Git Mo’ Reality

Sorry, late to the party. Did I miss anything?

Oh, Dick Durbin still hasn’t quite grasped the faults in his logic or how offensive his comments were? Sounds like a failure to communicate as the message is evidently going over his head. Let’s put it in terms he may be able to understand by quoting another dynamic speaker, Napoleon Dynamite: “IDIOT!”

Yet the Strib calls Durbin’s speech “thoughtful” and claims the inflammatory remarks were taken out of context. A “thoughtful” person would know better in the first place, and there isn’t a context big enough to compare tens of millions dead in the concentration camps, gulags and killing fields to the “suffering” and “death toll” in Gitmo. Now, if you were to compare Gitmo to, say, the St. Pat’s Board Member Initiation at a certain engineering college I know of, then you might be more in scale. (Come to think of it, the Gitmo detainees are definitely more hygienic and better fed).

As for the inane theory that the “torture” in Cuba damages the security of our troops and inflames the “Arab street”, oh please. These people know what real torture and abuse are, having practiced it on each other for centuries. The street might be rioting over reports of abuse, but it’s riotous laughter. You know, if your expectations are to be gruesomely maimed or killed slowly, the idea of having the air conditioning turned way up or doesn’t sound that bad…even if you don’t care for the music.

Instead, what endangers our troops and prolongs the fighting is the encouragement the terrorists get by listening to this claptrap and thinking they have a chance to outlast us.

And just what alternatives do Durbin, Reid, Kennedy, et al offer for detaining combatants and gathering intelligence that can thwart further attacks? Let them all go? (Sure, if you also implant every one of them with little tracking devices). How about the Hillary kiss torture?

Anyway, sorry that I couldn’t get here sooner. So, any of those little wienies left? (No, no, not Durbin).

Book it

Emily at Portia Rediscovered tagged me (all the way from Californee!) with the book meme that’s in circulation. What a relief! I’ve enjoyed reading the responses to this on other blogs and wondering when I was going to get hit, and beginning to think it might turn into one of those “last one picked” traumas that would scar me for life!

What is the total number of books you have ever owned?
“Owning” reflects such a capitalistic mindset – I prefer to think of myself as a Protector, stewarding these precious resources for…. Oops! Which one of my college textbooks did that come out of? I don’t know how many books I’ve owned, or even how many I have now. Right now there’s probably at least 100 within arm’s reach on shelves (and a quick glance at one shelf in the “L’s” has Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard and C.S. Lewis having an interesting conversation) and I know I’ve got the entire Travis McGee series in paperback in a box somewhere. While some might say,”If you love something set it free and if it doesn’t come back it was never really yours to begin with,” this doesn’t fly with my personal collection – or my local public library. However many books I’ve owned, I’m sure the number is dwarfed by the number I’ve checked out from the library. At any given time I usually have two or three books out – and, thanks to time spent blogging, I’m the least voracious book reader in the immediate family.

What is the last book you’ve purchased?
Hard to say, since the library is my primary channel. Probably “Blog” and “In, But Not Of” by Hugh Hewitt. I do know the book I’ve purchased most often and given as a gift is “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman, and I expended the most energy in tracking down the “Swan Lake/A City in Winter/The Veil of Snows” Mark Helprin and Chris Van Allsburg trilogy. Oh, and I did score the “Captain Underpants” boxed set.

What is the last book you have read?
I just finished “Two O’clock Eastern War Time” by John Dunning, a novel set in the early days of World War II. It’s primarily a mystery, but it lovingly describes the early, exciting and creative days of a mold-shattering new media: radio. It’s a great perspective, and reminded me a lot of what is going on in the blogosphere today. I’m also just about finished with “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.” (See the “On the Nightstand” entry in my right-hand sidebar.

What are five books that mean a lot to you?

Of course, what’s a good meme without passing the assignment on to others. I’ve enjoyed reading the selections described by other MOB members who I’ve already gotten to know a bit through their blog writings. There are several new MOB members, however, who I’ve been looking in on and I’d like to get to know them better so I’m tagging them here. So, Actually a Chef, anything on your shelves besides cookbooks? Feet to the Fire, your feet are, well, to the fire. Always Right, Usually Correct – how did you get that way? And North Star Liberty, your site is a bit “wonky” – have you read anything but position papers lately? I invite each of you to answer the questions above. I’ll watch your blogs and link to you when you post your responses. By all means, feel free to inflict this on five others (each) as well.

Hmmm, that’s four. Okay, blogger number five I already know pretty well, but good readers usually start young, so Tiger Lilly, what are you getting out of those 15 books you check out of the library every week?

What kind of fool am I?

Today is the longest day of the year. Which means it is the shortest night of the year. Which means, if your name is “The Night Writer”, it is also the shortest writing opportunity. It sounds like the perfect time to post several of those “What kind of…” blog quizzes I’ve been taking and collecting over the past few weeks.

This is also a good time to run these because I noticed that as of today I have achieved “Adorable Little Rodent” status in the TTLB…which I suppose could mean “guinea pig.” Therefore, let the testing begin!

Wait a minute…adorable little rodent? Adorable is still in the description, but according to this:

What Kind of Animal Are You?
Bear
What Is Your Animal Personality?

brought to you by Quizilla

Hmmm. Lazy, stubborn, self-interested but adorable despite a nasty temper…no wonder I am also:


You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read.
Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few
.

Smart? Insightful? Ah, but of course, that explains it (and my refusal to “break the curve” on the IQ test shows just how adorable I am):

Your IQ Is 125

Your Logical Intelligence is Above Average
Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius
Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius
Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

OK, pencils down everybody. Get out there and enjoy the longest day.

Celebrating at Keegan’s tonight

As of today I’ve been blogging for four months and some 115 posts. OK, that’s about a week’s worth of blogging for Captain Ed, but I was still surprised when I saw the tally. Other key numbers from this experiment so far: 3,336 total visitors according to Site Meter, but 17,453 visitors (not “hits”) and 7,741 unique readers according to the built-in Powerblogs tracking tool. I don’t know which number is closer to reality, but I figure either one is too many for it just to be my mom checking in, so thanks everyone!

What better place to celebrate this mini-anniversary and also get some face time with my family than at Keegan’s tonight for trivia and coded blogging orders from Karl Rove. Night Visions and the Children of the Night are coming along this time with Tiger Lilly making her first appearance and getting her first secret assignment.

Perspective on Guantanamo

There were two posts on different blogs I read on Wednesday that did an excellent job of framing the absurdity of the hyperbole surrounding Guantanamo. The first is from Bad Hair Blog and details the conditions and treatment French journalist Florence Aubenas experienced during her brutal 157 day captivity. (HT Michelle Malkin ).

Aubenas, mind you, was an observer, not a combatant. Here’s how she reports she was treated:

Also from Zolli – some light summer reading

Futurist Andrew Zolli has an interesting blog that stimulates your brain to think about many virtually ignored trends and technologies that are coming together to shape the future. I’m not saying Zolli is necessarily correct in his analysis, but the information is there to ponder – and you’re definitely not seeing much of this in the MSM.

In addition to his posts, Zolli has posted his reviews of some very interesting-sounding books that would be ideal for reading while sunbathing beside the gene pool. Below are some of the books that sounded most interesting to me (though they’ve probably got some lefty assumptions), along with excerpts from Zolli’s reviews (links are to Amazon.com):

I don’t know if my local library has any of these books, but I already feel smarter just knowing these books are out there somewhere!

A Life After Death

On June 17, 2003, Shirley Shepherd did not show up for her job at a St. Paul storage facility. The energetic 79-year-old grandmother and great-grandmother also didn’t pay her daily visit to church, or make one of her regular calls on a good friend in a nursing home, and she wasn’t at her house. Her car, which had previously been stolen and recovered, was also missing.

Television, radio and newspapers broadcast details of the search as her family and friends agonized. Two days later her body, identifiable initially by her jewelry, was found beside a walking path in Woodbury. The police’s attention was focused on the young woman, Tekela Richardson, who had previously stolen Shirley’s car and who was also a customer of the storage center. She offered many versions of her story pointing to other people but ultimately confessed to the killing and was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. With that the story sank out of public view.

The story, of course, didn’t end for Shirley’s family. Her two sons and two daughters and their families were left with anger, hurt and a lot of questions. In the midst of it, however, was unexpected peace and comfort from an unlikely source, the eldest brother, Greg Shepherd.

Fit and solid even into his 50s, Greg still looks and moves like the athlete he was once known for being. He was also known by his family and co-workers, however, for his temper and outbursts. Yet there he was, composed and talking to the media, and a steadying resource for his family. What was happening?

“My wife Nancy and our son had gone to this church near us several years ago and really liked it and felt they were getting something out of it,” Greg says. “I couldn’t believe it when they told me the services could last as much as two hours. I said, ‘I’ll never go there.’ That wasn’t what I was used to. I liked it where you went in, listened to the sermon for 20 minutes and then you’re out and go to lunch.”

About four years ago, however, he was persuaded to pay a couple of visits, and was amazed by what he saw in the group and in the pastor, Rev. Dr. Tom Jestus. “There just seemed to be a light in his life and the people looked like they were happy to be there,” Greg says. “Pastor Tom didn’t just read from the Bible but explained the scriptures that I never understood before, and did so in a way that I could enjoy and even take away things I could use in my life.” Greg and his wife became regular attenders, connecting with many of the other members at the Miracle Centre in South St. Paul.

Gradually he began to see changes in the way he reacted to things and to other people. Then his mother was killed and he saw just how much his heart had changed.

“Yes, I was angry and I probably felt some hatred at first,” he says. “But we had people praying for us, stopping by, leaving messages. Pastor Tom was there everyday, reminding me to look at God’s plan, not my plan. He helped me to see that it didn’t do any good to scream and yell and be angry at the person who had done this, that I would only hurt myself, and that’s not God’s desire for me.

“If God and Tom hadn’t already been working on me, and then being with me, I would have been a lot different going through this, believe me. There definitely would have been outbursts. At first I wanted to know why this happened in the way it did, but I began to better understand what God’s son went through, and what he endured so that something good could happen for us, and good things were going to happen now because of what my mom went through. I’m at peace and I know my mom is as well.”

One of the good things that started to happen almost right away was that friends and family grieving Shirley or dealing with other crises in their lives began to meet with Greg and Tom at Greg’s house on Tuesday evenings to talk and pray and find out that the Bible isn’t just platitudes and “thou shall nots”. Many in the group don’t attend church otherwise, or aren’t “religious” but are finding a benefit that has kept the group going for the last two years.

“We’ve got nine or 10 people coming regularly to meet for an hour. People dealing with family problems, divorce, kid problems, whatever, and we get it out in the open and ask questions and find answers in the Bible,” Greg says. “We find good, practical things about what we can do and what we should do, and it helps us to look at the big picture by looking at Jesus’ life and all the things he did and the effect he has had. It’s relaxing, and brings us comfort and peace of mind.”

Another change Greg has noticed is that he is more open and comfortable with people than before. “Until this time I wouldn’t have been able to sit around and talk about my faith or what happened to my mom, but now I can talk to anybody,” he says. “A lot of times people don’t know what to say when someone is going through a bad situation, but now when I go to wakes or funerals or other things I have a better feel for what people are going through.

“My marriage has also gotten better. We’ve had a good marriage, married 33 years, but this has made it stronger. We can talk about God with each other now and with our kids, and they can see a difference in us. People who knew me before can’t believe that I don’t want to get ahold of that woman and rip her up, but what good would that do, and how would that reflect on God?

“I don’t hate her. I hope she gets her life turned around in prison to where she knows she can ask God to forgive her, but other than that I don’t think about her very much,” he says. “Sometimes it seems like there’s a lot of attention focused on people who commit crimes, like the big article the St. Paul paper did the other day about the guy who had raped two women. What good does that do? Why not focus on the good things the victims did? My mom visited the nursing home regularly, took people who were down and out into her home, and even tried to be a friend to Tekela and people should know about those things and be encouraged that there are people like her in the world.”

Rather than being bitter, Greg has let his mother’s life be an inspiration. “I’ve realized that life is short and I want to give back as much as I can,” he says. “I’m not going to waste time hating anyone. Once you let the hatred get in then the Devil’s got you. I try to keep my mind open to God and let him do what he needs to do through me.

“What does anyone want out of life? Meaning – a life with meaning. That’s what I have.”

Deep Throat and Being in the Belly of the Beast A’borning

Ever since W. Mark Felt, Jr. stepped out of the shadows of Hal Holbrook and a parking garage to reveal himself as Deep Throat, my thoughts have dwelled on that time nearly 30 years ago when I was in the first class of students to enter journalism school after the movie “All the President’s Men” came out. I’ve thought not just about those days, but the effects of Mr. Felt on journalism today and on my own life.

My introduction to journalism actually came in the fall of 1971 when I was in the 8th grade and started to write for the school newspaper. By the spring of ’72 I was co-editor and thought my life’s course was set: I was going to go journalism school and write for a living. Also right about that time we first started hearing about something called Watergate, but the fall of ’72 brought President Nixon’s re-election. This was followed by his resignation in ’74, and the movie in 1976.

In the fall of ’77 I started my journalism classes at one of the big three journalism schools in the country, along with an impassioned lot committed to being the next Woodward and Bernstein’s. Those were heady days back then as we sat in our News Writing 101 class (really, that’s what it was called) and learned interview techniques, story construction, to question everything and to always get at least two sources before running anything. We were given 30 minute deadlines and pounded out our assignments on old manual Underwoods and Royals with ribbons left over from the Crimean War. We also sat in our History of Journalism class as Professor Taft, who looked old enough to have worked as Gutenberg’s copy boy, tried to drum the history and traditions of the craft into our heads. He’d talk about all of us “Woodsteins” sitting out there wanting to break the story of the century without learning the lessons of the past century.

Part of our training involved working on the daily city newspaper the J-school produced — world and national news, metro, sports, lifestyle, including advertising — with a daily circulation of some 35,000. The reporters were all students and our professors and editors were often one and the same. One editor in particular taught a News class and looked like Central Casting’s idea of a gunfighter: ramrod straight, steely eyes, a withering glare and a temperment itching to gun down the careless and undedicated. He absolutely hated, and would not tolerate, an anonymous or aliased source. You dared not bring one into a story in his newsroom, and he would rail against it from his lectern as a technique that invited abuse from a lazy journalist and manipulation by a source who could keep his name and agenda hidden.

Most of us had read our Capote, and were reading Hunter S. Thompson, and itching to tell stories through the eyes of the principals – especially the kinds of stories where the principals might not want to be specifically identified, and this restriction seemed unnecessarily harsh. When I, while working under another editor, wrote a magazine feature about a Vietnam vet turned mercenary (who needed to remain anonymous for legal reasons), I had to bring both the merc and some of his documentation to my editor in order for the article to run.

Certainly everything we were warned about manifested just a few years later, in 1980, when Janet Cooke, someone our age, won and then was stripped of a Pulitzer when it turned out she had invented the 8-year-old heroin addict, “Jimmy,” who was the center of her series of articles for the Washington Post. In the process she became godmother to Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. Until Felt came forward there were those who wondered if Deep Throat really existed or was as fanciful as Cooke’s Jimmy, as Glass’s computer hackers or as Blair’s expense reports.

What has largely been forgotten about Watergate is that Deep Throat’s main usefulness to Woodward and Bernstein was in pointing them in certain directions and confirming information they discovered as a result. The information he provided was born out by events. Woodward and Bernstein may not have been lazy, but as we’ve learned lately, Mr. Felt was not as forthcoming with his own motives as he was with other information, and they didn’t pursue this part of the story and deprived the story and the public of that context. Ultimately it may have made no difference in the outcome. Further, their efforts to find multiple confirmations is a far cry from today where not correcting a statement is accepted as a confirmation.

Certainly combative relationships between journalists and governments has a long history predating Watergate, and even Tammany Hall. One side has and will always try to keep some things hidden, and the other will always try to find ways to bring these to light. Something about the Nixon and Watergate era, however, appears to have made this battle personal in the way it is prosecuted, but that may simply be my perception from living in these days. Romantically, perhaps, I think of the time before Watergate, Vietnam and Deep Throat as more of a game, although played for high stakes. Since then it has become a war, and has often been said, truth is the first casualty.

Carl Bernstein himself may have described it best when he said, “The lowest form of popular culture — lack of information, misinformation, misinformation and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives — has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”

Who’s Wounding the Civilians?

The StarTribune ran this Washington Post story in the upper right hand corner of its front page this morning, proclaiming “Wounded Civilians in Iraq Get Little Help.”

My first thought was the article and its placement are another attempt to suggest “quagmire” or paint a hopeless picture. My own filtering system suggests that such a strategy of subtle psychological warfare may be “false but still plausible” but I’m not going to fisk this article. Instead, the image that immediately came to my mind when I read the headline was this photo that Michelle Malkin featured last month (click to enlarge):

There was “little help” for this Iraqi girl following a terrorist bombing.

The photo was by freelance journalist Michael Yon, embedded with a brigade of Marines in Mosul at the time. Follow the link to read his account of what happened and a postscript on the effects of the photo.

Whatever its motives, the WaPo article couldn’t help but point out that over the past 18 months the civilians have suffered greatly at the hands of the terrorists (the article called them “insurgents”). It’s bloody, not subtle, but it is still psychological warfare in the name of the Fear of Man, not of God. At its heart it is really all about the all-too-human desire for power. And, as the photo shows, it has an all-too-human cost.

To that extent the war may be “unwinnable”, be it Northern Ireland or the Sunni Triangle. How much better, however, to put the focus on those trying to change things for the better. Run the same WaPo article but include the picture above and the reader comes away with a different perspective.

Finally, if for some strange reason your picture of Iraq is of a sinking sand quagmire, it’s worth going back to Yon’s blog to read his latest accounts and see the pictures he’s taken about what things are like.

No, Torii, Don’t Swi – …. Nevermind!

First, let me say I love having Torii Hunter on the Twins and I’m happy they signed him to a big contract. I love watching him go over the wall to bring back home runs or make diving catches to prevent doubles, and noooobody tries to take an extra base on him. If you put Andruw Jones in left field and Hunter in right, I could play centerfield – riding a Segway. We’d never let a ball drop.

My problem is that for all his years of experience the man has the patience of a mayfly at the plate. In recent years there were two articles we could always count on seeing every season in a Minnesota sports page: one talking about Randy Moss’s new maturity and leadership and the second about Hunter’s new commitment to plate discipline. The latter article usually included something about what a positive influence Shannon Stewart is, but it appears the effect works only if they both bat in the same inning.

Normally I wouldn’t create a post just to restate the obvious, but today seems like a good time to do so after last night’s 6-2 Twins win, highlighted by a heaping helping of everything that Torii does that makes him Torii – including the following from the Strib’s account:

The Twins trailed 2-0 with the bases loaded and one out in the third inning when Hunter came up. Lefthander Cliff Lee tried to get ahead with a curve ball, expecting Hunter to be sitting on a fastball.

Truth is, Lee was right. But the pitch hung a little, and…

“My hands said, ‘Yes,'” Hunter said. “Most people don’t swing at a first-pitch curve ball. I don’t know why I did. … I didn’t think I was going to swing at it. It was just a reaction.”

Let’s make this clear: NOBODY swings at a first-pitch curve ball with bases loaded. I suppose there’s just something about seeing a ball in motion that sends Hunter over walls after homers … and swinging at balls almost as high.

Oh well, like summer in Minnesota, you’ve got to love him despite the minor annoyances. And I’m not like some friends of mine who used to insist that Tom Brunansky never hit a homerun that did the Twins any good. In fact, if you go over to Craig Westover’s blog he has a method for calculating the average number of at-bats a player needs to produce a run (he calls it the ABR). You’ll have to read his explanation for how this works, but the key is that the lower the number is, the better. Using Craig’s tool you see that Kirby Puckett had a career ABR of 3.46. Torii Hunter’s career ABR is 3.47 – exactly the same as the career ABRs of Tony Oliva and Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente.

COOTIES!
While in the Strib’s sports section I read Sid Hartman’s column where he revealed the following scoop:

Williams Arena was completed in 1928, and the training room has had some great Gophers basketball players spend time there.

But now the women’s basketball team is going to take over the men’s training room as its locker room. The men’s training room will be wrecked and a new one will be built down the hall past the visiting men’s locker room. So when the men get taped before a game, they will have to walk a good long distance past the visiting men’s locker room. The training room will be used by the women’s and men’s teams…

… So now, in a three-year period, the men have lost exclusive practice time at Williams Arena, exclusive scheduling of games and now a training room with great historic tradition that should have been preserved.

I’m predicting several late fourth quarter folds by the men’s team this winter, brought on by the lads being tired out from the extra energy expended getting taped. And how can you measure the effect of all the tradition in that training room? Did you know that when you were in there, if you were lucky, you might get to see the very razor they used to use to shave Randy Breuer’s back?

At least the mens’ teams will never have to worry about having to share Sid’s exclusive attention with the women.