Mr. Dilettante's Neighborhood

Vikings to Metrodome? -- No Need to Be Coy, Colvin Roy

2012-01-27T06:02:00.000-06:00

You remember how all the momentum was for the Metrodome site for the Vikings? And how it was Minneapolis, and not Ramsey County, that had the funding mechanism in place that could provide the chimerical "local contribution" that would fund a new stadium?

Good times, good times:

City Council insistence that public funding for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium must go before Minneapolis voters put the brakes on Mayor R.T. Rybak's plan for the Metrodome site Thursday.Sandra Colvin Roy, whose stance on the mayor's stadium plan was previously unknown, became the seventh member of the 13-member council standing against the proposal absent a citywide referendum. That vote is required under the city's charter if the city spends more than $10 million on a stadium, but the mayor and council President Barb Johnson would like the Legislature to override it.

And guess who makes Colvin Roy worry about the machinations?

"Looking across the street at Occupy Minnesota and thinking about what's going on in our country right now, some of the discussions that are happening relative to government -- can we trust them or not? -- I cannot countenance going around that referendum," Colvin Roy said Thursday during a hearing.

Well, hell, let's just give Occupy a suite in the new place. That should solve the problem.

So there needs to be a referendum to secure funding in Minneapolis, too? Somewhere in his bunker in Ramsey County, Tony Bennett must have a smirk on his face about this development.

I've made this point before, but it needs to underscored. The "local share" business is a myth. No local electorate will be willing to impose a tax on itself to pay for a playpen for billionaires. The only way this deal gets done is if the state picks up whatever share the Wilfs aren't willing to provide. R. T. Rybak can use whatever flimflammery he'd like, but he has no more leverage to find imaginary local funding than Bennett and his bobos on the board have in Ramsey County.

If we're going to have a Vikings stadium, it's going to be up the legislature and to Mark Dayton. And if the cost is $700-750 million, which it probably will be no matter where they build the thing, it's going to be a tough sell. The good news? The NFL has decided that the Vikes can't move to L.A. this year. After that? Well....

Guilty Pleasures Part Eighty-Four -- Chief of Staff Fearless Maria Offers Random Dance Moves

2012-01-26T20:38:00.001-06:00

Hey everybody, Fearless Maria is back in town! And I'm now the Chief of Staff of the MOB! Take that, Learned Foot!

Well, Foot is due some courtesy, since he's Secretary of State for Life.

Well, tell me this, Mayor Dad -- if I'm Chief of Staff, do I get to boss him around? Because I'm prepared to boss him around. I am. Then again, I heard he's a lawyer so I'd better be careful.

Yes, it is a good idea to be courteous to lawyers.

But do I get to boss him around? C'mon, Dad -- let me boss him around! I never get to boss anyone around! Well, that's a bit of hyperbole -- I do boss around Ben from time to time when he has it coming. But who cares? I just want to get on with the post, so answer my question, buddy! Do I get to boss Learned Foot around?

Yes -- I think you can boss him around. How far it gets you is another matter, of course.

Okay, then. As long as I have the power, I'll use it wisely and won't pursue it for now. So now, this is a Guilty Pleasures. And no, this is not Zombie Fearless Maria. I didn't die, or even retire. I just haven't gotten around to doing a Guilty Pleasures in a while. Sometimes the Mayor gets too busy writing about the Vikings stadium. Sometimes my English teacher is too busy assigning me big honking essays. Which I ace, of course, because I'm Fearless. And just pure awesomeness.

And modest.

Hey, I thought you told me that it isn't bragging if you can back it up. So let's back up the Wayback Machine and play some music from the time of the Phoenician sailors! Yes, I'm getting into my Social Studies classes and I think some of the stuff that Dad finds is at least that old. Like this song:

That's Wilson Pickett, doing the Land of 1,000 Dances. So Dad, what the heck is a bonie maronie, anyway? Or the mashed potato?

I think those were old dance crazes. Ol' Wilson goes through a lot of them on his list.

Well, he's sure wearing a lot of leather, too. His hair is fine and his outfit is kinda silly, but it was 1966, so that's just how things were those days. Right, Dad?

Well, I turned 3 in 1966, so I'm not entirely sure. I know I didn't wear a leather jumpsuit.

So did you wear a leather onesie? No, I don't think Grandma would be that cruel. I suppose you were eating more mashed potatoes than doing the mashed potato dance. But by the time the next some came out, you might have had some dance moves:

This one is called "Give It Up or Turn It Loose." That's what they told you in kindergarten, right, when you were hogging the sand table. Or maybe when you were hogging the magazines in the school library.

I don't remember what magazines they had in the school library at Jackson Elementary. I think it might have been "Highlights for Children" or something like that.

So, you're telling me your childhood was lame? That explains a few things. I'm surprised that James Brown can crack some of those moves in his suit. He looks fine, and so does his band in a weird sorta way, but the wall behind the band is pretty silly. Kinda like a messed up Target symbol or something. And the song is fun.

The JBs were quite a band.

No, that can't be right. I don't see Justin Bieber anywhere in that video, Dad! He wasn't even born yet! And he's horrible anyway. So let's move on the next one:

That's Sly and the Family Stone, who seemed to have misplaced their copy of "Hooked on Phonics" when they named this song "Thank You (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)." Did they leave their copy at Jackson Elementary School for you to read, Dad?

I don't remember seeing them there, but it's possible, Maria. This song actually came out around the same time as the James Brown song, but this performance is later on, around 1974 or so. Sly was starting to lose it around this time, but the band could still play.

He was definitely messed up in his outfits. I mean, really -- what did he do, just close his eyes and grab it out of the high school drama department dress-up box? The rest of the band looks slightly strange, but it was 1974 so I guess they were actually normal. The song, obviously, is great, although I could think of a lot of people who would completely frown on that spelling effort. I'm hoping my teachers don't see that I wrote this post and think I've forgotten how to spell. Which I haven't. In fact, I'm very precise, Dad!

That's why you're Chief of Staff, Maria.

Yeah, that and because you really couldn't trust that Red Squirrel guy with that much power. Anyway, let's get on to the next one. Hey, it's a Soul Train video!

That's the O'Jays, singing "For the Love of Money." And look, they are wearing blinding white tuxedos! Ah, the horror that their wives must have gone through trying to wash them after they all got stained from the wine people were throwing at them, because they were so good! Although I guess that Soul Train guy -- what's his name, Dad?

That would be Don Cornelius.

Yeah, that guy -- the guy who always wore the suits with the lapels as wide as Snelling Avenue and patterns as bright as the Great Coral Reef. Yeah, that guy. He must have edited out the wine throwing part. I suppose they are technically well dressed, because the suits don't look bad or anything, but if they'd have been wearing yellow ties, then I would have been concerned. There are definitely some fun dance moves going on, too -- especially the people waving around the giant dollar bills. You did grow up in a strange time, Dad!

Why yes, Maria. Yes, I did.

Glad you snapped out of it, though! All right, we're going to pass over the disco era because it's kinda boring anyway and we'll break out some 80s. Hey look, it's one of our favorites!

Ah yes, the Bangles continue to "Walk Like an Egyptian." And you can tell it's the 80s, because they all have really HUGE HAIR! Their outfits are okay, a little strange but not strange enough to rant about, although if they used that much hair care product, I wonder if the other ladies in town had to do without for a week. I bet they had hair mousse in the 55-gallon drum size! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have a hole in the ozone layer!

That could be the reason. I hadn't thought of it, but maybe we should blame the Bangles.

Well, we have to blame somebody, Dad. This is politics -- you're the mayor and if you don't blame somebody, they're going to blame you! And I've seen your hair -- I don't think the mousse is going to help you very much.

I actually tried mousse once during the 80s.

Don't tell me things like that, Dad. I'm going to have nightmares imagining you with Flock of Seagulls hair.

It was a nightmare. But I haven't done that for a very long time now. And there's no photographic evidence out there that shows me in a moussed-up state.

Since we already know what's in the hair, let's find out what's in the heart!

"Groove Is in the Heart!" Deee-Lite! Strange, strange, strange. But I always want to make sure that Dad gets a Bootsy Collins fix and there it is! It's a fun song, but the gigantic platform shoes are a bit much to take, as well as yellow pants with green and yellow dress shirts. Or some kinda shirt. Maybe it was just a bath towel -- it's hard to be certain. But the song does make me want to move my feet.

And that's not a bad thing.

No, it's not, Dad. But now we need to move on to the voting. So let's have you pick your favorite in the comments section! Remember, be nice, please! You wouldn't want to get on the bad side of the Chief of Staff! Or the Mayor. But just between you and me, the Mayor is a pushover compared to me. I'm Fearless Maria and don't you forget it! Peace out!

Show Me the Money

2012-01-26T05:47:00.000-06:00

I don't really want to know how much money Debra Bosanek makes. But you have to wonder.

Bosanek has become something of the anti-Joe the Plumber in recent days because she is supposed to symbolize the downtrodden middle class worker who is getting jobbed on her taxes, especially in comparison to her boss. Bosanek is Warren Buffett's secretary and she and ol' Warren have been making the rounds in recent days, complaining about how unfair it all is.

As usual, there's more to the story. First of all, most executive secretaries make pretty good coin and I would imagine that Bosanek is no exception. A columnist for Forbes estimates that for Bosanek to pay the tax rate she claims to pay, she must earn well north of $200,000 a year. If this guy is correct, she might make closer to $400,000 a year:

If she’s really paying a marginal rate of 35%, she’s earning over $379,150 per year in taxable income, which places her in the top 1% of income earners nationally. If this is true, Ms. Bosanek is anything but an average citizen. An average citizen–say someone who earns the median salary of a secretary to a CEO, which is $67, 791, according to a 2011 survey conducted by Certified Compensation Professionals–pays a much lower effective tax rate on taxable income than Ms. Bosanek. Assuming this average citizen took about $15,000 in deductions, she would pay an effective tax rate of 17% on taxable income of $52,791, the same rate Mr. Buffett claims to be paying.

I would not be surprised if she did make that much. Buffett could afford to pay her that much and probably would, since a CEO's secretary typically has the same skill set as a department manager, or even director-level employee in most companies. As has been pointed out elsewhere, there's really no way to know if the assertions that Bosanek and Buffett are making are true unless they both are willing to release their tax returns.

My guess is that the 35% number actually counts the payroll taxes that go to FICA and Medicare, although calculations of the effective income tax rate do not typically lump in those numbers.

Another point worth making: even if you closed the loopholes and really stuck it to the uber-rich, we aren't really talking about a lot of people, as Jonathan Karl of ABC News reveals:

The Top 400 tax filers – the very richest Americans – do pay a lower rate of just 18.11 percent of their total income. Why? Many of them are hedge fund managers and people like Buffet — their income is pegged how much their investment fund grows. For some reason, this income is counted as so-called “carried interest” (even though it is not interest at all; it’s more like a performance bonus) and is taxed at the lower 15 percent capital gains rate.

It’s a loophole for hedge managers, pure and simple. But while it may be an outrage that these uber-rich hedge fund managers pay such a low rate compared to the rest of us, there are just not many of them out there.

But the top 400 tax filers represent a tiny sliver – just .00028 percent of all filers. The vast majority of those earning over $1 million a year pay at a higher rate, which is why the average tax rate for this group, according to the Tax Foundation, is 29.1 percent of taxable income. And, yes, this number includes income taxes, payroll taxes and capital gains taxes.

Either way, I don't think Ms. Bosanek has much to worry about. Buffett has plenty of money coming in these days.

8th Grade Reading

2012-01-25T12:54:00.001-06:00

You can read various critiques of President Obama’s State of the Union address out on the interwebs, but there is one critique out there that is, frankly, pretty lame. It is the idea that there is something risible about the speech being written at an 8th grade level.

I write for a living. Writing at an 8th grade level is a good approach, in most cases. Too many people confuse complexity with intelligence. Truth be told, needless complexity is usually a mask for something else, including incoherence or deceit. At the level of attention that most people can offer, communicating at the 8th grade level is usually where you want to be. Reading need not be the intellectual equivalent of calisthenics.

Remembrances of Things Past

2012-01-25T06:02:00.000-06:00

As time passes, it's easy to forget things that have happened. Memories blur and things that aren't necessarily true can ossify into conventional wisdom. Now that our man Newt is back on the scene, part of the conventional wisdom is that he was ethically challenged and was forced to resign "in disgrace" because of the evil deeds he did.I've heard these things in recent days, but a lot of it didn't jibe with my own recollection of events, although I didn't quite remember why. Writing for the Washington Examiner, Byron York gives us a trip down memory lane:

Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it's worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich's former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich's ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated.

York's piece should be read in full, but a few things are worth calling out. First, the role of Gingrich's chief accuser, Ben "Cooter" Jones, the onetime "Dukes of Hazzard" actor who found his way to Congress but lost his seat due to redistricting. Jones had an axe to grind and he wasn't particularly subtle about it, as York reminds us:

There's no doubt the complaint was rooted in the intense personal animus Jones felt toward Gingrich. In 1995, I sat down with Jones for a talk about Gingrich, and without provocation, Jones simply went off on the Speaker. "He's just full of s--t," Jones told me. "He is. I mean, the guy's never done a damn thing, he's never worked a day in his life, he's never hit a lick at a snake. He's just a bulls--t artist. I mean, think about it. What has this guy ever done in his life?…Gingrich has never worked. He's never had any life experience. He's very gifted in his way at a sort of rhetorical terrorism, and he's gifted in his way at being a career politician, someone who understands how that system works and how to get ahead in it, which is everything that he has derided for all these years. So I think he's a hypocrite, and I think he's a wuss, and I don't mind saying that to him or whoever. To his mother -- I don't care."

At that point, Jones leaned over to speak directly into my recorder. Raising his voice, he declared: "HE'S THE BIGGEST A--HOLE IN AMERICA!"

And if what York asserts is true, why then has the impression of Gingrich being a world-class scoundrel hardened, at least on this issue? Let him explain how the game works:

Back in January 1997, the day after Cole presented his damning report to the Ethics Committee, the Washington Post's front-page banner headline was "Gingrich Actions 'Intentional' or 'Reckless'; Counsel Concludes That Speaker's Course Funding Was 'Clear Violation' of Tax Laws." That same day, the New York Times ran eleven stories on the Gingrich matter, four of them on the front page (one inside story was headlined, "Report Describes How Gingrich Used Taxpayers' Money for Partisan Politics"). On television, Dan Rather began the CBS Evening News by telling viewers that "only now is the evidence of Newt Gingrich's ethics violations and tax problems being disclosed in detail."

The story was much different when Gingrich was exonerated. The Washington Post ran a brief story on page five. The Times ran an equally brief story on page 23. And the evening newscasts of CBS, NBC, and ABC -- which together had devoted hours of coverage to the question of Gingrich's ethics -- did not report the story at all. Not a word.

All the news that's fit to print, of course.

There are plenty of things to dislike about Newt Gingrich, including his philandering, his egomania and his tendency to misunderstand that bloviation isn't an adequate substitute for principle. At this point he'd not be my choice to lead this nation. Still, in a time when dishonesty is firmly in the saddle, York's article is a useful reminder of why dishonesty works so well. I'll say it again -- no matter what you think of Gingrich otherwise, you really need to read the whole thing.

Old Country Buffett

2012-01-25T05:39:00.000-06:00

President Obama thinks it's a shame that Warren Buffett's secretary pays at a higher marginal rate than her boss does. Of course, the reason for the disparate treatment is that Warren Buffett, like most rich people, makes his money in ways that don't count as traditional income.

And sometimes Warren Buffett makes makes money in other ways, too:

Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration's decision to reject TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

"Whatever people bring to us, we're ready to haul," Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett's Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in an interview. If Keystone XL "doesn't happen, we're here to haul."

And it should be quite a haul, too. Read the whole thing.

Vikings to _______?

2012-01-24T06:05:00.001-06:00

As the lege gets ready to start up, Mark Dayton gives Zygi and the boys the news they don't want to hear:

Gov. Mark Dayton told the Minnesota Vikings on Monday that the only workable site this year for a new stadium is the Metrodome, apparently bringing the team's long search for a new home back to where it started."The governor spoke to Mr. Zygi Wilf this afternoon and told him that if we are going to get a stadium bill passed this year, it will have to be at the Metrodome site," said the governor's spokeswoman, Katharine Tinucci.

And now Zygi is coming back to Minnesota for a "come to Jesus" meeting. The question is, who gets to be Jesus in this one:

Vikings spokesman Lester Bagley said the team is upset by the news, which came just the team appeared to be shifting from its preferred site in Arden Hills to the so-called Linden Avenue location near the Minneapolis' Basilica of St. Mary."We were told by the governor's office that Linden Avenue is not workable, at least in the short term," said Bagley, the team's vice president of public affairs and stadium development. "All I can tell you is that our ownership is extremely frustrated with the situation."

I'll bet. We're at the point now where Wilf is getting what is called "Hobson's Choice" -- what is on offer, or nothing. If you read between the lines, what Bagley is telling you is this -- if the Metrodome site is the only option, the Vikings are going to pursue other options. My guess is that is what Wilf will tell Dayton tomorrow. And that is when it gets interesting.

No Exit/Il miglior fabbro

2012-01-24T05:49:00.000-06:00

I did something I hadn't done before in this cycle, which is to watch one of the Republican presidential debates from beginning to end. Since that represents two hours of my life I'll never get back, herewith I present a quick synopsis and a recommendation.

The overall impression I got was similar to the sensation I got when I saw a production of Sartre's "No Exit" during my college years. You saw a bunch of unpleasant people in a version of hell that is entirely of NBC's making. If you look up "unctuous" in the dictionary, there's a picture of Brian Williams next to the definition.
Mitt Romney does a lot better with the attacking when he hires the job out to surrogates. I really don't know if what he said about Newt Gingrich is true, but he came off as desperate and irritating.
Newt Gingrich went into his "well I declare, I don't know what you're talking about, Mitt" mode for most of the debate, which was effective because it seemed like Mitt didn't know what he was talking about.
Rick Santorum continues to come across as an earnest statist with no real reason for being on the stage. He's not going to be president.
Ron Paul is mostly correct in what he says, but he's still got that crazy uncle persona going and I think Stephen Green's observation is spot-on: "Is Ron Paul shrinking or are his suits growing?"

Speaking of which, Green, who writes for PJ Media under the handle "Vodkapundit," has been "drunkblogging" the debates and his synopsis is better and more amusing than most of the other post-mortems I've read. This observation I think is 100% correct:

7:24PM There is only one explanation for this debate: NBC News wanted to show off the GOP contenders as the world’s Most Boring and Irrelevant White Guys. On tomorrow night’s NBC News primetime program, the second coming of Black Jesus.Compare and contrast, dulled audience.

Maybe not the nicest way to put it, but that's about it. I strongly recommend clicking the link -- he's really good and makes at least a half dozen other observations that ring true.

No SOPA, or PIPA Longstocking

2012-01-23T06:04:00.000-06:00

At least for now, SOPA and PIPA are not happening. These two bills were both ostensibly aimed at stopping the problem of pirated intellectual property, particularly movies and music. The problem was that, in designing a mechanism to shut down primarily overseas websites, the law was likely to put the clampdown on a lot of what happens on the Internet.

Hollywood wanted SOPA (the House version) and/or PIPA (the Senate version) to pass and it hired former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, the one-time Friend of Angelo who played a major role in ensuring that corruption in the financial industry was undisturbed, to protect its interests. Didn't work out so well. And now Dodd is very angry at the Obama administration in particular, and Democrats in general, for not staying bought:

Hollywood's top lobbyist and former Sen. Chris Dodd is threatening to cut off campaign funds to President Obama's re-election effort because of anger over the White House appearing to side with tech companies in a bitter fight over anti-piracy legislation.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Dodd fired off a warning to Obama -- his former Senate Democratic colleague in this election year -- "don't take us for granted."

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

This is actually pretty amusing, because to me backing away from SOPA and PIPA is one of the best things the Obama administration has done since it first came to power. This was bad legislation and would have had the potential to hurt a lot more people than it would have benefited. It's also amusing because it's highly unusual to hear a lobbyist be so out front about the fact that he's trying to buy votes.

I suppose Dodd is confused because while he was a scoundrel whose vote was always negotiable, he had the moral probity to stay bought. And I suppose it's difficult to remember the proper pecking order among mendicants for who gets what from the Obama administration. Hollywood gives a lot of money, but they didn't get the Solyndra treatment in terms of tilting the playing field their way. If you think you are a winner, it's gotta hurt to be a loser in the poker pork game.

Meanwhile, our two august Senators, Klobuchar and Franken, were staunch PIPA supporters. As far as one can tell in the gauzy, feel-good Lifetime Channel world that is Amy Klobuchar's career, she stayed bought. Wonder if the money will keep coming now.

Victory Speech - Updated

2012-01-22T11:50:00.000-06:00

We were going to do a press conference, but it was obvious from the get-go that being elected Mayor of the MOB isn't really news. And staging a press conference did present the remote yet uncomfortable possibility that some leftyblogger might actually show up at my house. That would likely disturb my neighbors and would be rediculous. So here's my speech:

Thanks to everyone for your support. It reflects two things -- that you might have actually enjoyed something you read here; and your evident good taste in rejecting the other candidates. That is the greatest victory, of course. It's also a sign of your courage, since Ecker is heavily armed.

What is my goal for my tenure as MOB Mayor? To endure as much ridicule as possible. And to encourage all MOB bloggers to write as much as they can. Unlike my predecessor, the honorable J. Roosh, I will keep writing. We need all bloggers to be writing as much as they can. Even dashed off tripe can add to the debate, as this blog has proved conclusively for the past six years.

We will have more to say at the MOB Party, which will take place on Saturday, Feb. 25 at Ol' Mexico in Roseville. In the meantime, my chief of staff Fearless Maria is in charge of processing applications for the various lucrative patronage positions that are now available. Know that the following positions are already filled:

Everything else is up for grabs. And if nothing else, we can trust on everyone to be grabby.

Update (01/23/12). We have added two additional positions to the team:

Watch this space for additional updates.

She Turned Me Into a Newt

2012-01-22T09:42:00.000-06:00

Newt Gingrich wins South Carolina, going away. Why do you suppose that happened? It's pretty simple, really. He's out there throwing haymakers. He's willing to do whatever it takes to win, even if it means blowing up his fellow Republicans. He's working the passion angle very well right now. And primary voters tend to be more passionate than the overall electorate.

We can safely assume that the Obama campaign is going to be fear and loathing all the way, since he'll not be able to defend his record, which has fallen far short of the myriad promises he made. Even if we had better Republican choices than we do, any Republican that runs for office these days is going to be vilified. That's just the way it is.

If Newt Gingrich has any advantage, it's that his villainy is pretty much out there and not much of a revelation to anyone. For anyone over the age of 30 who was even remotely paying attention, Newt is well known. There's really not that much we can be told about him that we don't already know. And to a certain extent, the experience of living through Bill Clinton's presidency is crucial to what is happening. By the end of his term, everyone in the world recognized that Bill Clinton was a world-class scoundrel and a moral reprobate, but even his harshest critics had to admit that he was a smart dude. Gingrich offers a similar profile, at least in some ways.

As for Romney, he's still in a better position, but he has problems to face. Much has been made about the idea of income inequality driving this election, which makes sense because that is the ground Obama would prefer to fight upon, but I really don't think that's it. What I think might turn this election isn't economic populism as much as it is a revolt against elitism. And that's Romney's problem. When people compare Romney to John Kerry, this is what they mean. Romney has the bearing of an elitist -- he can't be a man of the people because he's never been one.

We've had a lot of elitists lately. Obama masked his own elitism fairly well until he got into office. The various Bushes who have been in office were elitists, too. I'm getting a Jacksonian vibe right now and while it would be ridiculous to understand Gingrich as an Andrew Jackson-style outsider, he's enough of a ruffian that he's getting traction. Romney will never be anything other than an elitist. If that flavor is out of favor, he's going to be a tough sell.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- Not That They Really Matter At This Point Edition

2012-01-20T20:13:00.000-06:00

So old dude, I heard you won the election and are now the new Mayor of the MOB.

You heard right, Seabiscuit. It's quite an honor.

So tell me -- how you are going to use nepotism to give me a really sweet job in your administration?

Keep this under your hat, young fella, but I believe you are being vetted for a potential position as the Minister of HYYYYYYYYPPPPPE!

That seems like a lateral move to me. I've been doing HYYYYYYYPPPPPE! for a number of years now. What else ya got?

You should probably just let the process play out, young fella. This is how they got Blago, ya know.

Good point, Decrepit! Anyway, we do have to pick the remaining games, even though the Green Bay Packers are no longer part of the tournament. I gotta tell you, my heart isn't in this, but I'm nothing if not contractually obligated to offer my views on such things. So watch me work!

Baltimore Ravens (+7) vs. New England Patriots. It's the classic matchup. Offense vs. Defense. Style vs. Substance. Ratty Hooded Sweatshirt against Nylon-Clad Generic Coach. So many contrasts, old dude! I learned my lesson last week when I was foolhardy enough to say that the Patriots would be shut out. Instead, they scored 45 points and Tom Brady threw six touchdowns. I'm not afraid to say that I might have been a little wrong about that one, but as a fully licensed prognosticator and high school sophomore, I feel that I do have a professional opinion to offer. And I'm also very predictable. Ravens 24, Pats 0.

Slow learner, too, apparently. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ravens pull this off, because they are a superior defensive team, but I don't know that they can score enough to win. I'm going to say that they do beat the spread, though. Pats 31, Ravens 27.

New York Football Giants (+2.5) vs. San Francisco 49ers. I also learned that it's a bad idea to question the New York media, since they are a lot louder than I am. I'm pretty sure I could take Mike Lupica in a game of one-on-one, since he's, what, 73 or something, but he's seen a few things that I haven't. Like the Civil War, for example. I kid, I kid. The Giants played well, I'll admit, and they are the ever-popular "hot team" that is always noticed at this time of year. What I don't get is this -- if they were so hot, how did they lose to the Redskins in December? Hot must be a different concept in New York. As for the game, I highly doubt that Eli Manning is going to have a good game, because he is still turnover-prone. If everything breaks right, the Giants could win. But I don't think they will. Niners 14, G-Men 10.

I watched the game last week. Pretty much every stinking minute of it. The Giants were dominant. Can they do it again? I don't see why not. The 49ers are a talented team, but they haven't been there before. The Giants have. I think that makes the difference. Giants 27, 49ers 20.

Well, that's all I have for this one. Excuse me while I fight my way through the lobby where all the job applicants are lining up for patronage positions. Ben out!

Welcome to City Hall

2012-01-20T19:52:00.002-06:00

It is official. Mr. Dilettante is the new Mayor of the MOB. We will have a press conference over the weekend to lay out our agenda and announce a few key appointments. My thanks to SOSFL Learned Foot for his diligence and, if I may, I'd especially like to congratulate the other candidates in the race for running a spirited campaign, with special thanks to the Master of Sausages for phoning it in.

State of Play

2012-01-20T06:09:00.000-06:00

Another presidential debate last night -- only saw excerpts of it because the kids were watching something else. Good thing, too. A lot happened in the last few days, though:

Our friend First Ringer provides a typically great synopsis over at Mitch's place if you need to catch up on all of the particulars, but the big news of the day was that Rick Perry dropped out of the race and endorsed Newt Gingrich, which was a curious move. One could write volumes about the problems Perry encountered in his campaign. Whether anyone would want to read them is another matter. He was supposed to the deus ex machina of the race, but he turned out to be more of a doofus ex machina. He has a good record as governor and I remain convinced that being a governor is the best prerequisite for the job of President, but he wasn't ready to be president. And it's likely he never will be.
Newt Gingrich is, as always, the most interesting guy in the race, although he's interesting in the sense of the famous Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times." One of his ex-wives unloaded on him yesterday and the matter came up in the debate, which gave Gingrich the opening to be outrageously outraged about the whole thing. He took great, theatrical umbrage and battered CNN moderator John King about the neck and ears, earning a standing ovation from the assembled crowd. It's a pretty good trick to get a room full of Republicans to give a standing ovation to a philanderer, but that's the beauty of Newt. I continue to believe his popularity rests entirely on his willingness to play bully boy and take the battle to his interlocutors. I'll admit I enjoy it, too. Having said that, it's preposterous to think he could be an effective President. Andy Aplikowski has an interesting take on the matter of Gingrich, too.
Rick Santorum is still standing, for reasons that aren't entirely clear. I've never really thought much of him and while he's been occasionally effective on the trail and may have won Iowa after all, he's not the right guy to run the country. Social conservatism is fine but for it to triumph it needs to win the hearts and minds of the citizenry through persuasion, not be imposed by fiat. And Santorum seems far too comfortable with the notion of using the tools of the state to impose things by fiat.
Ron Paul is Ron Paul. He's doing his Old Testament prophet shtick and raising important points, but he's also 76 years old and it's evident that he's getting worn down. I fully expect him to remain in the race to the end, though, because he's playing the long game and trying to change the nature of the conversation. And in doing so he's performing a necessary service.
That leaves Mitt Romney. He's not the guy most conservatives would prefer, but he's the guy we are likely to get, despite the punches in the nose he's getting at the moment. He's been running for president for about 8 years now and the experience shows in his campaign. He's problematic for several reasons, but in the end the question will be this -- is he better than Barack Obama? If this year plays out the way I suspect it will, Obama will have a very difficult time convincing anyone he deserves a second term.

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXXIII -- Linden Avenue?

2012-01-19T06:10:00.000-06:00

In the ever-churning Vikings debate, is Arden Hills dead? Mark Dayton thinks so:

Dayton was firm about the fate of one site: The Vikings' previously preferred site at Arden Hills, he said, "is not financially viable." The Vikings, he said, could choose to contribute $700 million to the cost of the $1.1 billion stadium -- something the Vikings immediately said would not be possible.

The Vikings could fork over that much money if they chose to, but they won't, mostly because the league won't let them. The question is, does the Linden Avenue site actually work? Lester Bagley said this:

Vikings spokesman Lester Bagley called the Linden Avenue site "intriguing," and said: "It's got the ability to share game-day experience with [the] Twins and Target Center. If Arden Hills is not achievable, we will work with state leaders and the city of Minneapolis to try to negotiate an agreement."

He also said this, though:

Bagley, the team's vice president for stadium development, stopped short of a full embrace."We are not there yet," he said. "We have to study this."

A few thoughts:

It's worth remembering that a large part of the costs associated with the Arden Hills project concerned the improvement of local roads. Those projects are going to happen regardless of whether or not a stadium is built on the site; the only real change is that an additional 35W interchange at County Road H2 to direct traffic to a stadium is now out. It was always a curious thing that these costs were included in the project.
The state will still need to deal with the cleanup and remediation costs of the Arden Hills site. That hasn't changed, although the costs will now get transferred to another place on the ledger.
The only real advantage I see to the Linden Avenue site is that it would allow the Vikings to stay in the Dome during construction.
There's no real funding available for the Linden Avenue site, either. R. T. Rybak doesn't have it and it would take a change to the Minneapolis city charter to make it happen.
The Basilica of St. Mary would have a lot of trouble if the stadium goes on that site. Mary Jo Copeland's Sharing and Caring Hands facility would also get displaced. Perhaps Archbishop Nienstedt will be too busy dealing with other matters, but running afoul of the Archdiocese isn't wise.
When the Vikings are done "studying" the issue, they may decide that Linden Avenue won't work. What then?

I don't know if the Arden Hills site is dead, or merely mostly dead. But there are larger questions involved and we are no closer to resolving them after yesterday than we were before.

Keystone Cop

2012-01-19T05:44:00.000-06:00

By now you've heard that Barack Obama has sandbagged the Keystone XL pipeline, which was going to be used to get Canadian oil down to our refining facilities in Texas. If you want a Canadian perspective on the matter, check out this video. It's long, but commenter Ezra Levant makes the following points:

Canada sells all of its oil to the U.S. If we won't buy it, someone else will.
The decision benefits Venezuela
The environmental concerns that have been raised are all red herrings, since hundreds of pipelines of various sorts already crisscross the Ogalala aquifer
In 2008 Obama promised to end our dependence on buying oil from the Middle East and Venezuela; this decision runs counter to that

Definitely worth a click.

How Does Marianne Gingrich End Newt's Career with One Interview?

2012-01-18T21:21:00.001-06:00

That's the premise behind all the chattering going on about the interview that ABC News apparently did with Marianne Gingrich, the second wife of Newt Gingrich, the known reprobate who is running for president on the Republican side of the equation.

I'm hard pressed to think of what this woman could say about Newt that would be any worse than what we already know about the guy. I mean, it's well established that he's a narcissist, a blowhard and that he has a difficult time controlling his genitalia, which was standard presidential behavior in the 1990s, of course. So what could she tell us that we don't already know? Let's make this a contest and solicit your guesses. I'll throw out a few possibilities to get things started:

Newt killed a puppy with his bare hands
Newt did the voiceover work in the 1980s for the Snuggle the Fabric Softener Bear ad campaign
Newt was once a roadie for Uriah Heep
Newt left Marianne because of a torrid affair/love triangle involving Garry Trudeau and Barbara Mikulski
Newt actually is the Antichrist
Newt never once offered Marianne the opportunity to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"
Newt is actually the Red Squirrel and has abandoned his presidential bid to run for Mayor of the MOB

I'll stop now before this becomes a NIGP Top 11 List. Weigh in!

Walker vs. the Machine

2012-01-18T06:07:00.001-06:00

My friend Gary Miller used to let me play in his internet sandbox Truth vs. the Machine, which is now sadly defunct. But the Machine never goes away, as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is learning:

Shouting "This is what democracy looks like!" and singing "We Shall Overcome," volunteers, union activists and Democratic partisans delivered a truckload of petitions to the state's Government Accountability Board, virtually assuring that Walker will face a recall election this year, probably in the summer.

For his part, Walker seems to be taking a "bring it on" stance:

Walker said he looks forward to talking to voters "about my continued promises to control government spending, balance the budget and hold the line on taxes." He added that he eliminated a $3.6 billion deficit last year without raising taxes.

And the Democrats do have a problem they need to address -- they may have a lot of anger, but they don't have a candidate:

Potential candidates include Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in 2010; former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, who failed in runs for governor in 2002 and attorney general in 2006; David Obey, a former longtime congressman from northwestern Wisconsin; and state Sens. Tim Cullen, a moderate Democrat, and Jon Erpenbach, a leader of the Democrats who fled the state last winter to keep the Senate from approving the anti-union bill.The election would serve as a prelude to the presidential battle in this battleground state, and Erpenbach said he believes it will have national implications because Democrats feel they are fighting an assault on the middle class. But he said the Democrats will not win with a simple protest candidate."'Vote for me because I'm not Scott Walker' is not going to do it," Erpenbach said.

To review -- the Democrats offer either people who have lost before (Barrett and Falk) or very old men (Obey and Cullen). I've seen Erpenbach and he won't beat Walker, either. Democrats in Wisconsin are like dogs that chase the car. They've now caught the car. Can they do anything with it? Guess we'll find out soon enough, but the guess here is that it won't end well for them.

Make Sure You Read This

2012-01-18T05:53:00.000-06:00

There's a really good analysis of the problems besetting Europe at City Journal. Theodore Dalrymple delivers the correct conclusion at the very end:

In short, the incontinent spending of many European governments, which awarded whole populations unearned benefits at the expense of generations to come, has—along with a megalomaniacal currency union—produced a crisis not merely economic but social, political, and even civilizational. The European Union that was supposed to put an end to war on the continent has resuscitated antagonisms that might end in bellicosity, if not in outright war. And the European Project stands revealed as what any sensible person could have seen it always was: something akin to the construction of a massive, post-Tito Yugoslavia.

And we all know how that ended. Read the whole thing -- it's longish but definitely worth your time. And remember this -- people who admire Europe and its peculiarities are currently in charge of our government at the federal level.

The polls are open

2012-01-17T21:24:00.001-06:00

Voting has begun for the MOB mayoral election over at the Secretary of State's office. As you likely know, I am a candidate for this imaginary office and would appreciate your support, although you might want to vote for Ecker, since he's heavily armed. As always, let your conscience be your guide and remember -- either way, Fearless Maria is still very bitter about all this.

Answering a question

2012-01-17T05:59:00.000-06:00

Over at Mitch Berg's blog, a discussion about conservatism has broken out and I answered two questions in his comment section, to wit:

What does conservatism mean to you?
What first got you excited about politics?

And my response was:

For me, conservatism is recognizing that while my personal life experience is unique, my experiences are not. Because of that deference is due to the judgments of my predecessors on a variety of matters, especially those concerning the ordering of society. I choose to assume that those who came before me might have insights that still have relevance to our world.

As for what got me excited me about politics — nothing, really. In fact, I rather dislike it. However, I realize that I need to be in the arena because there are too many people who are (a) wrong-headed and (b) full of passion to change the world because they overvalue their own worldview and life experiences.

So how would you answer the questions? Share it with Mitch, or share it here. Better yet, do both. We're all about sharing.

I Appreciate the Honesty

2012-01-16T05:57:00.001-06:00

Good to know where you stand. Must be part of that nuance thing that our betters are always instructing us about. Besides, I'm not completely critical of Mr. Obama. I like the tie he's wearing in the picture -- it's very classy. There -- just with that statement, I bet I get at least five more points on the ol' I.Q. test.

That Dog Won't Huntsman

2012-01-16T05:38:00.000-06:00

It took a few days longer than I thought it would, but Jon Huntsman is apparently out:

Jon Huntsman Jr. informed his advisers Sunday that he intends to drop out of the Republican presidential race, ending his candidacy a week before he had hoped to revive his campaign in the South Carolina primary.Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the soaring expectations of his candidacy, planned to make a formal announcement Monday, hours before he had been set to participate in an evening debate in Myrtle Beach.

So I have one question -- other than Huntsman himself, who precisely had "soaring expectations" for his candidacy? I really can't think of anyone. Can you?

Noted in passing

2012-01-15T20:46:00.000-06:00

Just an observation, based on what I see from social media (Facebook and Twitter):

I have a number of friends and people I follow on Twitter who are from Chicago area. Many of this number are Bears fans. Not one has indulged in any schadenfreude concerning what happened to the Packers today. In fact, on my Facebook feed, the Bears fans have been quite respectful.

On the other hand, I've seen at least a dozen "ha ha the Packers suck" and "the cheese is melting" comments from various Minnesota-based correspondents. I'm not sure what that means, or if you can draw any conclusions from it. But I find it quite interesting.

All Hail the New York Giants

2012-01-15T20:01:00.001-06:00

The better team won today. It was fun while it lasted -- it's awfully tough to repeat in this league and the Packers weren't ready for the challenge they faced, so they got what they deserved. Still love 'em anyway. Time to get ready for next season....

Fearless Maria Hits the Dozen

2012-01-15T08:49:00.002-06:00

It goes by so very fast. Maria is 12 years old today. I wrote an essay about her birth back in '08 that you can read here. She remains a wonderful daughter and a source of great joy for everyone who knows her.

Things I Learn on Facebook

2012-01-14T11:15:00.005-06:00

One of my old college friends tipped me to this -- apparently today is National Pastrami Day. Hey, if Hallmark can invent holidays, there's no reason why the lunchmeat industry shouldn't follow suit. Finding really good pastrami in the Twin Cities is tough, but it might be time to start a quest.

Update: Gino is considering naming his birthday National Italian Beef Day. Once the paperwork gets posted, I'll keep you apprised.

Things I Learn on the Internet

2012-01-14T09:40:00.001-06:00

Who knew?

Ex-presidential candidate John Edwards has a serious heart condition that will require a medical procedure next month and his illness limits his travel including for an upcoming court case over possible campaign violations, his doctor told a judge, who delayed the trial.

So heartless people can have a heart condition? Go figure!

Seriously -- go get it treated, Mr. Edwards. Then go away.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- NFL Divisional Round HYYYYYYYYPPPPPPE! Edition

2012-01-13T20:29:00.000-06:00

Old dude, there's so much HYYYYYYYPPPPPPPPE! out there that I had to get it out of the way in the headline! Can you feel it?

I'm actually a bit desensitized to it, considering I experience it nearly every day.

Are you sure that it's just because you usually need a nap? Old dudes like to nap, I've noticed.

Could be. But what does that have to do with picking the football games?

Well, nothing. I'm supposed to care about your well-being. And whether or not you're taking your Geritol and all the other over-the-counter medications you see on the 5:30 news. But enough of that. We've got games to pick. Watch me work!

N'awlins Saints (-3 1/2) vs. San Francisco 49ers. So let me get this straight. The 49ers were 13-3 and earned a first round bye, but they are home underdogs? Speed of lighting, roar of thunder! Well, that's what happens when you play the New Orleans Saints, who are the best offense on the entire planet and perhaps the entire solar system as well. That's what they keep telling me on ESPN. Well guess what? They are now walking into the Streets of San Francisco and they're going to need more than a "Quinn Martin Production" to win this one. Jim Harbaugh doesn't wear a bad hat like that Karl Malden dude, but after his 49ers get after Drew Brees, they might be asking "what will you do? What will you do?" Niners 35, Saints 17.

Nice use of 70s references there, Benster! Your link fu is strong, grasshopper. Will your pick be correct, though? I'd like it to be, because as a Packer fan I'd prefer to avoid the Saints. But I think the Saints are probably going to be able to beat San Francisco after a bit of a struggle. Saints 31, 49ers 27.

Denver Tebows (+13 1/2) vs. New England Evil Empire. So is this one Carthage vs. Rome -- total war? Or is it a battle of Good and Evil? It's brave Sir Tebow, who is on a mission from God, although some people call him. . . Tim. Our man Tebow has been on a quest for the Holy Grail, and now he finds himself in Foxborough to face the dark lord Belichick. Guess what? You might expect me to pick the Patriots, right? Well -- NNNNNNNNNT! That is incorrect! The Patriots can't win at home in the playoffs. They have failed twice in a row and do not have a good defense. In fact, the Patriots were lucky to get out of Denver alive last time. The final score was pretty comfortable for New England fans, but their comfort level is about to plummet. Denver 21, New England 0.

Uh, no. I've been pretty impressed with the Denver defense this year, and there's no denying that Tebow has made a lot of big plays when it matters, but this seems like too large a task. The window is closing on Tom Brady and if he's going to make another Super Bowl run, it probably needs to be soon. Hard to see the Pats falling short this week. New England 34, Denver 20.

Houston Texans (+7 1/2) vs. Baltimore Ravens. It's T. J. Yates against Ray Lewis. That could be trouble for the fresh-faced kid from Carolina. The Texans played very well last week in defeating the Bengals, and our man J. J. Watt made a huge play by picking off a pass and lumbering into the end zone. Way to represent, J. J.! Gotta give some love to our Badger alums! But here's the funny thing -- if the Texans are going to have a chance in this game, it might be Badger alum Owen Daniels who might have to make a big play against the Ravens defense. In fact, I think the Ravens aren't ready for what they're about to face, because Joe Flacco is one inconsistent quarterback and you never know which Baltimore team is going to show up. Houston 17, Baltimore 10.

Houston plays very good defense, so they should have a chance. I agree that Flacco isn't all that great, but he's probably going to be better than T. J. Yates. I think it's a low-scoring game, but I'll go with the Ravens. Baltimore 24, Houston 14.

New York Football Giants (+7 1/2) vs. Glorious Green Bay Packers. I noticed this week that some of the Giants were running their mouths a little bit. Jason Pierre-Paul, who is a very good player but not known for his tact, went all Joe Namath and guaranteed a win. Good move, sir! As it happens, the old dude and I were at Lambeau the last time the Giants paid a visit. Tom Coughlin's face didn't freeze off that time, but the Giants were humiliated 45-17 and had to spend an additional night in lovely Appleton because the East Coast was snowed in. Bet that was fun for the Giants! My X Factors for this game are Jordy Nelson and Tramon Williams. I think both will get into the end zone and the Williams pick will be especially devastating to our old pal Eli Manning, who has played well lately but usually is good for a pick or two a game. Jordy Nelson has not been getting a lot of headlines, but if you look at the stats, you'll see that he has scored 15 touchdowns this season. That's a lot of touchdowns, kids. And when Jordy Nelson scores, the Packers win. Packers 45, Giants 17.

I heard some of the same things you did, young fella. The Giants are a hot team. They are playing so well right now. It's just like 2007. Pull back from the hype (not HYYYYYYPPPPPPPE!, which is a more wholesome thing) and you'll notice that the Giants were 9-7 and were outscored as a team this season. They played their best game of the season against the Packers on their own turf and still came up short. And it's not 2007, because Aaron Rodgers isn't an aging gunslinger. He's the best quarterback on the planet and he's at the peak of his powers. The Giants will give the Packers a struggle early, but I also think Jordy Nelson will score. As will a few of his friends. And the Giants won't be able to keep up. Packers 38, Giants 21.

Just a reminder, kids. This is what it will look like in Lambeau on Sunday. Get used to it. Ben out!

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXXIII - Meaningless Scurrying and a Jan Parker Sighting

2012-01-13T06:08:00.002-06:00

Minneapolis city officials, the gang of spendthrifts known as the Ramsey County Board and various other mendicants were parading around the Capitol yesterday, Vikings stadium proposals in hand. They all came with their plans and presented them to a guy who can't actually make the decision.

It was a ludicrous exercise. We learned nothing new. Although there was one thing that was surprising -- we heard an actual public statement from Jan Parker, the otherwise-invisible DFL timeserver who ostensibly represents my district on the County Board:

Ramsey County Commissioner Jan Parker said she believed there was a bias toward building the stadium in Minneapolis, and she specifically criticized the Star Tribune. Parker said she thought the newspaper was skewing its coverage in favor of the Metrodome site because it holds land nearby. "I'm just appalled at the lack of objectivity," she said.

This is hilarious, since the Parkers of the world usually count on the Star Tribune to carry their water. It's doubly hilarious because it stepped on the message of her fellow commissioners, which compelled her colleague Rafael Ortega to contradict her:

At a brief news conference outside the governor's office, county officials were asked repeatedly Thursday whether they felt there was a "bias" in favor of Minneapolis. "We don't feel there's been any bias," Ortega said.

And this, of course, is hilarious as well. Of course there's a bias in favor of Minneapolis. A lot of politicians have staked their careers on putting eggs into the Minneapolis basket and their vision of a dream world with light rail lines and other amenities. It's a vision that is as ludicrous as the vision Zygi Wilf has about Arden Hills. The one thing both have in common is that they are perfectly willing to spend other people's money to make their vision come true.

And yes, the Star Tribune suits want the Metrodome site because they envision that they can make a lot of money if they can sell the land around their building to the Vikings.

Two other things worth noting:

As many of us have suspected, the lege is going to do what it is going to do and the artificial deadline doesn't mean much. There's a chance the matter won't even be taken up in this session. And Kurt Zellers, bless his heart, doesn't seem to care that much.
Plenty of people have noticed that the Vikings are now saying they will accept a stadium wherever it is built -- I must have seen a few dozen hits on the ol' Twitter feed about it. I wouldn't put too much stock into that statement. If this thing drags out or doesn't get resolved, the Vikings will start getting pretty antsy and the rhetoric will change.

mayoral race question 3

2012-01-12T20:22:00.000-06:00

the final question is posed

QUESTION: Which ONE (no more, no less)of your fellow mayoral candidates is the least suitable to be MOB Mayor? Please explain why this person would be an embarrassment / pose an existential threat to the art of blogging / just sucks in general. DIFFICULTY: You may NOT use capital letters, punctuation and the letter 'b'.

if you are wondering why grammar and rules of punctuation do not seem to apply that is why

this makes posting like writing an e e cummings poem only far worse

rules also take early plan to answer question channeling saturday morning cartoon favorite mushmouth out of play

a warning you should know link is actively annoying so dont click it whatever you do

anyway lets answer the question

definitely tough to denounce one candidate since his name includes letter not used

he wont win anyway though so to hell with him not worth our time

could denounce red squirrel guy however old rule states never punch down

and red squirrel is so down that foot mocks him with impunity

denouncing ecker is dangerous since he remains heavily armed

that leaves night writer

tough guy to denounce however this is the game so game on

night writer really doesnt suck although he does have suspect facial hair

he claims title master of sausages

current presidential administration does not approve of sausages

night writer might participate in witness protection program

this would explain suspect facial hair

night writer is a highly skilled writer although he shills for evil corporate interests

that is the word on the street anyway

no cant use occupy wall street rhetoric that is icky

his wife and daughters are lovely people hard to ding him for that

his son in law is a lutheran minister

a fellow could face hell fire for making fun of lutheran ministers

some reason must exist for night writer denunciation

foot suggested existentialism so we could use jean paul sartre

hell is other night writers

no that makes no sense and there is nothing wrong with night writers teeth so sartre comparison wont work

could channel j d salinger and go all holden caufield on his tuchus which might work

perhaps night writer is a phony

no thats silly

or we could try monty python

his father was a hamster and his mother smelled of

no cant use that word either

perhaps cheech and chong

his mamas talkin to night writer
she tells him how to live
he dont listen to her
his head is like a sieve

that seems to work
night writer is so old he played that song at his senior promand lived it too
although drag queen incident cheech and chong make reference to is well hidden from view
yes night writer is actually j edgar hoover and is in witness protection program

cant vote for someone like that
it would put his life in danger

in conclusion night writer is very shadowy and has suspect facial hair
he does not deserve your support

if he offers you a sausage he is not happy to see you
run the other way
seriously

thats it
thank you very much

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXXII - Artificial Deadline Day

2012-01-12T06:10:00.000-06:00

Boy howdy, the excitement is building in the Capitol, because today is the day it gets decided:

Minneapolis and Ramsey County hurriedly retooled competing plans Wednesday to build a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, although both appeared to have continuing flaws. Meanwhile a sudden, last-minute bid from Shakopee could complicate the race.Racing to meet a 5 p.m. Thursday deadline set by Gov. Mark Dayton, city and county officials said they expected to work nearly up to the deadline. As many as five locations -- including three in Minneapolis -- are in play.

Shakopee? Yes, Shakopee. Scott County. Closer, in some cases, to the ticket-buying base than Arden Hills is. And they do have the land for parking. So, whaddya say, Vikings?

The Vikings, meanwhile, say they still prefer a $1.1 billion stadium in Ramsey County's Arden Hills, and brushed aside Wednesday's proposal by Shakopee officials to build a $920 million stadium in Scott County backed by racino money.

Of course they do. Nothing has really changed, because the Vikings want the big score, which is the development potential in Arden Hills. Real estate developers like real estate they can develop. That's what you get in Arden Hills.A few comments are in order:

If anyone tells you, and that includes the Vikings, that this is about building a "people's stadium" for the benefit of the State of Minnesota, they are lying. It's never been the case.
Beyond the lack of development potential, the main reason the Vikings haven't been all that interested in the Metrodome site is that they need the Metrodome, as it is currently configured, to remain operational while their new palace is built. Why is that? The Vikings may not want to play in the Metrodome long-term, but they can live with it for now. The Vikings would lose money, rather a lot of it, if they have to play at TCF Bank Stadium for a 2-4 years. And while we are throwing around huge numbers for costs, there's a difference between a capital budget and an operating budget. If the Vikes had to play at TCF, it would hurt their current operating receipts. That is precisely why the Vikings released the letter on Tuesday that outlines those issues. They have to be polite for the moment, but they have no intention of taking a multi-year haircut.
Every site in consideration assumes income that likely won't be available. I don't see the Ramsey County food/beverage tax plan getting anywhere. While racino is a possibility, it's hardly a slam dunk. The tribes that are making the money on gambling now don't want to take a haircut, either, and they have plenty of friends in the Lege. And the three-card monte game that Minneapolis officials are playing won't ever produce the revenue they claim it will.
Because of these factors, we need to be up front -- the state would likely end up paying both the supposed "state" portion and whatever "local" funding source is involved. So you can assume that the overall cost to the state, at any location, is going to be around $750 million. You can ask the Vikings to make up the overage, but you can also ask to be named King of Portugal. Neither request is likely to get a favorable response.
You may not have noticed this, but the San Diego Chargers announced that they are staying in San Diego for the 2012 season. The Chargers are, along with the Vikings, the most likely potential team to consider a move to Los Angeles. The Vikings haven't said where they will be.

So that's the question folks. Same question it's always been. What are the Vikings worth to you? Do you give them what they want, or do you let them walk? Okay, that's two questions. We need to answer both. We don't need to answer today, but we do need to answer it soon.

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXXI - We Shall Send You a Letter

2012-01-11T06:05:00.000-06:00

It's increasingly evident that there's a push to stampede the Vikings into accepting the Metrodome site for their new stadium. One problem -- they don't want to do that:

In his letter aimed at dispelling portrayals of the Metrodome site as the cheapest option, Vikings President Mark Wilf wrote that "The $67 million in costs identified above brings the total costs to build at the Metrodome site to $962 million."The team, he added, was also concerned "about the significant disruptions to our football team, our fans and our sponsors and partners."

I've seen a lot of headlines indicating the the Vikings are supposedly "warming" to the idea of building at the Metrodome, but I still don't see it. This has always been about maximizing revenue and the Metrodome site will never allow the team to do that. You can bemoan the Vikings for being greedy. Go right ahead. It won't change their stance, though. There's enough to pick at in the Star Tribune article linked above to provide fodder for about three stories. We'll return to this subject soon.

State of Play, Briefly

2012-01-11T05:41:00.002-06:00

Romney wins New Hampshire easily. What does it mean? A few guesses:

Rick Perry's campaign is, to borrow a phrase from P. J. O'Rourke, dead but too dumb to lie down.
Rick Santorum needs to win South Carolina to have any chance. Don't see that happening.
Jon Huntsman said that "in New Hampshire, they pick presidents." They didn't pick Huntsman. Buh-bye.
Newt Gingrich has proven conclusively that he hasn't learned a damned thing since his days as Speaker. He, or rather his "Super PAC," has a lot of money to spend on South Carolina. While you can buy a lot of attack ads with 5 mil, it's not going to be enough.
Ron Paul likely will be able to contest Romney all the way to the convention. And he should.
If you want two other smart takes on the state of play, check out our friend First Ringer over at Shot in the Dark and James "Editorial We" Taranto at the WSJ. I highly recommend both.

Hall of Fame (with Update)

2012-01-10T06:06:00.000-06:00

We learned yesterday that longtime Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was the only person elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, although Jack Morris is now considerably closer to election than he has been in the past. The requirement is to be named on 75% of the ballots; Larkin got 86%, while Morris got 66%. Historically, if you reach 66%, you eventually get in.

First, there's no question that Larkin deserved the honor. Two of his contemporaries are in the HOF: Cal Ripken and Ozzie Smith. Ripken is in because of his offense and his amazing durability, while Smith is in because of his defensive prowess. Larkin had a little bit of both -- he was a power/speed guy and was consistently one of the best defensive players in the National League throughout his long career with the Reds.

When I think about that era of shortstops, one other guy strikes me as a worthy candidate for the HOF. That would be Alan Trammell. In fact, I would argue that both Trammell and his longtime double-play partner, Lou Whitaker, are both deserving of the honor, although Trammell was the greater player of the two. The Detroit Tiger teams of the 1980s were consistently contending for the championship and they were dominant in 1984. The key players on those teams were Trammell, Whitaker and Morris. Throughout the 1980s, you would often see Trammell and Whitaker compared to the two HOF members of my beloved Brewers, Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. There was never any question concerning Yount or Molitor's qualifications and if you look at the numbers, Trammell and Whitaker weren't as productive offensively. They were a tremendous duo, though, and they were always considered to be among the best players of their time.

We tend to think about Morris a little more in Minnesota because of the one glorious year that he spent with the Twins. Morris was one of three great players from St. Paul who were dominant players; the others were Molitor and Dave Winfield. Morris gets dragged down by some because his career ERA (3.90) isn't outstanding. I think you have to consider the context in which Morris pitched, though. A pitcher of an earlier generation who made the HOF easily was Catfish Hunter, who was the ace of the Oakland A's staff of the 1970s. When you look at the numbers, you see that Hunter's ERA was considerably better. However, he won less games and pitched in one of the best pitcher's parks around, the Oakland Coliseum. He also pitched in an era where overall offensive numbers weren't as high as they were later on. When you look at it in context, I think Morris has a pretty good argument.

What do you think?

Update: From the comments, Night Writer offers a post he did a few years back concerning the fateful 1987 Twins/Tigers series. As with all NW enterprises, it's definitely worth your time.

On Tebow

2012-01-09T05:48:00.002-06:00

Two observations:

I have little reason to believe that God cares who wins NFL games. I would assume that at least someone on the Pittsburgh Steelers was praying for God's benevolence as well.
What makes Tim Tebow different? He apparently really means what he says. And while he still has mechanical issues to correct as a quarterback, he made some really good throws yesterday, including the one that won the game. In a league that is all about narratives, Tebow and the Broncos are providing a highly interesting one.

Benster and D Pick Your BCS Championship Game -- With a "Special Comment" from the Benster

2012-01-08T20:47:00.000-06:00

I really have two purposes this evening. First, we do have to pick the "championship" game for the BCS. But more importantly, I have some denouncing to do. And you know that I'm feeling the HYYYYYYYPPPPPPPE!!

Of course you are. I could sense the HYYYYYYPPPPPPE! building all weekend. Or maybe that was a backed up sewage pipe?

Old dude, you try so hard to be funny. And yet you fail. Leave the comedy to me, Gummo. And in the meantime, watch me work!

BCS Championship Game: Alabama Crimson Tide (-2) vs. L.S.U. Tigers, in N'awlins. First thing they need to do is test the temperature of the carpet on the floor of the Superdome. It might still be smoking from the beatdown the Saints issued last night and the smoldering remains of the Detroit Lions's defensive backfield. Wow, Brees went all Peshtigo on them! By the way I disagree with the presence of at least one of these teams in this game. But I'll save that for my "Special Comment" that follows our pick. First, the game itself will be boring. Yes, really boring. Do you remember the last time these two titans of the gridiron met, back in November? It was a snooze-fest. The teams couldn't score on the field in Tuscaloosa. Now, I've heard it's pretty easy to score in New Orleans, but I can already see the old fella shaking his head at me about that, so I'd better avoid the urge to "work blue." I'll probably never be welcome in the SEC Hospitality Tent for saying this, but the SEC is overrated! It has always one or two really good teams, but the rest are terrible. The problem I have, as a Big Ten guy, is that all the teams in the Big Ten are horrible, too! But at least there's a question as to who is going to have a shot. We've seen all too much of LSU and Alabama lately. I want to see any other team in the country win a championship. And maybe that will stop this SEC bias. As for the game, LSU has the better defense and the better offense, too. So why is Alabama favored? Beats me. LSU 9, Roll Tide 7.

I sense the rant was trying to leak out there. Hold your horses, young fella. Bottom line, as much as it pains me to say it, is this -- if the Big Ten wants to be the top dog, they need to start winning more games against the top competition. It didn't go well for the Big Ten this year and last year it was worse. I would have preferred to see Oklahoma State in this game over Alabama, but I get why they were passed over. I do suspect this game will be a snoozefest, though. And I also suspect that unless you start seeing some other regions in the country represented in this game, interest will begin to wane. That might cause a few of these computers to get reprogrammed a bit, if you know what I mean (and I think you do). Alabama is favored because it's supposedly tough to beat the same team twice. It isn't if one team is better than the other. LSU 17, Alabama 14.

And now it's time for Benster's Special Comment. I may not be able to ramp up the frothing rage of Keith Olbermann tearing into some Republican operative, but I will be heard. Hear this -- the BCS is rigged. Why, you ask? Because both of the human polls are biased. The coaches don't have enough time to actually vote and they hand off the task to the SID or some other flunky in their program. Even worse, the Harris Poll is made up of mostly former players or administrators. They have actual lives, but not actual objectivity. They will usually vote for teams in their region only, and because Southerners generally follow the SEC and tend to vote as a bloc, SEC teams do disproportionately well in these polls. The AP poll, which is not part of the SEC ranking system, tends to be a more accurate and objective means of ranking teams. But even that can be screwed up. And it gets even worse.

Before the 2002 season, the BCS decided to get rid of margin of victory from the computer formula, primarily because it was ranking Boise State too high. Boise State tends to crush its opponents and because it has not been part of the BCS favored conferences, it always gets punished for beating up its opponents. If you noticed what happened this year, Boise State was sent off to the MAACO Las Vegas Bowl, even though they had finished with an 11-1 record. They played a BCS school, Arizona State, and crushed them 56-24. That sort of thing happens all the time with Boise State. To find a way into this rigged system, they are now joining the Big East. Do you know where Boise, Idaho is? It's in freaking Idaho! It's only in the east if you go all the way around the world before you measure its location. This is silly and completely unnecessary. In fact, it seems to me that the cartel known as the BCS is scared of the little guy, mainly because the BCS exists only for the care and feeding of the big schools, whether they are any good or not.

The obvious answer is to get rid of the BCS and institute a playoff system. You could have a simple "plus one" system that takes an extra game at the end of the season, or you could integrate the existing bowl system into a playoff format, or you could use home sites as they do in FCS, Div II and Div. III. The key thing is this -- any team can conceivably get in, and the winner will be chosen on the field, not by a bank of computer and polls of disinterested observers. We need to get rid of the BCS. In fact, we can blame the SEC for the existence of the BCS. But that's another story that I'll share at another time. Ben out!

Gabriel and Amy

2012-01-08T09:29:00.000-06:00

I wrote yesterday on the nasty piling on that some liberals have given Rick Santorum and his wife concerning the way they chose to deal with the heartbreaking circumstances surrounding the birth and death of their infant son, Gabriel. For reasons that weren't clear to me initially, this particular episode of political blood sport bothered me more than similar episodes of crappy behavior from the pundit class. Writing for National Review, Mark Steyn made the following observation:

The short life of Gabriel Santorum would seem a curious priority for political discourse at a time when the Brokest Nation in History is hurtling toward its rendezvous with destiny. But needs must, and victory by any means necessary. In 2008, the Left gleefully mocked Sarah Palin’s live baby. It was only a matter of time before they moved on to a dead one.

While that's true, there's more to it. And I figured out what it was. While I've never had to make the horrifying choices that faced the Santorums, my parents did. And the toll it took was larger than I ever really understood.

Like the Santorums, I come from a big Catholic family. I am the oldest child; I grew up knowing three brothers and two sisters. But I had another sister, whose name is Amy. And Amy is largely a mystery to me.

Amy was a twin, born the same day as my brother. Paul was a healthy baby and he is now the proud father of three fine children. Amy was born and died the same day, in October of 1966. I am not even sure that my parents even knew that my mother was carrying twins, as ultrasound machines and such were rarities in those days. Paul was born first and apparently arrived without much incident, but the story goes that after Paul was born, my mother's obstetrician noticed that there was another baby. That was Amy. From what I understand, it was immediately evident that Amy had severe birth defects and was not going to make it. Amy died within an hour of her birth. She apparently had a funeral; I say apparently because I was about a month shy of my third birthday when Paul and Amy were born, so I have no memory of these events. It's possible, even likely, that I didn't attend the funeral.

Growing up, I knew about Amy's existence, but my parents didn't really want to discuss the matter very much and I was usually too busy pursuing my own agenda to worry much about family history. From time to time we would go out to the country cemetery in Mackville, a crossroads about 5 miles north of town, where Amy was laid to rest, alongside other infants and young children of previous generations who had died from the fatal childhood diseases that were once a sad part of life. But while Amy wasn't a topic of conversation very often, throughout my mother's life it was clear that Amy's absence was on her mind. When my mother passed away, some 34 years later, her remains were buried in the same plot where Amy was laid to rest.

Both of my parents are deceased now. So is the obstetrician who delivered her. I am not aware of any pictures or other evidence of her life, beyond the grave marker out in Mackville. It's likely that no one who still walks this earth has ever seen her face. Yet Amy was here. She is my sister and her life, however brief, has meaning, just as Gabriel Santorum's life has meaning to his parents. And because of the choice that Rick and Karen Santorum made, his siblings have at least some understanding, or at least a tangible memory, of the brother they have.

In the NR article, Steyn points out that the choice the Santorums made isn't weird at all:

Not many of us will ever know what it’s like to have a child who lives only a few hours. That alone should occasion a certain modesty about presuming to know what are “weird” and unweird reactions to such an event.In 1996, the Santorums were told during the pregnancy that their baby had a fatal birth defect and would not survive more than a few hours outside the womb. So Gabriel was born, his parents bundled him, and held him, and baptized him. And two hours later he died. They decided to take his body back to the home he would never know. Weirdly enough, this crazy weird behavior is in line with the advice of the American Pregnancy Association, which says that “it is important for your family members to spend time with the baby” and “help them come to terms with their loss.”

I don't know, and will never know, what drove the choices my parents had to make. They had to deal with two toddlers (my brother Pat was 20 months old at the time) and now another baby boy, all of whom needed their love and attention. They may not have had time to grieve, considering the circumstances. Still, the reality of this sister I never knew is something I carry with me. I don't know that if I'd been able to see her face, or hold her, it would have made that much of a difference in my life. I suspect not. But it would have meant a connection that I cannot now make.

This much I know -- I am glad that my father was a businessman and not a politician.

Home Truth

2012-01-07T09:37:00.000-06:00

I have no interest in voting for Rick Santorum. Having said that, the outright mocking he has received for the choice he and his wife made concerning the death of his infant child tells us a lot more about his detractors than it tells us about Santorum.

Writing for the Washington Post, blogger and columnist Charles Lane shares his own experience with the horrible process of losing a child, and a regret:

I regret that, unlike the Santorums, who presented the body of their child to their children, we did not show Jonathan’s body to our other son, who was six years old at the time. When I told him what had happened, his first question was, “Well, where is the baby?” I tried to explain what a morgue is, and why the baby went there. It was awkward and unsatisfactory -- too abstract. In hindsight, I was not protecting my son from a difficult conversation, I was protecting myself.

He also says this about Santorum, which rings true to me:

I’m not defending Rick Santorum the presidential candidate. From what little I know about him, he seems to have his own issues with moralizing and judging. To the extent he has used his family’s experience to make a point about abortion, I object.

But I am defending the right of the Santorums and all families to grieve an infant’s death in accordance with their personal needs and beliefs. My plea is for a little more respect regarding the way people deal with loss, and a little more maturity about physical contact with the dead. If that puts me in sympathy, for a moment, with this right-wing politician, so be it.

Jonathan’s death was probably the hardest moment of my life. But actually touching his body was a source of comfort and the first step in going on with life. Not weird.

There are ample reasons to criticize Rick Santorum's politics, his demeanor, his worldview. He's the sort of Republican who simply wants to redirect the intrusions of huge government into other areas, which makes him unacceptable to me. But I've seen a lot of terrible behavior from his detractors. And I would be remiss if I failed to mention that some of the most nasty invective has come from certain quarters of the Right.

I realize it's probably a forlorn hope, but I don't think it's too much to ask, so I'll put this as plainly as possible: let's try to keep our partisanship from turning us into assholes.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- Playoffs? We're Talking About Playoffs? Edition

2012-01-06T20:16:00.001-06:00

What's that? Playoffs? We're talking about the playoffs? Well, actually we are. Because at this point of the year every football fan is now feeling the HYYYYYYYYPPPPPPE!

I thought it was stomach flu.

Of course not -- that's just your rapidly decaying system punishing you for that burrito you just ate, old dude. I told you, you need to stick to the brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal. It will soothe you.

Thanks for the tip, Seabiscuit.

I'm a helper. I like to help. But most of all, I like to dominate. Watch me work!

Cincinnati Bungles (+3) vs. Houston Texans. Actually, it's not fair to call the team from Cincy the Bungles this year, because somehow they managed to make the playoffs. That doesn't happen very often in Cincinnati, which has been traditionally a very poor squad. But they can do some things. They play defense well and they have a good young quarterback in Andy Dalton, who scares his opponents with his flaming red hair. And it kinda matches the helmets the Bengals wear -- kinda has that orange-y glow, like a campfire around midnight. But enough about that. Houston was pretty dang good, but unfortunately they ran out of quarterbacks about Week 12. Last we saw, they were starting T. J. Yates, a rookie quarterback from North Carolina who is not to be confused with T. J. Hooker, the bad 80s cop show that featured William Shatner, usually draped over the hood of a car. I hear the old dude really enjoyed that one -- big Heather Locklear fan, I'm told. But we still haven't gotten to the game yet. The Texans don't have a passing game to augment their strong running game, while the Bengals can pass some but don't always run the ball effectively. So what happens? Bungles 17, Texans 13.

This could be a very boring game. Very boring. I might have to break out some T. J. Hooker reruns instead. I can still hear Shatner's classic line reading, upon finding a murdered starlet in one episode of the show. "She came here with stars in her eyes, and left with a bullet in her chest." Genius. Anyway, as for the game, I think Houston will win, but barely. And they won't enjoy the trip to Baltimore the next week. Houston 20, Cincinnati 14.

Detroit Motor City Kitties (+10 1/2) vs. New Orleans Saints. So the Lions have been waiting since 1999 to make the playoffs and this is their reward. Bummer. Drew Brees has been en fuego all season and when the Lions paid a visit to New Orleans a few weeks back, he torched them for about 900 yards and 14 touchdowns. It might not have been that much, but it certainly seemed like it. Meanwhile, the Lions are still licking their wounds from the beatdown that Matt Flynn, of all people, gave them last week in Lambeau. The Lions can score, but their star wide receiver Calvin "Megatron" Johnson has a bad Achilles tendon, which doesn't bode well for the boys from Motown. Saints 49, Lions 14.

I'm impressed with Matthew Stafford, but he's going to have to be pretty awesome to beat Drew Brees in New Orleans. I think the Lions will get some shots in, but unless the pass rush gets to Brees, they are toast. I don't think it will. Of course, the early exit will give Ndamukong Suh a chance to film his latest round of commercials for Subway. He'll also have plenty of time to eat. Saints 45, Lions 31.

Hotlanta Falcons (+3) vs. New York Football Giants. So, who's playing in this game? Now that we've established who is playing in the game, let's get to the analysis. The Falcons have been up and down this year, but they have managed to claw their way back into the playoffs after last year's devastating, and I do mean devastating, loss to the Packers. Good for them. I don't think the Falcons have enough firepower to win, even though the much-vaunted Giant running attack has been missing all season. Eli Manning has a lot of weapons and he's playing with great confidence right now. So much confidence that he will take the Giants back to Lambeau for a chance to get some revenge. Not that he'll get it, of course, but we'll worry about that next week. For now, G-Men 20, Rise Up! 17.

The thing about the Giants is, they are inconsistent. They can be tremendous one week, then lose to the Redskins the next. This time they are playing a competent NFL team. I'm feeling the upset. Atlanta 27, Giants 21.

Pittsburgh Stillers (-8 1/2) vs. Denver Tebows. Think about that pointspread, old dude. The game is in Denver. Ben Roethlisberger is limping badly. Rashard Mendenhall is out for the season. And yet the Steelers are more than a touchdown favorite. Talk about a lack of respect for our man Tebow! In fact, Tebow can actually make plays against the Steeler defense, especially considering James Harrison and Troy Polamalu are hurt and may not be so effective. Meanwhile, Tebow is like these guys. Broncos 10, Steelers 3.

I get the theory -- the Steelers are coming into town looking like they should be carrying a drum and a fife. But really, as much fun as the Tebow thing was, he's not really an NFL quarterback and the Steelers aren't likely to be bamboozled by Tebow's antics. It's hard for Tebow to win the game in the last two minutes when his team is down by more than two touchdowns. And they will be. Steelers 24, Broncos 10.

That's it for now. I'll be back over the weekend to give my pick for the BCS Championship Game and to uncork a rant the likes of which you will not believe. Ben out!

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXX - Another Deadline, and This Time We're Serious, Really

2012-01-06T06:05:00.000-06:00

We haven't talked about the stadium in a few days and because there's an artificial news cycle to be fed, Mark Dayton has issued yet another deadline. If you think you've heard this before, let not your heart be troubled for he assures us, this time it's serious:

Gov. Mark Dayton is giving Minneapolis and Ramsey County until next week to submit final proposals on a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, and he said Thursday that a location for the much-debated project soon will be "clear cut."

"I think the facts will speak for themselves," Dayton said of what will be the final, competing proposals. "One of them will show ultimately to be a better option."

Of course, if the facts are actually allowed to speak for themselves, we wouldn't be involved in this enterprise in the first place and Zygi Wilf would build his own stadium without asking for public money. But we'll leave that aside for the moment.

What follows is really the lede:

While the Vikings have insisted for nearly a year that they want to build in Arden Hills, team spokesman Lester Bagley acknowledged Thursday that others will influence the decision.

"If the public is going to put in approximately 60 percent of the deal, the public's going to have a fair amount to say about the site," he said, reacting to supporters of a site in Minneapolis. "Who chooses? Do we choose? Who chooses?"

Is it possible, at long last, that the Vikings are backing away from their dream, their awesome dream, of having a suburban Xanadu with a magnificent stadium and even more magnificent parking? Maybe. It could also be that they've talked with the folks from L.A. and the deal they'd get there isn't as attractive as they'd hoped.

Do we really take the deadline seriously, though? I can think of at least 3 previous deadlines that have come and gone in the last year, a fact that Dayton had to acknowledge:

Acknowledging that previous deadlines had come and gone, Dayton said the ongoing stadium debate has been stuck in a "semi-Twilight Zone, where we know some of the facts, we don't know all of them, and some people [are] showing cards, and some people [are] not showing cards."

What does that even mean? This isn't a poker game, it's an attempt to wrest millions, maybe even a billion dollars, from the public fisc. Dayton is always delighted to spend other people's money, but his own political needs require him to appear as something other than befuddled, so he imposes yet another deadline.

Meanwhile, our man Tony Bennett is getting frustrated:

Ramsey County Commissioner Tony Bennett expressed frustration Thursday, wondering whether the latest timetable was "the last hoop" in his efforts to bring a $1.1 billion stadium to suburban Arden Hills.

"We've walked so many different aisles with the governor and the Legislature. I don't know if the janitor and the night sweepers have checked us out yet, but everybody else has," said Bennett, who said he did not expect the county to markedly change its proposal.

Bennett wouldn't want the "night sweepers" to check his proposal out, of course. Night sweepers recognize garbage when the see it and deal with it accordingly.

MOB Mayoral Debate -- Answer to Question Two

2012-01-05T20:24:00.001-06:00

As alert readers of this feature have noted, I am a reluctant but dedicated candidate for the office of Mayor of the MOB. Secretary of State for Life Learned Foot has posed the following two part question for the ongoing debate:

The once stalwart Nihilist in Golf Pants blog has devolved into a cheap (and bad) sports betting advice site. Please answer both of the following:

1) What do you think are the causes of its decline?

2) Would you use the MOB Mayor's power of eminent domain to take the blog? If so, how would you rehabilitate the property, or to what new use would you put it?

First, a general comment. Foot is, unfortunately, correct in his assessment. NIGP, once one of the glories of the MOB, is now the online equivalent of Block E, circa 1985, except without the drink specials at Moby Dick's. In fact, one might argue that NIGP is a desolate as Block E, circa 2012, but that would be uncharitable. The roster of bloggers at NIGP is strikingly similar to the roster of bloggers at the more sprightly Fraters Libertas, which actually has drink specials most weeks. One might surmise that it's simply a case of talented bloggers moving to a more fashionable address, but Occam's Razor doesn't always cut it. So for the first part of the answer, we need to channel the spirit of NIGP and offer the:

Top 11 Reasons Nihilist in Golf Pants Has Declined

11. Gary Miller's dire Facebook warnings concerning the dangers of fiat currency led NIGP staff to implement a vigorish-based hedge fund strategy

10. It can now be revealed -- NIGP is a nom de plume for USA Today oddsmaking whiz Danny Sheridan

9. Recurring nightmares of Bob Davie Era have sapped writer's will to live

8. Assigned duties as Chad the Elder's chauffeur and lackey take up valuable writing time

7. Fellow blogger and mail order bride "Wintryminx" arrived postage due, causing significant cash flow issue

6. Tired of being told blog "couldn't carry Mitch Berg's jockstrap"

5. Failed merger with with MinnPost drained valuable resources and led to punitive legal fees

4. Corrosive effects of Nick Coleman's withering scorn

3. Too busy watching "American Idol" with Bogus Doug, or whatever she is now

2. Gave up hope after getting ass kicked in prognostications by a sophomore at Irondale

1. Extensive volunteer efforts on behalf of Romney campaign leave no time for frivolity

Now, on to Part Two. The question, as you might recall is:

2) Would you use the MOB Mayor's power of eminent domain to take the blog? If so, how would you rehabilitate the property, or to what new use would you put it?

Given the unfettered powers given to governments in the Kelo decision, any potential mayor would have little choice but to take action against this blighted internet property. Given the state of decline involved, a full-blown rehabilitation may be impossible, but a repurposing definitely seems in order. Herewith,

Top 11 Proposed Uses for Repurposed Nihilist in Golf Pants Blog

11. Drab, all-black color scheme makes ideal pairing with Minneapolis Armory for enhanced "Vikings Fan Experience" package for proposed downtown Minneapolis Vikings stadium

10. Potential merger candidate with long-lamented former MOB favorite Mobange!

9. Holding pen for Michael Brodkorb

8. Testimonial site for St. Louis Park Pannekoeken Huis

7. Cut blog into clay pigeons, award as prize to perennial MOB Mayor also-ran Kevin Ecker

6. Website home of annual Andee Applecowski Spelling Bee

5. Racino!

4. Continuous video loop of Powerline's John Hinderaker doing dramatic reading of "Winthrop Thorpe Tortuga" chapter from Garrison Keillor's 1993 opus The Book of Guys

3. Virtual reality simulation of Pamida Store #117 in Loogootee, Indiana

2. OTB!

1. Hamper for Mitch Berg's jockstrap, thus refuting assertion in Item# 6 in first part of question

In conclusion, I would like to add that this response is 100% Sisyphus-free. Until the last sentence, that is. Good evening.

Recess Bully

2012-01-05T06:01:00.001-06:00

So Barack Obama went nuclear on the recess appointments yesterday, naming four people to various positions within government while the Senate was technically not in session:

After making an end run around Senate Republicans to fill the top job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Wednesday, President Barack Obama ran the same play again a few hours later, making three recess appointments to bring the National Labor Relations Board to full strength.

The president used his power to name Sharon Block, Terence Flynn and Richard Griffin to the board, which arbitrates workplace disputes and federal labor issues and has recently drawn considerable fire from Republicans after it sided with an aircraft workers’ union in a dispute with aerospace giant Boeing.

So what should we think about this? I'd go with the following:

It's unfortunate;
It's likely to come back and bite Obama in the future; and
He's the President and he gets to do things like this.

It doesn't make much sense to complain too much about this sort of thing, because every president I can remember has done the same thing. It's how we got a year of John Bolton at the U.N., among other things. If you don't like Obama acting like a king, there are two things to do. First, vote his butt out of office in November. Then, make it clear that presidents who act like kings will get deposed. Historically there hasn't been much of a price to pay for such behavior, which is why we get it.

Democrats used to complain quite bitterly about Dick Cheney's notions about a unitary executive, but now that Obama is president, they've warmed to the idea considerably. Of course they have. Both parties love to use as much power as they can when they are in a position to wield it. The only power you have, as a citizen, is to stop such things with your ballot. This is an election year, so get to it.

8 Is Enough

2012-01-04T06:08:00.000-06:00

So Mitt Romney wins the Iowa caucus straw poll by 8 votes over Rick Santorum, with Ron Paul in third. And thus is the intellectual split in the Republican Party neatly defined.

Even amateur pundits are called on to explain What It All Means. So let's try:

What happens to the top three is less important than what happened to the bottom feeders. Michele Bachmann is making brave noises about South Carolina, but there's no path for her and hasn't been one since the Gardasil incident back in the fall. She's never lost an election before, but every politician loses one eventually. Now she has to decide whether to go home and try to win reelection to Congress, or if she should pursue another agenda. Don't be surprised if she pursues another agenda, since the 6th CD she returns to might be very different from the one she's won in the past. There's even a chance she might find herself having to run against Betty McCollum, who has a 99-year lease on the St. Paul electorate, depending on how redistricting shakes out.
Rick Perry might be done after finishing fifth. Had he done better in Iowa, he might have had a chance in the upcoming events in the South, but at this point it's difficult to see how he rises in the field. Some of the reports I've seen this morning suggest he is going to drop out. He might as well.
Newt Gingrich finished a distant fourth, well behind the front runners. He's got a chance to regain some ground in New Hampshire, mostly because Romney will have to fight on multiple fronts, and he could win if things break right. It's difficult to see where Gingrich would go from there, though. He's relied on the force of his personality to get back in the race, but as we've seen in his long career in politics, that personality is a double-edged sword, at best.
No matter what else happens, Ron Paul is in this thing to the end. I still believe he's in the race to further his agenda and doesn't really expect to win. It will be interesting to see how his campaign approaches the upcoming events. He will have to tread carefully, because in the end his best bet is to pave a path for his son Rand to pursue the office in a future cycle. Sometimes I think the biggest problem Paul has is the fervor of some of his supporters. A lot of Ron Paul fans are really irritating. While it's not fair to blame the man for his fans, I think the antics from some of Paul's supporters make it difficult for people who might otherwise be amenable to his message to listen. Memo to Paul fans: insulting the electorate isn't a winning strategy, even if you think they deserve to be insulted.
Santorum almost pulled off the miracle in Iowa, but it's frankly difficult to see where he goes from here. He was able to get the support of evangelical voters in Iowa, but the evangelicals in the South are a different matter. Santorum is Catholic and there are a lot of people in the South (and elsewhere) who won't pull the lever for a Catholic, especially among the evangelical population. We might as well be up front about that. I also don't see how Santorum will be able to sustain the momentum, given his limited resources. He may earn enough delegates to have a voice in the convention, but it's difficult to see him getting past Romney. And to be honest, the more you see of Santorum, the less you like him. While the shots I've seen about the way he handled the death of his infant child were mean and frankly beyond the pale, there's something strange about his overall manner. While you have to be a little strange to even consider running for president, you can't be too strange. I don't think Santorum will wear well.
Romney did very well in Iowa, all things considered. I would expect him to win New Hampshire, although Jon "Iowans pick corn, New Hampshire picks presidents" Huntsman is there, lying in wait. I don't see Huntsman beating Romney, but he could take enough votes away from Romney to give Gingrich an opportunity. Still, for all his faults, Romney has to like where he is right now.

Back to life, back to reality

2012-01-03T06:01:00.000-06:00

The holidays are over and now we're into the long slog of winter. And since it's an election year and the schedule has been compressed, we're already at the Hawkeye Cauci. So what happens tonight in Iowa? A few guesses:

Romney finishes in the money, which means that the electorate is thinking more about defeating Obama than making a point, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Ron Paul will do well and might even win the thing, but he's really in the race to make a point, even though the electorate may be less interested in that. He'll push his agenda as far as he can, though, and a good showing in Iowa guarantees him a place on the stage.
Newt will not do so well, as his lack of organization starts to catch up to him.
Surprisingly, Rick Santorum does well enough to make it to New Hampshire, but it ends there.
Rick Perry has the money to go on, but it's difficult to see him making much headway.
Michele Bachmann gets to come back to Minnesota and decide if she wants to fight the folks who are trying to unseat her through redistricting.

A few more words on Ron Paul. Mitch Berg wrote yesterday about Paul's son Rand, who is a freshman senator from Kentucky. Rand Paul shares many of his father's views, but he wears the cloak of a more traditional Republicanism and his manner is less, how do I say this delicately, crazy uncle-ish?. I would not be surprised if Rand Paul is a major factor in the future election cycle, which is why Ron Paul will not, in the end, run as a third party candidate. As Mitch rightly suggests, the role that Ron Paul plays, sort of a Jeremiah with bad eyebrows, is important in this cycle. We do have some serious issues that none of the other candidates seem willing to address, but we never elect Jeremiahs to national office.

Benster and D Pick Your Bowl Games -- Somebody Has To

2012-01-02T10:04:00.000-06:00

That's right -- somebody has to pick these bowl games, Decrepit. Are you up for the challenge? Has your Geritol kicked in, yet?

I seem to be awake without the aid of over-the-counter remedies, young fella.

That's always a good sign. Guess I can remove that toe tag I put on you while you were napping in your chair. I was pretty busy yesterday monitoring the half-dozen touchdown passes Matt Flynn threw against the Lions, but now the New Year's Day bowl games are coming, only a day later. So we'd better get these picked before the teams actually hit the field. Watch me work!

Houston Cougars (-7) vs. Penn State Nittany Scandals, in the Ticket City Bowl. Ticket City Bowl? What the heck is that? You told me that Ticket City is Rosendale, Wisconsin, because of that cop who sits on the side street and pulls over anyone that comes through town. This must be some other Ticket City. And this certainly isn't the destination that either of these teams expected. Penn State was last seen scraping themselves off the turf in Madison, where the Old Dude and I witnessed the carnage. As for Houston, they were rolling along undefeated until they ran into a real team and were waxed. So here's the question -- is Penn State, after everything that has happened, a real team? No, I don't think they are, because they can't score. Houston can score and they score a lot. Houston 49, Scandal State 10.

Uh, no. Houston is adequate but a team that gets killed by Southern Mississippi isn't going to score a ton against Penn State. I suspect Penn State might be a little short offensively, though. Houston 24, Penn State 20.

Floriduh Gators (-2) vs. The Ohio State University Buckeye Cheating Weasels, in the ever-popular TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl. I don't imagine the Buckeyes would ever use TaxSlayer. I assume that they would use Tax Evader instead, given their sudden penchant for cheating. But here they are, 6-6 record and all, against the worst Florida team to take the field in a long time. The Gators are also 6-6. So, tell me this, Decrepit -- since when do we put 6-6 teams in New Year's Day bowl games? I thought these were supposed to be a reward for excellence, not crappiness. Meanwhile, the story behind the story is that Urban Meyer, who used to coach Florida, will now be taking over Ohio State. So that's supposed to add intrigue to the matchup. I don't see it -- what I see are two bad teams. Cheaty McSweater Alumni Association 24, Gator Bait 17.

I agree. Bad game. Nothing else to say. Florida 21, Ohio State 16.

Georgia Bulldawgs (-3) vs. Michigan State Sparty the Spartan, in the Outback Bowl. Michigan State is mad because they lost the Big Ten Championship and were relegated to the Outback Bowl instead of getting a BCS bid. Well, sorry. You guys lost the game. And the last time the Spartans played in a bowl game, they were edged by Alabama 49-7. The Spartans love the sound of their own voices, but they need to shut up and play football. Georgia is a pretty good, but not great, SEC team. If the Spartans were really robbed, they should go into Tampa and kick some Bulldog butt. Will they? UGA 49, Sparty 7.

That was harsh. I think Sparty will do better this time. Georgia isn't that great. Michigan State 34, Georgia 31.

South Carolina Gamecocks (-2 1/2) vs. Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Capitol One Bowl. Nebraska fans were probably expecting a better trip than to Orlando this year. I'm guessing a lot of them were thinking Pasadena, but as it turns out, the Big Ten is a little tougher than they might have envisioned. South Carolina was a much better team before for their stud running back Marcus Lattimore got hurt and they've been riding their defense for the second part of the season. This is not a great Nebraska team, but they are capable. Huskers 35, Gamecocks 20.

I think Nebraska is better. South Carolina had a chance to be great, as the young fella mentioned, but losing Lattimore was a crushing blow. The Cornhuskers have Rex Burkhead and he'll be the difference today. Nebraska 27, South Carolina 19.

Oregon Ducks (-6) vs. Beloved Wisconsin Badgers, in the Rose Bowl. I know what everyone has been saying. It's speed vs. power and the Badgers are not fast enough. I would have thought we put that to rest back in '09, after the Badgers took down Miami. Last year the Badgers didn't play their game against TCU until it was too late, but they showed everyone what a force they could be. This year has turned on two Hail Mary type passes that didn't go the Badgers' way. The Badgers can score any way they'd like. Oregon is fast, but defensively they are very small. The Badgers have a very, very big offensive line. And they are athletic, too. Ask the teams that have been steamrolled along the way. Badgers 63, Ducks 56.

So the Badgers are going to win the game on free throws at the end, then? It will be high scoring, I agree, but not that high scoring. I think the key is for the Badgers to get on the scoreboard first. If Oregon goes to the lead, the Badgers will be in trouble, but if the Badgers have a chance to control the tempo early, they'll win. The most important part of the game might the opening coin toss. Badgers 42, Oregon 37.

Oklahoma State Cowboys (-4) vs. Stanford Cardinal in the Fiesta Bowl. Oklahoma State was the one team that was legitimately screwed in the BCS extravaganza this year. They lose a game in Ames on the same day that their women's basketball team suffers a plane crash and they are suddenly relegated to this game? Hardly seems right. Of course the BCS doesn't know what's right and never, ever has done the right thing. So it goes. Can Oklahoma State prove a point tonight against a very good Stanford team led by next year's top draft pick, Andrew Luck? Can OK State coach Mike Gundy let fly a memorable rant? I'm a Man, I'm 40! 35, Stanford 34.

I remember that rant. I just can't watch the video because it so, well, orange. Hurts my eyes. I agree with the young fella about what happened to Oklahoma State, especially since I think if they'd played LSU it would have been a really entertaining game. This one will be too, though. Last year Stanford felt like they got screwed and put it to their opponent. Will the Cowboys do the same thing? Oklahoma State 28, Stanford 20.

Well, that's a lot of games. I suppose we could pick the Sugar Bowl, but I'm not feeling it. So here's my score without analysis. Go Blue 21, Va Tech 17.

More points, same result. Michigan 35, Virginia Tech 24.

That's it for now. We'll look at the BCS Scampionship game later on. Ben out!

This just in

2012-01-01T17:00:00.001-06:00

Matt Flynn is pretty good.

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T16:59:00.001-06:00

I don't know how you feel about it, but 2011 can go away now. We'll send it away with three things.

First, a picture of Times Square as 1956 was about to arrive:

And then, another view of Times Square, circa 1969, as things were going to seed:

You have to love the giant cigarette. I got both of these images from the very interesting blog The Bowery Boys, which has a lot of cool images of New York and some interesting history, too. Definitely worth your time.

Finally, a hopeful 2012 prediction from the always excellent Jay Reding:

On December 21, 2012, the universe will end when the Mayan god Kukulkan descends from the heavens and decrees an end to all existence. Unfortunately for Kukulkan, he arrives in the middle of a Lady Gaga concert, where a blood-soaked feathered serpent would attract little notice. Disgusted by everything, he figures that non-existence would actually be better than what we have, so he ascends back up into the heaven and has a few too many glasses of wine with Zeus and Thor as they complain that no one actually believes in them any more.

So maybe we've got that going for us. Hope you have a great New Year's Eve and we'll see you next year.

State Central

2011-12-31T09:48:00.000-06:00

The potentially momentous meeting of the Minnesota Republican State Central Committee is beginning as I write this. As has been well documented, the state GOP is a big mess right now. I've made the conscious decision to participate in party politics only at the BPOU level, so I don't have a dog in this fight. Selecting the new party chair is going to be tough and there's been a spirited debate concerning the relative merits of the potential candidates.

It looks likely that the decision comes down to either Pat Shortridge, a well-liked figure in GOP circles who most recently was a key player in the Marco Rubio campaign in Florida, or Terry McCall, who is from John Kline's district and from what I gather has ties to the Ron Paul wing of the party. There's also a third candidate named Todd McIntyre but he is likely to be an also-ran.

As I said, I don't have a dog in this fight. People whose opinions I respect differ on the candidates. My guess is that Shortridge would be better positioned to clean up the current mess, but McCall might be a better choice for rallying the troops and trying to secure the loyalty of the Paul supporters long-term. At this point, Shortridge is the better choice, but it's going to be important to ensure that McCall, and the constituency that he represents, has a strong voice in the party.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- New Year's Day Pro Edition

2011-12-30T20:16:00.000-06:00

Old dude, the NFL season is about to end. Well, for some teams it is going to end. But not for the team I like.

So you're not rooting for the Jaguars these days?

I think all that Geritol you've been swigging is starting to eat away at your brain, Decrepit! Of course I'm not rooting for the Jaguars. We'll talk about the team that I do like the best soon enough. But first we have to unleash the HYYYYYYYPPPPPPPE! about some other games. Watch me work.

Bear Down Chicago da Bearz (+1) vs. Minnesota Webb-Footed Ponders. Well, both teams in this stellar matchup are NOT in playoff contention. The Vikings were apparently eliminated in the 3rd week of the preseason and da Bearz took the gas pipe last week up at Lambeau. So neither team has much to play for this week. Da Bearz are now using Josh McCown, best known to Vikings fans for this:

I never get tired of that. It just warms my adolescent heart. But anyway, back to the game. That was a long time ago and the Vikings are a very different team now. They mortgaged the future on He Who Must Not Be Named and then tried to apply a tire patch named Donovan McNabb. Meanwhile, the defense got old and now Adrian Peterson is a client of Dr. James Andrews, which is never a good thing. Da Bearz are playing out the string without Jay Cutler, who always seems to be questioned about his toughness, especially when he's buried underneath about 900 pounds of defensive linemen that da Bearz cannot block. Vikes 17, da Bearz 0.

I don't see it that way at all. I think the Bears see this game as an opportunity to salvage something out of what's been a very disappointing season. In the past many fans, especially Packers fans like me, have attributed any success the Bears have had to luck. Well, this season the Bears had no luck at all. I don't if it's karma or just the way things go, but even an old cynic like me feels a little sympathy for our tattered rivals. Of course, I'm happy to point out that the Packers are 4-0 against da Bearz in the 2011 calendar year, so I suppose I can be magnanimous. As for the Vikings, I wish Adrian Peterson well. Hope he returns to full health soon. Bears 24, Vikings 14.

Detroit Motor City Kitties (-3 1/2) vs. Glorious Green Bay Packers. So let me get this straight. The Lions haven't won a game in the state of Wisconsin since 4 years before I was born. The Packers are 14-1. And the Lions are favored? What's up with that? Well, actually I know what's up with that. The wise guys in Vegas think that the Packers are going to roll out the jayvee squad against the Lions in order to protect Aaron Rodgers and his high-flying pals from the wrath of Ndamukong Suh, last seen crashing his car into a tree in Portland. Now, that takes some guts -- they really love their trees in Portland. I don't know if the Packers will try to win this game or not; in fact I think they should sit the starters down and see if they can get D.J. Williams and Brandon Saine a touchdown or two. They might be able to do it. Will that be enough to beat a motivated Lions squad that wants to avoid a trip to New Orleans? Jayvee Team 24, Suh 21.

Did you know that the Packer quarterback in that 1991 game was none other than Mike Tomczak? The Packers actually have a nasty, largely forgotten history of employing old Bears quarterbacks. Tomczak, Jim McMahon, Jack Concannon and even Bobby Douglass were Packers for at least a little while. And if you look it up, Tomczak actually did an honest job that year for a Packers team that was terrible. Many things have changed since then, of course. I can't pick the Packers to lose, even though common sense would indicate that the Lions will win the game. Packers 27, Lions 19.

Dallas How Bout Them Cowboahs (+3) vs. New York Football Giants. It's quite possible that one of these teams will have the pleasure of hosting the Lions next week. These teams are now tied for the lead in the NFC East, both sporting lofty 8-7 records. There's a reason why these teams are both 8-7; they are inconsistent as teams can be. That makes picking the winner of this game pretty tough, actually. Will Tony Romo play lights out football, or will he revert to his 2007 form, in which he ended the season wearing a 12in. collar? Will Eli Manning throw for 400 yards and 4 touchdowns, or will he get intercepted a half dozen times? G-Men 27, Choke Artist 7.

Just a hunch. That's all it is. I think the Cowboys are going to play well and will be in Green Bay in two weeks. Cowboys 31, Giants 24.

Since it's past the Old Dude's bedtime, we shall return on Sunday for our annual bowl game extravaganza and my annual rant against the BCS cartel. I've been doing breathing exercises all along so that I can't be stopped once I start uncorking my dazzling verbal destruction of those BCS cheeseballs! But until then, Ben out!

Throwing a Bone

2011-12-30T06:08:00.000-06:00

Chew on this article from the New York Times for a while and let me know what you think. One passage to call out:

White House officials, however, counter that Mr. Obama’s detachment from Congress could end up benefiting him politically. After all, many Americans regard this Congress as dysfunctional, with abysmal approval ratings.

“We have a culture here where people actively dislike everything about this whole city,” one senior administration official said of Washington, adding, “the only leverage he has right now is as an outsider.” Another official argued that Mr. Obama’s perceived distance from Congress is partly why he is viewed as the clear winner of the payroll tax cut fight.

In fact, Mr. Obama’s re-election strategy involves running against Congress, particularly the Republican-led House, calling attention to its inability to pass even the simplest legislation without resorting to threats to shut down the government or default on the country’s debt.

Remind me again -- who runs the Senate?

Guilty Pleasures Part Eighty-Four: Fearless Maria Meets 2012 Head-On, Plus a Bit of Bonus Social Commentary (interspersed throughout)

2011-12-29T20:24:00.001-06:00

Fearless Maria is back.

Duh duh DUHHHHH! Cue the dramatic music. She's ALIVE! She's ALIVE!

Decided to make an entrance, then.

Well, we have to keep things interesting, you know, Dad! It's good for marketing! My line of Fearless Maria merchandise may be coming out any time now. It's a shame that that noob screwed up the paperwork, otherwise we'd have gotten the merch out before Christmas!

Wait, I didn't know you had merchandise.

Well, you never know what's hiding underneath my bed. And don't you go checking there now!

Well, it's hard to do that and do a blog post at the same time.

Well, some people can handle multitasking. Especially younger people. But I said especially. Not all.

So, what kind of merchandise did you have?

Well, I had a bunch of campaign merchandise all ready and raring to go, but then Fate intervened!

Fate?

Well, no it wasn't really Fate. It was Foot. Learned Foot, to be precise. The corrupt political operative who runs the Kool-Aid Report and is now wanted at two blogs. But not necessarily this one.

Oh, so you're still mad at Foot because he wouldn't let you run for Mayor of the MOB?

I just think that he's prejudiced against fun people, that's all. And middle schoolers, too. That much seems obvious to me. What kind of stupid age discrimination against supercool agents of genius like myself is this? Just because I don't have back problems and a walker like you old people doesn't mean I'm not smart enough to run the MOB! Maybe I'll have to set up my own thing for the Undersecretary of the MOB. It will be a fair, clean vote. No one will get rejected. Not even someone's intestinal tract!

Seems fair. Do you feel better now, having uncorked that rant?

Oh, I could go on. But sure, I'm done. Now, what are we doing tonight for Guilty Pleasures, Dad?

Well, I checked the calendar and it appears we're at the end of the year.

But it only just started!

No, it's over now, for the most part. And it's time for 2012.

Oh my gosh, what songs are about 2012? There haven't been any written yet, right?

Probably not, but we can go back to the past. We usually do.

Surprise, surprise! Yeah, I know you know a lot of really old music, Dad. So old that some of their instruments were designed by cave men. Or maybe that Learned Foot guy.

You're really a little too young to be so bitter.

Well, who says I'm not being bittersweet?

I'm not even sure how to respond to that. So instead we'll plug in the first video. We'll start around 1965 or so, when even I was young. But Frank Sinatra was not:

Well, what do you think, Maria?

I didn't know that older people wore fedoras! I thought that was Bruno Mars's thing!

Actually, back in the day a lot of people wore them. And Frank was famous for his.

Did you have one in those days, Dad?

Well, I was about 2 when this song came out. So I probably had a "Junior Slugger" baseball cap.

Ah. Well, anyway, the song was good, obviously, but let me ask you this -- when you were 17, was it a very good year for you?

I think so, Maria. But I didn't spend a lot of time on the village green.

Why? Were you too busy playing wiffle ball with your friends, in your suit and tie and fedora?

That would have made it tough to play wiffle ball, actually.

You're not going to tell me anything about that, are you? Well, that's fine -- I'm sure I can get the truth out of Uncle Paul anyway. So let's move on. What's next?

Well, not long after Frank was getting all wistful, two other dudes were thinking about the future:

Look at that facial hair! And that one dude's head! It's like an oval head covered in fake hair! Not much to say about their clothing, because it's in black and white and I can't tell if it doesn't match like most of the videos you show me. I wonder why they thought they could predict all this stuff. Did they think they were oracles or something?

No, just a couple of folk singer types trying to make a living in the cruel, cruel world.

That explains a lot of things, especially that one guy's weird oval head. But we're just trying to get through 2012, so I'd rather not think about 2525! Do you have some other year?

How about this one?

It's the "Year of the Cat."

Well, shouldn't it be the Year of the Dog? Everybody loves dogs! And you know I want a dog! A sweet, lovable dog that would fetch your slippers, relieve stress and keep the food scrap population down and be a good addition to the family! Right? Right?

Actually, let's stay on topic.

Okay, cats then. I just think you want to avoid the topic of dogs. Cats are awesome, too, and I can see the connection between girls and a cat. Girls are smart -- cats are smart. Girls are independent thinkers -- cats value independence, too. Girls could be mayor of the MOB, Foot can be catty. It all makes sense now!

I don't think ripping the guy is going to get him to reconsider.

I know that, Dad, but if I tried to persuade him he'd probably just stick his tongue out at me and slam the door in my face. I can't even persuade you and Mom to get me a dog, so maybe I need to change my approach.

Well, did you like the song?

Sure. It's a good song. I like the piano solo and even though that video is right in the middle of the 70s, they don't look completely ridiculous. They actually even look decent, which coming from me is a good compliment.

High praise, indeed, I'd say. Shall we move on?

Yes, Dad. Let's. I think it's time to turn the page.

Ah, yes, Bob Seger. I've heard this one before, Dad! The alto sax is very good on it and Bob Seger seems to be looking okay, although he might consider brushing his hair a little.

These days, he has a little less hair.

Well, see, if he'd taken my advice and brushed it, maybe it would have stayed in more! These people never listen to me. Just like Learned Foot. By the way, why didn't he call himself Learned Elbow? It's more catchy!

I'll be sure to pass your advice along, Maria.

That would do everyone some good. Okay. What else do you have?

Well, we can talk about the new year. Or let some Swedish people sing about it.

Ah, finally something to critique! Lots of outfits on this one! Number one: I see a lot of very silly hats that people got from the dress-up box.

That's actually a tradition in some places, wearing silly hats on New Year's Eve.

Oh, okay then, we won't critique that any further. Number two, I also see a lot of strange striped outfits, and I think I even saw one that looked like Kermit the Frog! Or is that part of the tradition, too?

No, I don't think dressing like Kermit the Frog is traditional.

Good to know. Number three, a lot of very ugly frills around on some of the costumes and on one of the members of Abba. And number four, don't you think the interior design of the living room is pretty boring? White on white? Tan on tan? Yawn on yawn?

Well, it's got that IKEA vibe going on. And after all, it is Sweden.

Oh, good point. But I don't shop at IKEA anyway. I just think some green plants would like nice. Or maybe a huge inflatable jumper thing. They were doing a lot of jumping in the video. Not as much as these guys, but a lot.

Now you're getting into Benster's territory with that link.

Well, I had to see if he was paying attention. And you know he tries to get into my territory all the time! "Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs?" Heck, what does that even mean? And you know I hate rap, so it's just to make a reference.

Well, you're nothing if not versatile, Maria.

Correct. All right, now do we have anything else?

Well, it's hard to get through a New Year without this one:

Some serious need to brush hair on that one! Well, maybe Bono was just trying to look punk, which is fine, I guess, if that's the look you're going for. And it was 1983, so actually it's acceptable. As for the song, well, I think it's pretty good. Although it seems a little sad for a new year. We'd like a new year to be a little more upbeat and hopeful, maybe positive even.

But nothing changes on New Year's Day. Or so they say.

I don't believe that, Dad! I think this new year is going to be great! But the best way to celebrate is to make other people happy. And you know what would make me happy?

If people would pick their favorite in the comments section?

Well, yes! So this year, people, amuse me and pick something! And meanwhile, Dad, let's talk about that dog....

Game Over

2011-12-29T06:06:00.001-06:00

Michele Bachmann loses her Iowa chairman to Ron Paul:

In a surprise move, and a blunt reflection of the shifting fortunes of Republican presidential candidates ahead of Tuesday's opening voter test, Michele Bachmann's Iowa campaign chairman defected Wednesday night to Ron Paul's campaign.

State Sen. Kent Sorenson, who has strong ties to Iowa's Tea Party, was hired as a Bachmann staffer in Iowa, even before she announced her candidacy. He helped lead her campaign to victory in the Ames Straw Poll in August. Ever since, however, Bachmann's popularity has been in decline.

Recent statewide polling shows her running last among the six Republicans actively competing in Iowa. Paul, meantime, is in a tight race with Mitt Romney for first place in Tuesday's caucuses, the opening vote of the 2012 Republican nomination contest.

"It's difficult, but it's the right thing to do," Sorenson said, in announcing his decision before a crowd of several hundred at a Veterans for Ron Paul rally at the Iowa state fairgrounds in Des Moines.

What to make of this? A few thoughts:

Sorenson bet on the wrong horse and he's trying to trade in his parimutuel ticket in the middle of the race. You cannot get by with that at Canterbury Park, but you can certainly try in Iowa. Whether he'll get by with it is another matter. My guess is that Sorenson has hurt himself more than he's hurt Bachmann.
Loyalty is conditional and careerism is Job One in politics, so Bachmann shouldn't be surprised.
Paul and Bachmann don't really see the world the same way, so this is strictly about Sorenson.
If I were to guess, if Bachmann supporters decide to bolt now, they'd be more likely to support Rick Santorum than Paul.
Santorum might do a little better than people expect if the evangelical vote that Bachmann was courting heads his way. Then again, Santorum is Catholic and for some evangelicals, that's a bridge too far. It will be interesting to see how far evangelicals are willing to travel.
As a practical matter, Dave Weigel pretty much got the upshot for Bachmann: "This changes everything. Instead of having to drop out on January 4, Bachmann will have to drop out on January 4."

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXIX -- Tiresias Perceives the Scene

2011-12-27T21:39:00.000-06:00

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest--
I too awaited the expected guest.

-- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

Earlier today I questioned how Peter King, a nationally known columnist for Sports Illustrated, could be so certain in reporting that the Vikings were going to have a stadium deal. It seemed curious, especially given the great uncertainty in the Minnesota Senate following the departure of then-Majority Leader Amy Koch, who was rumored to be willing to deal on the stadium, even though she'd never said as much.

Well, now that we know the identity of Koch's replacement, there's reason to believe that King knew something we didn't know:

Senate Republicans have elected David Senjem to lead them into the 2012 session and election year following the sudden resignation of former Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch.

The election — which took place at an initially secret meeting room in the Roseville Radisson hotel — lasted more than 11 hours. Senjem said he was elected after only one ballot. He was elected via a secret ballot.

Here's the key thing to know about Senjem. From the article:

Senjem, who was first elected in 2002, previously served as minority leader in the Senate. He has been a champion of racino legislation in past sessions. Gazelka, however, said neither gambling expansion nor a new Vikings stadium was part of the discussion.

Gazelka is Paul Gazelka, who will be one of Senjem's lieutenants, by the way. And whether or not Gazelka's assertion concerning the discussions prior to Senjem's selection are true or not, it's not particularly relevant. Senjem has carried a lot of water for racino; having a racino supporter in charge of the Senate changes the discussion concerning the Vikings stadium completely. Mark Dayton will sign anything that passes and the racino (or racinos -- could be one at both Canterbury and at Running Aces) would become the putative funding mechanism for a stadium. Senjem's old buddy Dick Day, former state senator turned carnival barker for the racino interests, has suggested that the racino can fund darn near anything. It may even make hundreds of julienne fries in seconds. I have no idea if any of that is actually true, although as a rule gambling revenues don't meet the projections. But if the governor believes it, that matters.

The skids are getting greased. And now all eyes turn to Kurt Zellers and the House.

Vikings to Arden Hills? XVIII -- So, What Does Peter King Know. . . .

2011-12-27T06:07:00.000-06:00

And how does he know it? Writing for SI.com, pro football bigfoot Peter King tells us that a stadium deal is nigh:

Last week, a source with knowledge of the Vikings stadium situation told me it's not a matter of if, but when the club and state officials finish negotiations to build a stadium at one of three sites -- one favored by owner Zygi Wilf in suburban Arden Hills, or two in downtown Minneapolis. As I reported on NBC last night, you should look for the Vikings to build the stadium in Minnesota and drop out of play to be the team that moves to Los Angeles.

So the die is cast, apparently. So all this speculation about how the recent drama at the State Capitol has thrown things up in the air is just kabuki, apparently. I would not be shocked if the fix was in, but there's little evidence of that. For his part, King does remind us of one important thing that happened recently:

About six weeks ago, NFL CFO Eric Grubman went to Minnesota not to badger local politicians and the governor but to state a fact: If they waited until after the season to hammer out a deal with the Vikings, they'd risk losing control of the decision-making process. The implication was clear: The Wilf Family is not from Minnesota, and ownership had already pledged $425 million to the stadium effort, and if that wasn't going to be good enough to get a deal done, the family might have to look elsewhere.

King seems sure. Are you?

Semantics

2011-12-27T05:51:00.000-06:00

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but something rather important changed in the most recent skirmish in Washington concerning the 60-day extension of the payroll tax. It's hiding in plain sight -- did you notice that we're now calling FICA a tax? And not an "investment?"

Two things worth noting here:

First, it's more honest, because FICA has never been anything other than a tax, considering that the federal government has always spent the revenues that it has received from FICA, pretty much on the spot. There's no lockbox or big vault that the feds keep your money in. They will (or might, depending on how old you are) pay you Social Security from whatever is available at the time you are allowed to collect it. And if the dollar happens to have the same valuation as a Turkish lira, tough luck, pally.
There's a larger purpose afoot in identifying FICA as a tax, though. In recent years Republicans have argued, often successfully, that nearly half of Americans don't pay income taxes. Because of the large income deductions that are in place, that has been true, but I've always thought that it was misleading, because nearly every American who files a W-4 form gets nicked for FICA, which does take essentially 13% of your income off the top. That's why the temporary rollback of FICA rates for this year can be called a "middle class tax cut." And in doing so, it allows those who love government to challenge the notion that nearly half of all Americans don't pay income taxes.

Good news of great joy

2011-12-24T17:36:00.000-06:00

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

Jesus is here. Merry Christmas to you.

On the Case

2011-12-24T10:51:00.000-06:00

I wrote about the issues surrounding the state GOP and its handling of the departure of Majority Leader Amy Koch. Sarah Janacek, who has long been one of the shrewder observers of the scene in St. Paul, has a long series regarding the matter over at her site. Just click on the link and keep scrolling. Much of what you'll read there rings true to me.

What do you think?

2011-12-23T21:50:00.000-06:00

One thing I've seen from Ron Paul supporters repeatedly is an assertion that the reason Iran, and by extension the Iranian people, hate the U.S. is that the CIA installed the Shah in 1953.

Given that the Shah hasn't been a factor since 1979, and the mullahs have been in power since the shah was deposed, do you suppose that, today, the average Iranian is more upset about:

a) U.S. participation in the events of 1953; or
b) U.S. non-participation in the attempts to gain freedom from the mullahs in the past few years?

For a bonus question -- do you suppose that the average Guatemalan is also angry that the CIA helped to depose Jacobo Arbenz in 1954?

Lemme know what you think.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- Holly Jolly Christmas and Belk Bowl Spectacular Edition

2011-12-23T20:05:00.000-06:00

You know it's that time of year when a young man's attention turns to the important things in life. Like, consumer electronics, girls and HYYYYYYYPPPPPPPE!

But not necessarily in that order, right?

Well, I put them in whatever order I see fit, Decrepit. But for now, since we are sitting in front of this computer, why don't we pick some football games? You can handle that, right?

I'll try.

Okay then. Watch me work!

Louisville Cardinals (+1 1/2) vs. North Carolina State Wolfpack in the Belk Bowl, in Charlotte, NC. Yes, kids, it's time to pick the Belk Bowl! Now, I know you have a number of questions concerning this event. For one, what the heck is a Belk? Well, our crack research team has determined that Belk is a chain of department stores located in the South, somewhat like Herberger's or maybe Fleet Farm but without horse trailering supplies. Then again, it is the South, so we can't rule out that they might have a bridle section in lieu of a bridal section. But then again, I'm sure you have another question -- who really cares? Well, certainly the good people of Charlotte must care a little bit about their Belk Bowl, considering that the Wolfpack is playing in the game. As a Badger fan, I am grateful to the Wolfpack for their dunderheaded decision to let Russell Wilson transfer. We really appreciate your stupidity, Wolfpack! Thanks, guys! But the question remains: who will win the game? Russell Wilson Alumni Association 21, Louisville 14.

Well, think about this from Russell Wilson's perspective, young fella. He had a chance to play in the Belk Bowl, but instead he's playing in the Rose Bowl. Of course, had Wilson stayed, perhaps the Wolfpack might have been able to play in the prestigious BBVA Compass Bowl instead. So in any event, it's all Belk, all the time for the Wolfpack. I'll pick Louisville for no good reason, which is about as much thought as the Belk Bowl requires. Louisville 27, NC State 21.

Minnesota Ponders (+6 1/2) vs. Washington Politically Incorrect Burgundy-Clad Football Squad. And you wonder why Redskins fans pay $40 for parking -- who wouldn't for the chance to see daring quarterback Rex Grossman at the helm? Well, I've seen Rex and as a Packer fan I was always deeply grateful for his ineptitude, rivaling that of fellow failed NFC North quarterback and contemporary Joey Harrington, who I believe is now a lounge act in a bar in Eugene. I think the Vikings should try and get Luck-y, if you know what I mean. Now that the Colts are winning some games, we could see a scenario in which Andrew Luck takes his talents to Winter Park. Or maybe Los Angeles, considering what's going on in the Legislature these days. Skins 42, Vikes 17.

Wow, there's a lot of textual density in that paragraph, Seabiscuit! Since I've never been that good at semiotics, I simply remind you that (a) Rex Grossman is a marginal quarterback and (b) the Vikings are probably due to win a game at some point. No luck for you, Vikings. Vikings 21, Redskins 16.

San Diego Chargers (+2 1/2) vs. Detroit Motor City Kitties. You can set your watch by it -- the Chargers are on one of their patented late-season rallies, which gets them a 5 or 6 seed in the playoffs and an early departure. It's always a stirring thing to watch, as Phillip Rivers throws beautiful spirals and Norv Turner stares blankly. It's not gonna happen this year, though. The Lions also have a shot at the playoffs and even though I hate to say this, I think they will get there this time. Hope they enjoy another trip to New Orleans and maybe your friend and mine, Hong Kong Dirty, can rough up Drew Brees enough that he won't be a factor later on. Lions 35, Bolts 31.

I think you're right -- it's going to be a wild one tomorrow in Detroit. And what could be more fun than spending Christmas Eve in Detroit, by the way? But I digress. Matthew Stafford is the key here -- if he gets hot, watch out. Lions 38, San Diego 27.

Bear Down Chicago da Bearz (+13) vs. Glorious Green Bay Packers. I'm not sure da Bearz have ever been a 13-point underdog against the Packers. I'm also not sure that they should be in this game, either. A lot of people have been saying that the Packers are in trouble, but they've got it easy compared to a team that doesn't have its two biggest playmakers available. I think da Bearz will still fight it out, because that's what da Bearz always do. But I'm wondering if Josh McCown and Kahlil Bell, who appear to be the replacements for Jay Cutler and Matt Forte in this one, can score enough points. Can they score any points? Well, we know McCown can do this. And you know something, Decrepit? I never get tired of that. Packers 13, da Bearz 10.

I think the Packers have something to prove. And they will on Sunday. Just make sure that Devin Hester only handles the ball on the sideline. Packers 31, Bears 14.

Before we close, I would like to say Merry Christmas to all my faithful readers and to my family. Ben out!

In It to Win It

2011-12-23T06:10:00.000-06:00

As you might recall, this feature nominated its stellar young blogger Fearless Maria to be Mayor of the MOB. Due to either (a) a mixup in our nominating paperwork, (b) an utterly arbitrary ruling by SOSFL Learned Foot or (c) both, Fearless Maria's nomination was rejected and instead I, Mr. D, find that I am the standard-bearer for our enterprise in this election.

That's fine -- as Foot rightly surmised, my plan was to have FM be the smiling face that hides various nefarious plots that others on the blog roster might undertake. As it turns out, my opponents include:

My friend and mentor, the estimable Night Writer;
The always-engaging, and heavily armed, Kevin Ecker;
A young blogger and activist named Ben, who is decidedly not the Benster;
The mysterious and obscure proprietor of the Red Squirrel Report; and
Bobo the Talking Chimp

Now, I'm of two minds about this. First, if I'm in this thing, I intend to win. However, I'd prefer not to savage Night Writer because he is a wonderful fellow who deserves praise, nor Kevie Ecker, who is, as I mentioned, heavily armed. But you have to do what you have to do, so game on. If I win, I'll buy you boys a drink at the next MOB party.

The key to winning is to answer the various questions SOSFL Foot poses. The first question is posed here. And remember, the purposes of this election are twofold: first, for entertainment only, since the position of MOB Mayor is entirely ceremonial; and more importantly, to drive as much traffic as possible to the Kool-Aid Report, Foot's charming and occasionally scatalogical site. So be sure to visit often -- Foot likes it when his Sitemeter resembles a winning slot at Mystic Lake. And remember -- support Mr. D for Mayor.

How Stupid Wins the News Cycle

2011-12-22T05:53:00.000-06:00

Based on what I'm told, the House Republicans are getting their butts kicked because they refuse to pass a temporary 60-day extension of the payroll tax cut, which the Democrats in the Senate apparently prefer.

There's a good reason for that opposition, which is the cost a temporary fix would impose on anyone responsible for dealing with payroll taxes:

"People need to realize what the Senate did, and kind of in a hasty way, they did something that is going to cause a lot of problems. By only extending the tax cut for 60 days, that's going to cause a lot of problems mechanically for businesses to implement it," the 57-year-old Mr. Gibbs said.

Employers who file tax paperwork on a quarterly basis, he said, will have to fill out payroll withholding forms twice, he said. "At least they should have made it for 90 days for the quarter. It's not workable."

The Senate over the weekend approved a bipartisan compromise, backed by President Obama, to extend the payroll-tax cut for just two months, while the GOP-dominated House approved its own bill for a 12-month extension. The tax cut will expire Jan. 1 if the two chambers cannot reach an agreement.

Emphasis mine. The Gibbs quoted here is a Republican congressman from Ohio, by the way. What he's saying is true -- payroll withholding is done on a quarterly basis and if the rates change, that means a lot of extra work recalculating things. For a small business, the time spent dealing with a midstream change is time they will not spend on their business. It might not seem like much, but in the aggregate such things add up.

As always, the problem is that (a) Republicans are terrible at explaining things; and (b) even if they explain things competently, there's an even money chance the MSM will not let the message get across. And taken together, (a) and (b) are why so many of us blog.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Lambert, Seeking Guidance on Issues of Great Importance

2011-12-21T06:01:00.000-06:00

Writing at MinnPost, enquiring mind Brian Lambert is demanding to know why "Minnesota's major conservative bloggers" aren't as concerned about Amy Koch as Mr. Lambert seems to be:

I am still looking and waiting for any of Minnesota's major conservative bloggers to say something about l'affaire Koch. The closest to date is Mitch Berg at “Shot in the Dark.”

Now, when you consider the major conservative bloggers in Minnesota, it's worth remembering that Ed Morrissey and the Powerline guys write for a national audience, so it's unlikely that they would spend much time on the issue. There are other bloggers with a more regional slant, especially Mitch Berg and Gary Gross, that I would consider part of the A-List. In my experience, neither Berg nor Gross are the sort to traffic in gossip or innuendo. It's not their thing.

Lambert knows this, of course, but on occasion Mr. Lambert's gig requires him to take a walk on the salacious side, to be a combination of Irv Kupcinet and Dan Savage. So, he's gotta stir the pot. And since (a) Mitch, Gary and the rest have better things to do than to analyze Sen. Koch's love life, and (b) have no requirement to write what Mr. Lambert wants to read in any event, that leaves Lambert without the explanation he craves. And of course Mr. Lambert needs an explanation, because his bien pensant audience needs the dirt. As one of Minnesota's minor conservative bloggers, and as a public service, I'll step into the breach and share my view of the matter. I wrote the following on Saturday:

Two stories in the last few days haven't helped things for Minnesota Republicans. The first, concerning the behavior of Amy Koch, now the former Senate Majority Leader following her abrupt midweek resignation, is the more salacious of the two, but far less interesting than the other. Koch should have known better and I'm glad she's gone. What else is there to say about it, really?

Now that a few more days have passed, I'm not convinced the story has become any more interesting. We can stipulate that Koch, at minimum, had a terrible lapse in judgment. We can also tut-tut her for not living up to conservative ideals. Please understand one thing -- it's just a variation on the oldest story around. As long as humans inhabit the planet, they will behave badly from time to time. People are sinners. And people who are in positions of authority are just as prone to sin as anyone else. In considering the importance of this matter, one might even suggest that at some point it might be time to "Move On." But I suppose that would be churlish.

There's one other factor at play here. It's evident that various members of the local chattering classes are attempting to suss out the identity of Koch's paramour. It's also clear that many of Koch's moral instructors on the Left are actively hoping that it turns out her liaison was with a certain well-known, and widely disliked, Republican operative who was fired over the weekend.

And let's face it -- because the well-known Republican operative has been very good at making DFLers look bad over the years, there's a great hope that this matter will provide a banquet of schadenfreude for all those who dislike the operative and wish to see him brought low. So, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that it turns out that the liaison was between Koch and the disliked Republican operative. Here's my question -- if it turns out to be true, would the matter be any more scandalous? If so, how?

I guess what I'd say to Mr. Lambert and the rest our friends on the left is this -- have fun with the story. Enjoy yourselves. Consider the revelation of the stupidity and self-inflicted pain of others to be an unexpected holiday gift that lifts your spirits in this, the most wonderful time of the year. Savor the cocktail of recriminations. After all, it would be churlish to deny you the pleasure of chortling at the pain of your enemies.

Open Thread

2011-12-20T05:56:00.002-06:00

Plenty to talk about, but not much inspiration this morning. Whatcha got?

Three Interesting Case Files for St. Peter

2011-12-19T05:57:00.001-06:00

So, it's not every weekend when you have three people of the stature of Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il leave the stage. Hitchens was the brilliant essayist and public intellectual who skewered everyone from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, yet still somehow became a favorite of many conservatives in later years because of his fearless critiques of radical Islam, among many other topics. As he fought and eventually succumbed to cancer, the avowed atheist Hitchens had millions of people praying for him, which caused him much amusement.

Havel was fearless, too -- a self-proclaimed man of the Left who was instrumental in fighting and eventually defeating the Communist regime that had ruled Czechoslovakia, via what came to be known as the Velvet Revolution. There aren't that many chain-smoking Frank Zappa fans who can change the fate of a nation (actually two nations, now that the Czech Republic and Slovakia have parted ways), but Havel did, leading a peaceful revolution and then serving wisely as one of the initial presidents of new republic. And my description of him hardly does justice to the man's importance on the world stage. He stands with Lech Walesa as a world-historical figure.

But the big news was the last of the three -- Kim Jong Il. North Korea is one of the most horrible places on earth, primarily because of the ministrations of Kim and the father he succeeded. North Korea has a starving populace, a million man army and, it is believed, nuclear weapons. It now has Kim's son at the helm, about whom little is known. South Korea, which is as prosperous as North Korea is destitute, has much to fear right now, as does Japan and even China. An army of that size, with all the modern weapons and no obvious leadership, is a very dangerous thing.

This world is a dangerous place, but as a Christian, I am eager to someday experience the next world. Hitchens disavowed the possibility of such a world and Havel, like Orwell, believed that God is dead. Kim would, by all accounts, be a prime candidate for Hell, but we don't know that. One of the greatest mysteries is that we do not, and cannot, know God's will. While it makes for an interesting parlor game, we cannot know what fate awaits these men. I expect we will be as surprised as they are.

Republicans in the News

2011-12-17T09:43:00.000-06:00

Two stories in the last few days haven't helped things for Minnesota Republicans. The first, concerning the behavior of Amy Koch, now the former Senate Majority Leader following her abrupt midweek resignation, is the more salacious of the two, but far less interesting than the other. Koch should have known better and I'm glad she's gone. What else is there to say about it, really?

The second story troubles me a hell of a lot more -- the complicated tale of woe concerning Brandon Sawalich, an executive with Starkey Labs who had decided to throw his hat in the ring for chairman of the GOP. The Star Tribune, in a rectal examination a news story, tell us a number of things about Mr. Sawalich:

In what an official for the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is blaming on a state clerical error, a candidate to head Minnesota's Republican Party was arrested this week outside baggage claim, then fingerprinted and photographed -- for expired vehicle tabs.

There's a message there -- your freedom is contingent on proper execution of bureaucratic clerical requirements. But there's more:

On Friday morning, airport police at first declined to explain why this offense, "intent to escape tax," warranted booking Sawalich. By midday, the chief spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) said that Sawalich should not have been accused of a gross misdemeanor, blaming the mixup on a clerical error by the state's Driver and Vehicle Services.

"We do not believe he had any such intent," said MAC spokesman Patrick Hogan. "Mr. Sawalich will receive a citation for failure to have current registration for his vehicle, which is a petty misdemeanor."

Hogan said that police were working on inaccurate information from the state that the pickup's tabs had been expired since June 2010, leading to a suspicion of intent.

They later determined that the tabs expired in June 2011, which reflects "a simple oversight" by Sawalich, Hogan said.

Perhaps there was an apology in there somewhere, but I don't see it. Of course, Sawalich should have paid for his tabs, although it's the sort of thing that would be easy to forget about. It beggars belief that a guy who is an executive with Starkey would have any reason to stiff the state over vehicle tabs. That's where the "intent" thing comes in.

For his trouble, Sawalich had to pay for his tabs, plus $138 to get his truck out of the impound lot and $60 for cab fare back to his house. I assume he'll have to eat that $200, even though there was no reason he should have incurred those costs.

Of course, those weren't the only costs he's paying:

On Friday, Sawalich dropped out of the race to head Minnesota Republicans, saying in an e-mail to activists that the party "cannot afford distractions for the uphill battle our party has in store."

That's tough, but he would have had an uphill battle to win the post anyway. One of the lingering problems of Tony Sutton's tenure is the sense that the state GOP wasn't paying attention to financial details, which is a real problem when you have to rely on voluntary contributions for your operations. Forgetting to pay for your tabs doesn't mean much in the greater scheme of things, but when attention to detail is crucial, such a problem is magnified.

So, Sawalich is out of the race, has paid for his tabs and is presumably going back to being a private citizen. End of story, right? If you thought so, you don't understand the modern media environment. The Star Tribune saw fit to add a completely gratuitous paragraph to the end of his account, detailing events in Sawalich's life that happened 8 and 10 years ago, respectively. If you want to see what they are, you can click on the link, but I'll not share them here. Sawalich is apparently 36 years old, which means that the events in question happened when he was less than 30 years old. In other words, even though he is now out of the race, Sawalich was Emmerized.

There's a message in that last paragraph -- if you would seek to be a prominent Republican, or even prominent in the inner workings of the party, you can expect to have every indiscretion of your life shared with the world. So you'd better damn well keep your light under a bushel.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- You Cannot Be Serious Edition

2011-12-16T21:11:00.000-06:00

I'm telling you, Geritol Fan -- they made us go to the new Blogger format. I'm having a difficult time envisioning the HYYYYYPPPPPE! I'm 16 years old and finding myself resenting forced software changes. My goodness, is nothing sacred? Or am I turning Decrepit well before my 20th birthday?

Hard to say, young fella. Are you resistant to change?

I live by the motto -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And because my mad prognostication skillz are intact, despite whatever technological barriers are placed in front of me, I soldier on. Watch me work!

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl -- Utah State Aggies (-1.5) vs. Ohio University Bobcats, on the Smurf Turf in lovely Boise, Idaho. Man, talk about a crappy bowl game! Two teams that are usually on the D-list in college football, playing in an outpost far removed from all civilization, on blue turf. You cannot be serious! This bowl game is the pits of the world! In fact, I don't really care who wins. But since we are duty-bound to pick one crappy bowl game each week during the bowl season, and this one is the crappiest one available this week, I will pull my unique analytical skills out and determine that Utah State nearly beat Auburn earlier this year, while Ohio University may have beaten the Heidelberg University Student Princes. So who wins? Aggies 17, Bobcats 10.

I'm kinda waiting for the Belk Bowl myself, but that's still 10 days out. A nice bowl of Belk is a traditional holiday favorite in Hungary, I understand. As for this game, I have no clue. I'll go with the other team just for giggles. Ohio University 24, Utah State 19.

New Orleans Saints (-6.5) vs. Minnesota ~~Ponders~~ Webbs. Actually, Christian Ponder hasn't been crossed out yet, but he's getting mighty close. He pretty much brought the stink last week in Detroit, while Joe Webb did his best to start a quarterback controversy on a 2-11 team, which is a pretty good trick when you think about it. Things have gotten so bad for our local Purple that KFAN is openly ridiculing the team that they carry as the flagship station of the Viking Radio Network. In fact, I would say that Christian Ponder is playing more like this than an NFL quarterback. He's got the hair to pull off a power ballad, but let's face it, one more bad performance and he'll be back on the pine. In fact, I don't think Ponder should necessarily assume he'll be the starter for this team in 2012. He's got a lot of work to do and he can't be like Social Security -- something I can't depend on in the future. As for the Saints, they'll win easily. N'awlins 100, Vikes 0.

Yeah, that margin of victory would be a pretty easy win. I don't think it will be that bad. Meanwhile, word to to the wise, Seabiscuit -- don't be dissing Ponder too much, especially since Mrs. D is fond of the dashing young signalcaller. But I agree, the Saints will win. Saints 34, Vikings 17.

Glorious Green Bay Packers (-13.5) vs. Kansas City Chefs. Meanwhile, the 13-0 Packers head to Kansas City, where they will encounter a team that fired its coach and seems ready to play Kyle Orton, who the Packers have already torched in the pre-Tebow era, and also generally because Orton is a former Bear with a really cheesy mustache. Is everything up to date in Kansas City? Not really. Pack will cruise. Champs 42, Chefs 7.

I sense little faith on your part for the home team. That seems right. Arrowhead Stadium is usually a very difficult place to win, but the Chiefs are hurting and the Packers have a chance to do something really special this season -- silence Mercury Morris. I don't see them tripping here. Packers 38, Chiefs 17.

Seattle Seabags (+3.5) vs. Bear Down Chicago da Bearz. Here's the thing, Decrepit -- the Seahawks are playing better these days, while da Bearz are still wheeling out Caleb Hanie. I know that everyone is jumping on the Tim Tebow bandwagon, but let's be real here -- there's no way that the Bears should have lost that game in Denver last week. That game was one of the worst choke jobs I've ever seen. And I enjoyed it immensely. Sorry, Gino. Seattle, believe it or not, has an outside chance to make the playoffs if they keep winning. The Bears have a chance to go 7-9. Dare to dream, Tarvaris Jackson. Dare to dream. Seabags 7, da Bearz 0.

One thing is certain -- the Bears are having an interesting stretch. It's not often you lose your starting quarterback, star running back and have a backup wide receiver get nabbed by federal drug agents. The funny thing is, I'm glutton for punishment, so: Bears 20, Seattle 14.

I was going to pick the Lions game, but I was afraid that I'd make Ndamukong Suh mad and he might stomp me or something. So I'll let them play without me. Ben out!

In case you care

2011-12-16T06:04:00.000-06:00

I finally got on Twitter. You can reach me here. I'm still not convinced that I can manage the 140 character thing, though. We'll see where it goes.

Late to the Party

2011-12-16T05:58:00.000-06:00

I'd managed to resist watching any of the previous Republican debates, mostly because I think they are at best a dubious exercise. I did watch the second half of yesterday's shindig in Sioux City. A few thoughts:

The biggest surprise to me is that I liked Jon Huntsman. He has no chance, of course, but in some ways he's a better Romney than Romney. I would hope that if one of his adversaries does become president, Huntsman would have a role in the next administration.
Late in the debate, Michele Bachmann had a scrum with Newt Gingrich and after Newt brushed her aside, she asserted that she was a serious candidate. Bottom line: if you have to make that assertion, you aren't a serious candidate.
Rick Santorum is weird. Weird guys don't get elected president.
The Fox News folks gave Ron Paul the rope and, not surprisingly, he hanged himself. I understand what he's saying about people acting in their own interests, but the Iranian regime has been fighting a low-grade war against the United States since 1979. The Shah has been gone for over 30 years, so you have to question what motivates the regime. The Soviets wanted to rule the world, but Khrushchev, Brezhnev and the rest were, at bottom, rational actors. I'm not convinced the mullahs are. Beyond that, Paul comes across as a cranky old dude. Cranky old dudes don't get elected president, either. I understand he was very good in the first half of the debate, but in the part I saw he was awful.
Rick Perry seems to have righted himself, but I think his moment has passed. His answer about the 10th Amendment was excellent, though.
Mitt Romney looks the part, and he might do better in the general election than he will in the primary. The problem is that he has to get through the primary. He has to spend a lot of time explaining why he has changed his positions over the years and he's had a lot of positions. It's hard to play offense when you're constantly on defense.
Newt Gingrich is really, really good at soundbites. He's brimming with ideas. He'd be a great dinner guest. I just don't see him as president, though. We're going to need someone with a plan and a consistent vision, and the discipline to stay after it. Newt can't help himself with the spitballing. Unless he had an extraordinarily good cabinet and a chief of staff who could keep him on task and on topic, he'd be a disaster.

Bottom line? I'm still not convinced that any of these individuals is really ready to be president. Still, one of them has to be, because the Obama administration is a train wreck. Once we get through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the field will be winnowed and it's possible that one of the candidates will look better.

NR Nixes Newt

2011-12-15T06:09:00.002-06:00

It was not that long ago when National Review was the go-to source for conservatives. My father had a subscription to NR for most of his life.

The key to NR was that William F. Buckley was at the helm. He was, for better or worse, the closest thing the conservative movement had to a true spokesman among the chattering classes. Buckley was one of the last of the public intellectuals and he enjoyed the jousting. NR also featured some interesting writers who weren't necessarily there for polemics, including the perceptive critic Terry Teachout and the acerbic back page columnist, Florence King.

What Buckley was never able to do, though, was find a successor. Buckley is gone, of course. And for me, National Review has been a dicey proposition for a long time now. I read the online version from time to time, but the writers it employs these days aren't appreciably better than what is available elsewhere.

That said, NR still has a strong presence on the conservative scene and it has now offered its view on the campaign. And we are told that Newt Gingrich should be straight out:

During his time as Speaker, he was one of the most unpopular figures in public life. Just a few months ago his campaign seemed dead after a series of gaffes and resignations. That Gingrich now tops the polls is a tribute to his perseverance, and to Republicans’ admiration for his intellectual fecundity.

Both qualities served conservatives well in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Gingrich, nearly alone, saw the potential for a Republican takeover of Congress and worked tirelessly to bring it about. Even before the takeover, Gingrich helped to solidify the party’s opposition to tax increases and helped to defeat the Clinton health-care plan. The victory of 1994 enabled the passage of welfare reform, the most successful social policy of recent decades.

Gingrich’s colleagues were, however, right to bring his tenure to an end. His character flaws — his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas — made him a poor Speaker of the House. Again and again he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action, bringing Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position without actually taking one. Again and again he put his own interests above those of the causes he championed in public.

Hard to argue with any of that, but I wonder if the words will mean much in the current environment. Newt is doing well for one reason only -- he's the only candidate out there that seems to have the throw weight to slug it out with Barack Obama. To the extent that I have been paying attention, it seems like the goal of the entire campaign has been to get the unruly rank and file to learn to love Mitt Romney. The problem is that Mitt isn't especially lovable. NR's editors say this:

Governor Romney won our endorsement last time, in part because some of the other leading candidates were openly hostile to important elements of conservatism. He is highly intelligent and disciplined, and he takes conservative positions on all the key issues. We still think he would make a fine president, but time and ceaseless effort have not yet overcome conservative voters’ skepticism about the liberal aspects of his record and his managerial disposition.

That skepticism hasn't abated thus far. If anything, it's increased. As a practical matter, Mitt Romney has been running for president for at least six years now and, if anything, he's farther away from making the sale today than he was at this point in 2008. That's not a failure to communicate. That's a failure to show the leadership he supposedly has.

I know Barack Obama has to go. But I'm not sure that any Republicans in the race are ready to deal with the horrific mess they would face in 2013.

Where's the Money, Jon?

2011-12-14T05:57:00.002-06:00

The MF Global debacle is getting more interesting by the moment. The hearings concerning what happened to customer money are not exactly shedding much light on the matter, either:

Terrence Duffy, executive chairman of CME Group, told a Senate hearing that an MF Global staffer told one of his employees that Corzine knew $175 million the firm loaned to a European affiliate came from segregated customer accounts.

Duffy said CME Group provided the information to the Department of Justice, which is pursuing a criminal investigation into the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Corzine has twice testified under oath that he was not aware customer funds were missing until Oct. 30, just before the firm's collapse.

Corzine, in case you didn't know, is Jon Corzine, the heavyweight veteran of Wall Street who was incidentally once a senator and governor for the state of New Jersey. CME, in case you didn't know, is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The CME is where many of the agricultural commodities in the country are sold. And it turns out that a lot of the missing customer account monies belonged to farmers in the Midwest, including one guy the Star Tribune happens to mention:

Among those who are missing money is Minnesota farmer Dean Tofteland. He didn't mince words about what he thinks happened to $253,000 he had deposited in his futures and options account at the bankrupt brokerage.

"Commingling money is stealing money," Tofteland told members of the Agriculture Committee earlier in the day.

Tofteland, who raises wheat, corn and pigs in Luverne, stressed his sense of betrayal as he waits to see if he will recover the $253,000, plus another $100,000 he lost when he was forced to liquidate hedges held at MF Global.

"These funds were not an investment in MF Global," Tofteland told committee members, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat who invited him to testify. "These funds were not a loan to MF Global. These funds were simply collateral required by the exchange as a guarantee for my promise to deliver the bushels that I priced."

Meanwhile, Corzine is into omerta:

As he did last week in the House hearing, Corzine offered no explanation of where the missing money went. Nor did Bradley Abelow, MF Global's president and chief operating officer, or Henri Steenkamp, the chief financial officer of MF Global Holdings Ltd. Both appeared with Corzine before the Senate panel.

Several senators grew openly frustrated with the trio's inability to answer questions or to give the names of individuals who could.

There's a much larger story here. We don't know the particulars, but we're going to find out soon enough. And there will be a lot more people than Dean Tofteland who are hurt.

6 Years Ago Today

2011-12-13T05:56:00.000-06:00

I was on my lunch hour. At the time, I was working for Bank of America and, while I didn't realize it at the time, the big financial bubble was about to burst, with implications that have bedeviled us ever since. I enjoyed my job as a financial analyst, but BofA had decided to close its location in the Twin Cities and consolidate operations on the West Coast. I was faced with a potentially life-changing decision: do I stay with BofA and move my family to Portland, Oregon, or do I accept a severance package and stay in Minnesota?

When faced with a life-changing decision, you have to do some critical thinking. You have to weigh your options, consider the financial impact and the wishes of your children. You have to imagine how different your life would be. So I had a lot on my mind that day. And what did I do?

I started a blog. This blog.

As it turned out, starting a blog was as much of a life-changing decision as anything else I was contemplating that day. Over the course of six years, a total of 2,787 posts have appeared in this space. I've written most of them, with some assistance from my family. I've chronicled family events and the passing scene. And I've met some wonderful people.

Rather a lot has happened in the last six years. I ended up taking the severance and it took a long time to find a good job, although I did, eventually, not long before the bottom fell out on a lot of other people, including many of my BofA colleagues. In the meantime, I was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor and got to meet neurosurgeons and endocrinologists. My kids have charged through their childhoods into adolescence. And the Packers have gone from being a 4-12 footwipe to a Super Bowl championship.

It's difficult to imagine what the world will look like in six years, given the amount of tumult we have seen since that quiet afternoon in 2005. I suspect the pace of change will only increase and that the challenges ahead will be especially daunting. The world doesn't seem nearly so happy in 2011 as it did in 2005. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if things look better in six years. And I fully expect to write another navel-gazer on the blog's 12th anniversary.

Home Truth

2011-12-12T12:37:00.000-06:00

The great P. J. O'Rourke on fairness:

Yes, it's upsetting that some people have so much while other people have so little. It isn't fair. But I accept this unfairness. Indeed, I treasure it. That's because I have a 13-year-old daughter And that's all I hear, "That's not fair," she says. "That's not fair! That's not fair!" And one day I snapped, and I said, "Honey, you're cute, that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off, that's not fair. You were born in America, that's not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray that things don't start getting fair for you."

Palestinians

2011-12-12T05:54:00.001-06:00

This has become a story in recent days, because Newt Gingrich brought it up. He asserts that the Palestinians are an invented people and that the term has only been in general use since 1977.

I remember 1977 and I'm pretty sure that Newt is right. But it falls under the "true, but irrelevant" category. We are now nearly 35 years on from 1977 and things have changed. There will be, and must be, a Palestinian state of some sort in the future. What it looks like is still open to debate. The converse is also true. There has been a Jewish state called Israel since 1948. It must exist, too.

Still Not Interested

2011-12-11T09:52:00.000-06:00

I believe they had the 437th presidential debate in this cycle last night. From what I can tell, the sole purpose of these enterprises is to provide usable soundbites for the Obama campaign.

I watched this instead.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- Getting Ready for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl Edition

2011-12-09T19:40:00.003-06:00

You know it's that time of year. The time of year when we start rolling out the crappy bowl games. In recent years we've honored the EagleBank Bowl and the Beef O'Brady's Bowl, but again this year we have some fine new bowl games to mock. Like the tradition-laden Belk Bowl, or the hugely popular Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. First question: what the heck is a Belk? Second question: who cares?

Actually, I know what a Belk is. It's a chain of department stores in the South. Apparently they beat out Herberger's for the honor. And I would like to again acknowledge how much I miss the Galleryfurniture.com Bowl.

Old dude, I'm never less than amazed at your command of completely useless information. I don't bother with that stuff, though. Because my job is to pick games with great style and bring the HYYYYYYYPPPPPPE! So let's get down to it. Watch me work:

Minnesota Ponders (NL) vs. Detroit Motor City Kitties. There's no line on this game because no one is certain whether Adrian Peterson and/or Christian Ponder will be able to play in this particular game. We do know that Ndamukong Suh will be watching the game from behind the wheel of his smashed-up car somewhere in mysterious Portland, Oregon. I'll bet Chrysler is thrilled to have him for a spokesman by the way. The Vikings are in total freefall and will get destroyed, I imagine, especially if they end up trotting out Joe Webb or Parsley Sage Rosenfels. Lions 24, Vikings 3.

I dunno. The thing about the Lions is that they are punks. That much has been established in recent weeks, as they seem to be especially good at losing their composure. I saw where Jared Allen said some disparaging things about the Motor City the other day, which is the sort of thing that will get people riled up all over again. I suspect that Allen is trying to mess with the Lions and their fans. Will it work? It could, but given that the Vikings might end up trotting out Alfred Anderson and Spergeon Wynn before the game is over, it doesn't augur well for the Purple. Lions 27, Vikings 14.

Bear Down Chicago da Bearz (+3 1/2) vs. Denver Tebows. So it's da Bearz versus the quarterback who seems to be the personal emissary of the Lord Himself. Talk about your morality play, good versus evil thing! Yeah, this is gonna be a game with a lot of fervor. The Broncos have been led by their overrated quarterback, but mostly they're really winning because of their defense, which has been mostly outstanding for the last two months. Tebow is decent, but let's face it; you can't win in the NFL long-term playing with a college option quarterback. After all, who could forget the great NFL careers of Jack Mildren and Jerry Tagge, right? Okay, those dudes played in college about 25 years before I was born, but I've seen the footage on ESPN Classic. And from what I can tell, Tim Tebow is exactly like them, except with a better haircut. In fact, Tebow Time will not come this week. Da Bears 21, Tebow Time 17.

Ya know, I was kinda thinking the same thing, but I'm required to disagree with you on at least one game, so I guess I'll have to go with the Broncos. What makes this decision easier is that the Bears are going with Caleb Hanie, who is playing more like Mr. Haney on Green Acres these days. Bears fans all over the world are pining for Jay Cutler right about now. Riddle me this: how many felt that way after the NFC Championship Game last year? Funny how our perceptions can change over the course of a calendar year, huh? Denver 17, Chicago 9.

Oakland Raiduhs (+11) vs. Glorious Green Bay Packers. The Raiders are coming back to Green Bay in December. The last time they were in Green Bay in December, Leroy Butler invented the Lambeau Leap. This was before I was born, but I've seen the video. The Raiders have been back to Green Bay since then, but it's always been in warmer weather. The early forecast for Sunday is that it's going to be cold. I sat through a cold game at Lambeau last year and it's actually a lot of fun. But not if you're the opposing team. The Raiders are going in without their top offensive threat, Darren McFadden, and that's not a good thing when your only hope to win is to outscore the Packers. Well, that's not gonna happen. Packers 28, Raiders 10.

When we were there that cold December day, the Packers scored 45 points on the Giants. Could they score 45 on the Raiders? They could. But I'll settle for one touchdown less. Packers 38, Raiders 24.

I am really getting excited about that Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, but that's a pick for next week. Ben out!

Albert's Bridge

2011-12-09T06:05:00.000-06:00

Just a quick observation:

Albert Pujols is leaving the St. Louis Cardinals to play for the ~~California~~ ~~Anaheim~~ Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and will get $254 over 10 years for doing so.

For the privilege of playing in Anaheim, he will pay, at minimum, a state income tax rate of 10.3%. Had he stayed in Missouri, he'd have paid somewhat less, 6%. Had he gone to Miami, he'd have paid no state income tax.

It's hardly surprising that so many athletes want to play in Miami these days.

At the Dilettante BPOU

2011-12-08T20:34:00.000-06:00

The scene: the dining room table at Chez Dilettante, a guarded location somewhere in the northern suburbs. A gathering is taking place among the team members of the Mr. Dilettante's Neighborhood blog, a successful non-profit enterprise that occasionally breaks triple digits on the Sitemeter, but only when one of the bloggers insults either the Minnesota Vikings or songwriter Eric Carmen. A conversation ensues:

Mr. D: Thanks to everyone for coming out this evening.

Fearless Maria: C'mon, Dad. We live here and it's cold outside. Where else were we supposed to go?

Mr. D: Okay, that's a fair point. The reason I've asked all of you to join me this evening is that we have an opportunity to participate in a grand civic endeavor.

Benster: Am I in trouble?

Mr. D: Not so far as I know. Why do you ask?

Benster: Decrepit, I'm 16 years old. Every waking moment could be grounds for my arrest at this point.

Fearless Maria: You sound a little paranoid, Benster. Then again, maybe you have reason to be.

Mr. D: Anyway, as I was saying, we have a chance to participate in an august political tradition. You may have heard that acting Secretary of State For Life Learned Foot has called for a new mayoral election for the MOB.

Fearless Maria: I've heard about that, Dad! It means you get to preside over the MOB as a benevolent despot. And then really old people with marginal social skills make fun of you.

Mr. D: You've been reading ahead, haven't you?

Fearless Maria: I'm not on the honor roll in middle school for nothing, Dad. I pay attention to things.

Benster: I'm in high school so I hang out with a lot of people with marginal social skills. This doesn't sound too hard to me. Do you need any particular credentials?

Mr. D: Well, based on the roster of previous mayors, it doesn't appear that you do.

Fearless Maria: Is it true that becoming mayor of the MOB affects your ability to spell properly? I heard about that Andee Applecowskee guy. I don't want to get in trouble with my fellow citizens I would serve!

Mr. D: I don't think you'll have any trouble with that. In fact, your spelling ability would be a real plus.

Fearless Maria: So, are you going to run, Dad? I know you're pretty power-hungry these days.

Mr. D: No, I don't think so. I'd rather be the power behind the throne.

Benster: Well, maybe I should run. I could use a few meaningless credentials to add to my college applications in a few years. Who are the potential candidates?

Mr. D: I'm pretty sure that most of the nominations thus far aren't serious. Someone nominated a blogger named Karl Bremer who isn't even a member of the MOB.

Fearless Maria: Well, who is he, then?

Mr. D: He's a guy with a mustache who lives in Stillwater and spends a lot of his time writing nasty things about Michele Bachmann.

Benster: Wait, a guy with a mustache who writes nasty things about Michele Bachmann? That sounds like Eric Black.

Mr. D: I could see how you'd make that mistake, Benster. The only difference is that Eric Black combs his hair a little more often.

Fearless Maria: Who cares about either of those guys? Is anyone else running?

Mr. D: It's hard to tell, Maria. The other nominees are a woman named Dog Gone and the intestinal tract of a University of Minnesota professor.

Fearless Maria: Wait, how could the intestinal tract of a professor run for mayor? Wouldn't the rest of him have to run, too?

Mr. D: Presumably, although it's been suggested that the intestinal tract would run as a ticket with Dog Gone.

Benster: Well, Fearless Maria likes dogs a lot. Maybe this Dog Gone would be okay.

Fearless Maria: And Benster likes eating a lot, which usually ends up involving intestines, so maybe this Dog Gone/intestinal tract ticket would work!

Mr. D: I suppose, but I've had the sneaking suspicion that this race needs an actual candidate.

Benster: You're not trying to get me to run for mayor against an intestinal tract, are you Decrepit?

Mr. D: Well...

Fearless Maria: Dad, actually that's kinda gross. I mean, really kinda gross. But then again, if this is just a fake candidate...

Benster: What it sounds like is that this race needs a little bit of HYYYYYYYPPPPPPPE!

Mr. D: Well, it needs something.

Fearless Maria: Maybe it needs some logical style advice and intelligence.

Mr. D: I'm sure of that, Maria. I've seen how some of these people dress and they do look like the road crew for Slade.

Fearless Maria: I dunno, though. I'm still in middle school and I'm not sure that I'm ready for the honor. Have you thought about drafting Uncle Stinger?

Mr. D: I thought about that, but Stinger hasn't written anything for the blog in nearly a year.

Benster: Yeah, but Johnny Roosh hasn't written anything for at least two years and he's been the mayor the whole time. I think Uncle Stinger's work ethic might be comparable.

Fearless Maria: Hey, Dad, if we came to talk here about Mayor of the MOB, and we're thinking about nominating Uncle Stinger, why didn't you invite him over? I feel like I'm missing something here.

Mr. D: Uncle Stinger's kinda busy these days. It really needs to be one of us, I think.

Fearless Maria: What about Mrs. D?

Mr. D: Nominating Mrs. D to be mayor of the MOB might be grounds for a divorce.

Benster: Well, that wouldn't be good. I love Mom and I do need someone to remind me to clean my room.

Fearless Maria: Stop it, stop it! I don't like where this is going! Bring it back to reality, twerps!

Mr. D: I assume you mean, "dear brother and dear father," right?

Fearless Maria: Yes, my dear father. But you have to admit, that was pretty twerpy.

Mr. D: Hard to argue the point, Maria. But anyway, where does that leave us?

Fearless Maria: Well, I guess I could present my credentials. I'm an "A" honor roll student, a member of the Art Club and I received 3rd place in the Barnes and Noble poetry contest last year. And I take pre-algebra, so my financial skills are going to be far superior to any of the other candidates.

Benster: Well, I'm a high school student and noted football prognosticator. I pretty much kick this guy's butt every week with my picks. And considering his blog is supposed to be humorous, I've told a lot more jokes than he has lately. And I've never actually met Sisyphus.

Mr. D: You've never met Sisyphus? That might be enough to clinch it right there. So who should our candidate be?

Fearless Maria: I suppose I could, Dad. But I want to be modest. Maybe you should be it, Dad!

Mr. D: Naah. What about you, Benster?

Benster: Well, I would like to add that meaningless credential. And certainly I should be able to beat out someone's intestinal tract. But I'm afraid it would cut into my NBA 2K11 time too much. I think Fearless Maria should do it, unless you can talk Brad Carlson into the job.

Fearless Maria: I don't think Brad would do it, Benster. He's too serious to do that. Can we nominate Gino, even though he lives in California?

Mr. D: I don't think so.

Fearless Maria: I guess you're right, Dad. He'll have to run for mayor of the COB. And Gino, if you're reading this, make sure to bring some corn.

Mr. D: Well, if Benster won't do it, and Gino can't do it, and the Stinger is hors de combat, that leaves you, Fearless Maria. Can you do the job?

Fearless Maria: All right, Dad. I'll do it. I'll do it for the MOB. I'll do it for the good of mankind! I'll do it for the cause of justice and decency! I'll do it for the dogs! Maybe once I cash my first mayoral paycheck, I can buy my own dog! Yippee doodah hooray!

Mr. D: Okay, it's settled then. Fearless Maria is our candidate. And every candidate needs a theme song:

Fearless Maria: Dad, I don't really like that song. Can I write my own song instead?

Mr. D: Sure, Maria. So your hat is in the ring?

Fearless Maria: I guess so, but don't make me throw my softball hat. That's special to me.

Benster: Sounds good, Maria. Now I have to write an attack ad against that intestinal tract. I'll just pretend it's part of the BCS. Ben out!

Almighty Dollar

2011-12-08T06:05:00.000-06:00

Without directly stating it, Ann Althouse makes an important point about the role of money in campaigns, including the current effort to recall Scott Walker in Wisconsin:

Work for pay is honorable, even in politics. A political campaign isn't carried out entirely through volunteers. But money in politics matters. In fact, Scott Walker's antagonists lambaste him for his connection to monied interests. Some folks stress getting the money out of politics. They rail about Citizens United and so forth. That's one way to go, the wrong way I think, because it's not going to work and it violates freedom of speech. But part of freedom of speech — key to the majority's opinion in Citizens United — is the public's interest in receiving information. In this light, what is crucial when it comes to money in politics is that we the public receive information about who's spending the money and where.

Thus, what I want is to know to what extent signature-gatherers are being paid. Who is being paid, how much, and by whom? I want to follow the money.

I do, too. I've long suspected that the reason why so many liberals, especially those who rail against the Citizens United decision, object to "money in politics" is just that letting everyone, including corporate interests, participate equally makes the job of liberals tougher to accomplish.

The other question that needs asking beyond "who's spending the money and where" is the question that never seems to get asked: why? What do Scott Walker's opponents hope to gain from a recall? The obvious answers are more money out of the public treasury and the ability to keep that money flowing. Which brings us to the governor on this side of the St. Croix, Mark Dayton. The Star Tribune reports that Dayton isn't impressed with the forecasted budget surplus in Minnesota:

Projections of a surplus rather than a deficit may have caught Gov. Mark Dayton by surprise, but that doesn't mean he's giving up on his signature issue of taxing the rich.

"I'm not dropping that," Dayton said of his proposal to raise taxes on millionaires. "We will come in with it as the lead in to the 2013 session, regardless of the outcome of the election."

I'm sure he's sincere about this. Which is why this election cycle will be so crucial for Minnesota.

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXVII - Mostly Lather, Rinse, Repeat

2011-12-07T06:06:00.001-06:00

I've written about the Vikings stadium issue rather a lot this year and because so little real news came out of yesterday's kabuki, I almost let it pass without comment. But there are two things that are new, so we return to the topic.

The biggest story is that the Vikings expanded their threat to leave:

Vikings spokesman Lester Bagley said the team has heard from two cities seeking an NFL team -- Los Angeles and another he would not identify. "I would let that city speak for themselves,'' Bagley said.

Where would that be? It's difficult to think of a U.S. market other than Los Angeles that isn't currently served. But it's worth remembering that the NFL has long been trying to reach markets outside of the United States. Would you rule out Toronto? Or Mexico City? I wouldn't. It's long been suspected that the Buffalo Bills might move to Toronto some day and it's been an open secret that the NFL would like to establish a base for operations in Canada. And while we often think of Mexico as a complete mess, there's plenty of money in Mexico City.

The second newsworthy piece is that an Ojibwe tribe is offering to get involved if they can get a casino out of the deal:

The committee also heard testimony on benefits and drawbacks of various gambling options and on use of public funds. Erma Vizenor of the White Earth Tribal Council pitched a proposal to build a tribal casino near the new stadium to benefit the tribe and help pay for the stadium.

Politically, this is where it gets interesting. The White Earth band is one of the largest in Minnesota and would love to have a casino closer to the metro area, but the Sioux tribes that operate Mystic Lake and Treasure Island would fight another casino tooth and nail. The metro area tribes give a lot of money to politicians in St. Paul, especially DFLers. That alone likely makes Vizenor's proposal a nonstarter, but it exposes some interesting political fault lines.

Not surprisingly, the Star Tribune buried the ledes in favor of plumping for the non-news aspect of the story, which is that R.T. Agonistes has decided that the Metrodome site is the best bet for a Minneapolis bid. We get the same litany of nonfactors that supposedly benefit the site:

Rybak said the presence of one (and eventually two) light-rail lines at the Metrodome and its lower costs compared to Arden Hills make the current home of the Vikings the best place for a new stadium. Proposals for sites at the farmers market and near the Basilica of St. Mary remain in the running, Rybak said, but will not have the city's official support.

"The bottom line is, we are prepared with existing revenue streams to put $300 million on the table,'' Rybak told senators, who heard 5 1/2 hours of testimony on stadium plans and ways to pay for them. Rybak acknowledged the revenue -- from city liquor, sales and lodging taxes -- is now dedicated to the Minneapolis Convention Center and may not be sufficient in the early years of the stadium project.

He said the Vikings' desire for activities outside the stadium led Minneapolis to consider ways to use the privately owned armory as an "event center field house, the centerpoint of a new game-day experience'' for the team's fans. In addition, he said, unspecified changes along 4th and 5th Streets between the stadium and armory could improve the fan experience.

Again, I point out that the Vikings don't give a damn about light rail and Rybak is still writing checks on other people's accounts, especially concerning the revenue streams. As for the Armory, unless the Vikings and the city can figure out a way to clear $1 million a game from concessions there, which would represent the money the Vikings would give up if they don't get their giant parking lot in Arden Hills, it won't matter.

After two meetings, nothing has really changed. The Vikings want what they want. It's up to Minnesotans to decide if they are willing to pay the price.

Lightning Round - 120611

2011-12-06T06:06:00.000-06:00

Time is short:

I don't typically like judges imposing themselves into public policy, but the judge that stopped Mark Dayton's rush move to unionize day care workers did everyone a favor. There is no reason to believe that unionizing day cares does anything except provide an additional revenue stream for the unions. The judge suggested that the legislature might want to weigh in on the matter. And it certainly does.
The latest polling suggests that Ron Paul has passed Mitt Romney among potential supporters in Iowa. While I continue to believe there isn't a chance in hell that Ron Paul will ever be president, some of his arguments, especially those concerning the economy, do make a lot of sense. I actually preferred Romney in 2008, but in this cycle things look rather different and his technocratic style seems out of touch with the times. I suspect that events are in going to be in the saddle in 2012.
There's a lot that's wrong with college football right now. And the decision to put LSU and Alabama in the national championship game will not sit well with too many people outside of the southeast and the professional sports commentariat. Having said that, I have minimal sympathy for Boise State, which got shut out of the process again, because the entire thing revolves around something that Boise State can't really provide -- money. More people would rather see the Michigan Wolverines play in a major bowl game than care to see the plucky squad from Idaho. And the Michigan fan base can fill the stands in Louisiana much more easily than Boise State. That's just how it is.

A Weekend Without Politics

2011-12-05T06:01:00.000-06:00

I pretty much avoided politics this weekend. It's a good thing to do sometimes. Politics continue, of course and a few things happened over the weekend that merit a comment or two:

The slow-motion train wreck that has been Herman Cain's presidential campaign appears to have come to an end now. It is easy to like Herman Cain but there was never any real evidence that he had the skill set necessary to be the next president. Whether you think his 9-9-9 plan had any merit, and I was pretty skeptical about it, he did raise the importance of rethinking the current tax code in a big way. That is a public service.
Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich becomes the most formidable Not Romney yet. The standard objections still apply -- he's pretty much the dictionary definition of hubris. What I still wonder is this: we still haven't seen a single vote cast. Are we really sure that we know anything about the race yet? I'm not convinced we do.
At the state level, the big news was the resignation of Tony Sutton as head of the Minnesota Republican Party. While I'm largely sympathetic to the Republican Party and have done some work at the local level, I've tried to stay away from the machinations of the party at the state level. Sutton has been a controversial figure within the party from the get-go. While he's certainly been more visible and voluble than the two Rons who helmed the party previously (Carey and Ebensteiner, respectively), he also had a management style that lacked some, ahem, transparency, especially on the financial side. The challenge is similar to what the Republican Party faced on the national level when Michael Steele was there -- if you can't account for where all the money is going when you are running an organization that depends on donations, you are going to have trouble maintaining control. Finding a guy who can talk the talk and keep things tidy simultaneously seems to be a problem. As always, Mitch Berg has some useful thoughts on the matter.
So what did I spend my time on this weekend? Family and football. And it all went very well.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- Decrepit's Birthday Edition

2011-12-02T20:39:00.003-06:00

Before I get started, I just want to say Happy Birthday to the old dude! So, how old are you now, Dad? I think you're like what, 74, right?

I think you're off by a few years. I still am not getting mail from AARP yet, pally.

They must not love you, Geritol Fan! Heck, I'm not even out of high school and AARP is sending me mail.

I think that's an invoice, bud.

Well, that's just great. I expect to get a lot of invoices from your no-account generation. But this is not the place to talk about politics. This is the time to unleash the HYYYYYYYYYPPPPPPE! And since our vast reading audience depends on my wisdom, I'd better uncork a little. Watch me work!

Beloved Wisconsin Badgers (-9 1/2) vs. Michigan State Spartans, at Indianapolis. After the Ohio State game, a lot of people lost faith in the Wisconsin Badgers. But not me. I predicted that the Badgers would be playing in this game. And lookie here -- there they are! The old dude and I were able to see the Badgers live last weekend against Penn State. First, I must say, thank you, Uncle Butcher! (Yes, I have an Uncle Butcher. Deal with it.) Secondly, to assure our friend Gino, I steered clear of the Penn State locker room while we were in Madison. Third, I jumped around! That's right, I came to get down. But now, let's get down to business here. So, we all know what happened last time in godforsaken East Lansing, where the Spartans won the game on a Hail Mary. But that wasn't the play that changed the game. I call your attention to the first half. The Badgers were driving for a touchdown, when a Michigan State player gave Montee Ball a helmet-to-helmet shot that temporarily knocked him out of the game. Instead of the Badgers driving in for a touchdown, they were stopped on the next play and Michigan State then got their momentum going. No one has really talked about that play, especially in the Michigan State camp. They seem to have forgotten or would prefer not to acknowledge it.

Man, this prediction is so long that I need a second paragraph. But anyway, Wisconsin has all the momentum going and should have a foolproof strategy for beating the Spartans this time around. Keep the Spartan defense on the field and pound it into submission. Then, force Kirk Cousins to beat you with a rally. Guess what? No rally this time, Sparty! Karma can be a, well, female canine. Let's just put it that way. Wisconsin 42, Sparty 38.

I don't know if you've noticed, but the Badgers actually have one of the top 10 defenses in the NCAA. And the Spartans are ahead of the Badgers on defense. I have to admit that I found the Badger defense to be very tough when we were at Camp Randall. Now, Michigan State has more firepower than Penn State, but I think the secret for this game is that the Badgers have improved their defense steadily over the season. And I think Montee Ball will get his points again. Rose Bowl? Sure, why not? Wisconsin 38, Michigan State 27.

Denver Tebows (+1 1/2) vs. Minnesota Ponders. Hey, Geritol Fan! Did you see the glow coming from the Metrodome? That can only mean one thing -- it's Tebow Time! I have to be honest with you -- I don't know how Tim Tebow is winning football games, considering he seems to be channeling the form and style of former Bears quarterback great Bobby Douglass, who never won anything except the wrath of Bears fans. There must be a reason why Tebow is successful. Could it be his strong faith? Maybe. More likely, it's the strong defense of the Denver Broncos, which is the real story behind what's been happening in the Mile High City. Well, considering Adrian Peterson is out for the Vikings, the real question is whether the Vikings will score any points. Broncos 17, Vikings 0.

Wait -- have you no faith in Greg Camarillo? Or Toby Gerhart? Or Devin Aromoshadu? Well, me neither. Unless Percy Harvin touches the ball about 30 times on Sunday, the Tebow tale will continue. Broncos 13, Vikings 6.

Glorious Green Bay Packers (-7) vs. New Jersey Dwarfs. The last time the Packers played the Giants, I was there with the old dude and two of my uncles. By the way, the Packers kicked the Giants all over Lambeau Field. The best part is that, because of a snowstorm on the East Coast, the Giants got to spend another magic evening at the Paper Valley Hotel in Appleton after their loss. I'll bet that was a joyous occasion for Big Blue! Since then, the Packers have not lost, while the Giants have lately been in an embarrassing free fall. Did you see any of their performance in New Orleans last week, Decrepit? That looked like something out of a horror story. The Packers are rested and while they have a few nicks, they should be ready to kick some more Big Blue butt. Packers 63, G-Men 0.

That seems a mite high, Seabiscuit. I realize that's part of your shtick, but really? Anyway, the defensive coordinator of the Giants, Perry Fewell, added a little Fewell to the fire by suggesting that the Giants were going to smack Aaron Rodgers around. As it happens, today is Aaron Rodgers's birthday. That's no way to treat the birthday boy! I think the Giants will play well early, then fade. Packers 34, Giants 20.

Kansas City Chefs (+7) vs. Bear Down Chicago da Bearz. It's a magic quarterback matchup -- Tyler Palko vs. Caleb Hanie! Wow, be still my heart! No, not really -- these quarterbacks are terrible. So who wins the terrible quarterback matchup? The team with the better defense, of course. And that would be. . . . Da Bearz 24, Swedish Chefs 0.

Hard to argue. So I won't, although I'll trim down the margin of victory a smidge. Bears 17, Chiefs 7.

Detroit Suhs (+9) vs. New Orleans Saints. So, our old pal Hong Kong Dirty (a/k/a Ndamukong Suh) managed to kick his way into a 2-game suspension after his soccer display on the arm of Packer lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith. I'm still convinced that the funniest kick I've seen this year was when the Packers played the Vikings and T. J. Lang got hit in the well. . . . I'm not sure what the Packers are doing to get their lineman kicked so much, but I hear that Suh and Brian Robison of the Vikings are comparing notes, or maybe thinking about an offseason audition with Riverdance. The Lions are now in a total freefall and that's never a good a place to be, especially when you have to visit New Orleans in your downward trajectory. N'awlins 49, Suhs 42.

And now, a musical selection in honor of our guy Ndamukong. Except this time, it's going to be Drew Brees doing the stomping. Saints 34, Lions 17.

Well, happy birthday again, old dude! Ben out!

The Surplus

2011-12-02T06:07:00.000-06:00

A billion in the hole? Or the better part of a billion in surplus? That's the discussion here:

Minnesota's strengthening economy and previous budget savings leave the state with a projected surplus of $876 million, but the flash of good news comes with warnings that the respite could be brief.

News of the surplus Thursday morning stunned legislators who had been bracing for a potentially deep deficit and another brutal budget showdown come January.

The problem -- it isn't real. And as is its wont to do, the local news gathering organization buries the lede:

A significant chunk of the savings that created the surplus came from the administration's health care retooling and Dayton's embrace of President Obama's health care overhaul, which Republicans vehemently oppose.

In other words, one part of government is subsidizing another.

So what's the upshot of all this? A few thoughts:

Don't expect a tax refund or reduction in rates from the state. It's not gonna happen.
Although Gov. Dayton indicated that he might go a little more sotto voce on the class warfare, that won't last.
There's still really no money for a new Vikings stadium.
The structural problems remain. The state still spends too much money and now that a temporary windfall has come into the system, a lot of hands will come out.

And the other part of the equation? Well. . .

Thursday's surplus projection was accompanied by a less welcome prediction: A $1.3 billion deficit for 2014-15, and a greater than normal chance of recession in 2012.

I don't like to be a bear, but there are a lot of reasons to be one right now.

Doing What People Do

2011-12-01T06:04:00.000-06:00

Can you believe it -- the Star Tribune reports that firefighters in Minneapolis might be gaming the system:

Irritated Minneapolis City Council members Wednesday again grilled Fire Chief Alex Jackson about rising overtime payments traced to firefighters calling in sick on summer weekends.

"It strikes me as more than coincidence that people are more likely to call in sick on Friday or Saturday than on Tuesday or Wednesday," budget committee Chair Betsy Hodges said during a recent hearing, adding that she wants legitimately ill firefighters to call in sick.

Council ire over fire department overtime has been building for at least two years as the department tries to meet a mandate to shrink its budget. In repeated hearings, council members have asked Jackson to explain the warm-weather bulge in overtime and come up with a solution.

Seriously? C'mon, everyone knows that getting an early start for the cabin has remarkable recuperative effects.

And yet:

Council President Barb Johnson said she was "shocked" to see the fire overtime issue arise after the council had chastised police officials for overtime costs.

But you see, that was about the police department. You can't reasonably expect one department to take any lessons from the treatment another department gets, now can you?

On the bright side, the fire department has a plan:

The department hires firefighters to fill gaps for multiple reasons. Sometimes firefighters can't work because they're recovering from a duty-related injury or long-term illness. Some overtime is required to fill behind military leaves. Some is paid under federal fair labor standards because the number of hours worked under 24-hour shifts exceeds the federal threshold. Sometimes firefighters are held over to complete a run.

But it's the amount spent to fill gaps behind sick firefighters that's drawn intense council scrutiny. Jackson said he's already requiring that anyone missing more than six shifts a year for illness get a doctor's note. Lakosky said he thought that requirement should solve the problem.

By the way, "Lakosky" is Mark Lakosky, who heads the firefighters' union.

I dunno -- if you work in the private sector and you call in six times over the course of the year, chances are good that you'll get scrutiny far sooner than you after the sixth incidence. At the same time, you have to expect that people are going to abuse any system, because that's what people do.

If the sixth time is the one that requires a doctor's note, I predict you'll see a lot of firefighters take precisely five sick days a year. Maybe that will close the deficit noted in the Star Tribune article.

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXVI - Talking Loud and Saying Nothing

2011-11-29T21:49:00.002-06:00

So they had a public hearing on the Vikings stadium at the Capitol today and the Vikings were told that they need to talk to Minneapolis:

“There is no done deal here as far as I’m aware of,” said Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, who chairs the influential Senate Taxes Committee and presided over Tuesday’s hearing. “There is no fait accompli.” A second hearing will be held Dec. 6.

In one of the hearing’s pivotal moments, Ortman pointedly told Lester Bagley, the team’s vice president for stadium development and public affairs, that it would be “in your best interest” to meet again with Minneapolis officials before partnering with Ramsey County and firmly committing to a site in Arden Hills. While Bagley said the team would oblige, he said that with Ramsey County “we think it’s important that we stick with the local partner that sticks with us.”

I'm not sure what this meeting would accomplish, unless R. T. Rybak and the rest of the gang in the Mill City have a way to replace the $10 million parking revenue stream that the Vikings expect to collect if they get to build their palace in Arden Hills. As we've noted all along, the Vikings don't care about existing infrastructure, unless it delivers automobiles to parking lots they control. Not one of the sites that Rybak is floating will have that. Are they confused?

In addition Rybak said that, without input from the Vikings, city officials and business leaders still did not know which of three downtown sites to officially support.

Here's a hint to the befuddled mayor and his retinue: the site that works best is the one that has 20,000 parking spaces the Vikings would control. If Rybak can deliver that, the Vikings might come downtown. Better get cracking on that land acquisition.

As you would expect, the meeting accomplished nothing, really. The question hasn't really changed since the very beginning: will Minnesota pony up what the Vikings want? If Minnesota will, Wilf will smile, build and count his money. If Minnesota won't, Wilf will likely sell the team. There are potential buyers in Los Angeles. Are there potential buyers in Minnesota? If the lege won't pay the ransom money, Vikings fans had better hope that someone with deep, deep pockets is willing to buy the team.

Vikings to Arden Hills? XXVI - Talking Loud and Saying Nothing

2011-11-29T21:48:00.000-06:00

So they had a public hearing on the Vikings stadium at the Capitol today and the Vikings were told that they need to talk to Minneapolis:

“There is no done deal here as far as I’m aware of,” said Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, who chairs the influential Senate Taxes Committee and presided over Tuesday’s hearing. “There is no fait accompli.” A second hearing will be held Dec. 6.

In one of the hearing’s pivotal moments, Ortman pointedly told Lester Bagley, the team’s vice president for stadium development and public affairs, that it would be “in your best interest” to meet again with Minneapolis officials before partnering with Ramsey County and firmly committing to a site in Arden Hills. While Bagley said the team would oblige, he said that with Ramsey County “we think it’s important that we stick with the local partner that sticks with us.”

In addition Rybak said that, without input from the Vikings, city officials and business leaders still did not know which of three downtown sites to officially support.

What vs. Why

2011-11-29T06:06:00.000-06:00

I got a pack of material in the mail yesterday from the Ron Paul campaign and it makes for an interesting read. Much of what Paul proposes makes sense, but there's almost no way any of it could actually happen, given that it would require cleaning out pretty much everyone who works in the federal government.

One thing that is especially interesting is the oft-proffered notion that it is time for an audit of the Federal Reserve. The Paul supporters I've encountered are especially keen on this idea. According to this website, the GAO has already taken a gander at some Fed activity and has found the following:

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows..

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places

Is this sinister? It's difficult to know, really. What it really shows is the extent of our financial problem. The key thing that's missing from this information is why such loans would be necessary. That's really the important question.

Home Truth

2011-11-29T05:46:00.000-06:00

Bret Stephens, in the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece.

We're starting to run out of other people's money.

VDH Explains

2011-11-28T05:52:00.001-06:00

The estimable Victor Davis Hanson offers some observations on taxes and taxation, including the following:

At first glance, 33-35% federal top rates do not seem that steep; but income taxes do not fall in isolation. Many of the higher-income payers are small business people and self-employed professionals, who pay 15.3% in FICA and Medicare taxes on a sizable and growing portion of their income. And that portion and the rate itself always go up, never down. In 2013 a surcharge will hit those in the now near “criminal” $200,000 and above brackets. Many of the top incomes (believe Sen. Schumer, not me) fall in high-tax states like New York and California, where state income taxes can hit 10%. Add in property taxes on homes and businesses, and it is not hard to envision a theoretical 50% + rate, or over half one’s income. So, the conservative asks, at what total rate would local, state, and federal governments be happy — 60%-70%-80% of annual income?

And this:

Liberals talk as if we live in the world of coal-dusted Dickensian London and the Cratchits, or perhaps millions are still like the Joads putt-putting in smoky cars from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. Yes, there is poverty, but it transcends income, entitlements, and most of the rules of what used to apply in the pre-globalized world. My local Wal-Mart — in the poorest section of one of the poorest counties in a near bankrupt state — does a brisk business in new cell phones, DVDs, big-screen TVs, laptops, and discretionary purchasing. Black Friday was nightmarish when I drove by. When I was ten, few of the middle class had air conditioners; now most of the poor do, whether in their homes or cars. The onset of a billion new global workers, cheap consumer items, technological revolution, and government cash has meant that someone with a “below the poverty line” income can purchase cheap clothing and gadgetry that forty years ago were the mark of an aristocrat. The ability to call a foreign country on a cell phone for 5 cents a minute from the check-out counter never computes in any standard of wealth and poverty. In our world, it is “What THEY have,” not “What I have,” that counts.

There's a lot more at the link.

Football and Wisconsin

2011-11-27T20:25:00.000-06:00

We were in Madison over the weekend. A few comments:

My brother-in-law took me, my brother and the Benster to Camp Randall Stadium for the Badger-Penn State game on Saturday. Although I've been a lifelong Badger fan, I'd never gone to a game before. It was a wonderful experience, especially since the Badgers had little trouble dispatching the reeling Nittany Lions, 45-7. The game day experience is filled with ritual and a certain measure of silliness, although the crowd was somewhat subdued because of the weather conditions (a light rain) and the admonitions of various UW officials. It was evident that majordomos were concerned that the UW student section might have a few choice chants at the ready for the visitors, especially in the wake of the unfolding scandal involving the football program. For the most part, the crowd did not partake in the joy of cheap shots. Meanwhile, the famous "Jump Around" tradition at the beginning of the 4th quarter is even more amazing in person. The entire crowd seems to get into it.
The Badgers have a hell of a football team. Quarterback Russell Wilson is not a large man -- they list him at 5'11", but I doubt he's that tall. He is fearless and composed, though, and he was able to dodge some pretty sizable Penn State defenders with ease. Meanwhile, UW tailback Montee Ball is even more impressive when you see him in person. He has had an astonishing season -- over 1600 yards and 34 total touchdowns, a total that completely smashed the previous Big Ten records. Ball is decisive when he hits the hole and is able to use power or finesse as needed. He has another year of college eligibility, but I sincerely hope he goes to the NFL and gets his paycheck. He has a chance to be a special player in the pros.
There was ample evidence of the recall efforts against Scott Walker, but it wasn't clear to me that the petitioners were necessarily getting a lot of takers in the area near the stadium. I suspect that outside of Madison, there's little appetite for a recall and that people would just like the unpleasantness to go away for a while. Unfortunately, there's little chance of that. My sense is that the Left continues to see the current era as existential -- the worldview of so many people is crashing in so many ways around the world right now and the dream won't die easily. Scott Walker is emblematic of the death of the dream -- he never graduated from college, yet has been able to foil many people who cling to their academic credentials. He's not especially articulate, either. Yet he's managed to win election and, thus far, stay in power. If your worldview and livelihood depend on the blandishments of the therapeutic state, Scott Walker must be destroyed.

Uh-oh

2011-11-23T21:25:00.000-06:00

This is really bad.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Fasten your seatbelts. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- Thanksgiving Day Extravaganza Edition

2011-11-23T19:14:00.004-06:00

You know it's that time of year when we bust out this image, Old Dude! That's right, it's Thanksgiving HYYYYYYYYPPPPPPPPPEE! First off, let me thank everyone for wishing me a happy birthday earlier this week. I'm another year older and am still waiting for the Geritol Fan to let me drive his Buick Roadmaster.

You may be waiting a while, young fella.

Yes, I know, I still have to take the driver's ed course and pass the tests, but it's going to happen soon enough. But that's not why you're here. You've come for my mad game picking skillz. Watch me work!

Glorious Green Bay Packers (-6) vs. Detroit Lions. This might be the first time that one of these games has mattered since 1962. Do you want to know how long ago 1962 was? Get this -- Decrepit wasn't even born yet! My goodness, that's a long time ago! The Lions looked like a team that was going to challenge for a playoff spot this year and they still might make it, but lately they've been a little shaky. Matthew Stafford has been erratic and the Lions defense has been giving up touchdown passes lately. That's not a good formula for success against the Packers, who score more points than I do with the ladies. Okay, that's not a fair comparison; maybe I should strike that line from the record. Naah, we'll let it stand. Anyway, back to my expert analysis. We'll be seeing the Lions again on New Years Day at Lambeau, so this one is probably going to decide the division. If the Packers win tomorrow, the Lions are toast. Or stuffing. Or giblets or something. Packers 35, Lions 31.

The funny thing is this -- the Packers actually like this Thanksgiving Day thing. Mike McCarthy said as much this week. I'm not sure the immediate experience is going to be pleasant, though. Josh Sitton has been playing hurt all season and that's not a good thing when you are lined up against Ndamakong Suh. If the Packers keep the Lions out of Aaron Rodgers's face, the Packers will win. But it's gonna be tough. Packers 28, Lions 24.

Minnesota Ponders (+9 1/2) vs. Hotlanta Falcons. Meanwhile, we have the Vikings, who are contemplating a full Les Steckel experience this season. You remember Les Steckel, right? Well, I don't, because he was the coach about 11 years before I was born. But I've heard the stories about his reign of error. This team looks pretty dismal right now, especially if Adrian Peterson can't play. I'd heard that Christian Ponder wanted to be an NFL quarterback in the worst way. He's getting his wish -- bad receivers, bad offensive line, no stud running back and an opponent that really needs to win. Ooh, this won't be good. Dirty Birds 70, Fire Leslie Frazier 0.

Wow, the Leslie Frazier watch is already on? Mrs. D won't be amused by that call, Seabiscuit. I get where you're going, though -- the Vikings are looking worse by the week and there's no evidence that they will be able to right the ship. I'll bet Zygi Wilf really enjoys the excellent PR work his team is doing right now. The question is: would L.A. want this collection? Atlanta 27, Vikings 13.

Bear Down Chicago da Bearz (+3 1/2) vs. Oakland Raiduhs. Hello, Caleb Hanie. Welcome to Oakland. Watch as the Raider defensive line decides to Occupy Hanie. Do you see what I did there? Fresh as today's headlines. Anyway, things got a lot tougher for those Bears this week as we've learned that Jay Cutler has a broken thumb and won't be able to play for at least a few weeks. I'll give you this -- Cutler got hurt on a play that should put to rest the snickering about his courage once and for all. We've been tough on Cutler here, but he deserves a lot of respect for what he's done this season. The problem is, he might be done doing what he does. And that leaves us with Caleb Hanie, who channels the best attributes of former Bears greats Bobby Douglass and Peter Tom Willis, with maybe a dose of Steve Stenstrom thrown in. The problem is, da Bearz need something better than that. Wouldn't it be wild if we see the return of Brent "Don't Text Me Bro" Perve in a Bearz uniform? He wouldn't do that, now would he? Or would he? In fact, I think he is. Raiduhs 17, da Bearz 10.

Don't even suggest something that terrible, youngblood. Hanie is a good athlete and can run well. He may have to. I think the Bears defense holds up well and keeps them from falling out of the race, but it's going to be tough to keep pace. I expect a lot of Matt Forte for now. Bears 21, Raiders 16.

Illinois Fighting Zooks (-10 1/2) vs. Minnesota Golden Road Kill. If you're a Gopher fan, at least you've got this much going for you -- your coach will be back next year. As for Illinois, maybe not so much. Ron Zook is cooked, I think, and he won't coach at the D-1 level for a while. The Illini started the season well, but they could end up 6-6 after a 6-0 start and get to go to the ever-popular Little Caesar's Bowl, where they will be playing a bucket of chicken wings. The early line on that game is that the bucket of chicken wings is a 3 1/2 point favorite over the Illini. Meanwhile, our Gophers are trying to improve and they've shown a few signs of progress, but Jerry Kill was right -- this is a big rebuilding job. Gophers 50, You're Fired, Ron Zook 0.

Wow. Just wow. I agree, Zook is in a lot of trouble, but I don't see that sort of faceplant happening on Saturday. I also think that the Illini pull one out because they like their embattled coach. Won't save him, though. And Vegas is probably right about the chicken wings beating the Illini, especially on a neutral field. Illinois 24, Gophers 17.

Penn State Media Circus (+16) vs. Beloved Wisconsin Badgers. I still don't want to talk about Penn State right now, but professional duties require that I must, so let me tell you this. The Nittany Lions can play some defense, but they are offensively challenged, because they have two quarterbacks. And when you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterbacks. Will Montee Ball get two more touchdowns? Heck, I think he'll set the national record. If he gets 3 touchdowns per game through this one, the Big Ten championship game and the Rose Bowl, he'll do it. Let's call this foreshadowing, but Montee Ball will win the Heisman, because he's had a much better season than anyone in the country. Wisconsin 83, Penn State 0.

I looked this up. The last time the Nittany Lions came to Madison was 2008, they killed the Badgers. The final score was 48-7. I suspect Bucky will turn the tables. No mercy this time. Wisconsin 48, Penn State 7.

Arkansas Razorblades (+14) vs. LSU Bayou Bengals. And now, a rant. Ahem. I watched the Game of the Century a few weeks back and it was the worst game that weekend. LSU/Alabama was BORING! A snoozefest! It was DULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! And now comes Arkansas, who is somehow 3rd in the country? No! Enough of this SEC bias, and enough of the BCS! I've always called the BCS a cartel. What's worse is that they combine two things that are really tough to take: corruption and boredom! I still don't forget how the Badgers got screwed in 2006 and how various teams have been getting screwed each year (Houston Cougars, I'm looking at you!) In fact, do you want to know the truth about the SEC? They don't have the courage to play actual teams! I had to listen to to all the sneering from the SEC types about Big Ten non-conference schedules, but I've noticed Georgia Southern, Western Kentucky and Northwestern State on SEC schedules recently. I guess the game with Lakeland Dental Academy must have been postponed. I have to pick a winner and LSU didn't impress me one little bit. Razorbacks 17, LSU 10.

I hope you're right. What I'd like to see is this: Arkansas wins this game, Alabama loses to Auburn and then the Razorbacks lose to Georgia in the SEC championship game. Then let's see how the BCS cabal can wedge two SEC teams into the BCS championship game. It would be amusing. Arkansas 24, LSU 17.

Man, all that ranting tires a guy out! Well, at least we'll get some tasty turkey tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving -- Ben out!

Your Strange Tangential Vikings Stadium Story of the Day

2011-11-23T06:05:00.000-06:00

Not really time for a new Vikings stadium post, but this is an odd story:

Anoka County is seeking $2 million in compensation for a package it created to try to land a Vikings stadium in Blaine five years ago — a playbook the County Board’s chairwoman says Ramsey County used to lure the team to Arden Hills.

The proposal by Rhonda Sivarajah drew a response of “huh?” in Ramsey County

.

"Huh" is a bit more polite than "whiskey tango foxtrot," I guess. There's more:

Sivarajah at first suggested that Ramsey County pay the $2 million — which she called a “conservative estimate” — for using an Anoka County plan the Vikings publicly sacked in 2006. After a vigorous discussion, she said the money should instead come from the state and only if racino proceeds help to fund a stadium in Arden Hills.

“If the state decides their priority is to use proceeds from racino to fund a Vikings stadium in Ramsey County, then Anoka County should be reimbursed $2 million, which was utilized to develop the financial package that Ramsey County is essentially using,” Sivarajah said later.

I'm hesitant to go on, since it's possible that Sivarajah might invoice me for quoting her. But we need to finish the job:

When Anoka County devised its plan five years ago, racino wasn’t part of the picture. It was that plan, again without racino, that Sivarajah said Ramsey County used.

“I know Ramsey County has requested information from us,” she said. “It’s only appropriate that the citizens of Anoka County be reimbursed.

Here's a prediction -- all Sivarajah will get out of this is a headline in today's paper. If you follow her logic, you find there really is no logic. If units of government are due compensation every time they pick up the phone and call another, you'll have no communication at all. At least no one will call Sivarajah.

Just a guess -- what this is really about is getting Anoka County's beak in the tent for any racino proceeds, especially if the Running Aces track gets one. Running Aces is in Anoka County and if it's going to generate any money, Sivarajah and her colleagues would like a taste. That's easy enough to understand. It's even a defensible request, since Anoka County will incur additional expenses for policing the site if a racino is built. It would be better if she'd just admit as much instead of pretending that Ramsey County owes consulting fees.

Another Debate

2011-11-23T05:35:00.000-06:00

We've now had 11 debates among the Republicans. So far, the only thing that this seemingly endless cycle has proven is that every candidate on the stage is deeply flawed.

Well, yeah

2011-11-22T06:07:00.000-06:00

Saw this on Facebook, from an old college friend who is a college professor and reliably leftist:

Apparently we're supposed be outrageously outraged at two things:

1) That some jerk cop was randomly pepper spraying people at UC Davis; and
2) That some people (that the Left feels free to smear with the nasty epithet "teabagger") carry guns.

It's pretty simple, actually. Human nature being human nature, it should be obvious that some cops are going to be nasty people. There are nasty people in all walks of life. Because you encounter nasty people in the world, you need to have the ability to defend yourself. That's the point of the 2nd Amendment.

It's really not that hard to understand. If you can demonstrate that the cost of screwing with you will be high, people won't generally screw with you. And if you depend on the kindness of strangers. . . .

Super Duper

2011-11-22T05:53:00.000-06:00

The Super Committee failed. Are we surprised? I'm not.

It was supposed to fail. There is a fundamental disagreement in this nation concerning the proper role and scope of government and there was no way that a group of Congresscritters that included Patty Murray and Jon Kyl would solve it. These folks see the world very differently.

There's a reason why conservatives oppose tax cuts as a matter of course. The idea that any group of legislators that uses the levers of government to curry favor with constituents would raise taxes, then refrain from using the money to pay people off, is ludicrous. It's never happened. Conservatives know this. They've been playing Charlie Brown while the liberal Lucys have been pulling the football away for nearly 80 years now. In many cases, they've been complicit.

We're running out of money now. Europe is running out of money. Everywhere you look, the money isn't there. People don't want to admit it, but that's the reality of the situation. It's going to be an ugly, ugly election cycle.

November 21, 1995

2011-11-21T05:53:00.000-06:00

This post first appeared in 2008, but it still works. Happy birthday, Benster -- 16 years old today!

I remember it being a cold but sunny Tuesday morning. As it turned out, two things happened that day that are historic. First, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed over the 5000 mark for the first time. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Dayton Peace Accords were initialed, marking the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And at 1:52 p.m. CST, in a room at United Hospital in St. Paul, our first child was born.

We'd had a bit of a scare a month earlier and Mrs. D had spent about a week in the hospital with pre-term labor. She'd returned home and had been on bed rest. When we woke up that morning, it was clear that something was up. We called the hospital and they told us to come down. We worked our way down from our townhome in Shoreview, stopping once so I could get my cup of morning coffee. Momentous events require coffee.

Once we got to the hospital, we went to our room and Mrs. D went through the experience. Things were progressing along slowly but it seemed possible that this would be the day. The nurses and doctors came and went, none seemingly too worried about things. It was possible that it might be days before the baby would arrive, we were told, or the baby might come today. It seemed like a long morning. We'd been through the Lamaze classes and we were clued into what we might expect. We'd brought music to listen to and Mrs. D's favorite teddy bear, which she'd received as a gift in college. Whatever it took.

As the morning dragged toward noon, she turned to me and said, "look, I don't think anything is going to happen any time soon. Why don't you go and get some lunch. Take your time." Knowing that she was in good hands, I left the hospital and walked down to a Subway shop on West 7th. I got myself a turkey sub and a Pioneer Press and had a good long hour of decompressing. Although we were both excited about the possibilities of the day, it was good to get away and think about things other than the life-changing event that might happen. I strolled back to the hospital, got on the elevator and headed for the maternity ward.

When I got back, it was obvious that Mrs. D had had an eventful hour in my absence. She was rocking uncomfortably back and forth in the bed and she looked at me and said, "you can't leave now." There was a nurse nearby and we were told that the obstetrician would be arriving shortly. "It looks like the baby is going to come today," I was told. The next hour was a blur. I remember trying to hold Mrs. D's hand, and hold the teddy bear to give her a focal point. I remember trying to fish through our bag to change the tape (yep, we still had cassettes). I put on some Miles Davis - Kind of Blue, a favorite and something that would be comforting enough. As the bottom of the hour passed and we headed toward 2, it became pretty clear that this was the time. A close family friend had arrived to offer support and was pretty much horrified to realize that she had walked in at the moment of truth. She quickly beat a hasty retreat the waiting room. I will never forget the look on the friend's face.

Meanwhile, the moment had arrived. Childbirth is simultaneously amazing, frightening and a little bit bizarre. As the song "All Blues" wailed softly in the background, I saw the baby emerge. It was our son. As the nurses quickly took him to the side table to give him his first exam, the Apgar score, he let out a healthy wail. Mrs. D looked at me. I looked at her. It was the beginning.

My son is a 7th grader and is straddling the childhood he is leaving and the exciting world of adulthood that is beckoning. He's turned into a bright, energetic kid with a quick wit and a great enthusiasm for learning more about the world he entered that cold, clear Tuesday. He's been a source of great joy.

At times, it's obvious that 13 years have passed. But it still seems like we just brought him home from the hospital.

****

Three years on, my son is now a high school sophomore. He's still the same kid but he's changed in a lot of ways, but one thing remains is constant. He's an enthusiastic young man. He's coming of age in a tough world, but his enthusiasm should serve him well. He's beginning to understand the whys of the world even though he questions them, as a teenager will. He's still a source of great joy.

And it still seems like we just brought him home from the hospital.

One Less Legend

2011-11-19T10:56:00.000-06:00

There are ample reasons to cast a cold eye at Newt Gingrich, but one less today:

Yet while the thrust of the story about his first divorce is not in dispute — Gingrich’s first wife, Jackie Battley, has said previously that the couple discussed their divorce while she was in the hospital in 1980 — other aspects of it appear to have been distorted through constant retelling.

Most significantly, Battley wasn’t dying at the time of the hospital visit; she is alive today. Nor was the divorce discussion in the hospital “a surprise” to Battley, as many accounts have contended. Battley, not Gingrich, had requested a divorce months earlier, according to Jackie Gingrich Cushman, the couple’s second daughter. Further, Gingrich did not serve his wife with divorce papers on the day of his visit (unlike a subpoena, divorce papers aren’t typically “served”).

I guess that means Gingrich gets at least one more week to be Not Romney.

Benster and D Pick Your Games -- You've Been Zooked Edition

2011-11-18T20:02:00.002-06:00

Hey, Decrepit! Wake up! We have work to do!

I guess we do, young fella.

The season is getting on these days. Kinda like you! So we don't have a lot of time to waste. So, watch me work!

Minnesota Golden Road Kill (+ 15 1/2) vs. Northwestern Fighting Fitzgeralds. So, Geritol Fan, did you get a load of that point spread? The pesky Gophers are a 15 1/2 point dog to Northwestern???? Northwestern???? I don't know that Northwestern has been favored by 15 1/2 points in all their games combined this season! Talk about a lack of respect for our friendly rodent pals! Well, let's think about why. Last week the Gophers got their butts kicked by those nasty Badgers. Now, is Northwestern nasty, too? Or has Vegas been busted? Fitzgeralds 21, Gophs 14.

Someone in Vegas must think it's 1995 or something. Northwestern has a talented quarterback in Dan Persa, but they aren't exactly a Big Ten powerhouse these days. I really wonder why the spread is that high, too. I think the Gophers will score, but Persa will score more. 15 1/2 points more? Not so sure about that.... Northwestern 38, Gophers 27.

Beloved Wisconsin Badgers (-14 1/2) vs. Illinois Fighting Zooks. I don't know if you remember this, old dude, especially given your tendency for memory lapses, but the Illini started out the year at 6-0. Did you notice their record today? They are 6-4. And in true Illini fashion, they are bringing the fail. Epic, epic, fail. So much fail that you might mistake it for HYYYYYYYPPPPPPE! Except it's the opposite of HYYYYYYYPPPPPE! It's FAAAAAAIILLL! I also noticed that Coach Ron Zook walked out of his press conference this week. Is that a sign that he'll be walked out of his office at the end of the season? Meanwhile, the Badgers, as I predicted, now control their own destiny and can get to the Rose Bowl if they win out. Do you think the Illini can beat the Badgers? Maybe. Jared Abbrederis is hurt and Peter Konz is probably out until the bowl game. The Illini have a good defensive line. That could make it interesting. But in the end, I think the Illini are going to get Zooked. Badgers 56, Chief Illiniwek 49.

Have you seen the Illini play offense, Seabiscuit? They've been having difficulty crossing the 50, let alone scoring. The Badgers will miss Konz, but it looks like Abbrederis will play. More importantly, Montee Ball and Russell Wilson will play. And the Illini will have no answer for that. Badgers 42, Illinois 20.

Penn State Fugitives from Justice (+7) vs. Ohio State Tattoo U. Man, is this game corrupt, or what? We have the miscreant Buckeyes hosting the scandal-ridden Nittany Lions, who are carrying the sins of people who are no longer part of the program, but continue to do said misdeeds. I didn't want to pick the Penn State game last week, but now that we have a little distance, we can begin to take stock of things. It's awfully tough to keep your focus when the eyes of the entire world are on your campus, so in some respects it might be a relief for Penn State to get out of the fishbowl and play someone else. Especially when that someone else is corrupt, too. Luke Fickell is learning just how fickle the Ohio State fans are. They are calling for his head after losing to Purdue. I don't know who to root for in this game, but I do know this -- it will be interesting, kinda like a train wreck is interesting. Fugitives from Justice 10, Tattoo U. 7.

I have nothing to say about these teams. Ohio State 23, Penn State 16.

Oakland Raiduhs (-1) vs. Minnesota Ponders. Well, how do the Vikings feel after they picked themselves up off the turf at Lambeau? Not very good. The Vikings made too many mistakes and you can't do that against the World Champions. Now they play the Raiduhs, who are mourning the loss of Al Davis, who successfully showed the NFL that they don't rule the world. Then again, the Raiduhs have pretty much been lousy for the last decade or so. This game features two good running backs -- Adrian Peterson for the Vikings and Darren McFadden of the Raiduhs. That's old school football. Maybe not as old school as the single wing, or whatever Tim Tebow is running out in Denver -- I think Tebow is running the flying wedge. So how do I pick this lousy game? Put it this way, if you love punters, this game is for you. Shane Lechler and Chris Kluwe, anyone? Raiduhs 7, Vikes 3.

No love for Christian Ponder? The ladies of the house will be disappointed, youngblood. I think the Vikings have problems that go well beyond the offense. They looked old and out of gas in Lambeau on Monday night and the Raiders do have some weapons, including their usual assortment of really fast guys with Roberto Duran hands. Will one of those guys catch a pass? Yeah, I think so. And that will be the difference. Raiders 24, Vikings 21.

Tampa Bay Pewter Pirates (+14) vs. Glorious Green Bay Packers. When last we saw these two teams, it wasn't pretty. The Packers went down to Tampa and lost to the Bucs, who had broken out their gawdawful Creamsicle colored uniforms for the occasion. Old dude, did the Bucs really wear those things all the time back in the day? Because I think they stole their logo from Beloit College! How do you feel about that, Decrepit? Your alma mater features the same logo as the most inept football team around? I have a feeling the Packers remember that horrible day and won't be looking past the Bucs this time. Packers 83, Bucs 0.

Uh, no. Tampa is struggling right now and I expect the Packers to win, but Tampa can play defense. Now if my beloved Beloit Bucs show up instead of the Tampa Bay Bucs, then your score might happen. But I think it will be a little tougher than you envision. Not that much tougher, though. Packers 38, Tampa 17.

San Diego Bolts (+3 1/2) vs. Bear Down Chicago da Bearz. The Chargers are in trouble, Geritol Fan! They've lost two in a row and now have the distinct pleasure of playing the Bears on the parking lot known as Soldier Field. I've been in the actual parking lot for Soldier Field and it's tough to tell it apart from the field inside the stadium. Last week da Bearz pretty much took the Lions to school, which was an interesting development, to say the least. Old Lovie Smith, who always wants to beat the Green Bay Packers, has found a way to make his team competitive again, even though they looked awful early in the year. But, this game is a trap game for da Bearz and they will finally be exposed. Bolts 24, da Bearz 16.

Interesting. San Diego can score, but they don't play a lot of defense. I think Jay Cutler is figuring things out now and while he still needs a few more weapons around him, the Bears are a dangerous team. San Diego will need to find a pass rush if they want to win. I think they won't. Bears 28, San Diego 21.

Well, on Monday it will be 16 years of Bensterism! I should probably schedule a parade. I'll talk to Brezhnev about using some of his tanks. Ben out!