Handy Washington Post caucus map, and my little predictions

This political mapping site on WashingtonPost.com makes all this caucus-schmockus stuff so much easier to follow:

Washington Post interative caucus map

So it looks like a candidate needs about 2,000 votes to win. We're still in the double-digits on the GOP side and just breaking the triple-digits on the Democratic side, so the numbers showing Huckabee ahead of McCain I think are misleading at this point. But what do I know?

I predict:

FOR THE DEMS:
Obama the orator will beat the pants off of Hillary "stiff, tired and no fun at a party" Clinton. She seems to have picked up nothing from her husband but a funny-looking child.

FOR THE GOP:
McCain the war hero will beat the pants off of Mitt "I was born rich and look the part, which is a liability in a recession" Romney. Huckabee will garner a few hundred delegates on Super Tuesday and win some headlines, but won't really register after too long. We do not mix God and politics in this country as much as people think.

END RESULT:
In a general election race between Obama and McCain, the "war on terrorism" gun-nuts will square off against the "let's pull out and leave the middle east in even more chaos" defeatists, each calling the other wimps or Nazis. Whoever yells the loudest wins.

THE SAD PART:
Bill Richardson was the only viable candidate with international experience (former ambassador to the U.N., and hostage negotiator!), executive-level experience (Governor of New Mexico), immigration experience (Governor of New Mexico), and federal experience in a field that really affects our daily lives (former Energy Secretary). And he's out of the race.

The rest are all sad-sacks and I just don't care anymore...

THOUGHTS?

Aqua vs. Aura

I was just invited to party tonight at Aqua, the trendy, dress-to-get-sexed downtown Minneapolis club.

I momentarily confused it with Aura, the intimate martini bar in Calhoun Square, Uptown Minneapolis, which is very Brooklyn-esque: http://www.mndaily.com/drinkanddine/details/88/Aura

Either way, I'm a bit of a fish out of water at either venue. But it's time to test my comfort zones and booty-bump with the beautiful people. Right after I do two months worth of laundry.

What the Star Tribune is doing to its Jimmy Olsens

It looks like all the young talent at the Star Tribune has been put on probation -- indefinitely! For a union-paper about to enter contract negotiations, that's a clear sign that Avista Co., the Star-Tribune's parent company, is going to use the youngsters as a bargaining chip in a blood-bath of a contract dispute that will surely see an end to the STRIB as we know it. These are tough times. Sigh. Sigh.

MinnPost / MPR media media critic David Brauer has been following the re-re-restructuring of the Star Tribune, which has been so dizzying over the past few years that he deserves a cigarette and a band-aid for paying so close attention. I mean, it's like watching rough sex, man.

Just click the headline above to find out about the push toward weekly suburban coverage, and then the push away from it in favor of folding coverage of the 'burbs into the zoned daily editions, and now back toward the weekly model. Jeez criminy!

At least the Strib is honest about the fact that this is advertiser-driven. Advertisers apparently prefer being associated with a once-a-week insert that was dotted with news than with a daily package that was sparse on it.

Here's a little footnote to this advertiser-sponsored indecisiveness: The 7 or 8 20-something cub reporters who wrote for weeklies like "Strib South" and "Strib North" were folded into the newspaper (and the Minnesota Newspaper Guild / Communications Workers of America labor union) as the Strib went to daily zoning. Now, despite their AFL-CIO cards, they could all lose their jobs!

Here's why: These hard-working Jimmy Olsens were all treated as new employees and put on 3-month probation when the Strib began zoning their daily editions a couple of months ago, even though some had been with the paper for more than a year.

Well, those "three-month" probations are "over" but they just got extended ... to 9 months!

This is a bare-faced bargaining tool for parent corp. Avista Co. You're jerking your 20-something reporters around, and expecting loyalty to the paper and to the profession as the newbies mature into the profession? Ouch. Is Minnesota Public Radio hiring??

Sick of flag-waving as a defense for not asking basic questions

Apologies to my untold fans for being incommunicado these many months. Life changes took precedence....

There's an Oscar-nominated documentary out that takes a look at the death of a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by U.S. troops after five days in a military prison camp. The military later released his passengers from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, finding no evidence the prisoners took part in any wrongdoing.

The soldiers were later tried and convicted of assault, but they appear on camera saying they were scapegoated by superiors who basically told them to get information out of the poor guy anyway they could. The superior officers looked the other way when these interrogators used increasingly brutal force.

The film is called "Taxi to the Dark Side." A CNN video is available through the headline link above.

Look, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, I truly believe America is a great country and allows us many freedoms other countries don't, and that our constitution is the best-written constitution around, and the most noble, notable and enduring. (Not that 200 years is all that long a time in the scheme of things, but still...)

But if you're still taking an "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies" approach to our habit of detaining Iraqis and Afghanis and holding them for years without charges, then... um... you suck.

So far, 250 Americans have been tried for heinous interrogation methods, according to the CNN clip. Those are just the ones that have been caught.

Yes, we were attacked on Sept. 11. And we have a right to find those perpetrators and bring them to justice. But let's get real. A 22-year-old taxi cab driver? What did he ever do to anyone? We're squandering U.S. lives and the lives of the people we're supposedly out there to protect.

Be patriotic by holding the right people accountable up and down the line, not just the adrenaline-blinded army grunts who were pressured into these heinous crimes.

The D word is everywhere --- and I'm not even married.

Suffering through the death throes of an ill-fated, on-again, off-again relationship, I once made the mistake in college of turning to my friend Sam for advice. "You could always ask her to marry you," said Sam, a brilliant pre-medical student who had recently become engaged to his girlfriend of three months.

"It's a way of realling hooking someone in there," he continued, with a little clutching gesture, like someone who has just scored in tennis. "And if things don't work out, that's what divorce is for."

For various reasons, Sam and I did not stay friends much longer. Marriage proposals used as carrot / stick bargaining tools -- or hostage tools, more like it -- falls somewhere between incredibly tacky and mildly criminal in my eyes. That said, such crap is probably fairly common.

But what's just as, if not more, concerning to me is the D word. The Star Tribune is doing a depressing yet informative series on divorce and its many zany permutations. For instance, there's the divorce where the couple remain best of friends and still vacation together with the kids, otherwise known as the "And why did we bother getting divorced?" divorce.

Then there's this trend of wife-initiated divorces. Now 66 percent of all divorces involving women over age 40 are apparently her idea, with boredom being a top reason giving up on couplehood. Hope you're better entertained flying solo...(supposedly, many women say they are!)

None of this sounds like much fun, from my self-serving male perspective. Sure, it's nice to know that if I ever get married, and things turn out as rocky as my last five relationships (I average a new one every two years, since college), there's an "eject button."

Scratch that last thought. It isn't nice knowing that, not at all. It's scary. Because odds are, with two people both stationed by the escape hatch, when traffic gets bumpy, someone will use it.

So what's the big deal? If everyone is getting divorced (except my parents, almost 40 years and still going strong!) and there's no longer a taboo associated with a failed union, why fear the marriage reaper?

Perhaps that's precisely what scares me most. It isn't taboo any longer to simply give up and walk away. And that speaks loads about how self-interested we've become as a society, our uniquely American brand of individualism par excellence.

What's ironic here is that as our willingness to put up with our mate's body odor or stale sweat socks diminishes, our childcentric rhetoric only increases. Everything is "for the children."

An exasperated mom wrote an excellent piece for Time Magazine about how sick to death she is of her fellow suburban soccer moms and their germ-phobic helicoptering. (Tonight at 9: How safe is your playground? Could your child slip off the slide???)



It doesn't take a Sept. 11 to get us to look out for each other, to remember the other person is in the room. It takes a Sept. 11 to get us to like ourselves.

Six Haikus About Failing and Being Dumped

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
She and I used to write poems in bed < Bidgmancantleave > 02/02 16:46:14

side by side, or on
the phone, into the sweet void
thinking she heard me


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wishing I were a better man, oh my lord, my lord < ThisiswhatIhave > 02/25 22:31:09

Then rising prayers
Would not leak condemnation
Down, down upon me

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The little I've offered < Thisiswhathave > 02/25 22:26:26

Opening my hand
Hoping world does not reject
Little I've offered

-------------------------------
One last poem before I leave work < BidgmaninMinneapolis > 02/02 16:43:12

Messy desk, always
Dark night in January
She dumped me last month
---------------------------------------
Dumped on my birthday < bidgman > 02/02 16:30:01

Her timing sucked ass
Inevitable anger
Hating loving her
--------------------------------------------
Dumped on my birthday II < Bidgmanagain > 02/02 16:39:25

When its over I
say its not over I say
take me back please please

Which X-men are you? I'm a powerful nerdy tramp...

What the freak! I took this online survey to determine what kind of X-men I would be, and it tells me I'm someone's geeky yet sexy kid sister.

Phooey!

You Are Shadowcat

You're like a little sister to some, but others see you as a sex kitten. You are well trained in martial arts, a bit of a computer geek, and can totally kick butt. Powers: the ability to "phase" through walls and other physical objects

Which of the X-Men Are You?

New Star Tribune owner's resume: off-shore oil drilling and direct mail

Strib columnist Nick Coleman today has the best analysis I've seen so far of the Star Tribune sale to the Avista Corp., whose major holdings include nothing in newspapers, but plenty in the area of direct mail and off-shore oil drilling:

http://www.startribune.com/357/story/903516.html

I used to work for an Avista-like company that also had no knowledge of the newspaper field, and no interest in learning. It was called Fidelity. And it owned a chain of about 100 weekly newspapers, where I was a lowly cub reporter.

As reporters and editors began to quit, Fidelity decided not to hire any staff to take their place. Instead, under-staffed papers would borrow more and more articles from the neighboring towns. The result was laughable at best, but to longtime readers it was straight out offensive.

Just imagine opening up the "Bloomington Weekly News" and finding only coverage of St. Paul and Edina!

It got to the point where the weekly papers were cobbled together by one reporter and one editor. And then just an editor. And then by no regular staff at all, with the task of laying out articles performed by whomever in the shared newsroom happened to have a hand free.

Of course, from Fidelity's perspective, the staff was completely expendable. After all, it's advertisements that pay the bills. So why not get rid of content entirely and just fill the paper with ads? After all, everyone loves waking up in the morning to a cup of coffee and the weekly supermarket shopper. Am I right?

Of course not.

Suffice it to say, Fidelity eventually got out of the newspaper business. Let's hope Avista is a quicker study.

Supposedly, this is a nice l'il Internet...

I like this site for its local political analysis: http://minnpolitics.blogspot.com

I like this site for its in-depth listing of all the Green Lanterns who have ever patrolled the myriad sectors of the universe, on behalf of the blue Guardians of Oa:
www.glcorps.org

And I like this site because supposedly, it gets me on the Web:
Affordable T1 Service price quotes and Discount T1 lines from cheap T1 providers. Instant Quotes!

The end is nigh

They put Hillary AND Barack Obama on the cover of Newsweek?

The media really is trying to cancel these two out, aren't they? And the Dems will sit back and let them do it, as usual.

And the conservatives will cackle all the way to the White House.

Get ready for John McCain in 2008.