At 4:16 this afternoon someone in St. Paul, Minnesota with a Comcast account was the 10,000th visitor to this blog (as measured by Site Meter)!

I thought I was still several weeks away from this milestone so I was startled to make this discovery a few minutes ago. As such, I don’t have a prepared commemorative message other than to offer my warm personal regards and thanks to all of you – especially those of you who have visited regularly. Especially special thanks with whip cream on top to those of you who have left comments!

This blog started 8 months and 12 days ago when I had no clue as to how many people would ever see it and merely the sketchiest of ideas of what I was going to write about on day 2. It was exciting to see my average daily visitors number creep over 20, and to get my first comment (thanks again, Sandy!). It’s been fun to watch this blog climb up the TTLB Eco-system; lately it seems I keep evolving and de-volving between being a Marauding Marsupial and an Adorable Little Rodent (and don’t think that that isn’t hard on the old pelt!) Perhaps most amazing, 10,000+ visitors and no flames or trolls yet! (I’ll try harder).

Some details: the two most popular posts (396 each) by referrals are 21st Century British Healthcare and Love and the Difference Between Being a Friend and Being Friendly. I’m especially awed that the latter post has been downloaded in China, Japan, the Philippines and in several countries in the Middle East and Africa. Those two are among my favorites, but I’m also pretty proud of the time I compared doing this to being in a garage band.

Thanks, everyone – you’ve made my day!

Update:

So, with 10,000 visitors and some 60-odd (some odder than others) links, what is this blog worth? Here’s one measure:

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The following was forwarded to me, but I haven’t been able to verify or attribute the source. It refers to this event, which occurred October 4-6.

For those of you who are not aware, North Dakota and southwestern Montana got hit with their first blizzard of the season a couple of weeks ago. This message is in from a county emergency manager out in the western part of North Dakota state after the storm:

WEATHER BULLETIN
Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from a Historic event — may I even say a “weather event” of “Biblical Proportions” — with a historic blizzard of up to 24 inches of snow and winds to 50 mph that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to tens of thousands.

George Bush did not come…
FEMA staged nothing…
No one howled for the government…
No one even uttered an expletive on TV…
Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards…
No one asked for a FEMA trailer house…
No news anchors moved in.

We just melted snow for water, sent out caravans to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Aladdin lamps and put on extra layers of clothes.

Even though a Category “5” blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early — we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

Everybody is fine.

No obvious jokes about global warming, please.

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After working in corporate America for a couple of decades I’m used to seeing Dilbert cartoons that eerily depict something that actually happened in my company the day before. Today’s “Pearls Before Swine” cartoon by Steven Pastis, however, strikes especially close to home for Twin Cities readers, where we “enjoy” an evening radio talk show called “Krok Talk”.

(click to enlarge)

I’d say Pastis nailed it perfectly.

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In reading around the blogosphere today I saw an interesting juxtaposition between two different stories. The effect is so surreal I can picture Johnny Depp, as Willie Wonka, saying the following:

“Welcome to today’s protest, children. Will you be wanting consequences with that action, or not?”

First, an excerpt from Shot in the Dark (Mitch Berg’s comments in italics):

This is from an email sent to local pro-Dictatorship groups:

Urgent solidarity needed! [I love that – “Urgent Solidarity”. What’s the next level down – “Laconic Solidarity?” – Ed.]

Students are being threatened with failing classes for walking out on November 2nd

*** Help mobilize our defense! ***

As of October 19th, nearly 1,000 high school students across the Twin Cities had signed the “November 2nd Walkout Pledge,” and we expect that number of grow substantially in the remaining 12 days before November 2nd. This tremendous response to Youth Against War and Racism’s call to action has taken place in the face of threats to fail students who miss tests that day.

Wow – a thousand high school kids signed a pledge to…get out of school for a day?

Wow! This must be serious!

By an unfortunate coincidence, many Twin Cities schools scheduled a finals day on November 2nd, the anniversary of Bush’s “reelection” [A “re-election that, ironically, happened on the same day as his re-election! – Ed] and the day chosen for nationally coordinated student walkouts against the war and military recruitment in schools. But other students who miss class that day for reasons school administrators deem legitimate will not fail their classes. They will get to take a make-up final.

Right. Because skipping school to go to a bogus political rally is not a legitimate reason.

Is it too much to ask that anti-war students who choose to participate in this justified act of protest, who are taking action to secure a decent future for our generation, also be given make-up tests?

No, the students who are demonstrating to return Iraqi and Afghan children their age to the Sixth Century would be asking a bit much for this sort of special treatment.

Let’s hope this goes on their permanent record so they can look back on it someday and slap themselves, really hard, on the forehead. Meanwhile, in the real world, Varifrank notes:

More than 20 members of Cuba’s world-famous national chorus are singing songs of freedom today after defecting in Toronto.

Members of the National Chorus of Cuba dodged security officers and jumped into waiting cars, some on Sunday and others yesterday, said Cuban exiles who planned the defections.

“These people are scared for their lives,” said Ismail Sambra, president of the Cuban Canadian Foundation. “They are worried about their families back home”. (Why should they be worried? Uncle Fidel and revolutionary party are merciful, are they not?)

Hmmm, I wonder if they chose to defect in Canada instead of the U.S. because of the school systems?

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Last spring I described the plans the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 were hoping to implement in their effort to unionize the new Target store then being built in West St. Paul. The strategy called for a “groundswell of opposition,” as reported in the StarTribune at the time.

The goal is to create a groundswell of opposition to Target before the West St. Paul store reopens this fall as a SuperTarget, said Bernie Hesse, a union organizer with Local 789 of St. Paul, which represents 7,500 workers in the Twin Cities area.

“We want to have people in those stores, organizing, on the day it opens and we want the [West St. Paul] community to support us,” he said.

The new SuperTarget opened last week and it appears there has been a groundswell, though perhaps not what the UFCW was hoping for. I’ve been to the new store three times so far. It may be more precise to say I’ve been on the premises three times because once the parking lot was so full that I couldn’t find a place to park for my quick errand so I whipped over to the neighboring WalMart store. On the two occasions I actually made it indoors the store was teeming with folks, none of whom appeared to be carrying picket signs. Meanwhile the staff, though a little harried, did not appear to be straining against the cruel oppression of management.

Perhaps the Mall Diva, a former employee in the store’s previous incarnation on this site, will go undercover for us and talk to some of her friends who have returned to work at the new store and report what, if anything, is happening.

Meanwhile, there are just 71 shopping days until Christmas.

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I’d heard a couple of comments at work today about an incident last week where some Vikings players had acted in an unsavory manner on some charter boats on Lake Minnetonka. In this community we’re all too used to reports of drunken driving, assaults and unruly behavior in public with this club so the context of the comments today were along the lines of what “our” chuckleheads had gotten themselves into now.

Driving home from work, however, I heard for the first time details of what allegedly had happened as KFAN host Dan Barreiro interviewed an attorney representing the charter boat service. This was much more detailed and explicit than what had been reported so far. The gist of it was that Viking players (not necessarily the team itself) had chartered two boats and arrived at the dock in a parade of limos. A number of women accompanied the players and once out on the lake there was some disrobing and lap dancing. This evolved into several of the players engaging in sex acts with the women in the public areas of the boat and in view of other players and the crew of the boats. Money was seen changing hands. The crew included young waitresses who were themselves accosted, offered money to participate and teased by these players and their “dates”. The situation was reportedly very frightening to the crew, staff and captains who consulted with ownership on the radio and decided to return to shore. They were concerned with having to deal with many large, unhappy men so they didn’t tell the group they were returning. Because several of the players were also in the control rooms of the boats the captains (young men between 25 and 30 years old) were afraid to give too many details to ownership about what was going on. The limos had remained at the dock so the charter boat owners organized these for a quick pick up and there weren’t any reported incidents when the boats returned. Some of the players apologized for their teammates actions.

There’s certainly a lot to be outraged about in the world today (especially considering the Mall Diva’s post above this one), but for some reason this situation especially turned my crank. That maybe doesn’t say a lot about my priorities when there are so many things of national and international importance to comment on, but I’ve just got to let it fly on this incident.

It may be because I can picture myself being the father of one of those waitresses (hmmm, but not of the other “ladies”) and I can imagine how scary it could be to be trapped in that charged atmosphere. I can also easily imagine the concerns of the captains knowing they were navigating at night on deep water with a group of very large, very strong and unruly men who might not be in a mood to be reasonable. The possibility that they were overreacting – and that the attorney was overplaying the scenario – exists, but it doesn’t sound that far-fetched to me. And I think this behavior has reached a tipping point – for the franchise and possibly for sports in general as this becomes (I predict) a national story in the coming days.

New Vikings owner Zygi Wilf has to take immediate and dramatic action — not to save this season, but to save this franchise and his investment. The players — whether on an officially sanctioned team event or not — have shown no accountability or concern for the public. A public, by the way, that they are expecting to come up with tons of money to build them a new stadium. (Perhaps we ought to consider building another prison instead.) Given this team’s history, ranging from Tommy Kramer and other drunks terrorizing the 494 strip in the 80s up through the infamous Artic Blast event and including the domestic incidents and street-fighting of even more recent vintage, Mr. Wilf needs to put a strong and undeniable stamp on his professed committment to making this a class organization.

There were reportedly as many as 17 of the players involved in this incredibly inappropriate public display. There are 12 weeks left in this season. Mr. Wilf needs to announce that beginning this week two or three players from this group will begin serving two-game suspensions without pay for conduct detrimental to the team and the entire organization, and that these rolling suspensions will continue until every player involved has been suspended. Forget whether or not any of these actions can be proved to be criminal; this isn’t a time for technicalities. These actions in and of themselves have a negative impact on a multi-million dollar operation and its standing and goodwill in the community, and this is the perfect opportunity to demand accountability and establish that things are going to be different. If the team loses, so be it. Mr. Wilf has indicated that his is a long-term view and he wants to operate it in a way that makes his family proud.

Do it, Mr. Wilf, and make us proud at the same time.

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When I heard the news of President Bush’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court the other day my initial reaction was much like Fozzie Bear’s famous “AAH-ah” of discovery: surprised, interested and a bit uncertain. I’ve sat back and tried to process my thoughts and predictions as just about every other blog I’ve read has jumped on one side or the other as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Even after a few days of this I’m still, like Fozzie, a bit wide-eyed.

Here’s the thing for me: I’m politically and socially conservative, and most of my close friends and family vote the Constitution Party. Having been quite involved in Minnesota Republican politics some years ago, I have long since overcome any illusion that there was any real difference between Republicans and Democrats when it came to fiscal sanity. For all the supposed rhetorical differences, each party in practice is pretty much the same when you look at the results. Socially there was a big difference between Bush and Kerry, but I probably would have gone ahead and cast a protest vote for the Constitution Party candidate, Michael Peroutka, but for one, over-riding reason: the Supreme Court.

Given Bush’s track record of judicial nominees in his first term, I really wanted him – and our country – to have a chance to put conservative constructionists on the Supreme Court for the next 30 years. When the first opening arrived and he nominated John Roberts I was almost giddy – something I haven’t felt when it comes to politics in a long time. I was blown away at Bush’s political masterstroke in distracting his opposition while coming up with, almost out of the blue, a bulletproof heavyweight. The Dems knew they couldn’t touch him, but it was fun to watch clowns like Joe Biden blunt their pointy little heads on Roberts’ Kevlar fashioned from experience, scholarship and gravitas.

I thought the only question with the second nomination would be whether Bush choose to go into battle with one of the leading candidates already out there drawing fire, or whether his team had another overwhelming powerhouse like Roberts waiting in the wings to wheel onto the field.

Consider me underwhelmed.

There are definitely things about Harriet Miers that I like and make me feel hopeful, and I can’t – as you may have noticed over the past few days – work up the righteous indignation of so many other bloggers and pundits regarding her nomination. At the same time I can’t help but feel more than a bit wistful at an opportunity lost.

It was kind of like waiting for the NFL draft when your favorite team has a top pick. You spend months reading scouting reports, listening to Mel Kiper and the wannabees, imaging this blue-chip player or that coming in to plug a hole on your team. Then, on draft day, Paul Tagliabue steps up when it’s your team’s turn and says, “From Slippery Rock State …”

Hey, maybe the kid has 4.2 speed in the 40, great hands and eats linebackers for lunch, but you still don’t know if he can play in NFL. Someone high up must have seen something in him, but you can’t help yourself from thinking, “Is that the best we could do with that pick right now? Maybe he would have been available next round after you’ve already drafted the stud from the national championship team.”

Blogfather Hugh couldn’t ease my concerns completely, and the President’s “Trust me” statement wasn’t what I was hoping to hear, either. While he hasn’t inspired my confidence in areas such as immigration and spending (where I had low expectations going in anyway), I will say that his judicial appointments throughout his time in office have been more than solid.

So, back to my Muppet analogy, perhaps my hopes have been abused and my support manipulated by unseen hands. My options are limited, however. It’s not going to do any good for me to go all Animal right now or to act like the karate-chopping Miss Piggy – or even to heckle from the balcony like Waldorf and Astoria. I’ll just be Fozzie; a bit dim, I guess, but always optimistic that things are going to turn out alright. I just hope that this isn’t a re-run.

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Here’s an old joke:

A Protestant pastor is attending a conference in Ireland when he decides to use some free time to drive through the countryside. It’s a lovely day and he’s enjoying the beautiful scenery and accidentally drifts over the center line and strikes an oncoming car.

The pastor is shaken but okay, and is surprised to see that the driver getting out of the other car is a Catholic priest. The priest says, “Faith and begorrah, are you all right, Reverend?” (What’s a joke without a little stereotyping?)

“Why, thank the Lord, yes I am,” said the pastor. “Are you all right, Father?”

“Yes, quite,” said the priest, “but looking into your eyes it seems you are still a bit shaken.”

“I suppose I am,” admitted the pastor.

“I have just the thing,” said the priest, returning to his car and bringing a flask out of his glove compartment. He gives it to the pastor who sips it appreciatively.

“I’m so sorry,” says the pastor. “I was enjoying your lovely countryside and I must not have been paying attention. I’m so glad you’re not hurt.”

“It’s quite all right,” said the priest. “It is a lovely view, and I often find my own mind wandering when I drive past here. The cars can both be repaired, the important thing is we’re both unhurt.”

“Well said, Father,” said the pastor, taking another sip from the flask. “Isn’t it amazing, here we are two members of different religions, sitting here on the side of the road after an accident, peacefully considering each other’s health instead of fighting. In fact,” he said, “here’s to your health!” taking another sip and passing the flask back to the priest. “Won’t you join me?”

“Oh, no thank you, Reverend,” the priest said. “I think I’ll wait until after the police arrive.”

George Bush says to trust him regarding Harriet Miers. Ehhh, maybe. But trust Harry Reid?

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No, I’m not about to start stamping about on Doug’s turf, but I noticed this story in today’s New York Times (free registration required). Apparently there is such a glut of French wine in the market that some quality wines are selling in supermarkets in that country for less than the cost of bottled water. To survive, French vintners are converting 150 million liters of the country’s Appellation d’Origine Controlée into ethanol to be used in gasoline.

The article cites a few reasons for this overabundance, including a crackdown on drunken driving in France, but finally gets around to this:

Mr. Gibelin’s exports to the United States are a tenth of what they were a few years ago, thanks to a strong euro and, to some extent, he says, to the American boycott of French products that followed France’s refusal to support the invasion of Iraq (his biggest market was in Texas).

France may yet have the last laugh, however:

Because France exports gasoline and one of its biggest markets is the United States, by sometime next year, some Americans may be pumping their cars full of gas that includes a bit of Chardonnay or Pinot Noir.

I guess that soon I won’t have to check just the octane rating but the vintage as well when I fill my car. With a particularly bad year it might be fun spill the gas on the ground and complain to the attendant, “You call this gasoline? Why, I wouldn’t serve this to my lawn mower!”

I don’t want to trespass on King’s turf either, so I’ll leave it to him to evaluate the effectiveness of the EU’s response:

Whatever its cause, the glut has led to ruinous price declines. A bottle of modest Côtes-du-Rhône that used to sell wholesale for about 1.20 euros, or about $1.40, sells today for 60 centimes, about 70 cents. Even bottles of fancier Saint-Émilion are going for under 3 euros apiece.

To prevent the problem from growing, the European Union has kept the acreage devoted to vineyards in Europe fixed for the last five years. There are even subsidies available for people who agree to tear up their vineyards rather than keep producing bad wine, known in Europe as plonk. France’s state wine regulator, the National Inter-Professional Wine Bureau, has also been buying up vineyard rights – in effect, licenses to make wine – and taking them off the market.

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June 14, 2005:

McCombs, speaking on a conference call from his San Antonio office, reminded reporters that all the offseason moves made by Minnesota were completed under his watch. After adding at least five new starters on defense, the Vikings could be a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

“To me, this year — this will be my team, regardless of the fact that we’re totally out of ownership,” he said. “It’s obvious that we were involved in putting this team together.”

Red,

Most of us Vikings fans snorted back in June at your all-too-typical attempt to wring another windfall out of your stint as Vikings owner. We knew the only reason the new free agent acquisitions were made was because you already had Reggie Fowler’s $20 million non-refundable deposit safely tucked into an empty Folger’s can and buried in a secret location on your ranch. As if that weren’t enough, you tried to arrange it so that all the signing bonuses for the new guys wouldn’t be paid until after the team was sold so as not to depreciate your $400 million profit.

You are, after all, the guy who wouldn’t even pay to have the central air-conditioning at the club’s headquarters repaired. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find out you smuggled your own peanuts into your owner’s suite at the Dome so you wouldn’t have to pay those high catering prices.

Nor were we shocked that when it it was time to replace Denny Green you embarked on an exhaustive, 16-hour search of possible candidates before settling on Mike Tice, the team’s offensive line coach. Tice did have one important credential, however: he was so gosh-darn excited by the opportunity to be a head coach — despite never having even been a coordinator — that he was willing to work for about one-third the going rate for NFL head-coaches. It was a match made, not in heaven, but at Sam’s Club.

For the past three seasons as the team has struggled under your ownership it was hard to tell how much of the problem was coaching and how much of it was a lack of skilled players across the roster. Of course, it didn’t help that you savored the bouquet of all those dollars you saved by staying well under the salary cap each year the way some rich folks covet a fine cognac.

But, oh, the promise of this year! Fans were overlooking, however, that your actions let Tice limp into this season as the lamest of ducks. Therefore, once Scott Linehan found out he could make nearly as much money being the coordinator for the Dolphins as Tice would make as head coach, it was impossible to attract a promising offensive-coordinator for what might be a one-year (low-paying) job. Undiscouraged, you left no stone unturned in the Winter Park parking lot in another exhaustive search and found yet another offensive line coach already under contract. Not only was he willing to take the new responsibility, but he’d keep his old job, too. I bet you loved that two-fer.

It’s not that Coach Tice doesn’t have some positive attributes. He’s much more charming and forthright than Denny Green, and while his efforts to motivate his players were mostly ham-handed, he seemed to know a bit about the game and it was hard not to root for the big lug. And, yeah the team has had injuries and played some tough teams so far. But I’ve got to draw the line on a guy who said repeatedly, “This is my team. This is the team I built,” and who now says “We’re still trying to find our identity.” Finding this team’s identity ought to be as easy for him as finding his own backside with one hand; instead it’s looking like a game of two-handed blind man’s bluff.

Red, with your used car selling background you know better than anyone else that you get what you pay for. The irony in this situation is that this is the team that you got paid for, but you were absolutely right back in June. It’s your team, Red. You’ve earned it.

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