You Are Dumb - Minnesota

I've Heard Of Buddha Flies...

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:48:13 -0600

Religion, 14 November 2008

Memo to Buddhists: NOT YOU TOO.

As a lefty, I'm supposed to have a bit more respect for Buddhists than I do for Christians. Mainly on the grounds that Buddhists mainly keep their invisible sky daddy to themselves without excessive attempts at conversion and theocracy. And there's also the fact that Buddhism is farther along on the philosophy - religion axis than most religions. A bit less god in their theological stew.

But they still believe in mystical bullshit, and apparently they're not immune to the same kind of crazy that makes Jesus-freaks pray to crosses in bathroom windows and Virgin Mary shapes in burnt toast. And it's right in my own backyard, too. Down in Rochester, MN, home of the Mayo Clinic, a bunch of Cambodian Buddhists are amazed and awed by the three-dimensional image of Buddha, manifested in earthly form in the eaves of their temple.The medium by which the Asian avatar of peace and tranquility was expressed? A giant motherfucking wasp's nest full of giant motherfucking wasps.

I'm afraid that this means I'm going to have to expand a bit on the usual argument that human beings are hard-wired for pattern recognition, and turn vaguely familiar shapes into very familiar shapes using mental faculties that were once very important to evolutionary survival, but now mainly exist just to piss me off. But a wasp's nest? Wasp nests are grey, round, and bulgy. The traditional stone Buddha statue is also grey, round, and bulgy.

Now, if it was a temple of Malaysian Rubikians who found a wasp's nest in their temple that was not only 27 small cubes in the shape of a larger cube, each side of each cube a different color? Then you might have something. Because you clearly have a wasp's nest doing something that does not come naturally to wasps, whose prowess at solving cheap plastic puzzles from the 80s is hampered by their constant desire to sting the living fuck out of it.*

But no, the elderly Cambodian Buddhists in Rochester see a miracle in a lump of biologically-extruded paper full of angry venomous ouch. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The Buddha is trying to tell everybody to seek peace in their lives." - Voeun Sor, age 70, eliminating what miniscule chance remained that I would ever consider taking up Buddhism. Because I can guarantee you that the parts of my life that have been the least peaceful are the parts that had WASPS IN THEM. In fact, my inner peace has been proven to be inversely proportional, on a logarithmic scale, to the number of wasps in my vicinity. I'm afraid I would meet Buddha's message of peace with two cans of Raid and some other motherfucker I could trick into going in and emptying them.

"Bees can do this kind of miracle, so humans can also do miracles. Everywhere in this world, we humans need to follow in the bees' path to make peace and serenity." - Sokunthea Thun, age 35. And you know, there's a part of me that could almost be sort of receptive to the whole "follow nature's example and take action" message inherent in Thun's statement. It's the same part of me that lingers longer than it should in certain aisles at Whole Foods, the part that gets patted on the head and fed a biscuit for appreciating the diversity of other cultures. But even that part of me knows one thing. Wasps are not bees.

I mean, I don't LIKE bees, but bees at least pollinate flowers and make honey, and as long as they keep doing that and do not develop the ability to open glass living room windows, bees and I can peacefully coexist. But wasps? Wasps are the bees shithead redneck cousins. They don't make anything, they don't do anything, they just spend a lot of time hanging around outside, getting pissed off, and getting into fights. They're the second least-Buddhist life form on the planet after Dick Cheney.

The only message a vaguely Buddha-shaped wasp's nest is sending you is a simple one: CALL AN EXTERMINATOR.

*Perfectly understandable, mind you. If I'd had a poisonous stinger coming out of my ass as a teen, I might have foregone peeling the stickers off entirely and just stabbed the ever-loving shit out of the thing instead.

The Bachmann Boogie

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:36:53 -0500

Wingnuts, 23 October 2008

Memo to Michelle Bachmann: HOLY SHIT, YOU SUCK AT THIS.

I cannot contain my glee at watching Michelle Bachmann, Minnesota's own basic-cable low-rent Ann Coulter, dodge and weave and do a St. Vitus' dance I call the "Bachmann Boogie" in a desperate attempt to recover from last Friday's disastrous Hardball interview. You know, the one where she called in the media to investigate members of Congress who may have anti-American views? It's like a schadenfreude sandwich on schadenfreude bread with schadenfreude mustard and a side of schadenfries.

Three weeks ago, if you'd asked me, I would have assumed that Bachmann's re-election was assured. She had the benefit of incumbency, was running in a district stupid enough to elect her in the first place. She was running against a guy named Tinklenberg. But now? Tinklenberg has almost a million bucks in small donors, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is in for another million, their Republican counterparts have pulled all their ads promoting Batshit Bachmann, and it turns out there is such a thing as bad press after all.

On Monday, I mentioned Bachmann's first attempt at playing her Get Out Of Fuckup Free card - the standard denial. You may have seen it recently when Sarah Palin claimed the Troopergate investigation said she didn't do anything illegal or unethical, which is a fascinating interpretation of "she broke an ethics law", and one that somehow seemed to work. But Bachmann is no Palin. Faced with direct quoting of her saying she feared Obama held anti-American views, she reached for the top of the Republican Community Chest pile, and to nobody's surprise, came up with "Blame The Media". ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Chris Matthews laid a trap, and I walked into it... Chris Matthews was using the term over and over, and I should not have used it... This was Chris Matthews. I made a big mistake by going on the show. I never should have... I just didn’t recognize — I never watched the Chris Matthews show before. I should have before I went on. I didn’t recognize that he would lay a trap the way that he did." - Bachmann, to the St. Cloud Times.

Wait, are we talking about the same Chris Matthews? Spud-For-Brains? He's a fucking cable news hack, not even one of the Spy Vs. Spy guys. You know how you can tell Chris Matthews has set a trap for you? Simple. Look for the piece of notebook paper taped to the wall with the word "TRAP" and an arrow written on it in crayon. If you then walk into that trap, you're as stupid as... well, Michelle Bachmann, I suppose. And there's a whole list of jobs, ranging from burrito folder all the way up to congresscritter, that being that dumb ought to disqualify you for.

And second, I call bullshit. Chris Matthews has been doing Hardball, or earlier incarnations of the same damn schtick, since 1994. You're going to tell me that the politically ambitious Bachmann never once tuned in? You're going to tell me that during the late 90s, when Matthews was making his bones by raking the Clintons over the coals, that the ultraconservative Bachmann didn't check it out EVER? No fucking way. The only true thing in that entire interview was the part where she said going on the show was a big mistake. Although that depends on your point of view. You could argue that going on Hardball was the first good thing Michelle Bachmann has ever done for society.

We've done the jump to the left and the step to the lie, but it's the psychotic thrust that'll prove she's insane.* Watch, as she goes on conservative talk radio and repeats the claims she swore she didn't make, and was tricked into making:

To Hugh Hewitt:"And so, he was using the word 'Anti-American' and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama’s views. Because Barack Obama’s views are against America. They won’t be good for our country." And to Mike Gallagher: "And they can’t take it because the point is what are Barack Obama’s policies? Are they for America or will they be against traditional American ideals and values?"

See? He's not anti-American, he just holds views that are against America and against traditional American ideals. Anyone who would twist that into Obama being "anti-American", based on nothing more than liberal bias and the knowledge that "anti-" means "against", is just a clever trickster who happens to host an obscure talk show that no Representative in their right mind would ever have heard of. Follow that?

BONUS HALLOWEEN COSTUME IDEA: Tie some sheets into a bunch of knots, drape them over yourself haphazardly, and be the hit of your party as "Michelle Bachmann's Logic".

*If I ever apologized for any jokes, I would apologize for this one.

Bachmann Turnout Overdrive

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:25:07 -0500

Wingnuts, 20 October 2008

Memo to Michelle Bachmann: GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY.

Fuck, it's worth a try. Actual true story. Friday morning, workplace political discussion. The topic? That Michelle "Batshit" Bachmann was only four points up on her unfortunately-named Democratic challenger, Elwyn Tinklenberg. That morning, I predicted that if she were to do something incredibly stupid, she might lose. But it couldn't be the usual stupid shit she pulls two times a day. No, this would have to be something monumentally stupid, preferably on camera, preferably reaching a national audience.

From my lips to your non-existent deity or deities' ears. Because that evening, there she was, on Hardball With Mr. Potato Head, calling for a full media investigation into which members of Congress hold un-American beliefs, starting with Barack Obama and not stopping until they're all rooted out. On-camera, for twelve minutes, reaching a national audience, displaying the full range of utter idiocy and bugfuck insanity that we all know Bachmann harbors in her tiny, twisted brain.

Here's the short version of how it went down. Bachmann was there to push the Ayers story and act like there's a ton of stuff out there about the Obama/Ayers relationship that we don't know. This is, of course, a lie, but it's one of the lies Republicans are freely being allowed to tell this election, so that's OK. But then she took it one notch farther on the great wingnut belt. She dipped her toes into the conspiracy theory that Obama has been shaped all his life by radical anti-Americans, from Wright to Ayers to a whole list of other names that you usually see in all caps on a comments page.

And Chris Matthews, who has recently taken up pretending to be a journalist as a hobby, noticed that Bachmann was sitting on the other side of the Acceptably Crazy/Unacceptably Crazy wall, and decided to actually spell out the shit she was implying. This is traditionally done by cable news journalists to allow the politician to step back from the abyss. Having given everyone a nice long look at what they want to say, but can't, they then say "Of course I don't mean that, Chris. I'm just saying that the American people have a right..."

But Michelle Bachmann is, as we've noted many times before in this space, SUPER DUMB. So when confronted with the question of whether she was calling liberals, including her fellow members of Congress, anti-American, she leapt in with both feet. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Absolutely. I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That's what the American people are concerned about. That's why they want to know what his answers are. That's why Joe the plumber has figured so highly in the last few days... You'd have to ask them, Chris. I'm focusing on Barack Obama and the people that he's been associating with... What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that."

I didn't think she could pull it off, but she did. She actually broke her own individual record in the hundred-meter stupid, which has stood uncontested for MONTHS. And when you add in the blatant lie denial, ("I'm not saying his views are anti-American. That's a mis-reading of what I said.") and the truly epic electoral consequences, she may actually have broken the world record. And oh, what consequences they are.

First, when this broke wide, the left-wing blogs started sending money to Elwyn Tinklenberg. He got half a million dollars in 24 hours. Which, for a low-profile House race, is a huge, huge amount, and with luck, he'll use it to get some ads on the air in the final weeks of the race. But it gets better. ACTUAL NOT-BACHMANN QUOTE TIME!

"Thank you for your support in helping me lead the charge in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District against the destructive neocon ideology that has mired the United States in an unnecessary war in Iraq at a cost of thousands of American lives, hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars, and untold damage to the international stature of the United States of America. And, as if incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann’s enthusiastic support for these policies is not damaging enough, she now appears to be calling for a witch hunt to 'find out [which members of Congress] are pro-America or anti-America.' We cannot tolerate this festering brand of neo-McCarthyism in our midst."

That rabid anti-american leftist is REPUBLICAN Aubrey Immelman, who tried to unseat Bachmann in the primary, and who is encouraging Republicans in her district to write in his name instead of voting for her. It's like Christmas in October, and every present Bachmann opens launches a spring-loaded pie into her face. If this actually gets Michelle Bachmann out of Congress, I swear, I'm going to declare October 17 an official YAD holiday and celebrate it every year.

But Have The Gifts Been Reported?

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:55:22 -0500

Norm Coleman, 9 October 2008

Memo to Cullen Sheehan: YOU LOSE.

Or you win. It depends. If it's a contest for best campaign spokesman ever, you just came in last. On the other hand, if they're handing out nickel-plated turds for Worst Performance By An Apologist In A Non-Saying Role, then the seat-filler better get ready. You, sir, have an appointment with a podium.

One of the great tragedies of the World's Stupidest Presidential Campaign is that, like the war in Iraq overstretches our military, the Obama/Gramps fight overstretches my dumb-fighting resources. And the Darfur of my analogy has GOT to be the Coleman-Franken campaign, which has gotten mere lip-service from me despite being in my own backyard, pitting a professional comedian against one of my most hated sitting senators.

And it's a crying fucking shame, because it's gotten completely surreal. Basically, Coleman's spent the entire campaign defending against charges that Coleman loves being a Senator because people give him shit for free. Now, I find this hilarious, because I think it's about the least damning thing you can say about a politician. Given a choice between a rabid ideologue and someone who's just in it to steal really expensive pens for the office, I'll take Pen Guy every single time. As long as they keep it to the office, and don't start looting entire other countries, it's reasonably safe for democracy.

But Coleman's been hit with a barrage of stories about free shit. Discounted apartment rent. Free plane trips. Free vacations. Possibly a cushy job in risk management for his wife that she's completely unqualified for. All given by people who have an interest in seeing Norm Coleman stay happy. And the latest? Free suits.

I freely admit I have never paid attention to Norm Coleman's suits, due to the constant distraction caused by his mighty teeth, each of which is a miniature white monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey". But scuttlebutt says that ol' Norm has been getting pricey Neiman-Marcus suits as presents from local businessman and GOP doner Nasser Kazeminy. And when asked about it, Coleman has engaged in the clumsiest question-dodging I've ever seen, culminating in a press conference with Cullen Sheehan yesterday. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Rachel, the Senator has reported every gift he has ever received... The Senator has reported every gift he has ever received... The Senator has reported every gift he has ever received... The Senator has recorded every gift he has ever received... The Senator has reported every gift he has ever received... He has reported every gift he has ever received, Rachel... Again they have disclosed everything they need to disclose on the Senate ethics forms... He does that every year as a United States Senator on his Senate disclosure forms... The Senator has reported every gift he has ever received... The Senator has disclosed everything that he is required to disclose and recorded everything that he is required to record... The Senator has reported every gift he has ever received... The Senator has done nothing wrong and reported every gift he has ever received... And again whatever has been required to be disclosed about her income and what she does has been disclosed."

The quote above contains 163, or 73%, of the 224 words uttered by Cullen Sheehan during the press conference. The other 61 words were no more illuminating. And all he's done is made me crazy curious about what the fuck they're hiding so desperately and ineptly?! That's how bad a spokesman Cullen Sheehan is. He's created a scandal so juicy-sounding it's forced me to use an interrobang. Is he smuggling rare lemurs sewn into the linings of these suits? Could the suits be part of an elaborate coded transmission scheme based on lapel length? Free suits alone can't justify that many reiterations of "The Senator has reported every gift he has ever received."

Whatever the real truth is, I hope Coleman fesses up to it after he loses, because as a member of the voting public, I demand an answer.

May The Schwartz Be With You

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:03:08 -0500

Republicans, 17 September 2008

Memo to Gabriel Nathan Schwartz: YOU ARE DUMB.

How great a day was yesterday? Holy shit! First, thanks to a link from Crooks and Liars, something like 20,000 people saw You Are Dumb Dot Net for the first time. Hi! Hope you stuck around, because today brings a whole new kind of bingo. Not only did the site get swamped, but I found the new Rock Band wireless drums. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I had my first ever schadengasm.

I'm serious. Make sure you're sitting comfortably and are wearing stain-proof pants, because I'm pretty sure when you hear about this, you're going to have a schadengasm too. Remember the Republican National Convention? You know, a couple of weeks ago, here in Minneapolis, where we invited America's Whitest Douchebags into our restaurants, hotels, and sporting arenas, in the hopes that between hate rallies, they'd leave behind a bit of money for the local economy?

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Gabriel Nathan Schwartz came all the way from Denver to be one of Colorado's delegates to the Republican National Convention. To sit proudly with his fellow Coloradans, waving oversized American flags while Sarah Palin made fun of community organizers. That's all he wanted. Well, that's not actually all he wanted, but it's most of what he wanted. Well, OK, it can't actually be most of what he wanted, because when Sarah Palin was up there charming the pants off small-town America, Gabriel Nathan Schwartz was getting the pants charmed off him in the new luxurious Ivy Hotel in downtown Minneapolis.

According to police reports - and seriously, hold on to your fucking armrests and maybe put a wallet in your mouth, because this is about to reach horse-fucking levels of awesome - Schwartz met a babe in the hotel bar, and invited her up to his room. She accepted. They went upstairs. She fixed some drinks and told him to get nekkid. And the next thing the 29-year-old delegate remembers is waking up. The woman? Gone. Between $50,000 and $120,000 of his stuff? Also gone.

Now I know what you're thinking. Yes, Republicans suck, but that's not enough to openly celebrate the drugging and robbing of one who was just looking for a little female companionship that wasn't wearing glasses and shooting moose. And that's fair. Luckily, I can assuage all your inclinations for sympathy so you can revel in the woman who brought balance to the Schwartz. Let's take a look at what was stolen, according to police. ACTUAL LIST TIME!

"The haul included a $30,000 watch, a $20,000 ring, a necklace valued at $5,000, earrings priced at $4,000 and a Prada belt valued at $1,000, police said." - St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Two things jump immediately out at me. First, a $30,000 watch? FUCK THAT GUY. Even if he is to be believed and the stuff wasn't worth as much as police said, that's still a really expensive watch. Past the "I need to know what time it is" price, past the "man this watch is cool" price, past the "showing off" price, and well into "I have to tell you how much my watch cost because I'm a douchebag" price.

And second, as the article points out, Schwartz is a single attorney. So what the fuck were expensive earrings, an expensive necklace, and a Prada belt doing in his hotel room to be stolen in the first place? Either Schwartz is one hell of an accessorizer, or there's even more to this story than meets the eye.

Still, just the act of throwing around wads of cash on useless and/or inexplicable stuff is not quite enough to allow us to reach the heights of schadengasm. If only Schwartz were in possession of some truly odious right-wing political opinions. The kind of thing that the GOP Elders never talk about except in back rooms. Ideally, these opinions would be expressed in the most frat-boy asshole way possible. And if we could, maybe throw in some lines full of sweet, sweet retroactive irony. What's that, you say? Is your $30,000 watch telling you that it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME?

"Less taxes and more war... more war... Iran, baby! [Bomb Iran] to protect Israel. Hopefully just bomb the hell out of them from the sky, no troops. We should plant a flag, take the oil, take the money. We deserve reimbursement. Just do strategical air strikes. Take out their nuclear* facilities. Simple... We could use slingshots and beat 'em, I'm sure." - Schwartz, answering the questions of a reporter from LinkTV.

Oh, yeah. That's the stuff. Right there. You can say a lot of things about the woman who ripped off Gabriel Nathan Schwartz, but you cannot deny that she did, in the end, provide an INTENSE feeling of satisfaction.

*And if you're wondering how he pronounced it, you're absolutely correct.

Authoritastic!

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:30:37 -0500

Society, 8 September 2008

Memo to the St. Paul Police Department: GREAT JOB.

You can say what you like about the Republican National Convention here in the Twin Cities - that it was a snoozefest, a disinformation Nirvana, that it wrapped up all the insecurities of the ruling class of assholes, tied it in a red, white, and blue bow, and presented it to the American people like a proud cat with a dead mouse in its mouth. But you cannot deny that the St. Paul Police Department did its job, and did it extraordinarily well.

Of course, the only way to justify THAT evaluation with a straight face is to understand what their job was. Which is not the same as what they -said- their job was, which was to keep public property and the delegates safe from harm last week. That wasn't the job they did. The job they did, and did so incredibly well, was to ensure that the people in power be spared even the slightest discomfort as a result of their actions, and discourage anyone in the future from speaking out.

Evaluating this kind of large-scale police action is difficult. Reports are sketchy, and chock-full of bias. The police never admit to crossing any lines, ever. And there are protesters who think that a brick through an unaffiliated downtown window is protected speech. But there are some measures to look at and find out who the police are protecting and serving in cases like this. Are they protecting the people, or just a very small percentage of the people?

For example, arresting journalists. This is a big one. When it comes to separating out violent protesters from law-abiding citizens, journalists are the easy ones. They carry cameras, or at least credentials. If you're arresting journalists, you're not protecting society, because as much as I bitch about the awful journalism going on in the cable news world, we still need independent observers to keep everyone honest, especially in situations like this. Rounding up at least thirty journalists in sweeps, from AP photographers to Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, confiscating their equipment, and issuing them citations is NOT the hallmark of responsible, community-oriented policing.

Second, we need to look at what people are being charged with. Take, for example, the Thursday protests, in which several hundred people were arrested for marching on the last day of the convention. Most of them (including journalists) were cited for "unlawful assembly". Which, as crimes go, seems to clearly violate the spirit of the First Amendment, and boil down to "you were here when we didn't want you here". The reason their assembly was unlawful? They were marching after their marching permit had expired.

Now, I know we're all really conditioned now to shudder at the various messy things permitted in a free society, and to sigh with relief whenever lines of riot-gear troopers tear gas the living hell out of the dirty stinky hippies who are deluded into thinking that protesting makes a difference, but just look at some of the concepts up there. "Unlawful assembly". "Expired marching permit." This is the bureaucracy employing force to keep us all comfortable and under control, and no matter how much it soothes your suburban soul that it's happening, it's not actually the way America was supposed to work.

Amy Goodman was charged with "conspiracy to riot", which is just fascinating - apparently interviewing protesters means you're on-site planning a riot. There's a whole disturbing "pre-crime" presumption of guilt mentality to the week, from the police raids before the convention, to the federal infiltration of anti-war groups that set UP the raids, to Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher's statement after police herded 200 protesters onto a bridge and arrested them Thursday. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The tactic of blocking people on the bridge could very well have prevented a lot of activity later tonight. Clearly there were a number of people with no intention of being law-abiding tonight." - Really, Kreskin? This is the kind of shit that should send chills down our spines, but we're too invested in our own comfort to care.

Some other things to keep an eye out for in the coming weeks, that we don't have numbers on yet. How many of the charges will be dismissed? How many cases will even go to court? How many convictions will they get? Of the 818 people arrested because of RNC protests, how many of them actually committed crimes? And how many of those committed crimes that are actually crimes - actions that harm society? I'll bet that when the final numbers come in, they'll show that the St. Paul police did their job quite well.

American Idolt

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:49:14 -0500

Minnesota, 5 August 2008

Memo to Tim Pawlenty: DON'T THINK I'VE FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU, FUCKNUTS.

Minnesota's governor has been lying surprisingly low of late. But I thought I'd check in with him and see how his grand audition for John McCain's running mate is going. It doesn't need to be said that I would absolutely hate it with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns if I saw McCain-Pawlenty bumper stickers and road signs from now until, well, years after the 2008 election because people never take political bumper stickers off their fucking cars.

But I'm going to say it anyway. Because John McCain picking Tim Pawlenty as his running mate is an event that has absolutely no upside for me. Most importantly, Timmeh would still get to be governor of Minnesota. He wouldn't have to step down to campaign. If McCain loses, Pawlenty gets his old job back, and if McCain somehow wins, Pawlenty gets to sit in the chair still warmed by the infernal fires burning in Dick Cheney's asscheeks. None of these outcomes appeal to me in the slightest.

On top of that, Pawlenty would be talking a lot more, and I'd be hearing him a lot more. Can you imagine it? Pawlenty giving speeches, and going on the teevee, and everybody listening to him? That's just vile. It'd be like last year's bridge collapse, only it wouldn't stop after a week. Motherfucker will probably go on Leno, and I'm not sure even my hardy soul could handle THAT much hate.

But worst of all, it'd reward and justify Timmeh's entire fucking political career. We in Minnesota know all too well that Tim Pawlenty doesn't spend his days fluffing Grover "Die Taxes Die" Norquist because he likes the taste. He's spent his entire time in Minnesota implementing the policies that make the conservative kingmakers happy, and make the citizens of Minnesota miserable. And he's done it for the express purpose of getting that phone call from the McCain campaign. If he gets that call, it would be rewarding harm.

And oh, does he want that call. Case in point, last Wednesday, Pawlenty spoke to an organization of conservative lawmakers, at an event sponsored by Wal-Mart, and delivered this shining, polished turd of wisdom. "'I want to get the best value for my money,' he said of visiting a Sam's Club. 'That's missing in government in dramatic, dramatic measurement.'" - Pawlenty, via "The Swamp", because nobody has a decent fucking transcript of his speech.

That's precisely the kind of completely retarded rhetoric that John McCain needs to woo the key Republican demographic of marketing dudes in ugly ties. Let's govern like Sam's Club! Let's ignore the fact that government is not actually in the business of providing tubs of shortening at wholesale prices. Let's ignore the fact that nobody in a Sam's Club is ever, ever happy. I had a Sam's Club membership for a year, and the one thing I got in bulk there on a regular basis was CRUSHING DESPAIR. Also let's ignore the fact that Tim Pawlenty is apparently more than willing to model public policy on whoever's paying him to speak that day. Let's just govern like Sam's Club, because it's important that the second or third most powerful nation on earth pick its leaders by who can reduce the task of running it to the simplest, dumbest possible analogy.

But being a vice presidential nominee isn't just about pandering to corporate sponsors. It's also about attacking your boss's opponent. Pawlenty's got that one covered, too. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"He's put so many contingencies around it that I wonder, in fact I question, whether he would do it at all. It may be a way for him to gain favor during the election, and tube it later because all the contingencies weren't met." - Pawlenty, on Obama's stance on offshore oil drilling. Now, I happen to think that Obama tempering his offshore drilling stance was a stupid, stupid move that will not get him what he thought it would. But at the same time, I consider it further proof of the nonexistence of a just and vengeful God that Tim Pawlenty didn't burst into flames an instant after accusing another politician of taking a politically expedient position he didn't actually believe in.

But all of this would be meaningless without the coquettish dance of the potential veep. Can Pawlenty master the highly irritating footwork that is apparently required of anyone up for what was, until recently, the number two spot in the United States government/ I think he can. After all, along with BOTH of the stories I've mentioned above, the following things came out of Pawlenty's gaping pie-hole:

"The rest of the stuff about VP is speculation and I just don't engage in it. Lately, I've just stopped talking about it because I get asked about it frequently..." (July 30). "I don't talk about the V.P. stuff anymore," Pawlenty said. "I just stopped talking about it because it became a distraction." (Aug 2.). Yes, Timmeh. Make damn sure you mention at every single opportunity that you're not talking about or thinking about the possibility of being McCain's running mate. Show us through your unrelenting, non-stop barrage of denials that it's the farthest thing from your mind, and all you're really concerned about is governing the great state of Minnesota. And we'll all pretend to believe you, you whopping great douchebag.

Not Enough Harm

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:48:50 -0500

Society, 1 August 2008

Memo to the Minneapolis Police Department: YOU'RE NOT HELPING.

One of the underlying philosophies of You Are Dumb Dot Net is also one of my own underlying philosophies - that society should operate largely on the basis of harm. The way that reads seems like I'd be as happy as a clam, as our society does seem to be predicated on doing as much harm as possible, but that's not what I mean.

It's basically an extension of the Wiccan saying, "an it harm none, do as ye will", which is a good start, but like most things Wiccan, it's underdeveloped and a bit wanky. What I'm saying is that society, and by extension government and institutions, should punish what harms and reward what helps. This should be the primary metric. Motive is secondary. History and tradition and personality and all the other shit that we use on a daily basis to decide things and do things aren't what matter. What matters is, are you harming, or are you helping?

Now, I know that you run into problems deciding on a consensus opinion of whether some things hurt or some things help. Abortion "hurts" a blob of cells, and "helps" a living, breathing, functioning member of society. Teaching creationism in schools "hurts" children's developing brains, but "helps" tiny-minded young-earth fuckers who think their special book trumps reality. Reasonable people can, and do, disagree on these points, even if they're very fucking wrong. But sometimes, you can look at a situation through this lens, and the answer is as clear and uncomplicated as a creationist's EEG.

In December, Minneapolis police raided a home looking for a violent gang member. Police say they'd been told the gang member was there by an informant. A SWAT team with a "no-knock" warrant burst in. The family who actually lived there, none of whom were violent gang members, thought they were being robbed. The father, Vang Khang, fired three shotgun rounds at the intruders. The intruders, from the MPD, returned fire. Nobody was hurt, and the police apologized for their mistake.

The family has since lost the home. The children, according to their mother, are still traumatized. And on Monday, eight of the officers involved got medals for the incident.

Now, if you're following the simple metric of rewarding help and punishing harm, this makes no fucking sense. It doesn't matter what they -thought- was happening. The reality was they busted in and shot up the house of an innocent citizen. I'm not saying necessarily you punish the cops themselves, assuming the cops who performed the raid weren't the ones who picked the wrong house. But you don't commend them for their actions, because their actions harmed innocents, and harming innocents is bad.

So what freakish calculus was at play? Policy and tradition. According to police chief Tim Dolan, "we've never not recognized an officer shot in the line of duty." Which is fine, except that it relies on ridiculously loose definitions of both "shot" and "duty". According to the Strib, three officers got "shrapnel damage" to their body armor and helmets. Combine that information with an earlier story that reveals Khang shot at them with his hunting shotgun, what I conclude is that three officers got hit by pellets in the line of duty, five officers didn't get shot in the line of duty at all, and the "duty" itself was a horrifying mistake.

Medals for everybody, then! Maybe a round of applause and a ten dollar gift card for Starbucks. It would have been $20, but, you know. They didn't actually catch any criminals in the raid. The police chief even admitted he KNEW people would look at it badly, but he did it anyway, because, well, that's how it's done. And that's how it's increasingly done as we get more and more authoritarian in this country.

The police get medals because they were police. Because being a cop is difficult and dangerous and if they ever do something to you and you think you didn't deserve it, you're wrong, because you must have done something to bring them down on you. If they Taser you, it's because you were resisting and needed to be subdued, even if you're lying on the ground with a broken back and foot from a fall*. And if you shoot up the wrong house, you get a medal, because except for that pesky "wrong house" thing, you did everything like you were supposed to.

And people accept it, because... I have no fucking clue why they accept it, but they do. Like they accept torture and illegal spying and running fifty thousand volts through the Don't Tase Me Bro kid just because he was annoying. Fear and stupidity and the incredibly misguided conviction that good people can always be safe from bad people, and we can always tell who the good people and bad people are. Or maybe we're all just fucking nuts.

*An actual case from Ozark, Missouri. The kid got Tasered nineteen times because he wouldn't stand up when he was ordered to.

Sleeping Dragons and Lies

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:34:44 -0500

Wingnuts, 25 July 2008
Memo to Katherine Kersten: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Watch out, folks. Minnesota's dullest conservative has a new cause, and she will not rest until every last one of us are sick to death of her endless carping. And what is this new issue that has her in such an excitable state? A sleeping dragon!

That is, the "sleeping dragon" of protesters at the Republican National Convention. The RNC will be covering the Twin Cities with an oily, black stain right after Labor Day. Since Kersten is such an awful writer, I have no way of knowing if "sleeping dragon" is something the protesters are calling themselves, a term some law enforcement dude thought up, or Kersten's own term, helpfully wrapped in quotation marks so her Neanderthal followers don't take it literally and try to get George Bush a sainthood before September. In any case, she's scared shitless.

And when a conservative is scared shitless, there is only one metaphorical round plastic oral insert that will quell their bawling: a draconian show of force by an even more empowered authoritarian police force. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Denver City Council's public safety committee will vote today on an ordinance that would bar protesters from carrying items such as weighted PVC pipes, carabiners and quick-drying concrete... St. Paul police officials do not see a need for a Denver-style ordinance... Will we be ready?"

That's awesome. Pass laws outlawing the possession of common, everyday items to deal with a problem that, if it happens at all, will only last a few days. Let's just give police free(r) license to stop, detain, and Taser people based on suspicion of potential wrongdoing. That always goes well.

And what will the snoozing lizard use these dastardly devices for? Ostensibly, it's to make it more difficult for the police to break up human barricades. Which, I must point out, is a non-violent form of protest. If protesters, even the dreaded "anarchists" Kersten invokes at every opportunity, chain themselves across a street leading to the XCel Center, the average citizen will suffer what's known in Saneworld as a "minor inconvenience".

There are, in spite of 6 years of a Pawlenty administration, other working roads in St. Paul. And if you're actually trying to get to the XCel, well, elections have consequences, as your glorious leader said once. That Kersten wants to live a life free of the consequences of a pissed-off country, angered by Kersten's best friends running it like a bunch of power-mad, feces-throwing monkeys? Not my problem.

Frankly, we're long overdue for some civil fucking unrest in this country, and if a few hippies with blogs cuffing themselves to lampposts is the worst we have to worry about, Kersten and her ilk should drop to their knees and thank their beloved Jesus that the big sacrifice they have to make for fucking us all over is leaving their hotel an hour or two early. In other, less civilized times, people who ruled like the GOP were the ones attached to lampposts. And not in a comfortable way.

Kersten is also required by the bylaws of the authoritarian playbook to raise the horrific spectre of Seattle 1999, when protests of the World Trade Organization conference turned rowdy. Kersten calls the protests "traumatic and destructive", but we all know how wingnuts love to exaggerate any trauma related to "World Trade", don't we? Some intersections blocked, some windows smashed, some dumpsters set on fire, but then the pepper spray and the rubber bullets came out. Order was restored, and the people who ended up the most traumatized have not, I'm guessing, earned Kersten's sympathy.

Seattle got over it. And if, in defiance of all physical law, Kersten turns out to be right, it still won't be that bad. We'll get over it, too. But I have a tough time imagining her being right, considering the myriad other ways she's disconnected from reality. Case in point - it turns out the "anarchists" whose blogs she's fastidiously monitoring so that she can alert us to the impending apocalypse are also planning to protest at the DNC convention in Denver. Which prompts this from Kersten:

"Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be, has called for an end to the Iraq war and otherwise adopted a leftist's dream agenda." - Like fuck he has. Believe me. I'm a leftist. I have a dream agenda. It involves single-payer health care, electric cars powered by orbital solar power stations, and a whole bunch of people, from Dubya on down, wearing orange jumpsuits and making custom license plates with pro-gay messages on them. Obama's nowhere near that. Being willing to settle for a guy who won't lose is not my dream, trust me.

But I will take Katherine Kersten's discomfort when Obama wins as a nice consolation prize.

Franken Sense

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:26:50 -0500

Election 2008, 10 June 2008
Memo to Minnesota: YOU ARE DUMB.

Look, people. I know this is the home of Garrison Keillor and James Lileks, but I didn't think it'd actually become necessary for me to explain comedy to all of you. Thanks for proving me wrong.

You see, comedy is the means by which an entertainer, such as, say, Al Franken up until late last year, provokes laughter in his audience. The primary component in comedy is the "joke", which frequently utilizes shock, surprise, or cognitive dissonance* to generate laughter.

Any comedian with even a half-hearted dedication to his art is required to think and say things outside the narrow median of polite discourse. Why? Because polite discourse ISN'T FUNNY. So if your Senatorial candidate was at one point a comedian, you should not be terribly surprised to find that, at various points, he's written about sexbots, Janet Reno, or the hypothetical rape of Mike Wallace by Andy Rooney.

Yet shocked they were, and shocked they will continue to be, by the idea that a comedian might mine taboo subjects for laughs. Since people are having such a tough time with this, allow me to provide some helpful tips on when you should actually be troubled by a comedian's jokes.

Consider Context: If Al Franken had written his "Porn-O-Rama" article for Readers Digest, it would have been wildly inappropriate. But he wrote it for Playboy. A magazine dedicated to women washing their cars with their breast implants. In those hallowed and sticky pages, jokes about virtual bestiality are well within the pale.
Make Sure He's Kidding: Some comedians use jokes as an outlet for their inner demons. If Al Franken jokes about fucking a sexbot, it could be because sexbots are funny, but it could also be because he really, really wants to fuck a sexbot. How can you tell? Look for the subtle clues. For example, Franken has his sexbots come from the Minnesota Institute of Titnology. Titnology is a very silly word. People with fetishes have a really difficult time being silly about their fetishes. Ergo, Franken's probably just kidding.

Consider the audience: Republicans slammed Franken for telling this joke. ACTUAL JOKE TIME!

"[To pay me,] send a girl to my room. And they did. But she turned out to be a lesbian. Great! Next time you do that, could you at least send two?"

Know how I can be certain the joke wasn't offensive or homophobic? Well, he told it to the Human Rights Campaign, and nobody kicked his ass. So, while I certainly appreciate Minnesota Republicans taking a break from their constant anti-gay agenda to defend the lesbian sisterhood from Franken's horrible slander, they should consider just fucking off and dying next time.

Did The Joke Get Told or Not?: The 60 Minutes example is the best. Apparently, a 1985 article in New York magazine quoted Franken brainstorming in the SNL writers room about an Andy Rooney sketch. Reportedly, the brainstorming included the following: "And 'I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then when Lesley's passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.' Or 'That's why you never see Lesley until February.' Or, 'When she passes out I put her in various positions and take pictures of her... What about 'I drag Mike into my office and rape him. Right here! I guess that makes me bad.'"

None of that made it to air. It was just comedians throwing ideas around, deciding if any of it was funny, deciding if any of it was usable. You do not get to condemn Franken for this, period. This is how all the comedy you enjoy gets made. Ideas get thrown around, and then whittled down according to what actually makes people laugh and what you can get away with depending on your audience. Also, when state representative Laura Brod says "Rape is not a punch line and it certainly is not funny," she is clearly talking out of her ass, because by any objective standard, Andy Rooney raping Mike Wallace is pretty damn hilarious.

If you don't want to vote for Al Franken because he's a comedian, that's fine. Well, it's not fine, it's stupid. But at least it's stupid and fair. Not voting for Franken because of specific jokes he made as a comedian, however, is completely fucking ridiculous. As a senator, he won't be voting for research into cyber-blowjobs, introduce legislation making lesbian sex legal tender, or ask that Andy Rooney be put on a registered sex offender list, because those are JOKES. And being a senator, as we all know, is a deadly serious and important job held only by citizens of the highest moral character who would never even THINK about sex.

*Unless told by Dane Cook.

Show Your Work

Tue, 27 May 2008 21:31:52 -0500

Science, 28 May 2008

Memo to the Star-Tribune and Mike Fairbourne: YOU ARE DUMB.

Two new rul... er, Fresh Directives. Maher is on hiatus, his lawyers probably aren't:

DIRECTIVE THE FIRST: If you want to speak with authority on a topic, you have to show your goddamned work. You don't get to jump to a conclusion and let everyone assume that you put thought and research into it.

DIRECTIVE THE SECOND: If the first quote in your article invalidates your article, don't publish the fucking article. Scrap it and write something else.

Our topic today is global warming, and the denying thereof. Global warming deniers fall into three basic categories. People with a vested financial interest in continued American consumption (oil, coal companies); people with a vested personal interest in continued American consumption (Hummer drivers, owners of gas-powered leaf blowers), and assholes who disbelieve anything liberals believe on the grounds that liberals believe it. I don't know which of these three WCCO weatherdouche Mike Fairbourne is, but I know he's one of them. Why? Because he doesn't show his work.

Fairbourne spoke recently to the Strib because his name was one of 31,000 scientists claiming that we need to reject Kyoto, that carbon dioxide might be good for us, and the usual hooey. I can only assume that very few of the scientists are actually climate scientists, because the last list like this with climate scientists on it only had about 500 names on it, and most of those dudes weren't told they "signed" it and demanded to be taken off it when they found out. No, they're "scientists" like Fairbourne, who shows the depth of his ignorance when he says things like this. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"[In the 1970's,] we were screaming about global cooling. It makes me nervous when we pin a few warm years on squishy science." Did you spot the two words that tell you Fairbourne got his science from a cursory reading of Powerline? Yes, that's "global cooling", a handy phrase that lets you know anyone using it in all seriousness is an idiot. You see, back in the 70's, there was one speculative article in Newsweek that contemplated global cooling. No scientific consensus. No Al Gore equivalent going on a lecture tour in bellbottoms warning us that we were all going to freeze. Just a Newsweek article dipshits trot out as one of their many false equivalencies.

You don't even have to read further, where Fairborne says "They're doing it for a lot of reasons; some may be scientific, but most of them are political", but that's another Official Talking Point, learned by rote and regurgitated like a methane-laced cow burp.

So why did Fairbourne get column-inches in the Strib? I have a theory. You see, the Strib is suffering from what scientists call a low financial "temperature". In order to raise that temperature, they need a reliable source of hot air and flame. Whenever the Strib runs a controversial story on its website, hundreds and hundreds of local idiots comment on it, spewing hot air and shit-gas, and coincidentally viewing plenty of online ads along the way. Because not only did Fairbourne get an article, but a day later, they ran a follow-up article recounting how all the local meteorologists feel about global warming. An article that began with a few introductory paragraphs and then this quote:

"'Broadcast meteorologists tend to avoid deep discussions on long term climate changes as that is really not our field of expertise,' Claire Martin, chief meteorologist with CBC News in Canada and chairwoman of the International Association of Broadcast Meteorologists, said in an e-mail."

In other words, they essentially e-mailed the QUEEN OF THE WEATHERPEOPLE, and she told them that weatherpeople know fuck-all about global warming. And so they went on to tell us what the local meteorologists think about global warming. You don't need a weatherman to know that this blows.

So if you want to deny global warming, I want to see your studies. Your references. Your citations. Al Gore had fucking PowerPoint slides and footnotes. You've got the equivalent of an online petition to bring back Firefly to the Sci-Fi channel. In a sane world, that would mean you'd lose.

Over The Edge

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:06:06 -0600

Politics, 8 November 2007

Memo to John Nephew: CONGRATULATIONS?

Tuesday was Election Day. I will admit, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it this year, since it was all the kind of deeply local stuff that I'm supposed to care about as a good progressive citizen but never actually do. Which is why I was actually quite shocked when it was brought to my attention that Minneapolis has a suburb full of crazy people.

And by a suburb full of crazy people, I don't mean a suburb full of stupid people. We've got plenty of those (hi, Edina!). No, I mean a suburb actually full of actual crazy people, who have taken the axiom that "all politics is local", and ran with that axiom like they were in the Jim Jones Memorial 1,000 Meter Kool-Aid Relay. I'm talking Glenn Close Fatal Attraction crazy.

The suburb is Maplewood, which in my mind is largely famous for having the Toys R Us in the Twin Cities metro that's too much fucking trouble for me to ever go to. It's the kind of suburb you don't think about unless you live there, at which point, apparently, you think about it to an unhealthy degree. Anyway, Tuesday's election would determine two seats on Maplewood's four-seat City Council, which before Tuesday had a 3-2 (including the mayor) majority*. So a lot was at stake, for a sufficiently small value of "a lot".

You want to know how crazy the race was? Here was the least crazy thing - one of the majority incumbents, Rebecca Cave, got in trouble for lawn signs that required tiny asterisked footnotes on them to be, well, you know. True. The signs said "POLICE - FIRE - ENDORSED", with footnotes explaining that it wasn't all of the police and it wasn't all of the fire department, providing the kind of nuance and clarity that voters driving past at 35 miles an hour would surely pick up on.

Challenging Cave, for all practical intents and purposes, was John Nephew. A man who, had I been paying attention, would have gotten the coveted You Are Dumb Dot Net endorsement for Maplewood City Council solely on the strength of him being the owner of Atlas Games, a very niche and nerdy pen-and-paper RPG publisher.

Which brings us nicely into the next phase of campaign crazy - mysterious mailings. Nephew, for example, was accused of marketing violent and dark games to young people, which is a somewhat misleading charge. There's no way in hell young people are actually playing Atlas RPG's. Now, there's a chance that the mailing might be referring to Lunch Money, a card game which was dark, and violent, and incidentally fairly awesome. But the only time it might have been marketed near children was when it came out. Eleven years ago. At the height of the Magic craze. And none of the subsequent societal collapse since then can be laid at Nephew's feet.

There was another mailing that tried to get supporters of Nephew and white-hat incumbent Will Rossbach to take down their lawn signs under some false but official-sounding premise. Which is not only dirty, but also continues an odd trend I've seen in local politics of drastically overestimating the value and importance of lawn signs. But that's another column.

Because we have to get to the bestest mailing of all - a psychotic postcard that showed up in at the very least Rossbach's mailbox in September. On the front, a picture of posthumous liberal boogeyman Paul Wellstone, captioned "A William Rossbach Role Model". And on the back... oh, the back.

On the back, five pictures captioned "SOME OF YOUR CLOSE FRIENDS!" I can only assume the intent was to strike fear into the hearts of Maplewood voters by linking Rossbach to scary individuals of national prominence. I have to assume that, because the Rogues Gallery assembled here is not, shall we say, that awe-inspiring.

Sure, Ted Kennedy's a given. He's the go-to guy for situations like this. Jesse Jackson's a little less topical, but there is the possibilty that, at any moment, Maplewood could become the center of a racial injustice of national prominence. But doubling up on Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan? I'm sorry, but the odds of any member of the Maplewood City Council bringing in the Nation of Islam are pretty fucking slim. Still, Farrakhan is just a psychotic canape for what is to come.

Namely, Janet Reno. Janet Reno? The only way anyone could have thought of Janet Reno in the past six years was if they were watching SNL reruns or summering in their fortified Montana compound. On the other hand, Reno is still alive, unlike Bella Abzug.

Did I mention Bella Abzug was on the postcard? I didn't? Perhaps that's because I was saving it for last, because it's BELLA FUCKING ABZUG. Someone I had to look up when she was a punchline in a Bloom County strip over two decades ago. Even if the election of Nephew and Rossbach caused the dead to rise from their graves tomorrow, Bella Abzug wouldn't be a threat to anyone. It's no wonder the two of them won by a handy margin, if that's the level of their opposition. Asterisks and Bella Abzug. Fuck.

So congratulations are in order, I guess. Nephew now gets to help rule over this sorry lot of bugfuck suburbanites, with their petty squabbles, their fire department rivalries, their lawsuits, and the everpresent threat that Bella Abzombie will stop by City Hall for a chat.

*News articles about the political stuff in Maplewood studiously avoid discussing party affiliation for some reason. From various inference, I'm led to believe that it was a 3-2 Republican majority, but it could be two types of fucking Sneeches for all I know.

Mississippi Backfill

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:02:30 -0500

Minnesota, 16 August 2007

Seven hours. I'd been out of town for seven hours, and that's when Minneapolis decided to become national news?

I know you're probably sick to death of bridge shit right now, but cut me some slack. During the two weeks I was out of town, a lot of shit happened, and some of it needs to be mentioned.

At one point, the Today show described Tim Pawlenty as "at a loss for words", then cut to a clip of him reading from his statement at the evening press conference. Now, I'm no scholar of the English language, or at least that part of the English language suitable for broadcast on the Today show. But I'm pretty sure "at a loss for words" doesn't mean "having a carefully prepared and leaderly-sounding speech ready for air". I think, in fact, it means the exact fucking opposite.

It may sound like I'm being a bit harsh on old Tim-O for doing what every politician does in this situation - find someone on his staff who can express abstracts of human emotion in a safe and photogenic way - but bear with me. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say that this was Tim Pawlenty's fault. Claiming that he was directly responsible for the deaths of up to a dozen people would be legally irresponsible and factually incorrect. He's INdirectly responsible for the deaths of up to a dozen people. Not just him. The whole lot of them. Every single politician who does the math. Who weighs in one hand the benefit to society of actually paying for the things that need doing, and weighs in the other hand the damage to their career caused by taking tax money away from their contributors. And choose themselves.

I've seen it forever. From the lowliest Connecticut school board to the federal government. They cross their fingers, put off the maintenance for another year, and roll the dice. And nine hundred and ninety times out of a thousand, it doesn't result in a catastrophic collapse and loss of life. And the one time it DOES happen, all they have to do is claim it's inappropriate to point fingers, and there'll be time for that later. Because they know that mythical later time will never manage to roll around.

I tell you, I deride the mainstream media just as much as the next Internet writer, but you can't deny that once CNN has made up special graphics and a theme song for something that happened in your home town, you are ON THE MAP, BABY. You have capital-A Arrived. I didn't think we'd get to this point until the Republican National Convention next year, and even then, it wouldn't really be about us. This time, when Matt Lauer came in person to our fair city, it wasn't because Rudy Giuliani came here from New York first.

It was also interesting to watch the calculus from afar as they tried to figure out who to send to show how much they cared. The bridge collapsed on a Wednesday. On Thursday, we warranted a Friday trip from Laura Bush, who apparently was able to take precious time away from ending gang violence. But by Friday, El Chimpacabra himself deigned to come by for the weekend. Since there wasn't a rising death count at the time, all I can figure is that they were gauging media coverage. They probably just follow some kind of Larry King Rule - once Captain Suspenders has devoted three nights in a row to it, the President of the United States has to step in.

In case you're wondering how the Sacramento newspaper covered it the first morning, I will share with you their headline. ACTUAL HEADLINE TIME!

"8 LANES OF HORROR"

Which is pithy, but it's really more of a pullquote you'd want from a review of Steven Spielberg's "Duel" than a tragedy affecting dozens of people. I do think it's interesting that they chose to go with width as their dimension. The natural instinct, I'd think, is to go with the Z axis (plunge, collapse, fall), followed by length ("SPAN OF DEATH"), but that's just me.

FUN FACT: Elapsed time between bridge collapse and first comparison to 9/11: 90 minutes. That's good, but we can get that time down quite a bit if we keep up with our emergency media preparedness drills, people. The next time you drop a glass on the floor and break it, I want to practice the following phrase: "This must have been how the people at Ground Zero felt, Larry."\

Inner City Pressure

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:50:26 -0500

Main Column, 26 June 2007

Memo to the Minneapolis City Council: YOU ARE DUMB.

About a week and a half ago, our local City Council approved a new raft of restrictions on panhandling. Apparently, some local politicians were eating outdoors, got asked for change while enjoying their meal, and suddenly the issue of begging got pushed to the forefront.

The new rules mean that poor people can't beg at night, they can't beg in groups of two or more, they can't beg within ten feet of a crosswalk, liquor store, or concenience store, and they can't beg within fifty feet of the doors to parks and sporting arenas.

It's a shitty thing to do. It's such a shitty thing to do that the people who were doing it tried to pretend they weren't doing it. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"This is not an ordinance against homelessness or poverty. What we are addressing is aggressive behavior, not a socioeconomic group." - City Council member Ralph Remington.

Of course it isn't. I'm sure that the instant some rich guy asks me for spare change within fifty feet of the Target Center, he'll be carted away by the police. What other socioeconomic groups ASK PEOPLE ON THE STREET FOR MONEY? For fuck's sake. I don't know which is worse - that he expects us to believe that, or that he might believe it himself.

At the end of the day, though, the reason this is a shitty thing to do isn't because it targets the poor. Even though it does. And even though these people have enough to deal with without estimating their distance from the nearest crosswalk.

No, this law is a shitty thing to do because it's just one more way to try and convince people that they live consequence-free lives.

I hate being panhandled. It's uncomfortable. I feel guilty if I give, and I feel guiltier if I don't. I don't want desperate people, crazy people, drunk people, coming up to me and asking me for money. But whether I want it or not, I need it. You need it. We all need it.

We need to be uncomfortable. We need to see that these people are there. That our system allows them to exist. That our system creates them. That our system largely DEPENDS ON THEIR EXISTENCE. Odds are, if you're reading this, your standard of living was built on the backs of thousands upon thousands of people with worse lives than you. Whether it's the guy assembling your Taco Supreme, or the guy who processed the cow to make it, the ugly fact of American life is that many of us are more comfortable BECAUSE other people are less comfortable. Not while. Not near. BECAUSE.

To live like that, and then try to turn downtown into a magical fantasy land where people never have to be confronted with even the smallest reminder of that unfortunate fact? That's what makes it a shitty thing to do.

And on a less socio-polemic note, all you suburbanites coming in for a game? All you folks who got suckered by the billboards into a brand new downtown condo? All you politicians enjoying lunch on Nicollet Mall? You people need to SUCK IT UP. You're in a city. A CITY. Cities have poor people. Cities have beggars. Cities have always had poor people and beggars and drunks and crazy people who walk down the street yelling for no reason.

You want to be in a city? You want fancy bars and sushi at 4 in the morning and skyscrapers and museums and professional sports teams? Then carry a couple of bucks in quarters in your pocket and SHUT THE FUCK UP. So what if they use it on drugs and booze? If I were living on the streets, I'd probably start drinking too. And every hour they spend in a stupor is one less hour they're bugging someone for change. Don't think of it as being kind to the poor and downtrodden. Think of it as a service you're providing to all the delicate suburban flowers who will be walking along this block for the next few minutes.

And if, even after all that, the thought of some dude smelling like Scope and pee fills you with unspeakable dread, don't look to the City Council to help you. Get your asses out of the metro and to a small town somewhere. You know, somewhere quiet, where downtown is three blocks long and everyone knows the name of the one guy who smells like Scope and pee. We'll all be happier.

No Duck In This Fight

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:31:26 -0600

The News, 5 March 2007

I know, from the standpoint of the reader, that I must seem nigh-omniscient at times, keeping up on the latest in Southern bestiality, psycho politics, religious nutjobs, and movies opening on Friday. It's a perception that I rabidly encourage, even though it's not entirely true.

But in addition to the dozens of events that occur but I decide, for various reasons, not to comment on, there are also things that I miss. Things that just plumb shoot past without ever registering on my radar. Like about a month ago, when Katherine Kersten got in a tiny spat with Brian Lambert.

Note the spelling. This is longtime Twin Cities journalist and writer Brian Lambert, who has not, to my knowledge, ever used the term "skunk-fellating" in a column, which is another useful way to tell us apart. Hasn't stopped me from getting one or two phone calls a year from people thinking I'm him. As far as I know, the inverse has never happened to him, but whatever. It's fine. I'm comfortable with our relative positions.

But if any B. Lambert in this town is going to be mildly annoying Katherine "Most Boring Conservative Ever" Kersten with an article about her mind-numbingly dull writing, it should be me, goddammit. Not Mister With-An-I, who, toward the end of January wrote a sort of retrospecticus of Kersten's tenure at the Star Tribune, a period marked initially by controversy (the Strib hiring a conservative as a news section columnist, rather than on the op-ed page!), and now marked by stifled yawns.

I-Lambert's profile is certainly comprehensive. For example, he explains that Kersten came to her conservatism by being irritated by rich Sandinista sympathizers in the area during the 80's. That kind of motivation goes a long way toward explaining why her prose burns with the white-hot intensity of a thousand rocks.

Kersten, in her blog, nitpicked the article, which, in her defense, I freely admit was really fucking long. I-Lambert commented on her clothing (sexist!), how she's buddies with the doofuses at PowerLine (which she doesn't see as a problem), and how she should be on the editorial pages (an argument that, to me, seems very 1970s and dead tree). What I don't understand is why Kersten doesn't object to I-Lambert's most egregious falsehood. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"So, for the last twenty months, Kersten has been a one-woman solution, applying a decidedly different, and perhaps revolutionary, face to the role of big-city reporter and metro columnist." - Brian Lambert, in The Rake, one of the free alternative press weeklies in town.

Revolutionary. Even ironically, that is not the kind of word you can apply to a woman who, in her most recent blog entry, actually fucking wrote "We’ve heard many predictions over the years that rap music is on its way out. But every year the beat goes on, and we old folks are left muttering, 'Where’s the tune?'"

Yes, in 2007, the Star Tribune's Queen of Albedo is still wondering when this "rap" stuff will go away and stop talking about "bling" and "ho's". And hoping it will be soon. That's not revolutionary. That's not even revolutionary in the field of banality. That's the kind of mediocre, standard banality that might win her a Best Adapted Banality award at the Golden Banal Globes.

She even closes the column with a bit of disappointment that it's just people getting bored with mainstream rap, instead of "Americans developing a stronger moral compass, and taking seriously the cultural wreckage to which rap contributes". It's like it's 1992 again, and nobody realizes the violent gangsta rappers who are destroying society will be starring in wacky, family-friendly Hollywood comedies in fifteen years' time.

At the end of the day, the only thing differentiating Kersten's column from any given day's Mallard Fillmore is her apparent inability to draw a goddamned duck. They're both where they are in the Strib thanks to affirmative action.