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

Saturday, April 26, 2003

Liberation - Looking at this montage from Powerline, (thanks for the pointer, guys!), I'm reminded of a Stephen Ambrose quote, from "Citizen Soldiers" - I'm paraphrasing, here: Throughout history, a squad of armed 19-year-olds from an occupying army has been a terrifying thing; a squad of German, Russian or Japanese soldiers usually betided rape, looting and mayhem.

But Americans changed that. For the first time in history, a squad of armed-to-the-teeth teenagers brought with them chewing gum, baseball - and liberty.

We face problems in Iraq. The media, especially the likes of the Times and the BBC will make sure we know that.

But the simple fact is that an American army of liberation does exactly that.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/26/2003 11:51:58 AM

Need More Brain - Yesterday was one of those nights I wished I had a Palm Pilot with speech recognition. I was listening to some fascinating guests on NPR who had some incredible insights on the situation in Iraq, and also on a topic that I've gone 'round and 'round about here on "Shot", the notion of the "Just War" and whether Iraq was one.

And they kicked off a few ideas in my own head, and now it reminds me of when you have a blinding flash of epiphany in your sleep, and you wake up to try to write it down before the insights go away...

...or, possibly, of the times when you manage to write it down in the middle of the night, and you read your jottings in the morning, and you've scrawled "Linty Yellow Clinton" on your Qwest bill.

Which will it be?

Stay tuned!
posted by Mitch Berg 4/26/2003 11:35:45 AM

Friday, April 25, 2003

Hearing - I'm going to slip into announcement mode: Monday morning (4/28), the Senate will be apparently debating the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

If you're a supporter of the MPPA, meet at the capitol. I will see you there.

UPDATE: If you're an opponent of the MPPA, a highly-placed source tells me that there'll be a meeting at the Hennepin County Government Center, in the atrium at 9:40 sharp on Monday morning. Bring your signs. Remember - that's only if you're an opponent. Please pass the word.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 02:12:48 PM

Mmmmm, Beer - Just in time for the weekend, The Black Table reviews "Cheap Beer".

Now I'm going out.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 01:42:44 PM

Personal Life Update - We interrupt the Concealed Carry coverage for some just-plain-Mitch notes:
Job Hunt update: The previous two weeks were great. This week has been absolutely blah. Hopefully it's the calm before the storm. I should hopefully start hearing about things as we get into May here. It's somewhat bumfuzzling to note that as of a week from tomorrow, I'll have been on the beach for four months. Scary. And yet the world hasn't ended - yet. Knock wood.
Bagpipe Update: Whenever you learn a new instrument, it always goes in fits and starts. You'll have a burst of new facility, and then hit a plateau where you sort of mark time -and, if you're practicing, get ready for the next burst. In all of my other instruments:
guitar
cello
bass
drums
keyboards (as long as it's old Bruce or Tom Petty songs)
mandolin
harmonica
pennywhistle
curan
it's been the same thing. But I snuck an advance look at my band's online music archive last night. Oy, vey - do I still have a lot to learn. Even the simplest sounding "real" Scottish bagpipe song, "Scotland the Brave", looks brutally difficult. But I've never been one to worry about learning to crawl when I can see all that cool running going on.
As I noted last week, I'm still baking all my family's bread from scratch. It keeps getting better and better - this past week, some great French, Challah and Wheat loaves. I even caught my kids snacking on the wheat bread, without my having to make them do it. Cool or what?
I haveto get away from the keyboard. I think I'll bike over to Lake Como and noodle around a bit. No good job hunting happens on Fridays, anyway...
Finally - I see from my hit logs that traffic to this site seems to have survived the domain change pretty nicely - I'm still up between 350-400 visitors a day. Drop me a line, or just leave a comment - either way is great. I'd love to know who's visiting the site.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 01:32:42 PM

Whose Sports? - While I did, in fact, praise the Strib's news coverage of the concealed carry debate, their editorial page is still carrying water for Sara Brady.

Today, as if on cue, they printed this letter from investment banker and "sportsman" Bob Johnson of Lakeville.
As a gun owner, hunter and sportsman, I'm concerned about a common misperception: the belief that gun owners are a monolithic body of people who all march to the tune of the National Rifle Association.
No, we certainly aren't. An awful lot of people own firearms who have no clue about the constitutional issues involved. A lot of politicials cynically manipulate that disconnect; Mark Dayton, a member of the gun-grabbing DFL, portrayed himself as a firearms rights supporter, as did Ann Wynia; Bill Clinton had himself photographed trunding through the swamp with a shotgun, shooting some sort of bird or another; Paul Wellstone did his damnedest to dissociate "sport" shooters from those of us who see firearms as a constitutional and moral issue.

And they're all wrong!

Johnson continues:
As legislators debate the measure that would put more concealed, loaded handguns onto our streets, they should not assume that most gun owners would be happy with a looser permitting system. Some very misguided policies are propounded in our names, and many common-sense measures that would protect all of us are never enacted -- all out of fear that gun owners will exact their revenge at the polls if our interests are not defended.

The unfortunate truth is that those gun owners who speak the loudest represent only one rather extreme element of the gun-owning population.
The NRA has about three million members. They're all extremists?

And the simple fact is that concealed carry is n ot extreme. The record nationwide - in 34 other states - shows i to be a prudent measure that at the very worst does no harm, and at the most does in fact reduce violent crime.

Pretty extreme, huh?
The rest of us do not support the notion that our community will be safer with thousands more gun-toting citizens carrying concealed, loaded handguns.
Who is Bob Johnson, suburban male soccer dad, to speak for "the rest of us?" I don't recall any elections.
Nor do we believe that military-style combat weapons should be marketed to the general public.
I'm not sure how to read this line: Does Mr. Johnson (and the editors at the Strib) think tossing scary army guns into the letter will associate it with the concealed carry debate? Or are they all just devoid of logic?
Most of us do not fear reasonable regulation.
But this isn't about "reasonable regulation", is it?

In fact, the permit-issuing process is all about "reasoable regulation" - in many ways, vastly more reasonable than the current system! Under the proposed bill, permit applicants must actually prove they have no criminal record, and undergo actual training. Under the current system, the applicant must merely be approved - purely subjectively - by their chief of police.

Which, indeed, is the more "reasonable" regulation?
Hunters are among the most responsible of gun owners. We store, care for and use our firearms properly. We treat them with respect because we know their power and understand their danger.
Well, that's fine - but if you combine all that responsibility with illogical myopia on the larger moral, constitutional and criminological issues, all you are is responsible and wrong.

Here's the part that makes me see red; the same line used by inveterate gun-grabbers like Paul Wellstone and Bill Clinton:
There is no threat to losing our right to own guns for sport.
But the Constitution doesn't protect hunting!

Sometimes I wonder who the bigger enemies are - those who actively oppose firearms rights, or those who can't see beyond their own recreational self-interest.

The real threat to gun owners is the same threat hanging over the rest of the population -- that the safety of our families will be jeopardized if the rhetoric of the gun-rights groups prevails.

posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 11:47:49 AM

Duelling Studies? - First, the praise; the Strib has led the local media in beginning to report the Concealed Carry issue as one with two sides; Conrad De Fiebre was among the first local reporters to break away from the traditional media role as Sara Brady's unpaid mouthpiece.

Bob Van Sternberg wrote a piece that compared the "Duelling Studies" that proponents and opponents of concealed carry cite in debates on the issue.

The story notes that the results of the studies diverge so widely that they are mutually contradictory:
Minnesota is only the most recent battleground over what are called "shall-issue" concealed-weapon laws, and it would be the 35th state to enact one. The long-debated bill, which would make handgun permits available to many more people than under the current system, is expected to be enacted as early as next week.

It would take effect 30 days after Pawlenty affixes his signature, as he has vowed to do.
So far, so good.
Already this year, such laws have been adopted in Colorado and New Mexico, and revisions of concealed-weapon laws are in the legislative pipeline in at least five other states.
Which is an interesting point to juxtapose against one from later in the story; Luis Tolley, the State Coordinator for Brady, said:
"Most of their successes were at least 10 years ago," said Luis Tolley, the Brady organization's state legislative affairs director. "They've got a small, very active core of gun owners who want these laws, but there's not a huge public outcry on behalf of them."
This is pure spin on Tolley's part. It's not necessarily the Strib's job to point that out - but it is mine.

The statement is accurate in the sense that a large number of states adopted shall-issue ten years ago. The number of shall-issue states has jumped from eight in 1983 to 34 today; Minnesota would make 27 states in twenty years.

But if three states adopt shall-issue in one year (and, as the article notes, the issue is in play in five more), that is hardly a slowing of momentum!

Proponents of shall-issue laws are inevitably going to hit a point of diminishing returns, though - shall-issue states outnumber discretionary or non-issue states by 2.33/1. The fifteen states that remain are the hard core of the American nannystate; New York, California, New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Massachussetts, the D of C - places where you'll have to jam a gun into the ruling class' cold, dead hands. Painting that level of success as a black eye against the firearms rights movement is very crude spin.
In every state, the NRA has repeatedly squared off against Handgun Control Inc., now called the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence...

Representatives of the NRA declined to comment.
Although, it's worth noting, not really here in Minnesota. It's been CCRN's show, locally.

The article then goes into describing the various competing studies:
But the struggle over concealed-weapon laws is less a matter of dueling rhetoric than a crossfire of competing studies.

The first was issued in 1996 by John Lott Jr. and David Mustard, faculty members at the University of Chicago. Its conclusion was distilled in the title of a book later published by Lott: "More Guns, Less Crime."

Examining crime data between 1977 and 1992, Lott and Mustard concluded that "allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths."

If states without "shall-issue" laws had adopted them, it would have prevented 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes and more than 60,000 aggravated assaults annually, they wrote. They also concluded that concealed handguns had the greatest deterrent effect in counties with the highest crime rates, and that criminals opt to commit property crimes instead of running the risk of encountering armed victims.
So far, so good.
Opponents pounced almost immediately. Within weeks of the publication of Lott's paper, Stephen Teret of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research wrote that the conclusions of Lott and Mustard were "unsubstantiated."

"Their study contains factual and methodological flaws and reaches conclusions that are implausible based on criminologic research and theory," Teret wrote. More specifically, he said that violent crime reductions cited by the author failed to "distinguish a true effect of the law from an expected downward drift toward average [crime] levels."

Just as quickly, Lott rebutted the criticisms, as he has continued to do every time his conclusions have been challenged.
This is an important observation - in fact, a first from what I've seen in coverage of the fallout of Lott's work in the major media. Indeed, Lott and some of his supporters have not only shredded Teret and most other comers, but Lott has circulated his raw data to many naysayers asking them to fold, spindle and mutilate it to try to come up with a different answer. As of last year, none had.
In 1999, University of Arkansas law Prof. Andrew McClurg wrote in the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy that "blatantly fallacious argumentation continues to dominate popular gun control discourse."

While opting not to pass judgment on Lott's conclusions, McClurg described him as a man who has "developed a devoted cult following among gun lovers and has become a marked man among gun haters."
In other words, McClurg substituted a fairly superficial personal attack and a broad statement for actual data.
[McClurg] added: "There are simply too many variables contributing to violent crime to isolate concealed-weapons laws as a major cause in deterring or reducing it. It is simply not something that is capable of being proved by a statistical study. . . . In the absence of other proof -- which may never exist -- it would be reckless for state legislators or anyone else to rely on this single study."
In other words - "It's all just toooo complicated!".

Sounds like a cranky parent yelling at the kids - "don't bother me now. I'm too tired to explain why - just SHUT UP!".
In late 1999, Carlisle Moody of the College of William and Mary presented a paper at the American Enterprise Institute's Guns, Crime and Safety conference that concluded that concealed-carry laws "tend to reduce violent crimes" and burglary, but their effect on other property crime is uncertain.
Which, in fact, supports Lott's conclusions to a "T". Lott claimed reductions in violent crime, but some displacement into property crime. More on this below.
In 2000, the Journal of Economic Literature published an analysis by Florenz Plassman and Nicolaus Tideman that concluded that while the effects of concealed-handgun availability vary, depending on crime categories and states, they "appear to have statistically significant deterrent effects on the numbers of reported murders, rapes and robberies."

However, some crimes increased, and what the authors called this "ambiguous result" indicates that "right-to-carry laws do not always have the deterrent effects on crime that are envisaged by legislators and that the adoption of such laws is not without risk."
Which is, of course, more or less congruent with Lott's findings; property crime (auto theft, for example) increases in shall-issue states.

Question: Would you trade a couple of car thefts, garage break-ins or petty thefts for a murder, rape or assault?

To use the great liberal trope: "If we can save just one life" for the loss of a couple cars, lawnmowers and stereos, isn't it worth it?
The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper in 2001 by economist Mark Duggan titled "More Guns, More Crime." He found that the decline nationwide in firearm homicides between 1993 and 1998 can be largely traced to a corresponding decline in gun ownership -- not concealed-carry laws.
Two responses to that:
John Lott has some interesting commentary on Duggan's work
Studies indicate that there is no decrease in firearms ownership; and if you recall the stories about media and Brady consternation about booming firearms sales (especially after 9/11) you'd be right to wonder where all those guns are going...
In other words, Duggan's data would seem to be suspect.
The laws didn't increase gun ownership or reduce crime, suggesting "either gun owners did not increase their frequency with which they carried their guns or that criminals were not deterred by the greater likelihood that their victims would be armed."
So let's take this claim at face value; the very worst, then, that the opponents can claim about shall-issue reform is that it has no effect.

The very worst!

If only every government initiative had no net harmful effect!
Most recently, Stanford University law Prof. John Donohue wrote in a book published by the Brookings Institution that Lott's conclusions about the laws' deterrent effect were "flawed" and "misguided."

Donohue's bottom line: "If somebody had to say which way the evidence is stronger, I'd say that it's probably stronger that the laws are increasing crime, rather than decreasing crime. But the stronger thing I could say is that I don't see any strong evidence that they are reducing crime."
Donohue, unfortunately, never actually claims that Lott's study is wrong, per se - merely that people might worry about the results. Donohue is incredibly disingenuous on this topic.

While it's not the Strib's job to necessarily dissect each and every study brought to the table on this issue, it'd be nice if someone were able to give some context to the reader/voter who wants genuine education on the topic.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 11:05:34 AM

Oh, No - Not Again - Lileks seems to be down again.

UPDATE: Or not.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 08:03:32 AM

Galloway Slipping - The Christian Science Monitor follows the London Telegraph with documentary evidence that British Labour party MP and anti-war activist George Galloway was on the Iraqi payroll.

Big-time:
Evidence of Mr. Galloway's dealings with the regime were first revealed earlier this week by David Blair, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph in London, who discovered documents in Iraq's Foreign Ministry.

The Labour Party MP, who lambasted his party's prime minister, Tony Blair, in parliamentary debates on the war earlier this year, has denied the allegations. He is now the focus of a preliminary investigation by British law-enforcement officials and is under intense scrutiny in the British press, where the story has been splashed across the front pages.

The most recent - and possibly most revealing - documents were obtained earlier this week by the Monitor. The papers include direct orders from the Hussein regime to issue Mr. Galloway six individual payments, starting in July 1992 and ending in January 2003.

The payments point to a concerted effort by the regime to use its oil wealth to win friends in the Western world who could promote Iraqi interests first by lifting sanctions against Iraq and later in blocking war plans.

The leadership of Hussein's special security section and accountants of the President's secretive Republican Guard signed the papers and authorized payments totaling more than $10 million.
Ten million dollars.

Galloway accounts for about $600 large.

Where's the rest?

If the leader of the opposition of the second-largest power lined up against Iraq got $600K, who could the Iraqis have been paying in the largest power in the coalition?

Your speculation is welcomed.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/25/2003 08:02:23 AM

Thursday, April 24, 2003

The Hamster Speaks - A lot of my far-left friends are very excited about Vermont governor Howard Dean. More and more, I hope the Democrats nominate him.

If he keeps saying stuff like this, he'll make McGovern '72 look pretty good:
Asked if the Iraqi people are better off now than they were under Saddam, Dean said, "We don't know that yet. We don't know that yet, Wolf. We still have a country whose city is mostly without electricity. We have tumultuous occasions in the south where there is no clear governance. We have a major city without clear governance."
He might even make Mondale look good in comparison.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/24/2003 08:46:27 PM

Concealed Carry Redux - You'll know them by their enemies.

And I'm proud to claim some of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act's opponents as political foes.

Here's what the Strib had to say:
Opponents tried unsuccessfully to pass several amendments. One would have prohibited weapons at the Metrodome, State Fairgrounds, the Target Center, movie theaters and liquor vendors.
That's right. Best to keep those places as sacred sanctuaries for gang-bangers and nutbars who carry with neither training nor permits.
Another would have allowed local governments to restrict possession in their own public buildings.
Creating a "Citizens Can't Shoot You Here" zone in public buildings - brilliant!
A third would have prohibited concealed handguns at colleges and universities.
The DFL obviously wants to avoid scenes like this, at a recent shooting at a Virginia law school, where armed students apprehended a mass-murderer:
When the sound of shooting erupted, panic ensued. "People were running everywhere. They were jumping behind cars, running out in front of traffic, trying to get away," Gross said.

Instead of joining in the chaos, Gross and Bridges ran to their cars and got their guns. Joined by an unarmed Ted Besen, an ex-Marine and police officer, the three men approached the shooter from different sides.

"I aimed my gun at him, and Peter tossed his gun down," Bridges recalled. "Ted approached Peter, and Peter hit Ted in the jaw. Ted pushed him back, and we all jumped on."
The obvious conclusion - the DFL wants to protect criminals.

Back to the Strib's coverage:
An amendment by Rep. Karen Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, would have required a person with a handgun to ask the owner of a private residence for permission to enter.
That's right, DFL - legislate how people interact with each other over personal issues like allowing firearms in the home. Don't allow the individual the dignity of doing any such thing for themselves. Make it government's job.
"I'm ashamed of us," Clark said later during the debate.
She should be.
Opponents said more guns in purses and under suit coats would result in more guns being used inappropriately and more being stolen.
Unfortunately, opponents showed no statistics of any such phenomenon in current shall-issue states.

Because no such statistics exist.

Could it be that the opponents just feel that Minnesotans are that much more depraved than everyone else?

No wonder Karen Clark's so ashamed.
"This is not the conceal-and-carry bill; this is the conceal-and-kill bill," said Rep. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park.
In 1987, Florida state senator Ron Silver coined the phrase "The Gunshine State", and predicted that the streets of Florida would be like Dodge City East, after Florida passed its concealed carry law. He's had the good grace to eat his crow in public over the past ten years or so.

Assuming Mr. Latz is still in office, I'll be there with my Heinz 57 Crow Sauce ready to go.

But I liked this one, by Rep. Jean Wagenius (Nannystater, Minneapolis, where else?):
The new provision prompted some opponents in the House to display signs in front of their desks saying, " . . . allows no firearms within these premises." Rep. Jean Wagenius, DFL-Minneapolis, suggested that people opposed to the expansion boycott businesses that fail to put up the signs.

"If the Mall of America does not post the whole mall, I've had my last trip to the Mall of America," she said.
Given the trouble the Mall's had with gang shootings in the past ten years, I'm thinking it'd be worth it just to have a Wagenius-free zone.

And I plan, myself, on boycotting any stores that don't have a damn good reason for posting themselves.

More as events warrant.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/24/2003 11:42:23 AM

Why I Support Carry Reform - If you've read this blog more than, say, twice, you know I'm a big supporter of concealed carry reform. I'm a sometimes member of Concealed Carry Reform Now of Minnesota.

When people ask me why I support reforming our currently patriarchal, antiquated and racist concealed carry laws, though, it takes a while.

It's not just personal reasons - I did thwart a break-in back in July of 1988, but that was in the home and had nothing to do with being able to carry a handgun or not.

It's not just the empirical fact that concealed carry makes a place safer - as shown in all of John Lott's exhaustive and unrefuted studies of the subject.

It's not even the prudential political fact that 33 states have shall-issue laws - or the more impressive fact that 25 of those states adopted the laws within the past 20 years, or, most impressive of all, that not a one has repealed their shall-issue law.

No. To me, it's a moral issue.

Currently, here in Minnesota, the criminal knows that the only people who can hurt him come in Crown Victorias with whoopie lights on top. The citizen in the street is no threat. The "balance of fear" is skewed away from the criminal, and toward the citizen.

Reforming our laws would change that - even if only a tiny minority of Minnesotans opted to get permits. Criminals that read newspapers might know that 1% of people in "shall-issue" states actually get the permits - but they'd never know which one of a hundred potential victims would be the one that could shut his lights out forever.

The balance of fear shifts; the criminal feels more; the citizen feels less.

Isn't that supposed to be what civilization is about - making the civilized more secure, and the barbarians less so?

Is a measure that makes the barbarians more secure and the civilized less safe, within the context of civilized society, moral?

I'll be following this, obviously, very closely.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/24/2003 10:41:39 AM

Bloodbath at Foggy Bottom - Newt Gingrich spoke to the American Enterprise Institute about the successes and failures in the war - and, more germanely, the diplomatic tapdance that led up to it.

Guess how the State Department comes out?
From President Bush's clear choice between two worlds, the State Department had descended into a murky game in which the players were deceptive and the rules were stacked against the United States.

The State Department communications program failed during these five months to such a degree that 95 percent of the Turkish people opposed the American position. This fit in with a pattern of State Department communications failures as a result of which the South Korean people regarded the United States as more dangerous than North Korea and a vast majority of French and German citizens favored policies that opposed the United States.

As the State Department remained ineffective and incoherent, the French launched a worldwide campaign to undermine the American position and make the replacement of the Saddam dictatorship very difficult. This included twisting Turkish arms to block a vote in favor of the United States using Turkish soil to create a northern front and appealing to the other members of the Security Council to block a second resolution.
Gingrich juxtaposes this with the Department of Defense:
Fortunately the Defense Department was capable of overcoming losing access to Turkey, losing public opinion support in Europe and the Middle East and turned those disadvantages into a stunning victory working in concert with our British allies and with support largely secured by Centcom and DoD among the Gulf States. Had Centcom and DoD been as ineffective at diplomacy as the State Department (which is supposedly in charge of diplomacy) Kuwait would not have been available, the Saudi air base would not have been available, and the Jordanian passage of special forces would not have been available, etc.

The military delivered diplomatically [emphasis added] and then the military delivered militarily in a stunning four week campaign.
The DOD does a better job at diplomacy!

Read the whole thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/24/2003 08:26:53 AM

Where's James? - In an outpouring of concern not seen on the 'net since Mahir went missing (or, I guess, since Plain Layne's unannounced relocation), the whole world is wondering where Lileks' site has gone.

Our hopes and best wishes go out to those concerned. Team coverage to follow.

posted by Mitch Berg 4/24/2003 07:35:47 AM

Iran - The Iranians have been intervening among the Shi'ites in Iraq. The question is, why?

Especially given the trouble they're having at home themselves.

I think the mullahs need to spark a conflict to stay in power - just not too much conflict.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/24/2003 07:24:13 AM

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

The New Era in Iraq - David Warren has a fascinating look at the curve-balls we face in governing Iraq.
Asked what his greatest challenge would be, [incoming administrator Gen. Jay Garner] said: "Everything is the challenge."

A remarkably calm, folksy, understated man, Lt. Gen. Garner (Ret.) would not have been kidding. Repairing infrastructure (including the large south Baghdad electrical plant that was more effectively sabotaged than first reports indicated -- U.S. and Iraqi engineers have been working on it day and night) will be the least of his problems. The central task of Iraqi reconstruction is political -- to create a viable civil order in the face of decades of savage tyranny, and the kind of pent-up social forces that were exposed in e.g. former Yugoslavia when Communism fell.

On the plus side, the Bush administration has learned much by studying what went wrong in places like former Yugoslavia. On the minus side, the challenge of Shia Islamism may make Balkan troubles seem like flies at a picnic.
That's just the exposition. Read the whole thing - it's excellent.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/23/2003 12:59:25 PM

A Modest Proposal - Was there a hockey game last night?

I love baseball. I can watch football. But NBA hoops and NHL hockey both bore me stiff.

I can call the play-by-play of any NBA game more or less as follows:
"5:18 in the half, and [name of 6'10" mutant] has the ball...he [pick one] DRIVES...IN for two!/ReJECted!". Repeat until closing buzzer. If I don't pass out from boredom on the way.
In the meantime, Hockey combines the low-scoring thrills of major-league soccer with the endless, endless, endless, back and endless forth of professional tennis.

I have a proposal to make both sports more interesting - but it'll take some cooperation.

Currently, every hockey team has a goalie - a guy in padding straight from a bomb disposal unit who puts his mug in front of speeding pucks for a living. In the meantime, goaltending is a penalty in basketball.

So switch them.

Ban the goalie in hockey. Nobody, defender or attacker, should be allowed inside the box. And make shots from beyond the blue line worth two points.

In the meantime, add a goaltender to each basketball team; maybe even give him a helmet. He should be a guy with a superhuman vertical leap, whose job it is to keep the biscuit out of the basket.

Think of the revolution this would force on the strategery of both games! More importantly, it's make both games interesting enough to watch...

...when there's not a baseball game on the radio, anyway.

Gaaah. I need a job.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/23/2003 11:10:43 AM

Nyaaa Nyaaa Nyaaaaaa - Yesterday, Doug Grow called anti-tax-hike activists copycats. Citizens for a ~~Subservient~~ Safer Minnesota calls pro-carry-reform people "Yahoos in Parkas", as we noted below.

Today, Laura Billings is on the case. If you oppose tax hikes, you're a baaaaaaad person.
Though a grudging but civil send-off for our delinquent dead used to be one of the hallmarks of Minnesota Nice, a no-nonsense funeral now counts as one of those nonessential services, like Porta Pottis in public parks, after-school programs for kids, or libraries that are actually open when people might want to use them.
I, as a non-native Minnesotan, am getting very, very sick of the ever-expanding definition of "Minnesota Nice", which is itself turning into a rather sickening sobriquet. "Minnesota Nice" should be about not letting people starve. I'm not sure where porta potties and indigent funerals fit into that.
Ever since Gov. Tim Pawlenty's budget proposal came out in February, the slow trickle of news about cuts to social services like this have caused "a sort of a smoldering reaction" in Alex Ellison, the South Minneapolis mother of a 15-month-old daughter and the owner of a small recycling bin business.

"As each new thing came to light, I found myself getting more and more angry,'' said Ellison, a self-described Wellstone Democrat who says her interest in paying the upfront costs of social services like education and health care were inspired by the fiscal conservatism she learned growing up in a Republican household.

"I know that taxation has been vilified over the last 30 years, but it serves such a high purpose. Why is everyone so afraid to suggest it?''

Ellison and her husband, Chuck Tomlinson, who works in the University of Minnesota's general chemistry department, decided that Minnesotans who have been intimidated by the anti-tax crowd simply needed some encouragement to admit aloud that taxes can contribute to the public good. So they started a grass-roots campaign complete with an Internet site (www.betterminnesota.org), bumper stickers, prepaid postcards to pass the word, and bright orange lawn signs for others in the state who are, as their signs say, "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota.''
I'm the last person in the world to criticize people acting in their own self-interest - but do you suppose Laura Billings could be honest enough to note that Ellison and Tomlinson's livelihoods both depend on tax-funded programs, to one extent or another?

Like Grow, Billings doesn't like the fact that the marketplace of ideas in this state has more than one shelf:
The Web site betterminnesota.org was up and running at the end of March, espousing a vision for healthy families, excellent schools, strong cities, clean lakes and thriving businesses, along with links about the consequences of budget cuts to those areas. By last week, the Republican Party of Minnesota had set up its own copycat Web site, www.betterminnesota.com, complaining about Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party "budget games." (Randy Wanke, communications director, explained, "We wanted to make sure there were better ideas presented.'')
"Copycat" site? No, it's not - it's a much better-designed site whose ideas intersect at one and only one point - the concept of "Better Minnesota". The last I checked, the right to express a different view of what a "Better Minnesota" is has not been trademarked.

Here's the part I find the most irritating; the column's slugline. It reads as follows:

Some Minnesotans say it's not nice to be stingy
Stingy?

First - we're not cutting the overall budget at all!

But second, and most importantly - Stingy?

Dictionary.com defines "Stingy" as:

1. Giving or spending reluctantly.

2. Scanty or meager: a stingy meal; stingy with details about the past.
That may be the left's most noxious conceit in this whole sorry debate - the notion that it's about being "mean", or "reluctant" about doing good for others.

No, indeed - I think you're seeing a state full of people who are perfectly willing to build and staff schools, but are sick of being treated like ripe sucks by the MFT; who have no problem paying for good infrastructure, but are repulsed by pork-barrels like the Hiawatha Line; who have no problem paying for a great university system, but are sick to death of the U of M's invincible institutional arrogance.

We're not mean. We're just not bottomless pits of money - not now.

I'd love to see if the institutional left in this state - the likes of Doug Grow and Laura Billings and Citizens for a ~~Supine~~ "Safer" Minnesota - can carry on an argument without the cheap stereotypes.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/23/2003 10:57:59 AM

The Smell of Fear - Citizens for a Subservient Minnesota (CSM) is running a new radio commercial (requires Quicktime) to try to foment fear about the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

Note the emotional buttons being pushed:
The character reading the spot is, inevitably, a "mother"; "I don't want to walk into a store with my kids...". The appeal is obvious - they're trying to get the soccer moms (or, as we reported last winter, win them back; 9/11 won a lot of "soccer moms" over to the concealed carry side, according to some polls)
Notice the crude defamation of those who favor concealed carry reform: "...any yahoo with a gun in his parka...". Not "rape victim", ""single parent protecting his/her family", "law-abiding citizen who is absolutely no threat to anyone"...no, just "Yahoo".
Check out, while you're at it, the social stereotyping in the spot. The protagonist - cute-but-businesslike-sounding mom. The antagonist? A guy in a parka. In this day and age, "parka" is itself an iconic token; it screams declasse'; they're worn by the lower-class, the rural, the extras from Fargo, the "white trash" who live outstate and shop at Wal-Mart. There's a hint of depravity to it, too; the parka is very out of style for the "mainstream" (at least, the suburban, minivan-driving mainstream that this commercial is aiming at) - it was middle-class winter chic in the seventies, so among the spot's audience, it's likely associated with biker bars, homeless shelters, that crowd.
Beyond that? The "Parka-wearing Yahoo" is, in terms of 21st century urban archetypes, a politically-correct boogeyman; in an era when you can't go on the air with a woman worrying about guns in the hands of "bangers in starter jackets"; the parka-wearing yahoo is an acceptable substitute for the real fear, read "Bigotry" underlying this commercial.
Like most CSM communications, the commercial lies. It will take more than a simple background check to get a concealed carry permit when the MPPA passes. But even so, note the arrogance inherent in the commercial's subtext; the woman's fear of someone's external "Yahoo"dom is more important than the complete absence of criminal record?
Listen to the ad; note the complete lack of references to "Minnesota" in the exchange between the "mom" and the "senator's staffer". The spot was cut by a national group - which one, I don't know, but I'll find out - and sent out to local victim-disarmament groups to have the local "tag" (the guy reading the bit at the end) added on in final production. CSM is working with someone nationwide.
I'm thinking, right now, that this commercial is good news, in a backhanded way. The victim-disarmament lobby is getting nervous enough to actually spend money; moreover, they're spending it in Minnesota, a state that even a few years ago had to have been considered rock-solid safe anti-gun territory.

I haven't had much time to follow the concealed-carry debate this session, with the job hunt and all. But I'll be on this as the session winds down; it's too important an issue to let slide.

UPDATE: I'm told the group is actually called "Citizens for a Safer Minnesota. My bad.

UPDATE AGAIN: An email correspondent writes:
"I hadn't listened to it myself, but I fully expected them to engage in, what sound likes from your report, simple name-calling and fear.

My feel is this: the media and people are beyond name-calling and fear; they won't respond to the advert; and it may just motivate our people to call in support.
Of this, I'm also confident. The anti-gun movement in Minnesota and nationwide is a mile wide and an inch deep; a lot of people are uncomfortable around guns or with firearms rights, but not uncomfortable to bother calling legislators or turning up at hearing after hearing; firearms rights supporters turn out for both in droves. I think that, as far as this is concerned, the ad will backfire.

And that the media are probably not susceptible to this bag of tropes is also encouraging; despite their bias on so many issues, enough of the Twin Cities media has learned to see through CSM's phalanx of strawmen that, from my vantage point, the media hasn't been that much of a handicap to the pro-liberalization side.
I think this advert is a real mistake on CSM's part.

Not that it'll be easy. The Senate is still too tight
for my comfort."
True on both counts.

Again - more to come.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/23/2003 10:00:59 AM

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Pro Death - The National Organization of Women is scuttling away from its attack on "Fetal Homicide" laws in 23 states. The issue came to a head when California charged Scott Peterson with two murders in the death of his wife and unborn child.
NOW officials declined to comment Monday on statements made this weekend by Mavra Stark, "out of respect for (Peterson's) family and what they're going through," spokeswoman Rebecca Farmer said by telephone from Washington.

Farmer would not say whether NOW opposes fetal homicide statutes that exist in at least 23 states. The laws have been opposed by some pro-choice groups even though legal abortions are exempted from prosecution.
[...]
Stark, who heads the Morris County NOW, spoke Monday with the national organization's vice president, Terry O'Neill. Stark said O'Neill told her that NOW "felt it wasn't the right thing to take a position right now" on either the Peterson case or fetal homicide statutes.
[...]
On Monday afternoon, Stark said the "viability of the Peterson fetus � makes a great deal of difference" in assessing the criminal case.

"The position I was veering very close to was not even in synch with those of all the pro-choice organizations I belong to," said Stark, who had previously speculated that the double-murder charge could strengthen efforts by pro-lifers to enact a ban on late-term abortions.
As I said yesterday, I generall steer clear of abortion; my views aren't conducive to being pounded into a convenient quote, which is a little too deep for some people.

But leaving aside the fact that the Peterson baby was nearly full-term, a solid three months farther along than "Fetuses" have been successfully delivered, the whole "viability" question is a complete canard.

Left to its own devices, even with absolutely no medical care, a "Fetus" will survive to full term 3/4 of the time. Even on the prairie before medical care was widespread, at the turn of the century, 2/3 of pregnancies ended in a live birth. "Viability" is, in most cases, a matter of someone not killing the fetus on purpose.

NOW is backtracking because the issue and incident showed an awful lot of people what a bunch of extremists NOW is. (I almost said "Depraved Extremists", but that would have been inflammatory. I'd hate to inflame, so I won't say that).
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 12:52:07 PM

Very Different Worlds - Doug Grow's latest column covers one of the most irritating "grassroots" movements in Minnesota today - those asinine "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota" signs.
Signs that Minnesota's progressive movement wasn't totally obliterated in November are popping up on lawns across Minnesota this spring.

"Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota," they read. They can be found -- if you look hard -- from Duluth to Rochester to the Twin Cities.

They're the creation of Alexandra Ellison and Chuck Tomlinson, who awoke on Nov. 6 in a Minnesota far different from what they had ever known.
It's ironic, isn't it, how this theme keeps popping up?

No, Alexandra and Chuck did not "wake up to a Minnesota far different from what they'd known". They woke up the morning after the Republican Party won most of the offices up for election.

Waking up to find the Taliban marching down University Avenue would have been "very different". Or perhaps turning on "KARE11 Today" to see a Jesse-Ventura-controlled secret police force mowing down their opponents and building a pyramid of skulls on Nicollet Mall as a warning - that would have been a "Very Different Minnesota".

No, all that happnened on November 6 was the DFL lost an election. And as long as DFLers take that as a cataclysmic debacle of human failure, rather than an electoral defeat, then I'm betting "Under" in this state's battle for civility.

Further sign of what this blog has been catalogueing since its inception - the blind contempt and gaping rage the DFL feels at having to share power with the unwashed masses.

Grow continues:
The "Say No to War With Iraq" signs obviously were their inspiration.

"You have a group which feels unheard," Ellison said. "A big yard sign is a way of jumping up and down and saying, 'Hey, listen to me.' "
I find it ironic that people who (I'll presume here, and I'll bet I'm right) find, say, "conservative talk radio" to be "shallow sloganeering" would jump to, say, lawn signs.
But a former Republican governor, Elmer L. Andersen, provides another motivation.
As an aside, here - I'm getting real tired of DFL mouthpieces like Doug Grow trotting out the likes of Elmer Andersen and Arne Carlson as "Former Republican Governors". Sure, they wore elephant pins; but at no point were any of them any more than "DFL-lite".

James Lileks, in one of his old radio shows, made the quintessential Minnesota Independant Republican joke, presumably before the 1990 election, where Arne Carlson ran against ~~some cookie-cutter DFLer~~ Rudy Perpich - and I'm paraphrasing from memory here - "It's hard for me to explain to my friends on the coast, that here in Minnesota we have a choice between the pro-choice, anti-gun, high-tax candidate - and the Democrat".

So when the "That Feels Good Sir, Give Me Another Tax" crowd cites the likes of Andersen and Carlson, you need to know that you're being played for a sucker.
Ellison and Tomlinson read a recent newspaper account of the man who represented a more moderate Republican Party than the party of Pawlenty, and they were struck by this Andersen thought: "Taxes are the way people join hands to get good things done. That's the tradition of Minnesota."

That quote is prominently displayed on a Web site that Ellison and Tomlinson have established, http://www.betterminnesota.org.
Again with the sloganeering!

Sorry, folks - Andersen's statement is only true if government is the extension of the will of the people.

Which nobody's really believed since Lenin.

I can't tell if this next bit is yawningly hypocritical, o just clueless:
Just as "Say No to War With Iraq" lawn signs begat "Liberate Iraq" signs, the betterminnesota.org site has stirred a counter site. The state's Republican Party recently put up http://www.betterminnesota.com.

Isn't that a little like Grand Old Party theft of somebody else's idea?
Great, Doug!

I presume you'll be out there condemning whitehouse.com next?

If "betterminnesota.com" was available for sale, then it's not theft.
"We didn't want somebody hijacking the term 'betterminnesota,' " said Randy Wanke, the party's communications director. "We just wanted to expand the debate."

The dot-orgs didn't learn of the dot-com's' theft -- oops, debate expansion -- until last weekend. Not surprisingly, some of the dot-orgs were upset.
As they should be. They screwed up.
Predictably, the Republicans' site is filled with derisive comments about DFL tax plans and praise for the governor. The grass-roots dot-orgs' site is far less partisan, except for anger at the Republicans' site.

"What does it say about the governor, his party and their confidence in their budget plan?" the dot-orgs ask on their site. "They're deceptively undermining a positive, grass-roots, citizen-led campaign."
What incredible, manipulative - and yes, Mr. Grow, partisan twaddle.

The .com site is a conduit for information about Pawlenty's plan. Yes, there are some japes at the self-righteous self-importance of the .org site - it's irresistable.

It's also communicating a message - one that the likes of Doug Grow will never treat fairly.

Speaking of manipulative:
They also are seeking progressive people to hold meetings in their homes to discuss issues and ways to counter the "no new taxes" mantra that is overwhelming all other political voices.
"Mantra".

Note Grow's choice of words - "Mantra", "Overwhelming"...like the idea of reducing our crushing tax burden is some Lucas-esque dark force sweeping the state. A darkness from which a plucky band of grass-roots activists - EVERYONE likes them, right? - must save the benighted masses. Save us from ourselves!

What buncombe. The people of Minnesota support Pawlenty and the budget proposal. I'd imagine Grow thinks this is some sort of pathology to be cured.

Demogogues are like that when it comes to genuine democracy in action.

As always, I would welcome Doug Grow's response.

Ironies of Design - By the way - since the "Happy to Pay..." "movement" is basically a throwback to the seventies, it's interesting to look at the actual signs.

They, too, are throwbacks to the seventies!

Check them out; the low-contrast orange-on-orange design, the inept use of capitals - the whole thing screams "Brady Bunch Living Room".
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 09:11:13 AM

Someone Call Sara Brady! - Two Minnesota farm kids have a close call with a potato gun, according to the Strib:
Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier said the two friends were shooting a screwdriver from a homemade potato gun Friday night. The gun failed to fire after several attempts, then went off when one boy picked it up, the sheriff said.

The screwdriver just missed the other boy's heart, LeTexier said. He is expected to recover.
The accident took place near the town of Erskine. Would it be catty of me to say that Erskine is Roger Moe's home town?

Gaaah. People from my hometown ask me why I got the flark out of North Dakota...
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 07:53:46 AM

Left On Iraq Update - Nick Kristof admits admits his predictions about the war were totally wrong:
Since I complained vigorously about this war before it started, it's only fair for me to look back and acknowledge that many of the things that I � along with other doves � worried about didn't happen. So let's look back, examine the record and offer some preliminary accountability.

Despite my Cassandra columns, Iraq never carried out terrorist attacks in the U.S. or abroad, it didn't use chemical or biological weapons, and it didn't launch missiles against Israel in hopes of triggering a broader war. Turkey has not invaded northern Iraq to attack the Kurds.

So let me start by tipping my hat to administration planners whose work reduced those risks. For example, one reason Iraq did not attack Israel may have been the Special Operations forces in the western desert of Iraq, where the launches would have come from. And belated pressure from Washington has kept Turkey out of the war so far.
Then he goes and makes some more predictions:
Those Americans who contend that Iraqis hail us as liberators should try traveling around Iraq. I grew a mustache to look more like an Iraqi so hostile locals wouldn't throw rocks at my car. (I've now returned to the U.S. and had to shave my mustache so my family wouldn't throw stones at me.)

The hawks also look increasingly na�ve in their expectations that Iraq will soon blossom into a pro-American democracy. For now, the figures who inspire mass support in postwar Iraq are Shiite clerics like Ali al-Sistani (moderate, but tainted by being soft on Saddam), Moqtadah al-Sadr (radical son of a martyr) and Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim (Iran's candidate), all of whom criticize the United States.

As in revolutionary Iran, the Shiite network is the major network left in Iraq, and it will help determine the narrative of the war: infidel invasion or friendly liberation. I'm afraid we infidels had better look out.
Bet your money on "Democracy".
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 07:35:47 AM

Ebert - My friend Brian Jones runs "Boviosity". He uncorks on Roger Ebert (scroll down to the part beginning "Amateur patriot Roger Ebert..." - his permalinks aren't working).

The money quote, to me, is probably a toss-off to Brian:
It's so hard not to call people names when they're being this thick. The density of ignorance in this brief paragraph is astonishing. It's almost as if it was edited to seem perfectly and wilfully ignorant.
So the left regards virtually everything the right says as either supreme idiocy or lies; you can test this by cranking up Rush Limbaugh in front of a group of U of M CLA grad students and recording the remarks.

And of course, we on the right regard much of what the left says as ungaugeable cretinism.

In light of piece below, where we quote Andrew Sullivan about how "an intelligent opposition helps good government rather than hinders it", then here's my question:

If someone (of any political orientation) speaks in the forest, and everyone who disagrees calls it idiocy, will anyone hear it?

Not that Ebert's piece isn't pretty stupid...
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 07:35:11 AM

Unhinged - On this site, we've been chronicling the hatredof the left for the right since the very beginning.

Sullivan, today, sums up what it means for democracy (second article down, entitled "Why?":
What I'm saying is that the level of animosity has now gone to truly unhinged levels. This, of course, is good news for Bush, who is busy turning his opponents into shriller versions of Ann Richards. But it's bad news for Democrats and worse news for anyone who believes, as I do, that an intelligent opposition helps good government, rather than hinders it.
The whole piece is excellent, and not too long.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 07:22:34 AM

Payroll - Key British anti-war politician and Labour party leader George Galloway was on the Iraqi payroll to the tune of $500,000 a year, according to the Telegraph:
A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq's exports under the oil for food programme.

He also said that Mr Galloway was profiting from food contracts and sought "exceptional" business deals. Mr Galloway has always denied receiving any financial assistance from Baghdad.

Asked to explain the document, he said yesterday: "Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?"
Andrew Sullivan is cautionary - we don't know the sources, and nothing is confirmed yet. But he says about Galloway's denials:
Not exactly a clear denial, I'd say. Notice the Clintonian "maybes" and "to the best of my knowledge." Notice that Galloway doesn't clearly deny receiving laundered oil money either. I imagine the Telegraph must be pretty confident of its source materials, but I cannot independently verify them, of course. And I haven't seen the story picked up yet by anyone else. But this is the lead story in the largest-selling quality newspaper in Britain. If confirmed, it couldn't be more damaging to a man synonymous in Britain with the anti-war movement.
The big question, of course - if this is true (and it's only an allegation so far), do you suppose Hussein's secret police would have left the US alone?
posted by Mitch Berg 4/22/2003 07:12:13 AM

Monday, April 21, 2003

One Of The Boys - Andy Bizub of the Chicago Boys has this excellent rejoinder to the Celebrity Activist community:
The celebrity activist crowd is shocked, shocked that their feet are being held to the fire, that they are being made to suffer the consequences of taking their overwhelmingly unpopular stands. Welcome to the real world people, a world of personal responsibility where actions can generate reactions. The beautiful ones recoil in horror as individuals and private institutions move to disassociate themselves from anti-war rhetoric. Luckily, that does not shut down the pop icons, they just proceed to reel out more rope with which to hang themselves.
They don't suffer peasants gladly
Regarding Susan Sarandon and her new play (TelegraphUK) : She would not take the play to the Middle East. "I do work for Unicef but I don't know if I want to go to the Middle East. It's so violent and I've got a family." Well shit Suzy, we're all safe here, so let the human meat grinder keep running, after all, they're only Arabs and Zionists, right?
Now, this could be taken many ways - it could be completely out of context.

But if I'm allowed to wax cynical - yes, Susan, all those brown, non-coastal people do have it pretty rough under their current regimes, don't they?
As for her partner, (WNBC) : (Tim) Robbins reportedly threatened Washington Post reporter Lloyd Grove for interviewing Sarandon's mother, saying "if you ever write about my family again, I will (bleeping) find you and I will (bleeping) hurt you." Freedom of the press and speech are wonderful things, unless they are wielded against the extreme left, in which case they prompt threats of physical violence.
Tim! Your and your squeeze are semi-literate poseurs.

You know where to find me.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/21/2003 12:13:55 PM

Discovery? - Every day that we don't find immense caches of chemical weapons is another day that the extreme left gets to practically wet its pants with "Told you so!" glee.

Unanswered: what if Hussein buried the weapons, or shipped them abroad, or just destroyed them, or some combination of the three?

According to Judith Miller of the Times, there's evidence of all of the above.

We've found an Iraqi scientist, says Miller, who claims to know where the proverbial bodies are buried:
A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.

They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs.
The article continues:
Military officials said the scientist told them that four days before President Bush gave Mr. Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war, Iraqi officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research and development was conducted.

The officials quoted him as saying he had watched several months before the outbreak of the war as Iraqis buried chemical precursors and other sensitive material to conceal and preserve them for future use. The officials said the scientist showed them documents, samples, and other evidence of the program that he claimed to have stolen to prove that the program existed.
By the way - you can practically year the conspiracy-theorists of the left shooting steam out of their ears over this bit:
Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.

Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist's safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked.
We'll be watching this one.

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 4/21/2003 10:11:14 AM

Mac - Lileks had a blast from my own past, in this scene from a postcard show:
The best find: some promotional cards for KSTP�s new studio, including some shots of the station�s talent. I didn�t recognize any of the names save one: John McDougal. He did the news for the AM station when I started working there. A big man, Foghorn Leghorn-shaped. A mild manner, a voice from that was mostly gut with a high note of nose to give it distinction. If something went wrong in a broadcast he had a way of looking over his glasses that loosened the bladders of novice board operators. Forty years of broadcast know-how came down on your sorry head.
Mac was the News Director when I started at KSTP, back in '85 - about a year and a half before Lileks, if memory serves. He'd had a fascinating pedigree; before working out his waning years at KSTP-AM, in a post that was probably largely ceremonial - it was well into the era when radio stations just didn't have their own news departments anymore - Mac had been the anchor for Channel 5 (KSTP-TV) News. Stanley Hubbard apparently felt enough loyalty for his old warhorse to keep him on the air, somewhere.

Before that, he'd been in New York. He'd been a big voice-over guy. He was sort of the Tom Barnard of his day; his voice appeared on a dizzying variety of commercials, and if you listen to some of the old "Christmas Story" audio records from the fifties, Mac is the narrator.

Before that, he'd been drafted from his first radio job (at the original WLOL radio in Minneapolis) and served as an infantryman, all the way across Europe in WWII.

Lileks continues:
He died nearly 10 years ago, but here he was in a suburban community center, filed away in an envelope of unopened promotional material. Caught me by surprise, it did.

Wonder if I�ll find a stack of my promotional postcards at a show some day. Fifty cents for the lot! Fine by me. That's what happened to John, and he was the best in the business. One approving nod from his gray head was like having the Museum of Broadcasting drape a medal around your neck. Posterity sometimes just seems like a drunk passing out cigars at random - when it passes over men like John you realize how arbitrary fortune can be, and how the Valhalla of the Briefly Reknowned But Mostly Obscure is probably the most interesting quarter of the afterlife. I'd post his picture here, but you'd forget it tomorrow. I'll post it some other day when I need to summon his shade. You'll know what I mean when it happens.
You surely will.

We worked together on the old Don Vogel show at KSTP - John, producer Dave Elvin (who's now a PR guy in Boston), sports guy Bruce Gordon or Mark Boyle (I have no idea where either of them are), and Mac. And while everything Lileks says is true - being on the wrong end of his wrath after you screwed something up, you knew how Moses felt after his people had really boned one, and a compliment from him, rare as it was, truly meant something - Mac was saved from being a stereotype cliche "crusty old news guy from central casting" by genuinely liking the motley crews he found himself cast up with.

Wow. Hadn't thought about him for quite a while.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/21/2003 07:06:42 AM

Where Angels Fear To Tread - Give me all the good old-fashioned conservative hot-wire topics; American Exceptionalism, Firearms Owners Rights, Taxes, the Nannystate, whatever; I'll eat 'em for breakfast and ask for more.

But I've tended to avoid abortion. It's not that I don't have an opinion on the subject - it's just that it won't fit into a seven-second soundbite. The libertarian in me doesn't want government regulating it (or paying for it); the Christian and conservative doesn't want people getting them; and to be fair, "choice" needs to be more than just that of the mother.

It's an issue where 20 percent of the population would ban the procedure, 20 percent regards it as a sacrament...and 60 percent is somewhere in the gray area in between.

It is, in short, an issue where, despite the raw emotionality of the topic, reasonable people can disagree.

The problem is, some of the parties to the debate just aren't reasonable:
The head of the National Organization for Women's Morris County chapter is opposing a double-murder charge in the Laci Peterson case, saying it could provide ammunition to the pro-life lobby.

"If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder," Morris County NOW President Mavra Stark said on Saturday
Ah. Better that a murder go unatoned than the pro-"choice" lobby be faced with a legal inconvenience.

The rest of the article is more of the same. It shows how far we have not come.

Kerry's Priorities - John Kerry was busy raising funds during the funeral of the first Massachusetts soldier to die in Iraq, according to Drudge:
So why wasn't U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry [D-MA] at last week's funeral of Matthew Boule, 22, the Dracut, Massachusetts native who was the state's first soldier to die in the Iraq war?

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, was in Arizona on Tuesday -- fundraising and campaigning -- the very hour Boule was being buried, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.
How very...Clintonian.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/21/2003 06:39:57 AM

Clark - Some of my Democrat friends have been bloviating about a possible Kerry/Clark ticket in 2004.

Given Kerry's mad dash for the left, I think the top of the ticket is something Bush can deal with, presuming the economy picks up at all (and my own consumer confidence grows with each job interview).

As far as Clark goes, NRO's Jim Geraghty writes about it:
Clark�s reputation appears to be in better shape than the Republican Guard, but it�s taken some hits.

Morton Kondrake of Roll Call says, �The Democratic party should think very carefully about taking advice from Wesley Clark, who has been a doomsayer about this from the beginning.�

�The two big losers of the war in the media were Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Wesley Clark,� says University of Virginia political-science professor Larry Sabato. �They were so wrong. They got way out on a limb on criticizing the Pentagon and the war plan and obviously the success of the operation cut the limb off.�

Sabato says the massive media exposure was a mixed bag for a Clark candidacy.

�He raised his name ID, but it�s likely that now there are lots of people who just know his name and don�t have much of an opinion of him as a candidate,� Sabato says. �He certainly comes across well on TV � he looks good, he sounds good, and comes across as authoritative. Those are all plusses.�

But Sabato also says the general�s doubts and criticism of ultimately vindicated Pentagon war planners mean Clark �shot himself in both feet for general election.�
Kerry's "Regime Change" jape from last week - perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever heard from a serious presidential candidate this side of Pat Buchanan - is certainly something that can be used against him next year.

As to Clark, his performance on CNN was just the latest in a series of problems:
One political observer who had dealt with Clark said that the general�s fights in the Pentagon were not the usual results of disputes over policy, but a refection of Clark�s �arrogance� he�s always absolutely sure of the rightness of his position.� Clark doesn�t appear to be on great terms with the most recent Democratic commander-in-chief, either. It is rumored that donors approached by Clark went to President Clinton for advice and got the thumbs down on the general.
Someday we'll go into Clark's record as US commander in Kosovo.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/21/2003 06:39:33 AM

Sunday, April 20, 2003

Happy Easter - Lest you forget amid the Hallmark (TM) hype that's nearly taken the day over, today's the observed anniversary of the day Christ rose from the dead to redeem you from your sins. (I'm not going to throw in any of the usual "...as Christians believe..."-type qualifiers. If you're Jewish or Moslem, you have my personal dispensation not to bow and scrape to my sensitivities on your holy days. If you're an atheist - find you own holiday!)

Easter is one of my favorite holidays mainly for the religious experience, which has become, if anything, vastly more profound for me over the years. Christmas is Christ's birth, and itself a deeply religious holiday for me, personally. But Christmas is so deeply associated with family (still the main time we're all together), the weather (I love the cold crispness of the air I always associate with Christmas) and, since I've had children, the joy of the whole gift-giving part of the holiday, as commercial as it is. Christmas is an overload of sensations, really - religious, familial, parental, gustatory, sensory - that it leaves me fatigued, needing the (otherwise inexplicable) New Years Day break more for relaxing from Chistmas than to recover from the drinking binge I haven't gone on in over a decade.

Easter, however, is rejuvenating in a mostly spiritual sense. The weather varies (often gorgeous, sometimes deep in snow, today gray and threatening rain), the only family involved is my own, and I'm free to focus much more on the meaning of the holiday than I am for Christmas, even though my approach to Christmas is still perhaps just a bit more spiritually-centered than that of most in our society.

At any rate - whatever your faith or approach to life, I hope you find today the sense of renewal and redemption that we all need, from whatever source. And for Christians - may you all have a blessed Easter.

No CommentSquawkbox, my comment server, seems to be having trouble today.

Hopefully the Comments section will return, as soon as they can make it happen.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/20/2003 10:22:03 AM

Economics Ground World's Fastest Metaphor - One of the greatest stories from The Onion is their classic lampooning of the Titanic disaster, headlined "World's Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg".

We'll come back to that.

Today, the Star/Tribune editorial board mourns the demise of the Concord:
There was a time, not so long ago, when progress seemed linear.
Today - in many areas that truly matter - it's become geometric...

But I digress
A marvelous new supersonic passenger jet would surely revolutionize air travel by zooming people around the globe at ever increasing speeds. Fleets would expand, costs would drop and masses of travelers would eventually benefit.

But superior technology doesn't always win the battle of the marketplace, as attests last week's announcement of the Concorde's demise after 27 years of scheduled service. The sleek marvel of engineering will stop flying this year, British Airways and Air France said last week. World events and the precipitous drop in transatlantic demand hastened a retirement that would have come anyway.
Because, as far as the market was concerned, the Concorde and supersonic transports were not superior technology. It was an interesting, 30-year technology demonstration, indeed - but the technology was a solution in search of a niche.

People needed to get across the Atlantic fast less than they needed to get across the ocean fast enough, and affordably.
Developed in the 1960s, only 20 of the planes were ever built. It's a paradox that the constrictive economics of air travel never allowed Concorde to truly soar.

Frequent fliers know the harsh reality. Newer planes are more cramped, less comfortable. Most passengers, lucky to get pretzels, can't imagine the caviar and fine wines lavished on Concorde customers. Remember dressing up to fly? Flying nowadays is about as glamorous as taking the Greyhound. Even no-frill airlines struggle to stay aloft.
And yet, despite the "constrictive economics", subsonic air travel is a staggering success. Remember - air travel has been around for exactly 100 years this year. Passenger service is 80 years old - 65 years as a practical proposition. It's only been a truly mass market phenomenon - more than a genuine treat, or business indulgence - for less than thirty years.
The Concorde was "a technical miracle but an economic disaster," said Ronald E.G. Davies, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which expects to land one of the needle-nosed jets as an artifact.

The plane was never able to attract customers beyond the celebrity and executive elite. Yes, it flew twice as fast as an ordinary jetliner, allowing pampered fliers to arrive in New York or Washington an hour or two before they left London or Paris. But the Concorde was nine times more expensive to operate than a Boeing 777 and could accommodate only 100 passengers. Even the wealthy paused before spending $6,000 on a three-hour flight.
With that, we start to approach the crux of the matter.

The Concorde was never intended, in and of itself, to be a moneymaker. But it was also more than a technology demonstration. The next graf is the big payoff - although I wonder if the Strib editorial writers know it?:
Americans, showing their practical side, never built a supersonic jetliner. But it's good that the Europeans did,
And there's the real story.

Concorde was, from the beginning, a symbol of European - and by that, we mean Old European - technological prowess.

It was the product of a huge "public/private partnership", the apogee of socialist achievement; a cooperative effort between nationalized British Aerospace (BAe) and French Aerospatiale.

And its career as a symbol was rich in metaphor; the plane took 13 years from initial conception to first flight, and seven more until its first commercial flight. Even the most bumfuzzled military aircraft program moves faster than that.

And in the end - it provided a very specialized service at hideous cost; a solution, truly, in search of a need.

So to return to The Onion's parody; the Concorde was a metaphor for the technological power of the nationalized economy; it was conceived, built and operated by nationalized companies, and served as the points of pride of two nations that were, at the time, poster-children for the belief that command economies and freedom could coexist and thrive.

Since the Concorde first flew, air travel has become a case study in the supremacy and peril of the free market - and, as a side-issue, of the obsolescence of the state-controlled enterprise. Britain turned its back on the worst excesses of socialism 20 years ago. The Concorde became an artifact of the era of the all-powerful government - especially in its increasing obsolescence.

In the end, as the Strib says, the Concorde gave us:
...a fleeting glimpse, at least, of luxury and technological possibility.
And a not-so-fleeting lesson.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/20/2003 08:08:44 AM

...And the #1 Sign Spring is Finally Springing in MN - My magnolia bush is starting to bloom.

I'd hoped to have a job, so I could buy a digital camera, so I could show this on the blog.

You'll have to take my word for it...
posted by Mitch Berg 4/20/2003 07:31:44 AM

Ice? Or Iceberg? - Here's the picture:

A large, motivated minority turns out to protest a military action they detest.
A religious organization links up with a group that represents (and practically worships) an old, discredited dictatorship, proving that war does indeed make for strange bedfellows;
The media plays the demonstrations as if they are a definitive, seminal mass movement.
Are we talking about the anti-war demonstrations? Or the Iraqi anti-US demonstrations?

Both, of course.
At overflow Friday prayer services at the huge Abu Hanafi mosque, a Sunni religious center which opened its doors to members of the rival Shiite sect in a rare demonstration of solidarity, hostility toward the Americans and the desire for an Islamic Iraq were on open display.

"No to sectarianism, one Islamic state," read a banner on the mosque, with the legend "No to America" emblazoned on top.
Now - allowing for the fact that:
the media will only tell us the story they see - which is the story involving the most immediate gratification in terms of conflict, and
the Iraqi people are getting back into free speech, and one might expect that, as with the looting, the long-repressed feelings might take some radical turns,
I have to ask: Is this something to genuinely worry about?

Is the "US out of Iraq" movement any stronger in Iraq than it is here in Saint Paul? Is it the same percentage of vocal, obstreporous people with a knack for getting camera time that it is in Minneapolis or San Francisco?

And as long as the mission - to remove WMDs and Saddam and his links to terror, and allow the Iraqis a real choice in their future, even if that choice is oppressive fundamentalist Islam - then does it matter?
posted by Mitch Berg 4/20/2003 07:22:50 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