source and sometime contributor to Perry’s propaganda mill, as well as a high-profile contrib to Perry’s ex-gig, the Daily Mole – not a public figure? Is his public involvement in the stifling of Vets for Freedom’s appearance somehow off-limits?

Why? (Preferably in terms other than “because we really really want it to be”?

I mean, Bremer likes to dish out the abuse. Not that I advocate abuse (to say nothing of Bremer’s brand of context-mangling hackery), but can’t he take it?

If so, then why is he mixing it up in public? And why is Steve Perry breathlessly repeating his “reporting” as fact?

I phoned KTLK, a Clear Channel station, intending to ask program director Steve Versnick if this harangue fits the station’s programming policies. He has not yet returned the call. If and when he does, I’ll update with his response.

Well, I can’t speak for Steve Versnick. If I were Jason Lewis’ boss (and Clear Channel could do, and has done, worse), though, my response might be something like…:

Mitch Berg, Program Director: Steve? Bubbie? What’s the matter? You and your little website and its little clacque of hangers-on wanna be activists! You’re all fair game! I mean, if someone threatens you, call the friggin’ cops, and I’ll have your back! But if you think that the rules change just because your pal wants to do his sliming under cover of the Democrat Underground hive, you’re sadly mistaken.

Have a nice day!

Which is a lot nicer than my first draft, “If you find something here that isn’t strictly covered by the First Amendment, then go pound sand up your ass, crybaby”.

Here’s hoping.

Minutes from this morning’s meeting:

———-

LEADER: Attention! The moment we’ve been awaiting is at hand!

VARIOUS OTHER BUFFALO: Sssssssh!

LEADER: After centuries of being put down by the two-legs, and the humiliation of having North Dakota State University in Fargo co-opt our species name as a mascot …

MANY BUFFALO: (hissssssssss!)

LEADER: …against our will, we are finally to get our due! This morning, I’m told a “Tom Elko” – a two-leg who writes for the Minnesota Monitor, who goes with our interests at heart – is set to blow the horns off of the two-legger conspiracy to keep the buffalo down!

(Much enthusiastic stomping of hooves)

RRRRUUHHHNXXH (a buffalo): Leader? Is this the same “Minnesota Monitor” that ridiculed their would-be leader’s teeth? Or that didn’t know that guns are already legal in two-leggers’ “bars”?

LEADER: Yes! We have set up this computer to show the story when it comes across on the two-legs’ “Inter Net”. Grffffrnx, hit the button to view the “Web Page”.

GRFFFFRNX (another buffalo, albeit less handsome): By your leave!

(Grffffrnx the buffalo clumsily clicks a huge “mouse” button. The Minnesota Monitor story loads)

(not actual size)
(Crestfallen dismay)

GGGRRRRRNHX (Another buffalo): My god! After all these years, they write a story about the two-leg bastards in Fargo – and they put up the wrong logo?

RRRRRRHRRRRRRH: (a short, pugnacious buffalo)  Pffft.  Anything west of Saint Louis Park might as well be Uzbekistan to these two-legs!

AAAAAAXHHHXXXXXHHH (a buffallette, something of a sex symbol at the BADL if I may be so bold): Noooo! To try to generate sympathy for us, they show a picture of another cursed two-leg?  The logo of the University of North Dakota, as opposed to North Dakota State, the purported subject of the two leggers’ story?

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHRN (a frumpy-looking middle-aged female buffalo):  Omigod, it gets worse!  Look what he wrote:  “NDSU has frequently been criticized for its “Fighting Sioux” nickname and its Native American logo.”  Don’t these two-legs proof-read anything?

 RRRRRRHRRRRRRH: Look!  He also writes “This latest incident comes the same week NDSU sorority Gamma Phi was put on “temporary social probation”…They have THE WRONG INSTITUTION!

LEADER: (Silent for a moment, choking back tears): Stupid…stupid speciesist two-leg bastards!

And…scene.

It’s been a crazy week.

No, I know – it’s a crazy week for everyone. It always is. Among the urban, urbane, working-guy’n-gal set, every week is set to puree, these days. If people aren’t constantly complaining about being too busy and too swamped, other people wonder if you’re abusing Xanax or something. But suffice to say it’s been worse that most; most of it “not good”, none of it catastrophic. One of those “not red-letter” weeks, let’s just say, the kind that make me look forward to biking-to-work season, which opens (come hell or high water) next week for me.

But Mr. Dilettante notes something that I, and a lot of local bloggers, missed covering this past week; Senator Coleman announced his candidacy on Wednesday.

Local center-right bloggers were muted in their coverage:

I wasn’t especially worried about missing the event, since I figured that other bloggers would be there and would write about the event in detail. The ever-reliable Michael Brodkorb was there of course and there’s substantial coverage of the event over at MDE, as you’d suspect. But as yesterday spread into today, I started to notice something. Many of the other prominent center-right voices in the Minnesota blogosphere hadn’t written anything about the event, either. Nothing from Powerline. Mitch Berg was otherwise occupied. AAA hadn’t weighed in. No barking from the Freedom Dogs. Not a peep at Anti-Strib. Bupkis at TvM. And most notably, nothing at True North.

I’d chalk it up to a couple of things:

1. Most of us center-right bloggers – not having a Soros-like sugardaddy – have to work day jobs. Coleman’s announcement came amid a very busy work day; perfect timing for the dead-tree and broadcast media news cycle, bad for a guy who’s gotta get to meetings and deliver stuff. I sent my regrets to Coleman’s press people, who – I have to say it – have done a great job at reaching out to center-right bloggers this past year. Kudos to them.
2. Some center-right bloggers – the ones farther to the right on the continuum – are upset at some of Norm’s votes. Norm is not a pure movement conservative; he is a consummate pragmatist, as befits someone who ran a highly liberal city for eight years as a conservative DFLer against a hostile majority, and had to win election against not just Paul Wellstone, but his memory borne into eternal hagiography by the swooniest mob since the Beatles played Shea Stadium. Norm is not the perfect conservative; he is, however, good enough on all issues, and leads the pack on a number of issues, most notably shining a light on the cockroach den on the East River, the UN. But for Senator Coleman, “Oil For Food” would be just another Texaco marketing promotion. He’s generally right on the war, mostly right on spending, generally on the ball on judges; against that, I’ll forgive ANWR and his few other not-quite-conservative miscues.

So while I was remiss in not covering the Senator’s announcement, let me make it perfectly clear; I am fired up for Norm, and I’m going to do everything in my meager power to keep Norm in the Senate.

Mr. D:

As bloggers we’re all independent actors — despite what some people would have you believe, there’s no “ScaifeNet” or “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” afoot. We all make independent, idiosyncratic judgments concerning what we write about. And there have been some interesting local stories in the last few days, including the controversy at Forest Lake High School and the light bulb bill that Rep. Bachmann introduced, among other things. In all of that, Norm seems to have gotten lost. I’m not sure what it means, but the apparent lack of interest in Coleman’s event must mean something. And it would seem to be a good idea for Norm’s campaign people to see if they can ascertain the larger meaning.

Well, there’s no larger meaning at Shot In The Dark. D’s right, of course; this week was a mad blender of breaking news, and – events aside – while Norm’s announcement is important, it was hardly “news”; I don’t think anyone woke up Tuesday morning wondering if the Senator was going to bow out of the race.

But let nobody misinterpret my silence; this blog and the voter behind it supports Norm Coleman. I support him against the DFL’s nominee (I’m rooting for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer!), and would do so against anyone the DFL could or would conceivably put in the race. While I differ from Norm on a few things – and tell him so, and tell you, via this blog, as well – Minnesota has had no better Senator in the two decades I’ve spent in this state; if Minnesota Republicans screw that up because of the odd ANWR vote, we’ll all be the poorer – literally and figuratively – for it.

Go, Norm!

This week’s Hot Gear Friday – done with a nod, as always, toward Anti-Strib’s “Hot Chick Friday” – focuses on the “Speed Racer” of guitar gear, the Supro Thunderbolt.

When you were a kid, did you ever dream about finding a bunch of parts in a second-hand-parts store, tossing them together, and – via an improbable series of empricial vicissitudes – accidentally build a go-cart that could go 200 mph? Or do the neighborhood show or skit that would get seen, randomly, by some Hollywood agent?

The Supro amp was sorta like that.

Supro was a budget-model line of guitars and amps, just a couple of steps above the makes you’d find in Penneys and Sears catalogs of the day, but nowhere near the A-list amps of the day, the Fenders and Ampegs and Marshalls and Hiwatts. They were priced accordingly, when they were new – outside the catalog range, but toward the lower end of the music-store brand range.

But what you got…

…was a value priced piece of equipment with a tone that’d strip the chrome off a trailer hitch. With a good, high-output guitar, the Supro would get the perfect overdrive. It was like that mythical, fictional, fantasy go-kart built out of odds and sods that just happened to work better than the sum of their parts.
Jimmy Page reportedly used a Thud on Led Zeppelin I, II, III and/or IV, depending on the legend you choose to believe. This introduces a chicken/egg question; would people have noticed this humble, budget amp without the Jimmy Page history/legend, or would that legend/history have ever existed had the Supro not been a diamond in the rought?

Who cares?

All I know is, I got to play one in college; when my Fender Deluxe Reverb was in the shop (a long, gruelling process in rural North Dakota at the time), I borrowed a Thud from a friend of mine.

And until the dawn of amps with “modeling” processors (subject of an upcoming HGF) I’ve never played an amp that just felt so perfect, before or since (short, perhaps, of the occasional Mesa/Boogie that, at that time of my life, would have cost a couple months’ salary). And apparently others think so, too – once humble Thuds seem to go for princely ransoms on EBay these days.

If you get the impression that I could burn through a Powerball purse on guitar gear, you’re probably not all wrong…

Question for Nick Coleman:  In society today, high school students are exposed to just about everything adults are.  Forget about sex and violence and a cynical Hollywood and Madison Avenue, which treats ’em like ripe marketing targets, hypersexualized little ripe sucks.

Thanks to the hyper-left orientation of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers and the educational academy, they also get a steady diet of political correctness and the DFL line on issue after issue.  I used to pay my kids a buck for every piece of political indoctrination they brought home from school – and they made out pretty well.

Schools bus students to pro-teachers’ union lobbying events, on school time.  More cynically still, many school districts are proposing “community service” “requirements” that would make students earn part of their graduation requirements by…providing free labor for “community” non-profits.  On questioning, I got proponents to admit that the groups they had in mind included ACORN, the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, NARAL and the like – but not, naturally, dissenting groups; a kid who believed in Second Amendment rights couldn’t earn social studies credit interning with the NRA, for example.

Whatever.

Anyway – Nick Coleman, a la Captain Renault, is was shocked, shocked to learn that politics were involved in this past week’s “Vets for Freedom” rally.  Scott Johnson pretty well eviscerates Coleman’s column:

Coleman never contacted Hegseth to give him the opportunity to address the allegation that VFF is or was a Republican front group. And he didn’t bother to show up for any of the local appearances the group made in town on Tuesday. Had he done either, he would have discovered that VFF is the brainchild of (mostly decorated) Iraq war combat vets David Bellavia, Knox Nunnally, Mark Seavey, Joe Dan Worley, and Wade Zirkle — not a White House operative among them. They joined together on their own impetus to rally support on the home front for victory in Iraq against what they saw as the miselading portrait of the war painted in media organs such as, well, the Star Tribune.

VFF seeks political support for the objective of victory in Iraq. Thus its expression of gratitude to Senator Coleman and congressional Democrats such as Brian Baird (D, WA) and Jim Marshall (D, GA) who have heard the group out and come to share its point-of-view. The assertion that it is a partisan organization is a partisan lie.

More cynical still?  Coleman briefly mentioned the group of “anti-war” activists who hounded Flake High in to politically-correct submission.  But he mentions not a word of their intensely political motivation of the “anti-war” groups.

Dave Thul – an actual Iraq veteran – writes an excellent piece on his interchange with Karl “Howlin’ Mad” Bremer, a man who’s spent the last ten years of his life dedicated to attacking Rep. Michele Bachmann.  (Although various conservative commentators have linked Bremer to the campaign of harassment that caused Flake High to shut the Veterans for Freedom down, Bremer disclaims any direct involvement in the campaign.  He also notes that he is himself a veteran, and that he’s been harassed as a result of the belief that he’s been involved.  While I’ve condemned Bremer’s monomaniacal focus on Rep. Bachmann, and his frequently yellow and self-indulgent “journalism”, and think that he is the personification of the “bad speech” that the First Amendment bids us to provide “more better speech” to counter, I condemn any personal harassment, and salute his service as an MP back in the seventies).

Read Thul’s piece.  And think about what the public schools teach every single day.  And ask yourself – while they pay lip service to their alleged “mission” of creating citizens who are capable of participating in our civil society, when was the last time you actually saw them exposing kids to any idea that dissented from the DFL’s platform?

Those Blogthings quizzes are inside my head, I tell you:

You Are 99% Sexy

Your Sex Appeal Is: Almost Off The Clock You’re very sexy. You just have that certain something that takes over a room.  You warp the minds of lesser people. You know how to attract, entice, and keep whoever you want. You are truly appealing.  Even the caustic jealousy of the less-gifted doesn’t harsh your romantic mellow.

A few days ago, many of us in the local center-right blogosphere got a good laugh at a local leftypundit’s declaration “if you say you’re not a racist, you are”.

Apparently the corollary is “if you negotiate carefully and in good faith to make sure that a potentially-political event is non-political,  you are political”.

Or so Nick Coleman would have you “think”:

Tuesday’s cancellation of a visit to Forest Lake High School by Iraq War veterans in a giant bus labeled “Vets For Freedom National Heroes Tour” produced a bonanza of outraged media reports:

“Heroes banned by School! Minnesota hates the Heroes!”

Or maybe a Minnesota school was just trying to keep its students from becoming pawns in a political game.

There would not have been much outrage if that big bus, instead of saying “Heroes Tour,” had been painted to say “Republican Tour to Shore Up the Pro-War Vote.” But that would have been an honest paint job.

And it would have made clear why Forest Lake Principal Steve Massey — now vilified by right wing radio and TV — did what he did.

Massey and Forest Lake — a patriotic small town with a Fourth of July parade where spectators stand and doff their hats and put their right hands over their hearts every single time an American flag goes by — are getting a bum rap.

The visit to Forest Lake was worked out by Massey and Forest Lake alum Pete Hegseth, an Iraq veteran who heads Vets for Freedom. VFF says it is nonpartisan, but the liberal watchdog group the Center for Media and Democracy said it began as a Republican front group managed by White House insiders.

Their plan? According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the plan is to drum up support for the war. The group’s political bent was clear last year when it bought TV ads to thank Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., for supporting the war.

Hey, folks: It’s an election year. Things may get ugly. They sure were in Forest Lake.

Permit me to say something: Vets for Freedom are real vets, their heroics are authentic (but not all heroes support the war) and their right to their opinion is unquestioned.

But uniforms and valor should not hide a political agenda. On that, they must be questioned. Even in a school. Especially in a school.

Massey had little choice.

Forest Lake shows how badly we need to talk about this war. And how very hard it is to do.

The regional leftymedia has been tittering about the Republican bill to repeal the ban on incandescent lightbulbs.  Of course, for the regional left(y media), the fact that Michele Bachmann is among the 12 co-sponsors is all it takes to initiate the tittering.

Kouba – who knows about actual science and stuff – has the facts that would make a thinking lefty…well, stop tittering, if they bothered to think about it.

Excerpt, from a Tim Carney piece:

As reported previously in this column, the energy bill was loaded up with all sorts of favors for energy companies, manufacturers and other corporate bigwigs. The light bulb law follows the same pattern: A regulation touted as an environmental boon that will have dubious benefits to the planet, real costs to consumers and guaranteed profits for a handful of well-connected corporations.
…
Today, the clear successor to Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb is the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). CFLs are more expensive, but they last longer and use less electricity. They have real downsides, however.

First, the light is not as attractive to many consumers — a problem with which the industry has struggled for years. Second, they take a little time after you flip the switch to reach full brightness.

Third, most CFLs can’t be used with dimmer switches or three-way fixtures. Fourth, the bulbs contain mercury, creating a potential health hazard in case of breakage and an environmental hazard for disposal.
….
These companies will get rich thanks to energy bill, but it’s not clear the public or the environment will share the windfall GE and Philips will experience. GE makes its CFLs and other fancy light bulbs in China, while it makes its incandescents in the United States.

The light bulb law will ship more American jobs offshore, shift manufacturing to China’s dirtier and less efficient factories, and increase shipping distances. Add in the mercury, and it’s not clear how good this law is for the environment. Its clearest benefit is to the companies who lobbied for it.

Ah, well.  Whether it’s environmental policy, self-defense law, John McCain’s teeth, whatever.  Being a lefty means never letting anything get in the way of tittering.

Big day today; huge meeting where I pitch what I do – as part of a new enterprise development process – to the company’s staff of Business Analysts”, followed by my annual review, followed by more work work work.

I overslept a tad this morning, so my usual frenetic 5AM burst of productivity is absent wtihout leave today. Posting will therefore likely be light-ish until I’m done at the office.

If you’re jonesing for stuff, check out Roosh, Kev, Dan-o, the Dogs, TvM – they all crank out material like it’s going out of style. You’ll be glad you stopped by.

UPDATE FOR THE WHINERS THOSE WHO’D WONDERED: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and go to KAR and Anti-Strib, too. I mean, it’s not like I never link there, right? Just trying to spread the love a little farther afield in the MOB, y’know? And it’s not like Anti-Strib is hurting for traffic; they get 20,000 hits a day from people searching for Kari Byron in a push-up or Lacy Chabert in a bikini.
Not that I would leverage any such thing.

Fine. There’s yer links. Criminy.

One of the biggest problem in trying to “talk” about “race” with people – mainly but not exclusively with the white liberals who try to control so much of the “debate” – is that while it is human nature to be a racist, a sexist, a classist…a me-ist, in short, is the same problem one always encounters when dealing with people whose fundamental approach to life is idealistic, rather than pragmatic (and what is a liberal but an arrested idealist?); the definition of “racism” becomes less a matter of “lynchings” and “detritus of slavery” and “lack of opportunity”, and more a matter of “failure to adhere to some inhumanly-obtuse standard of purity in thought”.

William Raspberry – in a column that appeared nearly two decades ago, long before the online era – allowed that the former version of racism was dead, and was manifested (as of about 1991) primarily in the sort of ignorance that is, to a modestly secure person, more or less irrelevant.  Now, as I noted the other day, the aftereffects of institutional racism are still with us – mainly, in my humble opinion, in the devaluation of the male, especially the father, in black society.  And there’s a “racism of low expectations” that operates in our welfare system and in our schools, to be sure.  Those are sins of arrogance, political hubris and institutional stupidity (I’ll be charitiable), though, not of racial malevolence; as partisan as I am, I’m not going to say “the Department of Education and the Klan are different sides of the same coin”.

So dialog me this;  does anyone actually think there’s not less racism – defined as “active ractial hatred” – today than there was 50 years ago?  If not, how so?
Bonus question:  If your answer is “yes”, can you show me a society in all of history that has done as much to repeal human nature, as fast as our society has?

Matt “Republicans Kill Babies” Snyders over at the City Pages covers a format shakeup at “89.3 The Current“, Bill Kling’s 401K Minnesota Public Radio’s attempt to lock in the 25-35 set.

It seems their ratings are off a quarter, and they’ve done what every flailing radio station does when the numbers head south; they’ve hired a consultant.

And The Consultant has put an end to free-form programming, and set the station up with The Playlist.

Well, whatever.  I mainly cite the piece to quote this line, about The Current’s token Brit, Mark Wheat.

[Wheat] turns his attention to a wide computer screen, finds his rhythm, and grabs the mic at precisely the right beat.

No, he probably does not.

Mark Wheat is just about the sloppiest , most dead-air-prone on-air presence this side of the Macalester college station; a verbal diarrheac who’d seem to be addicted to the percolating flow of his pointillistic knowledge of alt music, he rambles uncontrollably on the air.  Hearing his voice itself doesn’t make me turn away from The Current; that happens when his chattering about Tegan and Sara’s last gig at the Fine Line (or whatever) passes the two minute mark, and/or his name-dropping comes too fast to make out individual names.

Just saying.

Molly “Ms. Sensitivity” Priesmeyer responds to Michael Brodkorb (I’m gonna pull an Eva and link to a comment) about the furor over her “McCain’s teeth” post. About the fact that Mac had his teeth bashed out by North Vietnamese goons…:

I was not aware of the fact. I simply was linking to a post that revealed “his teeth” had become a topic of discussion on the blogosphere. Buzzfeed.com is an aggregator site that collects trends of the day.

It beggars my imagination that someone – especially someone whose MNPost profile claims she writes about “veterans”, especially someone who claims to be a journalist with an interest in covering politics – can possibly not know that McCain was tortured to and beyond the limits of human endurance during his five years of captivity. Or, for that matter, that he’s a cancer survivor – and some cancer treatments play hob on a guy’s teeth.

At it beggars it even more to think she’s going to try to slink away by saying “I was just linking…”. Yesterday she said:

…it’s at least refreshing to see McCain’s teeth get a razzing (though, unfortunately, not a cleaning). It gets a little tiring listening to the same sexist cries that Hillary Clinton is just too ugly to be president. Hatin’ on the looks of all the candidates? Now that’s equality!

That’s not a “link”, Molly. That’s an endorsement.

UPDATE: Charlie Quimby leaps to the defense, with a post that basically quibbles (Quimbles?) about how many teeth McCain lost in captivity, and how they were lost (was it bad nutrition?) – and, like any good leftyblogger, finds a Bush anecdote:

One of McCain’s aides tells me that two years ago, campaigning with McCain, George W. Bush asked him if the senator would like to work out with him. Told that McCain did not, could not, really “work out,” Bush replied, “What do you mean?”

Which might have been a little more germane had the President then followed his ignorant statement with “those broken old-man arms sure do look icky, don’t they?”

Quimby also dredges up a photo of a woman at the ’04 GOP Convention wearing a Purple Heart bandaid – a tacky mockery of the wound that led to John Kerry’s Purple Heart – and asks:

And of course, today’s critics would never stoop to mocking a candidate’s war wounds.

I’m not sure when “I know Molly is, but what are you?” became an accepted debate tactic – but as a matter of fact, no. This critic never did; I roundly condemned that particular stunt on the air and, if memory serves, in my blog. I treated Kerry’s war service and decorations as off-limits.
Look – it’s not a the end of the world that Molly Priesmeyer was ignorant about John McCain. It’s even forgiveable (if dumb) that she mocked the candidate’s teeth; she’s built a career out of shallow, ill-informed mockery.

It’s just interesting to point out that snide, trite, shallow mockery is what passes for coverage of politics these days at the Monitor. Why, it’s like they’re just another Kos diary, or a cheap lavishly-paid version of Cucking Stool.

Quimby also allows…:

Priesmeyer’s piece was dumb and insensitive, of course, and now it belongs to the polemicists like Berg and Brodkorb, who will make much more of it than it deserves.

This sentence is worth a post on its own.

We’ll come back to that.

UPDATE AND BUMP: Someone at the Monitor (I’m gonna guess Paul Schmelzer, but it’s just a guess) gets i Steve Perry notes that the MNMon got the message; they’ve pulled the infamous “Presidential Teeth” story from the front page:

To answer the question from GOP blogger Michael Brodkorb that kicked off the controversy about this post yesterday: No, neither Molly Priesmeyer nor I was aware that McCain had had his teeth broken as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war. No, we would not have piled on with further aspersions on the appearance of his teeth if we had known.

The item was not intended to make a serious point of any sort, as we thought the headline suggested right off the bat (“The dental gap: Does McCain have presidential teeth?”). It was a bit of web ephemera that we found funny mainly for its absurdity–sort of like the videos we’ve posted from Obama Girl, the McCain Girls, and La Pequena, and items we’ve written about phenomena such as social media sites obsessed with Barack Obama. The POW backstory turns a joke noted in passing into a lousy joke. And we’re sorry for that.

Fair enough. Although the fact that this is “Web Ephemera” in the first place is sort of disturbing.

We’re also sorry that this dust-up has inadvertently provided yet another sideshow in which genuinely important questions about the candidate and his campaign are circumvented. There’s far too much of that going around.

Well, let’s be honest, here: it’s conservatives – like Michael and, incidentally, I – who’ve been holding Mac’s feet in the fire (figuratively speaking) for most of a decade now, while the media and the center-left uncritically lionized him as the “acceptable Republican”. Many of us have been asking questions about the “candidate and his campaign” since before the beginning.

But that’s another whole issue.

The term “Hero” gets overused terribly these days – and if there’s a term that should retain its punch, “hero” is it.

Still, to me (and, I think, the vast majority of Americans), anyone that puts his or her life – family, career, X-box, whatever “life” is – on hold for months or years to answer his or her country’s call and duke it out with a horde of very evil people in one of the crappiest places in the world, voluntarily, is some kind of hero.
One of the best interviews the NARN has had in recent months was with David Bellavia, a former Army squad leader who related his experiences (listen) at the Battle of Fallujah in his book, House to House.  If you’re into that sort of thing, this book is the single best book about grunt-level, house-to-house infantry combat I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a few.  It’s harrowing, will leave you with white knuckles, and is impossible to put down.  Just as non-fiction literature alone, it’s an amazing achievement.

But Bellavia’s not done yet. Ed videotaped his appearance at the Veterans For Freedom appearance at the Fort Snelling O Club last night – and noted (with emphasis added)…:

The Army awarded him the Bronze Star and Silver Star, and Hegseth warned us that these were just temporary; he’s under consideration for the Medal of Honor for his bravery, which would make him the first living MoH recipient from this war. He went into a house alone where at least six insurgents had his unit pinned down, and the only one to come out alive was Bellavia.

Bellavia continues his efforts to defeat the enemy in Iraq with a stirring presentation, one that at turns was funny, heartwrenching, inspirational, and defiant.

Watch the vid – and, if  you get a moment, check out the book.

Remember – when the principle at Forest Lake High School cancelled the Vets for Freedom assembly, he claimed the event (which had reportedly agreed to eschew politics), was “too political”.

Well, good heavens – we wouldn’t want politics in our schools, would we?
P-Short, writing at TvM and True North, notes:

Back in 2004, Patty Wetterling held her campaign kickoff announcement at a public school during the school day.  I do not recall complaints from liberals.  I do seem to recall, though my memory could be faulty, the school’s logo prominently featured on the podium or perhaps behind the candidate.

Of course, if you’ve ever had kids in the schools (and not just public ones!), you know the drill; the kids are endlessly drilled in the PC interpretations of Global Warming, the War on Terror, social issues – pretty much everything.  They bus kids to the capitol, to serve as captive picketers for Education Minnesota’s various legislative pushes, at events planned on school time, and that use school functions to recruit parents to help use their kids as political props!

And the Saint Paul Public Schools – they’d never stoop to partisan politics to pander to the politically powerful.  Would they?  (Yes, I know – naming schools after public figures is nothing new.  But there’s a level of reverence for the “Wellstone Legacy” involved at the school, and in the SPPS, that takes it a few notches beyond, say “Roosevelt Elementary”, my elementary mater).

For the record, I honestly don’t care if school present kids with all kinds of politics – indeed, they might learn to be better citizens.

But Flake High’s capitulation had nothing to do with poltics; by all appearances, it was about the “threat” of the wrong kind of politics.

It’s been a bad week for getting to events.

Monday, I wasn’t able to get to see Dennis Prager at the Northland.  King has the report.

Last night, prior commitments prevented me from getting to the Vets for Freedom event at the Fort Snelling O Club.

Ed was there, of course:

The VFF had already scheduled an event for tonight at the Fort Snelling Officers Club, but the event got a lot more publicity from the fiasco in Forest Lake. Fortunately, that’s only about ten minutes away from my home, and another meeting we had tonight got postponed. I went to the club expecting to see a few dozen people in a hastily-arranged setting. Instead, I found around 150 or so people crammed into a standing-room only venue. The crowd had to spill out into the foyer, the bar, and two auxiliary rooms to contain all of the Minnesotans who dropped everything to support the VFF speakers.

I had something I couldn’t drop – so it’s a good thing Ed brought his camera.  He’ll be interviewing…:

Pete Hegseth [he’s been a NARN guest], Jeremiah Workman [from Blackfive], David Bellavia [author of House to House, which is the best book I’ve ever read about life as a grunt infantryman, bar none; he’s also been a NARN guest], and Tim Parks. I got video of Hegseth and Bellavia, as well as John Kline’s address to the group. I’ll be posting each separately tomorrow — and I hope it will prompt people to visit the VFF site and support the group.

As they say, “indeed”.

The other day, I read Andy Birkey’s piece in the MNMon about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s preference for appearing on conservative and Christian media outlets.  I responded by inviting a group of liberal politicians – Senator Klobuchar, candidate Franken, Reps. Ellison and McCollum, mayor Rybak and Joel Kramer Dane Smith – to appear either on the NARN or, via email interview, in this blog.

Some commenters responded “do you honestly think you’re in the same league as MPR or WCCO?”  And to be honest, there were two answers to that question.

When it comes to the quality of the interviews – a level of incisive civility and an aim toward getting actual content from an interview, as opposed to plate-throwing or button-pushing – Ed and I are as good as anyone out there.

But the commenters’ question, and that answer, really miss the point.  Each of these politicans represents (or, in Franken’s case, wants to represent) people of all political and social stripes.  Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum – like Rep. Bachmann – represent districts where large, significant minorities disagree with them, and  have tough questions for them.  The questions deserve answers.  And if a representative won’t face people who have civilly-placed but incisive questions, then can it be fairly said they’re even trying to represent everyone?

So if it’s fair to try to take a whack at Rep. Bachmann for ducking out on an unfriendly, biased media (and let’s do be honest, here; after a couple of decades of Morgan Grams and Alan Fine hatchet-jobbery, it’s a fair cop), then it is certainly fair to wonder why Minnesota’s other elected officials won’t return to the favor (to a media outlet that opposes them, but has, unlike the Strib and Almanac and WCCO, a reputation for fairness and civility and sticking to the facts).

Oh, yeah – so far, I’ve heard back from only one of my invitees.  Since arrangements are still underway, I won’t let it slip just yet, but let’s just say this person is not an elected official.

As to the rest?  Well, I’ll give it a week.

Two new blogs on my blogroll for your enjoyment:

• “Urban Renaissance Coalition“, by “The Minneapolis Shadow”, is all about un-quagging the Minneapolis quagmire.   He’s currently on the subject of Education, which is of course near and dear to my heart.
• “Jack Of All Trades“, by the complementarily-named Master of None, a longtime regular commenter around these parts.  (“Jo’T” was on the short list of names I thought about for this blog way back when, but I think things worked out just fine…)

Go forth and read like rabbits – rabbit’s who’ve sublimated their procreative urges by reading blogs, anyway.

You’re The Anti-Hippie…

You do, indeed, have beliefs as deep as those of any hippie.It’s just that one of them is “Hippies Need To Turn Off the Phish CDs, Take Baths And Get Jobs”

Are You a Hippie?