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

Friday, October 17, 2003

Bomb Plot? - Gertz has details of a potential Al Queda "dirty bomb" operation:
A key al Qaeda terrorism suspect was in Canada looking for nuclear material for a "dirty bomb," The Washington Times has learned.
Adnan El Shukrijumah is being sought by the FBI and CIA in connection with a plot to detonate a dirty bomb — a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material.
According to an FBI informant, El Shukrijumah was spotted last year in Hamilton, Ontario, posing as a student at McMaster University, which has a 5-megawatt research reactor. U.S. officials believe El Shukrijumah, whose photograph was posted on the FBI's Web site in March, was in Hamilton trying to obtain radioactive material.
So why Canada?
According to the officials, the al Qaeda members were sent to North America and assigned with making the bomb from materials acquired there, rather than trying to smuggle conventional explosives and radioactive material into the United States.
Chilling, if true.

As they say - read the whole thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/17/2003 08:59:10 AM

Half Her Brain Tied Behind Her Back - Ann Coulter shreds much of the gleeful Limbaugh-bashing we've seen in the media this past week.

Money quote:
"When a conservative can be the biggest thing in talk radio, earning $30 million a year and attracting 20 million devoted listeners every week – all while addicted to drugs – I'll admit liberals have reason to believe that conservatives are some sort of super-race, incorruptible by original sin. But the only perfect man hasn't walked the Earth for 2,000 years. In liberals' worldview, any conservative who is not Jesus Christ is ipso facto a "hypocrite" for not publicly embracing dissolute behavior the way liberals do.
And this...
Liberals can lie under oath in legal proceedings and it's a "personal matter." Conservatives must scream their every failing from the rooftops or they are "liars.") "
Read every word. It's a classic - maybe one of her best.

As much flak as Coulter took for Treason, it's a mistake to call her a right-wing Michael Moore (as I myself mistakenly did). She's at least right more often than not.

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 10/17/2003 08:03:48 AM

Boykin - As Hugh Hewitt reports, NBC and the LATimes have launched a jihad against General William Boykin. Boykin, a newly-nominated lieutenant-general and Deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence for intelligence and war fighting, has apparently made explicitly Christian statements that some find divisive.

There are many issues in this story - pick-and-choose journalistic ethics and selective theology being top on my list.

There is already quite a bit of commentary about this story; Hewitt himself covers the Los Angeles Times' unusual path to break this story, while Lileks briefly touches on the rather gaping journalistic ethics problem in the LATimes story (by their intelligence specialist, former Army intel analyst William Arkin).

NBC's Lisa Myers (and the Associated Press' Matt Kelley)highlight a quote that seems to be part of the problem from some of Boykin's critics:
"Boykin's church speeches, first reported by NBC News and the Los Angeles Times, cast the war on terrorism as a religious battle between Christians and the forces of evil.

Appearing in dress uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June, Boykin said Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Some critics, including Moslems, are upset. Perhaps undertandably so, to a degree:
A Muslim civil rights group on Thursday called for Boykin to be reassigned.

"Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policy-making position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America's motives and intentions," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
But according to Frontpage's Lowell Ponte, the general is being taken completely out of context:
Only days after this Oregon speech, for example, Boykin addressed a prayer breakfast at Fort Dix, during which, according to the base newspaper, the general “compared the radical Islamic fundamentalists to the radical ‘hooded Christians’ [apparently Ku Klux Klansmen] of the United States.

“’There are Muslims who worship here and support the United States,’ he said, pointing out that those who act violently in the name of their religion do not reflect the principles of Islam,” the base newspaper report continued.

“Nor do they reflect the principles of the Judeo-Christian roots of the United States, he said.
Another quote from Arkin and Myers which has whipped up a lot of righteous fervor:
During a January church speech in Daytona, Fla., Boykin recalled a Muslim fighter in Somalia who bragged on television the Americans would never get him because his God, Allah, would protect him: “Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”
Again, there's a context here. According to Boykin's biography (note the bio's author), Boykin was the commander of Delta Force during the 1993 Mogadishu raid.

And this introduces an understanding of comparative theology that NBC and the LATimes either missed, or found inconvenient.

Ponte notes (with my added emphasis):
It was in this context that Boykin denounced one underling of a Somali warlord as idolatrous for following a path of violence that violated the most fundamental tenants of Islam.

It would make no sense to a genuine Muslim for Boykin to proclaim his Christian God bigger – because Muslims of this region regard themselves as descendants of Abraham and worshippers of the One God of Abraham, the same God worshipped by their fellow “People of the Book,” Jews and Christians.

Boykin’s statement about his God being bigger (pushed by Leftist media critics as if it were an insult to Islam) has meaning to a Muslim only if intended to convey that this one person [Aidid, and other Wahabbists] was in fact a pagan idolater pretending to be a Muslim while violating the Koran.
So Boykin's remarks have to be strenuously divorced from their genuine context (uttered by a man with a profound understanding of the issues, both military and theological) in this war) to make them as insulting to Moslems as the media are trying to do.

So let's recap:
A general with decades of profound understanding of the Wahabbi sect and its actions, and with immense intelligence in this area (Delta force doesn't just hire killers; you have to be highly intelligent to make it into the unit, particularly as an officer; Boykin served in the unit for 12 years, then commanded it, before commanding all US special forces!).
Comments delivered completely deprived of the genuine intellectual context in which the general discusses the issue; damning, seven-second soundbits excised, Maureen-Dowd-style, from decades of intensely knowledgeable commentary and action on the subject
Dubious journalistic ethics (note Lileks's commentary)
...equals the appearance of being another LATimes smear campaign against the President, of course. The media's been unable to impugn the President on the motivations for war (Yellowcakes fell flat; their "imminent threat" trope is imminently cold); and the truth about the situation in Iraq is finally starting to leak out; it may be that the Democrats' best hope left is to try to portray the Administration as extremist ideologues in the eyes of...

...Who?

This is the fascinating question, to me. The media are trying to smear one of our top officers as a simple-minded bigot, by way of impugning the president's emphasis on simple faith.

Is it because the media believe that there's a groundswell of anti-Christian backlash waiting to erupt among the electorate? Or are they as out of touch as they seemed to be during the California recall (when, according to some observers, most of the LATimes' newsroom believed Bustamante would win up until the election results actually started shaping up)?

Comments? Please. I don't have the answers here.

UPDATE: In the comments, PJZ adds:
As someone though who enthusiastically supports the War on Terror/Islamofascism I LOVE IT when our leaders (especially the guys running the campaign) speak in terms of Good versus Evil rather than the phony nuances of multicultural relativism because it shows me that THEY GET IT!
About twenty years ago, there was a really bad business-management book that was, probably accidentally, a great book on leadership; "The Patton Principles" by Porter Williamson. It explained a lot about the "warrior" frame of mind exhibited by someone like a Boykin, an old-school, "lead from the front" officer - the only type that are tolerated in Special Forces.

The book introduced me to a simple fact that Patton understood intimately - and that Boykin must, as well; when you're leading men in action - and by action, I mean "where people are shooting things at you that can rip off your limbs and leave your guts spraying out of your stomach as you watch in mute horror" - it's no time for Clintonian shadings and nuances and parsing. All things - your cause, your buddies, your enemy's turpitude - are absolute. You don't ask men to die for nuance - something Bill Clinton never understood.

And yet if you examine the context and history of the General's remarks, his absolutes are also honest (which is also an essential for a good leader); Aidid and Bin Laden do follow a sect of Islam that most of the world's Moslems find foreign if not abhorrent. And whatever the surface faith of the terrorists, they were motivated by what most Christians - even ultra-liberal anti-American ones - would have condemned, and called "evil", had the terrorists not been Moslems.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/17/2003 07:08:10 AM

Fundamentally Unfair - The current style among younger women involves low-rider pants, high-cut tops, and bare midriffs.

Even though I'm 40, single, and live a block from a college, I have no problem with this. I can put up with it, in fact; call it my contribution to the First Amendment.

However, it illustrates a fundamental unfairness of life. When a 40 year old guy rides around on a bike wearing pants that are too low in back (not writing autobiographically, here), it's called "Plumber's Crack". When a 21-year-old girl does it, it causes cars to swerve onto the boulevard.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/17/2003 06:00:41 AM

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Another Wimpy Day - I'm going to be on a client site today.

More posting tonight.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/16/2003 06:50:15 AM

Jimmy Stewart Calling - I...I...I don't, um, listen to much...much....much...um...mid-day radio these...these...these days. There's...there's...not, um, much time for that in my...my...my...my...current, rather, um, busy schedule.

So, I...I...I, um, never got to listen to...to...to...Rush Limbaugh very much. He's...he's...um, on at a time of...of...of...day that I just...just...um, don't get on the radio much.

I'll...ah, tell you this much. I...I...I...er, can't stand listening to...er...Roger Hedgecock. He's...he's...er, irritating to listen to, and his...his...his...call-handling...er, um...skills aren't much better than...um...Katherine Lanpher's. And...um...Walter...er, Williams may be a...be a brilliant man, but he's...he's...he's...nearly unlistenable.

So during my...my...my...my...er, rare moments of mid-day radio listening, I...I...I...er, have been catching...er, catching up with...um, Dennis Prager. The...um, the man is...is...is...um, intellectually...er, fascinating.

But...er, but the man has...has...has...has...has...um, a few verbal tics that may...may...may...may...may...may...drive me to um...um...distraction if I'm...I'm...I'm...I'm...not, um, careful.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/16/2003 06:49:56 AM

Whine and Cheese - The Strib's editorial page is at it again, this time whining about the settlement that the state's public employees were "forced" to take:
"Leaders of Minnesota's two largest state employees unions had no other choice: They had to swallow hard and accept a new contract that will cut the compensation received by most of their members.
If I understand correctly, this statement is hogwash. The public employees will be paying more of their fair share of their own health care benefits. Ironically, the fact that public employees have had a free ride on health care is in some part responsible for the high cost of health care for the rest of us; when people can go to the doctor for free for every hangnail, it drives up the demand, and hence the price, for all the rest of us copay-paying (or uninsured) consumers.

But the Strib gets this right:
The 27,000 members of AFSCME Council 6 and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) are well advised to do the same. The alternative is a politically unsustainable strike that could lead to disaster, not only for the strikers' household budgets, but also for the future of collective bargaining by Minnesota's public workers.

A strike would not be well received by Minnesotans. It would be seen -- and spun, by allies of Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- as a union attempt to gain more generous benefits than many similarly occupied workers receive in the private sector.
Say what you will about the Strib - they're not stupid.

Just disingenuous:
Minnesotans are a fair-minded lot. They do not begrudge public employees decent compensation.
Notice the way the Strib keeps calling it "compensation" - as if they're getting their take-home pay cut!
State workers ought to complain about paying more for health care. The willingness of employers to transfer an increasing portion of health coverage costs to employees appears to be unlimited.
Quick - note the levels of disingenuity in this statement!
The state employees' copays and premiums, even with the new contract, are vastly lower than those paid by private-sector consumers!
The Strib mentions the "willingness of employers to transfer an increasing portion of health coverage costs to employees" as if it's an evil thing. It's not! And in fact if health care was all privately paid, it would likely be vastly more affordable than it is.
The desired end result, of course, is between the lines; put it all back on the employer; mandate health care. And when that proves unsustainable, make it all "single-payer".
That - government-rationed health care - is, of course, the Strib's goal. They put it in code, of course:
[Unions] can galvanize grumbling resentment into political pressure for a solution to rising health care costs that does more than shove an increasing burden onto already overloaded shoulders.
Any questions?

Of course, there's a political motivation:
Public employees are also well positioned to help Minnesotans understand the full cost of a 'no-new-taxes' policy. The take-home pay they will sacrifice under the proposed contract is lost to them for good -- and lost now, when it is badly needed, in additional consumer spending to stimulate the state's economy.
Two possible answers to this:
As if government employees are the only consumers!
Government employees have in their hands the same solution to this "problem" that the rest of us do; don't go indiscriminately to the doctor! Take care of yourself!, and that means you, 300-pound municipal court employee and pot-bellied water-department worker and martini-swilling Attorney General's Office employee! It's what the rest of us do!
The Strib continues:
More than that, the compensation crimp will take a long-term toll on the willingness of talented people to choose public service as a career.
Oh, dear.

The crimp in compensation certainly drove "talented people" out of the buggywhip industry. Does that mean we should cave in to the BWMA's demands?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/16/2003 06:49:12 AM

Support - Two months ago, I postulated "Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary":
No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the President's justifications for the War in Iraq at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive
Andrew Sullivan adds evidence to my theory in today's posts.

He notes the radical inconsistency of many opponents, as exemplified by Maureen Dowd:
Here's Maureen Dowd on March 9 of this year:
The case for war has been incoherent due to overlapping reasons conservatives want to get Saddam. The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis...[snipped]...
And on June 4, only three months later, we discover that
For the first time in history, Americans are searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over... Conservatives are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam's poised and thrumming weapons of mass destruction."
So what was it? An incoherent set of multiple reasons or a single, crude one, i.e. self-defense against the "imminent" threat of WMDs? It doesn't really matter to Dowd, of course.
Read the whole thing (actually two posts); it sums up not only the problem with the opposition to the liberation of Iraq, but the problem a conservative faces in so many arguments with the left (including the ones I'll be talking about later, in re the St. Paul School Board election).
posted by Mitch Berg 10/16/2003 06:28:57 AM

Cubless - Too depressing to comment on.

Five'll get you ten the Bosox buy it, too.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/16/2003 06:21:08 AM

The Answer - I got a reply to my letter to St. Paul Green Party School Board Candidate Richard Broderick yesterday. And it was a doozy.

And it's going to take me a day to write about it - it appeared in an email discussion forum, and was accompanies by quite a bit of commentary from other forum members. It's going to take some writing.

Which I'm going to do. Because if you're a Saint Paul voter, this is important.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/16/2003 05:37:47 AM

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Busy Day - Off to work at another of my little short-term clients, on a rush job that shows all the signs of being a star-crossed death march.

Yippee!

No, I'm being sincere. When you're a contractor, as long as the death march is someone else's fault, you wind up billing tons of hours while you wait for the client to get their act together. Cha-Ching!

(No, I really am an ethical guy. But I'm being realistic here - I'm looking at two days of broken-field running).

Meanwhile the BCCI crept up overnight - one potential employer is currently checking references. That's usually a good sign. Knock wood.

Anyway, blogging will be light until tonight at least. Enjoy the day!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/15/2003 06:42:29 AM

Open Letter To Richard Broderick, Part II - On September 9, I wrote an email to Richard Broderick, Green Party candidates for the St.Paul school board.

I never got a response.

He has a website, now - and on it he says that, in addition to all his earlier statements (use the school board to "nurture kids' intrinsically Green consciousness", build a "Peace Curriculum", yadda yadda), he also wants to use his position on the School Board to "...help lead the fight to remove the many destructive provisions of No Child Left Behind and to repeal Minnesota's new Conceal-and-Carry law - a major safety threat to students and teachers alike."

Yet again, Mr. Broderick never responded to my email.

So I just sent him another.
Mr. Broderick,

My name is Mitchell Berg. I'm a St. Paul resident, and father of two St. Paul Public School children.

On September 9, I sent you an email with three questions addressed to your campaign. I haven't received an answer yet - and in the intervening five weeks, I've come up with another question.

I believe these are questions on the minds of a number of St. Paul parents, and I'd like to try again here.

1) On your website, you say you want to create a "Peace Curriculum". What is YOUR vision for the "Peace Curriculum", as reflected in how children study, say, world history or current events?

2) You plan to have "organizations like Friends for a Non-Violent World
with a proven track record in training people in the theory and techniques
of non-violence" involved in creating this curriculum. Leave aside for a moment that FNVW (and most other such groups) have a very defined political agenda (can you imagine someone proposing bringing in the NRA to help with a curriculum?), I have to ask: are you going to have any countervailing opinion involved? In what way do you plan to seek balance from the broader community in creating this curriculum?

3) In your press release announcing your candidacy, you said "...we need to nurture the instinctively Green consciousness of our young people through the comprehensive application of these principles to *curriculum* [my emphasis], instruction, administration, and district-wide decision-making processes."

To a non-Green observer, that sounds like you plan to use the school system to indoctrinate students with the Green worldview. Could you please elaborate on this statement?

4) Finally, on your website you say "I will help lead the fight...to repeal Minnesota's new Conceal-and-Carry law - a major safety threat to students and teachers alike." Two questions, actually:

* How do you answer someone who asks why you'd
use School District time and resources to
try to affect legislative business - effectively
turning the School District into a PAC (for
non-school-related issues)?

* Could you please document instances of
*legally-permitted* people (as opposed
to people without permits) in any of
the 35 other shall-issue or no-permit
states committing ANY crime, much less
a shooting, against "students and
teachers?"

Again, I eagerly await your response.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Berg
Again, I'll be waiting to see if he responds.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/15/2003 06:04:11 AM

Dream On, Guys - The Fraters and the Monkeys have been having an extended discussion about carving up and partitioning North Dakota. The Fraters' Elder started the discussion:
I say enough is enough. I know that life in North Dakota is harsh and hopeless (I lived there for five years after all) and that they have come to Minnesota in search of a better life for themselves and their families. And it's true that talk radio is a menial job that most native Minnesotans consider beneath them. But I believe we're starting to lose our cultural identity as the latest wave of North Dakotans seem less and less inclined to assimilate. Today Marlsand was talking about baking bread on his show, a decidely unMinnesotan (at least for males) hobby shared by one Mitch Berg. What's next? An hour on the proper way to prepare lefsa?

The time has come to send a clear message to huddled masses in North Dakota, waiting for their chance to come to the promised land. Minnesota is full. Stay home. Especially you talk radio hosts.
Well, the secret's out - yes, I am an economic refugee. I came here for a...well, not so much a "better life" as a life where garage bands could have a chance for a better life.

But we North Dakotans are like the people from India that currently dominate American technology - we're hard-working, industrious, and we apply ourselves to things in a way that Minnesotans don't seem to anymore. That's why we have such commanding numbers in the fields of talk radio, technical support, newspaper columnists and special ed teachers.

Elder posted yesterday:
While we're at it why not merge North and South Dakota? I mean really what's the point of having two Dakotas anyway? It's confusing to the media on both coasts and is just a duplication of resources. One Dakota. One big empty expanse of land. Dakota for the Dakotans I say.
A lot of people have noted that "East Dakota" and "West Dakota" make a lot more sense - divide the states at the Missouri River and the Time Zone Line.

But that's neither here nor there: the Elder has bigger plans yet:
If Rick is indeed willing to return to defend his homeland, then perhaps my plans could be amended to include a Free Otter State, running from just west of Alexandria to Rothsay (home to the world's largest prairie chicken) with its capital at Fergus Falls. It would of course be a vassal state to Minnesota but could serve as a critical buffer and first line of defense against the Dakotans.
Don't bother defending yourself. A Dakotas nation would nearly-perfectly reflect the great Scandinavian tradition - nearly bipolar passive-aggression. Minnesota'd push the Dakotas...the Dakotas'd give, and give, and give a little more...

...and suddenly a wave of old-yet-well-maintained F-250s loaded with normally-taciturn, flannel-clad guys would sweep across the border and be grilling their venison at the gates to Minneapolis before the Minnesotans would have their feasability study on defense finished.

The Dakotas aren't a sleeping giant, to be sure. They're more like the handyman that never says much, until he gets shorted one too many times, and then hauls off with the pipe wrench.

Don't mess with North Dakota, bucko.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/15/2003 06:03:07 AM

Can't Hardly Wait - Paul Westerberg's writers' block is over.

The City Pages devotes a couple of stories to the former Replacements star in today's issue.

I liked this part:
It's not surprising that Westerberg has turned exclusively to laying down tracks as a one-man band. He's a self-described misanthrope, though to judge from his rather tender interactions with fans in Tremble, that self-appraisal is an exaggeration. What's a bit strange is that he's making music--blues and various strains of the Chuck Berry tradition--that's rarely played in this solitary manner. Not that there's anything unusual about making organic-sounding rock one overdub at a time, and John Fogerty, a better drummer, set a precedent for playing this brand of boozy roots music all by his lonesome. Still, there's something funny about a presumably sober guy holed up in his basement looking for ways to make a song called "Hillbilly Junk" sound like it's being played by a pack of hillbillies strung out on junk.
That, of course, is the way I write and record music - alone, in my basement. Partly because I have no time to cultivate relationships with other musicians, partly because at the end of a day of job-hunting and chasing kids around, the music I write just isn't fit for human consumption.

I'm glad to hear him back. Along with Springsteen, Richard Thompson and Joe Grushecky, Westerberg was the songwriter I most consciously aped when I was writing music. While many of the old-time Replacements fans have fallen away as Westerberg's style diversified (some would say softened), it's fascinated me; Westerberg has gotten into his forties with a lot more style than his contemporaries (heard Grant Hart or Larry Sahagian lately?), and even with the ebb and flow of the muse, continues to write fascinating music that's as emotionally crisp as it is technically sloppy.

The autumn just got a little nicer.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/15/2003 06:02:34 AM

Gaining Momentum - Infinite Monkey James' campaign to become the leader of the Black Community is gaining momentum.

The Fraters say so!

Seriously - I'm all for it. Let's get out the vote!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/15/2003 06:01:54 AM

Fisking Grow - Brand new Minnesota blog Mr Cranky tackles Doug Grow. Give it a read, and please support your new local blogs.

This is a good thing - it takes some of the load off the Fraters and I...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/15/2003 06:00:36 AM

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

The Harder They Fall? - File this under "Mixed Feelings".

Ruminator Books in Saint Paul is in serious financial trouble.

The store has been a Grand Avenue fixture for over 30 years, and, since the death of Odegaard Books, is easily my favorite book store in the Twin Cities.

Which is not to say that I'd be their favorite customer. The store, next to MacAlester College and deep in the heart of the Mac-Groveland neighborhood (so far to the left that you can still find people who think Kathleen Soliah was framed) fairly oozes oppressive hipness. But the store supports local authors, and is still a genuinely fun place to shop for books.

Like the late, great Odegaards, bad management calls seem to be the culprit:
David Unowsky, owner of the St. Paul store for 33 years, has attributed his troubles to competition and to the loss he took on a recently closed store at the Open Book literary center in Minneapolis. Inventory at the store has dwindled, and his payroll in the past two years has shrunk from 27 mainly full-time employees to 14.

"We've been through tough times lately," he said Monday. "We lost a lot of money, tried some things that didn't work out very well -- in some ways a failure of our own management skills. But we're still here."
Ten years ago, it was sad watching the once-magnificent Odegaard chain (which had stores on Grand, Uptown, and, in a move that led to the chain's undoing, Edina) spin from magnificence into oblivion. There, too, the problem was bad management - and, no doubt, a lot of less-dedicated book customers going to the then-new Barnes and Nobles and Borders that were just starting to spring up.

I hope Ruminator can hang in there. If nothing else, the store and the neighborhood whose intellectual lynchpin it is make for great inspiration for a conservative blogger.

And they have cool books, too.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/14/2003 10:30:36 AM

Someday... - There's this street a block from my house where, every fall, all the trees on a two block stretch of street simultaneously turn the most gorgeous, vivid shade of yellowish orange.

The best part about it is than when you walk out on that street in the afternoon, when the sun is at just the right angle, the leaves filter the light into the most stunning, ethereal shade of orangish-pink that I've ever seen. For those few moments of the day during that one week of the year, standing on that street (especially the two street corners involved) is like standing in an orange dream, as the light around you makes it feel like the whole world has turned color, and it even feels like it's soaking into you just a bit.

Someday, I'm going to find a camera and film good enough to capture the sight. Although I don't know that anything can capture the feeling.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/14/2003 08:34:36 AM

Faith In The Courts - DJ Tice at the Pioneer Press has an excellent article on what partisan furor over court decisions means for faith in the legal system:
Many pundits have concluded, casually and comfortably, that the initial ruling from a reputedly liberal panel of the circuit court represented some sort of retaliation for Bush v. Gore. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, for example, wrote a column terming the ruling "revenge for an act of judicial activism" (that is, for Bush v. Gore). He added, "even if the three 9th Circuit judges are overturned, they have already made their point."

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times perceived "irony blazing" as the circuit lobbed the Supreme Court's own arguments back at it. She quoted a political consultant saying, "It was beyond delicious … that the Supreme Court be hoisted on its own petard."

What an image of jurisprudence. Do federal appeals court judges really make decisions in order to wreak political vengeance on other courts? Do they issue rulings interfering in elections merely to make a point?

These are shocking suggestions, or anyhow they should be shocking.
Then, he calls for a dispassionate review of Bush v. Gore. Which is, of course, where the problems always kick in.

Worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/14/2003 07:06:33 AM

BCCI Update - The index has been slipping a bit since its high at the weekend. I've been waiting three days now to hear about a potential job, for which I had a great interview on Thursday.

Still working two little projects - for the first time in nine months, I'm actually overemployed, which is kind of a nice switch.

Landing the other contract would finish out the year nicely.

So - if we can just get them to pop the offer...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/14/2003 07:00:38 AM

Coal To Newcastle - Algore's proposed TV network won't be liberal.
Former vice president Al Gore and a group of investors have plans to launch an all-news channel, but it won't be a liberal alternative to Fox News. Instead, it will be aimed at the under-25 crowd.

"Liberal TV is dead on arrival," said an insider advising Mr. Gore and his team. "You just can't do it."
Unstated; even if the new, "young, hip" news channel apes the biases of the mainstream media, it's still...what? I don't want to keep seeing the same hands, here, people.
Some observers feel that despite the change in tack, a network led by Mr. Gore will not be able to erect a firewall thick enough to insulate it from his Democratic Party affiliation.

"If there is any transparency to Gore, then it will be identified as a partisan operation, which will alienate advertisers," said the sales executive.

"The problem with being associated as liberal is that they wouldn't be going in a direction that advertisers are really interested in," said Paul Rittenberg, senior VP-advertising and market research, Fox News. "We don't get business for being conservative, we get business because the ratings are good and we believe that we're fair. If you go out and say that you are a liberal network, you are cutting your potential audience and certainly your potential advertising pool, right off the bat. "
And it would be redundant.

UPDATE: Read the story above, then read this, and tell me which is the satire...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/14/2003 06:37:32 AM

The Ethereal Party - "OK, so Bush never said anything about Weapons of Mass Destruction. But he implied it."

"No, we can't find any examples of any right wing talk show hosts actually advocating harm to anyone. But they create a climate of hatred".

"So what if all the empirical evidence shows that shall-issue concealed carry laws are a good idea. Emotional responses are just as valid as your data!"

Arguing with liberals can be a tough row to hoe. The minute you get them on empirical grounds (and you usually do), they switch to emotions, perceptions, things that have no material, empirical existence.

For example, Bush's supposed claim that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat. Andrew Sullivan has been tearing bloody holes in the argument that the President ever said there was an "imminent" threat from Iraqi WMDs - to the point that the major media, after weeks of trying to turn it into a meme among the less-literate, is finally starting to back off the claim.

The claim's been replaced, of course, by the argument favored by that class P.J. O'Rourke calls "everybody's first wife"; "You didn't say it, but you felt it".

Fraters writes about the imminence scam today - but their paragraph applies to so many Democrat and DFL positions:
The beauty of that argument is that it's almost impossible to refute. Since the act of implying is mostly a subjective rather than objective process, it is very difficult to prove that a particular implication is not accurate. In a way implying is almost like feeling. And we all know that you can't tell someone how they should feel. Or prove that their feelings aren't valid.

It really should come as no surprise that the left has once elected to shrink away from logic and fact based arguments and instead hide behind their old friend feelings. At this point it's the only thing they have left.
I doubt it'll work for the Democrats - not that playing to peoples' feelings isn't a great campaign strategery (the New Deal was as much psychotherapy as actual economic reform), but the empirical case is getting strong enough that even the less wonky among us can see it; the economy's picking up, the Kay report says there are many nuances yet to work through before we declare Iraqi WMD claims false, and bit by bit the justifications for war in Iraq, even some very subtle ones, will become apparent.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/14/2003 06:31:08 AM

Monday, October 13, 2003

Is It News? - Some days, I swear you get more, better news from ScrappleFace than you do from CNN - or at least better analysis.:
"Compared with the the last full year of the Clinton administration, in three years under Mr. Bush the DOE budget for elementary and secondary education has increased a mere $12.6 billion. However, during the eight boom years for education (1993-2000), Mr. Clinton succeeded in boosting that part of the DOE appropriation by a whopping $9.2 billion."
Satire? Yes, but also facts that never make it to print elsewhere.

It's like flipping on "Whose Line Is It Anyway" for the straight poop on Iraq - and getting it, and more reliably than at CNN.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 11:39:06 AM

We Learned More From A Three-Minute Record... - Joanne Jacobs thinks kids should be doing more homework, and fewer extracurriculars.

She's partly right, at least in the stereotyped world of the SUV-mounted, "Achievement"-oriented caricature of the 'burbs:
Compared to the past, children spend much more time in scheduled, supervised, after-school sports, lessons and other activities. Few middle-class kids are allowed to do what we used to do after school. Nothing. With no adults hovering over us...Working parents have to make sure their kids get from soccer to Scouts; SUV-driving moms spend their afternoons driving back and forth to recreational sites. By the time they get home to microwave dinner, they're in no mood to help their kids build a molecule out of styrofoam or fake a Pilgrim's journal about The First Thanksgiving.
Well, there's a point there. Kids - especially in the caricature society Jacobs describes - don't have a lot of "free" time. Kids in that world rarely get to plan for themselves, very rarely seem to have to learn those most valuable of all skills - managing your own time and entertaining yourself, rather than depending on others for both.

But Jacobs then goes on to ask:
So. Is soccer really more important than studying? Should teachers eliminate math homework so kids can spend more time practicing karate kicks?
Allow me to answer an absurdly-phrased question with an absurd answer? Yes. Yes, teachers should give less homework.

I can hear my conservative friends' jaws dropping. Bear with me.

Jacobs says, by way of showing her motivations:
Homework is must-do only for a small minority of hyper-motivated students [emphasis added].

American teen-agers average no more than five hours a week on homework, according to a new report, which summarizes four earlier studies, by the Brown Center for Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. A RAND report, "A Nation at Rest: The American Way of Homework," agrees: Middle and high school students aren't working any harder now than in the past.
Note Jacobs' use of the term "hyper-motivated"; ask yourself - hyper-motivated for what?

Why, to play the academic paper chase, of course:
Both Paly and Lynbrook educate high-achievers who take multiple Advanced Placement classes, and stress out if they get an A- instead of an A. But, usually, it's not the academics that overwhelms them. Based on my daughter and her friends, three hours a night is typical for top students. What wears them out is the imperative to be well-rounded. It's doing the homework and editing the newspaper, competing on the Mock Trial team, singing in the choir, running track and volunteering for a cause that will impress a college admissions official.
So is that the object of having children? To impress admissions officials?

Jacobs concludes:
Middle and high school students learn more, especially in math, when they study more. They also prepare to learn independently -- if Mom and Dad back off and let them do their own work.

Limit after-school activities. Turn off the TV. There's plenty of time for homework -- if it's the top priority.
I have to confess; it's not.

The "top priority" for me is raising kids who will have not only the ability, but the desire and the knowledge, to decide where they want to go in life, and who have the intellectual, social, moral and physical tools to do go there when they know where "there" is.

Jacobs is focused on the academic paper chase; get good grades, get into a good school, and then...

...what? When they get into college, and they're on their own, and have genuine free will for the first time in their lives, what do they do? They may or may not have good, homework-bred work habits (or they may have just learned how to provide the kind of paperwork that teachers like to see), but will they have learned to think, to communicate, not just in the form of term papers, but in the real world of interacting with other people? In the rush of finishing up the avalanche of homework the likes of Jacobs demand (she seems to think three hours a night is acceptable), will they have learned to think about what the purpose of it all is?

That's not idle pseudo-intellectual noodling. Learning to play the academic game is vital for those who aspire to academic careers - medicine, the law, academia. And Jacobs is right about TV - it's a waste of time, valuable only in the mental vacation it gives a kid, in moderation.

But do you honestly think the kid who spends two hours a day honing her soccer kick or his curve-ball or her skills on the saxophone or the debate team isn't "learning good work skills?" Do you think that people aren't smart enough to apply "work skills" learned editing the school paper to work later in life?

I'll go as far as to say this: For many, if not most, kids, once they get past learning to read, write and do basic math fluently, they learn more of use to their lives, no matter what they go into, outside of traditional classroom work than in it.

Personal, anecdotal examples: As a child, I excelled at math, history, writing, foreign languages and music. I excelled at four of them, not because I did an hour of each for homework every night, but because I intrinsically loved them, and did what I had to do to learn them.

Math, on the other hand? As the homework piled up, without any commensurate reason to become and remain interested in the subject, I drifted away from the subject. I do fine, not only at math, but at the logical skills at which endless math homework is supposed to train kids (and which foreign languages and music may be better training!). Between the homework and a series of teachers who seemed dedicated to making math onerous and irrelevant, I lost interest. The best the schools can claim for my continuing love of and success at music, languages and history is that no teachers screwed any of them up for me. I have great "work habits" - and they come from teaching myself eight musical instruments, not from any homework I did.

The "More Homework" movement - and it's attendant "Just Teach the Three R's" bleat that you hear endlessly on Garage Logic, are lousy ideas, that accentuate one of the greatest failings of our school system - that they glorify the academic, "paper chase" path to the detriment of all other life paths. In schools today, if you're not on the college track, you're regarded as something of an embarassment. Yet there are scads of kids for whom kicking a soccer ball or repairing a car or learning German or the Bass Guitar is not only more fun than traditional academic work - it's better academic preparation, too, because it better teaches how to work, manage ones' own time and expectations, and just plain how to think!. The kid who trains her mind to solve problems by learning the piano will learn the logical tools needed to become a doctor just as effectively as the child who's drawn to math (as indeed happened with a high school friend of mine).

The best thing education can do for kids is give them the tools they need to exercise their natural curiosity - and then let them exercise it.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 08:43:56 AM

Sorry, Kos 'n Jeff - Liberals up and down the food chain - from the Daily Kos (whose obsessive poll-watching is a matter of looking at his website) to the pretty-good-guy Jeff Fecke - have been rendering themselves frenzied for weeks as the president's poll numbers have eroded from their euphoric, post-9/11 highs.

I always figured, "let 'em cheer - they gotta have something to feel good about".

According to Powerline, those days may be coming to an end; Bush's poll numbers may be levelling off and rebounding, as I predicted they would.

Hindrocket notes:
"I assume that by now just about everyone has absorbed the facts that people are still getting killed in Iraq, and we haven't yet found significant quantities of WMDs. So the President's stabilized ratings are a good sign. It seems likely that the next movement will be positive, as word spreads about the progress being made in Iraq and as ongoing signs of the economy's strengthening get more attention."
There was no way the President could have maintained the numbers he had a year ago. The fact that his numbers are still pretty universally above fifty percent, two years into the emergency, is itself pretty amazing.

The left seems to be holding on to one other semi-historical hope; the precedent set by the President's father, who fell from astronomical popularity in 1991 to defeat in 1992. But the economy isn't sliding into recession, as it did when the tanks stopped rolling in 1991 - indeed, things are picking up at a rate guaranteed to give Paul Krugman indigestion. The news is leaking out - the liberation of Iraq is going well, and outside the Sunni Triangle (where the major media rarely travel) it's going very well to all rational accounts. And we've gone 25 months since a major terrorist attack on the US.

Rumors of the President's political demise are - I'll be charitable - greatly overstated.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 07:10:31 AM

The Babykiller - There is so much about this story to make any rational person cringe; two weeks ago, a 14 year old girl gave birth to, and then strangled, a baby. The baby's father was a 22-year-old man who the girls parents had allowed to live in the house with them, and who'd started having sex with the girl two years ago, when she was 12 years old.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner is seeking to try the girl as an adult. She's charging the "boyfriend" with statutory rape - which is a charge you file when people have sex with people who aren't of age to consent yet. In other words; the girl didn't have the adult faculties it takes to consent to sex, so the guy gets charged; but she's adult enough to stand trial in adult court?

The Pioneer Press' Ruben Rosario discusses the case:
No question, it's a horrible act. Who in their right mind would commit such an atrocity? This kid obviously needs help. But is adult prison the answer?"
Of course not. Society recognizes the diminished capacity defense, although it makes it appropriately hard to use. If you're not capable of rationally knowing what the problem is with a crime, it's a mitigating circumstance at least.

And who could possibly have a more diminished capacity than a girl who'd not only been raped (statutorily, anyway) for years, but did it with the tacit approval of her parents (or their negligent indolence, which any child that age will consider approval)? Can you figure out a better way to permanently warp a kid's sense of right and wrong?

If there was ever a textbook case for why we have a
juvenile justice system separate from the adult one, not to mention a diminished capacity defense, this is it.

It all goes back to Susan Gaertner. The woman be Ramsey County's home-grown version of Mike Hatch, always looking for the angle to get the political headway.

In Ramsey County, if your kid is late to school more than six times in a semester, Susan Gaertner's "Truancy Intervention Project" (Motto: "providing work for lawyers who can't get real jobs") intervenes - for the childrens' own good, of course. And if heaven forbid a parent falls behind on child support payments - Gaertner's minions are always ready to pounce. If someone should use a gun to defend his property or her life; for you, justice in Ramsey County is Susan Gaertner's sensible pump, on your throat, forever...

...but now, when you have a set of parents that failed to a criminal extent at the most important job they have - where's Gaertner? The parents whose negligence allowed this whole sordid incident to happen have apparently not been charged with anything.

Gaertner is in the unenviable position of having the left as well as the right taking shots at her; her record on gun owners rights and inserting the County Attorney's office into the dumbest places makes her persona non grata among Republicans, while trying to charge this girl - no, as a conservative, I think I can get away with calling the girl a "victim" - as an adult will now offend at least some of her DFL supporters (the ones that aren't frantically trying to portray themselves as "Not Soft On Crime!", anyway).
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 06:52:22 AM

The Jokes Write Themselves These Days - G. Pascal Zachary thinks the Bay Area should secede from the Union:
"We, the people of the Bay Area, need to leave the United States. We are held prisoner by a foreign power, colonized by an alien civilization. We require cultural and social self-determination. We demand, in short, a declaration of independence -- and our own nation."
It's hilarious. No, not in that intentional, Scrappleface kind of way. No, this is very different:
Maybe Lincoln would have been an even greater president if he had let the South leave the Union in 1861. In the absence of Southern racists in Congress, the North would have become an industrial democracy of the European sort. American global power would have been moderated, humanized and democratized -- because urban voters in the industrial cities of Pittsburgh, Chicago and New York would have insisted on solidarity with workers of the world. Our roster of presidents would have included the populist William Jennings Bryan, the Socialist Eugene Debs and the one-worlder Henry Wallace. A more compact, social-democratic America would have still struggled mightily with the legacy of slavery and discrimination against African Americans, but a movement for racial equality would have begun decades earlier.
"Slavery, Schmavery - we could have had socialized health care!
Might the liberation of the Bay Area unlock similar positive change? Think of the model social legislation that a Bay Nation could enact: bans on guns altogether, full legalization of same-sex unions, an expansion of public television and radio, complete decriminalization of marijuana, basic health care for all, environmental protections that would be the envy of North America.
I just can't add anything. What'd be the point?

Hesiod has met his match.

UPDATE: And then, when I think I can't find anything as wierd as the above, I run into this via Sullivan; Edward Asner talks about his admiration for Joseph Stalin, to Ed McCulloch in WorldNetDaily:
"I think Joe Stalin was a guy that was hugely misunderstood," said Asner. "And to this day, I don't think I have ever seen an adequate job done of telling the story of Joe Stalin."
Literally - you can't make it up fast enough these days.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 06:08:12 AM

The Twin Cities Needs This - There is nothing in the world I miss worse than plaing in a band.

I never told my parents this, but the real reason I moved to the Twin Cities in 1985 was because I was going to be the next Paul Westerberg. I made a pretty good run at it for a while, too; "Tenant's Union" played the First Avenue and opened for some national acts, on the strength of a bunch of songs I wrote that, in a few cases, didn't suck; "Joe Public" put out a five-song cassette that some people didn't hate; "The Supreme Soviet of Love" played one set at the Turf Club that is still one of the favorite nights of my life.

But it's hard to find the time, to say nothing of energy, to get a band going these days. So I've taken to the next best thing on occasion - getting up in front of a crowd (or not) in a bar and singing karaoke. I'm not bad; the host usually tells me I'm the only person he's ever met with the balls to tackle Sprinsteen; and once crazy night, I had the whole house hopping to "Jump Around" by House of Pain.

And yet, it's not the same. It's not a band. Singing along with a tape track - almost invariably cut on a MIDI computerized music setup that plays music with crushing Teutonic efficiency - doesn't have the glorious give-'n-take of playing with 3-5 guys on stage.

But now, Lex Green from Chicago Boyz tells us, there's hope for the rest of us:
"The Hideout features live band karoake -- which is pretty damn cool. You get on stage with a real band behind you and belt one out -- you are Angus Young, or Johnny Rotten, or Paul Rodgers, or whoever, for three glorious minutes. "
I'm all tingly thinking about it.

Open letter to Twin Cities bars: Add "Live Karaoke" to your entertainment, and I can almost guarantee I'll come and buy a drink. Or two.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 06:02:24 AM

Infantilization - Emily from Give War a Chance touches on a subject for which I excoriated the Strib's editorial team last week - the Democrats' infantilization of the voters.

As she was reading through some anti-recall campaign literature, she found this:
I caught a quote, though, as I was reading through this sample ballot that struck me hard, and summed up in very few words exactly why it is that I loathe the ideas of the Democrats:

"What if our children could recall their parents every time they made a tough decision?" -William Jefferson Clinton
Since you asked, William Jefferson Clinton, I will tell you exactly what would happen.

Seeing as how children are uncivilized, uneducated savages in training to become otherwise, the world would probably plunge into utter chaos. Think Lord of the Flies. Cubed. Now that you mention it, they probably wouldn't stop at a recall. They'd execute parents for making kids do their homework instead of watching cartoons.
This is a theme I've been harping on for years; even in private, relatively unguarded conversation, many Democrats I know regard government as a "parent" whose job it is to keep the kids from beating the stuffing out of each other.

And I keep trying to ask them "doesn't this strike you as the most caustically un-democratic notion you can have in a country built on the notion that we are a free association of equals, not a collection of subjects?"

In too many cases, the eyes lapse into that "does not compute" trance.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 06:01:20 AM

The Arnold Effect - It's too early to tell, of course - but it's possible that Arnold may have a every bit as great an effect on politics in Europe as in California:
The straight-talking Hollywood action star's election win in California has had an electrifying impact on Germany, leading to calls Friday for top politicians to voice clear ideas in simple language or be swept away at the polls.

"The more confused we are by what they say, the greater our longing for a man or woman with simple words," wrote Bild newspaper columnist Franz Josef Wagner. "The only problem is that it's the wrong ones who usually master simple language."

Schwarzenegger's victory in the California race for governor has led to editorials calling for German politicians to abandon their barely comprehensible speaking style in favor of "Klartext" (straight talk).
He's right - political German is like sitting at a county water board session on easements; dry and technical, it is to German as educationese is to French.

Of course, there's baggage with that approach:
But Wagner and others also warn of the dangers of falling for simple remedies from loud Austrians who enthrall the masses. Austrian-born Adolf Hitler still casts a long shadow in Germany.

Celebrities, columnists, ordinary citizens and even some politicians have joined the chorus of calls for less talk and more action to get Germany moving again after years of economic stagnation and political standstill.

"My first thought was 'Oh my God, not another Austrian emigrant -- the first one caused enough damage"' wrote Peter Boenisch, a former government spokesman and newspaper editor, in an analysis on Schwarzenegger for the tabloid Bild.
Nice to know they're watching for that sort of thing these days!
"But Germany urgently needs something Schwarzenegger-like: a can-do spirit, unconventional thinking, courage, strength and vision. We're facing the worst crisis since the war," he wrote.
It's interesting to see that such a person could make an impact in German politics - and, by extension, perhaps the bureaucratic, exclusive world of politics in the entire European Union.

Of course, the other extreme is alive and well, as we see in our next article...

From The Top - The EU is working on a European Constitution. Says the relatively-conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine:
We, the people“ - these are the opening words of the most successful and durable constitutio-nal creation of modern times, the U.S. Constitution of 1787. The European convention's tome of several hundred pages, however, is a far cry from the straight precision and pleasant pathos of this exemplary document. Its preamble starts with the somewhat pompous statement that the European continent is a pillar of civilization, the cradle of humanism, and it concludes in all seriousness by thanking the convention members.
Worth a depressing read.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/13/2003 06:00:41 AM