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]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2656 Tue, 4 Mar 2008 06:39:00 -0600 It's getting better all the time http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2655 a good editorial today, reminding us that it's not a good thing when the federal minimum wage exceeds the state's minimum wage.

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Some more posts and stories worth checking out.

Scott Horton on Torture

Obama v Farrakhan / McCain v Hagee (I told you about Hagee a long time ago. I guess I should have cc'ed McCain.)

Challenging churched blacks on LGBT rights

Cap'n Ed's new playpal in "off with their heads" mode

Middle East tuning out Bush

Jack Nicholson, who keeps reminding us that he's a better actor than he is a person, does a video mashup that should be called, Yes She Can, but not much memorable music therein (for tunes, read this)

HRC's biggest supporter's wife kneecaps the truth again on Meet the Press

The Father of All Lies tells us a pullout would bring about $200/gallon oil (if that were true, Bush would have pulled out years ago)

Giving the FBI credit for reviving folk music back in the '50s/'60s (I got sucked into this documentary as well, keep an eye out for it.)

Getting it as wrong as wrong can be

I would object for different reasons but yeah, this is just wrong

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Erin Aubry Kaplan has a nice op-ed on America and race but I think she's personally just post-racial enough to be missing the the real point. Obama's not an African American, he's an African American. You see the difference, right?

The words are the same, but one means someone descended from ancestors who were brought to the New World in chains. The other means someone who was born in Africa (or whose parents, grandparents, etc. were), but who is either a naturalized or native born American. Obama's father was African, but he wasn't brought here in chains.

Chains make all the difference. If you know an American racist (and who doesn't?), at some point you've heard them talking about Africans. However rudely they made the reference, chances are it wasn't as rude as their contempt for African Americans (the kind associated with chains). Or maybe you've never heard anything of the sort and are wondering if I'm batshit insane, a blue-eyed idiot flapping his gums about shit he knows nothing about.

Except I've worked with hundreds of African clients, coaching them on getting jobs in America. Ghanaians, Cameroonians, all kinds of Nigerians, some North Africans, a handful of South Africans, one Ugandan, and lots and lots of Eritrean, Tigrean, Oromo, Sudanese and Somali refugees. They all had one thing in common: they knew that American racists treated them better than native African Americans, and they exploited that difference. When racist peckerhead supervisors and coworkers said to them, "you're not like . . . ", my clients would nod their heads, smile and keep working. Whether they were or weren't different was irrelevant, the important thing was to always smile and stay on the "you're OK for a nigger" side of the line.

Because American racism isn't about color so much as it's about property, and some people don't let go of property well. In this case generation after generation of American racists have taught their children the same lesson in how to be mentally diseased. And a similar number of generations of wealthy Americans have taught their children how to exploit that mental illness, keeping working whites, blacks, browns, tans, yellows, etc. at each other's throats.

If racism ever ended in America, economic justice would prevail. But so long as we stay at each other's throats, the parasites at the top will continue to eat our lunch, cherrypicking our ranks for lovers, lieutenants and goons while keeping myriad rules in place for keeping us in our place.

It really doesn't make any difference what color you are, when you hear someone say the word nigger, they're just cheering for the status quo and 400 more years of economic imbalance and the continued rule of the parasite class over the rest of us.

Obama doesn't fit neatly into that plan. I hope he never will.

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A last Krugman before I go. I'm sorry to report that on this, my penultimate blogging day, he's chosen to wonk on Obama, and his talking points are still from bullshit.

...Mr. Obama’s rise has caused such division among progressive activists, the very people one might have expected to be unified and energized by the prospect of finally ending the long era of Republican political dominance.

Division? I don't think so. I mean you can count HRC supporters as progressives, but I think that needs some heavy qualifying, HRC being the person most of progressives were defining ourselves as not being.

What Krugman and a few other Clinton diehards don't seem to recognize is that while Clinton and Obama have similar voting records, they got there by different means. They may intersect on a graph now, but that won't be true a year from now, anymore than it was true before they took office. Krugman looks at the mislabeling this way:

Some progressives are appalled by the direction their party seems to have taken: they wanted another F.D.R., yet feel that they’re getting an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg instead.

Again I think Krugman's all too generous in describing the progressive movement. For starters, we're almost entirely online, and bloggers are at our core. Quick: name some pro-Hillary bloggers!

Having trouble? There are some, but not very many. Not surprising as "progressive", for me at least, emerged as a term to help Democrats distinguish themselves from the failed liberal policies of Bill Clinton and the DLC (and by extension our Congressional leaders).

Define progressive however you like, I'm sure you do so in a way that puts Hillary on the fringe of the movement, at best.

And then Krugman, like so many others, trots out the "press hates Hillary" meme. So? Obama didn't make the press hate the Clintons. Progressives didn't make the press hate the Clintons. The Clintons get savaged in the press because they're scapegoats of a movement they've never adequately confronted because the people who use the corporate media to smear them are the same people who reward the DLCers for letting the smears slide by unchallenged.

This politics of confusion and discord is exactly what progressive Democrats are trying to put behind us. And yes, many of us wanted a fighter, not a conciliator, but I at least am coming to see conciliation as a better path forward. Fighting the right gives them strength. Ignoring their pestilent hate speech makes them cry and whine.

A few have worried that my "towards the light" theme was meant in a personal way. No, in my case, in this case, the light is Obama and even if he can't cleanse me of my sins, at least he can win the election and move us forward. At which point I'm letting go entirely so I can enjoy the rest of my life.

After forty years of being politically obsessed, a new era is dawning. I'm not needed anymore, and neither is Paul Krugman. Think good thoughts about us both, but — like birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan — it's time to surrender the notion that we can punish the right for being such evil bastards these past several decades.

The left has been humbled and shamed. Not for good cause, but it's been done just the same. We are now, in some ways, on the same footing as the right with their shameful legacy of insane war against the Trojan horses of communism and Islamo-fascism. Enough of all that, it's time to put this country back together again. And if the mentally diseased racists don't want to come along, well, they can be the new niggers [bound in chains of their g'parents' making] catching a free ride to Obama's new and better future in an America we can all be proud of again.

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The future's so bright I'm going to need shades:

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2655 Mon, 3 Mar 2008 08:31:18 -0600 Picking out a blue suit (to be buried in) http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2654
Still have a few posts in me, but I suspect the political content will be less link-laden and more whatever I'm thinking. That seems popular with some, not so much with others.

Fan mail has been decidedly male. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I lost a lot of women readers over my Hillary comments. But the harder I focus on that, the more I believe my anger with Hillary stems from thinking of her as a man. Not in a Limbaugh feminazi way, but because her campaign is Nixonian, and seems to possess none of the redemptive qualities you'd expect from a feminist.

My remarks about feminists, however, sometimes strayed from Hillary towards other points probably best not made. Yes, feminism failed as a movement despite prevailing in the cultural wars. As did labor, as did the environmental crowd, as did the safety advocates, as did the wellness proponents. The hard right fought us on every possible issue, and successfully smeared the left beyond recognition, making us all look bad.

I continue to be excited by Obama's candidacy. The things I liked least early on seem to have been de-emphasized, and I for one receive a lot of value from his speeches. The truth is I want hope more than I want specific details, but I like the fact that his details are really just outlines, because the change he calls for comes through compromise, not fiat.

But compromise isn't possible unless we purge Congress of the McConnells, Kyls, Ted Stevenses, Chamblisses, and Inhofes, not to mention the Youngs, Bachmanns, Kleins, Renzis, McHenrys, and the other House horrorshow Young Americans for Fascism.

Compromising with hardons doesn't work, not when one side never budges and then lies about the process afterwards.

The Republican party, for its own good and ours, must be crushed this fall. Broken, not beaten.

In my lifetime I hope to see the Republican party return to its genuinely conservative roots, casting off the racist South, leaving them to stew, powerless, until they purge themselves of their horrendously racist past and begin sending African Americans and women to Congress (just like the more civilized states do).

Anyhow, here's what you've been writing me:

Loved every word, and the photo of the light at the
end of the hallway made me laugh. I started reading
you about a year ago, and the ride has been great.
Month by month, you moved closer to the top of blogs I
read first in the day.

Happy trails -- and if you pull a Michael Corleone
after a hiatus of a decent interval, I for one won't
be surprised.

-- Rob from Chicago

Just wanted to drop you a note saying how sorry I am to hear that you'll be winding down your blogging. I have enjoyed your voice over these last five or so years, and hope that after a break I will get to read you again.

With much admiration,

-- Ross from UCLA

I just read about your decision to stop blogging for a while. I don't
blame you one little bit. I cannot even begin to imagine how much effort you have put into your blog over the years and if you have grown weary, you have certainly earned the right to take a break.

I just want you to know how MUCH I have appreciated your work. You bring a perspective that is indeed rare--even on something so large as the internet. There are damn few people who understand the importance of understanding agriculture AND what it is like to make something as critical to the national economy as car tires AND what it is like for the thousands of folks who have turned to you for help getting a job AND have the ability to write so damn well.

You not only are smart as a whip, you actually have enough perspective to demonstrate genuine wisdom. When you are "on," you are as good as anyone out there.

Take good care of yourself!

-- Jonathan from Northfield

If I could comment I would. Just wanted to say that you've been a
great read in my RSS reader. Thank you. I hope to read more about your other projects when they come up.

Thanks again.

-- Aaron from Mpls

I am sad to read this! Best of luck! You were one of the first blogs I followed.

-- Garrett from southern Minnesota

I just want to wish you well, and let you know how much of a hole your giving up blogging will leave in my life. Well, selfishly for me it will be a big hole, but I can't help wanting the best for you, and that is what you must do. So if you're bidding goodbye then to you goodbye as well, with my special thanks for 4 (or is it 5) years of special insight, entertainment, exposure to a really interesting view of the world, and hundreds, probably thousands, of links that I wouldn't have had time to have found for myself.

Dammit I'm going to miss you like a brother....

The editor of the Englich magazine Private Eye once said that to fill
the magazine required starting the day by reading the papers and
becoming 'incandescent with rage', and I think that that is what you
have done. It's bloody exhausting isn't it. But you have done a fabulous job of it, and I appreciate that enormously. I first read your stuff by following a link to 'Bush Wars' and found you at City Pages, then followed you to your lair, since when reading your posts just about every morning has started my day.

-- Adam from Australia

To sound like one of the doofuses on talk radio: long time reader/lurker, first time writer.

This is probably going to be very selfish and long winder, but if you read it fine, if not its no biggie to me. Its not like I ever read everything you linked, nor even half that stuff though I do love your anti-DFL endorsement rants (one of the things that I point to as to why Im not a registered democrat even though Im a moderate progressive...or an ubersocialistcommunistterrahlover according to my conservative friends)....

Cause of what you started, Im almost tempted to make a dailykos account just to piss off all the fanboy Al Franken people there. For a "reality based community" they sure gravitate faster to B-list starpower than Republicans who use that to run for President. Heck one of my good IM buddies who currently lives in Ohio is one such person, and Ive mocked him endlessly for not supporting the true progressive in this race (go JNP!) only cause he cant distinguish Air America from the real America.

Anyways thanks for all your work the past couple years, good luck in your future endeavors, and Im hoping that eventually you'll come back to blogging. If so I know I'll be reading it.

-- MR

Sorry for my own sake that you're packing it in. I was a faithful reader for a couple of years, tuned out when you announced you were going to work to elect someone in Minnesota, and tuned back in about 6 months ago. We've even corresponded a couple of times, although about what I cannot remember. Thanks for all your good words, and here's to hoping it's merely a matter of recharging your batteries and one day announcing a comeback tour. Best of Luck,

-- Jim L. from California

I have enjoyed reading your words. and clicking your links since, I
believe, late 2004. Maybe I should also have better things to do.

-- Dave C. from Indiana

Not the time to quit, you know. With McCain clearly the fool and Huckabee over there with the "It's okay - Jesus is on our side" bunch, and W still in the White House, it will probably take the 82nd Airborne to serve the eviction papers at 1600 Pennsylvania.

In the words of my favorite Hispanic broadcaster on Saturday mornings at KFAI, "Keep on keepin' on!"

-- Dave P. (MN)

Blogging is hard, especially doing it every day like you do, but still, what the fuck? I've been marveling lately at how rapidly teh interwebs have gotten almost as shitty as TeeVee, but Norwegianity has always been a dependable bright spot.

-- Brad from Mpls

Since it looks like you are going on hiatus / giving up / turning
Thai, I just wanted to let you know how much I have appreciated
reading your site. I've learned a lot there, and used some of it in
my classrooms.

-- Denny from Cedar Rapids

UPDATE: a few more:

Say it ain't so re. your leaving the site. You have a tremendously good voice. I can't bear the though of another established site closing shop. Perhaps this electioneering stuff is too debilitating. I do hope you will reconsider or, as you say, come back in another format.

Re. repubs: So true--"Deferential to authority when they are in charge, obstreperous beyond reason when they aren't."

-- Lisa (from TX, I think)

Just so you know, you didn't lose me as a reader. Yours was one of the very first blogs I ever read when I got started, and I'm having a hard time imagining my day now without you in the feed reader. I do wish you the best of luck and thank you for encouraging me (you didn't know that you did, did you?).

-- Lisa from Mpls

Mark, add me to the list of folks who will miss you on the internets.

I've learned a lot from you and appreciate all the effort which went into Norwegianity. When I've spoken to friends about political blogs, you are always the first I recommend.

-- Gene from D.M.

This is a very belated thank you. I moved to Duluth, Minnesota during the summer of 2002, knowing almost nothing about the state. Norwegianity became something like a primer on Minnesota for me, and I've read you faithfully ever since I first found your blog - I can't even remember how long ago.

You've made me think, you've made me laugh, you've even made me angry, although rarely at you. You've certainly earned my respect. I wish you well, and hope that if you do return to writing on the web in some form, I find you again, because you always have something interesting to say.

I'm going to have serious withdrawal pains very soon, I suspect.

-- Ramona

Sacred feces! I get bogged down for a while . . . and return to discover you’re going to Houdini out of the blogosphere. Bummer. Total.

-- Barbara M. from Mpls

I appreciate all of your comments, but Norwegianity will not resurrect. That's not in my nature. If I return to political blogging, it will be in a different format. Norwegianity was designed to thwart links in. The style of posting I did (multiple items in a single post) is not recommended to anyone who wants to succeed as a blogger. The occasional wrap-up post is great, but you need discrete posts on focused topics to get linked to.

I designed Norwegianity to be toxic at many levels. If wingnuts linked to me, I wanted them to be exposed to more content than just the item they objected to. That was a successful strategy and I was told years ago that the state Republicans had told their ever obedient bloggers to shun me. I'm glad they did.

There's a limit to what you should say about your opponents, true or not. At a certain point, you just fire up the other side, a criticism that's been made many times about other MN-based blogs that tread the dark side of blogging. You have to give your opponent the chance to at least think your opposition to them is issues based, and not personal.

With me, it was often personal. This blog took the low road more often than not because this blog was more about my anger with the party of my birth than it was about advancing political causes. It was too easy to focus on the Democrat's culpability, and the Republicans' fascist tendencies. Too easy because the Democrats were corrupt and the Republicans are, in every textbook definition I've found, a bunch of fucking fascist wannabees. There are precious few Republican-leaning blogs that wouldn't make Goebbels smile. Deferential to authority when they are in charge, obstreperous beyond reason when they aren't. Willing to research only to prove their point, but never to learn more about issues in any comprehensive sense. Mostly curse-free, but mostly as vile and antagonistic as me on my worst days.

I need to put that behind me. So do they.

Democrats need to learn to lead again, and Republicans need to shut the fuck up for a while, as do I.

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2654 Sun, 2 Mar 2008 12:08:19 -0600 Rezko to griot http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2653 Obama Donor Goes on Trial; Questions Linger.

First the article smears Obama on his home buying deal even though the sellers have told the media that the Obamas put in the highest bid on the property. That's not a story. Then they say that "fallout from Mr. Obama's relationship with Mr. Rezko [is a] distraction [that] promises to linger as Mr. Rezko goes on trial on corruption charges starting Monday." Always lead with the smear, substantiate later, if at all.

The proof? None. Zippo. Not a damned thing. Tony Rezko was a scumbag leech who attached himself to every politician in Illinois trying to curry favor. Obama never did him any favors. Yes, Rezko made serious efforts to curry favor. No, no one — absofuckinglutely NO ONE — has even suggested Obama ever did Rezko any favors, but the entire Times' article is written so as to suggest an improper relationship.

If there's one thing that's kept me blogging all these years, it's my disgust with our extraordinarily dishonest media. In every fucking possible sense they are the kind of flacks who worked for Goebbels, churning out hateful copy that uses truth to tell lies (when they bother with the truth) all for a fucking middle class paycheck.

This article will be used a lot by John McCain's surrogates as they wave the Times' banner to impute corruption to Obama.

Fuck the New York Times. This isn't news, and it's not fit to print.

*

Above the Rezko story was an oh so cute Hillary on SNL valentine. Giuliani was also on the show, so I guess the theme was famous politicians who can't win primaries.

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Rich on McCain's hard slog.

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The Times may be in the bag for Hillary, but they've turned on Bush with a vengeance. A hard hitting editorial here.

Good, right? I hope so. The fact is the corporatized media don't just turn on a dime in these matters, they turn, pounce, pound and pound. Bush will be hamburgered by the press in the coming months, and it wouldn't be surprising to see a Republican backlash of sorts emerge. Hillary would spark that backlash by herself, but without Clinton in the race the media may have to resort to pounding Bush to stir Republicans to turn out.

And then twenty years down the road they'll be kissing his ass again, just like they did with Nixon, another criminal who never served time behind bars.

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More on Scrabulous, the patent-infringing game with 3 million players that Hasbro would love to shut down, but doesn't have the balls to.

Will that change when Hasbro finally rolls out a "legal" online version? Probably. After visiting Hasbro's site and being tricked into giving up all my personal data only to discover they don't offer an online version after all, it's clear to me that Hasbro is mismanaged by suits who refuse to acknowledge the value of their patents until others prove their worth to them.

American business has sunk to an all-time low. Crushing debt, the war, and insane Bush policies will keep us in a recession/depression for some time. Inept and idiotic CEOs and senior management will hinder any recovery until changes in tax laws and regulations allow ripped off shareholders to more easily oust the greedy assholes who've run our top industries into the ground.

Back to Scrabulous, Hasbro refuses to acknowledge whether sales of their board game have gone up since the online game became popular. Common sense tells you they've spiked and Hasbro is profiting, further complicating their conundrum.

And had Scrabble's inventor been granted his patent the first time he applied in 1931, Scrabble would now be in the public domain anyhow, making all of this moot. But the patent office back then was stingy with patents (unlike today's "this napkin drawing looks good to us" patent give away artists) and it will be another fifteen years before Scrabble is freed from their corporate massahs.

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Went to St. Andrews mega-church/campus with some of my family last night to see my nephew sing in a choral concert. He's one of the Luther College Norsemen and I was very impressed by their tight presentation (their dancing, not so much). Not to be an Iowegian homer, but I thought the Norsemen sang circles around the younger St. Olaf Viking Chorus, altho I will credit the Vikings for having done a better by an Indian raga than the Norsemen did with No Ne Li Domi, a Ghanaian griot song about a chicken (that was the one where the very white Norsemen all started dancing, an alarming sight to say the least).

I doubt nephew Alex ever reads or sees this blog, but if he does, this is what a griot song is supposed to sound like.

And yes, it's getting hard to see what with that bright light getting brighter and brighter.....

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2653 Sun, 2 Mar 2008 10:47:58 -0600 Robo this! http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2652 The Ohio primary is only a few days away. I’m so glad I already voted by absentee ballot. The polls will be wild on Tuesday as they are predicting a record primary voter turnout in Ohio (read:DEMOCRATS)....

So far today I have gotten 8 ROBOcalls. 6 from the Clinton campaign, 2 from Obama. Since I’m registered as an independent, that says a lot!

[Vick Mickunas, Book Nook]

After reading that at Vick's DDN blog, it really drove home for me just how completely out of touch politicians and campaigns are with the actual voters. Who in the fuck could possibly think that anyone would ever want to receive a robocall? They're like a wave, except instead of standing and waving you turn and prick the person next to you in the arm with a pin, and so on.

But then again, when you don't really have a message, just a slick script plagiarized from whatever worked for other candidates, maybe you don't have a clue how to properly reach out to those people you've been flying over for all these years.

Still, it's odder than hell that it's the guy who fills big arenas who best understands that all politics is local, but that the vision needs to be global.

*

I guess that's as good a segué as I'll get into a topic I want to address before signing off: the Minnesota DFL endorsement system, the only caucus-based endorsement system where endorsements come before the primary.

Please email me if you know of exceptions, but I will be checking your facts as the last time I said that someone told me that Iowa had changed their system. Not true, and I was ticked when I checked it out as I corrected myself. Iowa still holds an early June primary, and the IDP meets at their annual convention later in the month. Democrats and voters who change their registration pick Iowa's Democratic candidates, and they get some good ones as a result.

There is a very good reason why other states don't allow party regulars to stamp candidates with party approval before a primary has been held: it's profoundly anti-democratic.

In Minnesota, to get to have an actual say in who will be our U.S. Senate nominee, you had to have attended the February 5 caucuses. If you voted for president and then left, you were cut out of the process. In my precinct, people were told it was OK to leave after they cast their straw poll ballot. True, had everyone stayed there wouldn't have even been enough standing room (400 voted, 100 chairs). The point, however, is that in my precinct they didn't tell these people they had to stay to have a say so in the Nelson-Pallmeyer/Ciresi/Franken contest.

If you did stay, you probably had the process explained to you, but not in every precinct and certainly not in mine. To have a say, you had to be elected as a delegate to the Senate District conventions, which are being held this weekend and next, depending on where you live. Our SD delegates were chosen by show of hands, and since most attending didn't understand the process, they waited, thinking the Senate vote was later. (When later came they were quite angry to learn they'd blown their opportunity.)

If you go to your [state] Senate District convention as a delegate, you'll add at least 3-4 hours to the 2-4 hours you've already put into the process on caucus night, and you still won't have the right to vote as to who gets the Senate nomination. No, you have to get elected again, and this time it's a lot harder since everyone present understands how the game is played (probably much better than you ever will).

It's at this point in time that a walking caucus or some kind of vote happens to make sure the next delegates chosen are done so proportionately to the number of supporters they have present. (This was true at many caucuses, but not all.) Individuals like myself who think the endorsement process is fucked get to caucus by ourselves, and the chance of our being viable is slim to none. If you didn't care about a candidate, why would you still be involved in this process at this late date?

There's a round of CD conventions after that, but the Senate endorsement process pauses until the endorsement convention in June when all of the people who put in anywhere from 6-15 hours at earlier conventions get to spend the day fighting over the endorsements to be bestowed upon the mob's favorite. Mob in the sense of the activist-delegates present — all everyday voters having long since been purged from the process.

Bottom line: you can't vote without investing an absolute minimum of at least ten hours into warming chairs at a minimum of three caucus/conventions.

How anyone could possibly call that a democratic process just boggles my mind. It's a labyrinthian winnowing process designed to disenfranchise regular voters in three easy steps. Those delegates who make it to the end, having invested upwards of 10-30 hours in that process, feel quite justified in having their vote count a 1000x more than those DFLers who (wisely) stayed home.

It's a clusterfuck and it lingers on solely for the purpose of allowing the knowledgeable few to exercise their will over the less committed many. There is a word for this, and that word is "Republicanism" — the certainty that the few know more than the many, and are better qualified to make decisions on their behalf.

The DFL, having long allowed minorities and women into their process, feel justified in excluding the "lazy" and less than fanatically committed. Nevermind that this disproportionately includes newcomers to the state. As a result, the vast majority of DFLers feel completely justified in ignoring the DFL endorsement come primary time (and they usually do). The candidates who benefit are those who are the least loyal to the party apparatus. Great system, huh?

But the damage to the system isn't the elitism, it's the way in which the endorsement turns the process upside down. Instead of everything being about the candidates and electing them in the fall, the DFL endorsement process makes everything be about the delegates who cast the endorsement ballots. From the caucuses on, the candidates aren't focused on the voters, they're focused on the delegates, wasting their time making phone calls to the precious few who hold their fate in their hands, instead of the normal process in which the delegates would be working phone banks for the candidates, reaching out to DFL and independent voters.

The locals argue that it's about giving underdogs a chance to win even though they don't have the bucks to run commercials for a primary. That would be amusing if it weren't for the fact that the whole process stems from a shitfit thrown by both parties in the '50s when their respective party members weren't sufficiently deferential to the chosen few of that era. And yes, having a boatload of money helps tons in getting the nomination, just ask Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.

I can think of nothing good to say about how the DFL runs Democratic politics in Minnesota. If they simply moved their primary ahead of their endorsements, they could then "ratify" the voters' choices, instead of force feeding their candidates to the voters.

But I'm just a transplant from Iowa, and I've given up on trying to explain this to Minnesotans. They either don't care (and don't participate), or they participate and will defend to the death their right to be pig-headed.

Sadly, only the pig-headed ones get to vote on whether to change the system. I've come to think of it as the perfect Doomsday Machine, as it's wired in such a way that you blow up if you try to tamper with it.

This item is me, blowing up.

*

Still, it could be worse. You could be trying to cast your full vote in Texas Tuesday night.

But the bottom line is that more Texans will have a direct say than Minnesotans, no matter how badly Texas goes.

*

Jamison Foser piles rocks onto Tim Russert's bloated but still ambulatory corpse, trying to force all the wingnut gas out.

An impossible task but Foser certainly seems to have enough rocks.

*

Crisis tested?

I will admit that I was as surprised as anyone when I went into anti-HRC meltdown mode earlier this year, but until New Hampshire, I didn't really appreciate how much I despised Clintonian politics.

Incredibly, I think her advisers are worse than the activists who run the DFL.

I like hardnosed politics, but when you attack someone for not doing something specific, it should be something you have actually done yourself.

Hillary Clinton's only true crisis was in getting out of the White House without too much of Bill sticking to her.

*

A last link to This Week in God. (Just go to The Carpetbagger Report every Saturday to keep reading these gems.)

I'll keep this page up for a while after shutting down, but if you use my blogroll to get around, you might want to start bookmarking your favorites.

Otherwise Google's amazingly smart when it comes to finding a blog you've lost the link to.

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Speaker Pelosi continues to sell out the rule of law rather than rock the boat and offend the establishment.

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When states turn down your money, you know you're really on the wrong track.

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I wasn't tagged, but why not?

As for personal correspondence, the law has always held that the recipient owns the physical letter itself but that the writer of the letter controls the right to reproduce it. The new law has made no change in this distinction. Of course the letter itself and the ownership of the copyright may well have been given, willed, or sold to other persons or institutions.

[The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th edition]

Before you take that information to heart, bear in mind that the 13th edition is now 26 years old.

*

A last link to WINston.

*

Wasn't sure how to end this one, but life just intervened and I'm out the door so that's the end of this.

Besides, it's getting hard to blog with that fucking light shining in my eyes.

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2652 Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:22:04 -0600 Last of the tunes http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2651

Since most of the sets were the "best of" that week's downloads, I continued that tradition, which slowed me down considerably as I've been on a tango binge lately (you take what's there), but just did a tango set a while back and wanted the last upload to be a bit different.

An Oakland-based Nubian oud player, Norwegian guitarist, old soul, some tango ensembles and a string quartet, remixes from the Balkans, avant garde, rock steady and Norwegian jazz, and that's your last batch. More there if you chop the url after "wegebox/".

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2651 Sat, 1 Mar 2008 11:21:17 -0600 Shining through the cracks http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2650

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The DNC is telling Campaign Clinton to cool their jets on whether the Texas primary-caucus rules are fair. At least we're learning that Hillary's not the sort of person who'd roll over and smile after getting shafted in Florida or Ohio.

More on Tuesday's contests from Bob Herbert, Gail Collins, Colbert King, Al Giordano, Scarecrow, and MarkAdams.

McCainiacs go here.

*

Reporters debate whether they've been big enough assholes this election cycle.

Why is it always the reporters covering a Democrat who have this discussion? Where are the tough questions for John McCain?

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Goddamn Charles II at Mercury Rising for posting these Dick Gregory YouTube clips. Twenty minutes of my life gone, and my stomach muscles will ache like the devil tomorrow.

Btw, if you feel very uncomfortable at times listening to Gregory, well, you're supposed to. No one can listen to Dick Gregory without feeling uncomfortable at some point. He's George Carlin without any of the seven words, but a lot more offense.

This link is for all the readers who wrote in to thank me for an earlier Gregory link (pretty much the same clip as Part 3 in Charles II's links).

*

Netscape, R.I.P.

I can barely remember what it looked like, and I'm sure I've got plenty of readers who have no recollection of this early browser at all. I've used or at least checked out the AOL browser, Mosaic, Mozilla, Firebird (Firefox's predecessor), Opera, Internet Explorer, iCab, Safari and, of course, Firefox. That's ten browsers over the course of fourteen years online.

I'm surprised little kids don't expect me to be wearing a raccoon-skin cap.

*

In honor of Tim Goeglein, no attribution:

I’m a little disappointed that multiple instances of plagiarism led to the resignation of a top White House aide yesterday. It’s not that Tim Goeglein had a good excuse (he didn’t), and it’s not that he deserved to keep his job (he didn’t), it’s just that I’d much prefer to see White House officials resign for some of the Bushies’ more serious crimes. This feels like busting Capone for tax evasion.

An aide to President Bush responsible for outreach to conservative and Christian groups resigned Friday after acknowledging that he had plagiarized material for a column he wrote for his hometown paper in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Special assistant Tim Goeglein admitted lifting material from an essay about college education by former Dartmouth professor Jeffrey L. Hart and presenting it as his own in a guest column Thursday for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. Other allegations of plagiarism quickly surfaced after Goeglein informed White House officials of the situation Friday morning, and by day’s end he said he would step down.

On its Web site Friday, the newspaper said 20 of 38 Goeglein columns between 2000 and 2008 contained “portions copied from other sources without attribution.” […]

“There are no excuses. I am entirely at fault, and you have my sincerest apology. I pray you will forgive me,” Goeglein, 44, said in the e-mail to Hart. Neither e-mail alluded to other cases of plagiarism or offered an explanation for the use of the plagiarized material.

Once Goeglein was busted on his first instance, it was probably safe to assume there’d be more. And sure enough, once the examples started piling up, his career was over.

But looking back at this White House’s record of wrongdoing — the lies, the cover-ups, the extra-constitutional envelope-pushing — it’s unfulfilling to see Bushies resign in disgrace for relatively minor transgressions. Plenty of top White House officials have been forced from their posts, but for what? Plagiarism? Shoplifting? Given this gang’s conduct for the last seven years, it seems like they’re skating on the serious stuff, and getting busted for relatively minor mistakes.

That said, there is some irony in seeing Goeglein go down for stealing others’ work and claiming it as his own. He was, after, all, largely responsible for maintaining the relationship between the White House and the religious right, and promoting the president’s “faith-based” initative.

Here’s an excerpt from an NYT profile on Goeglein from 2004. As it happens, his favorite phrase is, “I really do mean this.”

Karl Rove, the president’s top political strategist, is famous in well-connected Washington for his tireless round of telephone calls and personal contacts with influential conservatives around the country. But even Mr. Rove has his limits — calls he cannot make, hands he cannot shake and meetings he cannot attend. For those, he has Timothy Goeglein.

When opponents of abortion were holding a rally on Mr. Bush’s first day in office, for example, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, called Mr. Goeglein from below the speakers’ platform to press the White House for a statement of support. Within an hour, Mr. Brownback received a call with a vow that Mr. Bush would cancel federal support for international groups that provide or advise abortion, a break from the president’s delicate approach to the issue during his campaign.

Mr. Goeglein, a slender, pink-cheeked 40-year-old Midwesterner who looks about half his age, is the official White House liaison to conservatives and to Christian groups. He is Mr. Rove’s legman on the right. “He is a constant set of eyes and ears,” said Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Feulner said he saw Mr. Goeglein two or three times a week at meals, meetings or social events. “If I have a message I want to get to Rove or the administration, I will scribble out a note to Tim, and within 24 hours I will get a response back. For lots of things, he is sort of one-stop shopping for a point of access to the administration.”

Christian conservatives, in particular, say that Mr. Goeglein (pronounced GAIG-line) has been an important conduit to the White House for their demands that Mr. Bush stop financing family planning groups that support abortion, heavily publicize a signing of anti-abortion legislation, block stem-cell research and oppose same-sex marriage - all calls that the president has heeded….

In an interview in a briefing room near his office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, Mr. Goeglein - an earnest speaker who punctuates his conversation with the phrase “and I really do mean this” - insisted that his job was to convey information to and from the whole administration, not just his boss, Mr. Rove. “The wonderful thing for me is that I recognize each and every day that I work for the president of the United States, the president of all the people, not some.”

But conservatives outside the White House say they view Mr. Goeglein mainly as an extension of Mr. Rove. And stalwarts of the right say that, even as some conservatives have grown sharply critical of the administration’s spending or of the war in Iraq, his function as a hot line to the White House helps keep the Bush administration more closely allied with their movement than any previous administration has been.

Mr. Goeglein majored in journalism and English at Indiana University. But after interning for Senator Dan Quayle, he fell into politics, first working as a spokesman for Senator Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, a champion of conservative Christian causes. In 2000, Mr. Goeglein was the spokesman for Gary L. Bauer in his Christian conservative campaign against Mr. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination.

What a shame.

Actually, this is double plagiarism: stealing from the blogger and not attributing the source of his/her quotes as well. Hmm, triple plagiarism, really, since he/she quotes two different sources.

Things like this you can't do accidentally. Like manufacturing evidence that lets you go to war, some things are quite deliberate.

*

Some notes about my passing, and I'm getting some very nice emails. I'll try to print some of them (without full names) before I go, but as is usually the case I'm sure the best ones will all come after I've boarded the place up.

Still, the light gets in through the cracks between the boards.

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2650 Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:17:46 -0600 Cargo shorts and car washes http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2649

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Hell yes that makes me squeamish. Money and politics are like mold spores and fruit, you just can't combine the two and expect anything but rotten produce in return.

But it's the name of the game, and it's the game the Republicans insisted on playing, so sure they were of themselves as they shit out corruption and then pretended the voters would never tire of their turning Capitol Hill into their personal commode.

Culturally, they couldn't have possibly have been more arrogant. The latest proof is a an encyclopedic look at the religious faith of comic book heroes and villains — the villains all being "atheists, Satanists, Communists, or Nazis," it never occurring to the Holier than everyone but Thou Our Father crowd, who consistently forget that Nazis were mostly Lutherans and Catholics, and that Satanists are just inverted Christians (no one comes to Satanism through atheism, that would be such a huge step backwards).

Anyhow, click Monaco's link and you'll not just learn more, but you'll see some vintage Superman animation buttressed by the ass-kicking Afro-beat styling Budos Band.

*

More from Digby on our imprisoned nation where one in every one-hundred Americans is now behind bars to slake the unquenchable wingnut thirst for justice, which of course can never be satisfactorily obtained so long as the hard right is in charge, breaking more laws than they can create.

Or as they would put it, "In a country where male negroes are allowed to walk freely about, can any white woman ever be safe?" [cue ominous laughter: John Hagee knows! bwahaha! (much more on Hagee from Glenn Greenwald)]

Again, most of our drug laws and a disturbing portion of our traffic enforcement is focused on controlling our minorities. But don't worry about laying off any prison guards. If justice finally comes to DC, there'll be plenty of white assholes to repopulate our prisons with. Assuming, of course, the new order of the day won't be "catch and release," which is how it usually turns out when the establishment goes on trial.

The only way to stop Bush from pardoning every living Republican for their crimes is to impeach and remove Bush before November. It's not too late, and it certainly won't impede any legislation in this, the Year of the Veto.

*

HRC updates:

Ickes, in the NY Observer, with an icepick (in Mark Penn's back)

Don't tell lies about Venezuela

Obama updates:

Obama and His Wonks

Carrying the day, every single election day to date

Digby on The Transformation Project

Auditing the non-evangelicals

Update from Turdistan:

"The New York Times this week printed an article alleging that John McCain may have had an improper affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Or, as it's known among lobbyists, lobbying."

Toles on email

Digby on Rove and his strategies

Dana Jill Simpson on Karl Rove's lies

Soar like a vulture

Horton on Abramoff and McCain

Stealth retractions

Thune blogging* in Tennessee

*Thune blogging is when you get paid to blog by political interests, but don't disclose them. Named after two Republican hacks in the Dakotas who bullshitted the local papers into running their oppo research attacks, helping John Thune to defeat the eminently defeatable Tom Daschle. Locally, see Brodkorb, Michael, and Exposed, Minnesota Democrats.

*

In Minnesota, the legislature overrode Gov. Pawlenty's veto of the Transportation bill (the one that raises our lowest in the Midwest gas taxes to pay for desperately needed road and bridge upkeep). Despite the deaths of over a dozen Minnesotans on a failing bridge, the details of which were covered up by Pawlenty's administration, our wingnut governor repeatedly put his "no new taxes pledge" ahead of the safety of Minnesotans, so the House-led Democrats took his veto and shoved it up his tight, little bony white ass, increasing the gas tax by pennies for the first time in over a decade. [chart showing price of gas since 2002]

That triggered no end of loud and noxious bluster from Gov. Veep Wannabee, culminating in the lege dumping his unprecedented Lt. Gov./Commissioner of Transportation Carol Molnau. Molnau's still Lt. Governor, but the Transportation post will now, hopefully, go to a real engineer, or someone else with actual transportation experience.

No backlash has emerged despite Gov. Whine-a-lot's petulant predictions, and the fiscal future of Minnesota remains grim as his ideologically driven policies continue to bankrupt the state.

As for Molnau, the hyperpoliticized Strib didn't have a single headline about her fate (some stories had the news buried within), but her photo and the real story only ran on the little-read editorial page here.

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In other Minnesota news, a convoluted story is emerging from southern Minnesota. Mostly it seems to be about unknown Republicans knifing state rep. Randy Demmer in the back. [more]

Old skool politics, still as nasty as ever.

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My favorite wrestler made it into the Ohio State High School Championship Tournament. An amazing testimony to determination.

And yes, I expect him to finish dead last, but that's not the point. The point is he got there when there isn't a bookie in the world that would have bothered to calculate the odds.

I'm assuming he's a Democrat. A Republican would have just kept blaming socialized medicine and the Democrats for his plight.

UPDATE: Thanks to Matt Fasola for this update, Dustin won his first match, then lost in the Quarterfinals. Bravo!

Another inspirational story here, this one about a professor who used lies to guide his students to the truth.

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Monopoly rules.

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None of these songs will be in tonight's last ever Friday music set. I don't know what will be, but none of these, that's for sure.

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I liked "strangled" better, myself, but either way this means I slipped a cat into my last ever Friday Norwegianity post.

And yes, the light is growing a bit brighter . . . .

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2649 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:40:23 -0600 From Tideland to Brazil http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2648 Tideland tonight. Jeez, talk about a movie that crawls up inside your head, lays down and dies . . . . Without using a single horror movie trope, Terry Gilliam thoroughly creeped me out. It was as if James Joyce had written an X-Files episode.

Not in recent memory has a movie made me feel this uncomfortable. I'm going to have to rip a copy to watch again sometime, but not anytime soon. [more (spoiler alert)]

*

Links I had stashed that remind me of Tideland in some way:

ICE and the far right

John Hagee (sort of a The Night of the Soul Dead Born Agains thing)

Hamsher on Buckley

Clarence "Ellen Jamesian" Thomas

Tim Russert

1 in 99

The Birmingham News

The Press-Register

WHNT

Dust

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., just because he could

In God We Trust (scroll down for video)

There is no authority by which persons may wholly ignore a subpoena and fail to appear as directed because a President unilaterally instructs them to do so. Even if a subpoenaed witness intends to assert a privilege in response to questions, the witness is not at liberty to disregard the subpoena and fail to appear at the required time and place.

Urban planning (exiling the poor to outer suburbia)

Digging up JFK one more time (but cool, if they make it stick)

Beryllium blues

Some of those links owe more to Brazil than Tideland, but those movies are more similar than you might think. It's just that Sam Lowry isn't as brave as Jeliza-Rose.

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2648 Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:15:53 -0600 A light at the end of the blog http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2647 You do your best, and if things don’t work out, it just wasn’t your time. Life isn’t always fair.

All of which Ohio understands very well.

[Gail Collins, New York Times]

More on Campaign Clinton:

Texas not going well

Leon Panetta: they had no plan

The Ministry of Fear

"We already won Michigan"

"NAFTA is proving its worth" [video]

Hold the pillow

HRC uses Ann Richards in Texas ads over sons' objections

Geraldine Ferraro on turning superdelegates loose

Hillary on the Christian Broadcasting Network News

Campaign Obama:

Fox freaks out over incident unrelated to Obama, reports it all wrong

Neiwert on Russert's gasbaggery

Early voting off the charts in Texas

AIPACkers freaking out over Obama and Israel

One million donors [more]

al-Qaeda in Ohio

Ohio: the NAFTA primary

Grassroots in Cincinnati

Obama's safety [Steve Perry's first Minnesota Monitor story]

John Lewis comes aboard

Terri Schiavo

McCain/'pugs:

"Hussein!!!" talk show hosts drops McCain, now supports Hillary

Digby on Husseinism

Rove: don't "Hussein" Obama (at least not this early — wait until this fall you morons!)

Worst Senator for children

More on Russert's insufferable moderation from The Carpetbagger Report, and Eschaton.

*

Way late this morning so I'll let this go at this: one big pile of links. And some truth.

The truth is, I'm burned out on blogging. It was five years ago that we went into "beta" mode at City Pages prior to going live with Twin Cities Babelogue. Since then I've posted over one million words a year for five straight years (thankfully over half of that was quoted text, but still...). I think that's enough from me for a while.

As soon as Obama conclusively wraps up the nomination, I'm outta here. I've got other projects waiting to go but they need my full attention. Starting the day by getting pissed about the news is not part of that game plan.

Thanks for reading. There'll be more between now and then, but maybe not as regularly as you've come to expect.

As for those of you who've recently stopped reading Norwegianity, Obama's won, get over it. He wasn't my first choice either, but unlike any candidate I've ever seen, he keeps growing and getting better. And if you're not reading the transcripts of his speeches or exploring the issues on his website, just shut the fuck up until you have. I've yet to hear anyone accuse Obama of being light on the issues if they've actually checked out his stuff.

As I've already said, the Baby Boomers have fucked things up beyond recognition. Hell, we fucked up beyond FUBAR. If someone used Bush's face to clean my toilet, I wouldn't sit my ass on it ever again, having a much higher opinion of my ass than I do any surface touched by his cancerously hateful face.

This year's election should be a formality, one in which the United States of America apologizes to the world for having inflicted Bush on all of us, twice. McCain would be salt in our collective wounds, and Clinton a malevolent cypher, both feet in the past and her head wrapped up in more special interests than a ten-gallon turban.

No, I don't know what an Obama presidency would be like, but I suspect his leadership will drive the Republican party to moderate itself once good Americans see that conservative Republicans willing to work with real Democrats can do more than just bicker and squabble and stick it to the other guy. But first the Republicans have to wake up and realize how insanely far to the right they've slid, like that streak mark in the toilet bowl that no amount of flushing ever removes.

It's time for the GOP to get out the bowl cleaner and brush and start to cleaning themselves up (starting with a purge of the white southern male racists). The rest of us are moving on, and there's no reason to wait for the incorrigible few no matter how loudly they scream and holler and throw hissy fits.

America needs to grow up and put the regressive and childish Bush administration behind us. And toward that end, my aggressive and insulting partisan rhetoric isn't helpful.

I can see the light, but it's still a bit too soon for me. But I'm headed in that direction, and expect to get there along about next Wednesday or so. Maybe I'll see you there.

]]> General http://www.norwegianity.com/index.php?itemid=2647 Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:23:41 -0600