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

Saturday, January 04, 2003

Wierd - Long day, plus stranger server bugs.

Hopefully back up and running shortly.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/4/2003 09:01:24 AM

Thursday, January 02, 2003

R.I.P. Joe Foss - Joe Foss, former governor of South Dakota, and before that US Marine fighter pilot and, for a while, America's leading fighter ace, died today at 87.

In 1943, flying from Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal Island, Foss shot down 26 Japanese aircraft in a matter of days.
Foss "spurred an entire nation into a resolve that we would win the second World War and make the world a safer place," [Current South Dakota governor Bill] Janklow said. "All the things that he accomplished pale in comparison to the fact that back in the deep dark days of the early '40s when America needed a hero, Joe Foss was there."
He was indeed - and his accomplishments kept rolling. He went on to govern South Dakota, lead the original American Football League, and was a past president of the National Rifle Association.

The passing of the World War II generation is a national tragedy, unavoidable as it is.

(Via Rachel Lucas and her History Project)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/2/2003 05:09:01 PM

Molnau - Governor-Elect Tim Pawlenty has appointed his Lieutenant-Governor-Elect, Carol Molnau, to lead the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

By having the lieutenant governor at the helm, the financially strapped state gets to pocket the transportation commissioner's annual salary of $108,000. Molnau, who will become the first woman to run MnDOT, will receive the lieutenant governor's salary — $78,197 per year.
"In my view it's time for the lieutenant governor to get to work. Without being unkind, it's not the most demanding job in the world," Pawlenty said.

Jesse Ventura's second fiddle, outgoing Lieutenant Governor...let me look this up...ah, yes, Mae Schunk, took umbrage to Pawlenty's remarks:
"We're not like a spare tire. A spare tire you put in a car and it hangs there until you need it," she said. The lieutenant governor is "like a backup quarterback. When you need them they are prepared, they're actively engaged, they're knowledgeable, they know the plays and they know what has to be accomplished if they can get out there."

Sort of like...a spare tire?

The appointment drew criticism from the usual suspects - the non-profit community and the Minnesota Left:
"We are concerned about the selection of Lt. Gov.-elect Carol Molnau as commissioner of MnDOT. In the past she has judged transit projects by ideology and politics," Lea Schuster, executive director of Transit for Livable Communities, said in a written statement.

"She's never been a fan of transit. I don't think the transit community found the strongest advocate in her appointment," said [former Republican In Name Only] Sen. Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar.
Pawlenty's three key issues were public safety, no new taxes, and easing the Metro's traffic congestion through road construction, a switch from the Ventura administration's fixation (inherited from the Metropolitan Council, the Twin Cities' un-elected planning-body-cum-government) with light rail. Molnau's appointment shows he's serious about the issue.

Not to say I entirely agree with Pawlenty's road-centric views - there's a very strong case to be made for commuter rail in and around the Twin Cities, using existing rails and right-of-way, and older rolling stock. According to some estimates, a genuine commuter rail line could actually break even or turn a profit - in the private-sector sense of the term! - if run under those conditions.

But that's not what Tim Penny, Jesse Ventura, and the Met Council want. They want light-rail - custom-built, brand-new, on freshly-purchased rights of way, on rails incompatible with any other rolling stock. And that means money - lots of it - and endless financial losses, to make what is in effect a statement to the world, rather than a transportation solution.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/2/2003 04:50:33 PM

Hate, Part IV - News that Bill Frist - the new Senate Majority leader and a cardiac surgeon in the real world - saved yet more lives in yet another accident (this is his third incident) brought up yet another shocking deluge of left-wing conspiracymongering on "Democratic Underground", according to "Right Wing News".
posted by Mitch Berg 1/2/2003 04:06:32 PM

Mail - I got this one today:
Mpls Star Tribune editorial board? [Today’s editorial - George W. Bush, A toast to his internationalist side].
They "toasted" him for doing what they've always wanted him to do - defer to the "international community". They fought him tooth and nail on the means he took getting there.
That you've been so immersed in nothing but extreme neo-con blather from every possible angle shows in your inability to even know what a liberal looks like, much less what their goals are.
So many possible answers to this:
I'm no "Neocon". Never have been. I'm a conservative. Or, to be perfectly, anally accurate, I'm a fiscal and social conservative, and a judicial and legal libertarian. Any questions?
I live in St. Paul. I most assuredly know what a liberal looks like.
My parents, many of my friends, most of my church, and many of my most admired people are liberals. We co-exist quite well, thank you! Can the writer (assuming he's reading this) say the opposite? How much of your circle is conservative? And how threatening do you find it?
But based on your writing you think it's anyone who doesn't look, speak and think exactly like you do.
As to "thinking like I do" - well, yes, it seems reasonable that liberals and I think differently.

As to "speaking" differently - is holding opposing views such a crime? Or was that a jape at my North Dakota accent?
The only reason you don't realize how small your world is is because there are so many of you - intellectually lazy, emotionally stunted, impressed (and driven) by money and proud of your collective numbers.
Let's look at that whole paragraph, point by point.

Is my world small? (What's with the assumption that conservatives wouldn't be, if they were only exposed to "the truth"?)? Hm. I speak or read five languages, I have travelled widely, I have spent half of my life as a liberal and half as a libertarian conservative. I've interviewed policymakers and hookers, athletes and brainiacs, thugs and flashes in the pan. I've learned ten musical instruments, beaten people with pool cues, and held my children when they were seconds old. I've taught myself how to do a job in which most people have Masters or PhDs. If my world is small - well, the view is amazing.

Am I intellectually lazy? I'll let the reedder jugde wether I em.

Am I emotionally stunted? That seems a big judgement to make based on reading an article on a blog.

Am I impressed (and driven) by money? Ten years ago, I and my family were far below the poverty line. Having money sucks less. White liberal guilt is lost on me.

Am I proud of my "collective numbers"? In Minnesota? Yes, I am. In the seventeen years I've lived here, Minnesota has swung from being solidly liberal - voting for Mondale and Dukakis, for Hubert's sake - to being a "toss-up" state by many national reckonings. This, we've done against a hostile media and an academic and administrative establishment that tries to nullfy us at every turn. Am I proud of whatever numbers we've been able to amass? Absolutely.

The writer concludes:
Just because you're articulate doesn't mean your not another parrot.
And just because I'm a conservative doesn't mean I am.

Although for some reason, I have a craving for saltines...
posted by Mitch Berg 1/2/2003 11:19:07 AM

New Project - Kos, of the Daily Kos, has started a new project, Polstate.com.

This project seeks to get bloggers of diverse political viewpoints from all fifty states (and overseas) to contribute local/regional political content.

Natch, I'm covering Minnesota, along with "Moderate Left" blogger Jeff Fecke.

The Political State Report rolled out yesterday, and should be an interesting experiment.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/2/2003 07:12:40 AM

Moderate Left - My roll of local blogs (I'm in Minnesota) grows again - with Jeff Fecke's list of regional political awards fro 2002. Some interesting stuff. But I have to comment on his "Biggest Loss in Minnesota Politics" category:
James Janos, a.k.a. Jesse Ventura. I'll be chatting about the Guv in a few days, but in a nutshell, he changed Minnesota politics--for about four years. Though he failed miserably to reach his potential, thanks to his unfortunate petulance, there's no question that he was a wake-up call to the DFL and Republican parties in this state. That the DFL refused to wake up is to their ongoing shame and electoral misery. The Body also made Minnesota politics fun.
In the same sense that hearing how you behaved while you were blind drunk at the New Years party is fun? Yes, he did!
After a few years of the bland, vaguely nice Tim Pawlenty, I think we're gonna miss the big lug--in theory, at least.
The left underestimates Pawlenty. He's not only a genuinely great guy - he is as good a speaker and as articulate a politician as any you'll find in this state.
Honorable Mention: Tim Penny. He was clearly the best candidate for Governor--something that Minnesota will realize when Pawlenty cuts the budget by 10% across the board without considering a tax increase.
Let's indeed hope Pawlenty has the balls to follow through on this. The budget cut could be the best thing ever to happen to Minnesota.
Let's hope his crushing defeat doesn't spell the end for the former U.S. Rep--and let's hope it doesn't make the DFL think that they had anything but a horriffic choice for Governor in Roger Moe.
I once admired Penny. That was before his headlong race for the left during the gubernatorial campaign. As for being the best candidate for governor - well, that's a matter of pespective, isn't it? Certainly better than Moe (or Loury, or Dutcher), but in the end, Penny was just another big-tax, big-spend, DFL-Lite politician.

Like Ventura, without the feather boa and the galloping ego.

Anyway - kudos to Jeff Fecke for covering Minnesota from his perspective.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/2/2003 07:11:16 AM

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

Media Wars - This article talks about one of my favorite topics - why the left not only can't win the "alternative" media war (on talk radio and the blogosphere), but can't even figure out why.

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/1/2003 11:30:45 PM

Murderapolis - Minneapolis got about an hour into the new year before
someone got murdered.
The murder happened in a neighborhood that residents are working tirelessly to clean up. Despite their efforts, the people that live there say drugs and prostitution are rampant again. Neighborhood activist Donna Ellringer says police arrest drug dealers around the clock, but she says the courts have been lenient and dealers are often back on the streets in days or less.

"All of a sudden the gangs and drugs come back. In the last three to four weeks, it's been out of control," Ellinger said

Police are still trying to determine if the murder was drug or gang-related. They say no suspects are in custody.
For those of you from outside Minnesota (and those of you in Minnesota who don't pay much attention to the Twin Cities' urban core) - the Phillips Neighborhood is a monument to the failure of fifty years of liberalism. The neighborhood - mostly old, solid homes built from the 1890s to the 1920s - was a respectable working class neighborhood until "Urban Renewal" and the federal government drove I-94 and I-35W into the heart of the neighborhood (their crossroads marks the northwest corner of the neighborhood now), gutting property values and beginning the immense middle-class flight from central Minneapolis that has still not abated.

Then, Minneapolis' socialistic landlord-control laws, and Minnesota's confiscatory rental-property taxes, gave the small landlord a choice - maintain a property properly and lose money hand over fist, or let it decay and cover their mortgage and tax payments.

And Minnesota's welfare system turned the inner city and its newly-undesirable property into warehouses for the poor - while the system's misplaced generosity and myopia imported more poor from around the country. They brought their drug trade and gangs with them...

...and here we are. Another poor schmuck dead in Phillips. The community again cowering in their distressed housing, the city's honest citizens disarmed by a patriarchal government, the liberal judicial system unable to impose order, much less justice, the police mistrusted by both the city's minorities (who feel singled out as well as unprotected) and the whites (who feel disempowered and unprotected, too).

I'm so utterly glad I live in St. Paul.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/1/2003 11:02:37 PM

Green Christmas - Due to a recent technicality in Minnesota election laws, the Green Party of Minnesota will maintain 'major party' status.
Ralph Nader put the Greens in the major-party league when he attracted 5 percent of the 2000 presidential vote in Minnesota and at least one vote in every county. Aside from sure spots on the ballot, it qualified Ken Pentel for $240,000 toward his gubernatorial campaign and brought lesser amounts to other Green candidates.

In the days after the 2002 election, many thought the Greens forfeited their special status because they failed to get at least 5 percent in any statewide race.

They were saved by a 2001 law change that left statute books with ambiguous language. It effectively gave them a pass for one election cycle.

Unless a Green Party presidential candidate meets the 5 percent threshold in 2004, however, it's back to square one. The race for the White House is the only contest that will appear on all Minnesota ballots in two years. Gordon said he's not sure who - if anyone from his party - would run for president.
Although I predicted that the GP would lose major-party status - and, by the "5% rule", I was right - I'm still frankly amazed by the disintegration of the Minnesota Green Party. The Independence Party I rightly flagged as a Ventura-driven phenomenon - but I figured the Greens had enough oomph among the Volvo-driving, terminally-sensitive PC caste to get 5% somewhere in the state.

Glad to see I was wrong.

Speaking of Volvo-driving, Terminally-Sensitive PC Caste - I was driving down Hamline Avenue in St. Paul yesterday, behind a woman in a late model Volvo sedan. Guess what kind of woman?

If you guessed fiftysomething, pudgy, earth-motherish, wearing a Peruvian alpaca knit cap and a VERY posh-looking coat, you may proceed to the next section of this posting. If you didn't, do - and then proceed.

Her bumperstickers included
"Regime Change Begins At Home"
"Re-Elect Gore in 2004"
"You Can Not Simultaneously Prepare for Peace and War
I need to print some of my own, I think:
Regime Change Begins Where the Government Kills Its Opponents
Get Over It - 2000 was The Law of the Land, Stupid
Preparing for Peace Without Being Able to Defend It is Worthless
Hm. That can be on next Chrismas's list...
posted by Mitch Berg 1/1/2003 04:18:39 PM

Conventionial Wisdom - North Carolina Senatory John Edwards seems more and more a shoe-in to run for president.

Now, I've heard three different, inevitably contradictory, versions of "conventional wisdom" on this:
Knowing that, should present conditions hold, running against Bush is a suicide mission, Edwards is really setting himself up for a Vice Presdidential run in '04, to set up name recognition for a run for the presidency for real in '08.
Edwards' run is analogous to Nixon's run in '60 against Kennedy - counting on at least building name recognition and a nationwide base, probably on the cheap - rather than spending like he'd have to to make a credible try at winning, he'd scale his effort more toward going nationwide and set up a credible campaign organization for '08.
If something seems too good to be true - or, by corollary, too bad to be true - it's probably not. Edwards is counting on some disaster to cut the knees out of under the Bush administration in time for the next election - either a military disaster, or a double-dip economic slump to turn the electorate's attention back toward the domestic matters that the Democrats still feel confidence about (whether justifiable or not).
Any ideas? I personally think #1 is the closest - Edwards has to know that no non-Democrat-activist outside of the Scrapple Belt knows anything about him, and it'd be nice to build the name recognition on someone else's dime.

Of course, I've been wrong before...
posted by Mitch Berg 1/1/2003 02:43:18 PM

Happy New Year! - I haven't spent New Years out of my house since...yeesh, probably 1994. New Years generally involves buying a bottle of sparkling apple cider, playing games and doing stuff with the kids until midnight, then running around the house banging pots (and occasionally shooting off illegal bottle rockets smuggled in from North Dakota the previous summer) at midnight.

Last night started off being no different. Took the kids skating at the Roseville Ice Arena, and got a thoroughly unexpected invite from a friend to a party at her house. New Years among adults (and their kids, of course) - unthinkable! And fun!

And most of the people at the party were in the wine business, so I even had champagne I actually enjoyed for the first time ever.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/1/2003 12:01:40 PM

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

Real Predictions - Why mess with the amateurs, when Austrialian uber-blogger Tim Blair has the real scoop on 2003?

My favorite
29th Liberals flock to a Minneapolis-area juice bar where a likeness of Paul Wellstone has appeared in a wheatgrass spill.
He thinks he's being funny.

Speaking of Oz - The latest ethnic pressure group may be my favorite.
JUST founded this month in a New York bar is the G'Day B'rith society, modelled after the Jewish B'Nai B'rith, and dedicated to stamping out vilification of Australians.
"Vilification of Australians? Criminy. Next, the Norwegians, I guess.

We can all celebrate Rosh Youbetcha together.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/31/2002 11:40:25 AM

Rangel's Angle - Representative Charles Rangel runs for the right on military policy.

Or does he?

Rangel has proposed "universal military service." This could mean anything from the old-fashioned "draft" - the onerous lottery we rid our nation of 30 years ago - or it could mean National Service, like in Switzerland, Israel and a few other countries, which some conservatives (including myself) have supported. And even for a few of the same stated reasons:
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, said such legislation could make members of Congress more reluctant to authorize military action.
That's one of the reasons I cited in the article I link above. I used to wonder - would we have been as quick to jump into Haiti and Kosovo if Chelsea Clinton were serving as a reservist in a Military Police company? If the children of the Beltway elite were serving in the military - as well as some of the elites themselves (reserve service in Switzerland and Israel ends at age 50 - 55 for officers), how would it affect our military policy?

But what's Rangel's real agenda?
"I'm going to introduce legislation to have universal military service to let everyone have an opportunity to defend the free world against the threats coming to us," Rangel said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"I'm talking about mandatory service."

The Korean War veteran has accused the Bush administration and some fellow lawmakers of being too willing to go to war with Iraq.

"When you talk about a war, you're talking about ground troops, you're talking about enlisted people, and they don't come from the kids and members of Congress," he said.

"I think, if we went home and found out that there were families concerned about their kids going off to war, there would be more cautiousness and a more willingness to work with the international community than to say, 'Our way or the highway.' "

Rangel did not provide specifics of his proposal.
Indeed, he didn't.

Sergeant Stryker has an excellent piece on the subject.

Several points come to mind:

Militarily - especially when fighting overseas - a professional, volunteer military IS a better thing.
The "Draft" - the "lottery" system we had - IS onerous.
However, if used properly, National Service - as in Switzerland or Israel - doesn't have to be an onerous burden. It's a duty of citizenship - sort of like paying taxes and serving on juries. It's like . It also doesn't make the military particularly less competent, if applied correctly - Israel's military does generally OK. For providing troops for domestic defense, disaster relief and supporting operations abroad (as opposed to sending masses of draftees overseas), it's not necessarily a bad thing, IF applied properly.
But we all know that's not Rangel's angle. It's hard to know what he wants, except to find some backdoor way to stymie the administration - which has been the force propelling his career for the past two years.
The idea itself gets a C - it does nothing for the defense of our country, but in other democracies can be shown to have been a good thing. The motivations get a D - he's sniping at the President, even if it's for motivations even a lapsed Libertarian like me can grudgingly accept. Rangel's political acumen? It's an F. As Instapundit notes, I doubt it'll get a lot of traction. Our military ain't broke.

Hm. Maybe that's what Rangel's after?

By the way - in the world's most successful "Universal Service" systems, like Switzerland, Israel and Norway, people serve for a period in the army (less than a year in Switzerland, a few years in Israel), and then in the reserves until age 50. They also keep their military firearms and ammunition at home, in case they're mobilized. That surely can't be what gun control advocate Rangel wants...

posted by Mitch Berg 12/31/2002 08:26:47 AM

Monday, December 30, 2002

Brown Knows - When Tina Brown isn't editing vapid lifestyle magazines, she writes some excellent stuff, like this piece on how New Yorkers are missing that post-9/11 feeling:
For New Yorkers, 2002 was one long morning after. We all just want to log off and slink away with a huge pile of DVDs and a mug of hot chocolate. After 9/11 we expected a paradigm shift, the discovery of what we really wanted for our children, our country, ourselves...

It was also, I suspect, the attempt to rekindle how we felt in the first months after the terrorist attacks. New Yorkers secretly miss the people they became at that time, elevated by a new connectedness and the exhilarating absence of materialistic trivia. Beneath the city’s pace for a while there was a new undertow of meaning.
It's that "rekindling feeling" bit I wonder about. Bear with me here:

In "Modern Times - a History of the World from the Twenties through the Eighties" - Paul Johnson notes about the beginning of the First World War that
contrary to popular myth, the young people of Europe were the ones most eager to get into the war,
This eagerness was borne of a desire to participate in something "bigger" than the workaday lives they (Europe's youth) saw stretching in front of them, and
the older generation - many of whom remembered the Boer or Franco-Prussian wars - were much more wary of the conflict that ensued.
Yes, we have ample reason to hit back at terror. AND invade Iraq, for that matter. But I wonder if America isn't also looking for something "bigger" than the pretty normal, pretty comfy life we have?

It's a two-edged sword, if so.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 08:53:17 AM

Mamet On Israel - Playwrite David Mamet - who describes himself as an "aging diaspora Jew" - writes this excellent piece in "Forward" on life as a Jew, outside looking in at Israel.
There, before me, was a broken-down Volvo of old, the vehicle of my brethren, the congenitally liberal. It was festooned, as are its kind, with every sort of correct exhortation: "Save James Bay," "Honor Diversity" and so on. A most interesting bumper sticker read: "Israel Out of the Settlements." Now this is a legitimate expression of free speech. Israel has been involved, as we know, in a rather protracted real estate dispute with several hundred million of its neighbors. This legitimate political expression, however, had all its "S"s transformed into dollar signs. Here we have, one would have supposed, a civilized person (one would assume that one could reason with the owner of a Volvo) sporting a slogan which could best be translated as "Hook-nosed Jews Die."
It's been interesting, watching the little scraps of endemic anti-semitism creeping out from the left this past two years. It continually begs the question - why do Jews keep voting Democrat?

Mamet did pull one clinker:
My very airplane book, my refuge on the endless flight to Israel, is Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears," in which I find the major plot point, the misplacement, by Israel, of an atom bomb. As per Mr. Clancy, in this otherwise ripping yarn, the world is going to end because these lazy or distracted Mockies have committed a blunder no civilized folk would make.
I have to wonder if Mamet actually read the book - the bomb was hardly "misplaced". The scene where the bomb is accidentally put on a plane that is shot down, and the bomb buried underground in the Golan, reads like an utterly ecumenical SNAFU. I can think of few authors who admire Israel as effusively as does Clancy.

Mamet again:
It is — I cannot say "refreshing" — a relief to trade a low-level umbrage at anti-Israeli tripe for the reality of a country at war. Israel, at war, looks very much like Israel at peace. Life, as the phrase has it, goes on.
It's a great article, and well worth a read.

(via Andrew Sullivan)
posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 08:24:08 AM

What Would Muhammad Drive? - The cartoonist has apparently recieved death threats for this one.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 12:58:18 AM

Recovering Liberal - As someone who abandoned liberalism like a cheap date who'd been binging on Old Style beer and gas-station frozen burritos...

...Er, wait. That image is just too much.

Anyway - I love this blog, by a fellow recovering liberal, called, oddly enough, Recovering Liberal. It's by Kathy Shaidle, a Canadian who in addition to being an ex-liberal, is also behind "Relapsed Catholic", which is interesting stuff even if you're a non-lapsed Presbyterian...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 12:55:32 AM

All These Years... - of websurfing...

...And I haven't yet discovered this?
posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 12:49:56 AM

All About Betty - The Strib logs in with this short piece about the voting record of my "representative", (which I put in quotes because she represents me in no way), the Fourth District's Betty McCollum.

She makes Nancy Pelosi look pretty darned moderate.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 12:24:25 AM

Ventura Backs Data Collection - In perhaps a final bit of proof that Ventura was the DFL-iest "populist" we've ever elected, our soon-to-be-ex governor okayed the biggest data collection act in Minnesota history.

The Strib article says:
Some groups consider the plan an attack on privacy, but health officials say sensitive details would be encrypted to protect confidentiality.
Note the artful dodge; "Encryption" does indeed protect data - from outsiders. But outsiders aren't the ones that "some groups" are worried about! It's the state itself that is the problem, here - as they collect private data to help them make "policy" decisions.

The Strib goes on to say:
The department sees the database as a tool in tracking health-care quality around Minnesota and a way to spot troubling trends early. Other states have similar systems already in place.

The medical database would include everything from who has a stroke, an abortion or a surgery to who takes Prozac and other prescription drugs.
So the state can figure out who is doing what, with what - and feed that data into the maw of the state's regulatory machine.

The Strib just doesn't get it.

posted by Mitch Berg 12/30/2002 12:20:30 AM

Sunday, December 29, 2002

Declining Standards Alert - Los Agneles Magazine is apparently ready to call Barbra Streisand's website it's Website of the Month.

For teaching us all how to spell Gephardt, one presumes.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 12:39:20 PM

Random Thought - Re-reading my screed on the death of Joe Strummer from earlier this week, something occurred to me:
My dad is probably a Scoop-Jackson-ish sorta-liberal.
My mom is a far-left liberal.
My favorite musical artists - Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer, Joe Grushecky - are all liberals to one degree or another
Some of my favorite authors - Orwell et al - are liberals (and others are classical liberals, like Tolstoii and Dostoyevskii)
The non-family, non-media/entertainment figure that had the biggest impact on my pre-college life - Reverend Bill King - was so far to the left, he went on to minister at one of those lefty wackjob Presbyterian churches in lefty wackjob Madison that served as "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants from Central America, some of whom were most likely fugitive terrorists
One of my favorite college professors, Dr. Stan Slade, did Rev. King one better, leaving his teaching position to serve as a missionary in Nicaragua (he was a strong proponent of liberation theology) during the height of the Sandinista regime
And yet, each of these people played a key role in making me a better, more thoughtful conservative. Vastly more so than Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly ever could.

This must be what they call a Larry King Moment...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 12:35:32 PM

Jesse "The Ex" Ventura - The Pioneer Press' Jim Ragsdale is one of the Twin Cities' best political reporters.

And this piece in the PiPress, on the unravelling of the Ventura administration, is a great one.

And I like this part, especially because it's what I've been saying for the last year about Ventura and the "Independence" party:
Ventura supporter Mark Jumer, a 42-year-old meat cutter, was quoted four years ago exulting about Ventura's victory.

Not anymore.

Ventura's moon-lighting for pay didn't bother him. Neither did the governor's controversial comments — Jumer likes someone who tells it straight. What irked him was Ventura's inability to work with the system and with the media, and to be the moderating force government needs.

Jumer said he believes Ventura blew a "perfect opportunity" to build consensus from the center. He called Ventura's frequent outbursts evidence that he couldn't cope with the give-and-take. He and others fear the idea of a third-party renaissance is now a national joke, courtesy of Jesse Ventura.

"I really thought it was going to be the start of a movement," Jumer said. "I think his first two years, he did OK. Then in his last two years, it just got to be almost like a three-ring circus. I really thought he was going to be able to bring people together. I believe now that he chased people away."

Jumer voted for Republican Pawlenty this time, as did most of Jesse Country. The result suggests Ventura was a one-time anomaly, a product of his own fame and the generosity of voters during a prosperous economy. But he couldn't transfer that popularity to the candidate who most agreed with him — Tim Penny, who had a dismal showing in most of Ventura's strongholds.
Ventura was not swept into office on a wave of admiration for wonks!

Here's another quote:
The last stop on Ventura's February 2000 bus tour was a tree-shaded municipal office building off Interstate 94 near St. Cloud. Then it housed the newly incorporated "City of Ventura," a name town leaders chose to draw attention to their boundary dispute with neighboring St. Cloud.

Ventura went there to promote his plan for a one-house Legislature, and the "City of Ventura" became a symbol of the need for legislative reform. A House-Senate conference committee had scuttled a negotiated solution of the boundary dispute, and Ventura joined city officials in saying those shenanigans would end in a single-house Legislature.

Today, Ventura's dream of a one-house Legislature remains on the shelf, never even advancing to a floor vote. And the "City of Ventura" reverted to being the "City of St. Augusta" in an overwhelming public referendum. Mayor Ollie Mondloch, a 1998 Ventura voter, said the German-Catholic community never forgave Ventura for calling organized religion "a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people" in a 1999 Playboy magazine article.

"He was intolerant about people questioning him … that's not a trait you can go far with," said Mondloch.
Read the article - the insider stuff is amazing, and tends to confirm the views of a few media insiders of my acquaintance - who think Ventura was one of the most arrogant, stuck-on-self people in all of Minnesota politics (or, leaving aside Keillor, the media as well).

So these last four years have been interesting - in the same sense that car wrecks and brawls at hockey games are "interesting", too.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 11:06:16 AM

Predictions - The fabulous Bill Quick does some fact-checking of the National Review staff's predictions...for 2002.

So we see the danger of trying to predict things. Still - no guts, no glory.

I'll do mine. I'll make them nice and general - to avoid the wrath of Quick next year.
Iraq will fall. Probably in February.
There will be a Tienanmen-square-style incident in Iran. The mullahcracy will stand - but the cracks will widen.
The "Clone" will be found to be a sham. This time.
The nattering classes that are currently quibbling about Bush's sitzkrieg-induced dip in popularity will be eating their words, as the post-Iraq popularity bump will push him back into the seventies.
Evidence will tend to show Bin Laden is dead, again. Still.
Ditto Francisco Franco
Send me your predictions - why should I have all the fun?

posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 10:44:06 AM

Cusacked - I've always liked John Cusack. He's had probably the best percentage of good-movies-to-clinkers of any actor I can personally think of. Better Off Dead was the best teensploitation film of the eightiesand the best John Hughes parody ever. Say Anything, Grifters, Hi Fidelity, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil...he's no slouch in the movie department. Less so than most actors, anyway.

But this, from Newsmax, kinda makes Winona Ryder look good:
The New York Post recently reported that the actor is fond of a practice he calls "celebrity looting." In an interview with Black Book magazine, he explained what the activity entails.

Cusack pointed out a clothing store to the interviewer and said, "We did celebrity looting there. … They asked me to come over, patronize the store, pick up some stuff. So I took all my friends over, and we went straight for the $8,000 rack of leather coats and took a bunch. The managers, they get all nervous and twitchy. They freak. But you just look at 'em really hard and walk out. That's celebrity looting."
Needless to say, Cusack is a liberal - but his name is being bruited about as a potential far-left candidate:
The actor, who is actually being touted by the left as a possible presidential candidate, told Details magazine last year what he thinks of President Bush. He labeled him a hypocrite who is going to "do a lot of damage."

"Bush means Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and all these ... crypto-fascists are gonna get in and start carving up the pie and handing in all their markers to the Republican Party that's been itching to get back into power," Cusack said.

Although bear in mind this piece was written two weeks before the November election.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 10:39:37 AM

The American Empire - One of the best things the late Stephen Ambrose ever wrote was toward the tail end of "Citizen Soldiers". I'll paraphrase it: throughout history, a squad of foreign soldiers was something to fear. The Roman legionaire, the Cromwellian levy, the Napoleonic cannon-fodder, the Japanese soldier or German soldat or Russian draftee from the steppe was usually nineteen or so, and in conquering his hated foe, usually developed a keen sense of revenge. They commandeered goods, took the winter's food supply, raped the women, burned the houses for a laugh.

And yet at the end of World War II, Germany and Japan and Italy learned to see the squads of nineteen year old GIs (and British "Tommies") as something different. The same band of olive-drab snuffies that had scaled the cliffs and blasted their own nations' übermen out of their concrete bunkers at Omaha Beach, or learned to stalk the jungles to kill the samurai in their lairs, came in as conquerors - and gave out candy, and kept the peace, and rebuilt the conquered nations in their own images, and gave them the power to be what they'd never been. Like us. For the first time in history, a squad of nineteen year old kids with guns was not a force for malevolence.

Bill Whittle weighs in with an excellent essay that extends this idea. It's long, but worth the read.

(via Rachel Lucas)
posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 09:46:49 AM

Aaagh - Fraters Libertas reports the impending demise of Sherlock's Home. An authentic Brit brewpub, it was one of the few - and most profound - joys in the bleak southwest suburban bar 'n chow scene, one of the precious few non-chain places to be found west of France Avenue, and one of the first and finest of the bazillions of brew pubs that have sprung up in the last fifteen years.

I may have to try to sneak over there...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/29/2002 08:52:16 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