I try, as a matter of principle, to keep partisan watchfulness/cynicism out of how I view the exercise of democracy.  Pinky swear, I do.

It’d be a lot easier, in re Minnesota’s ongoing recount, if Minnesota’s Secretary of State weren’t someone who’d come into office pledging radical changes in our electoral system, and flaunting affiliations with ACORN, the liberal fraud mill. 

As it is?  Hanging on by the skin of my teeth:

With Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman clinging to a reed-thin lead over DFL challenger Al Franken — 180 votes as of Saturday night — the issue of how and when absentee ballots should be counted has election law experts everywhere closely tracking the Minnesota recount drama.

In a race this tight, the difference could come down to clerical errors on absentee ballots or even a challenge of Minnesota’s law governing such ballots.

“Campaigns over the years have challenged anything and everything,” said recount expert Timothy Downs, principal author of “The Recount Primer” who has been involved in most major recounts over the years, including the biggest: Gore vs. Bush in 2000. Downs’ co-author, Chris Sautter, hit the ground in Minneapolis last week as part of Franken’s recount team.

This recount – between a solid, moderate incumbent Senator and a facile polemicist with issues – is almost a bigger embarassment than having had Jesse Ventura as governor;  Ventura was the product of a more trivial time in politics, when states could afford the political equivalent of a drunken one-night stand. 

That Franken is even in the running, that he was even endorsed, should embarass us all.

…but it could be the next. Nobody really knows how deep “it” will go or how long it will last.

In the wake of a 50% drop in the stock market, comparisons to the great depression are apt to occur. Learning from history may reduce our chances of repeating it and all that.Is it possible, theoretically, that we could experience another great depression? If you believe that there is, there hasn’t been a more precipitous collection of events conspiring to repeat that chapter than we have right now.

Are we really so much smarter or better equipped than we were “back then?”

There are a lot of very smart analysts and economists debating both sides of this argument but one fact remains. There has only been one such event in America, and only a handful of major recessions. A dearth of data upon which to formulate analysis of current events.Every time we have a market crash, pessimists exhort “This time is different,” but it never is and the market has always recovered.

Recessions however are caused and measured by multiple elements, the stock market representing only one of them. To say that we aren’t witnessing the beginnings of another great depression simply because conditions are dissimilar to those the led up to the last one is sheer folly.

All this historically inaccurate nostalgia can occasionally make you want to clock somebody with one of the three volumes of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s history of the New Deal. The credit debacle of 2008 and the Great Depression may have similar origins: Both got going when financial crisis led to a reduction in consumer demand. But the two phenomena differ substantially. Instead of workers with 5 o’clock shadows asking, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion. More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in the 1930s makes today’s woes look like a flesh wound.

That’s easy to say in retrospect but we’re not done yet. Unemployment hasn’t peaked. Real estate values haven’t stopped falling. Credit hasn’t started flowing. Banks haven’t stopped failing. The market hasn’t stopped falling.

A forensic analysis determines the conditions of an event but does not rule out other conditions that could have the same result.

I’m not saying that in fact we are going to experience anything like the Great Depression nor do I know anyone that does. Policymakers however can not continue to penalize the productive, facilitate bail outs, effect government takeovers of entire segments of our economy and drive deeper our national debt without fear of paying a much higher price in the future.

A price that we may not have the resources to pay. Then what?

It isn’t clear what Barack Obama intends to do to correct the course of the economy. It isn’t clear there is anything he can or should do. What is becoming clear however is that a liberal administration and a liberal congress have no intention of sidelining additional bailouts and government largess. The policies that got us into this mess will be perpetuated for at least the next four years. Like oil turning to sludge in a V8 engine, the productive and corrective forces of our free enterprise system are becoming ever more encumbered by liberal lawmakers that have no business messing with economic policy or worse, feel that they know better.

The next great depression may have been caused by a whole new set of circumstances. The last one was caused by a lack of government intervention. The next one could be caused by exactly the opposite.

Conservative firebrand Bill O’Reilly assails the press’ “in-the-bag” Obama bias in the past election:

“It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war,” O’Reilly said at a panel of media analysts. “It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.”

O’Reilly, who maintains Time’s political site “The Page,” cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

“The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies,” O’Reilly said. “The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn’t talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that’s ever been written about her.”

Of course, coming from Bill O’Reilly, that’s no surprise.

CORRECTION: Oops. I slipped while doing a “replace all”, and inadvertently substituted “O’Reilly” for “Mark Halperin”, the admittedly left-leaning “Time” magazine editor who actually said all of that.

I regret the error.

When a young person takes his or her life it is of course a sad story. A life snuffed before it has begun.

When it happens with an audience, on the internet, it becomes national news.

…and a threat to the first amendment.

MIAMI (AP) — The father of a college student whose suicide was broadcast live over a webcam said Saturday he was appalled by the virtual audience that egged on his son and called for tougher regulation of Internet sites.

I can’t imagine the devastation and loss this father feels. Maybe it is the depth of that sorrow, looking for some meaning or utility for his son’s death that leaves him thinking that a law restricting the internet, or holding providers culpable could have prevented his son’s suicide.

Police found Abraham Biggs Jr. dead in his father’s bed Wednesday, 12 hours after he first declared on the website for bodybuilders that he planned to take his own life. He took a fatal drug overdose in front of an Internet audience. Although some viewers contacted the website to notify police, authorities did not reach his house in time.

“I think after this incident and probably other incidents that have occurred in the past, they all point to some kind of regulation is necessary,” Biggs said. “I think it is wrong to have this happen for hours without any action being taken from the people in charge. Where were they all the time?”

Bigg’s son suffered from bipolar disease and had previously threatened to commit suicide at least once before he took his own life.

Let’s hope lawmakers don’t leverage this type of event coupled with recent talk of resurrecting the “Fairness Doctrine” to restrict unfettered self expression and the free flow information on the internet.

That would also be a tragedy.

There is so much stuff I’m thankful for, honestly

One of them is that my world isn’t so utterly, pathetically, hatefully small that I get off on the kinds of things Steve “Spotty” Timmer seems to. Steve is upset because, after years of being able to slime people (including his neighbors) from the cover of his precious anonymity, my friend Swiftee outed him in the comment section of this blog last week. 

As a part of his job (about which more below), Mr. Timmer has the ability to find, and misuse, all sorts of information.  And he’s pretty sure he has a bunch of it.

Oh all right. Tings like criminal operation of a motor vehicle, and za probation violation. And ja judgments for unpaid bills! Tings like multiple drunken driving convictions. Tings like driving mit out za license. Za blogging on company time; za trash house chronicles and za failure to support za pups.

Timmer refers to “glass houses” in his piece, apparently oblivious to the cheap irony; I’ve always used my real name, with all that that’s entailed in terms of “public risk”. He’s the one who’s always felt he had stuff to hide.  (More cheap irony; I met him earlier this year at Flash’s place.  We actually hit it off pretty well.  As I noted at the time, when I meet bloggers I disagree with, it’s usually much easier for me to treat them as humans rather than cheap stereotypes; Timmer apparently didn’t feel that way, taking some really cheap shots at me shortly thereafter.  I made noises about “outing” “him” at the time – and got a panicky-sounding email from him, all but begging me not to “out” his precious identity; he  really really preferred to remain anonyous.  The cheapest irony of all?  I hadn’t actually heard his name at Flash’s, and had at that point no idea who he was).

Since I’ve always blogged under my real name, every wart on my public record is pretty much available for the asking – so kudos to Steve’s awesome investigative chops!  And yep – I’ve had a wart or two.  Maybe we’ll touch on a couple of ’em in the next day or two, if Timmer really is as nekulturnii as he says “he’ll” be.

But I can say I’m proud about a couple of things, and do it with a straight face.

Here’s a big one – while I’ve mixed it up the “opposition” pretty gleefully (and for the most part they, like Timmer, deserve the “irony quotes”), I’ve upheld one standard; I’ve left other peoples’ families and livelihoods out of my blog.  Nobody – nobody, even gutless trolls like Timmer or Diane “Minnesota Observer” Gerth, deserves to have their families or their livelihoods attacked over what is, at the end of the day, a hobby.  I’ve upheld the Golden Rule, treating others the way I’d hope to be treated; I have no problem with people mixing it up with my politics, my choice in guitars, my taste in baseball – I am more than a match for anyone on any of those topics.  And on the other hand, I’ve kept my hands off of other peoples’ families, private lives, jobs and outside-of-blogging lives pretty religiously.

And I’ll continue to.

Because I am better than that.

And by “that”, I mean “I’m a better writer and a better man than Steve “Spotty” Timmer”.

 And that’ll be true no matter what Timmer and his little pack of gutless anonymous trolls think they can pull out.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM:

• Volume I “The First Team” –Brian, Chad and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assigment today, so I’ll be joined (as this is written) by First Ringer and Jeff Kouba from Truth Vs. The Machine, as well as my associated publisher JRoosh from 1-3. Tune in!
• III, “The Final Word” – King and Michael will be dishing the Minnesota smack from 3-5.

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.

Plus – details of our final debate party, and our best-in-class election coverage!

And don’t forget the David Strom Show, with David Strom and Margaret Martin, from 9-11!

(Title: Oh, doyyy)

Traditional Minnesota office potluck:  Lots of cold cuts, hot dish, chips and jello.

Office potluck in an IT department that is about 35% South, Southeast and East Asian:  A wonderland of gustatory adventures; paneer, Vietnamese egg rolls, H’mong spring rolls, endless varieties of masala, funky spicy cornmeal dumplings of indeterminate ethnicity but verified deliciosity, and things whose names I don’t know but whose flavors will haunt me forever…

…not to mention haunting my co-workers through the next two hours of meetings.

It was Monday, November 21, 1988.

Wyatt’s “plan” to “repay” the money he owed me involved…:

a) …spending a few thousand dollars that his grandmother had sent him on…

b) …a bunch of cocaine, that he would…

c) …sell, to…

d) …make money, to…

e) …pay Shane and I.

I suggested the obvious alternative – give us the $600 or so he owed us from the money from his grandmother, and buy his cocaine with whatever might have been left over – might have been better for all concerned.  He had bigger plans, naturally. 

I pondered – how do I get rid of a roommate?  My ponderings usually resolved to “there’s nothing I can do”. 

Which seemed to be a habit I was in with most areas of my life at the time. 

I had left to do some grocery shopping early in the morning.  I came home to Wyatt presiding over a living room full of people – all of whose body language, dress and attitude looked you in the eye and said “drug trade” without a hint of worry. 

“Hey” said Wyatt, “this is Marshall”, pointing to a stocky, unsmiling black guy with a big scar on his cheek in a Members Only jacket “and that’s Jeff”, a too-thin white guy with a porn-star mustache and long hair wearing a yellow plaid flannel shirt.

“Hey”, I nodded.  They eyed me, making not the faintest sign of acknowledgment.

I walked into my room, shut and hooked the door.  Then I sat down at my “desk” – a party table on which I stacked a bookshelf, which actually made for a fairly handy deskoid structure – and called the radio station in New York I’d interviewed at last month.  The program director had told me to check in in a month or so.

The receptionist answered.  “Is Charlie there”, I said, asking for the program director.

“I’m sorry, Charlie is no longer here”.

My heart fell like a shot goose.  I sat, my jaw too heavy to move for a moment.

“Um…why?” I finally blurted out.

“The station changed ownership and format.  We’re now a gospel music station!”, she chirped.

I thanked her, hung up, and leaned back in the chair, my legs and arms too heavy to move anywhere for the moment. 

Crap.

I sat for a moment, having a hard time focusing on much.  I still have the voiceover gig at WOR, and that network gig out there, I reassured myself.

But they’re not going to happen, I de-assured myself.   

I heard Wyatt, Marshall and Jeff doing their business through the wall.  It took a moment to focus; unsurprisingly, they were moving some of Wyatt’s “product”. 

I walked to my bed, and reached down behind the mattress and took out the little .22 automatic pistol I’d been keeping there for emergencies.  I checked the chamber – empty.  I checked the magazine – full.  I stuck it in my pocket.  It’d stay there for a while.

Crap. 

Democratic leaders in Congress denied the Jet-Setting Big Three CEO’s saying show us your plan before we show you the money.

The Big Three are on their own for now.

Congressional efforts to rescue Detroit’s auto makers collapsed Thursday, with lawmakers saying the industry lacked credible plans to return to profitability.

The decision came after two days in which leaders of three of America’s largest corporations pleaded for a taxpayer-financed rescue from lawmakers in front of a national television audience. The spurning of their pleas leaves in question the future of companies that have been synonymous with American industry for decades and together employ 239,000 people in the U.S. (Please see related article on Page B3.)

Democrats in Congress offered only a glimmer of hope, saying they would reconsider a rescue if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC submit convincing turnaround plans by Dec. 2.

This is a dire, critical juncture for America’s auto makers but you have to admit, Congress asking The Big Three for a business plan laying out their plans for the money if they got it? Requesting accountability? Discerning fiscal efficiency?

That’s humor.

…and it would be funny if it wasn’t real.

Frank, Pelosi and Reid wouldn’t know a business plan if they saw one let alone offering anything in the way of analysis or assessing viability.

That would be like getting marital advice from Barney Frank. Advice on manners and professional comportment from Al Franken. Executive leadership advice from Barack Obama.

Good luck Big Three. Just copy some economics paper from your freshman year of college and show it to them. They’ll never know the difference.

NPR’s “Morning Edition” carried a story yesterday morning that made me go “Hmmmm”.

The thesis – bad dconomies don’t cause crime waves:

There are few outlaws in the United States as famous as Bonnie and Clyde — a young couple, with no jobs or prospects, driving across the country robbing banks and killing police officers to make ends meet during the Great Depression.

It’s an indelible image of what people will do during desperate times. For a while, Bonnie and Clyde were almost American heroes.

There’s only one problem: The Depression years had very little crime.

The story went from there to claim that…:

Just look at the 1920s, says David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention at John Jay College of Criminal Studies.

“It was a period of booming economic prosperity, the roaring ’20s, and very high crime,” he says.

The 1950s and ’60s were the same. The economy was great, but crime rates rose every single year.

Well, I know one thing; my kids aren’t going to John Jay College of Criminal Studies.

The 1920’s were a booming stretch of time; they were also the peak of Prohibition, which helped organized crime metastasize out of the inner metropoli out across the entire country. 

And by the way, crime rates in general may have been low-ish, but the murder rate peaked at 9.7 per 100,000 in 1933. 

And what happened during the ’50’s and ’60’s?  “Urban Renewal” and the building of the Interstate system gutted the stable beating hearts out of many American cities (including both of the Twin Cities), disrupting low-income communities (like Saint Paul’s Rondo and Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhoods, turning them from dowdy and low-rent but close-knit and low-crime areas into dangerous ghettoes overnight) and trashing the landscape.  The sixties also brought us the Great Society, which in trying to “declare war” on poverty succeeded in institutionalizing it, and the beginning of the “war on drugs”, which created an upward-incentive on the price of drugs and a profitable niche for criminals to both fill and violently defend (not to mention the fact that the Baby Boom got into their most criminally-susceptible years starting around 1964).  As a result, the murder rates zoomed during the seventies, peaking at a record 10 per 100,000 in 1980. 

When the economy goes bad, many people move in with parents or relatives, and they stay home more — both of which appear to have a calming effect, experts say.

The “experts” seem to be focusing on property crime, rather than violent crimes, especially murder.  I’d suspect (with no academic proof whatsoever) that property crime is a “smile problem”; if people have stuff to steal, people will steal it (especially given that liberal government policy has created both a permanent underclass and a permanently-inflated drug market).  If people have no stuff to steal…

…well, you probably don’t go to John Jay College of Criminal Justice or work for Morning Edition, so you know where this is going, right?

The question isn’t so much why they arrived at their conclusion, or why NPR ran the story. 

The real question is “how does NPR story think this is going to benefit an Obama Administration”.

The Dow broke through 8000 in earnest yesterday, moving below the “50% down” benchmark that some analysts believe is/was the line in the sand between a recession and a really really bad recession; maybe, not likely, even a depression, a term that has evaded technical definition (or at least a consensus thereof) due thankfully to its rarity.

Congress showed GM the Door. The market showed the rest of us the bird. Word is once US economic data is revised, it will show that a recession was upon us as of January. Not 2009. 2008.

Which may sound like good news if recessions still last an average of eleven months. If that were true, the market would have started to build back as another rule of thumb is that the market turns when a recession is about 55% done. As it stands, this recession could last as long as twenty four months using that rule of thumb and given the market’s failure to launch.

I get asked the question “What kind of news will it take to make the stock market go up?”

As much as I would advise investors to ignore the market right now I have to at the same time advise them that the market being on the rise will be the news. It will signal the midpoint of the recession and that the market is starting to price in an anticipated rise in earnings and profits. Problem is, we will only know this once the trend is established in earnest; it will manifest itself only in hindsight; which is to say there is no way to predict when it will happen.

The market usually tells us what will happen, not what is happening or what has happened (save a terrorist attack or some other external event).

What to do?

Hang in there. For investors with long-term time horizons of at least ten years, this market may represent a significant opportunity to buy in. Increase monthly or payroll contributions – at least temporarily – to average in lower.

Does that mean that the market is done melting? Maybe not. But it is almost certainly closer to the bottom than the top.

As Warren Buffet says, be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.

…and buckle your seat belt.

John Boehner must make Lori Sturdevant’s leg all tingly:

House Republicans are not shifting to the political right, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told CNSNews.com on Wednesday, just hours after two of the top three GOP leadership spots were won by conservative lawmakers in an internal leadership election.

I said it before.  I’ll say it again; John Boehner presided over the most disastrous session the GOP House Caucus has suffered that didn’t involve a Great Depression or a presidential resignation.

Members Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and John Mica (R-Fla.), however, told CNSNews.com that they think the conference is shifting to the political right.
 
But Boehner said, “No, I don’t think it’s right or left. It’s what are the issues Americans are concerned about, and how do we build solutions on our principles? It’s not left or right.

The hell it’s not. 

He should have gone.  He has to go. 

Patterico, to Sullivan:

You shrieking, hysterical moron.

Read the whole thing and witness the ongoing disintegration of the guy I’m ever-more ashamed to call my blogfather.

Gary Gross’ “Let Freedom Ring” blog – which has become an essential read for Sixth District politics and Minnesota GOP inside baseball – turns four today.

And Gary’s still on a mission:

Tony Snow asked some former CNN executive what he thought about these bloggers scooping the MSM. Out of that came the infamous line that bloggers were just a bunch of jammie-wearing “people hacking away at their keyboards.” Typical of the Sneering Media, this executive couldn’t get even the basic facts right.

Four years later, the Sneering Media still isn’t getting the basic facts right. In fact, I attended more voter forums than the St. Cloud Times did. Even when they were there for the forums, they omitted key bits of information.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve done more reporting this year, actually breaking stories. Expect that to increase as 2009 unfolds. Just like with politics, now isn’t the time to spend alot of time looking back. Now’s the time to look forward. Now’s the time when bloggers peered into the future of the blogosphere. It’s time we mixed in as much reporting as pontificating.

Look for LFR be in the thick of things on this front.

Happy anniversary, Gary.  And keep giving ’em hell.

A gaffe is when a politician slips up and tells the truth.

I guess it also applies to politicians’ lawyers:

“People who voted for Coleman are more likely to have taken the SAT in their lifetime,” [Bill Star, Franken lawyer] said. “They’ve filled in circles. Franken voters are probably not college-educated. They’re new voters and immigrants. They’ve been brought in by groups like ACORN, from the inner cities. They’re more likely to make mistakes. I’ve bounced this off of minority people, and they agree with me.”

No word as to whether they’re bitter and clingy, and over or to what.

It reminds me of this line from Jennifer Vogel’s classic of hYpStR condescenscion:

A favorite scene from the election took place at my local polling place, in a historically Polish neighborhood. An African woman wearing bright robes stood in a gray plastic voting booth with her ballot. She spoke only a little English, so she asked for assistance. A poll volunteer approached and embarked upon a lengthy explanation. The African woman interrupted. “Kerry,” she said loudly. “I want Kerry.” That was that.

Liberal GOTV in action; give the cattle a name to memorize and herd ’em into the polls.

I’m so proud to be an American today.

Politicians and media – and by “media”, I mean the “traditional” media, the “objective/detached” media that most of us grew up assuming “the media” were – have a symbiotic relationship, at best.  Politicans need exposure; the media needs material.  The media’s mission is to get Democrats elected putative mission is to be a private check and balance on government – all government.

 But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that “the media” have changed drastically, and rarely moreso than in the past decade.  From the rise of conservative talk radio and the Drudge Report through the explosion of alternative media that they both helped spawn (including this blog and the related talk show), the media’s world has changed as completely as that of any buggy-whip manufacturer circa 1900. 

Of course, any symbiotic relationship has its limits.  A shark will tolerate the remora fish that picks bits of crud out of its gills; it’d probably draw the line at a barracuda try to fill the gig.

With that in mind, I read with interest this piece in the Minnesoros “Independent”; Chris Steller is peeved about being 86ed from one of Senator Coleman’s press conferences:

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign staff ejected a Minnesota Independent reporter (that would be me) from a press conference at campaign headquarters this afternoon. I made it as far as the inside of a small press conference room at a drab office park in St. Paul where I was just about to settle into the chair that seemed least conveniently located to the exit when a staffer asked who I was with. When I said the Minnesota Independent, he said I’d have to leave. On the one hand, openness to “journalism” on the part of our politicians is a good thing.

On the other hand, when you lie down with the devil, one should not feign the vapors when people wonder “what’s that sulphur smell?”

Steller?  He feighs the vapors:

To my protest that MnIndy is a news outlet like others represented there, the staffer replied, “Right, and it’s funded by George Soros,” and he escorted me out. It’s the fourth time local independent media have been denied access to the senator’s media availability.

Except that the Minnesoros “Independent” is in no way “independent media”.  Leave aside the (accurate, but for our purposes irrelevant) Soros connection; when departing staffers emerge from the Kool-Aid hangover long enough to point out that the “news outlet” that employed them really was a shrill partisan shill – a paid employee of the opposition, in fact – is Coleman and his staff obliged to treat them with the sort of deference and respect that they traditionally pay the Strib, WCCO or MPR?

Bonus question for the Mindy staff (or those that remain):  how do you think I, a talk show host working for a media organization that is as partisan as yours, but at least honest about it, would get treated at a Keith Ellison press conference? 

(Hey, at least right-wing politicians return your calls.  As I showed last year, DFLers apparently consider themselves above that basic courtesy).

Lefties; why should Norm Coleman give access to a media outlet who is not only in the bag for the opposition, but utterly disingenuous about it?

As the saying goes “the people they’ve been waiting for” may not be the brightest bulbs on the tree.

A recent Zogby poll: they can’t even find the tree.

83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President. . . .

57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

The test was multiple choice. This goes a long way to explaining how BHO garnered such momentum in the race for the White House.

When I was a kid, I pretty much associated “teachers” with “women”.  My teachers in first through fourth grade were all women – my fourth-grade teacher had in fact been my father’s fourth-grade teacher as well (which used to awe me, although now I see that it’s really not that big a deal). 

But then in fifth grade, I was astounded when I got Mr. Buchholtz’ class.  Mr. B was a big, football-player kind of a guy.  He was a Navy veteran, and had spent time in Vietnam.  He told war stories, rode a Honda 500 (or a Fiat X1/9) to school, showed us karate moves, took us out to his family’s farm for a day of running around in the countryside, led the games of tag football on the playground…

…in other words, he’d probably be fired, in this day and age; he showed us how to make toy guns, he had a paddle that he used liberally if kids sassed him, he took no BS…

…and was a godsend to a bunch of 11 year old boys who’d been cooped up in classrooms all day.  Suddenly, it was safe to want to roughhouse (indeed, Mr. B revelled in roughhousing, frequently wrestling with piles of gleeful fifth-grade boys and whuppping all our butts), to run and yell and be boys in school. 

Of course, modern feminism has succeeded in basically feminizing the classroom, nowhere more than in elementary school.  It’s made school a fairly hostile place to be a boy (or at least a boy that doesn’t learn to be verbal and facially-compliant with a regime hostile to their emotional makeup), to the point where being  a boy is going to get a kid slapped into “Special Education”.  And as a result, boys are eschewing education; they drop out of secondary school in numbers that dwarf girls’; in higher education, young women currently outnumber men by a significant margin that looks likely to climb to close to 3:2 in the not-too-distant future.

Both trends – the feminization of the Educational Academy and the falling numbers of men seeking higher education – would seem to be exacerbating this problem – the dire shortage of male teachers:

At [principal Thomas DeVito’s] Ferryway School, where boys slightly outnumber girls, male teachers are a rare species, presiding over only four of the 35 classrooms.

“The district has a job fair every year, but we don’t see a lot of guys,” DeVito said.

The problem is especially acute, he said, when it comes to hiring elementary teachers at his school, which spans kindergarten through eighth grade. For those jobs, he said, “I don’t think I’ve interviewed any males in the last five or six years.”

The same scenario is playing out across the state and the nation, where the number of male teachers is dwindling despite a recent focus on drawing more men into classrooms. In Massachusetts, only 24 percent of teachers last year were men compared with 32 percent 15 years ago, according to the most recent state data. Nationally, a quarter of teachers are men, a 40-year low.

Here’s the question:  why does this surprise people?  After thirty years of making not merely the educational establishment and academy, but education itself hostile to boys and the very notion of masculinity, why would any guy go into the field?

Of course, there is [Daschle on] “concern” [/Daschle off]:

At a time of increased emphasis on improving student achievement, especially in inner-city schools, education specialists are raising serious concerns that male flight from classrooms could be hindering boys’ ability to learn.

A study by an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College, which has been gaining national attention in the debate over single-gender classes, found that boys learned better in reading – a subject in which they typically struggle – when teamed with a male teacher. Similarly, girls did better in math and science with a female teacher.

And lest you think the piece will skirt the real issue…:

Even more eyebrow-raising, the research questioned whether a predominantly female teaching force is causing more boys to be labeled as behavior problems because women may struggle in handling the sometimes rambunctious nature of boys. It also questioned whether boys may respond better to a coachlike sternness found in some male teachers.

But in an interview, the study’s author, Thomas S. Dee, cautioned against a knee-jerk reaction of simply recruiting more male teachers.

“The more appropriate avenue to explore is how do we make teachers more productive for all students,” Dee said. “I’d rather have my son with a great teacher who is female than a mediocre teacher who is male. Teacher quality often gets lost in this debate.”

…well, OK.  They sorta skirted it.  Boys are incredibly complex; they certainly deserve better than what the educational-industrial complex has dished out for them this past few decades (I’ve written about this at some length).

Of course, it’s not all structural imbalance; it’s also bigotry borne of hysteria:

Yet the shrinking number of men can be chalked up to another reason: Some men worry that overly protective parents might falsely accuse them of being pedophiles because teaching, especially in the lower grades, is still largely perceived as a woman’s job, requiring a nurturing personality that supposedly is not common among men. In other words, something must be wrong with the guy who likes working with children.

Whether by hysteria or structure, this is a self-perpetuating vortex. 

…I missed National Ammunition Day yesterday.

On the other hand, now I get to cash in at all the “post-NAD” sales.

Score!

(Up next on the list; surplus 7.62×51 for the HK91 I just know Santa’s gonna bring me for Christmas).

(Alternatively – another box of .22LR).

I heard the results of the GOP House caucus elections – Boehner retains the (I’m not kidding, this is really what they call it) “leadership” post – and was…

…underwhelmed?

First Ringer at TvM puts it well:

Proving themselves to be the political equivalent of William Ford to the GOP leadership’s Matt Millen, Republicans in D.C. re-elected Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) to the post of minority leader despite the party’s nearly 20 seat dip two weeks ago.  Surviving a last-minute challenge by conservative California Rep. Dan Lungren, Boehner once again pick up his mantle of leadership and tossed it at the feet of the incoming Democrat supermajority:

“America needs us to be the party of reform again,” Mr. Boehner told House Republicans Wednesday. “We have a chance to pull together and be the party America needs us to be.

“I wasn´t born a Republican … I didn´t know I was a Republican until I looked up one day and realized Washington was at odds with everything I believed. If history is any guide, millions of Americans will have a similar experience in the coming months as President-elect Obama and the Democrat Congress move their agenda. Our job is to make sure those Americans find a proud home in the Republican Party.”

I doubt if Speaker Pelosi’s heels buckled.

It wasn’t all bad – some youth and conservative fervor in the form of Cantor and Pence got moved up the ranks – but if Conservatives were looking for a resounding tonic from today’s maneuvering, we’re still waiting.

Intern at KSTP-TV wasn’t happy about being tossed:

University of Minnesota student Jennifer Nicole Anato-Mensah, 21, threw a fit last month after Twin Cities station KSTP let her go. She began hurling threats at an executive producer, according to a criminal complaint, and kicked out the glass of a conference room door in an attempt to get at her. “You don’t know where I’m from. I’ll mess you up, b—-,” the student allegedly told the female producer.

The broadcasting industry, being full of deeply dysfunctional people, is full of stories of the tirades and rampages people go on when they get pink-slipped.  But not so much in the news end of things.

And while Hubbard Broadcasting (KSTP-TV’s owners) has cleaned up its image a bit since I worked there (also bored us to death by hiring Willie and Jay to do mornings at KSTP-AM), I think Ms. Anato-Mensah might have had a big future in middle-management there, back in the ’80s.  It’s all in the timing, I guess.

May I suggest sending an audition tape to Springer?

It’s a meme.  This time, it’s from Rev Ma, over at Night Writer.

I can’t help myself.  It’s true.

55 Things
1. The phone rings; whom do you want it to be?
Mostly?  Friends.

At 3AM?  A manageable problem.

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart?
To the little corral thing?  Absolutely.  I’d hate to make someone chase my cart around.

3. If you had to kiss the last person you kissed, would you?
Seems a safe bet.

4. Do you take compliments well?
Well?  Sure.  Often?  Not so much.

More below the fold.

(more…)

As a GM Lessee, I got a personal note from Troy Clarke, Group President of General Motors North America. I didn’t know he had my email address.

…we need your help now. Simply put, we need you to join us to let Congress know that a bridge loan to help U.S. automakers also helps strengthen the U.S. economy and preserve millions of American jobs.

Despite what you may be hearing, we are not asking Congress for a bailout but rather a loan that will be repaid. (emphasis his)

Despite our successful efforts to restructure, reduce costs and enhance liquidity, U.S. auto sales rely on access to credit, which is all but frozen through traditional channels.

Troy, that’s funny. I went to lease a Cadillac CTS and a Chrysler 300C and what they told me was that neither GM nor Chrysler will lease me a car, but banks like US Bank will. I went to Infiniti three weeks ago and they leased me a car. I tried to buy American but to no avail.

The Americans stopped leasing cars well before the credit crisis.

The consequences of the domestic auto industry collapsing would far exceed the $25 billion loan needed to bridge the current crisis. According to a recent study by the Center for Automotive Research:

• One in 10 American jobs depends on U.S. automakers
• Nearly 3 million jobs are at immediate risk
• U.S. personal income could be reduced by $150 billion
• The tax revenue lost over 3 years would be more than $156 billion

Discussions are now underway in Washington, D.C., concerning loans to support U.S. carmakers. I am asking for your support in this vital effort by contacting your state representatives.

Troy, I think it would be a great idea to contact my State Representative. I agree that we need to do something for you because our government is responsible for some of your issues. I also believe America needs to stay in the automotive manufacturing business. If for no other reason, its a matter of pride, and probably national security.

But you guys have made some really boneheaded moves over the decades and have allowed the unions to run the show. Take a lesson from Northwest Airlines. Price the jobs at what they are worth, let the strike begin, and fire the ones that don’t show up. There are plenty of good people looking for work.

If you won’t, you don’t deserve to exist, you’re not getting my business and you don’t deserve help from taxpayers.

Nonetheless, my wish would be that you get your loan, but only under the following conditions:

1. Congress suspends CAFE regulations with an eye to abolishing them completely so that you can focus on making great cars that your customers actually want. Let them buy an Aveo from Hundai. If they can make money schilling them, all the power to them.
2. The Unions will have to make a choice. Reduce pay and benefits to bring labor costs in line with the rest of the market word wide or be gone.
3. Rick’s gotta go. You need a CEO with a spine. Someone who knows how to run a chainsaw.
4. You still have too many brands. Lose Hummer and combine Pontiac and Buick or Pontiac and Chevrolet. Combine Chevy Trucks with GMC. Lose the fat. Badge engineering has to go, once and for all.
5. You have to agree never to cancel the Corvette. I want one. A new one. Some day.
6. Fix the radio in my Suburban.

Thanks for the email. I hope the wife and kids are well.

One of the dominant memes in GOP circles since November 5 has been “the need to use the internet better”. 

And while that’s a fairly big, amorphous concept, there is at least one empirical measure of the Obama and McCain campaign’s successes (other than online fundraising, although someone really should investigate all those millions in anonymous donations); someone has done a Usability Test comparing the two campaign’s websites:

A quick online usability study of the Obama and McCain websites was conducted on November 3rd and 4th, 2008. [Note:  Passive must be avoided – Ed.] Preparation for the study took about 2 hours and data analysis took about 4 hours.

I should point out that Usability Testing is a part of what I do for a living.  We’ll come back to this.

One of the key questions you have to ask when doing a usability test is “what is the user trying to accomplish?”   These tasks should, ideally, reflect things the the user actually would need to accomplish using your website, software, hardware, store design or whatever it is you’re testing: 

Participants were asked to do four tasks on one of the sites: find where to vote, find the candidate’s position on Social Security, find a photo of the candidate waving, and find the impact of the candidate’s tax plan on them.

I’m trying to picture someone trolling the web thinking “I need to find a picture of Barack Obama waving to a crowd.  Where, oh where…“.  But three out of four ain’t bad.

The next step is qualifying and quantifying your results:

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two sites; 44 of them completed the tasks. Task success (self-reported), task times, and task ease ratings were collected, as were ratings on several scales, including the System Usability Scale (SUS).

Pay no attention to the terms of art among Usability geeks; let’s jump to the results: 

Overall, the users were successful with 78% of their tasks on the Obama site but only 47% on the McCain site. Users of the McCain site also took 28% longer and rated the tasks as 27% more difficult. Users rated the Obama site as being significantly easier to find information on and significantly more visually appealing. And the Obama site received a mean SUS score of 76% compared to 45% for the McCain site. Usability issues with both sites were identified from user comments. Overall, it was a landslide usability victory for the Obama website.

Just a quick note to whomever runs for President in 2012; the little things count.  And I know a few conservative usability geeks that’d love to lend a hand getting that particular problem solved.

The important part is finding the good news.

For example, it’d be easy to look at this piece, above the mugging and violent assault on crime novelist Laura Caldwell while jogging in Chicago last weekend…

On Thursday, Caldwell, a red-headed attorney who in 2005 successfully defended a man who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for murder, was jogging at Seminary and Altgeld in Lincoln Park when she saw two men — one with a hood pulled over his cap and the other who was lifting his jacket over his head.

Nervous, Caldwell felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. Suddenly, one of the men kicked her from behind, and she fell onto the street.

“They smashed my mouth into the pavement and kicked me a few times,” she said. “They screamed about money, but I said, ‘Guys, I am jogging and I don’t have any money.’ They took my iPod and ran off.”

…and other such stories…:

Police officers told her that muggings are more common in Lincoln Park in late autumn, when the victims are walking in darkness and more susceptible to surprise attacks, she said.

There was an armed robbery at the same intersection just after 11 p.m. on Nov. 6. And over the last month, there have been two assaults and a purse-snatching within three blocks of Caldwell’s mugging, police records show.

In September, the sister of Bears quarterback Rex Grossman was robbed at gunpoint in her garage about six blocks away at Racine and Armitage.

…and of course Chicago’s skyrocketing murder rate and out-of-control gang violence, and think “Wow.  Crime’s getting bad in Chicago!”

What you should  be thinking is “Whew.  Good thing none of those criminals has to worry about a law-abiding citizen being able to legally use a gun to defend themselves.  All hell could break loose, then!”

Chicago; governnment so good, we now have it nationwide!