Of Mannequins and (Some) Muslims

Today's Star Tribune contained a story about a mannequin and the outrage its outfit seems to have generated with some Muslims in Rochester and in Washington, DC. The gist of the tale is that Steve Lewis, a used car dealer in Rochester, has a mannequin dressed in what appears to be crude imitation of a suicide bomber, including fake explosives made from toilet paper rolls and a red scarf with a profanity written on it (alas, the picture that ran with the story was not detailed enough to determine the exact words, and the Star Trib declined to report them). This thing had been sitting in guy's office for two years without the any sort of controversy, until a couple of Muslim customers happened to see it and were insulted. They proceeded to report this horrible insult to the good offices of the Council on American/Islamic Relations (CAIR) which, in the words of Rabiah Ahmed (communications coordinator for CAIR) found the display to be 'clearly offensive and insulting", as well as damaging to "relations between cultures and community'. I presume this is a prelude to a request to remove the display.

I have some advice for the offended parties in Rochester and for CAIR: grow a thicker skin. In this country even if Mr. Lewis' display is lacking in taste and even offensive to some, he has every right to express himself that way if he so chooses. The Constitution does not include protections against being offended, but it does guarantee freedom of speech. If you don't the like the stereotype expressed by the mannequin, how about persuading your misguided Muslim brothers and sisters who have revived the idea of the kamikaze to change their mode of political argument. In the meantime if you don't like Mr. Lewis' dummy, don't buy a car from him.

Gay Marriage, Again

Heres a link to a Star Tribune story covering a rally against the proposed ban on gay marriage. Note that the rally in support of the ban (which attracted about the same number of people) did not get a similar story in the Star Trib. Double standards, again?

Personally, I haven't yet formed a strong opinion on the matter one way or the other, except for one aspect. I do not want this decided by judges. If same sex marriage is going to be law in Minnesota, it should be decided directly by the people via referendum or by the people's elected representatives.

Up to now, marriage has been assumed to be between men and women. If we're going to change this centuries old or millenia old convention (depending on which authority one believes), it should be done via a legislative, democratic process, not by a judge's decision.

Tactical Victory for Al-Qaida?

There's been a lot of electrons shuffled about by folks with opinions about the Spanish elections. Oliver Kamm is disagreeing with an Andrew Sullivan piece about whether the election result is a victory for Osama BinLiner and Al Qaida. Oliver takes the position that it was not a victory for the scumbags, while Andrew Sullivan considers it to be a major one.

As far as I understand it, Oliver's position is that since the jihadis are not interested in anything other than killing off the infidel, that Al Qaida wasn't interested in influencing the Spanish election. I'm going to side with Mr. Sullivan on this one. The reason is that I think these lowlifes are basely intelligent enough to try influencing elections to gain a tactical advantage. Their long term strategic goals don't change, but there is nothing stopping them from displaying some tactical flexibility. If one of their long term goals is re-conquering Andalusia for Islam, they may very well be wiling to temporarily lay off (or promise to do so) if they can drive allies away from the Great Satan with the effect of weakening their main enemy. They may very well believe that Europe can be put to sleep via a temporary truce (a hudna?) and defeated later. In some cases (like France) they may believe that demographics (i.e., a growing unassimilated Muslim population) is a winner for them. The conflict with the United States, however, is a fight to the death.

Buh Bye, Ahmed!

The Israeli Defence Force sent Shiek Ahmed Yassin to his new spiritual address Sunday. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving fellow. I can't say that killing people fills me with glee, but this gent misused his religion to incite others to kill innocent men, women, and children as well as themselves. The rocket he caught was well-earned.

The EU and and the Arab world condemned the killing, of course. That kind of reaction we've come to expect from the Arabs, but the Europeans and the British should be ashamed of themselves. They should know better (especially after Madrid) than to take the side of the terrorists.

Taxes due...

Tax appointment tomorrow, too depressed to blog... .

Sorrow Reigns...

Walking slime murdered at least 200 people in Madrid, Spain today. Spanish officials suspect either the home-grown ETA or Al Qaeda, but the investigation is in its early stages. At this point, I can do is offer my sympathies to the victims and their families.

If anyone reading this wishes to send condolences/flowers in support of the Spanish people the address of the the Spanish Embassy is : 2375 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. - Washington, D.C. 20037. The phone number (202.452.0100.) will be needed for internet orders. This contact info was cribbed from the Instapundit.

Toasty, Abu?

Abu Abbas, head hijacker of the Achille Lauro and murderer of Leon Klinghoffer, died in Baghdad while under US custody. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving fellow. I wonder if he was surprised at the sulfurous odor of his welcoming committee to the Afterlife? Well, at least he'll be roasting with friends...

We're Not That Bad, Really!

I came across this article in Commentary today (via Dean's World) written by an expatriate American who moved her life to Paris, and after 30 years is having second thoughts. Now, it is in a way kind of nice to find that someone who had written her homeland off in her younger days has reconsidered and found that United States has some redeeming features after all, but I have some other thoughts about Ms. Poller's essay. I want to dispute the oh-so-casually expressed idea of the USA being some low-rent, second-rate place to live.

I'm not disagreeing with the larger part of what she said. I have no intention of disputing what she writes about the French press - she reads a lot more of it than I do. And it is nice that she has discovered that the nation that she so easily dismissed 32 years ago does actually have some merit. However, she seems to find it hard to actually name them, other than the US is a free country. Everything else here, it seems, is distinctly second-rate in her eyes. After all, she left for France in 1972 at least partially because:

Instead, I'd been a "European," picking up after a brief interruption not exactly where my family had left off-not Budapest, not Przemysl, those were places we would not go back to- but Europe and all it could boast of. Beautiful cities that are really lived in, monuments at every street corner, savoir faire, craftsmanship, savoir vivre, boutiques, refinement, manners, health care, free education, history, French windows and parquet floors.

Really? The USA lacks beautiful cities, monuments, history, craftsmanship, refinement, history, etc. ? Spare me the silliness of that statement. Let me provide a few examples why.

Cities? We have New York (which the author herself mentioned as almost perfect), Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Savannah, my own home of St. Paul/Minneapolis, plus many, many others that are pretty nice, livable places.

Monuments? It's true that we don't have one on every street corner, but with over 3.6 million square miles to fill it takes awhile. We'll get there eventually. But in the meantime, there is no shortage of monuments here. Admittedly some of them are a bit super-sized, like the Death Valley National Monument or the Custer Battlefield, but there quite a few. In Atlanta for example, there are markers everywhere to mark events that occurred during the American Civil War.

History? We have no history? Sure, our time as a nation is relatively short. But we've crammed a lot of history (both good and ill) into our 228 years. The Revolution, the creation of our governing documents (the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), exploration of the continent, the westward expansion,The Trail of Tears, the Civil War and the end of slavery, the growth of the US into a great trading nation, sending our troops to the rescue in Europe, the Manhattan Project, Project Apollo, the Cold War, our growth into a 'superpower', two centuries of invention, and yes, even culture. There's an awful lot packed into that last sentence, and that's just scratching the surface. The individual histories of the states, counties, cities, and towns haven't even been mentioned yet. Consider that practically every county in the US has one or more organizations devoted to finding and maintaining the local history. One last thing. Consider the impact this nation has had on the world in her brief existence - is it less or greater than that of France?

Oh, and by the way, we do so have manners, dammit! We're actually a pretty polite people albeit a plainly spoken one, although our standards of politeness may vary from that of the average Parisian. Anyway, I don't need to go farther to make my point.

Later on, she describes the USA thusly:

I come from a free country. A rough and ready, clumsy, slapped together, tacky country where people say wow and gosh and shop at Costco. A country so vast I haven't the faintest idea where I would put myself. A homeland I would have liked to keep at a distance, visit with pleasure, and leave with relief.

Rough and ready, sure. Just don't forget open, hospitable, and generous as well. Clumsy? I wasn't aware a nation could be agile. Is there a gymnastics or figure skating competition for nations? (Ladies and gentlemen, skating the short program to La Marseillaise is France!) If what is meant by clumsiness is our characteristic directness. I disagree. Now, about tacky. It is absurd to describe a whole country as tasteless (otherwise known as tacky), especially since taste actually is one of those qualities that is pretty relative. Yes, to our discredit we have Jerry Springer, soap operas, and professional wrestling, but Europeans made David Hasselhof a star. I wouldn't want to bet on which one is the bigger crime against good taste. Also, there are fair number of pretty good orchestras, theatres, and even a few artists here and there. Some of them even tour in Europe (like the Minnesota Orchestra, for example). This country's big enough to hold 'em all.

Ms. Poller, please don't be so quick to sell us short.

Another Gut Check for the Star Tribune

The Star Tribune has once again printed an editorial about the governor's handling of the Minnesota budget problem. It gets off to a promising start by praising his decision to not use the state's reserve fund or an proposed expansion of gambling revenues to fix the deficit. (Yep. I'm biased towards those positions - so sue me - ed.) They then criticize him for making more cuts in health care and social service spending which is reasonable, given the paper's left-liberal perspective and is a legitimate topic for discussion and disagreement.

However, once again they indirectly ding him for ruling out tax increases. Once again, I challenge the editorial board at the Star Trib to stand up for what they really want. Go ahead, propose a tax increase. Then explain who shall be more heavily taxed, how much more will they be paying, etc. and why we need more taxes. At the same time, you can explain how the larger tax burden will not hurt our local economy, if you can. If y'all are so certain a tax increase is the correct thing to do, make a case for it and try to persuade the citizenry.

Where do I stand? I just want the state to leave the damn tax code alone for now. Once the state changes it, we never really leave the changes in place long enough to see how things shake out over the long term. Maybe folks would find stability to be a refreshing change. Just spend the money that is actually raised, and leave it at that. If by some miracle the state raises more money than it actually needs, save it for a rainy day. The goal here isn't to turn Minnesota into some libertarian paradise. It's just that I find it hard to believe that Minnesotans are not taxed enough. We are in the upper tier of states when ranked by state and local taxes, isn't that enough? When the economy is tough, increasing the tax burden seems counterproductive, taking an even greater share of the total wealth produced, thus reducing the ability of the private sector to invest and create economic activity (and hopefully more jobs). What's wrong with that?

If You Want to Raise Taxes, Clap Your Hands!

In Saturday's Star Tribune editorial on the budget there are couple of curious notions. I'm not talking about their criticisms of the governor's decision to ignore inflation in the budget projections, as I believe that is a valid criticism. The idea I'm thinking of is the notion that an increase in jobs will increase the state's budget problems:

One reason the state isn't deeper in red ink is that spending on public health and education is coming in lower than expected. That's in part because fewer newcomers have been attracted to the state during the prolonged "jobless" recovery since 2001. As jobs return, so will people to fill them, bringing with them their need for education and health care.

I thought jobs being created in the state would be a good thing. After all, don't people who work pay taxes, instead of collecting unemployment?

The other item is the Star Tribune editorial board's reluctance to openly advocate raising taxes while at the same time criticizing Governor Pawlenty's unwillingness to agree to a tax increase. C'mon guys, don't be shy. If you want higher taxes tell us what taxes you want raised, who should additionally taxed, how much more should they be paying, and why they should support it. Be proud, stand up for your beliefs!

Spring is coming....

Pitchers and catchers reporting today.... Here in Minnesota, it's the first sign that Spring is coming.

Pot, Meet Kettle

Jim Boyd at the Minneapolis Star Tribune doesn't like the Republicans accusing his party of "gutter politics" and is eager to let us know it. There's only one problem: he has misrepresented what was said in one of the pieces that he's bashing. But, let us start at the beginning.

Readers can decide for themselves whether the Democrats are engaging in "gutter politics" by pushing hard on President Bush's Vietnam-era service, or lack thereof, in the National Guard. The story about Bush peeves me a little; I enlisted in the Army and did my time in Vietnam, not carrying an M-16 but not safely in Saigon either. Almost four years of my life were devoted to service, and Bush apparently couldn't be bothered to show up for some of the weekends he promised to serve.
But what really gets my goat is political operatives in Bush's White House making the "gutter" charge. Whether or not you think the accusation is true, it takes a lot of gall for this group to make it.

First, he gets in a gratuitous shot at President Bush by implicitly endorsing the 'AWOL from the National Guard' story. Hey Jim, just thought you should know that all the evidence available says that Bush completed his service in the Guard honorably and his service was acceptable to the United States military. Since you care enough to bring it up, I should let you know that I don't care if you're offended or not. Just wanted to remind you that the mud-slinging in this year's campaign has been done so far by your side. By the way, just because you don't like the accuser doesn't automatically disallow their complaints except, apparently, for the editorial staff at the Star Tribune.

He goes on:

Take what they did to Max Cleland, for example. Cleland is a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, former head of the Department of Veterans Affairs and for one term a U.S. senator from Georgia. Then the Republicans decided to do a number on him. In a hard-fought campaign for re-election, Cleland got everything the Republicans could throw at him, including the kitchen sink. His challenger was Saxby Chambliss, picked and managed by the White House's Karl Rove and Georgia GOP Chairman Ralph Reed. The absolute low point was a television ad which showed Cleland's photo together with those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, equating the three. Cleland, the ad said, had shown his true colors by voting against homeland security. He was, the ad implied, unpatriotic.

Of course he wasn't. Through the long process of creating the Department of Homeland Security, Cleland had supported an alternative plan pushed by Democrats. It differed with the Republican version chiefly in the way it treated federal employees who are members of unions. The new department, after all, was a Democratic initiative, for months strongly opposed by Bush. But the false claim that the moderate Cleland had been soft on terrorism was enough to get him removed by Georgia voters -- in an election animated by the issue of whether the Confederate flag should have been removed from the Georgia statehouse.

Now fast forward to 2004. Cleland has been hitting the campaign trail hard for Sen. John Kerry. Whereas Kerry has been circumspect about Bush's military service, Cleland hasn't. He has repeatedly challenged Bush to prove he met his Guard obligations.


Yep, them Republicans played hardball during the Cleland campaign and won. Not that Democrats ever would do anything like that. We'll just ignore that the Dems were the fine folks who dug up Willie Horton in 1988 (thanks to Al Gore), ran ads accusing Bush and the Republicans of supporting the burning of African-American churches, and whose supporters at the NAACP ran an ad practically accusing Bush of racism and murder because he doesn't believe in hate crime laws (a defensible position, I might add). He also doesn't seem to mind Cleland making accusations about the President's National Guard service that are not supported by fact.

Boyd then complains about Ann Coulter's treatment of how Sen. Cleland lost his limbs in Vietnam:

Whereupon the Republicans unleashed their blond guided missile, Ann Coulter. Here's what she had to say this week: "Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix." Coulter's version is akin to saying that John F. Kennedy was injured in World War II while taking a boat ride.

First I just thought I should mention that Ms. Coulter is not controlled by the Bush administration nor do they do control what she writes about or how she treats it. Although I am not a regular reader of her work, since I consider her to be a right wing equivalent of people like Paul Krugman and Eric Alterman (a pair whose writings are at least as strident and biased as Coulter's if less factual, except Boyd and the Star Tribune never disagree or complain about them) but I read the piece in question and came to a slightly different conclusion. Her description and Boyd's actually were pretty similar(hers was a bit snarkier), and her complaint was that the Democrats misrepresented how his injuries were acquired in order to enhance his image.

Mr. Boyd then goes on to complain about John Kerry's military service has been belittled by some GOPers and what what happend to John McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 campaign. He fails to complain, however, about the accusations of desertion and being AWOL voiced by Democratic party chairman Terry McAuliffe and some of the candidates in debates. Or for that matter the disgusting "Bush = Hitler" stuff on the web, or the ads on the Democratic party website depicting Bush rolling the elderly off a cliff, etc. .

Mr. Boyd thinks that it "takes a lot of gall" for the Bush campaign to complain about Democrat political tactics. I suggest he should learn not to throw stones in glass houses, but that's one miracle I don't ever expect to see any time soon. In the meantime Mr. Boyd, meet Mr. Kettle.

The Star Tribune's Blogger Sample (Fair and Balanced, Not)

In today's OpEx section ( a weekly expanded editorial section in the Sunday Star Tribune ) I found an article titled "Bloggers weigh in on Bush's military service" (I was unable to find a link) that purported to present a sampling of opinion from the world of weblogs. The less than extensive list included seven sites: TAPPED, Eric Alterman's Altercation, Joshua Marshall's Talking Points Memo, awolbush.com,Greg Palast(a writer at the Observer), National Review Online, and Intel Dump. Five sites hostile to Bush, and two that are not. Apparently, this is how the Star Tribune defines 'fair and balanced'. May I suggest that the Star Tribune owes Fox News an apology?

Update: I neglected to include a link to Greg Palast's site and I had also incorrectly attributed his views to the BBC. Both of these errors have been corrected above.

Comments

I've added them, thanks to the friendly folks at Haloscan. I reserve the right to delete comments and ban folks for whatever reasons I desire. Generally, those reasons will include use of abusive or threatening language. Otherwise, comments will be unmodrated, as I don't believe that I can (or should) be responsible for the speech of others. Please try to keep things civil. Thanks.

The Gay Marriage Thing

I guess that I'm in the minority in the part of the blogosphere I read in that I believe the Massachusetts high court overstepped its authority. The decision about whether to allow same-sex couples to marry is one that should be left to the people's representatives in the state legislatures, not an unelected court. It seems to me that the advocates of gay marriage are using the courts (in the same way the political left does on other issues like abortion) to impose on an unwilling majority a change in the definition of the fairly basic institution - marriage.

Not being neither a debater nor a philosopher, political scientist nor lawyer, I'm probably going to say this badly. It seems to me that law is the tool used to describe the formal structure of a society; i.e. what types of conduct are acceptable, what methods are to be used to resolve disputes, etc. . A written constitution serves as the base of the structure, and the rest of it built via the creation of laws compatible with that constitution by the people's elected representatives (the legislature). The job of the courts is to apply existing law to settle the inevitable disputes between individual citizens, citizens and the government, etc. . It is not the job of the courts to write the law, and this is where I believe the Massachusetts court went astray.

As far as I know, it is implicit in the definition of marriage (at least in any culture that I've heard of) that it involves a couple composed of one member of each sex. Changing that definition is not a modest step, and in a society that is a democratic one this kind of change should occur via democratic processes - in other words, by persuading a majority that redefining marriage to included gay couples is the right thing to do. In this case getting a court to impose this change by judicial fiat as wrong and undemocratic. Gay folks were not without a voice, and can over time convince the majority and gain more acceptance for the idea. In the meantime the court's action may boomerang, since a lot of people are not amenable to this sort of thing being shoved down their throats. If nothing else, the folks who oppose gay marriage may gain support from people who believe the courts too often step on the rights of the majority by dictating law to the legislature. The justices should have left this one alone.

The Star Tribune Strikes Again!

The Star Tribune (sometimes known as the Star and Sickle) editorial crew, secure in their conviction that conservatives and republicans are Evil, has again managed via the power of selective memory to produce another biased and inaccurate piece. This one compares/contrasts their opinions about the Kay Report and the Hutton Report. I was going to make it the target of my very first fisking, but Mitch Berg at A Shot in the Dark beat me to it. Now, biased is OK for an editorial (even if I think their heads are stuck up between their collective gluetius maximus), but it is the inaccuracy that is hard to forgive.

About the BBC...

As probably the whole Western world knows by now, the results of an investigation into the death of David Kelley by Lord Justice Hutton were reported in Britain yesterday, with Justice Hutton basically vindicating the government and ripping the BBC a new anal orifice. Jeff Jarvis has been on this thing like a blanket, (start here and scroll down) so I won't repeat it.

All I really wanted to say about the matter is that it's about time. The local public radio news station carries the BBC World Service during the late evening/early mornings, and the bias in their coverage of the United States is just short of blatant. It usually takes the form of an 'analysis' piece bout some Bush administration policy/decision where the 'American view' is presented by a person critical of or hostile to said policy. Only rarely do they deign to have a guest that is supportive of administration policy. This is a rather odd way of fulfilling the part of the BBC charter that requires impartiality.

The resignations of Gavyn Davies and Greg Dykes are a start, but not nearly enough. Andrew Gilligan's head delivered to Jeff Jarvis (as requested ;-) ) isn't enough. There is a whole culture there that needs removal, root and branch. I just hope the next BBC chairman has a big enough shovel.

Bloggers vs. (?) Big Media

While I was perusing his blog for stuff about the Hutton report, I found this post that probably does a better job of expressing what I'm going to try to say here.

It seems a fact of life that (at least for the moment) despite the words posted on blogs decrying the sloppiness and the limits of 'Big Media', bloggers are utterly dependent on it for information. Yes, the analysis provided by the professional journalists is often biased or just plain silly ( yes, Reuters, I'm pointing a finger at you!). And yep, sometimes their asses desperately need fact checking. But for all the buzz about the blogosphere being the 'better' way, we still depend on the major news organizations for the raw material. With rare execption, the basic reporting is done by the news organizations and their people in the field. Bloggers analyze and criticize the results, but the means by which the raw information hasn't changed much. As access to the internet becomes easier to get everywhere in the world, it is conceivable that reporting will become an activity pursued by one and all, since anywone will have the ability to post what they see/know in the window for the whole world to see. My question is, will the signal to noise ratio be better or worse?

What is a Tightwad to Do?

After perusing this item at Opinion Journal, its hard to see where a political home can be found for those of us who are concerned with the growing federal deficits. If the author's figures are accurate, the Democrats are promising to spend even more money than Bush, and repealing Bush's tax cut will not make up the difference.

Since fiscal sanity apparently is not to be found in either major party, what other criteria are left to decide on a vote? National security and the economy are probably the most important since without those two under control, other domestic concerns are moot. At this point the only major Democratic candidate that has convinced me he's serious on security is Sen. Lieberman, and he has about the same chance of winning the Dem. nomination as I do. As far as the economy, they all seem to be interested in raising tax and regulation burdens - which doesn't leave me with a case of the warm fuzzies either. It would seem that I may be pushed towards voting for Bush by default. Please, Democrats, make some decent arguments so at least I can think I have more than one reasonable choice.

Why I won't be voting for Kerry, Part XXX

I keep finding reasons why I won't be able to vote for John Kerry come November. The latest was a statement he made while being interviewed on Fox last Sunday. When he was asked if he thought that President Bush had deliberately led us into war under false pretenses, he dodged the question by accusing Dick Cheney of misleading us into the Iraq invasion instead of concentrating on Al Qaida. As answers go, this one bothered me on multiple grounds.

First, the re-introductions of the 'Bush is dumb' and 'Bush is a puppet' themes by implying that Vice President Cheney is the one really running the government. Second is the idea that the US government dropped the hunt for Al Qaida scumbags in favor of the invasion of Iraq. Earth to Kerry - the government can multitask, and the hunt for Bin Laden's boys hasn't stopped. Last is the weasel factor - if Kerry wants to accuse the administration of wrongdoing, he should have the guts to do it directly instead of attacking Bush indirectly via Cheney.