Saturday, November 08, 2003
We're All Neighbors Up There - Bill Tuomala on Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City, a paeon to heavy metal and the place it has in the hearts of small-town guys like...well, Klosterman, Tuomala and me.
Although for the record there'll never be an eighties metal song as cool as "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Hanoi Rocks.
My theory: Eventually, all cool bloggers will have to prove they spent some time in North Dakota.
I'm dying to hear Sullivan and the Professor explain their way into that one...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/8/2003 02:33:07 PM
Friday, November 07, 2003
YUCCies - Young Urban Conservatives - Michael Medved and Lori Sturdevant are, for once, on the same sheet of music.
Medved had some big news last week. Apparently, for the first time in decades, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans is equal to those calling themselves Democrats.
More importantly:About a third of adults under age 30 now say they're Republicans, up from about a quarter in 1983. Meanwhile the Democrats' share of young adults has gone from about a third 20 years ago to fewer than a quarter today. (Among older adults, four in 10 are Democrats.)
This is huge news. For the first time, Democrats are older than Republicans, and the younger generation is largely - perhaps decisively - Republican.
Polipundit notes that Republicans are garnering a veritable flood of volunteers.
And that national trend has coattails here in St. Paul. The Strib's Lori Sturdevant observed about last week's City Council and School Board elections:Sociologists say that in countless ways across America in the next decade or so, ambitious baby busters (born between 1965, though some say 1961, and 1976) are going to be bumping into members of the dominating, and often domineering, generation that was born between 1946 and 1964 (or, if you prefer, 1960).
Leave aside the subtle derogation ("We" got to the polls, Lori, and you've been pissing and moaning about it since last November). She's right. And it's going to have an impact that will have Lori Sturdevant ever more upset as she rolls into her declining years.
The bumps will come for several reasons. These are people with different values and expectations from life. They often don't understand or like each other very much. Further, there are a lot more boomers than busters, and a lot of boomers have no intention to yield their spot on life's stage to a Gen-X upstart. "They are the first generation in modern times to approach later middle age not expecting to retire," Reinhardt said.
She elucidated: Research shows that people's experiences between the ages of 17 and 24 color their values and attitudes for the rest of their days. America's boomers experienced affluence, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War. The busters knew financial insecurity, family breakup, the end of the Cold War. It's Bob Dylan vs. Kurt Cobain, Ed Sullivan vs. MTV, the Kennedys vs. Ronald Reagan.
The result is a 50-something cohort that tends to be optimistic, communitarian and politically liberal, vs. 30-somethings who are skeptical, individualistic and conservative at the polls, if you can get them there. Think Paul Wellstone vs. Tim Pawlenty.
I live in the Midway. It's a nice, middle-class neighborhood. It's in Saint Paul, a city whose main business is government. It's also within two miles of five colleges and universities. The neighborhood is home to many of the people who work for government or government education; teachers, bureaucrats, administrators, professors, and quite a few of their students. And they vote DFL; my neighborhood sends Jay Benanav to the City Council, Alice "The Phantom" Hausman to the House, Ellen Anderson (who is as personable and responsive as she is liberal, which really sucks, because I feel bad trying to insult her!) to the state Senate, and is the lynchpin of Betty "White-out on the Monitor" McCollum's support in the Fourth Congressional District.
With some - many - of my neighbors, I feel like I'm in perpetual, first-date, "try not to make them hate me" mode. You can see the looks - on a street dotted (still!) with Wellstone signs, my "Coleman" sign got funny looks (and then got stolen). I see political candidates gingerly flit past my yard, as I wait, watching.
"Really, DFL neighbor - I'm not such a bad guy".
And yet.
Maybe things are changing. Sturdevant's "Wellstone Vs. Pawlenty" simile is excellent, but here in the Midway, it's more like "Hubert Humphrey vs. Pawlenty." The old guard is getting older. They're moving to smaller houses, or to Florida...
...and they're being replaced by younger, "Gen-X" couples with young kids; people like me, I guess. And as a very broad thing, they seem more conservative than the neighbors they replaced. Younger, less-institutional families, drawn by the wonderful housing stock and bargain-basement prices, have been moving in as the older generation moves on.
St. Paul is a strange place; it mixes the Wellstone-y, Kathleen-Soliah-supporting la-la-land DFL of Highland Park with the blue-collar, "pro-life, pro-gun" DFL of Randy Kelly's east side. And looking at the examples of the likes of Brett Shundler in Jersey City, and hopefully Jack Ryan in Chicago, it's an interesting exercise to think...what would it take to put a conservative Republican in office is Saint Paul?
Saint Paul's ethnic minorities have quadrupled their numbers in the past decade. They vote solidly DFL. And when I talk with them, I have to ask; why?
Thinking globally: conservatism seems to be winning the war, bit by tiny bit.
Thinking locally: How do we make it happen in Saint Paul?
As Drudge would say - developing.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/7/2003 11:36:46 AM
Paging Howard Dean - Steyn weighs ina great piece on the disconnect between the US and Old Europe.
Money quote: One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American differences over Iraq is that it’s an argument about the means, not the end. If only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only he’d been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a very bad man.
You'll have to read - you got it, the whole thing.
Not the French and Germans. There’s too much evidence suggesting the main reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that they’d already signed on to the other team and they’d decided, in the sort of ghastly vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. They’re being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction. It was never about the means, only the end.
Lesson: America and ‘Old Europe’ have different objectives in Iraq, and those objectives are incompatible.
In the meantime, David's Medienkritik - the essential German blog - links to this fascinating piece in the Economist.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/7/2003 06:22:54 AM
Snawk - Powerline notes the Beeb's comments about the Jessica Lynch story.
Here's the amazing part:Publisher Alfred A Knopf signed a $1m deal for Private Lynch's account of her ordeal, entitled I Am a Soldier, Too, The Jessica Lynch Story.
As Powerline notes - reprising something the entire blogosphere brought up last spring - the only "denouncing" was done by the BBC itself - in stories that have been fairly soundly ravaged ever since.
Praised as a heroine by many, others denounced her rescue as a staged event used by Pentagon officials as a propaganda exercise.
Now, in a story entitled "Jessica Lynch 'raped' in Iraq" - note the scare quote - someone tell me why this next graf is included at all?Rick Bragg, who wrote the book, is also no stranger to controversy. He recently resigned from the New York Times newspaper after allegations his stories relied too heavily on the work of a freelance journalist.
Counterspin? The Beeb is trying to find a chink in Lynch's story to try to draw attention away from their own malfeasance?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/7/2003 06:14:00 AM
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Beyond Parody, Frivolity- Brian at Boviosity says:
Brian's referring to an article in the Atlanta Journal/Constitution:I struggle, when trying to convince people to change their minds, or at least when trying to make my views plain, not to engage in name-calling and hand-waving. I don't always succeed, as anyone who has argued with me will surely attest.
That said, I hope I'm not supposed to take these people seriously:Blacks say Bush played race card with court pick [...] Prominent blacks charge
d President Bush deliberately chose a conservative black woman so it would be harder for senators to vote against herProminent blacks charged President Bush deliberately chose a conservative black woman so it would be harder for senators to vote against her. Her defenders responded that liberal ideology was blinding the African-American leaders.
I wonder - how much of the racially-based opposition to Bush happens merely because the opposition feels it's supposed to, no matter what?
The 11-member Republican majority on the committee is expected to recommend today that the Senate confirm Brown for the D.C. Circuit. The court hears many appeals concerning federal agencies and regulations, and it often serves as a training ground for Supreme Court justices.
African-Americans from many of the 78 national and California groups opposed to Brown's confirmation gathered in the Capitol on Wednesday to ask senators to kill the nomination, either in the committee or on the Senate floor.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/6/2003 01:04:39 PM
Big Morning - Big project due. Not much posting before noon today.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/6/2003 07:51:01 AM
Wuss - Kim DuToit writes an essay - sometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening - on the "Pussification of the American Male".
Money grab: ..."little boys in grade school are suspended for playing cowboys and Indians, cops and crooks, and all the other familiar variations of 'good guy vs. bad guy' that helped them learn, at an early age, what it was like to have decent men hunt you down, because you were a lawbreaker.
He explains some of it, hitting some, missing others.
Now, men are taught that violence is bad -- that when a thief breaks into your house, or threatens you in the street, that the proper way to deal with this is to 'give him what he wants', instead of taking a horsewhip to the rascal or shooting him dead where he stands.
Now, men's fashion includes not a man dressed in a three-piece suit, but a tight sweater worn by a man with breasts.
Now, warning labels are indelibly etched into gun barrels, as though men have somehow forgotten that guns are dangerous things.
Now, men are given Ritalin as little boys, so that their natural aggressiveness, curiosity and restlessness can be controlled, instead of nurtured and directed.
And finally, our President, who happens to have been a qualified fighter pilot, lands on an aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit, and is immediately dismissed with words like 'swaggering', 'macho' and the favorite epithet of Euro girly-men, 'cowboy'. Of course he was bound to get that reaction -- and most especially from the Press in Europe, because the process of male pussification Over There is almost complete.
How did we get to this?"
Du Toit has a great piece on the ritual castration of the male in advertising:Little girl (note, not little boy): Daddy, why do we eat Cheerios?
There's much more.
Dad: Because they contain fiber, and all sorts of stuff that's good for the heart. I eat it now, because of that.
LG: Did you always eat stuff that was bad for your heart, Daddy?
Dad (humorously): I did, until I met your mother.
Mother (not humorously): Daddy did a lot of stupid things before he met your mother...
...What Dad should have replied to Mommy's little dig: Yes, Sally, that's true: I did do a lot of stupid things before I met your mother. I even slept with your Aunt Ruth a few times, before I met your mother.
The Professor notes:IN RESPONSE to Kim du Toit's essay on manhood, which I linked earlier, I just want to note two things: First, that it's come back to me already via multiply-forwarded email from all sorts of friends and acquaintances who don't seem to realize where it originated, suggesting that it's taking on a life of its own, and second that I actually think the strongest part of his essay was his reflection on how television and advertising reflexively denigrate men -- and especially fathers -- nowadays (sort of the Berenstain Bears syndrome writ large).
Advertising and education are the two greatest forums for this phenomenon.
In advertising, the "Fred Flintstone" archetype has taken complete hold; Fred was impulsive, stupid, lost to his self-centered and wrong-headed desires. Wilma was the inevitable voice of wisdom and reason. It's gotten to the point where kids today accept that as the norm (the fathers on Lizzie McGuire, Boy Meets World, Even Stevens and so many other kids' shows follow that model. It wasn't always that way; compare fathers on TV produced in the fifties and early sixties (Andy Griffith, Robert Young, even Hugh Beaumont - all of whom were on a level field with their TV wives and girlfriends) and TV set in the fifties and early sixties (Tom Bosley's ridiculous father in Happy Days, or the impotently tormented Dan Lauria in Wonder Years). You're talking about two drastically different samples of men. Why is that? I think Kim has it right.
Education is, if anything, worse. TV is a drug you can turn off. But if your son doesn't respond to ostracism and suspension for petty offenses that involve acting like a boy (as has my son, who was suspended for a day recently for bringing, not only a toy gun to school, but a tiny one at that), they start pushing Ritalin. It makes boys act more like girls, which makes the utopian, fabian, feminized educational-industrial complex much more comfortable.
Expect much more on this later today.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/6/2003 06:53:25 AM
Victim Disarmament Update - Citizens for a
Supine Safer Minnesota is flogging a new, explicitly anti-gun movie, a movie called The American Gun which, tragically (and hypcritically) was James Coburn's final acting role.
CSSM's website is...deluded. : "As much as we Americans cling to the belief that gun violence is caused by criminals, in fact, most gun death and injury in our country is due to 1) suicide and 2) homicide between people who know each other. AMERICAN GUN illustrates the many aspects of gun violence, portraying the reality that few of us understand.
Including, apparently, CSSM, as we'll see below.Nearly one third of gun owners in Minnesota keep their firearm for 'protection.' Yet a gun in the home is 22-times more likely to be used against a friend or family member than against an intruder.
Hm. Any bets on whether he plays someone with realistic personal views of the world around him?Which is, of course, taken from a study that considered all gun owners' acquaintances equally, whether they were friends, abusive ex-spouses, drug dealers or customers (they are, indeed, acquaintances!) or anything else.
James Coburn's character in AMERICAN GUN exemplifies the culture of fear that drives Americans to keep guns, but also the ambivalence we feel about the role of guns in our society.
Any action on that bet?All guns used in crime start as legal guns.
Right. And everyone who joins the Klan is born a perfect egalitarian.
The gun is not the problem. The owner - whether a clueless, untrained moron who improperly stores his/her weapon, or a criminal, or someone who shoots a rapist in self-defense for that matter - is what makes the difference. Weapons flow from person to person in an unregulated secondary market through personal sales, street purchases, gun shows and even theft.
Even theft. Heh. Join CSM for a Sneak Preview of AMERICAN GUN, Tuesday, November 4th.
My only regret? That I missed the preview, and was unable to...:Join writer/director Alan Jacobs in a sneak preview of his new film, AMERICAN GUN starring James Coburn in his final role. Meet AMERICAN GUN co-star and Minnesota native Alexandra Holden at the reception before the screening.
Oh, that might have been fun.
Wonder if the security guards who would have ushered me out would have been unarmed?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/6/2003 06:04:34 AM
The Ashcroft Libertarians - You know the type.
Before January of 2001, the only civil liberty they really cared about was abortion. The Second Amendment bothered them. They shrugged their shoulders at the Clinton-era erosions of civil liberties, like the property forfeiture laws, which allowed cops unprecedented authority to seize property of anyone accused of drug violations. They though the 1994 Crime Bill was good - for the children, probably.
They thought Libertarians were fevered backwoods yahoos who needed to adjust the tinfoil under their grain-company caps.
But since John Ashcroft became Attorney General, we suddenly have a new generation of Jeffersonians. Suddenly civil liberties are sacrosanct.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/6/2003 06:01:45 AM
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Heh - It took me a few minutes to realize that this was on the level.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 07:59:32 AM
Status Report - NaNo is going fairly swimmingly.
And while I have a new contract starting Monday, I also have another meeting today for yet another situation.
Plus another contract to finish up.
Light posting 'til later!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 06:39:51 AM
New Media Wins? - Terry Teachout has a great piece on CBS's bailing on their apparent Reagan hack job.
Teachout notes the rather spongy press release CBS used to break the news:If you were born earlier than this morning, you don’t need me to tell you that CBS decided to pull The Reagans solely and only because of the "controversy." They didn’t give a damn whether it was "balanced." All they cared about was whether enough people would watch the series to make it worth broadcasting—and the firestorm of outrage among conservatives, whom one would assume to make up a large part of the target market for a network miniseries about Ronald and Nancy Reagan, left little doubt that such would not be the case.
The difference? It's a new media story:I’m sure that everybody and his sister will be blogging about this one, and they’ll mostly be right. Of course it’s a new-media story, and of course it wouldn’t have happened five years ago. I’ve been following Big Media’s coverage of the flap over The Reagans, and just two days ago I noted with interest and amusement a wire story claiming that CBS would be pleased by the controversy, since it would inevitably increase the series’ ratings. That is soooooo last year. Those of us who blog, whatever our political persuasions, know better. Boycotts of Big Media have always been feasible in theory. (Newspapers, in case you didn't know, take cancel-my-subscription-you-bastards letters very seriously—if they get enough of them.) In practice, though, they rarely worked, because it was too difficult to mobilize large-scale support quickly enough. No more. Fox News, talk radio, and the conservative-libertarian sector of the blogosphere have combined to create a giant megaphone through which disaffected right-wing consumers who have a bone to pick with Big Media can now make themselves heard.
It's all worth a read.
Meanwhile, in further news, the NYTimes is considering changing its policy of letting its columnists handle their own corrections. Michael Cox reports that Maureen Dowd's "Ellipsisgate" fiasco has had its effect on the Gray Lady:Dowd's May 14 column Dowd used an ellipsis to alter (some would say invert) the meaning of a passage in a Bush speech in Little Rock, AR. At that time, we vowed to continue pressing the issue until a formal correction was made. Dowd's response was to randomly insert the full quote into her May 28 column which many, including the TND, deemed insufficient. While Dowd never issued a formal correction, the TND was able to convince newspapers across the country to issue corrections including two papers that wrote editorials critical of Bush based on Dowd's incorrect version of the elided quotation. For a complete account of this matter, readers can jump over to our archives section. The short version is that a number of papers around the country dropped Dowd's syndicated column including The Mobile Register. Michael Marshall, Editor & Vice President of the Mobile Register, wrote to the New York Times in July to register his concerns with the Dowd column and got two unsatisfactory replies from Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins.
Of course, the fact that a paper needs an "Ombudsman" in the first place is a sign that they have a grossly-flawed system in the first place, but never no mind - the real story here is the fact that the Times is changing anything at all.
Things now appear to be changing. In the wake of the Jayson Blair fiasco an internal commission at The Times, the Siegel Commission, has recommended a number of changes at the paper including the hiring of an ombudsman to advocate for the readers within the Times newsroom. This new "public editor", Daniel Okrent, will be in place on December 1st but appears ready to shake things up at The Times.
And where did the Ellipsisgate story take off? On the libertarian-conservative wing of the blogosphere, and talk radio.
(Via Sullivan)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 06:30:20 AM
Reason 1,539 - There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of reasons I won't be voting Democrat in the next election.
This paragraph, from the closing of last night's Democratic Dwarves Candidates' Debate, is merely one:"QUESTION: You guys seem to get to know each other fairly well. I'd be curious to find out, if you could pick one of your fellow candidates to party with, which you would choose. But keeping in mind, partying isn't just, you know, who do you think can shake their groove thing.
If someone - say, a potential date - uses the word "Party" as a verb, it virtually guarantees there are 300 other reasons we shouldn't go out.
When a political party does it...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 06:29:24 AM
Implosion - Jonah Goldberg on the implosion of liberal policy initiatives:
Rarely has the intellectual rot of liberalism been more evident. Both at home and abroad, the honorable tradition of liberalism — and there is one — has been hollowed out by its own appetite for power and vengeance. Indeed, it is exceedingly difficult to see how liberalism, at the national level, stands for anything but appetite — undirected, inarticulate, unprincipled, ravenous appetite. Truly it has become Bill Clinton's party.
The piece also includes this classic description of Democrat Iraq policy:
Consider two stories of demonstrably unequal importance, which nonetheless have fascinated the chattering classes: The $20 billion request for Iraqi reconstruction, and the effort underway to create a successful liberal think tank. Of course, the administration does have a plan. And central to that plan is, well, spending money to rebuild Iraq. The Democrats make it sound like all the U.S. Army is doing in Iraq is having one giant-sized Chinese fire drill every day. One can just imagine John Kerry going to the local garage:
Read the whole thing - it's fascinating.
Kerry: I won't pay you to fix my car until you have a plan.
Mechanic: Um, I do have a plan: You pay me. I replace the engine I just took out. Your car works. That's the plan.
Kerry:How can you say you have a plan? Look at the terrible shape my car is in. It's worse than before; there isn't even an engine.
Mechanic: You're an idiot.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 06:03:41 AM
Liberals For Bush? - Last week, we discussed the notion of Democrats crossing over to vote Bush. Some notable local Democrats reacted with umbrage.
And yet there are signs that many Democrats are crossing over, as noted by Hawken.
While they still support their own parties for whatever reasons, they notice the important thing; that when it comes to foreign policy, and policy against terrorists, the Democrat party - and especially the Nine Dwarves - just aren't serious. Turning the government over to them would be like handing the keys over to a fifteen-year-old.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 06:00:56 AM
We've Got Scrappleface... - and the other guys have this guy.
Sample? Sure: "Residents of this conservative Los Angeles suburb, already stunned after a week of devastating forest fires, are now trying to recover from yet another shock - a huge smoke cloud hanging high above the blaze that scorched their homes - an enormous, cylindrical cloud closely matching descriptions of the penis of former president Bill Clinton.
It must be a horrible life, being on the left.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/5/2003 06:00:02 AM
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Ignorance On Display - Bumpersticker seen today on a car in downtown Minneapolis - inevitably, a beat-up minivan driven by someone who visibly smelled of Patchouli:
Don't Pray In My School,
Below that:
And I Won't Think In Your ChurchWhat Would The
I'm starting to really hope for a landslide victory for Bush in '04 if only to watch the paroxysms of anger that'll overwhelm these people.
Tooth Fairy Do?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/4/2003 01:11:25 PM
Whigged Out - Yesterday, Vodkapundit Stephen Green asked if the Democrats were going to go the way of the Whigs, and obliterate themselves.
Eric Raymond at Armed and Dangerous responds. The Democrats certainly seem to be trying pretty hard to self-destruct. But this is not a new story; it's been going on ever since the New Left captured the party apparat in the early 1970s. My first experience of political activism was standing athwart that particular tide of history, yelling "stop!", as a campaign worker for centrist Democrat Scoop Jackson in 1975. I think I already half-understood that he was doomed. What I didn't foresee was the completeness with which the Democrats would abandon their southern and rural wings to become a party run exclusively by Brie-nibbling urban elites. Call it the NPRization of the party.
A smorgasbord of food for thought.
Recently they've abandoned the private-sector labor unions as well. Just before 2000, a key Democratic strategist noted that party's demographic power base consisted solely of blacks and the public-employee unions. Bill Clinton, charming sociopath and perfect acme of the American political creature that he was, had managed to paper over that problem for a while. But it keeps getting worse. The liberal-Democrat lock on the national media is crumbling under pressure from talk radio, Fox News, and the bloggers. They're losing their ability to control the terms of political debate.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/4/2003 01:08:36 PM
Justice? - Linda Tripp won her lawsuit against the Pentagon:
"Based on information supplied by Pentagon officials in 1998, The New Yorker reported Tripp did not admit an arrest on her security application for her job at the Defense Department. She had been arrested for grand larceny when she was a teenager. (Related item: Settlement Agreement)
This story isn't getting a lot of play in the major American press so far.
Tripp, whose secret tapes of conversations with Monica Lewinsky helped lead to President Clinton's impeachment trial, sued the Defense Department two years ago, alleging violations of the Privacy Act. She had worked for the department as a public affairs specialist."
Tripp's website has the rest of the story.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/4/2003 09:06:00 AM
Finney - Saint Paul Police Chief Bill Finney is leaving his job as St. Paul Police Chief:
"Finney will be leaving a department much changed from the force he took over 11 years and three mayors ago.
There are a long list of reasons I prefer Saint Paul to Minneapolis - less expensive, better neighborhood character, better schools, the best urban fire departmentin the US - but the police force is an important one. While there are exceptions (like with any police department), the Saint Paul police are a sharp contrast with the Minneapolis department. Saint Paul has had as successful an implementation of "community policing" as any city in the country, and the comparison of crime rates shows it.
His tenure has marked a shift from the 'professional,' paramilitary model of policing to a 'community policing' strategy that has attempted to forge closer ties between officers and the neighborhoods where they work."
Minneapolis' police department seems to follow the same model that the Los Angeles PD had under Darrell Gates (and still reportedly has) - the too-small force motivated by a strong "us against them" ethic. And while there are many great cops in Minneapolis, the MPD seems to have a different feel about them on the street - tense, edgy, prickly - that you don't generally find with the SPPD. And Bill Finney is largely responsible for that ethic.
Finney had his critics of course:There have been regular allegations that St. Paul officers have used excessive force, and that the chief has been lenient with friends and family members who allegedly have strayed from the law or department policy.
One episode about Finney is, I think, illustrative - and bear with me, my memory of the details may be a tad fuzzy after nine years.
Most recently, Finney's son, St. Paul Police Sgt. Jon Loretz, has been accused of assaulting patrons at a local bar during a melee on Oct. 19. Loretz denies any wrongdoing, and the case has been turned over to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for investigation to avoid any conflict of interest.
In 1994, two Saint Paul cops and a police dog were murdered by a deranged ex-Marine during a nightmarish day-long manhunt in Saint Paul. After the shooting of the first officer, a citizen fired at the perp as the perp was drawing a bead on a woman that had seen the shooting. The impact of the bullets on the car scared the perp, and probably saved the woman's life, and certainly helped the police, who were quickly told they were looking for a bullet-holed car with two blown-out windows.
The Ramsey County Attorney - Tom Foley, if memory serves - did his best to try to bring charges against the citizen. The police department, reportedly at Finney's direction, refused to cooperate with the prosecution, and eventually decorated the man.
Bill Finney has not been the perfect police chief - but compared to the Olson years in Minneapolis, I think Saint Paulites have every reason to be thankful for the Bill Finney years, and hope we do as well with our next chief of police.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/4/2003 07:14:18 AM
Iraqi Bioweapons - Power Line with the latest from Laurie Mylroie.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/4/2003 06:00:42 AM
Mob Liberty! - The Twin Cities Women's Press offers a fine perspective on Identity Feminism.
In this month's issue, Susan Raffo writes n article snarkily entitled Arnold offered Californians the American dream: freedom for me [and the faulty capitalization is theirs; the TCWP is edited worse than the average blog].
Let's see how far we get:The Terminator is now governor of California.
Whoah, that wasn't long.
No, Susan; Arnold Schwartzenegger is now the Governor-Elect. "The Terminator" was a character he played in a movie.He won this new position with a platform based on movie quips and vague references to freedom, democracy and the sacredness of individual choice.
Remember; this is the Twin Cities Women's Press. I'm actually impressed that "Freedom" wasn't in scare quotes. In 1991, Arnold Schwarzenegger was taped as saying, “I come from Austria, a socialistic country. There you can hear 18-year-olds talking about their pension. But me, I wanted more. I wanted to be the best. Individualism like that is incompatible with socialism. I felt I had to come to America, where the government wasn’t always breathing down your neck or standing on your shoes.”
I'm going to try to meet Mz. Raffo halfway here.
Schwarzenegger is only the most recent—and possibly most celluloid—proponent of this idea that freedom is something that can best and maybe only happen when it happens for an individual.
Perhaps she means to say "Success is something that can best and maybe only happen...". Because "Freedom" is something that can only happens to an individual; there is no meaningful freedom that attaches to groups that mustn't start with the individual.
If freedom, or "Freedom", were not a matter of the individual, then the freedoms of speech, press, religion and assembly would only apply to politicians, the institutional press, established churches and the legislature.
No, Freedom is always individual. Everything else boils down to a mindless collectivism that forces people to make decisions that are not in their best interest.
Strawman. Or, since this is the Women's Press, "Strawperson".
While conservatism is certainly focused on the dignity as well as liberty of the individual, there is nothing about any flavor of conservatism short of anarcho-libertarianism that doesn't note the need for a society that upholds the things individuals need to protect their freedom - the rule of law, the security of the society's freedoms. Stating the case as an either-or is absurd and meaningless.
WARNING: The standard lefty strawman - the "Rugged Cowboy", is about to be invoked. Normally when a lefty invokes TRC, my internal logic circuits overload and I revert to full O'Rourke snark mode. I'm going to contain myself:The cult of the American individual, the rugged cowboy on the edge of the great frontier, the come-to-America-and-get-rich dream of doing it alone, making it alone, is the great myth that’s stuck to our national shoes like gum that’s long dried solid.
Even while the cult of those who pooh-pooh individualism suppurates like old chaw on a hot sidewalk, separating into even portions of tobacco juice, saliva and snot.
Oh, wait - I thought I'd wandered into the simile workshop. I'm sorry.
We return to Mz. Raffo, who seems to be confused:The problem with this U.S. ideal of individual freedom is that it depends on someone being generous towards those who don’t have as much private time or ranch land. An individual is only ever as generous as the mood they’re in. There are a lot of ranchers who would’ve left me on the side of the road with no way home simply because they were tired, they didn’t like my looks or they had too many other things to do.
Get that? Freedom depends on unanswered charity!
No, Mz. Raffo. Freedom depends on the "generosity" that comes from a free association of equals (or people willing to work to become equal) deciding to co-exist in a society they rule together. Not handouts.
Freedom is not analogous to getting to the destination of some vacuous hitchhiking trip; it's the act of being able to decide to take the trip in the first place, and risk the consequences depending on your own motivations and talent.
Mz. Raffo goes on - and this part almost made me spit coffee on my monitor: The American dream has worked for Arnold. A mostly untalented Austrian with well-worked muscles, iron discipline and focused willpower came to the United States and became a multi-millionaire and international celebrity.
Get that?
He had "iron discipline" and "focused willpower" - which made him one of the most successful people in Hollywood - but he's "mostly untalented!"
I suspect that in Susan Raffo's world, discipline and willpower aren't talents - but mindless adherence to cant (see Martin Sheen) are. He’s perfected the art of self-marketing, running his gubernatorial campaign like a movie premier and thumbing his nose at politics-as-usual.
(Both of which sound like talent to me!) Schwarzenegger’s taken the overcrowded California dream of forever sunshine and turned it into a Hollywood snapshot. You work real hard and deserve to kick back in your fence-enclosed backyard sipping a margarita by the pool.
O rin your communal kibbutz, or apartment in Pomona, or artist's loft in Lowertown - whatever you choose to use your talents to work toward. That's part of being free, or "free" if you prefer! This is the dream that bought Arnold an election.
Receipts, please! The dream of a world where you can have neighbors who never bother you, unless you want them to. It’s a great dream, I suppose, until you’re the one standing on the side of the road waiting for a rancher to go a hundred miles out of his way, hoping he’s in the mood, and with no other way home.
And Mz. Raffo again mistakes "freedom" - the right to hitchike into the middle of the Montana desert - for "charity" - the rancher's unbidden desire to bail her out of the mess she got herself into.
I cut liberally from the article. You may read the rest at the link above - but you're also free not to.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/4/2003 06:00:27 AM
Monday, November 03, 2003
You Go, Grrrrrrl - A study says Oprah fans are likely to be under mind-numbing stress:
"According to a new study, fans of the 'Oprah Winfrey Show' have higher stress levels than those who are not fans. According to the study, 5 percent of the country's adult population, or 9 million people, said they feel so much stress that they can no longer cope. Half of those said they were fans of the show.
I know that both time I watched Oprah, I felt my blood pressure rising, and felt a desire to smash something...
'Either watching 'Oprah' leads to anxiety, or severely stressed Americans are drawn to her show to look for solutions,' said [Hale] Dwoskin [by Hale Dwoskin, author of 'The Sedona Method'] in the release. 'However, the most likely conclusion we can make is that people who seek out Oprah's life-affirming TV are probably just more aware, open and honest with their emotions.'"
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 05:22:34 PM
Bad Day - Sullivan on yesterday, a bad day in Iraq, which he describes as...:
"...enough to make anyone want to leave the place in disgust. But that's the point. Saddam always relied on the Somalia strategy. He believed - and probably still does - that the U.S. does not have the guts to stick this out and wear down the Sunni dead-enders now combined with Islamist terrorists. He planned on this kind of war of attrition from the minute he knew he was militarily finished. That makes our endurance all the more necessary. The slow collapse of American credibility in the 1990s will take time to reverse. And moments like yesterday are classic attempts to test our determination. "
I'm waiting for the first leftblogger to cite yesterday's attacks as a reason to withdraw.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 07:15:32 AM
Plausible? - Day By Day notes Terry MacAuliffe's complete impotence as DNC leader:
It's as good as any other theory so far...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:57:00 AM
Got my K-Tel On - Lileks, on his way to fisking the worst song of all time (Going Up The Country by Canned Heat) in a Bleat last week, gives a link I've been dreaming about for years; K-Tel Records.
Bear in mind, my parents tried. We didn't have Public Radio in Jamestown, North Dakota in those days, so my parents listened to CBW in Winnipeg - a station that, in retrospect, was Thomas Magnum to MPR's dowdy spinster. And my first instrument was the cello. The three local radio stations broadcast, in order of size: Country (KSJB), Beautiful Music (KSJM), and the owner's opinion of the state legislature (KEYJ, the station that eventually hired me in 1979).
But then, one day in 1976, over in Mike Aylmer's basement, on the tiny, 1960's vintage portable record player - K-Tel's Block Buster.
And it was there that I discovered the seductive joys of...well, not really rock and roll. But certainly pop music, circa 1976.
The album included:
Question for those of you were born after, say, 1972; are you starting to understand why so many of us looked at Bruce Springsteen and the Sex Pistols as conquering liberators?
Side Two
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:03:20 AM
Maxi-Flop - CBS's "Reagan" mini-series has some interesting backers:
CBS entertainment chief Les Moonves insists that Democrat diva Barbra Streisand didn't have anything to do with the insulting portrayal of President Reagan and his wife Nancy in his network's upcoming biopic "The Reagans."
And, by all accounts, the series shows it.
But only four months ago the anti-Republican songstress was described in mainstream press reports as "tight" with the Reagan-bashing film's producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.
George Putnam excoriates CBS's Reagan miniseries.
One of a wallet-ful of money paragraphs: "Reagan played right guard on his college football team. Next to him at the center position was the only man of color on the team. The night before an important out-of town game, Reagan's team was to be given a steak dinner. As they sat down to eat, the restaurant owner approached the man of color and said, 'You can have your dinner, but you've got to eat it in the kitchen.'
Many more observations worth reading.
Quietly furious, Reagan asked his fellow teammates to each contribute a few dimes and nickels so they could leave and go elsewhere for dinner ... and then the team walked out en masse, went down the street to a local hamburger joint and that was their dinner. The next day they enjoyed a smashing victory. Just one small incident of many showing where Ronnie Reagan came from."
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:01:36 AM
Counterterror - Krauthammer with with historical and demographic perspectives on the guerrilla war in Iraq:
"The Saddam loyalists swim in a small lake. They represent the deeply loathed Baathist regime, with just a small constituency at home -- bolstered by foreign terrorists who may speak for a general kind of Islamism but are no more loved by Iraqis than they were by the Afghans, who despised them.
The American left, whose knowledge of history goes back no further than 1968, regards all guerrilla war as unwinnable. Krauthammer notes that it's not true, citing the British war in Malaysia in the '50s (and even Krauthammer swings and misses - the Brits won even more similar wars in Yemen and Oman in the '60s).
There is no general uprising among the Iraqi people. On the contrary: 80 percent of the country is either Shiite or Kurd, for almost a century ruled and repressed by the Sunni Arab minority. Which is why most polls show a very substantial majority of Iraqis want the Americans and British to stay and are pleased with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The resistance to the U.S. occupation is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab. But it represents only 15 percent to 20 percent of the Iraqi population. For 30 years, through their own Saddam Hussein, they used their power not just to rule but to rob. They gorged themselves on Iraq's oil wealth. Tikrit was a sleepy town before Saddam rose from it to Stalinist god-king and poured not only privilege, power and protection into Tikrit and onto Tikritis but vast amounts of money as well."
You'll want to read this.
(Via Vodkapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:01:24 AM
NaNo, NaNo - About 3,000 words over the weekend. Doesn't seem so bad, so far - although I'm sure I'll regret writing that soon.
But it occurs to me that to meet the NaNo goal you need to write about 1,300 words a day. Last September I dumped all my blog writing into a file, and figured I'd been averaging about 670 words a day for a year and a half - and last year most of my posts were short, and I only did a few a day. I'll bet I've averaged way over 800 words a day just on the blog alone for quite some time.
So maybe this NaNo thing isn't such a big deal!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:01:15 AM
Who Da Cowboy? - David's Medienkritik is an essential read for a perspective on the European media.
The Halloween edition led with this image, from the German weekly Zeit (Ironically, German for "Time"): 
David responds with this graf...:Isn't it amazing that this stupid cowboy's economic policy seems to be doing quite well, especially when compared to the not so successful efforts of his smart German counterpart? 7.2 % annual growth in the US compared to zero in Germany - what a difference!
David then follows with a perhaps more appropriate picture...
...but you'll have to read his blog for that.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:00:23 AM
Take Toys, Leave Sandbox - The Dems respond to the 7.2% growth numbers...churlishly:
"Democrats yesterday downplayed the strongest quarterly economic growth in 19 years, refusing to give President Bush credit and stressing still-lagging job creation, while Republicans gloated over the news.
No word on a Dem response to Friday's BCCI jump...
'President Bush has compiled the worst economic record since the Great Depression, and it is going to take a lot more than one quarter of growth to clean it up,' said Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in a statement.
'The real measure of a strong economy is when average Americans see real benefits and the people who lost their jobs under President Bush are working again,' he said. "
posted by Mitch Berg 11/3/2003 06:00:18 AM
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Where's The Party - So yet again, there's a great party...
...and I was never invited.
Just like high school all over again.
Oh - and Saint?I was glad to be there, in what may turn out to be the ultimate nexus of blogosphere-related icons in Twin Cities history. That is, until Mitch Berg and the Pioneer Press Weather Blog guy finally get together for that symposium on cumulonimbus clouds they've been threatening.
Again, just like high school.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/2/2003 10:16:04 AM
Today's BCCI: 81%
Yesterday: 80
52 Week High: 85%
52 Week Low: 1%
NaNoWriMo Word Count: 13616
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