Who Says Politics & Religion Don't Mix?

. . . and the people said, "Let there be more shrines, for there are not enough."

You've read the book. You've watched the movie. Your kids have sung the school song. You've ridden on the bus. You've admired the seed art. You've been trained at the camp. You've shed tears at the memorial. You've kept the signs in your yard and the bumper stickers on your car years after they've become irrelevant. So what do you do for an encore? How about an uplifting evening at the theater?

A stirring and insightful portrait of Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila. This new play is filled with the passion, politics and surprises of one of Minnesota's most out-spoken and controversial politicians.

Head Up Municipal Ass

Minneapolis: What a shithole.

My credit card number was stolen, presumably in Minneapolis, while I still retain the card. They found the number, perhaps by stealing mail, perhaps by lifting it from a purchase I made. Several purchases were made using it, including 3 Chinese takeout orders totaling 150 bucks, a Topper's pizza order for 40, and the kicker, a payment to someone's Time Warner Cable account---to the tune of $276.

Easy enough, right? There is someone's name on this cable account, I would call that a lead....right? Well, the Minneapolis fraud investigators wouldn't. When I called the fraud unit, after I took all appropriate measures to ensure that my card and credit were taken care of, I was not able to talk to an investigator. I left a message, with the information that my card was used to credit an existing cable account, as well as an address that a Topper's pizza was delivered to. And I asked them to PLEASE call me (understand you are busy, etc). No phone call, no correspondence, for several weeks. Then, I got a letter. "I'm sorry, Mr _________, but your case does not meet the 'threshold for investigation' at this time.

In my mailbox, on this same day, was a letter from city of Minneapolis code inspectors insisting that I mow a foot wide strip of weeds in between the garages on the alleyside of my house, or face a hefty fine.

Flippant Prediction

"An Inconvenient Truth" is on a fast track to become the environmental "Fahrenheit 9/11"

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlén.

Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."

And so it goes.

Whaddaya Mean by Backwards?

About 20 years ago, I got a quickie brake job by a fella who was a glorified shadetree mechaninc; glorified because he actually gave you a recipet for the work he did. Turns out he put the rear drum-brake adjusters in the wrong sides of my Mustang; left one on the right side, right one on the left side. Sure it was dang hard to stop, but as a fledgling motor vehicle master, I didn't crash into anything. The shop he lorded over no longer fixes cars, and I always wondered what happened to that muttonhead . . . until today.

According to a report released by the board today, the root cause of the crash was an error in the craft’s original design. In their design of the probe, subcontractor Lockheed Martin inverted the two accelerometers that were supposed to trigger parachute deployment. “They installed [the sensors] the way the designs said,” Genesis project manager Donald Sweetnam says. “But they were backwards.” Investigators had suspected that this was the cause since as early as October, 2004.

One More From the All GM Show

Mmmmmm . . . torquey.

Weekend Update

Summer's on a brief vacation here on the Tundra, so not much time at the beach. Friday ; li'l kids dancing. Saturday; dinner 'n' cocktails with friends. Sunday; car show/swap meet, naturally, and then a really entertaining movie from Netflix.

Notice I was not in Ottawa, but others were:

The world's political elite, top thinkers and powerful business folk gathered here for an annual, ultra-secretive Bilderberg conference as heavy security kept conspiracy theorists and curious onlookers at bay. Global luminaries such as former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, US banker David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands were greeted at the airport by limousine drivers holding single-letter "B" signs late Thursday, said local reports.

They were quickly whisked away to the Brookstreet Hotel in a serene suburb of Ottawa for three-day talks on oil markets, security concerns tied to Iran's nuclear ambitions, terrorism, and immigration, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

But skeptic Daniel Estulin, who flew from Spain to try to cover the conference, said their intent is to "create a world government ruled by an elite group of people whose main objective is to control all the natural resources on the planet."

We're Number One!

Actually, they're #1, across that too-narrow river:

An FBI report to be released Monday will say that violent crime reports in Minneapolis increased more last year than any other Midwest city and that the jump is among the tops in the United States. The crimes of homicide, rape, aggravated assault and robbery increased by 35 percent from 2004, compared to an average 5 percent increase for cities of similar size to Minneapolis across the nation, according to FBI crime statistics given to interim Police Chief Tim Dolan on Friday. Violent crime rose an average of 2 percent nationwide.

And according to Minneapolis police data, there were 2,524 reported violent crimes through June 5, up 35 percent from 1,874 at the same time last year. And serious crime, which includes violent crimes plus burglaries, theft and arson, is up 19 percent.

The increase in Minneapolis' violent crime reports is alarming but not surprising, Mayor R.T. Rybak said. He said the city has responded to the crime upturn through new initiatives that aim to crack down on gang activity, reform juvenile offenders and turn at-risk youth away from unlawful lifestyles. Rybak also said he's tried to get more state and federal resources to put more police on the street.

There's your Minneapolis in a nutshell: They're perpetually one more after-school program away from Utopia.

In the Same Boat

I've just always been in the dog camp. I've known some amusing cats, but let's face it - can you ever really trust 'em? No way.

The dog's agenda is short an open and will not change some random morning. Scratch my neck. Fill up that bowl. Make sure I get to bark at the unknown, and let's get that leash out, my bipedal provider.

Lileks gets dogs, and his is and old fart like mine are.

For him there's no yesterday. There's not even a winter, behind or ahead. There's just the smell of the lake and the cool balm of the water. He wasn't wondering whether this was our last summer together.

He was stiff the next day, but when I said "Lake?" he got up and headed to the car. More slowly than before, but still game. Let's go, boss. Let's go.

Chalk One Up for Mr. Stockman

Stockman reminds us over at The Motley Fool that Zarqawi got blown up in . . . a safe-house.

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Fill Her Up; Check Under the Hood

Three gas station owners report for their first day in prison. The prison guard asks one of them, "What are you in for?" He replies, "The government says I charged customers more for my gasoline than other gas stations. I'm in for price gouging."

The guard looks at the second man. "And you?" He answers, "I charged less for my gasoline than everyone else. I'm in for anti-competitive pricing."

The guard looks to the third. "And you?" He shrugs. "I charged the same price for my gasoline as all the other gas stations. I'm in for collusion."

Now That's Leadership

"Money's tight! What do I do? What do I do?"

Worst-case scenarios for balancing St. Paul's 2007 budget could slash 212 city employees — including 115 police officers and firefighters — or require a 23 percent property tax increase, city officials said Wednesday. Neither extreme is likely, but Mayor Chris Coleman and members of his administration raised the specter to point out the severity of the city's financial woes, which include a $15 million projected budget deficit.

To even propose those two options is childish since neither would be tolerated, even by the new mayor's most lemming-like followers.

When asked if he'd set a limit on how much taxes could go up before facing serious political repercussions, Coleman said he had not. "The worst thing you can say is 'No new taxes.' The second worst thing is trying to forecast what the max you can allow is," he said.

No, 'no new taxes' is not the worst thing you can say. In fact, it should be the first priority. When will the modern, caring, sensitive politicinas get the horese back in front of the cart and realize that cities do not exist to tax citizens and invent things on which to spend the money, cities exist because of citizens who have decided that certian limited roles must become municipal.

The city also unveiled a Web-based "Budget Cruncher" tool that lets citizens try their hands at balancing the city budget and fixing the $15 million deficit. Go to http://www.stpaul.gov/ to try it and for more information.

If you follow the link to the budget tool, you can see what kind of a scam process our city faces. The tool only allows you to adjust the highest-profile or politically-charged budget items like police and fire protection, criminal prosecutions, libraries and code enforcement. Wanna hack out all the lame stuff? Not an option. Of course it lets you raise taxes to the moon, though. The whole thing is very a disingenuous stunt from the mayor and a classic finger-in-the-wind move. Why did we even bother with an election?

And They're Off!

Germany 4 - 2 Costa Rica, and Josie couldn't be happier.

Good doggie . . . now please come off the ceiling.

Happy World Cup Day

The whole world is watching. Don't be a dunce. Keep up on the action. Beware the badgers.

#1 Terrorist Strikes Again

Within the last 16 hours it seems that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales and Coulter all had a hand in violating the civil rights, the human rights, and very likely hurt the feelings of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'll be looking forward to statements of condemnation from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Sierra Club, the Walden Woods Project, the Minneapolis City Council and the Central Corridor Committee.

Of course you remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He's the one that flunky failure W will never get, and now that he's been got, the same crowd will say it doesn't matter that he's been eliminated. The goal line is moving as I type this.

Meanwhile, the always-quoteable Al-Qaeda whackjobs promise to keep on keepin' on, making sure that everyone is either as Muslim as them or are promptly killed, 'cuz, you know, that's what ants, sheep and other cavemen are prone to do.

Anyway, congrats to Iraq for taking a big step forward on the journey to national stability. From early reports it look like a team effort by Iraqi security forces, Jordanian intelligence, and coalition air superiority. I tired to get more info from MPR this morning, but they were begging for even more money.

Anyway, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is over. Now if we can just get the other foreign-born fanatical freaks out of Iraq those folks can get to work putting the pieces back together.

Wit - Above All Else

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend... if you have one."
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
Winston Churchill, in reply

The Short Life of Net Neutrality

No doubt about it - power and priviledge are corrupters, no matter if you're a fitness pimp, a moss-covered education hack, or the largest online presence on Earth:

After sending the Google Help Desk a query concerning the matter, Salvato was informed that there had been complaints of "hate speech" at his website, and as a result, The New Media Journal would no longer be part of Google News. As evidence of his offense, the Google Team supplied Salvato with links to three recent op-eds published by his contributing writers, all coincidentally about radical Islam and its relation to terrorism.

Unfortunately, this was not the first conservative e-zine to be terminated in such a fashion. On March 29, 2005, Rusty Shackleford, owner of The Jawa Report, received a similar e-mail message as Salvato informing him that: "Upon recent review, we've found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News." For those unfamiliar, The Jawa Report focuses a great deal of attention on terrorist issues and how they relate to radical Islam.

A year after Jawa was cut from Google News, Jim Sesi's MichNews.com was banished on April 12. In Sesi's case, the three pieces provided as examples of "hate speech" were articles by conservative writer J. Grant Swank, Jr., all about - you guessed it - radical Islam and terrorism.

See a trend here?

Yea, the trend is to not upset the Boeing-As-Missle Gang or the Fertilizer Bomb Boyz.

Look, I wholly believe any private entity may do and say and cover what it wants. Just don't PRETEND to be in favor of everyone's opinion and access only to slam the door when the subject matter rubs you the wrong way.

Canada - One Step Forward, One Step Back

Ooop dere Toronto way; seems some nice young men of were planning to make things go boom.

Police also said they seized about three tonnes of the commonly used fertilizer ammonium nitrate. Just one-third of that material was used in the bombing of a U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people in 1995.

Officers fanned out across the Toronto area on Friday to make the arrests. They later delivered the suspects to the Durham Regional Police Station in Pickering, east of Toronto. The 12 adult suspects, who face terrorism-related charges, were to appear west of the city in a Brampton courtroom later on Saturday. All of the suspects are residents of Canada and most are Canadian citizens of various backgrounds, officials said.

Funny thing is that all these nice young men of obvious Scandinavian, Japanese and Caribbean descent:

1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto, Ontario
2. Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga, Ontario
3. Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga, Ontario
4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga, Ontario
5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga, Ontario
6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ontario
7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston, Ontario
8. Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto, Ontario
9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto, Ontario
10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto, Ontario
11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga, Ontario
12. Saad Khalid, 19, Mississauga, Ontario.

What, Canada? Pacifist Canada? Loving, accepting, open-bordered, other-cheek turning Canada? What have they ever done? They're not in Iraq and they only begrudginly sent troops to Afghanistan after all the heavy lifting was done. Oh, yea . . . that's why they're targeted: Canada just isn't Muslim enough for some people

Good catch. I hope there rest of the world is watching.

I don't know if this situation pays any political capital for Stephen Harper, but the Liberal Party is still smarting enought from losing control of the government last time around they're now using children as money-laundering mules to thwart capaign finance laws.

Two 11-year-olds donated $10,800 to Joe Volpe's Liberal leadership campaign, and their 14-year-old brother gave another $5,400. The sums were from children of former Apotex Inc. vice-president Allen Shechtman and were among the 20 donations totalling $108,000 to Mr. Volpe's campaign from five current and former executives of the firm and 15 of their family members.

Surely the national party wouldn't condone such a shell game, right?

The national Liberal Party said yesterday it has no reason to investigate donations to leadership candidate Joe Volpe from current and former executives of a generic drug firm and their relatives, but some Liberal MPs said they have qualms about accepting money from minors.

Mr. Volpe has received donations of $5,400 each from five current and former executives of Apotex Inc. and 15 of their relatives, including some who are under 18.

Companies are banned by law from donating money to a federal leadership campaign and individuals cannot donate more than $5,400. The law also prohibits individuals from donating money on behalf of someone else.

Ah Canada . . . 'tis a confusing place. As if this is some sort of tipping point; I'm in the camp of the Oil come the finals.

It's Not Easy Being Greenpeace

Especially when you're stumped for catchy hyperbole:

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing. "This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor. We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all:

"In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

I guess it's forgiveable to be disingenuous frauds if you're correct in your thinking, eh comrade?

Like Sands Through the Hourglass . . .

so are the bounces of Little Green Footballs. Start at the top and keep reading. It's very intersteing and revealing.

At 3:23 am, this creature used our contact form to send the following email with the obviously phony Hotmail address ‘zionistpig@hotmail.com’ and the subject line, “You bunch of wankers.”

I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut....

Well, isn’t that tolerant. But this particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News: RIPE
Whois Database: 192.165.213.18.

It's quite the saga and is an efeective demonstration of how good detective work should be among the most highly-compesnated skills on Earth.

Are the Sign Carriers Watching?

Fast forward 4 or 10 or 20 years from now, when whackjob Iranian 'leadership' is threatening some part of the world with its nuclear weapons . . . you know, the ones that only the United States tried to prevent them from acquiring way back in '05/'06.

Unfortunately, at whatever level of engagement we find our nation, in this future there will be the inevitable policy-come-lately's, still with the Kerry/Edwards sticker on the rusty Civics, who holler from the rooftops, and whine on the editorial pages, and carry signs on street corners lamenting our/Bush's failure to have dealt with Iran diplomatically back when we could have prevented the escalation.

What? The Bush White House IS trying to deal with Iran diplomatically?

The US shift puts the ball squarely back in Iran's court. In a sense, Ms Rice's statement was Washington's response to the open letter written last month by the country's hardline leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Despite the president's anti-western and anti-Israeli rhetoric, Iran has repeatedly offered to hold talks with the US. By conceding Iran's right to civilian nuclear energy and dangling a wide range of incentives, Ms Rice has called Mr Ahmadinejad's bluff.

If, after serious consideration, Iran formally rejects the offer and the accompanying carrots-and-sticks package to be finalised in Vienna today, the US will be able to say that it has tried its best. And western nations, plus Russia and China, will almost certainly agree. They will be much more likely to unite behind Washington in seeking coercive UN security council action against Tehran. Ms Rice will have achieved her "coalition of the willing".

Not only is the administration doing the right thing, it is again going it alone. So far there has been no effort on the part of Russia, China or India, to say nothing of the laughable UN, to mitigate Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions.

More from the Washington Post:

(Iran) will try to dodge the choice it will be presented or reject it altogether. It will look for support to actors such as Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who has publicly undercut the decisions of his own board and the Security Council by proposing that Iran be allowed to continue uranium reprocessing. Tehran also will count on the Bush administration's critics in Europe and Washington to decry the offer to negotiate as unworthy and to insist that the United States offer Iran unconditional bilateral negotiations on all issues.

Ms. Rice made it clear yesterday that no such "grand bargain" is on the table. Were the Bush administration to propose such a scheme, Iran would surely pocket the concession of de facto U.S. recognition while continuing to pursue its nuclear program. Fragile European support for sanctions would quickly give way to pressure on Washington to offer Tehran greater and greater concessions. If, on the other hand, Iran accepts the coming offer, it's possible that Iranian-U.S. talks could evolve into a larger discussion of security issues -- Iraq, Lebanon, global terrorism -- that would benefit both countries, though it's hard to imagine that happening under Iran's current government. For now, the administration has rightly put the focus on forcing Tehran -- not Washington -- to make a choice.