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

Sunday, December 01, 2002

More Hate - Several emails about yesterday's piece on the climate of hatred that led to this, among other things:

Let's start here - a correspondent writes:
It seems like you could develop the notion of progressive politics as a religion even further (e.g. NGO’s as missionaries), but I haven’t tried to work it through to see where I end up.
Well, let's run with the idea, shall we?

The left - especially the Minnesota DFL - reminds me of the perpetually-warring branches of the Lutheran Church; last summer's DFL convention - with feminists, Greens and the "old-boy" DFL machine all engaged in a game of "who's holier", like the Missouri Synod and the ELCA going at it, hammer and tongs. And it seems (to the casual observer) that an awful lot of DFL activists have no other job or vocation in life - like good acolytes, they've devoted their lives to the cause.

Again, it's a casual observation.

Another emailer wrote me:
Before I start, I want to make it clear that I think the defacing of the Coleman billboard was wrong. It was also stupid, immature, and hateful as well. With that said, I have to disagree with your implication that the inter-party hate consists entirely of Democrats hating Republicans.:
I'd never dream of saying the hatred is all one-way. You don't have to listen to much of the Jason Lewis or Dave Thompson shows to hear a caller bubbling over with rage - it's become a media cliche, the angry white talk radio caller. I neither deny them, nor make excuses for them. However...well, we'll return to that thought later.
I took some time out of my apolitical life this past election day and volunteered to help get-out-the-vote for the first time in my life on November 5th (maybe because of some sympathy for Wellstone's campaign or something, I'm not really sure why). During that day I spent an hour or so a highway overpass here in Minneapolis' western suburbs holding Mondale campaign signs. The reactions I observed fell into four categories, listed here in decreasing order of occurrence:

1) No reaction
2) Thumbs-up/Wave/Honk
3) Raised middle-finger
4) Thumbs-down/Head shake

What really surprised me was the order of the last two reactions. How could someone dislike a candidate so much that their reaction to a campaign
sign would be an obscene gesture at the person holding it? And, more importantly, how could that reaction be more predominant than some other more civil (less hateful) negative reaction?:
When I worked in talk radio, we learned one statistical truism - 1% of all people who believe in any given idea will call a talk show. I don't think it's overstepping to extend that to people sitting in their cars: only a small percentage will be motivated enough to feel strongly enough about anything to do anything about it. And I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone who feels negatively enough to react at all, might react strongly - and extending the middle finger takes less effort than a thumbs-down.
I guess my point is that there are extremists out there from both ends of the political spectrum that have gone overboard in their expressions of dislike people with different ideologies. Maybe it's so much a part of the discussion among pundits that those politically active (like yourself) don't recognize it unless it's directed at someone "on your side," but it's very obvious to me. As someone who's political involvement has been pretty much limited to voting every couple of years, I'd have to say that there's all kinds of hate out there and the Democrats don't have a lock on it.
I'd never dream of saying the Dems had a lock on hatred and bigotry. I've sat through GOP caucus meetings where I heard some fairly noxious bilge.

The difference, I suggest, is this: I suggest the genuine hatred on the part of GOPers is the extreme; you don't see Republicans of the stature and fame analogous to, say, Garrison Keillor or Alec Baldwin or Cher or Barbra Streisand saying the sorts of things about Democrats that we've heard going the other way. Fringe players, yes - not the mainstream. Not the leadership. Picture Arnold Scwarzenegger insulting his enemies like Barbra Streisand. Does it work? I don't think so.

The standard response from the left when I say that is "Oh, yeah? What about Limbaugh? 'Feminazi' isn't very civil!". True, it's not. It's also aimed, rather forthrightly, at specific people as a consequence for specific deeds, not a generalized reflection on the humanity of the phrase's target.

More to come.

St. Paul School Board News- We'll do Part II of the SPPS Budget Shenanigans series next week. I'm still running down some facts.

posted by Mitch Berg 12/1/2002 12:24:36 AM

Saturday, November 30, 2002

Purchase for Peace - One of the loony left's latest conceits is sniping at business. A group of leftist symbolactivists staged a "nationwide" "Buy Nothing Day" yesterday, in which protesters wandered through stores with anti-commerce, anti-war and anti-Bush messages pinned all over themselves.

A Minneapolis leftist site, CircleVision, documents the activities. I'll let you all fill in the blanks.

By the way - "Buy Nothing Day" seems not to have had much of an effect...

(via Instapundit and Fraters Libertas)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/30/2002 11:58:01 PM

Friday, November 29, 2002

Hate Crime - Someone did this to a Norm Coleman billboard in St. Paul yesterday:

Any guesses?

We've been talking about how desperately some - many - Democrats seem to hate Republicans in this space, many times.

I was on a date a few weeks ago, probably two weeks before the election. Now, I knew my date was a DFLer - but I do know they can be reasonable, rational people. Yet the topic of the election came up, and the first coherent thought was "GOD, I hate Norm Coleman", spoken with the kind of face you normally only see from a six-year-old asked to eat Brussel sprouts. Suffice to say, there was no love connection. But I didn't get it - I mean, I don't like Walter Mondale much, but I'd never hiss it like an oath on my mother's grave in the first half-hour of a first date, either.

Why the vitriol?

No, I don't think it's an inherent trait - but there's an atmosphere of revulsion that too many Minnesota Democrats seem to feel. It's reflected in their publications, both official and under-the-table; they just don't like us, don't trust us, don't want to share the sandbox. Keillor's screeds were merely symptoms.

Symptoms of what? Two things:

One: Quite simply; they're used to being in charge - Minnesota used to be their playground, "Berkeley on the Prairie". No more. A neocon apostate has taken "their" senate seat from their newly-canonized martyr. LIke the redneck whites of the Deep South after reconstruction, they don't like all of us uppity conservatives getting off the plantation and gittin' funny ideers. They're angry - and feeling threatened. And they've been striking out for years, in ways both condescending (Keillor) and puerile (Paulapalooza) and corrosively bigoted (the billboard vandalism).

Two: What do the following people have in common: Someone who paints swastikas on a billboard of a Jewish man; someone who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into bus full of children; someone who sets off a bomb at an abortion clinic; one who flies a plane into a building packed with innocent civilans? All of them have adopted a warped, twisted, sick interpretation of their religion.

"But Wait! The Minnesota Democrat Farmer Labor Party isn't a religion!" Enh. For some, it is. You'd have to meet them - some of them are no less dedicated than any monk, and regard their party with no less devotion than any nun. And their prophets! Paul Wellstone couldn't have just been the victim of bad conditions and an inexperienced pilot, they say, he must have been shot down! A victim of a "Bushie" conspiracy! He died for our sins! Of course, one's prophet and martyr mustn't die of mundane causes: Wellstone could no more have been laid low by an inexperienced pilot any more than Jesus could have choked on a a blinz or Joan of Arc could have stepped in front of a moving draftwagon. No, martyrs must die martyr's deaths. And those who oppose the martyrs are the infidels, and nothing is too awful for them.

We'll be seeing much more of this sort of thing in the future. Count on it.

(Photo via Instapundit and Powerline)

MORE: An email correspondent writes:
Someone pointed out that every time a pro-life spokesman opens his mouth, he's basically forced to disavow any connection to folks who murder abortion doctors. That comment came in connection with the suggestion that the same treatment should be given to Islamic apologists. (I happen to be pro-abortion but I think that the pro-life folks have behaved much better. I'm running out of sympathy to lose for the "religion of peace".)

Perhaps the thing to do is to publicize the defaced Norm Coleman billboard with a simple comment along the lines of "brought to you by the DFL".

If the DFL is like every other long-lasting belief system, the current generation will not change, but the next generation might.
True. But it may take longer than that. There seems to be (to me) a sense of bitterness and isolation among the DFL hard-core - that's how I see it, anyway - and I think that if anything things'll get worse. These things feed on themselves.

I think the comparison with the pro-life people is very appropriate - and illustrative. The pro-life groups that get to be that bitter and isolated about their defeats in court tend to be the ones that act the least rationally.

So we know what we have to look forward to!

The big question: Can our society - a free association of equals that disagree, yet do so civilly within a framework where everyone's assumed to be working toward the same end - survive? I think so, but I've never been this worried. Historically, our society has been much more polarized than it is today - the civil war and the conservative/socialist split of the thirties are examples - but things are the worst in the memory of anyone currently thinking about politics.
I've encountered no small amount of the usual "Republican=homophobe, racist, mysogynist, etc.," but at least the discussions end with an agreement to disagree--some of those discussions are with my own mother. I feel for you.

My best friend is a Democrat, but lately he's been bastardizing that old quote, "When I was a child I was a liberal, but as I became a man, I put away childish things..." He still listens to NPR occasionally, but his hearing's been tainted. And I'm smart enough to never, ever get into a discussion about politics with his wife. That's just an invitation to get hurt.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, maybe there's hope? I'll keep reading your posts to find out...
Oh, the stories I could tell - but I'm happy to let you all do it for me. Yes, this is exactly what's going on, both good and bad. Some can agree to disagree. Others are too insecure, in their own beliefs and in what this democracy's about - for that.

Who's in the ascendant? We'll see.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/29/2002 11:38:05 PM

Democrat Hate - The site Democrats.com is front and center with every wacko-left conspiracy theory. In the immediate aftermath of the Wellstone plane crash, they were printing conspiracy theories practically before the bodies were cold.

More? Notice this little bon mot (scroll down the page to find it):
CNN and Rightwing Horatio Alger Association Push a Corporate Model of 'Success' to TeensThis is almost as bad as if CNN used its television forum to push smoking or alcohol abuse on teens!! CNN and the 1950's style rightwing outfit the Horatio Alger Assoc. have collaborated to "help young people" through their production, "Only In America." This program is pure corporate propaganda, designed to replace traditional America goals - integrity, sacrifice, making a difference for the greater good of mankind - with a new goal: Become a CEO!! The show is hosted by rightwingnut adman Ed McMahon. What's next? Preteen shows on how to lend your pals money at 18% interest, compounded quarterly?
Working for a corporation is as bad as teen alcohol abuse? And Horatio Alger (and the eponymous society) has goals that are less "traditionally American" than "integrity, sacrifice and"...making a difference for the greater good fo mankind? Huh?

The authors' illiteracy about finance is too plain to even mention. But the question remains - who are these people? Some left-wing nutbars, as removed from the mainstream of the Democrat party as the "Vince Foster Conspricy" tinfoilhats are from the GOP?

As if! Look at this list! These people are mainstream Democrat players!

And if a Republican group were to put out such noxious, hate-drenched slime, it'd bring the media down like a pack of Dave Matthews fans after the last bottle of Zima.

Hate speech, indeed.

Dem Gun Demigoguery - The Minnesota DFL website offers this gun control bon mot - a reprint of a Strib editorial:
The government wants you to think it takes terrorism seriously -- that it's doing all it can to excise murderous plotters from American soil. But think again: Though the White House has done much to heighten homeland security, one font of fear flows as freely as ever. Bad guys still buy U.S. guns by the bushel; the feds are still willing to look the other way.
Which "bad guys"? The September 11 hijackers flew planes, as I recall. Which "bad guys" are the DFL/Strib referring to?

"Bushel"? The hyperbole starts here, and never stops...
Could this really be true? People who've been watching say yes.
Who? Anyone?
Even after Sept. 11, they note, the White House hasn't done a thing to stop unsavory gun traffic -- of which the United States is a large if unwitting sponsor. Underground armies the world over can credit U.S. dealers with supplying the arms fueling their endless wars.
"Underground armies". Remember this bit. It'll pop up later in this fisking.
Even the congressional ban on assault-gun sales hasn't slowed things down much. Thanks to some speedy redesign and renaming, any thug with an ax to grind can stroll into a retail store in any number of states, fill out a cursory background-check form and walk out with a MAK-90 -- a "sporting" version of the banned AK-47.
So let's get this straight: According to the DFL/Strib, "Underground Armies" are flocking to sporting goods stores to load up on sporterized cheap copies of "AK-47"s, with which they equip themselves for "endless wars".

Next time you're at Joe's Sporting Goods, wave hi to the Serbian militiamen and the Hutu death-squadsters!
And though legal limits are placed on multiple handgun purchases, no law bars a buyer from driving off with a truckload of long guns designed to shoot people rather than deer or bears.
No limits are placed on people buying thousands of gallons of gasoline and filling up a stolen tank truck and using it as a bomb, either - but it doesn't seem to be happening, regulations or not.
Transactions like these don't do much for world harmony, and it's hard to see why they're allowed at all.
Because unregulated purchases of sporting arms have no effect on crime in the US, much less wars overseas.

That'd be my wild guess, all in all.
But that's how it goes in gun-mad America: Nearly every would-be terrorist in want of a weapon can get one -- at a gun show, from a pawn shop, through a newspaper ad, from a friend. In days gone by, at least, a no-good gun-buyer stood a chance of getting caught if his gun ended up being used in a crime: If that happened, the FBI typically checked federal gun-purchase records to look beyond the scene of the crime.

No longer. Just when its use could prove most crucial, Attorney General John Ashcroft called a halt to that tracing tactic. Why? To protect gun buyers' "privacy."
Uh oh. It's the scare quotes. Whenever the left wants to get you to part with a right (or rather, a "right"), they put the scare quotes around it. Look for references to "due process" and "free" "speech" soon in reference to "talk" radio.
It's hard to know what to make of an attorney general whose chief civil-liberties concern is keeping secrets for gun owners up to no good. It's certainly not a good sign. Neither is Ashcroft's failure to propose any gun-related provisions in the recently approved U.S. Patriot Act -- the government's catch-all antiterrorism law: Despite Ashcroft's pledge to "unleash every possible tool" to fight terror, it's evident that cracking down on gun trafficking just isn't in his plans.
Perhaps because "gun trafficking" (I can do scare quotes too) in US hunting rifles has not been found to be any sort of problen whatsoever.
But why not? Doesn't Ashcroft know that even now U.S. guns are pouring into terrorist hands? He must know, because the federal government has long been monitoring gun purchases by U.S. militant groups with links to Al-Qaida.
Really? Data, please?

If this is like the "facts", (yaaay) also breathlessly reported by the DFL/Strib, that " a gun is 43 times more likely to kill someone you know than a criminal" (wrong in SO many ways) and "concealed carry permits will put more guns in the hands of gang members"
Yet when the FBI tried after Sept. 11 to see whether anyone on its list of terror suspects was on the government's list of recent gun buyers, the Justice Department threw a fit and nixed the check.
And they were right to do so, just as they would be right to nix blanket checks of recent car buyers or recent Blockbuster rentals.
So there you have it. In the World According to Ashcroft, fighting terrorism means asking airline passengers to take their shoes off at security checkpoints while respecting the "privacy" of unknown characters who buy armloads of long guns in the dark of night.
If they're buying them "in the dark of night", odds are it's not at a gun store...
Where's the logic in that? Where's the safety?

Surely it wouldn't hurt to check whether suspected terrorists are also avid gun buyers. Indeed, doing so might even give investigators new leads as they try to track terror networks. As broadcaster Bill Moyers noted in his Nov. 15 PBS program, "Gun Land,"
...which was chock-full of equally bad information...
it's plain that foreign terrorists have exploited this country's lax gun laws to arm themselves against their own governments -- and ours.
If I say "it's plain that the earth is flat", does that make it so? I've seen precisely no evidence that any US weapons, bought through the same sorts of civil channels that US civil gun buyers use, have had any impact on the world weapons trade.
The United States must toughen its laws to avert such exploitation. It must shake off the silly idea that gun sales should be secret, and do what it takes to catch the exploiters.
"Exploiters"? I thought we were after terrorists.

Of course, we're not. The DFL/Strib wants to make the life of the law-abiding gun owner, buyer and merchant just that little bit more onerous.

They're scared, of course - the GOP won big, the NRA is ascendant, and the Minnesota Personal Protection Act (our "shall issue" concealed carry law) will probably pass this session.

Expect much more of the same.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/29/2002 10:30:38 PM

Soccer Moms with Uzis- This may be the biggest sea change from this month's election: Women aren't necessarily utterly reliable Democrat voters.

As noted in Washington Post article by Tom Edsall, women's attitudes changed drastically after September 11:
The post-9/11 climate has helped the GOP win support from women, especially married women with children. While under normal circumstances women tend to be more averse to national defense spending and military action than men, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the continuing threat of domestic terrorism have changed women's attitudes.

Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, found a dramatic shift in women's views about the creation of a national missile defense system. Just before the attacks, his polling showed that 29 percent of women and 42 percent of men agreed that "we need a national missile defense system right now." In October, after the attacks, support among men grew only slightly, to 47 percent, while among women the percentage soared to 51 percent, with 59 percent of women with children backing immediate creation of such a system...

All of these findings point to the increased receptivity of women to the generally more aggressive and tougher stands of Republicans on issues of military preparedness and dealing with foreign adversaries. These shifts may be temporary, a product of the terrorist threat. But while a war with Iraq might come and go, no one knows how long the threat of terrorist attack will continue. There is no reason to believe that this aspect of the political environment will change in the near future.
The cynic could say that women vote with whatever's driving them at the moment.

I wonder, in all honesty, what this says about the differences betwen the genders. White middle class males are the GOP's strongest consituency, minorities are the bedrock of the Democrats - white women seem to be the wild card, switching pretty wildly if the last three elections are any indication.

Via Instapundit.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/29/2002 10:20:51 PM

Hate Crime The Star Tribune is reporting that the vandalism of a Coleman billboard is being investigated as a hate crime.

It's about time. I've seen Coleman signs defaced and destroyed in many different ways - our tolerant local DFL-sympathizers in action - including Nazi symbols.

(via Powerline and FratersLibertas)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/29/2002 11:04:00 AM

Thursday, November 28, 2002

New Years Day - 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 Manhatten. 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.

(Granted, if Monica Costello were to reappear somehow, I'd be thankful of that too...)

God bless you all. And if you don't believe in God - well, bless yourself silly.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/28/2002 08:41:47 PM

"Useful Idiots" - Anthony Woodlief 's theory - that NPR harbors a secret conservative conspiracy to discredit liberalism.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/28/2002 06:39:40 PM

Our National Day - Andrew Sullivan has a point - perhaps more than Fourth of July, Thanksgiving is the real American national holiday. I've read this article before - it's six years old, from the Sunday Times of London - but it's as wonderfully pertinent as any.

Here's my favorite of many favorite parts:
At the end of November each year this restless, contradictory and simple country finds a way to celebrate itself. The British, as befits a people at ease with themselves, do not have a national day. When the French do, their insecurity shows. Even America, on the fourth of July, displays a slightly neurotic excess of patriotism. But on Thanksgiving, the Americans resolve the nationalist dilemma. They don't celebrate themselves, they celebrate their good fortune. And every November, as I reflect on a country that can make even an opinionated Englishman feel at home, I know exactly how they feel.
Happy Thanksgiving, America, wherever you are.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/28/2002 03:58:56 PM

Nuge on Thanksgiving - I'm a guitar player and first-generation punk rocker who is also a conservative. I've often bemoaned the fact that if you're right of center, the only rock and roll musicians who seem to share your points of view are Marky and the late Dee Dee Ramone, Willy DeVille, and...er, Ted Nugent. The first two I dug. Nuuuge?

Well, I've still never heard a Nugent song I liked, but this article redeems a lot.

Oh, wait - Great White Buffalo was pretty cool...

(Via Powerline and Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/28/2002 03:01:58 PM

Fox in the Chicken Coop - When I heard that Henry Kissinger was going to be heading up the investigation into the government's 9/11 screwups, my heart took a little dive.

Ugh.

Christopher Hitchens has a great take on this.

(via Smart Genes)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/28/2002 10:51:16 AM

Thanksgiving Prayer - Michelle Malkin offers this. It's long, and it's wonderful, and it's all worth a read. Here's the part I liked enough to copy right away...
For "All men are created equal," for "Tear down this wall," for "Ask not what your country can do for you," for "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," for "I swear to uphold the laws and Constitution of the United States of America, against all enemies foreign and domestic," we give thee praise.

For iron will, for steely resolve, for mettle tested and time-worn, for uncommon valor that never sleeps, for steady hands, sturdy legs, broad shoulders, and level heads, for stiff upper lips, for blood, sweat and tears, for conquering our fears, and for unbending courage in the face of the unknown, we give thee praise...
And there's so much more.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/28/2002 10:11:33 AM

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Affordable Job Shortage The Pioneer Press' DJ Tice of the Pioneer Press does the unthinkable - applies empirical reasoning - to the "affordable housing debate:
Ron Feldman, an analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, released a paper on the much-discussed "affordable housing crisis." This "crisis" is occurring all around the country, but is said to be particularly severe in the Twin Cities. It concerns the fact that a considerable number of people have to spend a larger percentage of their incomes on housing than they ideally should.

Feldman's startling, controversial diagnosis of the problem?

Poor people, he says, don't have enough money.
Almost seems hard to believe that a government agency came up with that, doesn't it?

Tice continues:
This may sound like a pointless spat over terminology. What's the difference whether we say rental prices are too high or incomes are too low?

In fact, as Feldman argues, accurately identifying the real problem may determine how many "house poor" people can be helped with available resources.

The commonplace view of the housing issue is that we face is a "shortage" of "affordable" housing. The idea is that there is some malfunction in the housing marketplace, which isn't producing enough low-cost housing. Therefore, government needs to subsidize new construction of housing for the poor.

Feldman's paper, which I'm forced to oversimplify, says this is a misunderstanding (read it at www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/bsdpapers/housing.cfm). He points to data showing that among Twin Citians paying more than 30 percent of their income for rent (the accepted arbitrary definition of "unaffordable" housing), virtually all are in households with very low incomes. Even if rents were to decline significantly, Feldman calculates, most of the poor would still be living in "unaffordable" units.
That's the question - is it possible to lower housing prices - however artificially - enough to make a dent on the demand, to say nothing of the inevitable increase in demand that the subsidy will cause?

I doubt it - and thank goodness the GOP won.

(Via Powerline)

posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 07:26:12 PM

Farce?According to this article, UN weapons inspectors stonewalled the media on observing the first round of inspections today. The only media contact came after the UN team had left, according to NPR news, when the Iraqis let the gaggle of correspondents tour the inspection site.

Of course, noted one of the reporters, the media have no idea what they're looking at. Show them an urn full of smallpox bacilli and call it "Pizza Topping", and Pizza Topping is what'll get on the news.

The inspectors also said "This could take a year".

I don't think they're going to get it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 06:56:23 PM

Things I'm Thankful For - There's quite a list, really.

My kids, Daryll and Sam
My family, who've been behind me my whole life
God - there's no atheist alive who can convince me he's not watching out for me, and them. Although they're welcome to try
November 5, and the renewed faith in our electorate it gave me.
A job.
Friends - don't know where I'd be without 'em
Our wasteful, consumeristic economy, which enables so much joyous pseudo-gluttony tomorrow. Huff and poo poo if you want - but be thankful it's an option. Starvation sucks.
The blogosphere, which has brought a wealth of information (10% of it pretty good) to my life, and given my inner pundit a convenient outlet
All of you - when I started this thing, it was purely a vanity project. I averaged eight hits a day all summer, maybe 12-20 per day into September. Then, with the elections and the Keillor flap, things took off - and I've been averaging 200 or so a day, with occasonal spikes into the multi-thousands. Thanks to each of you for coming back!
Wisdom. Especially that of the founding fathers.
American anger - expressed by everyone who's sick of the way things are. That means all of us - left, right, black, white, justifiable or Mary Daly - who hold each others' feet in the fire when things just aren't right.
The transience of web-delivered content - because if I say "I'm gonna take tomorrow off", but write something anyway, nobody can call me on it.
Have a great Thanksgiving weekend, and I'll hope to see you all again soon!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 03:08:49 PM

Make Rules, Not Love or War - aka Why the Left Lost - Part MMMCMLVII.

As we noted in an earlier post, Greens share more with the Puritans of the 1600's than just religious zeal. They share...well, Puritanism itself! Carrie Nation was no less a killjoy than the tree-frenching left.

First it was cars powered with anything larger than a lawn-mower motor. Then nuclear power (with every other type of practical, inexpensive power in close second on the hit list). Then cigars, cigarettes, meat, veggies and fruits that weren't blessed with the seal of the organic komissar, alcohol, CDs, anything that comes in a package...and on...and on...

But we figured - "At least there's one human activity that these bastards can't crush beneath the birkenstocks of their relentless, mindless, soul-destroying Political Correctness". You'd think that there might be one primal, inseparably human activity, one simple, pleasurable, healthy, form of physical/spiritual/emotional joyous release, would escape the grasping clutches of the Greens, the Destroyers of Joy, the Regulators of Life's Simple Innocuous Pleasures.

You'd think so.

You'd be wrong.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 02:31:03 PM

Dump the Donkey? - Steve Perry is the editor of the Minneapolis City Pages, a sort of cut-rate Village Voice that combines some very thorough (if robustly biased) advocacy journalism with the sort of invincible left-wing slant that makes Molly Ivins look like Cal Thomas.

Perry reflects this, himself - an excellent editor, his politics give "loony left" a bad name.

This week's long-form Op-ed discusses reasons for giving up on the Democrat party. It's a longish piece, alternately fascinating and skull-thumpingly incongruous. For instance:
Since the mid-1980s there has been a steady dribble of social issues polls that have shown the American public standing considerably to the left of its elected officials. (There are polls that prove the converse, too; usually they are the ones that lard their queries with one overriding presumption: You don't want to pay higher taxes, do you?)
So many responses to that; what "social issues" polls? It'd seem to me that November 5 was the social issues poll we need to keep in mind. And Perry, good überliberal that he is, seems to think that the presumption that people want lower taxes is a distraction to the simple-minded voter.

Then there's this:
I am going to argue that the Democrats are not really a lesser evil, that their turn to Republican Lite in the past generation has been as cynical as it is deliberate. But for the moment let's take the lesser evil argument at face value and suppose that the courts and the human services bureaucracies do fare a little better (that is, erode more slowly) under Democrats. Is that "democracy" in any sense? Do you really think so little of your country and your citizenship as to accept that?
Catch that? "Democracy" is equated with a robust "Human Services Bureaucracy".

I'll let you draw your own conclusions. He goes on:
how does the rank-and-file react? Why don't the Democrats... If only the Democrats... If the Democrats were smart... Hold on right there. Let's dispense with the ridiculous, shopworn notion that the Democrats don't get it, that they are too dim or too timid to do the things that are evident to the rest of us: tack left, talk populist, stand up to Bush, push hot-button issues like corporate malfeasance, health care, and campaign finance reform.
Perry ignores the fact that the Dems tried their damnedest to stick Bush and the GOP with each of these issues. None of them stuck; most people see corporate ethics as a business ,not political, issue. Health Care is a cold button. Campaign Finance Reform is like a lead balloon - at the very least, nobody cares. At the most, the samizdat media (talk radio, the internet and the new balanced-to-right news outlets) have convinced enough people that it's really nothing more than elitist speech rationing dressed up in ill-fitting populist clothes. As far as failing to "tack to the left" - well, from Sacramento, Boise is east. From Steve Perry, the Democrat party is "Right".
They see these things as clearly as the rest of us, and they choose not to do any of them. Why? Money is the simple, vulgar answer, and the correct one. The matter of corporate crime, to take one example, is not seen by the national Democratic party as an opportunity to capitalize on Republican weakness and seize an upper hand; it is seen as a problem shared in common with Republicans--the problem of helping one's cash clients in a tough time.
"Seen as" a problem? No, Steve, Democrats benefitted just as much from corporate malfeasance as the GOP, and it's not a matter of perception!
...big money has not held all the cards in quite this way since the Gilded Age of robber barons like Morgan and Rockefeller. And in their day there was nothing approaching the staggering concentrations of media that exist now, which is to say there was not the opportunity to exclude so many voices and interests from public dialogue.
This could only come from someone who's spent his entire career in the "establishment" "alternative" media. I challenge any of Perry's supporters to show a time in our history when the flow of information has been more decentralized, both structurally and ideologically! There are robust alternatives on all sides of most issues (little as Perry thinks of them - being the "establishment" figure he is). Show me if you can an analogue in our history anything like the challenge the "alternative media" (and by that I mean different media as well as points of view) present to the "establishment" media that we have today.

There is so much more to talk about - I could fisk this piece for days. And maybe I will.

Read it and let me know what you think.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 01:52:29 PM

Blix' Trix - Tony Blankley on Hans Blix:
When, during World War II, we learned that Hitler was working on the atomic bomb, we assumed the worst and spent as much as it took and worked as fast as we could around the clock to get the bomb first. That sense of urgency reflected in the Manhattan Project is the only rational pace at which we should be moving on all fronts today. But even our good and determined president is finding his pace slowed down by the quagmire in which he finds himself; not the quagmire of battle (our soldiers fly on the wings of Mercury with the weapons of Mars at the throats of our enemies), but the quagmire of diplomacy.
Even the New York Times reports that, of course, we can't expect Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors to actually find the weapons. But they may find evidence of Saddam's breach of U.N. resolutions. Meanwhile, Mr. Blix says he doesn't want to confront Saddam or search aggressively (what he calls an American trait). He admits that it is very hard for him and his team even to assemble and bring into action 35 Jeeps and 100 inspectors. He is bemused. He is patient. He knows his limits. What's a 74-year-old Swedish diplomat to do? More importantly, what's Mr. Bush to do?
Stick to his guns, that's what. Hold Hussein to the letter of the demands, and not an iota less, no matter how the interational nattering set phumpher and garfle.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 01:25:37 PM

Work is interfering with blogging, damn the luck. Expect a blogalanche after lunch.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 10:54:42 AM

Speaking of Castration - Mary Daly is a feminist separatist academic. She taught until recently at Boston College, and is famous for not allowing men into her Women's Studies classes.

A few weeks ago, she wrote on society's "need" to limit the number of males - to perhaps a one-to-nine ratio with women.
WIE: In your latest book, Quintessence, you describe a utopian society of the future, on a continent populated entirely by women, where procreation occurs through parthenogenesis, without participation of men. What is your vision for a postpatriarchal world? Is it similar to what you described in the book?
MD: You can read Quintessence and you can get a sense of it. It’s a description of an alternative future. It’s there partly as a device and partly because it’s a dream. There could be many alternative futures, but some of the elements are constant: that it would be women only; that it would be women generating the energy throughout the universe; that much of the contamination, both physical and mental, has been dealt with.

What Is Enlightenment Magazine [WIE]: Which brings us to another question I wanted to ask you. Sally Miller Gearhart, in her article, “The Future—If There is One—Is Female,” writes: “At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race.” What do you think about this statement?

MD: I think it’s not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.

There are a zillion other quotes I could pull out of big articles like this - from "What Is Enlightenment" magazine - but frankly, it's too depressing. Radical feminists do take this stuff seriously - and I wonder if or why the irony escapes them: reading Mein Kampf wasn't much uglier than this.

Just read it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 10:38:24 AM

Empathy Alert - Ths news today, about the El Al hijacker who has apparently confessed in Turkish custody after reportedly being threatened with castration, can be taken a number of different ways:
It's a warning: Don't mess up in Turkey;
Someone needs to make sure Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly don't read this
.

Bad luck to pick Turkey as a destination, by the way - the only Moslem nation that maintains cordial relations with Israel.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 06:30:21 AM

Pierce - There are some times when only a visit to Tony Pierce's blog will do.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2002 01:42:03 AM

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

What Firearm Are You? - I needed to find out.

Of course you can click through the ad to find out what you are.

Me?
Which Firearm are you?
brought to you byStan Ryker

Oooh! Cool!

Try it out.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 11:34:29 PM

Son in Marines, Part II - the Kipling Years- Like much of the Blogosphere, Rantburg is writing on this story - of the Volvo-Drivin' upper-middle-class Bostonite whose son joined the Marines.

And he (I presume it was him) added this, with a nod to Kipling:
We are patricians of Boston, intellectuals proud and strong;
We send our kids to private school to avoid the unwashed throng.
When we were young we dodged the draft and got in Johnson's face
For we think our home and country is all the world's disgrace.

For it's Chomsky this, The Nation that, and "George Bush is a clown!"
And "the USA deserved it!" when they knocked the Towers down;
They knocked the Towers down, my boys, they knocked the Towers down,
Yes, the USA deserved it when they knocked the Towers down.
Yes, making mock of uniforms that guard us while we sleep
Lets us feel ourselves superior, and do it on the cheap;
And talking of root causes when we appear on NPR
Is five times more "intellectual" than fighting a just war.

For it's Chomsky this, The Nation that, and "George Bush is a brute!"
And burn the flag in protest when the guns begin to shoot;
The guns begin to shoot, my boys, the guns begin to shoot,
Yes, burn the flag in protest when the guns begin to shoot.

We have no use for heroes, heroism's not our scene,
We cannot understand why John joined up with the Marines;
They're yahoos from the red states; they lack advanced degrees;
They don't even have Volvos! They ride in green Humvees.

Yes it's Chomsky this, The Nation that; but we know we'd lack the soul
To stand up for our neighbors when Todd Beamer called, "Let's roll!"
We're snobbish and self-centered, it's beneath our pride to serve;
But we'll exercise our freedoms, tho' we know they're undeserved!
Great stuff. By the way, the original cite came from Instapundit.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 04:39:21 PM

Yeah! - I've been wanting to see this guy put up a website for years. I finally found it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 04:05:40 PM

More Attitude - Eric Raymond of Armed and Dangerous, who is presumably not a Democrat, has written a marvelous article on what a truly responsible Democrat party would look and act like. The highlights:
Support war on Iraq, but insist on nation-building afterwards...
Derail the Homeland Security Act and other intrusions on civil liberties...
Stop the War on (Some) Drugs. This is a civil-rights issue. ...
Support school vouchers. Another civil-rights issue — it's precisely minorities and the poor who most need to escape the trap that the public-school system has become, ...
Speak up for science. Religious conservatives are up to a lot of anti-scientific mischief ...
Stop the RIAA/MPAA from trashing consumers' far-use rights...Young people, who are trending conservative these days, care deeply about the RIAA attack on file sharing. Wouldn't you like to have them back?
Of course, after all the money the Wellstone and Mondale campaigns got from Hollywood, I just don't see that RIAA thing happening...

Many of these, by the way, are things the Republicans can at least nod toward in some degree to consolidate their gains. Like what?

We'll go into this later...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 03:22:48 PM

Attitude - A few weeks ago, we talked about the hatred some Democrats seem to feel for Republicans, or any other form of dissent.

Discussing that can quickly slide into the absurd. But on a more personal level - I've observed that many Democrats are unwilling to tolerate any smidgen of conservative thought anywhere in their lives, including among friends and relationships.

Robert Toth discusses this in today's Journal:
Near the anniversary of Sept. 11, a friend of mine told me the most upsetting thing I'd heard all year--but also the most clarifying.

We were talking politics, or rather we were shouting politics. He was laying into me for getting into bed with racists, murderers and hypocrites, people who had committed the equivalent of Sept. 11 countless times--which is to say, conservatives. Meanwhile, I was telling him through my teeth that Noam Chomsky, the source of my buddy's picturesque worldview, was a shameless liar and distorter.

We kept at for almost an hour. Then, as he got off the phone, out of breath and close to tears, he said it: "I don't know how to be your friend anymore."

I fell into a chair, shaking. For the past 10 years, I thought, I've shared every joke, every secret, every fear, with this guy, and this is how it's going to end? I spent a long time wondering how he could feel that way about me. Then I realized I'd been feeling that way about him, too--him and a good chunk of my closest buddies. He'd articulated a feeling that had been nagging at me ever since I started hearing what my friends thought about the attacks. If I had heard a stranger voice those opinions, I'd dismiss him as a crank, someone as monstrously wrong-headed as Gore Vidal or Michael Moore. So how do I stay friends with people who hold those views? Or, more bluntly: Is politics an important enough issue to kill a friendship?
This troubles me. I've run across it many times.

Most recently - I was on a date with a woman. We'd had a great time, and we were sitting in a coffee shop, talking about this and that. Politics came up. I mentioned that I'm a Republican.

She looked like she'd swallowed a moth ball. After a few moments of phumphering and blustering, she said "...if I'd have known you were a Republican, I'd have never gone out with you". The date ended awkwardly, and I got an email that evening saying that the difference in politics would cause a problem, so it'd be best not to talk anymore.

Do Republicans do this? I've never heard of it - but in my dating life (three years, this time around) I've had probably 3-4 women essentially break contact and run when the "R" word came up. I've read the personal ads - and quite a few say "No Republicans", even as the headline; it's the first impression they want to make on anyone who might write them!

So what's with the fear of dissent? I've called it hatred in the past - and we all know hate comes from fear, right?

Anyone have an explanation?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 01:38:40 PM

Mulligan - Laura Billings writes in today's Pioneer Press about the Augusta National Golf Course controversy.

Augusta doesn't admit women. Unlike a lot of Twin Cities' columnists, Billings does seem to notice that the free market will one day sort this all out:
I predict that once we have a critical mass of retired women corporate leaders with good handicaps and $50,000 for membership fees, the gates to Augusta will swing right open...
...or if they don't, those female executives will flock to a club that's more amenable to them, and the male-only club will languish...

But whatever - it's rare that a Twin Cities media pundit actually grasps the inherent leveling influence of the market. Kudos to Ms. Billings for doing something Doug Grow never has...

However, the path she takes to get to that realization is crowded with strawmen.
The state's demographer reported that even though Minnesota has the highest percentage of working mothers in the country, and even though we are home to such women-friendly companies as General Mills, working women here still make only 73 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

That's a wage gap that has been narrowed by only 6 cents since 1990. According to the findings of the 2000 census, women who work full time still earn an average of $10,600 less than men.
The census - and Billings - miss or gloss over the reasons for this; it lumps type-a 80-hour-per-week stockbrokers together with people with high school diplomas who raised five kids and now work 15 hours a week at Fashion Bug. It compares apples and axles.

Simple fact - if you compare males and females with the same education, time on the job and qualifications, pay inequity between the sexes is a myth. The funny part is, Billings comes close to realizing this:
Interestingly, the same inequity is not seen in the pay stubs received by the 200,000 men and women who work for local and state government.
Bingo. State workers are at least in a similar group - people with roughly (very roughly) comparable education, background and training.

But in the real world, women take time off to have children. They also frequently take time off to raise them - a very rare thing for men in our society. It doesn't go into a paycheck, sure. It's a part of life that's not only as important when all is said and done - it's something men are often the worse off for missing.

Moreover, many areas of academia and our schools seem to be overcompensating, with boys and men being shorted in many key ways. I say this as a guy who's spent a lot of time at home raising kids.

I'd love to see a columnist at least try to recognize the complexity of comparing men (who tend to start work when their education is done, and work nearly 'til death) and women (who tend to short their education to get into relationships and have children, take time to raise them, and enter or re-enter the workforce late), and add in some of the intangibles that accompany those differences.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 01:09:26 PM

Serving the Nation - Frank Schaeffer is a Boston-area novelist - a self-described "Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping" American brahmin, whose kids went to private schools and whose neighbors regarded military service as...something other people do.

Then, his youngest boy joined the Marine Corps.
It had been hard enough sending my two older children off to Georgetown and New York University. John's enlisting was unexpected, so deeply unsettling. I did not relish the prospect of answering the question "So where is John going to college?" from the parents who were itching to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard. At the private high school John attended, no other students were going into the military.

"But aren't the Marines terribly Southern?" asked one perplexed mother while standing next to me at the brunch following graduation. "What a waste, he was such a good student," said another parent. One parent (a professor at a nearby and rather famous university) spoke up at a school meeting and suggested that the school should "carefully evaluate what went wrong."
"What went wrong". Amazing.

And yet Schaeffer finds he's learned a lot from his son's experience:
My son has connected me to my country in a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before. I feel closer to the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends. She has two sons in the Corps. They are facing the same dangers as my boy.
And the big lesson:
Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? Is the world a safe place? Or have we just gotten used to having somebody else defend us? What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm's way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean?

I feel shame because it took my son's joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me. I feel hope because perhaps my son is part of a future "greatest generation." As the storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in uniform in the eye. My son is one of them. He is the best I have to offer. He is my heart.
He's right, of course.

Last week, I briefly mentioned the idea of instituting National Service - the sort of system they have in Switzerland, Israel and (to some extent) Norway, where citizens serve a period in the active military (Switzerland - about a year), and then in the reserves for most of their adult lives. Everyone in the nation shares the burden and duty of protecting the country - the sons of janitors and the daughters of diplomats.

Several people wrote after last week's brief reference, saying that there were many sociological and military reasons not to do this. And they're all correct - the astounding proficiency of our current military is a direct result of it being all professional, all volunteer.

That being said - our military, and the attending burden and duty - are predominantly the province of the lower-middle and lower classes. And I've wondered for years - had Chelsea Clinton been a reservist in a motor pool, had the children of our congresspeople and diplomats and bureaucrats and spinmeisters been combat engineers and army truck drivers and tank repair girls, would we have intervened as blithely and cavalierly in Somalia, or Haiti, or the Balkans?

I have no answer to that, of course.

Read the whole article - it's worth it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2002 10:35:47 AM

Monday, November 25, 2002

Pizza on Patrol - Part II - Earlier today, I linked to to a site whose mission is to allow people to send take-out pizza to Israeli soldiers on duty against Palestinian terrorists. I added that while it seemed like a cool idea (and one that'd be interesting to apply to, say, Afghanistan), I wasn't sure that it wasn't a hoax site. Not like that ever happens on the 'net.

An email correspondent writes:
Whats so funny about sending pizza/burgers to israeli soldiers, I've done it!
So I guess the site's legit. Cool.

He went on to answer my rhetorical question about kosher pizza (and I have to say that for a goy from North Dakota, I do know a lot about kosher food laws. Don't ask). My question was more like; "Is Kosher Pizza any good?", but I suppose after a day of looking for dynamite under people's jackets, even Domino's would taste just fine.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 03:12:01 PM

Diversity - My kids are still six years way from thinking about college. Thankfully.

Katherine Kersten isn't so lucky. She wrote this op-ed last week in the Strib:
Why does this academic imbalance matter? Today, most college professors encourage their students to view subjects like political science, sociology, economics and history through the ideological prism of the political left. They urge students to analyze American society through the lens of race, class and gender, and to adopt a reflexive skepticism about America's role in the world. The impact of ideological imbalance extends well beyond the classroom. At many campuses, for example, young people may find it difficult to recruit a faculty adviser for a prolife student organization, or arrange a lecture by a conservative political figure.

Where can college students go to hear the other half of the story? Generally, they've got to ferret it out on their own. To help my own young friends, I've purchased a new book by political commentator Dinesh D'Souza, called "Letters to a Young Conservative." In the early 1980s, D'Souza helped found the Dartmouth Review, a conservative student newspaper at New Hampshire's Dartmouth College. His slim new volume is a useful primer for students who are eager to sample the intellectual diversity they can't find in college classrooms.
I converted from McGovern liberalism to Reagan/Goldwater big-picture conservatism while I was in college, no thanks to most of the college's staff (but, of course, for my major advisor, the English department chairman, Dr. James Blake. Can you imagine being able to say "My English Department chairman catalyzed my switch to conservatism" these days, at anyplace this side of Hillsdale or Liberty Baptist?). Dinesh D'Souza wasn't available to me when I was in college (Jamestown College, class of '85). The books that started me rolling to the right were Modern Times by Paul Johnson, Republican Party Reptile by P.J. O'Rourke, 1984 by Orwell, and The Gulag by Solzhenitzyn (nope, believe it or not, no Ayn Rand).

Here's been my big question all these years - we know that the campus became liberalized, then radicalized, in the sixties. While much of the rest of America has swung right since then, the academy has remained steadfastly left of not only center, but of what passes for "left" anywhere else in American society, "left" of where the majority of liberals were even in the sixties and early seventies (when they first took over the Democrat party). So - when does the sixties generation die off? Who replaces them? Is the liberal academic complex self-perpetuating?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 02:44:57 PM

To the Manor Born? - Eugene Volokh - son of a Russian immigrant - tackles Paul Krugman's attack on second-generation Republicans - and wonders why second-generation Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Andrew Cuomo, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Skip/Buck Humphrey and so on don't come in for the same scrutiny.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 01:35:31 PM

Iran - Michael Ledeen of the National Review continues to report on what seems, to some observers, to be portents of the downfall of the "mullahcracy", after half a million Iranians hit the streets over the weekend:
Rafsanjani and his allies are preparing still greater repression for the suffering people of Iran, due o be launched on Wednesday, and already on Sunday members of the failed reformist movement were telling the students to calm down, so as not to provide a pretext for the looming crackdown. But it is by no means clear that the regime has the blind loyalty of the security forces any longer; during the recent demonstrations there were several instances of defections to the demonstrators' side, and even the Revolutionary Guards have been subjected to repeated purges, as the mullahs seek desperately to find willing killers and torturers.

Which brings us back to the debate-that-is-not-happening. How can we tell when a regime is about to fall? The key ingredient is not the sort of thing that the political scientists talk about in the academies, because it can't be measured, only smelled: It is a combination of failure of nerve at the top, and resolute desperation from below. On both counts, the trends are encouraging, but brutal repression is invariably successful if it is delivered with overwhelming strength, and the would-be revolutionaries cannot effectively cope with it.

We do not know how this will play out in the coming days and weeks, but one thing is already luminously clear: The Bush administration has missed an opportunity to strike a massive blow against the terror masters. If, instead of winking and nodding at various Iranian emissaries and back channels, we had supported the Iranian people with money, effective radio and television, and modern communications gear, the regime could very well have been smashed this past weekend.
That is a good question - why are we not exploiting this (or at least exploiting this more visibly)? Perhaps to avoid rekindling memories of the US tinkering that brought the Shah to power? Perhaps because Iraq seems the riper target, or at least the easier one to topple?

Maybe because the whole purpose is to stir the region up enough to cause the overthrow of the mullahcracies more or less spontaneously (with lots of help from us)?

I'm certainly entertaining suggestions.

posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 01:00:01 PM

Keillor, MPR News and the Republicans - A few weeks ago, rumor (local and otherwise, via Smart Genes) had it that Garrison Keillor's anti-Coleman rants had chilled relations between the MPR newsroom and the Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty camps.

Not so, says a source at MPR News: "nobody's had any trouble dealing with Coleman after the Keillor articles. Apparently our News Director talked to him, and he just kept raving about our debate the day before the election." The source "...found him the same as always - easy to deal with. I think your source was misinformed!"

Misinformed? I thought you could believe everything you read on the internet...

Thanks, MPR source!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 11:03:27 AM

Bowling for Moore - Instapundit has this piece of fact-checking from Forbes.com on some of the, er, "issues" in "Bowling for Columbine".
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 08:30:25 AM

I Need Photoshop - So I can do this sort of thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 08:10:44 AM

Can't Make It Up Fast Enough - Read this one a few times. It is apparently not a joke.

And, the more I read it, the more I like it. I believe I'm going to contribute.

I'm just wondering what Kosher pizza is like...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 08:00:31 AM

Exit - There's a small undercurrent of paranoid lefties that thinks it's time to get out of the US - that there's someplace out there free from the ravages of John Ashcroft. This article in the San Antonio Current - San Antonio's City Pages, I think - showcases some of it. Note the paranoia...:
It's the not-so-rich whose fates are increasingly constrained by a government that has ratcheted sharply to the fanatical right.

The new thought police don't like anyone to criticize the government; they don't like gays; they don't like the arts; they don't like Muslims; they don't even like Halloween. They control the textbooks in Texas where, by law, history and social studies courses must teach capitalism as the only viable economic system. They control the public discourse, in which local television broadcasters laugh at the Libertarian candidate for opposing the death penalty (yes, that actually happened on election night). And now they control the House, the Senate, the Executive Office — and by extension the judiciary.
...juxtaposed with the triviality with which the subjects of this article address the issue:
So what's a citizen to do? “Prague,” my friend reiterates. I take a bite of the sourdough bread and nod. The best reason I can think of to stay is lunch at the Liberty Bar.
Hm. Maybe if we dropped sourdough bread on Pakistan, Al Quaeda'd capitulate.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2002 12:49:09 AM

Sunday, November 24, 2002

The Pre-War Show - We're already working, "like termites" as this article from next week's Time Magaznie says, to undermine Hussein, within Iraq:
America's recent combat experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan have confirmed for the Pentagon the virtues of psychological warfare and political initiatives in weakening the enemy before battle. These days the U.S. Army likes to say it is committed to "softening up the battlefield." Iraq is being softened up in many different ways. For one, following a Presidential Decision Directive on Oct. 3, the U.S. started a program to train up to 5,000 Iraqi exiles for possible missions in Iraq that could assist American combat troops. There is action inside Iraq too. A senior intelligence official tells Time that the U.S. has contacted groups that may be capable of sabotage before full-scale hostilities start. The U.S., says this official, is opening up lines to "people who can do World War II-style resistance, breaking up the infrastructure of communications and command." In a program that links intelligence, diplomacy, psychological warfare and military action, Saddam is being squeezed. "I see it as poking," says a State Department official. "Let's poke this pressure point and see what happens; let's see what reaction we get."
Remember a few weeks ago - we discussed the left's odd trope that toppling Hussein without a shot would be a defeat for the Administration?
To hear U.S. officials tell it, this war before the war brings a double benefit. On the one hand, it prepares the ground if a full-blown invasion proves necessary. On the other hand, it just may be enough to topple Saddam without having to bomb Iraq and march into Baghdad. "We've embarked on steps that help us prepare for a military option inside Iraq," says the State Department official, "but that don't constitute a crossing of the Rubicon. None of these steps are irreversible, and all of them could help promote the longer-term destabilization of Saddam's government."
In the meantime, the pace of operations is picking up:
Already, U.S. and British warplanes have moved to a more aggressive posture while enforcing Iraq's no-fly zones, the northern and southern regions from which Iraqi planes are banned. In the past, when Iraqi forces fired on allied planes, the reply came in attacks on guns and missile batteries. That has changed. Now the allied planes are attacking command-and-control centers, communications nodes and the fiber-optic network that links Iraq's air-defense system. "We're responding differently," says a Pentagon official, "hitting multiple targets when we're fired upon—and they're tending to be more important targets."
A big issue, not only for the left for for anyone that follows the history of the region, is "what about the Kurds?"
What's more, the U.S., safe in the northern no-fly zone over which Baghdad has no control, is beginning to work more closely with the Iraqi Kurds, who are starting to get their often tangled act together. A few weeks ago, the two leading Iraqi Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P..) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), started to carry out a historic accord designed to end their years of often violent rivalry and to launch a period of working together.
And that "period of working together" may only last until Hussein is at room temperature, or cooling his heels in the Sudan. But the job'll get done.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2002 06:39:28 PM

Murder in Minneapolis - A shootout between gangbangers in Minneapolis has left a 12-year-old girl dead.

The Strib's headline this morning? "Stray Bullet Kills 12-Year-Old". Powerline notes the media's soft-focus coverage of this tragedy - and, like many local critics, notices that the bullet didn't motivate itself. It was fired by "couple of Minneapolis's finest gangbangers", as Big Trunk of Powerline calls them, busily blasting themselves - no, blasting everythign around them into infinity, whilst leaving their own worthless carcasses untouched.

So what will (Minnapolis state rep) Wes Skoglund be talking about in re this crime, when the concealed-carry debate restarts? The bags of human scum that fired the shots? Or the fact that they had guns - without distinguishing their most-likely-illegally-obtained pistols from those of the law-abiding citizens he so constantly decries?

By the way, a Minneapolis police sergeant told me in 1986 - when gang shootings were still a bit of a novelty in Minneapolis - that the safest place to be when the bangers start shooting is...their target. The most dangerous place is 45 degrees off the line of fire, in a second floor living room, minding your own business. He was being facetious - the kind of facetious that comes from having to deal with this kind of crap for a living. This was right after an eight-year-old boy was paralyzed from the waist down by a stray bullet from a gang fight two blocks away. The bangers - firing at each other from across the street - all escaped unharmed, if memory serves.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2002 06:25:34 PM

Clinton on Civil Liberties - The "Talkleft" blog has a fascinating look at the erosion of civil liberties...

...during the Clinton Administration::
Laura Murphy concludes that "both Clinton and Dole are indicative of how far tbe American people have slipped away from the notions embodied in the Bill of Rights." She omitted the role of the press, which seems focused primarily on that part of the First Amendment that protects the press.

Particularly revealing were the endorsements of Clinton by the New York Times, The Washington Post and the New Republic, among others. In none of them was the president's civil liberties record probed. (The Post did mention the FBI files at the White House.) Other ethical problems were cited, but nothing was mentioned about habeas corpus, court-stripping, lowering the content of the Internet to material suitable for children and the Clinton administration's decided lack of concern for privacy protections of the individual against increasingly advanced government technology.

A revealing footnote to the electorate's ignorance of this subverting of the Constitution is a statement by N. Don Wycliff, editorial page editor of the Chicago Tribune. He tells Newsweek that "people are not engaged in the [political] process because there are no compelling issues driving them to participate. It would be different if we didn't have peace and prosperity."
If Ashcroft is gutting the constitution as the far left claims (wrongly, but let's be ecumenical here), then he's standing on the shoulders of giants; Reno, McCafferty, Clinton himself.

...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2002 06:14:59 PM

The Blacklist Continues - I'm posting the Blogosphere Blacklist on a separate page.

Feel free to send me more entries!

This Week on Shot in the Dark - We'll be doing Part II of the St. Paul School Board's alleged budget shenanigans.

What did the St. Paul Public Schools get for the $3,180 paid to Progressive Minnesota? Among other things, campaign literature that may have violated campaign fraud laws.

More later this week.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2002 09:33:34 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