Minnesota Weakly Clairvoyant

My letter in the Pioneer Press rebutting Tom Friedman's Turkey Trot

2010-07-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

This letter was published ALMOST as I wrote it, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Sunday, June 27, 2010, under the heading "History."

Thomas Friedman's June 17 column really irked me ("Off balance and tilting the wrong way"). He's disappointed that the reality of Turkish politics doesn't match up with the fantasy he'd concocted about that country. He rhapsodizes about his idea that Turkey is "modern, secular, Muslim, democratic and has good relations with the Arabs, Israel and the West."

Well, that idealized vision of Turkey has always been at odds with reality. Modern Turkey was built on mass murder. Friedman is dismayed that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan played host to Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad of Iran, and to the scourge of Darfur, al-Bashir of Sudan. Friedman is astonished--he clearly can't quite believe it--that Erdogan would boldly assert: "It's not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide."

But look who's talking. It was Turkey--long before Nazi Germany--that set the pattern for 20th-century genocide. Before the old Ottoman Empire fell apart, its armies and killing squads inflicted death on more than a million Armenians in 1915-16; and the torture, rape, deportations, starvation and shootings continued until 1922. Besides the Armenians, the Pontine and Anatolian Greeks were also victims of state-sponsored genocide and mass deportations by the "modern" successor to the Ottomans, namely, that very nation of Turkey with which Mr. Friedman is so infatuated.

The sequel to that tragic history is that Turkey has never admitted its crimes. Turkey's prime minister can embrace the Holocaust-deniers because Turkey itself has gotten away with denying the truth about how it deliberately wiped out its Christian minorities.

I wish that Friedman, before he left Minnesota on his way to journalistic fame and fortune, had absorbed the wisdom of J. Fletcher Williams, the original secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society, who wrote: "History is inexorable, and we must record facts as they are."

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul

Another letter the Star Tribune won't print.

2010-06-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

This letter was sent to the Minneapolis Star Tribune on June 21, 2010.

To the Editor:

Your paper and Mayor Rybak are just wrong--dead wrong--when you place the blame for prohibition-related violence on "America's insatiable demand for illegal drugs."

Rubbish! The root of the problem is prohibition. And yet politicians and journalists refuse to admit it.

When the "Noble Experiment" of alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1933, the number of crimes committed with firearms diminished each year for the next ten years in a row. Learn from history: to put the gangs out of business, take the business out of the gangs! Replace prohibition with regulation.

There is no peculiarly "American" demand for drugs. The appeal of altering one's consciousness is simply human nature. Our prohibition laws reflect nothing but political demagoguery and have no rational basis. As Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, once wrote: "Ironically, the drugs which most often kill are legal, and the far less toxic drugs are illegal."

Furthermore, prohibition laws fail to distinguish logically between use and abuse. In practice, prohibition inevitably leads to corruption, violent crime, loss of tax revenue, adulterated illicit products, invasion of civil liberty--without stopping the behavior the law tries to suppress.

As was so eloquently stated in the 19th century: "Prohibition . . . goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Thomas Jefferson, who certainly knew more about those principles than R. T. Rybak ever will, wrote: "The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others . . . Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be under such keeping as our souls are now [he referred to the coercion of a state-established church]. Thus, in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food."

Your writers glamorize alcoholic beverages and your company willingly profits from them, so your canard about "America's insatiable appetite for drugs" has the added demerit of amounting to self-righteous hypocritical cant.

George Orwell assigned the ironic slogan "Ignorance is strength" to the spying, prying, mind-controlling dictatorship of the totalitarian regime in his novel, "1984." To your dishonor, the Star Tribune embraces that noxious creed in your ignorant defense of America's narcofascist police state and its discredited premise of prohibitionism.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul, MN

A letter the Pioneer Press did print

2010-05-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

This letter was published as a Spotlight Letter by the Pioneer Press on April 30, 2010:

"Expensive Consequences"

A front-page story on April 29 ("Cops took his $4,500; now he gets $70K") was summed up in the sub-headline as: "Illegal immigrant who was target of gang unit settles seizure lawsuit."

Perhaps it was technically accurate--but what an inflammatory way to slant the story. It makes the victim seem like the offender; similar to writing a headline about sexual assault like this: "Loose woman gets more than she bargained for."

Here's the actual story: "Police misconduct costs taxpayers $70K."

This man wasn't a "target" of a legitimate police investigation--he was the target of robbery by thieves with badges. If the victim himself was in violation of our laws, that doesn't diminish or excuse the police misconduct. Power corrupts, and excessive power given to law enforcement officers without oversight or accountability inevitably breeds corruption and injustice.

I hope the new chief of police in St. Paul will guard against the risk of abuses--so as to protect us all from the expensive consequences. The cops who swiped $4,500 from Dagoberto Rodriguez-Cardona ripped off the taxpayers for 15 times that figure. Maybe it should come out of their salaries.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul

Beggars and choosers

2010-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

This past week, I got a phone call from the Democratic Senate organizing committee. A very sincere woman asked me to send them money to help re-elect Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island and Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia.

I guess they need help in Rhode Island--they just threw away the Senate seat from Massachusetts! That DSOC--a real bunch of jokers, all right! Imagine asking ME to BAIL OUT a ROCKEFELLER! And then I got a letter from Al Franken asking me to contribute money to his Political Action Committee in order to help Democratic candidates this year.

Here is my response, and I invite everyone to copy it and send it along, or adapt it for your own state's Senators or Representatives and let them hear from you. You could add the other new post here, the quotation from Harry Truman about "phony Democrats." And then send it all along to his Excellency, President Obama, too.

Jan. 29, 2010

Dear Senator Franken:

When FDR took office in 1933, he said: "Our first priority must be to put people to work." By contrast, President Obama's first priority appeared to be bail out Wall Street, closely followed by cutting a deal with the insurance racketeers to concoct an insurance industry bailout and call it a "health reform bill."

I am sick of Democrats selling out, caving in, rolling over, kow-towing, and betraying the people who elected them. (Al Franken, for example, voting for the so-called Patriot Act.)

Not one dime will I contribute to the Democratic congressional or Senatorial candidates this year--anywhere!!!!

In 2000, George Bush and Dick Cheney LOST the election by half a million votes. But they got into the White House anyway, and immediately began pushing through what they wanted. And they got it, without any "60 vote margin"--in fact, they got it despite a Democratic majority of the Senate.

No excuse can explain how the Democrats, back in the White House, and holding solid majorities in House and Senate, still won't stand up against the economic royalists and bring ordinary Americans the change you promised.

In every political conversation, people ask me, "Why are Democrats such wimps?"

Words are cheap. So don't make promises. Don't make excuses. And don't have the insufferable gall to ask us for money! Don't kid yourself about any "core support"--that core is 100% disenchanted, disillusioned, disappointed, and disgusted.

Sincerely,
Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul, MN

p.s.: Taryl CLark isn't going to beat Bachmann in the 6th district--a district gerrymandered for the ultra-right. In fact, this will be a great year for the Republicans. Not because the Republicans have ANY merit at all, but because Democrats by their craven ineptitude and spinelessness have FORFEITED the trust and support of the people.

Highly recommended

2010-01-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

I would like to put in a plug for Anthony Porter's blog, "From the Edge." You can find it by Googling "Anthony Peyton Porter" and it should come up first. The url (?) is: http://www.anthonypeytonporter.com/ [thank you, LES] and if I could recall the instructions another friend sent me, I would activate that http: as a "link." Meanwhile, there's Google.

Phony Democrats

2010-01-31T08:42:00.000-08:00

"I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and says he doesn't really believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign . . .

We are getting a lot of suggestions to the effect that we ought to water down our platform and abandon parts of our program. These, my friends, are Trojan horse suggestions. I have been in politics for over 30 years, and I know what I am talking about, and I believe I know something about the business. One thing I am sure of: never, never throw away a winning program. This is so elementary that I suspect the people handing out this advice are not really well-wishers of the Democratic Party."

-------President Harry Truman, May 17, 1952

Letter published in City Pages

2010-01-31T08:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a letter published in City Pages, a weekly newspaper in Minneapolis, on January 27, 2010. ["Smoke Signals: Marijuana's steady creep toward legalization nationwide" was the title of the City Pages cover story on January 13.]

Reefer Madness/Readers respond to "Smoke Signals"

Cannabis is an extraordinary herb--innocuous or beneficial to those who ingest it, but with the peculiar power to cause insanity in those who don't smoke it. It would be wonderful to see an end to the anti-pot witch hunt, but it won't happen soon, because marijuana prohibition has nothing to do with health or public safety, and everything to do with wiping out civil liberties and personal freedom. As the British poet Robert Graves observed in another context, you can't run an empire according to the rules of the old republic which it has superseded.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul

Another letter the Star Tribune won't print.

2009-12-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

December 11, 2009
Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN
To the editor:

I doubt that Sarah Palin, the high-flying heiress of an American political heritage of recurrent anti-intellectualism, actually wrote the article with her name on it, on the December 10 Opinion Exchange page.

In the few unscripted performances she was allowed during the 2008 campaign, Ms. Palin's utterances provided ample fuel for parody of her peculiar mismanagement of English grammar and syntax. Therefore, the internal evidence of the December 10 column, with its complex sentences and careful rhetorical flourishes, indicates that in this case ex-Governor Palin is putting her name to someone else's work---without attribution.

I am sure that the other Opinion writers---Thomas Friedman, Sy Rosen, and Charlie Weaver---all wrote the columns under their bylines. But the so-called Sarah Palin article, although ironically it's a complaint about scientists falsifying their data, smells fraudulent itself.

Perhaps it represents what Ms. Palin would like to write if she were in fact articulate enough to do so. But what you published doesn't sound like her own words! Does the glitter of "celebrity" exempt private citizen Sarah Palin from the reasonable expectation that both your editors and your readers have--that persons submitting Opinion articles have written the pieces themselves? It's worth noting that copies of ex-Governor Palin's best-selling autobiography, which was composed by a professional writer, clearly credit the ghostwriter as co-author.

Oliver Steinberg
St. Paul, MN

Urban Legend

2009-12-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

This is a letter to the editor which was published in the Minnesota Daily newspaper on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009:

One passenger featured in The Minnesota Daily's Nov. 18 Metro Transit profile told the reporter that anti-war protesters attacked him when he got off the plane after his military tour of duty in Vietnam, that he was "picked up and thrown into a stack of chairs" and that in Atlanta, protesters there spat on him.

I doubt it. I constantly took part in anti-war activism in those days, and I never heard of any such attacks on servicemen. There was violence--always, at first, one-sided violence from the police aimed at the so-called "peaceniks," who were, as that epithet implies, philosophical pacifists. As far as "spitting," well, as a peace demonstrator, I was spat on by a fraternity student on the library mall at the University of Wisconsin in 1968 (the only war-protest-related spitting I ever witnessed.)

After enough tear gas and unprovoked clubbings from cops, many protesters lost their pacifism. I became acquainted with anti-war militants, and even the most militant didn't dream of assaulting Vietnam vets.

In fact, returning vets became the most respected and effective spokesmen for the anti-war movement, notably, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization.

We protesters blamed the government for the war, but we knew that most soldiers had been drafted involuntarily. They were just pawns. We wanted young men to resist the draft, and draftees to oppose the war. You don't spit on people you hope to persuade to join you.

Furthermore, if any average protester--typically a skinny hippie or soft college student--was foolish enough to physically assault an average GI just back from 'Nam, the outcome would have been a severe ass kicking for the protester.

While I suppose there may have been isolated incidents of confrontation at airports between soldiers and civilians, it is certain that no airport management would have tolerated organized demonstrations intended to harass the vets. Although airports back then were not the Orwellian zones they have since become, peace marches or rallies were always heavily surveilled wherever they happened and never took place without police officers being present. The claim that the alleged spitting took place in Atlanta is especially incredible, since the degree of police repression in that area was extreme, and the peace movement there was strongly repressed and intimidated.

Furthermore, I have yet to hear or see any documentation of anyone arrested at an airport for assaulting a soldier in that era. If it happened, such a fight might well have been instigated by a stressed-out or angry vet, upon sighting some long-haired male or "hippie"-accoutered female, who merely by their appearance looked like a "peacenik."

Even though these "spitting on servicemen" incidents rarely ever happened in reality, the story has become a common urban legend.

If you Google "spitting on Vietnam vets" you will discover that Slate.com Editor-at-Large Jack Shafer has carefully investigated this story and has discovered a grand total of two contemporary accounts of uniformed GI's being spat on at airports or anywhere else, dating from about 1971. One of those soldiers was interviewed again by Shafer, and although details of his story aren't consistent with the first time he told it, it seems it may have happened. The other incident remains obscure. This information tends to reinforce everything I said in my letter to you, and I think you may find it interesting as an example of the persistence and ubiquity of unfounded, fanciful "urban myths."

---Oliver Steinberg, Daily reader

NOTE: This published version was an edited consolidation of three e-mails I wrote to the Daily.
It's far from the best letter I've ever composed. "Furthermore," I notice a stylistic fault of repeating certain words. I was tired when I was writing it.

I also said the alleged incidents "rarely, if ever" happened and the editors changed the sense of what I wrote by editing out the important qualifying phrase "if ever."
They ran this letter on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which means that hardly anybody would have seen it. But I'm glad I spoke out about it because this particular lie is so pernicious and widespread.

Applesauce Redux

2009-12-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

So Barack Obama has decided to show something to all the cynics, scoffers, skeptics, and doubters . . . . namely, how right they were!

President Obama, lacking even the fig leaf of a declaration of war (forget that silly old scrap of paper, the Constitution!) is sending tens of thousands more over-equipped, trained killers to Afghanistan, at an expense of a million dollars per soldier per year (don't pay for it now, put it on the taxpayers' charge account!)

Ah yes, Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. David Morris, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, pointed out that Mr. Obama's idiotic decision came exactly 30 years after Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet dictator, announced that the USSR was walking into precisely the same sand trap. By the time the Russkis stumbled home, there simply wasn't any USSR anymore.

Well, bad as this is, it won't destroy the U.S. of A., will it? Oh come on, it paves the way for President Palin, and once she gets the bit in her mouth, she'll destroy the whole world. And just imagine what her Supreme Court nominations will look like! I'm inclined to think Armageddon would be preferable to the coming American theocracy. But I expect we'll get the whole package, won't we?

As Mr. Morris pointed out, it was under the last Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, that the bright lights at the CIA and State Department anointed a young Saudi merchant prince, Osama bin Laden, to lead the guerrilla resistance against the Soviet invasion. Boy, talk about chickens coming home to roost!

Wait, you say, wasn't Bill Clinton the last Democratic president? No, he never was a Democrat as far as I could tell.

How do you suppose Pete Seeger feels now, after the euphoria of that inauguration concert was worn off? It took a lot less than a year.

Yes, for all his shiny rhetoric and who knows, maybe even his good intentions, old Barack Obama is just another tool, and we who cheered for him are just another pack of disillusioned fools.

And he's a damned bad politician, too. The fascist pigs of the other major party at least know enough to "keep the faith," taking the risk of losing an election but knowing better than to betray and demoralize their own base of popular support.

Yes, when it's time for an empire to fall to the forces of ignorance, superstition, fear, and barbarism, nothing can change the shape of things to come.

Applesauce

2009-11-24T20:48:00.000-08:00

This blog actually has three followers, so I really ought to give them their money's worth, and write something. How can it already be the end of November? What happened? I haven't been working, except for a few weeks from Sept to mid-October, so it's not as if I've been too tired to dash something off.

Mostly, I admit, I've been "buried in a book," or rather, a series of books: biographies of Harry Truman and Capt. R. F. Scott and Robert Moses and Arnold Rothstein; and Hughes' "Fatal Shore" about colonial Australia, Jared Dimond's re-take on "Guns, Germs, and Steel," and others: contemporary Cree and Ojibwe life in Canada, the Peloponesian War, British 18th-century gardeners, cartographic controversies, landscaping etc.

And then, we've been making applesauce. There's this little orchard which my brother-in-law has planted and nurtured, and in 2009 it produced a bumper, or should I say a bushel, crop of totally natural unsprayed and/or otherwise chemically uncontaminated fruit. Actually many bushels. Something had to be done with all them apples.

We had made applesauce a year or two ago, doing the hot-water-bath canning jar routine. It was fun and simple. We decided to do it again. After a couple of weekends of that, we went even lower tech. Just boil 'em down and freeze the applesauce without bothering to can it. We'll use up the frozen stuff first and get around to all those jars next spring and summer.

Politics? City elections came and went. I voted early on Nov. 3, then took the Greyhound bus to Madison for my mother's birthday party. Therefore I missed the re-election victory party for our Mayor, Chris Coleman, who had wisely decided NOT to join the stampede of people running for Governor next year. And it doesn't look good for the Democrats, does it? Mr. Obama had read the book "Team of Rivals" about the Lincoln Administration, as his primer for how to be the President. He'd have done better to read about FDR and the Depression, than about the Civil War. He might have heard someone say, "Our first priority is to put people to work." Instead, he heard: "Our first priority is bail out Wall Street."

So, now you got your "money's worth." If you HAD had to pay money, you'd have been entitled to something of actual interest. Well, I promise that some more unpublished letters to editors are in the pipeline.

Tail end of summer

2009-09-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

Hibernation means sleeping through the winter; estivation is sleeping through the summer. Or is it? The spellcheck device doesn't approve of "estivation." But then, it doesn't approve of "spellcheck" either. I won't bother to look it up. I merely wish to declare that I feel a quickening of the blood and I wouldn't be surprised if four months of estivation---or whatever it's called---is now over . . . especially since I can remember my password to open the blog up again. Last week I couldn't.

We spent Saturday picking apples which may be turned into apple sauce if we work at it. (Although if some of them were made into apple pies, I wouldn't object.) The season of growing is almost done . . . the purple asters which I wait all year to see, have begun to blossom in the side yard. It's nearly my favorite time of year.

I encourage those who read the Clairvoyant to sign up to read A. P. Porter's blog, "From The Edge." Mr. Porter's recent column about President Obama was a gem: Just a suit, not a knight in shining armor. Hereabouts you would expect me to have the correct URL or whatever it is spelled out so you could click on it and read "From the Edge," but I haven't advanced that far yet and doubt I ever will. But you are all more sophisticated than I with this computer jazz, so I'm sure you can track it down. Then you'll appreciate it, I think.

Infinity

2009-05-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

"You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him. How else could you produce that particular Patronus?"

Fortune Cookie

2009-05-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

I carry a lot of sentimental scraps of stuff in my wallet. Not as useful as money, but more inspiring. For instance, there's this old slip of paper from a fortune cookie I once ate. It reads:

Keep on charging the enemy so long as there is life.
Lucky numbers 8, 11, 32, 39, 40, 46

A letter the Star Tribune printed: The Senate Contest

2009-04-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

The Star Tribune printed this letter about a month ago (maybe more) but I failed to make a note of it on the copy I kept. They gave it the headline: "Coleman needs to abide by the results of his lawsuit."

Norm Coleman is a lawyer, so he ought to know that there is no basis in Minnesota law for a "sore loser's second chance" election, no matter how narrow the margin of defeat.
After the November election, there was a recount--not because Al Franken's campaign asked for it, but because state law automatically required a recount. Coleman wasn't happy with the outcome of the recount, so he contested it, as was his right.
Now he isn't happy with the way his lawsuit seems to be going, so he is calling for a revote, even before the court case is finished. Showing disrespect, or perhaps contempt, for the people of Minnesota, Coleman chooses to place his own ambition above the law.
Coleman should let the court conclude its business. And then, whether the outcome is in his favor or not, take it like a man.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul

Another letter the Star Tribune won't print.

2009-03-04T17:47:00.000-08:00

"Pawlenty needs more informed advice on medical cannabis"

To the editor:

In a Capitol corridor conversation, Public Safety Commissioner Campion declared that he personally doesn't believe that marijuana has medicinal properties, and that he never would believe that it does.

Since Governor Pawlenty says that his intention to veto a medical marijuana bill is based on the advice he gets from law enforcement, and since Mr. Campion is his top law enforcement adviser, I ask this question:

Why should Mr. Campion's mere opinion on a subject about which he is not professionally qualified to state an opinion, deserve to override the opinions and the clinical experiences of thousands of doctors and tens of thousands of patients, not to mention voluminous research, not to mention the results of two years of DEA hearings in the 1980's, not to mention the recorded therapeutic uses of cannabis going back for a thousand years or more of human history?

Just asking.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul, Minnesota

The Pioneer Press printed this letter

2009-03-02T07:08:00.001-08:00

The Pioneer Press printed this letter from me on February 25, 2009, under the title: "Make room for medical marijuana."

In 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief administrative law judge, after lengthy litigation and hearings, emphatically concluded that herbal cannabis is safe and that doctors should be able to prescribe it for patients.
The DEA rejected its own judge's ruling and has blocked all attempted federal reform ever since. So reforms have proceeded state-by-state. Voters passed medical marijuana ballot measures 12 out of 13 times, even outpolling Clinton in California, Bush in Montana and Obama in Michigan. Four legislatures have also acted favorably.
Minnesota's existing law is harsh. Anyone arrested for using cannabis medicinally cannot even defend himself in court with a doctor's testimony of therapeutic need. Minnesota's county attorneys, parroting the DEA line, have strenuously opposed legislative reforms. Yet many claim, privately, that they wouldn't prosecute patients acting without criminal intent, who use cannabis only to protect their own well-being.
This year's tightly restrictive medical cannabis bill gives our lawmakers the chance to provide what is lacking--a statutory justification for officers' discretion in declining to arrest in cases of medical necessity. It deserves to pass.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul

Guarding the guardians: Park Bugle Letters

2009-02-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

This letter was published in the St. Anthony Park Bugle, St. Paul, Minnesota, in the October 2008 edition.

After a week of arresting journalists, legal observers, medics and innocent bystanders; after the promiscuous deployment of tear gas, pepper spray, tasers, stun grenades and riot clubs; after prisoners were beaten while in custody; after cameras and cell phones were seized to prevent recording of police conduct; after all these and other abuses during the Republican National Convention, St. Paul Police Cmdr. Doug Holz said: "We did it pretty much textbook."

I wonder who wrote his textbook---Mussolini? Worse than the police excesses, however, was the thundering silence from our elected local representatives, not one of whom had the courage to stand up, as Sen. Abe Ribicoff did to Mayor Daley in 1968, and denounce official lawlessness in these memorable words: "Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."

Forty years later, in the land of Paul Wellstone, there is not one leader willing to condemn the Gestapo tactics in the streets of St. Paul. We, the people, are betrayed. for there are none among our public servants who are willing to guard the guardians.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Anthony Park

An orgy of official lawlessness? Midway Monitor letter

2009-02-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

This letter was published in the October, 2008, edition of Midway Monitor in St. Paul:

After the Republican convention, why should we hire and equip any more police officers (Monitor, September)?

They had $50 million dollars to spend for "security" here, and they spent it in an orgy of official lawlessness:

Arresting at least 30 journalists; arresting legal observers, medics, and scores of innocent bystanders; beating prisoners in custody; lining the streets with stormtroopers; promiscuously deploying their armament of grenades, pepper spray, tasers, rubber bullets, and riot clubs against the public; seizing cameras and cell phones to prevent onlookers from recording police conduct; and committing many more inexcusable abuses.

As long as the police in St. Paul are being subverted for the purpose of political intimidation and violation of citizens' rights, with impunity and immunity, I see no reason to add to their ranks. Far from making us feel any safer, the events of the past few weeks have left us feeling the chilling threat of a fascist police state.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Anthony Park

The many sides of Mary Jane: Villager "Inbox"

2009-02-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

This letter was published in the Highland Park Villager newspaper in St. Paul on January 21, 2009. It's not exactly as I wrote it, but maybe the editing improved what I sent them.

To the editor:

Re: "Death of a perennial candidate" (January 7 Villager):

I shamelessly took advantage of Mary Jane Rachner's reputation as a crank and filed against her in the 1984 Republican primary election for the District 4 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. I thought that an unknown candidate like me might be preferable to a known "zany" like her. Little did I know. Mary Jane got the votes and became the nominee. As a Republican, I was something of a ringer and Mary Jane deserved to win. During the course of the campaign, I got to know Mary Jane and realized it was wrong to think of her as a "little old lady in tennis shoes."

We competed again in a St.Paul School Board election. I saw another side of Mary Jane that time, too. When the School Board candidates gathered for an Urban League forum, the genuine pleasure with which the people greeted Mary Jane was due to the fact that in her spare time she volunteered as a tutor for disadvantaged school children. Of course, Mary Jane would not have uttered a word like "disadvantaged." She would have used plain English.

Mary Jane once used a large, fake spider as a campaign prop to tease those who reacted to her as if she were crazy and they had "A-Rachner-phobia." I heard her impeccable objection to a proposed diversity curriculum: "Diversity is a fact. You don't teach diversity. You might try to teach tolerance." Yet Mary Jane sounded like the very apostle of intolerance all too often with her own flagrant homophobic prejudices, which were "principles" in her mind.

It was many years later that I learned about her automobile crash in the 1970's, which must have had lasting aftereffects. To recover as much as she did, and to persevere in spite of it and all the ridicule she received because of her eccentricities, was a testament to her determination and strength of character.

Mary Jane wasn't easy to pigeonhole politically. She changed at one point from a scripted "drug war" advocate to a reformist in opposing prohibition. When Minneapolis police killed an elderly African-American couple in a mistaken-address drug raid, Mary Jane went to the victims' funerals. She told me there were few people there. She believed the entire city should have attended.

After her years of go-it-alone politicking, her election to the Ramsey County Board of Soil and Water Commissioners gave her the chance to savor an electoral triumph. In the quirky ranks of perennial candidates, a few are one-time winners turned perpetual losers, such as Harold Stassen and Dick Franson. Most of the others only encounter contempt or indifference. But fate capped Mary Jane's career with the reward she had longed for--election, at last, to a position of trust and service. Good for her!

Oliver Steinberg, St. Anthony Park

A letter printed in the Minnesota Daily on 1/28/09

2009-02-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

Your Jan. 27 editorial says "Officials are wrongly seeking to regulate prayer in a Minnesota charter school." Are you sure?

Charter schools receive tax money from the state. The crystal-clear language of Article 13, Section 2 of the Minnesota State Constitution says" "In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught."

This Constitutional barrier obliged penniless Irish immigrant families to pay the expenses for Catholic parochial schools in the 19th century, and it ought to apply equally to the 21st century's Somali immigrant families if they want Islamic schools. If you don't like it, feel free to begin the process of amending the Constitution. In the meantime, should the law be flouted? If Muslims get excepted from the law, why shouldn't every other sect?

Your editorial further asserts that "federal guidelines allow for prayer in school." It would be most informative if you were to identify those guidelines, if they exist, and explain how they relate to various United States Supreme Court decisions regarding state-sponsored prayer or other religious exercises in public schools. "Guidelines" are nice, but decisions of the Supreme Court on constitutional disputes, interpreting the Constitution itself, are the law of the land.

Oliver Steinberg, St.Paul resident

A letter the (now bankrupt) Star Tribune printed

2009-02-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

A Jan. 22 news story reports that the ACLU is suing a tax-supported school that apparently promotes Islamic doctrines, practices and prayer.
Article XIII, Section 2 of Minnesota's Constitution reads: "In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught."
That wording is perfectly clear, isn't it?
The Constitution is our state's highest law, and it makes no exceptions for Muslims, Jews or Christians. I think the ACLU is correct in this case.

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul

Yet another letter the Pioneer Press won't print

2009-01-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

To the Editor:

How nice that Sheriff "Chicken Little" Fletcher has figured out what Ramsey County really needs: a platoon of real-live, rootin'-tootin' Secret Police---with all expenses paid by off-the-books, after-the-fact reimbursement, courtesy of us perennial patsies, the local taxpayers.

Fletcher claims that his spies and provocateurs sniffed out some scary skullduggery plotted by fringe-group protesters at the recent Republican National Convention, which itself was a conclave of perjurers, thieves, and war criminals which really should have been named the "Crime Families Convention." Of course, the Sheriff's snoops didn't have a difficult task, since plans for disrupting the "CFC" had been posted on the internet. I suggest that instead of $350,000 of tax funds, Fletcher's "G-spot men" ought to be paid with fruits of their labors, namely, a bucket of lukewarm piss---which is all that this adventure in Stalinism was worth.

Another letter the Pioneer Press won't print.

2009-01-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

To the editor:

Joe Soucheray's bilious column about the recount roiled and gurgled with exclamations of "steal" and "corruption" like the sonic distress emanating from the abdomen of an over-indulgent ten-year-old at the Minnesota State Fair.

Like so many conspiracy buffs, Mr. Soucheray starts with his pre-determined conclusion, which seems to be something like: "The only valid purpose of elections is to ratify the divine right of Republicans to always win."

And, like other conspiratorialists, he offers alleged evidence without realizing it contradicts his case. For instance, what about those missing Minneapolis ballots from a DFL-leaning precinct. Why would DFL-ers purposely "lose" ballots from their own stronghold? However, if they were swiped by a scheming Republican, trying to undercut Franken, that would make sense! Joe complains that when the absentee ballots (those which both sides agreed in the recount were in fact valid votes) were counted, Mr. Franken gained 175 votes. Looks suspiciously as if local Republican election workers on November 4th must have deliberately and improperly rejected certain absentee ballots---maybe by setting aside ballots mailed by college students, who were expected to favor Franken. I don't say this happened, but if, as Soucheray alleges, there's corruption in the process, that's the direction the facts point to!

The Pioneer Press, and other media, give Mr. Soucheray a privileged pulpit from which to cast his aspersions against Minnesota's laws, procedures, and election personnel without being held to a standard of civility or veracity. Joe alleges, without a shred of evidence, a partisan plot by Secretary of State Ritchie to "fix" the election for Franken.

Can Joe explain how Ritchie could hypnotize the non-DFL majority of the Canvassing Board---including four judges---to collude in falsifying election returns, which is in fact a crime? With every step of the way under public scrutiny and live web-casting? If Secretary Ritchie is corrupt as Joe proclaims, then explain why Ritchie publicly rebuked both the Franken and Coleman campaigns for each campaign's rejection of several hundred absentee ballots in the final recount phase.

Mr. Ritchie has done an unbiased job in this most open, transparent, and orderly recount--a process designed by law to inspect every lawfully cast ballot and accurately determine which candidate got the most votes. Soucheray's whole tirade can be boiled down to: "Why should the person with most votes win, if it's somebody whose politics I don't like?"

p.s.: If anyone wants an example of corruption FACT rather than Soucheray-style fantasy, go back to 1924 when Republican Tom Schall won this same Senate seat, after shaking down Minneapolis bootleggers for campaign contributions in return for promises of protection from federal prosecution once Schall would be elected.

the voice of the people

2009-01-03T23:02:00.000-08:00

Thanks to citizen-journalism-cinema-verite pioneers at theuptake.org, we got to watch from the comfort of home as over 900 previously sealed absentee ballots were counted today in St. Paul. At the finish, Democratic-Farmer-Labor party candidate Al Franken had gained over 170 more votes and now looks to have a 225 vote plurality in the U.S. Senate race against incumbent Norm Coleman of the Crime Families Party.

Out of almost 3 million votes, that's not much of a lead but it may be enough to win the election! We await the outcome of last-minute objections from Norm's lawyers, which could drag things out. Right now, it looks promising for Mr. Franken.

For a "political junkie" like me, it was like Election Night all over again.

Another letter the Star Tribune won't print.

2008-12-10T01:10:00.000-08:00

Just to be fair about it: the Star Tribune won't print this letter because it is too long (by their guidelines) and because they just printed a portion of one of my letters back on Sunday, November 30, 2008 and again, their guidelines don't allow publication of another letter by the same person until more time has elapsed. So no matter how much they will enjoy this one, no one will be able to read it anywhere except here. ---O.S.

December 10, 2008
To the Editor:

Thank you for publishing William Ayers' condensed version of his role in the Weather Underground, and the WU's role in the resistance to the Southeast Asian war. Those excesses and faults which Professor Ayers now regrets were, of course, discussed at the time by other radical political factions. In October, 1969, I heard the Illinois Black Panther Party chairman, Fred Hampton, denounce the Weatherman leadership as "adventurists" and nihilists. I wonder if Mr. Ayers himself might now agree that that description of the Weathermen was accurate.

Two months later, Fred Hampton, an unflinching, charismatic popular leader, was murdered---shot in his bed---by Chicago police and Cook County sheriff's deputies. Hampton's criticisms of the Weathermen rang true, but his assassination by law enforcement agents starkly demonstrated that the Weathermen's own analysis of American society and its power structure wasn't wrong. In the event, the Weatherman faction revised their name to the gender-neutral "Weather Underground," and began to preach and practice their doctrine of "bringing the war home."

Maybe it looks like arrogant and tragic folly now. Actually, the Weather Underground was only the best-publicized of a dozen or more small splinter groups which attempted to use dynamite and firebombs against both symbolic targets and actual military targets such as war industry and military installations. Their rationale was rooted in the historic resort to violence against tyranny, dating back to Robin Hood and taking inspiration from American history---our own Revolutionary War; the rebellions by slaves; the example of John Brown; the desperate struggle of Native warriors like Tecumseh, Black Hawk, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, Geronimo; and influenced also by the then-recent memory of heroic resistance to the Nazis---the French resistance, the partisans, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; and by those unforgettable scenes in Hungary of teenagers throwing "molotov cocktails" at Soviet tanks.

Underlying this outcropping of anti-government violence was the dreadful sense of being responsible, as Americans, for what was believed to be an illegal, unjustified, cruel, imperialistic, and endless war. One demonstrator carried a sign: "Don't like the bombings in America? You should see Vietnam."

Did the Weather Underground's activity constitute terrorism? Oh, that depends on how you look at it. Mr. Ayers insists not, because his group's attacks weren't intended to kill people, and so were different in nature from suicide bombing designed to indiscriminately maim and murder random victims. Technically, any resort to violence could be called terrorism. What was the South's decision to secede and initiate a civil war, back in 1861? (Maybe that went beyond terrorism all the way to outright treason.)

What was the mission of the Ku Klux Klan; what the purpose of thousands of lynchings and beatings across 100 years of U.S. history, ignored (when not actually condoned) by civil authorities, if not overt terrorism? What other than terrorism was the widespread deployment of state militias and private Pinkertons and gun-toting goons against labor organizers, from the 1870's to the 1930's and even later? What if not terrorism was the armed subjection and dispossession of the Native people of this continent?

Terrorism against the workers, against racial and ethnic minorities, against other nationalities on our frontiers or even across the Pacific Ocean; essentially, terrorism against the defenseless---that's a repetitious motif in the story of our nation.

And, ultimately, what is war itself other than organized, industrialized, government-sponsored terrorism?

We live in a world permeated by terrorism, with a history sculpted by terrorism, facing a future certain to bring the fright of terrorism into more vivid reality for millions, unless we find a cure for it by setting the example and beginning to remove hatred and fear from our own hearts.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Both in the perspective of history, and close up in terms of their own activities, one has to say that as "terrorists," the Weather Underground amounted to pretty paltry potatoes.

They managed to blow up three of their own comrades; and one small band committed a botched robbery ending with murder---for which the perpetrators were brought to justice. Enough nightmares were spawned in just those two incidents to forever subtract all the romanticism from their naive notions of armed revolutionary transformation.

On the other hand, they bombed off its pedestal the statue in Chicago commemorating the legal lynching of the martyred Haymarket anarchists. That was impressive---a perfect symbolic target. And after the statue was restored, a year later the Weather Underground came back and blew it up again. That was cool. And another tremendously inspiring accomplishment was their successfully-planned and carried-out operation to break Timothy Leary out of prison.

Luck, and a good endowment of what the Weathermen themselves used to contemptuously call "white skin privilege," enabled William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to survive their youthful adventurism, as Fred Hampton dismissively labeled it.

I'm glad. I don't fault Bill and Bernadine in the slightest for backing away from self-immolation. Fate, which closed out Fred Hampton's shining star, set the former WU duo on a tangential path to briefly intersect with the destiny of our new President-elect, Barack Obama. That encounter supplied fuel for one of the most futile attempted smear campaigns in political history. I suspect, however, that fifty or a hundred years from now, 2008's unfounded slander will have grown roots just like George Washington's mythical cherry tree. What failed as a campaign tactic may succeed as a legend, telling about the anti-war "Robin Hoods" whose vindication came when their (supposed) protege made it to the pinnacle of power. And once there, he began to slowly but surely lead us away from imperialistic war and back towards peaceful, democratic nationhood.

At that wishful prognostication, I think I can hear the shade of Fred Hampton scoffing.

Suspended animation

2008-12-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

The chipmunks in the back yard have disappeared for the duration--hibernating in their cozy burrows; leaving the surplus bird food to the squirrels and rabbit who don't hibernate but must shiver through until spring along with the humans and whichever birds don't fly south.

The outcome of the US Senate race in Minnesota is still officially unknown although incumbent opportunist Norman Coleman ends the first stage of the recount with a tiny lead. Rotten luck for us. At least Ted Stevens in Alaska got defeated! Of course, all these electoral contests, much as I love them, really amount to not much more than a distraction from what's really going on. And "what's really going on?" I would rather go back to sleep than face it.

Eureka!

2008-11-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

I have found it: the New Yorker magazine profile of Barack Obama, written by William Finnegan and published on May 31, 2004 (before Obama's 2004 speech in Boston at the DNC.)

Here's the best part:

[Congresswoman] Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her "obama" button.

"He jumped back, almost literally," she said. "And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a 'b.' And I explained who he was. The President said, 'Well, I don't know him.' So I just said, 'You will.'"

not-very-clairvoyant-at-all

2008-11-05T09:31:00.000-08:00

Never in my life have I been so glad to be so wrong about the outcome of an election.

Barack Hussein Obama "got 'er did!"

To which all I can add is: "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Duck

2008-10-30T01:39:00.001-07:00

With less than a week to go until the election, I still don't envision Senator Obama as President-elect. There is too much racism in this country, too much ignorance. The smear campaign against him is eroding his margin in the tracking polls each day, by just enough so that come Tuesday, the race will be a toss-up. Stir in the Thug voter suppression activity, and rigged voting machines, and the crimes of 2000 and 2004 will be repeated.

The historical precedent is the 1896 election. The Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, had the crowds and the appealing personality, and was widely seen to be in the lead just a few weeks before the election. But the money of Mark Hanna, and the incessant smear campaign in the newspapers (this was before television and radio), along with crooked election judges, carried the day for McKinley, for corporate ascendancy, for imperialism, for the prostituted news media.

Another letter the Star Tribune won't print.

2008-10-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN Oct. 23, 2008
To the Editor:

Katherine Kersten's column of October 22 reminded me of an old Lenny Bruce routine. Bruce, a professional comedian whose career was disrupted by several arrests for alleged obscene performances, used to describe the prurient excitement with which cops and prosecutors would recite in the courtrooms the words he had spoken in a nightclub:

"He said 'blah-blah-blah'?" "That's right--he said 'blah-blah-blah!" "You're telling the jury that this man actually said 'blah-blah-blah?" "I clearly heard him say 'blah-blah-blah!'"

Bruce suggested that these upholders of official moral standards really enjoyed the chance to say those words themselves. When I saw that Kersten deliberately repeated two common vulgarities written or spoken by Al Franken, explicitly spelling them out in her column, I remembered Lenny Bruce's comments---although I wondered that the editors of the Star Tribune permitted their unexpurgated publication. You won't print "nigger," I think, but you will print "asshole" and "bullshit"---for Kersten's sake. A letter from a reader with such vocabulary would be automatically rejected, wouldn't it? So what is appropriate? What are the standards and to whom do they apply, and when and where?

We encountered a similar situation ten years ago, during the Republican impeachment effort against President Clinton. The self-appointed guardians of public morality splattered the newspapers and monopolized the television screens with the most graphic details of private sexual behavior. The same people who crusade against sex education in the schools, were pursuing their vendetta against Clinton with pornographic glee---forcing parents and teachers across the nation into an involuntary role of clinical sexual tutors. (It was not surprising to see, when we visited Washington, DC, about ten years ago, that some entrepreneurial satirist had printed Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's lascivious official report onto rolls of toilet paper.)

I do not object to Kersten's expression of her viewpoint. Her use of shock words was designed, of course, to reinforce her argument that Al Franken's tasteless lampooning of religious beliefs and practices makes him an unfit person to elect to the Senate. We do not legally punish people for what some may consider the most outrageous blasphemy, but it is entirely permissible to punish people politically, if we so choose. And I quite agree with Kersten that there ought to be as much freedom to mock and satirize Muhammad, the Qu'ran, and Islamic articles of faith, as there is to make fun of Christian doctrines . . . that is, if I understand her correctly.

Of course, the part of her column that invokes the Founding Fathers and their notion of the U.S. Senate as a rarified chamber of refined gentlemen engaged in deliberative discourse, leads onto a little shakier ground for Ms. Kersten. It was her own favorite Republican Vice President (and Senator Norm Coleman's good buddy) Dick Cheney, who stood on the floor of the Senate not long ago and told a Senator, in the crudest possible language, to perform an anatomical impossibility.

I don't recall Kersten's indignation about that incident . . . since she has never expressed any.

And as a footnote of historical interest, the Senate seat which is being contested is the same one that was once held by a Republican named Thomas Schall. According to historian John Beecher:
"Magnus Johnson had contested the seat after the election and thus kept Schall out of it for the first 21 months of his term. The shakedown of the Minneapolis bootleggers was the principal item in Magnus' bill of particulars as to why Tom should not be seated. Although evidence was later unearthed to show that the shakedown actually was authorized by Schall, he convinced the Senate that his political manager had been acting 'on his own' in making these collections.
"Once seated, however, Schall rose to a point of personal privilege and delivered himself of such an appalling outburst of venom against his enemies as even the Senate could scarcely keep on its calloused stomach. That body 'sat aghast,' it was reported, and certain of his highly seasoned remarks had to be stricken from the record as unprintable."

Kersten and the Republicans are throwing stones from inside the proverbial glass houses. They remind me of what Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party hero, Governor Floyd B. Olson, said almost eighty years ago:
"It has always been the cardinal principle of Republican strategy to becloud the issues and confuse the voter so as to bring about a decision at the polls that is not based on the merits of the case."

Oliver Steinberg
St.Paul, MN

p.s. What Dick Cheney actually said to Senator Patrick Leahy was: "Go fuck yourself." I used the circumlocution in my letter in order to demonstrate that neither Franken nor Kersten should have to resort to explicitly-spelled-out expletives---although Kersten's offense, appearing as it does in a family newspaper, is decidedly more egregious.
She could have simply said that Franken used pungent profanity, or barnyard epithets, as the case may be.

it's getting scarier by the hour

2008-10-22T02:39:00.000-07:00

I am getting freaked out by the frenzied hatred emanating from the wingnut candidates and their wingnut constituency. The information about the success of the Republican-inspired disenfranchisement of registered voters in Colorado, New Mexico, and in many more states---you can find that at Rolling Stone magazine's site. The bile and venom expressed by the rank-and-file wingnuts is flooding the internet---encouraged by the anonymity people assume when they comment on-line. What a sickening sight it is to see into the psyches of these whackos.

Well, they are dangerous. Extremely so. I recall the fact that on November 22, 1963, the Dallas newspaper carried a full-page ad denouncing President Kennedy (as an appeaser or a traitor or something like that.) Before the day was out, he'd been murdered in broad daylight. And across the South, white schoolchildren cheered when their teachers told them the news.

With two weeks left before the election, the criminal elements who hold power in the USA face a crisis. Their voter suppression efforts may not be sufficient to obstruct the building support for the Obama ticket.

They may be in the same position as New York's Boss Tweed, who used to brag: "As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?"

Then the day came when so many voters turned against the Boss that his minions couldn't get away with their cheating---and enough votes were honestly tallied to throw the machine out of power.

The Obama strategy is to try to win by such a large margin that the steals and suppressions can't keep up with them. Something like this happened two years ago, when an unexpectedly high turn-out helped Democrats overcome most of the Republican theft---with the notable exception of that one Congressional race in Florida where 18,000 votes mysteriously vanished.

Obama launched his campaign in Springfield, standing before a statue of Abraham Lincoln. It is worth remembering that when Lincoln was elected, he did not take seriously the threat from the slave-state politicians to secede from the Union. Such threats had been made for decades, and did not seem realistic or reasonable.

What Lincoln did not know then was that these threats were backed up by actual conspiracies, organized by deadly serious political leaders, who had in fact been laying the groundwork for their treason for years. It took the shock of events, all the way up to the attack on Fort Sumter, for President Lincoln to grasp the full gravity of the crisis.

It is just as much wishful thinking now to suppose that the criminal thugs who run the US government will voluntarily relinquish their grip on power. Something is going to happen . . . I don't know what. It may entail a declaration of martial law following a staged "emergency" incident. It may be a spy-agency orchestrated assassination---perhaps disguised as an "accident" or an "air disaster."

As we learned here in St. Paul during the Crime Families Convention in September, the mailed fist is ready and all-too-willing to strike a blow at the very principles upon which our system of laws and government are founded. The USA is in fact governed by a "Mafia state" almost identical to the regime now running Russia. The facade of democracy is wearing very very thin.

I'm sure a lot of the readers of this blog are pretty sick of my "croaking" and would like to hear something upbeat---something reflecting the excitement that is stirring across the nation, as the spirit of hope rises. I think we had better enjoy the feeling now . . . but I still haven't heard anyone explain to me why there is any reason to expect that these thugs who have trampled law, custom, ethics, and truth into the dust, will suddenly repent, and politely step aside.

The fix is in

2008-10-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

Greg Palast and Robert F.Kennedy, Jr., who know a lot more about it than I do, are saying that the 2008 election has already been stolen.

Vintage Season

2008-10-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a tip, I tracked down the short story I mentioned in a previous post (Living in the Past.)

It wasn't written by Heinlein or Bradbury, after all, but I located it in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on the web, so evidently I'm not the only one who was impressed by the story. The title is "Vintage Season," and the authors are listed as Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as Lawrence O'Donnell.)

I will extract a telltale sentence from the story:

"You have no way of knowing what a good, gay period you live in, Oliver."

But now a new conundrum . . .

2008-10-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

So I learned how to correct a typo. But now for some reason, the computer screen won't bring up the comments when I click on the word "comments." It's not as if there are a tremendous number of comments, really. Oddly, it was working a few minutes ago--but now, no response. Will this fix itself if I go away and come back?

My Lucky Day

2008-10-14T01:45:00.000-07:00

A kind person has explained to me how to fix the typographical error which I complained about in the post entitled "curses!" The instruction was simple enough for me to follow, so I did it, and it worked!

Thank you!

living in the past

2008-10-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was October 11, 2008, and it was a nearly perfect fall day in Minnesota so we went for a little walk. Maples were so brilliantly colored they seemed to be lit from within---red, orange, yellow . . . but mostly red and orange.

This time of year seems suited to introspection and retrospection, to borrow words from my brother.

There was a short story I read as a kid, written I think by Ray Bradbury (and if not, then by Robert Heinlein.) It was a science fiction tale, so the author used the old time traveling motif. I don't remember the plot or the characters . . . only that the time travelers were visiting in turn the most nearly perfect days in the past---one for each of the seasons.

Yesterday could have been a nominee for one of those days. We did nothing remarkable ourselves and the day's impressions will blur and fade and vanish before long. Does anyone remember the story I was thinking of? Like most short stories, of course, it had a surprise twist to the ending. I wish I knew the title; I'd like to re-read it.

curses

2008-10-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

there must be a way to edit these (expletive deleted) posts after you post them and discover a typographical error. I'm sure there is a way. Hell if I know how to do it, though. [Please insert a collection of your own favorite, choice, angrily expressive swear words here, with reference to the last paragraph of my previous post.] "America is doomed."---what I THOUGHT I had typed.

weakly clairvoyant redux

2008-10-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

Four weeks from today we'll suffer another election. Despite the fact that the Obama ticket is presently leading in the tracking polls, the outcome of the election will be declared a victory for John McCain. In order to get to there from here, the Recidivist Party will run the most vicious smear campaign ever seen . . . and if you know American political history as well as I do, that is a sickening and discouraging prospect to contemplate.

But character assassination alone will not accomplish their objective . . . or maybe it would, but the Recidivists will also use two more dirty tricks---voter suppression and electronic vote stealing (which leaves no evidence---the perfect crime.)

There are scores of voter suppression tactics the Recidivists have employed over the past eight years. All of them, and more, are in the works. Some news reports have already surfaced from states like Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and I am sure there are dozens more.

As for the theft of elections by manipulating electronic voting machines, they've done it before and they have every incentive to do it again---and meet with no resistance from the ones you'd logically expect to oppose them, namely, the candidates and party they keep cheating out of their rightful wins.

So one does not have to be clairvoyant to tell how this one is going to play out.

As for all the lesser races, who the hell cares?

Even if the Democrats win huge majorities in Congress, their leadership will still cower and cringe and capitulate when confronted by the neo-con controlled Executive Dictatorial Branch, so don't get your hopes up. All the criminal activities of the past eight years will go merrily unpunished and even un-investigated.

The Recidivists, having stolen everything they could and bankrupted the country in the bargain, will retreat to their fascist fortress in the corporate monopoly media, and jeer and sneer and smear at the hapless, feckless, clueless, spineless, worthless Congressional placeholders.

Well, you say, this is a cheerful post, isn't it?

I'd love nothing better than to be cheerful; I'm an optimist by temperament . . . but I'd rather be honest, since that is the closest I can come to being truthful.

I aim at the truth, and if I miss it at least you know I am sincerely trying. I have spelled out for you the reasons which rationalize my hunches. And I see no reason to believe that the villains who ALREADY stole two presidential elections would have any hesitation about doing it again. Why would anyone expect otherwise??????

. . . and I will not conclude this post without noting that there are still many millions of bigots whose voting decision will be prostituted to the satisfaction of their racial prejudice.

So. America is doomed. You read it here first. I shall of course keep actively agitating and campaigning for the next four weeks, because I for one intend to GO DOWN FIGHTING!

pardon my paranoia please

2008-10-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

Where to begin? With proper humility, I have to concede that Senator Joe Biden by all accounts justified his placement on the Democratic ticket with a successful job in the Vice-Presidential debate. The risk of that debate cannot be overstated, for those of us who recall how Jesse "The Body" Ventura baffled and perplexed the two most experienced and capable professional politicians in Minnesota during the 1998 debates in our Governor's race.

Of course, Jesse is quite a few rungs higher on the evolutionary ladder than Sarah Palin, but the corporate media complicity with the fascist party is enough to make one apprehensive about how off-kilter the debate might have gone. As it was, the intense campaign of character assassination and intimidation against the moderator, Gwen Ifill, was obviously effective. My opinion of Katie Couric on the other hand has never been higher.

In terms of electoral politics, I still think that Senator Clinton should have been picked for V-P. And I am not going to revise my basic assessment of Mr. Biden. But he seems to have come through well as a "clutch hitter." So as a gesture of atonement, I stopped at the local Obama campaign office and made a small contribution to the cause.

It was a good night last night and a pretty good day today . . . one of those crisp midwestern fall days with blue sky above and dry leaves underfoot. A good day for a bike ride to the library . . . after spending a couple of hours printing bumper stickers in the basement. When the ink is dry (next week) I'll stand on street corners to hand them out. I did a little street corner sign-holding two days ago, with a hand-lettered placard reading "Jail Not Bail for Bush & Wall St."

Response was less than I expected---some hostility, and a bit more applause and support (it was a Democratic part of town). It's my conclusion that the sign was awkwardly worded. Tying George Bush and Wall Street together is logical to me, but since there is no visibly articulate leadership by the Democrats to make that association and to drive the message home, it didn't resonate much with the public when I attempted it.

Faithful blog readers (all three of you) will be pleased to learn that the mystery of my missing files was resolved with unexpected recovery of all that was missing. I must assess 75 paranoia points against myself for supposing that they had been taken from my possession, and 25 frazzle points for supposing otherwise that I might have left the box of files at a photocopy shop or in the State Office Building during the weary waning days of the recent legislative session. (I would explain what happened but am restrained by concern about potential risks to national security.)

I am also going to dock myself another 15 paranoia points for spreading the word about the call-back of the Third Infantry's First Combat Brigade from Iraq for "crowd control" duty in the "homeland" formerly known as the USA, just in time for the upcoming rigged elections. And 5 more frazzle points for calling them the 3rd Combat Brigade of the 1st Infantry, in an e-mail I wrote earlier tonight.

That leaves me down 90 paranoia points and 30 frazzle points. I can recoup a little by noting that I did get two letters to the editor printed recently, one in the Star Tribune and one in the neighborhood monthly, the Park Bugle. Perhaps next week I'll post them here . . . better late than never. There is a comment attached to one of my previous posts---look it up---which links to the segment on the Conan O'Brian Show which has about 10 seconds of video of me protesting during the late Thugfest (Bush Crime Family Convention) here in St. Paul. I haven't seen it yet myself . . . but will end this note and go check it out, finally.

It can't happen here . . .

2008-09-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

In the course of this week here in St. Paul, I met a man who had a story to tell. After hearing it, I asked him to write it out and send it to the newspaper, which he did. Whether it gets published, I don't know, but I have his permission to copy it and I hope others will too, and send it around the world:

letters@pioneerpress.com

In 1981 I witnessed first-hand the Poles' courageous rebellion against Soviet tyrants. In an unforgettable scene, dreaded Zomos chased demonstrators across a square, leaving a wake of brutality.

"Zomos" were uber-police, clad in dark battle-gear. Police? Communists? Psychopaths? They wore no insignia. They simply kept tyrants in power.

Last Monday, I walked from Cathedral to Capitol and wound up between a group of "anarchists" and an equal number of riot police. The anarchists? Hardly scary. Think "Halloween" and squashed pumpkins at the end of your driveway. The riot police? Think "Zomos."

I asked an anarchist, "So what's next?"---"Dunno," he said with a chuckle. I wanted to put the same question to one of the riot police, but they were far scarier than the kids---I mean, "anarchists."

Then I felt despair. This wasn't Poland in 1981.

This was St. Paul in 2008 . . . in the hands of "Zomos."

Eric Nillson, Falcon Heights, Minnesota

The cure for 1984 is 1776

2008-09-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

The repression in this burg has been astonishing---in a liberal Democratic city and county, journalists and legal observers and medics have been targeted every single day, even before the protests. Reports tonight are that even employees of local corporate media and of Fox "news" have been busted. The intent to teach a lesson of intimidation could not be more plain.

Having done my protests against the Reprobates BEFORE the convention started, I spent part of Tuesday and Wednesday outside the city-county building, where one of the original printed copies of the Declaration of Independence was to be displayed, coinciding with the Thugfest. I donned my patriotic regalia---three-cornered hat from Williamsburg, fake buckled shoes, long white socks, knee britches my dear spouse made for me from old martial-arts pants, and a terrific colonial-style muslin blouse that she whipped together for me over the weekend.

I looked fabulous, if I do say so. Naturally, I carried my 4th of July sign---the one which reads: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God --- DOWN WITH THE KING --- GEORGE THE WORST!"

Lots of people took my picture; I was interviewed by three Minnesota newspapers, and Korean Radio, Polish Radio, Newsday, and numerous other time-killing journalists. Someone from an American t.v. show turned up and made fun of me. I was informed that it was the "number two sidekick" from a show hosted by a person named Conan O'Brien (or O'Brian?) I doubt they used the tape; I hope they didn't, although a comrade who was there with me said I did reasonably well in front of the camera.

What I was doing, of course, was handing out printed copies of the Dunlap broadside, the version of the Declaration which was on display. A reproduction of the document on one side; on the other side, a timeline of 1776 events; an explanation of "long s" (all your "s's" look like "f's"); and a long polemic I wrote about the incongruity of having to submit to a metal detector search before being allowed into the building where the Declaration was on display.

Write to me if you want a copy---send a regular mail address and I'll post one to you; I'll keep your address from appearing on the blog, I promise.

All week, the Ron Paul supporters were in evidence in greater or lesser numbers. They have great spirit, and held a rally which packed the Target Center in Minneapolis. I met a few who were actually credentialed delegates and one from North Carolina would have gotten me into the convention on a guest pass on Wednesday night. (No thank you, I would sooner slit my wrists.)

It will never be possible to feel the same way about my adopted home town of St. Paul after this week's events. To see every elected representative capitulate completely to the brazen repression of journalists and legal observers is perhaps the worst of what one of my brothers called "very serious evil" that we have endured.

And the Declaration of Independence? It was on display on Tuesday at City Hall, and was supposed to be there for viewing through Thursday, the final day of the convention. But by Wednesday it was gone. Too seditious, I suppose.

Fascism comes home

2008-09-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Thugs have landed in Minnesota and we are an occupied city. Glen Greenwald says that he has never seen an American city so militarized as St. Paul is this week--not even New York after 9/11.

There have been preventive detention arrests; arrests of journalists, legal observers, and medics; confiscation of computers, telephones, cameras, recording devices, political pamphlets; police assaults and insults to citizens; "caging" protest rallies and restrictions of freedom of movement on streets and sidewalks---all that's missing is a curfew. Literally--because bar closing hours were extended to 4 AM for the "family values" crowd.

I vow that I for one will never cease to denounce our local political leaders for stepping into this trap, and bringing St. Paul into step with the high-tech police state of the 21st century.

Note: news reports of the peace march on Labor Day quoted police crowd estimates of 8-10,000. They lie as always. They videotaped every single person in the march; I defy them to produce the tapes and let a count be made.

Good sign: McCain has too many houses, America has too many homeless.

Best street theater" Lobbyists for McCain. Go to LobbyistsforMcCain.com and start collecting their set of 133 cards.

More to tell in later posts . . . and of course, I can now reveal that Senator McCain DID contact the Minnesota Weakly Clairvoyant to vet Governor Palin for him. We were as helpful as we could possible be, and kept everybody's secrets really well, didn't we?

Obama's blunder: "Where egos soar."

2008-08-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

I owe an apology to Pat Coleman and the other Hillary Clinton supporters. While Senator Obama wasn't my first choice, I thought all along he couldn't be a weaker and more unappealing candidate than Sen. Clinton would have been. Well I was certainly wrong on one count---Obama's campaign has been in free fall for the last two months. He is making McCain's task easy. I am disgusted although really not entirely surprised . . . the signs have been there ever since last winter, when Obama's campaign failed to comprehend the menace of the internet whispering campaign against him.

Now by picking for Vice-President one of the most useless egotists in Washington, Obama has sealed his fate---and history will proceed to foreclose on the U.S. of A. The only thing that can be said in Biden's favor is that he dissed Rudy Giuliani last year, very cleverly. But otherwise he is an opportunist, a trimmer, a political coward, a plagiarist, and a fully accredited member of the spineless Democratic Senatorial chickenshits.

ANY political analyst could have seen that the best choice for V-P, in order to win the election, would have been Senator Clinton, WITH ALL HER FAULTS. It was SHE, and not Joe Biden, who carried the contest the farthest in the primaries. Biden's manifest lack of appeal made him the FIRST to drop out!!! Now Obama forfeits the election . . . the price to pay for surrounding himself with sycophants and amateurs and losers like Tom Daschle. This is the worst V-P pick since McGovern tapped Tom Eagleton, and should help Obama just about as much as Eagleton did McGovern. And because this is the first important decision Obama has made as a national figure, it reinforces every attack against him as inexperienced and not ready for prime time.

So John McCain will get to the White House by way of the gutters and sewers; the kleptocracy will keep bleeding us; climate degradation will NEVER be combated; the Supreme Court will reinstate all the powers and privileges of absolute monarchy; and other horrors await us.

One last "weak clairvoyance": I didn't see how McCain could not have picked Tim Pawlenty for his V-P selection, but TIME magazine says he'll go with Mutt Romney. I am so naive at times. For all the reasons the Pawlenty would have been the perfect selection for McCain's purposes, I forgot the main point---Romney has unlimited wealth and will spend it all to advance his ambition. Further your affiant sayeth not.

Auld Lang Syne

2008-08-06T18:25:00.000-07:00

The locale was the Middleton Sport Bowl and the event was the 40th year class reunion for the Madison West and Madison Memorial high school graduates of 1968.

I had been looking ahead to this year's reunion because I felt like such a dolt at the one which was held five years ago---not recognizing people is embarrassing, and I don't know how to fake it if I don't remember some one at all. I thought, maybe I'll do better this time.

Imagine my surprise to discover that the reunion organizers have a tradition---no name tags are provided for the Friday night social get-together. In the past, I had never attended on Friday nights, just Saturday afternoon events. So now the task was to identify the teen-agers turned geezers, without any clues.

Hours later, we left reluctantly. It was not possible to talk to more than a fraction of the people who were there, and besides, how does one compress forty years into a few minutes of conversation? As awkward and socially inept as I am, I still enjoyed the reunion, and even though my dear spouse didn't go to a Madison school, she easily made new friends out of my venerable cohorts.

The party was raucous, voices exuberant, great quantities of ethanol imbibed by many--a good time was had, despite the subconscious awareness that a chronological corner had been reached and passed. And now the Harvest has gotten underway, not just of so many of our parents, but also among our classmates, friends, and spouses.

Between now and the next reunion I plan to read Thomas Wolfe's novel "You Can't Go Home Again." The title alone should make it worthwhile.

Another letter the Pioneer Press wouldn't print

2008-08-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

To the editor:

On May 18, 1931, the St. Paul Daily News reported the indictment of 150 alleged violators of the alcohol prohibition statutes. On July 29, 2008, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported the arrest of over 100 alleged violators of the drug prohibition statutes.

Eight decades ago, it was the practice to sweep up petty violators while allowing more prominent gangsters to sojourn unmolested in St. Paul. Today, while the police and county attorney nick the taxpayers for all these nickel-and-dime arrests, they nonetheless blithely welcome to town the largest racketeering-influenced corrupt organization in America, the Republican Party, of which yet another prominent member, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, now faces federal criminal charges.

The policy of drug prohibition, like alcohol prohibition, doesn't solve the problem it is aimed at, but instead fosters a social climate of hypocrisy, of unequal justice, and of disdain for other, more reasonable laws.

Another letter the Star Tribune wouldn't print.

2008-08-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

To the editor:

100 years ago, journalist Lincoln Steffens included Minneapolis in his muckraking series, "The Shame of the Cities," because back then the Minneapolis police force was scandalously in cahoots with the city's criminal element. The century since Steffens wrote has seen many changes, but one thing has been constant---the police department remains a blot on the city.

Arrogant, abusive, trigger-happy uniformed bullies aren't just tolerated in Minneapolis, they are invariably shielded with lies and cover-ups. If they terrorize citizens sufficiently they may even get a medal.

And when Chief Dolan says that officers shot in the line of duty always and automatically get an award, I hope he can tell the news media whether any medal, decoration, or honor was given to the undercover officer who was machine-gunned a couple of years ago---by another cop!

The unchecked political and paramilitary power ceded to the Minneapolis police department doesn't make the city safer, it just empowers the rogues and thugs who wear a badge but respect no laws themselves, and who lie with impunity in and out of court.

Losing much more than my grip

2008-07-31T07:32:00.000-07:00

For thirty years, I have sifted and winnowed a vast amount of printed information that I considered politically or historically important. For most of those three decades, almost all of it was inaccessibly heaped in boxes and crammed into several thousand un-indexed file folders.

Last winter, I assembled the most timely files---every single thing I had on police misconduct and corruption particularly in Minneapolis; every single thing I have assembled since the 2000 election relating to election fraud and voter suppression by the fascist Republicans; most of my files on the police state, including the famous Gilbert Shelton cartoon about "Government Spies," and besides these things, I was compiling a lot of stuff relating to the Republican convention scheduled to meet here next month.

These files were the culmination of years of research, agitation, cogitation, and diligent newspaper clipping.

They're all gone. Missing. Vanished. Disappeared. Haven't been seen for months, and I have inspected every crevice and cranny in this not-very-big house. There was a box on one shelf that I had thought was holding these files, and when I looked at it yesterday, I was mistaken. So I am in shock. Cannot sleep or eat. Of all the files I have built up, these were among the most valuable of all and the most pertinent to what needs to be done this year.

Since the missing files were in more than one box, I think we have proof that black-bag jobs are back in style. Even though I know I am supposed to be intimidated, I find myself thinking about how the Whos down in Whoville reacted when the Grinch stole Christmas. Their spirit was undaunted.

In a day or two, mine shall be the same.

GOPS don't want civility---they prefer servility.

2008-07-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

Another letter the Star Tribune won't print. July 11, 2008

To the editor, Star Tribune:

(CAUTION: This letter quotes uncivil language used by the alleged Vice President of the United States.)

Michael Gerson enjoys the privilege of using the pages of the Washington Post and the Minneapolis Star Tribune [July 9, 2008] to attack Al Franken. What annoys me most about Gerson and other right-wing propaganda-pushers like Bill Kristol is their habit of using the name of English writer George Orwell to try to buttress their propaganda points.

Here is what Orwell actually said about the Gersons and Kristols of his day---the defenders and apologists for the ruling class:

". . . They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo about 'godless' Russia and the 'materialism' of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. . . .

"All the considerations that are likely to make one falter . . . all this fades away and one sees only the struggle of the gradually awakening common people against the lords of property and their hired liars and bumsuckers."

[SOURCE: "Collected Essays of George Orwell," (Looking Back on the Spanish War)]

So when Gerson tries to invoke the shades of Orwell, Swift, and other renowned satirists of history, and to claim that Al Franken is excluded from their company, Gerson only reveals his own ignorance of what, and why, those earlier dissidents wrote.

Gerson seems to object to what may well be called bad taste in some of Franken's past writings. But just such offenses abound in the writings of the world's greatest satirists. Jonathan Swift was notorious for his scatology; Mark Twain's sketch "1601" is one long fart joke; the Midwestern satirist who preceded Al Franken into politics, George Peck, filled "Peck's Bad Boy" with rude, offensive humor which even a century later evokes either belly laughs or disgust at his crudeness.

What an expert on eighteenth-century English literature says about Swift makes a reasonable defense for alleged excesses in a few of Franken's past productions:

". . . Before we rush to accuse him of misogynism on the one hand, or of some sexual perversion on the other, it is salutary to remind ourselves that . . . 'Swift was following an ancient tradition.'
"Instead of Swift's scatological poems necessarily revealing something unstable or unsavoury about his character, they may be merely an extension of his satire on human behaviour.
"The satirist is constantly seeking to expose the discrepancy between how men like to view themselves, and how they appear in reality."

[SOURCE: J. A. Downie, Professor of English, University of London, "Jonathan Swift, Political Writer," p. 309]

And a contemporary novelist, Hari Kunzru, after discussing works of Swift, Nabokov, Orwell, and Michel Houllebesque, pointedly asserts:
"Obscenity is central to satire. You need one kind of obscenity to expose another kind of obscenity."

[SOURCE: From "Dream Ink" blog, proprietor Zafar Anjum (Singapore)]

Gerson's dubious claim to fame is that he wrote speeches for George W. Bush, the most inarticulate man to ever occupy (albeit illegitimately) the White House.

I think his real grievance against Al Franken is not with anything Franken wrote years ago, before he got involved in politics, but with what Franken has published recently, now that the hypocrisy, mendacity, and villainy of Mr. Gerson's patrons have become Franken's targets.

Al Franken, as a satirist, has produced too much truth that hits too close for comfort for the Republican Party's "hired liars and bumsuckers."

Thanks to Al Franken, the fearsome power of the right-wing corporate propaganda apparatus has been challenged---if not yet checked.

It was Franken who dared to publicize Bill O'Reilly's authorship of a pornographic novel; and Senator Phil Gramm's investment in pornographic film productions; and Rush Limbaugh's addiction to drugs; and the draft-dodging and avoidance of combat service of the whole clan of chickenhawks, from Dick Cheney on down to Norm Coleman; and the entire panoply of shameless lying and personal hypocrisy so effectively exposed in Franken's recent books: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot; Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them; and The Truth: With Jokes.

How pathetic that the media can be manipulated to swallow the bait on this one---to obsess about what Franken wrote a few years back, and ignore the real obscenity of atrocities like Abu Ghraib, and scores of other human rights abuses endorsed or excused by Michael Gerson and other Republican apologists. There's no willingness to hold anyone accountable for such bizarre sadistic deeds---which are actions in real life, unlike the verbal provocations of satirical compositions.

Gerson's intent, of course, is to divert attention to what Franken said or wrote when Franken wasn't running for office---and ignore what Norm Coleman has done while in office, which happens to include, among other things:
justifying the Iraq invasion based on lies; helping subvert the Constitution; overlooking systematic graft, war profiteering and wholesale corruption occurring on his "investigative committee's" watch; and jauntily marching in lockstep with Bush while the damage was being done---then trying to dodge and slide away from him when Bush's popularity plummeted.

Naturally, outsiders like Gerson don't actually know the political landscape of Minnesota. Gerson doesn't know, or won't admit, that Norm Coleman was singled out years ago by that architect of election fraud, Karl Rove, as the right-wing's great hope in Minnesota. Rove pressured Tim Pawlenty to step aside for Norm in the 1998 Governor's race, and again in the 2002 Senate race. Ironically, Pawlenty now ends up in the catbird seat, since the ever-ambitious Norm miscalculated last year and hitched up with Giuliani while Pawlenty enlisted with McCain.

Gerson doesn't know that the Minnesota Republicans have their own historical skeletons.
It was our Republican Senator Tom Schall who was kept from his seat for months because he'd taken money from bootleggers; and who when finally allowed into the Senate made a speech so profane that it had to be struck from the record---couldn't be printed.
It was in the Republican party, more recently, that a gubernatorial candidate was yanked from the ballot due to allegations of his presence at a nude swimming party with teenagers.

It was Minnesota's reigning Republican radio mouthpiece, Tom Bernard, who remarked in 2002 that he would like Senator Paul Wellstone dead.

And even after the plane crash that took the lives of Senator Wellstone and seven others, then-candidate Norm Coleman refused to repudiate the support of Mr. Bernard.

Tom Bernard, by the way, has compiled a laundry list of offensive utterances, and that's always on the publicly-licensed airwaves, not in a private night club or an adult-oriented magazine.
As reporter Nick Coleman noted some years ago, Bernard's on-air "humor" includes an endless litany of penis jokes.

Against such a backdrop, Gerson loftily invokes the virtue of "civility" in political discourse, and poses Republican Norm Coleman as the avatar of civility and the former satirist, Al Franken, now an aspiring public servant, as a dangerous threat to political etiquette.

That's correct---an appeal for "civility" from the party of Joe McCarthy, of Rudy Giuliani, of Lee Atwater, of Tom Delay, of Karl Rove, of Dick Cheney, and of ten thousand demagogues and smear artists.

A plea for "civility" from the party that "swift-boated" war hero John Kerry; the party that beat triple-amputee war hero Max Cleland with accusations [utterly bogus, of course!] of sympathy for Osama bin Laden; the party whose only hope this year rests on the success of an internet whispering campaign of lies about Senator Obama!

A request for "civility" from the party that staged the "Brooks Brothers riot" to disrupt vote counting in 2000; the party that is exploring every possible means to suppress voting and disqualify voters; the party that lost the 2000 election by half a million votes and by all evidence also lost the 2004 election, yet still occupies the White House; the party that had to stage a purge of honest U. S. attorneys, in order to halt the steady procession of its own Congressional leadership being perp-walked into federal prisons; the party that scoffs at Congressional subpoenas and learned from its disgraced former leader Richard Nixon no lesson except to be sure to "erase everything!"

A demand for "civility" from the party of Fox News, of Bill O'Reilly, of Sean Hannity, and of Ann Coulter, for-crying-out-loud! You know what they say about bullies---they can dish it out all right, but they can't take it when it comes back at them.

A call for "civility" from the party that, as Gerson even has the gall to mention, seized upon a sordid little consensual sex scandal as a pretext for the impeachment of President Clinton---and imposed the discussion of graphic sexual details into the mass media and into family and classroom settings! THAT intrusion makes anything said or done by Al Franken, in his previous career, seem truly picayune by comparison!

And get this: a plea for "civility" from the party led by Norm Coleman's good friend and fellow chickenhawk Dick Cheney, a self-proclaimed Constitutional hermaphrodite, who has usurped the office of Vice President---Dick Cheney, who on the floor of the Senate told a U.S. Senator to his face:

"Go [f---] yourself!"

Gerson, one of the breed that George Orwell so memorably typed as "hired liars and bumsuckers," will only be remembered, if at all, as the creep who put the oxymoronic catchphrase "compassionate conservatism" into the mouth of as witless and incoherent a ruler as America has ever been subjected to. Honeyed words, voiced by a political thug.

Civility is of tremendous value in a free and open society, but in Bush's fear-drenched police state, Gerson's ostensible advocacy of "civility" is nothing but an attempt to devise a political fig leaf with which to conceal the unmentionable and unpleasant truth.

Al Franken will go on with his campaign, either to quixotic defeat or to an upset triumph. I hope the spirit of Walt Whitman, the poet of American democracy, goes with him:

"There is no week nor day nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance."

Some suggested reading:

A Collection of Essays by George Orwell, especially "Politics and the English Language," "Looking Back on the Spanish War," and "Inside the Whale." (Doubleday & Co., Garden City NY, 1954)

Glass Houses: Shocking Profiles of Congressional Sex Scandals and Other Unofficial Misconduct by Stanley G. Hilton and Dr. Anne-Renee Testa (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1998.)

Capitol Hill in Black and White: Revelations of the Inside--and Underside--of power politics by the black former maitre d' of the Senate Dining Room by Robert Parker (with R. Rashke), [Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1986]

And Mr. Franken's books, cited above.

losing one's grip

2008-05-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

So, I was a little off on my Pennsylvania primary prediction---but not all that far off. It remains my impression that the Obama campaign is wounded and boxed in by the smears which can be traced to the slanderous electronic whispering campaign against him. Such attacks are designed to be anonymously spread---but they MUST originate somewhere. That is what "swiftboating" looks like in 2008.

Other recent diversions:

I went to listen to David Hilliard, one-time chief of staff of the Black Panther Party, who spoke recently at Carleton College. I took extensive notes but haven't sat down here to write up a commentary about it. Meanwhile, my daughter provided me with a chance to read "Waiting for the Midnight Hour," a narrative history of the Black Power movement. That book has an account of the history of the Black Panther Party which traces the rise and fall of the organization and its factions, while appearing to remain fairly neutral towards all sides. I've also heard of a recent book published by a Macalester professor, "Framing the Black Panthers," which I'll need to review as well.

A lot of irons in the fire . . . I spent time quietly picketing at the Capitol for a bill that might have made it to the floor---more about that later in the summer.

On May 15, the St. Anthony Park Neighbors for Peace sponsored a public showing of the video documentary "UNCOUNTED," about the practices of voter suppression, black-box voting machine rigging, and other election fraud which the Republicans have perpetrated in order to steal elections over the last eight years. Go Google this movie, and then do what you need to do to get a copy and watch it. There were about eighty people at the library the other night, and it is safe to say that they were disheartened by what they learned. Here's an irony: along with Neighbors for Peace, the Library was sponsoring the event as part of the civic lead-up to the Republican National Convention which meets here in September. If all the citizens of St. Paul were to see this documentary, the Thugs would get a less-than-lukewarm reception when they get here. I already hacked out a seven-page letter to the Mayor telling him what I think about it. ". . . if only he could read."

Mulberry Sellers reporting . . .

2008-04-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

. . . from the 4th District Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention in Roseville, Minnesota.
I wasn't inside the meeting room, but judging from the buttons and stickers displayed by people in the hallway, the Clinton supporters were dominant---although they lost the February caucuses by a 2-to-1 vote, they got their people through as delegates. Because of the intense challenge mustered by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer against Al Franken in the Senate endorsement contest, the Clinton people can deal with either side of the Senate race in order to place their people at the state convention. Senator Obama's support was much less visible and what there was of it appeared to be largely young, inexperienced at caucus wheeling and dealing, and therefore likely to get less than their "share."

While delegates chosen at the state convention for the national convention in Denver will theoretically be "bound" to vote according to the Presidential percentages of the statewide caucus, there isn't any way to prevent them from voting as they choose; and no significant punishment if they defy the "instructions."

I had no luck at all finding takers for the t-shirts and posters I worked on for the last few weeks. They display anti-Republican-convention messages---but although some people admired them, mostly I got looks of confusion at best and disagreement at worst. Some people thought my sign: "Republicans: They hate us for our freedom" was a sign supporting the Republicans. And these were among the fraction of 1% of the population that actively takes part in politics. One young woman berated me for being so hostile to the Republicans; she said either I made her sick or my sign did. She was "angry," wasn't she? Too bad she couldn't have felt "sick" about what the Republicans (and their Vichy Democratic co-dependents) have done to this country and to the world. But of course SHE WAS TOO YOUNG TO EVER REMEMBER ANYTHING DIFFERENT,
so it was MY sign she found offensive, not THEIR crimes.

And it wouldn't be the DFL if I weren't found (almost just by being there) to be officially "offensive to women." Consequently, my posters parodying the Republican convention won't ever see the light of day--at least I won't waste more time on them. The few already printed will become collectors' items as soon as the ink dries . . . sometime in the next month. Because I really only want to ridicule the Republicans, not offend any otherwise liberal, albeit ideologically rigid, comrades.

After an experience like this morning, I fully understand why the Republicans win so many elections, even ones they don't just steal outright. They know how to appeal to the lowest, reptilian part of the consciousness---don't try to reason with or educate the public. It is impossible to underestimate the political mentality of the American people---it's nothing but a mess of Pavlovian conditioned emotional reflexes.

And even at a DFL party event, use words of one syllable as much as possible. I had to keep explaining what it meant when my posters and shirt said "Reprobate" rather than "Republican." I mean, sure they are synonyms---but most people today didn't know what "reprobate" means.

I had another sign which displayed a quote from Floyd B. Olson, and the common reaction to that was, "Who's Floyd Olson?" Had I asked some of these delegates what the "F-L" in DFL stands for, they would have been stumped. So, without waiting for the actual results, here's my impression: Clinton probably picked up quite a few stealth delegates, beyond her quota; and Nelson-Pallmeyer may well have equaled or beaten Franken in the 4th.

On Thursday, I went in for a root canal. Today, the DFL convention. My consolation was to hand out little cards advertising this blog. So to both of my new visitors, please accept my thanks---and please read two or three or four more posts while you're here.

Through a glass,, darkly

2008-04-19T03:33:00.000-07:00

It is time for a demonstration of clairvoyance. I foresee that Senator Obama will get electorally eviscerated in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, with his campaign disintegrating under the combined attack of the lickspittle toadies in the corporate media teamed up with berserker Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton will prevail by greater than 20% in the Democratic primary vote---but it will of course be a classic case of a Pyrrhic victory---"One more victory like this and I shall be undone."

So a year from now, Tim Pawlenty will be only a shaky heartbeat away from the Presidency. Not that it matters. This country has not been a free republic since November 22, 1963. In all the years since then, only two men have been in the White House who were not the pet candidates of the greedy and sinister racketeers who in fact wield imperial power in the USA. One was Jimmy Carter, who barely slipped in during the interregnum following Nixon's abdication; the other was that man-on-the-make, William Jefferson Clinton, who only won in 1992 because of the vanity candidacy of Texas billionaire Ross Perot. It was Perot, not Clinton, who unhorsed the CIA's first in-house President, the senior Bush.
They got rid of Carter. Reagan's campaign manager, that CIA guy William Casey, not only committed dirty tricks like stealing the Carter campaign debate briefing book--he also treasonably bargained with the Iranian mullahs to block the release of the US Embassy hostages until AFTER the election. I didn't make this up; it's a matter of historical record.
And Bill Clinton, having had the luck, the ambition, the political skill to barge into the executive office, never knew what hit him. Hillary did know---"a vast right-wing conspiracy"---but neither of them had a clue about what to do in response, except to employ "Reagan-Light" political tactics. In the end it left them weaker than if they had embraced a more principled political strategy.

In practice, Clinton never obstructed the secret government---but his very presence in the Oval Office was taken as a personal affront to the fascists. Consequently, the election-rigging in Florida (and elsewhere) in 2000--running roughshod over the Voting Rights Act, and then cementing the steal with a Supreme Court ruling that simply stated that Junior Bush would suffer irreparable harm if the vote recount were allowed to continue. That is what it said in the ruling. In other words, the Court re-established hereditary monarchy or the divine right of kings, or certainly an equivalent doctrine, in 2000.

Since then, the fascists have worked at perfecting the business of stealing elections. In this they have two trump cards. The first is the adoption of black-box voting machines, which can return any votes one wants, without leaving any evidence--unlike the case in the old days of literally stuffing ballot boxes. As Larry Kolb points out in his memoir of life in the world of spies and secret government, the CIA has been rigging elections all over the world for decades. Why would anyone expect them not to guard their base position? The second trump card held by the fascists is the chickenshit leadership of the Vichy Democrats.

When the vote-rigging in the 2006 congressional elections fell short, due to undetected massive popular rejection of the Bush regime, it soon became obvious, despite the will of the people, that no real opposition would be offered by the Democratic congressional majority.

And I want to say this: If Hillary Clinton had fought one-tenth as hard against Bush and Cheney as she has against Barack Obama, then she would have been the Democratic nominee by acclamation. As it is, she either gets the nomination by an unprecedented character assassination against a fellow Democrat, or she leaves him so sabotaged that he will be lucky to carry his own state. And it is too bad, because Obama could have been a great President. He's a conventional liberal, ideologically, but since he is not owned by the military-corporate-shadow government troika, they set to work to destroy him. It is not the way they taught you from your civics textbook. Which may be one reason most schoolkids detest, ignore, and forget their civics lessons faster than any other subject.

Why hasn't the Vichy Democratic leadership addressed the fact of election fraud? They even had the US attorney scandal HANDED to them---to which the reaction of Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, et al., was: "What, me worry?"

Now I would like nothing better than to see the Democrats win the Presidency so that the Supreme Court would be less fascistic than it is destined to be. That is ALL I would hope for from a Democrat. No end to petro-imperialism, no other basic reforms or improvements. But even someone who is WEAKLY clairvoyant can see this year's outcome with no second-guessing.

It is a pity that Senator Obama did so poorly in the t.v. "gotcha" debate the other night. I had begun to think he might have the kind of rare leadership ability that we so desperately need. Alas, he looked less like Lincoln, or even like Adlai Stevenson, than he needed to on that occasion. Which leaves us hearing the echoes of John Brown's final, clairvoyant prediction. (History students will know the phase I am thinking of.)

What I will spell out is another doomed man's instructions--the words of Wobbly organizer Joe Hill: Don't mourn---organize!

Time travelling with Bobby Seale

2008-03-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

I went to the U of M campus to hear Bobby Seale on February 27, 2008. Bobby Seale was once the Chairman of the Black Panther Party, which he and Huey P. Newton founded in Oakland, CA, around 1966.

In the course of the fascistic suppression of the party, Mr. Seale was arrested several times, charged with a variety of federal and state crimes, including at one point a Connecticut charge of murder that would have carried the death penalty if he had been convicted. He was acquitted. In fact, as he pointed out, he had never been in prison---but he was held in jail for a couple of years before the charges against him eventually came unstuck.

It was both the skill of his lawyer, Charles Garry, and the power of the people, cliched as the expression may seem, that freed Bobby Seale.

While Bobby Seale survived, his party did not. The Black Panther Party was destroyed in a series of police and FBI raids and shootouts, and scores of criminal trials, such as those in which Dharuba was convicted in NY and Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt in LA. One of the most promising leaders, Illinois party chairman Fred Hampton, was shot dead in his bed by Chicago police, whose informant secretly drugged him with a sedative before the cops staged their raid.

Bobby Seale in 2008 doesn't seem to be a militant activist anymore. Judging by his Minneapolis speech, he devotes himself to asserting his proprietorship of the legacy of the Black Panther Party. He expressed a vehement denunciation of Melvin Van Peebles' movie "Panther" as a complete distortion of what the Panthers were about, and he railed against some other film-makers presently putting together what is claimed to be a documentary about the Party. He accused them of ignoring his literary property in the story.

[That property is basically his 1970 book called "Seize the Time," which I had never read until AFTER I went to hear him speak---38 years later. Had I read it previously, I'd have known a lot more.]

In the course of his speech and his answers to questions later, Bobby covered a lot of ground. I wasn't taking notes, so I'll just mention what stayed in my recollection later.

Most vividly, he described some of the famous early exploits of the Panthers:

Huey P. Newton, armed with a loaded shotgun, reciting the law to the Oakland police while leading an armed patrol of Panthers for the purpose of monitoring police behavior. The Panthers faced down the cops and their legend got its start.

Huey and Bobby, reading and re-reading Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth;" then composing the party's 10-point platform "What We Want" and adding the ten points of "What We Believe"---with a lengthy quotation from the Declaration of Independence!

The scene when the Panthers went to the state capitol in Sacramento, wearing their leather-jacket and beret uniforms and carrying loaded weapons through the legislative chamber (they were looking for the gallery but took a wrong turn.) This got them international publicity: "Niggers with guns! In the Capitol!!!" At that time, California law allowed citizens to carry weapons if they were not concealed. Needless to say, the law was soon re-written.

The raid on the Los Angeles Panther headquarters, which took place at 6 AM, just two days after Fred Hampton and Mark Clark had been murdered by cops in Chicago. 300 "SWAT"-team police surrounded the HQ, and blockaded the area for blocks in each direction. They began shooting guns and tear gas into the building. But Bobby, held at that time in jail in San Francisco, had (via his lawyer) given directions for fortifying the office with sandbags and metal-covered shutters for the windows. The Panthers also had installed a secret telephone line from a nearby house.

So when the raid began, and the cops cut the office telephone line, the people in the office could still be reached by the secret phone line. Bobby instructed them to try to surrender and to display a white flag. The cops kept shooting---for five or six hours!

Finally a t.v. reporter with a telephoto lens was able to show the Panthers' white flag on local television, and the Panthers' lawyers were able to get sympathetic Hollywood people to appeal to the media to report that the Panthers were trying to surrender. In the end, the cops had to stop shooting, and although they arrested all the Panthers they didn't succeed in killing any.

Bobby Seale also told about his ordeal in the federal courtroom during the Conspiracy trial in Chicago, when Judge Julius Hoffman ordered him to be shackled to his chair and gagged in the courtroom, because Bobby had been demanding the right to have his lawyer, Charles Garry, represent him. Garry was ill and had to undergo surgery, but Hoffman refused to delay the trial or to re-schedule the part involving Bobby.

The spectacle of a black man bound, shackled, and gagged in a federal courtroom, was far more radicalizing than any speech that Bobby or any other leader could have made. It still chills my blood to think about it.

J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, named the Black Panther Party as the most dangerous and subversive organization in America. He called their leaders thugs and hoodlums. Bobby is still resentful of that label; he also was at pains to point out that the Party was never a racist or Black Nationalist organization. Their slogan was "All power to the people; Black Power to Black People." Mr. Seale went to some length to differentiate the original Panthers from the so-called "New Black Panther Party" organized by the late Khaliq Abdul Mohammed---and to leave the impression that he rejected the "New" party as the successors or inheritors of the first Panthers.

Bobby protested the popular image of the Panthers as a bunch of macho gun slingers. What he wants people to understand are the accomplishments of the Party as it tried to strengthen as well as defend the community. He described the Breakfast for Children programs, organized in many cities by Panther chapters, which at their best were feeding tens of thousands of children--he claims even larger numbers. He described their Free Clinics, which among other things performed the largest mass screenings for sickle-cell anemia--as many as a million people tested. The party published a newspaper which reached a circulation of almost half-a-million, making it the largest "underground" newspaper of that era.

It is pretty clear to me that it was their ability to literally and effectively "serve the people" which was the greatest part of the "threat" posed by the Black Panther Party. There were always criminal gangs who carried guns (although not blatantly in front of the cops!) Huey Newton had the inspiration of forming an armed but lawful political organization--NOT a criminal gang.

The Panthers if left alone to make use of their Constitutional rights, appeared to be a sincere revolutionary organization with fearless, intelligent, charismatic leadership. So they were bloodily crushed. To achieve that, they were first infiltrated and sabotaged from within by agents provocateurs and informants, and then set up for arrests and for the series of bloody police/FBI assaults that ended with almost 60 Panthers dead, many more wounded, scores facing criminal charges, and the party disabled and bankrupted by legal expenses. Internal tensions and factional schisms further wore the organization down.

Bobby didn't talk about the end of the party, nor about the death of Huey, who was assassinated by, supposedly by a crack addict, in 1989. And Bobby Seale had no information in response to a question about the San Francisco 8, former Panthers who were recently re-arrested on decades-old charges---and didn't seem to know what their status is now. No one asked about Mumia Abu Jamal, who was never mentioned. Someone did ask about Senator Obama, and Bobby had an odd response, speaking of his equal satisfaction with either Obama or "sister Hillary Clinton."

In his speech, Mr. Seale spoke of the great crisis facing the whole earth, the global warming environmental phenomenon. He believes that all the struggles for social justice connect together, although aside from that assertion itself, he didn't spell out specific illustrations of why that is.

He did mention a projected or perhaps theoretical scheme to provide millions of jobs for minority kids, making products needed for generating renewable energy. The lengthiest response he made to any question was to talk about education, in which he is a firm believer. I can't recall the details of what he said on that point, however. (Sorry.) He also talked about how people are not very different from one another, asserting that study of the human genome shows that the genetic differences among the races and the sexes---and all the other variations in human appearances---make up less than one-half of one-percent of the DNA code.

I want to describe the audience. I suppose the event, sponsored by the Black Student Union, was not very well publicized, since there were only about 150 people in the room, which could have held more. In the early seventies, there would have been 10,000 people, perhaps. Well, maybe not in Minnesota--- and of the people present in 2008, maybe a couple of dozen were of African descent, while most of the rest were young "Euro-Americans."

There was a handful of grizzled "survivors" from what was once called the "New Left"---the mostly white radical youth from that long-ago era. There was one middle-aged black guy who was recognized by Bobby as having been in the courtroom during the Chicago trial---at the time, a fifteen-year-old, through whom Bobby passed the word to his followers NOT to riot, but to stay disciplined and keep up the party's tasks. And there were the faithful Trotskyites, peddling "The Militant" and taking up the question time with arcane disputes about socialist doctrine and practices. Some things don't change.

I learned something. It seems that after the Chicago killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and the LA raid right after that, there was a reduction and then an end to the paramilitary raids on Panther offices. Bobby Seale says that the raids were stopped because of hearings in the U.S. Senate, held by Ted Kennedy and Frank Church, who called the FBI and other agencies up to the hill to answer questions about why they were killing all these Black Panthers. Whether they got honest answers to that question I rather doubt---but Seale thinks that the hearings halted the law enforcement vendetta against the Panthers. [At least for a few decades.]

Bobby Seale is a stocky man, past seventy years old, of middle-height; he wears a beret constantly which I speculate may be because he's gotten bald, and he smiles and jokes much of the time. But his eyes don't smile much, and occasionally either in his recitation of a past incident, or in reaction to an audience question, you got a flash of a steely quality in his personality.

This is a man who more than once literally put his life on the line for that seemingly-abstract, slogan-like idea of SERVING THE PEOPLE. He has lost many of his followers; he has lost the one person he had total and complete faith in as his leader; and he spends his time now doing what he can to keep alive a memory of idealistic, courageous young men and women who, in the words of Fred Hampton, were "so proletarian-intoxicated" they could not be "astronomically intimidated."

I'm still kicking myself for not having bought tickets to the dinner that the BSU held for Bobby later that evening.

unscattering my thoughts

2008-03-15T00:14:00.001-07:00

I have written up my account of the speech made by Bobby Seale at the University of Minnesota on February 27, 2008. It will be posted here soon.

Moscow on the Mississippi

2008-03-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

The St. Paul chief of police last week announced the formation of a special investigations unit to snoop on "First Amendment activities" in St. Paul.

I downloaded the so-called "guidelines" which are alleged to govern the work of this incipient Red Squad. The guidelines are pure Stalinism. There's a fig-leaf of disclaimer of any intention to violate citizens' First Amendment-protected rights (although what those rights are is never spelled out or defined in the guideline.)

For the record, let's spell it out: First Amendment-protected activities include the free exercise of religion; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; and the right to freely assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

It is now the asserted prerogative of the St. Paul police department to unilaterally abrogate or infringe those precise activities. The chief of police assumes the sole authority to label as suspicious any worship, any speech, any publication, any assemblage or organization, and any petition to the government--just as he may choose.

According to the document, the department now intends---among other things---to routinely photograph and conduct surveillance of public assemblies; to compile dossiers on citizens; to send disguised undercover agents to infiltrate "suspicious" organizations; to encourage those agents to spy on meetings where lawyers are providing legal counsel to citizens and organizations; to seek city attorney approval before they take unspecified police action against "mainstream media"---but to reserve to themselves the right to decide who or what is or is not "mainstream", leaving the clear implication that those they deem non-"mainstream" have no rights which need to be respected; to share and distribute information from their dossiers (known as "databases") to sundry other law enforcement or governmental entities,

and what is more, all of these spying activities are to be conducted in secrecy; the chief retains total and complete authority over the program and no provision is made for external review, for civilian oversight, for accountability to the Mayor and City Council, or to the taxpayers. No one will ever be able to see the files on themselves, or to discover whether their activities have been spied upon or their organizations infiltrated. The police further declare their intention to DESTROY the records of any investigations, at their discretion. That way nobody can ever sue them for anything--I am sure they'll extend the practice to other divisions of the department as soon as they see they can get away with it.

This is all part of a nationwide trend of high-tech data-gathering and police spying, which was vividly described in the radical publication, U.S. News & World Report, on May 6, 2006. When I talked to my new city council representative, a young man elected by the most certifiably liberal and progressive constituency in this Democratic-Farmer-Labor dominated city, he appeared puzzled, and finally offered the suggestion that someone who has nothing to hide has no reason to fear being the object of photographic surveillance.

I can't even go down to City Hall to attend a council meeting in order to protest this madness . . . because all who enter the City-County building are required to submit to metal-detector screening and I will not voluntarily surrender my rights and heritage in what was once a free nation.

Actually, both St. Paul and Minneapolis, like nearly every other sizable American city, already are under de facto political control of the police forces. In Minneapolis, a city with a corrupt and vicious and notoriously racist force, the police union rules and overrules all local politics. They openly endorse favorite election candidates, and not too long ago made threats of physical violence against Alderman Remington, who crossed them on some issue. Minneapolis pays enormous court settlements, year after year, to people who have been beaten up, shot, and abused by the police (the cops are so arrogant and lawless that they even beat up lots of white people; while native Americans and persons of African descent are in constant peril.)

In St. Paul, the seven-member city council has had at least two police officers or members of police families on it, for many years. The cops' pet candidates for Mayor and certain council seats actually were defeated in recent elections, but the winning candidates weren't going to actually oppose the department or the union in any significant fashion.

It needs to be pointed out that although the St. Paul cops savagely beat up Pat Fearing (for which the city paid out money), and they kidnapped Dan Beissel and kept him involuntarily committed for two days because he attempted to photograph a police stop, from across the street, they nevertheless have overall a better reputation than the Minneapolis blue gang. And the St. Paul police department even has a documented record of protecting the exercise of First Amendment rights, in two, count them, two recent instances.

In 2001, when the Ku Klux Klan held a white supremacy rally at the state capitol, the St. Paul cops worked along with state officers to protect and shield the Klansmen, providing enough officers to keep order and allow the Klan rally to proceed undisrupted. It was an expensive afternoon, but it firmly established the Department's devotion to upholding the Klan's civil liberties.

No other group has ever benefited from such tender concern, until this year, when the Republican National Convention is scheduled to be held in St. Paul. Republicans are finding their way smoothed for them; the department is stone-walling against the requests of anti-war groups seeking to stage non-violent protests during the convention; and latest police plans indicate that protestors will be allowed no nearer than three blocks away from Republican events--kept out of sight.

So selected groups--the Klan, and the Bush-Cheney Crime family--get to enjoy their First Amendment freedoms in St. Paul. Everyone else is, by definition, a suspect. It does make the Constitutional requirement of equal protection of the law sound like a sad and hollow joke, doesn't it?

Another letter the New York Times wouldn't print.

2008-02-24T19:27:00.000-08:00

William Kristol is a choice hypocrite for basing his column on quotations excerpted from George Orwell's "Collected Essays."

Here's another quote---from Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language:" "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

Mr. Kristol, defending corporate immunity for illegal wiretapping, writes: ". . . certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities are important to our national security"---a perfect example of the use of "euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness" Orwell so despised.

As for Mr. Kristol's assertion that some Democratic politicians were ". . . against the war and against the surge. That was the sum and substance of their policy,"---hogwash. The Democrats were FOR getting Osama bin Laden, whereas the Republicans under Kristol's (and other chickenhawks') urging, were FORGETTING about Osama bin Laden, while using lies about "mushroom clouds" and "terrorism" to conceal their designs on Iraq's oil.

Second try, which the Star Tribune also refused to print.

2008-02-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

William Kristol, the New York Times' new op-ed calumnist, served up a choice morsel of hypocrisy by quoting from George Orwell's "Collected Essays" on February 20.

Kristol, a prominent advocate of Bush and Cheney's invasion of Iraq, himself qualifies as one of the political writers whom Orwell would have denounced for using "euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness" to "make lies sound truthful and murder respectable."

As for Kristol's remark that Democrats were "against the war and against the surge. That was the sum and substance of their policy," it would be more accurate to say that the Democrats were FOR GETTING Osama bin Laden, whereas the Republicans under Kristol 's (and other chickenhawks') urging, were FORGETTING about Osama bin Laden, while using lies about "mushroom clouds" and "terrorism" as pretexts for grabbing Iraq's oil.

Another letter the Star Tribune wouldn't print.

2008-02-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

They say that the devil can quote Scripture, and never more flagrantly than William Kristol's February 20th opinion article, which borrowed quotations from George Orwell's "Collected Essays" to buttress Kristol's denunciations of Democratic politicians.

George Orwell would have scoffed at Mr. Kristol, one of the original flock of chickenhawk advocates of the Iraq invasion.

In his essay on "Politics and the English Language," Orwell wrote: "Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable . . ." and, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible."

Mr. Kristol's column, defending Bush's demand for retroactive legal immunity for illegal, warrantless, pre-9/11 wiretapping, gives us a perfect example of what Orwell meant.

Kristol launches a solemn lie, and follows it with a prize specimen of what Orwell called "euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness."

Kristol claimed: ". . . highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds . . . have all testified, under oath, that in their judgments, certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities are important to our national security."

" . . . certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities . . ."

Kristol could have used the same "inflated style" to defend kidnapping and torture, if he hasn't already.

I suggest Mr. Kristol finish the book---especially Orwell's essays on "Marrakech" and "Reflections on the Spanish Civil War."

Where will it end?

2008-02-19T01:15:00.000-08:00

Associated Press reports that Amtrak will increase its "security" measures: There will be "random" searches of passenger's carry-on luggage, and there will be patrols by guards armed with automatic weapons and leading dogs to sniff for bombs or whatever they want to sniff for.

As I described in a post last year, the trains already are being stopped, while the Border Patrol goes through them for passenger identification checks. This is not a free country anymore. The next stage will be highway checkpoints throughout the nation. (They already exist in many states, especially in the Southern border region.)

Don't imagine that the fall elections will change anything. The people like Karl Rove who rigged the last presidential election, won't let this one out of their grasp---and they have total control of the US Justice Department, so all their cheating and stealing will be unchallenged by the only authority that could do so.

And if by a miracle the Democrats do capture the White House, why, they won't un-do the police state because they'll be afraid of being called "weak on terrorism."

Minneapolis rally for Ron Paul

2008-02-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

On Monday, February 4, I attended a political rally along with over 4,000 people packed into Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus.

This was a last-minute campaign stop by Dr. Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is running a quixotic---but very enthusiastic---campaign as a Republican candidate for President. The enthusiasm is beginning to be tinged with despair or even disillusion among some supporters, for the good doctor hasn't been able to win many votes in real-life primaries and caucuses, despite his tremendous on-line popularity . . . and despite his having been the leading Republican fund-raiser in recent months.

Last night should have been a shot in the arm, though. The crowd was huge---said to be more than had come to see Hillary Clinton in the same town last week, and ten times the size of a weekend event for Romney, another Republican candidate.

There was a certain reticence about the audience, at first, but it was finally warmed up by a capable country-style singer, who also led the singing of the national anthem. I had been weirded out by the presence of several people holding signs saying "Down with Socialism and the United Nations."

Ron Paul's well-publicized lunatic-fringe followers were there, all right. But so were a lot of relatively normal people, and Dr. Paul did not disappoint.

Ron Paul is no orator. His presentation was more of a lecture than a typical stump speech. He made his points clearly and well: "The United States has become an empire; empires collapse when they get overextended and run out of money; the U.S. is broke; China holds a lot of our debt"---and his solution to the immediate crisis is to draw back our military from its imperial mission. In a way, it is a return to the so-called isolationist approach from the last century. The difference is that we are now the world's biggest debtor nation . . . as well as the fact that we aren't threatened, really, by any other nation in a military sense.

I have to say that I don't share Dr. Paul's rejection of the positive parts of the New Deal legacy, such as Social Security. But he plainly said that the problems caused by our bad foreign policy trump the domestic issues, and I agree with him. One of the loudest cheers from the audience (which was FAR from lethargic once the candidate had appeared and begun to speak) came when Dr. Paul discussed the curtailment of civil liberties, with the "war on terror" as a pretext, and declared:

"We should NEVER surrender our civil liberties in the name of national security!"

It was thrilling to be in the midst of thousands of Americans vociferously demanding the restoration of Constitutionally-guaranteed rights that have been abrogated under the present gangster regime. It was spectacular to hear a Presidential candidate saying what has been so painfully on my mind for the past many years. Without the trappings of pseudo-patriotism---without even an American flag on the stage---I felt I was in the presence of a brave and heroic figure, albeit a man who seems modest to a fault in his personal demeanor.

In conclusion, Ron Paul invoked the Constitution, and asserted that the government should not try to run your personal life, should not try to run the economy, and should not try to police the world. Then he was done . . . and best of all, did not conclude with the now-all-too-obligatory recitation of "God bless you" and/or "God bless America" which now pollutes the speech conclusions of all the corporate and theocratic politicians, even such as John Kerry, John Edwards, and others who shall not even be named here.

Regrettably, the Paul campaign wasn't able, despite lots of really hard work, to turn out voters in the primary states or caucus goers in caucus states. I spoke with someone who'd been sent a list of ten people in his precinct who were Ron Paul donors or supporters. He called them all but at his caucus, he was the only one who actually showed up. In the Republican lions' den.

And I also failed to caucus for Ron Paul; it wouldn't have been ethical. Every election day, I put a big poster in my yard directly across from the polling station, displaying a speech by Farmer-Labor governor Floyd B. Olson, where he denounces the Republican party as corrupt, and compares it to the Mafia. So I went to the Democratic-Farmer-Labor caucus, along with my dear wife. While she joined the majority of our 500+ (!!!!) attendees in voting for Senator Obama, I followed the precedent of Studs Terkel (see his autobiography, Talking to Myself), and voted for Fighting Bob La Follette.

Studs had done the same thing, at his law school reunion back in 1960, saying:
"Bob La Follette, dead, had more blood to him than either of the two young make-out artists, who were more machine than human."

Brilliant idea department

2008-01-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

I'm going to talk to some neighbors and see how many we can assemble for a Draft Russ Feingold sub-caucus at the Feb. 5th precinct caucuses.

The Kingfish

2008-01-30T10:24:00.000-08:00

It's been cold in Minnesota---satisfyingly cold for weeks. Just like the good old days thirty years ago when I moved here, or fifty years ago when I was a kid in Wisconsin. So I buried myself in a good long book---a good book about Huey P. Long, that is.

Published in 1968, T. Harry Williams' biography of the Louisiana Kingfish is still well worth reading. It is probably more sympathetic than is warranted, to the man who is usually written off as a corrupt, power-hungry scoundrel and a kind of homegrown fascist demagogue.
Is it a case of "sympathy for the devil"---or was there more to Huey P. Long, something blurred by time and submerged by the epithets of his enemies? Long, when he got to the Senate, teamed up with the likes of George Norris and R.M. La Follette, Jr., who also were routinely denounced as Bolshevists, demagogues, etc. I think Huey would be a good subject for a well-done psychohistorical study, like the ones on Jefferson and Nixon by that brilliant writer whose name escapes me just now.

Williams puts Huey in the context of his place and time. Once Huey was murdered, his "Share Our Wealth" doctrine died with him. But there is no doubt that for a couple of years, Huey P. Long looked like someone who might re-write history himself. That was his own intention---and as the book shows, he had an uncanny knack for getting directly to the goals that he set himself. The list of his accomplishments in his short political career is phenomenal. And historians note that FDR turned "to the left" in 1935, in order to win the 1936 election. Professor Williams makes a convincing case that FDR was deeply worried about Huey as a political rival, and turned the New Deal to the left in 1935 as a way to steal Huey's thunder.

Then Huey was gunned down, right in "his" brand-new state capitol in Baton Rouge, late in 1935.

That led me to think about the unthinkable, the unspeakable, the taboo in our history, namely, the occurrence of assassination as a political tactic. Historians and politicians and educators all shy away from it. Yet you can't get around it.

Reading Plutarch, you run into assassinations on almost every page of ancient history. The Gracchi---and of course Julius Caesar, and many another, both tyrant and populist. World events of the last century---the Archduke's murder in Sarajevo set off World War I; the murder of Jaures removed the one man who might have stopped it; the murder of Gandhi; the murder of Lumumba, the murders of the Egyptian president and the Israeli prime minister---these are just the first ones that pop into my head and you can see that conspiratorial or even lone-nut assassins have done the key work to set the stage for the head-of-state professional assassins who drenched the world in blood.

And in the United States? The greatest American of the 19th century---Abraham Lincoln. And the greatest American of the 20th century---Martin Luther King. Other presidents: Garfield, whose misfortune affected history the least; McKinley, whose killer put Teddy Roosevelt into power, with far-reaching consequences; JFK---and if you think you know what that was about, I suggest you google "Orlando Bosch in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963" . . . and take it from there. Then Malcolm X, RFK, Dr. King . . . and all the others along the way: Huey Long, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, the San Francisco victims (F. Older, Harvey Milk, Mayor Moscone), Carlo Tresca, Medgar Evers . . . [I don't include Alexander Hamilton because he chose to risk his life.]

We are in the mess we're in today because the bullet has prevailed over the ballot, time after time. I don't know what else to say about it. I once heard Fred Hampton, just weeks before the Chicago Black Panther leader was murdered by the Chicago police and the FBI, say:

"You can kill a revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution."

But not for lack of trying, though.

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"

2008-01-30T10:02:00.000-08:00

Last night in St. Paul, about a thousand people jammed into the Carpenters' Union hall to listen to John Edwards, candidate for President. This morning, the news report comes that Edwards won't be a candidate any longer.

That's a blow. Last night, Edwards hit his stride in his speech. This was the third time I've heard him speak, and by far the best talk I've heard from a Democrat in a long time. About fifteen minutes into the speech, he got into a groove and had that roomful of people hanging on every word and syllable. He talked about health care, about education, about the economic issues---and he also denounced the violation of the Constitution, and the Bush regime's practice of kidnaping, of secret prisons, of torture. This is what I had been waiting to hear from a candidate. I was all ready to caucus for Dennis Kucinich, when Dennis dropped out. And now John is gone.

Now what? It's bad enough that the voting machines are rigged and the thugs in the White House are using the federal Justice Department as one big voter suppression tool! Why, I would go an caucus for Ron Paul---the only candidate to use the F-word: FASCISM, and the last one left who denounces the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX---except that my Republican neighbors know who I am and would throw me out. Right now, I'll have to be UNCOMMITTED.

I feel sorry for the campaign volunteers and staff. Just a week ago, Edwards' people were saying he would stay in the race all the way. After all, lots of things can happen in politics---sometimes an opening results from unexpected events. And just yesterday, I sent in another campaign contribution to him. SO MUCH for CLAIRVOYANCE. Or is my support what did it? The political "kiss of death?" In 2004, after much reflection, I finally decided to go with Edwards---on the night of the caucuses---only to emerge from the caucus room that night to hear the news that John Edwards . . . had dropped out.

Perhaps his wife's health has taken a turn for the worse. I hope not.

"Bully for Backstrom!"

2008-01-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Minneapolis Star Tribune printed a nauseatingly sycophantic profile of James Backstrom to applaud his having been re-selected as head of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association.

Here's another letter to the editor that the Star Tribune won't print:

TO THE EDITOR:

Thanks to reporter Jim Adams' puff piece (Tuesday, Jan. 15) we have some psychological insight into the character of Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. Backstrom, we're told, was tormented by bullies as a child.

Did he learn any lesson from that? I guess so. Now that Backstrom is Mister D.A.-Man, a "Super-Lawyer," he's showing those mean kids how a real bully operates!

Yes, amateur bullies can gang up on smaller, weaker kids, but it takes a career bully to use the awesome authority of law, buttressed by a recitation of discredited "reefer madness" propaganda, to justify throwing disabled, sick, or dying patients into jail, or forcing them out onto street corners to buy their medicine from illicit drug dealers rather than from a safer source.

It was Mr. Backstrom who single-handedly blocked the medical cannabis reform bill in last year's legislative session. Backstrom's meretricious pretense of ignorance regarding the medical value of cannabis transforms his so-called "fight to do right" into a nasty crusade against crippled and suffering people who are victims of an unjust law.

Oliver Steinberg

New Hampshire the Granite State

2008-01-06T19:32:00.000-08:00

The Iowa caucuses are over and done. It was wise for me to refrain from any attempt to forecast those . . . but the Des Moines register did a very good job---especially in predicting that a huge number of first-time caucusers would show up. They did, and gave Senator Obama a boost.

See how prescient Michael Moore was a few years ago when he wrote that Oprah Winfrey would be his ideal candidate for President? Mr. Obama's campaign didn't really click into gear until Ms. Winfrey went to Iowa---lending him not just her endorsement, but her personal presence.
That seemed to help, all right!

As for New Hampshire . . . there's a state whose politics I used to have some insight into, from visiting when I was a teenager, and reading their awful newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader. The last time we were there was an election year, 1984, and the motel where we stayed had the political commercials running on television. Senator Gary Hart had the best commercials, and looked like a promising liberal "David" to go forth and tackle the "Goliath" Reagan.

But Mr. Hart ruined his chances by taking a little Caribbean boat trip with a young woman who was not his wife . . . on a yacht with the you-couldn't-make-this-up name of "Monkey Business."
A photograph appeared in the National Enquirer, a scandal tabloid---and not only was Hart out of the race, but this incident inaugurated the media's obsessive snooping into the personal, private lives of political figures. Before this, reporters and editors almost all refused to cross a line respecting personal privacy. That line, roughly, was that it wasn't news as long as no one was arrested, sued, or injured and/or killed.

Once crossed, the ultimate result was the impeachment of President Bill Clinton because, basically, of an adulterous affair. Just to think about it is unpleasant . . . and that's an understatement. So if Obama and Edwards beating Mrs. Clinton in Iowa is a sign that maybe she won't be the nominee (and it is too soon to rule her out!), then it could mean that our political future will be brighter. We have to put the Bush-Clinton-Bush psychodrama of lies, corruption, and criminality behind us. Ideally we'd put Bush and Cheney behind bars, too, but that's too much to wish for.

Shall I endeavor to predict the NH outcome? No . . . I am chickening out. I do have a sentimental favorite---the 81-year old Democratic candidate, Caroline Killeen. She's been on the ballot there before . . . all it takes is $1,000 and an affidavit of candidacy. I won't write more here about her, I'll take the lazy way, and say, "Google her."

I am beginning to think that I won't make ANY predictions this year. (Notice how I have dropped the affected "editorial we" used in the previous post. It's too awkward.)

Good old New Hampshire. Their state motto: "Live free or die." Their state symbol: "The Old Man of the Mountains" up in Franconia Notch---a granite profile or silhouette of a man's face. It disintegrated a few years ago and is now on the map as "Former site of the Old Man of the Mountains." A metaphor in stone for the entire republic, not just one state.

Not at all clairvoyant tonight. . .

2008-01-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

This is the Weakly Clairvoyant, so we ("editors, royalty and people with tapeworms," as Mark Twain described the "editorial" we voice) at the Clairvoyant feel an obligation to go on record about the Iowa Caucuses---which have just gotten underway as this is typed.

A couple of days ago, "we" posted a comment elsewhere saying that Hillary Clinton might carry the Democratic caucuses, especially if she cooks up a deal with Joe Biden to take his supporters when they make their second-place selection (Biden will miss the 15% viability quota in most precincts.) But tonight "we" are hedging on that. "We" just don't feel at all clairvoyant tonight!!

"We" don't know anything about Iowa politics, and this prompts a reluctance to hazard even a guess--because it wouldn't be an INFORMED guess. On the Thug side,"we" don't care, except that "we" will be watching the vote for Ron Paul very closely. Ron Paul is a fine man and a great defender of civil liberties and individual human rights. His votes against the Iraq fiasco and the so-called "Patriot Act" are credentials that most of the Democratic candidates don't have. His opposition to the unconstitutional and authoritarian federal drugs suppression laws is noteworthy, principled, and courageous. If he can get 10% in Iowa "we'll" be satisfied . . . 15%, "we'll" celebrate.

20% and "we'll" be posting here again tomorrow!! But "we're" not holding "our" breath.

"As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?"

2007-10-27T02:23:00.000-07:00

That was the sneering remark made by Boss Tweed in his arrogant heyday.

I had that in mind when I found myself recently in a DFL activists' meeting, listening to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. The DNC has a scheme to reinvigorate "retail" politics---precinct-level, door-to-door political recruiting, organizing, and voter registration.

When questions were solicited, I naturally asked about the problems of voting machines that can't be audited and elections that are rigged by the Thugs, even to the extent of using the power of the Justice department to suppress votes and twist the law. I mentioned the 2006 congressional race in Florida where 18,000 votes that would have elected the Democratic candidate just evaporated from the black-box voting machines.

Dean acknowledged the incident of the Buchanan-Jennings race. Of course. He can't deny it. But his answer to my questions was lame and lamentable. He says they'll have lawyers and election watchers in the areas where they anticipate trouble. And that friendly Secretaries of State will be helpful----in states where we have friendlies, that is.

He basically dodged the question of unauditable black-box voting machines---didn't address it at all! He side-stepped the ENORMOUS issue of the perversion of the justice department and courts for the intentional rigging of elections in favor of Republicans. Although I didn't include it in my question, he ought to have discussed the Thug drive---a coordinated national strategy---to impose voter ID laws (the new incarnation of the poll tax.) With the packed Supreme Court, you don't have to be CLAIRVOYANT to know how they will rule when they decide about state voter ID laws, in this session.

All the tremendous exertion and expense of painstakingly rebuilding a precinct-level organization will be wasted if the DNC and other national Dems such as the presidential candidates, can't learn from the right lessons from the crimes which have been brazenly carried out against the American voters, since the 2000 coup d'etat.

How can they be so blind? How can they be so stupid? And how stupid do the Democratic big-shots think WE are?

An overlooked genius

2007-10-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

The Minneapolis Tribune (now the "Star Tribune") has sunk a long ways in the past twenty years, and its decline has accelerated since the Cowles family unloaded it a few years back.

But there are still two things worth reading in that paper. One is Nick Coleman's column. The other is the serial op-ed page cartoon by Kirk Anderson, called "Adventures in Amnesia." This is political satire with teeth to it! Far better than Doonesbury ever was!

Anderson's work is like a combination of Jonathon Swift and Thomas Nast. He is as good as Katherine Kersten is lousy.

Armenia

2007-10-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

The Turkish regime has spent 20 years blocking the Armenian genocide resolution in Congress. They have succeeded once more. The St. Paul Pioneer Press had two stories side by side recently. One described the political waffling, cowardice, and temporizing by American politicians who were backing away from their previous support of the resolution.

The other story was about a skirmish in the Turkish part of Kurdistan in which twelve people (I think they were Turkish soldiers) were killed. A Turkish army officer was quoted in that story as saying: "These killings are a crime against humanity."

And the genocide against the Armenians was what? Oh, maybe it didn't happen, if we believe the official Turkish Lie. Not to mention the slaughter of the Pontine Greeks, the Greeks of Smyrna, and throughout Asia Minor . . .

Ironic how all the politicians and editorialists clamored to condemn the Iranian presidential jerk when he ventured into the rhetoric of denial of the genocide by the Nazis against the European Jews. A fine indignation was whipped up---we had people willing to nuke Iran over it.

Those very same politicians and editorializers found a dozen rationalizations to justify playing along with Turkey's equally vicious, false, and morally reprehensible denial of their genocidal crimes. Can a lie live forever?

My problem with the ACLU

2007-09-19T01:14:00.000-07:00

So today's paper says the American Civil Liberties Union will go to court to defend the Thug "family-values" Senator who was caught in a police entrapment, soliciting in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport. Said Senator's behavior was described by the ACLU as "freedom of expression" under the First Amendment.

Oh give me a break. While I think the police entrapment is sleazy and despicable and an insulting waste of the taxpayers' dollars, I don't think this is a "First Amendment" issue.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's, we tried to launch a new political party in Minnesota, the Grassroots Party. We went out with clipboards and petitions, pamphlets and posters, and other traditional political apparatus. In city after city across Minnesota---but especially in Minneapolis most of all---we were accosted by police and other authorities, told to cease our campaigning, threatened with arrest (and several times Chris Wright was actually taken into custody); we had our campaign materials seized; we were initially denied a booth at the state fair, etc.

We kept running into overt interference with our indisputable, traditional First Amendment-protected political activity. We went to the Minnesota ACLU. We thought, this should be right up their alley. We don't have a lawyer in our group, but what's the ACLU for, anyway?

They wouldn't even let us in the door of their bunker-style headquarters in Minneapolis. They showed no interest at all in our plight. At considerable expense, we hired private lawyers to try to protect our rights. Their chief concern was padding our bill.

The ACLU was always around to stick up for pornographers, nude dancers, Rush Limbaugh, and now Larry Craig and his unsavory ilk.

I got another "join-us" fund-raising appeal from the ACLU in the mail today. Despite the perilous state of civil liberties in America under the fascist Thugs and the feckless Dems, that letter from the ACLU went into the recycling without even being opened. And so will the next one.

A Look Around

2007-09-19T00:52:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago it was time to take our daughter to college in Massachusetts. We flew out, always a dismaying experience for me. I dislike going face-to-face with fascism at the airports. And I have never gotten over a recurrent dream I used to have, involving a plane crash.

So the agreement was made, we'll take Amtrak back to the Twin Cities. As much as I hate flying, I love train travel. Well, Amtrak under the Thugs has deteriorated terribly: food is miserable, paper and plastic have replaced linen and china; everybody seems to be overworked, etc.

But that's not what I'm writing about. It was about twenty years ago that I rode the Lakeshore Limited on my way to conference out east. What impressed me then was the prevalence of barred windows, boarded buildings, and blight in our cities. The level of civilization, for average urbanites, seemed to have dropped since my last previous excursion out to megalopolis. Garbage, grime, and fear of crime seemed predominant.

SO what did we see in 2007? Oh, beaver dams and lodges and beautiful mountain streams and sandhill cranes and whitetail deer---out in the countryside. That was nice. Nature keeps trying.

Going through Wisconsin, it got really depressing. We saw two or three new prisons---with guard towers and razor wire-topped fences. Gulag Amerika. In Wisconsin Dells, the Midwest's most enduring tourist trap, we could see from the train window a new attraction there: the TORTURE MUSEUM.

It's closing in, isn't it?

abolitionists opposing slavery and tobacco

2007-03-17T23:22:00.000-07:00

I was looking for historical precedents to compare with a proposal for a medicinal cannabis program for our state, and I thought of the Personal Liberty laws passed in some of the free states before the Civil War. The parallels are perfect, right down to the Supreme Court declaring the laws unconstitutional. In 1860, the Court was subordinate to the Slave Power; today the Court is in thrall to the Government Narcotics Racket.

In the course of my "research" I discovered a most extraordinary website, and everyone should check it out: http://medicolegal.tripod.com/abolitionists.htm

If I knew how, I'd make it a link, but can't do so yet. There you will find a different type of Bible-quoting Christian enthusiast. His information about the Personal Liberty Laws and about William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe are worth the time to look them over. And if you read Katherine Kersten's recent column in the Fib-Strib about how "the Christians" deserve credit for abolishing slavery, this site will supply that balance which you know Kersten is incapable of showing. Kersten waffles from outright invention and hallucination all the way over to half-truths. Her column on slavery was in the half-truth category.

Check out the site I mentioned if you want to see the whole truth---emblazoned with Scriptural citations that would choke Ms. Kersten in mid-harangue, if there were any such thing as justice. And for any serious student of American history, it's a great discovery.

the world is diminished

2007-03-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

"send not to know for whom the bell tolls . . ."

It tolls tonight for Lucie Aubrac, French Resistance fighter, who died at the age of 94. Go to the library and check out her story--the English-language version is called "Outwitting the Gestapo" and it was published by the University of Nebraska Press.

You could go on-line and find literally millions of entries for Lucie Aubrac, but to know her story you should read the book. I know that a movie was made based on her Resistance actions, but I haven't seen it, so I recommend the book.

Rededicate yourself to the fight against fascism. Sometimes that means more than just words.

what's snoo with you

2007-02-26T23:15:00.000-08:00

well guess what? We did have a snowstorm over the weekend, after all. Not a civilization-obliterating blizzard and nothing to panic about, but it did snow, so I was wrong on my past post. Actually even the weather forecasters were surprised that they were accurate for once. I saw one newspaper featuring an article by a local television station's "meteorologist," headlined: "This time we were right." Keep up the good work.

deep space is my dwelling place (someday)

2007-02-23T20:35:00.000-08:00

If you have nothing better to do, or better yet even if you do have something better to do, I invite you to go back and read my blogposts from Nov. 2006 onward. There was a hiatus of about two months so it doesn't add up to all that much, really. Then please let people know about this blog as I crave an audience. Who wouldn't? I'd love to reciprocate and do as much for you, but all the tricks and intricacies of e-mail, linkages, etc., are still opaque mysteries to me.

There may be only one or two readers---one of whom is heckling me, so he can forget about his comments ever getting published. Unless he sends an abject apology and sheds his anonymity.

you don't need a weatherman

2007-02-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

I was out at Byerly's today, observing the panic-stricken bourgeois masses stocking up for the predicted BIG BLIZZARD. Ha ha ha. EVERY time the forecasters predict one of these mythical monster storms, it fizzles. Wish I had a dollar for every blizzard that's been forecast since I moved to Minnesota over 30 years ago---for every blizzard that was forecast and then fizzled, I mean.

Then when an actual winter storm does come through, at rarer and longer intervals from here on in, the odds are that it catches all the overpaid weather wizards totally by surprise. Didn't see that one coming! It really is ridiculous.

If you want to know what the weather is going to be, step outside and check the wind, sniff the air for the smell of rain, look at the clouds (if any), and mentally compare it with the experience you have already had in the past. And don't believe the babbling idiots on television, who freak out at their own Doppler-ized shadows, and who seem to be able to convince otherwise rational Minnesotans that the sky is falling---particularly when it ain't.

The highway department has been out dumping chemicals all day for a supposed winter storm scheduled to strike at 6:00 pm. Five hours later, with the highways poisoned and the urban and suburban peasantry huddled together in fear, once again it is obvious that nothing much happened. Not 18 inches of snow, as I heard on the radio earlier. Not 8 inches. Not an eighth of an inch. Zilch. It's too warm to snow, anyway. Well, if a half inch of slushy sleet falls tomorrow, they'll dump many more tons of chemicals on the roads. The wind is from the east-southeast, so there is a low pressure system advancing . . . south of us. They'll get rain. This has been the warmest winter in history, it is going to get much much worse and will never get back to the old midwestern winters in our lifetime or our children's lifetime, or in any foreseeable future. It's all the Republicans' fault, too, and don't you ever forget it!

On the bright side, while I was in the Byerly's parking lot I saw something I'd never seen before---a Mercedes-Benz minibus.

wandering in cyber space

2007-02-23T02:24:00.000-08:00

There's a great blog about Minnesota politics called Mercury Rising. I highly recommend it, having accidentally bumped into it while failing to find something else. Don't know who writes it, but it's good.

Fuck 'em Bucky!

2007-02-23T02:02:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I hate to use such vulgarity on my own personal blog. But what else can you say when the University of Wisconsin sends out letters to high schools, threatening to sue them for trademark infringement for using "W" letter logos that are supposedly similar to the Badger {tm} Big Red {tm} "W" {tm}.

Makes me ashamed to be from Wisconsin {tm} and it pains me to admit it.

Why don't those University of Wisconsin geniuses sue PRETENDER Junior Bush? He's gotten a lot of mileage out of "W"---more than any of the unlucky high schools.

It would serve Bucky {tm} right if all of those schools kept the "W" and used it to signify Weasel, with a caricature of Bucky {tm} drawn to illustrate the symbolically appropriate zoological fact that the Badger {tm} belongs to the Weasel Family.

This is the sorriest, stupidest, most idiotic blunder in a recent string of follies from Madison. That university used to be an outstanding institution of learning and a beacon of academic freedom and democratic education, not a parasitical parody of corporate cupidity.

Poor Wisconsin. Too many years of Republican rule have left their {tm} mark.

the brand-new (?? not!) tennessee waltz

2007-02-23T01:22:00.000-08:00

Why the uproar from the Pavlovian righties about the University of Minnesota granting an honorary degree to the Honorable Al Gore, formerly Vice President of the United States?

I think they smear because they must. To relent---ever---from their hateful hysteria against this decent public servant, would be to risk the public mind fetching up on the fact that Mr. Gore won the 2000 election, by over 540,000 votes, and would have won the electoral college vote if there had been a fair election or an honest vote count in Florida.

And the implication of this is the NASTY TRUTH: namely, that Junior Bush is in the White House only because he and his crime family cheated successfully and stole the election. The incumbent is illegitimate.

It is to Mr. Gore's discredit that he and the other Democratic Party leaders acquiesced in the crime---because that is what they did. Too bad he did not recall the historical example of that other man from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson. Say what you will about Andy Jackson---definitely not my favorite dude because of his vicious policy toward Native nations--- but when he got squeezed out in the 1824 election by John Quincy Adams (who came to terms with Henry Clay when the electoral college deadlocked and the decision was made by the House of Representatives), well, Jackson didn't take it lying down. He was not a good sport about it. In fact, technically speaking, J. Q. Adams was legally and constitutionally elected despite the fact that Jackson had him beat both in popular and electoral votes.

But Jackson refused to be a "good sport." He and his supporters pinned the label "corrupt bargain" on Adams and Clay, and never let up for four years. And that was when the election was technically legal and constitutional.

How about when the election was just plain stolen? I can't see an Andrew Jackson Democrat rolling over the way the corporate Dems did in 2000. What defense could there be? Didn't they really understand just what was being done? All their recrimination went against
Ralph Nader, the designated scapegoat. But blaming Nader played right into the hands of the Bush crime family, since it totally distracted from the fact that GORE WON despite the Nader effect.

Real Democrats, whose allegiance should have been to the PEOPLE, not to the corroded, contaminated, and corrupted branches of the federal governing apparatus, would have never let a day go by after Bush and Cheney's arrogant inauguration, without denouncing the occupant of the White House as the PRETENDER, not the legitimate PRESIDENT.

Astonishingly, the story was repeated in 2004! It's a good thing Kerry isn't trying to run again, because how can he answer the question of why he didn't anticipate the steal in Ohio, and why he ever conceded a race that was rigged like that. I have the same question for every other of these eager-beaver early bird candidates for 2008---do they think history won't repeat itself?

If Congress doesn't pass tough election protection laws, you've got to wonder how stupid they really are. Pelosi had her "safe" focus-group-tested issues, but the professional politicians are so chickenshit they couldn't start out with the most basic fundamental issue of all---the right to vote and have your vote honestly counted. They're STILL not listening!

Well, the rabid righties know their game. I hope the University of Minnesota, my alma mater, doesn't falter. There's a strange leadership vacuum in Minnesota at the moment---too many cards held by Pawlenty, whose only apparent misfortune right now is Mr. McCain's slippage.

Ready to go again.

2007-02-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

Today's date is February 11 2007 and thanks to kind help from a patient friend, some long-standing technical difficulties have been tackled and we'll see if this new computer can stand my incendiary comments since its cybernetic predecessor conked out for good not long after the recent memorable election.

As Wayne Morse once said, "No one is indispensable."

With all due humility (hah!) I plan to post more acute, penetrating, irrefutable political analysis and commentary--reasonably soon.

tangled up in tubes

2006-11-21T14:11:00.000-08:00

Well here are all these wonderful comments piling up, waiting to be posted to this blog, and I still can't figure out the right sequence of buttons to press. I sure did want to talk things over with DavidD from Llyodletta's Blog; and ask Heresiarch to to explain it to me in words of one syllable; and so forth. At least by reading the newspaper I now understand why I can no longer access the American Hot Sausage Blog. Pity.

And maybe by the NEXT millenium I'll figure out e-mail.

caucuses v. primaries

2006-11-15T12:32:00.001-08:00

Every election year in Minnesota, I wonder why the archaic caucus system is sustained in Minnesota.

Sure, it gives a small but earnest percentage of citizens a chance to meet early in the year and to size up and take sides with candidates and issue-advocacy platform planks.

Yet as one follows through the process beyond the precincts to the district and state conventions, the more zealous and self-interested percentage of the delegates gets more concentrated and the average citizens tend to be more squeezed out or to the sidelines.

Ironically, all of the maneuvering and passion invested in the caucuses/conventions is beside the point since the legal nominees, the ones whose names actually appear on the ballot, are chosen in the primary election.

The caucus irrelevancies have been more harmful recently to the DFL, which in late years has often seen its endorsed candidates defeated in the primaries. This year, an endorsed candidate for Atty Genl didn't even make it to the primary. The stand-in candidate chosen by party apparatus was beaten in the primary. But the Reprobate Party has had similar disconnects, notably the Quist-Carlson primary, and then the even more peculiar Grunseth-Carlson dispute in the following election.

Primary voting has fallen to the low 2-digits in participation. If we were to drop the caucus-convention endorsement process and just go to primary elections, there is still plenty of opportunity for activists to get their fill of political activity, in primary campaigns---and a better opportunity to involve, engage, and recruit more new active citizens from the populace, in the process.

Critics often say that the caucus-convention endorsement system lets the ideological extremes achieve an undue influence in the two biggest parties. (Not an issue for the Independence Party, which is too ideologically muddled to have this problem.) Even if I myself might be identified by "some" as one of those extremists, due to my outspokenness and radicalism on many issues, I have to agree that this criticism makes sense. It's a turn-off to much of the public.

caucuses v. primaries

2006-11-15T12:32:00.000-08:00

Every election year in Minnesota, I wonder why the archaic caucus system is sustained in Minnesota. Yes, it does give a small but earnest percentage of citizens a chance to meet early in the year and to size up and take sides with candidates and issue-advocacy platform planks.

Yet as one follows through the process beyond the precincts to the district and state conventions, the more zealous and self-interested percentage of the delegates gets more concentrated and the average citizens tend to be more squeezed out or to the sidelines.

Nevertheless, all of the maneuvering and passion invested in the caucuses/conventions is beside the point since the legal nominees, the ones whose names actually appear on the ballot, are chosen in the primary election.

The caucus irrelevancies have been more harmful recently to the DFL, which in late years has often seen its endorsed candidates defeated in the primaries. This year, an endorsed candidate for Atty Genl didn't even make it to the primary. The stand-in candidate chosen by party apparatus was beaten in the primary. But the Reprobate Party has had similar disconnects, notably the Quist-Carlson primary, and then the even more peculiar Grunseth-Carlson dispute in the following election.

Primary voting has fallen to the low 2-digits in participation. If we were to drop the caucus-convention endorsement process and just go to primary elections, there is still plenty of opportunity for activists to get their fill of political activity---and a better opportunity to involve, engage, and recruit more new active citizens from the populace, in the process.

Critics often say that the caucus-convention endorsement system lets the ideological extremes achieve an undue influence in the two biggest parties. (Not an issue for the Independence Party, which is too ideologically muddled to have this problem.) Even if I myself might be identified by "some" as one of those extremists, due to my outspokenness and radicalism on many issues, I have to agree that this criticism makes sense. It's a turn-off to much of the public.

overlooking the obvious

2006-11-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

Candidates from both big major parties in Minnesota showed an aversion to declaring their party affiliation in the recent election. Judging by lawn signs and election literature (I tend to not see t.v. commercials), it was hard to tell there ARE any political parties in Minnesota.

Political analysts say that this is because it is necessary to appeal to independents who don't themselves identify with or particularly like either of the big major parties. Which may explain why the only visible party ID was that of the Independence Party.

But after the election, in organizing the legislature, the parties come back into play. Seems to me that downplaying the DFL brand is stupid. In the governor's race, this might have tacitly encouraged the willingness of bourgeois liberal DFL'er's to split their ticket and vote for Peter Hutchinson instead of the DFL nominee. Furthermore, if you talk to average Minnesotans, they may or may not understand that the DFL is essentially the Democratic Party. But odds are that not very many could tell you that "DFL" stands for Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

I have been one of the traditionalists who want to keep the full name of the party, yet those who say, "Let's change it to just plain 'Democratic,'" do have a valid point. So either get busy refreshing that Democratic-Farmer-Labor brand recognition and identification, or expect to get further disconnected from the electorate---and younger voters in particular.

money doesn't talk: it swears

2006-11-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

I don't yet know how to set up links, so I will spell this out. Please go to FightingBob.com and read Ed Garvey's article "Consulting with the Devil."

Clearly, between now and the next election, there needs to be a people's revolt against revolting election campaigns. The rovian stalinists have no scruples and all too much money. Their themes of "fear, smear, and queers" can be anticipated but their tactics shift from year to year.

We must denounce republican dirty campaigning and voter suppression strategies now, and publicize their offenses without let-up, in order to begin to frame the importance of fair elections as THE issue in the run-up to the 2008 campaign.

I'm still puzzled by the 2000 and 2004 cave-ins by the Democrats. In 2000, the Dems WON the popular vote, and probably also carried Florida's electoral votes, but LOST the battle for public opinion. The Dems evidently were inexcusably unaware of the power of right-wing talk radio. The Dems evidently were under the impression that the Bushies would "play fair" in the counting and in court. The Dems didn't seem to know the nature of their opponents:

Boston Herald 11/23/2000: "For enraged Republicans it's not just a hotly contested presidential campaign anymore--it's a full-blown holy war. 'Republicans are breathing fire,' said U. S. Rep. Joseph Moakley."

Pensacola News Journal 12/18/2000: Rep. Joe Scarborough envisions a political "holy war" (in Florida.)

The Tampa Tribune 12/16/2000: Political observers fear a political holy war . . . what one political scientist calls "the coming political jihad."

But the Dems capitulated and wouldn't even put on the record the kind of racially-targeted and well-documented voter suppression actions in Florida, despite the pleas of the Congressional Black Caucus. Far better for our country if the Dems had stood up in Congress every day and denounced the undemocratically installed pretenders. All the passion was on the side of the usurpers!

As for the 2004 election, if you haven't read Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s, article in Rolling Stone, you may scoff at the contention that the 2004 election was rigged and stolen. If you read that article, and other well-researched and well-documented references, with an even half-way open mind, you will at the very least begin to realize that our voting systems and our campaign procedures are so flawed, and so vulnerable to cheating, that something ought to be done. And if you read it with a fully open mind, you will conclude correctly that the Republican party is indeed dedicated to subverting American elections.

Pressure must be applied to Congress now to restore integrity to elections. A good start would be a voting rights amendment to the constitution, to counteract Rehnquist's dictum that American citizens have no constitutionally-protected right to vote.

On the political battlelines, citizen activists must begin to identify, isolate, and repudiate the professional campaign consultants who do so much more harm than good. Three bright lights in this recent election were the victories of Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, Tim Walz in Minnesota, and Mr. McNerney in California. These upset victories were won by people power, not by consultants' machiavellian machinations.

Are these merely technical, nit-picking, relatively unimportant points? After all, there's the war, the deficit, health care issues, education, job outsourcing, and environmental crisis---all happening at once.

Maybe it's special pleading, but my belief is that Election Integrity is a sine qua non. All hope of making progress on those other critical issues depends on being able to hold fair elections. The moneybags and the rovian recidivists were caught off-balance this year. They will retreat and regroup. Now is the time for hot pursuit.

Trivial pursuit

2006-11-13T22:41:00.000-08:00

Best bumper sticker spotted in the last week:
"I'll bet Jesus would have used His turn signals."

WEAKLY Clairvoyant

2006-11-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

I have never been more happy to be wrong! "As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?" quoth Boss Tweed.

American voters did yesterday exactly what they did to Boss Tweed---they voted in such overwhelming numbers that all of Karl Rove's dirty tricks and cheating couldn't save the meretricious miscreants of the Reprobate Party, or as some other blogger calls them, the ReThugs.

On the other hand, my Minnesota ouija forecasts all turned out accurate, and I only wish I had been wrong! I picked (excuse me, Jesus picked) Republican-Lunatic-Fringe candidate Bachman for 6th District congressman. That was fairly obvious. I also sensed that Two-faced Tim Pawlenty would slime, and I don't mean slide, through to win the Governor's race. That is a real shame.

Otoh, I called it for Tim Walz in the First CD, which puts me up over media-anointed "Minnesota political expert" Larry Jacobs---the same genius who didn't see Jesse Ventura coming down the pike in 1998. With all due respect for these credentialed analysts who always get called by the Minnesota sheep media---they ought to go out and talk to the people now and then.

I am glad that I backtracked on the 5th CD, but I freely admit that I did so because of the published poll on Monday AM. My revised prediction was spot-on: "Lee and Fine duking it out for second" is just what happened---each got about 21%.

von Logau: "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine."

Bad Moon Rising (Reprise)

2006-11-07T00:51:00.000-08:00

Bad Moon Rising (Reprise)

"The election's over. We won. It's all over but the counting and we'll do the counting."
U. S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Nov. 2, 2004, about 1 p.m. (but already drunk?)

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
Josef Stalin

"As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?"
Boss Tweed

AND HERE WE GO AGAIN: There is already an avalanche of reports of Republican cheating, dirty tricks, and voter suppression tactics even before the official Election Day of Tuesday, November 7, 2006. Numerous reports are being collected from states like Florida of touch-screen voting machines flipping votes cast for Democratic candidates over to their Republican opponents.

"Look at the fraudulent robo-calls in close districts made to look like they came from Dems, which come at early hours in the morning and call back upwards of ten times when you try and hang up on them."
(Adam Connor, from MyDD)

"Only one party has a nationwide campaign to deliver millions of intentionally-harassing calls disguised to appear that they're from the opposite party. That party is the Republican Party. And the calls are funded by the NRCC---the House GOP election committee.
"The Republican Party is the party of election subversion."
(Talking Points Memo)

TO THE NEWS MEDIA: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

And to refresh your selective and/or collective recollection:

Of all the plotlines suggested in the survey, the best bet is the one the Bush campaign has already used to great effect once before: election fraud.
. . . When the most brazen and corrupt president in living memory meets the most corruptible election apparatus of the post-Civil Rights Act age, it's hard to like the odds. The question isn't whether there will be errors and fraud, but how extensive and how consequential.
Steve Perry, City Pages, Sept. 1, 2004

. . . imagine another excruciatingly close election in which there is evidence of error---and no way of tracing its source. Is this inventive nation incapable of producing voting equipment with the efficiency of the touch-screen and the security of a paper trail?
E. J. Dionne, Jr., St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 1, 2004

But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks.
Paul Krugman, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 4, 2003

The Republicans could pass a paper trail law in two or three days. That's how quickly Congress passed the "do not call" law against telephone solicitors. But the Republicans won't even give a hearing to Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) Fair Elections Bill. Fair and honest elections are no threat to politicians who don't plan to cheat.
Oliver Steinberg, pamphlet, August 13, 2004

As a technologist and student of computer science, I can tell you that I will never willingly cast my vote on a computerized voting machine. What a computer prints out and what it actually records are two different things, and tampering with the voting software to rig an election is a trivial task, even with a paper trail. What's wrong with counting votes manually?
Adhitya S. Chittur, Letter to Editor, N.Y. Times, Dec. 20,2004

The mounting evidence that Republicans employed broad, methodical and illegal tactics in the 2004 election should raise serious alarms among news organizations.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Rolling Stone, June 15, 2006

Was the 2004 presidential election stolen? exit polls, election fraud, and the official count.
by Stephen F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, 2006, Seven Stories Press, New York.
Bleifuss is a journalist and Freeman has a Ph.D. from MIT and "he teaches research methods and survey design (a domain that includes polling)." Don't dismiss this one if you haven't read it. If you have read it, you won't dismiss it.

What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election.
Edited by Anita Miller, 2005, Academy Chicago Publishers, Chicago.
Here is the testimony that first put on the record many of the reports of cheating by the Republicans in Ohio in 2004.

Jews for Buchanan: Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency?
by John Nichols, 2001, The New Press, New York.
Not only did Al Gore beat Bush by over 500,000 in the popular vote (as if that counts for nothing!) but the evidence is that Gore DID carry Florida. Nichols, whose father was an election judge, says: "By the time I was ten, I had seen more recounts than most reporters will witness in a lifetime." Illustrated and indispensable.

Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America.
by Andrew Gumbel, 2005, Nation Books, New York.
From its cover blurb: "This book tells the fraught but colorful history of electoral manipulation in the United States . . . a tale of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, duplicated, assigned to dead people and pets, miscounted, and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court." Wait, wait, don't get cynical! Get informed!

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent.
by Robert A. Caro, 1990, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
How LBJ lied, cheated, and stole his way to the U.S. Senate, with a starring role for Kellogg, Brown, and Root (cf. Halliburton Corp.---follow the money!) The book that teaches you more about real power politics than any civics class ever could.

A History of the United States Since the Civil War. Vol. IV: 1878-88 & Vol. V: 1888-1901.
by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Repr. 1969, Negro Universities Press, New York.
See Chapter XXVI; pp. 45 ff (v.IV), re: 1876 election and Tilden's cipher telegrams. Also see Chapter XXXIII, The Campaign of 1888, pp. 72 ff. (v.V): "Quay was wont to say afterward that he and those in his retinue were near 'the gates of the penitentiary' for what they had done to make Harrison President."

Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures.
by Albert Bigelow Paine, 1904, MacMillan, New York.
Nast brought down Tweed. Exciting and fun to read about, from this distance. Also mentions TIlden's ciphers and the disputed dirty election of 1876.

The Politicos.
by Mathew Josephson, 1963, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York.
Brilliantly written, doesn't pull punches. See chapter 11, "Frying the Fat," and Chapter 18, "The Rise of a National Boss: Mark Hanna."

The President Makers: 1896-1919.
by Mathew Josephson, 1940, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York.
Begins with the sardonically titled "Golden Years of McKinley and Hanna"---when the underpinnings of our modern corporate domination of politics were secured for all the years since.

Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). by Mark Crispin Miller, 2005, Basic Books. Miller: ". . . a system built specifically to disenfranchise an aroused and even militant majority, and to do so without leaving any traces." From Library Journal: ". . . flagrant examples of unresolved voter fraud."

hedging my "bets"

2006-11-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

When confined to ink and paper, I couldn't get away with it . . . but this is my exercise of editorial license:

I am hedging big time on my pevious prediction of Independence cadidate Tammy Lee upset of Democratic-Farmer-Labor Keith Ellison in MN C.D. 5. I drove around the 5th on Saturday and saw lots of support for Lee, little support for Republican Alan Fine, and only scattered indications of pockets of support for Ellison. I sense that support for Lee has been booming; she has the advantage of being the only woman running against three men, she got excellent play including a cover photo from Lavender, the widely-circulated gay-oriented publication, and she has support from retiring incumbent DFL congressman M. O. Sabo.

But Ellison was not very visible before the primary in September yet he won that going away over three or four well-funded contestants. And a poll today---the first published poll---shows Ellison with 49% of likely voters. Either this indicates low turnout on Tuesday or it's a measure of anti-Bush ferocity in the 5th, or both.

So I feel a lot more cheerful about the 5th, and it gives me very little pain to eat my earlier prediction. I expect Ellison to win---even though, intuitively, his campaign still doesn't "feel" like a winner to me, as an observer.

For the rest of the races, I don't know if Republicans will really win the Senate seat in Maryland, but I foresee that they will come out with a majority of 3, or 4 if you count Joe Lieberman as a Republican which he is for all practical purposes.

That's easy to predict. As for the House of Representatives, everything depends on turnout and on Republican cheating. Republican cheating is certain---they are committed to seizing and holding power and have been using voter suppression tactics with striking success since 2000 and black-box cheating since 2002. BOTH recent presidential elections have been stolen. I will post my voter-theft bibliography later.

Minnesota divinations: Walz in the First (big upset), Kline in the Second, Bachmann in the Sixth. As for the Governor's race, between Hutchinson's (IP) energized third-party candidacy and a well-orchestrated spot of negative publicity after DFL-er Mike Hatch allegedly called some meretricious Republican media mouthpiece "a Republican whore," I will stick with what I had been saying--until the last two weeks--- that incumbent right-winger Tim Pawlenty will keep his office. Along with a 150 other assorted partisans, I stood outside the Fitzgerald Theater last night during the final campaign debates, holding a sign for Hatch---which no doubt
sealed his fate.

Our U.S. Senate seat will go to the DFL's Amy Klobuchar but my own vote will go to the Independence candidate, Robert Fitzgerald, for his intelligent dissent against politically orthodox drug war rhetoric in last night's debate. Any major party candidate calling for decriminalization (or better) will get my support.

As for the BIG ONE---the U.S. House of Representatives? There are all those close races, and there are a few where GOP incumbents will be beaten---but "close" isn't enough. Most forecasters are just parceling out the close races more or less evenly between the stalinists and the Democrats. This isn't a reliable method, for two reasons.

First, the stalinists will cheat, as I have said before. The failure of the Democrats to make an issue out of Free and Fair Elections in America will haunt the Democratic Party and all decent Americans on Nov. 8. That, along with the second reason, namely, a low voter turnout. Even in Connecticut, where I happened to be two weeks ago, there is very little evidence that there is an election going on. Too many people are simply tuned out.

Ouch. Well, I won't have my essay on the parallels between Bush-Cheney-Rovism and Stalinism ready before the election, on account of going to the Hatch rally last night, but since our readership here is low or nen-existent, I'll waste energy on that later. It'll be more relevant than ever.

november surprise

2006-11-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

Much to my surprise but not entirely to my satisfaction, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, after holding it for EIGHT DAYS, printed the letter which I had used as the very first post on this blog "Thirtieth consecutive letter rejected by Strib." They even made it "Letter of the Day."

Of course, they didn't get it quite right. Using their editorial license, they changed the word "Chickenhawk" to "Vice-President." Since I do not acknowledge the legitimacy of this usurping administration, which holds office only because they stole the 2000 and 2004 elections, I never dignify either Bush or Cheney with their usurped titles.

Smear campaign against Keith Ellison

2006-11-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

On October 6, The American Jewish World, Minneapolis, MN published the following letter in their "Readers Respond" letters column. Two different shorter versions of this letter were rejected by the Star Tribune, and two other similar letters (with differences in their texts) were refused by Pulse of the Twin Cities and Insight News.

The headline in the AJW read: "Republicans should stop smear campaign against Keith Ellison."

When Louis Farrakhan spoke at the University of Minnesota, I handed out protest flyers at Northrop Auditorium before and during his speech. I didn't question Farrakhan's right to appear. I objected to what he stood for.

So when I see the Republican Party trying to pin Farrakhan's sins onto DFL Congressional candidate Keith Ellison, you can appreciate my urge to kibbitz.

Guilt-by-association is the smear technique here. No words or deeds of Rep. Ellison's can be construed as anti-Semitic. The Republicans want to stick that tag on him anyway, due to Ellison's long-ago, transitory, and now-repudiated association with Farrakhan's organization.

I despise Farrakhan and other Jew-baiting demagogues. In 1988 I debated David Duke in front of a student audience at Irondale High School. When I finished, the kids who had cheered Duke at first ended up booing him.

Nor am I inclined to overlook covert or supposedly "unintentional" bigotry in politics either, as typified by former Republican State Representative Arlon Lindner.

I'm tough to convince, believe me.

And I do accept Keith Ellison's sincere apology about Farrakhan. I've heard authoritative assurances from Ellison's legislative colleagues and from veteran Paul Wellstone supporters whom I know. These reasons, and meeting Ellison personally, as well as observing the way he has kept his own campaign positive, all reinforce my conclusion that charges of anti-Semitism against him are absolutely false. So, I suggest to Alan Fine, the Republican Fifth District nominee, that he let go of that one (9-22-06 AJW). If Fine is genuinely offended, as I am, by expressions of religious or ethnic bigotry, then he might well take a good look at some strange bedfellows on his own ticket.

DFLer Keith Ellison has clearly stated his adherence to the principle of separation of church and state---tolerance of all faiths, with no government-sanctioned religious establishment or practices.

On the other hand, Minnesota's Republican Secretary of State calls separation of church and state a mistaken doctrine. And a Republican state senator, soon to be a member of Congress (with whom Alan Fine would caucus if he were elected), held an exorcism-style prayer meeting on the floor of the State Senate chamber; and I heard her once telling her supporters: "Jesus Christ sent me to St. Paul to save your children from socialism."

It's no secret that the Republican Party is shot through with zealots whose goal is to make America a Christian fundamentalist nation. Their apocalyptic theology is predicated on the conversion of the Jews, so their ostensible "support" for Israel and their supposed sympathetic interest in Judaism, arise from a set of bizarre ulterior motives, and come with some awfully sticky strings attached.

The Constitution declares that there shall be no religious test for holding office. The Founding Fathers wanted to keep us safe from the bloody religious warfare and persecution that had desolated Europe for centuries.

Yet the Republican Party, dominated by the Christian-extremist right, shamelessly seeks to inject religious animosity into our elections. That's wrong, and Alan Fine is educated enough to know it.

Accusations of anti-Semitism against Mr. Ellison are bogus. Let the voters focus on bona fide issues, for instance: health care, foreign policy, education, the economy, and the environment. If I lived in the 5th District, I'd proudly vote for Keith Ellison.
***
Oliver Steinberg lives in St.Paul.

More self-justification by a conceited blogger (me.)

2006-11-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Minneapolis Star Tribune continues to blacklist my submissions to their letters from readers section. Opinions Editor Susan Albright has admitted to me that they deliberately choose to print more letters from allegedly conservative (in fact, reactionary right-wing) readers.

That explains why a Mr. Oberholser got two letters, both crammed with fascist-radio talking points, printed within a few days of each other this fall. Most papers limit accepted letters from any one reader, but the Strib has refused to print mine for four years.

Until 2002, I had had letters published in Twin Cities daily papers regularly since the early 1980's. It's true that the Strib ran my piece in August, 2004, about Dick "Shooter" Cheney, but I think that was a fluke: either their regular person was on vacation, or else they simply didn't realize the satirical intent of my essay (most people did--but you had to read it with a moderate amount of attention.)

My first post to this blog was a copy of a letter rejected by the Strib.

If you look in this week's New Yorker magazine, you'll find their renowned Talk of the Town editorialist, Hendrik Hertzberg, reacting to Cheney's endorsement of waterboarding, just as I did in my letter to the Strib, and using the very same key rhetorical phrasing.

As I learn more about how to operate this blog, I will set it up to accept comments; and I will also add some of my letters that the papers have suppressed in recent years, in order to demonstrate my own (weak) clairvoyant powers and to illustrate the quality of what they have chosen NOT to print, while pandering to the rabid righties.

Let's be precise

2006-11-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

In my lengthy post of Nov. 1, I said that any woman running against two men in the 5th CD (Minn.) would get a boost of at least 5% from inveterate pro-female voters. I should have said, in this case, that one woman candidate is running against three men! (Apologies to Jay Pond, the Green Party candidate.)

Kicking and screaming . . .

2006-11-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

This is an attempt to establish a Weakly Clairvoyant weblog. I am unfamiliar with how computers operate and it will show. For instance, there are two copies of the Pioneer Press posting because I have not figured out how to make the one with the typographical error go away. Apparently "delete" doesn't do it. So, kicking and screaming, I am dragged into the cybernetic nightmare of the future.

Between now and the election, I hope to have time to finish my op-ed piece on the Stalinist character of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration.

As for clairvoyance, ha-ha. I got the 2002 election partly right---Coleman beat Mondale, and partly wrong: the DFL held on to the State Senate. I got the 2004 election partly right---the criminal Republicans re-elected themselves by using voter suppression and untraceable black-box voting fraud, and partly wrong: Minnesota went to Kerry (thanks to John Edwards' assiduous campaigning in the state.)

So here goes: I make no prediction about the national outcome in the U.S. House of Representatives because I don't want anyone calling me a croaker. My crystal ball is either cloudy or polluted.

I sense that Tammy Lee will win the 5th District race in Minnesota. I have done what I can to support Keith Ellison, but his campaign doesn't feel like a winner to me.

Note: ANY woman running against two men in Hennepin County will get a boost of at least 5% from women who vote selectively for female candidates.

Tammy Lee appears on the cover of this week's Lavender magazine, with an enthusiastic story inside. And Mr. Ellison is hurt because even in the 5th District, my perception is that there is more animosity and prejudice from those who don't like Muslims, than there is of reflexive liberal sentiment to elect a Muslim as a signal of socio-cultural "progressiveness."

The conventional wisdom is too confident in saying that the 5th is so DFL that they can't lose. I remember when young Don Fraser came out of nowhere to knock off the venerable Mr. Judd. Unpleasant surprises happen to those who are overconfident or out of touch.

6th District:
Brace yourself, because Michele Bachmann's faith will be rewarded with a seat in Congress. It is too much to hope that the rapture will intervene between now and Tuesday. Well, it was a strategic mistake for the DFL to nominate Patty Wetterling instead of Elwyn Tinklenberg. All Mrs. Wetter-ling gets for her effort is another toxic dose of character assassination at the hands of the holy hypocrites of the Christian Taliban, those birds of ill-omen who run the Guano Old Party. Their slogan: "Let us prey."

Well, Mark Twain said: "Congressman is the trivialest distinction for full-grown man." He also said, "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

What fun Mark Twain would have had with Congresswoman Bachmann, the self-anointed leader of the Congressional Cuckoo Caucus.

Admonishment:
It was morally and ethically wrong, in my opinion, for the anti-Bachmann bloggers to bring up the Wisconsin synod "pope as antichrist" dogma as a purported issue in this (or any other) election. It was unprincipled journalism for the Star Tribune and for Pat Kessler to publicize this hoary roorback.

I have always been willing to go for the jugular, politically speaking. But this incident is a case of bad judgment, because it isn't about anything Bachmann herself has said or done, and because voters rightly resent attacks on people's religious beliefs (with two exceptions: Muslims or non-believers.)

First District: Watch Mr. Walz.

Minnesota Governor: In my precinct, Hutchinson hurts Hatch. Statewide, it may be otherwise. My hat's off to Hatch for a relentless, all-out, old-fashioned campaign. I'd be amazed if he wins, and I won't even make a weakly clairvoyant stab at picking this race. Still, he has Pawlenty sweating.

IT WILL TAKE A WHILE, but if not too discouraged by next week's events, I'll learn how this internet stuff operates. It's some kind of system of tubes or something. My chief priority is to post letters that the papers won't print, but as I get better at it, I hope to have a proper blog operating.

O. Steinberg, November 2006

Setting the Pioneer Press Straight

2006-11-01T07:33:00.001-08:00

On Oct. 10, the St. Paul, MN, Pioneer Press carried a page one story about the North Korean atom bomb test, headlined: "World's rogues await U.S. response."

My letter was printed on Oct. 18, breaking the PP's four-year blackout on publishing my correspondence, but they managed to garble my text, leaving out the remainder of the sentence which follows the words " . . . the only one in history . . ."

Here is the accurate version as I wrote it:

Oct. 11, 2006
Pioneer Press
Letters to the Editor

"Rogue nation"---what's the definition? A nation that starts an unprovoked war, justified by lies? A nation that kidnaps people and sends them overseas to be tortured in secret prisons? A nation that uses attack dogs and coerced sexual perversion against prisoners?

A nation that abolishes the fundamental right of Habeas Corpus? A nation that claims the right to hold prisoners indefinitely and convict them on hearsay evidence?

A nation that is the only one in history that has actually used nuclear bombs against human beings? A nation ruled by a political clique that lost an election byhalf a million votes but took power anyway, and has rigged every election since then?

It would really be more accurate to speak of "rogue governments" rather than rogue nations. That would give the citizens of such a nation a partial shield against having to share the guilt of their rogue government's crimes.

Oliver Steinberg

Thirtieth consecutive letter rejected by Strib

2006-10-29T12:56:00.000-08:00

October 25, 2006
Opinion Page
Minneapolis Star Tribune

To the Editor:

Chickenhawk Dick Cheney, a man who felt no obligation to offer military service to his country during the Vietnam War because he "had other priorities," has confirmed that United States agents use the practice of "waterboarding" (among other things) as an interrogation technique against prisoners who are suspected terrorists.

The prisoner is submerged or suffocated until he either talks or dies. Mr. Cheney said that this technique isn't "torture," and he thinks the decision to use such interrogation methods is a "no brainer."

I am reminded of what Abraham Lincoln said about another barbaric practice which the Dick Cheneys of Lincoln's time liked to justify.

Lincoln said: "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Cheney says waterboarding isn't torture. That's a lie. He says using it has saved American lives. That's most likely another lie, but if it does happen to be true, it has come with a very high price tag---the death of America's honor and the loss of America's soul.