Monthly Archives: November 2009

Dear “Youtube Star”

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To:  Would-be YouTube “Stars”

From: Mitch Berg

Re:  Your Activities

To whom it may concern:

You know who you are.  You make videos of yourselves sitting on the toilet chanting “I’m Sittin’ On Da Toilet”.  You have your roommates post videos of you, slobbering drunk, chanting “Hhhope ‘enn chanzhe” over and over. You scream yourself into incontinence over how “we” are treating Britney and importune us to “leave her alone”.

You are hereby directed to destroy your cameras and report to the nearest bar full of longshoremen for a long-overdue beating.

That is all.

You Are Guilty Of Thought Crime; Go To Mental Detention

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Need any more reason to get your kids the hell out of the public school system?

“America Last” is going to be a matter of academic doctrine – at least, at the U of M.

Katherine Kersten – the single best columnist working in the Twin Cities today –  takes it down:

Do you believe in the American dream — the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools — at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus.

In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace — and be prepared to teach our state’s kids — the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.

Now, in a sense Kersten (and the U of M) are behind the curve; the Education academy has long been a hive of Fabians who see themselves as social artists and the school system as their canvas, on which to create a whole new, “better” America, without all that “America” in it.

The task group is part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained at the U’s flagship campus. The initiative is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of “cultural competence” contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students. Last spring, it charged the task group with coming up with recommendations to change this. In January, planners will review the recommendations and decide how to proceed.

The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the “overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.

In other words, education will be even less culturally diverse – in the mainline public schools – than it already is.  That’ll take some doing.

The first step toward “cultural competence,” says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize — and confess — their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the reeducation camps of China’s Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi.

Read the entire, nauseating column.

Now, on Twitter yesterday the MNPost’s David Brauer noted that Kersten doesn’t link to the report – apparently unaware that we bloggers have been bagging on the Strib for the better part of a decade over exactly the same practice; I suppose it makes sense that David Brauer (to whom I give props for having never adoped even the faintest pretense of detachment from politics in his writing) notices it with Katherine Kersten after years of the Strib treating online columns like print columns.

Here’s the U of M report in question.  I’ll tear into it tomorrow (or maybe Wednesday).

But dont’ wait up for me or anything…

Now The Strib Is A Giant Of Free Enterprise!

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In the nearly eight years this blog has been a going concern, I’ve spent countless posts bagging on the Minneapolis Star/Tribune – usually for the relentlessly left-of-center orientation of the editorial board and columnists, although occasionally for really really bad reporting.  I’ve also noted, of course, that whatever their faults, they are a private organization.

On the other hand, I’ve noted plenty of times that while Minnesota Public Radio to a great extent reflects the prejudices and bigotries of its upper-middle-class Volvo-driving free-range-alpaca-wearing audience, and while they do in fact jump on every government subsidy they can get with both feet, they’ve at least made a fairly concerted effort to run a balanced news shop (an effort that NPR would do well to emulate while they can).

The Strib’s Mike Sweeney notes a conundrum in a Sunday editorial.

He tees up by noting that, as he sees it, the Strib’s recent bankruptcy reorganization have left the paper profitable and with the biggest news organization in the state.  And, says Sweeney, it needs to be:

In my 30 years in business, I have never seen a more exciting marketplace than today’s news industry. Citizens are more interested in news than ever, and there are countless organizations willing to provide it. For-profit businesses and nonprofits are all vying for your attention. Large technology-driven companies like Google and Yahoo are competing with niche businesses like Politico and the Huffington Post. And the nonprofit world has responded with terrific sites like Minnesota’s own e-democracy.org and MinnPost.

OK, so Sweeney doesn’t get out much.  e-“democracy” is a bunch of breathless DFL fanboys that actively squelches dissent and doesn’t so much “cover news” as it “spreads DFL press releases”.  Kind of like the Strib’s editorial board.

And hello Mike, but would it kill you to note that it was the very local, absolutely private phenenon of the conservative blogger – John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson at Power Line especially – that’s really led the change locally? Especially by shining a bright light on the worst of the Strib’s historical excesses?

It actually probably would.  I digress:

Against this robust backdrop, our community is facing important public policy questions. One that particularly concerns us is whether the government should provide taxpayer dollars to subsidize news media companies. From the Star Tribune’s perspective, the answer is a resounding “No!” We don’t want or need taxpayer subsidies, and we see no reason for government to disrupt an already robust, innovative market.

Well, good – we finally agree.

Minnesota Public Radio disagrees. This past week MPR convened a group of hand-picked speakers from across the country to proclaim the future of news. The selected panelists seemed to agree that newspapers could not evolve and that market intervention was necessary. Information about how newspapers were evolving and how entrepreneurs were innovating was shrugged off. There was apparent consensus that public radio could fill a perceived void by grabbing public funding. We have numerous concerns about publicly funded news, but our primary question is how an organization funded by government can objectively report on government.

Leaving aside the fact that the private (yay!) Strib does such a dodgy job of covering (one of the parties in our) government, that’s an excellent point.  Public media advocates (more the “socialize the media” crowd than the MPR crew) have long said that it’s impossible for commercial news operations to resist the whims and demands of the advertisers who support them.  They never actually answer when I ask “so how much better would it be if the group paying the freight  controls not merely an ad budget, but the police, the Department of Commerce, the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Revenue?”

For example, MPR has successfully lobbied state government for years to secure millions in subsidies to help finance its nonprofit business expansions, most recently obtaining $2.65 million in Legacy Amendment funds over a two-year period. Apparently MPR will use some of those taxpayer funds to compete with private media companies. In a time of such scarce government resources, should public money be allocated to a healthy nonprofit so that it can compete more aggressively with private, for-profit businesses?

And for MPR’s czar Bill Kling, that answer will be a resounding “yes”.  Remember, governent’s subsidies of public radio go way beyond the financial.  “Public broadcasting” has the low end of the FM dial more or less reserved to it; they have never had to compete in the scrum for licenses (although they did buy the classical, 99.5FM frequency in the Twin Cities 18 years ago from the former WLOL, a major leap into what had been commercial air).  More than that, the Federal Communications Commission has spent the past 20-30 years stonewalling the licensing of Low Power FM (LPFM) Radio, which would allow community groups to set up small FM radio stations with ranges of a couple miles for as little as $1,000.  Leading that stonewalling effort?  Bill Kling of MPR.

MPR will respond, correctly, that public funding is a small part of their budget.   Commercial radio people will respond “Yes, but it’s a huge budget”; MPR’s $2.65 million Legacy Amendment grant, which is a tiny fraction of MPR’s budget, is larger than the entire annual budget for the operation at which I broadcast – AM1280 The Patriot, AM980 The Believer and AM1570 The Businessman.  And while MPR supports a huge newsroom (the largest radio newsroom in the state, and one of the biggest in the metro in any medium) and three big stations as well as a regional network, it also has a huge staff, facilities that’d make an Abu Dhabian oil sheik blanche, and a powerful, not-cheap lobbying operation.

And given that reality, and the fact that MPR does make an awful lot of money without government subsidies, and has developed large, significant, and generally-profitable for-profit spinoffs that should be able to support the parent corporation, I think Sweeney is even more correct in questioning the need, much less the rationale, for these subsidies given the market news organizations face.

Brauer on the MNPost notes that Sweeney is being disingenuous in pointing out a subsidy when the Strib is going to receive, he says, the biggest one of all; publicly-funded stadiums do a lot to buff up the Strib’s balance sheet – especially if the state and team build a stadium on the site of their current headquarters building, making the property actually worth something.  It’s true, I note in the comment section – but it’s indirect, especially in the former case.  In the latter case – with the Strib playing its cards and its lobbying like mad to get the city/state/team/taxpayer to buy its land – it’s a little better case; it’d be disingenuous to claim that the Strib is no different than, say, a homeowner whose house is in the way of a new freeway.

The obvious answer, of course, is for government to stop subsidizing everything; business, poverty, the works.

More later.

I Can Learn

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For all these years, I thought that being “African-American” was a combination of African-descended ethnicity and, at some level, some stake in the cultural history involving slavery, reconstruction and the battle for civil rights.

Silly me.

It’s all about supporting Obama, no matter what:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Well, there you have it!

“Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December.”

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From the tearful pleas of rock stars to politicians pounding their hammy fists, the Man Made Global Warming movement has been a maypole for liberals for what seems like twenty years now.

…and gave Algore a suitable purpose for his deceitful, pathetic life.

Watch now as world leaders quietly turn their backs and walk briskly away.

As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December.

It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria.

“So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, ‘Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill,’ I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won,'” Inhofe said.

Darn it all. I was so hoping not to have to move South in my twilight years.

I thought these “scientists” were just liberal zombies contentedly suckling at the teet of government grants, doing the Motherland’s bidding; the all-growed-up version of the career protesters I observed when I attended the U.

Now, it turns out they were [dramatic music] evil doers!

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

Leave it to the StarTribune to discount the findings, toss the word “evidence” in there for good measure and  essentially say “Sorry. Too late, officer. The Kool Aid is drunk already.”

But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

…because it’s already been eroding…without the help of hackers.

With their help however we have this:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide a decline” in temperatures.

The good news? Algore made a Billion and can retire. Maybe he’ll keep his yap shut now.

Happy Birthday, Miami Steve

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It’s Steve Van Zandt’s 59th birthday today.

So which Steve Van Zandt do you like best?

The guitar player?

As “Miami Steve”, Van Zandt has served for a couple of decades, with a break from 1984 through the mid-nineties, as Bruce Springsteen’s onstage foil – sort of the quiet anti-Clarence-Clemons of the band.  And while a lot of Bruuuuce fans have an awful lot of great memories locked into the E Street Band’s, Van-Zandt-less incarnations – Nils Lofgren is no slouch, and the ’84 and ’88 tours were pretty amazing experiences – the Miami years had a chemistry and interplay that changed into something else – not better, not worse, but different – on later years.  Something I missed:

Van Zandt had a knack for raw, on-the-sleeve background vocals that set off Springsteen’s throat-scraping roar, and a sloppy, leaky style on the Strat that, on a good night, sent songs like “Jungleland” into orbit.

Van Zandt the singer?

Men Without Women, 1982

Men Without Women, 1982

Van Zandt’s solo debut, “Men Without Women”, was one of the ten best albums in the history of rock and roll.  Van Zandt gathered a bunch of rock’s greatest journeymen – Max Weinberg and Dino Danelli on drums, the Plasmatics’ bassist Jean Bouvoir, Felix Cavaliere, Roy Bittan and Danny Federici on keyboards, and La Bamba’s Mambomen – better known today as most of “The Max Weinberg Seven’s horn section” – into a studio for a couple of frantic days, and ended up with an album that combined the raw emotion of Exile on Main Street, the style of the best Stax/Volt rock and soul, and the immediacy of a bunch of guys running on raw inspiration; most of the album was is first takes, all of it recorded “live” direct to tape (Van Zandt overdubbed only a few guitar parts; the rest of the album was recorded almost like a live album, with the band gathered in a big circle in the studio).

And what an album it was.

“Forever” was the song that intoduced me to the whole raw, passion-drenched world of Stax/Volt soul:

There wasn’t a weak cut on the album:

The album came and went pretty quickly in the eighties – although big chunks of it turned up in the first two seasons of “The Sopranos”.

He released four more albums – swerving through garage metal, dance music, worldbeat and fairly conventional rock, each louder and a little shriller and much more political; it seemed to me that he only had so many ideas that got more and more tapped out with repetition. But when they were all brand new?  Men Without Women was one amazing album.

Steve the producer? Van Zandt was the brains behind the first several classic albums by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. You could see the Jukes as one of the great bar band in history…:

…or as a prototype for Men Without Women:

He also producer another of my favorite records of all time – the Iron City Houserockers’ Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive), along with Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson.

Which is not to say he was King Midas. He also presided over the decline and fall of the magnificent Lone Justice, producing Shelter, perhaps the slumpiest sophomore effort of the eighties. Which isn’t to say it didn’t have redeeming value…

Steve the actor?   Well, it’s been pretty much The Sopranos so far.  But I thought he was a pretty convincing sleazeball cub owner/consiglieri.

The disc jockey?  That may be his great contribution these days; Little Steven’s Underground Garage is the absolute last bastion of genuine cool rock and roll anywhere in radio today.

Anyway – happy birthday, Steve Van Zandt!

There Was Someone On The Radio Saying “Come On, Come On!”

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Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

  • The King Banaian Show – On AM1570, “The Businessman”, from 9-11.  King’s broadcasting from Saint Cloud, at long long last.
  • Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
  • Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I are up from 1-3.  We’ll be talking cloture, and how the term “cloture” sounds like something a doctor will sew into your small intestine.  Also more Show Trial talk, the indestructible Sarah Palin. 
  • And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM on AM1280!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

  • AM1280 in the Metro
  • streaming at AM1280’s Website,
  • On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
  • UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
  • Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
  • Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

Bad, Bad Jeff.

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Before I get started, let me just start by saying how very, very much I hate Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent.

Part of it is the gay thing, sure.  But for the most part, it’s because like most sentient people I hate liberals; their attitudes, their smug self-centered perspective on all things, their beliefs themselves.

I don’t think “hate” is too strong a word; they differ from me – so “hate” would seem to be perfectly appropriate.  No?

Well, of course “no”.

Hating someone for what they believe – presuming it’s a legal belief that harms nobody – to say nothing of what they are, genetically or through whatever means beyond their control, is not just wrong; it’s one of those things that society has branded as “evil or pretty darn close to it” in the past 70-odd years.

So did Jeff Fecke never get that message?

First off, let me note that I hate Carrie Prejean as much as the next sentient human.

Sentient humans as a rule don’t hate, at least not over things that are within the rational realm.

And what did Ms. Prejean do that warranted this “hatred?”

Held a view on gay marriage that echoes that of the vast majority of our society, including the voting majorities of the 31 states that have held elections on the subject and, at least in terms of public pronouncements, the President that Mr. Fecke supports.

Disagree?  Sure.  It’s what people in a democracy do; disagree without, ideally, being disagreeable.

But to all too many on the left, “difference of opinion” is grounds for hatred.  And hate they do.

And while Fecke does go on to make plenty of sense…:

It’s sick and wrong. And it’s nothing to laugh about, even if the victim in this case has been moralizing about other things. For all her wrongness, I don’t recall Prejean arguing that LGBTQQ individuals should have their nude, intimate photos and videos released to the world.

…I just have to point out another thing that nobody, Fecke included, can recall Ms. Prejean doing; hating gays.  You might be one of those who believes that denying the rectitude of gay marriage equals hatred; that’s the sort of reductionist argument that boils every difference of opinion down to instant blacks and whites that leave no room for anything but yelling, screaming and, well, hatred; every disagreement requires a level of emotional commitment most people can not sustain for long enough to try to drag it back to sanity; every disagreement becomes a choice between “Hate as well” or “walk away and stay away”.

I’d like to think we could do better.

Good, Good Jeff

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I had two very different things to say about this particular Jeff Fecke post. In their own way, they rated two separate posts:

That out of the way, it’s time for me to defend Carrie Prejean.

As you may have heard, former Miss California USA-slash-anti-gay activist Carrie Prejean

“Anti-gay activist”?

Well, no.  She’s a beauty pageant contestant who was asked her views about gay marriage.  She answered – honestly, and with view she shares with the majority of the American people.  The only thing for which she’s an “activist” (I’d prefer “accidental celebrity”) is being targeted by “gay activists”.  Unless simply believeing something makes one an “activist”, anyway.  I’d say she’s more of a “quit bashing people for differing with the showbiz majority” activist – but nobody asked me.

She was attacked at first by a “gay activist”, irritating celebrity snarkblogger Perez Hilton.

But I digress. Sorta.

…has a sex tape that’s gotten loose, and perhaps “several more” in the hopper. (No, I’m not linking to stories; keep reading, you’ll see why.) This is, of course, totes hilarious, as Prejean was trying to build a career around moralizing while still being a normal human with feet of clay.

I’m always amused by liberals who say with great assurance that “kids’ll have sex, there’s nothing we can do about it!”, and then become deeply moral about the subject when someone who gets uppity about religious Christian faith actually does it.

Nothing about “preaching morality”, and especially about professing Christian faith, implies belief that one is “perfect”.  Most of us believe there’s only been one perfect Christian so far.

But – mirabile dictu, and almost alone among leftybloggers I’ve grown ever-more depressed to read – Fecke gets it:

Now, yes, Prejean has been involved in moralizing. And here’s where I’m supposed to say that she has this coming, having the temerity to be a sexual being while criticizing others for their sexuality [which, of course, she’s not – she’s opposed to gay marriage as a political issue, not to gay people being,  y’know, gay.  A minor point, but words do matter – Ed.]. But you know what? I’m having trouble believing that. Because while Prejean’s opinions on same-sex marriage may be wrong, it doesn’t therefore follow that it’s okay for someone she trusted to break that trust by sharing private videos with the public…You see, it’s like sex. If you and your girlfriend are having consensual sex, that’s fine. If you invite your buddy in unannounced to start having sex with your girlfriend too, without clearing it with her? That’s rape. No, selling smutty pictures of your ex-girlfriend to TMZ isn’t rape. But it’s rape’s evil, less-reviled cousin, and it’s in the same moral ballpark.

The sun turned blue tomorrow, gravity is lifting me up, and I’m agreeing with Fecke.

But don’t summon the dogs of the apocalypse; all it takes is to be a human with some modestly sane priorities.

When In Downtown Saint Paul Today…

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…and you’re wondering why there are forty nebbishy white guys with professor glasses and Elvis Costello hair cuts in front of you at Subway asking if there’s arugula and if the salami is free-range, and if the line at Caribou is paralyzed by perpetually outraged-looking women who look and sound like Sarah Vowell gabbing about why the Minnesota History Center is allowed to keep “his” in its name, and if you say “teabag” outloud and instead of a nervous titter or an uncomfortable shuffling of feet you get a round of applause so very very unanimous as to feel just a little bit odd?

Not to worry.  “Netroots Minnesota” is going on at the Hilton Garden.  “Progressive” bloggers will be coming from all over Minnesota and, one suspects, beyond, to demand more Hope and Change now!, and to respond in perfect enthusiastic unison “off what and how high?” when George Soros tells them to “Jump”.  Expect to see little clots of nervous twentysomethings who’ve never been east of the light rail wandering around lost; look for graying ex-hippies wandering the streets begging for cops to taze and teargas them so they can be in the news too, unaware that the RNC ended 14 months ago.

Look for the only people of color in the room to the on the panels or working for the hotel.

Some “highlights”

Tools to Hold Your Opponents AccountableSAT, 11/21/2009 – 3:30pm, Ballroom
Think your opponent has some skeletons in the closet? Are they prone to gaffes? Learn how to uncover their public records, negatives and voting record, as well as tracking the candidate on the campaign trail.
PANELISTS: Sally Jo Sorensen, Bluestem Prairie; DJ Danielson, Field Organizer, MN House DFL Caucus, 2008; Laura Askelin, President SEMN Labor Council; Liz McLoone, MN AFL CIO Field Representative & former Senate Majority staff.

In other words, “how to be a blog stalker”.   Because the local leftyblogosphere has such a shortage of ethics-challenged jagoffs who see themselves as ace reporters.

Push ‘N’ Pull: How Traditional Advocacy Organizations and Netroots Activists Can Create Progressive Change Through Impact Journalism and Action
SAT, 11/21/2009 – 10:15am, Town Square Ballroom

A one hour discussion with reporters, advocacy organizations and outreach communicators on how to create impactful stories, reach out to interested advocacy groups, and bring about action that will create real change. We will also walk through a case study of how one article written in September of 2008 eventually forced John McCain to concede Michigan.
PANELISTS: Paul Schmelzer, Center for Independent Media; Hanaa Rifaey, Center for Independent Media; Denise Cardinal, Alliance for a Better Minnesota

Hint to leftybloggers:  save the money on this one; all they do is tell you to call the Republican “crazy” in a thousand different ways.  A good thesaurus will do the trick.

Oh, yeah – and if you ever wondered about the rigorous fairness of the Strib’s coverage of regional politics, wonder no more (emphasis added by yours truly)!

Gubernatorial Candidate ForumFRI, 11/20/2009 – 6:00PM, Town Square Ballroom
DFL candidates for governor will join us at Netroots Minnesota to take questions directly from you. The candidates will be asked questions solicited online via Twitter, Facebook, and email, and in person, during a discussion moderated by Star Tribune writer Lori Sturdevant.

I wonder if Star Tribune writer Lori Sturdevant will badger the DFL candidates to move to the center to return to the sainted “bipartisan” glory days of Minnesota politics?

Any bets on that?

Hey – I wonder if I could get a Strib columnist to host the next MOB party?  Other than Lileks, I mean?

Anyway, welcome to Saint Paul, Netroots (and if I were a classy fella like some of the leftymedia, I’d come up with a borderline obscene sexual reference for your gathering, and believe me, with a term like Netroots, there are a zillion of them, but that just isn’t how I roll).  I’ll be the guy selling “free range cocktails” from the pushcart on the street.

UPDATE:  I missed one:

Netiquette: From Polite to Pit Bull, Where Do You Cross the Line?

FRI, 11/20/2009 – 3:30PM, Phalen Room

We all have candidates we love and candidates we hate. Now it’s time to have an open and frank discussion about how to help our favorites online. Does being polite get you ignored? Does being a pit bull make people hate the candidate as much as they hate you? When is it too much, and how to handle abusive commenters? And, as always, learn how what to deal with anonymous trolls on your sites.

PANELISTS: Minnesota Observer, blogger; Mark Giselson, Kurt Schiebel, blogs as Flash

Since the vast majority of leftybloggers are anonymous trolls (there are exceptions, but I’m talking the rule here), that discussion will be either very short and dry or very, very long and animated.

As far as that “Does being polite get you ignored? Does being a pit bull make people hate the candidate as much as they hate you?”  Well, Flash has the “polite” thing generally down, so I’m going to guess Gisleson is supposed to be the “pit bull”.  To which I’d love to ask – where does “pit bull” start, and “profane and overbearing” end?

And as far as “does it make the candidate hate you” – they really should be interviewing the Dump Bachmann people and, for an extra perspective, people from Bachmann’s office.  I’m fairly convinced that the Dump contributed at least a point to both of Bachmann’s victory margins; between them and the City Pages fairly loathsome cover story this week, I think there’s a two point floor right there that the lefthsphere has given the good Representative.

“If You Kids Don’t Stop Fighting I’m Going To Turn This Nation Around!

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A Democrat congressman from Missouri, tired of all that dissent, wants Congress to just shut up and quit its beefing.  Emanuel Deaver is asking his fellow congresscritters to join him in sponsoritng a Concurrent Resolution to bar “complaining” :

From time to time, we all experience anxiety, frustration, stress, and regret.

One certainly imagines that Deaver, looking at the Dems’ polls and the turnout at the Tea Parties, is experiencing all of the above.

But I digress:

And often, we respond to these feelings with a criticism or a complaint. Regrettably, complaining keeps people stuck on current problems, inhibiting them from thinking constructively to find solutions.

Like, and I’m going to go out on a limb here, “hope and change”?

Research has also shown that complaining can be harmful to one’s emotional and physical health; relationships; and can limit professional career success.

From the poster – Breitbart’s “Capitol Observer”:

We are torn on the larger question of whether Congress should even be wasting any time on such silliness as “official” days for this or that. On the one hand, it is surely a waste of taxpayer money and a decidedly unserious response to our challenges. On the other, though, every moment spent on things like this is a moment that isn’t spent re-regulating huge swaths of the economy.

We do know one thing, though: The Age of Pericles this ain’t.

Nope.  It’s the age of Mom.

The Exploding Cigar

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“Liberalism:  Where everything that isn’t mandatory is banned”
   — Unknown

One of liberalism’s most noxious traits is its tendency – indeed, its almost inevitable need – to support and enforce “liberal” (big and small “L”) policies with authoritarian means. 

This tendency is expressed through means both moderately civil and benign (the European mania for larding every step of the production and distribution process with Value Added Taxes, or VATs, which make enterpreneurship so very horribly difficult and so terribly inpinge the profit motive where they’re applied) to big and ugly (Nancy Pelosi’s plan to build concentration camps for people who don’t buy healthcare, Obama’s fistful of czars and his executive pay boards and the enforcement arm behind the “Stimulus”).

There is history for this, of course; it was during America’s most unfettteredly-“liberal” era, from the thirties through the early seventies, that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and the CIA, carried out abuses against American civilians that would have made Bush-era liberals lose bladder control, if their masters told them to think about it they thought about it all that hard.  Under Roosevelt, Truman, the relatively liberal Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnsion, domestic surveillance was common; the FBI and CIA kept dossiers on American citizens. 

“War on communism?”  Sure. 

But even after the so-called “McCarthy” era – and remember, while the left to this day jumps up and down and invokes “Joe McCarthy” with the same thoughtful consideration of monkeys flinging poo (as if a Senator from Wisconsin controlled all the levers of the federal government), there was plenty of bipartisan, transpartisan and non-partisan support for the so-called “witchhunts” in the post-New-Deal executive branches of the day.

And after the “Red Scare?”  When Jimmy Carter’s version of “hope and change” was stymied by the “lynch and terrorize” counterpolicy of Ayatollah Khomeini, he not only launched a rescue mission that’d make Jack Bauer blanche at the unreality of it all; he also founded the “Joint Special Operations Command” (JSOC), the organization that controls the Army’s “Delta” and the Navy’s SEAL “DevGru”, which reports directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President as opposed to the regular military command, which undertakes all the serious “black bag” dirty work with only the highest level of oversight.  The left and media, naturally, only paid attention to it during the Bush Administration – and seems not to have any actual evidence of actual abuses during that time – but it was a creature of the Carter years.

And it should go without saying that after eight years of lefty whinging about nonexistent or overblown excesses in the Bush administration, it’s the Obama Administration and its allies that are actually seriously discussing censoring  and gutting freedom of speech.  Because Hope and Change must be unanimous!

At any rate, the main point is this:  behind the “carrot” of hopey-changey big-L Liberalism – the programs, the entitlements, the goodies under the government tree every morning – there is a big, ugly, authoritarian stick.  They go together like horse and carriage.

So after putting up with eight years of lefty whinging about the Bush Administration’s alleged, largely nonexistent abuses of the Constitution, and a year of watching the Obama administration undergird its “hope and change” with enemies lists, with official paranoia aimed at American citizens, I’ll make this prediction: 

If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is sprung from his public show trial by fair means (unlikely) or foul (also unlikely, but then so is every jailbreak that has ever happened), it’ll be the Obama Administration that authorizes covert hit teams to prowl the globe killing people beyond the pale of any law, oversight or accountability.

A Parliament Of Third-Graders

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“When you’re taking flak, you know you’re over the target”
     — Mike Huckabee

“When they call you crazy, you’re scaring the p**s out of them”
    — Mitch Berg

“Most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure,”
   — Vladimir Bukovsky

Note to Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Laura Ingraham, Pat Anderson, Katherine Kersten, Laura Brod, and every other conservative woman who is taking an avalanche of the kind of abuse (including an Avogadro’s number of variations on “She is teh crazee”) that’d leave the left writhing in fits of PC disgust  if it were directed at someone whose politics didn’t make them Untouchable; keep up the good work. 

That noise you’re hearing is the sound of the left scraping the ground below the bottom of the barrel.

The Evil Health Insurance Companies

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…are not so evil after all.

The government recently advised that women don’t really need so many mammograms…that it takes 1900 of them to save one life.

Insurance companies’ reply?

Don’t worry. You’re covered…

Insurance companies contacted by USA TODAY say they will continue paying for annual mammograms amid widespread fears that new breast cancer screening guidelines from a federal task force could lead women to lose coverage for those tests.

The guidelines – suggesting that most women under 50 don’t need routine mammograms and that women over 50 need them only every other year – were issued Monday night by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

…until the government takes over that is.

Moo. Moo? Moo!

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It’s a new book about our CarnivorousnessTM

Eating Animals is an exploration of what we eat and why, and how what we eat affects our lives and the environment. Inspired by his impending fatherhood and the responsibility of making dietary choices for his child, Foer set out to discover what exactly meat is, how it gets to our tables, and how we define what’s acceptable to consume and what isn’t.

Acceptable to consume?

I will be at Pittsburgh Blue Saturday night celebrating the Audacity of  CarnivoracityTM.

It brings to mind something I read somewhere else this week:

If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?

A quick Google informs that Homer Simpson, a regular SITD reader,  may have first uttered the query.

Discuss.

I’m No Lawyer…

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…and I have only followed the Petters trial in the most cursory possible depth. 

But I suspect that…

Petters said two top executives of Petters Co. Inc. (PCI), Deanna Coleman and Robert White, filled the company’s balance sheet with constantly maturing promissory notes that eventually broke the company and cost investors $3.65 billion.

Coleman and White generated bogus merchandise transactions as Petters worked on other elements of his conglomerate, Petters Group Worldwide, and grieved over the 2004 murder of his son John in Italy, Petters told jurors.

A tearful Petters recounted at his fraud trial that he paid “little, if any” attention to PCI after his son’s death.

PCI was the main vehicle in the scheme aby the government. Petters said he thought the company was doing “a few deals here and there,” and that it was “tremendously profitable.”

…”the dog ate my homework” is not much of a legal defense.

Just saying.

Unlamented

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This story passed almost un-noticed in the past three weeks:  John Evander Couey is dead.  He passed away due to complications from anal cancer on September 30.

Couey was convicted of kidnapping nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford and burying her alive.

Couey took Jessica from her bedroom to his nearby trailer in February 2005, triggering a massive search. The third-grader’s body was found about three weeks later in a grave in Couey’s yard, only about 150 yards from her home.

Her body was found under a foot of dirt wrapped in two garbage bags. She had poked holes through the bags with her fingers, although her hands were bound with wire. She was still clutching her favorite stuffed animal, a purple dolphin.

While I’ve written that I oppose the death penalty for the solitary principle that executing the innocent is far worse than letting the guilty sit in jail for life, there was no doubt whatsoever about Couey’s guilt.   I had planned, in all sincerity, to host a party on Couey’s execution date.   I’ll confess to hoping that his execution would have been botched very, very badly.

God forgives.  So I hope He’ll forgive me for hoping that there’s a Hell, and that Couey is getting signed up for their 401K right now.

Dumbest Tack Ever

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I commented on this yesterday; the administraiton is listening to the bipartisan revulsion at the decision to hold show-trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and company in Manhattan, and saying “na na na scaredypants”.

It’s catching on: Senator Patrick Leahy, the real leader of the DNC Markos Moulitsas and Attorney General Holder are all playing along.

Of course, it has nothing to do with fear – or at least not fear of the trial.  But there’s some utterly justifiable trepidation about the precedent this will set.

Sister Toldjah:

Hmmm. Let’s see. You’ve got one side desiring to protect sensitive intelligence information from the eyes of Islamofascist thugs who want to kill Americans abroad – including our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – and both military officers and civilians here at home, a side hungry for justice to be carried out against admitted terrorist brutes like KSM, and you’ve got some on another side that is operating under the shameless pretense of “wanting justice” for 9-11 victims but who in realilty apparently have no problem with the possibility that sensitive national security information will be revealed in the process – and in fact wishes for such information to be revealed in order to put the evil Bush admin on trial, a side where not many are particularly interested in justice for the 9-11 victims but are apparently more interested in being pro-”justice” against their political opposition – a position that presents a clear danger to both Americans and their interests both at home and stateside. This isn’t about “justice” for the left – it’s about “revenge.” Interesting, when you think about it, because they’ve been telling us for years that the courtroom is not supposed to be about “revenge” but about “fairness and justice under the law.”

Um, just who are the “cowards” again?

Careful, there.  You’ll be called “Hateful”.

Obama Won’t Read Palin’s Book…He Thinks It’s About Him.

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and…in a surprisingly early concession…

“You know, if – if I feel like I’ve made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it and, you know, my poll numbers are in the tank and because we’ve gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically, I’m in a tough spot, I’ll – I’ll feel all right about myself,” Obama told CNN’s Ed Henry during an interview in China.

You may not run for a second term?

[insert dramatic orchestral exclamation here]

…because a resounding Jimmuh-like expulsion from office might leave your self esteem a wee bit bruised you mean?

It’s all about you, isn’t it, Sir?

Coleman: The Fix Is In

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I don’t go to the WaPo’s Chris Cilizza for keen-eyed observations on conservatives or Republicans. 

But his piece in “The Fix” on the Minnesota goober race provides some junk food for thought:

Norm Coleman (R) isn’t expected to make a decision on the 2010 governor’s race until next year but a new Rasmussen poll suggests the former senator has plenty of time to make his decision. Coleman led the Republican field with 50 percent while state Rep. Marty Seifert at 11 percent was the only other potential candidate to break double digits. Coleman’s lead is almost entirely attributable to name identification gained from his time as mayor of St. Paul and his six years in the Senate but it does suggest that if he decides to run, he will be a clear favorite. On the Democratic side, former Sen. Mark Dayton and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak each received 30 percent of the vote while none of the other candidates scored in double digits. Coleman would give Republicans a chance to hold this seat, which is being vacated by Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) after two terms. But, if Coleman takes a pass this race looks extremely difficult for any other GOP candidate given Minnesota’s Democratic tilt.

Before we get to Cilizza’s actual piece, let’s take a moment to remember how well the “cult of the inevitable” serves the Democrats.  While it’s entirely possible that the second coming of Ronald Reagan would have had trouble in the 2008 election, it’s also a fact that the “inevitability” of John McCain – cultivated through many careful years by the media, who spent the better part of a decade building up John McCain as the “Good Republican”, so they could spend six months tearing him right back down – didn’t serve the GOP especially well in the past election.  McCain was built up to serve as a beacon for “Moderate” Republicans, and “moderates” discredited themselves utterly and completely between 2002 and 2008.   Don’t believe for a moment that Big Media doesn’t desperately want to do the same again; look for a wave of approving stories about what an “acceptable”, work-across-the-aisle kinda guy Republican Mike Huckabee is, sooner than later.

But for the moment, let’s do two things; leave media perfidy out of it (or just accept it as a given and move on), and accept Rasmussen’s numbers at face value, and assume that Norm Coleman’s name ID gives him a prohibitive advantage in the GOP field (and, at first glance – again, let’s accept the numbers at face value – an edge over the Rybak and the ludicrous Mark Dayton), what does it mean?

I’ve disagreed strenuouosly with plenty of my conservative friends on Coleman, based on one key principle – a principle that guides so very much in life.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Coleman, like Tim Pawlenty, is no conservative’s icon.  But like Pawlenty, he is conservative enough, at least on the issues that matter.

Coleman, like Pawlenty, has angered conservatives with a number of his stances over the past 16 years.  But, like Pawlenty, he has been a thoroughgoing conservative on the things should matter; taxes, spending, growth and security.

As Mayor of Saint Paul, he presided over eight years (and keynoted four more) of holding the line on taxes, on living within the city’s means, and on job and business growth – things that are nearly forgotten four years after Coleman’s successor Randy Kelly left office.  Like Pawlenty, his conservatism may fray a bit around the edges, but at its core it’s just fine.

So who do I support for Governor?

I think the race boils down to one thing, if you’re a Republican; not moving the party to the center, but communicating what the right really stands for to give “the center” a reason to move right.

Do I think a thoroughgoing conservative like Tom Emmer, Dave Hann or Pat Anderson has what it takes to communicate the benefits of a real conservative vision to a middle that’s shell-shocked by Obama’s incompetence and excess?  Yes, I do  – and so does the Twin Cities’ media, which is why you never see Tom Emmer or Pat Anderson’s name in print without some variation on “extreme” or “hardline” conservative in front of their names.    I’ve seen Emmer, Hann and Anderson talk with mixed crowds; I’ve even heard Emmer on a liberal-leaning internet talk show – he did a spectacular job of articulating the conservative vision to a non-conservative audience, and I have no doubt Anderson and Hann can do the same  (which is why the Strib and the rest of the Twin Cities media will make sure that they don’t give any of them the opportunity to do it to a larger audience).

But at the moment, I support one thing; fighting like hell – as I put it a few years ago, grabbing one side of the rope or another in our inter-party tug of war and pulling like mad.  Getting out the caucuses early next year and fighting like there’s no tomorrow for your candidate.  Because for Minnesota conservatives, it’s a win-win situation.  Either we get a genuine movement conservative, an Emmer or Anderson or Hann or Seifert, someone who can genuinely articulate conservatism to the undecideds, running for (and winning) the race…

…or we get Norm Coleman, after having to survive a tough, spirited nomination battle against three superb candidates to his right.  Which will make him tack right, while still remaining Norm.  Norm is no slouch at articulating the key tenets of conservatism to a crowd either; and as a “worst case” that isn’t all that bad, having to overcome Emmer, Anderson and Hann will force him to walk the conservative walk in a way he has not had to before.

Which is not a bad thing.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.  Would I prefer that Emmer, Anderson, Seifert or Hann won with a forty p0int margin?  Absolutely – and I plan on pulling like hell for one of the three of them.

And whomever gets through the convention – Tom, Pat, Dave, Marty or Norm?  I’ll pull like hell even harder for any of them.

Because any of them will make a better governor in these times than Rybak or Dayton.

The Class Of ’04

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Gary Gross’ Let Freedom Ring blog is celebrating a big anniversary today:

Today marks the fifth anniversary of me starting blogging. It’s understatement to say that it’s been a great experience. During those years, I’ve watched history being made, starting with the elections in Afghanistan, then Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (that’s how I first learned about King), followed by Iraq’s Purple Finger election on Jan. 31, 2005, immediately followed by the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon.

The Cedar Revolution was started when Syrian thugs assassinated Rafiq Harriri, the popular leader of Lebanon.

Over time, LFR evolved into a mostly political blog. Thanks to Final Word, I got interested in state level politics. On that front, the best is yet to come. There will be exciting news coming on that front soon.

Hopefully it involves video of Tarryl Clark taking wads of Jacksons from drug dealers.  But I won’t hold my breath.

I’ll just say that it’s about putting a common sense blueprint for winning in 2010.

OK, seriously now: Gary is one of the “Class of ’04” – one of the big crowd of excellent center-right blogs that started in 2004.  Gary has gone the extra step, though, parlaying LFR into a fairly influential source of info for Saint Cloud-area politics.  Gary, along with King, is one of the leading voices for principled conservatism in Saint Cloud and the Sixth District.

Happy Anniversary!

“It would be nice if some leader could induce the country to salivate for the future again.”

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Instead of apologizing for it’s past.

The Chinese, though members of a famously old civilization, seem to possess some of the vigor that once defined the U.S. The Chinese are now an astonishingly optimistic people. Eighty-six percent of Chinese believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with 37 percent of Americans.

Take a bow, indeed Mr. President.

Lightning Never Strikes Twice

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Somali pirates attack the Maersk Alabama – the ship from last spring’s hostage drama with captain Richard Phillips – again. 

This time, the crew drove the pirates off:

Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama for the second time in seven months on Wednesday, but guards on board the U.S.-flagged cargo ship repelled the takeover attempt, the EU’s naval force said.Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.

Somali pirates attacked the ship with automatic weapons early Wednesday about 350 nautical miles east of the Somali coast, but guards on board the craft fired back and thwarted the attempted hijacking.

Good to see that Maersk Shipping ignored Obama Administration advice to “apologize to the pirates”.