minneapolis upside down

On the cusp

2012-01-02T20:18:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year. We sit tonight waiting for the first official tally of the 2012 Presidential election.

Watching the numbers, it looks like a Paul and Santorum one/two or vice versa is a real possibility in Iowa tomorrow night, with Mitt Romney coming in third.

Here's hoping.

If Romney comes in third, a new narrative will have to be created. The Republican party will have to sabotage Ron Paul. Santorum will implode rapidly, leaving the party with a task not unlike the last election when the failed candidate, John McCain, had to be quickly rehabilitated and minted as a standard bearer. Romney's campaign will similarly be salvaged

The difference this time is Paul, who could fragment the Republicans and likely will after the party flacks turn on him after Iowa. Ron Paul's third party run will draw from the Dem side too, but his candidacy would throw the Repugs into an instant state of existential crisis- -and Mittens ain't the kind of leader to pull the party out of its resulting doldrums.

Let me be clear, I think that Ron Paul is a miserable racist bastard, and I never would vote for him. But as Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out, he is really good on some issues, particularly on issues where Obama has sucked. Paul could make some noise, and I saw him tonight on the tube with his smirking fuck head son, Rand--an indication, I think, that the Pauls may have a plan.

I digress. We'll see how it goes. Here's my prediction.

Paul 23%
Santorum 23%
Romney 21%
Perry 13%
Bachmann 10%
Gingrich 9%
Huntsman etc. 1%

Gingrich will drop out. Perry has money and will hang around until South Carolina. Who the hell knows what Bachmann will do.

--Loosestrife

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy

2011-11-09T07:48:00.000-06:00

There are political figures that are inherently irritating to me. John Kasich fits that category. To be bipartisan about it, outgoing Democratic State Senator Larry Pogemiller and R.T. Rybak do too. In pursuit of gender equity, let's not forget Michele Bachmann and Diane Feinstein.

I am not talking politics here but something more fundamental--the immediate sense that a politician is a jerk. I don't remember when I became aware of Kasich, but I know my reaction is always has been immediate. Here was a guy who defined overreach, convinced of his innate superiority and having the bearing of a smug frat boy stamped into his very soul.

Politically he wasn't the worst when he was in U.S. House, able to be bipartisan to the point of working with real socialist Ron Dellums of California to trim Pentagon waste. Still he was a classic asshole, and his worst political tendencies were amplified by his growing self-satisfaction. He even was a stand in asshole for Bill O'Reilly, lest we forget, before becoming governor of Ohio. Always retrograde, Kasich now is a shill for corrosive business interests running the country into the ground.

So it was with great joy that I followed the results last night, a repudiation of Kasich that will ultimately drive him back to Fox News, where sycophants can feed his ego well into his dotage.

The voters in Ohio sent a clear message. Not only was the Republican assaultive bill limiting public sector bargaining rights defeated soundly, the final totals appear to exceed pre-election polling margins, 62 % voting against the bill.

Surely someone told Kasich that his brand was rancid, his approval rating consistently in the 30s and that he was a detriment to the campaign to sustain SB 5, as the anti-worker law passed by the Ohio legislature and signed by Kasich came to be known. Kasich probably called him or her an idiot, like he did the cop who made a legitimate traffic stop of the Governor for passing too close to an emergency vehicle.

The association of the bill with Kasich probably added a few percentage points to its defeat, but even without the Kasich asshole factor, the bill would have probably gone down. The Repugs have openly demonstrated that their agenda is being written by business interests who have no interest in your personal welfare. The GOP message discipline is beginning to work against them, as brainless repetition does tend to rankle over time.

I see that the Democrats are trying to claim this as their victory, and they have reason to be happy. But what might be more significant is that this victory is organized labor's and that Richard Trumka's leadership of the AFL-CIO is burnishing labor's image as a progressive force in American society. It was not long ago that Trumka put the Democrats on notice that they can't take labor support for granted.

After they celebrate this victory with their union sisters and brothers, the Dems would be wise to take his counsel.

--Loosestrife

Long Time Gone

2011-11-07T10:39:00.002-06:00

I am going to wade back in and at least get my ankles wet.

Where to start?

--Loosestrife

The open wound

2011-01-11T05:53:00.003-06:00

To improve Gabrielle Giffords' chances of recovery, surgeons removed part of her skull so that the swelling of her brain doesn't increase the pressure in her head to damaging or lethal levels.

Maybe we should do the same for the nation as a whole.

Jared Loughner remains a cipher, and his mug shot,while having a disturbing quality, doesn't grant any insight into his motivation . He ain't talking.

The details trickling out from the investigation are balanced enough to give "both sides" opportunity to make hay. Didn't belong to a political party, liked the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf, loved his community college but thought it unconstitutional, big pothead and drinker who went sober in 2008 and got crazier etc.

I'll predict that we will never get a full understanding of Loughner's "motivation." We may find out that he is schizophrenic, perhaps too find out that he has aspergers. Hell, what if he has a brain tumor?

As the rhetoric heats up, the pressure in the national head grows.

Within hours if not minutes of the shooter's identity being revealed, evil clowns were on Facebook creating fake profiles for Loughner--both as an Obama supporter and a Teabagger.

Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church asshole squad says that Loughner was sent by God and that they will attempt to protest the victims' funerals.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are sharing their private emails to demonstrate their suffering at the hands of those nasty liberals.

The right is having a hard time maintaining the caring stance, overwhelmed by the urge to kick people while they are down. The liberal left has had to endure years of the Ann Coulter smirk and the Rush Limbaugh bluster as the right punditocracy barely conceals--if it is concealed at all-- its desire for the execution of liberals. The liberal left's justifiable rage is spilling over.

Those truly to the left will catch shit from "both sides," but you know, we are used to it. While those in the mainstream, good Americans all, try to reduce this tragedy to easy explanations and attempt to place blame, we might just consider getting our own shit together and coming up with some solutions for the formidable challenges before us.

--Loosestrife

Thus, the new currency

2011-01-10T05:56:00.003-06:00

The aftermath of Arizona Safeway shootings has become an erratic and impulsive ritual of poorly thought out explanations.

I don't grant graphic art the power to single-handedly drive a young man to go purchase a 9 mm and shoot a congressperson and those in her vicinity. Sarah Palin's website usage of a gun sight metaphor, while ill-advised, does not explain this shooting. Her people pulled it because they knew it would be a PR disaster not because they regret it. Her aide's claim that they weren't gun sights but surveyor stakes was laughable, but the "left" would be wise to let Palin be her own undoing on this. She has already offered condolences to a family whose loved-one hadn't died. Let Sarah be Sarah.

Bill O'Reilly is a pinhead, but nothing in his xenophobic rantings leads me to say that Jared Loughner's Saturday gore fest resulted from Billo's obsession with running down each and everything that doesn't look and sound like him.

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, shares the cadence of Loughner's tortured syllogisms, and my hunch is that if any of the right's bête noires directly influenced our young shooter, it is Beck, but not necessarily in terms of ideology. It's more a matter of method--getting out the metaphorical chalk board and drawing arrows that connects Gabrielle Giffords to a perceived threat by virtue of arrows that have mysteriously appeared on the chalk board.

That said, there is the stench not so much of tea bags but of pot smoke, Birch, and testosterone around this thing. Giffords is a motorcyle-riding attractive Jewish woman, unapologetic in her support for immigrant, GLBT, and gun rights--not a leftist to be sure, but an assured woman who won her seat in the cesspool of right-wing bigotry that is Arizona. She doesn't fit a model for proper womanly behavior and ideological identification. She apparently likes non-white people on some level. Thus, was she a threat to an emotionally stunted young white male with mental illness and a fine American tradition of paranoia and violence into which to tap?

Charles Manson famously believed that he was connected directly to the Beatles, who sent him messages through their music. He is also very smart, with real musical talent and, in the past at least, a talent for compelling weaker personalities to act on his analysis and beliefs. Loughner strikes me as someone who could have been a hanger-on at Spahn's ranch.

The only question to my mind at this point is whether Loughner was influenced by a stronger personality who compelled him to act, either intentionally or unintentionally. Ever seen American History X?

In the mean time, the mainstream press cries for quiet-ism while our government attempts to squelch Wikileaks by any means necessary. The Democrats go after Palin. The Repugs demonstrate their sensitive side. And our country lurches forward, a self-perpetuating war machine.

--Loosestrife

But the shouting

2010-09-23T18:44:00.007-05:00

Whatever the result of the 2010 midterm elections, one thing is assured. The national elected government will no more be able to make substantiative progress towards solving any of our collective problems.

Sorry tea partiers, you'll rise to your level of incompetence and true influence, meanwhile undercutting the mainstream Republican party--the result being politically nil.

And before you Dems start snickering, your influence will be diminished under any scenario, when, when, you can't hold your own now--except when it comes to fund raising.

The Repugs have a chance, simply because they won't take over after this election. They'll gain legitimacy without power, the Dems barely holding majorities in both the house and the senate and the presidency while the Repugs get even shriller and more annoying. The resulting gridlock will make a Obama vulnerable in 2012.

Except that he's not. What Obama proved in 2008 was that he was Bill Clinton's election juggernaut equal, and the repugs will have to find a candidate who can realistically go with Obama.

Palin? Pawlenty? Romney? Huckabee? uh who is that guy that won the Value Voters poll?

This would all be amusing in that Will Rogers' sort of way except that we are at a crossroads of economic, ecological, and ethical defeat. And while Christine O'Donnell warms my diabolical heart, her idiocy is no consolation when one mulls over the planet's fate.

That all said, I am getting poked and prodded to have a little more to say as the election nears. Maybe.

--Loosestrife

Of tips, flips, and slips

2010-07-16T07:17:00.009-05:00

Bad week for Minnesota Republicans. A trifecta of arrogance that moved the political climate ever so slightly to the DFL's advantage.

Tom Emmer emerged once and for all as an assclown. That ill-conceived "town hall" with a bunch of cranky restaurant workers was fine theater, but it made Emmer look like a total chump, as Michele might say.

And that unmanly flinch when a little alt guy threw a bunch of pennies on the table in front of him and his shrill and awkward attempt to make light of it by mentioning that he was a hockey player will be Tom's "Dean scream." Without the irony.

Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty drove Emmer's numbers down even more with this Fox j'accuse performance art piece wherein he asked whether Al Franken was made a senator by a conspiracy of felons, presumably black, since they apparently vote Democrat. He doesn't know, he's just sayin'. By the way, classic Fox noise, referring to a controversy that didn't exist prior to the questionI don't know that, but if that turned out to be true, then I'd be right, at Tim might say.

Over in Bachmannistan, something's wrong, with staffers slipping across the border in search of plausible deniablity. It may be the dawning realization that Bachmann is in for the fight of her life, as Taryl Clark bounces into the national consciousness off Bachmann's own notoriety. That means big money in the stretch for Ms. Clark, and her campaign shows much more tenacity so far than Patty Wetterling's depressive fugue or Elwin Tinklenberg's smiling nice guy routine.

Maybe former Minnesota Republican Chair, Ron Carey, who resigned as Bachmann chief of staff, and Zandra Wolcott, her former campaign finance director, thought they'd landed an easy gig and realized that the next few months were really going to be the moral equivalent of war. Maybe the internal polling numbers scared them away.

And then it could be this, the burgeoning investigation of major Bachmann campaign contributor, Floridian Bobby Thompson, founder of the shady U.S. Navy Veterans Association. I don't know that, but if that turned out to be true then it might mean that an investigation of Bachmann herself is in the offing or has already begun.

--Loosestrife

Sometimes

2010-06-01T12:36:00.007-05:00

There are those moments when dealing with a grave threat where you have throw all in or simply concede defeat.

That's where we are with the Gulf oil spill.

This is the biggest man-made environmental disaster, evah. The level of the blossoming damage to the Gulf of Mexico begs for laughter--it's absurd. Remember when we got those feel-good stories about barber shops and salons donating hair for human hair booms? Our can-do attitude and stick-to-itedness will pull us through.

Funny.

For all the disappointment that Obama has provided, I still thought of him as competent, serious, and occasionally successful, but no longer. That BP has called the shots and continues to do so after their duplicity became undeniable seals the question about his loyalties to the corporate world.

Far more infuriating has been Obama's cool disavowal not only of blame but of responsibility, leadership abandoned to marketing and liability limitation. Surely, he understands the severity of the spill. Yet not one oval office broadcast to the nation? No major figure assigned--Al Gore anybody?--to coordinate emergency management for an unprecedented environmental disaster? No shifting of government into emergency status and operations? A speech to an emergency session of the U.N. might have been a nice touch, a recognition that this is bigger than the U.S.

What needs to be done technically is beyond me. For better or worse, I have to throw in my lot with oil field folks who know about this shit--that includes some BP folks, but the current public-private partnership is not suited to an emergency situation where the planet's future is at stake.

It is time to seize the necessary assets from BP--and by assets I mean technology and know-how primarily--bring them in under a level of coordination and command structure that only the government can muster. Now. Everyday means severe ecological degradation.

And the earth can only take so much.

--Loosestrife

How does one live?

2010-05-30T23:56:00.002-05:00

So the top kill was junk? Plenty of folks more knowledgeable than me, knew this.

As it stands, there is little hope that anything will work before the relief wells are complete in August. Even those are in doubt.

As I remarked this evening, no visionary artists came up with this particular doomsday scenario. Isn't ironic? The sea poisoned by dinosaur blood.

Like anyone who is terminal, one must just enjoy the simple pleasures while they last. No political act can make a difference.

--Loosestrife

A Toe Hold

2010-05-28T08:14:00.003-05:00

I'm no expert, but I know a little about the seat-of-your-pants culture of oil field operations.

Of course, these boys don't exactly know how things will turn out in advance, but my guess right now is that they feel like that have actually affected the flow from the gulf leak and that's a start. So they throw in the "junk shot" strategy and cross their fingers. If things begin to stick, they keep doing what they are doing until it fails or doesn't.

If they sufficiently stabilize the well, they'll dump as much concrete down that hole as they can.

This has all been engineered, but when you get to the heart of the matter it's all about mass, pressure, and time--and creating a clog.

We'll see. In the meantime, the truth about the scale of this disaster continues to emerge.

It's a game-changer, as they say.

--Loosestrife

Kill Shot

2010-05-27T22:24:00.002-05:00

First it looked like it was working. Now it doesn't. Watch this eerie video of T-Boone Pickens.

So we gotta get lucky or face double or triple the environmental degradation that we already face.

Crap.

--Loosestrife

In the Future When All Is Well

2010-05-25T22:35:00.006-05:00

Even if the Gulf Oil Spill doesn't kill the oceans in total, guaranteeing mass extinctions including you and your species, the world has changed in fundamental ways in the last month. The violation of trust perceived by those victimized in this catastrophe will be a potent sentiment spreading from the Gulf Coast, quite likely to Florida, quite possibly to the east coast. Our environmental credibility with China has become a joke. The Gulf nations will seek compensation for the damage to their cultures and economies. I heard Huey Long's name invoked on TV today as the kind of leader we need to take on this challenge.

The natural limit to this catastrophe--the point at which pressure equalizes between the ocean water and oil--is not gaugeable with any reliability. Or maybe it's that the truth is too horrible to utter--that without successful human intervention, the sheer volume of oil released into the Gulf will ride ocean currents until little by little ocean health deteriorates across the globe until they are effectively dead as ecosystems.

That being the case, you root for the BP scoundrels to pull something out of their corporate asses--albeit a cynical act of self-preservation--that works in closing this rupture. Tomorrow's attempt will be "Top Kill." May it succeed.

The self-congratulations will be nearly unbearable, but not as bad spending my final days on a planet that has been given the poison pill, each day a little more fucked than the last.

There is plenty to consider, of course. All sorts of legal repercussions, not to mention political implications. Things to be studied. Academic analysis. Pilot programs.

At the crux, though, this game belongs to the engineers and scientific community. Unless this erupting oil geyser can be diminished significantly, if not closed off, then the Gulf is a goner. Already the marshes are being fouled. Dead shit is floating up on the beaches. No one knows what the "dispersants" being dumped in the water to hide the size of this mess will do to flora and fauna of the region. How much oil would it take to doom complex life on this planet?

My only political inclination on this issue is to question Obama's absence from the airwaves. It has been apparent for at least two weeks that this was not going away easily and that "we" faced a huge disaster. At some point, an evening address laying out the situation in the Gulf, the challenge of stopping the oil flow, and the need for a coordinated and disciplined response would have done everyone some good.

In its place, we have a lot of blather and posturing filling a leadership void, fairly perceived or not. It's time to stop that shit and put this country on emergency footing. One moderate Gulf hurricane on the right path, and we will be evacuating many from well oiled poisoned watersheds. Nationalize BP if necessary, whatever.

I can sympathize with the passionate if desperate voices of those on the coast, their lives being destroyed before their eyes. But the scale of this monumental human fuck-up dwarfs them now.

Go get 'em, BP! We'll arrest the CEOs after the celebrations and give fucking medals to the brains and wrenches who saved the planet.

--Loosestrife

Ellison Fucks Up

2009-07-22T06:31:00.005-05:00

Let's see.

If a Christian affiliated charter school receives government funds to pay in rent to its own sponsoring--explicitly religious--organization, would I consider that OK? And if that sponsoring organization paid for a trip to the Holy Land by a explicitly Christian member of the Congress, an arrangement reportedly kept low profile by the Congress person since the trip was religious in nature, how would I feel about that?

No doubt in my mind that the school paying publicly funded rent to its own sponsoring organization creates a fine medium in which to grow some corruption. No doubt, too, that I'd think that Congress person was either naive or cynical or both to have this trip funded by any organization, particularly one involved with government contracts.

If I follow correctly, this is what Keith Ellison apparently did--the trip being instead his Hajj, a Muslim's one in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, the money instead coming from the Muslim American Society, which received rent from Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA), a charter school, which it sponsors. TiZA receives substantial state funding.

I hate to say it, but this story may have legs, particularly if Ellison's action is not an isolated one. It does not help that TiZA is the school being investigated for other misuse of government funds, allegedly having a religious agenda in part funded by government dollars it receives.

I hear the feverish meshing of gears in Katherine Kersten's head.

As a strict separation of chuch and state secularist (SSCSS?), this kind of shit makes me ill. I think Ellison has been a fine Congress person thus far, but now I wonder about his judgment. What was the thought process that made Ellison believe that it would be OK to take this gratuity from an overtly religious organization that receives state funds, albeit indirectly, under circumstances that have themselves been called into question?

Oh yeah, the man accompanying Ellison to Mecca was Asad Zaman, who "is executive director of the TiZA school, a political contributor of Ellison's and was president of the Muslim American Society until August, when the Mecca trip was planned," according to the Strib.

As my five readers know, I am a fan of Keith Ellison and believe that he is a highly capable legislator. I can only hope that this was a lapse in judgment. I hope that Keith recognizes that this is bigger than him. Mistakes like this diminish his power and effectiveness, but for us who place some trust in him, they diminish our hope.

--Loosestrife

Rules for 2009

2009-01-11T12:15:00.008-06:00

and surviving change.

--Loosestrife

What Frankie Knew

2009-01-07T06:38:00.010-06:00

Awhile back, early in the emerging Petters scandal, I wrote a bit about the mysterious case of Frank Vennes Jr., "facilitator" of the Tom Petters' ponzi scheme.

Yesterday, the Strib let fly with a story about Vennes' knowledge of the Petters' ponzi scheme some 9 months before the feds shut the whole thing down.

This is hardly news. An experienced grifter, religious conversion notwithstanding, Vennes had to know in this godly heart that something was not quite right: it's the too good to be true principle. What did he care? Petters compensated him mightily, providing most of Vennes' income, $28 million, according to the Strib.

If Vennes learned of Petter's fraud scheme just 9 months before the feds raided Vennes' home as stated in the Strib article, then the big question is now whether faith-based Frankie continued to serve as a facilitator steering investors towards Petters. The article already states that Vennes did not alert anyone but his own attorney, christ-like Craig Howse, when alledgely learning that he was waist-deep in a fraud scheme worth possibly $3.5 billion. (That figure keeps growing by the way. Will it reach $5 billion?)

Which means that Vennes was sitting on the board of Minnesota Teen Challenge with knowledge that that the organization had millions invested in a ponzi scheme; Vennes possibly was responsibile for Teen Challenge making that investment.

This brings us to interesting questions. Was he using faith-based organizations and the Christian community as easy marks? Was Vennes, whose previous crime career involved money-laundering, using the Christian non-profit world and unsuspecting preachers as the ultimate money laundering scheme? Did others in the faith-based world have knowledge of fraud that Petters and Vennes were perpetrating but were content to skim big money off it?

After all, as Rick Warren says, "With God’s authorization, the outcome is guaranteed to be successful." The possibilities are endless with that creed.

I doubt that Vennes was in the dark about the Petters operation at any point although being an experienced flim-flam man, he knew when to keep his mouth shut, even to Petters.

The feds will be searching Vennes' email account and that of this son, Denley. According to the Strib, Vennes sent documents to investors through those two accounts. Apparently that search warrant is sealed at this point. It's twenty-four pages? I'd sure like to see it.

Correction: The warrant is not 24 pages. The affidavit is, I think.

--Loosestrife

Adventures in Radio

2009-01-06T03:50:00.006-06:00

Being a commie, I was listening the AM 950 as I motored from my safe South Minneapolis home to the suburban hinterlands yesterday evening. As I arrived at my destination, Mark Heaney had a guest from Minnesota 2020 who was discussing the shift from taxes to "fees" in Minnesota under the Pawlenty thumb.

I walk into the office, and I could hear the unmistakable rhythm of right wing outrage. It was kind of like Muzak: I could just make out the tune but not any of the words. I had a wait, so I moved closer to the speaker.

I couldn't tell what it was--I don't listen enough to radio yahoos to identify them readily. It seemed to be local, however.

The speaker's rant was that this country has sunk to the point where it is "acceptable" to vote for someone who redistributed wealth, takes "your money" and gives it someone else. Voting this way constitutes theft, is un-American, and is immoral according to this yahoo. There were, of course, platitudes about the "free market" and laments about Al Franken's victory over Norm Coleman.

I stepped away when a seat opened up in the waiting room, but I sit too much of my day, and I got back up to pace around.

Now, they were taking calls.

The attack on the loser Norm Coleman was immediate. He was to blame for his loss to Franken because he attacked conservatives, one call claimed. I waited for someone to say Coleman couldn't be trusted since was a Jew. I knew there was at least one caller in the queue who was thinking it.

I drifted out of range. When I got back within earshot, the host was saying that Coleman lost because he was too far left, finally exclaiming that he was afraid that the Republicans wouldn't learn the lesson that you can't beat the Democrats by trying to be like them.

It was a small, good thing.

My drive back was delightful. The suburban neon played nicely through the frosty windows. I don't remember what was on Air America.

--Loosestrife

The Holy Hustle--The Divine Business Plan, God's Authorization of Rick Warren

2009-01-04T21:07:00.002-06:00

"The Holy Hustle" seems an apt name going forward for will be an on-going examination of the myriad variations on that most American of scams, religion. Of course, the focus will be on local manifestations, but this week I take a little side trip since Barack Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration has become such a flash point.

Stylistically and theologically, Rick Warren's antecedent is Billy Graham, a life-long Democrat and anti-segregationist, whose "crusades" in stadiums across America preached a message that was not too overtly political while the Graham himself was a major political figure and a virulent anti-communist demagogue. It was easy to sit through a Graham crusade and not remember much about it, bland and wholesome as it was, but behind the scenes at the White House home of his good friend, Richard Nixon, Graham engaged in mildy anti-Semitic banter with his buddy. Later in his his life, Graham speculated that AIDS was God's punishment on those who it afflicted.

Graham later apologized for those remarks; he always had his finger in the wind and often softened his red-necked fundamentalist views when they threatened his huge popularity or influence. Rick Warren has that tendency sometimes, too, like when he removed the most offensive of the gay bashing language from his website recently.

On the other hand, Billy Graham's son, Franklin, couldn't be better cast as the fallen son who repents so as to take over the family enterprise and fails to be up to the task. It's clear that Franklin just doesn't have the stuff continue his father's "Pastor to the President" shtick going, despite being the chosen one at W's 2001 inauguration. Tellingly, his sister says of Franklin in a 2006 USA Today article, "He didn't get Daddy's gift of diplomacy."

The job of Pastor to the President is open, in other words, and Rick Warren is available, very available.

Like Billy Graham, he is a Southern Baptist. Like Billy Graham, he has successfully and consciously inserted himself into political world without an overt political play.

Further, Warren provides potent and convenient symbolism for Barack Obama--Warren is a balding beefy unattractive white man, with a bad goatee and tent-like bold print shirts, who harbors all sorts of phobias and bigotry but who is basically good, trying be open minded and understanding in this crazy world in which we all live. Men who look like Warren are among the voters that Obama didn't quite reach in 2008, and having Pastor Rick on the podium on the inauguration may well be the opening shot of the 2012 election. If Warren has a few problems with the gays, then so be it. Politics is politics.

And Rick Warren's thinly veiled revulsion at all things non-heterosexual has gotten the attention, but Warren has a lot of other, shall we say, interesting views, many of them, no doubt, divinely inspired.

Click on his website and one is greeted by a manifesto claiming an imperial agenda for the "The Church," wherein it's organizational superiority to both business and government makes it "the greatest force on earth."

It's an inherently political document, wherein he claims the inevitable victory of a mass "Church" movement over the godless, and therefore bankrupt (in every sense of the word), secular institutions that are failing us.

"With God’s authorization, the outcome is guaranteed to be successful," claims Warren, placing himself firmly in the tradition of godly hucksters and the hard Dominionist camp of Pastors who seek a neo-tribal society with clergy exerting ultimate authority over the lives of their followers, a model not unlike that of the most conservative elements of the Catholic church or Islam. Whether in a stiff white collar, a bow tie, a thobe, or a Hawaiian shirt, these boys all seek a world where their--that is God's-- authority is unquestioned and women (and children) know their place

*********************

Warren's homophobia is odious but typical of his flock. I am far more disturbed that Obama would choose Warren as the most prominent religious figure at the inauguration when the Pastor Rick is praying to replace the federal government with "The Church."

In that, politically speaking, he represents a continuation of the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell version of politico-evangelical clap trap, casually dressed and marginally more charitable in his stances on HIV/AIDS and global warming, rather than Billy Graham's less ideological tradition. Where Robertson and Falwell openly desired to influence and infiltrate government and did, now with disastrous results, Warren apparently seeks to establish Religion as a rival to government--as Apple to government's PC.

Warren is not alone, of course. Locally, the Petters' scandal (and bloggers like myself) have led to a discussion of Minnesota Teen Challenge that illuminates the arrogance, delusion, and deceit possible within faith based initiatives. The contradictions inherent within the the anti-secular rhetoric of hard shell religious organizations when taking government money are easily resolved by the missionary zeal. As long as the church is the top, it's all good for religiously inspired poverty johns.

One of Obama's worst tendencies is to support the faith-based bullshit institutionalized under the Bush regime, and it will take a mighty effort to cut religious hucksters off the government teat.

Another bad Obama tendency is to subscribe to Rahm Emanuel nasty insider political tactics, making moves that throw off your demanding allies as well as your enemies, keeping everyone off balance for political advantage.

A third is the insufferable "team of rivals" Lincoln worship that is absolutely useless in modern politics, except as a strategy to get elected or as a way to fill time and space for unimaginative pundits.

Put these three bad tendencies together and you get Rick Warren at the inauguration and an early lesson in how the Obama team works. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good things happening in the transition, but it will be important to maintain a perspective only possible through distance when dealing with the new administration.

Even Rick Warren may need to keep that in mind.

--Loosestrife

Is This Live Blogging?--The Update

2008-12-26T19:04:00.002-06:00

Life will allow me to blog a bit more now, so I'll be picking up some of the poorly developed themes scattered in my intermittent postings of the past few months.

First, let me gloat just for a moment on the awesomeness of my polling methodology, which appears to have accurately called the outcome of the Minnesota senate race on election night before the polls actually closed.

Adios Normy.

--Loosestrife

Breaking News--Missing Minneapolis Ballots Found!

2008-12-04T20:04:00.005-06:00

An unconfirmed report is circulating that the 133 mysterious missing ballots in Minneapolis crucial to the outcome of the Franken/Coleman Senate race have been found.

An source close to the investigation of besieged auto magnate Denny Hecker's mysterious auto accident on County Road 6 in Plymouth last night revealed that the missing ballots were discovered in an empty potato chip bag in the trunk of Hecker's car .

Also discovered in trunk was a paper shredder and receipt for its purchase from Petters Warehouse Mall of America store last October.

The source disclosed the Hecker's injuries resulted in part from a box of faux leather Bibles that that struck Hecker in the back of the head as his vehicle tumbled down an embankment.

There was no indication whether the Bibles were also purchased at Petters Warehouse.

--Loosestrife

Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T08:29:00.001-06:00

Timmy's New Doo

2008-11-18T23:31:00.005-06:00

Consider this my tentative wade back into the political fray.

Is this for real? View the video here.

Not the first time that Pawlenty's follicles have been the grist of hack journalists and snarky bloggers.

That Palin thing must have sent Timmy into a midlife tailspin. I am inviting photoshop artists to come up with alternatives for our thinning governor. Send me your images or at least links to your work.

--Loosestrife

Early Returns--Is This Live Blogging?

2008-11-04T18:18:00.006-06:00

After 2 days of GOTV, I decided to drop by Chicago Lake Liquors this evening.

It was eerie. All these fellow drinkers with I Voted stickers. It was unprecedented. Today while door knocking I saw people who were setting up for watch parties

Based on this unscientific poll, Franken will just eek by Coleman.

You heard it here first.

Update: Checking the definition of eek, there are two possibilities here. Eek could be considered a synonym for squeak, in which case I was being clever. Or, I could have meant "eke" instead of "eek," which means that I was relying on very tired sports writing cliches after a long day knocking doors.

I suspect the latter.

Regardless, Coleman's call for Franken to concede the day after the election indicates that he is worried. Normy wouldn't make such a call if he didn't think he was in trouble.

--Loosestrife

VOTE

2008-11-03T06:10:00.002-06:00

Volunteer, badger, cajole. Leave it all on the road.

--Loosestrife

Favorite Web Ads: In a Sinking Economy

2008-10-30T22:11:00.002-05:00

--Loosestrife

All You Need to Know

2008-10-26T22:43:00.001-05:00