Show Prep and Link Dump Page

This game is done. Please head over to http://martinandrade.wordpress.com for all my linkage and dumpage goodness

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NRO List

Other list

another list

and the last (for now)

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So...some guy watches an episode of Futurama and gets an article?

The "Auld Lang" new years song:

Here's a translation, which you can see refers to a friendship between childhood friends who have been parted and met again. Literally it means that for the sake of our long friendship we should join hands and share a drink together in the spirit of good will. To extend that meaning it means that we should not forget our old friends and celebrate reunion with them.

Should old acquaintances be forgotten,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintances be forgotten,
And days of long ago !

Chorus:
For old long ago, my dear
For old long ago,
We will take a cup of kindness yet
For old long ago.

We two have run about the hillsides
And pulled the daisies fine,
But we have wandered many a weary foot
For old long ago.

We two have paddled (waded) in the stream
From noon until dinner time,
But seas between us broad have roared
Since old long ago.

And there is a hand, my trusty friend,
And give us a hand of yours,
And we will take a goodwill draught (of ale)
For old long ago!

And surely you will pay for your pint,
And surely I will pay for mine!
And we will take a cup of kindness yet
For old long ago!
1 year ago
Source(s):
Here's an interesting link on the traditional Scottish celebration of New Years Eve or 'Hogmanay'

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J. Goldberg's

Liberal thread

Classical liberalism doesn't really count

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Great books I

Great Books II

And another

Condensed reading list reference

Bulletin of Oita prefectural College of Arts and Culture
Vol.32(19941231) pp. 91-98
Oita Prefectural College of Art and Culture ISSN:13466437

The first edition of the ten year plan

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Most Damaging books

YAF List

Jonah Goldberg's

Random 1

Law

The Insider

National Review

Conservative Times

Random II

Freeper thread

Federalist society

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I know guys like this

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Midrash explained

Global Warming stats

To Read: Spe Salvi

Charlie Wilson

McCain top choice against Democrats

Protestant Critique

Constitutionality of SCOTUS filibuster

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A history of the Huckamiester

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Ebert, come on...

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Here; I published an article April 25th of 2001, it marked my first published column and the first of my online content.

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To do: Fisk

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Virtual Slide Rule

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Legend Tripping

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Classic Pen Set

Pay as you go wrong

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The Pontifical Academy of Sciences?

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New York considering Horse Carriage ban

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It can happen, 90 seconds appears to be the max

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Crime in US

Note to self: make ThinkGeek wishlist

The safety-nazis just won't stop

Jobs are not public goods

Voting an whatnot

Marvin Miller for HOF?

Multiple victim shootings happen at gun-free zones

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Waiting for snapter 3

46 best free downloads

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neanderthal pre-adamite?

MDTA Teaching aides

Drakes drum

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William Buckley Captured CIA agent; wiki profile; he was tortured Vince Flynn suggests he released valuable information

Torture efficacy; human rights de UN

Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Who is Dave Dravecky?

Divorce=bad for gaia

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Who is Dave Boswell?

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Something to do with climate

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Retrofuturism at wikipedia

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AMT and IRS boondoggle

Writing Reviews; Writing Book Reviews; academic book reviews; movie reviews; restaurant reviews

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Doomsday Argument, Doomsday device

Republicans better self reported mental health

Henry Hyde, RIP

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Beets, Cabbage, Guava and Swiss Chard

Swiss chard doesn't even sound edible

Check your readability scores

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Huckabee a fiscal con?

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English Grammar, wikibook

Buckley Life stuff

CQ on elections

Koran on wikibooks

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Stephen King Suggests Waterboarding Jenna Bush

Storyboards at Wiki

MRI scans of second hand smoke lungs

Hueristics Work?

10th blogiversary

101 mad scientist projects

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This sounds cultish to me

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Pope getting rid of bad music

Mankind shortening the life of the universe?

Democrats the party fo the rich

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List of political comedies another on political satire

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Increase Writing ability, more

Economics and thanksgiving

Amazon.com gadget

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Cool wolf pictures

Big Ass Bug

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Torture in the US:

[edit] "Stress and duress"
In 2003 and 2004 there was substantial controversy over the "stress and duress" methods that were used in the U.S.'s War on Terrorism, that had been sanctioned by the U.S. Executive branch of government at Cabinet level [19]. Similar methods in 1978 were ruled by ECHR to be inhuman and degrading treatment, but not torture, when used by the U.K. in the early 1970s in Northern Ireland. CIA agents have anonymously confirmed to the Washington Post in a December 26, 2002 report that the CIA routinely uses so-called "stress and duress" interrogation techniques, which are claimed by human rights organisations to be acts of torture, in the US-led War on Terrorism. These sources state that CIA and military personnel beat up uncooperative suspects, confine them in cramped quarters, duct tape them to stretchers, and use other restraints which maintain the subject in an awkward and painful position for long periods of time.[20] The phrase 'torture light' has been reported in the media and has been taken to mean acts that would not be legally defined as torture. Techniques similar to "stress and duress" were used by the UK in the early 1970s and were ruled to be "inhuman and degrading treatment" but not torture by the European Court of Human Rights. While this is in no way binding on the United States, it is seen as indicative of the state of international law on what constitutes torture.

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Documentary on the invasion of Poland

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Cool ancient speach

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Der Fall Gleiwitz, direction: Gerhard Klein (1961), DEFA studios (The Gleiwitz Case; English subtitles), an East German film that reconstructs the events, pronounced in West Germany the best DEFA film.

(Recreates the German propoganda actions along polish border before the invasion.

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From the late Prof Lykken:

The Significance Test Controversy

When I was a graduate student circa 1950, I had a job for several months in the
Student Counseling Bureau analyzing the returns from a “After High School What?” survey that one of the counseling faculty had administered to 57,000 seniors in Minnesota high schools. In the basement of Eddy Hall, I would run boxes of IBM cards, each bearing the responses of one student, through the IBM sorting machine. A few years later, when I was on the faculty myself, Paul Meehl and I used those data for our unpublished “crud factor” study in which we showed that, in psychology, everything is related to everything else, at least a little bit. We cross-tabulated all possible pairs of 15 categorical variables on the questionnaire and computed Chi-square values. All 105 Chisquares were statistically significant and 96% of them at p less than 10-6. Thus, we found that a majority (52%) of Episcopalians “like school” while only a minority (47%) of Lutherans do. Fewer ALC Lutherans than Missouri Synod Lutherans play a musical instrument.

What this silly-sounding study implies is that Group A is bound to differ from Group
B on Variable X so that, if your theory predicts that A > B, you have about a 50:50chance of confirming that prediction empirically at least if you have a large enough
sample even if your theory is dead wrong.

Meehl used these data as illustrations in a 1967 paper in Philosophy of Science. He
pointed out that the physical sciences, whose theories are strong enough to permit point predictions (Group A will average 125% of Group B’s score, rather than merely A > B), use significance tests in a way that is obverse to the way they are used in the soft sciences. Psychologists say, e.g., that X and Y will be correlated positively and, if that much proves true, then we try to “reject the null hypothesis” by showing that the correlation is so far above the zero or null point, that there is less than one chance in 20 (or more) that the true value of the correlation (which our obtained value estimates) could be as low as zero.

One unhappy consequence of this way of proceeding is that our conclusions become
more suspect as our experiment gets better! If we use good, reliable measures of X and Y, then we are more likely to detect the (almost inevitable) correlation between them, and the larger our sample, the more likely it is that this detected correlation will be statistically significant, i.e., have a small enough sampling error and be far enough from zero to believe it really is not zero. A cheap, crappy experiment with poor measures and a small sample that can report a statistically significant result is therefore regarded as more persuasive than a good, big study!

In physics, on the other hand, the object is to accept the null hypothesis, which now is the point value predicted by the theory. A challenging experiment, with careful measurements and many of them, will be more likely than a poor one to detect deviations from the experimental prediction (the null) and therefore, if a really good experiment cannot invalidate the prediction, the theory has survived a real test. About the same time, in 1967, I happened to read an article in a psychological journal in which a psychologist named Sapolsky proposed that some psychiatric patients unconsciously believe in the “cloacal theory of birth” which is that babies are started by mouth and born through the anus. This creative thinker predicted from his theory that people who believe in the cloacal theory will (a) tend to have eating disorders (overeating if they want to get pregnant or anorexia if they don’t), and (b) they will tend to see frogs on the Rorschach inkblot test. A test of this prediction in Sapolsky’s hospital showed that patients who were frog responders also showed a much higher incidence of eating disorders according to the nurses’ notes.

I thought this alleged study would be a good sacrificial lamb for a paper on significance testing so I asked 20 colleagues whether they believed in this “cloacal
theory” idea. The median probability they attached to this theory’s being true was a
generous 0.01, which I interpreted to mean, “I don’t believe it.” I then revealed the
highly significant results of the “experiment” and asked again about the probability of the theory but the responses didn’t change. Thus my 20 colleagues, who would normally profess to believe in the statistical methodology of our field, plainly rejected it when the results were too implausible.

One reason why I doubted Sapolsky’s theory was that few patients would know what
a cloacus was or that a frog has one. Moreover, biologically sophisticated patients are likely to also know that the frog’s eggs are both fertilized and hatched externally, so that its cloacus is in no way involved! With this as a base, I wrote an essay on statistical significance testing in psychology and its problems and consequences, a paper that included the first and best analysis of the notion of replication to appear in our literature, and published it in the Psychological
Bulletin. Briefly, literal replication is probably impossible, even by the original
experimenter; operational replication means following the first author’s experimental
recipe, i.e., the details he thought relevant enough to include in his description of what he did; and constructive replication, the most valuable kind, involves taking just the first author’s empirical hypothesis and testing it in whatever way you think is best. If an operational replication is well conducted but it fails, then the first author’s results may have been due to an artifact or sampling error, or they may have resulted from some defect in his experiment that he failed to detect or acknowledge. Similarly, if the operational replication works but the constructive one does not, thenunless your own methods were defectivethe first author’s empirical generalization was too broad. Those were the pre-Xerox days and people sent for reprints of articles they thought were important. I got more than 600 reprint requests for this paper, an almost unprecedented number, and it was later reprinted in several collections and cited as a “Citation Classic” by SSI.

Years later, Meehl asked me to give three lectures on this general theme to his annual graduate course in Philosophical Psychology and, years later still, I used my lecture notes as the basis for my contribution to Paul’s festschrift, a chapter I entitled “What’s Wrong with Psychology Anyway?” Quite a number of academic colleagues from around the country have told me that they have been assigning this chapter in their graduate seminars. One minor but interesting point about operational replication is this: If a researcher tells you the model number of some instrument he used or, like Sapolsky, lists in a table the diagnoses, age, sex, and length of hospitalization of each individual patient whom he tested, then that researcher doesn’t understand what he is doing. What you list in your methods section should be limited to what you believe or suspect might have been relevant to getting the results you got, period.

Since .pdf files suck I couldn't clean this up any better.

Consider the crud factor when looking at this study showing people's initials might effect their school performance.

Researchers who studied the impact of initials found that baseballs players whose first or last name starts with the letter K, which signifies a strikeout, tended to strike out more often than other players.

And students whose names start with the letters C or D, which denote mediocre marks in some grading systems, did not perform as well as other pupils with different initials.

"Just having the right initial doesn't spontaneously make you a better baseball player, but it can spontaneously make you a slightly worse baseball player," said Leif Nelson, of the University of California, San Diego.

Nelson and Joseph Simmons, of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, studied the effect of first or last-name initials in situations where letters corresponded to an undesirable outcome.

They found that people whose initial matched a negative label performed more poorly than others. The findings suggest that the unconscious mind finds one's own initials appealing even when it compromises success, according to the study that will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

I'll have to look at the study but my thoughts are it's pure "crud."

For something else, light and color and Isaac Newton. My thoughts are persuasion doesn't persuade and often it intrudes on the truth.

The publication of these discoveries led to a series of controversies which lasted for several years, in which Newton had to contend with the eminent English physicist Robert Hooke, Edouard Lucas (mathematical professor at the University of Liège), Franciscus Linus (a physician in Liège), and many others. Some of his opponents denied the truth of his experiments, refusing to believe in the existence of the spectrum. Others criticized the experiments, saying that the length of the spectrum was never more than three and a half times the breadth, whereas Newton found it to be five times the breadth. It appears that Newton made the mistake of supposing that all prisms would give a spectrum of exactly the same length; the objections of his opponents led him to measure carefully the lengths of spectra formed by prisms of different angles and of different refractive indices; but he was not led thereby to the discovery of the different dispersive powers of different refractive substances.

Newton carried on the discussion with the objectors with great courtesy and patience, but the amount of pain which these perpetual discussions gave to his sensitive mind may be estimated from the fact of his writing on November 18, 1676 to Oldenburg: "I promised to send you an answer to Mr Lucas this next Tuesday, but I find I shall scarce finish what I have designed, so as to get a copy taken of it by that time, and therefore I beg your patience a week longer. I see I nave made myself a slave to philosophy, but if I get free of Mr Lucas's business, I will resolutely bid adieu to it eternally, excepting what I do for my private satisfaction, or leave to come out after me; for I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new, or to become a slave to defend it."

Basically, there were well written and persuasive arguments against Newton's theories that white light was a collection of all th different colors. They were persuasive but incredibly wrong.

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Troublesome Pupils might actually turn out okay?

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Lone American female European theatre POW WWII

US worst in the world for infant death? Really?

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Coleman pole over Franken

Pawlenty has to be slowing down the economy

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Economics in one lesson

"political activist" will never appear on this list

Publishers tracking down online copyright violaters

FAA and the defib

Insomnia

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Worst Cubicle Ever

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Abortion proof Twin

Yes, media has left wing bias

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Bill Richardson gets caught and so does Hillary

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Top liberals and conservatives

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Tootsie Company

GOTV Studies

Top liberals and conservatives

New Congress at war over everything

Mark Ritchie

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Work Station Treadmill

Source II, III

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Abortion Stuff

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Jason Lewis Column

Sputnik Building

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One, Two

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8 ways the conservative movement sucks

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Help for Campus Conservatives

George Orwell and writing

Short people chip on shoulder

GOP women to defect

Priorities for nation = Iraq

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Army Suicide rate

Strib Article on Military Mental Health

Patton Quotes

Swearing at work helps team spirit and morale

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Math Assignment from Greekhouse

Playoff winning% with stats

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I get pwn3d in a BBTF Thread

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Prolific Blogging

Wiki List of Prolific Bloggers

Cool web tool

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DNR Hunting Column

Okie War on Terror Plates

Coulter Comments on Judaism

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"Cascading" A problem with scientific "consensus"

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Giuliani Judges Lean Left

Republicans further from center than Democrats?

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Smoot Hawley Tariff

Poll: Minnesotans turn independant (at expense of GOP)

Indoctrinate U coming to MN

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Abused workers get back by slacking

Judging baseball's managers

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Sen. Domenici to Retire

Franken rakes in more cash

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Christian Conservatives Mull 3rd party attmepts

The Truth about blogging: Age more important than posting

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Study proves parallel universes?

Social Robots

Cancer and divorce related?

Global Warming

Noonan and loathing others opinion

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Closed Circuit TVs not effective in making crimes solvable

Doubtful preventative benefits (just a redistribution)

One, Dos

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Scientists hopeful despite climate signs

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Sam Adams alliance awards

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Minor League Park Factors

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Dems going to win Senate say DMorris

Artificial Boy Robot

Fred Thompson, Lobbyist

Devil Rays GM

Greenspan: Iraq necessary for oil

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Franken not the candidate? Also GOP loses a bunch of seats 2008.

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Good Work T-Paw

Russian Province "Conception Day"

Iraq Statistics

Clutch hitting might exist

Business of Baseball

Economic health of baseball

Critical Mass

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Punto worst ever? Problem with BA

Mad Scientist Inch Adder

Moving helps Martinez at catcher

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Ryan traded top OBP man in 2001 for a 36 year old pitcher Printer Friendly

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Help Wanted ads go unanswered in west

Unintended consequences of Roe v Wade: more abortions, more single mother, less abortion and less attention paid to birth control

Saving "real" journalism?

Liberals invested in failure


Old AJ trade article

Umpire racist? Hardball Times

No such thing as "efficient" pitching

Original study

Global warming not a consensus?

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Dukakis on Political Technology

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light solid makes great insulator

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The Worst Hall of Famers

Wetmore Story

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Scouts vs stat heads

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comments

comments

Bonds

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Flaw in bridge might have stemmed from the drawing board

Bush standing firm against gas tax

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Getting help from a swing aid?

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Evaluating Baseball Managers part I, Part II, Part III

Search engines creating profiles of people

Blogger Labor Union

Baseball Abstracts

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Mountain Bike into Snowmoblie

Available in Feb

Carter Admin really did suck

Printer smog worse than 2nd hand smoke?

Original source

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Carnivore Sex off the Menu

Abstracts from the baseball abstracts

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Mountain Bike into a snowmobile

awesome propoganda piece

AIR deal on elections

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King Banaian on going to college

Campus conservative rebels

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Track record for pitching makes no sense

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Liberals going after FoxNews advertisers

GOP avoids the YouTube debate

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Worst Ever 3rd basemen

List:

3B:

1. Aurelio Rodriguez
2. Frank O'Rourke
3. Art Whitney
4. Barry McCormick
T5. Chippy McGarr
T5. Ken Reitz

and worst player ever:

Tommy Corcoran

Gleeman Post

SBG post on bottom of the Twins barrel

Jim Levey had career season where he hit .280 but fell again th next year (another SS) similar to Punto

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For Once

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Santana overrated?

Veterans Charity Website

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Have a tendency to throw in the towel

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Anti-smoking ads backfire

Best baseball GM...

Gov websites

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Arkaim, 17th century BC

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Bseball Schedules aren't balanced

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Has murdered an average of 1.9 people

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George Will gives an overview on the New Deal dependence

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Vinyl records making a comeback

Bio-fuels feeding more starvation

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Versus using AC

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"Mostly from" donors giving $100 or less

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White house sees some progress in Iraq

10 truths about humanity h/t city pages blotter

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Ellison signs on to impeach Cheney

Gore has his own assualt on reason

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US Juries are wrong, a lot. (1/6)

Facebook vs Myspace in a classist sense.

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Starbuck card collectible

Cohen on how the GOP could win

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Kids as young as 6 turning to fitness trainers

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Roe v. Wade other consequences

Abortions up in Britain

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yWriter tool for book writers

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Write a Novel in 100 days

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SABR Manifesto

Football SABR

More SABR

RNC fires phonies

Slow growth good? Econ by Banaian

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Putting GOTV in perspective and other info on elections

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Do the Minor Leagues help to mature players or improve play?

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Political Preference Genetic

Joe Mauer not coming back as DH

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Method for finding offensive MLE in baseball

Man burns books in protest of people not reading books

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His reading list for Giuliani

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The rise of militant athiesm

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Page at U of M with obit and life story.

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Bee Song

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Post Office delivers about anything

Coleman not a lawyer? Better yet.

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Baseball Analyst Numbers

Part I

Part II

Run Estimation equations and analysis

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Terry Ryan

The Twins GM recently spoke to a group of students at the U of M and there was a great write up in this blog on the encounter. What caught my eye:

He’s also waiting for Kubel to starting driving the baseball in the gaps and over the fence. Until he sees that, I don’t think he’ll be fully satisfied with Kubel

He mentioned that Punto is already pressing, and you could tell that bugged Ryan.

...he talked about Ramon Ortiz. It was interesting to learn that the Twins and Ortiz’s agent had been in negotiation since November of 2006, and that when negotiations began, Ortiz was asking for three years, $20 million. When he stated Ortiz’s final deal, he did so with a little smirk, indicating he knew who won that negotiation. Ryan moved on to Ponson, mentioning his checkered past. “He punched a judge,” Ryan stated bluntly, again to strong laughter among law students. He mentioned that Ponson is in the best shape of his life at 245 pounds—down from 270. Ryan is concerned about Ponson off the field, but they are trying to surround him with quality people to keep him out of trouble.

He asked if there were any Kansas City fans, and quickly followed it up by saying, “If there is, don’t raise your hand.” He basically said that KC was getting it wrong. You have to build from the ground up, and that the Royals by giving Gil Meche $55 million were trying to build from the top down. He said that even though he was interested in signing him, Meche wasn’t going to take KC to the “promised land,” so KC would have been better off investing the money elsewhere.

He used Liriano’s experience to segue into the David Ortiz fiasco. The bottom line, Ryan said, was that he didn’t think Ortiz would ever do much. However, he defends himself by saying the rest of the league could have had him for a few months before Boston signed him. “I’m not the most stupid guy,” Ryan said

Ryan then talked about contracts. He said the most important thing to know is when to walk away. At this point, he said that there haven’t been any players that he let walk that have gone somewhere else and had success. He loved Koskie, but the money and years weren’t right. He said that Sid often gives him a hard time about Koskie, but “Sid doesn’t have the facts straight, which isn’t unlike Sid.” More laughter.

If Cirillo is Out, Will We Get Another Bat: “No. I’ve spent all my money.”

Ryan has no input on lineups—that’s all Gardy’s fault—I mean choice (my words, not Ryan’s).

Bloggers calling him and asking him for information can be a “pain in the ass.” He tries to accommodate everyone, and he has “enough trouble with Sid.”

Regarding Organizational Philosophy: The Twins don’t keep guys around who don’t follow the program. When they are young and in the minors, he has lots of leverage—he can cut them. He used a male law student’s longer haircut as an example. He said that if he saw that guy with hair like that, he’d tell him to get it cut.

Too Many Good Young Arms?: They are not in the market for free agent pitchers, ever. You can never have too many, and he would rarely trade a good young pitcher.

Mr. Ryan believes in “loyalty, if nothing else.” Most people who follow the Twins would agree, and sometimes some may say that Ryan can be loyal to a fault.

Evaluating Defense: Ryan doesn’t believe in statistical analysis for fielding. He uses what his eyes and his scouts’ eyes can see, using a two through eight scale.

With regard to statistics, Mr. Ryan said, “You can make stats dance.” A Sabermetrician, Terry Ryan is not.

Lots of column fodder here...

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Lots of good graphs

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From wikipedia

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Ethanol causes more deadly pollution

SCOTUS upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban

Bunting = Bad

Bunting = Bad II

Terry Ryan at the U

Films Considered the best ever

More Guns Less Crime debate

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Scrap the internet?

Twins middle good, everyone else bad

Why the A's lose in october (but what about the twins)

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Catcher at Wikipedia (show that catchers get about 5 fewer productive years and that catchers have never hit 3000 hits)

Baseball Prospectus on Mauer showing large catchers (tall). Basically, there are none and large catchers don't appear to fair well in baseball.

City Pages.

Joe Mauer growth spurt.

"It doesn't matter if you're 5-8 or if you're 6-5," Ryan said. "As a catcher, you are going to have things. But history points out there are many big catchers who caught for years and years and years"--Terry Ryan (ed. Yeah? Name two)

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ESPN Says Pitching and Defense in playoffs

Global Warming and Mars part VII

3-D to save theatres? Yeah right...

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Here.

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http://minnesotaconservatives.wikispaces.com/

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The Deal

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http://www.angelfire.com/mb/markssigningbonus/

http://www.homestead.com/spcgaz/a24.html

http://www.homestead.com/spcgaz/a1.html

http://franklu38.tripod.com/index.html

http://www.angelfire.com/ky3/egautographs/

http://www.freewebs.com/egautographs/index.htm

http://www.freewebs.com/egautographs/currentplayersuccesses.htm

http://hometown.aol.com/damajja24/myhomepage/sports.html

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Read through this online "timeline" of the events leading up to and after the car accident in Chappaquiddick that resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. The webiste is very anti-Ted Kennedy and the timeline has a very partisan bent. However the author uses a lot of pictures and diagrams to help people like me, who have never really seen or even heard about what happened that night almost 40 years ago, it is quite insightful. Particularly damning is the picture of the intersection where Ted "took a wrong turn" where you can clearly see that no one could have turned towards the "dike bridge" except on purpose.

I think the technical title of this online "eBook" is "The Chappaquiddick Chronicles." Having read the thing, I have less regard for Senator Kennedy than I did before. I don't think anyone of my generation really has gotten the full story on Ted Kennedy, and I suggest everyone read through the entire "chronicles."

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If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.-Mark Twain

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here.

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10 in 1 thing

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Study shows hormone treatment "reduces" homosexuality in rams.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6214655.stm

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http://www.boston.com

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Circumcision cuts risk of AIDs in half

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Why don't we ever hear about these studies in the media?

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Former GOP Senator Rudy Boschwitz:

This is a poor statement. The JCRC was "troubled" but recognizes the need for security. Which is it? There you are at the gate about to kiss your wife and kids goodbye and the imams begin praying. Would you walk away and let the family go forward? Or would you be much relieved if the airline said: hold on, we ought to check these guys out. Give me a break and not this liberal bullshit.

The airline acted prudently just as it should have.

Rudy Boschwitz

Rape isn't sociology:

A biological defect in the way blood flows in the brain rather than a psychological defect could be one reason why some people become criminal psychopaths, a new study shows.

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London monitored the emotional responses of six men who had committed repeat offences such as attempted murder, rape with strangulation and grievous bodily harm.

"We've never been able to look directly in the brain before and what we found is that when psychopaths were exposed to frightened faces the distress cue didn't increase the psychopath's blood flow. It decreased it," Declan Murphy, a professor of psychiatry at the institute, told Reuters.

He added psychopaths might not stop their attacks because they may have learned to dampen their brain's response to other peoples' distress signals.

GOP Moderates

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Here

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_figures_that_have_been_banned_for_life

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Most Californians Support Steroids Probe and Punishing Steroid Use:
http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/RLS2194.pdf

Those Caught Using Steroids should have Records Erased
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0324/p11s02-alsp.html?s=widep

Fans want more Testing even if it mean Government Intervention
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2004-12-10-steroid-gallup-poll_x.htm

Americans want punishement
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/PollVault/story?id=586653&page=1

More on steroids
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/PollVault/story?id=2216928&page=1

More
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=463

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Women are different (talk 3 times more)

More women have abortions as it loses its stigma

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The full speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0FI82DOuxE

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A Christmas Carol Script:
http://www.geocities.com/emruf/xmas.html

GOP getting whooping
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008552.php

Global Warming Killing Species
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061121/ap_on_sc/climate_species

Just not polar bears:
http://pbsg.npolar.no/status-table.htm

Teen goes nuclear
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061119/NEWS03/611190639

Blogosphere Nominations
http://2006.weblogawards.org/2006/11/nominations_best_of_the_top_2501_3500_blogs.php#more

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGbp-IoGs_Y

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http://citypages.com/databank/18/871/article1521.asp

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Recent "revelations" about Michele Bachmann prompted this search. I didn't know what to do with the articles then I realized that's why I have this blog.

Catholic Encyclopedia article on the subject:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01559a.htm

Protestant apologist page on the subject:
http://www.gotquestions.org/pope-antichrist.html

Pope JPII was the anti-christ?
http://www.trosch.org/jpi/antichrist.html

More protestant views
http://www.ianpaisley.org/antichrist.asp

Another Catholic view
http://www.cathinsight.com/apologetics/adventism/popeanti.htm

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http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2006/10/stern.html

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5 Important events in a Fan's Life

Fallacy of "Lesser of two evils"

What Selig has done to ruin baseball

"Racist" ad poking fun at Ford

Quality gap in healthcare

For collectibles blog, Ruth's first dinger

Blog House column sucks a lot

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Tag is being banned everywhere now
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061020/lf_afp/afplifestyleusschool_061020160352

suicide and religiosity
http://www.springerlink.com/content/dm5fajp28j2w39u8/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide

klye has made a name for himself
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/10/16/undercover/

Intermittant voters might be the key
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_el_ge/who_votes_ap_poll

most polluted citites in the world
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061018/wl_nm/environment_pollution_dc

invisibility cloak invented
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_sc/cloak_of_invisibility

democrat strategy found by GOP
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15792975.htm

ozone hole bigger than ever?
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-10-19T194031Z_01_N19254824_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-OZONE.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

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August 24 '06

If Space Were High School

Pluto: "Hi you guys! What's up?"

Mars and Venus look at each other uncomfortably. After a beat, Mars mumbles, "Oh, hi, Pluto. What's up?"

Venus stifles a giggle and Mars elbows it and whispers, "Shut up! You're so mean!"

Pluto: "Are you guys going to Jupiter's party in twenty thousand years? I can't wait. I’ve been working on my gravitational pull."

(Enter Jupiter and Neptune.)

Jupiter: "Excuse me, dwarf planet, what are you doing talking to Mars and Venus?"

Pluto: "What? What do you mean? Oh, you’re talking about my demotion…so I'm downgraded a little, so what? I'm still the same old me, good old Pluto! Remember that time Earth had that dinosaur infestation and I was like, 'Hey Earth, why don't you call Orkin?' That was funny, right?"

Jupiter: "Whatever, dwarf. I always knew you weren't one of us; for crying out loud, you're not even round.”

Neptune: “Yeah, and newsflash, I don’t really appreciate how you’ve been orbiting me all the time like some stalker. It totally grosses me out, why don’t you just quit it.”

Pluto: “It’s not like I can help it! You think I don’t want to orbit the Sun?”

Jupiter: “Look, dwarf, we've been listening to your dumb stories for long enough. Go hang out with Ceres, why don't you...what, Venus? What did you say?"

(They all look at Venus, who blushes and stammers nervously)

Venus: "Um...I was just saying, Earth does think it's so great and everything just because it has people and stuff. I mean, don't you get sick of its constant whining about that stupid Ozone hole? You can't even see it. At least it has Oxygen."

(Jupiter leans in menacingly close to Venus.)

Jupiter: "You don't fool anyone, Venus, we all know how jealous you are of Earth and you might as well face it: Your properties are not even close. Not only do women not come from you, you're never going to have people, or trees, or those giraffe things you’re so obsessed with. No way, no how. Now why don't you shut up or maybe we'll have to start calling you a dwarf, too."

Venus: "No...no please, Jupiter, I'm sorry."

(The four bona fide planets spin away, leaving Pluto rejected and dejected. Enter Ceres and Xena, the two other “dwarf planets”.)

Xena, excited: "Hi Pluto! Heard you’re one of us, now! Do you want to go try and clear asteroids out of our ellipses?"

Ceres, sadly: “Hey, I am an asteroid!”

Xena: “Whoops, sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it, you’re so big I just forgot.”

Pluto, angrily: “I don’t want to hang out with you guys, and like you’re even strong enough to clear your orbital paths anyway. You know what? I hope you get crushed by icy debris! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!"

(Pluto spins away, its odd egg shape giving its orbit an awkward tilt.)

Xena: “Pluto better watch it. I’m bigger than it is.”

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MR. RUSSERT: And we welcome Democrat Amy Klobuchar, Republican Mark Kennedy.

Welcome, both.

REP. MARK KENNEDY (R-MN): Good to be here, Tim.

MS. AMY KLOBUCHAR: Good to be here.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pick up on North Korea, Mr. Kennedy. If the North Koreans simply ignore these sanctions, or the Chinese don’t enforce the sanctions, what do we do? Do we use military action to stop their nuclear program?

REP. KENNEDY: I think we need to continue to ratchet up the diplomatic efforts. You know, we’ve had two U.N. resolutions unanimous. And we also need to continue to push China. China has the novel—nozzles that they can push on food, on energy. They have far more influence over North Korea. If they’re going to be a world power, they have to act like a world power.

MR. RUSSERT: But President Bush said, “We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea.” Do we hold him to his commitment?


REP. KENNEDY: Yes, but he also said that we want to have a peaceful and diplomatic solution. So we have to push every channel we can to achieve it in a peaceful and diplomatic way, not taking anything off the table. And we’ve seen a step towards that just yesterday. We need to continue, and we need to continue to push China.

MR. RUSSERT: But if George Bush leaves office with nuclear devices in North Korea, will it have been a failed policy?

REP. KENNEDY: We need to take every step we can to prevent that from happening.

MR. RUSSERT: Ms. Klobuchar?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: You know, as a prosecutor, I know that when people cross a line, Tim, there’s got to be consequences. And in foreign affairs, it’s the same thing. I believe these sanctions are incredibly important; we can’t have North Korea begin to be some kind of weapons factory, and they can’t be selling and bartering nuclear materials. And the rest of the world is watching. We don’t want to create an arms race here. And especially Iran is watching, and that’s why I think these sanctions are incredibly important.

MR. RUSSERT: But if the North Koreans ignore them, what do we do?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: Again, we have to keep ratcheting things up. We have to keep working with our partners.

But one of the things that went wrong here is that these multilateral discussions broke down, North Korea walked away from the table, and I believe we have to keep talking. We have to—it’s good that China’s part of this, but if it’s moving in the right direction and if we believe it’s in our national security interests, we should be talking to them directly. I mean, even during the Cold War we kept talking to Russia. And so the discussions are important, and we need to keep the diplomatic pressure on.

MR. RUSSERT: Should President Bush sit down one-on-one with Kim Jong Il?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: Again, it’s too early to say that, but I believe that we need to keep those discussions going, as well as keeping the sanctions ratcheting up, if necessary, and keeping the military option on the table.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you what Bill Clinton, when he was president 13 years ago, said about North Korea right here on “Meet the Press.”

(Videotape, November 7, 1998):

PRES. BILL CLINTON: North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb.

We have to be very firm about it.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: So we’ve had two presidents, one Democrat, one Republican. When President Clinton said that, the North Koreans probably had the potential to build two nuclear devices. It’s now up to 13. And if nothing is done when George Bush leaves office, it could reach 17. It seems as though the United States talks tough with North Korea, but allows the program to go forward.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Again, keeping the military option on the table is key, but these sanctions are the first step, and unlike how we handled Iraq or where it was “Go it alone,” I believe we have to work with our allies in the area. That’s starting to happen more, but we have to keep that up.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq, because it’s an issue that’s been very important in your campaign and one that I think is affecting elections all across the country. Mark Kennedy, you’ve been there three times. Let me go back to comments you made after your first trip in ‘03.

“On the whole, the trend [in Iraq] is very positive. ... Our troops ... face ... a collection of terrorists and thugs, of whom there are fewer each day.” That’s just dead wrong.

REP. KENNEDY: If you looked at the time in 2003, months afterwards, were we potentially a bit optimistic? Possibly. And we’ve seen more challenges than we expected, no question. But if you look at what’s happened, we have trained 300,000 Iraqi troops. We have a government that is a unity government.

This is the number one issue in this race, and there are stark differences between my opponent, Ms. Klobuchar, and myself. She says it’s a distraction. I think that it is one of the central fronts in the war on terror. Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi says as well. She has set out a specific timetable for bringing our troops home that would tell the terrorists when they can take over an oil-rich country as a sanctuary for terrorists. And I believe we ought to be bringing our troops home as soon as we can after we’re sure the terrorists can’t win. And she’s also come out against a bill funding body armor for our troops that a majority of Democrats join me in supporting. We have no higher priority than to support our troops in time of war, and we have to win this war on terror.

MR. RUSSERT: But 10 months ago you said “Progress was clear, we’re making great strides.” Why shouldn’t voters in Minnesota say, “This is rosy-colored glasses. It’s not reality. There were no weapons of mass destruction and the level of sectarian violence is at an all-time high and Congressman Kennedy is saying, ‘Everything’s fine. We’re making progress.’”

REP. KENNEDY: I never said everything’s fine, but we are making progress.

MR. RUSSERT: “Progress is clear. We’re making great strides. It’s very positive”?

REP. KENNEDY: Each and every year I go back to Iraq. I see a government that is further down the path of being independent and addressing serious issues. Each and every year I go back, their military is more closely—more fully developed and taking over more and more of the responsibilities for us. The path is to make sure that terrorists can’t win. And by so doing, allow us to bring our troops home. But we also need to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves here at home. Again, key differences in the war on terror. Ms. Klobuchar has come for weakening the Patriot Act that has allowed us to have five years without a terrorist attack on our country. She’s come out against making sure that we were paying attention when al-Qaeda was talking to somebody in America to make sure that we knew what plots they were planning. And she came out against a bill to make sure that we can get the intelligence we need from those we hold in custody to prevent future attacks. We cannot let the same poor judgment that Ms. Klobuchar has shown, that has made Minneapolis more dangerous, to be in the U.S. Senate, making America less safe.

MR. RUSSERT: Knowing what you know today, if the CIA came to you and said, “Congressman Kennedy, Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction,” would you still vote to go into Iraq?

REP. KENNEDY: We acted on the information that we knew at the time.

MR. RUSSERT: No, but knowing what you know today, would you still vote?



REP. KENNEDY: We acted—you know, you can’t really play TiVo and rewind in the real world, but let me just say this: First of all, I stand by my vote. And second of all, we just got done talking about Korea. We just got done talking about consequences for actions. Seventeen U.N. resolutions. If we had let one of the top sponsors of terrorists, that was paying thousands of dollars to those families that had suicide bombers, if we had let 17 U.N. resolutions go by, what chance would we have of North Korea or China paying any attention to the resolution just passed yesterday?

MR. RUSSERT: So you’d still go into Iraq?



REP. KENNEDY: I stand by my vote. We can’t rewind. We acted on the information we knew at the time and acted correctly.

MR. RUSSERT: Ms. Klobuchar, you said on your Web site, “2006 ... should be a year of transition in which we bring a significant number of our troops home.” This is October, now, of 2006. You told the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, “I am saying change the course. I believe that we need to bring a significant number of our troops home. ... One would hope that by 2007, we would have withdrawn the vast majority of our troops [from Iraq].” That’s next—a matter of months from now. Is that still your position?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Tim, you know, the congressman is talking about body armor, and of course I support body armor for our troops, I support winning this war on terror by being smart, I supported the Patriot Act. But I will say this: the best way that we can protect our troops is to get this policy right, and I believe that that means changing course in Iraq.

We need to transition to Iraqi governance, we need to send the clear message that they have to take control of their own government, and that means no permanent military bases. The congressman and I differ on this. This means not saying 2010 we’re going to have the same number of troops. And we need to be more accountable for the help that we’re giving Iraq.

You look at what’s been happening here, you know, $10 billion in cost overruns with Halliburton, putting a 24-yer-old in charge of the stock exchange with no financial experience, building a military academy for $75 million for the police and then finding out the plumbing isn’t right so they have to demolish part of it. I believe that we do need to start bringing our troops home. Clearly, at this time, this late date in mid-October, we can’t bring a significant number home. We have to be reasonable. I have never been one to say “Bring them all home tomorrow.” I have never subscribed to one of those mandatory dates, because I understand that, despite my opposition to the war from the beginning, that we have to be responsible about how we bring our troops home.

MR. RUSSERT: But you did say, “Bring home a significant number this year,” and you’re saying now that’s probably not doable. What about a “vast majority in 2007,” which is what you said also?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: These predictions were built on the promises and the predictions of progress from this administration, and we simply haven’t seen that. So you have to be reasonable in what you’re going to do here. But let me tell you this, you cannot solve a problem that you don’t admit exists, and that is what’s going on here with the congressman. This war has basically devolved into a civil war. Eight times the number of deaths were caused by sectarian violence other than by bombs. You have Shiite militia roaming the neighborhoods and taking young men, putting them in cars, shooting them in the head and dumping them out on the streets. This is a civil war, and, yes, we need to be more accountable and do a better job of training the police, but we also have to realize that this solution isn’t going to be more boots on the ground, it’s going to be a diplomatic and political solution. It’s—we have done this before with even more difficult situations. This war, as of Thanksgiving, will have lasted longer than World War II. So I believe that we need to bring people together and help this country to come up with a diplomatic and political solution in addition to giving them the tools that they need.

MR. RUSSERT: Speaking of predictions, Congressman Kennedy, this is what you said six months ago. “I fully expect that over the next year there will be a significant number of troops who will be returning home because of success in Iraq.” Flat wrong.

REP. KENNEDY: I said in November that...

MR. RUSSERT: But this is February, six months ago.

REP. KENNEDY: ...in February that we expected troops. We have less troops, not as much as I would like, we’ve run into tougher patches...

MR. RUSSERT: A significant number. Why can’t you say you were wrong?



REP. KENNEDY: I was wrong in the significant number, I was right in terms of the fact that there are less troops, but I’m also right in saying, whatever I said, I’m going to support what the commanders in the field say. And when we talk about accountability—let’s talk about accountability.

Ms. Klobuchar refuses to be accountable for coming out against the bill funding body armor for our troops. She refuses to be accountable for statements that she says, and, and you didn’t get the June of this year NPR, where she said she wanted more than half the troops out this year and all of them out by next year. That is a clear timetable. That is irresponsible. And she’s also—continues to try to mislead people, not just about her own record and where’s she’s taken positions, but about my record as well. I never voted for permanent bases. I voted for making sure that we could have an agreement as to keeping our troops in a sovereign country and making sure that we had the base protection that would keep our troops safe. We need to bring our troops home as soon as we can, after we’re sure the terrorists can’t win. But we don’t need to let politicians’ predictions or anything else drive this, it has to be the commanders in the field and what is going to achieve that end.

MR. RUSSERT: To that end, Ms. Klobuchar, there was a question asked of you back in March. “QUESTION: So your desire to withdraw troops does not depend on the commanders agreeing with it. They should be told to do it and just told to find the best way to do it. AMY KLOBUCHAR: Correct.”

And then this: “If the president is unwilling to provide a plan [for the drawdown of American troops], Congress should call upon the Joint Chiefs of Staff to do so.”

So you would overrule the military commanders and you think the Senate has the authority to direct order the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw down troops?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Tim, no, I don’t believe that. What I was saying here is because the president refuses to bring us a plan and deal with this as it is, as a civil war, that we need to have the direction coming from Washington. Of course we should listen to the commanders on the ground. In fact, there’s generals that have returned from there that say we need to change course. Senator Warner just came back from there and said “Give this a few months, and we need to change course.” Jim Baker went over there and started talking about this.

What I’m hearing is a general consensus around what I’m talking about, that we cannot, as Congressman Kennedy and the president are talking about, just stay the course indefinitely with more troops dying, over $300 billion spent.

And the idea is to listen to the commanders on the ground, but to have the direction come from Washington that we need to change course. I was talking about bringing the Joint Chiefs in to discuss with Congress what the plan should be, because I just do not see it coming from this commander in chief.

MR. RUSSERT: If we withdrew from Iraq and a full-blown civil war erupted, what do we do?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: First of all, we aren’t going to completely withdraw from Iraq at this moment. And I believe that we need to redeploy some of these troops to surrounding areas so that they would be ready to come in. And I’m not suggesting...

MR. RUSSERT: Where? Where would we put them?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: Well, in Afghanistan, where we’ve seen a complete, a deterioration of the situation there, in part because we have put singular focus on Iraq, and to surrounding areas, perhaps Kuwait, other places that we can keep these troops so that can come back in if necessary. Again, reaching out to regional powers to get their help. You cannot, you cannot talk about this unless you acknowledge that this is a civil war that’s going on here. Yes, there’s terrorists there. In fact, 16 agencies of this government who deal with national intelligence said that this war has fomented more terrorism.

So if we look at what we need to do about the war against terror, we need to get—to be smart about this, we need to focus on Afghanistan again and get that situation under control, we need to beef up our homeland security where the 9/11 Commission has given us D’s and F’s. You know, the president identified the “axis of evil” when he talked about North Korea and Iran. We have them both now talking about nuclear weapons.

MR. RUSSERT: Republicans have been talking about Iraq in a very different way. Jim Baker, the head of the Iraq study group, former secretary of state for former President Bush: “I happen to think ... that there are alternatives between ...” the course and cut and run and staying the course. Negotiate a settlement. Strong suggestion.

And this from John Warner, Republican, chairman of the Armed Services Committee: “I assure you, in two or three months, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control, ... I think it’s a responsibility of our government ... to determine: is there a change of course we should take? And I wouldn’t take off the table any option at this time.”

So you talk about timetables. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Republican, has basically said to the Iraqis, “You have 90 days to stop the violence or we could very well change the course, and every option’s on the table.”

REP. KENNEDY: Senator Warner has also said and rejected a specific timetable for withdrawal. And I agree with Senator Warner. We ought to, not just in two or three months, but at every stage along the way, say, “Is there adjustments we need to be making?’ We have been making adjustments. I’ve seen the adjustments in the three years I’ve been there. And we need to continue to make adjustments.

But when you say that the solution, as Miss Klobuchar says, is diplomatic and political, you can’t negotiate with people that are ruthless and glory in killing innocent women and children. We need to make sure that terrorists can’t win so that we can bring our troops home as quickly as possible.

MR. RUSSERT: No matter how long it takes?



REP. KENNEDY: We need to make sure that the terrorists can’t win. We cannot let Iraq became a sanctuary for terrorists.

MR. RUSSERT: And you believe this war can be won militarily?



REP. KENNEDY: There’s no question that we need to also prod the political forces within Iraq, as we have been. And make sure they address some of the key issues that are, that are causing some of the foment, making sure that we get this federalism issue solved. We understand federalism in America; we have states and federal government. We also need to make sure they get this “Who owns the oil?” I think they ought to take a path where the Iraqi people own the oil, just like they do in Alaska. We also need to make sure that they see the progress on the ground.

But, these are steps that need to be pushed politically, but they can’t be done if we’re saying, “We’re going to pull our troops away and leave a young democracy without the kind of support necessary to make sure it has time to get a political solution.”

MR. RUSSERT: You invoked Miss Klobuchar’s name; I’ll give her a chance to respond.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Tim, this is just more of the same. More of the same of this administration, more of the same with Congressman Kennedy. And, you know, I just heard Trent Lott a few weeks ago, the press asked him, “What do, what do you think about Iraq?” and he said to the reporters, “You are the only ones obsessing about Iraq. Real people in the real world aren’t obsessing about Iraq.” Well, I guess he didn’t talk to the mom up in Mahnomen, Minnesota, whose child is going on his second tour of Iraq and she can’t sleep anymore. Or Claremont Anderson in western Minnesota, who’s driven hundreds of miles to come to our events, and every time he cries when someone asks a question about Iraq because his child was killed over there.

These are real people in the real world who are looking for solutions. And the way to get this right for our troops is to give them equipment that they deserve, but also to get this policy right, and to admit that we need to change course—not do anything radical, not bring all the troops home right away—but to pursue a diplomatic and political solution. And I don’t think that it’s right for Congressman Kennedy to criticize me for that when members of his own party and experts in this area are saying the same thing.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, what question would you ask him?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: I would ask him how come he won’t even admit that he was wrong about voting for this war when we are in the situation we’re in, when we’ve spent over $300 billion, when many members of his own party have admitted that this war was not the right direction, that in fact it has fomented terrorism. That we now have 16 agencies of our own government, of President Bush’s administration saying that this has added more terrorism in this world.

MR. RUSSERT: Let you answer that question, and ask her one.

REP. KENNEDY: Let’s talk about what the 16 agencies said. They said that we are clearly activating terrorists in Iraq, having taken the challenge to them. But they also said we have to prevail. If we don’t prevail, it will greatly mushroom this threat, let it grow in size, and come to face our future generations, where we wouldn’t be able to ask—answer the question that our kids would say to us, “Why did you let this happen?” They said that if we, if we lose, that’s what will happen; if we win, we will greatly degrade what’s happening on the other side.

And what I would say—what would—what would I ask my opponent: How can you change your position from saying we ought to ignore commanders months ago, that we ought to have a specific timetable, and call that consistent? How can you say you’re going to support our troops in the field during a time of war when you came out against a bill funding body armor for our troops that a majority of Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, supported? How can you say that you’re going to comply by the 9/11 Commission when you came out for weakening the Patriot Act, when you came out against making sure we were paying attention to what al-Qaeda was saying in this country about plotting future attacks, and you came out against a bill for making sure we could get information from those we hold in custody, and call this bill that John McCain, who still bears the marks of torture, call this bill that is critical for our security a torture bill? How can you be so disrespecting? It’s, it’s consistent with what her own employees said about her, that this is someone who only cares about her career advancement, and nothing else. How can you criticize not just McCain, but also our troops in the field? Last week, she criticized the way our troops were training Iraqi troops. We need to have somebody with a consistent view on bringing our troops home as soon as we’re sure the terrorists can’t win.

MR. RUSSERT: A lot of questions there.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Tim, I would say this is why we’re in the mess we’re in in Iraq, because of this political gamemanship. Congressman Kennedy didn’t even answer my question, and instead proceeded to ask many questions. And I will tell you a few of these answers.

I am committed to this war against terror. I am someone who puts people in jail for a living. I am tough on security. And I will tell you this: I believe that the people on the front line have to have the tools to wire-tap, they have to have the tools to do the surveillance that we need. I supported the Patriot Act, I did support some of the changes that were later made to the Patriot Act with library books, library records and things like that. I also believe that we should have gotten that detainee bill right, something like what was originally passed out at the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Supreme Court gave this Congress a duty, and the Supreme Court said to this Congress, “Get this right.” Instead, they passed a very broad bill that I don’t believe will meet constitutional muster. I didn’t have to take this position, but I feel it’s the best position because they were putting their short-term political gain in front of the bigger quest of winning the war against terror so that they could go on Sunday morning talk shows like this one and claim that their opponents were weak on security and weak on terror. I think Democrats should welcome this debate on security. And we’re having it in our state, and the people are listening.


MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to a domestic issue where there’s a big difference. Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Klobuchar said that we should roll back the Bush tax cut on those making over $200,000 a year, because the federal debt is now $8 trillion, and we have to get our finances in order, and this is a way of raising revenue.

REP. KENNEDY: She’s said a lot of things on taxes. Her own proposal says that she wanted to have a trillion and a half increase in taxes...

MR. RUSSERT: But, but specifically, what about rolling back the tax cut on those who make more than 200,000?

REP. KENNEDY: We have had six million new jobs. The economy was flat on its back after 9/11. We passed tax relief to reward, and people—to let them keep more of their hard-earned money. Families, small business, those that take risk and create jobs. Six million new jobs have been created. We cannot be raising taxes, putting this economy back on its back, and also not growing jobs. We have to keep the approach of keeping spending under control. I’m the author of the line-item veto. I don’t understand why we want to build a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, a rain forest in Iowa.

MR. RUSSERT: But you voted for both those proposals.

REP. KENNEDY: I voted for every single Jeff Flake amendment to take out these crazy...(unintelligible)...

MR. RUSSERT: But in final passage, those proposals were legislation you voted for.

REP. KENNEDY: They were, because I support roads, because I support making sure that we’re moving forward with key programs. But you ought not to hold a whole bill hostage because there’s silly stuff in it. We ought to have a line-item veto for the president, whether Republican or Democrat, to cut that junk out of there, hold Congress accountable, keep spending under control.

MR. RUSSERT: But you have a Republican—you have a Republican president.

REP. KENNEDY: So you can keep taxes low and keep building jobs.

MR. RUSSERT: A Republican House, a Republican Senate, you have a $250 billion deficit, an $8 trillion debt.

REP. KENNEDY: There’s no question that I would like the president to take a little bit more leadership on spending. There’s no question that we have had obstruction in the U.S. Senate that has bogged down not only our ability to take further steps on fiscal responsibility, but many other things as well. We do need to push forward and make sure that we have strong fiscal measures to keep spending under control.

MR. RUSSERT: Ms. Klobuchar, 57,000 households in Minnesota make over $200,000 a year. A lot of small businesses, people who create the jobs. And you want to come along and pound them with a new tax increase by taking away their tax cut. Why?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Let me talk about why this is important to me and important to the people of our state. Right now we’re in a situation where our debt is approaching $9 trillion, where this administration and this Congress took a $200 billion surplus and turned it into $250 billion deficit. Why does this hurt the people in our state? It’s not just some chart on a wall. One out of 12 of the federal tax dollars that they’re paying goes to interest on this debt.

And this is my solution: I’m the only candidate in this race that has come out with a plan to balance the budget. First of all, let’s look at those $70 billion that’s being sheltered in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda for multi-millionaires. That report came out August 1. Get rid of those shelters. That takes in 70 billion. Next, look at capital gains. Not changing the rate, but having a third-party validator like brokerage houses post those because there’s underpayment. That brings in $17 billion. Roll back the tax cuts to the Clinton levels, to the top 1 percent, the Clinton levels when we had record jobs produced in this country. That brings another $56 billion in.

Then you go to the discretionary spending. I don’t agree with the congressman that this is silly stuff. Even if you reduce half of that discretionary spending, it’s $15 billion. Get rid of the no-bid contracts so we have competitive bidding, $10 billion. Go back to the pay-as-you-go rules that we had during the Clinton administration and then reduce these oil subsidies and these drug subsidies they give away.

MR. RUSSERT: Discretionary spending, what programs do you cut?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: Well, first of all, we have had a 50 percent increase in discretionary spending. The Cato Institute identified that.

MR. RUSSERT: What, what specifically?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: And you—well, let’s start with the one the congressman voted for, the bridges to nowhere, the rain forest in Iowa, the waterless urinals in Michigan.

MR. RUSSERT: But as you know, 60 percent of our federal revenues go...(network technical difficulties)...Medicare and pensions. Will you go after those?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: I believe that if we can shore up this deficit and balance the budget, that we can then start shoring up Social Security. This Congress has raided $925 billion from Social Security. And you go back to the Clinton administration.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you raise the retirement age?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: I don’t believe that is the solution.

MR. RUSSERT: Cost of living increase?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: I don’t believe that’s the solution. Just think back to the Clinton administration, 1995 balanced the budget. By the year 2000, the plan was to put $200 billion, sock it away for Social Security. We had 15 years on what we have now. Social Security was saved for 15 additional years, now it’s been moved back. If we can get that balanced budget in place and we can move on this, we’re going to be able to secure Social Security for the future. I believe Social Security is the fundamental way that we can protect people in this country.

MR. RUSSERT: With no changes in the system?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: Look, we can have a bipartisan commission look at those changes. They should be options to be looked at, but it would be a hard sell on me because I believe our priority should be to balance the budget. When you talk to an iron ore mine worker up in northern Minnesota, where my grandpa worked and my dad grew up, it’s easy for us to talk about adding age to the retirement. For them, it’s a lot harder. So if there is a better way to do this by being fiscally responsible instead of giving, you know, billions of dollars in oil giveaways, I don’t lose sleep at night about whether the CEO of Exxon, who’s retiring and just made $400 million, whether or not he’s doing OK. I’m thinking of those workers in Minnesota.


MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Kennedy, one of the issues in this campaign has been your relationship with George Bush. Here’s the National Journal: “At his [Minnesota] GOP convention speech ... Kennedy never mentioned President Bush.” And yet the Congressional Quarterly says that during your tenure in Congress, you supported the president 92 percent of the time. Here’s a news clip which talks about “Kennedy has been considered a strong Bush ally since joining the House in 2000, according to Minnesota political analysts, who say they are surprised by his ads playing down a party affiliation and making no mention of the president. ...

“‘This is a party guy,’ said political scientist Lawrence R. Jacobs of the University of Minnesota. ‘He ran in a district that leaned pretty heavily Republican, and the way to win in that district is to run as a loyal Republican. Now he’s running in a statewide race where the president’s approval ratings are poor. ... It’s an attempt to reinvent himself.’”

Do you belive that George Bush is a great president?



REP. KENNEDY: I belive history is going to make that decision. This is a guy who’s human, like all of us. Has made mistakes, we’ve all made mistakes. You know, there are things...

MR. RUSSERT: Are you running as a George Bush Republican?



REP. KENNEDY: I’m running as Mark Kennedy. I’m running at a guy who believes strongly in values that I was raised with in Minnesota, the vote’s based on what’s best for Minnesota families.

MR. RUSSERT: But 92 percent of the time, you voted for President Bush.

REP. KENNEDY: There—you know, I don’t where they get those statistics, but I can tell you—you know, they, they only take one out of 10 votes. But I can tell you there are things I disagree with the president on, whether it be No Child Left Behind that I voted against my first year in Congress, or ANWR. There are things that I agree with him on, that you get prosperity for our kids not by raising taxes but by keeping it low, and that we keep our families safe by being on the offense in the war on terror.

But let me just address—we keep hearing Amy Klobuchar walking away from what she said before and trying to mislead people. She comes out against oil subsidies. At the state fair debate, she said that she was for the same energy bill that I voted for. She comes out and says in, in an ad that she’s going to save $90 billion, $90 billion, by having government-run prescription drug program on a program that only costs 60 billion. How do you save 90 billion on a program that costs 60 billion? And let me tell you, on Social Security, it’s going to be a lot more than a hard sell for me to be raising the retirement age. That is not the solution. I will oppose that. That is just one of many differences on Social Security where she wants to give Social Security to illegal immigrants, which would put billions of dollars at risk on a program that is already strained.


MR. RUSSERT: You can respond to that.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. I really appreciate that. I will say that the people of Minnesota don’t really care if it’s 92 percent or 97 percent. What they care about is the effect that these policies have had on them and the effect that this kind of negative attacks and this kind of gamemanship have had on the people of Minnesota. Congressman Kennedy just started to talk about Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants. I suggest your readers go onto the Star Tribune Web site from yesterday and they can see that the newspaper in Minneapolis and St. Paul came out and said that his claims were completely false, and in fact the bill that he’s talking about, which was supported by a Republican senator, Senator Coleman, did not contain that provision.

This is the kind of political gamemanship we have been hearing from the beginning. And the reason...

MR. RUSSERT: So you oppose Social Security for illegal immigrants?



MS. KLOBUCHAR: Yes, I do. And the reason, you know, that he has gone off on his attacks again is that he really didn’t want to answer your question. He spent the last few campaigns bragging about how close he was with President Bush, and now he’s spending this campaign bragging about how independent he is from President Bush.

You know what the people of Minnesota care about? They care about that their gas prices went up to 3 bucks a gallon this summer, and that is—when they got a long way to work, it’s hard to do; that their health care premiums went up 60 percent since he’s been in office.

MR. RUSSERT: But, but, but you also—let me just ask you—you, you said a couple things about President Bush to the Pulse of the Twin Cities publication I want to ask you about.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: “QUESTION: Would you vote to support the Russ Feingold resolution to censure President Bush? AMY KLOBUCHAR: No, not now. QUESTION:

Do you favor the impeachment of President Bush? AMY KLOBUCHAR: No, not now,” suggesting that you’re open to both censure and impeachment.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: I don’t think you should ever rule anything out, but I’m telling you, my focus is not impeachment, it’s not censure. My focus is to go to Congress and get something done. The questions were “Would you support these?” And I said, no, I did not.

MR. RUSSERT: “Not now.” Hillary Clinton is coming to Minneapolis this week to raise money for you. Do you think she’d make a good president?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: You know, I think there are a number of good Democratic presidential candidates. I’m not weighing in on that. I’ve got enough to do in Minnesota.

MR. RUSSERT: But you’d be proud to support Hillary Clinton if she was the nominee?

MS. KLOBUCHAR: I believe that any of these Democratic candidates would be better than our current president.

MR. RUSSERT: As you know, Mr. Kennedy, there’s a lot of concern amongst Republicans about the war in Iraq, about the Mark Foley page scandal, and there is an article—sorry, comments from the Minnesota Public Radio, an interview with Norm Coleman. And it says here, “Documents filed at [Minnesota television stations] KARE-11, KSTP-TV and WCCO-TV show that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has not bought or scheduled any ad time on behalf of [Mark] Kennedy.

“Republican Senator Norm Coleman,” a Republican senator from Minnesota, “acknowledges that Kennedy faces an uphill battle. Coleman said he’s encouraging the campaign officials to invest in Minnesota but says they may be more concerned about other contests.”

Are the national Republicans pulling out of your race?



REP. KENNEDY: They, they are not. We’re getting a lot of good cooperation from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. We just had six senators in last week. I won my first race one-on-one, and I’m happy to win any race that way.

But if I may respond to some of the charges that Miss Klobuchar made, saying in the Star Tribune—a liberal reporter in a liberal paper—got it wrong. If you look at it, she voted for a bill, she said she would support a bill, the Senate immigration bill, that would give 12 million people that didn’t have benefits benefits. The paper says, $5 billion cost to Social Security. That’s—if, if you included Medicare and Medicaid, that’d be 50 billion. If there’s 50 billion more costs, how do you have more costs if you’re not supporting something? I would have not supported the bill because of that.

MR. RUSSERT: This is the McCain bill?

REP. KENNEDY: The, the bill...

MR. RUSSERT: The same McCain that you’re praising on the torture...

REP. KENNEDY: The, the...

MR. RUSSERT: ...you’re criticizing him on immigration.

REP. KENNEDY: I’m not criticizing him on torture, and I am saying that I would have voted against that bill.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re praising him on the torture bill. The McCain...

REP. KENNEDY: I, I am criticizing...

MR. RUSSERT: ...bill, which is also supported by President Bush.

REP. KENNEDY: I, I also do not agree with Senator McCain on immigration in that case. But let’s go back to what—she supported a bill that had—giving Social Security to illegal immigrants. And when you talk about Bush, people aren’t going to be focused on Bush, they’re going to be focused on issues. And I can tell you, Tim, I’ve been all over the state of Minnesota. People are finding a lot of support for my policies of keeping spending under control so we can keep taxes low, and making sure that health care’s controlled by doctors and patients, not lawyers and big government. And making sure that we bring our troops home as soon as we can, after we’re sure the terrorists can’t win.

I don’t see the kind of support out there for Ms. Klobuchar’s, you know, proposals to have a trillion and a half increase in taxes. The long list of taxes she’s covered isn’t going to cover a trillion and a half. It just tells you, when a liberal says they’re going to soak the rich, the middle class gets drenched. They don’t see a lot of support out there for giving Social Security to illegal immigrants, for rationing prescription drugs, and for bringing the same policies that has made, and the same bad judgment that’s made Minneapolis having twice the murder rate of New York City under her tenure—talk about accountability—to the U.S. Senate.

MR. RUSSERT: I’ll consider that a closing statement. I started with you.

I’ll give you 30 seconds, and we’re out of time.

MS. KLOBUCHAR: OK. I believe that I will be a good senator for the state of Minnesota if they give me that honor. I’m the granddaughter of a miner, I’m the daughter of a newspaper man and a teacher. I’m a mother, I’m a wife, I’m a prosecutor, and I’m an advocate. And I have the determination to make change in Washington. And if the people of Minnesota give me that opportunity, I will get things done for them.

MR. RUSSERT: Amy Klobuchar, Mark Kennedy, big differences on big issues. We thank you for sharing them with our viewers.

Our Senate Debate series continues in two weeks. Another closely watched Senate race, Maryland. Democratic Representative Ben Cardin vs. Republican Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. Right here in two weeks.

And we’ll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week with an exclusive Sunday morning interview with Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama. That’s next week, right here on MEET THE PRESS. If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

Hang in there, Buffalo, help’s coming.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15210576/page/2/

Labels: Link Dump

Smokers have higher risk of AIDs
Correlation doesn't prove causality (blah blah, this is such a huge stretch)

Judge Rejects Ohio's Birth Pill Law
Because it was "vague". Are we talking Stare Decisis vague or commerce clause vague?

George Soros to quit politics
YEESSSS

Coservatives need to get back to the basics

George Will column on the coming loss of free speech

Book on winning and losing the White House (CH 1)

http://www.genevaconventions.org/

You will love big brother (milwaukee)

Labels: Link Dump

MN PCR Program
http://www.mngop.com/sd42/pcr.html

I thought Canada was safe (school shooting)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060913/ap_on_re_ca/canada_college_shooting

New Novel Award/Contest
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060913/ap_on_en_ot/books_new_prize

French youth embrace British style drinking
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2006-09-12T192758Z_01_L12453934_RTRUKOC_0_US-FRANCE-HEALTH-YOUTH.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

Gold Nugget going going…
http://www.startribune.com/106/story/650569.html

Don’t be a blogger
http://www.wikihow.com/Dissuade-Yourself-from-Becoming-a-Blogger
be a blogger
http://marketpower.typepad.com/market_power/2006/09/why_we_blog.html

Bush 9-11 speech
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060913/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_democrats

Childhood disappears
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23366610-details/Junk+food%2C+TV+and+the+internet+'are+poisoning+childhood'/article.do

Too many road signs
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23366547-details/335+road+signs+in+eight-mile+stretch/article.do

Why emulate Europe?
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2006/09/why-emulate-europe.html

GOP to do research?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090901079.html

1956 the year when everything turned the other way
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/15212407.htm

Bible giveaway stopped
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_re_us/bibles_for_kids_lawsuit

DFLers to focus on economic issues
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15393271.htm

Employment numbers for government jobs, not private jobs
http://www.virginiamn.com/mdn/index.php?sect_rank=9&story_id=206906

Man lived until 112 despite junk food diet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060901/ap_on_he_me/obit_oldest_californian

Mercury fillings for teeth not dangerous
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060901/ap_on_he_me/dental_mercury

Vegetative state may have awareness
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_he_me/vegetative_brain

No bibles for elementary school kids
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_re_us/bibles_for_kids_lawsuit

CIA admits secret prisons
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush



Michael Caine complains of modern “Banal” films
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2341438,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=World

Melons are bad for us
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/27/ndiet27.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_27082006

Celebrities really are more narcissistic (study)
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/05/prnw.20060905.LATU045.html

Obesity worse for women
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060906/hl_afp/healthobesityaustraliaconference_060906093244

Gingrich’s eleven
http://www.humanevents.com/winningthefuture.php?id=16863

Conservation versus preservation
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/651644.html

GOP like a rock
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060809/9whisper.htm

Hitler and Stalin were possessed
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=402602&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Mindset stuff on incoming freshmen
http://www.beloit.edu/%7Epubaff/mindset/index.html

Ban Anger after you ban smoking
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060830/hl_nm/lungs_dc

Arming airline pilots
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/5/11/171108.shtml

Arnold and minimum wage
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060822/bs_nm/economy_california_minimumwage_dc

Soy is bad for you
http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/darkside.html

More on Soy
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fdsoypr.html

God, atheism and Japan
http://www.humaniststudies.org/enews/index.html?id=219&article=7
Stuff on blue v. Red state:
http://www.three-peaks.net/election.htm
http://www.egreeley.com/messages/1008.html
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

Pawlenty sounds like Hatch
http://www.startribune.com/191/story/632242.html

Government is true big oil
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7276986

Deadball era baseball
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060824/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_vintage_base_ball
http://www.vbba.org/


Killer whales like humans
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060824/sc_space/killerwhalessettledisputeslikehumans

GOP deserts one of its own
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/nyregion/19conn.html?hp&ex=1155960000&en=cf0c403c75a866b9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Greenland’s glaciers shrinking for 100 years
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/21/060821191826.o0mynclv.html

For the almanac, Blair’s shorts
http://upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060813-082719-8412r

Essay topics

-Never Support Dems
-PCR Program in Minnesota
-Stem Cell thing
-Plan B stuff
-Speed reading.
-101 reasons not to blog

Terrorist Update
Prosecutions Down
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060903/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terrorism_prosecutions
#2 al qiada man caught
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060903/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Minneapolis Crime Report
US Crime Graphs
http://www.justice.utah.gov/Research/Crime/utahvsus.html
Powerline
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011115.php
Opposition to racial profiling?
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/826rvcvn.asp
Economist says it’s because of middle cities issues
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7796538
Minneapolis Violent Crime Graph
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/07/27/midday1/
Rybak wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.T._Rybak

Currently in Minneapolis there is no police chief, fire chief or public school superintendent. The fire chief is currently under investigation. The police chief has moved on to San Antonio and the superintendent was forced to leave under questionable circumstances.

Rybak's election in 2001 was a shock to many political observers, as he defeated Sharon Sayles Belton, the first African-American and first female mayor of the city, without the help of campaign consultants or a vast war chest of funding. To win, Rybak ran an energetic and highly populist campaign, listening intently to the concerns of residents while he brought his message door-to-door. In the 2001 election, he won 65% of the vote to Belton's 35%—the widest margin in city history for a challenge to an incumbent. He took office in January 2002, and was elected to a second term in November 2005.

Wikipedia Article on Minneapolis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis%2C_Minnesota

The FBI released data Tuesday June 13, 2006 indicating that violent crime surged 35.5 percent in Minneapolis in 2005, but the city's Police Department said a computer glitch grossly exaggerated what was actually a 15 percent jump from 2004. A 15 percent increase is still six times the 2.5 percent national rise in murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults in 2005, figures disclosed in preliminary data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. On the downside, violent crime in Minneapolis has increased in every year since 2001. Plus, the data come as the city has grappled with two high-profile homicides in the Downtown and Uptown areas, spreading anxiety among some residents and leaders. A 35.5 percent increase in violent crime in Minneapolis would have marked the biggest rise among U.S. cities with populations in the range of 350,000 to 400,000. Interim Police Chief Tim Dolan attributed that error to a tight FBI reporting deadline that did not leave time for a department analyst to cross-check the data

Strib article
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/487441.html/

On the downside, violent crime in Minneapolis has increased in every year since 2001.
Minnesota Crime Report:
http://www.dps.state.mn.us/bca/CJIS/Documents/Crime2005/MCI2005.pdf
Rybak: Murderapolis is Amy’s fault:
http://www.kennedyvmachine.com/?p=847
Compare Different Cities
http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Minneapolis&state=MN
FBI Press Release
http://minneapolis.fbi.gov/pressrel/2006/crimestats061206.htm
Minneapolis rise worst in the Midwest
http://www.kennedyvmachine.com/?p=2122
Candidate Attacked
http://www.startribune.com/587/story/651923.html
Amy’s own report
http://www.hennepinattorney.org/docs/2004%20annual%20report.pdf
More Amy’s words
http://www.hennepinattorney.org/news_2.asp?NRecno=239
More on prosecution rates
http://www.minnesotademocratsexposed.com/2005/11/nrsc-whoops-minneapolis-mayor-rt-rybak.html
Amy Takes credit for reduced crime
http://amyklobuchar.com/about/
Police Chief Info
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/03/16/mcmanusleaves/

For the Exec summary:
An example of bad prosecuting from Amyklo’s office:
http://swanblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/knowing-voluntary-and-intelligent.html
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/002436.php#002436
Klobuchar conviction rate
http://www.mnpublius.com/2006/08/amy_klobuchar_the_best_hennepi.php
San Diego conviction rate
http://www.sdcda.org/prosecuting/conviction.php
sowell and crime studies
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=studies_prove_part_iii&ns=ThomasSowell&dt=08/11/2006&page=2
Rybak
http://www.minnesotademocratsexposed.com/2005/07/16/is-rybak-playing-politics-with-public-safety/#comments

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Because I have a lot of articles which I sometimes don't get to either blog on or put onto the radio show. However, I'd still like to have some record of those stories.

Also, I'd like a place to put my show prep that's easy for me to use and find.

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