I was out at Target the other day when I ran into a familiar face pushing a shopping cart full of Reynolds Wrap through the grocery section.  It was Professor William G. Krieppi, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Hennepin Technical College’s School of Geology.

It went something like this.

———-

KRIEPPI:  (Seeing me) Hey, Merg!  Brian Lambert at the Minnpost sure pwn3ed you?

ME:  Hm.  I always wondered how one pronounced “Pwn3d”.  Otherwise – and I know I’ll regret asking you this – what are you talking about?

KRIEPPI: He called you out on your “citizen journalist” nonsense!  In the MinnPost!

ME:  Well, I’m glad to see they have such important stuff to cover.

KRIEPPI:  Check it out!

ME:  Jeez, it’s only Lambert.   I’ve got stuff I gotta do.

KRIEPPI:  You are clearly melting down.   Why do you hate children?

ME:  Oh, what the hell.   (Types quickly on IPhone) (sotto voce) If I say “That’s a fascinating point”, will you go away?  (Normal tone of voice) OK, here it is:

…you might want to reader conservative blogger Gary Gross’s take on [whatever Lambo was writing about]. It concludes with this semi-classic threat: “What this means is that Gov. Dayton’s words, Pat Kessler’s words and other biased media’s words didn’t have a hint of truth to them. It’s worth noting that ABM didn’t hesitate in using them in their statewide smear campaign against GOP candidates. It’s time for Mr. Sommerhauser and other reporters to blister Alida Messinger, Gov. Dayton and the Twin Cities media for telling the whoppers that they told. If he won’t, citizen journalists like Mitch Berg and myself will expose the DFL for the corrupt political party it is.” Hey, guys, can I see your “citizen journalist” badges?

KRIEPPI:  hahahahaahahahaaahaahahahahaahahaahahahaaahaaha (shallow breath) )hahahaahahaahahahaaahaahahahahaahahaahahahaaahaahahahahaaha!!!

ME:  OK…?

KRIEPPI:  So where’s your badge, Merg?

ME:  I don’t have one.  But then, I used to work as a reporter, and I didn’t have a “badge” back then, either.  Why don’t you ask Lambert to see his “badge”?

KRIEPPI:  He is teh real journalist!  What teh hcek is a “citizen journalist”?

ME:  (Groaning wearily) I don’t much care for the term “citizen journalist”, and I never have..  And for that matter, the term “Journalist”, either.  Establishment “journalists” wrap themselves in the term to try to give themselves a veneer of non-existant “objectivity”.  The problem is, left-leaning establishment journos from the NYTimes down to the MinnPost, along with the Administraiton, are trying to define the term such that only “people who get paid by institutional media outlets” qualify as “journalists”, which is cynical and stupid, but certainly self-serving.

KRIEPPI:  Quit equivocating!  He pwn3d you!  Maybe even pwn4d you!   He showed that you are nothing but a partisan hack!

ME:  Huh.  So let’s recap, here; you’re referring to the “objectivity” and/or “hackery” of a guy who writes utterly-unveiled opinion pieces for a glorified blog, and has appeared for years on the radio as an expressly, even stridently-partisan commentator…

KRIEPPI:   Yes!  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

ME: …who interrupted his “non-partisan” “media” career for a gig as then-Senator Mark Dayton’s press secretary?

KRIEPPI:  …Hahahahahahahahahaahhahahahaaaahahaaahaahah… (maniacal laughter slowly grinds to a halt).

ME:  Who’s spent most of his career as a DFL stenographer and snark-bot,  but who will nonetheless dance up and down and say “You’re not a real journalist” because it’s a whole lot easier than explaining why a group of plutocrats and unions have basically bought the governorship and legislature with his blog’s blessing.

KRIEPPI: (stands, blank-faced)

ME: Hey, have a great day, Professor!

(I walk away as KRIEPPI slowly opens a carton of Reynolds Wrap and starts to wrap it around his head)

———-

Like I said, i don’t much care for the term “citizen journalist”.  Partly because it’s stilted and anachronistic, but mostly because In the modern sense of the term, it’s a little like saying “citizen carpenter”.  There’s no real barrier of entry to picking up a hammer and a saw – or a keyboard.

Oh, “professional” journos like to act like Journalism is a higher calling, like a secular monastic order.  Listen to Garfield and Gladstone doing “On The Media” on NPR sometime (somebody has to, right?); Krista Tippett’s “On Being” isn’t as pompous, solemn and brow-furrowed.   And it makes sense; “professional” journalists devote a lot of time to learning the craft, and years and decades practicing it – and usually spend their time covering city council meetings and interviewing high school athletes and boutique owners.  Of course they’ll try to give it some higher meaning!

But journalism is not a monastic calling.  It’s certainly not a profession.  It’s a craft, not much different than carpentry or CNC machining or cooking a good steak.   If I need a complicated metal part, I call a machinist.  If I want to know what happened in a city council meeting, or what was up with that car crash or house surrounded by police tape, and I’m not able or interested in asking the questions myself, I go to a “journalist”.  And if you want to know what’s really going on with charter schools, I go to someone who covers education because it’s their passion and interest and whose coverage of the issue engages me; it might be a reporter for an institutional media outlet, but it’ll more likely be Matt Abe and Speed Gibson, because they’re just plain better at it. 

Am I a reporter?  Not normally.  I do some reporting – I’ve eaten the rest of the media’s lunch on a few stories over the years, and I’ll do it again – but doing “reporting” right takes time. I have a day job, so I usually stick with analysis, or just plain opinion.  Sort of like a newspaper columnist, only without the salary.

So I don’t have a badge.  Either does Lambert.  He gets paid to snark and occasionally report.  I don’t.   He does it eight hours a day or so.  I do it for about 90 minutes.

Other than that, there’s not much difference, really.  Unless you start talking radio.

Pin that to your shirt.

Now, I’m not one of those people who’s crabbing about the way “Black Friday” has infringed on the sanctity of holidays.  Businesspeople have to do something to survive the Obama economy – and it’s the job of each and every person who believes in the sanctity of holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to lead from the front, as it were.

But I just wanted to say that after three days of hearing about and seeing people camping out in front of Target and Best Buy waiting for Black Friday in the wind and the snow, and seeing and hearing about people battling each other in the aisles last freaking night, I’m here, on the  morning after Thanksgiving; warm, drinking coffee, having a warm bowl of oatmeal, getting ready to go to work…

…watching all the chumps out for Black Friday.

Y’all do realize it’ll be generally cheaper later – right?

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Even after the Cease-Fire brokered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took effect (at a cost of nearly $50 billion in bribes to various tribes), Palestinians were still shooting missiles into Israel.

You keep using that word “Cease-fire” Hillary. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

If this is what “extending the hand of friendship to Muslims” accomplishes, we might as well go back to Bush’s Cowboy Diplomacy. At least our embassies were safe.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s a rhetorical cease-fire.  One that both sides – the US and Hamas, the ones the Administration really cares about – can wave about at the UN.

I wrote this for Thanksgiving ten years ago.

Which reminds me; I’m thankful that I’ve had this blog for ten years (not to mention my show for almost nine).

And, of course, each and every one of you in the audience.

==========

I moved from North Dakota to Minneapolis in October of 1985. It was a spur of the moment thing – in fact, it started with a drunken statement to a bunch of classmates at a college homecoming party two weeks earlier. It was five months after graduation, and they’d all come back to Jamestown (my hometown and college) with stories of their fun careers, fun cities, fun lives…

I was doing roofing and siding, wondering what the hell one did with an English degree. But after five or six gin and tonics, I found myself dancing with Monica Costello, and telling her “Yeah – I’m still here in Jamestown”. Really, she asked? “Yeah, but I’m moving”. Where, she asked. I thought about it for a second. “Minneapolis” seemed to be a place I could afford to get to. When, she asked. “Two weeks”, I blurted out without really thinking.

Damned if everyone didn’t remember that promise when we all sobered up. So – two weeks later, I loaded two duffel bags and a guitar into my ’73 Malibu, and I was off.

Six weeks later, it was Thanksgiving. I still had no job, I was broke and malnourished and cold. I’d had a few interviews, but no bites. I had dinner at a friend’s place. And on the way home, I drove downtown, and walked out onto the Central Avenue bridge, and looked out over the city in the dark. If you’ve never seen it, looking at downtown Minneapolis in the dark, when everything’s all lit up, is stunning; for someone just in off the prairie, it was like looking at Manhattan  I was cold, and scared out of my shorts about my short-term prospects – and for the first time, I felt strangely at home in this new city.

And every since then, Thanksgiving has seemed like the turning of the new year for me – the time when I reflect on the past year’s agonies and flubs and successes, and look forward to the next year. Much more so – for me anyway – than New Years’ Eve, which is more decompression from Christmas than anything.

I remember each Thanksgiving in the last 17 years – the giddiness of feeling like I was on the edge of something big in 1986, confident in my ability to pull it all together in ’87, shell-shocked and depressed and contemplating the implosion of my radio career in ’88, crazy in love in ’89, a harried but happy but broke newlywed in ’90, a new dad digging out of deep snowdrifts in ’91, broke and on the brink of eviction with two kids and another on the way in ’92, in a new house in ’93…wondering how long my marriage would last in ’98, being able to answer the question “not long at all” in ’99…

…and today. I sat for a while by the Cathedral of St. Paul, looking down Summit over downtown Saint Paul. The giddy, heady uncertainty of the thanksgivings of my first years as an adult, the throat-clutching terror of my divorce-era holidays, and the weary relief of my first thanksgivings as a divorced dad…well, little bits of all of them are still there. But there’s the emerging sense that my life really is mine, and that I’d better get on with it.

There’ve been so many good lists of things to be thankful for, from people as diverse as Michelle Malkin and Ted Nugent and Andrew Sullivan – and my own for that matter.

But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.

God bless you all. And if you don’t believe in God – well, bless yourself silly.

========

At some point this evening I’ll probably stop out on the Central Avenue bridge again.

Anyway – Happy Thankgiving, everyone!

His answer on “when was the world created?” flirts with Creationism and “Intelligent Design!”

Oh, those bitter freaks, taking solace in Jeebus!

SCENE:  MITCH is sitting with Inge “Lucky” CARROLL and Bridget GRETELSTEIN, operatives for the ABM (“Alita Buys Minnesota”), at the Champs in Mendota Heights.

MITCH:  (Continuing conversation that started before the scene) Well, yeah – ABM and the DFL’s message – pardon the redundancy – was aimed at low-information voters.

CARROLL(sitting with four empty cosmos in front of her):  Hah!  You are having teh meltdown!

BERG:  Er, huh?  “Meltdown”.

CARROLL:  Yes.  You are having teh meltdown.

BERG:  Well, no.  I’m pretty calm. Bored and waiting for a drink, actually.  Where do you get “meltdown?”

GRETELSTEIN:  It makes you uncomfortable, talking about your declining mental state.  Doesn’t it?

BERG:  No, it makes me uncomfortable that neither of you will answer a question about your organization’s cynical, factually-challenged campaign.  I’ve been documenting all your group’s lies for years now.  And I’m just amazed that so many people in our purportedly “above-average” state buy such a line of transparent BS.

CARROLL:  You’re so angry, you’re about to have teh stroke.

BERG:  What part of “bored and waiting on a drink” do you have trouble with?

GRETELSTEIN:  Don’t go all postal on us!

BERG:  Hm.  OK, I’ll see what I can do.  Hey, let’s talk about what the new DFL majority will inherit – since Democrats are all about babbling about things they inherited.  A balanced state budget, for starters.

(Silence for a few seconds as CARROLL and GRETELSTEIN look uncomfortably at each other).

CARROLL:  You are having teh meltdown.

(And SCENE)

…that there’s a booming recovery underway.

Maybe it comes from the same place the Administration’s Benghazi statements did.  Because this is not what recovery looks like.

The SEIU – who else? – is planning on protesting tomorrow at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

On Thanksgiving.

What exactly is SEIU protesting for? They say that an airport contract is breaking the city law on living wages – which, of course, is nonsense, since that would be prosecutable. They also say that the contractor has eliminated “affordable healthcare” for over 400 workers. Which is, again, bull. After all, can’t the SEIU just rely on Obamacare?

It’s California.  They’ll buy anything.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

I miss Pilgrims.

When I was a kid, we learned about Thanksgiving in school. We learned the Pilgrims came to America and made friends with the wise Indians who showed them how to plant fish heads with their corn. Later, the Pilgrims invited the Indians to come over for a turkey dinner as thanks for their help – the First Thanksgiving. We colored pictures of women in dresses and bonnets holding turkey platters, shirtless Indians wearing feathered headdresses, and men wearing tall black hats with buckles on the front and a blunderbuss over their shoulders. I always liked the sound of that: blunderbuss. I still want one. Every store on Main Street had a Pilgrim in the window and gave away a turkey prize. Nobody I knew watched football games – we rode in the station wagon to Grandma’s house to visit. Grandma said the same prayer before dinner every year until she died. Now my Mom prays it, exactly the same.

Okay, the story we learned was not complete or even particularly accurate. But it’s one of the few bits of American history every kid of my generation knew by heart, one of the few plots of common ground on which an entire nation stood together. Every family celebrated Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is disappearing. Menards has had Christmas stuff displayed for weeks. KOOL 108 is starting to sneak Christmas songs into the rotation in anticipation of going all-Christmas-all-the-time starting Black Friday – the day retailers put their ledgers in the black by selling so much stuff – which is the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is no longer a major holiday. Thanksgiving is that little town nobody goes to anymore, now that the freeway goes around it on the way to Christmas.

Some of us remember. Some of us will make a point of taking our kids to that little town to visit Grandma, to share turkey, to say a prayer to thank God for the good things we have and for the good things yet to come. Some of us remember Pilgrims and why they were important.

I miss Pilgrims.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

As I’ve written (quite a few times, in fact), Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

But Joe’s right.  Why give thanks when you expect it all anyway?

Minnesota is plagued with voter fraud.  The evidence – both empirical (200 convictions in Ramsey County – the only county that the Minnesota Majority was able to browbeat into taking actual evidence seriously) and anecdotal (yet again, the stories from the U of M and many precincts in the Fourth and Fifth CDs demand an investigation that will never come) is everywhere.

Most Minnesotans that pay attention and aren’t bobbleheaded Fraud Denialists – the people who’ve grown adept at plugging their ears and chanting “nya nya nya best system in the country la la la” – know this.

So why did the Voter ID Amendment fail?

Not because it wasn’t needed, or because a majority of Minnesotans who actually pay attention voted “no”.

Dan McGrath – who led the effort from the beginning – has a long, detailed take that oozes the exhaustion and disappointment he no doubt feels, over at True North.   Go read the whole thing; it’ll be easier than copying and pasting the whole thing here.

A few takeaways, both McGrath’s and mine.

• The anti-Amendment crowd outspent the proponents by a daunting margin.  Which is odd, considering that in every poll up to the very end, the measure was passing by a bare minimum of 3:2.  Now, polls are obviously a mess, in this state more than most.  But what could possibly cause a movement to spend that much money to thwart a measure so overwhelmingly supported by so many people, even – initially – DFL-identified voters?   Pure, simple love of the status quo?
• The pro-Amendment forces were not only too small and too underfunded – they were fatally fractured, to the point that some pro-Amendment groups actually fought each other.  Precious time and money was wasted.  There was too little of both under even the right circumstances.
• The movement started out with massive bipartisan support – and then turned the issue into a partisan one.  That might have worked in a year when the conservative/GOP brand was a big winner.  It was clearly not, this year – but the lesson remains; it was a huge mistake to make it a GOP vs. DFL issue; that did the DFL’s framing for them.  This should have been a “Justice versus Fraud” issue, repeated relentlessly and at every opportunity.
• That failure made it easy for the DFL to tie it to the Marriage Amendment, and kill them both with their “Vote No Twice” campaign; it was elegant, and simple enough to drive into the heads of all the low-information voters that dominated this past election.

My prediction:  The DFL is going to build “safeguards” to fraud into the system in the next two years that it’d take a decade of conservative rule to untangle.  Look for voters to not be required to give names at the polls by 2014; by 2016, people will be picking up ballots at WalMart.  By 2018, they’ll come pre-filled from the DFL.

Facetious?  We’ll see.

The CIA shuts down its “Climate Change” unit.

I suppose that rules out the reboot of 24 starring Paul Douglas and Ken Barlowe.

The Regime is sending diplomats to….

…Minneapolis:

The State Department has announced that it’s sending the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs to … Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Maybe they thought it was “Myanmar”, too.

This part was actually funny:

“Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer will travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 19 where she will be hosted by Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and participate in a series of discussions with civil society organizations

If the not-remotely-civil Keith Ellison is involved in “civil society organizations”, look for a hidden rocket launcher.

Before I get into the beef of the series, it seems I need to do a little remedial art appreciation, logic and rhetoric.

For starters, my thesis, and the case I’m making, is “Why Bruce Springsteen is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter”.  Not “Bruce Springsteen is a Conservative”.  He’s not.  That’s all duly noted and stipulated in advance.

Not “Everything Bruce Springsteen Has Ever Written Resonates with Conservatives”.  It does not.  Merely most of his best stuff.

But as Socrates showed us a few millennia back, the best way to teach is to ask and to answer.  In other words, it’s time for one of my Frequently Asked Questions:

• “But Springsteen is a teh liberal!”: It doesn’t matter even a little.  The series isn’t about him or his personal politics.  They are, in fact, utterly irrelevant.  Art is in the eye of the beholder.  Many conservatives find resonance, even inspiration, in his music, though; this series merely explains why.
• “But what if Teh Boss himself were to tell you you were wrong?”:  Again, doesn’t matter.  It’s not about him.  It’s about what he wrote.
• “What does Nate Silver say?”:  Nothing.
• “Don’t be teh smartass.  You know what I mean.  How can you empirically prove your thesis?”:  There is no “empiricism” in art criticism.  It’s stating a critical case for a subjective point.
• “You are just trying to make teh music fit your intellectual template”:  Nope.  I’m stating a case for why the music not only fits my worldview, but reinforces it.
• “But did you ever REALLY listen to it?”:  As we’ll see in coming days, clearly, more than you have.  Whoever you are.

One of the reasons the GOP has such a hard time selling “family values”, at least to the mass political market, is that those values have slowly changed over recent history.

Johnathan Fitzgerald in the DBeast chronicles the slow, steady drip of decay:

 The sitcoms from the 1980s and 90s were on the leading edge of this shift. What those cheesy shows with nontraditional family arrangements like Full House or Who’s the Boss were doing back then was preparing the American public for a radical redefinition of family in a safe—and comical—environment.

But the shift in the moral landscape goes back much further. Television in the 1950s portrayed a stringent vision of a traditional family—think Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, or Father Knows Best—shows that one can easily imagine playing on repeat in the Romney living room. But it wasn’t long before new sitcoms appeared and began to show the cracks and break the model. In the 1960s, Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters maintained the traditional family model, but used nontraditional characters, a witch and an assortment of monsters, to change the formula. In shows like Family Affair, The Andy Griffith Show, and My Three Sons, single parents—because of death, not divorce—appeared for the first time.

And then the “family” became a vehicle for writers with agendas:..

In many ways, the 1970s revealed just how influential the primetime sitcom could be. In a recent review in The New York Times of the DVD box set of the popular 70s sitcom All in the Family, Neil Genzlinger noted that, “before All in the Family sitcoms were largely something to tune in for escape and reassurance. But as of Jan. 12, 1971, when All in the Family had its premiere on CBS as a midseason replacement, comedies suddenly had permission to be relevant.”

…as well as reflect the results of the agenda with a big happy face:

And in the 1980s and 90s, popular culture began to explore dysfunction in families, as in The Simpsons and Married With Children, both objects of consternation from the GOP at the time.

The whole thing is worth a read, not because it’s especially prescient – doy, it’s history – but as food for thought to explore the following question:

Conservatives ceded the culture war to liberals forty years ago.  How much has America suffered for it?

…let’s just say I find this premise utterly plausible.

What does one-party rule look like?

California!

As bad as last Tuesday night was for the national Republican Party, it was far, far worse for the California Republican Party. Not only did Golden State Democrats maintain control of every statewide elected office; not only did Gov. Jerry Brown’s $6 billion Proposition 30 tax hike pass by solid margins; but Democrats also secured supermajorities in both state legislative chambers. Now, Brown and the Democrats can raise taxes by as much as they want.

The California Republican Party is functionally dead. And how is California doing, now that liberals have successfully terminated the state’s remaining conservatives?

You know where this one goes.  The state is drowning in debt.  There’s a $2Billion deficit next year, they state is committed to almost $400 Billion in state and local debt over the past ten years.

And what does that do to a state’s economy?

Smashes it faster than you can say “Medical Device Tax”:

According to a new census report released Friday, almost one-quarter, 23.5 percent, of all Californians are in poverty. One-third of all the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country’s population. That’s four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York.

(Wait – didn’t Paul Krugman tell us that blue-states carry the rest of us?)

Unemployment in California is 10.2% today.  It’s in the sixes in Minnesota.

I should start a poll for people to predict where Minnesota will be after two years of one-party rule in Minnesota.

Forward!

Bruce Springsteen.

There may be no more politically-divisive figure in popular music today.

On the one hand, he openly campaigns for liberal Democrats, and against conservatism, every election cycle.  This earns the ire and contempt of many conservatives.  And with a net worth of $200 million – four times Michael Moore’s portfolio – he’s the very definition of a limo liberal, even if his limo is a ’32 Ford with a 318, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor.

On the other hand, many of Springsteen’s highest-profile fans – Chris Christie, Tim Pawlenty, me, Laura Ingraham among many others – are one degree of conservative or another.

Now, part of that is no doubt purely visceral.  Eddie Van Halen once said that rock and roll is supposed to make you feel something – angry, horny, lovelorn, whatever.  And Springsteen is if nothing else an extremely gifted writer who has, for two generations now, had a gift for making people feel things – things that cross party lines, because they’re human reactions to art.

But many songwriters have that gift.  And yet, in the face of perceived incongruity and even some muted, passive-aggressive hostility from the artist himself, conservatives soldier on as fans.

Why?

About a year ago a woman I know – a modestly prominent Democrat organizer – asked on Twitter “Don’t you Springsteen Republicans actually listen to his lyrics?”

To which I responded  “Yes.  Do you really LISTEN to them?”   And by that I meant “without slathering your own worldview and ex-post-facto knowledge of Springsteen’s life and activities outside his music over the past ten years?”

Because as I started arguing a few weeks ago in response to MPR’s question on the subject “what song sums up where this nation is at right now?” (I answered with Bruce’s This Hard Land), Springsteen’s music, especially throughout his peak creative years (which I’d argue started with his collaboration with Jon Landau on Born to Run and ran through Tunnel of Love, and rebounded on The Rising) was overflowing with themes and currents and messages that resonate with political and social conservatives.  And, in fact, those themes, currents and messages were the most important ones in his repertoire.

———-

“But wait, Berg – all you’re going to do is pound some isolated out-of-context odds and ends into a context you make up to define conservatism as conveniently as possible for your dubious premise!  Right?”

Not even close.

I’ll be building this piece around a ten-point definition of conservatism from none other than that noted Paleocon tool, Andrew Sullivan who, back before his brain flitted away into Trig-Palin-triggered dementia, put together what I thought was a pretty good definition of a classical conservative:

According to Sullivan, the conservative…:

• believes that an enduring moral order exists.  Not an easy one, but an enduring one, anyway.
• adheres to custom, convention, and continuity, barring any compelling reason to change.
• believes in what may be called the principle of prescription – the idea that most of the great ideas on which our sociey was founded are good enough as is; improvement faces a steep curve.
• are guided by their principle of prudence – we try to gauge actions against their probable long-term consequences.
• believes that only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law.
• believes human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults.  Human nature is not inherently good.
• believes that freedom and property are closely linked.
• upholds  voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
• sees the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.
• knows permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.

That’s a good definition of classical conservatism, from Hobbes and Hume all the way to Milton Friedman.

To that, I’d add some peculiarly American characteristics; here, a conservative believes…:

• That while Humanity is not perfectable, and Americans – especially as acting through government – are far from perfect, America has coalesced into a nation around a set of ideals that are in themselves inherently noble and worth upholding.
• That this nation – imperfect as it is – is a free association of equals, governed by mutual consent.  Government is not a set of parents needed to discipline recalcitrant children.

I’ll be doing 2-3 of these a week for the next few weeks; showing in each case how and why Bruce Springsteen’s music (if not his personal politics, obviously) not only resonates with, but inspires, people who believe in all of the above.

So roll down the window and let the bracing wind of freedom blow back your hair!  C’mon – rise up!  We’ll meet beneath that giant “Friedman” sign that gives this shining city light!

Don’t end up like a dog that’s been beat too much, all you henpecked conservative Bruce fans; it’s a state full of lemmings, and we’re pulling outta here to win!

I’ve finally followed through on my dream of writing an episode for a major TV drama.

In this case, it’s “Criminal Minds”, the long-running CBS police procedural about a group  of FBI criminal profilers who track mass-murderers.

I hope to hear back from CBS soon.

———-

SCENE:  A Gulfstream G4, silhouetted against a gorgeous sunset, winging its way southwest.  The voice of Special Agent Aaron HOTCHNER narrates in voiceover:

HOTCHNER: “Kurt Cobain wrote “Load up on guns, bring your friends. It’s fun to lose and to pretend“.

(Dissolve to interior of aircraft.  Agends HOTCHNER, REID, JAREAU, PRENTISS, MORGAN and ROSSI are sitting around a well-appointed table. ROSSI sips at a snifter of brandy.

MORGAN (The handsome and über-buff Afro-American agent who, notwithstanding the FBI’s dress code, is never not seen wearing form-fitting sports attire): Lincoln, Nebraska police report two waitresses sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled.

REID (the nerdy brainiac prodigy):  Sounds like a classic sexual sadist spree killer…

PRENTISS (the flinty raven-haired brunette with the enigmatic past): …with serious mommy issues.

HOTCHNER (The strung-too-tight leader who looks like “Greg” from “Dharma and Greg”):  Police say he turned up in their apartments with no sign of forced entry.

JAREAU (the blond eye-candy): So the vics let the unsub in.

ROSSI (the erudite sixty-something pioneer of the trade and oenophile): The unsub is almost certainly a white male, twenties through forties, victim of sexual abuse as a child…

PRENTISS:  Probably abandonment, too…

ROSSI: …right, and probably socially-accomplished, in great physical condition – most likely very vain, a bodybuilder type…

REID: …a real “lady-killer” if you pardon the term.

(MORGAN, JAREAU, ROSSI and PRENTISS grimace)
HOTCHNER:  Probably a complete stranger to the vics,but charming enough that they didn’t care…

REID:  The same basic MO that Ted Bundy used.

PRENTISS:  Every woman in Lincoln is a target.

JAREAU:  I’ll get a statement out to the media as soon as we land.

HOTCHNER:  Do we have anything else?  What are the Lincoln PD doing?

MORGAN: Tasing people who refuse to comply.

HOTCHNER: Well, it’s all we got.

PRENTISS:  And today’s Friday.

REID:  That means he could be striking again even as we speak.

(Agends furrow brows)

(Cell phone goes off in MORGAN’s pocket).

MORGAN (looks at phone).  It’s Garcia.  I’ll put you on speaker, Princess.

(MORGAN sets phone on table.  Notwithstanding that the G4 is cruising at 40,000 at 500 knots, the phone has and maintains four bars of signal reception, enough to get clear, skitter-free video of FBI macguffin technician technical analyst Chloe O’Brien Penelope GARCIA)

HOTCHNER: Go ahead, Garcia.

GARCIA:  Yo, yo yo, ma izzagents.  Here’s what we have so far.  Victims are 22 year old Danielle Larson, worked at a Perkins in Lincoln, and 21 year old Cathy Profett (Photos pop up on screen, superimposed alongside Garcia), who worked at a truckstop off the interstate.

PRENTISS: Both blond, high school grads, working their way through community college – Larson for nursing, Profett for tool and die fabrication.  You got the causes of death – both identical.

MORGAN:  What are their financials?

GARCIA: Already on it!  (Spreadsheets swirl across screen to superimpose over photos on phone screen).  Both low-income, but solvent.  Larson’s father is an insurance agent and alcoholic who had a fling in 1985 with a receptionist at their insurance office.  Proffett’s mother played fiddle in a country-western band in her twenties and owns a secret copy of Fifty Shades of Gray.

JAREAU (whispering to REID): I always wondered – how does she get all that info instantly, without a search warrant?

REID (whispering back):  My IQ is in four digits, and after seven years, I still haven’t figured it out.

ROSSI:  So other than age, gender, blonde and working-class, no real link.

GARCIA:  Wait, wait – this just coming in now.  We have a third vic.  22 year old Amy Rademacher.  Waitress at a Dennys on the west side.  She’s alive…

MORGAN: So something interrupted the unsub.

GARCIA: Correctamundo.  She also has a detailed physical description.  White, Male, late thirties, dark brown hair…

PRENTISS:  Yep…

GARCIA:  …and gushing blood from his chest…

REID:  Wait – that doesn’t fit the profile at all.  Unsubs of this type are almost always uninjured, in peak physical condition…

GARCIA: …where the victim shot the unsub six times at point blank range with the .357 snubnose revolver she carried.  And (checks scrolling panel on computer) yep, she has a valid Nebraska carry permit and… (pops up online data from a local Gander Mountain) shot better on her last day at the range than you did, oh tall, dark and handsome! (MORGAN blushes).

ROSSI (puzzled):  The victimology is all wrong!  Our vics are never able to fight back…

HOTCHNER:  This is big.  Very big.

GARCIA:  Lincoln police is bagging what’s left of him up right now (photo of blood-smeared floor and full body bag pulsates on the screen.  GARCIA waves at the screen). Toodles, unsub.

MORGAN:  Well done, Princess.

GARCIA:  Oh, you just made kitty purr!  OK – adios, muchachos!   (GARCIA bleems out).

PRENTISS:  Well, that settled that, I guess.

MORGAN:  Vics killing unsubs.  What’ll they think of next?

ROSSI:  Time to rewrite the book.

HOTCHNER (presses intercom button).  Pilot – take us back to Quantico.

(JAREAU brings up “Shot In The Dark” on her Macbook.  For next 56 minutes, camera focuses on her reading, cutting between her face and the rapidly-scrolling blog, as Jareau becomes  more fascinated the longer she goes).

(Shot dissolves to exterior of Gulfstream flying against the dusk,  Agent PRENTISS’ voice appears in narrative voice-over)

PRENTISS: P. J. O’Rourke once wrote “And so I said “let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us, Americans. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’  Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, f**k longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and sh*t them out before lunch.”

(And fade to black as credits roll).

———-

Waiting for a call from my agent even as we speak.

I saw this in a comment thread on Facebook:

Mitt put the gun in your mouth and pull down hard on the trigger!

I mentioned that this was a particularly noxious little bit of rhetorical effluvia for someone from a party that ostensibly won the  election.

The original commenter responded that he wanted to make sure I got his context straight, you see:

Mitch if you were on my page you’d see that I posted on that as well. I’m sick and tired of crybabies! And Mittiot is a lousy human being so when you blog about my comments don’t generalize… Flat out tell your blog tribe I’m the guy that asked him to blow his brains out! I didn’t threaten him or you… I simply think he’s a maggot and should be treated as such while the secession troop can get down on their knees and I will trickle down on all them!

Well, now that you put it that way…

There was never a problem in the Rockaways, Winston.  There was never a problem in the Rockaways:

With the media’s silence and the public’s amnesia over the impact of the hurricane, President Obama has once again received a free pass on yet another issue of national importance. The media’s outcry over the devastation after Katrina led to a massive influx of aid in the form of governmental agency involvement, subsidies, and private charitable organizations’ assistance. Without that outcry, the victims of Sandy should be wondering what kind of attention they would be receiving if the president’s party began with an R, not a D.

Silence.  We are now moving forward.

Heckuvva job, Obama-y.

The GOP’s new motto on immigration reform?  Yo quiero pander…to all sides of the debate:

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Politico that he’s open to giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship in exchange for a temporary moratorium on all legal immigration while they “assimilate.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a longtime proponent of reform, said legalization should be paired with the repeal of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. And Republican House Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Friday that he would not commit to including a path to citizenship in his immigration reform efforts…

Juan Hernandez, a Texas-based Republican political consultant who served as Sen. John McCain’s director of Hispanic outreach in 2008, said whatever the potential disagreements, congressmen should start hammering out a deal now.

“Should it be with two, three or four steps? That’s fine. Let’s negotiate. But let’s starting taking the first steps immediately,” Hernandez said. “We may not find a political moment again in which at least I see everyone saying it’s time for immigration reform.”

The cries that demographics equal destiny for an eventual GOP shift to the left on all issues pertaining to immigration reform have been shouted for some time.  And in the wake of a narrow popular vote re-election for Barack Obama, carried in part by a 44% margin of victory among Latino voters, the cries have renewed with vigor.  Even some in the conservative intelligentsia have backed a 2007-esque immigration reform stance, including Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer.

But would backing amnesty, a path to citizenship, however the GOP wishes to define such legislation, really give the GOP any electoral edge?  Republicans have gained nothing among African-American voters despite the GOP’s critical role in civil rights legislation.  Yet pollsters love to mention Bush’s 44% showing among Latinos in 2004 and equally enjoy pointing out 65% of all voters (including 3 out of 4 Latinos) support some opportunity at citizenship for illegal immigrants.  Of course, Bush’s Latino support was greatly inflated and was more likely around 38%.  And last, but not least, is the data suggesting that immigration from Latin American countries may be actually reversing.

That last part is critical because Latino attitudes towards immigration reform vary depending on whether they were born here or immigrated.  While 42% of all Latino voters called immigration reform their number one issue, only 32% of U.S. born Latinos agreed compared to 54% who were foreign born.  Financially stable ($80k+ incomes) Latinos and those who are second generation are less likely to focus on immigration reform or support carte blanche amnesty.  Those who called Spanish their first language were far more interested in immigration reform than those who said English was their primary language.  The greater integrated recent immigrants had become, the less interested they were in immigration concerns.

Republicans focus on Latinos when speaking about immigration reform ignores a number of other demographic groups who have more at stake in any immigration conversation.  Asians are now the largest block of recent immigrants, surpassing Hispanic migration.  And as a voting block, Asian-Americans voted by similar margins to Latinos for Obama.  Where are the breathless newspaper column inches declaring the GOP must court Asian-Americans?

Republican outreach to minority groups has been a priority mothballed election cycle after election cycle.  If an election where nearly 13 million fewer voters showed up prompts the GOP to finally engage demographics they’ve thus far all but ignored, then great.  But if Republicans try and out liberal liberals on issues like immigration reform, they will continue to find no real opportunities for political gain.

ADDENDUM: Rachel Campos-Duffy at National Review hits the nail on the head of the broader challengers standing between Republicans and Latino voters:

Hispanics come to America for the American Dream. They are “trabajadores,” and you would be hard pressed to find an American farmer, contractor, or restaurant owner who would not testify to their work ethic. Unfortunately, the communities in which they live and work are teeming with liberal activists: farm and service-industry labor unions, well-intentioned community-based social services providers and more radical and racially motivated Latino groups such as La Raza, LULAC, and Mecha. In addition, the curricula their kids encounter in public schools are either hostile or silent on the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and ideas that are the foundation of conservative thinking. All of these activist groups and institutions have a common ideology and an affinity for big and centralized government, and of course, entitlements. They go out of their way to sign folks up and to begin the cycle of government dependency. Once hooked to the IV of government handouts, a steady drip of ideology, and a heavy dose of raunchy pop culture, the once vibrant American Dreams and traditional family values of Hispanics drift into a slow, deep coma.

I’m still on “vacation” from the blog.

Thanks to Ringer and Joe!

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Instapundit reports:

“KATRINA ON THE HUDSON EAST RIVER: Occupy Sandy Volunteer Sounds Alarm on ‘Humanitarian Crisis,’ Near-Complete Absence of Government Aid in Coney Island Projects. “Just three hours ago I was speaking with seniors for whom I was the first person they talked to since the storm. . . . People literally have no power, no food, no water, no bathrooms–they’re defecating in buckets. And there is no one to answer to for it.”

We were assured Bush’s hatred for Black people was the reason FEMA’s response to Katrina was so bad in New Orleans. Appears Bush didn’t limit himself to hating New Orleans Blacks. He must have hated Black New Yorkers with a passion, to be motivated to reach out 4 years later to foul up this disaster response. For a guy so roundly reviled as an idiot, he certainly does have a long reach.

Too bad for poor President Obama. No wonder Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” speech stung so much, hit too close to home. We should be more sensitive. The pathetic response to Hurricane Sandy plainly is not President Obama’s fault. In fact, we should pity him: must suck to be a completely powerless figurehead after four years on the job, facing the prospect of four more years of total uselessness.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

You’re doin’ a great job, Obama-y.

Our Dilettante Playboy Governor is howling mad over the Vikings’ looking into charging “seat license” fees…

..,.that are specifically allowed in the moronic stadium deal he pushed the state into?

Imagine what’s going to happen when he was no opposition.

…it’s only Republicans that are corrosively racist.

Keep repeating it until the authorities instruct you to stop.