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

Thursday, November 27, 2003

The Search Goes On - The search goes on for Dru Sjodin, a Pequot Lakes (MN) girl apparently abducted from a parking lot in Grand Forks, ND.

The Grand Forks Herald continues to cover the story:
"Despite rumors flying Wednesday around the investigation about a body being found, they were all false, and nothing was found that has been linked to Sjodin, police said. No suspects have been identified, and no one is in custody, police said.

The 22-year-old UND student from Pequot Lakes, Minn., is thought to have been abducted about 5 p.m. Saturday near or in her car in a parking lot at Columbia Mall in Grand Forks."
It's hard to remember, sometimes, the effect something like this has in small-town America.

And seeing this picture reminds me; damn, it must be cold up there.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2003 04:38:56 PM

Presidential Moment - Bush slips the media gauntlet, flies to Iraq to spend Thanksgiving with the troops.

Watch for the Dems to harangue about:
the cost
the election-year symbolism
his outfit :

(remember the flap over him wearing a flight suit when he flew to the Abraham Lincoln?
Call it what you will. It's not just greatp politics. It's great leadership.

Especially when juxtaposed with the Dems' attitudes on the whole thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2003 01:15:31 PM

New Years Day, 2003 - I thought about leaving you with the Thanksgiving piece I wrote last year. I was pretty happy with it, and it kind of summed up how I really feel about Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving has seemed like the turning of the new year for me - the time when I reflect on the past year's agonies and flubs and successes, and look forward to the next year. Much more so - for me anyway - than New Years' Eve, which is more decompression from Christmas than anything.

I remember each Thanksgiving in the last 17 years - the giddiness of feeling like I was on the edge of something big in 1986, confident in my ability to pull it all together in '87, shell-shocked and depressed and contemplating the implosion of my radio career in '88, crazy in love in '89, a harried but happy but broke newlywed in '90, a new dad digging out of deep snowdrifts in '91, broke and on the brink of eviction with two kids and another on the way in '92, in a new house in '93...wondering how long my marriage would last in '98, being able to answer the question "not long at all" in '99...

...and today. I sat for a while by the Cathedral of St. Paul, looking down Summit over downtown Saint Paul. The giddy, heady uncertainty of the thanksgivings of my first years as an adult, the throat-clutching terror of my divorce-era holidays, and the weary relief of my first thanksgivings as a divorced dad...well, little bits of all of them are still there. But there's the emerging sense that my life really is mine, and that I'd better get on with it.
To last year's litany, I should add the throat-clutching insecurity about the economy and my employment which, within a month, became fully justified. If anything, I have more to be thankful about this year: that I got through four months of unemployment and five more of drastic underemployment, in one piece; a new job; opportunities; relative stability.

It's a new year for me, again; as I noted last year, all the big changes in my life seem to hinge on the Thanksgiving season, good or bad. This year seems to be no exception - this year, it seems to be a good thing. So far.

And for that, I'm deeply thankful.

And as I said last year, I'm thankful for all of you. When this blog started, I got 7-8 visitors a day - friends, relatives, "car crash" spectators. The Garrison Keillor flap and the subsequent Instalanches pushed me up to around 200 visitors a day on average. Today, a typical weekday brings 4-500 of you to the site; it's flattering, humbling, challenging, and more fun than I'd ever imagined it being. Thank you all.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I certainly am.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2003 09:09:15 AM

F-Gate - Last week, the tempest in the blogosphere's teapot was Lileks' dropping of the F-Bomb against Salam Pax.

Spitbull comments - and begs two questions. One regards the Midwestern sensibility about swearing:
"Come to think of it, I believe they teach our kids to use the term 'Uff da!' to express strong emotion at school, but I guess James must have forgotten temporarily. But we'll forgive him. After all, he did apologize so nicely.
The other; has Mr. Bull ever met anyone from Chicago?
Now Dan, it's your turn. Chicago is technically in the Midwest after all. Let's keep the discussion civilized!"
Spit! People from Chicago - certainly every one I've ever known - swear with a brio that'd put a New York cabbie to shame. It's not the utilitarian, surgical cussing of the Minnesota farmer or mechanic - who tend to regard cursing as something akin to nudity or emotional revelation, something you only do when you really need to, and not to be indulged in otherwise.

No, every Chicagoan I've ever met has approached swearing the way a Frenchman regards wine; as something to be enjoyed, lingered over, savored.

When Lileks said "F-bomb You" to Pax, you could hear the North Dakota accent within. Had James been from Chicago, it would have been more like "F--- you, Salam, you F---ing D----ebag J--off!" delivered with the sort of pugnacious grin that you see on little boys who are about to TP a house, each syllable crafted with loving, joyful care; "F-wk Yooo, you DOOO-shbag J-g-off...."

It's one of the things I love about Chicago.

Just don't tell my mom.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/27/2003 09:00:54 AM

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Two Out Of Three Idiots Agree - Spoons notes:
"George Blyther and Woodrow Johnson, a 60-year-old retired bureaucrat and and a 70-year-old retired gas-station attendant, respectively, have concluded that John Hinkley is pyschologically fit to be released from the mental hospital where he has been kept since his trial for the attempted assassination of President Reagan. The men come by their particular expertise by virtue of having served on the jury that found Hinkley not guilty by reason of insanity 21 years ago. Blyther, for his part, asserts that the Bush administration's opposition to Hinkley's release is 'purely political' and has 'nothing to do with reality.'
This is in reaction to...

...wait for it...

...wait...

...a Washington Post story.
Complicating matters, the other nine pinheads who acquitted Hinkley (and haven't seen him in two decades) have not yet offered their two cents.
You wondered what they'd all do when they got Mumia Abu-Jamal off the hook...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2003 07:46:03 AM

TV Romance - I've been single - again - for just about four years now. I've gone out with a woman or two - or 68 - in that time. And as a result, I think I know what's wrong with this country.

Romance, TV-style.

The PiPress over the weekend featured an article by Barbara Buchholtz, "Blind to Mr. Right." The scary part is, I think I've gone out with quite a few of the women in the article.
"We're seven attractive, smart, successful women who are used to getting everything we want," she says. Several are also waiting for a thunderbolt to strike. "Everyone says you know it when you meet him. There's magic. With my former husband, there were no bells, but I thought we'd have a nice comfortable life and get along," she says.
"I'll know when I meet him." Sounds reasonable on the surface, doesn't it?

But you have to read it literally: When I meet him. Not on the third date. Not after two hours of conversation over coffee. Within the first minute.

And to get the chance at that first minute, you have to leap some fairly rigorous hurdles these days. Buchholtz starts out:
If the fairy tales were rewritten, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella wouldn't be so quick to head off with their princes once they kissed or found the lost slipper.

They first would pull out a checklist for him — good looks, passion, an impressive job, net worth, nice wardrobe and trendy vacations — to be sure their suitors measured up.
Buchholtz is very close. That's all part of it.

But for all-too-many women (and, I presume, guys, although I haven't dated any of them), once the bona-fides and the income and the wardrobe have been gone over it boils down to one word: Chemistry. In science, Chemistry is a discipline defined by empirical reason. In dating, it's the reading of sheep entrails - no, worse, since entrails entailed some sort of at least nodding acquaintance with empiricism. It's the opposite of reason; the notion that one can be swept away at first sight due to forces beyond anyone's control. It's "that special something" that nobody can define, but everyone knows the results.

A woman I briefly dated (and with whom I felt no "chemistry") called it: "Chemistry is that feeling you have in the back of your head that says 'I know I just met you, but I am attracted enough to want to sleep with you long before I know I should."

In dating today, we see a mixture of old and new values: For centuries, marriage had little to do with romance; they were as much financial transactions as anything, as they are still in much of the world. About a hundred years ago, that started changing in the West, and romance - including the "love at first sight" fairy tale.

Today? It seems only both will do. Perhaps it's because women's roles have changed; not so much their overt roles in work and society, but their unstated roles; the notion that men, or "their" man, is there to protect them and their children from the depredations of the world is a dead issue today. So there's a practical element to courtship - especially among women for whom ensuring and protecting ones' lifestyle has replaced raising and protecting children as their primary motivation - that that was perhaps less important 30 years ago
Despite their good intentions, part of their prolonged hunt may be because they keep seeking some wrong qualities, says editorial stylist and freelance producer Susan Victoria, of Chicago, who is 57 and single. "So many women want a good catch and won't talk to a man unless he makes a certain amount," she says. "What they should be looking for instead is the right emotional connection."

Pamela Garber, a psychotherapist in South Florida, agrees that too many women set as the goal a certain lifestyle rather than intimacy. "A mate simply becomes another part of the package," she says.
The man and, when you get to that point, the baby as well. Children, for a growing number of couples, have become a lifestyle accessory. But that's fodder for another post. Buchholtz continues:
A prime reason for this phenomenon is that we've become a brand-conscious society.

"Our culture bombards us with messages that if we buy a certain product or service, we won't have to settle for someone who's less than the idealized person the media has created as a benchmark, such as a George Clooney type," says Rob Frankel, author of the self-published "Revenge of Brand X" (Frankel & Anderson Inc., $36.95).
Or the message of "Sex in the City" - that if they and their friends analyze their love lives to a fine sheen, Mr. Perfect will make himself apparent.

In the first sixty seconds, mind you.

(Via Dave's Picks)

posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2003 07:39:11 AM

"Astroturf" - That's the new buzzword among the blogs on the left.

According to lefty bloggers like Josh "Joshua Micah" Marshall, when a group of average schmuck liberals gets together to agitate for something - even if it's under the aegis of an organization like MoveOn.org (which just got $5 million from George Soros) - it's "Grassroots".

But everyone knows that it's the conservatives that are run by a centralized cabal of big-buck financiers, and we couldn't possibly organize to move mountains at the grass-roots level, right?

Every time I worry about getting enough material, I just read a few of my favorite lefty blogs. It fixes things every time.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2003 07:39:05 AM

The Peril of the Moderate Moslem, Part II - Powerline is observing the same thing I am - that as US policy remains stalwart against terror, the terrorists will go for easy targets - the civilians and Moslem moderates who are, in the long run, the greatest threat to them.

Powerline notes, in referring to a conference by Gen. Abizaid, who noted attacks against US forces are down sharply in recent weeks:
To some degree, the Baathists' efforts have been re-directed toward attacks on Iraqi civilians, designed to deter cooperation with the coalition. Bremer says he doubts the attacks will be effective: "If Saddam taught the Iraqis nothing else it was how to endure the depredations of thugs."
In the meantime, Sullivan points to this report in the Guardian, on the mood in Turkey.

A cash register full of money quotes in this piece.
. But once we had left the airport, it was hard to see any sign of a crisis. The streets were clogged with traffic and people shopping for the holiday that begins today. The shores of the Bosphorus were lined with fishermen and a procession of large, slow-moving families enjoying the unusually fine weather. The restaurants and cafes were doing a brisk business, and every few hundred metres there was a florist overflowing on to the pavement to meet the seasonal demand.

In my brother's neighbourhood, which was ankle deep in broken glass a week ago, the glaziers have been working so hard that there is a joke rumour going around that they were the masterminds behind the bomb. Now all but a few of the windows have been replaced, bar the ones on the mosque next door to the synagogue. The buildings across the street have lost their fronts and been condemned. But the lighting store next to them is open for business.

My brother says that the shopkeepers on the street were out with their brooms within minutes of the explosion. It was the residents who got the wounded to hospital. He saw no official presence for two hours.

They are very much in evidence now. Those with homes or businesses in the affected areas must leave their identity cards with the police manning the barricades. Anyone who stops to look at the damage can expect to be filmed by a man who may or may not be an innocent journalist. It is all very subtle, and very calm. The shopkeepers in the fish and flower markets near to where the entrance to the British consulate stood until last Thursday do not want to talk about the bomb any more. They would rather sell me a string of red peppers or talk me into a pair of wonky glasses and a monster mask. Like my friends, they see staying at home behind closed doors as a form of defeat. They are determined to get life back to normal as soon as possible, no matter what.
Needless to say, you need to read the whole thing.

Turkey has had one form of domestic strife or another, frequently between Islamic fundamentalists and the secular authorities, especially the military, since Ataturk established modern Turkey after World War I. The latest phase - tied to the current war on terror inasmuch as it is linked to Wahabbist madrasses that have sprung up throughout the Turkish countryside - promises to be difficult.

How will the Turks react? To some extent, as Sullivan notes, that's up to us.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2003 06:05:42 AM

Open Carry Day in Ohio - Ohioans have been fighting for a concealed carry reform bill similar to Minnesota's for some time. Their legislative and legal battle has been long and brutal - and, at the moment, the legal opposition comes down to Governor Taft, who is pretty much singlehandedly stalling things.

However, due to a recent court decision, open carry is legal in Ohio. So CCW Reform supporters in Ohio are carrying openly as part of an organized campaign of civil resistance - and may be planning a march on the capitol, according toClayton Cramer:
Ohioans For Concealed Carry has announced that activists from across the state who are interested in protesting Governor Taft’s obstruction of concealed carry reform will "openly carry" their sidearms, beginning in a public park at the corner of Parkview and Commonwealth outside the Governor’s Mansion in Bexley, November 30 at 2:00 p.m.

In the past two months, over one thousand Ohioans have staged 'Defense' Walks around the state, at which they openly carry firearms to protest the failure of their elected officials to keep their promises and enact concealed-carry legislation.
Read both pieces.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2003 06:03:40 AM

Gunned Down, Part II - The Kansas town of Geuda Springs requires all homes to have guns, a la Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. Geuda Springs has no police force, and passed the ordinance as a means of deterring crime.

Anyone want to guess how hard the WaPo had to look for dissenting opinion? They found a "City Attorney" (in a town without a police force?) and this comment from the county sheriff:
"Geuda Springs has no local police force; the Sumner County Sheriff's department is responsible for policing the area. Sheriff Gerald Gilkey said the ordinance makes him concerned for the safety of his officers.

"This throws up red flags," he said.
From his comments, I take it the Sheriff's department has had lots of problems in Geuda Springs? The only crime records I can find in a quick web search are for Sumner County - but that includes the urban cesspool of Arkansas Springs. Perhaps the Sheriff is either sensationalizing, or being taken out of context?

Let's see how many people - including Sumner County Sheriffs Deputies - get shot in Geuda Springs from now on...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/26/2003 06:00:44 AM

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

What Kind of Hawk Are You? - One of the more irritating hard-left tropes sine 9/11 has been the notion of the "Chickenhawk". If you've never served in the military, you'd best not urge any policy that involves use of the military, lest you be called a chickenhawk. The term flies thick and fast on the left wing of the blogosphere.

Some on the right have taken umbrage at this. I won't. In fact, this idea should be applied through all public policy discussions!
If you've never been poor, but you write about what society has to do for the poor? You're a Poorhawk!
Yapping about education policy, even though you're not a teacher (or, like my own city councilman Jay Benanav, your kid went to private school)? You're a NEAhawk!
Concerned about policy implications on the elderly, even though you're not 65 yet? Pffft. You're an Aarphawk!
But we need more! Leave comments or send email.

Unless you're some kind of Nofeedbackhawk...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2003 05:59:49 AM

Truer Words - Lileks notes something I wanted to touch on:
"Please, please, please Corporate America: do not put the Cat in the Hat on any more products. The sight of that thing gives me nightmares. It should not be. If in olden tymes such a beast sauntered into town, the menfolk would pick up shovels and beat it to death. "
They've taken the lanky, Suessified icon of my childhood, and forever made me think "The Cat looks like Fat Bastard."
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2003 05:40:54 AM

Gunned Down, Part II - AS we reported yesterday, the M-16 rifle may be fighting its final battle.

It's long been regarded as too fragile and jam-prone (as we may have seen during the Jessica Lynch incident, where quite a number of M-16s jammed in action). Now it's too bulky, too:
After nearly 40 years of battlefield service around the globe, the M-16 may be on its way out as the standard Army assault rifle because of flaws highlighted during the invasion and occupation of Iraq (news - web sites).

U.S. officers in Iraq say the M-16A2 — the latest incarnation of the 5.56 mm firearm — is quietly being phased out of front-line service because it has proven too bulky for use inside the Humvees and armored vehicles that have emerged as the principal mode of conducting patrols since the end of major fighting on May 1.
The replacement? A cut-down M-16.
The M-4 is essentially a shortened M-16A2, with a clipped barrel, partially retractable stock and a trigger mechanism modified to fire full-auto instead of three-shots bursts. It was first introduced as a personal defense weapon for clerks, drivers and other non-combat troops.

"Then it was adopted by the Special Forces and Rangers, mainly because of its shorter length," said Col. Kurt Fuller, a battalion commander in Iraq and an authority on firearms.

Fuller said studies showed that most of the combat in Iraq has been in urban environments and that 95 percent of all engagements have occurred at ranges shorter than 100 yards, where the M-4, at just over 30 inches long, works best.

Still, experience has shown the carbines also have deficiencies. The cut-down barrel results in lower bullet velocities, decreasing its range. It also tends to rapidly overheat and the firing system, which works under greater pressures created by the gases of detonating ammunition, puts more stress on moving parts, hurting its reliability.

Consequently, the M-4 is an unlikely candidate for the rearming of the U.S. Army. It is now viewed as an interim solution until the introduction of a more advanced design known as the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, or OICW.
"Great, a new weapon!"

Well, maybe not. Look at this thing. If you've never been a soldier, you might think it looks like something from "Aliens". You wouldn't be far off.

It weighs 68 pounds, loaded for action. That's nearly 10 times the weight of the M-16. This, after the military spent forty years trying to build a rifle lighter and handier than the old M-1/M-14 family of rifles, which were both wondeful rifles (I've shot both) and bulkier than your standard deer rifle.

It's not an idle point. Soldiers will have to lug this thing - and all its ammunition - along with their other gear (food, ammunition for their squad's machine gun, etc) into action - and the more tired they are when they get there, the less likely they are to be able to shoot accurately, no matter what kind of sight you pin on the top.

Or so I'm told. I've never been a soldier.

Kim Du Toit has, and he's the blogosphere's resident firearms maven. His opinions about the OICW start here, and if you were left in any doubt, continue here.

More on this later.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2003 05:21:56 AM

Public Image Limited - What does Sergeant Mom have in common with British Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell?

For the last week, one thing; a realization that the media's image of the President is wrong.

Campbell, a major figure in the British Liberal Democrats (one of many parties that come in behind Labour and the Tories in the UK), said that while he disagrees deeply with Bush (as is to be expected), that:
“He is personally extremely engaging. He has a well-developed sense of humour, is self-deprecating and when he engages in a discussion with you he is warm and concentrates directly on you.

“He looks you straight in the eye and tells you exactly what he thinks.”

Mr Campbell, stressing that the President was “totally at odds” with his media image, went on: “I was not persuaded by what he said, but I was most certainly surprised at the extent to which the caricature of him was inaccurate.”
Campbell realizes something Sergeant Mom notes in her post on Stryker this morning:
Really, people, I am getting the feeling that you have never paid attention to all those stories and jokes about smart, cosmopolitan types who ventured out into the sticks to patronize the local yokels and wound up loosing their shirts, or their wallets, or at least a couple of illusions regarding making an assumption about a person based on that persons’ dress, accent, and apparent class (or lack thereof) when said yokels out-slicked the city slicker.
This, in fact, ties together quite a number of threads.

The US media and government establishments are completely centered on the coasts, east and west. While solid, convincing arguments can be made that race, class and gender are big divisions in American society, I've sensed for decades that regionalism may be the biggest one of all, in the long run.

The signs are everywhere.

Academygirl (link via SCSU Scholars, who are second to none at covering academia) has this fascinating piece, on how very difficult it is for gifted, poor, rural students to get noticed by "elite" universities.

She tells the story of Daniel Spangenberger, of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, who:
SCORED 1330 on his SAT, well within the range desired by many elite schools, and now that he’s borrowed an SAT prep book, he hopes to break 1400 on his second try. His teachers say he’s smart, motivated and exceptionally mature. He holds two after-school jobs and also finds time to volunteer, setting up a computer cafe at the local Boys & Girls Club. And he drives his mother, who is battling cancer, to her monthly chemo sessions. Only two obstacles stand between Spangenburger and his dream: he comes from a poor family (neither parent went to college) and attends a rural high school. “With the right kind of college education, Daniel could do great things,” says Berkeley Springs High School principal George Ward. “But so many smart rural kids fall through the cracks. Top schools don’t know Daniel exists...Many schools say diversity—racial, economic and geographic—is key to maintaining intellectually vital campuses. But Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation says that even though colleges claim they want poor kids, “they don’t try very hard to find them.” As for rural students like Spangenburger, many colleges don’t try at all. “Unfortunately, we go where we can generate a sizable number of potential applicants,” says Tulane admissions chief Richard Whiteside, who recruits aggressively—and in person—from metropolitan areas. Kids in rural areas get a glossy brochure in the mail.”
Of course, in many of the rural areas of this nation, there's a sort of reverse snobbery, which has served to keep many of the hinterland's best and brightest securely locked in the hinterland for generations. Kids are encouraged to go to the state college and come back home to build the communities, and carry on where Mom or Dad left off. Kathleen Norris spelled out the syndrome - and its results - in her classic Dakota: A Spiritual Geography"; part inferiority complex, part reverse snobbery, part monkish aesceticism...

...and partly what Academygirl and the Scholars note: persistent ignorance about the parts of this nation more than 100 miles from the coasts, which leads to underrepresentation at our "elite" universities, which leads in turn to underrepresentation in this nation's academic, media, upper-level administrative and governing classes.

Which leads to the media's ever-persistent myopia about people who don't...act like them. People like the President.

20 years ago, European leaders recall being amazed at Ronald Reagan's erudition and personability - completely at odds with the image they'd gotten from the US and European presses.

The cycle continues.

(Via the Professor and Rush)
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2003 05:04:45 AM

Anger Management - Which of us has not felt this way?:
"In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made 'road rage' famous, Charles Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on bail for making repeated threats to staff of a Canadian company between May and July.

Booher threatened to send a 'package full of Anthrax spores' to the company, to 'disable' an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.

He used return e-mail addresses including Satan@hell.org.
I feel the same way when I get my daily emails from MoveOn.org...
In a telephone interview with Reuters on Friday, Booher acknowledged that he had behaved badly but said his computer had been rendered almost unusable for about two months by a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail.
Simple solution: Switch to Mozilla Firebird. In my household, Internet Exploder is treated as a virus.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/25/2003 05:00:07 AM

Monday, November 24, 2003

Powerslam - Powerline assails Tom Daschle's attack on the RNC's ad campaign.

After running the script, Hindrocket adds:
The Democrats' position is ludicrous on its face: they have blanketed the air waves in primary states for months with ads attacking the President's handling of the war, and now he doesn't get to defend himself? Daschle's willingness to take such a ridiculous position can only be seen as an indication of how badly the Democrats fear the national security issue will play for them next year.
I don't think they know exactly how bad it's going to play for them.

I notice that the blogging left is being very quiet about the whole thing...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 06:50:13 AM

Crucial Endorsement - Grave-dancing cartoonist Ted Rall has endorsed Howard Dean.

He says this on the "Dean For America" blog:
" Howard Dean has the best chance to beat Bush.

Brilliant, aggressive and moneyed... Dr. Dean has a corner on the single most important issue to Americans: health care.
Huh?

I suppose there is a large class of Americans who can completely ignore what's going on outside our borders - or what went on here, two years ago.

Are they a majority? I doubt it. God help us if they are.

This next bit is hilarious:
But the rubber would really tear up the road at the presidential debates, where Dean's dry, sardonic Long Island wit would devastate the hapless Bush--and charm television viewers.
Astounding, isn't it?

Does "dry, sardonic Long Island wit" play in Peoria? Especially a Peoria that knows that Bush has handled the presidency well, and isn't buying Dean's ostrich-head-in-the-sand rhetoric?

Medved's prediction - that next fall will be a historical landslide - is sounded better and better.

And that's ignoring the effect of the crucial Rall endorsement!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 06:35:53 AM

Majer Setback - When Brian Lambert knocks off with his absurd political commentary, he's a very good media columnist.

This week, some almost-inside dirt on the departure of Paul Majers from KARE11. Lambert's account differs from the antiseptic, collegial account given in, say, Minneapolis/Saint Paul magazine.
Flopped in a leather chair in his handsome Lake of the Isles home in Minneapolis, Magers prefers the story of moving on to a new challenge. The shift to Los Angeles, he says, "already has new emotions for me — nervousness, anxiety — all those wonderful things we like coping with on a daily basis. It really has created a whole new set of stimuli."

The secret to Magers' success has been analyzed endlessly, even though the discussions are usually quite brief. He's a natural. The relaxed, quick-witted, self-effacing guy you see on camera is pretty much exactly what you get in person. In private, however, he's confident enough to pepper conversation with a few mild, strategically applied profanities and, well off-record, some vivid, funny dissections of other local personalities.

Magers jokes about shifting from the Twin Cities, where he's easily one of the half-dozen most recognizable and sought-after people in town, to L.A., where local TV news anchors rank somewhere between midlevel sitcom actors and last year's pop divas in terms of heart-fluttering star power...

Magers also makes light of the near-miraculous effect he'll have to have on KCBS. It's been an also-ran in the Los Angeles market for years, and many industry pros are skeptical even Magers can do much to raise it from near oblivion.

"Yeah, this thing could go wrong pretty easily," he cracked during the summer. "By this time next year we could be living in a double-wide on the Salton Sea," he said, referring to the parched, windswept hellhole out in the Mojave.
In a city this size, you don't have to go far to find people with Paul Majers stories. Mine? Well, back in the mid-eighties, I talked with him several times; he was a regular listener to the old Don Vogel show, and he called in to the program line at least once. And when I got whacked at KSTP, I used that "connection" to call him up, cold, to see if there might be a job of some sort out at KARE.

While most anchors - hell, most news directors, producers and cameramen - would have put that call in their mental File 13 without much further thought, Majers invited me out to KARE, had a cup of coffee, and introduced me to their then-News Director - something I can imagine very few anchors anywhere doing for someone they'd "met" only via phone on a talk show. (The News Director, on the other hand, rejected me for a dispatcher job, calling me "overqualified", which, given the reputation of KARE's behind-the-scenes production staff at that time, was kind of a slap...)

Anyway, while I watch very little local news these days, I guess it's significant that I don't think I can even name any other local anchors without thinking about it (and thinking about it only yields me Robyne Robyneson, Jeff Passolt and Amelia Santanielle. That's it).

Now that's marketing.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 06:04:28 AM

The Peril to the Moderate Moslem - As we said Friday - the most dangerous thing to be when it comes to terrorism is a moderate Moslem.

Matthew Gutman sums it up in the Jerusalem Post:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately released a statement following the second twin bombings in Turkey in the space of a week, that Islamic violence threatens the free world. But Turkey experts quickly warned Thursday that even at a greater risk are states that make up the small bloc of moderate Arab/Islamic states.

"Al Qaida is concentrating more and more on the moderate or pro-Western states it considers heretical," said a senior security source, "like Jordan, Egypt Morocco, and especially Turkey." In a recently broadcast statement that could be called a "State of the Jihad" address, Osama Bin Laden listed attacking moderate Islamic or Arab states third after Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan, the security source said.

Al Qaida seems intensely focused on states like Turkey because far more than Israel, or "US-Zionist imperialism," as the phrase goes, Islamic fundamentalists are threatened by moderate Islamic and pro-western states, said the security source.
This is a hugely important point - one that most Americans just don't realize. The policy among Moslem radicals, going back to the 1920s, is to kill the moderates first. Then the infidels.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 06:02:42 AM

Emmylou - I may share only one thing with Norm Geras of Normblog; a fascination with Emmylou Harris:
Then on comes Emmylou Harris with the ease and naturalness of a grand old lady of the music, and wearing it without any trace of arrogance or show. She just sings her stuff, both new and old, like it's forever. And that voice, with its distinctive purity; not thin exactly but kind of slender, and coming from somewhere higher up. I don't mean this in a religious sense, not being so inclined. But in a metaphysical sense, maybe. For Emmy stands on stage and she sings at you; it's plain, that's where the voice is coming from. But it sounds like from somewhere higher, as though sliding down from between two very closely aligned forms. Of the Emmylou Harris classics, we heard a marvellous Hickory Wind; and Together Again, and Wheels, and Wayfaring Stranger. And then to finish - in the encore - possibly her two greatest songs: (Townes Van Zandt's) Pancho and Lefty, and Boulder to Birmingham, written by her in memory of Gram Parsons.
Meeting Emmylou was one of the epiphanic moments of my life. And if you don't have a copy of "Roses in the Snow" or "Angel Band" or "Red Dirt Girl", you have only yourself to blame. Run, don't walk.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 06:01:42 AM

Closing the Links - Slowly and surely, the links between Bin Laden and Hussein are becoming fleshed out with documentary evidence.

Sharkansky notes that someone needs to tell Molly "Bush is a Poopyhead" Ivins.

Just read it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 06:00:43 AM

Scoop - Lileks refers us to "Iraq Now", a blog by Jason van Steenwyk, a US Army officer currently in country.

Van Steenwyk touches on a topic that ties him to his anscestors 35 years ago in the jungles of Vietnam; hatred of the M16 rifle:
"Well, the secret's out. After months of combat, after Kosovo, after Bosnia, after Haiti, after Mogadishu, the Associated Press and the Army finally realized what we figured out after about 90 minutes on the ground: the M16 is too beaucoups for vehicle-intensive, urban peacekeeping operations. Story here.

The truth is, we seem to be the only suckers out here trying to fight with them. Most of the Cav guys carry carbines. The special ops guys around here all arm themselves with some variant of a carbine, or machine pistols such as the TEC 9 and HK. Ditto the Brits.

I just talked to a British paratrooper the other day. (See, Josh Marshall--we're not "all alone" as you say!). American troops gripe when their rotation goes beyond 6 months. He just spent five years patrolling the mean streets of Belfast. The British have been there for decades. You'd think they'd have learned a thing or two about urban counterinsurgencies.

We talked to some of his troops about their armaments. All of them carried a variant of the submachine gun design, with folding stocks or no stocks at all.

Even the insurgents are cutting the stocks off their AK-47s! "
No, this doesn't much pertain to politics in Minnesota. It's just fun to scoop Kim Du Toit on a gun-related story for once...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/24/2003 05:59:36 AM

Sunday, November 23, 2003

Open Letter to the Television Industry - If I ask "Who the hell is Paris Hilton, and why should I care about her romantic life or her experience on an Arkansas pig farm?", please understand this subtle point: The question is purely rhetorical.

That is all. Carry on.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/23/2003 09:03:15 PM