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

Friday, September 05, 2003

New Year - It's my tenth autumn here in the Midway.

I first moved to the Midway in 1987 - and with about a two-year gap from '89 to '91, I've lived here ever since.

I moved into this house ten years ago next month. Now, I spent ten years, maybe eleven, in my father's house in North Dakota, so we're rapidly approaching a personal record, here. It feels strange, given that between college and my first years in the Twin Cities I moved about 12 times in five years.

The rhythm of life here in the Midway has markers not all that different than the ones I grew up with in North Dakota, at least conceptually. The rhythm is the same; the details aren't.

Winter is winter, of course - sleet, then snow, then the months of gazing out at the cold wet blanket from the safety of the warm living room, cocoa in hand, watching the Hamline students trudge past. Spring is marked by the return of bikes to the bike paths, and the shortening of sleeves. Summer? Halter tops.

But fall is the one that hits you. We have three colleges or universities within a mile of my house - Hamline is a block away - and the sights and sounds of college kids moving into the dorms, trying out their stereos, throwing their first tentative parties, warming up the boom cars with the big, beginning-of-the-year displays of audio bravado color the nighttime soundscape. The first slicks of vomit are also turning up in the gutters.

On my block, it's really the beginning of the New Year. The little cold tinge in the night air still gives me that 20-year-old feeling, time to start packing up, vestigial but still there.

Unlike most of the Hamline kids, I was here four (and eight) years ago, and I'll probably be here four years from now, if not forty years from now. I love this place - the trees arching over the streets (the 'hood has finally recovered from the Dutch Elm Disease that made the main streets so sere and barren-looking even 15 years ago), the neighborhood stores, the neighbors themselves...

...and every fall, when most people would start feeling blue with the reminiscences of the end of summer, we have the loud, crass, baggy-pantsed reminders of renewal here among us; walking through our yards, puking on our boulevards, tossing beer cans in our gutters, and reminding us of what we were not that long ago, and sometimes, on wistful nights like this, making one take stock of what parts of that part of our lives need to be exhumed and re-examined and maybe revived just a bit.

Happy New Year.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/5/2003 09:38:43 PM

Couture du Trashe Blanc - When I was a kid, tattoos meant one of two things:
One had been in the service, where tattoos have always been a sort of rite of passage, or
One was sort of a low-life.
Things, of course, have changed.

I was at a swimming beach on an east-metro lake the other day. While I know that tattoos are much bigger business than they used to be, I was amazed - it seemed like we non-tattooed people were the minority.

And I figured - as I often do in thses situations - "we need some sort of taxonomy, here".

Submitted for your approval:
Barbed Wire around the Bicep - Voted for Ventura, doesn't really remember why.
Celtic band around arm - Votes DFL, plays Hackey-Sack
Big Phoenix or other bird at Small of Back - Tendency toward overdramatic expression of opinions over trivial things.
Rose or Mercury Wings Tattoed on Ankle - Tends to binge-drink with friends.
Postage-stamp sized Kanji glyph between shoulder blades - On male: Fussy. On female: Sexy.
Poster-sized Kanji glyph between shoulder blades - Prone to binge-drinking in tattoo parlors.
Small rose on ribcage - On woman: sexy. On man: sign of glaucoma.
Dragon, Barbed Wire, Phantasmal Creature or anything that looks like the cover of a Molly Hatchet album covering one breast and sticking out over average neckline - On woman: Sign of serious issues. On man: Check criminal record.
Cross - Check church record.
Hamfisted, but I suspect largely accurate.

Yes, I nearly got a tattoo, once. It was 20 years ago, and it was a near miss. Subject for a later blog, I'm sure.

Or not.

I'll be back online this weekend, to make up for the lame week. Stay tuned.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/5/2003 06:09:17 PM

Still Working On It - the computer, that is.

I'm having a very arcane hardware problem. I'll probably catch up on posting over the weekend.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/5/2003 03:21:44 PM

Travails - More computer trouble, plus a possible phone job interview later today - we'll see.

More posting later, when we'll try to answer the questions: Will Fraters and Hugh patch it up? Is Sullivan going to the dark side? Is Layne OK?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/5/2003 08:23:49 AM

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Why? - Electric Venom states the resentful feminist case against the Islamic fundies.

Nothing new - but lots of old stuff you may have forgotten, in one convenient package.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/4/2003 02:06:10 PM

Good Vs. Evil. Then Shopping - Virginia Postrel starts the discussion about the gross misapprehension of America's real values:
Americans had forgotten bourgeois virtue. Freedom and affluence had made us soft. We were self-indulgent moral nihilists -- materialistic, selfish, and impulsive. We might have been having fun, but we’d created a culture no one would fight for.

At least that’s what the wise men said.

On September 11, 2001, they shut up. Ordinary Americans, it turned out, were not only brave but resilient and creative, even lethal, when it mattered.
Her conclusion?
Buffy was right all along.
ScrrrrraaaaAAAAAAAATCH.

Buffy?

Nope, I've never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then again, I've never watched Friends, Will and Grace, Frazier (maybe twice), or much of any other "Must See TV".

But Postrel states an eloquent case for the WB's flagship show:
The mere existence of Buffy proves the declinists wrong about one thing: Hollywood commercialism can produce great art. Complex and evolving characters. Playful language. Joy and sorrow, pathos and elation. Episodes that dare to be different -- to tell stories in silence or in song. Big themes and terrible choices. In the show’s most wrenching moment, Buffy kisses her one true love and saves the world by sending him to hell.

Buffy assumes and enacts the consensus moral understanding of contemporary American culture, the moral understanding that the wise men ignored or forgot. This understanding depends on no particular religious tradition. It’s informed not by revelation but by experience. It is inclusive and humane, without denying distinctions or the tough facts of life. There are lots of jokes in Buffy -- humor itself is a moral imperative -- but no psychobabble and no excuses. Here are some of the show’s precepts, a sample of what Americans believe:
Postrel (who vaguely resembles Buffy, actually) then lists the precepts. Read 'em - it's fascinating stuff.

So maybe I'll check out the DVD after all.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/4/2003 10:37:05 AM

Women Glow and Men Chunder - Daughter is feeling fine today, but son and I are both home, sick as the proverbial dogs.

Blogging will either be nonexistent or obsessive, depending on how this headache plays out.

Notice is Served - People have ribbed me via email, noting that I occasionally respond to quotes in my blog with the single-word "Indeed", a la Glen Reynolds. The emailers ask if I'm not copying the Professor a bit blatantly.

Buncombe. I've been using the word "Indeed" as an all-purpose, non-committal response for at least twenty years, and I have college pals who'll back me up on it.

I was Indeeding when Indeeding wasn't cool.

Yes, I feel like a pioneer. What's it to you?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/4/2003 10:11:35 AM

"Saint Paul DFLer Sentenced for Bank Robbery Murder" - Wouldn't that have been a wierd headline?

Of course. To have put out such a headline about the sentencing of Kathleen Soliah would have implied that Soliah's politics were an element of the crimes for which she was sentenced.

You ask "So what?"

Tim Graham in The Corner notes:
Am I the only one to find it disturbing that NBC/MSNBC is routinely referring to abortionist-killer Paul Hill today as an "anti-abortion activist," as if he's comparable to Chris Smith or Phyllis Schlafly?
Indeed.

How many criminals have their vocations or avocations tied to their sentencing?

The headlines did not scream:
PAINTER EXECUTED FOR LINDBERG KIDNAPPING
or
PLUMBER SENTENCED FOR ROBBERY
because the occupations of the perps aren't generally elements of the crime.

Referring to Paul Hill as a "Murderer" or "Zealot" or "terrorist" would be both true and germane to the crime for which he was executed. Calling him - not just occasionally, but as a general thing - an "anti-abortion activist" links Hill's crime with the efforts of everyone who actively opposes infanticide.

)Via Jeff Fecke)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/4/2003 07:38:36 AM

Museum of Communism - Radley Balko at Fox News writes about the struggle to create a memorial to victims of Communism:
"Most of us are justifiably revolted at the sight of a teenage kid wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika. But glimpse the same kid in a shirt featuring a sickle and hammer, or a portrait of Che Guevara, and many of us will find him quaint, perhaps idealistic -- at the very worst, naïve and misguided. In New York City, you can get tipsy at the KGB Bar, a chic spot featuring Soviet-era symbolism and paraphernalia. Imagine what might become of the entrepreneur who tried to open a nightspot themed with Nazi regalia.

It become fashionable of late for celebrities to make high-profile pilgrimages to Cuba, to be wined and dined by Fidel Castro. In the time it takes to extol the virtues of universal health care and education, you can bet at least a dozen Cubans have risked their lives to get out. Iconic director Stephen Spielberg was the latest to make the trip. You’d think the man who so eloquently documented the brutality of totalitarianism in "Schindler’s List" would know better than to cozy up to tyrants.
This isn't merely tongue in cheek; there actually is an effort underway to create this memorial.

It's running into struggles, though:
One such project is already underway. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has been raising money toward a museum for several years now. The organization plans to build an online “virtual” museum first, then a standing memorial in Washington, D.C., with a final eye toward a bricks-and-mortar memorial similar to the Holocaust Museum.

But there’s a problem with the project’s funding. Project Director Jay Katzen says that although initial plans called for the museum to be funded entirely with private donations, the challenges of private fund raising has led the group to seek public dollars.
Balko continues, talking about the irony inherent in that resolution.

Read the whole thing - as well as George Mason University's "Museum of Communism" site.

(Via Tocquevillian)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/4/2003 06:30:19 AM

Quote Of The Day - Lileks, natch:
That’s the good thing about the Dark Side.

Eventually, your eyes adjust.
Even working on a .NET project looks good right now.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/4/2003 05:22:16 AM

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

The Weekend - The irony of being a long-term unemployed (that's what the Department of Labor calls me now!) on Labor Day weekend didn't escape me.

Still, it was a great weekend. Saw Franky Perez at the Bandshell on Saturday night at the Fair. Now, the Bandshell crowd has to be one of the toughest crowds out there; a mixture of people from stroller-bound toddlers to septuagenarians and everyone in between, all footsore and gassy and worn out after a day of violent rides and greasy food. Of the several hundred people there, it's a safe bet that only a thin film of them have any idea who you are. And if you're a club animal like Perez - who puts on a kinetic, old-school raveup of a show that's tailor-made for a club (or at an outdoor gig full of rock and roll fans, like last July at the Block Party - that has to be hard. The show was good - but you can tell when a hyperkinetic stage animal like Perez just isn't feeling the love. A group of maybe forty fans dancing around the foot of the stage picked things up. Here's hoping he has another local club gig soon.

More job leads. Sigh. I've been playing the numbers game all along; I've sent hundreds of resumes, had dozens of interviews of various types, and have probably 5-6 serious job leads right now. Eventually, the logic - my logic, anyway - says something's gotta break. Right?

Speaking of breaks - thanks to everyone that made this past month a record month for donations. I think Amazon delays telling me about gifts for at least thirty days, so - if you donated money via my Amazon link about this time last month, thank you very much! This site continues to be completely self-supporting, which in these times is pretty encouraging.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 11:20:03 AM

Due To Gun Control, Part CVI - Spoon has a long, fascinating post on the ramifications, not only of Chicago's unconstitutional gun ban, but of the consequences of the gun-control "moderates'" favorite solution, registration.

It seems the last-registered owner of a pistol used in a murder sold the firearm to a couple of policemen who ignored the law. The result? He's in jail on $100,000 bond:
"Got that? This poor mope, Beuck, legally buys a gun, probably some time around 1966-67. He keeps the gun for 15 years or so, without incident, at which time he promptly complies with Chicago's unconstitutional gun ordinance and registers his gun with the City in 1983. He keeps the gun for another decade or so, until 1994, at which time he legally sells it to a cop. Nine years later, and after at least two police officers have ignored the gun ordinance, a career violent criminal (in violation of a half dozen state laws and City ordinances) somehow gets ahold of the gun and kills several coworkers. The cops track down Beuck, now homeless, and ask him about the gun. Beuck cooperates, tells the police what he knows, but because this homeless man cannot now produce records regarding the sale of his gun nine years ago, Beuck gets sent to Cook County Jail on $100,000 bond!

You gotta wonder what would have happened if the authorities had shown as much interest in locking up the murderer, Tapia, after any of his more than a dozen arrests as they did in locking away a 58 year old homeless guy who couldn't come up with the paperwork documenting a gun he sold nine years ago."
And the left tries to ridicule the pro-Second Amendment movement's reference to the slippery slope...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 10:36:40 AM

It's The Terror, Stupid - Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Spectator (via Sullivan), on the intellectual self-destruction of the Left after 9/11, over the only issue that really matters: Terror.

Remember - Wheatcroft's no dittohead:
"Two years later, the sorriest consequence of all this has become much clearer. Because the critics of the Bush administration and Blair government made themselves so ridiculous in the aftermath of 11th September, the proper case against the Iraq war was subsequently much weakened. Sane critics of Bush and Blair must have been embarrassed by the sheer emptiness of the Voices for Peace, one of the instant books which came out in autumn 2001, in which Mark Steel, Ronan Bennett, Annie Lennox ("I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it"), George Monbiot ("Let’s make this the era of collateral repair"), Anita Roddick ("We must shift from a private greed to a public good") and other usual or unusual suspects were rounded up, along with Adrian Mitchell (yes, also still with us), who rather lamely reprinted his old favourite "Tell me lies about Vietnam," which must have taken a few wrinklies back to the 1960s.

These unthinking "radicals" provoked more than just amusement mixed with irritation—they induced a sense of despair. They simply had nothing to say—as they showed when they were asked for more practical advice. If Alice Walker’s suggestion that Bin Laden should be reminded of all the good, nonviolent things he has done was one of the most remarkable entries in this whole sottisier, it wasn’t much different in kind from the fatuities on offer elsewhere. Paul Foot led the way by telling Bush, "first, cut off your aid to the state of Israel." This was like saying, first, conquer the law of gravity, or, first, fly to Venus.
Intellecual vacuity, of course, is far from international. One had only to watch any of the Twin Cities' left's ~~pro-Hussein~~ anti-war rallies to see that ofay symbolism has replaced rational thought with all too many on the left (and on too many issues, as you notice if you work on the Concealed Carry debate too long).

This is an interesting topic, one I'm planning on exploring more. If you ask the left (see Josh Marshall), the left is just about to hit its stride. And yet as the Dean candidacy unfolds, and General Clark's mendacity is exposed to daylight, it looks like the sort of stride you see in a Three Stooges episode, only better, because the slapstick humor is unintentional.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 09:46:15 AM

Crossfired - I cut my political teeth watching "Crossfire". Back about the time I was converting from liberalism, the show crackled with energy. Original hosts Tom Braden and a pre-boogeyman Pat Buchanan attacked their topics and guests with a flood of overtly-partisan but unabashedly articulate barrage of rhetoric. It was, of course, all opinion and no fact - which, in the years before Al Franken, was something we weren't used to getting overtly from the major media.

Then, I didn't watch it for about 15 years, and was shocked to hear that it's a prime candidate for the tank. I had no idea.

David Frum explains it well:
Is it possible that the brilliant original formula that made Crossfire a success in the 1990s--all opinion, no information--is out of date in a world in which Americans are threatened by dangers about which they crave information. You can learn things by listening to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, or by watching the Fox News Channel or CNN's Aaron Brown. But who has learned anything from Crossfire" recently? It may be that the show has failed by doing something that TV executives used to sneeringly insist was impossible: by underestimating its audience.
So it seems.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 07:10:22 AM

Krusing and Boozing - Colleen Kruse used to be a modestly serviceable comic. The bulk of her schtick has always (as I remember it) been to beat her audience over the head with PC cliches about...Colleen Kruse "Teenage Single Mom! Waitress! Woman in a Man's Racket!". As the City Pages said about her, The comedian is a product of working-class East St. Paul, teenage single motherhood, and a tour at Mickey's Diner. Those experiences have put her, as she declares onstage in thigh-high boots, "in touch with her inner motherfucker." Whether talking about her young son's pride in his erect penis or her day job in restaurants, Kruse is more interested in observational storytelling than one-liners". In other words, humor tailor-made for "This American Life".

She's managed to insinuate herself into the local writing crowd; she's reviewing books for the Strib now.

I can't tell what stands out the most about her review of Al Franken's new book, Icky Poopy Conservatives and Why I Hate Them: Ms. Kruse's fluence with strawmen, or the casual stupidity of her hatred.

Both are in evidence: Fluency with strawmen:
There's an adage generally attributed to Mark Twain: "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on." (He would have loved AM talk radio.)
and casually-stupid hatred:
On the other hand, if you play your Friday night game of cribbage with Grandma using an FBI's Most Wanted Deck just in case, you're going to want to fire up your Hummer 2 and motor on down to the union-busting mall bookseller, plunk down your $24.95 and see what you're up against. Because you've got to keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Oh, yeah; Kruse thinks Franken is a cogent, on-point commentator:
Franken has been keeping a very close watch on his opponents, including Fox News shouter Bill O'Reilly, instapundit Ann Coulter [Note to Ms. Kruse: vide Instapundit. Don't make me come back there], former CBS correspondent turned media critic Bernard Goldberg, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch. With detailed, and often searingly funny footnotes, he deconstructs their writings and public utterances for maximum embarrassment value.

He catches O'Reilly boasting that the tabloid TV show "Inside Edition" won two prestigious Peabody journalism awards while he was on the staff. Never happened. He dings Coulter for research methods that wouldn't fly in a community college debate class.
Ms. Kruse; I'll toss O'Reilly over the transom if you do the same for Begala or Carville.

I'll be waiting.
Franken is brilliant at converting actual, factual quotes from our very own public servants and powerbrokers into wry commentary by simply affording them the relative calm of the printed page, rather than shouting over a media host's screaming agenda.
Where I come from, we call that "Taking the writer out of context". Note to Ms. Kruse; Franken's famous for it.
Of course, Franken's fact-finding can be fallible, too. He makes a mistake when he attributes an article that appeared in the Star Tribune to "Mpls./St. Paul Magazine (the weekend magazine of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)" But that's error, not deliberate deception.
Right.

And Franken's reflexive support of a president that lied under oath? That was...hep me, here?
Readers who pick up "Lies" simply expecting a laugh will find the joke's on them. The joke is, this is no joke. Franken's sardonic critique of our culture of political disinformation is serious business, and there's a lengthy chapter on the Wellstone memorial controversy to prove it.
Ms. Kruse: What Mr. Franken proves is that he's as bald-faced a spin doctor as a Carville, without half the entertainment value.
Like any pro comic, Franken doesn't shy from any subject. He's thoughtful and thorough, and not always side-splitting.
He's a cheap shot artist who specializes in out-of-context japes that, often as not, fall apart under detailed scrutiny, not that anyone cares to scrutinize the pathetic, publicity-whoring has-been.

By the way, Ms. Kruse; about your writing. I read this bit here, and I'm getting concerned:
But a lot of the time, he is. Enough of the time, he is.
Much of the time, you're better than that. Some of the time, you're better than that.
It would have been unseemly for him to have paced his laughs in any other way. They would have become the point of the book rather than its highlight and saving grace. Franken has built this finger-pointing book to be sturdy and interesting, no matter which side of the capital-gains tax break you butter your bread on.
Actually, I rather suspect you'd have to be sitting on Ms. Kruse's side of that issue, holding a wedge of Brie and a glass of Chablis with her and Al and Lori Sturdevant for all I know, to find it (if my skimming is any indication) anything but a has-been's painful attempt to cash in on a brief flash of outsider-hip cred.

But then Colleen Kruse probably thinks Molly Ivins is an incisive commentator, too...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 06:28:57 AM

Sundaze - Lori Sturdevant wrote a great column on Sunday.
There's a timelessness on Machinery Hill. The visitor notes the timelessness of the 4T Program message - Tractors, Transmissions, Tarnation, Tranquility - and the clusters of genuine young 'uns gathered around their mechanics projects. These are the "Family Mechanics" of the future - the people who'll run our family garages and farm equipment dealerships, carrying on this state's proud traditions...
Or perhaps this:
Standing around the 4R booth - the R's stand for Radio, Ratings, Rip and Read - one can see what 101 constant years of constant, generation-to-generation commitment (in terms of state subsidy) that the program has brought to the youth involved. The children - who will carry on Minnesota's "Family Radio" tradition - benefit - and so do we all...".
Of course, I'm lying. Ms. Sturdevant really wrote this:
There's a soothing timelessness inside the 4-H Building at the State Fair. The eye can rove from the 1930s group photos and 1958 ribbons in the display case to the clusters of real young people around beribboned exhibits, and admire what 101 years of constant commitment has produced.

The eye can be deceived. Courtesy of state budget cuts, change is coming to 4-H, and to its parent organization, the University of Minnesota Extension Service.
Sturdevant's column noted that funding cuts to the U of M Extension Service's "4H" program will spell the instant death of the family farm - or at least the Norman Rockwell-y image of the Family Farm that the DFL continues to flog.

She says:
County 4-H program coordinators -- along with the once-ubiquitous county extension agents -- will soon be gone.
And along, it should be added, with the tiny-town family farm life, which has been on the ropes for thirty years, and is pretty much a dead issue.

Time was that farm life in the Upper Midwest was centered around hundreds of small towns - each with a grain elevator and a rail spur, a grocery store, a church or two or three, about the same number of taverns, an extension/4H worker and a high school.

Today, the schools are consolidated, farmers think nothing of driving two hours to shop. The elevator is closed, the spur shut down years ago, the store and the taverns folded, the school consolidated with four others - in a bigger town 20 miles away - and the small towns are basically nursing homes with freeway exits.
There's a new structure coming: 18 regional offices with 18 regional extension educators, coordinating the work of volunteers and of as many paid county 4-H staff members as the state's 87 county boards of commissioners care to hire.

Where county elected officials are willing to raise and spend property tax dollars, 4-H will flourish. But in counties where 'no new taxes' is the rule, whither 4-H?
Whither the Young Ford Dealers? Whither Future Guitarists of American? Whither indeed the Editorial Columnist Kids club?

Whither indeed; nobody has decided that it's worth taxpayer dollars to create the next generation of car salesmen or musicians or journalists.

So - can 4H be saved? How important is the question?

Sturedevant found a patsy - a rural DFLer - to answer that:
State Rep. Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar and a 4-H parent, spoke for the pessimists: 'Minnesota's 4-H programs are in trouble!' he warned, as he argued at a press conference for restoration of $850,000 lost to 4-H through state budget cuts this year. 'We are at risk of losing 4-H and all the good things it does for rural kids.'
But that's not the point. Why do rural kids rate a special subsidy? So we don't lose the seed art at the State Fair? Why?
Did voters in Jackson and Martin counties in 2002 understand that 'no new taxes' could mean a smaller 4-H program?

'I don't think so,' Harries said.

It should dawn on them before the next State Fair rolls around."
Or perhaps it will dawn on Lori Sturdevant; Rural Minnesota's kids will pay their "First-ever" membership fee, if 4H is important to them. If it's not...

...it'll go the way of Future Whalers of America.

Need a Kleenex?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 06:28:28 AM

Real, or Satire? - Which is satire, and which is reality: A, or B. Remember - no fair peeking:

A - "U.N. Troops to Lead 'Operation Haughty Weasel':"It's really a goodwill gesture," said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "We want to let the Iraqi people know that even though we opposed their liberation, we still love their petroleum. So...you know...no hard feelings."

B - "The UN declared Aidid an outlaw and, using troops (and US helicopters) ill-equipped for such a mission, began trying to track him down. The UN raids resulted in many Somali deaths, which had the effect of uniting Aidid's clan behind him. So when Clinton reluctantly agreed in August to send Task Force Ranger, an elite force of commandos backed by US Army Rangers, to accomplish the job more professionally, the stage was set for "Black Hawk Down".

All right, dumb question.

But the UN's record at fighting terror - from Mogadishu (where they set the stage for the Black Hawk Down incident) to the Congo (where they set the stage for as ghastly a genocide has has ever happened) is as worthless as the Democrats need it to be.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/3/2003 06:27:39 AM

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Manic Tuesday - Very busy day today - job interview, plus getting the accursed computer working again.

More about the Labor Day weekend, my computer woes, plus notes on America's Next Third Party, the Democrats, either tonight (if I'm lucky in the computer department) or tomorrow (if I'm not).

Hopefully back to full-speed blogging this week.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/2/2003 04:33:36 PM

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