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

Sunday, July 07, 2002

Apologies - Late in the day, July 4, Blogger.com (the site that I use to publish Shot in the Dark) started having technical difficulties. This is the first time I've been able to publish since then.

This time, it's not my fault! Woo Hoo!
posted by Mitch Berg 7/7/2002 12:57:59 AM

Call for Paul Ehrlich - When I was a kid, I was scared out of my little mind by what I heard about the doommongering of professional hysterics like Paul Ehrlich.

Remember Paul Ehrlich? In 1969, he wrote "the Population Bomb", in which he predicted that mankind would starve itself to near extinction, and the survivors would kill each other off searching for food - by about 1984. India, said Ehrlich, was going to be completely hopeless - he introduced the concept of "triage" in an article in 1974, which gave my little 11 year old mind its first big attack of angst.

Of course, he was wrong. Wrong on every count, absolutely and irredeemably. He was so wrong, only a place like Stanford could continue to employ him.

But the predictions keep coming. According to ultraliberal pressure group the World Wildlife Fund (and reported with breathless credulity by the UK's far-left mouthpiece The Guardian), we're going to need to colonize not one but two new, earth-sized planets in the next fifty years, because of all the damage we've done to Earth.

Hey - didn't Ted Danson tell us in 1989 that we had a ten year supply of oil left? You'll recall, of course, the great Indian Food War of 1984...

Why doesn't anyone in the media ever call groups like the World Wildlife Fund on their lousy record at predicting the future?

Bulletin! Bulletin! - Michael Jackson is wierd!

Update! - So is George Michael
posted by Mitch Berg 7/7/2002 12:42:44 AM

Friday, July 05, 2002

Difficulties - Blogger.com, the site that I use to put this site up, seems to be having some technical problems today. I'll post new material this evening. More to come.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/5/2002 09:10:27 AM

Everyone Have This? Any Questions? - Remember the old SNL bit from during the Gulf War, when Mike Myers asks General Schwartzkopf "Please tell us the units involved in tomorrow's airstrikes, their targets, and the times they'll be attacking?".

Today's NY Times has about the same thing...

Now, here's the question: Given that the Bush Administration is as leak-phobic as the Military claims to be (and frequently succeeds at being), my question is: is this legit? Or is this disinformation intended to skew the public's perception? Or Iraq's?

Which begs all sorts of questions: Turkey's claimed at various times to support the War on Terrorism - but then said it doesn't support invading Iraq. Yet they've always wanted a less looney-tunes government on their southeast border, too. And they are the one army in place in the region that's allied with us (in NATO, remember?) and capable of mixing it up with the Iraqis (in addition to whomever we and the Brits haul into the region).

And we'll probably need that - Seven Divisions from the Army and two from the Marines fought in the Gulf War, while today the entire US Army is twelve divisions, in wildly-differing states of readiness.

Hm. Who do you believe...
posted by Mitch Berg 7/5/2002 09:08:02 AM

Thursday, July 04, 2002

Words Fail Me- Which is a rare thing indeed.

Peter Singer - the "bioethicist" at Princeton who says that we should allow parents to retroactively abort infants up to a year after birth - says that Christianity hurts animals.

I'm not going to say a thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/4/2002 10:43:13 AM

At Least We're Independent From Them - "Legendary" foreign correspondent John Pilger eloquently states the Eurotrash case, showing why the Fourth of July is so very, very important.

Idiots like this are why it's so important for the US to act unilaterally and let those with any sort of moral grounding follow. The pusilanimity of the Euro wonk class stands in stark relief to the courage of those European leaders that have backed us, and that of the foreign troops, especially the special forces from Canada, Germany, Denmark, Australia, Norway and especially Britain that are in the mountains with our guys right now.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/4/2002 10:37:02 AM

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Oboy - When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, there was this guy, an unreconstructed hippie, that ran an organic farm (basically a weed research station) about 20 miles out of town. His name was Harley MacClain. And besides raising weeds and showing up at the local open-stage nights to play old Neil Young songs, what Harley did was run for President. Every election from 1976 to 1992, Harley ran for President, as the leader of the "Chemical Farming Banned" party.

In 1980, he reached the apogee of his fame. He lost the presidential election - he was only on the ballot in North Dakota, so he was kind of a dark horse. But he noticed that the ballots always put the Republican and Democrat candidates at the top, and then all the other candidates below, in order of size, basically. He thought that was unfair. So he did two things: He declared himself the winner of the election, and he took the North Dakota elections commission to court.

Well, declaring himself president didn't work so hot - you may recall Ronald Reagan served two terms without significant interruption. But the court case did work - today, North Dakota's ballots (and those of many other states that recognized the precedent) randomize their ballot order.

So these wild hair candidates occasionally do have an impact.

I just don't think that newly-minted Republican, former IP and DFLer Leslie Davis will be one of them.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/3/2002 07:51:42 AM

One Standard for Him, One Standard for Her - Men who have sex with underage women are looking at hard time. Women who get jiggy with underage boys can expect perhaps probation, along with sympathy from the feminist establishment

Cathy Young writes about this imbalance.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/3/2002 07:12:11 AM

Up in Smoke - The role of the big, urban, Green interest in the current forest fires in the west needs to be examined. The forests - like much of the government-owned west (the fed owns something like half of all land west of the Mississipi) is managed by diktat from politicized east-coast interests that are only marginally aware of how to deal with real-life, sometimes life-threatening, vicissitudes of nature.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/3/2002 07:05:27 AM

All Worry, All the Time - CNN's woes in the face of Fox News' steady rise have been a matter of both record, sycophantic butt-smooching, and even an attempt to re-tool the liberal-leaning network's image, which met with at least some catcalling .

Open note to CNN execs - if it's not about "star power", it must be about...your blinkered bias?
posted by Mitch Berg 7/3/2002 06:59:34 AM

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

Ray of Hope - 49% of Britons oppose adopting the Euro. How serious is it? Even Brit showbiz types are jumping on the lorry.

Including, it should be noted, the generally socialistic former Boomtown Rat, Sir Bob Geldof.

As a side note - how wierd to see the punk rock icons of my teenage years getting involved in politics - Geldof, Bono...
posted by Mitch Berg 7/2/2002 10:46:54 PM

Gubernatorial Smackdown!- I think Tim Pawlenty can win this. Stop me if I'm wrong. Here's my theory:

Jesse Ventura won the governor's race on pure personality. I doubt that his political stances, except as related to car tabs and jet ski license fees, earned him enough votes to matter in '98.

Now - Tim Penny is a pretty interesting guy, for a DFLer. He has been the "wizard behind the curtain" of the Ventura administration, along with fellow DFL refugee Dean Barkley.

I should say - he was interesting. Until he declared his candidacy. Once he did that, he started scuttling to the left faster than Tyrel Ventura diving on a loose beer.

Now, before he did that, polls were showing him neck and neck with Moe and Pawlenty. But that was then. Now, Penny has gone "pro-choice", and has softened his once-truly-moderate, even vaguely acceptable stances on gun control and taxes. He's set himself up as the tax-'n-spend sycophant to the DFL that Ventura was under his and Barkley's direction.

So he's running center-left. Moe is just left, and Green endorsee Ken Pentel is running on the absurdly-far left. (Let's assume Christine Jax isn't in the mix here, just for simplicity's sake).

Let's assume that Pawlenty keeps the 34% Norm Coleman won in 1998. Assume that the three candidates on the left split, in some combination, the remaining 66 percent in some fashion. Figure Ken Pentel, buoyed by his urban-la-la-land base in Dinkytown and the Wedge and the various colleges, keeps major-party status with a 5% showing - which comes ENTIRELY from the left, largely the DFL uber-base. Assume Moe gets the same 28% of hardcore DFLers, union guys and the professionally enraged that Humhrey got four years ago. Then, assume Tim Penny can manage to come across as something other than just another political talking head, and can get EVERY SINGLE unaccounted-for vote - which he won't, because he's Tim Penny, a mild-mannered policy wonk talking head with a few interesting ideas and a lot of political baggage - not Jesse Ventura. That's 33%.

And that's Governor Pawlenty to you, sport!

Yes, that "analysis" is hamfisted. Got a better one? Write me. I'm always looking for material!

What's a Liberal? - The traditional definition of conservative is "concerned about preserving the best of the traditional way of doing things",while liberals tend to define themselves as "concerned about civil rights".

Now, those of us who've been working on Second Amendment issues know just now selective the left is about the rights they'll support. But we always figured that, while their depredations on the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments are a matter of record, we could at least count on them to fight like rabid wolverines for the First Amendment.

Right?

Er - according to George Will, no.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/2/2002 07:12:39 AM

Swing to the Right, Part IV - Deroy Murdock writes about the Pink Pistols - an organization of gay Second Amendment activists.

The Pistols were formed for the same reason the Concealed Carry movement exists - to deter violence, in this case gay-bashing.

But in addition to what the Pistols teach us about the deterrent value of the handgun, they also teach us something about the true nature of tolerance in America today. To wit:
"I know of absolutely no conservatives who have attacked us," says [Washington lobbyist and gay man Austin] Fulk. "I've gotten a lot more grief from gay people for owning guns and supporting the Second Amendment than I ever have from gun owners for being gay."
But whatever the political ramifications, it's the criminal ones we're most concerned about. And those are...?
According to Doug Krick, 31, the Boston-based dot.com engineer who founded Pink Pistols in July 2000: "While I can't say that we are completely responsible for it, I can say that there has not been a 'fag bashing' in any of the towns where we have chapters after our chapters were founded."

Now, if only the rest of our society would figure that out.

By the way - there is a Pink Pistols chapter in the Twin Cities. I'll need to follow up on that last claim...
posted by Mitch Berg 7/2/2002 06:51:29 AM

What if Napoleon had a B52 at Waterloo? - Modern technology - like "writing" and "books" - have degraded human memory. Since we don't have to remember things, but can put them in our diaries or tape recorders or Palm Pilots, human memory has been on a downswing for centuries - except among societies that lack, say, alphabets.

So who says the same thing isnt' happening to speech? With our plethora of aids to giving speeches - from the microphone to the Powerpoint multimedia display - is it possible that we're just not capable of performing the public displays of oratory that we used to?

Speechless - Jay Nordlinger writes about the effect of the current round of Mideast brouhaha on American campuses. And the stories are simply insane. The reaction on some of our elite campuses in many cases is not only anti-Israel, but anti-Semitic.

This is what goes on on the major campuses?
posted by Mitch Berg 7/2/2002 06:35:34 AM

I Just Don't Get It - During the nineties, every other week in Time magazine there'd be a feature about the current doings of Hollywood moguls Barry Diller and Michael Ovitz. The articles were long and involved, and obviously took some extensive reportage. And to some extent, the tradition continues.

And the end result was, the average Time reader probably knew more about Barry Diller and Michael Ovitz than about the upcoming conflicts in the Balkans, certainly more than we did about teh goings-on in the Arab world.

It's a sign that someone is disconnected from life in America. Is it the big news media, or is it me?

Anyone?
posted by Mitch Berg 7/2/2002 06:27:44 AM

Paging Alec Baldwin - Yet another Hollywood condo-pink - this time it's Tom Cruise - decides America is worse than the alternatives.

Ever notice how many weasels are listing "corporate corruption" as one of America's big problems, as Cruise does in the article ? Hello, idiotic superstar or vapid pundit - they got caught! And every day brings news of a new comany being caught. In how many countries does this never happen?

Waiting on that earthquake...
posted by Mitch Berg 7/2/2002 06:21:17 AM

Monday, July 01, 2002

Faith In Government - A quarter of simulated weapons are getting by airport screeners, in the latest round of tests of the new federalized recruits.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/1/2002 11:00:39 AM

Into the Breach - One of the great stories of the Civil War is that of the First Minnesota Regiment, whose near-suicidal charge at the Battle of Gettysburg 139 years ago tomorrow may have saved the battle for the North, and potentially the entire war.

The new book on the subject is worth a look, as is the set of online excerpts, which will be running in the Strib all week.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/1/2002 09:15:26 AM

Patriotic Conflict - I've always been queasy about the Patriot Act - the law ushering in a raft of anti-terror provisions. On the one hand, as a military historian, I know that government can not run exactly the same in wartime as in peacetime. As a conservative, I know that you often know a thing most truly by that thing's enemies - and the Patriot Act's first enemies were the same sort of retro-sixties fossils that oppose EVERYthing pro-American.

And yet the libertarian in me thought that some aspects of the Act rounded up excessive power for the government, too.

Cities around the country are passing resolutions - and sometimes meatier laws - against the Act. Many of them are the usual suspects: condo-pinko la-la lands like Amherst, Boulder, Berkeley and Portland. Others are creeping every so close to the mainstream, like heavily-Arab Ann Arbor.

Somewhere between the Attorney General's seeming cavalierness and the ACLU's detached absolutism, perhaps. is the truth. For example, this rant from Dennis Miller:
"You have to admit phone sex has gotten a lot hotter in recent months. There's just something spicy about knowing that John Ashcroft might be
listening in. As for what many are calling racial profiling in the aftermath of September 11th, well, get ready to be pissed off, you ACLU-F**king-Morons, we're dealing with a massive threat and limited manpower, so, you want them to check everybody out equally? Sure, fine okay, but let's at least compromise and put the Swedish dwarf a little
further down the list than the Iraqi explosives expert carrying a Belgian passport with more eraser marks on it than Kid Rock's trig final."

posted by Mitch Berg 7/1/2002 09:06:23 AM

The SUV and We - In 1987, I bought a 1978 Jeep CJ7. It wasn't the best car I ever had - that'd be the Honda Accord I had next. But no car was ever more fun for me than that Jeep. Why?

This was before the term SUV existed. Nowadays, greens sniff at what the SUV implies about the US.

This guy has it figured out correctly, though.

posted by Mitch Berg 7/1/2002 08:53:07 AM

Shapes of Things to Come? - Our military's base on Qatar is growing rapidly, even as we draw down our presence in Saudi Arabia.

Qatar is in easy striking distance of Iraq - and its leadership is four square behind us.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/1/2002 08:36:39 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