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

Saturday, January 25, 2003

Last Weekend - More from last week's pro-dictatorship demonstrations, this week from Baltimore. It's a photo series. And it's pretty sickening.

Indymedia is a site that publicizes left-wing, pro-dictatorship, pro-genocide activities around the country.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/25/2003 04:32:40 PM

Shocking - This story from Powerline nauseates me.

An Iraqi man, clutching files to his chest, jumped into a van full of UN "weapons inspectors" today. As the "inspectors" watched and the man begged for help, Iraqi security pulled him from the van and dragged him away to an uncertain - but probably dismal - fate.

Powerline had this to say:
CNN adds that the man appeared "agitated and frightened," and yelled "save me, save me" as he jumped into the U.N. vehicle. CNN also describes the U.N. "inspector" who, "watched from the passenger seat, unfazed" as the Iraqi guards dragged the man out of the vehicle. So now we'll never know whether the man was a nut or someone with valuable information to offer. The U.N. had no interest whatever in finding out what he had to say. And now any other Iraqis who might be thinking of approaching U.N. "inspectors" with information that might interfere with the U.N.'s pro-Saddam agenda will know better.
Some of the current analysis posits that the current "weapons inspection" fiasco will lead to the eventual irrelevance of the UN. Yesterday, it was a wonky, procedural point.

Today, it's written in blood.

UPDATE: Instapundit's also on the story:
I guess the U.N. wouldn't want to give would-be Iraqi defectors the idea that doing so might be, you know, safe. The guy had a notebook. I wonder what was in it?

I suppose he could be just a common garden-variety nut, but he doesn't look like one in the picture, and we'll certainly never know. But the message was undoubtedly received by any potential defectors: approach us, and we'll hand you over.

Can we charge the inspectors with "material breach?"
I believe the charge we want is "aiding and abetting".

posted by Mitch Berg 1/25/2003 12:42:23 PM

Solidifying Irrelevance - The relatively conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine talks about the summit between Germany and France - AKA the "Axis of Weasel", according to some:
The events in Versailles, planned to be largely ceremonial in nature, took on deeper significance when Schröder and Chirac issued a joint statement against military action against Iraq without the backing of the UN. It prompted U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to comment acidly that he could see the “old Europe“ in the attitude of Germany and France.
During the Versailles ceremonies, Schröder and Chirac also listed numerous areas of deepening cooperation, to the point of allowing their citizens to have dual Franco-German nationality. They pledged to cooperate more closely in policy areas as diverse as the family, military and foreign affairs. They also said they wanted to align their respective national positions in international organizations. The statement came as France chairs the UN Security Council; Germany will take over for the first time next month.
All well and good - after a couple hundred years of Franco German warfare, it's good to see them TRYING to get along.

But while their systems are still dominated by the social-democrat/Green coalitions that led them to their current state - economic stagnation and thrall to the bureaucratic EU - it's all window-dressing.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/25/2003 08:01:54 AM

Friday, January 24, 2003

Sitzkrieg - The Democrats that aren't kvetching about going to war, are busy kvetching about how long it's taking Bush to get the war underway.

As is frequently the case when talking about defense issues, Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless has the most spot-on analysis I've seen on the blogophere - and, ergo, in the media period:
For instance, many have wondered why it was that it's taken so long to prepare for war. Likely it will be years before we truly find out, but among other things it appears that there were certain logistical necessities which couldn't be prepared before now. For instance, more than a year ago it became clear that we couldn't rely on the Saudis, and that meant we couldn't depend on using the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia. It wasn't just that the runways would not be available to us for airstrikes; it was that our regional military command center was located there. Starting about a year ago, we picked up and moved, and built up the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar into an alternative command center. That only became operational in December, and General Franks and his staff have spent the last month shaking it out and making sure everything works correctly.

Another problem was that we had run through a substantial percentage (probably more than half) of our stockpile of precision guided munitions in Afghanistan, and we were not producing them at a wartime rate. It takes a long time to ramp up production of this kind of thing, because the manufacturing pipeline is extremely long for modern high-tech weapons. And even after the higher rate finally emerged from the back end of the pipe, it was necessary to wait for our stockpiles to build back up. But that's happened now, and we again have a lot of JDAMs and Tomahawks and the rate of production is much higher now.

And though we are capable of fighting nearly anywhere, in almost any kind of conditions, there are some which are better than others and favor us more. It turns out that February and March are the best months in which to fight a war in that region because of the weather and the climate (as Donald Sensing pointed out last August). It's no accident that the last Gulf war ground action was also at this time of year.

The point is that what looks from the outside like dithering and stalling may simply represent unglamorous but critical hidden progress.

There probably were other issues involved, some of which we may not learn about for decades. If we'd ignored those things and gone in earlier, we certainly could have won – but it might have been an extremely ugly victory, one which was more politically damaging than politically useful. Remember that the point of war is to advance your political goal; you don't fight wars just because you're pissed at someone. (Not if you're intelligent, you don't.)
Read the whole piece.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/24/2003 08:52:59 PM

RIP Mauldin - Very sad to see one of the great personalities of the World War 2 generation, Bill Mauldin, passed away yesterday at 81.

He'll be remembered.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/24/2003 05:48:12 PM

Useless Idiots - Steven Schwartz on the real faces behind last weekend's pro-dictatorship protests. :
The despicable record of WWP [the World Workers Party] in promoting Stalinist and fascist dictators is old news. WWP, the patron of International A.N.S.W.E.R., is on record supporting:

* The pitiless massacre of Chinese protestors by the armed forces in Tiananmen in 1989. WWP states, "troops were issued arms… after some students took some soldiers hostage. On June 4, [1989], the demonstration changed from a peaceful protest to violent attacks on the soldiers… events were a battle – not a massacre." Everybody in the world knows this is a disgusting lie.

* The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, among whose defenders WWP are doubtless the most fawning. Their newspaper, also titled Workers World, wrote gleefully, in 2001, "more and more countries had begun individually breaking the ban on flights and other sanctions against Iraq." Right: countries with an equally bad or worse record, like Yugoslavia, which supply Iraq with illegal chemical, biological, and other weapons.

*The evil regime of crazed North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. WWP hack Deidre Griswold, who has been shoveling this manure for some 35 years, recently wrote, from the Communist hell itself, "People here in the socialist north of Korea are well aware of U.S. President George W. Bush's remarks branding their country as part of an ‘Axis of Evil.’ It has in no way dampened their ardor for their independent socialist system… Koreans today are celebrating… the continuity of leadership represented by unity around Kim Jong Il, who is pledged to follow the course of national independence and socialist construction charted by Kim Il Sung… the North Korean socialist system, which has kept it from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world." No mention here of the numerous individuals and families that have risked their lives and those of their relatives to escape the reality of North Korean socialism, or of North Korean international weapons sales, kidnapping of foreign nationals, terrorist attacks, or other details.

*In one of its most disgusting, and continuous, displays of admiration for genocidal fascists, WWP, the leaders of International A.N.S.W.E.R. are prominent defenders of indicted Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. When the trial of Milosevic began last year at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands. The International Action Center (IAC), predecessor of International A.N.S.W.E.R, "sent a delegation to take part in activities showing solidarity with the defendant and opposing the ‘trial’ as a NATO frame up." They declared, "Washington and its NATO allies hopes (sic) to pin the guilt for the 10 years of civil war in the Balkans on the Yugoslav leader." Who in the world, aside from fevered extremists, believes this swill? WWP has also published expensive volumes defending Milosevic.
We conservatives occasionally give in to hyperbole, calling the likes of John Bonior, Maxine Waters and their ilk "America Last"ers. Well, it's true - and in a way, they are very corrosive influences.

But the organizers of last weekend's demonsrations were worse - people who are immersed in genuine hatred of America, of constitutional liberty, of Western Civilization and its tradition of individualism.

As the "Anti-War" movement continues, look for the major media to continue to ignore the story behind the story.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/24/2003 04:51:00 PM

Flashback - So I filled in for Bob Davis last night on KSTP.

Now bear in mind, doing talk radio was in many ways the first big love of my life. A very dysfunctional love, of course - radio is an industry that goes through boyfriends faster than Cher or Julia Roberts. And it was a love that took me a few years to get over.

And I guess the best result you can get from a failed relationship is that you say friends. So hopefully talk radio and I can get along, get together, have a few drinks and a laugh or two from now on.

The evening was an extended series of flashbacks. I was on right after Tom Mischke, who I remember from long before he became the king of stream-of-consciousness radio. He used to call in to the old Don Vogel Show (his '85-'87 incarnation) with these anonymous, incredibly hilarious bits - and I was the first person who figured out who he was (his brother edited the newspaper I freelanced for, and he dropped the dime inadvertently. I sat on the secret for the next year or so).

A wierder flashback - a phone call from überblogger James Lileks. He's a household name on the blogosphere today - but I remember him calling into my old weekend graveyard-shift conservative talk show, arguing politics (he was a liberal then - and no less articulate verbally than in writing, then or now), back when he was working on his first novel. And as we argued about was the better expat North Dakotan ("Hah! I pour the ice tray down my pants, rub rubbing alcohol all over my body and THEN go running in the snow!". "HAH! Pants are for pansies!"), it was all I could do not to break up laughing on the air. God, it was a blast.

Stranger still, it's led to some mutual flashbacks - in today's Bleat, he reminisces about the whole scene we were in back in '87; our mutual pal, ex-hippie-turned-bodybuilding-talk-host Geoff Charles (whose show I produced), and even the lead singer of classic Twin Cities cult punk band The Clams (who used to be indistinguishable from Chrissie Hynde, and now has three kids at the same daycare as Lileks' Gnat).

And just like back in 1986, when I'd get lost in my harangues and the arguments and the fun of it all, two hours passed like it was a fast half hour. I talked too fast - in radio, you need to talk slow, and when you think you're going too slow, slow down some more) and jumbled some points and stammered a bit, but Kodiak the producer didn't call security, so it couldn't have been all bad.

When I finished my program on March 29, 1987, I had no idea it was going to be the last one I'd do, at least until I changed careers twice, got married, had two kids, got divorced. It felt like a big bloody stump in my life for years (although I got over it eventually).

And while it may well be last night was the last talk show I'll ever do, this time it's OK, one way or the other. It was fun, it was enlightening, it was a great rail dragster ride down memory lane in many ways.

Talk radio and I? We're just good friends.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/24/2003 10:59:11 AM

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Back To The Future- Some of you have amazed me by actually remembering what I did in my earlier life - a fact that never ceases to astound me.

I started in radio when I was 16 years old, at KEYJ in Jamestown, ND. After working for six years in North Dakota, I turned up (through circumstances that would make a very long post by themselves) at age 22 working at KSTP-AM in St. Paul. I started as an intern on the Don Vogel show, on the late Vogel's first hitch at KSTP. From there, I became a producer/engineer/sidekick, and then got a shot at doing my own show, "The Mitch Berg Show", on the weekend graveyard shift. The show was a lot of things; a weekly car crash, the biggest ego boost I'd ever had (people called, to talk politics with me!) and, although I'd only been a right-winger for maybe three years, it was conservative.

Now, this was long before "talk radio" and "conservative" became synonyms, a good two years before Rush Limbaugh left Sacramento to go nationwide. And it was the most fun I'd ever had. I could have stayed there, making $12K a year and doing comedy bits with Vogel and kibitzing about politics with the bar rush crowd forever.

But life moved on. Most of the staff at KSTP got fired one day; that was how Hubbard Broadcasting used to do business, although you'd never know it from the way most of KSTP's current staff has been working at their jobs for over a decade, now. I went on to other stations - KDWB, WDGY, even KFAI for a while. But it was never the same. And eventually radio just stopped being fun, and then stopped paying the bills. So I moved on. I got over it. I didn't want that any more.

Last fall - fifteen years, two careers, a marriage and divorce, two kids and a lot of life later, the old bug hit me. I think I was listening to some fill-in host, and thought "Criminy - even I was better than that". I called KSTP last fall, and asked if they ever, ever needed a fill-in talk show host, to give me a call.

Four months later, they did. I'm filling in for Bob Davis tonight. 10-midnight central, on AM1500.

It'll be interesting - either on its own terms, or in that "watching crashes at the NASCAR race" kind of way, but interesting in any case.

It'll be the first talk show I've done in almost 16 years. It could very well be the last I ever do. But it's interesting - while I never really liked the radio industry, and grew to really detest a lot of people in the business and the conditions that make them what they turn into (I'm talking top40 people, here), there's a rush to being on the air that is like nothing else - better than bungee jumping, better than driving really fast, or biking down a really long hill or busting off a magazine from a 1928 Thompson...you get the picture.

So tune in. However it turns out, it should be quite the event. I'll blog about it tomorrow.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/23/2003 08:04:10 AM

Super-Size Rejection - The McDonald's suit has been tossed.
Although he dismissed the suit, Judge Robert Sweet granted the plaintiffs the option of filing an amended complaint within 30 days addressing the problems that Sweet found in the plaintiffs' original arguments.

Sweet said some of the arguments could be compelling if addressed in more depth, including the allegation that the processing of McDonald's food makes it more dangerous than a customer would have reason to expect.

"If plaintiffs were able to flesh out this argument in an amended complaint, it may establish that the dangers of McDonald's products were not commonly well known and thus that McDonald's had a duty towards its customers," Sweet wrote.

In the current suit, he said, no such hidden dangers are shown.
Exactly.

There are grounds for suing people, and companies, for legitimate damages. That's why we have a civil court system! But as the judge quite rightly pointed out, this suit was based on none of those grounds.
"Where should the line be drawn between an individual's own responsibility to take care of herself and society's responsibility to ensure others shield her? The complaint fails to allege the McDonald's products consumed by the plaintiffs were dangerous in any way other than that which was open and obvious to a reasonable consumer," Sweet said in his ruling.
This is a very good thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/23/2003 07:28:37 AM

DFL Regroups - The DFL is in the process of trying to regroup from the fall elections, according to this morning' s Strib:
No leader of any group is yet claiming that there is consensus on what DFLers should do in 2004 and beyond. They have a bit of a breather because there is no Senate or governor's race until 2006.

Some DFLers are arguing that 2002 was largely a fluke caused by an extraordinary tragedy and an unforeseen aftermath, a controversial memorial for Wellstone that created a backlash against the party, in Minnesota and nationally.

Others argue that DFLers need to get more aggressively liberal and anti-establishment than ever and that the state's most successful DFLers have been Wellstone and Attorney General Mike Hatch, both noted for their advocacy for workers and consumers and their antagonism toward corporate wrongdoing and wealthy interests.

Still others see a gradual but steady change in the state electorate and favor a turn toward more centrist themes, like those favored by former President Bill Clinton.
So which route do you suppose they'll take?

Here's a hint - the article goes to great depth talking about the impact of Wellstone - both his political legacy and the effect of the plane crash on the elections. The simple fact that Jeff Blodgett is the man leading the process should tell you something; led by the sympathy/sentimentality vote, the Wellstone wing of the party - ultraorthadox, fundamentalist liberalism - will prevail.

And given the demographic shifts of the past few years, the DFL's fortunes will continue to slide.

My predictions are usually famously wrong - but I have a good feeling about this one.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/23/2003 06:43:45 AM

Why We Fight - for France and Germany - I was sitting in a local bookstore last night, talking politics with a small group of other people. Most of them were of the Volvo-Driving Perpetually Concerned class. One of them said "Well, we can't go to war - it'd alienate our allies".

Words failed me at the moment - or maybe it was tact. I didn't want to pick a fight at a bookstore when the point of the evening wasn't talking about world events.

Beyond the straight Ann Coulter line - "Who cares about our so-called 'allies'?" - though, a larger point started to form.

France and Germany "oppose" this war only to the point of having to get involved.

Andrew Sullivan expands on this point: The economic fruits of this war affect them, if anything, more than they do the United States - they are more dependent on middle eastern oil, and on having a reliable supply.
So once again, it's the English-speaking peoples versus the despots. And there's a reason for this. Terrorism is a far greater threat to countries founded on liberty. Terror's ability to cripple free societies, their travel and communications, their limited government, their cherished personal liberties, is felt far more keenly in the English-speaking world. That's why the civil liberties enthusiasts on the right and left are both right and wrong. Right to defend what they defend. Wrong to think that John Ashcroft is a greater threat in this respect than al Qaeda.

Statist and dirigist societies, on the other hand, with freedom less of a priority than among their liberal, English-speaking allies, cope with terrorists by ratcheting up police powers, making all sorts of concessions to the enemy, and muddling through. It's not so big a threat to their customary way of operating. Ditto with foreign threats. For most of the last century, France responded to external pressure in classic Gallic fashion: superficial remarmament, diplomatic ballet, appeasement, and, if necessary, tactical surrender or accommodation. And since the last war, Germany has placed superficial peace above all other priorities - whether defeating terror or accommodating Communism. When you don't have a deep tradition of internal freedom or inviolate national sovereignty, and when the external threat doesn't appear to be imminent, this kind of society instinctually avoids war. That's especially the case now. It's clearly the hope of France and Germany that the English speaking powers will bear the brunt of Islamist terrorism. By ducking out of the fight, they think they can avoid trouble once again, see the U.S. and the U.K. damaged, and make what best they can of the aftermath.
It's classical Macchiavellianism - let your opponents bleed themselves white. It saves you the trouble of having to defeat them yourself.

It's almost like Judo - letting your opponent use his strength against himself. If it works, that is.

Sullivan his his finger on it again, in an earlier post on the same topic:
So let's recap: vast gaps in his declaration to the U.N., discovered plans for a nuclear capacity, chemical warheads found that are unaccounted for, no real interviewing of scientists by U.N. officials. But the French are just pleased as punch. Do they have any proposals to make such inspections actually work? A vast increase in the number of inspectors, perhaps? Nope. Do they intend to support the military pressure on Saddam with their own troops? Nope. Germany has specifically disavowed such a course of action - ever. I'm left with the impression that they don't want to do anything serious, but they don't want anyone else to do anything serious either. Paris and Berlin know full well that the chances of the inspectors actually finding what Saddam has spent so much effort concealing is next to zero. And they also know that by delaying the potential war until the autumn, they will help keep the U.S. economy depressed (investment being crippled by uncertainty) and help the growing appeasement movement gain more strength. By then, war will become an even greater political risk for London and Washington, which is, of course, part of the Europeans' plan. Schroder and Chirac want regime change - in Washington and London, not Baghdad. And they are using every ounce of their diplomatic influence to achieve that. You see? They can get off their butts now and again, if they need to. The time is surely coming, alas, when the U.S. and the U.K. will have to acknowledge that these European powers are now de facto allies of Saddam. Because they sure as hell aren't ours.
These are the people that spawled Macchiavelli, that invented Realpolitik, that managed to gain control of much of the world even though they had a tiny fraction of the world's population. Playing enemies against each other is part of the job.

And "enemies", in this case, is exactly how we're seen, in the larger sense. We need to keep that in mind.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/23/2003 06:33:47 AM

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

No Appeasement for Oil! - Blogger Mike Campbell calls it right: the drive to war isn't about oil. The drive to appease - especially on the part of the French - is:
It seems like France will do anything to secure its Iraqi oil contracts. Relishing in its anachronistic role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, France is threatening to veto allied military action to disarm the Iraqi dictator. Said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, "If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end. Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process.

The United Nations, he said, should stay "on the path of cooperation. The other choice is to move forward out of impatience over a situation in Iraq to move towards military intervention. We believe that today nothing justifies envisaging military action."
The French would trade long-term danger for short-term security of their oil supply - in the hope that "something" will mitigate the danger before it's really, er, dangerous.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/22/2003 05:49:33 PM

The Polls - Powerline analyzes the latest round of polls. You know - the ones the Democrats are crowing about:
The Post doesn't say much about the poll's methodology, except to note that it involved telephone interviews with 1,133 randomly selected adults, "including an oversample of 211 African Americans." This is a huge oversample--roughly 50%--and obviously would invalidate the data unless an appropriate correction were made. The Post does not indicate that any corrective measures were taken.

Even with the oversample, the data do not seem particularly noteworthy. The President's approval rating is of course down, but still strong at 59%, with a plurality of 36% strongly approving of his performance. The only area where his ratings are clearly down is the economy. It is curious how peoples' poll responses on the economy bear little correlation to actual economic trends. Significantly more people describe the economy as "poor" now than did during the most recent recession.
Opinion is always a trailing indicator of the economy - maybe the trailing-est indicator of all. Pundits were still yammering about the 1982-'83 recession well into 1987, as I recall.

Powerline concludes with this paragraph:
Based on the Post's methodological disclosures, it is impossible to say whether these data have any validity, or should be thrown in the wastebasket. At worst, they are consistent with the fact that there has been little good news on any front for quite some time (apart, of course, from the non-news that there have been no more major terrorist attacks). But the Post's casual admission of a gross oversampling of African-Americans raises the question whether it, like the Minneapolis Star Tribune--as the Trunk showed last October--has subordinated accuracy in polling to its own political agenda.
Read the whole thing, including the raw data they link to.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/22/2003 08:46:40 AM

Travesty - Ronald Dixon is a hard-working guy, Navy veteran, works two jobs to support his kids, his girlfriend, and pay the mortgage on a house in a decent part of Canarsie, Queens.

Ivan Thompson has a 14 page rap sheet - burglary, larceny, the works.

Thompson broke into Dixon's house. Dixon takes up the story:
At 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday five weeks ago, Dixon was home in bed because he had called in sick. It was almost time for Kyle to wake up and run down the hall to his parents' room to watch his "Barney" video.

"I was supposed to be at work the night before, and would have gotten home about noon," Dixon recalled. "I was not totally asleep, and I heard a squeak in the floorboard. I opened my eyes and see a person snooping around, peeping around outside my bedroom.

"The only thing I could think of was my family. I didn't want to move, until he went to my son's room, and he went in."

Dixon said Best called 911, and he got his weapon from a closet and slowly crept up to the room. He said he saw Thompson rifling through dresser drawers.

"I went in ... I looked in his face, I didn't know this guy, I was so shocked ... In a nervous voice I said, 'What are you doing in my house?' and he ran toward me, yelling, 'Come upstairs!' like there were other people with him. I shot him 'cause I thought more people were in the house."
The Brooklyn DA wants to prosecute him.

What for? Attempted murder? Assault? No, the shooting was pretty clearly legitimate self-defense.

No, the Brooklyn DA is charging Dixon with using an unlicensed firearm to shoot Thompson. It's a misdemeanor that could carry a year in jail - although the Brooklyn DA offered a plea bargain that'd "allow" Dixon to serve "just" four weekends at Riker's Island.

Let's let the NY Daily News article tell the story:
District Attorney Charles Hynes is in the difficult position of prosecuting a hardworking, law-abiding Navy veteran for defending his family and home.

But there were 486 shootings in Brooklyn last year, and the borough remains awash in illegal firearms. A spokesman said Hynes cannot condone the use of an unlicensed gun.

"That doesn't mean the prosecution should go full steam ahead," said Friedman. "There has to be some common sense involved."
"Common Sense" would involve differentiating between 486 shootings by drug dealers, thugs, robbers and other assorted human filth, and those by law-abiding citizens defending their families. That would be common sense.

I'll be following this one.

(Via Rachel Lucas)

posted by Mitch Berg 1/22/2003 08:27:26 AM

From the "Watching NASCAR for the Crashes" Department- MSNBC makes the least-surprising announcement in the history of media - they've signed Ventura to do a talk show.
The exact format of Ventura's show had not been decided, but it would include media criticism and a discussion of current events. A start date for the new show had not been set.

MSNBC President Erik Sorenson attended a farewell party for Ventura on Jan. 4. While in town, Sorenson and Ventura's attorney scouted locations at the Mall of America.

Mall spokeswoman Monica Davis confirmed the visit and the network's interest in the mall. She told Hauser that no agreements between the mall and the network had been signed.
Let's hope MSNBC picks some famously patient producers to work on the new program. Sources who've were involved with Ventura's various radio talk shows at two Twin Cities stations say that working with the former governor, mayor, wrestler and Navy UDT diver was a unique experience: Ventura is reportedly a bit of a prima donna. That's not unusual in the media - but he also apparently has very little actual aptitude for hosting talk shows, other than the flair for confrontation and hyperbole that characterized and stigmatized his administration.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/22/2003 07:06:02 AM

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Darwin In Action - "Human Shields" are leaving for Iraq.
A first wave of mainly Western volunteers will leave London this weekend on a convoy bound for Iraq to act as "human shields" at key sites and populous areas in case of a U.S.-led war on Baghdad.

"The potential for white Western body parts flying around with the Iraqi ones should make them think again about this imperialist oil war," organizer Ken Nichols, a former U.S. marine in the 1991 Gulf War, told Reuters.

His "We the People" organization will be sending off a first group of 50 human shields from the London mayor's City Hall building Saturday, part of a series of departures organizers say will involve hundreds, possibly thousands, of volunteers.
My money says "Dozens, maybe a hundred" volunteers. Although thousands of unwilling shields is probably not out of the question.

And in the "You'll Know Them By The Company They Keep" Department:
In Bucharest, more than 100 Romanian diehard communists said Tuesday they would travel by bus to Iraq to act as human shields in case of a U.S. attack.

Members of the tiny Romanian Workers Party, which took the mantle of ousted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's defunct Communist party in 1995, said they would set off next month to support "the cause of the people."
The delusion of the far left is almost surreal, sometimes.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/21/2003 09:16:47 PM

Indictment - David Horowitz has a scathing rebuke of the organizers of last weekend's rallies for totalitarianism.

He discusses the organizers' Stalinist sympathies, and their over-generosity in figuring the attendance.

But he also does something I've seen nobody else do - call prominent Democrats on the carpet for their associations with ANSWER and other Anti-America movements (all emphasis mine):
Another striking fact about this march in support of global terrorism was the presence of prominent Democrat officials on the platform. In San Francisco, the most powerful Democrat legislator in the state John Burton screamed, "the President is full of shit" and that the President was "fucking with us," while encouraging the general sentiment that America rather than Iraq was the outlaw state. In Washington, Democratic hopeful Al Sharpton attended and DC ex-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney read a speech with the following claim: "In no other country on the planet do so many people have so little as they do in this country." This from a person who notoriously commandeered a taxpayer-funded limousine to take her from her townhouse one block to her congressional offices every morning.

More disturbing by far was the presence of two of the most powerful Democrats in Congress, the potential head of the Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel and the potential head of the Judiciary Committee John Conyers, who is of course the author of the Reparations Bill and the icon of the Communist organizers of both marches. Rangel's appearance was especially troubling because he has been a nightly face on TV news shows presenting himself as a patriot and a veteran (he served fifty years ago in Korea) who wanted a military draft so that all America would be invovled in the nation's defense. His critics thought he had other agendas, like using conscription to sabotage the war effort. Apparently his critics were correct.
Before you jump to any conclusions - yes, I know there are Democrats who aren't actively anti-American. And "supporting the war" isn't the only bellwether of Americanism.

Here's the point: It would be absurd for me to tar all Democrats with that brush; it would be equally absurd for Democrats to ignore what the presence of Waters, Rangel, John Burton and Cynthia McKinney at the demonstrations represents.

Horowitz continues:
Americans who care about their country and its future should think about the following. This anti-American pro-terrorist movement is now larger than the anti-Vietnam pro-Communist "peace" movement was until the very end of the Sixties. Yet there is no draft. Before the draft the anti-Vietnam movement was very very small. Its demonstrations were numbered in the hundreds of participants, not even the thousands. The first big manifestation of the anti-American left was the Stop the Draft March in Oakland in 1965, which was four years after America's involvement in Vietnam got serious.

The second thing Americans should think about is the fact that this anti-American support movement for America's enemies has deep roots in the Democratic Party. I am a firm believer in the two-party system. I find it extremely worrying, therefore, that one party can no longer be trusted with the nation's security. This problem will not be easily fixed. But it won't be fixed at all unless attention is drawn to it, and we cannot do that unless we stop the charade of calling this a "peace" movement and recognize instead that it is anti-American movement to divide this country in the face of its enemies and give aid and comfort to those who would destroy us.
The "Divide America" movement - that could be a good nickname.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/21/2003 06:44:38 AM

Backlash - Hyperbolic demonstrations that attack the US while lionizing brutal dictators may have actually increased support for the war.

The Vietnam War. Oh, and the one that's going to start in a few weeks, too.

It's been an article of faith on the far left in America that demonstrations are a key to winning "the people over". Yet as Eric Alterman says, the record doesn't bear that out - then, or now:
...part of the problem is this awful organization, A.N.S.W.E.R., which has taken over the organizing of them.

It is a little-known fact — I discovered it while researching my senior honors thesis in 1981-82 — that the anti-Vietnam demonstrations may have actually increased support for the war. Nobody was more unpopular with the country than the demonstrators. Even people who opposed the war, according to Gallup data, disapproved of the demonstrators by vast proportions. (The alternate argument — equally unprovable — is that the movement helped end the war because it scared the Nixon administration into suing for peace for reasons of domestic tranquility. But this is belied by the collapse of the movement following the end of the draft.)
Had that particular conceit been true, McGovern would have been president.
Some demonstrations are effective because they show Americans that people just like them care passionately about a cause and are willing to show up in person to support it. This was certainly true of Martin Luther King’s demonstrations and I think it’s also true of Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights demonstrations, and it seemed true of the nuclear freeze demonstrations I attended in the 1980s.
I suspect that Alterman is injecting his own beliefs into his piece. He was right about King - but had the ERA and abortion and freeze demonstrations been genuine expressions of the general public's will, the ERA would have passed, support for abortion would have risen and Ronald Reagan would have served one term. All of these movements were controlled by radicals of one stripe or another - unlike ANSWER, they were radicals of whom Alterman approved.

But Alterman continues:
But radical rhetoric denouncing America and everything it stands for — which is what I heard from the A.N.S.W.E.R.-chosen speakers in D.C. over the weekend — does more harm than good. They harden the other side’s resolve and turn away “normal” non-political people from a cause they might otherwise support.
Again, Alterman is superimposing himself into other peoples' consciences, and asking a "Chicken/Egg" question: If the "Anti-war" movement weren't run by Stalinists like ANSWER, would the factory workers and pizza deliverers and COBOL coders and office temps of America support the war any less than they do? Would their fundamental common sense lead them to fear Hussein's potential nukes and nerve gas any less than they do?

Would the memory of 9/11 motivate us any differently than it does, if the "anti-war" leaders were any less stridently absurd?
posted by Mitch Berg 1/21/2003 06:20:07 AM

Monday, January 20, 2003

War Comes Home - The 704th Chemical Company of the US Army Reserve - based in the Fergus Falls area in northwestern Minnesota - is being mobilized this week.

A high school pal of mine is a platoon sergeant in this company. Your best wishes and prayers for them, and all the other troops that'll be involved in whatever happens, will be much appreciated.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/20/2003 01:17:38 PM

Long Day - I have two job interviews today, and two tomorrow. The two today are important - they're actually for jobs, as opposed to meets and greets with headhunters before they market my resume. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but these interviews are the ones that lead to the actual jobs. Prayers, vibes or any other metaphysical support are most appreciated.

I did get two fun perks today - I see that I made the Instapundit blogroll. I'm flattered.

And I got an email from the son of the president of Zaire, asking to let them deposit $400 million in my credit card while they try to escape their war-ravaged land...

Anyway, more blogging tonight. After I get done celebrating my newfound riches.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/20/2003 12:59:01 PM

Why You Protested - Today's post by megablogger Tacitus does something our major media is too lazy to do - shows you what the protesters are supporting.

Warning: The photos are not pleasant.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/20/2003 08:43:42 AM

Artists Against War - Anti-war activism - San Francisco style.

(Via Little Green Footballs)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/20/2003 12:58:01 AM

Sunday, January 19, 2003

The Real Purple Shady - I saw Eight Mile, starring former bad-boy, now suburban daddy Eminem.

Pro: Eminem's not a bad actor.
Con: In some scenes, he looks like Adam Sandler with a crew cut.

Pro: Britney Murphy
Con: Not enough Britney Murphy.

Pro: I liked the movie.
Con: I liked it as much as the first time I saw it, when it was called "Purple Rain". I'm serious - plot point by plot point, it's almost the same movie.
Redirect Pro: That's not totally a bad thing - I loved Purple Rain, too.
Redirect Con: Nobody makes Britney Murphy jump into Cedar Lake.

Pro: The villain is a lot more villainous than Morris Day in "Purple Rain"
Con: The villain is not as funny as Morris Day in "Purple Rain".

Pro: Eminem's a really great rapper. Some of my friends, whose opinions I respect on many other things, persist in saying "rap's not music". Not true. And Eminem is not only the first rapper since Chuck D that I've genuinely enjoyed from a perfectly technical standpoint, he made me realize something today - he's the Keith Moon of rap. I mean, he'll start a lyrical stretch that'll loop and gambol all over the beat, make a literate point, and then, somehow, some way, end up on the beat again, against all odds, just like Moonie. It's amazing.
Con: STILL not enough Britney Murphy. She's in a really disposable role that makes less sense than any other in the movie. Sort of like Apollonia in "Purple Rain", really.

Pro: Eminem might be a closet conservative.
Con: The character of "Cheddar" is just appalling.

Pro: Kim Basinger, including a full-rear nudity scene.
Con: Science finally figured out a way to make Kim Basinger look dowdy and unattractive.

Pro: Shows Detroit, showcase of the failure of the nannystate.
Con: Coming from North Dakota, "Kick Dat Shit" means something different to me.

I give it a solid Silver.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/19/2003 10:18:50 PM

Smoking Gun - The London Telegraph has the best story I've seen so far about the UN's discovery of the "smoking gun" of Saddam (and Qusay) Hussein's involvement in a nuke program:
On the same morning that a team of inspectors had found the 12 artillery shells, another team of nuclear weapons experts had paid a surprise visit to the homes of two of Saddam's leading nuclear physicists who worked for Iraq's top secret for the Ministry of Military Industrialisation (MMI).

The ministry, which is run by Saddam's younger son Qusay, recently replaced the Military Industrialisation Organisation (MIO), the institution which historically has controlled the development of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction arsenal since the mid-1970s.

In their eagerness to get into the scientists' homes, some of the inspectors had been seen jumping over a garden wall.

Once inside they found what one Western official has described as a "highly significant" batch of documents which, on closer inspection, revealed that Saddam's scientists were continuing development work on producing an Iraqi nuclear weapon.
By the way, the leftist hate sites are quiet on these discoveries.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/19/2003 04:30:54 PM

Barney Fife Award Nominee- What is it about New York - they keep turning out grade-Z authoritarians like Nelson Rockefeller, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani (who has many redeeming qualities, but is no libertarian) and now Michael Bloomberg. Who just pulled the kind of stunt that earns one a nomination for the coveted Barney Fife award, for overweening, preening, martinetical exercise of petty authority.
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is fuming mad over Rolling Stones members smoking on stage at Madison Square Garden during an nationally televised concert this weekend, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"The mayor sent cops to issue summonses," one stage source told the DRUDGE REPORT late Saturday. "But the cops watched the show, off stage, by a monitor, instead of stopping the concert."

MORE

HBO cameras captured band members Keith Richards and Ron Wood smoking cigarettes while performing.

"The band raced out of the Garden after they finished their last number, avoiding the police," an insider said. "The music had not even finished playing; and they were in cars already, spinning away. The did not even go to their dressing rooms!"
Amazing.

This is going to be an ongoing thing for me, by the way - Sullivan has his Sontags and Derbyshires and Begalas, I got the Barneys. I'll give out the award next December 31, and email the recipient to announce their award.

So if you have a government figure who is acting drunk with power, send 'em in. When I get through with 'em...well, they'll still be Barney Fifes, but we'll have had our laughs.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/19/2003 04:04:15 PM

Jews Swinging to the Right - Ha'aretz reports that American Jews are moving to the right.

Bush's middle east policy is key to this growth - the perception of anti-semitism on the left is pushing some of the drift - but it's far from the whole story, according to Harvard's Steven Cohen.

Here was the part that fascinated me; education has an effect. But not the effect I'd expected; as they proceed from high school through grad school, Jewish women become more liberal - but Jewish men less so:
Curiously, the gap seems to be magnified by an unexpected and paradoxical education gap. Higher education exerts a clearly liberalizing influence on women, but has a slightly conservatizing influence on men. Among both men and women, those with a bachelor's degree are more liberal than those with just a high-school education. But men with a graduate degree are more conservative by most measures than men with just a bachelor's degree, while women become decidedly more liberal with a graduate degree - possibly a factor of gender differences in choosing fields of study.

The gender gap is not limited to the most educated. At every level of education, Jewish women are more liberal and less conservative than their male counterparts. The gap is greatest, however, among the best educated. Among those with just a high-school education, the liberal gender gap amounts to just 5 percentage points, growing to 15 points among the college-educated. It leaps to a full 24 points among those with a graduate degree, where just 39 percent of the men call themselves liberal as opposed to 63 percent of the women.
Many other factors - including the notion of a potential Joe Lieberman candidacy theoretically reversing this drift. Give it a read - it's a fascinating article.

Here's the interesting part - Moslems are supposed to outnumber Jews in America soon, if not already. They are a rapidly growing voting bloc. They tended slightly to the right before 9/11 - but it'd be interesting to see where American Moslems would vote today...

(Via Smart Genes)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/19/2003 11:00:00 AM

Team Coverage - Powerline continues to provide some of the best coverage in the blogosphere of yesterday's pro-dictatorship, pro-nuclear-and-chemical, pro-torture demonstrations.

The coverage is a very long section - and all of it's worth a read.

Especially interesting; a note about an anti-Hugo Chavez demonstration in Miami that may have had more people in attendance than all of the "anti-war" demonstrations combined:
The Associated Press reports that "authorities estimated the group at over 50,000 people." So the anti-Chavez, pro-freedom rally by Cuban-Americans and others in Miami was likely larger than any of yesterday's antiwar rallies. How much coverage did it get in your local newspaper?
Also - they continue to tie the pro-chemical-warfare, pro-Kim-Jong-Il protests' organizers to communist organizations.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/19/2003 10:20:27 AM

Daily Double Quiz Question - Who wrote this:
A war with Iraq has become more likely in the past week. Thursday's discovery of undeclared poison gas shells was insufficient to trigger war alone. But here was the first concrete, and predictable, confirmation that Iraq's co-operation with Hans Blix's UN weapons inspectors has been less than complete. And Saddam Hussein's defiant speech on Friday even disappointed those who still hope that the Iraqi leader might choose comfortable exile in Libya or Belarus.

One thing which has been stressed too little in recent weeks is that it is Iraq's choices that have brought war closer. The debate in Britain and Europe continues to focus largely on what America is doing and why. Too often, it is overlooked that it is Iraq which remains, at the eleventh hour, in defiance of the will of its region and the wider world.
Was it:

A) The Washington Times
B) The Limbaugh Letter
C) Saturday's Ari Fleischer briefing

The correct answer is "none of the above". It's the UK's ultra-left (as in neo-Marxist) The Guardian, reacting to the warheads, the speech, and one presumes the discovery of the documents at the scientists' homes.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/19/2003 04:26:33 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