Speed Gibson

Hugh Hewitt took The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby to task for his dour outlook on this fall's elections. He thinks many Conservatives like him will sit this one out rather than continuing to affirm non-Conservative behavior.

How disgruntled is the party's base? In recent polls, fewer than 70 percent of registered Republicans said they approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, a sharp drop from the 90 percent support on which he once could count. Among self-identified conservatives, Bush's standing is even lower: Just 51 percent rate his performance favorably, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. At a time when the president's support among Democrats has shrunk to single digits, and when only 1 independent in 4 gives him a positive job rating, the last thing he can afford to lose is the goodwill of his core supporters. But he is losing it.

And Congress is doing even worse. According to the most recent CBS News poll, while 59 percent of the public disapproves of the way the House and Senate are functioning, the figure among Republicans is 62 percent. Read that again: Republicans dislike the Republican-controlled Congress even more than Democrats and independents do.

Hewitt sparred with Jacoby on his show tonight about that. But you don't want Leahy or Conyers running committees do you? What about tax cuts? Supreme Court appointments?

Well, what about them? That was Jacoby's reply, stating that while a "lesser of evils" is often the right call, re-electing those who repeatedly stray from core GOP principles is too much to ask. Jacoby made a pretty good case, and I hope Radioblogger will publish a transcript soon.

All I kept hearing from Hewitt was whining about what the Democrats would do if they retake some or all of Congress. Could be a good thing argued Jacoby; Bush might finally find his veto pen. I'd add: how's Arlen Spector working out for you? John McCain? Norm Coleman? Hewitt lost this argument handily I thought.

Tell me again who has no positive agenda, Hugh.

I note a couple blogs unhappy with the Patriot Insider when Yost and Westover are not on, particularly this past weekend. Frankly, I think the Insider was best in show this weekend, over both NARN and TPL (Strom). Why? Because I learned something.

In the first hour with Tim O'Brien, "Blog House" columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune appeared, discussing his approach to his regular Saturday column surveying the Blogosphere. I found it quite informative, with considerable candor about how newspapers are trying to position themselves against TV news and the instant news available online. It's one thing for bloggers to criticize his work. It's better to have Mr. O'Brien expose himself as not all that blog saavy. For someone working in the OpEx world to not know of the Thomas Sowell was disappointing and telling, but not a fatal flaw.

The second hour featured Tammy Lee, Independence Party candidate for the Fifth U.S. District, that of retiring Congressman Sabo. She was well-spoken, but left no question that she was a Democrat, just like all the other Reform/Independence candidates. I heard nothing supportive of Republicans or conservatives. Yes, she wants a balanced budget, but by raising taxes, not cutting spending. Her blind, high opinion of Rep. Jack Murtha was particularly surprising for a "moderate". She also got a couple of basic facts wrong.

This prompted me to think the Republicans may have a tiny chance of winning this seat, as opposed to none at all. Suppose the Democrats get in a cat fight over their candidate, with staffer Mike Erlandson challenging the endorsed Keith Ellison in the Primary. It could be nasty, either way. Disaffected losers will find the Green Party (Jay Pond) and Independence Party alternatives very aligned with their DFL views. If GOP nominee Alan Fine scores even 35%, he's got a small "perfect storm" chance against these three liberals.

Meanwhile, back to the radio, I think fill-in host Dave Eichens (sic?) did a fine job, asking good questions, and keeping the show moving along. I like Mark Yost, too, but Dave is about his equal.

Finally, it is not Yost that I truly miss. It is Patrick Campion who started this show. Campion had one characteristic that I wish other hosts would follow: never let an unfounded premise slide by. He took retiring State Senator and candidate for Governor Becky Lourey apart on Health Care, getting her to finally admit what she really wants: someone else to pay her medical bills.

I saw some chatter about adding the victims of the 9/11 attacks to the list of those we remember on Memorial Day. This would be wrong. President Bush recently admitted to some mistakes in the War on Terror, and one more would be all the compensation and undue attention paid to those who died that day. Yes, it was tragic, but Mohammed Atta did not target them specifically in any way. A few like those aboard Flight 93 did have the chance to fight back, preventing a still worse tragedy, but most were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Still, the list of those we remember on Memorial day could be expanded to remember all those who supported our fighting men and women, paying the taxes, growing the food, providing the supplies, and making the many sacrifices that come with the job. As I strolled through Atlantic, Iowa on a cloudy, blustery day, I got a sense of this.

At the end of the main street, at 1st and Chestnut stands the old Rock Island train depot, long closed and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I walked around the yard, trying to picture the activity of 50, 75, or 100 years ago. People coming and going, freight in and out, and what I perceive was once a coal yard alongside. Looking south from the depot, the business district unfolds for several blocks down to U.S. highway 6/71. Again, I tried to picture the bustle of what was, the unknown, hard-working people of these areas just going about their business.

I few old fashioned street lights caught my eye, and I soom began thinking what came before that, imagining the little, white-haired man of song, in a town I now wish I knew better.

"He made the night a little brighter
Wherever he would go
The old lamplighter of long, long ago"

After berating a school principal for removing "In God We Trust" from the image of coin on its yearbook, altering facts unrelated to the yearbook or the school, Joe Soucheray said this on Monday:

"If there was a way to accurately poll every Minnesotan, I bet more would favor keeping professional baseball than would favor abandoning it."

Joe has been allegedly dancing on the Twins stadium issue for several years, torn between opposing corporate welfare and wanting a stadium regardless. I haven't bought a word of it. Sure enough, when the deal loomed, Soucheray's feigned integrity collapsed.

He has been posing a number of conveniently phrased lemmas like the above to support his position. Another was "well, what else would you spend the money on that would be of equal value?" Or this one: "Do you really think Carl Pohlad is now rubbing his hands with glee now that he'll get 3 cents of every $20 dollars we spend?" And, "our fathers and grandfathers built ballparks, why can't we? It's our turn!"

All of this is incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, your honor. Joe is often master of the logical argument. Here, he has carefully avoided any semblance of such.

On this issue, Joe Soucheray is a card-carrying Euphorian.

That was the rejoinder a Rush Limbaugh caller offered, regarding the silliness going on in Washington regarding making English the official language of the United States. U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid soiled himself claiming this was racist, clearly targeting the Hispanic population. His examples of why this was wrong were both irrelevant (not concerning official business) and counter to his own position. He then danced around how the bill/amendment was racist but its author wasn't.

If you've ever seen the mangled English written by foreign manufacturers in the owner's manuals, you see the dangers of transacting official government business in more than one language. Imagine the lawsuits and consequences when a statute is accidentally mistranslated, allowing citizen A speaking language X to do something however innocently that citizen B cannot.

The real goal of course is to print ballots in every language possible, which the DFL believes gives them an edge.

Maybe it was the accoustics at the Kodak theatre, but I thought the big finale for American Idol was a dud. Both McPhee and Hicks seemed tentative except for Taylor's first number.

I'm curious as to what Doug at Bogus Gold will have to say.

I wish it weren't true, but King at SCSU Scholars reports that "[of] the 54% of the students who went to college and took a math placement test, 24% had to take remedial math." Reading the linked post, the problem seems obvious enough: too much complexity.

By chance I have a copy of my daughter's Geometry textbook from the late 1990's. When my son took Geometry eight years later, I compared his book to hers. I liked his much better and at first I couldn't figure out why. Then I saw it.

The older book had a constant side chatter going on in the wide margins of the pages showing alternative methods, real life examples, and a smattering of unrelated "economic geography" statistics, graphs, and charts. The newer book did not. It simply plowed the road in a straight line, which I think is particularly helpful in geometry when you continually build on your past work. The extra material easily confuses the student.

It would be easy to speculate that there is a deliberate liberal agenda built into these modern textbooks and teaching methods to facilitate social grade promotion. But I'm more content to think that book buyers are too easily impressed with all the extra material, photographs, and intense use of color contrast. The book buyers are education majors, not engineers, and don't understand how math and science is best learned. Why wouldn't you want all those sidebars like the newspaper has?

If a student doesn't understand it, reading even more confusing sidebars isn't the answer. The teacher is the answer, the one who is supposed to explain it. Isn't that what the class size argument is about, to provide the necessary time for one on one learning when the book or lecture fails?

Bring back flash cards.

I picked up Vince Flynn's "Term Limits" in paperback at the airport two weeks ago. This was Flynn's first novel I believe.

I don't read much fiction other than an occasional mystery by Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I still enjoy rereading Sherlock Holmes now and then. Well, I keep hearing about Flynn and he seems to be doing well, so I though I'd give it a try.

Not bad for a first work, I'd say. Flynn is definitely a better writer per se than Tom Clancy, and has done his homework. The plot was interesting, even with an overdone climax/chase at the end. But it is his first work, and I hope to see more character development in the next.

I grew up in St. Louis Park, meaning we grew up "hating" the Cake Eaters across the border (Edina). Back then, head coach Willard Ikola assembled some of the best high school hockey teams money could buy. But later in college, having to listen to an insufferable Minneapolis Southwest alumnus, I rooted for Edina just that once to thrash slight underdog Southwest in the finals that year. But Southwest's goalie stood on his head, beating Edina 1-0 in overtime.

Somehow, I had hoped that the Minnesota Senate, so ably led by Dean Johnson and Larry Pogemiller, would mess up the Twins deal. After all, isn't that the job of a second body, to make it difficult to pass legislation? But it was all smoke, as the Senate retreated to the original House bill.

I haven't found how my representatives voted yet, but the deal is done and the "enlightened" Governor Pawlenty will sign it. To be honest, had I been in his place, I might have signed it, too. It isn't the Governor's job to be Legislator #202, and wealth transfer is the Legislature's primary activity.

I could be mad at Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat, but what's the point? Only another clever, outspoken Democrat could hope to oust him from his Republican-proof seat. Maybe he even annoyed Pogemiller by making it impossible to pass a larger, broader tax with the smaller tax on the table. He might have done us a favor.

No, my full wrath is reserved for my Legislators if and when I find that they voted for the final bill. Opat and Hennepin County did not have the authority to impose the tax, not without a referendum. By yanking the ballots out of our hands, they take the full blame.

Nothing compelled the Legislature to act. The process was working. Hennepin County passed it, with the normal expectation of a referendum to accept it. The Legislature, by acting, by preempting democracy, should be made to pay for whatever it is they lacked on this issue - courage, integrity, or common sense.

I've been in enough sales pitches and negotiations to really wonder about our new Vikings owner, Zygi Wilf.

I was impressed how he elbowed his way to the front of the line almost. It's all the Legislature talked about until now. At first, he was going to wait a cycle to make his pitch for a new stadium, but apparently thought he would miss out on at least the momentum of the Twins and Gophers if he didn't act.

The DFL Senate thought they in turn would ride that momentum to score a juicy tax increase for their otherwise stalled public transit fantasies. (It's not mass transit!) Like Mr. Wilf, State Senator Larry Pogemiller overreached, confusing his own caucus at times.

When that approach stalled, Wilf began dancing, withdrawing the roof from his proposal, and without checking with his Anoka County supporters. I think this was a huge error, immediately stripping his concept of all its grandeur. He also cast himself as asking for something he didn't need or hadn't thought out. Either way, the sense of urgency was now lost as well, and Ziggy is on the sidelines the rest of this session.

Maybe the deal was never there from the beginning, but Wilf made a really good try for a rookie NFL owner. He should have distanced himself early from the Senate plan, kept the roof, and simply run TV ads showing all those beautiful sketches and computer animations, pressing his advantage.

I can only conclude that he's used to doing business in New Jersey, not Minnesota. Ironically, it may be easier to deal with corrupt politicians than the merely deluded variety that grow here. Ziggy understands this now, and I have a feeling he'll get his stadium bill passed in 2007.

I finished up walking every street of my tenth city, St. Louis Park. This was a journey of 267 miles in 38 trips, finishing up at the Park Tavern with a glass of beer and a big bowl of chili.

To date, that makes just over 2,500 miles since February of 2002, over 11 miles a week. I have walked every street of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Golden Valley, Maple Grove, New Hope, Osseo, Plymouth (including Medecine Lake), Robbinsdale, and now, St. Louis Park.

Next up is Champlin.

Look at the announced candidates for Governor in 2006: Mike Hatch, Peter Hutchinson, Sue Jeffers, Steve Kelley, Becky Lourey, and incumbent Tim Pawlenty. At first glance, this would seem to be a pretty intelligent group. There is an exception, though.

The "Wal-Mart" bill is headed for the Senate floor, authored by Senator Lourey. From any angle - economics, employment, even health care itself - this bill is a loser, rife with faulty premises, leaps of faith, and unintended consequences. That this bill could get this far is testament to the DFL, but at least consistent with past positions.

I think we can hold any candidate for Governor to a higher standard. As Governor, you make decisions alone, often quickly. There are no committees or groups or votes to hide behind, only advice from the staff you yourself hired.

Becky Lourey has demonstrated here that she will be a poor decision maker. At a minimum, to think this bill is good public policy requires a poor grasp of history and current events, ignoring the woes of socialized medicine throughout the world going back centuries. Anyone who grasps the basics of economics could not in good faith support this bill. She even denies this is a tax, a worse lie than Pawlenty's about his tobacco fee, and no one from either party is buying the latter. In this area at least, she has demonstrated no common sense.

She's honest about her views, something I can't say about certain other candidates, including Mr. Pawlenty. But a good heart can't save us from fuzzy thinking. We don't need another Jesse Ventura.

Today marks four weeks completed on Weight Watchers, weighing in at the noon meeting. To date, I have lost 26.4 pounds, earning a "I lost 25 pounds!" refrigerator magnet. Please forgive me if I am just a little bit proud of this.

I could go endlessly about this program. Actually, I have, at a new, separate blog I've been keeping.

I kept watching channel 11 after The Apprentice, watching their 10 pm news. Careless of me, I know.

The President makes a speech on immigration in Prime Time. A messy accident results from a driver trying to escape a police chase. People are buying a spray that supposedly makes your license plate too reflective for a red light camera (may they rest in peace) to photograph. It's been raining for days; will the sun come out tomorrow? The Vikings might not want a roof after all? Did the Twins sweep the White Sox?

So what is their lead story? Why, insiders are buying up concert tickets and scalping them on e-Bay! A pretty thin story, and an old one I suspect. But the May sweeps are on.

I guess it worked, as I watched dumbfounded at the sequence of the stories.

This Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune has a couple of overdue but needed articles on the various stadium bills being (thankfully) mangled in the Senate.

Their Minnesota Poll shows that most Minnesotans oppose all of these proposals, that the Twins, Vikings, and Gophers should stay put in the Metrodome.

Yes, it's a small sample. Yes, the Minnesota Poll has a long history of inaccuracy, even bias. But consider two points. One, if there was any way to skew the results in the direction favoring their employer, the Minnesota Poll would have found it. Two, whatever the methods used, the results are comparable to last year's polling, showing no significant change.

Whether asked by pollers or referendums, Minnesotans have consistently said no to publicly funded stadiums, even for the Gophers. But the Legislature isn't listening. Neither is Prime Minister Pawlenty, one of his many flip-flops.

Another article says what most of us know already, the the sticker price of these stadiums isn't the true cost, which is always higher and usually doesn't include interest. The Taxpayers League is entirely justified at estimating the true cost of all three stadiums at $2 billion, and even that may be light.

I remember the Star Tribune running the tab on the true cost of the Metrodome. The Legislature authorized $55 million, but the real cost was around $86 million if memory serves. The $3 million architect fees were strangely omitted from that $55 million for example. Money flowed in from all sorts of places, as it always seems to in large public projects.

I'm back from Las Vegas, still trying to catch up with all the newspapers and the audio I recorded and subscribe to. There's so much more I'd like to catch, if only I could filter it down a bit. Now, podcasting is starting to show up everywhere, Mitch Berg being the latest entry.

It's a thought I've been toying with myself, but first I'd have to find the time - and a niche concept. Someday...

I'm out west this week, with not much free time. But I see in the online Minneapolis Star Tribune that the Minnesota Senate is well on its way to overplaying the stadium question by sneaking in a much bigger tax increase, the excess going to light rail no doubt.

We may get through this after all unless the House melts down. And with men like Sviggum at the helm, it could happen, and Prime Minister Pawlenty will likely sign it as not, given his track record.

But I'm hoping the whole thing collapses as it should.

I keep hearing that the Twins will leave or be the victim of contraction should the stadium effort fail. I'm not convinced. We've heard this before. Wasn't the drop dead date in 2005, that we couldn't wait for a November referendum? Well, the deal's still alive, actually stronger than ever. If we had simply put it on the ballot last fall, this referendum requirement question would be moot, right? Oh, yeah, wait, it might not have passed, which would mean what, Mr. Opat? But I'm not convinced that it wouldn't pass, either.

I am also not convinced that the Twins will stay the 30 years of the new "iron-clad" lease if we do build the stadium, given Major League Baseball's current situation. Is our problem to solve, or baseball's? And can a baseball operation with 30 plus teams afford not to be in at least the top 20 markets?

I am not convinced that the new stadium in and of itself will fund and inspire more spending on quality players. As we've repeatedly seen in almost every sport, money alone doesn't buy championships.

I am not convinced that the proposed location will work to significantly increase revenue, what with most games played at night in a high crime area, conveniently adjoining the garbage burner.

Even Joe Soucheray admitted one day that he really has nothing to argue for this other than "I want it" and his callers made their displeasure known. I don't think such a referendum would pass in Garage Logic.

There was a time when our Governor turned Prime Minister wasn't convinced, either. Ironically, it may be the likes of Senator Steve Kelley and his over-reaching counter proposal that will save us all.

I finally caught up with this weeks's DVR'd At Issue with Tom Hauser and Almananc programs. David Strom appeared in the "Face Off" segment unopposed due to a scheduling conflict. It was calm and thoughtful. I will say that Blois Olson is a great improvement over Ember Reichgott-Junge, but I'd rather see Blois one week, David the next. The conflict format wastes most of the time available.

Then, on the couch, David was intellectually unopposed, seated with a DFL Legislator who recited a few talking points, Dee Long of Phonegate infamy who had little to add, and Sarah Janecek who, well, she had a bad day. (I miss D.J. Leary!) Maybe his good looks just had the other three flustered.

But good job on both shows, Dr. Evil.

Craig Westover quotes a Pioneer Press letter writer who makes a good point.

A subtle form of eminent domain?

The April 24 article about the "land rush" on University Avenue is a major concern for many of the landowners along the University corridor who will "benefit" from the future light rail between the two cities ("In grip of a land rush").

The problem is, as a lessor, we are forced to raise the rent to our tenants in order to pay the exorbitant rise in taxes. Our tenants struggle now to meet the lease payment and still stay in business.

We have seen an increase in value of 300 percent over two years. Yet we have not benefited from this great "land rush" nor have our tenants. The city is using the "land rush" as a subtle "eminent domain" to force the small businesses off the corridor to make way for the large corporations. Why should the city and county reap the fruits of "increased land values" many, many years before we as landowners ever realize a profit? Meanwhile, our tenants are forced out of business because of the huge jump in real estate taxes.

RICHARD J. SCHUSTER
Roseville

I'm not sure that you could make the case that this is an intended result by the City of St. Paul, but it's yet another example of how messed up property taxes are in general.

I happened to see the late Howard Jarvis of Proposition 13 fame, still waiting in the cab at the end of "Airplane!" tonight. This ratcheting of property taxes was standard operating procedure throughout California. If memory serves, his referendum limited the tax increases to inflation regardless of the property value until the property changes hands. Maybe that's what we need here.

Rather than inflation, perhaps it should be indexed to the total (not just general fund) spending of the unit of government imposing the tax. But let's not sweat the small stuff.

Doing this would create the stability we want, that we don't chase good citizens like Mr. Schuster out of town or put his tenants out of business. On the residential side, don't homeowners have a reasonable expectation of reasonable - and no more - increases in property taxes over the time they own the property? Rather than move, homeowners would have a good incentive to be longer term residents, free to add on to their house without tax penalties instead of moving, usually further out. Yes, the current system promotes urban sprawl!

We've had over thirty years of the Minnesota Miracle. It hasn't worked. Property tax relief, deductions, refunds, and circuit-breakers only give local governments cover to put the levies right back where they were. It's time for the DFL and some like-minded RINO's to retire this concept once and for all, as the first step toward true property tax reform.

I saw something on tonight's Apprentice that I thought I would never see. After decades of marketing malpractice, that scary looking King being the last example, Burger King finally has an ad that doesn't suck. In fact, it's pretty good.

A young man, served some portions as tiny as they are fancy gets up, starts singing, and walks out demanding man-food, i.e., a Burger King whopper. Like minds join him parading down the street.

I've told my son that life isn't fair, one example being that Burger King pays people to make their awful ads. (Remember Herb?) Such people, like Ty on Extreme Home Makeover, produce absolutely nothing, yet get paid big money. I may need to freshen up this speech in view of this entertaining new evidence.

I had ambitious plans to return to the diet, having finally got past a number of work and personal tasks. But try as I might, I couldn't summon the will to start again. This is the reverse of my usual problem, that work and life "distractions" gave me the excuse to get sloppy, lose hope, and quit the diet.

"A man's got to know his limitations," said Dirty Harry. I now was aware of still another of mine, that I couldn't get this done on my own. After a little research, I found a partner: Weight Watchers.

Yes, Weight Watchers! Oh, that's for women, right? Well, yes, 90% of their customers are women, no question. Their plans are mathematically based on female metabolism, which is about 20 percent more efficient than male metabolism (calories/lb).

But the plan made sense to me in a number of ways so I signed up, and today is Day 13. I'll have more to say here and there, but so far so good.

On a related note, check on Uncle Ben, who is also getting some help.