What Jerome has to say about...

Go away, Tiger. Just go away.

2010-02-19T10:36:00.002-06:00

First off, let me admit to a bias here ,,, I couldn't care less about golf. My personal attempts at mastering pasture pool have been pitiable and the experience leaves me perpetually mystifies as to why anyone would choose to ruin a perfectly lovely summer afternoon in pursuit of an uncooperative white ball. And if I care little for golf on a personal level, my interest in golf as a spectator sport is even less. Televised golf is far beyond my comprehension ... alternating shots of sky and lawn accompanied by muffled applause and mumbled commentary ... it's the Home and Garden Network without fertilizer rates.

And if I don't care about professional golf, I certainly don't care about the personal life of professional golfers ... even when they're playing the role of penitent porn star.

There's a momentary ballyhoo this morning about Tiger Woods' latest public coming-out party. After getting caught with his pants down, the former squeaky clean media darling is trying to recoup lost fortunes -- understandable enough. I just don't know why anybody who doesn't know Tiger -- either in the platonic or the biblical sense -- ought to care.

He's just a man who plays with his putter in public --and we'll pay to see that -- anything beyond that I don't want to see, I don't want to hear about, is none of my, yours, our business.

So until it's tee time, Tiger, just go away. Leave us alone.

And how was your Presidents' (or is that President's) Day?

2010-02-19T10:35:00.002-06:00

Y'know, in the great scheme of things, I could really do without President's (Presidents'?) Day. It's a pretty lame holiday when the only thing I have to look forward to is not getting any bills in the mail -- because they're not delivering the mail.

Truth is, we don't even know for certain what the day is supposed to commemorate. Is it to honor the presidency (President's)? Or the august individuals who have held the office (Presidents')? If it is the former, shouldn't we also look into commemorating other positions of significance with their own day of postal abstinence (e.g. Supreme Court Justice's Day, Speaker of the House's Day) in good regard to the Constitutional principle of checks and balances -- perhaps tossing in a Governor's Day as a nod to federalism as well.

If it's meant to honor the occupants of the office -- then I fear the basis for the holiday becomes a bit more dicey. How much honor do we really want to heap onto James Buchanan, John Tyler, Warren Harding and, everyones favorite, Dick Nixon? With that rogue's gallery as a reference -- I'm really not certain just what it is we're celebrating.

I doubt if the situation would have arisen if George Washington and Abe Lincoln had had the foresight to be born in separate months. Taking a day off for both of their birthdays was a bit much in a month that's short on days to start with -- so Congress, back in the day when compromise wasn't a dirty word -- split the difference and made two holidays into one. A good thing for colleciton agencies and junk mailers, but no real plus for the rest of us.

So once again, I failed to put up my President's' Day tree, send out my President's' Day cards, rent a President's' Day costume and go to midnight President's' Day Mass. I didn't have a big President's' Day dinner or set off President's' Day fireworks.

I just looked into my empty mailbox and said, "Oh yeah...President's' Day..."

Anyway, I hope your's was a happy one.

A modest proposal

2010-02-19T10:34:00.003-06:00

It's good to see folks can learn from experience ... even if they are members of the Minnesota Legislature.

A couple of DFLers -- Rep. Lyndon Carlson and Sen. Richard Cohen are introducing a bill that will keep future governors -- Republican, Democrat or just plain crazy -- from repeating T-Paw's unallotment performance from last session.

According to a piece in this morning's Strib the proposal would "limit the governor's unallotment power in three ways:

"Governors could unallot only from the part of a projected budget deficit that was not known at the completion of the last legislative session.

"Payment to programs affected by unallotment would have to be reduced proportionately, and formulas or eligibility standards could not be changed.

"The governor could not unallot mor than 2 percent of the general fund budget and could not unallot more than 10 percent of a single general fund appropriation."

In other words, no future governor would be able to take a meat axe to a budget the legislature passed and he signed to satisfy the political whim of the moment while preserving executive flexibility to deal with unanticipated fluctuations in the state economy.

Of course, T-Paw -- continuing to play his favored role as Dr. No -- has promised to veto any bill limiting his authority.

Bad for business?

2010-02-19T10:34:00.000-06:00

No matter what T-Paw and the T-Party boys say, it looks like paying taxes isn't the only thing that's bad for business in Minnesota ... and it's not a bunch of lefty DFLer types saying it either. Here's the pertinent snippet from Tuesday's Strib:

"Moody's Investors Service lowered its ratings outlook on Minnesota to negative from stable, citing the state's ongoing financial and economic weakness.

The ratings agency also noted the state government's depletion of reserves and a heavy reliance on one-time resources to balance its budget."

It seems like Wall Street likes honest books and an adequate steady income -- and that doesn't come by playing politics with the balance sheet.

Here we go again

2010-02-04T16:05:00.003-06:00

Well, the Minnesota legislature called itself to disorder right on schedule and we're all set for a show that should rival an all-star Three Stooges revival -- featuring Larry, Maggie and Tim.

I just draw no great confidence from observing that we have a governor who wants to be president, a Speaker of the House who wants to be governor and a Senate Majority Leader who is certain he ought to be governor. I'd feel a lot better if the whole of the state's political leadership didn't go into the session with their resume's out.

Meanwhile there's the small matter of the state budget coming up $1.5 billiion short with another $5 billion worth of red ink on the next go-round ... but who wants to bet they'll spend more time on a new stadium for the Vikings?

And so it goes...

Pa'in with interest

2009-07-03T12:05:00.003-05:00

I suspect we're soon in for another dose of Minnesota Smug ... y'know, that insufferable Keilloresqe condescension that comes over us whenever anybody, anywhere does something more spectacularly bone-headed than we have just managed. Well, here we are ... having just royally screwed up our state budget, along comes the news that California's budget is so totally hashed that they are now sending out IOUs as payment for state debts. Yeah, there ya go -- T-Paw hasn't resorted to that maneuver. Good on you, Timmy. See ya in the White House ...
Weeeeelllll...not so fast. How these things look depend a lot on where you sit. Yeah, California is sending out IOU's, but get one of these IOUs and you can take it to the bank ... give it to the teller and the teller gives you good old American folding green, legal tender, on the spot. Or -- if you're doing fine and feeling flush, hang on to that IOU and the State of California will pay interest -- 3 percent -- on what they owe. In short, the state is paying what it owes ... plus ... holding up its end of the bargain even if Arnold and the Legislature can't get it together.
Compare that to the mess T-Paw and Maggie the K have left us with. Don't kid yourself -- the state's sending out IOUs -- $1.7 billion worth of them -- they're just going to school districts. Instead of paying what it owes our local schools on time, they're pushing it into another budget cycle so it doesn't show up on this year's books -- make believe budgeting on the grand scale. Bernie Madoff should have gone into politics.
Anyway, the upshot is, our schools don't get an IOU, they just don't get paid. Trouble is, they have bills to pay, payroll to make, but don't have the option of saying, just hold on a few months while our books finish cooking. No, the public schools have to go to the bank, take out a loan to pay what they owe ... and with that loan comes interest -- paid by the school district with money that would otherwise have been spent on teachers, books or a trip to the state tournament for a championship football team. Now, thanks to our illustrious leaders, it's doubtful they can afford the football team.
Remember, in California, the state pays interest on its IOUs. In Minnesota, our hard pressed school districts pick up the tab
California dreamin'? We'd best not get too smug, not smug at all.

Republicans' faulty Bible belt buckles

2009-06-24T17:14:00.004-05:00

How come righteous Republicans seem to have so much trouble keeping their pants up?
Here we go again -- another crusader against vice and evil caught with his britches around his knees with a wife (his wife, at least) nowhere near to be found. This time we were treated to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's little romp on the Pampas with some little Argentine firecracker. It would appear that uncovering a little illicit activity under the covers is going to send another GOP public servant back to the private sector they're supposedly so fond of.
It was just a few days ago Sen. John Ensign of Nevada 'fessed up to getting a little on the side, and who can forget Larry Craig of Minneapolis airport restroom ill-fame. The list of the publicly righteous laid low keeps going on and on.
I guess they don't make those Bible belt buckles like they used to...

Gun nuts worthy of the name

2009-06-22T15:11:00.003-05:00

And you thought it was just the bleeding-heart lefty civil libertarians that worried about respecting the constitutional rights of bloody minded terror suspects -- but turns out you're wrong on that one too, buppa. It seems that darling of the weaponized right, the NRA, has come out expressing deep concern that your government and mine might be do something to prevent folks who are out to kill us from getting all the guns their evil little hearts desire.
No, folks, I can't make this up. The NRA is on record with it's concern that federal legislation may infringe on the "second amendment rights" of individuals placed on the government's terrorist watch list -- created as a security measure following 9/11. "We're concerned about the quality and integrity of the list," according to the heavy-weight gun lobby -- who raised nary a peep of protest until Sen. Frank Laughtenberg proposed legislation that would bar weapons sales to people on the terror list.
As it stands, a person determined to pose a terror threat is barred from air travel, won't be issued a visa and faces other restrictions -- not among them a prohibition on purchasing, owning, transporting or using firearms. According to the Government Accounting Office, over the last five years, people on the list have attempted to purchase firearms over 1,000 times, with 9 out of 10 purchases approved -- including one for over 50 pounds of explosives.
So, we don't let them on our airplanes, we don't let them in our country, we keep a close eye on them so they don't get a chance to kill us ... with the guns the NRA is so eager for them to buy.
A-yuh -- I guess they're not called gun nuts for nothing.

Don't let the door hit ya...

2009-06-04T17:28:00.004-05:00

So we learn T-Paw will be moving out of the Governor's Mansion in 18 months. Well, I guess we won't have to count the silverware like we did when Jesse "The Mind" moved on -- I believe they hocked the silver to pay the light bill last month.
That will be his legacy -- the state broker, sicker, poorer than when he took office. It will be hard to miss a guy who accomplished all that.
I first encountered Pawlenty when he was House Minority Leader. He struck me as an affable guy, with a politician's inability to give a straight answer to a direct question.
That was well borne out the day after he announced his candidacy in 2003 -- complete with "No new taxes" pledge. It just happened to be the same day the state revenue department announced the budget was likely to come up over $4.5 billion short. Tim dropped by for a press conference and his response to questions on the looming deficit left me certain that this was a man who cared more for his career than for the people of this state -- and over the years, by and large, he did not disappoint.
I'll make exception regarding his response to the 2007 floods, where he acted with vigor to mobilize aid for thousands of people washed out of their homes. But that compassion seemed to dry up with the floodwaters and this spring, rather than raise taxes a hundred bucks a year on his rich suburban buddies, he's willing to take health care benefits away from 30,000 of our poorest, sickest citizens.
Ahhhh, Timmy, if you're thinkin' of leavin' early, just call -- I'll help ya pack.

Unwarranteed attention

2009-05-11T15:57:00.004-05:00

It seems that Chuck Schumer is about to sic the whole United States Congress on the dweebs who've been trying to warranty my Metro.
Several times a month for the last several months I've been getting called by a machine with an urgent tone in it's voice cautioning me that my car's factory warranty is about to expire. Now let me assure you, I've been mighty pleased with the reliable performance of my 12-year-old Metro, but it did come as a surprise to me that GM was still backing a vehicle with well over 100,000 miles on it.
So, when the machine calls, I like to stay on the line. I'm sure to thank the caller profusely for their concern. I tell them all about how happy I am with my car and what good mileage it gets and how little it cost and so on and on and on and then I start asking them about their cars and how long they've had them and ... well I've never had a conversation go beyond finding out about their personal rides. Somehow we get disconnected ... but I always try to engage the next friendly young fellow in a cordial auto related discussion. It's the least I can do, considering how concerned they are about the soon-to-lapse warranty. If Schumer's bill passes I might almost miss those conversations ... who else is going to care about my poor old Metro

A taxing situation

2009-04-15T14:44:00.004-05:00

Right now I feel pretty good about myself. I paid my taxes today and I'm not even up for a job with the Obama administration. For most of us, settling up with Uncle Sam is about as much of a patriotic sacrifice as we're called on to make - so much as I'd rather not sign that check, it does make me feel a bit Yankee Doodley to do it.
Which makes me wonder about the folks heading out to the latter-day tea parties today. I've been getting notices and invites to these affairs for weeks -- usually done up in star-spangled red, white and blue with an eagle or two tossed in for good measure. But all these folks are intending to do is gripe that their government -- and let me say that once again, their government -- has figured to be their fair share of the operating cost for their country. So, they want to hark back to the Boston Tea Party and throw a public fit.
Well, there's a difference between the folks mailing bags of Lipton to their Congresspeople and the guys who tossed British tea into Boston Harbor in the dark of the night. Two hundred thirty six years ago, those fellows didn't have Congresspeople to send tea to -- it was the lack of representation in levying it, not the tea tax per se, that they took radical issue with, and ultimately what the Spirit of '76, Valley Forge and Yorktown were meant to set aright.
It's fine with me if folks don't like paying taxes, fine with me if they make a fuss and complain, but it's not fine to bastardize history in the process.

The plot to wipe out Mr. Whipple?

2009-03-02T13:31:00.003-06:00

All right, I'm as fond of Mother Earth as any of her children, but the Greener-Than-Thou crowd has finally gone where no one ought dare to go. Go ahead, tell me my choice of light bulb is none too bright; than only a fat-headed lard arse would hold up the Whopper as the apex of ground beef cuisine -- that only a fat-headed lard arse would entertain "ground beef" and "cuisine" in the same thought. I can take it ... I can take a lot ... I'm a pretty doggone thick skinned fellow -- save in one place -- so any man, woman or trans-gender who gets between me and my Charmin Ultra Soft will have gone where no one ought dare to go.
But what's the latest target of environmental outrage? American toilet paper. The same folks who advocate kale flakes and wheat grass juice for breakfast are pushing for folks to tidy up after their morning duty with a recycled Whole Earth Catalog. All in the name of saving a tree.
Y'see, the toilet paper that's made American johns the envy of the inhabited universe is made mostly of virgin fiber -- fiber straight from the tree that grew it rather than recycling the newspaper that soaked up your spilled breakfast coffee. In order to make TP that's 'squeezably soft' they need long, fluffy fibers that puff up thick and strong -- making TP that's strong enough, thick enough to stand up to whatever the American diet throws at it. To tidy up what needs tidying without abrading the most sensitive section of the human sitter.
Now I'll join with anyone demanding that parking tickets and the like be made of recycled fiber, we can recycle newsprint and pasteboard boxes -- but as for the paper that really starts my day -- if it takes a new tree, that's a good investment.
I'm sure Mr. Whipple would agree.

Barkley for Senate, redux

2009-01-29T17:21:00.003-06:00

As the political bladder-emptying contest grinds on in the courts with no dignified or satisfactory resolution in sight, perhaps it's time to take another tack.
There's no doubt now that be it Al or be it Norm who is blessed by the three-judge panel, this judicial troika's ruling will be challenged by the candidate less favored ad infinitum or at least to the U.S. Supreme Court. An expensive and tedious exercise which bodes no redeeming result.
With this dismal outcome in sight, might I suggest a reasoned and decent way out of this sorry electoral dilemma.
We were blessed with at three-way race in November and clearly the Coleman and Franken partisans have little love for their opposite number. However, it is probably fair and accurate to say that for the vast majority who cast their ballot -- disputed or undisputed -- their second choice for U.S. Senate from Minnesota was Independence Party Candidate, former Senator Dean Barkley. Barkley, appointed by Gov. Ventura to fill out the last days of Paul Wellstone's term following his death, served with brief distinction and emerged with honor and little animosity. Let me suggest that the most satisfactory outcome of the current unseemly electoral deadlock would be for both Coleman and Franken to concede, withdraw and endorse the certification of Dean Barkley -- everyone's second choice for senator -- to fill the seat for the next six years. We'd be done with it and have a senator that most Minnesotans no only don't despise, but are pretty much indifferent to. After the current debacle, that would be a good thing.

A day with no television?

2009-01-09T14:16:00.004-06:00

Unemployment hit a 16 year high. The shooting goes on in Gaza. The governor of Illinois is impeached for putting a U.S. Senate seat on his private version of E-Bay and now the greatest crisis of all ... some folks might miss an episode of The Biggest Loser if Congress doesn't act and act quickly.
The economy be hanged ... it seems a bunch of folks haven't gotten with the program -- the digital TV program, that is -- and on February 17 their old sets are going to have more snow than a North Dakota blizzard, and not much else. It seems that, despite a law passed in 2005 (that's going on four years ago folks) and well over a year of really tedious talk about getting the $40 off coupon for a digital converter an uncomfortable lot of people remain analog and unconverted and because they haven't yet seen fit to haul their hinders to Best Buy or the neighborhood Wal-Mart store we need an act of Congress to put the whole she-bang on hold so nobody misses an installment of Days of our Lives...
Phooey.
We're talking about TV, people -- nobody ever died from Wheel of Fortune deprivation. How is it Congress is more concerned about kids not seeing Sponge Bob Square Pants than about kids not seeing a doctor? It's more important to ensure access to the Food Channel than to adequate food?
I suppose there's no real harm in letting the old analog broadcasts continue past the announced drop-dead date ... house plants won't wither and die nor will small, cute children mutate into toads ... but that's not the point. If, as a nation, we can't deal with procuring and attaching a fairly simple widget between the rabbit ears and the TV set with over a year's lead time to accomplish the same ... how can we hope to avoid becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Beijing, Inc.?
Best start learning Mandarin.

Time to exit gracefully, Norm

2009-01-05T13:33:00.006-06:00

I'm not sure Minnesota voters have really spoken in the race for the U.S. Senate, but they have managed a faint, hoarse whisper and that -- especially at this late date -- ought to be enough.
For two months the vote-counters have been counting and when they finally got to the bottom of the pile -- the pile as defined by the laws of the state of Minnesota as interpreted by the Minnesota Supreme Court -- Al Franken has come out 225 ahead. That, according to the rules, makes him the winner and a member of the U.S. Senate.
Congratulations Al.
And congratulations, Norm, on a hard fought campaign and thank you for your service.
That, should be that.
But it may not be. There are strong rumblings and grumblings that Coleman will take the whole thing to court -- prolonging the uncertainty until both sides either run out of money or avenues of appeal.
Please, don't do it, Norm.
Quite frankly, at this point, I really don't care which man claims the seat in Washington, but when the new Congress gets down to business, I want one of their butts sitting in it. Minnesota's interests deserve to be represented by two votes in the U.S. Senate -- not just one. The counters counted more votes for Franken -- it's time for Coleman to gracefully step aside, get on with his life and in six years, perhaps give those 225 voters the chance to reconsider.
It would be the classy thing to do.

Sweet Caroline

2008-12-26T15:47:00.003-06:00

So Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (funny how she's recently dropped the 'Schlossberg') ants to be the next U.S. Senator from New York. It seems a bit odd in this day and age to have someone lay claim to public office on the basis of hereditary right -- I thought that sort of thing went out of fashion when the Hapsburgs quit laying claim to every vacant throne in Europe.
Now I'll grant that Caroline was a cut kid -- sitting on her pony 'Macaroni' while it dropped road apples in the Rose Garden -- and her father's death is an American tragedy, but at 51 her life's most extraordinary feature is being rich and privileged -- something she has in common with a goodly number of Senators, but probably not what the Founders had in mind when they established the office. Somehow, it strikes me that somewhere in all of New York there dwells an individual with greater breadth of experience, depth of insight and profundity of understanding than a wealthy woman who wouldn't merit a moment's consideration if her last name were simply Schlossberg.
And if New York is really that hard pressed for Senate candidates -- might I suggest they appoint whichever New Yorker comes up short in the Minnesota recount. I'm sure that Norm from Brooklyn or Al from Manhattan will serve the Empire State quite as well as Ed Schlossberg's wife.

Hey, that's OUR president you're thowing shoes at!

2008-12-15T18:20:00.002-06:00

Poor ol' George -- he just get's no respect.
Good heavens, the man went to all the trouble and expense it took to liberate Iraq and give those poor benighted folks a free press and all, and how does he get repaid -- one of the press guys he went to all the trouble to free goes and throws his shoes at him.
No respect.
And it doesn't help a bit that from reports coming out of Mesopotamia and the adjacent region that Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the 28-year-old Iraqi shoe chucker, has become an instant hero to many of the folks living there.
No respect at all.
As for George, well, after 8 years of shaping foreign policy and dealing with people who don't live around here and speak English with a funny accent (New Yorkers don't count), past experience helped the increasingly lame duck president understand the situation. "I saw his sole," he told reporters.

The slick, the gullible and the just plain dumb

2008-12-04T16:11:00.003-06:00

There was another one in my in-box this morning -- this one from a Mr. Gary Kreep (I couldn't make that up)-- one more in a seemingly endless parade of email insisting that Barack Obama has been a liar since before the day he was born and, by the way, if I send Mr. Kreep some money he promises to do something about it.
This whole Obama-doesn't-have-a-birth-certificate BS is really getting old. I suppose the Kreeps of the world will keep milking the mouth-breathers for Godly and patriotic donation until the well runs dry -- it's what we ought to expect from that breed of political bottom feeder. What gets to me is that we have folks out there who are entrusted with jobs, credit cards and drivers licenses who actually believe there was a prenatal conspiracy to make a Kenya-born Obama the first Muslim president, thereby bringing down the wrath of an affronted almighty down upon this erstwhile Christian nation.
Lemme tell ya, if there's anything to this tale those conspirators have to be the most uncannily brilliant folks since the Learned Elders of Zion -- to be able to flawlessly predict in 1961, when miscegenation was a crime in 22 states, that the mixed race baby of an impulsive, ill-educated 18-year-old mother and a Kenyan daddy was destined to become president of a country that made it awfully hard for non-white folks to vote would have taken a mind of prescient power unparalleled since the Masons took clandestine control of Western Civilization.
These folks really demonstrated their demonic brilliance when they slipped that birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961, for a son to Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama nine days earlier. Getting that kind of documentation for a kid born in Kenya took Romulan deviousness, Klingon ruthlessness and the amorality of a Ferengi.
Yeah, for 47 years, powerful forces have been at work ... Nostradamus predicted it, you know.
Either that, or it's all made up bunk -- more fodder for the yahoos from the Black Helicopter crowd.
After all, there is the inconvenient fact that Mr. Obama's birth certificate is very much in existence and has been examined by quite a number of reputable folks - and it is all ordinary and legitimate, standard documentation for a child born in Hawaii in 1961. Attested to by Snopes, FactCheck and most importantly, good ol' common sense.
Common sense. Has it ever been in such short supply?

Yo, ho ho and a bottle of rum?

2008-11-21T10:42:00.004-06:00

Aaaargh ... Blackbeard must be dancin' a jig in hottest Hell. The old buccaneer must be splitting with pride to see the latter-day sons of the Jolly Roger thumbing their noses at every navy on God's blue seas. But what in the Name of Heaven, in the age of geo-positioning, laser-guided weaponry and satellite surveilance are we doing with pirates running amok on the high seas?
Good Lord, where's Errol Flynn when we need him. Across the globe nations, ours among them, dispatch submarines armed to destroy continents, carriers loaded with an air force apiece, cruise missiles, and the toughest, best trained fighting men on earth -- and all this might is helpless against a handful of ill-tempered swashbucklers armed with a stolen motorboat and nothing to lose.
And you know, it's hard not to have a grudging admiration for men who have the nerve to go out and steal a supertanker -- oil and all. Talk about the ultimate gas drive-off. And the thought of the Saudis and the world's shipping magnates literally dropping gunny sacks of cash from hovering helicopters to keep their captains and crews from walking the plank has a real David and Goliath-ness to it.
Pirates -- your kid can take a wrong turn and end up another Henry Morgan or Calico Jack Rackham, a Mary Read or Anne Bonney. Avast, me hearties and shiver me timbers -- there be pirates afloat and the king can't catch 'em.

No bail out for the MoTown dinos

2008-11-14T15:58:00.005-06:00

I don't have to go any farther than the office parking lot for all the reason I need to tell the Big Three automakers "go fish." Parked in its usual spot is my 1998 Metro -- a car the likes of which our domestic car companies didn't see fit to sell after 2001.
Because I'm cheap, I bought it used five or six years ago. There's no mistaking it for a Mercedes, but it's yet to fail to start, and other than a blower switch I haven't done any thing but routine maintenance - plus tires and light bulbs to keep it on the road. It compares well with Gayle's '97 Prizm which is about to roll 200,000 miles and has yet to have a wrench on the engine. They haven't made those for years either.
Oh, and did I mention if I don't get better than 35 mpg on a road trip from either of them it's entirely due to a heavy, heavy foot. A really nice feature a couple of months ago when gas was better than double what it's costing me today ... and it will be a really nice feature in the very near future when we're back to paying that price again and more.
But for years Detroit hasn't seen fit to put solid little cars on the American market -- though anywhere beyond North America solid little cars are about all there are to see. Instead they marketed dinosaurs -- big, inefficient, expensive and, for them, profitable -- as long as they were selling. Trouble is, when it cost a Franklin to fill the tank and the tank needed filling twice a week -- the shine came off that Detroit steel and folks, not always being as dumb as we look, looked around and bought a Hyundai.
Now Ford, GM and Chrysler want Unka Sugar to dig deep and save their bacon ... sort of like he did for AIG and the Wall Street bankers who forgot how to add, subtract, and figure simple interest. Unfortunately, there are thousands of ordinary folks whose jobs are on the line here -- and it's not fair to folks who just build 'em to suffer because the hotshots in the corner office have proven themselves no brighter than sea cucumbers.
So, let me suggest Congress tells the guys from Detroit to go back to MoTown, clean out there desks, turn in their keys and put in for third shift closers at the nearest Mac & Don -- then put in a call to Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and VW to make them an offer their not likely to refuse -- with cash-back financing to boot.

What if we just have enough stuff?

2008-11-12T11:21:00.003-06:00

The hand-wringers were working overtime again last week. Now it seems that Americans aren't hitting the stores hard enough to keep the Chinese gizmo factories humming and some are even daring to suggest they might only spend what they can afford on Christmas gifts this season. All of this, of course, is the latest harbinger of economic collapse to spoil the day of any American not in the Marine Corps, in prison or so spectacularly wealthy they don't have to worry about their next three hots and a cot are coming from. Of course, this bad news comes hot on the heels of the dire warnings that Americans were drowning in debt, couldn't get credit and the whole tottering economic edifice was about to collapse because we just couldn't exercise any self control at the checkout counter.
Y'know -- y'just can't please some people.
Now I realize that for decades millions of us have lived up to the consumer mantra: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping -- and Americans have always made it a point to prove to the world that nobody's tougher than us. Through the years we've dutifully bought stuff and bought stuff -- putting up ever bigger houses complete with multiple car garages (with the multiple cars parked on the driveway) to hold it all. We just kept on hauling it home and stacking it up and now, I suspect, more and more of us are confronted with a reverse Mother Hubbard -- far from being bare, the cupboard doors barely close. After a half century buying binge -- might it just be that a whole lot of us have enough stuff and might just use all this recession talk as an excuse not to add on yet another room to hold another holiday's worth of gifts we'd really rather not get?
And if enough is finally enough, does that mean the inevitable collapse of commerce? Well, not necessarily. While a lot of us can't find room for one more thing, there are a whole lot of people elsewhere in the world who'd have no trouble finding room to walk into their walk-in closet -- if they only had a house to put a closet into. If we have enough stuff, maybe we could let them have some -- there are some long Christmas lists out there.

Two buck gas on Election Day?

2008-10-31T14:10:00.003-05:00

Welly, welly, well -- two months ago, who'd a thunk it? Driving by the Kwik Trip on the corner I see gas selling for $2.149, just like back in the good old days when auto petrol was just too expensive, not ruinous.
Good lord, wasn't it just back in June when anyone with a wit about them consigned Sweet Shelly Bachmann to the ranks of the terminally dingy when she suggested that if we were to drill, baby ,drill the price of gas would drop back to two bucks. And all us pink-diapered lefty sympathizers know she would have been laughed out of office if sh had suggested that we might well be driving to the polls on $2 a gallon gas on Election Day ... and if it were to happen, we all had the dots connected and the conspiracy concocted linking Exxon Mobil, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the Republican National Committee and all the Sheiks of Araby.
Well Michele is on the verge of being laughed out of office any way, gas or no gas, and the virtually the only drilling that's gone on since June has taken place in dentist's offices. It appears all it took to bring down the price at the pump was a world-wide economic collapse. You betcha, nothing like the prospect of a real life sequel to The Grapes of Wrath to take the fun out of international commerce.
So here we are with cheap(er) gas on every corner and nowhere to go.
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

So long Sarah, it's time to get serious

2008-09-17T16:43:00.003-05:00

How is it that no sooner do we start having fun when something has to come along and ruin it?
We've had almost three weeks of good old fashioned political theater -- Sweet Sarah, the moose-hunting mama takes aim at Washington. Such fun it was -- the bridge to nowhere, Troopergate, jets on eBay, teen-age sex and shotgun weddings -- way better than the wonky stuff the Democrats wanted to talk about. When putting lipstick on pigs becomes a major campaign issue -- politics just don't get any better.
Then reality rears it's ugly head.
Here we are with an economic situation that hasn't been so grim since Herbert Hoover insisted that prosperity was just around the corner. Look folks, when the country's biggest banks are going broke the rest of us best sit up and take notice -- especially those of us running for president - or voting for president.
It's time to take the GOP's Tina Fey wanna-be off the front page and start asking the guys at the top of the ticket what they intend to do to keep 2009 from looking all together too much like 1929.
We'd best quit looking to find a candidate who's "just like us" and find out which one is a whole lot smarter than we are. Sarah may know the price of sneakers at the Wasilla Wal-Mart, but we need the folks in the White House who understand a whole lot more than that.
Sorry Sarah, it was fun while it lasted, but now it's time to get serious and you're just a side-show.

Driven batty?

2008-09-05T15:33:00.005-05:00

I guess it would be a stretch to link the pair of rabid bats found in Winona over the last couple of weeks with the political goings-on in Denver and St. Paul, but after two weeks of non-stop poli-spin anybody who's been paying attention to the parties' parties is probably a bit batty at this point.
In Denver we had three days of non-stop invocations in the name of St. Barack culminating with worship in the Greek Temple on the 50 yard line ... if the Democrats could have come up with a virgin, she would have been in a dangerous place.
Republican's usually have a better time with virginity, but since Alaska's First Family + boyfriend has been declared off-limits, we won't go there. The GOP -- who've supposedly had the keys to the White House these last eight years and fielded majorities in the Congress for all last two (when they insist nothing was done anyway) spent a week working itself into a lather to "throw the bums out" and "clean up the mess in Washington." It's the first time on records the tenants served themselves the eviction notice.
Meanwhile, hurricanes are lining up in the Atlantic, the unemployment rate creeps ever upward, an ice shelf the size of Manhattan disappeared in the arctic and Winona is dealing with an outbreak of rabid bats.
Enough, already.

SNL used to be funny too...

2008-08-04T18:50:00.003-05:00

Saving a U.S. Senate campaign from terminal tedium is a tough assignment for a fourth grade teacher, but that 's the assignment Al ... er, Allan ... Franken has given the woman who decades ago drilled him in multiplication and the memorization of the states and their capitals (spelling counts).
For those of us who savor politics as an medium of entertainment as well as mechanism for debating public policy, Minnesota's U.S. Senate campaign has been one disappointment after another. The prospect of months of Franken riffing on Senator Norm and his good buddy Dubya could only have been improved by Jesse "The Ego" jumping in with both oversized feet. But Ventura couldn't be lured from the Baja and Fearless Al reverted to Stewart Smalley -- "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and by gosh people like me..." A guy who made a career out of the emperor's lack of clothes -- or at the least that he let his mother dress him funny -- is being played the fool by a trio of bogus bowlers in the employ of the seriously humor-challenged Minnesota GOP.
C'mon Al ... a serious comedian is as credible as a fornicating TV preacher -- only a lot less fun to talk about.
Lighten up, Al, lighten up.

The breast news this week

2008-07-23T16:30:00.003-05:00

Every now and then a bright sliver of rationality dawns over the world and we do well to note and celebrate it.
This bit of common sense comes to us complements of the federal court of appeals which ruled that a 7/16 of a second glimpse of Janet Jackson's 38-year-old right breast wasn't worth $550,000 -- even if it is the highlight of a championship football game. (Of course, with about 90 million people watching -- it does work out to a little more than a half cent per peek -- which isn't too bad a price.)
Yeah, the moral watchdogs at the FCC lost their fight with CBS over the infamous 2004 Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction." Grossly paraphrasing, the judges ruled the punishment didn't fit the crime, if, in fact, there ever was a crime to be punished.
Well, I'm quite certain the only damage done was to the eyesight of all of us (yeah -- you too) who squinted over grainy, pixelated screenshots to be sure we saw what we thought we were seeing -- ultimately realizing it really wasn't worth the trouble.
But with the political advertising season well upon us, this ruling comes at an appropriate time. Thoughout the coming weeks, I'm sure I won't be the only one expressing the profound wish that the only boobs on television were attached to a pretty woman's chest.

Finie, Julius C.

2008-07-14T13:52:00.003-05:00

Well, at long last the Julius C. Wilkie has been reduced to flinders and toothpicks -- albeit rotten flinders and toothpicks.
It wasn't Winona's finest hour.
I can't say I had any great love for the boat-shaped building at the foot of Main St. It was a Disneyfied misconception of a remarkable era; a structure that was neither historic nor contemporary with as close to an anti-functional design as has ever been foisted upon a good intentioned community.
Built on the cheap, haphazardly maintained, never open and forever in the red it was a only a matter of time until the whole edifice collapsed in upon itself. A few hours and a backhoe finally put it out of its misery.
But the tragedy that finally played itself out last week had little to do with bad plans and poor lumber. After the original Wilkie\Pierson burned, the Winona community rallied to replace what had been lost. People dug deep, writing checks and tossing change into collection buckets sitting at virtually every checkout counter in town. Winona invested money and spirit in what was promised to be a lasting representation of their heritage ... and Winona was badly shortchanged.
But at long last it's all over, but for carting away the rubble. Hardly a good, definitely not a happy, ending. But an ending.
Let's learn from it.

So what?

2008-07-03T14:07:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking that maybe Barack Obama should consider changing his religion.
I know it's a lot to ask ... from the testimony of everyone who ought to know he's been a good and faithful Christian, a good church-going man as it were, since he was just a little feller going to services with his mama ... but if he wants to set an example and lead this country into a better day, I do believe he should consider becoming a Muslim.
Now to a bunch of gullible, unwitting, misguided or just plain ignorant souls this wouldn't seem possible -- they believe, based on the ranting of various ignorami and liars, that Obama already is Muslim and harbors secret plans to turn us all over to the ayatollahs on Inauguration Day. Now I'm just old enough for that sort of talk to sound like the plans another presidential candidate -- also a Democrat and also a senator -- supposedly had to turn the United States over to the Pope as soon as he was sworn in. But John Kennedy disappointed the bigots and John XXIII never sat in the Oval Office.
Of course, if a President Obama remains faithful to the United Church of Christ, as he has throughout his lifetime, he won't have the opportunity to provide living testimony to the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers that being a good Muslim and a good American are anything but mutually exclusive -- just as JFK did for American Catholics nearly 50 years ago. He could demonstrate that the proper reaction to the "accusation" of being a Muslim is and always should be, "So what?"
Yeah, for the good of the Constitution and all of humanity, perhaps Barack Obama should consider embracing Islam -- all things considered, it would be the truly Christian thing to do.

Congratulations, Del and Phyllis -- after 55 years

2008-06-16T20:25:00.003-05:00

I just checked. The sky hasn't fallen yet even though California is issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.
They sign in as Party A and Party B rather than bride and groom -- just in case you were wondering.
The first couple to tie the knot were, appropriately enough, a San Fransisco couple, Del Martin, and Phyllis Lyon, Del is 87, Phyllis is 84. They've been together 55 years.
Talk about long engagements...
At least they were married in time to have the legal right to make funeral arrangements for each other. The legal right to be there when the other dies.
Fundamentally, that's what this is all about -- legal rights enforced by a contract that they have been allowed to enter into.
A contract -- not a sacrament. Theirs is a union sanctioned by the state, not necessarily a church. It is an act of man, not of God.
Which is how it should be. Civil law is gender blind. The ability to fulfill the civil contractual obligations, rights and responsibilities imposed by the legalities of marriage is no more a matter of genitalia than it is skin color, caste, class or ethnic background -- though those factors too have been upheld as legal impediments to matrimony. This is an issue of equality before the law -- civil law -- not canon law, not sharia, not the laws of Moses nor Levitical injunctions.
And as such, it is good law.
Not God's law -- just good.

What we do and how we do it

2008-06-08T16:05:00.002-05:00

There was a long piece in the paper across town this weekend -- plus a column and an editorial -- excoriating the city of Winona for how it has presented information concerning the closure of the Interstate Bridge and subsequent developments.
In short, they complain they've been left out of the loop, nobody's been telling them anything and they don't like it. There seems to be a conspiracy of silence in the depths of City Hall.
Sorry, folks, that isn't quite the case.
At the Daily news, we got first notice of impending problems with the bridge about 7 p.m. Tuesday in a fax from MnDoT (not, as was claimed by Ms. Cynthya Porter, in an email, phone call or secretive phone call from city staff on a cloak and dagger mission). The fax announced an 8 p.m. briefing. Far from a secret conclave, except for the agrieved paper across town, all local media outlets plus some area TV stations were represented, along with members of the city council, county board, state legislature, city staff and a number of citizens who'd gotten wind that something was up. The session went on until no one had any more questions. The meeting set for Wednesday morning was announced, reannounced and announced again.
Just for the record, news of the Tuesday night meeting was posted on winonadailynews.com within minutes of our receiving the fax. A capsule account of the briefing, including an announcement of the Wednesday morning meeting was posted shortly after the session adjourned. That information was available in the newspaper and online.
Hardly a secret session.
All the unhappy folks at the paper across town needed to do is pick up their mail or read the daily newspaper and they'd have known all about what they insist was being kept from them. They might even have made it to that meeting. Our reporters were there -- we had an update on it online just after it wrapped up.
Ms. Porter goes on to claim that "In Thursday morning's edition, the Minneapolis Star Tribune scooped all local media with announcement of a ferry system." Apparently, neither Ms. Porter nor her editors read the banner headline and sub head over Winona Daily News reporter Mark Sommerhauser's Thursday morning story -- "Waiting for answers: City reels from bridge closure, plans shuttle system by Monday." Scooped? Hardly.
Ms. Porter might not have had a clue, but nobody beat the Daily News to the story -- and I'm not about to let the paper across town claim otherwise.
Now I don't care if the paper across town wants to whine and make excuses for itself, but I do mind when Ms. Porter claims the city is "under fire" from news organizations "who have been excluded from the information circle." It has been our experience that during these difficult days Mayor Miller, city staff, council members, area legislators and state officials have been open and fortcoming with information, sharing what they know when they know it and frankly admitting when no information is available.
All a reporter has to do is show up and ask.
Mark, Kevin, Amber, Nolan, Kari, Matt, Fred and Sarah have been out there showing up, asking questions, getting answers. There's no magic information circle to be let in on -- just hard work, tenacity and good, solid reporting.
That's how they got the story, Ms. Porter. Any perhaps, why you didn't.

Parent gripe hits a sour note

2008-06-03T16:01:00.003-05:00

It looks like we couldn't make it to summer vacation without another set of parents getting their undies in a bunch. This time folks across the creek in the GET school district are all affronted because there was too much sacred music in a recent high school choral concert.
I want to weigh in here before the Christian Taliban grabs onto this one and replays the typical rant about God-hating liberal secularism taking over our schools and putting us all on the road to Perdition and $5 a gallon gas. This silliness should be held up to proper public ridicule, not because it's an affront to the Almighty, but because whoever's doing the griping has no taste for or understanding of choral music.
Look, unless the kids are going to sing endless variations on a polyphonic Pop Goes the Weasel choral music is fundamentally sacred music -- from plainsong to Bach to Bernstein to George Harrison -- God just keeps creeping into those lyrics. I suppose if the schools wanted to be sure the kids weren't O.D.ing on spirituality, they could require the texts be sung in their original language -- which of course none of the students, much less their parents, would likely understand, but doubtless the tasteless oversensitive would still chafe.
As a former high school chorister, I can assure those concerned parents that the repetition of sacred lyrics by high school juniors eager for lunch is no more prayer than my forceful invocation of the deity upon walloping my thumb with a hammer.
It appears the GET administrators and school board are going about this in the great tradition of public education -- serious deliberation followed by a vaguely worded policy. What is needed is a sternly worded rebuke, tuition for Music Appreciation 101 and a year's membership in Minnesota Public Radio.
Enough of this silliness.

So long Julius C. Wilkie

2008-06-03T10:34:00.004-05:00

It appears Winona’s faux-steamboat era is just about over. The council has decreed that by July 25 the rotting hulk at the foot of Main Street will be the stuff of failed dreams and bad memories. Built on the cheap to the specifications of a rich man with more ego than sense of history, Winona has struggled with the Disneyfied riverboat replica for two decades. Too small for a museum, too inauthentic for a historic replica, it had no kitchen to support a restaurant, a dining room tarted up like the parlor of a Victorian bordello with a floor that canted enough to make a sober man unsteady. The only good thing to be said for it was that, at a distance, it looked pretty there at the foot of Main Street, reminding residents and visitors that behind the concrete sea-wall that keeps the city’s feet dry during times of high water flows the Mississippi River – “C’mon down and take a look.”

It was past time for the city to be done with this misbegotten building, but with the flood control dikes between the river and the city, the pre-1965 version of Levee Park is not up for resurrection. We’d be world-class stupid to do anything to jeopardize the city flood control system -- a system that has withstood near record high water twice in recent memory while communities elsewhere along the Mississippi were inundated.

But the Wilkie did look nice perched up there on the levee -- particularly in the winter when snow blanketed the worst of the decay and cold kept folks from coming close enough to see what shape it really was in. It is a wise move for the City Council not to prematurely demolish the hull-shaped foundation and reflecting pool or remove the utility hook-ups that powered the steamboat before it finally ran out of steam.

Let me offer a modest proposal... Send a bright young scholar -- an unemployed historian would be well-suited and likely willing to work on the cheap -- equipped with a notebook and tape measure to record the dimensions of the concrete hull. Then send that scholar off to research the river-packets that plied the Upper Mississippi, calling at the ports of La Crosse, Red Wing, Wabasha and Winona with the goal of identifying a boat whose hull was a close approximation of the concrete foundation there atop the levee. Let’s locate the construction plans for that boat -- or a sister vessel -- and reconstruct her on dry land as a historically accurate recreation. Refit her as she would have appeared to the immigrants, travelers and merchants who trod her decks and relied on her as a vital link to the world beyond the Mississippi valley.

But let’s do it right this time. Let’s not try to turn it into a restaurant -- everybody knows Winona won’t support a nice restaurant anyway, so why would an eatery crammed into building of unsuitable size and shape, in an inconvenient location be any different.

Let’s not try to turn it into a conference center. In this town, Mike Rivers, not the Mississippi River has that niche covered and, considering the 20-year track record of the Wilkie, does a much better job of it.

And let’s not try to do it overnight, on the cheap. The levee isn’t going anywhere -- if it does, we’ll have a lot more serious problems to deal with than what to do with a fake riverboat. For the time being, preserve the Pearson’s paddle wheel with a commemorative plaque detailing the sad story of the poor old boat and its successor. Put a couple umbrella tables up on the patio, let the folks from the Winona Island Cafe set up a snack and soda pop kiosk and make the area as pleasant and attractive as we can while we turn our attention to a lasting solution, worthy of the time, effort, and locale.

Putting up an accurate replica will take time for research and planning. Recreating a structure that is historically authentic in feel and appearance, but also in compliance with contemporary building codes, safety standards and accessibility requirements will require the services and imagination of creative and experienced designers and architects, working in cooperation with historically knowledgeable scholars. It will take time and money to acquire the artifacts and furnishings needed to bring the replica boat to life.

And building and furnishing will only be the first step. While we plan for construction, we also need to plan for what we will do with the thing once it’s up there. How will we coordinate the steamboat center with the William Thompson on exhibit at the Marine Art Museum, with the Winona County Historical Society’s downtown Armory Museum, the Bunnell House, Watkin’s Museum, Polish Cultural Institute, the Luxembourger museum in Rollingstone, the Arches Museum of Pioneer Life and tours of Winona’s historic architectural districts? The riverboat center needs to be viewed and funded as one piece of a much larger historic panorama. To expect it to be financially self-supporting as a stand-alone enterprise or attraction would likely doom it to failure, so establishing either a trust fund sufficient to assure adequate upkeep and maintenance or a cooperative financial relationship with other area tourist and historic attractions needs to be established.

Let’s take the Wilkie for what it was ... a hard lesson in how not to do things. This time, let’s take the time, do the planning, raise the funds and, sometime in the future, create an attraction we can be proud of for generations.

We can do this. Let’s do it right.

Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com. For Jerome’s comments on this, that and something else check out “Up on the wrong side of the bed” at www.rivervalleyblogs.com/jerome/ or go to www.winonadailynews.com.

It's a gas

2008-05-23T14:58:00.003-05:00

About the only good thing I can think of to say about the price of gas is at least we don't have to wait in line to buy it.
Back in 1973, when OPEC, annoyed by U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, closed the spigot -- not only did the price of gas shoot up, but there were times and places where gas was doggone hard to get.
Within weeks of the October 19 announcement of the OPEC embargo, Americans found themselves waiting in line to buy gasoline and worrying about where the price hikes would end -- if, as some rumors had it, gas might go as high as a buck a gallon.
Looking back, prices have an air of unreality about them. Before the embargo, oil was trading for under $3 a barrel -- the price shock then was seeing that price quadruple to $12 before the producing nations boosted production.
Meantime, the question was how to make the gas we had take us as far as it could and where to find more when the gauge nudged empty. Stations started flying flags to indicate if they had gas to sell -- green for plenty of gas, yellow for restricted sales, red for no gas, but stop in for a cup of coffee. Drivers were restricted to gassing up on even or odd numbered calendar days corresponding to the last digit on your license plate. Schools and factories went to shortened weeks to save on fuel oil and Congress passed a national 55 m.p.h. speed limit -- the notorious "double nickel" to force fuel savings on the nation's drivers. Year-round Daylight Saving Time was instituted. The Strategic Oil Reserve was established and the Department of Energy was founded.
Meanwhile, the price of gas crept up, from 38.5 cents in October 1973 to 55.1 cents in June 1974 -- numbers that sound pretty enviable today, but as a percentage were no less of a shock to the wallet than the jumps we're currently experiencing. The friendly service station attendant was replaced by the self-serve pump.
In March of 1974, OPEC officially ended the embargo, but things never quite returned to the "way they used to be." We'd taken cheap gas for granted and that confidence was shaken -- at leas for a while. It took the long run of relatively low cost gas starting in the late 80s to lull us all back into a 1950s-stlye complacency and now - with roads full of vans, pickup trucks and SUVs we're taking it in the shorts every time we need to fill up. Only this time, no matter how much Dubya begs the King, there's no spare oil for the Saudis to pump. The taps are wide open and the latest word to folks saying we need to pump more at home is that if ANWAR were exploited to the max it would only bring down the price of crude by 75 cents a barrel.
But, if there is a bright side, consider the plight of your Dutch uncle --according to U.S. Dept. of Energy data, gas in Holland was at $9.52 last week -- and the rest of Europe isn't far behind. (For more cold comfort go to http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.html)

Capital for a Day -- We did good

2008-05-19T16:51:00.003-05:00

There isn't a doubt in my mind as to who should be credited with getting the Minnesota Legislature and T-Paw to come to terms just under the wire -- it's you and me, folks; the good (and not so good) people of Winona. I'd dare anyone to dispute that it wasn't our stellar example of organization, good will and high calorie cuisine that inspired the Guv and the chief legislative talking heads that screwing up big-time was no way to celebrate Minnesota's 150th birthday. So they headed back to the capital for the other 364 days, knuckled down, buckled down and got the job done.
So everybody who helped organize Winona's Capital for a Day events should feel free dislocate a shoulder patting themselves on the back. From before dawn to well after nightfall, they kept things popping along no matter what -- be it folks oversleeping the sunrise to lightning bolts in competition with the fireworks. A good time was had by all.
I can hardly wait for the party we'll throw for the bicentennial ... free beer for everybody!

Dept. of Credit Where Credit is Due: President Bush is right -- seriously

2008-05-13T17:46:00.005-05:00

Dubya's got it right this time. On Tuesday, all but one of our illustrious Senators (only Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado was the sole dissenter) voted to quit filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in another classic pander-play centered on the high price of gas.
As you may or may not recall, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in the 1970s to stockpile crude oil to give us a cushion in case our foreign suppliers get the notion to shut off the tap. The stockpile has a maximum capapcity of 727 million barrels -- about two months worth of imports -- and is currently 97 percent full -- 701 million barrels.
Our senators want to say, "close enough," arguing that not buying the oil to finish filling the reserve will bring down the price of gas.
Like heck it will, the president is telling them and has promised to put the kibosh on the plan when it hits his desk.
Like I said -- President Bush is right.
Look we burn up 21 million barrels worth of oil in this country every day -- the government is buying 70,000 barrels a day to put away for the day the folks we're buying from won't sell us any more. That might not be spit in the ocean, but it comes pretty darn close. Not buying it sure isn't going to make filling up that Durango noticeably less painful.
But does send a pretty damn clear message that Congress -- on both sides of the aisle -- is more interested in pandering for a pre-election day advantage than it is in doing anything serious about this country's energy situation.
At the present rate, it will take us 300 days to stockpile enough oil to last us one day -- and the Congress can't even see that far into the future.
With leaders like that -- I'm afraid we deserve $4 gas ... if there's gas to buy at all.

Compulsory patriotism

2008-05-10T13:47:00.002-05:00

It looks like a few junior high kids out in Dilworth, Minn., have the adult world all tied up in knots. It appears that their principal caught them sitting down when the rule book said they should be standing up, and because that standing up time was to coincide with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance we've got lawyers, reporters and all manner of the Extremely Concerned weighing in. Meantime, I'm guessing the kids are getting quite a kick out of all the fuss they've managed to cause. Few things are more fun for a 14-year-old than making adults act like fools.
The fact is, those kids were breaking a rule that never should have been written, and once written, never should have been enforced. The Supereme court settled the whole question of kids saying the pledge long ago -- they don't have to. Which is good for the Constitution, good for the pledge and good for patriotism in general.
I've never held public professions of love for God and/or Country in particularly high regard. Every time I see somebody proclaiming loud and long on either topic, the parable relating the prayer of the Pharisee and the publican comes to mind -- that God and country are most sincerely honored in the quiet recesses of mind and soul.
Oh, I have nothing against saying the Pledge before a public meeting or offering grace before a meal -- they are pleasant rituals that remind us that we are community, bound by certain traditions and common understandings -- but merely standing to say the Pledge no more makes a person a patriot than recitation of the words of the Apostles' Creed makes a Christian.
There is no way to make patriotism compulsory -- going through the motions under threat of reprisal is as alien to the spirit of "liberty and justice for all" as the auto-de-fe is to John 3:16.
The kids in dilworth may be catching on to this, but it appears we adults still have a lot to learn.

Well -- duh!

2008-05-06T10:12:00.007-05:00

Here's one more for the "well, duh!" file -- Monday headline in the Strib -- "Teens use E-nudity to get noticed." As a former teenage boy, if it's teenage girls who are E-nude, I'd have to say that is something that I would have noticed ... and noticed with enthusiasm.
But to the disappointment of randy young fellows everywhere, reading down into the story, it turns out it was just one young lady in one small Wisconsin town and everybody involved is deep in dutch. Another case of dumb kids doing dumb things ... so it goes.
Except some folks just can't leave well enough alone. So now it looks like there's one more thing for The Extremely Concerned to be extremely concerned about: high school kids putting nekkid pictures of themselves up on their Face Book pages for all the world to see. The Strib spent a lot of time with a U of M prof who's paid to study such things (a job a lot of guys would really like to have) waxed earnest about how unwise it is for teens to post booty shots online and the need for parents to patiently explain this to them.
Methinks she frets too much.
Yeah you never know might want to be the next Jenna Jamison or John Holmes when they grow up, but there's no question that most of our kids do a pretty good job of keeping their privates private -- for all the good and righteous reasons they've learned from Mom, Dad and all the other folks who've passed along wise counsel in the course of their lives -- that and the fact that they're not pea-brain stupid.
I can almost imagine the reaction when earnest parents sit their kids down for a serious talk about keeping their pants on when the cameras come out. Those kids will unscrew and optic nerve rolling their eyes. I would suggest any parent attempting such a conversation begin it with the phrase, "Since you are unfathomably stupid and obviously devoid of any smidgin of self respect, I have something I need to talk to you about. You see, I read in the newspaper..."

Failing the test

2006-11-16T14:49:00.001-06:00

By Jerome Christenson

Winona Daily News

The sky isn’t falling.

Our children aren’t slack-jawed sub-literates, our schools aren’t fluff-factories staffed by money-grubbing careerists, our future is not about to be seized by hordes of Third World Einsteins bent on reducing us to burger-flipping Wal-Mart shoppers.

No matter what some folks claim the test scores say.

It’s time for the great annual wailing and gnashing of teeth engendered by the release of the results of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests in math and reading – and the resulting judgment levied on each and every Minnesota public school as to its success in making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) based on standards laid down in Washington by folks who’ve never met your child, your child’s teacher or visited your child’s school.

Let me venture the humble opinion that, as far as any individual child’s future is concerned – and ought it not be the future of the individual child that concerns us – those numbers are less important than the average number of peas put on his lunch tray on test day. The kid didn’t have to swallow the peas –we don’t have to swallow the assumptions behind those numbers.

Let’s for a minute remember what that data is based upon … a lot of kids sitting down and spitting back random tidbits of information tucked away in their little punkin-heads – the kid with the most tids wins – and so does her school.

Now, just to get this far in writing this little essay I’ve checked the spelling and definition of the word “engendered” in my desk dictionary, emailed the communications director at the Minnesota Department of Education to find out what MCA-II stands for (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment – but they leave that tidbit off their website), and looked up a story I’d reported five years ago just to be sure I remembered it right. Had I sat down to a test made up of those three items I would have scored 66 percent – probably not enough to be considered Adequate Yearly Progress by the state, certainly not enough to be considered Adequate Daily Accuracy by my editor.

The fact is, unless you’re lucky enough to be chosen to appear on Jeopardy, taking quizzes is just not a particularly important lifetime skill.

And isn’t it really lifetimes we’re talking about here? During the Watergate hearings, the question put to the nation was “what did the president know and when?” That’s the same question we’re putting to our kids, but what was critical in discerning guilt for the commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the most these test scores can tell us is that little Billy hasn’t learned all there is to know about compound fractions – yet. And figure, if the test was on Monday and the lesson on compound fractions was scheduled for Wednesday, what’s the big deal if Billy doesn’t know the answer – yet? Do we really have to fire his teacher, bulldoze his school and consign him to a lifetime of plucking for Gold’n Plump?

And before we join the hyperventilating over “rigor” and “standards” and “preparation for life in the global economy” it might be appropriate to let a bit of reality intervene. I’d offer that I am now approaching the 40^th anniversary of my last attempt at solving a quadratic equation – a feat that was, at one time, seemingly critical to my life. In fact, I spent three years of my youth studying algebra, geometry and other kinds of elevated mathematics – knowledge of which has proven as valuable in my day-to-day life as an understanding of the chemical composition of the earth’s core. However, each and every April since I was no more than 15 I’ve been confronted with Form 1040 or a derivative, but never in my high school career was so much as a class hour devoted to depreciation schedules or amortization tables.

So much for rigorous preparation for life.

Life is long. Despite the impression given by educrats and helicopter parents, life doesn’t end with the senior class trip nor is resurrection ordained in a college admissions office. Each day, each hour presents new chances, new opportunities, new challenges. There is a rhetorical nod given to “lifetime learning” whenever there is a grant to be written or a referendum pursued, but all the fussing about which answer sheet ovals were blackened on a given day gives the appearance that each of our brains is locked up and sealed about eight weeks prior to the end of 11^th grade – forever after to be baffled by whatever may be new, different and novel.

Not so.

Celia Werner passed away a few days ago. She was 107 years old. At 101 she was at the Winona Senior Center, emailing friends and acquaintances, exchanging digital photos with family. She didn’t have the opportunity to master the personal computer until she was well into her eighth decade simply because there were no PCs to master before she was in her eighth decade. “If you've got your mind, you can be 150 and still learn,” she said, when she was well on her way to proving it.

There’s no way to tell if Celia’s class would have scored well on the MCA-II; no way to tell if her school made Adequate Yearly Progress. In the course of 107 years, it didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. What the kids don’t learn today, they can learn tomorrow – or whenever it becomes important enough to need to know. Life is more than a quiz bowl and that’s what our kids need to be prepared for. Life is long and the only test worth worrying about comes at the end of it. Let’s see to it they all pass.

Dumb

2006-11-13T14:55:00.000-06:00

A 15-year-old boy is about the dumbest thing on God’s earth ... he’s so dumb that he figure’s he knows just about everything there is to be know and it’s his duty to make everybody he encounters aware of that fact. I was about that age and intelligence level when, at the outset of a fairly long auto trip alone with my father, I made some archly witty observation concerning “dumb farmers…” forgetting for the moment the occupation followed by my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great grandfather, uncles, aunts, cousins … not to mention a pretty much duplicate genealogy on my mother’s side. His reaction was pretty straightforward … the longest and least successful game of 20 Questions I can recall … What’s a good average yield for second-crop hay? How do you tell when a heifer is going into heat? What’s the best treatment for white scours in week-old pigs? …

I wasn’t as dumb getting out of the car as I was going in. Neither were farmers.

Achy

2006-11-11T15:21:00.000-06:00

My feel-bad's been hurting for the last couple of days. A slight case of the achy-nasties, I fear. Nothing serious, I assume, but it take the zing of the day and sure makes it seem like a long time until quitting time. Oh well.

Gerbils -- for no reason

2006-10-24T08:27:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, the joys of parenthood…

When ours were about 7 and 9 they adopted a couple of gerbils. Now, a gerbil is one of the most underendowed creatures the Lord ever made, and though Gayle and I checked, rechecked and checked again to assure ourselves that the pair had identical primary and secondary sex characteristics – we apparently missed a very small, but very potent package (I suppose this would disqualify us from careers with the TSA), which led to – in order – pregnancy, birth, maturing and exponential proliferation. By spring, our juvenile rodent population had entered three figures – and since gerbils really have very little to do but eat and make new gerbils, the situation was reaching critical – they were about to run me out of house and Habitrail … a situation even the youngsters were beginning to acknowledge, though they were resolved that none of their babies would go for a long swim down the Mississippi … my instinctive solution to the dilemma.

Fortunately, the weather was growing warmer, the grass greener and the world more inviting. A little nudging brought both kids (and their mother) around to the view that young gerbils would be much happier with their freedom – and with the help of a World Book entry documenting that the species was native to the cold, harsh environs of the Gobi Desert, they would live long and prosper in the relatively mild and lush climate of southern Minnesota.

So, on a sunny Saturday morning in May, Erin, Erick and took three ice cream pails of gerbils to a remote corner of Prairie Island and gave them their freedom.

I notice the owls were unusually fat that summer…

So, why is it that they hate us?

2006-09-15T16:20:00.000-05:00

Americans in Denial about 9/11

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on September 14, 2006, Printed on September 15, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/41635/

So, why did they hate us after all?

We sure blew off that question nicely. As with everything else in this country, our response to 9/11 was a heroic compendium of idiocy, cowardice, callow flag-waving, weepy sentimentality (coupled with an apparently bottomless capacity for self-pity), sloth, laziness, and partisan ignorance.

We dealt with 9/11 in many ways. We instantly dubbed everyone who died in the accident a hero and commissioned many millions (billions?) in mawkish elegiac art. We created a whole therapy industry to deal with our 9/11 -- related grief, made a few claustrophobic two-star Hollywood movies about the bombings, read Lisa Beamer's book and bought that DVD narrated by Rudy, watched Law and Order entertainments about sensational murders committed that morning and left for Jerry Orbach to solve, made bushels of quasi-religious references to "hallowed ground." We made many careers out of assigning blame for the attacks, with the right blaming Bill Clinton, Michael Moore blaming George Bush, and the clinically insane blaming those mysterious demolition experts who allegedly wired the bottoms of the towers with the explosives that "really" caused the tragedy. And we talked about 9/11 -- to death. We blathered on so much about the attacks and whined so hard about our "lost innocence" that the rest of the world, initially sympathetic, ended up staring at us in suicidally impatient agony, a can of kerosene overturned above its head, like the old lady sitting next to Robert Hays in Airplane!

We did just about everything except honestly ask ourselves what the hell really happened, and why.

That process of self-examination was flawed from the start. We were screwed the moment Fareed Zakaria wrote his infamous "The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?" essay for Newsweek a few weeks after the attacks. The question -- why do they hate us? -- was maybe the right question, but that was only if everyone could have agreed on what it meant. For what do we mean by they, and what do we mean by us? I for one am not entirely sure we're clear on these points, even now.

That we couldn't agree on who they were should be obvious by now. To the Bush administration the answers to the they/us questions were, respectively, "Foreigners" and "America." From the outset the Bush crew showed that they were both unwilling and unable to budge from the post-WWII political paradigm they'd all grown up under, and viewed the 9/11 events purely as an attack on the American nation-state by a belligerent foreign power. Their solution to the terrorism problem revolved entirely around a strategy for dealing with those foreign nation-states that were the "sponsors" of terrorism -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea. It was characteristic of the fourth-rate minds in this White House that they not only immediately got lost in the wrong political paradigm in response to the bombing, but picked the wrong country, Iraq, to punish for the crime. If we give them another ten years at it they'll probably end up introducing market reform to Antarctica as a backup plan.

Bush and his buddies grew up in the Cold War, an era where two countries dominated the world and even the scraggliest warlord in the central African jungle was usually a client of one or the other. It was a fun time for the overgrown Risk-playing nerds inhabiting America's think-tanks, who spent half a century describing all human life as an ongoing chess match between life-affirming American capitalism on the one hand and, on the other, the bloodsucking communist religion cruelly foisted upon the world by a conspiratorial bund of grubby German Jews (Hitler was eighty years too late!) and French homosexuals. That was what it came down to: world politics for half a century was a pissing match between two warring factions in the sociology department of the international University of Well-Fed White People. Things were so simple, even George Bush could understand them.

Well, things have changed since then. The operating conflict on earth now is no longer capitalism vs. communism, but one pitting organization vs. anarchy. All over the world, the borders of nation-states are blurring and becoming more and more meaningless. From the north Indian subcontinent, to the jungles of the Amazon basin, to the Middle East, and especially to west and central Africa, nations are fast losing their integrity while local warlords and gangs are taking over.

In some places in the world, authority changes more from block to block than nation to nation. In countries like Pakistan, which last week was forced to sign a humiliating peace accord with belligerents on its own territory of Waziristan, a tribal leader can twist the nipples of a nuclear power and not only keep his neck but come out ahead of the game afterward. In the late '80s and early '90s the Risk nerds squealed with delight over the supposedly unipolar world created by the fall of the Berlin Wall, but actually the change was from bipolar to apolar. There was anarchy and a crisis of international identity on the other side of that wall. Our pole, one might say, turned out to be a lot smaller than we thought it was.

So what happened? We never got that far in our reasoning. The farthest we ventured, before returning to our regularly scheduled programming, was a vague concession that the world was now "different." "All of this was brought upon us in a single day -- and night fell on a different world,' said George Bush in his "Churchillian" State of the Union address that next January. "The United States confronts a very different world today," opined the 9/11 commission report. It was "After 9/11, A Different World," as CBS News put it. Different how? Well, that's the part we haven't really figured out yet.

For the most part, America looks pretty much like it looked before 9/11. We spend most of our time pounding Ding-Dongs and Sonic burgers, watching ESPN, and surfing porn sites, while transnational corporations -- the silent allies of drug cartels and warlords in the dismantling of the traditional nation-state -- install turnstiles in congress and steadily move our entire manufacturing economy overseas. Our culture is a parade of idiot reality shows where ordinary citizens eat caterpillars for money and southern jocks drive moving billboards in a circle at 200 mph in front of euphoric crowds of a hundred thousand. In the intellectual north, our braver political dissidents dress in t-shirts with the face of George Bush morphed onto a pig's body and watch documentaries in which other intellectuals brag about being tricked by the Republicans into voting to invade the wrong country.

So what's changed? Well, we now hang our heads when we remember that dark day, kneel before the appropriate icons (Pat Tillman, firefighters, the flight 93 passengers) at the appropriate times, and periodically make sure to remember the Big Lesson, AKA Anything Can Happen, Even To Those Such As Us. The Monday Night Footballcrew this week commemorated 9/11 by bringing a firefighter named Tim Buckley into the booth; when asked what was different now, the humbled Buckley said that after 9/11, you have to think about things more when you go out on a call. "You don't know what to expect, after something like that," he sighed, shaking his head.

Somber nods all around to that in the booth, and then, with the snap of a finger; back to the field --- 3rd and 16 for the struggling Raiders...

In this light one could almost view our response to 9/11 as a triumph of the American system. If 20 knife-wielding lunatics blowing a hole in the middle of Manhattan on international television can't even temporarily knock us out of "What, me worry?" mode, you have to feel pretty good about our future chances for remaining just as cheerfully numb through even a more serious disruption of our fantasy existence.

America's response to 9/11 was basically to blow off the entire question of why it happened, change the set-design behind the same old us-vs.-evil commies cowboy-movie worldview, and to patch the hole blown in our self-esteem with a crude mix of stage-managed self-congratulation and sentimental claptrap. Our failure to actually win our subsequent self-declared war on the evildoers we explained away by using a modern innovation, i.e. taking a New-Agey approach to our shortcomings and forgiving ourselves for our little imperfections. In the Dr. Phil age, actual achievement isn't important, so long as you're comfortable with yourself! Make a list every morning, think about the good things in life! Living in Madison Avenue's irony age helps also -- when even Tony Sopranos pours his heart out to a shrink every week, it's not hard to convince Americans that they're still tough, even though Osama bin Laden is still doing bong hits on Al Jazeera five years after we boldly promised to kick his ass.

Whatever happened to actually being tough? What happened to speaking softly while we carry that big stick? Of staring problems bravely in the face, of taking the world seriously? History long ago washed that generation of "us" away, along with the world we still think we live in.

Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.

No time for such nonsense

2006-06-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

Published in the Winona Daily News, June 7, 2006

C’mon Mr. President, we don’t have time for this nonsense.
We have a country that’s slipping into the red at the rate of $1.75 billion a day, that’s importing 11 million barrels of oil a day and losing our young men and women to Iraqi bombs and snipers every day and you’re telling us to pay attention to who might want to marry whom.
With Iraq, the deficit, spiraling energy costs, health care, melting ice caps and the price of tea (and everything else we buy there) in China — amending the Constitution to deal with something that hasn’t happened yet is worthy of Congressional debate and special presidential attention?
We don’t think so.
Do we think it’s a cheap political ploy to distract citizens from their country’s real problems?
Yes we do.
It’s a case of the president crying “Wolf! Wolf!” while pointing to a snoozing Chihuahua.
Whether an individual believes the right to marry should be limited to heterosexual couples or not, the Marriage Protection Amendment before the Senate this week is an ill-considered un-needed politically-driven legislative sideshow.
From the nation’s beginning, setting standards for marriage has been a state, not a federal prerogative. How old, how closely related, how long to wait — marriage laws all change significantly as a prospective couple crosses state lines. Fifty years ago, in some states, race entered the equation. Nowadays, in some states, gender no longer does.
The Republic has survived.
Specifically, when it comes to same-sex marriages, 18 states have amended their constitutions to define marriage as between “one man and one woman.” Other states, Minnesota among them, have the same definition written into statutory law.
Furthermore, in 1996, the federal Defense of Marriage Act became law which specifies that, under federal law, “a marriage is the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife” and absolves any state from the obligation to recognize a same-sex marriage performed elsewhere.
What most people believe the proposed Constitutional amendment is intended to do has already been done.
So what is the president all worked up about?
Well, he insists, someday, somehow, some court might decide all those laws and all those amendments are so much ink on paper and only a Constitutional amendment can protect us against that.
It’s a pre-emptive amendment — a lot like the invasion of Iraq was a pre-emptive war.
We suggest a conservative approach. If the Supreme Court rules that heterosexual exclusivity is an unconstitutional encumbrance on Americans’ civil and marital rights, then let the Congress take up the issue and, if in their wisdom they see it necessary to overrule the court, send such an amendment to the states for consideration and ratification. But first, let’s let the idea get past Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy and their somewhat less strict-constructionist colleagues. Until then, it’s just the president and his partisans waving a political red shirt — the 21st century equivalent of segregationist race-baiting in the Old South.
We don’t have time for this nonsense, Mr. President. Neither should you.

By Jerome Christenson on behalf of the Winona Daily News editorial board, which also includes publisher Rusty Cunningham, editor Darrell Ehrlick, photo editor James A. Bowey and sales and marketing manager Tom Best. To comment, call 453-3522 or send e-mail to letters@winonadailynews.com

George C. and George W. "Never be outniggered again"

2006-05-16T17:07:00.000-05:00

Amazing how we've suddenly discovered Mexicans.
Mexicans all over the place. Cutting the grass. Washing the dishes. Killing the pigs. Pulling the beets. Mexicans everywhere -- to hear the Republicans tell it, anyway.
Funny how all these Mexicans showed up just as GOP Congressmen and their lobbyist buddies are heading to court like a bunch of Enron executives. How the folks from South of the Border changed from lettuce pickers, gardeners and garbage collectors to petential terrorists and inplacable threats to the Ameican Way of Life about the time Iraq turned to pus, the NSA got caught with their ears to the national keyhole, middle income people realized rich folks were getting more in tax cuts than they'd be taking home next year and a guy driving a cowboy Cadillac needed a hundred dollar bill and a fistful of singles to fill up.
Yeah, our kids are getting blown up, our constitution is getting ripped up and our oil supply is drying up and we're supposed to be worried there are too many Mexicans cleaning our hotel bathrooms, fixing our roofs and watching our kids.
Somehow it reminds me of what George Corley Wallace said after he lost his first run for governor of Alabama way back in 1958 -- "I'll never be outniggered again."
Well, Condi won't let George Bush say exactly that, but that's what he's doing -- the only difference is the skins are a lighter shade of brown and the accent is different.
When will we start hearing about the administration's "Final Solution to the Illegal Problem?"

It's the principal of the thing I can't stand

2006-05-16T16:59:00.000-05:00

I don't know principal Tom Barth over at Central High in La Crosse, and I don't want to.
This is the guy who had one of his students - Carter Broer of Coon Valley, arrested -- yes, arrested -- for putting his administrative mug shot on a parody of a Captain Morgan's Rum ad. The kid may be charged with defamation for his PhotoShop exploits. The principal out to have his no-funski likeness and petty-ass action spread from sea-to-shining-sea and beyond.
When high school seniors go to court for making fun of the principal, our country is in deep, deep trouble.

Minnesota Taliban

2006-05-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

Well it looks like the high priestess of the Minnesota Taliban got the nod to make a try for a two-year taxpayer-paid trip to Washington. Yeah, Michelle Bachmann -- nee' Amble, of youthful lust-tainted memory -- had the dirty old men of the GOP slavering out of her hand this weekend. Hit those doinks with a queer-hating, gun-toting, tax-cutting, Jesus-loving mama with T & A holding up pretty good for a passle of kids and the far side of 50 and we have and endorsed Congresswoman-wanna be.
Well, with any luck, she and her fanatic friends of Jesus will put a scare into the hoi poloi that will send them to the polls to vote for whichever jackass the DFL puts on the ballot and packs her off to a well-deserved obscurity.
On the otherhand, it might be fun to send her to Washington to publically befoul herself...
It is, however, amazing, that this is the same Minnesota Republican Party that was home to Harold Stassen, Elmer Anderson, Lloyd Duxbury and Arne Carlson.

Vox populi

2006-05-04T14:18:00.000-05:00

Well, it's good to see that the people are still smarter than the folks we send to Congress. It appears that the latest bright idea of the elected class -- send everybody a $100 check and we'ss shut up about $3 gas was about to get them laughed out of office. Somebody might have pointed out to our pampered politicos that getting a couple tanks of gas on Uncle Sam's nickel wasn't about to be a life changing experience -- save maybe for the numbskulls who proposed it.
Americans may not be the brightest bulbs on the string, but jeez...

... nothing much

2006-04-29T16:07:00.000-05:00

Right now I don't have anything much to say beyond it's raining and it seemed as good a time as any to set this up. If you're seeking great wisdom, you've come to the right place -- just come at the wrong time.
Try back later.