The Eclectic Mix

This sounds like something Bugs Bunny would say as an aside to the audience: “Ever had the feeling that something just ain’t right?” That’s how I feel right now, after spending too much time reading the news on the web, listening to the radio, or reducing myself to watching the news on TV.

I mean, much of it doesn’t seem real. How many banks, and MAJOR banks, at that, have folded or been bought at fire-sale prices in the last two weeks? And congress, usually capable of easily spending $700 billion before anything it’s planning gets out of committee, decided to pull a surprise out of its hat and NOT pass the emergency propping-up measure, or whatever it’s called. And, to top it off, Republicans and Democrats seem equally against the bill, regardless of who’s worked on it, is supporting it, or asking, nay, begging for it.

Excuse me? Did I just enter the twilight zone one night and just not notice? How is it possible that our state’s Democratic representatives voted IN FAVOR of bailing out corporations, and the Republicans voted no? It’s unfathomable, except for the minor caveats that the government must be paid back, some mortgage reform was included, and executive pay for the failed institutions is being limited, it smacks of a big-business, pay for it without raising taxes kind of Republican plan. Yet they don’t like it?

Okay, deep breath. Let’s take this thing one at a time…

Economy tanking. Check. No huge problem yet. We’ve been struggling on and off for seven years, and this appears to be a low-point. Hey, we’ve crawled out of worse.

Dow Jones Industrials looking like some black-diamond ski slope: Check. I mean, 773 points lost today? That kind of number just boggles the mind. Yet the civil defense sirens weren’t going off when the markets closed. Someone (or most likely MANY ones) lost their shirt today. Just wait for that to hit the front page.

Financial institutions, now saddled with bad debt because they gambled as much as the consumers did in forming the agreements that neither side could really afford, are closing or being bought out at bargain-basement prices: Check. How much will this alter the financial landscape of this country when we come out of this? What will the country do when really, there will be 4 or 5 major banks to get loans from? Choice, competition and fairness will surely go by the wayside. That can’t be good. And what happens if one more goes under? Who’s left to take over whom? Citibank/Chase? Chase/Wells Fargo? There can’t be enough money in one to truly absorb the other.

Locally, a prominent businessman is surely to be indicted for hundreds of counts of fraud: Check. Tom Petters, who’s probably the local equivalent of Warren Buffett in his ability to buy companies when they’re really down, is screwed. No matter how you read the news stories about the investigation into his dealings lately, it doesn’t sound good. And what scares me most of all about this is that with the NWA/Delta merger almost a sure thing and done deal, Sun Country suddenly finds itself on the high wire without a net. Regardless of where the money was coming from, Petters was personally infusing the airline with money every month, and while it looks like they might be starting to turn the corner, they still need that backing. And now, certainly, it’s got to be gone. What happens to MSP when we lose BOTH of our locally-based airlines? Just look up the St. Louis airport sometime in Google. When TWA vanished, business at the airport dried up.

The Twins are fighting for a playoff spot: Check. Even last week, I was SURE it wouldn’t happen. 2 1/2 games back with six to play? No way in hell. But here we are, about to take on the White Sox in a one-game tiebreaker. Guess you know where I’ll be tomorrow. (Butt, meet couch!)

And finally, and perhaps most surreal, what have we heard from Iraq lately? Afghanistan? That’s right, kids. NADA. ZIP. ZILCH. Don’t know about you, but I don’t trust this administration enough to think they’re keeping their eye on the ball when they don’t talk about something. They’re distracted, and sooner or later, the bad guys will notice that. We’ve got a couple hundred thousand of our people in harm’s way, and their ultimate leader’s looking the other way. NOT GOOD.

Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, there’s an election on. One that is surely to be as bitter, divisive, and close as 2000.

And all of this strange stuff will still be here (okay, except the Twins, unless they make it to the World Series), when the election finally comes. Eek!

So there you go. Your heavy thought for the day. Enjoy it, because tomorrow’s bound to be pretty flimsy.

See you tomorrow.

It’s Tuesday, no birthdays to report on, and Patrick didn’t call today (didn’t necessarily expect him to, but as a parent you’re always anxious to hear how your son’s doing). Not that it’s a slow news day, but some of the other things in the world I could comment on are just too depressing. But I’ve got to fill some space here, so…

From the Strib: “6-year-old shoots 3-year-old brother with loaded, unlocked gun they find in a bedroom”…Under the circumstances, I hate to say “well, duh,” but really, they’re kids. It’s innate in kids to play with things they find, and they have a thing for games with guns–cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians (sorry, Native Americans)–how can you possibly expect that a loaded, unlocked gun will go completely unfound by children under ten when left to their own devices? And from there, there’s only one thing a kid is going to do with a gun. Shoot it. Of course I’m sympathetic to the mother and sister in their grief, but you wouldn’t hand your 6 year old the keys to the car and say “go play, kid. Watch it, the clutch sticks a little.” So in what world is it okay to leave a gun where kids can easily get to it?

All eyes in Minnesota (and probably Wisconsin) are focused on Brett Favre. Did we even notice more troops were deployed to Iraq this week? Honest to God, I had to dig through 4 pages on the Strib’s site to find the story. Yet, we, the fans of one of the most seemingly inept football teams in ages, are fixated by the tantalizing proposition of getting an aging old superstar to anchor our Super Bowl dreams for what, one or two years? Folks, I have two words for you: Herschel Walker. Go ahead, look it up. Tear open old wounds. I’ll wait. Does anyone really think we could trade for Favre for virtually nothing? It’s not like we’d be picking up a kicker or something: this is one of the best quarterbacks of all time. Give up the dream. We just might have a good team here already. And they’re young. Let’s not screw up the future for now.

And speaking of sports, did anyone notice the day that the Twins spent atop the AL central? Who’da thought? Not me, I’ll admit to that. But I’m very pleased.

And oh yeah: the Olympics start this week. I can’t wait to see runners wearing filtration masks. My only question: who loses more on the international PR front from this: China or the IOC? I vote IOC, but only because they actually decided to put the games there when the Chinese were clearly not ready.

Don’t forget, join Michele Bachmann at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis next month! Wait, what’s that? The convention is actually in St. Paul? You mean this huge metroplex isn’t just one large city called Minneapolis? Geez, what a dingbat! I think we turn our hawk like media eyes from Favre and onto Bachmann just to see what crap will trickle out next. Lemme check…Yup, she represents St. Paul suburbs…Nope, St. Paul hasn’t been annexed as east Minneapolis…And yes, Hennepin still becomes Larpenteur and Lake Street still becomes Marshall once they cross the border. Does she even have a clue? How embarrassing for her: she made the same mistake Katie Couric made, and who wants to be in the same position as Katie lately? At least Couric apologized. I’d like to think that Bachmann’s staff has her tethered to a Minnesota map and is giving her hourly pop quizzes on which cities are not hosting the RNC.

At least she doesn’t have anything to do since Congress is in recess, though Nancy Pelosi’s handling of that was just stupid…Read about it here. Is there anything either party won’t do to further alienate the voters? I mean, here we have the Democrats showing us how un-democratic and childish they can be by playing political games to not allow a vote that they’ll have to take sometime soon anyway. Meanwhile, the Republicans are throwing a tantrum on the floor of the House on a daily basis, like a 2-year-old who’s had his blanket or favorite toy taken away. For cripes’ sakes, people! Do you think it’s too hard to ask any of you to actually do what you’ve been sent to Congress to do? I mean, like vote, debate, write good legislation and actually accomplish something for the good of the nation in the long term and not for your own party through mid-November?

Okay. I know. I said there wasn’t much to talk about. You should know by now that that should have your spidey senses tingling.

See you tomorrow.

pa·tri·ot·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈpā-trē-ə-ˌti-zəm, chiefly British ˈpa-\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1726
: love for or devotion to one’s country
- From the Merriam Webster Dictionary Online Edition

Okay, kids (and you probably know who you are). Set keyboards on “flame.” (And get comfortable. This is gonna be a long one).

Recently, Forest Lake High School cancelled the visit by the “National Heroes Tour,” an event which was to offer students an opportunity to talk to recent veterans of the Iraq war. It’s prompted an uproar both ways, but mainly lopsidedly in opposition to the decision by the Forest Lake school’s administration.

Initially, I thought the same: that the administrators of the school caved into political pressure and “threats” of protest against the vets. Now, two days removed from the hubbub and with clearer news (and more sources) coming available, I’ve changed my mind. At the time they made the decision, they believed they were avoiding a bigger problem of hosting a political event.

“Pshaw,” I hear you say. “Political event my butt. They’re vets talking about their experience. Opening up the kids eyes to what’s really going on in the world. That’s all.”

Perhaps, but there was no way for the school to guarantee that. Why? Because beyond the fact that this issue has deeply divided the country, the Vets for Freedom group isn’t purely an educational group, or merely setup to tour the country to share their experiences. They’re a 527 group, that is, an organization specifically created for political purposes:

A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527. A 527 group is created primarily to influence the nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates for public office. Although candidate committees and political action committees are also created under Section 527, the term is generally used to refer to political organizations that are not regulated by the Federal Election Commission or by a state elections commission, and are not subject to the same contribution limits as PACs.
- From Wikipedia

Okay, not comfortable with citations lifted from Wikipedia? How ’bout from the IRS?

A political organization subject to 527 is a party, committee, association, fund, or other organization (whether or not incorporated) organized and operated primarily for the purpose of directly or indirectly accepting contributions or making expenditures, or both, for an exempt function. The exempt function of a political organization is influencing or attempting to influence the selection, nomination, election or appointment of an individual to a federal, state, or local public office or office in a political organization.
- From the www.irs.gov website

So they’re a political organization, right? Still don’t think so? From their own website, they sound very conciliatory:

Vets for Freedom is a nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our mission is to educate the American public about the importance of achieving success in these conflicts by applying our first-hand knowledge to issues of American strategy and tactics in Iraq.

We support policymakers from both sides of the aisle who have stood behind our great generation of American warriors on the battlefield, and who have put long-term national security before short-term partisan political gain.

Vets for Freedom is the largest Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization in America.

Navigate just a bit past that happy statement, and you find this, on their donation page:

Vets for Freedom needs your help to communicate America’s strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without your support, the war debate will be dominated by defeatists like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, along with powerful anti-war groups. We cannot allow this to happen. Too much is at stake.

Please donate today to make your voice heard. Your money will help us fight radical fringe groups who want to steer our country towards defeat in the name of gutter-ball partisan politics.

Hmmm….A little inflammatory, yes?

In the meantime, the St. Paul Pioneer Press has offered much more even-handed coverage than the Strib (no real surprise there), in the process offering much more actual information. The school principal, Steve Massey, heard reports of protest plans by groups on both sides of the issue. In addition, there were groups placing leaflets on cars in the school parking lot. The Vets for Freedom themselves were planning a press conference on the school grounds in conjunction with the school visit. And to top it off, Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (who has been drinking from the White House Kool-Aid for far too long) was scheduled to speak at the event as well. From an administrator’s viewpoint, things were starting to spiral out of control. What had been planned as an educational opportunity was turning into a political flashpoint.

“The event was structured to be an academic classroom discussion around military service. We thought we’d provide an opportunity for kids to learn about service in the context of our history classes,” Massey said. “As the day progressed, it became clear that this was becoming a political event … which would be inappropriate in a public setting.
“We decided to cancel,” Massey said.
- From the StarTribune

Now, we’ve all chuckled at the stronger security at our schools lately, found some of it unnecessarily strong (I’m thinking specifically about the need for a bus pass for a parent or grandparent to ride the bus to or from school with our kids), but have probably secretly, deep down, appreciated the fact that schools seem to want to do their best to protect our children. In an age where there are some who believe evil lurks around every corner, erring on the side of extreme caution could be understandable.

Enter the administration again, faced with something they felt they couldn’t easily control, that had gone from being simply a speaker coming in to talk to a group of students, to a full-blown community outpouring of political beliefs, they had no choice but to cancel the event. Realistically speaking, they have only two main purposes: educating our children, and ensuring their safety while at school. And when an event threatens either of those two missions, they need to stop it. Schools close down after simply receiving a phone call or hearing a rumor of a bomb threat. We accept that. Here, they were facing an unknown number of people protesting at an unknown level outside of the school doors.

While peaceful protests are a proud part of our country’s tradition, and may have been a teachable moment for students, we take any potential threat to student safety very seriously. It is our priority to protect our students. As the event began to grow into a potential political demonstration about the war, we felt it best to cancel in order to maintain the security of our students and staff.
- From a public letter from the Superintendent of schools, published at Pioneer Press online, but not found on the StarTribune’s site [UPDATE: almost 2 hours after writing this, the Strib posted a story quoting the statement, but failed to post the entire statement from the superintendent.]

Having said all of that, there’s another problem here. It was a political event. No matter how you slice this one, it was all politics. You’d be offended if your kids were offered a political discussion of only one side of the issue, and that’s what was coming to Forest Lake High School. Where’s the other side? Not invited, nor wanted by the Vets for Freedom group.

Don’t get me wrong. Everyone has the right to state their views. But bringing in an outside group and doing so in a school under the guise of an educational event is wrong unless you give the opposing side equal time.

But then, here comes the kicker, from Pete Hegseth, Executive Director of Vets for Freedom and 1999 Forest Lake HS grad (quoted in the Pioneer Press):

“We’re not coming in with a political agenda,” he said. “We just wanted to come in and talk about service and sacrifice … not whether the war is right or wrong. If we don’t have room for patriotism in our high schools, then what do we have room for?”

That ticks me off. Where does he get off claiming that the school has no room for patriotism? What more patriotic duty can there be besides educating our kids and getting paid crap to do it? (I mean beyond the ones that actually require putting your life at risk, like military service, police or fire duty). Last time I looked, there’s at least one flag somewhere in every public and most private schools. How many of us can claim that at home? Ask any teacher why they do what they do, and I can promise you that most if not all of them will say that they love passing on knowledge to the youth of this country to help them become better people in our society (or at least something to that effect).

If it’s so patriotic to have this in school, then Forest Lake High School should be commended for having the incredible guts to book it in the first place, as the only public school in the country to offer to do so. The event visited only one other high school, a private, Jewish, Los Angeles area high school. Why isn’t anyone else willing to step up to take this patriotic gesture?

Which brings us back full circle to the definition at the top of the entry here. Go ahead. Read it again. I’ll wait…

There’s nothing there that says that just because you do something you feel is best in performing the duties of your job, that may be construed as possibly unpopular, you’re unpatriotic. There’s nothing there that says that just because you don’t support a war, you don’t love the country. Your devotion or love for the country means you want to see it conduct itself in a certain way, or do certain things. That’s the magic of democracy, kids. Theoretically, we all get a say, no matter how minor. I don’t support the war. I don’t like the idea that about the same number of American troops are in harm’s way in Iraq as live in the Rochester, MN metropolitan area. I don’t like our president, vice president, or most of his cabinet. I think our government is perfectly constructed to be as inefficient as possible. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the country. I just want to see it work better. That doesn’t mean I don’t support our troops. They’re underpaid, overworked, put in unnecessary danger, and they do it willingly.

Just like our teachers.

A few semi-related items of note going on lately that I’ll pile into one heap here at the top of the page.

First, Tony Blair announced this morning that he is resigning as Prime Minister and head of the Labour Party. Now, how cool is it that the PM in Great Britain has the power to almost come and go as he or she pleases? You can declare elections when you want them, as long as they’re within a certain timeframe, and you can simply announce you’re going to resign in about a month, have a party deputy take over, and they can worry about scheduling the elections? No fuss, no muss, no two-year run up to an election.

I think he’s been mostly good for England—they seem to be pretty economically stable, reasonably secure, and like many Americans, completely disgruntled at the war.

Blair’s support of the war really was more diplomacy than desire, although the Brits have a long sordid history of dabbling in Iraq. Really, he put Britain in a position to be a hero to the United States, like a mother bear coming back to protect her injured cub, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. He offered whatever support he could manage, and we took it. Never mind the fact that his was almost complete blind faith: I get less of a sense that the British government thought that the war was probably bogus than we did. Instead, it was almost completely an act of diplomacy and support. And it cost him. As it has the president.

So the tide will shift slightly. England will be headed by a less hawkish leader who certainly will trust the American intelligence reports much less than ever before. All the while, the French have elected a man who has openly admitted to loving America. So whip out the French fries, kids! Fish and chips are the new freedom fries.

Speaking of the war, the democrats decided to make their point in congress anyway, apparently feeling the need to keep up their end of a perceived promise to the electorate. I’ve said it before, cutting off funding for the war, or setting a date for withdrawal of troops at this stage is short-sighted and would endanger any progress we’ve made in Iraq. To illustrate, consider this: In August 1945, after the end-game move of nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, imagine if we had not occupied Japan for a while. Imagine we had not made sure that a stable government and economy emerged from the ashes.

We have the best chance yet to establish a western-friendly government in the Middle East. We have the chance to lay down roots for a democracy in a region that hasn’t known one throughout its history. We have a chance to show the Muslim world that we care about them and want to help. If we leave now, the pent up hate for us will certainly explode beyond all comprehension.

Finally, some local color: the legislature and governor are at odds over the gas tax. Now let me vent here a bit over this one…Didn’t we just get the transportation amendment slammed down our throats last fall? The same amendment that promised more money directed to transportation funding across the state? So why do we need more transportation money? How ‘bout this one: apply the gas tax only to gasoline-powered vehicles and take the revenue and apply it to incentives to produce ethanol, convert existing engines to ethanol blends, and maybe even to attract automakers to come to the state to build hybrids and alternative-fueled cars? Heck, we’ve even got a nearly dormant auto plant sitting in St. Paul just waiting for a tenant.

All that said, I’m not opposed to the tax. I’m opposed to what they want to spend it on. We’re going to be stripping the rest of the state budget for transportation funding as the amendment is implemented over the next five years. So why not use it for other things that don’t have an amendment promising funding for them? Why does the state of Minnesota have an amendment promising funding for transportation, but no amendment promising funding of education?

And as long as I’m ranting—why don’t we demand accountability from the private businesses that bid on highway contracts? Just as a point of reference, building 5 new miles of highway 610 on the northern edge of the Twin Cities is going to cost $161 million (in 2003 dollars, mind you…). So, okay…That’s just $32 million per mile. Or, over $6,000 per foot. Yeah, yeah. I know. Costs and all….But doesn’t education have reasonable costs? Don’t teachers deserve to be paid well, too?

Okay. Soapbox away. Back to business. Enjoy!

It was over a month ago I wrote the entry on Iraq below, but I got a response recently in the ol’ e-mail (which is at paul@lathropworld.com, for those keeping score at home).

It praised me for my bravery on tackling the subject, deemed taboo by many. Which is exactly what I don’t get about the whole thing.

Why, oh why is it unpatriotic to oppose or even want to discuss opposing views to the war? Isn’t that one of the great tenets of our society? The freedom of speech? The right to disagree with our leadership and openly say so? When exactly did it become wrong to voice a dissenting opinion.

What I did isn’t brave. I’m not fighting in the war. I’m sitting here, in middle America, in a comfortable job, in a comfortable house, with a comfortable life which has, at most, the occasional 6-year-old skirmish. But no RPGs or IEDs or any other alphabet soup-based weaponry.

I watched an interesting (and brief) documentary (more a commentary, really, since it does lean very heavily to the left) yesterday on Netflix (God bless streaming), called Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We’ll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren and it made some fascinating points.

The main thust was that our society is so wrapped up in itself now, so selfish, that we either don’t care about something, or care completely on issues. When we were building the coalition to invade Iraq, and France openly opposed our intention to invade, our flag-waving off-and-on patriotism flared up and we decided that all things French were bad — wine, cheese, french fries….(which are actually Belgian, but hey…) But in our rush to rename them to freedom fries, out government even encouraged us to get back to doing what we do — shop, spend money, be capitalists.

That’s in opposition to some (not all) previous wars, where we were encouraged to support the war effort, cut back on consumption to provide materials to the troops.

That point made me think. What is it exactly, that is going on with this war? It is, in some ways, a good war for us to be fighting. In one sense, it has the same moral ground as the fight against Hitler’s Germany — Saddam Hussein and the leadership of Iraq were clearly out to dominate and destroy the Kurds. We needed to stop that. But in another sense, the world didn’t really seem to care that these things were happening. Or if they did care, they weren’t willing to actually force change through military action. We aren’t the world’s police force, nor should we be. But again, we were angry, and injured as a country and as a society, and we were going to get our revenge. This gave us our excuse.

What floors me is that everyone seems to have believed that we could go in and get out quickly. We went in with the expressed purpose of destroying a government and replacing it. How long did we think that would take? Days? Weeks? And we were surprised that some factions that supported the government and some of the terrorist’s ideals hate us enough to wage their own war against us there?

Again, we’re impatient. We’re selfish. We don’t want to be there anymore. It’s a downer of enormous proportions. But we can’t cut and run. That defeats the whole purpose of being there in the first place. And that’s a bigger threat to the future than many care to think.

All sides on the issue are myopic. The conservatives see it as a patriotic duty — to fight the good fight against terrorism and protect the world from evil. The liberals see it as a waste of time, money and lives. And sadly, they’re both right.

There aren’t any easy answers. Plain and simple. The only sure thing is that there are over 100,000 Americans being brave in a hostile land. Doing what they VOLUNTEERED to do.

I’m not brave. I’m a coward writing about bravery.