From “Blues”

I am lazy, the laziest girl in the world.
I sleep during the day when I want to,
’til my face is creased and swollen,
’til my lips are dry and hot.
I eat as I please: cookies and milk after lunch,
butter and sour cream on my baked potato,
foods that slothful people eat,
that turn yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown,
the one with the lace trim listing
because I have not mended it.
Many days I do not exercise, only consider it,
then rub my curdy belly and lie down.
Even my poems are lazy.
I use syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go for pages.
And yesterday, for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove to factory outlet stores,
purchased stockings and panties and socks
with my father’s money.

…and then she reads at Barack Obama’s Inauguration.

Ugh.

I used to hate these bumper stickers.

Now I want one.

Visiting with business-owner and otherwise conservative clients these past few days, I have found a consistent level of puzzlement at best – ire more often – with President Bush’s move to override Congress, a GOP filibuster, and public opinion with his move this week to issue a bailout for GM and Chrysler in the waning days of his Presidency.

Why, Mr. President, Why?

To divide the GOP even further?

…exit the White House on a positive note (one that resonates only with other liberals)?

Use it or lose it? Did George Bush feel the need to spend his last dollar of political capital?

Conservatives are more pissed off with Bush than ever before.

Ford says “No Thanks.” Henry would be proud.

Cerberus, Chrysler’s privately-held owner says “You first”, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.

Cerberus Capital Management…said Friday that it would put $2 billion from Chrysler Financial into the automaker’s operations after being granted a $4 billion government loan.

Cerberus…previously resisted making further investments in Chrysler, citing its obligations to its investors (who must not be taxpayers?-JR). But Friday, after the government announced emergency loans for Chrysler and General Motors, Cerberus relented.

“In connection with the loan to be provided by Treasury, Cerberus has agreed to utilize the first $2 billion of proceeds from Chrysler Financial to backstop the loan allocated to Chrysler automotive,” the firm said in statement.

As for General Motors, Chapter 11 is the best and inevitable option – the only way to force true restructuring of the nation’s largest automaker.

As for you George, Don’t let the door hitcha’.

I’m ready.

I have a thirty-year-old snow blower that starts with one pull.

…a half bag of Starbucks.

…two four-wheel-drive cars.

…a shack full of firewood.

…a battery-powered AM radio to listen to Mitch & Ed.

…a scanner to listen to the mayhem.

…a drawer full of Ramen Noodles

….a lovely wife who happens to love shoveling snow (seriously).

…a forty-degree hill; three kids; three sleds.

…and my Christmas shopping is done.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

…as long as it’s gonna be cold it might as well be white.

Enjoy.

Steve Miller said it; you’ve got to go through hell before you get to heaven.   Or maybe it was Saint Augustine.

December ends in Christmas, of course – the most joyous time of the year, for those of us who believe, or who merely want it to be joyous whatever it takes (and I’m firmly in both camps).  And yet it starts so hard; the days collapse inward to the shortest days of the year.  The dark reaches out to get you earlier and earlier every day, engulfing the afternoon and eating up the parts of the day you don’t owe to The Man.  It’s fraught with symbolism, all of it (save Christmas) tied up in mythological angst.

And it’s the part before Christmas I think of when I hear this song:

It’s Maria McKee, formerly of Lone Justice – one of my favorite no-hit wonders of the eighties.  If anything, her solo career was shorter and less successful.

And yet this song infiltrates me every year about this time.  I’ve written in the past about songs that are inextricably tied  to things in my mind; places and times and moments.  “Breathe” is always December 16-20 for me; the striking, eloquent sadness; the wondering stare into the beautiful abyss.
Part of it is the guitar part, by Richard Thompson.  In some ways, this song is one of the most ingenious bits of guitar in Thompson’s ingenuity-clogged forty-year career as the world’s greatest living guitar player.  Elegantly jagged, beautiful and yet disturbing in its almost random harshness, it descends on you like a snow squall engulfing the aurora borealis.

Soon it’ll give way to the Christmas carols, the Hallelujah Chorus, Auld Lang Syne, just as the cold will fall before the apple cider and the lefse and the cocoa, just as sin and decay fall before redemption.

And yet Christmas wouldn’t be as hopeful but for the dark, the dread and the cold that it contrasts with.

My quicker take on Brian Lambert’s take on Katherine Kersten’s departure from the Strib:  He’s irredeemably wrong, for reasons that are largely due to personal and vocational myopia.

I told you it’d be quick.

But that’s not all that satisfying, is it?

———-

A couple of points, just as background. 

• I used to be a reporter.  I was a decent writer, and could cover a story, but I never really had the urge to immerse myself in making it in the field.  My career began and ended as a freelancer, in between radio jobs.  I was perfectly fine with that then, and even moreso now.
• Most “journalists” honestly believe that they are objective, or at least detached.  With that in mind, they also believe that the organizations for which they work, individually and institutionally, are too. 
• Many “journalists” also believe that they are part of a higher calling.  The journalist’s trade has a collective mythology about it, studded with catchphrases like “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” and “Woodward and Bernstein” and “keeping an eye on the powerful”, and “fairness, clarity and balance”. 
• These catchphrases animate a lot of “journalists” through the lean years of what is, for most reporters, a lean, niggling, awful career that, even when times were good, usually didn’t pay all that well or lead to any particular distinction.  The attitude is the same one that drives people in a lot of spartan, tenuous careers – religious monks and policemen jump to mind.  All fo them voluntarily immerse themselves in a spartan, aescetic life in pursuit of what they see as a greater good.  Few people get rich in any of the fields; most careers are nasty, brutish and brutish and, while monks and cops can retire from the field, reporters rarely do. 
• With that immersion comes a sense of exceptionalism.  With exceptionalism comes an “us against them” attitude.  With “Journalists”, that attitude is expressed via a belief that journalists are “high priests of knowledge”; that only a trained, qualified journalist can really tell a story clearly, truthfully and effectively.

And a couple more:

• An aphorism for you:  From Sacramento, Boise is “way out east”.
• Keeping the above in mind:  if a conservative orders a pizza in the woods, and a “sacramento” liberal is there to hear it, the liberal will hear “racism”, “whining”, “extremism” and “hate”.  Among other things.  Simultaneously.
• Oh, yeah; the latest meme:  No matter what their tone (to say nothing of facts), a conservative pointing out any anti-conservative institutional bias is always “whining”. 

Now, it’s been over twenty years since anyone mistook Brian Lambert for fair, balanced or non-partisan.  For years, he carried water for the DFL as the Pioneer Press‘ broadcasting columnist, until he went to work (very briefly) as then-Senator Mark Dayton’s short-lived re-election campaign.  He’s been bouncing among the Twin Cities’ online publications (and a stint as the liberal point to Sarah Janecek’s counterpoint on a short-lived KTLK-FM afternoon drive show).  He’d be one of those “from Sacramento, Boise is far east” liberals; from his perspective, the Star/Tribune probably does seem stodgy, establishment and “conservative”. 

And like most Twin Cities’ lefties, he’s happy to see Katherine Kersten leaving the Strib.  Like most journalists, he probably figured the Strib was pretty fair and balanced before all those meddling kids conservatives showed up.

In this case, the Powerguys:

The “boys”, Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker and Paul Mirengoff are worth mentioning here because they have played a critical role in this latest episode of self-abasement by Minnesota’s largest news organization

Editorial balance is “Self-Abasement”, when a conservative is involved.

While the Strib has always been attacked by right-wingers, usually for not adequately parroting the same talking points read off by Jason Lewis, Hugh Hewitt and the rest, the Power Line trio, Hinderaker and Johnson in particular, put a snake rattle in Anders Gyllenhaal’s head.

You can chalk that statement up to any number of things; I’ll chalk it up to Lambert being in “Sacramento” while Anders Gyllenhall is in “Boise” (as I sit in my office in Pittsburgh talking to most Americans, who are somewhere between Des Moines and Chicago).  But I keep trying to ask left-ish media types – can you show me where the Strib’s editorial/op-ed pages have ever been fair, to say nothing of sympathetic, to any of the principles of the center-right?  Forget about the hot-button issues like abortion and gun control; can you remember ever the Strib’s editorial board presenting a balanced view of, say, social security reform?  Government growth?  Local Aid to Government?  Cutting deficits by cutting spending rather than raising taxes?  School choice vs. the untrammelled power of the teachers’ union?  Parental notification? 

Can you remember the Strib doing a hatchet-job that benefitted anyone but a DFLer?

Get back to us on that one.

And when you do, tell us how that “balance” would actually be “parroting Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt and Jason Lewis”. 

Their legalistic, grad-school punditry, high standing among echo chamber “base” Republicans, combined with Time magazine declaring them “Blog of the Year” after their assault on Dan Rather…

“Assault on Dan Rather”.

You read that right.

Pay no attention to the forged dox, the impossible scenario, the implausible backstory; Dan Rather was the victim, says Brian Lambert, on his way to his inevitable (indeed, boilerplate) conclusion that conservatives are whining.

Now, it has never been proven that it was Power Line specifically who pushed Gyllenhaal to commit himself to a conservative “counter balance” to Nick Coleman, but Coleman himself aside, I’ve yet to hear anyone at the Strib doubt that that’s the way it went down.

So?

What if it’s true?  Indeed, it should be true; it was Nick Coleman’s gutless, factually-vacant assault on Scott Johnson that brought the issue to a head; it was the sheer feckless factlessness of it all, one might think, that convinced Gyllenhall, the Strib‘s former editor, that he had a real problem on his hands.

There are idiot ranters who don’t give a damn about facts and fairness. They can be ignored. And then there are well-educated, well-connected ranters who craft cleverly parsed, fact-like assertions and make demons out of those who show them no respect. Those are more difficult to ignore.

Question:  Why would one “ignore” the case that Powerline built against the Strib?  Over the course of almost seven years of writing, and countless articles detailing with lawyerly precision the crimes of Jim Boyd, Anders Gyllenhaal, Doug Grow, Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman against truth (to say nothing of balance and fairness), what’s to ignore?

Oh, yeah.  “They’re not journalists”.

That may not be exactly how Lambert would put it – “it has never been proven that Brian Lambert thinks only journalists are qualified to criticize journalism”, to paraphase Lambert – but really, what else could be behind it?

The point here is that Power Line in effect created the conflict that required the Strib to hire a Katherine Kersten and then pretty much delivered Kersten herself as the solution.

Powerline created decades of institutional bias?  They “created” the arrogance and incompetence that led Jim Boyd to slander them?   That led Nick Coleman to take a personal, defamatory (not remotely factual, certainly not “journalistically valid or ethical”) swipe at Scott Johnson?

Remember – Lambert is one of those lefty pundits that accuses conservatives of playing the victim.

———-

Let’s go back to the background points:  Journalists often see themselves as a class above and beyond the hoi polloi; they have a higher calling; they “paid their dues” in the “trenches” of the field, telling the truth when nobody else can; they often see themselves as being in the world, but not of it. 

I use the term “high priests of knowledge”.  Any given reporter may dispute that term, but it’s usually a difference of degree, not accuracy.

Kersten’s big problem, other than conservatism itself?

She’d never taken those same monastic vows:

Her arrival on the metro pages sent a clear message. Here was a purely partisan pundit with no reporting experience whatsoever. Moreover she was being set in place, with instant equal standing to a couple old dogs who had spent decades covering every imaginable facet of local culture…

So?

Nick Coleman spent decades covering city council meetings and one-car accidents, learning (let’s be charitable) to write clearly and effectively, just like every “journalist” does when “paying his dues”. 

And then, he became a columnist.  Someone who markets not fact, but observation, “insight”, and opinion.  One whose opinions led him to get a job as a talk show host on the local Air America affiliate, Lambert doesn’t trouble to add (he was a regular guest on Coleman’s abortive trainwreck of a morning show).

One has the right to ignore Coleman’s immense ideological baggage, and focus myopically on his “old dog”-ness as more of a qualification than Kersten’s background (academia and punditry).

But you’ll wait in vain for a defense that goes into greater depth than “because he’s a journalist, dammit”. 

Kersten became the ying-to-Coleman’s-yang, the quid pro quo, the internal countershot.That’s another way of saying that Nick saw Kersten for what she was, and for who and what she represented, (right-wing journalism haters and Power Line, who to be clear, delight in vilifying Coleman) and Nick rose to the fight, caution be damned. (Nick is Irish. He can’t help it. It’s an ethnic curse.)

Part of that ethnic curse, perhaps, is that our Scandinavian anscestors used to loot, pillage and dominate Coleman and Lambert’s Irish anscestors with little more trouble than Johnson and Hinderaker chewing up Coleman’s writing.

Here’s the big finish:

As I tried to get across in the Rake piece and in countless blogs since, I had no quarrel at all with the Strib hiring a conservative metro columnist. They needed one. The problem was hiring a conservative columnist who was first, foremost and solely a partisan voice. Had they found someone on staff or around town who had the breadth and depth of experience Nick Coleman and Doug Grow had acquired from years of covering the full spectrum of culture;

 And now we’re into the interesting stuff. 

Several questions, Brian Lambert:

1. Given the relentless “progressive” nature of the field of Journalism, where would a conservative candidate come from?  Countless surveys show that less than 15% of reporters vote to the right of center.
2. Most editors – certainly most Strib editors – aren’t all that far to the right of Brian Lambert.  They’re “Boise” to his “Sacramento”.  Which of them is going to promote a “Chicago” to the opinion page? 
3. Given the dearth of conservatives in newsrooms that proceed to “old dog”-itude, where does one find conservatives to serve in that role that you, yourself, acknowledge above was needed?
4. Why do you assume that only an “old dog” reporter can tell a story?

Lambert is – consciously? – echoing Nick Coleman’s infamous, pedantic, supremely arrogant justification for his own position and status

But that’s my defense: I show my face in public. I have been a reporter longer than most bloggers have been alive, which makes me, at 54, ready for the ash heap. But here’s what really makes bloggers mad: I know stuff.

I covered Minneapolis City Hall, back when Republicans controlled the City Council. I have reported from almost every county in the state, I have covered murders, floods, tornadoes, World Series and six governors.

In other words, I didn’t just blog this stuff up at midnight.

Nick Coleman “knows stuff” – because he was a reporter.

Top-flight lawyers?  Economists?  Career guys and keen observers?  Divorced guys on their third careers?   Ivy-league trained thinkers?

If they didn’t spend thirty years sitting in City Council meetings (or writing about TV shows, apparently), then they are not of the order. 

It’s not the ability to observe, to build a case, to tell the story, to make sense.  It’s that thirty years of ticket punching that really counts. 

I don’t think anyone outside “the order” buys that anymore.

All that said, it is a giant, groaning pity Gyllenhaal’s successors chose to wipe both Kersten and Coleman off the company ledger. But then it’s break-up-the-furniture-for-fuel time at the Strib. The only thing that’ll add loud, resonating insult to injury to this move is if Avista Capital Partners’ newsroom managers keep … a gossip columnist in place instead of two people who, say what you will, waded into serious, relevant issues and provoked constant reader reaction.

Well, I never said that Lambert was always wrong.

(more…)

Zach at MNPublius is a giddy as a little girl over Katherine Kersten’s exit from the Strib:

I’m sad to see Coleman go, but (sorry Nick) if it means Kersten gets the ax, I’d dump him everyday of the week and twice on Tuesday.

You hate dissent and disagreement that much?

Wow.

By the way, I hope the Strib plans on having at least one conservative voice in their paper. I just hope its not a race baiting lunatic like Kersten.

Let’s take a step back.

From 2000 through about 2007, John McCain was, for umpteen million Democrats, “the ONLY Republican I’d vote for” and “the ONLY rational Republican“. That comity lasted until he was a contender, when he became “just like Bush”, “extremist” and “ultra-right”. To Democrats, the only good Republicans are either irrelevant or indistinguishable from Democrats.

So I’ll make you this guarantee; in the (unlikely) event that the Strib hires another conservative columnist, no matter how acceptable local lefties would have found him or her Twin Cities lefties might find that conservative today, once that person got into print, he or she would become the dumbest, craziest, most “extremist” writer they could think of at the moment.

In other words; when they actually matter in terms of influencing policy, every Republican, no matter how cerebral (and remember, Kersten’s background is mostly academic; she’s no talk radio brawler) becomes a “race baiting lunatic”.
Next up – Brian Lambert’s piece.

MLP at Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry and I have so many “one degree of separation” links, it’s hard to even count ’em all.

This story takes us back to my sophomore year of college:

Twenty six years ago last night, Jay and I were in Jamestown, North Dakota, at a Christmas party at the home of Jay’s boss, Mike Olsen, the athletic director of Jamestown college, where Jay was in the first year of his first job as a college head coach.Lots of info in that sentence, yet none of it pertinent to the story.

Jay was the head coach of JC’s basketball team.  He also taught the mandatory, perfuntory one-semester phy ed class that was part our general requirements.  So I took Tennis.  I don’t think he knew tennis any better than I did (my dad, by the way, was a tennis coach for many years).
But it was a fun class, mainly because Jay was a hoot. He was also the only other Southside Johnny fan in North Dakota.

I did not remember this bit and,indeed, don’t recall ever meeting MLP when I was at JC – but that’s not unusual.  Most College faculty didn’t hang around town that much.

Yes, we were in Jamestown. But what I didn’t tell you, what nobody knows yet, is that I was over nine months pregnant.

My due date was the 14th. Like most first timers, when my due date came and went, I simply assumed I would be pregnant forever. That’s right; it was all a cruel joke perpetrated by Mother Nature, that bitch! and that I, formerly svelte and athletic, was doomed to spend the rest of my life waddling about like an arthritic blimp.

So we went to a Christmas party at the home of Jay’s boss.

Where my water broke all over their living room couch.

EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!

On the other hand, I never liked Mike Olson much, so – cool!

(Although Olson brought JC a slew of national wrestling championships.  Might as well give the AD his due…)

Many entertaining tangents ensue.

Then:

Back to the past…Jay and I stayed at the party long enough for him to open his present, before we headed to the hospital to meet our future ohmygod, I just Carrie Bradshawed!! I loved the show Sex and the City, but come on! That girl was the worst writer ever. Cutesy the Twat should’ve been beaten to death with her own laptop.Anyway… Jamestown is small so it took us all of ten minutes to run home, grab my night bag and get to the hospital. We checked in at about 10:30 and Tyler Patrick was born around 3:00 a.m. That’s remarkably quick for a first timer, but in my family, slow as molasses. My Mom has nine kids and I had already logged more cumulative hours in labor than she ever would.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Jay decided that that was it; he could never put me through such an ordeal again. Yeah, that worked out. Have you met our three other kids?

Having babies is amazing. When you are in the thick of it, you swear nothing could possibly be worth the trouble. Then, at the height of the awful, they hand you the most wonderful, awesome, fascinating and beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, felt or imagined; your own child.

The world literally changes.

Okay, the world doesn’t change, the world doesn’t even notice. Here’s what’s important; You change.

Observations…:

If it had been up to me, Tyler would never have been allowed to do anything out of my sight. It was Jay who convinced me to let Tyler and Katie walk the four blocks to the ice rink at Lake of the Isles when they were five and seven. I stood at the window and watched the spot where they’d disappeared around the corner until they came back, two hours later. It was Jay who convinced me to let Tyler roller blade from our house near Lake of the Isles to Gramma’s house on Lake Harriet when he was nine. I made him carry identification and call me from my folk’s house the second he got there. It was Jay who got Ty the job as ballboy with the Timberwolves when he was in seventh grade, and Jay who decided Ty could catch a bus from his school to the Target Arena downtown. Boys need Dad’s to grow up to be men. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.In the blink of an eye, that’s what happens. They grow up to be men. I miss that skinny, excitable, energetic little boy with the huge blue eyes. Sometimes it makes me sad to know that he’s gone and he’s never coming back. But the truth is that every year he becomes more of the kid that I love.

Once they get through that teenage stuff, anyway.  Grrr.

KSTP-AM tubes Willie Clark and Jeremy “Kodiak” Kienitz.

I got this internal memo from a KSTP fan. The writer is KSTP’s program director, Steve Konrad:

Staff,

Effective today, Willie Clark and Jeremy Kienitz are no longer with AM1500 KSTP.

We are appreciative of each of their efforts and hard work. We wish them only the best.

In the coming days, expect an announcement of a freshly re-structured morning-drive show, including who will be sharing the airwaves with Jay Kolls, Kenny, Bergie and Patrick Hammer as soon as some external details get wrapped up.

Steve Konrad
Program Director
am1500 KSTP

Four years ago, KSTP got the memo from the consultants; “conservative talk is dead”. So they moved to a kinder, gentler, more WCCO-like format; they largely ditched politics, they got the Twins, they hired the somnolent Clark to do mornings.

And things fell rapidly apart.

Of course, Kienitz was one of the station’s few links back to its glory days. A sharp, capable producer who could probably host his own program in a just world, “Kodiak” was the producer the night I filled in for Bob Davis in January of 2003. The station’s immense prosperity when it was hitting on all cylinders (Rush, Soucheray, Jason Lewis, Mischke and Bob Davis) allowed it to do something it’d never tried before; invest in solid, capable support staff. Producers had always been pretty much disposable at AM1500; the station’s long-belated success allowed it to start investing in good,capable support staff. Joe Hansen, “The Rookie”, Kienitz and others had the kind of job security (and money) that previous generations of KSTP’s control room galley slaves didn’t even bother dreaming of. And they were worth it; Hansen was an important factor in the chemistry that made Lewis a success; Rookie has been for years just about the only entertaining part of Soucheray’s show.

And Kodiak? Lileks – for whose “The Diner” show Kienitz was the original producer – says it best:

Jeremy has been a voice on the station for every ten years. I repeat this to program directors everywhere: PRODUCERS ARE TALENT. If they’re good. PRODUCERS ARE PERSONALTIES. If they’re good. And he was. You want to attract a younger demo, by the way? Don’t axe the only person at the station with a foot in geek culture. Don’t become the all-grumbly-geezer station.

KSTP-AM has backed away from the one thing that dragged it out of the pack – conservative talk in all its dyspeptic, fun, angry, hilarious variations – and trying simultaneously to “aim young” and be all stations to all people, sort of a WCCO of the 21st century. It’s not even working for WCCO anymore. Indeed, as the recession gets its claws into advertisers, the only part of talk radio that’s close to making money is…

…conservative talk.

Best of luck, Kodiak.

Oh, please, Democrats.  More of this:

When a powerful labor leader picked up the phone this week, he was surprised to hear the voice of a top aide to New York City Mayor Bloomberg. The aide made it clear: Caroline Kennedy [lose the Schlossberg] is going to be senator, “so get on board now!”

Vaporware presidents.  Moral thug congressional leaders.  Selling off Senate seats one week, forcing them down the peoples’ throats the next.

Carry on.  Seriously.

Minnesota gay marriage proponents think ’09 is the year:

OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest group pressing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality, says same-sex marriage will become its top priority next year. To lead that effort, the group will announce today that Amy Johnson will become its new executive director, replacing Ann DeGroot, who left a year ago.

“It feels my entire professional career and my volunteer activism led to this job,” Johnson said in an interview this week. “I think in working for marriage, we are working for full dignity and respect for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families. And on the way to doing that, we are going to engage the hearts and minds of Minnesotans.”

Opponents of gay and lesbian marriage say they welcome OutFront’s campaign. “To John Marty and their proponents, I say bring it on,” said state Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove. “I’d love to have that discussion in the next election.” He said most Minnesotans oppose gay marriage.

What Limmer said.

The DFL’s power base in Minnesota is a coalition of

• teachers,
• union workers,
• guilt-stricken upper-middle-class white liberals,
• mainstream minority groups
• various lefty pressure groups
• entitlement-oriented special interests
• Gays.

Among that coalition, the only ones who support gay marriage are:

• Gays
• guilt-stricken white liberals

Look – there may come a time when society approves of gay marriage.  Leaving aside my own personal and theological objections (which I’ve written about at great length over the years – I support civil unions, and believe “marriage” is a religious institution; if any church can morally and theologically justify it, by all means let them go to it), I don’t think this is it.  When liberal hotbeds like Hawaii, Oregon and California won’t pass it, the idea is clearly not ready to come out of the oven.

In fact, while I hope the DFL leadership is dumb enough (or owes enough chits to gay groups) to spend off their political capital on gay marriage, I don’t know that Republicans are going to be that lucky this year.

But we can hope.

There’s an apocryphal saying – it’s often incorrectly attributed to De Tocqueville – that goes “a free society can only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”. 

Apocryphal or not, it’s coming to vivid, horrifying life all around us.

We’ve bailed out the negligent financial industry and the smug, complacent auto industry and unions. 

Now?  Nick Loris writes that some even more-useless industries are at the trough; now, the Ethanol industry wants some taxpayer love.  Or should we say, more of it:

If you want a slippery slope example, you’re witnessing it. An auto bailout would set a disturbing precedent, resulting in even more private companies clamoring for government sponsorships. A number of companies today could make the case that their respective industry is vital for the economy and begin requesting billions of dollars in bailout subsidies. And if an ethanol bailout follows an auto bailout, who knows who will be next in line.

Ethanol has been receiving preferential treatment for thirty years and has proven to be unsuccessful. Even after decades of special tax breaks and subsidies, ethanol still provides only a small fraction of America’s energy needs. The government’s initial goal to kick start the ethanol business has morphed into the government trying to pick winners and losers among energy sources and has ultimately created a dependence mentality for the ethanol industry. It’s time to let ethanol stand on its own two feet or die.

And to make matters worse, ethanol isn’t doing any of the things it intended to do – ethanol literally is making matters worse.

Raising food prices, contributing to the global grain crunch, polluting more, depleting the aquifers, and begging for handouts?

If it were a bum, we’d put it in treatment.

Chris Steller at the Minnesoros “Independent“: “Blagociation”

Although to be fair, Steller might not have written it; it could have been the M”indy”s editors at the Center for “Independent” Media.

I try to hope for the best in people.

Rick Wagoner, CEO and G.W. share the same fate as their careers wind down.

They are both on the wrong side of public opinion. Bush is also on the wrong side of the aisle.

Good for GM, Good for America?

The Washington Post reports that its poll finds 55% of Americans oppose the Detroit handout, while only 42% support it. Democrats have become the party of corporate welfare, with 52% supporting the bailout; majorities of Republicans (69%) and independents (57%) are opposed.

Most surprising finding: “Union households are no more apt than those without a union member to favor the plan, 44 percent compared with 42 percent.” The United Auto Workers wants government money so as to protect the work rules and artificially high emoluments that have helped make Detroit uncompetitive.

Wagoner argues that without a bailout, GM will have to go Chapter “Belly Up” and won’t survive it. At the same time Bush is circumventing a Republican filibuster and overwhelming public opinion to open up the TARP checkbook for the Big Three; two of which don’t need the money; one of which has resorted to begging.

We keep hearing the argument, originally put forward last month by Rick Wagoner, GM’s delightfully named CEO, that people won’t buy cars from companies that have filed bankruptcy, for fear that parts and service will become unavailable. Are consumers really so stupid that they would have more confidence in a company that goes on welfare to support an unsustainable business model than in one that is being restructured through bankruptcy court?

It turns out the Unions aren’t as pro-bailout and foreign competitors may be more pro-bailout than one would imagine.

One major problem is that Japanese carmakers in the United States share many of the same parts suppliers. If a Detroit automaker were to collapse, suppliers would likely follow, setting off a chain reaction that could wreak havoc for Japanese production in a vital market.

More broadly, the U.S. crisis could lead to huge job losses and further weaken consumer spending, especially for big-ticket items such as automobiles. Together, the three big American automakers employ 239,000 workers in the United States.

I have teetered back and forth on this issue. Not unlike the unfolding of the financial system crisis, the more time that elapses, urgency fades in favor of clarity, and the more prized clear-headed thinkers become.

Let GM file bankruptcy. Let Cerberus feed their child so we don’t have to. Let Ford Navigate the waters unfettered by bailout dollars and the restrictions they would entail.

Let capitalism do what capitalism does: make stronger companies.

When I was a kid, one of the best things about the holidays was that Mom would make Chex Party Mix.

Bear with me, here.

For whatever reason, Mom made a bunch of batches of CxPM with a lot of extra Worcestershire sauce.  This extra sauce baked into a hard, salty coating around the Chex, making it extra delicious in a way that stuck with me for the past thirty-odd years.

It occurred to me whilst walking through the Worcestershire sauce aisle the other day; “I’m a grownup.  I can not only make my own Chex Party Mix – but I can try to re-create Mom’s old recipe.  Maybe improve on it!”

So I did.  Bought the Chex, the nuts, the pretzels, the garlic salt, and the economy-sized Worcestershire Sauce bottle with the no-splash spout.  And I went to work.  I added extra Worcestershire sauce.  I bumped up the garlic.  I let it bake a skosh longer.
And the results?

Totally worth the wait.

That’s my family tradition.
That is all.

Perhaps predictably, the best line in Eric Black’s takedown of the Strib’s buyout of Kersten and Coleman is at the end:

Pardon the football analogy (by the way, I’m on the Tarvaris bandwagon) but this Strib decision feels like trying to run out the clock when you’re behind by three touchdowns.

Even I wasn’t aware of how dumb Avista’s been playing it lately:

When the editors decided to ban the columnists from writing about politics in the last days of the recent election campaign, it was obvious that they thought controversy was not interesting. They thought it was DANGEROUS.Now this. Don’t just make them be dull. Make them be gone. Make everyone write in that same I-don’t-exist voice of the omniscient narrator (who knows all but won’t quite tell you the most interesting stuff he knows, because it might DANGEROUS).

Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson half agrees with me. Dumping the Coleman column “strengthens the paper,” Johnson writes. But Kersten, by virtue of her conservatism, “speaks for many in Minnesota who now are voiceless in the mainstream media.”

I disagree with Johnson about what the paper hopes to accomplish. They are seeking safety, but they won’t find it this way.

Not sure that Coleman was “dangerous” in the sense Black suggests, but the larger point is a good one.  The paper is weaker without Coleman.

Given that there is no shortage of mushy-left opinion at the Strib (including most of the editorial board), it should go without saying that whatever op-ed “credibility” the paper thought it had is circling the drain apace.

Mark “Mister Dilettante” Heuring, writing at True North, is reacting to the news of Nick Coleman’s buyout the way any good capitalist does.

Life has given us (the conservative bloggers who’ve spent the past half-decade correcting Coleman on issues great and small) lemons. Mr. D is looking for someone to whom life gave vodka, to make a Lemon Drop.

He’s putting his “money” where his mouth is:

Nick, you can work for me. And you can start tomorrow.

So what are the advantages of moving your operations to Mr. Dilettante? Oh, there are so many.

* Prestige galore. The Mr. Dilettante brand is known throughout the blogosphere for a devotion to discussions of politics, music and the arts and there’s reason to believe that at least a few dozen other bloggers have read Mr. Dilettante in the past. And as a contributor to True North and Truth vs. the Machine, you’ll have the opportunity to leverage your readership into triple digits, easy. Based on the current circulation numbers at your soon to be former employer, you’d have to be thrilled with that. I’ve actually met Gary Miller and Andy Aplikowski and would be happy to put in a good word for you.
* Complete freedom. No nervous bean counters or supercilious metro editors here, telling you what to say or suggesting that you tone it down a bit. In fact, I’d be highly supportive of letting you say whatever you’d like, Nick — may I call you Nick? The more outrageous, the better. And I’m reasonably certain that you’d see a lot of links from other bloggers, who are always eager to offer their trenchant analysis of your work. Conservatives are very supportive and nurturing that way.
* A commitment to lifelong learning. At Mr. Dilettante, we’ve been able to triple the usual readership of this feature from time to time by picking the right people to insult. You’ve never been especially hesitant to criticize someone, so you have a leg up on other potential candidates for this opportunity. I’ve noticed that have not been in the habit of criticizing Jim Oberstar much, but I’d be happy to teach you. I’d even be willing to share my secret methods for getting web hits by mentioning more arcane targets. For just one example, you’d be amazed how many hits you can get by mildly criticizing Eric Carmen’s solo career.
* A very steady, devoted readership. No reason to worry about declining readership here — this blog almost always gets double digit hits every day. Click on the Sitemeter and see for yourself.
* A generous compensation package. I’ll be willing to split the proceeds I make from publishing this blog with you 50/50. Try and get an offer that generous from anyone else. Just try.

Nick, I think this is a wonderful opportunity for you. It would be a shame to see your voice be stilled just because the economy has hit a rough patch.

And for my part – Katherine Kersten, if you want to write for True North and/or Shot In The Dark, the door is wide open!

Ben Smith at Politico says Jindal is talking about sitting out 2012:

Jindal said he’s planning to run for reelection [as Louisiana governor] in 2011, something that would make pivoting to a national campaign logistically and politically tricky.

He might figure 2016 is a better bet. He might have a point.

Jindal’s absence – 47 months in advance – is already making lefties turn backflips.

But wait!

UPDATE: A later version of the AP story quotes Jindal trying to tack back to his previous position, which had seemed to leave the door open.

“I think anybody who is even thinking of running would be well served to roll up their sleeves and support our new president,” Jindal said. “I told our people, ‘It doesn’t matter whether you’re Republican, Democrat or independent, it doesn’t matter whether you voted for him or not, President-elect Barack Obama is our president.'”

As much as we joke about the next biennial campaign beginning at 6AM the morning after the election, it’s really too early to even speculate about the next presidential race.  Although it certainly does help paid propaganda organs like the Minnesoros “Independent” bide their time…

“Obama doesn’t support the “Fairness” Doctrine” is the standard response from lefties when asked about Barack Obama’s putative fascist tendencies.

Of course, it’s really not about him. It’s his caucus in Congress that’ll be the problem, that’ll push legislation to extinct conservative talk radio, and that Obama will (very likely) not veto after they ram their legislation through.

More proof? Brian Maloney finds another Tic that is committing a “gaffe” by telling the truth:

Now, we can add another Dem’s name to the list: far-left Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), who represents an oddly-shaped district covering portions of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas.

Not content to merely silence Rush Limbaugh, however, Eshoo would take her crusade to cable and satellite broadcasts as well. Could they shut down the Fox News Channel as well as commercial talk radio? How about XM – Sirius?

Anna Hush-You would tackle them all in a way that would make Vladimir, Hugo and Fidel proud, not to mention her new friend in the White House.

When it comes to the “Fairness” Doctrine, liberals are like a two-headed pit bull; Head #1 might talk you into scritching its ears – but only to give Head #2 cover to chomp onto your butt. When it comes to fighting the “culture war” in this country, there is no such thing as an honest liberal.

Tell me.

Why do we live here again?

Professional Sports Teams

Doomed Stadiums

Low Taxes

Political Climate

Strong Job Market

I got nothin’

I watched Leslie Stahl’s 60 Minutes interview of Barney Frank online and made a couple observations.

First of all, the media’s pronounced bias (or Leslie’s for that matter) manifested itself conspicuously, and it was even before the interview began.

Leslie Stahl’s lead in, emphasis mine:

“Barney Frank has been called the smartest guy in congress, which is lucky for us since he works on some of the thorniest issues around. The fourteen-term, sixty-eight year-old Harvard educated Democratic (she dips her head in approval) Congressman from Massachusetts is chairman of the house financial services committee, which means his portfolio includes banks, housing, and now the auto industry.”

Let’s be clear on one thing. Fourteen terms of Frank ‘n Beans has not been “lucky” for any of us.

Frank has purportedly spent his career becoming Congress’ de facto expert on America’s banking system and Wall Street only to oversee – nay, become complicit in – the biggest failure of both in modern times?

Lucky us!

Leslie Stahl asks Barney Frank about the unfairness of some people getting bailed out of their mortgages while others work two and three jobs to pay theirs. He justifies the program by asking is it unfair that one neighbor loses his job and gets unemployment while the one that doesn’t lose his job doesn’t? He justifies one policy with another as if they are the same thing. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

He’s been at the center of both the 700 billion dollar rescue for financial institutions, and the bailout attempt for the car companies that failed in the Senate.

As they say, the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.

I learned from the interview that it’s not the only time he’s been at the center, or on the scene of a crime for that matter.

The lowest point of his life he says…when he found himself in a sex scandal. A male hooker that Frank had hired told reporters that he had run a prostitution ring out of the congressman’s apartment. An investigation concluded that Frank didn’t know anything about it but he was reprimanded and went to the floor of the house to apologize.

Never mind the fact that Barney Frank hired a hooker. He has a prostitution ring run right under his nose and escapes culpability on the basis of ignorance. Never mind the fact that he gets to keep his job. He is charged with overseeing our nation’s financial systems.

Only in a Liberal America.

Claudia Rosett on the succession of power in a banana republic:

Eight years ago, a Senate seat from the Banana State was won by the wife of a sitting president of the republic. That wife had never before resided in Banana State, but she bought a house there, campaigned with the aura and entourage accorded to a presidential spouse, and with one leap, winning her first elected office ever, she became a senator.

Riding a national political machine to re-election for a second term, that former first lady swiftly turned her Senate seat into a springboard for her own campaign for the presidency. She lost, but took a job in the new administration, leaving the governor of Banana State to appoint a replacement senator.

That governor was himself a replacement, due to the resignation of the elected governor, a crusading moralist caught in a prostitution scandal. As the replacement governor prepared to name a replacement senator, a former president’s daughter declared her interest in the Senate seat — which one of her uncles had won some 44 years earlier, and was using as a springboard for his own presidential run, after serving as attorney-general in his brother’s presidential administration. This former first daughter had recently worked on the campaign of the President-elect — an experience that awakened in her an appetite for politics – but she had reached the age of 51 with no direct experience of her own in public office. Nonetheless, another of her uncles, also a senator, was ready to endorse her for this leap to the Senate. So was the mayor of Big Plum (the biggest city in Banana State), who on his own turf had just succeeded in scrapping a two-term limit so he could run for a third term — which he justified as a way of offering people a broader choice (namely, himself).

That’s how it works in Banana Republics. Whatever Caroline Kennedy’s native abilities, celebrity mantle and political connections, if she thinks this is a good way for things to work in New York State, that alone is reason to worry about her qualifications for the job.

Viva Nuevo Yuerco!

Good thing we have those blue staters to teach us about democracy.

Mickey Kaus, on the proliferation of “czars” in the Obama Administration:

We need a Czar Czar, to crack the whip on all the czars. … P.S.: Also a federal czar policy. Right now, czar decisions are made on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis, with no attempt at czar harmonization.

Perhaps we need a standardized training program for czars, something to bring them up to speed on the history and power of the Czars.

Hm. What could that be? What indeed?