The Carpenters Union has endorsed…
…Norm Coleman?
Rachel Stassen-Berger notes:
The backing is a switch — the 13,000-members union endorsed Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone in 2002 and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2006.
How bad are things going for Franken when even labor unions are shunning him?
UPDATE: Ed is right: the Carpenters Union did advertise on the Twin Cities’ Air America affiliate.
The convention is almost here.
For four days, this is where most of this nation’s news is going to be.
And if you read this blog, you know that the mainstream media isn’t going to be covering the real news. They’ll be in the XCel center, or hitting the odd reception, or trotting around to where one protest group or another has told them to be in their press releases, filming pretty much what they’re expected to film.
We don’t expect them to film the real news; everything from “fops blocking freeway ramps” to “Code Pinkos leaving lousy tips”.
Some of us are working to fix all that.
One of True North‘s stated missions, when it started almost a year ago, was to provide real coverage of what happens at and around the convention.
True North is going to be soliciting your input during the convention. If you’re going about your business – not just at the convention, but anywhere around the metro – and see something – we’ll be setting up a “Tipline” for stories, pictures and video.
So if you see…:
…or pretty much anything else – take a picture. Shoot some cell phone video. And then contact us. We’d love to post what you have (with credit, if you want it).
And if you’re a convention volunteer – well, we’ll be asking you more of the same!
More details in the coming week.
Stay tuned.
An ad banner in right field at the Twins game today gave me pause (more on the banner in a moment) and since the game wasn’t exactly riveting (the Twins did win) my mind wandered, as any blogger’s mind surely will.
Most Americans by now I trust have heard of the study that shows societies whose median income is just above the subsistence level are in essence the happiest with their lives.
I wish I could find the study (or was it a book – give me minute, I’ll find it) but I do remember its thesis.
The premise is that one would think Americans, given the variety of choices we have in all things, especially as consumers, should find ourselves the happiest culture on earth.
But its not so.
Why is that?
Ah, there it is. It was a book.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
from a review:
Schwartz and his colleagues developed a “maximization scale,” by means of which subjects rate their relative maximizer/satisficer proclivities. People are asked to rate themselves on a seven-point scale from “completely agree” to “completely disagree” with such statements as, “When shopping, I have a hard time finding clothing that I really love” or “Whenever I watch TV, I channel surf.” Most people cluster near the middle in such scales, but 10 percent of Schwartz’s subjects were classified as extreme maximizers, those who think long and hard about every decision. They tend to make objectively better decisions than the rest of us, but they are less satisfied both with what they’ve chosen and with life in general.
To be deprived of all choice is to be brutalized. Yet beyond a certain point more choice means less happiness. The more choices we ponder or the more time we invest in making a certain choice, the worse we tend to feel.
Researchers in the latter field have known for some time that people don’t think like adding machines, tallying up potential positive and negative outcomes (“gains” and “losses”), but feel worse about a given unit of loss than about a corresponding unit of gain. And when we contemplate a choice (this or that, yes or no), we know that doing one thing means foregoing another. Foregone alternatives — “opportunity costs,” in economists’ terms — are losses. Because maximizers think about more alternatives, or think more about alternatives, they also experience more opportunity costs, the sum of which may be greater than the gain from the chosen alternative. They’ve programmed themselves to be acutely aware of what they’re not getting.
Okay, let me catch my breath.
Most insidious of all is hedonic adaptation. Whenever we find something that does make us happier, we eventually get used to it, and our sense of well-being returns to where it was before the new thing came into our lives. We can never make progress on the hedonic treadmill.
There was a simpler time in America where one’s family was a “Ford” family. Or a “Chrysler family. Or a “Chevrolet” family, or what have you. When it came time to replace the family station wagon (and it was of course a station wagon), Dad knew what to buy and where to buy it.
Grandpa bought Fords (or whatever) and therefore so did Dad. Old Faithful was traded in on the latest iteration and that was that. Dad was happy. He knew what he wanted and when he brought it home and parked it in the garage, that was that. Grandfather had his reasons for being a Ford man and that was good enough for Dad.
Now if Dad achieved a station higher in life than Grandpa did, he would graduate to a Lincoln. But for the most part, people whose economic status was best represented by a Buick didn’t shop for a Cadillac. They knew better.
The Big Three and their strata was all there was and all there needed to be.
Nowadays, the minute you put yourself behind the wheel of your new ride, you are bombarded with the twenty other choices you could have made. You should have made. You’re never quite sure you’ve made the optimal choice. Never quite satisfied.
Couple that with the fact that you may very well have signed for a car you really can’t afford, because you’d so very much like to impress the Jones’, and you have sixty months of dissatisfaction.
Turn on the TV twenty five years ago and you had PBS and three network affiliates. On a given night your family was a “CBS” family or a “PBS” family. And it was fine. Carol Burnett was plenty funny without saying “F*ck” or showing us her breasts.
Nowadays, turn the TV on, and as a wise man by the name of Springstein exhorted:
bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin’ onWell now home entertainment was my baby’s wish
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond
There’s fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on
So – the ad at the Metrodome today?
You, Happier.
BestBuy
If only.
Our entire economy, if not our culture, is designed to convince the consumer that whatever you drive, whatever you wear, whatever sits on your desk, or hangs on your wrist is obsolete the moment the purchase is transacted.
The consumer that can’t afford the new Lexus, Benz or Bimmer gives no mind to whichever has the best collision avoidance system or GPS navigation system. The 1995 Honda Accord with 100,000 miles on the dial is just fine thank you. Those things not in reach have no appeal.
For an ever increasing number of American consumers however, little is not within reach. A luxury becomes a necessity twenty four hours later.
And there you have it. Even the average American has, by the world’s standards, a menu of choices in almost every aspect of their life. You’d think we’d be happier. But apparently we’re not.
The moral? You’ll have to decide that for yourself.
Sorry.
Andy Birkey, writing at the Minnesoros “Independent” and the TC Daily Planet, carries water for the “anarchists”. In a piece that came out last night, Birkey participates – wittingly or not – in misdirection, obfuscation and building enough strawmen to fill the Excel Center:
With the Twin Cities set to host massive protests, an influx of media and thousands of Republicans and supporters, local corporate media [Hahahahahahahaha! Birkey, an employee of a full-time propaganda organization, is sniffing down his nose about “corporate media”! – Ed.] are looking to fuel fears that things could get out of control.
Really?
They’re “looking” to fuel fears?
Like it’s an agenda item?
Birkey states that as if it’s a documentable fact, rather than an editorial position.
More on that in a bit.
One activist group being targeted — they say, unfairly — is anarchists. They state that their plans do not include violence and that both their message and tactics are willfully misunderstood.
Well, if they say so.
Except that “their” “message” flip flops about wildly. I asked one of the planners of the “Militant” September 4 march if they renounced violence – vandalism, blockading freeways, attacks on delegates. She/they refused to commit; I’d be willing to chalk it up to a thick-headed juvenile game of self-aggrandizement…
…but we know better than that.
While local anarchists organizing actions at the RNC are loathe to speak to the news media, they have done extensive interviews with local community-based media.
Hm. Why would that be?
Because at best, the local “community-based” leftymedia are active shills for all things left, and reliable conduits of propaganda?
Just a suggestion.
Their message and clarifications have fallen on very few ears. Here’s what they have to say about the media, their plans and anarchism as a philosophy. None of the members of the RNC Welcoming Committee use their real names in media appearances.
“We are not as scary”
“We’ve been painted in that bad light, being compared to terrorist attacks on the Xcel Energy Center, or chemical weapons or other forms of violence that we are criticized for,” RNC Welcoming Committee member Bara Cade told Eric Angell on Our World in Depth a program on the local cable access network MTN. “It’s important for people to know we are not as scary as people make us out to be.”
Well, “Ms. Cade” is right at that. Individually, “anarchists” are a pretty pathetic lot. Or at least they were when I knew them. Back when I was the only conservative pundit in the Twin Cities punk rock circuit, I knew a bunch of people from the “Backroom Anarchist Center”; indeed, I interviewed a few of them on the old “Mitch Berg Show”. They were, individually, feeble little twerps; and behind all their “working-class” bravado, each and every one that I ever met, after a little research, turned out to be a rich little brat from posh suburb, victim of an expensive Macalester or St. Thomas or (in some hard-luck cases) U of M education, who apparently got some rebellious kick out of wearing a “Che” t-shirt around their insurance executive daddy and housewife mommy. I’ve seen les
Barry Cade, another member of the Welcoming Committee, said, “Our tactics are not terroristic. If anything I would call them empowering.”
They do intend to prevent delegates from reaching the convention by blockading transportation routes — often with street theater, including a planned dance party by queer group Bash Back!, and even the possibility of piling stuffed teddy bears at an intersection.
So in other words, they don’t want violence; but if some angry person running late for work jumps out of their car and gets pounded flat for their efforts, they’ll have been “attacked by the injustice in the system”.
I’m not even going to bother fisking the rest of Birkey’s cowardly piece of tripe.
But we’re not done with this topic.
One of the things I’m most looking forward to at the convention is going to be mocking the living bejeebers out of “True Blue Minnesota”‘s “huge” jumbotron, “overlooking” downtown Saint Paul.
Tom Swift writing at True North engages “True Blue Minnesota”:
Taking a cue from the cautionary work of George Orwell, Hine and Ballou have succeeded in assembling an authentic representation of a key piece of Orwell’s magnum opus; 1984….no, they are not providing Victory Gin.
Through a front group known as “TrueBlueMinnesota” Hine and Ballou, with help from Ministry of Love perennial favorite Dave Thune, will be whipping up leftist fervor with everyone’s favorite brainwashing technique, yes….”The two minutes hate” is in da house, and in your synapse.
Technology has progressed since 1984.
Today’s leftist pinheads no longer have to endure tedious eye strain while intently peering into a fuzzy image of Goldstein…no indeed. Today’s moonbat demands the finest high quality digital images of the objects of their hatred, flashed before them at the recommended 50 images a second, mind you…and with True Blue’s Jumbotrons, they’ll get what they came for.
Preview of “True Blue’s” activity starts at :25 seconds into this bit here.
I’ve talked with people who’ve seen some of the videos they plan to show. Lame, amateurish, so bad it’s good – all terms I’ve heard so far. We’ll add more at the convention, I’m sure.
I’m so looking forward to going all MST3K on them.
Next to Michael Brodkorb, no center-right pundit in the Twin Cities generates more deranged irrationality than the Strib’s Katherine Kersten.
Lambert writes about one of her recent columns (doesn’t matter which; they all react the same no matter what she writes):
As we know, Ms. Kersten writes . . . in public . . . because Star Tribune management felt it was overdue for someone to counterbalance the pro-gladiatorial, pro-crotch shot, and pro-animal-like moan worldview of brutish males such as Doug Grow and Nick Coleman. But countering those two violence-drenched pornographers is a big, tough job. Do you have any idea how many Minnesotans are obsessed with gladiatorial stripper-pole moaning? A lot.
So I got to thinking: The Strib needs help. [Heh – Ed.] This is too much for one person. Which is where you come in. With the assistance of MSP Publishing’s marketing department—and this is real—we are offering a swank dinner for two—a $100 gift certificate to r. Norman’s—to whoever out there produces the best 500-word column that “Out Kerstens Kersten”. (E-mail your submission to blambert@mspmag.com).
Of course, Lamborghini (as G. Charles used to call him) is pilfing my material; it was in 2006-2007 that this blog started the “Columnist Parody” tradition in the local media with dare I say a brilliant assault on the oeuvre of Susan Lenfestey (poll and entries).
So in the interest of protecting my copyright, and because the Twin Cities’ pundosphere is such a rich vein of “talent”, it’s time to do another “Parody In The Dark” contest, where you, gentle reader, get to show the world the kind of “satire” Al Franken can’t even pull off.
The only real problem: picking who to parody. The environment is, indeed, that target-rich.
So here’s what we’ll do:
The winner will receive some kind of reward. What, I don’t know; rest assured, it’ll pale compared to the pleasure you’ll bring millions.
As Charlie Quimby says:
Imitating clumsy writing is like purposely singing off-key. A professional will never be as convincing as the earnest and tone deaf amateur.
Amen, brother.
Bring on the tone-deafness!
(NOTE: Susan Lenfestey can not be nominated for this competition; she’s already “won” one).
An 85 year old woman stops a young young burglar, makes him call 911, detains him:
An 85-year-old woman boldly went for her gun and busted a would-be burglar inside her home, then forced him to call police while she kept him in her sights, police said. “I just walked right on past him to the bedroom and got my gun,” Leda Smith said.
Smith heard someone break into her home Sunday afternoon and grabbed the .22-caliber revolver she had been keeping by her bed since a neighbor’s home was burglarized a few weeks ago.
Kudos. And hey, it was a .22 revolver – even the Democrats will “allow” you to have one!
“I said ‘What are you doing in my house?’ He just kept saying he didn’t do it,” Smith said.
After the 17-year-old boy called 911, Smith kept holding the gun on him until state police arrived at her home in Springhill Township, about 45 miles south of Pittsburgh.
The boy will be charged with attempted burglary and related offenses in juvenile court, Trooper Christian Lieberum said. He was not identified because of his age.
“It was exciting,” Smith said. “I just hope I broke up the (burglary) ring because they have been hitting a lot of places around here.”
Most people: “Yay, Granny!”
DFLers: “Damn. Constituents off the street!”
Ever since I started biking, I’ve wondered at some of my fellow riders – the guys who you’ll see pedaling down the street in dockers, dress shirts and loafers, ties cinched around their necks, laptops bungeed to their panniers, heading to (usually) some state or non-profit office. I asked – how do they manage that and not reek like a bear in the office?
Yesterday’s PiPress has the answer: not always very well:
“There’s a significant number of people who will not bike to work” without a place to keep their bike, store their clothes and clean up, said Billy Binder, a member of bicycle advisory committees for the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. “If you’re sweaty, who’s going to sit there in business clothes?”
Yet a growing number of two-wheeled road warriors insist they are doing it without offending their co-workers.
“So far, nobody’s ever said, ‘Eeeewie, go find a shower,’ ” Chuck Laszewski said.
For years, Laszewski has ridden six miles from his home in Falcon Heights to work in downtown St. Paul, previously as a reporter with the Pioneer Press and now as communications director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.
Laszewski changes his clothes at work, but like many bike commuters, he says most summer days it’s cool enough in the morning that a cyclist who isn’t trying to break a time-trial record won’t get too hot and need a shower.
“Most summer days, it’s about 70 degrees when I get to work, so you’re not going to get into a huge sweat,” he said.
On the few days when it’s really steamy, he brings a towel to dry off before he gets to his desk. “God bless Madison Avenue. They do know how to make a good deodorant in this country,”
One hopes so.
And what’s this “if you’re not trying to break a time trial” BS? Of course I am.
If you’re pushing it all the way, it’s testing your limits (however feeble your limits may be); you’re pushing yourself. You’re getting a much better workout. You’re getting to work or home faster. You’re giving yourself something to live for; that adrenaline rush that comes from passing someone 15 years younger than you wearing lycra and riding a bike that costs more than my car. It’s the thrill of “Victory”, or at least of blowing other peoples’ cranks off.
Otherwise, you’re just commuting. And you can do that in a car or on the bus, for crying out loud.
There was a shower at work when Jay Walljasper was editor of the Utne Reader, but Walljasper said he rarely used it after biking to work.”I never had any complaints from my colleagues about my slovenliness or unpleasant odors coming from my direction,” he said.
But then, you were the editor.
…and the NBC play by play guy sounds for all the world like Norm McDonald.
And now, all I can do is picture Norm McDonald doing play by play…
…who has not the faintest clue about driving trucks or navigating Saint Paul, take a look at the route.
How many times can you say “Oh, My Gawd”.
Of course, I suppose anyone who could plan that could plan what Minnesoros Independent reporter Paul Schmelzer says they’re going to do (emphases added):
The drive will begin at 11 and make its way north through West St. Paul, crossing the Mississippi on the High Bridge at Smith Street. It’ll continue down Summit Avenue, north on Dale, east on University and then past the Capitol, before leaving on Robert Street — the closest the convoy will get to the RNC venue itself. By 4 pm, the truckers will join the “March for Our Lives” with the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, which starts at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at the United Nations, 45th Street and 1st Avenue.
Three hours to get to New York?
Formidable.
Think about it.
You have twelve hours.
“I will win. Don’t worry about that,” he said to the crowd of about 1,300.
He May Not Be Trailing McCain, But He’s Trailing Kerry (from Power Line)(Currently) Obama (has a) projected 275 (electoral) votes to McCain’s 250, with 13 up for grabs. Four years ago — Kerry 317, Bush 202, and 19 tied.
Glenn Reynolds adds:
Of course, Kerry was hurt by an overly grandiose performance at the Convention, and by media bias that backfired. Obama should be safe from that, right?
The Audacity of Nope?
“John McCain, all he wants to do is talk about me. They know they can’t win on the issues. So what they’ll do is they’ll try to scare people. He’s risky. He’s risky. We’re not sure.”
Which might make a good argument, if it weren’t actually true. And it may actually be Democratic voters weighing in to that effect as they find issue after issue wearing through the veneer that is Obama’s campaign, leaving his followers with a general malaise.
One might advise Barack to worry more about his constituents and what they are saying and less about McCain.
Will McCain knock Obama off his post or will Hillary and the rest of the Democrats? Does McCain offer a safer choice to likely voters in the middle or will they just stay home?
From an Obama supporter:
Obama And Closing The Deal (from Althouse)
I keep digging into his biography, and finding places where what he says doesn’t line up with what he did. That’s not striking – welcome to politics – but since he’s selling us in no small part his own beliefs rather than his accomplishments, it would be nice to see those beliefs more deeply in the context of his biography.
Allow me to paraphrase: “He’s risky. He’s risky. We’re not sure.”
For the women, the animosity over Hillary is not at the top, but simmers somewhere underneath. For the men, a feeling that Obama is a brilliant man, but a distrust – of what, no one could completely say.
A non-specific malaise then.
A large number of mainstream Democrats simply confess a disquiet. The Howard Wolfson story – that Hillary would have won Iowa and hence the election if Edwards’ affair had come out – has been repeated enough that it got my attention. I can only call it buyer’s remorse.
A non-specific remorseful malaise.
I’m feeling it as well. I’m still a solid vote for Obama, but when I sit down and write checks, somehow I just never bring myself to write one for him.
Obama’s Credibility Gap –Large and Growing: Obama also had on display yesterday a very troubling slipperiness that is increasingly defining him.
He has also managed to slip into a “reformer” shtick that has zero connection to his hyper-partisan voting record.
But yesterday he tried to slip past at least two issues on which such obfuscation shouldn’t work –same sex marriage and Senate ethics reform.
My point here is not to argue the policy positions Obama takes, but to point out his firm denial of his real positions on both issues. He flat out distorted his positions, and did so without even an arched eye-brow from the MSM.
A slippery non-specific remorseful malaise.
How might that manifest itself come November?
This (via Carnivore) just in, off the Democrat party platform. Shameful emphasis added:
We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We can work together to enact and enforce commonsense laws and improvements – like closing the gun show loophole, improving our background check system, and reinstating the assault weapons ban, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals.
Hm. So many ways to approach this.
What precisely is the difference between Cheyenne and Chicago? Size? But no, there are small cities (Flint) that are criminal cesspools, and big cities (Phoenix, New York) that are relatively quite safe.
Well, there’s the obvious difference; the law-abiding citizen has comprehensive gun rights in Cheyenne, and none whatsoever in Chicago. And it’s working so well. But that can’t be what they’re talking about, since that’s a “commonsense” law that has failed miserably.
What…other…difference could there be?
Oh, and nice touch, there, Democrats; “reinstate the “assault weapon” ban so terrorists don’t get them”. You’d have to be a Tic to be stupid enough to buy that; “assault weapon” is a political term meaning “semi-automatic gun that looks scary”; real terrorists and serious criminals can get the real thing, fully-automatic assault rifles (not “assault weapons”) and submachine guns from any number of sources around the world – and lest you forget, the World Trade Center and Bali and Barcelona and London weren’t gun crimes.
Automatic weapons – “machine guns” and “submachine guns” – have been illegal for most citizens for seventy-odd years [1], and yet every self-respecting drug runner who wants one can get a fully-automatic Uzi or AK.
In a sense, this platform plank is a good thing; it shows the conflict between the sensible, responsible wings of the party who recognize that “gun control” is a third rail on which they whiz at their own peril, and the nutroot urbocrat base whose faith in gun control is like the Raelians’ faith in their passing comet. Compare this with the gun control planks of 20 and 25 years ago; there is a palpable realization that they’re on thin ice with that sliver of America between the Sierra Madre and the Hudson.
They’re trying to put a fuzzy slipper over the jackboot.
(more…)
Bob Collins on the DFL’s potemkin DNC delegation.
It’s very, very “diverse” (in terms of color and orientation, anyway; ideology, not so much, but then it is a convention delegation. Although it might be mistaken for a small university’s English department). Much moreso, indeed, than the state it purports to represent:
You get the picture, but is it a picture of Minnesota? “It’s a good picture of the state of Minnesota,” Gilbert-Pederson said.Several speakers noted the Minnesota stereotype; we’re pretty white and the DFL delegation is meant to explode that stereotype.
But the statistics don’t lie. Minnesota as a state is very white. The DFL delegation is not.
Here’s a comparison of the delegation vs. the latest census data for the state.
Demographic Minnesota Metro Area Outstate DFL delegation White 89.4% 85.7% 95.1% 66% African American 5.1% 7.5% 1.4% 23% Asian 3.8% 5.5% 1.3% 9.1% American Indian 1.6% 1.1% 2.4% 5.5% Hispanic 3.8% 4.4% 2.7% 6.4%
Interesting – although it’s their party, they can do what they want to, and at the end of the day it’s only a convention. They could send a 100% Laotian Lesbian team to Denver to help annoint The One, for all the difference their individual votes make.
And national delegate slots are usually rewards for long-standing service in the party (at least, they are in the GOP, and am I the only one that wants to pants the seventeen-year-old dweeb in the story just on principle?), and the DFL certainly has its workers-of-color. More power to ’em.
But it does highlight not only the DFL’s picayune obsession with race and gender, but indeed, what a bunch of cretins some of them are about it:
Stafford took a shot at Republicans during his remarks. He said the appearance of the DFL delegation in Denver will “contrast with what you see a week later” at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
“What do you mean by that?” MPR’s Curtis Gilbert asked.
“White,” he said.
Taxpayers. Family people. Veterans who’ve served in combat. People who’ve spent years stuffing envelopes and knocking on doors. If you’re a Republican, anyway.
A skin tone trotted out for show and/or ridicule, if you’re a Tic.
I’m happy to belong to a party that doesn’t use skin color as a prop for their facile propaganda.
Barack Obama’s campaign is charging for signs:
No, not that one. This one:
Of course, not everyone is happy about this. And not everyone can abide Democratic unhappiness on their betters’ decisions; Sean from MNPublius, in this case:
…for everyone who can’t spare the eight bucks necessary to go buy an Obama lawn sign read between the lines. “An occasional exception might be made for an outstanding volunteer,” you can become part of Barack Obama’s campaign (and probably get a lawn sign) by [consecrating your soul to The One].
Also, Obama will flip-flop on this sooner than later.
Seriously, I don’t care if a campaign does or doesn’t charge for its signs. But the real significance of this story is its boundless cynicism. Obama sells signs – and bumper stickers, and buttons – and counts each one as an individual contribution. A flood of tiny “contributions” drives down the average contribution, thereby avoiding the embarassment Paul Wellstone suffered in 2002, when it was revealed his average contribution, puffed up with big Hollywood and Beltway money, was well into three digits while Norm Coleman’s was around $50 (and yet, somehow, their fundraising was fairly close).
The good news? I’ve heard no talk yet of Pelosi proposing government aid to help supply Obama signs to the underprivileged.
“Diversity Lane” is a new-ish conservative comic-blog.
And when I read the piece below, I couldn’t help but replace “Jayson” with Georgia, and “LaDuane” with Russia.
It fits!
Kudos to Zack, the proprietor. When it’s good, it’s very good. And we need to support conservatives in these kinds of areas.
…to read this particular bit by John “Not Jon” Stewart over at NightWriter today.
No comment; just saying.
Obama, in yet another gaffe, fails to realize the irony and the future repercussions of his assessment of another government figure not possessing the experience or credentials to assume his or her post.
The arrogance is palpable.
If he applies his same viewpoint selfward, might he relinquish his presumed nomination?
Obama on Clarence Thomas (emphasis mine)
Pastor Rick Warren asked each Presidential candidate which Justices he would not have nominated…Obama took a lower road, replying first that “that’s a good one,” and then adding that “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas.
I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution.” The Democrat added that he also wouldn’t have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.
So let’s see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General’s office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s second most prominent court. Since his “elevation” to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.
Meanwhile, as he bids to be America’s Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn’t yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a “community organizer” and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas’s judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama’s Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas’s rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama’s story look like easy street.
Even more troubling is what the Illinois Democrat’s answer betrays about his political habits of mind. Asked a question he didn’t expect at a rare unscripted event, the rookie candidate didn’t merely say he disagreed with Justice Thomas. Instead, he instinctively reverted to the leftwing cliché that the Court’s black conservative isn’t up to the job while his white conservative colleagues are.
So much for civility in politics and bringing people together. And no wonder Mr. Obama’s advisers have refused invitations for more such open forums, preferring to keep him in front of a teleprompter, where he won’t let slip what he really believes.
Anyone that has read of Justice Thomas’ upbringing and lifelong triumphs knows the ignorance that Obama let loose in his rancid commentary. Furthermore, Thomas, unlike many of his African American contemporaries has chosen not to self-victimize himself with his race, and that probably chaps Obama’s hide.
Clearly Barack Obama is hiding his true feelings on a host of issues, a glimpse of which has been revealed by his wife’s caustic commentary, subsequently squelched, and the rare occasion when Obama is caught unrehearsed or without his handlers.
Obama’s arrogance smacks of an adolescent who has just been given the keys to Daddy’s car for the first time.
His overconfidence is just the latest in a growing array of chinks in the armor of his candidacy. More on that later.
In a post last Friday about the “Fairness” Doctrine, a commenter quipped:
Imagine the outcry when the wacko Phelps family of Kansas gets to have anti-gay programs on all of the stations that have pro-gay rights material.
Heh. Funny – but as luck would have it, that’s not how the “Fairness” doctrine works.
Here’s how I remember it working in the first eight years of my radio “career”, from 1979 to 1987, when both the Doctrine and my job at KSTP were repealed.
The “Fairness” Doctrine didn’t assign ideological quotas to station’s programming; there was no bureaucrat in the Minneapolis office poring over stations’ schedules, coloring in liberal shows in crimson and conservative shows in blue, comparing swatches, and issuing orders to reprogram dayparts.
What the “Fairness” doctrine did was give the public – or parts of the public that were up in arms about a station’s presentation of one or several issues – legal and procedural grounds to challenge a station’s license renewal.
When stations renew their licenses (and I forget what the time period is for that; it happens every several years; I want to say “seven”, but don’t bet your mortgage on that), the FCC takes complaints from the public about the station’s “public service”. During the period of the “Fairness” Doctrine, that meant that people could write the FCC and complain that the station’s politics didn’t grant equal time to one view or another. Investigating these complaints and adjudicating them was part of the license renewal process was part of getting the license renewed; the FCC could assign corrective actions or (in theory; don’t know if it ever happend) deny renewal.
For most radio stations, the “programming” was mostly music – a matter of taste, certainly, but not a matter of public policy interest; writing to the FCC to demand a country station switch to alt-rock (record stores in Minnepolis in the mid ’80s frequently had “petitions” sitting around from groups that wanted the FCC to “serve the public” by forcing, say, K102 or KOOL108 or some other FM frequency to play alternative rock) would pretty much fall on deaf ears. But stations did (and to an extent, still do) have to show some effort to serve the public interest; these efforts had/have to be documented to the FCC at license renewal time. For a music station – like the first four I worked at – it was a matter of filing logs showing that the station had played
For talk stations, though, the potential was there to discuss controversial topics – news, current events, social issues and so on. These issues go way beyond having political overtones; most are inextricably political.
Under the “Fairness” Doctrine, the public could complain about the “balance” of the station’s presentation; at renewal time, if people complained the station was “too liberal”, the management had two options: have some sort of counterbalancing conservative on the air so they could tell the FCC they were taking measures to balance things out (which was how I got my first show, in 1986; KSTP had plenty of liberals on the air, and Scott Meier put me on weekend graveyards to cover the station’s butt for very, very cheap), or avoid controversy in the first place.
It all came down to showing to the FCC’s satisfaction that the broadcaster was adequately “serving the public interest”, so they’d renew the station’s license to use their frequency.
Since the license was mandatory for keeping the station on the air, most stations’ managers opted not to rock the boat – opted to play toward the middle and avoid complaints that could lead to costy, license-risking challenges.
So if the “Fairness” doctrine is reinstated, what’ll happen?
There won’t be any more time given to Fred Phelps; there won’t be a huge phalanx of complaints demanding equal time for his views. I have THAT much faith in my fellow citizens.
There also won’t be any equal time for conservatives on network newscasts, because it’s news and journalism, and everyone knows news and journalism are balanced and objective. Also they subscribe to “journalistic codes of ethics”, and while you and I both know that a “journalistic code of ethics” is nothing but a framework to rationalize dodgy behavior on the part of journalists, to the FCC it’s a get-out-of-“fairness”-free card. It’s not bias – it’s journalism!
But talk radio? The leaders of the medium – Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham, Hewitt, the Northern Alliance – proudly identify themselves as conservatives. It’s part of their marketing; it’s how they reach their audience.
So when stations come up for renewal, their schedules will show a number of hours of talk that, for marketing purposes, labelse itself “conservative” talk. And in a world where Atrios and Kos draw half a million visits a day, the left powers that be COULD, in a “Fairness Doctrine” run broadcast world, send hordes of droogs after that station up for renewal, demanding more liberal programming “in the public interest”; an Obama-appointed FCC would likely give the complaints plenty of credence. In order to retain their license, the station would have to add some liberal programming, like the Stephanie Miller or Ed Schultz – if they’re lucky (they’re the two liberals who show any life in the ratings at all) – or some stiff like “Lionel” or Michael Jackson (who do not). While there is nearly no audience for this programming, the FCC will be acting on the complaints, not ad receipts or ratings. The station would do as well to leave the transmitter off.
Of course, conservatives could in theory challenge the licenses of the few liberal talk stations – Minneapolis’ KTNF, the local FrankenNet “Air America” affiliate is a good example – but that’d really be a side issue and a diversion. The entire liberal commercial talk radio audience could fit into Rush Limbaugh’s garage with room enough left over for his cars. Limbaugh, Hannity, Bennett, Ingraham, Boortz, Miller, North, Liddy, Medved, Prager, Hewitt and even Jason Lewis are an army of 900 pound gorillas driving armored bulldozers, in ratings and financial terms. Comparing the ratings firepower of conservative and liberal talk radio is like scrimmage between the US Seventh Fleet and the Saint Paul Sailing Club.
So given the pain that the Doctrine will cause stations that run conservative talk, saying “conservatives can get equal time on liberal stations” would be like getting stripped of a Super Bowl ring, but knowing someone else gets a free toaster as a consolation prize, On a station running five 900 pound gorillas in armored bulldozers, it’d be like being forced to trade three of them for schnauzers on trikes.
It’s a win-win for liberals – – they get to water down the conservative movement’s best vehicle for free speech – and a lose-lose for conservatives. And anyone who tries to convince you there’s any other rationale to it is either uninformed, disinformed, or trying to make you one or the other.
In recent months, I’ve complimented the work of Zack and Sean from MNPublius. Sure they’re a couple of breathless DFL fanboys, but they keep their perspective about things, they usually have their facts straight (by DFL standards), and they are generally more into news than mindless snark – which alone puts them in the top 1% of leftyblogs. That is both a compliment and damnation by faint praise.
But there’s a big asterisk on their record; Aaron Landry.
Landry is, by all accounts, Al Franken’s full-time flak on the MNPublius staff. That’s fine – MNPublius can use its precious credibilty any ol’ way it wants to. But Landry combines a writing style reminiscent of a fourteen year old girl reviewing an Orlando Bloom movie with the reportorial chops of Grace Kelly.
For example, in this piece, about the Mark Olson flap:
The seemingly coordinated campaign by Republican operative Michael Brodkorb, Norm Coleman, the Senate Republican Caucus and others to fight against endorsed wife beater Mark Olson apparently didn’t include the people actually involved with the “grassroots” endorsement, the people in the Senate District 16 GOP and the leadership in the CD6 GOP.
So we have three statements, each of which requires a leap of logic:
First: “Seemingly coordinated?” Really, Aaron? Do tell. Do you know something we don’t? You have emails? Photos of people meeting at Keegans? Anything at all? Correlation does not equal causation. You either show the coordination – or at least why it should “seem” coordinated to us – or rewrite accordingly.
Second: “endorsed wife beater?” Olson was convicted of a misdemeanor charge, ““domestic assault by intending to cause bodily harm or death”. In other words, he made a nasty threat, and got busted. He’s never been convicted beating anyone. Did he do something very, very wrong? Yes. Did he “beat” anyone? Nope.
This is the kind of sloppy reporting that’ll get the “d” word – “defamation” – thrown around, sooner or later.
Third: About Brodkorb – what did Lewis say?
Ken [Weiner] recorded audio of Jason Lewis on KTLK talking with Chris and the MN CD6 GOP Chair Mark Swanson who are quite displeased with the “clear campaign to expel” Olson.
So listen and tell me – where does anyone mention Brodkorb?
I have no real opinion about Mark Olson; I haven’t followed his case or his story. I don’t live in his district; I have enough things to work on in my own city.
But could we at least get our actual facts straight?
MNPublius: How long will you keep squandering your hard-earned credibility on this breathless fanboy?
UPDATE: Jeff Rosenberg brings less fanboy – but I had to react to this:
In polling news, Mark Olson is currently leading Alison Krueger 55% to 45% on the primary election question. Olson supporters appear to be coming out in droves to support the man and his actions.
Supporting his actions?
So if someone is accused of something (and/or convicted of something less serious), then supporting a guy’s politics is the same as supporting his actions?
Is that the story all you pro-perjury Clintonites, dubious-ethics-prone Hatch voters, pr0n-mongering Frankophiles and hostage-tolerant Carter schlubs want to stick with?
How badly are the Russians behaving in Georgia?
Oh, yes – it’s much worse than the Mainstream Media would tell you even if they did a proper job of covering this war.
Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out at me as a former intel officer: Bearded irregulars riding atop Russian-built armored vehicles (old BMPs, for the military-hardware buffs). The vehicles had been splashed with white lettering.
What did the scrawls announce to the world? These thugs proudly proclaimed that they’re Chechens serving in the Vostok (“East”) Battalion commanded by Badrudin Yamadaev – who shares a reputation for gangland violence with his brother, Ruslan.
Read the piece for the background on this “unit”. Summary: It’s as if the Mafia or the Crips or Los Reyes were given machine guns and tanks (or BMP MICVs, for the equipment buffs).
Even in Russia, people have demanded this “unit” be disbanded. Yet it never happened. Why? (emphasis added by me):
Two reasons: First, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Georgians to suffer – to really suffer. And Chechens are the world’s subject-matter experts in atrocities.
Second, this gives the Russian army itself a veil of deniability: When Putin’s spokesmen insist that the Russian military isn’t involved in the worst savagery in Georgia, they’re technically telling the truth (if we don’t count air attacks and artillery bombardments), since the Chechen thugs on their payroll are on the job.
Talk of getting Georgia into NATO was far-fetched; they were “a nation too far” for NATO. But we obviously need a new approach to dealing with Russia. Because Morris is right:
And there’s plenty else to be outraged about – not all of it Russia’s fault. Images of dead and disfigured Georgian soldiers show them wearing US-surplus canteens, boots and helmets, or equipped with antique US anti-tank weapons. After the Georgians did all their tiny country could to support us in Iraq, all we gave them was cast-off junk – thanks to Congress and the State Department.
Our military was only allowed to train the Georgians for peacekeeping, anti-terrorism and small-unit tactics. The Georgians gave us all they had, and we gave them crap. The Bush administration should hang its wobbly head in shame.
Perhaps the west, should it intend to get serious about containing Russian aggression, needs a new organization, formed from nations who are less than a generation removed from Russian domination. Call it the Eastern Europe Treaty Organization, or the Borscht Bloc for all I care. Get the Baltics, Poland, the Czechs and Slovaks and Ukrainians and Romanians and Bulgarians and whatever’s left of Georgia when this is over. Nations that, unlike the (West) Germans and Dutch and Spanish remember what they’re fighting against.
Rhetorically, in most cases.
(Via Fingers)
From the fifties through the early nineties, NATO deterred Soviet aggression by very publicly treating an attack on any NATO member as an attack on all of them.
To enforce that, we stationed hundreds of thousands of American troops – the largest peacetime overseas deployment in US history, and one of the biggest ever – overseas; mostly in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Italy, but also South Korea and Okinawa (to deter a different bunch of communists). They were joined by troops from all that NATO partners – the Germans and Spaniards back when they were serious about defense; the Brits, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Dutch, Belgians, Norwegians, even Letzenburgish, along with de facto partners in France, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and eventually Finland. For forty years, the various countries stayed at what seems to kids today an absurd degree of readiness (or might, if any of them learned about it); the US military in 1988 was almost twice as large as today, with a national population considerably smaller than it is in 2008. Many European nations went further; they maintained military conscription well into the nineties, and some nations (Norway, Sweden, Finland) maintained Swiss-style national-service armies, where virtually every male serves in the military, the reserves or the home guard from their twenties through their fifties, keeping their uniforms and rifles at home to be ready to fight the moment they walked out the door (hypothetically).
The whole point? To deter Soviet aggression.
HEavy Handed POlitics links to a piece by Dick Morris with some perspective sorely lacking from a major media that is fairly illiterate on the subject. He wants to accelerate the admission of Ukraine to NATO:
The clear implication of the invasion of Georgia is that Russia cannot be trusted to live in peace with its neighbors. The impetus to imperial conquest predated and has outlasted communism. As Henry Kissinger argues, Russia must either be expanding or contracting. With so many divergent and often hostile nationalities inside and around Russia, the momentum of conquest is the only way to avoid an inertia which leads to decomposition.
Ukraine wants to enter NATO but our European allies, led by Germany, are so dependent on Russian gas that they are reluctant to antagonize the bear. Until now, the case of expanding NATO’s protection to Ukraine has been hypothetical, based on fear of Russian intentions. But by breaking the civilized rules of national conduct, Russia has demonstrated the folly of leaving smaller democracies exposed on its border.
Some – initially including Barack Obama – treated the Russian invasion as a border war for which both sides were responsible. The Democratic candidate called for mutual restraint and, only after two days had elapsed, did he label the Russian actions as “aggression”. Others have sought to blame Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili for the war because he sent troops into South Ossetia, long a part of Georgia which the Russians have egged on to seek its independence. The breakaway province is an example of Moscow’s oft-used strategy of encouraging emigration to other countries so as to use the new demographics to justify a takeover.
That’s been almost funny – the notion that Georgia, with a population smaller than Minnesota and a military maybe twice the size of the Minnesota National guard, would seek a military showdown with Russia
Of course NATO cannot extend its protection to every nation in Europe. It is, in the final analysis, a military alliance and it must be certain that it can back its guarantees with adequate might. The location of Georgia makes this difficult to assure. But Ukraine, located right next to NATO members Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania, can and must be defended by NATO.
And there’s the rub. We talked about this on the show on Saturday. For forty years, NATO kept immense garrisons in (West) Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and other western European nations.
And while the garrisons are smaller today, that’s where they still are. While the “front” between the West and newly-imperialistic Russia has moved hundreds of miles to the east, the US military still maintains a big clutch of bases in Germany – in exactly the same area that the US VII Corps occupied from the end of WWII through the Cold War. But in the countries that actually face potential Russian aggression? Poland, the Baltic Republics, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Bulgaria?
Nichevo.
Why does it matter?
Russia is rapidly losing its population. It has the lowest birth rate in Europe and loses half a million people every year. Its GDP is only $1.7 trillion, a tenth of the Euro Zone’s. It is only through energy reserves that Russia is able to project its influence. And Russia must realize that the West’s likely movement away from oil and toward alternative fuels may make the energy card obsolete in the future. It is only through blunt, blatant military force that Russia can expand and trouble its neighbors. And if the U.S. and NATO stand up to it, Russia will back down. And Ukraine is where we must make a stand.
In other words, it is “Back to the Eighties”; the Russians once again realize, perhaps, they’re playing a short hand, and have nothing but force to make it work.
Fear and desperation make bad neighbors.
Paul Mirengoff from Powerline’s takeaway from Mac and Barry’s go-round at Saddleback – in this case, on the candidates’ answers about their Supreme Court choices:
In any case, what’s most telling here is Obama’s unwillingness or inability to do what McCain did — identify the four (or five) Justices he obviously wouldn’t have nominated, and articulate the simple and obvious reason. Instead, Obama gave an incomplete answer coupled with an irrelevant reference to Thomas’ level of experience, a plug for his status as a “professor,” and (after prompting) a cheap shot at Roberts.
Read the whole thing for the context, obviously.
But this highlights how, via inexperience or (messianic) temperament, Obama’s just not ready for prime time in the “think on your feet” department.
Y’know – like we needed any more evidence.information.
…allow me to submit the following piece about an ad campaign for…
…Wrangler jeans.
Money quote:
This is a despicable campaign. It fetishizes murder and violence against women. To sell blue jeans. The people making the ads should be ashamed, though Copyranter doubts they are.
That’s right; Jeff Fecke is right about something.
What an incredibly creepy ad campaign.
To bring the universe back into alignment; I suspect he’s dismally wrong about American Carol. But I’ll let you know when I come back from the premiere.
More later.
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