I spent a weekend doing yard work, doing the show, taking care of kid stuff.  The mundane workadaddy, hugamommy stuff that consumes so much of most of our time.

But I’m considering the possibility of spending next weekend squiring Scarlett Johannsen around New York.

No, seriously; I’m thinking about it.  It’s theoretically possible.  I’m a straight guy and Scarlett’s a straight girl, so it could happen.  I could fly to NYC next weekend, if I cut back on groceries and car insurance.  Don’t rule it out!

“But Blogger Berg!  You are never going to get a date with Scarlett Johannsen!”

Silly critics.  There mere fact that it could happen makes it a story!

In related news, Bob Anderson might run against Michele Bachmann.

“Bob who?”

Bob Anderson.  He’s with the Ventura “Independence” Party.

I’ll forgive you for flipping to the next story right now.

Things are heating up in the race to unseat 6th District Rep. Michele Bachmann: Democrat Maureen Reed raised $230,000 in the two months following her announcement to run

Most of it, I’m told, from big and out-of-district donors.

past Bachmann challenger Elwyn Tinklenberg says he’ll be in the Democratic primary whether he gets the DFL nod or not;

Please, please, please, DFL.  Send E-Tink up against Bachmann again.  If a bureaucratic drone like Tink couldn’t beat Bachmann in 2008, the low-water mark for Republicans, he will get crushed in 2010 in a Sixth District that realizes what a bill of goods the nation has been sold.

and state Sen. Tarryl Clark is expected to announce her candidacy soon.

Ooh, even better; Clark is like a jello-cooking Nancy Pelosi. If nothing else, it’ll shut up all those dolts who think there’s no choice between politicians.g

A new twist: Third-party candidate Bob Anderson — who garnered 10 percent of the vote in the 2008 election — is seriously considering running again.

That ten percent was people saying “I’m a Republican voter in a Repulican district, and I’ll never vote for E-Tink; how will I chastize the GOP without voting for Obama?”

Last time Anderson ran as an unendorsed Independence Party (IP) candidate; Tinklenberg was cross-endorsed by the DFL and the IP. This time, Anderson says he wants just one endorsement — the IP’s. Coinciding with the IP’s executive committee mee…

…blah, blah, blah.

Here’s hoping this is the election where the Ventura-tied fluke of the IP being a “major party” ends.

There are a few lessons Republicans, Conservatives, and women who opt not to vote Democrat can learn from the past year in Sarah Palin’s life:

1. No matter how scrupulously you stick to your constitutional role on policy matters, if you are conservative and Christian, your opponents will call you a fundy theocrat.
2. No matter how accomplished you are,  people will insist you’re not very bright.
3. If you are a woman who attempts a life in public service without an Ivy League degree, no matter what you’ve done in the intervening twenty years, the tittering nabobs will call you the kinds of things they’d be excoriated for saying about a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader or a Hooters waitress.
4. If, only other hand, you are a conservative woman who did get an Ivy League degree and went on to huge accomplishments, you’ll be called a bitch who boffed up.
5. If you are a conservative of either gender, no matter how closely your views are tied to those of most mainstream Americans, you will be called “crazy”.
6. If you are a conservative of either gender, the media will consider you guilty until proven innocent of any ethics charges  brought against you.  Note the double-standard; a liberal lothario is linked with exploiting interns on company time and lying about it by a stained blue dress, and we were urged to “Move On”; Crazee McJackal from Otter Giblet Alaska says Sarah Palin took hush money from Venusians, and it’s treated with solemn urgency.

So there you go, conservative women.  Those are the ground rules.

You can thank all those “feminists” on the left for all they’ve done for women.

Ford ad, featuring today’s official media “regular guy”, Mike Rowe:

ROWE: “Why Ford?  Because Ford has a plan that is actually working…”.

Heh.

Minneapolis company expands – in North Dakota:

An aviation manufacturing company could create about 100 jobs in Minot the next two years if a proposed loan is approved by the city council.Administrators of a fund that provides incentives to new and existing businesses in Minot wants to loan $500,000 to Heliplane of Minneapolis.

While 100 more manufacturing jobs would have been pretty useful here in the Twin Cities, I suspect our happiness at paying for the better Minnesota.

While I’m always excited for the Northern Alliance broadcasts, in about a month we have what could be one of my favorites, ever.

“Doc” Pepping, one of the original “Toccoa Boys” from E Company of the 506th Airborne, immortalized in Steven Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, will be a guest on our August 22nd broadcast.  He’ll be in town for the Savage American Legion Corvette Club event, “Vettes for Vets”, which’ll be the next day (Sunday the 23rd). He’ll be on along with Dave Cruz, with Honor the Fallen.

Mark your calenders; this oughtta be good!

India rejects global warming hysteria.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.

He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming.

India realizes what conservatives do; that the only way to react to any sort of global climate change (whether man-made or not) is to spread as widely as possible the kind of prosperity that makes innovation possible.  Because it’s innovation, not retrenchment, that’ll solve whatever issues humanity does face with the environment.

In my years of blogging, I haven’t found much I don’t enjoy.  I’ve never really been tempted to quit.  It’s really no less fun now than it ever was.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the downsides have changed.  For starters, I’ve gotten really, really tired of the endless pissing matches between bloggers.

I’ve had my ups and my downs as a blogger and as a person in the past seven and a half years. But I’ve had a few standards about which I haven’t compromised at all.

1. I keep peoples’ personal lives out of it.  I don’t so much care if some leftyblogger got busted for pot in high school, or mixed it up with someone in a bar once upon a time.  I’ll bang on their politics, their logic, their writing – but I don’t really care about their private lives.  That is as it should be.
2. I don’t mess with peoples’ jobs.  I don’t care how noxious your politics are; nobody deserves to lose their job over a hobby.  Nobody.  And for the record, I don’t care if someone uses their work computer, even a government computer, to blog or write political emails.  Now, their employer certainly might!  But that’s between the employer and the employee.  I care not one bit.  While we’re on the record; I don’t blog at work. That’s a personal thing more than a work rule.
3. I leave peoples’ families out of it.  Completely.  I don’t care if your kid got arrested; I mean, I’ll hope for the best for your family, but for blogging purposes, families are off-limits.  The media as a whole should do as well to follow that rule, by the way.

Those have always been my rules. Not everyone sees it the same way, of course.

There’s a stream of “thought” among some bloggers – mostly but by no means all lefties – that if anyone criticizes the way Percy Leftkowitz approaches an issue, the best response is to toss out “dirt” about the critics.  As if the presence of “dirt” in their personal, familyi or work lives invalidates what they had to say.

JOE SCHMO:  “Percy Leftkowitz is wrong”.

LEFTKOWITZ: “Yeah, but Joe Schmo had a jaywalking ticket, so ignore him!”

It’s not debate. It’s just a way to try to shut other people up.  It’s the mark of the intellectual coward.

Anyway; a little bird told me that a swarm of leftybloggers have gotten their cute little danders up over yet another dirt-slinging match.  “They wanna fight dirty”, they chant, “we’ll play dirty too!”, and they circulate their little emails, and they grit their teeth and froth impotently.

Which is, of course, a sign that a squall of stupid is about to descend.

———-

Speaking of cowards, a number of local leftybloggers have been tittering about some “dirt” they think they have on me for the past year or so.  I had a run-in with Saint Paul’s code enforcement division.

Actually, the tale the leftybloggers are tittering about is Part 2 of a three part story. They don’t know the rest of it.

Part 1?  That’s family stuff.  It’s a long, painful story, and – I’ll say this politely – it stays in my family.  We’ve been working on it for years.  It’s a work in progress.  And it’s none of your business.

Part 2?  Well, that’s the part the titterers – and a “source” who should have known better – are getting their yuks about.  Things had, as of a year or so ago, gotten pretty out of control around my house; the place was in an awful state.  And I wound up having to do a hell of a lot of fix-up work, very very fast.   It was ugly, and embarassing, and probably the most difficult week of my life, and my family’s. Worse than getting divorced.  Worse than being out of work.  The worst.  I’m not gonna go into details – it’s nobody’s business, and…well, read Part 3.

Part 3?  This is the part that the poo-flinging monkeys who’ve been tittering about this story either don’t know or don’t think matters.  There was a happy ending.  Everything got done.

I couldn’t have done it myself, of course; at one point, I had over a dozen friends, family, neighbors, even people I’d never met, helping me out around here.  And we got the job done, ahead of schedule.  But for some eave-painting (and, uh, a new garage, although the fire was completely unrelated), I’ve been done since last fall.  (And the eaves, and my third-level dormers, do need the paint. I hope to have it done by State Fair time.  While we’re on the subject, does anyone have a cherrypicker crane they could lend me for a couple days?). And I had some very unlikely help; the DFL-run city council, at least one of whose members had gone through pretty much the same ordeal.  While everyone knows I’m that Mitch Berg, they were a ton of help.  I owe them my thanks – on this issue, anyway.  And so while I differ from all of them on politics, I thank them.

At any rate – while I’m never going to be mistaken for Martha Stewart, my house is no worse than yours, right now.  The hard part – working on all that stuff from Part 1 – well, we’ll be working on that one for a while, but again, that’s none of your business.

So.  There’s “the dirt” on Mitch Berg. 

What will you titter about now? 

———-

So why did I bring that up?  Well, certainly not because it’s anyone’s business.  I’m not going to discuss it with anyone.  The comment section is closed.

But I’m not afraid of the “story”.  It happened, it was an embarassing, brutal, grinding ordeal (I put in six straight 20 hour days), and it sucked chunks through straws, but I dealt with it.  It’s in the past.  Life has moved on, very much for the better for all concerned.

I’m even less afraid of the people who’ve been doing the tittering.  The people who’ve been getting their yuks from it have a lot more to be ashamed about than I do.  One area leftyblogger went so far as to put up a fake, anonymous blog on the subject.  I know who “he” is, by the way; it was about ten minutes’ work to prove it conclusively.  He’s someone with a long history of scuttling around behind anonymity, but whining like a bitch when he’s exposed for the gutless worm he is. 

And y’know what?  I don’t care.  Screw ’em.  I am better than they are.   Not just because I have the cojones to put my real name on what I write, but because even after all this, I’m still going to leave your families, your jobs, and your personal lives out of it. 

Mostly, though, it’s because most of the “dirt” that lesser bloggers think they can dig up on other bloggers – even the “embarassing” “dirt” – is just so unbelieveably mundane it doesn’t deserve comment, much less to be waved around as a reason to discount someone’s opinion, or to try to scare someone into silence.  

Someone posted to a listserve from a government computer; someone had a DWI fifteen years ago; the cops tagged someone after a bar fight; someone else didn’t pay a speeding ticket; someone got busted for shoplifting in college; someone told a bar-room story about themselves that didn’t check out; someone had an ugly divorce, or their kid got busted for burglary, or had plastic surgery, or they had a nasty fight with an ex-spouse that got out of control, or they were hospitalized for depression, or they’ve been out of work for two years…

Who are we talking about, here?

People.  Regular people with strengths and weaknesses, whose lives have pasts with wrinkles and ups and downs and twists and turns and warts.  People who have done pretty much everything but manage to keep their records squeaky, oppo-research-proof clean. 

Y’know – the kind of people who write blogs and, lest we forget, do pretty much everything else in our society.

Let he who is “without sin” hide behind a cutesy nom-de-plume.

———-

And with that, I’m done with all inter-blog mudslinging bullshit. 

From a local list-server; a Minnesota small businessman has had enough:

Being born in Minnesota, I have always been proud to claim this state as my home, but no more. After experiencing the never-ending social politics and nanny state liberal policies unfold year after year, I realize that Minnesota is on a fast path to destruction in the name of all things liberal and socialistic. Our politicians somehow feel entitled to continually spend money they don’t have because the can simply stick their hands in our pockets whenever they want more. The taxes in this state are incredible, yet we are continually expected to keep paying more and more in order to redistribute the wealth of the productive working class.  The stream of social and welfare benefits never seems to end. Somehow, those of us who continually struggle to get ahead; to get a good education, and work hard to support our families are deemed as being “blessed by opportunities” and therefore somehow owe something back to society.  I am not buying into this nonsense.

            The opportunities I have had were self created through hard work, personal struggle and sacrifice, hardship and came at great risk. There has never been a handout for me. I have earned what I achieved and worked incredibly hard for what I have.  And yet, the more I struggle and work towards being a productive member of society, the more I am taxed and viewed as somehow being privileged. Due to our current state of economic affairs in this country, we are all struggling to get by. We are all working harder and making sacrifices. Yet our politicians, especially in Minnesota continually prove they have no common sense to grasp basic economics 101, or they simply don’t care. We are on the path towards never ending tax and spend. Minnesota is continually hitting small business in the pockets through increased taxes, fees and regulations. And yet, we are somehow expected to standby and “pay our fair share” while the same politicians choose to frivolously spend more and more of our money on self serving interests in the name of social welfare or to further their careers.

            Well Minnesota…I am done!  I am no longer sticking around to support those that continually look for a free hand-out and those that seek to make their “self proclaimed rights” my burden. I am taking my productivity elsewhere and refusing to play the social redistribution of wealth game. I owe no one for my opportunities and success but God and family. I will create opportunities for those around me elsewhere, and will contribute towards productivity that serves to reward those willing to put it all on the line and take personal risk.  In a sense, I am now one of these former Minnesotans that has had enough and taking my money and labor out of this state. As more and more businesses and hard working individuals (and yes, the wealthy included) choose to leave this state and relocate to other states that are more business friendly and less tax happy, maybe Minnesotan voters will wake up and realize that one day, no one will be left to fund their socialistic welfare programs. Who will they tax then?

            So, while I guess we can not choose where we are born, we can choose where we decide to live. In the next month, I will be shutting down my Minnesota [business].  It has been a fun run while it lasted and I really enjoyed being a member of this list.  You are all great people and as [small businesspeople], taking huge risks every day in this state. Thank you all for your support over the years. This list is a great resource and I will miss participating in the future. I look forward to hopefully meet many of you in Duluth in a few weeks, even if you don’t agree with my view points.  Best wishes to you all.

(P.S. I know the country is not doing much better lately either, but once a professional soldier,, always a professional soldier.  I refuse to leave the USA.) 

It’s a big step – the ultimate one, really, in terms of voicing displeasure over state politics.  But it’s a long American tradition; if your neighbors get too stupid for you, strike out for the wilderness.

It’s more tempting all the time.

The Congressional Budget Office has been misbehavin’ – how dare they assert that Government health care won’t save us money.

Obammy says it will!

This may explain the treatment of Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the supposedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office who last week told Congress that you can’t “save” money on health care by having government insure everyone.

…because they can do math, unlike Jimmy II.

For that bit of truth-telling, he was first excoriated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

…a badge of courage as far as I’m concerned.

Then he was summoned, er, invited to the White House for an extraordinary and inappropriate meeting Monday with President Obama and a phalanx of economic and health-care advisers.

Advisers should be in quotes methinks.

Shall we call them the Obama Spanking Machine^™?

The Detroit Public Schools are pondering bankruptcy, swamped by (let me know if any of this sounds familiar) the combination of lowered demand for their product and mushrooming expenses, including pensions for long-retired employees:

A decision on whether to file for protection under federal bankruptcy laws will be by the end of the northern summer, according to Robert Bobb, Detroit Puablic Schools’ emergency financial manager. Such a filing would be unprecedented.But in Detroit — where US Education Secretary Arne Duncan dubbed the school system a “national disgrace” — politicians and bankruptcy experts see few alternatives, given the deep financial challenges confronting the district and the state.

“Am I optimistic that they can avoid it …? I am not,” said Ray Graves, a retired bankruptcy judge who has been advising Mr Bobb in recent weeks.

As with GM and Chrysler, bankruptcy may not be the worst thing for Detroit’s schools. A filing under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code, which covers public entities such as school districts and municipalities, would allow the district to put major creditors, including textbook publishers, private bus operators and utility DTE Energy, in line for payment.

Some experts say the Detroit case could be the first in a string of Chapter 9 bankruptcies among school districts and other public entities battered by the economic crisis, and it could help shape that area of the law.

The various teachers’ unions – which long ago replaced the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers as the pre-eminent union political power in the United States – have been busy doing to the education industry what the UAW did for GM.  Indeed, the benefits – especially the pension – have long been always been the main economic reason to go into teaching.  But with inner-city public school district enrollments plummeting, both from demographic shifts and parents voting with their feet, the promises schools made to teachers in the sixties and seventies are going to prove to the untenable.

And it’s not just for Detroit anymore; it’s in Minnesota too:

Some Minnesota school districts may have to go into debt to pay for the rising cost of health care for their retired employees.Local Minnesota governments have until October to sell bonds — without a public referendum — to help pay for retired employees’ health care. But with the economy in the tank, some people are unhappy about paying higher property taxes to fund someone else’s health benefits.

The retirees’ health policy costs fall under something accountants call OPEB — Other than Pension Employee Benefits. OPEB obligations, especially for health care, are really starting to put the squeeze on school districts statewide.

So – ballooning obligations fobbed off on future generations, demand for product decreased by ruinous economic policies; future generations left holding the bag.  Sound familiar?

This sort of thing, alas, is a complete no-no:

According to court documents, Charles W. Papenfus, 43, allegedly told a sales representative during a May 18 telephone call that he would burn down the building and kill the employees and their families. He was indicted for making a terrorist threat, a Class D felony; and he could be sentenced to up to four years in prison if convicted.

Cross “threaten telemarketers” off my to-do list.

Last week, we noted that Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), an Islam-based charter school in Inver Grove Heights, was taking the state to court over the withholding of the school’s allotment of money.

A small tangent; while the state and some of the state education system’s apologists were griping about teachers’ “licensing”, it’d seem that the school is better off without ’em:

Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) public charter school serving more than 500 students on two campuses, announced today that it has received a Growth Achievement Award for student achievement during the school year 2008-2009 from the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

…

In addition to the NWEA award, TiZA leads the state in math and reading achievement as measured with the state MCAII assessments and has been recognized for achieving the highest percentage of students scoring at grade level or better, despite having a high number of children living in poverty. TiZA serves a student population from over 20 countries. 80% of the students are from low-income households and about 70% are English language learners. TiZA has also received the Commissioner’s Finance Award for the past two years.

How many Twin Cities schools, much less schools with lower-than-average family incomes, can say that, charter or not?
While TIZA has faced allegations that it mixes religion and education in an unconstitutional manner, including lawsuits from the ACLU.  It’s worth noting that the first of the three ACLU suits has been dismissed.  From another press release from TIZA’s attorney, Erick Kaardal:

“Today, the U.S. District Court dismissed one of three of the ACLU’s claims against TiZA.  As to the remaining two claims, the ACLU now has the burden of proof to show that TiZA is in violation of the Establishment Clause. TiZA remains confident that there is no violation of the Establishment Clause.

“The ACLU must prove that TiZA, which has made religious accommodations for students and is compliant with the federal government’s official guidance on religion in public schools, has violated the Establishment Clause.

Anyway – regarding the licensing flap, the school won that one, too. From yet another press release:

Two days after it erroneously took almost $125,000 from Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) and received negative media scrutiny, the Minnesota Department of Education reversed its original decision and has transferred the funds back to the charter school.

“While TiZA appreciates the Department’s decision to release the funds, this is just another example of the erratic behavior of the Department and, in particular, Commissioner Chas Anderson,” said Erick Kaardal , TiZA’s legal counsel. “It’s another example of a department that ignores requests, makes accusations without merit and fails to follow the rules it’s required to enforce.”

  As a result of the July 15 decision to take TiZA’s student aid, the school has requested the Department turnover all documents and communications regarding the instruction to apply penalties against TiZA.  The Department has not responded to this request.

TIZA is a controversy magnet, of course; leaving aside the Separation Clause issues, there’s the matter of it being Islamic.

Certainly, if a charter school with pseudo-Catholic roots (like, say, Eagle Ridge Academy in Eden Prairie), held a mass on school time, there’s be some squawking.

But when people see Islamic school, some of them think “wahhabi madrass”.

So here are some questions:

1. Presuming the separation clause exists, and provided that TIZA is not advocating radical wahabbism, what’s the problem?
2. Given that the school does do something that eludes most schools; it gets spectacular academic results with children that the conventional school district pays lip service to teaching, but largely warehouses anyway, isn’t it time to address the fraudulent notion that “separation of church and state” means “no money goes to religious schools?”  Because it is a fraud; all kinds of tax money goes to religious colleges and universities; student financial aid, arts and research grants, yadda yadda.

There’s a significant chance that TIZA, baggage notwithstanding, is an answer rather than a problem.

But The One can’t be happy about these numbers:

Trust in President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies to identify the right solutions to problems facing the country has dropped off significantly since March, according to a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll.Just as Obama intensifies his efforts to fulfill a campaign promise and reach an agreement with Congress on health care reform, the number of Americans who say they trust the president has fallen from 66 percent to 54 percent. At the same time, the percentage of those who say they do not trust the president has jumped from 31 to 42.

And the Party of Pelosi?

The president’s party has taken a similar hit since the last Public Trust Monitor poll, with only 42 percent of respondents saying that they trust the Democratic Party, compared with 52 percent who do not. The party’s numbers are nearly the inverse of March’s survey, in which 52 percent said they trusted Democrats and 42 percent did not.

Obama’s overreach on healthcare and his squandering of the nation’s economic future are orders of magnitude worse than the Clinton overreach that led to the Gingrich revolution.

The only real question: is there are GOP that can pick up this fumble?

That’s the worry.

Back in 2002, a couple of unnamed conservatives walked into the State Green Party Convention on a lark, got themselves seated (because “credentials” were, at the time, an authoritarian paternalistic relic of fascism, apparently), and nominated former Marine fighter pilot Ed McGaa – a firebreathing property rights conservative and absolute anti-Green – for governor.  Hilarity ensued; McGaa, who was not present at the convention, won the nomination.  Afterwards, he got in on the joke, running an extremely tongue-in-cheek campaign while the Greens gradually realized they’d been had, went through a cataclysmic soul-searching, and finally tossed him and ran perennial pest Ken Pentel.  McGaa, tongue in cheek or not, might have done better. 

It was a joke that got out of hand. 

It looks like the joke got paid back this weekend.

While I’m deliriously happy about Eva Ng – a genuine conservative and person with the kind of vision my city needs – running for Mayor of Saint Paul, it’s not all roses.

The Minneapolis GOP has endorsed “Papa” John Kolstad.  Kolstad, a DFLer who left the party because “centrism” frustrated him, next ran for the Attorney General slot as a Greenie (note to pretty much anyone; the presence of “Papa” in a political stage name is always always always a bad sign).

And now – since the Greens have lost major-party status – he’s “running as a Republican”.

Kolstad has run for a DFL state senate seat and Atty. General (Green Party endorsed). His reasons for running for Atty General in 2006: http://dailyjam.blogspot.com/2006/06/minnesota-green-party-slate-of-2006.html

First, Becky Lourey has said she would bring the National Guard troops home from Iraq. Kolstad would use the attorney general’s office to assist her in that cause.

Second, as a strong supporter of Single Payer Health Insurance, Kolstad would continue the work Hatch has done in holding insurance company executives’ feet to the fire. He would also fight any legal challenges to Single Payer waged by the insurance companies.

Third, he would use the attorney general’s office to fight on behalf of the environment. If you are creating greenhouse gases by driving a gas guzzler, you should pay for it. He suspects collusion between coal companies and electric companies, and he’d like to investigate that. How can electric companies charge rate-payers to pay farmers not to use wind turbines to generate safe, renewable energy? He’d like to look into that.

Look, the GOP is a big tent, but this is lunacy. 

And while I’ve led the Twin Cities’ punditry in trying to welcome the Ron Paul supporters to the party, we have to draw the line at nominating a crypto-maoist like Kolstad.  Word has it that it was the Ronulans on the Minneapolis City Committee that pushed the decidedly non-conservative, non-Republican Kolstad through the process. 

Rules is rules.  Elections go to those who show up.  Duly noted.

But it is time for actual Republicans to take their party back in Minneapolis.  Somehow we in Saint Paul managed to incorporate the energy and vitality of the Paulbots, without losing our conservative souls.  Minneapolis needs to do the same.

Minneapolis Republicans; you need to rise up and condem this theft of your party by – words fail me – enemies of what you believe in.

Eva Ng officially files to run for mayor of Saint Paul today.

She’s having a bit of an event:

TUESDAY, JULY 21st

Time: 1:00 pm

(Please arrive about 12:30)

Ramsey County Elections Building,

90 West Plato Blvd., St. Paul

I’m going to try to make it there to cover it, although I’m probably a little under 50-50.  Work is pretty crazy.

Not as crazy as the state of government in Saint Paul, of course.  We need Eva Ng in City Hall.  If you can help out – whether you live in Saint Paul or not – we’d love to see you there.  This is the biggest race anywhere in Minnesota this year; this is the kind of thing conservatives statewide should see the obvious need to pitch in on.

Hope you can help.

…if Bush’s administration had suggested this – federal control over content on the Internet. White House advisor Cass Sunstein is talking about the White House – the Feds, anyway – taking a huge role in censoring the Internet.
And the insurgents – whatever their party?  They’d have been right:

Perhaps most disturbing is Mr. Sunstein’s vision for the future of web content, as he argues for a so-called “notice and take down” law. Under this provision, those who operate websites – – The Washington Post, radio stations, private bloggers, and perhaps even you, yourself -we would all be required “take down falsehoods upon notice” from the U.S. government.

And not only would the original content of websites be scrutinized by the government for “falsehoods,” website operators would also be held responsible for the content of “posts” created by the website’s visitors and readers. At first blush it may seem that, for a web operator to be held accountable for content generated by “posters,” is completely untenable. But that may very well be Mr. Sunstein’s goal – – to create an “untenable situation” for website operators – given his assertion that “a ‘chilling effect’ on those who would spread destructive falsehoods can be an excellent idea..”

Well, we all want “the truth” to prevail, don’t we?

But who shall determine what, exactly, is “true” and “false?” Mr. Sunstein laments the supposed “lie” that emerged during last year’s presidential race, that “Barack Obama pals around with terrorists.” Despite that fact that a friendship between Obama and known domestic terrorist William Ayers was something that both men acknowledged, Sunstein alludes to the notion that this was one of those “destructive falsehoods” of the sort that needs to be policed.

As I was recently talking about this matter on-air at Arizona’s NewsTalk 92-3 KTAR radio, a caller to the show observed that “there’s no way this could be legal, or constitutional..” Thoughtful Americans of all sorts will immediately view this situation through the lenses of constitutionally guaranteed rights.

But issues of “legality” don’t seem to matter, at times, with the Obama Administration. In March of this year, there was nothing illegal about executives of the AIG Corporation being paid bonuses that they earned from their employer, but they were harassed and publicly belittled, nonetheless. President Obama himself demonized them, while dozens of Obama supporters “demonstrated” in front of the private residences of the executives, alleging that it was “unfair” for those executives to be making “so much money.”

Remember when the lefties told us we were paranoid for thinking Obama would re-institute the Fairness Doctrine?

They may have had a point.  This makes the Fairness Doctrine look like a piker.

In a similar way, it appears that the Obama Administration may be ushering-in an era of harassment for website operators. Regardless of what U.S. courts may or may not say about this in the future, a “notice and take down” letter from the White House could have quite a “chilling effect” for today.

‘ For my part?  Consider this post a “Notice And Take Down” letter for this entire wretched administration.

I used to joke, before the election, that Obama would be the worst President of my lifetime by sometime on inauguration day.  I was joking.  At the time, anyway.

Granted, the “Pledge of Allegiance” isn’t the sine qua non of patriotism, but we’re not really looking for sine qua nons, here.

But I”m sure there’s an explanation.

…give a thought toward stopping over in Saint Paul as Eva Ng formally files her run for Mayor of Saint Paul!

TUESDAY, JULY 21st

Time: 1:00 pm

(Please arrive about 12:30)

Ramsey County Elections Building,

90 West Plato Blvd., St. Paul

Might just be worth a trip.  She could use the support – and Saint Paul could use her in charge at City Hall.

Why yes – I do remember sitting in the living room on a balmy July day and watching, like everyone else in the world, Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. 

As I recall, Mom was there; Dad was (again, if I recall correctly – and I was six, for crying out loud) was off teaching summer school. 

It’s hard to explain to people who weren’t old enough to remember it – or who weren’t born yet – just how exciting that moment was.  Granted, I was very young, and I certainly couldn’t speak for all of society, but the nearest I can remember, there have been no similar events that brought pretty much the whole world together in excitement, worry and prayer like the first moon landing.  Maybe 9/11, although that was very different, obviously.  The whole world just doesn’t get behind much of anything anymore.

But there was a double-shot of excitement for me, that day.  When Dad came home, he brought…my first guitar!

It was a cheapo catalog model that some kid had left in his locker three or four years earlier; it was the kind of thing that’d cost maybe $69.99 at WalMart today, and probably under $20 at the time.  It was missing a string.  And after I banged on it a little, it went into the closet, coming out over the next seven years to serve as a boat, a fort, a rifle and any number of things, until that day in March of 1977 when I decided I had to be a guitar player, dragged it out, put two new tuning machines and six new strings on it, and started working my way through the Gene Leis chord book.

Oh, I suppose after having written a long piece about my ambivalence about single-malt Scotch, you’re thinking “there Berg goes; he’s talking about grain alcohol.  That explains a lot”.

Perhaps it does:

Eveclear is a pure grain alcohol.  198 proof (that is to say, 99% alcohol) in its standard form (it’s diluted to 175 proof in Minnesota), Everclear is a common request from Minnesotans whenever I go back to visit North Dakota; it’s the main ingredient in homemade schnapps.  More importantly, some of my most treasured memories – or fragments of memories, anyway – started out with shot after shot after shot of the delicious, clear beverage.  Which also doubles as a lamp fuel if you’re stranded in the woods…

…oh, OK. I’m yanking your collective chain.  No, while you can drink the stuff, it’s really stupid to try.

No, I’m actually talking about the band:

Everclear, a Portland-area punk band led by Art Alexakis, had a brief Top-40 heyday in the mid-nineties.  They had (by punk band standards) a fairly brief swerve through “underground” success – which I mostly missed, other than reading snippets and hearing things from friends who still had time and energy to keep up with music; my kids were little, I was changing careers around and trying to teach myself a new trade, and music barely qualified as background noise for the most part.

But the band struck it big in 1996, vaulting out of the underground with So Much For The Afterglow, with a troika of singles, “Everything To Everyone”, “I Will Buy You A New Life” and “Father Of Mine”.

Now, before I heard any of this, I started reading (on that new “web” thing I’d just discovered) the usual punk kids, doing the same thing they do every time a punk band gets mainstream success and income; “Sellout!”.  That, I expected.

The part I didn’t expect was the sniveling some of the punk kidz were doing about the music itself; “boring stuff about parents and being a father”.

So I cocked my ear to it.

Turned out Alexakis was about my age (actually eight months older), had (unlike most rock and rollers) a kid or two, and that the singles that were starting to leak out on the radio were about…

…grown up stuff.   Having kids.  Trying to be a decent father and feeling really inadequate at it.  Trying to keep a relationship from fizzling out.  Y’know – stuff that actual grownups do when they have left the club scene and packed their guitars and amps lovingly away in the closet and have to get on with real life. Stuff that was real to him and, I add in retrospect, me, at the time.

“Santa Monica” is, along with “A Man In Need” and “Tunnel Of Love”, perhaps the best song ever written about watching a relationship crumble from the inside; the song has a wistful, doomed hope in clinging to the familiar (“we can sit beside the ocean, leave the world behind, swim out past the breakers, watch the world die”) that, no matter how many times its repeated, rings hollow; we know as well as the singer does that there’s really nothing to be done about it – there’s just too much ugly behind the hope in the chorus (“I am still dreaming of your face/Hungry and hollow for all the things you took away/I don’t want to be your good time/I don’t want to be your fall-back crutch anymore”).

But rock and roll is crawling with great breakup songs, from “Backstreets” to, yes, “The Breakup Song”.

What Rock and Roll does not have many of is songs about being Dad.

I was sitting in a cube at my job in 1996 when “Father Of Mine” came on the radio.  Alexakis’ real father left his family when he was young – I didn’t need to read anything to figure that out.  What catches you – or at least what caught me, 13 years ago – about the song is the blood-curdling anger that Alexakis feels for his own father and, above and beyond that, the fear-laced hope that he won’t pass the baggage from that horror, and well as fresh horrors of own, on to his own kids.

Having little kids of my own at the time, the song caught me between the eyes.  The song was as angry as anything the Clash ever did – but the anger wasn’t a vehicle adolescent posturing and puerile politics.  It hit me where I lived, not at age 16, but 33, and the anger and the fear were no different for me, and it hit me just as squarely as “London Calling” had, half a lifetime earlier.  Maybe moreso; this was my life.

It still is.

And for that brief moment, once in history, old punks didn’t die; the anger just grew up and got some purpose.  Just like the old punks.

Alexakis has never come close to that peak since then.  The band went the way of all punk rock bands, self-destructing not long after their brief heyday.  And Alexakis did  embrace puerile politics, eventually; he was a delegate to and entertainer at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and a reformed Everclear released a single, “Jesus Was A Democrat”, last year.  I don’t even like it when people claim Christ was a conservative; the less said, the better.

But we’ll always have 1996.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I get single-malt Scotch.  I know why people drink the stuff.

I get that the Scots (from which I’m at least partly descended) inherited from their Viking raiders and conquerors and eventual ethnic partners (from whom I’m also descended) a taste for taking perverse pride in aescetic self-abuse; the descendants of the Norse express this by eating lutefisk and living in Bemidji; those of the Scots, by professing a yen for haggis (or, really, any Scots cuisine) and, I suspect, drinking single-malt whisky.

And again, don’t get me wrong; I have enjoyed single-malt scotch in the past; a friend of mine broke out a bottle of 30-year-old Laphroaig at a party once, and I’ll confess I genuinely enjoyed it; smooth, nuanced, genuinely enjoyable.  I’ll also confess I had had two Pims, a couple of Newcastles, and two vodka sours before we got to the scotch (yes, I was in George Jones mode, and no, I was not driving), and I could have probably found good points to drinking Drano by that point.

And I’ve tried – oh, lord, I’ve tried – to develop a taste for lesser marques of single-malt whilst more sober. Oban, Glenfiddych, Lagavulin, Dalwhinnie, Macallen, Talisker, Glenwhinggyggherfachgger, and only Robert the Bruce knows what else.  I’ve read the critical reviews of the different brands, tried to wrap my head around the whole aesthetic of trying to find the differences between the nuances of the various brands (“was the shepherd who whizzed in the peat bog from which the water to brew it was drawn a diabetic, dehydrated or drunk, or all the above?” seems to be the big distinction), even learned to play the bagpipes.  And so far, the best I can say is that it makes cigars taste smoother.  (Not to take anything away from that, either…)l.

And while I’ll cop to not having time, money or interest in trying to ape the more foppish manifestations of bobo epicureanism, I do have a palate.  I can give a very literate critique of beer, wine, even vodka.  Don’t get me started on vodka.  Better yet, come on over to Moscow on the Hill on Cathedral Hill, put down the credit card, and do get me started; Moskva Na Cholmye‘s vodka collection, aka “Around The Warsaw Pact”, is second to none; every bit the work of genius that Williams’ “Beers Of The World” has been for the past 20 years.  I’m not a Coors-swilling yahoo (although after a weekend of yard work and paint-scraping, it has its place); I can tell good vices from bad vices.

But single malt, thus far, leaves me cold, Jimmy.

I don’t know if I was the last generation to grow up believing that the media had a sense of collective integrity – that the media really did observe the whole myth of “objectivity”, that the mainstream media (the only kind we had at the time) was honest and detached and really had integrity.  But there can’t have been too many after me who honestly believed, growing up and getting to learn how the world works, that the media could be trusted to just tell you the story, without larding it up with all kinds of agendas.  People who could be “believe in” someone like a Walter Cronkite.

Walter Cronkite, who (perhaps you heard)  passed away last week.

Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. with his family by his side at his Manhattan home after a long illness, CBS vice president Linda Mason said. Marlene Adler, Cronkite’s chief of staff, said Cronkite died of cerebrovascular disease.

Cronkite was both the last person in the American media to be imbued with that legend of integrity, and the first – to my own admittedly incomplete memory, anyway – to be accused of flouting it. He was the poster boy for “the media”; in a way, he still is:

Morley Safer, a longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent, called Cronkite “the father of television news.”

Let’s run with that “Father” metaphor for a bit.

How many kids have you know who were the children of boundless privilege, who oozed that boundless sense of entitlement that the overprivileged have?  Who never had to do what their forebears had to do to earn the privileges that the kids took for granted?

If you’re talking the children of dentists flitting around in BMWs and abusing waiters, that’s one thing.

If you’re talking an industry and institution that grew up over two generations believing that people owed them  – the likes of Anderson Cooper and Lori Sturdevant and Dan Rather and Nick Coleman – respect and a presumption of detachment and integrity because, for whatever reason, the media had gotten that reputation a generation or two earlier?

Cronkite should have disowned the brats.

The best thing about being 46 and Republican?

I don’t have Scarlett Johannsen sticking her tongue down my throat all the time, demanding sex at all hours of the day and night.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking; “That never happens anyway!”

Well, clearly you don’t have a career at the Minnesoros “Independent”: the mere fact that I mention the possibility, at least in reporter Chris Steller’s world, makes it a fact!

Down, Scarlett!

Being out of office has its privileges. One consolation for Norm Coleman after finally conceding defeat to Al Franken: seeing ethics complaints and investigations in his rearview mirror.

In other words,  being out of office – for Coleman as for Sarah Palin – means not being hounded to distraction by spurious “complaints” (“Rentgate”, the most-debunked piece of yellow hackery I’ve ever seen, which Steller reports as if it were still a serious story) – which are inevitably stated as proven facts by their various accusers, and reported with wide-eyed credulity by an in-the-bag media that seems to clam up when reporting that there was no there, there.

By the way, Chris Steller – Scarlett and I would love to meet you at the White Castle on Lexington.  I’ll buy you a slider…

…Whoah!  Steller was offered a bribe!  ETHICS COMPLAINT!

This bit here might ring a bell or two (Youtube video; audio intermittently not safe to be openly played at work…)

10. Never have to watch that “Maaaangoooooooooo” bit ever again.

9. No more people trying to do clever impersonations of “”Maaaangoooooooooo”.

8. Never have to watch that “Maaaangoooooooooo” bit ever again.

7. I can go weeks without having nightmares about that “Maaaangoooooooooo” bit.

6. Never have to watch that “Maaaangoooooooooo” bit ever again.

5. Never again have to respond to “What is your favorite Maaangooooooo sketch” as long as I live.

4. Never have to watch that “De Jooooze?  Eeez Good?” bit ever again.  No, wait, wasn’t that Rob Schneider?  Dang.  That’s another Top Ten list all by itself.

3. I never accidentally stumble across Night At The Roxbury on cable anymore!

2. Never have to watch that “Maaaangoooooooooo” bit ever again.

1. Nobody else ever has to watch that “Maaaangoooooooooo” bit ever again.