Speed Gibson

There have been a number of calls to lower or suspend the State and/or Federal gasoline taxes, so as to provide lower prices at the pump. I don't think that will work.

The wholesale price, yes, will fluctuate with crude oil and production costs. But the retail price seeks its own level, does it not? If it sells quickly, you raise the price rather than let lines form or run out.

Doug at Bogus Gold posted an answer for a question that I hadn't even really asked, like Jeopardy I suppose. The question is: Why does modern music suck? And the answer?

I just assumed these things come and go, like sports, movies, and wine (that's for you, Doug). Eric Carmen of The Raspberries actually has a pretty good explanation, more or less than the medium is now the message. I think he's got it.

As Jimmy Durante whimsically lamented, "Everyone's trying to get into the act!" Technology has made that all to possible, to where a home PC can record, edit, and mix tracks. When all this was expensive, most "performers" were shut out. Not any more. With voice processing, even American Idol rejects can sing on key. So, like bloggers and open source enthusiasts, we all jump in, only we skipped a step.

Maybe you saw Fantasia Barrino sing "Summertime" on American Idol last year. The judges and the crowd ate it up, as did my family. I shook my head. She sang it well, very well, but it was so obvious that at age 19, she had no understanding what the song was about. She simply had nowhere near enough life experience.

Take songs like "Fever" (Peggy Lee). Teenagers can sing them, but lines like the "Daddy, oh don't you dare, he gives me fever" are but cartoons to them. As time goes by, they'll "hear" the rest of it, but not today.

We learn all this from life, from literature, the arts, and the songs that went before. But the new artists, ever more impatient, find this irrelevant. Yet, they think they have soul! B as in B, S as in S.

Alleged poets who couldn't be bothered with rhyme and rhythm have produced a largely worthless glut of "free verse." Now, alleged musicians think they can do the same.

Sorry for the rant, go read Doug's post!

I remember when then Mayor of St. Paul Norm Coleman managed to bring NHL Hockey back to town with an admittedly spiffy new arena, the Xcel Center. He did it by continually chasing it until the opposition, not especially well-organized to begin with, more or less conceded just to shut him up. I remember him saying in various ways, "I'm sure we're all disappointed that it didn't pass and bring professional hockey back to Minnesota, but we have to get beyond that." Coleman used the same line on the Twins stadium, always that "we have to get beyond this or that to keep the Twins..." He was unsuccessful that time, but he's no doubt happy that we're getting beyond - what, economics, taxation without representation, checks and balances, common sense? - to make Mike Opat's givaway to Carl Pohlad a realty, largely for the same reason.

Sid Hartman's latest column does a good job of "summarizing" what we're up against.

What the Twins fans should know is that if the stadium bill passes the Legislature there will be a bigger budget for the team. That means there will be a much better chance of picking up the $12 million option on Torii Hunter's contract next year and signing other big-money players who could make the Twins a winner.

Twins owner Carl Pohlad has made it clear that once he knows a ballpark is guaranteed he will be more than willing to spend money to put a winning team on the field.

Why? A new ballpark will make it possible for the Twins to increase their revenue substantially.

In fact, you could see Pohlad spending some money to improve the team this year once a ballpark becomes a reality. And Pohlad will not own the stadium.

Why should Pohlad own the stadium? He practically will already. As for the preceding points, add a "Uh, we don't know that" after every sentence. But he's entitled to his opinion.

He is not entitled to mis-reporting:

Minnesotans who love baseball should know how two people went out of their way to try to kill the Twins stadium bill -- even though that action might have led the Twins to leave the Twin Cities.

Yes, Phil Krinkie, the chairman of the House Tax Committee, and Ann Lenczewski, DFL-Bloomington, were vocal in their effort to add a referendum to the Hennepin County baseball bill and came up with one amendment after another at the hearings Thursday and continued their opposition on Friday at the State Capitol.

Yes, Phil and Ann are trying to kill the bill, but not by "adding" a referendum requirement. The bill's only real purpose is to remove the referendum required by current State law.

"My district is 72 percent against the Hennepin County bill," Lenczewski said Thursday night.

Well, it all depends on how questions are asked in these polls. If people were asked if they would support a stadium if it was necessary to keep major league baseball here, I believe the answer would have been a lot different instead of asking people whether they opposed any additional sales tax.

This unresponsive analysis of Lenczewski's statement shows Hartman's problem, which was Coleman's problem, which has been every supporter's problem: the people, when asked, continually and emphatically say no. We can't dwell on that, we have to get beyond this to protect rule by the more enlightened minority.

But the die seems cast, with rural House members all too willing to vote to raise someone else's taxes for fear the Twins will announce they're leaving shortly before Election Day.

Here's my recap of the morning drive fare, in order of my personal preference. The first group of four I regularly listen to, the last five I don't.

Station      Content Delivery  Host%  Break%  Other%



KTLK-FM 100.3   B       B+       62      17      21

WCCO-AM 830     B       B-       51      38      11

WMFP-FM 107.1   C+      A-       62      30       8        

WWTC-AM 1280    B-      C        57      38       5



KNOW-FM 91.1    C-      C+       56      40*      4 

KQRS-FM 92.5    C       C-       61      26      13

KFAM-AM 1130    C       D        67      23      10

KSTP-AM 1500    D       D        57      13      30

KTNF-AM 950     F       F       n/a

                                       *Pledge week

The "n/a" for Air America's host is very appropriate. Wendy Wilde was deposed before I could review her. But I've heard enough to say it's easily the worst talk radio on the air, for however much longer.

KTLK-FM is my new morning selection, with KSTP-AM abdicating that long held position. I see that they've given Willie Clark a co-host, Jay Coles, but I won't be back until Clark is gone, or more specifically, this "soft news only that won't offend anyone" format.

Positions 2 and 3, even 4 if I know there's a big national story breaking, are pretty close. Mostly, I listen to these in the car "channel surfing" around the breaks.

Again, I find KTLK-FM the clear winner. It's local. The hosts are easily the smartest on dial. The hosts have good radio skills and complement each other well. And for now, the commercial load is very low, though I actually hope they succeed in booking more business.

I am now going to move on to the mid-morning slot, starting with KSTP-AM's Bob Davis, heard 9 AM to 11:50 AM.

Minneapolis Star Tribune Sports Columnist Sid Hartman quotes Minnesota Senate Majority Liar Dean Johnson as saying:

"Right now, the Gophers and Twins bills look positive as far as passing," Johnson said. "And then if that does happen, I wouldn't be surprised if we vote on a Viking stadium.

"Zygi Wilf [Vikings owner] is one of the better owners we have worked with, and he has tremendous support in Anoka County.

"So maybe the Vikings could get something if the Twin and Gopher stadium bills pass."

Let me see now. The quotee is someone known to say anything for his own benefit. The quoter has been wrong how many times in the past on stadium issues? It appears in the sports section that said than University of Minnesota Mens Basketball Coach Dan Monson would be fired. And that section of part of one of the most biased newspapers in the country, one with a vested interest in the outcome.

Maybe we should get a second source on this one.

This is the last in my series profiling the various morning talk show offerings, which I'll recap in a later post. I saved this program for last, as it is a network show, with only a splash of local news and weather at the top of the hour. The abbreviated time breakdown:

  Content:         57%

  Breaks:          36%

  News & weather:   5%

  Theme, promos:    2%

I just don't like this concept. Morning (and evening) drive time radio has to be local. Barring that, you should at least have to be entertaining, like Laura Ingraham. But that's not Mr. Bennett's long suit, either.

OK, he's a smart guy, very personable, but he doesn't cover anything beyond what Rush and the many dwarfs do. What he does cover seems more headline than article, no real depth of analysis. He does do a good interview, but that's not enough.

I do listen now and then, particularly the first hour before 6 am as a quick read on the headlines. But after that, I return to KTLK-FM.

I wish Dr. Bennett every success, but it's too thin, too tame, and too national for me.

That's what cable channel G4 calls it, playing the original Star Trek series uncut. They added a chat window at the bottom, some sort of character ratings at the right, miscellenous tidbits like VH1 pop-ups at the top. Best of all, are running statistics at the left, for:

• Red shirt deaths
• Hot alien women
• Vulcan nerve pinches
• Scotty being doubtful
• Dramatic Kirk pauses
• Phasor shots
• Uhura touches earpiece

and many others, like Ricardo Montelban sightings. It's occasional use only, but a lot of fun watching all the counts go up.

One of my blog roll favorites is Policy Guy. I see he's taking this week off, and he deserves a break. He's posted many interesting articles the past few weeks.

• Among the many fiscal problems facing the city of Detroit: employee benefits that are on average 88 percent of employee salaries.


• One of the most obvious cases of government waging war on economic sense is rent control. Fortunately, it's practiced in only a few places, notably, New York City. The things that people do to maintain their rent-controlled units sound like something out of an episode of Seinfeld, I would guess (never having watched an entire episode).


• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities laments that Colorado is 49th in the country in education spending. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? It's amazing that anyone in that state knows how to read and write. Except ... the ranking--as the CBPP page points out--calculates states the "percentage of personal income" spent on K-12 education.

In almost every public school district parents complain of a squeeze on sports and other after school activities. Some are shut down, fees become unaffordable for others, and there are all of those fundraisers. I have long wanted to put the funds for this important dimension of secondary education off limits, unavailable to the Administration and the Unions.

In fact, why can't we make a voucher out of this, whereby money is pinned to the student to spend at the high school, the latter being enjoined from charging fees or imposing required fund-raising services on either the students or the parents.

Unlike full vouchers, this money never leaves the district. Unused funds can be reallocated as scholarships for the multi-taskers out there that play three sports, take band, and are in the class play, more than one voucher would otherwise cover. But the Administration cannot use the funds to buy the textbooks they forgot to budget for. Nor are these funds on the table when bargaining with the Unions.

It's that last requirement that would be the first reason why not.

There are people in this world who have absolutely nothing better to do than try to change things that absolutely need no changing. For years, it was just Batman, then someone decided that The Batman was better. Neal Hefti never would have come up with that classic TV theme had he needed to fit that extra syllable in there. Going the other way, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome contracted to The Metrodome, and now just Metrodome.

As Joe Soucheray rightly complains, now Minnesota Twins announcer John Gordon and some others have decided that a batter has 23 RBI, not RBI's or RBIs. Some clown must have observed, hey, RBI stands for Runs Batted In, right? It's already plural, even for Rondell White! A higher order fool probably observed that it's valid either way, like the word sheep. The "R" in RBI can mean Run or Runs, and if I just now say RBI in all contexts, I sound more erudite!

This is too clever by half. Take the classic plural puzzler: is it Attorneys General or Attorney Generals? You can get the right answer a couple of ways. Obviously we're speaking of multiple attorneys, not multiple generals, so the first form is correct. More precisely, we pluralize the nouns, not the adjectives.

Now consider the acronym: AG. Is the plural AG? Would we say that most of the nation's AG welcomed the latest Supreme Court ruling? No, it's AG's or AGs, because AG literally stands for Attorney General, the singular form. (Some scholars prefer to reserve the apostrophe for possessive forms only.)

It's the same here. RBI is singular because there is no way to singularize "Runs Batted In" if it's plural, and it can't be both.

We've got enough problems teaching English to our children without having announcers getting them confused on something figured out correctly decades ago.

As I posted earlier regarding Oprah's two day series on the "Crisis" in public schools, Bill and Melinda Gates are sponsoring a new effort to reform and revitalize education. The program is short on words, but the Gates' have committed a billion dollars to it. (Thank you!)

The current methods are obsolete for the new economy they say. A new set of three R's are now required:

• Rigor: All students should have access to college prep courses such as algebra, writing, and chemistry.


• Relevance: Courses and projects must spark student interest and relate clearly to their lives in today's rapidly changing world. The curriculum should engage students and be relevant to students' hopes and dreams.


• Relationships: Young people must learn in an environment where they feel known, safe, and respected. All students should have at least one adult advocate who looks out for them and pushes them to succeed.

The descriptions are mushy. In fact, I don't like the Gates' explanations of them. But I like the three R's themselves.

Rigor to me means academics and accountability. The current practices of dumbing down the curriculum, social promotion, and grade inflation must be eliminated.

Relevance, yes, means school work should spark student interest. Many students complain school is boring, and a certain amount of that criticism is valid given the dumbing down of the curriculum. The latest example of this is "Active Physics" which substitute pictures and cartoons for the rigorous mathematics. But it's impossible to make every student happy to study English literature or Geography. Rigor (parents) must demand that students make a reasonable effort be made in these subjects as well.

Relationships are largely ignored by our educational experts, who focus almost entirely on academics, such as they are. I have always contended that school is 50 percent social, and that just can't be done in these mega-schools we increasingly see in the suburbs. The Gates contend that smaller schools are one of the keys to the reform puzzle. A school has to be small enough to where yes, you truly can get to know almost everyone. I like to tell the story of being seated at graduation next to a girl I had never met in my class of 798 students. That's too big.

The Gates are correct. Our schools are letting us down. But they're still clinging to the government-run school concept and therefore won't get much beyond increasing awareness of the problem.

Taxpayer's League Live had an informative discussion in their first hour yesterday, talking about the "anti-WalMart" bills being introduced around the country, including Minnesota. The guests were Bernie Hesse, Organizing Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers local 789 (St. Paul) and Rick Varco, Director of Communications and Research for the Service Employees International Union local 113 (Minnesota and Wisconsin).

The "anti-WalMart" concept as presented is that large companies should be paying some percentage of their payroll in health care. Any shortfall is paid to the State on the assumption that the employer is burdening Minnesota Care, Medicaid, or other public agencies with those costs. In Minnesota's case, a bill introduced by Senator and gubernatorial candidate Becky Lourey, those thresholds are 10,000 employees and 8 percent, respectively. You may remember her interview on The Patriot Insider when she claimed this would not be a tax increase.

Hosts David Strom and Margaret Martin went back and forth with the guests, who were surprisingly open in admitting that, yes, a "living wage" and "single payer health care" would also be good ideas. David at one point, apparently hardened by his neighborhood crime situation, openly called this proposal extortion. Not to worry, though. All kidding aside, the two union representatives couldn't have been nicer.

Like I said, it was informative, but not very satisfying for me because the underlying premise that employers are responsible for providing health care coverage for all employees was never challenged, even when the guests casually mentioned it. David and Margaret did a decent job debunking their various scenarios, but the guests parried those quite well I must say. The hosts won on points, but there were no knock downs let alone a knock out.

Patrick Campion, recently departed from The Patriot, did score a TKO against Lourey by not accepting such assumptions. I wish David and Margaret had done that here, right from the start. (Cazzata Malenga!)

If I wash dishes for Ruby Tuesday, someone in Tennessee is responsible for my health care. If I leave to work for Applebee's, now it's a Kansas executive's responsibility? Unless I waive it because I'm wealthy or covered elsewhere? This is silly, and the anti-WalMart bill only makes this worse.

It would also exacerbate the current problem of having employers pay for health care: it violates equal pay for equal work. Family coverage can run over $10,000 a year. Coverage for a healthy single is typically under $3,000 a year. Should a waiter with a family in effect receive $7,000 more than a single waiter each year? And what about those who need no coverage because they are covered by a spouse's or parent's policy? Or on Medicare?

The law we really need is this: All tangible compensation shall be in cash, duly reported on the employee pay stubs and W-2's. Meals, life insurance, disability insurance, health care, etc, can be purchased through the company, with payroll deductions much like today. But we now start with the concept of equal pay for equal work.

It's closing after all, it seems, in 2008. We should at least be happy for the extended time for its workers and their families to plan their transition to retirement, new jobs, and new careers.

There are a number of reasons for the closing as we've heard, that it's main product, the Ford Ranger, will soon be retired as well. The plant is old and therefore more expensive to retool, assuming Ford even needs this additional line capacity.

But all of this was known in January, when Ford made the first round of such announcements. The only reason I see to wait three more months was to assess the local reaction, either from the government and/or the unions. The latter seldom make proactive moves, and none was really warranted here.

But the Governor and the Legislature did react, in fact, overreacted. Rather than just offer the usual package of tax breaks and subsidies, they couldn't help tossing in some "free" "advice" as well.

Not only will you make something else, you will make something else that "we" like: hybrids. OK, they are selling, and as the engineering catches up with the technology, they are increasingly attractive to American consumers. Rising gasoline prices will make believers of still more.

Not only will you make hybrids, you will make them use E-85 Ethanol. Since this fuel isn't widely available, cross a large number of those potential buyers off the list.

Not only will you make E-85 hybrids, you will also provide a plug-in to charge the battery while in your garage. This was in bills introduced March 22 by the DFL with GOP support. It sounds nice, but the number of consumers who will buy this fancy hybrid, but not the plain E-85 hybrid has to be very small, more than offset by the customers lost to the its still higher cost.

Look at it from Ford's side. Even with incentives, you're looking at a marginal case for retaining and retooling this plant. Further, it is sitting on some rather valuable riverfront property in Highland Park. Then you consider the requirements of those incentives, which are significant business risks. What if you go ahead and make E-85 hybrids, only to see them rot on the sales floor while cheaper non-green hybrids fly out of your competitor's showrooms?

Even if the Legislature's fancy E-85 hybrid does prove successful, they can be built anywhere, not just St. Paul. If Ford needs to close additional plants, St. Paul seems an obvious choice. It eliminates a product and capacity you don't need, and avoids a complex, meddling deal with the State and City.

Remember when GM shopped the Saturn plant in the late 1980's? Dozens of states offered packages, some worth over a billion dollars. The winner was Tennessee, which had submitted no offer at all, but also had a good pro-business record. Ford may have used the same logic here.

Continuing my previous post, I watched part 2 of Oprah's call to arms about our public schools. She profiled NBA star Kevin Johnson who returned home to Sacramento, where he established a charter school. Actually, this was a take-over of the failing Sacramento High School, KJ's alma mater, which was facing sanctions for poor performance. The remaining time was largely spent with Bill and Melinda Gates, and with Oprah continuing to beat the "crisis" drum.

I'll give Oprah some credit in that she stated the problems point-blank, without exception or qualifiers. She excused no public school, even the best, noting a validictorian who found she really wasn't ready for college. She's getting there, but is a year behind from the remedial work.

Let me rephrase that. Oprah stated the symptoms point-blank. She didn't get to the underlying problems. Words like "union" went unsaid. She really didn't get into the large amounts of money being wasted, if we can even find it. Only KJ talked about accountability. John Stossel's Stupid in America should be part III of this series.

Bill and Melinda Gates have started a campaign called "Stand Up" with a new set of three R's, which I'll cover in another post. On the show, they made one rather intuitive observation, but I'm glad they did: smaller schools perform better than larger schools. Not smaller class sizes, smaller schools. We have used Open Enrollment to sent our children to a smaller district for that very reason.

Every little bit helps, so I appreciate what Oprah has done here. She has a large, unique audience that needs to see more of these crumbling buildings and short-changed children. Would that she would bring on and challenge a union head like Randi Weingarten as Stossel did. Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths" would be another excellent guest.

I hope this just wasn't TV per se, like her New Orleans coverage. I want the Oprah that took phoney author James Frey to task.

Oprah is dedicating two episodes (April 11 and April 12) to "American Schools in Crisis" with Bill and Melinda Gates.

Part one reviewed the current situation, starting with a tour of a pristine high school in an affluent Chicago suburb and a distressing tour of a couple of inner-city high schools. The neglect was appalling, far more than I thought possible. If these were businesses open to the public, OSHA and Public Health regulators would shut them down immediately. Another problem is (de facto) segregation, worse than ever before according to one expert. I think she's right in terms of results.

Part one was just about symptoms. Buildings decay not because of policy, and in the cases shown, not from a lack of money. Washington D.C. spends considerably more per student than almost any other state, but only 32 percent actually goes for instruction.

I'll have more to post Thursday after I watch part two.

The reward for the winning team on The Apprentice this week was breakfast in Washington D.C. with Donald Trump's good friend, U.S. Senator Charles Schummer of New York.

Remember the old joke about first prize being a week in Pittsburgh. Second prize? Two weeks.

A question for Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak: how close will the proposed Twins stadium be to Block E?

Education Minnesota has launched its fall campaign, preceded by their survey/listening tour seeking our input. I notice that none of the input I provided made the list. No, we could have predicted their findings before they started.

The tone is what I find perplexing. Who is the target audience? Ads seek to change minds or buying habits. Who is going to change their mind about the public schools based on these ads? The DFL is already bought and paid for, not to mention a sizable portion of the GOP. Those more enlightened aren't buying a word of this. That leaves only the apathetic and uninformed, who have heard all of this before.

No, the target audience is the rank and file of Education Minnesota itself, to buck them up and make them happy to pay for a better Education Minnesota via dues.

And they need some bucking up. Nearly half of Minneapolis's potential kindergarten enrollment is going elsewhere. Referendums to increase school property taxes are no longer a mere formality. Tests scores in many suburban districts vary considerably, with many well below even modest expectations. And lately we read that 30 percent of Minnesota high school graduates need remedial work at Minnesota colleges.

Education Minnesota itself is part of teachers' problems, squeezing budgets to where non-payroll expenses for transportation, sports, books, and office supplies have been cut. (And these are real cuts.)

Don't forget: K-12 education is the fastest growing portion of a state budget that doubles about every 10-12 years.

One of the major players in the Eminent Domain debate has been the League of Minnesota Cities (LMC). Their name has come up before in other matters, and I'm starting to wonder if such an organization isn't more foe than friend.

One of the main activities, perhaps their primary activity, would appear to be lobbying at the state capitol. Why would we need this? City officials can call, visit, mail, or email their legislative delegation directly. Actually, I'd turn this around to say that it's the responsibility of the Legislators to make sure their cities' needs are being met. Either way, where does the LMC fit in?

The LMC not only lobbies, it takes positions, obviously only one position per issue. As a growing bureaucracy itself, it's not surprising that the decided position will favor that of its member bureaucrats. Eminent Domain is a great example, where the LMC wants no restraints, however reasonable, however more Constitutional, placed on their cities' favorite "planning" tool.

The devil's argument would be that large companies or organizations like, say, Xcel Energy or the Vikings would still be free to lobby with big time lobbyists. How could cities fight them without pooling to hire their own Goliaths? I ask, how does this help? If your Legislator is corrupt, the battle is already decided, one way or the other. If not, you need no special advantage beyond your status as mayor, council member, or city manager.

Perhaps the Legislature needs to consider whether elected bodies - cities, counties, school districts, the Met Council, and joint powers agencies - can spend public funds on lobbyists. The LMC could continue as a think tank, provide common services, etc., but in taking public funds could no longer lobby at the capitol.

The LMC could arm cities with general facts and arguments, but the communication should be specific and direct for each city. Otherwise, as I sense with Emiment Domain, the LMC takes on a life of its own.

WFMP-FM (107.1) targets women, no doubt about it. But real men can enjoy the "Balanced Breakfast with Ian and Margery" heard weekday mornings from 5 to 9. First, some abbreviated stats:

Promos and Commercials: 30%
Content: 62%
News, Weather, etc: 8%

The content is all Ian and Margery Punnett. Margery does her part from home via a "blur line" as she gets their two boys up and off to school. The news, weather, etc is all but limited to two minutes of network news and a local "107 second" segment for the rest.

The content is pretty good, presented in a mostly light manner. They can get serious on occasion. Kirby Puckett had died the week I am reviewing, and they took on the media's coverage of Kirby's personal problems or lack thereof. Then they asked just how much introspection is appropriate at a funeral. It was very good, as you might expect from Ian.

Another good topic was a Bazaar article that being a stay at home mom is now chic, that women today now had more choices than prior generations. They lined up several women callers of the previous generation and had a great discussion, the bottom line being nothing has really changed other than now, yes it's fashionable.

Other topics included how fetching our Driver's License photos always seem to turn out. Botox, divorce, romantic poetry, and even some American Idol snippets. In discussing SAT's and cheating and calculators, I loved this from Margery: "The calculator I used to do long division didn't connect me to some pervert."

It's a good production, too, with a great theme/intro using Nat King Cole's "Just Like Being in Love" and featuring the two boys ("Itchy" and "Scratchy") introducing their parents. The flow is great and I was surprised to see the commercial load reached 30 percent. Other than those jangling awful Menard's ads, the ads seem to blend into the show.

It's very enjoyable, even for men, but it's not for me most days. There just isn't enough news, in fact, hardly any. The weather forecast is once an hour, maybe twice if Ian gets around to it for a few seconds. I need a little more, including sports. Traffic is as needed, which is next to none, so they have that right. By design, it's not drive time radio, but if you're air during morning drive, I think you have to make your listeners a little more current.

Next up: Bill Bennett's Morning in America.

A question I plan on putting to my DFL State Senator: how many major lies does Dean Johnson have to tell before you will vote for someone else as your Majority Leader?

It's at least 4. Leaving aside the silly stuff like "I was exonerated" he was caught lying about the Cheri Pierson Yecke ambush in 2004, the partial State government shutdown in 2005, and now the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2006. None of these were trifles. A career was smeared, and the task of recruiting quality Commissioners made more difficult. Many workers and residents lost income and services, needlessly as the Governor had blinked weeks earlier. The shadow of impropriety Johnson cast over the Judicial Branch remains to this day, for none of the many versions of his story clear the Justices.

For the record, my number would be 2.

I saw this in passing on KSTP-TV's news regarding a Senate committee approval of the Twins stadium bill. I didn't catch who said it and I'm paraphrasing, but he said:

These people tell you how important it is that we get out and vote. But on this issue, they tell us we're not going to be allowed to vote. If that isn't hypocrisy, I don't know what is.

The reason used to be that the deal couldn't wait that long. Wrong again, Sid. The deal is still on table, just as it was. No, the reason is that we cannot be trusted. We might vote the wrong way, not seeing the wisdom of handing team millionaires 3 cents of every $20 we spend.

In fiddling with the clocks this morning, I chanced on C-Span2, showing Bill Sammon, author of Strategery, being interviewed by Charlie Brennan of St. Louis's KMOX radio. I missed the first half hour, but what a great show. Podcasts of the radio broadcast are available at the KMOX web site.

We like Bill Sammon, of course, but equally impressive was Charlie Brennan, who did this as part of his regular 9-11 show preceding Rush Limbaugh. Brennan managed the interview, the audience, questioners from the audience, the C-Span broadcast and the radio broadcast flawlessly. C-Span has no commercials of course, so during the radio breaks, Charlie did his one minute live radio spot for a local business, then went to the rest of the taped spots. During that time, he continued the interview rather than just hem and haw, a great courtesy to the live and TV audiences. He effortlessly rejoined the radio broadcast, cueing the audience to applaud, all giving the radio listeners the impression that they hadn't missed a thing. It was a marvelous, competent production throughout.

I've seen the "Book TV" series now and then on C-Span, and they're usually pretty droll, sparsely attended, and seldom hosted by someone experienced in front of a camera. I may have to make this more of a habit, at least to check the upcoming schedule.

The latest McAfee update seems to have bunged up my PC. Internet Explorer comes up blank and inert. So does McAfee too, and I can't even uninstall it. McAfee's tech thinks it's a Microsoft problem, gave me the 800 sales number. Fortunately, Firefox is still working.

Sensing opportunity, the Dark Side has been thought-casting into my brain again. Would a Mac really be better? No, no, have to learn all new software. But wouldn't it be simpler? No, PinkMonkeyBird spent a lot of time just upgrading to Tiger. But aren't Mac's just cool, especially with a flat screen? No, you'll get over it when you see the price. But when is Microsoft going to make up its mind - 98, Me, 2000, XP, MediaCenter? So what, you were due for new hardware anyway.

Well, back to figuring out how to un-bung my XP. It is almost four years old, though, ...