Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Friday, June 07, 2002

The Organic Scam - I'm a conservative - make sure we're all straight on that, OK? But I have to confess I lifelong preference for organic food. It just tastes better, OK? Don't be yapping about yanking my GOP card over this.

So I listened with great interest to NPR's report the other day about a Swiss study that, supposedly, proves organic farming is more efficient than conventional farming.

But only if you seriously jiggle the numbers, says Ronald Bailey, who notes that "conventional" farming, based on the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer, is responsible for the earth being able to support about two billion people more than it would otherwise.

Has anyone told the Greens this?
posted by Mitch Berg 6/7/2002 06:19:17 AM

Missionaries Rescued - One of the missionaries kidnapped 13 months ago in the Phillipines was killed a rescue mission by US-trained Philipino troops today. Martin Burnham died of gunshot wounds, while his wife Gracia was wounded but safe.

It should go without saying that the media and the American left will second-guess this raid. But admit it - back in the seventies and eighties, when dozens of Americans were being kidnapped around the world, didn't you want to see this,even once? Way deep down inside?

Be honest now.

Nutbar Alert - The right-wing conspiracy theories get all the attention. But Michael Long chronicles the much more interesting - and, curiously, less publicized - wacko conspiracy theories ofthe left.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/7/2002 06:02:55 AM

Thursday, June 06, 2002

Storm over Eagan - Mary Jo Copeland passed the first hurdle in her attempt to build a group home - some call it an "orphanage" - in Eagan.

Of course, she still has to get permits from the county and state. And you can expect that, since that permit will come from the very authorities whose power her home will usurp, the permitting process will be as non-partisan as a DFL caucus.

Kelly Digs In - St. Paul mayor Randy Kelly vetoed part of the city's redistribution of sales tax revenues.

Watch for the city's inordinately-powerful neighborhood councils to turn out the troops in force. These councils are essentially second levels of city government, and are basically a St. Paul phenomenon. They exercise enough power to control a lot of money and zoning clout - which, especially at city level, is the power that matters.

Boy, are they going to be angry.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/6/2002 06:33:46 AM

The Whistleblower Speaks. Eventually - Congress is set to receive testimony from FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley on the foulups inthe investigation of Zacharias "Kirby" Moussaoui.

Watch for a partisan pile-on from Daschle and company.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/6/2002 06:24:15 AM

Wednesday, June 05, 2002

4 Out of 5 Terrorists - The usual suspects are queuing up to whack at Attorney General Ashcroft over his plan to fingerprint Arab aliens in the US.

So let me get this straight - the Bush Administration is being attacked for not doing enough to head off 9/11; but a measure that actually makes sense - keeping tabs on the types of undocumented aliens that represented most of the hijackers - is wrong?

The ACLU took time off from defending perverts' rights to leave spooge all over your library computer keyboards to call this measure "discriminatory" - which means it probably makes good sense.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/5/2002 08:34:15 PM

Tuesday, June 04, 2002

That Minneapolis Connection - One of the fascinating things about September 11 is the involvement of the Minneapolis FBI office. The office generally had very little terrorism to deal with - and they came ever so close, apparently, to finding the whole thing. If whistleblower Colleen Rowley is correct, it's very possible the FBI's central office spiked the effort that could have uncovered significant elements of the plot.

In the days immediately after the war started, the Onion ran a grimly hilarious piece - "American Life turns into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie". This story feels more like the very technical middle-pages of a Tom Clancy novel...

Speaking of Which - Why on earth did Hollywood hack up "Sum of All Fears" the way it did?

The hero, Jack Ryan, was played by the the thoroughly adequate Alec Baldwin in Hunt for Red October, and Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. In October, we didn't learn much about Ryan, but in the other two movies, he was portrayed as in the books - a family guy, middle-aged, "too old for this stuff".

Now, Ryan is a twenty-something, single guy...well, he's Ben Affleck. Not nearly as interesting a character.

Which isn't necessarily a problem, if you have a story like Sum to put on. A ten year old novel about Arabs using a recovered Israeli atomic bomb to blow up the Super Bowl in Denver, the movie makes the perps Nazis in the pre-9/11 interest of PC, and moves the attack to...

Baltimore?

Why is that? They had to make the movie resonate with people on the coasts who didn't know where Denver was?

I'd love to know the reasoning...
posted by Mitch Berg 6/4/2002 07:42:06 AM

The Sum of All Incompetents- Norm Mineta - the Secretary of Transportation - is one of the more useless cabinet members. He's a holdover from the Clinton years. And he was the first major government figure to oppose the arming of airline pilots.

Now, the former BATF boss - the one who ordered the assault on Randy Weaver's family, and who assisted in creating the organizational culture of incompetence that led to the theatrical and disastrous Waco raid - has sounded off, according to Ann Coulter.

Costs of PC - John Fund, on how some judiciously-applied " (and that is a very important qualifier)racial profiling" might have averted September 11.

Yup - I missed Monday. Overslept, too much to do...

...sorta like today.
posted by Mitch Berg 6/4/2002 07:33:12 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive