May They Live Happily Ever After

Benster has been watching the 10:00 pm news pretty consistently with us for the last couple of weeks. Many nights he has commented that the stories are violent and the news is negative.

That is not what I saw on the news this morning.

I saw huge a huge crowd of people milling around in the streets armed with cameras and flags, not guns.

I saw the police using words and hand signals to control the crowd, not riot gear or tear gas.

I saw the crowd being respectful of a famous building, not attempting to break into or camp out overnight in the famous building.

I heard the crowd applaud and yell "kiss, kiss", not shouting angry words.

Sometimes, when most of what we see around us is negative, that is when we really need to hear the story of a smart and beautiful woman falling in love, getting married in a tiara and a gorgeous wedding gown made specially for her, riding off in a carriage to live in a castle with her handsome prince.

Football in April

What, would you really want to talk about the Twins right now?

Benster made fun of the NFL Draft in this space the other day and there's a lot that merits derision about it, but the whole spectacle is some kind of marketing genius. 'Round about now, the NFL poohbahs would rather talk about anything other than the butt-kicking they received in federal court this week. And since we follow the news about the NFC North here, we do need to make a few comments about it.

From what I can tell, the locals aren't too impressed with the pick of quarterback Christian Ponder. My first impression was "Gary Cuozzo for the new century." For those too young to remember Cuozzo, which is probably most people, he was the Vikings quarterback in the short period in between the departure of Joe Kapp and the return of Fran Tarkenton. Cuozzo was a serviceable quarterback and was exceptionally smart, but was the sort of guy who you would want to replace. Ponder strikes me in a similar way. He's apparently off-the-charts bright (graduated in 2 1/2 years, already has a Master's degree) and he's had significant problems staying healthy. Guys like that don't stay long in the NFL, because if he's smart enough to blow through college in 2 1/2 years and get a Master's, he'll figure out that he can make plenty of money in the rest of his life without getting thrown to the ground by Nick Fairley. I assume the Vikings saw all the quarterbacks coming off the board and thought they'd better secure a guy they like, but I have to assume they could have still found Ponder in the 2nd round. I would have drafted someone else, but Ponder isn't necessarily a bad pick.

Which brings us to the problem pick of the draft, the selection of the Lions. It's a problem for everyone else in the division. The aforementioned Fairley is a stud defensive lineman from Auburn and he will now line up next to Ndamakong Suh in the middle of the Detroit defense and wreak havoc. What Detroit now has is a much younger and more athletic version of the Williams Wall on their defense. Life in the division was much easier for the other teams when the Lions were stupid. They aren't any more. I thought this was the smartest move of the day.

Da Bearz took Gabe Carimi, the huge road grader offensive tackle from the Badgers. It's a totally logical pick and Carimi will do a fine job for the evil Bears for probably a decade. Smart guy, nasty and will be able to keep Jay Cutler upright long enough for Cutler to survey the field and then throw an interception.

My beloved Packers, picking last, chose Derek Sherrod, a big tackle from Mississippi State. From all reports this was also a highly sensible and logical pick. Job one in Green Bay is keeping Aaron Rodgers upright and Sherrod looks like an imminent replacement for Chad Clifton, who has been the left tackle for the Packers since the Carter administration, or so it seems.

Evil Guns and Magical Thinking

Mitch Berg tipped his readers to an amazing column by long time anti-gun crusader Heather Martens. Mitch is calling for a full-on blog swarm from his evil conspirators. Allow me to twirl my Snidely Whiplash mustache a bit and just call out one absurd assertion, one out of many that Ms. Martens makes:

Normal people don't take another person's life unnecessarily. People who are inclined to do so are considered sociopaths. Shoot First laws encourage normal people to act like sociopaths, and provide a way for sociopaths to kill with impunity.

Really? If I were to hand Heather Martens a gun, does anyone think she'd shoot me with it if I looked at her crosswise? Perhaps she has a sociopathic toggle switch that flips every time she holds a gun in her hand, but I sure don't. I have never once held a gun and thought to myself, "hey, cool, now I can plug someone!" Have you?

I'd also be curious to see how a "Shoot First" law encourages a normal person to act like a sociopath. Does it trigger voices in your head?

Sociopaths are sociopaths and while a gun might make it easier for a sociopath to kill someone, random killings are exceedingly rare. And there are more ways to kill someone than with a gun. We saw evidence of that recently when some idiot got into an argument at a bar in Dinkytown, got into his car and ran down his purported antagonist, hitting a few innocent bystanders in the process. Did the car cause this idiot to kill?

If I really set my mind to it, I could kill someone with dozens of objects in my home before I ever got around to pulling out a gun. I have plenty of effective cutlery, baseball bats, paving stones, poison and more within a few steps of my home computer. Oddly enough, I've never killed anyone and none of the people who share my domicile have ever thought about using any of these implements of potential destruction to kill anyone, either.

The tool one chooses to kill isn't particularly relevant. Whether one wishes to act like a tool is another matter, of course. Sociopaths are out there -- there's little question of that. But there's no reason to believe that the presence of more effective tools will increase their number.

Benster and D Mock The Draft

'Twas the night before the draft, and all through the house, the sounds of Mel Kiper were getting waaaay too loud! Decrepit, now there's a guy who understands the finer points of HYYYYYPPPPPPEE!

And how to turn a head of hair into a feat of industrial engineering.

That's because he needs to shelter that giant brain full of 40-yard dash times and other draft jargon! Old dude, you know what?

What?

We should mock the draft! You know what separates this blog from all those mouthbreathing weasels who write mock drafts and obsess about the standing vertical jump ability of guys from Abilene Christian?

Other than we write our blog at the dining room table instead of in our mom's basement?

Yeah, you hear me knocking, Geritol fan! We should literally mock the draft, because if there's anything that deserves mocking, it's draft nerds!

I'm with ya, dude. So, how do we do this?

Well, we could undertake a reasoned analysis of the NFC North and the various needs of its member teams. Or we could just make stuff up. I vote for making stuff up.

Okay. Let's go around the division, then. We'll start close to home, with the Vikings.

The Vikings seem to be lacking a certain amount of ability at the wimp position. What's that? You didn't know there was a wimp position in the NFL? Obviously you haven't learned the in-depth thinking of an NFL scout or executive. There's always a need for some wimpiness in every organization. Now that Brad Childress has left town, there's a crying need for a wimp on the team. Brad liked to act like a strutting little bald peacock dude with a Panama hat, but deep down we saw through that and saw his wimpitude. So if you need a wimp, one needs to stay close to home. The Twin Cities isn't filled with macho dudes, except me of course. So I've been busy scouting the local airwaves for available talent. And there's little question that the guy the Vikings need has been busy working as a sideline reporter for FSN. He's got the irritating, high-pitched voice, the stage presence of Tiny Tim and reminds you of a high school loser that never made it with the ladies. Oh, sorry, I started singing Aerosmith there. Anyway, the obvious choice for the Vikings is Robbie Incmikoski.

Robbie would be an intriguing pick, but I'm concerned that the uniform staff at Winter Park would have a difficult time fitting his last name on the jersey. So I think the Vikings ought to take a lesson from another team in town, especially one that has a lot of experience drafting high. That would be their crosstown neighbors, the Timberwolves. David Kahn has made a bajillion trades in the last two years and has turned his team from a 15-win squad to a 17-win squad. Now, that's not so good if you play 82 games, but the Vikings only 16, so if they could win 15 that would be pretty good. Kahn loves to draft guys who are "long and athletic," although that seems to translate into guys with overactive pituitary glands. The one guy who the Wolves really love, but haven't been able to bring to town, is the guy who might do the most to turn things around for the Vikes. My pick for the Vikings is Ricky Rubio.

Good pick, old dude! Now, let's get to the Lions. The Lions have a definite need for attitude. They've been kicked around for over 50 years now and they show up for work wearing really wimpy light blue shirts. Now that's okay if you are a claims adjuster or something, but there's a rumor that the Lions are actually in the National Football League, so they may need to step up their game a bit. I would recommend that if you want attitude in Detroit, you should keep the search local and find the Detroiter with the most attitude possible. I ruled out Jimmy Hoffa because he's been missing since 20 years before I was born, and I also ruled out former Pistons bad boy extraordinaire Bill Laimbeer because he's been hanging out with the Timberwolves and that's pretty much the kiss of death when it comes to toughness and attitude. My pick for the Lions is the real Slim Shady, Eminem.

I've always thought the reason the Lions stink is that they are, well, cheap. So it stands to reason that they won't want to spend a lot of money on this pick. They also tend to be absurdly loyal to people who are already on the payroll, which means that the right guy for the Lions should be someone who is already in the employ of the Ford family and who knows a little something about unpleasant tasks. Let's face it, being a member of the Lions is one of the dirtiest jobs around, so my pick for the Lions is "Dirty Jobs" host, and Ford spokesman, Mike Rowe.

Now, it's time to go on to daaaaaa Bearz. Let's face facts here, people. Da Bears have two things that they are famous for -- nastiness and a tedency to be evil. The problem is that it's really tough to get your evil street cred when your head coach is named Lovie. I mean, what? Thurston Howell III wasn't available? Maybe these dopes should change their names to the Care Bears and be done with it! What a bunch of weenies! I recommend that da Bearz get back to basics and live up to their ruthless past. Now what is more ruthless than a guy who calls in air strikes against his own citizens? He's also a little crazy like Dick Butkus was. The obvious choice for da Bearz is Muammar Gadaffi.

That's probably a pretty good pick for the Bears, but I think what they really need to do is ramp up their obnoxiousness factor a little bit. Bears fans are at their best when they are obnoxious, so the team really needs to take a guy who combines bad taste and a really, really grating voice. Since they can't draft their shameless homer broadcaster Hub Arkush, since he already works for them, I'm going to recommend that they go for the suddenly available one-time voice of the AFLAC duck, Gilbert Gottfried.

So that leaves us with our beloved, Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers! You did know that they won the Super Bowl, right? I realize no one in Minnesota has ever seen the Vince Lombardi Trophy, but trust me, it's pretty cool and we have four of them in Green Bay. Okay, that's enough Vikings bashing -- back to business. The problem in Wisconsin lately is that even though the season has been over for two months now, the people in Wisconsin continue to keep acting like they are in a scrimmage, except they use politicians instead of linebackers. Now, I'm really tired of this -- if Wisconsin is going to put all this effort into fighting, they need to have these folks suit up in Green and Gold and go kick some Lion butt! That's why I am recommending that the Packers select David Prosser.

I think you're on to something, Seabiscuit, but the problem is Prosser probably won't be available. I do like your theory, though, so I'm going to recommend that they select JoAnne Kloppenburg instead. She's available and she'll probably be ready to kick somebody's butt. And her hair is no more absurd than Clay Matthews's hair.

Now I know one thing, Decrepit -- there's no way that Mel Kiper could have come up with anything close to our mock draft. I am hoping that you'll get me a Mel Kiper fright wig for Halloween, though. But I have to ask you one thing --

What's that, young fella?

Would wearing that much fiberglass on my head cause me to have a slipped disk in my neck?

Possibly. Do you mean to tell me you aren't prepared to suffer for your art?

No, suffering for my art is the job of the readers. Ben out!

The NFL Gets a Smackdown

Chances are you've heard that the NFL owners lost pretty decisively in U.S. District Court here in Minneapolis this week. The upshot of Judge Susan Nelson's decision is that the lockout of players will likely end and that further negotiations will favor the players.

Most football fans really don't care who wins the dispute between the owners and the players. All they care about is football. It's difficult to muster a lot of sympathy for the Jerry Joneses and Zygi Wilfs of the world, who sit atop a magnificent marketing machine that delivers a product people desire. Everyone involved in the enterprise, owners and players alike, is well-compensated for their efforts.

My take is that the players won this round because they had the better case. It may be out there, but I still haven't seen a compelling rationale for what the owners wanted, especially expanding the regular season schedule to 18 games. Everyone agrees that the preseason is too long and the product on the field is exceptionally substandard in those preseason games, but given the physical strength and agility of the players, and given the laws of physics, the players had a pretty good argument about the toll that extra league games would take on their careers.

I remember watching an old clip from NFL Films that featured then-Atlanta Falcons coach Jerry Glanville admonishing one of his players for a dumb play. Glanville said something like, "you know what the NFL stands for, right? It stands for Not For Long." And that is the truth, especially for the players. Football is easily the most unsentimental of the major sports and it's the one that most rigorously enforces performance standards. If you can't play up to standards in the NFL, no matter the reason, you don't see the field. That's one thing that makes the game so compelling, but it also puts enormous pressure on the players to perform at the highly demanding level the NFL requires. The players aren't unreasonable in asking for whatever protection, and whatever compensation, they can get, because the opportunities don't last long. Judge Nelson recognized that in her ruling. Now I hope that the games can begin without further incident.

This is the 2,500th post on Mr. Dilettante's Neighborhood

You're probably thinking, does this guy ever shut up? It would appear not.

We've been at this for about 5 1/2 years now, which works out to more than one post a day. I started this thing out as a lark, which is why I chose to include the word "dilettante" in the title. It's turned out to be something more than a lark -- 2,500 of anything is not a lark.

I still think there's a measure of dilettantism involved in our enterprise -- although I do know a little about music and have lotsa opinions on politics, I certainly claim no great depth of knowledge or insight. I've learned many things from this experience and have had some remarkably good blogging role models along the way. Like, to use just a couple of examples, this guy and this guy. And yes, this guy, too. Better still, I've made some great friends through blogging and have received great stores of wisdom, insight and encouragement from all of you. The joy in blogging is not throwing down words on a blank screen -- it's hoping that those who find this feature might get a little wisdom, insight or encouragement, too.

Night Writer posted a quote from "To Kill a Mockingbird" on a comment here earlier today:

"There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible."



- Atticus Finch

We can't keep the ugliness away, but if our little enterprise can give you even a brief respite from it, we'll have accomplished something. Thank you for your support and encouragement. All of us who write here will do our best to make sure we deserve it.

DOMA Alone

One thing you rarely see is a law firm abandoning its representation of a particular client. I worked for a large law firm for nearly five years and can only think of one instance where it happened, when a client who was engaged in bankruptcy proceedings was hiding assets, a la the Denny Hecker case that we saw recently.

It's one thing to say you can't represent someone when you know they are engaging in criminal behavior, but quite another when a law firm abandons a law itself. That's what happened this week, as the law firm of King & Spaulding, which was retained by the House of Representatives to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, suddenly bailed on the case. Byron York reports:

Legal insiders knew there would be controversy when Paul Clement, the former solicitor general, signed on to defend the Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenge. But few could have predicted a controversy so intense that Clement's law firm, under fire from gay activists, would abruptly abandon the defense, forcing Clement to resign in protest. And yet that is what happened on Monday.

York explains the chronology:

The Act was passed in 1996 by overwhelming bipartisan majorities -- 342 to 67 in the House and 85 to 14 in the Senate -- and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Gay activists have long opposed it, and many hoped that President Obama and congressional Democrats would repeal it. That didn't happen.

But in February, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the president has now decided DOMA is unconstitutional. Therefore, even though it is the Justice Department's responsibility to defend the laws that Congress passes, and even though the Obama Justice Department defended DOMA in 2009 and 2010, Holder declared the Department would no longer defend the Act against various court challenges that have been brought by activist groups.

That's where Paul Clement came in. When House Speaker John Boehner decided the House would defend DOMA in court, the House retained the giant firm King & Spalding, with Clement handling the case. Firm management considered the likelihood that the representation would be controversial -- that was pretty much guaranteed -- but still signed off on Clement's participation.

That's when the pressure started. King & Spalding prides itself on its diversity programs; in recent years, it has been a national sponsor of the gay-rights Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and boasts that it "actively recruits LGBT law students." When word got out that King & Spalding was defending DOMA, there was talk of gay groups cutting all ties with the firm. Of discouraging top students from joining the firm. Of protests.

Clement's representation caused tension inside King & Spalding, and on Monday that tension spilled into public view. The firm publicly withdrew from the DOMA case and Clement immediately resigned.

There are two things that strike me as particularly odd about this case. First, whatever the merits of DOMA, it's not a problem if the Obama administration opposes the law. What is a problem is the way they've gone about dealing with their opposition. It would be far more preferable for the administration to publicly support a bill in Congress that repeals DOMA, rather than bailing on its defense of the law. There would be a political price to pay for it, but if you are sincere in your beliefs, then you should make the case.

Second, the idea that a law firm would pull the rug out from underneath one of its partners is astonishing. As noted above, the firm was getting pressed by gay groups. York details even more pressure in his report. Still, lawyers don't fold under such pressures. Or at least they didn't until now.

What does it say about the state of American law that it is easier to get an attorney, and the full support of his/her law firm, if you are a terror suspect, than it is if you are the leader of one half of the legislative branch of government seeking to defend an existing statute? To me, it says the law, and the practice of law, is getting so thoroughly politicized that even basic standards of legal practice are on shaky ground. No matter what you think about the relative merits of the Defense of Marriage Act, that ought to scare the hell out of you.

Happy St. Mark's Day!

Most Catholics can celebrate the feast day of a saint that shares their name. Today is St. Mark's Day.

Before I was born, my parents apparently had the plan that they would name any boys they had after the four Gospel writers. As a result, I ended up being named Mark, which is a pretty common first name for people of my generation -- there were 3 other Marks in my high school class, which out of a class of 150 is rather a lot.

As saints go, Mark is a pretty good patron to have. Mark was not one of the Twelve but came to the faith early and worked with both St. Paul and St. Peter. He also wrote the second Gospel. His works took him to Asia Minor and he was reportedly martyred in Alexandria some time after the year 60 AD. He is also associated with Venice, where St. Mark's Cathedral is located.

Of the four Gospels, Mark's is the shortest and he takes almost a Jack Webb approach to the matter. He lays out the facts of Jesus's life and pays most attention to the miracles, with less attention given to the teachings. Mark worked closely with St. Peter to write his Gospel, which is one reason why the details matter.

My parents couldn't have known that their son would some day wish to write. Although they were both clear communicators, neither were especially writerly in how they lived. Perhaps they knew something, though, when they chose my name. I do know this -- if you are going to have a patron, Mark is a pretty good one to have.

John 20 1-9

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”



3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Rejoice, everyone! Jesus Christ is risen today!

One more time, since it doesn't seem to be sinking in with some people

A few gentle reminders:

1) Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a U.S. citizen.

2) Even if he weren't born in Hawaii, his mother was a U.S. citizen, which makes him a U.S. citizen. That would be true even if he was born in Kenya, or Indonesia, or beamed down from Planet Zorf. Which he wasn't.

3) We rightly ridicule Andrew Sullivan for the wild-ass theories he progagates about Sarah Palin's son Trig. We stare in disbelief at the spectacle of those who believe 9-11 was some sort of inside job. We marvel and scoff at the cottage industry that continues to surround the assassination of John F. Kennedy, nearly 50 years on. We do these things for good reason. And yet some of our putative friends throw all that common sense out the window, because they wish to believe conspiracy theories that are more in line with fan fiction than reality.

4) You can, I think, believe that Barack Obama's presidency is dunderheaded, inept, mendacious, intellectually vacant and morally bankrupt. You can mention with confidence the notion that he has surrounded himself with knaves, mountebanks, thugs and brown nosers. You can describe his performance in office as that of a dilettante (ahem), a malingerer and someone who is aloof to the point of catatonia. Even if all of these assertions are accurate, his presidency is not illegitimate. Barack Obama won the election in 2008, decisively. He is the President of the United States. So can we give this birther crap a rest, please?

Thank you. And have a totally bitchin' weekend!

Working Blue

Anyone have any idea what this means? Here's Derek Wallbank of MinnPost, describing the state of Michele Bachmann's current fundraising:

Michele Bachmann, quite frankly, has a pornographic amount of money. $2.8 million in the bank right now, despite her congressional committee spending more money in the 1st quarter of a non-election year ($787,000) than some campaigns will spend in an entire cycle. However, you can spend three-quarters of a million dollars without killing the bottom line when you raise $1.7 million, I guess.

Emphasis mine. So I ask, innocently of course, what makes an amount of money "pornographic?" If Bachmann had, say, $1.4 million in the bank, would her total be merely "ribald," or perhaps "bawdy?" And if she had $700,000, would that be "chaste" or even "prim?"

I ask the question for a couple of reasons. One, it's my solemn duty to bust Wallbank's chops, because he's actually a pretty decent reporter and there's a fair amount of useful information and analysis at the link. But I also ask because what gets described as pornographic is such a subjective thing. The most famous example was the observation of the late Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, in a 1964 case:

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . "

Perhaps where campaign money is concerned, Wallbank knows it when he sees it, too. But ought we to trust how he sees it?

The larger issue is what makes the word choice so interesting. As we are reminded, the blue-nosed Puritan killjoys among our cohort are always hot to ban the prurient and the pandering, because Puritan killjoys know that prurience has no redeeming social value. As the wags always note, there are plenty of Puritans out there who like their prurience just fine, so long as they can keep it from public view. As a dedicated wag, I can vouch for that.

The Puritans of the Left are always disapproving of money and ostentatious displays of wealth, of course. It is especially bad form for someone like Bachmann to have a pile. Whatever you think about Michele Bachmann's politics, she is a genius self-promoter and has done an excellent job leveraging her career. She is also a genius at driving bien pensants crazy. Those two factors are inextricable and are the formula for her success.

The thing about pornography is that it is illegitimate. If there is evidence that Bachmann is getting her money Duke Cunningham-style, that would be one thing. Bachmann gets a lot of her funding from individual donors. Are they somehow illegitimate too, because they have chosen to lavish their resources on Bachmann?

I don't expect Derek Wallbank, or anyone else, to answer a series of rhetorical questions. I would hope that Wallbank and his colleagues might think about how their word choices resonate, though. I'd wager his column will probably net Bachmann even more money, and I'd hate for a respected journalist to be an unwitting participant in a pornographic enterprise.

What you want and what you get

Over at MinnPost, Eric Black is gloating over polling results that would appear to be, ahem, problematic to the Republicans who are talking about structural reforms to entitlement spending:

In one question (really series of questions) the Post offered respondents five ideas for reducing the national debt. Four of the five were unpopular but the two that were most unpopular were “cutting spending on Medicare” (78 percent opposed) and “cutting spending on Medicaid" (69 percent opposed). Also unpopular, but not as much, were cuts to military spending and a broad tax increase tied to small changes in entitlement spending.

I took a poll of Americans 5 years ago and discovered that nearly 84 percent would like a parfait delivered to their doorstep every night. And in recent polling, I've found out that nearly 67 percent would oppose ending the Parfait Entitlement Act of 2006.

It doesn't matter whether Americans are opposed to cutting Medicare spending. It's hardly surprising -- programs that fund expensive things for people are always going to be popular. It doesn't change the fundamental problem of demographics. We are getting older and we do not have nearly enough young people to finance the costs. Nothing is going to change that. And when we are old and the bills come due, the young people won't be able to pay the bills. Waving a Washington Post poll from 2011 in their faces won't change that.

Republicans may very well lose this election if they actually fight this fight. That's fine. We'll get what we deserve, one way or another.

Dead But Too Dumb to Lie Down

The headline to this post is a ripoff of a line from P. J. O'Rourke, which he wrote in 1991. O'Rourke was writing about communism. I'm writing about Joanne Kloppenburg*.

A few observations:

• Kloppenburg is not going to win this recount. She knows this. There's ample evidence that the Waukesha County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, is inept. But there's no evidence that she did anything that was even close to malfeasance. Kloppenburg knows that as well.
• So why is Kloppenburg pursuing the matter, if there's no chance she'll prevail? Because (a) she can, and (b) the Democrats have a vested interest in not letting this thing go. At some point the matter of the budget repair law will finally escape the clutches of the hack Dane County judge who is currently holding it hostage and will find its way to the Supreme Court. Since David Prosser would likely be, barring anything really unforseen, the deciding vote in favor of the constitutionality of the law, delaying his return to the bench is helpful to the cause. After all, given we've been through 2 months of scorched earth tactics, why not break out a little more butane?
• As a practical matter, Kloppenburg's career as an assistant attorney general is over. Her boss, Republican Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen, may end up having to move against her at some point as this matter proceeds through the recount to its inevitable court challenge afterward. She can't stay there and while she's useful to her supporters for now, once this thing is over she'll have to find some other way to keep herself going. She might as well keep her name out there and maybe she'll be able to find something else to do with her life. Martyrdom can be lucrative, especially in the legal biz.
• So why is she dumb, and why is this effort dumb? Because while Kloppenburg and her allies are still fighting, everyone else is really, really tired of this circus. The next step in the process are the various recall elections that embittered partisans are trying to impose on state senators. Do you suppose that the outside money will continue to flow in for these exercises in spite?  Maybe. But if you think the people of Wisconsin want to be trapped in a permanent election cycle, you are dumb. People are really tired of this crap. The backlash is coming and it's going to be something to behold.

*No, I don't think Kloppenburg is a Communist. Communists had more fashion sense.

Football News

We didn't get to celebrate it much, actually. Because the political situation in Wisconsin got so nasty in February, there really wasn't much time for otherwise contentious Cheeseheads to celebrate the fact that the Packers somehow won the Super Bowl earlier this year. Which is a shame, because I'd rather see this than this (second link is definitely NSFW).

We've talked about it before, but one of the reasons the National Football League has been so successful is that they can generate attention pretty much at will. Yesterday we learned about the 2011 regular season schedule, which probably will take place once the NFLPA and the league wake up and realize that the are being idiots.

So the interesting thing for the Packers is this:  they will have games on Thanksgiving Day (the traditional visit to Detroit), Christmas Day (at Lambeau against the hated Bears) and New Year's Day (when Detroit comes to Lambeau).

That's a tough holiday stretch. There was a time when the NFL wouldn't have scheduled a game on Christmas Day, but we're long past that now. I suspect that the Bears aren't especially keen about spending Christmas Day in the Fox River Valley, either.

Meanwhile, the Vikings don't get a lot of love or national exposure this year, although they do get a visit to Lambeau for a Monday night game in November.

The larger point -- the NFL is now at the point where it does as it pleases and the rest of the world responds to it. While that's nice work if you can get it, you have to wonder a little bit.

Transgressions Against the Transgressive

Things that make you go hmmm.

When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion.

Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti-blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon.

So what do we make of this? My first reaction was, "aww, that's a shame." Still, I sense there's more to it.

Clearly the work was meant as an insult, but is destroying the expression of an insult the way to go? It's a tough question, especially since I recently was deploring the way political opponents shout people down in Madison. How should one react?

I would say this:  we certainly shouldn't hold sacred an object that was designed to be blasphemous, but at the same time I'd have preferred either of two alternatives have happened:

1) We continue to talk about such things and make our displeasure clear, without resorting to destruction; or

2) The better option -- we do a better job of ignoring such sophomoric provocations when they happen, because doing so robs the provocateur of his power.

What say you?

La la la

I can't hear you.

The Obama administration moved swiftly to downplay ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgrade of its U.S. credit outlook, calling the decision a political judgment that should not be taken too seriously.

The truth hurts, I suppose. Let's stipulate a few things at the outset, since this our current financial travails are subject to all manner of tu quoque argument.

• What we face has been a long time coming
• We've been kicking the can down the road for a long time
• Most of what we've tried to do in recent years (TARP, stimulus, etc.) hasn't worked very well and much of it has made the situation worse
• While it can be fun to question the motives of those who passed these programs, it's not especially useful when we are trying to move forward, because
• You can blame both sides of the political aisle for the problem and be correct

The question is this:  what do we do about it now? We are running out of time to make a palatable decision.

One last thing -- S&P really doesn't have an incentive to be political. In fact, as a ratings agency if they are overtly political in their judgments, they will lose credibility. They have strong reason to be as neutral as possible.

Crash-scene analysis -- the Timberwolves

You might have heard of these guys. I have it on good authority that they are an actual NBA franchise and that they regularly play some of the best basketball teams in the world, in much the same manner that the Washington Generals play the Harlem Globetrotters. One of their players seems to have a connection to the Beach Boys, too.

It's the Timberwolves, of course, perhaps the least-relevant team in town. They improved their results by over 10% this season, but going from 15 wins to 17 isn't so great when you still are the worst team in the league. So what is wrong with these guys?

I'd say it's pretty simple -- it's ownership. Glen Taylor built a hugely successful, multibillion dollar business in his day job, but he's never quite figured out how the NBA works. The team got lucky one time in the draft and got Kevin Garnett, but that was over 15 years ago now and for the most part they have been pretty rudderless since then. The current majordomo, David Kahn, is an arrogant dude who loves making deals but seems to have no sense of the big picture. He stocks up on point guards and power forwards but there's no coherence to the roster he's assembled.

Meanwhile, the coach he brought in, Kurt Rambis, seemed to be at odds with what Kahn wanted the team to do. If you bring in a bunch of young athletes and then market the team as a running squad, you probably don't want to bring in a coach who uses a complicated set offense that works best in the half-court game.

So what do we have in Minnesota now? The best player is Kevin Love, who fits the Rambis scheme. Most of the other guys who are on the team (Michael Beasley, Anthony Randolph, Martell Webster, etc.) don't. They await the arrival of Ricky Rubio, a 20-year old Spaniard who isn't exactly tearing up Europe. And they might, at long last, have the first pick in the draft, in a year where the best players are all power forwards.

What do you do? If it were me, I'd get rid of Kahn and bring in a guy who has built winners elsewhere. Give him the power to pick his own coach. And then wait. What would you do?

Amusing

President Obama, caught on an open mike (but not really, of course):

"When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, you know, he's just being America's accountant…," Obama said, "this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill -- but wasn't paid for. So it's not on the level. And we've got to keep on, you know, keep on shining a light on that."

Our friend Rich, who's obviously plugged in to the latest sounds, commenting here last week:

this is the same Paul Ryan who helped to run up this massive debt by fervently embracing the reckeless Bush tax cuts, the unpaid-for Iraqi and Afghani wars, a massive new and, again, unpaid for prescription drug benefit, TARP, etc. and now complains when Obama points out the obvious flaws in Ryan's plan.

Is it live, or is it Memorex?

Losing the Plot in Mad City

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party came to Madison on Saturday for a Tax Day rally at the Capitol. Not surprisingly, the ever-present Madison rent-a-mob was there, too, with their vuvezulas, cowbells, drums and their upraised middle fingers, trying to shout down the presenters.

You can see plenty o' video, pix and more at Althouse. The beauty post is the one about the 14-year old girl who gets booed as she addresses the crowd.

There's two ways to look at what happened. The first, which would be more charitable to the protesters, is that they have fought a hard fight and are still coming to grips with their loss. It must be galling to see Sarah Palin come to the place where many of them had taken up temporary residence and watch her spike the football in their faces.

The other way to look at thing is this way:  these are a bunch of spoiled children who have been participating in a tantrum for well over 2 months now. Their arguments have been made, heard and rejected. And instead of going home and thinking about better ways to make their argument the next time, they instead decided to throw turds in the punchbowl.

Not surprisingly, I think the latter argument is more compelling. It's clear that a lot of the protesters have lost sight of the bigger picture. No matter what you think of the propriety of putting a adolescent girl on the stage at a Tea Party rally, trying to boo her off the stage is behavior I'd expect out of pre-adolescents. The British have a useful term for such madness -- they call it "losing the plot." That seems to be what's happened to a lot of people in Madison these days.

My brother and my sister-in-law were there yesterday and my sister-in-law wrote the following on her Facebook page:

This was an experience for me. I have never attended a political rally. I must ...say, I was taken aback with the amount disruption of the "protestors" banging on drums, yelling profanities at the speakers, fliipping off the speakers, and yelling through bullhorns at the speakers. I was pleasantly surprised that they did stop drumming half way through the national anthem, when they figured out it was being sung. We taught our children at a young age what it means to be a "good audience member" I also know they were taught this in Kindergarten. I left the rally feeling good that I went, but also scratching my head in bewilderment, wondering how these people were raised, and why on earth they would think it is ok to behave in such a way?

One would hope, for the sake of my sister-in-law and everyone else, that those questions aren't merely rhetorical. My sister-in-law and everyone else in Wisconsin deserve an honest answer.

In case you hadn't heard

David Prosser won the election in Wisconsin. Thought you should know.