Across the Great Divide

Halter, Do You Want to Take a Call From Puck?

Ever wonder if you'd been born to different parents how your life might have turned out differently?

You know, like instead of going off to college and becoming a doctor, you'd get to introduce the guy who knocked you up on national television?

Can't help you with the whole scenario. But here's a hint how you might start out in life if you were were born to Sarah Palin and the First Dude — preferably before she turned 40.

The Palin name generator had me coming out as Puck Mule Palin or Chisel Dustup Palin, depending on whether I went with informal or full name. My son, using only first and middle names, was Stinger Assassin Palin. Adding my last name peacefulized things a bit to Ammo Canal Palin.

In case you think this is bogus, I just want you to know my DP came out as Halter Grasshopper, which, while not directly descriptive, certainly would've gotten my attention in the next life.

[h/t The Same Rowdy Crowd]

Pitching Palin.

Here in Minnesota, we have experience with funny-talking, inexperienced governors with a greater affinity for publicity than for governing.

Jesse Ventura, it's reported, will host a new program for TruTV — formerly Court TV —  that positions him as a psuedo-detective who'll "investigate" modern-day conspiracies. After hearing the evidence from believers and skeptics, he'll pronounce judgment and move on to the next kookery. (Ventura is a noted Warren Commission and 911 doubter. Here he tells a group how the CIA has a permanently installed operative in the Minnesota state government.)

This is just one in a string of Ventura media ventures, real and mostly imagined. (He reportedly walked away with three years' pay after MSNBC dropped Jesse's political talk show, and his name has also been floated for a "Judge Judy" type court show, although Jesse Ventura, Conspiracy Detective, may be the evolution of this concept.)

Assuming Alaskans are going to look at their governor a bit more carefully next time around, Sarah Palin may want to start developing her next projects as Jesse did, while he was still in office.

In fact, I've started thinking about show concepts for her. And in an across the great divide spirit, I'm throwing them out there for free.

Shooting with the Stars. Palin joins up with co-host Wayne LaPierre to school various celebrities on using firearms. The guests work their way from a standard target range to a tactical training course. Those who make it to the next level hunt caribou and shoot wolves from aircraft. Barbra Streisand appears with Alec Baldwin (who reprises scenes from The Edge) in the blockbuster first episode. All season long, there are rumors that Palin will recreate for real her Photoshopped gun-toting bikini babe role.

The Junior College Bowl. From the campus of alma mater Matanuska-Susitna College, Palin will pose questions to teams from the nation's junior colleges from categories such as foreign travel, famous Supreme Court decisions and presidential doctrines.

The Flintstones Live. Dinosaurs and humans walk the earth together with an all-ex-governor cast! Palin stars as Wilma Flintstone, with Ventura as Fred and Haley Barbour as Barney. George W. Bush reminds viewers of his previous job in the role of Bam Bam.

Lost: The Reality Show. Tourists from backwater towns compete to see how far they can get in foreign countries, winning points for applying for a passport, changing planes in international airports, passing through customs and leaving their hotel. Winners must return with a photo of themselves and a foreign leader.

The Preggers Pageant. Contestants model evening wear, swim suits and do aerobics routines while viewers and studio audience try to guess which women are pregnant. In the breaks, Palin offers parenting tips.

Let's Make an Ebay Deal. Palin describes products offered for sale on Ebay and contestants try to guess final sale prices. She mixes it up by including scam transactions and goods that never received winning bids.

Who Would You Fire? The Mole meets the Apprentice. Each season, Palin gets a new personal staff and has to decide which ones are loyal. Baby sitters, chefs, security details, briefers, schedulers, spinners, librarians and assorted in-laws are at risk.

Feel free to pitch your own.

 

The Hidden Cost of War.

While we're on the subject of bailouts...

Profiles in Courage: The Bailout Edition.

Looking at the Minnesota votes on the House version of the mortgage industry bailout bill — and the entire House, for that matter — it's hard to tell what motivated individual yays and nays. Sure, some of the votes either way were based on principle and some were based on taking a courageous stand, but normally, both virutes tend to diminish in direct proportion to the distance to the first Tuesday in November.

John Kline (R), not noted for being bipartisan or a fan of government intervention, voted for the package with Democrats Keith Ellison, Jim Oberstar and Betty McCollum. Those must be the seats the two parties consider safe in this election.

The leadership in both parties was pushing to put together enough votes to pass, while constituents in both parties seemed vehemently opposed. In such a case, the vote counters are likely to let the members in tight races oppose the bill, provided they think they have enough support lined up.

Well, they didn't.

With McCain and Obama standing as far away from the fan blades as possible and Bush bailing on his free market philosophy and then leaving phone messages, who was going to play president yesterday?

The Phantom vice president apparently did some lobbying for the president's bill. Perhaps Bush ordered him to after learning that Cheney didn't like showing up at disasters without receiving a direct order. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich showed himself to be McCain's equal by privately lobbying House Republicans to vote against the bill, and when his work was done, coming out with a public statement that said he would've voted for it.

The members who actually did have to vote were put in a position that almost guaranteed they'd end up hating the result, themselves, or both. At the risk of sounding like Nancy Pelosi, that pretty well sums up how the country is feeling about the Bush legacy.

Three Seconds Difference.

A girl in black was keeping a red-eyed vigil next to Nik Morton's ghost bike, chained to a light pole near 5th and Nicollet. She had been to Nik's memorial service earlier in the day.

"He was just starting his life," she said, and the life was going to be great. Nik was getting ready to move into an apartment with a friend. He'd started college at MCTC, and if he'd arrived here three seconds later last Tuesday morning, she mused, he'd be in class today.

That's where he was headed when Nik and a friend turned onto 5th Street. Nik was riding alongside a commercial truck and somehow got knocked down and dragged to the end of the block. He died at Hennepin County Medical Center several hours later.

Because the light rail runs down 5th, narrowing the street, it's about the last downtown street I'd choose to ride.

The intersection at 5th and Nicollet poses an added degree of risk for cyclists, because that's where drivers are expected to cross the tracks in anticipation of a right turn a block later at Hennepin. Vehicles continuing to the north stay in the left lane. It's confusing for drivers who don't usually go downtown, and last-second turns are common.

Nik and the girl had been theater techies together at South High. They're the kids who handle the sets and lighting and usually get little of the glory reflected from the stage, so they form their own tight subculture that knows more than it shows.

"Stay safe," she said as I wheeled off.

McCain and the Myth of the Maverick.

John McCain styles himself a maverick.

Originally, "maverick" referred to an unbranded young animal separated from the herd. It became the property of whoever found and branded it.

The name came from a Texas cattle baron named Samuel Maverick who found that not branding his own livestock made it easier to claim his neighbor's calves. By this definition, the blank slate-flanked Sarah Palin certainly seems to qualify as a maverick.

But we were talking about the Maverick-in-Chief,

Depending on your age and cultural frame of reference, the word today may conjure up wild west gambler James Garner or top gun Tom Cruise.

We are supposed to believe, like them, McCain is a winking, easy-going rebel, an independent sort who scorns orthodoxy, takes risks and resists established power. In fact, all the way back to his days at Annapolis, that was McCain's self-image.

Setting aside for the moment whether McCain is an authentic maverick or simply plays one on TV, let's consider the underlying premise: that the country needs a maverick as president — and just in case, a mini-maverick to back him up.

As a square peg in a Fortune-100 hole for more than a decade, let me tell you that large corporations and hallowed institutions do need mavericks. Leaders in well-managed companies actually tolerate and even value them — at least in small doses — because a certain amount of contrarianism is a useful, creative force in an organization. The maverick spirit fights inertia, challenges conventional thinking and pushes for change.

As a manager and business owner, I found my most valuable people were usually the biggest pain in my ass.

But a maverick running the company? I don't think so. The Senate, not the Oval Office, is the right place for a John McCain.

A maverick's nature is to remain on the outside, to react against the system. Putting the maverick in charge of the system takes away his reason for being. Expecting him to build consensus contradicts his self-definition as one apart from the crowd. An executive role neuters his strengths and demands what he has little interest in or facility for doing.

Mavericks at the top don't just change organizations. They can destroy them.

It's an extremely rare person who can cede control and institute order after fighting both forever. That's the same reason entrepreneurial companies rarely rise above their founders if they hang on to the top job.

Organizations need leaders with integrity who continually challenge their people to do better. But they also need consistency and coherence from leaders who see the big picture and communicate it clearly and convincingly. They don't need leaders who swoop in at the last minute to play hero, assign blame and then ride off into the sunset before the cleanup starts. 

If you have watched John McCain's performance over the past month, you can see the pattern of his life.  Maverick types may inspire initial romantic attachment, but once cast in executive positions, they wear Ventura thin.

The Brett Mavericks belong in frontier towns — where hardly anyone can get hurt when they shoot from the hip.

Accident in St. Paul Kills Unseen Cyclist.

We often hear that drivers choose SUVs because they are safer in a crash. This point was borne out again when an SUV driver survived a Saturday morning collision with a cyclist on Summit Avenue, a popular biking street across St. Paul.

The collision killed the cyclist, whose apparent safety measures included riding on a designated bike way, wearing a helmet and thinking a stop sign meant stop for vehicles intersecting with the main road.

The 51-year-old woman was heading east on Summit Avenue. A short service road merges into the area where Summit divides back around its parkway median after crossing Snelling Avenue. That's where she was struck.

According to a police spokesman, the driver said "he stopped and accelerated, and all of a sudden, she was in front of him."

Police are investigating, but there were no independent witnesses, which means the driver may not be charged.

You can see from the image [click to enlarge] that the service road provides a shortcut to Summit for drivers who might not want to wait for the light at the main intersection. There's no way to know if the "all of a sudden" was created by an impatient driver racing to beat traffic and not looking for bikes.

I'll continue to document these collisions to illuminate some of the safety issues both drivers and cyclists need to consider.

UPDATE:

For readers not familiar with the area, I've posted this contextual view [click to enlarge.]

Summit is divided parkway in this area, but the orientation of the various lanes changes as Summit crosses Snelling.

West of this intersection, Summit's through artery is a two-way street with frontage/service roads to the north and south separated by tree-lined boulevard strips. This arrangement continues east for half a block, where the main street splits into one-way lanes on either side of a single, wider median.

Cars and bikes would normally pass through the controlled main intersection in the middle of the three lanes you see. A cyclist heading east would then angle right as the main street divides around the median. A driver on the frontage road heading east would angle very slightly left at the stop sign point before merging into the east-bound lane.

McCain's "Leadership" in Action.

Mr. Sponge has it pretty well down:

*  First he says that the fundamentals of the economy are fine.    
* Then he changes his position on the crisis 5 times within the course of the week.    
* Then he "suspends" his campaign, which, in reality, was nothing more than walking out on 
   David Letterman.    
* Then he says that the debates should be put off until the crisis is resolved.    
* Then he flies into DC and the bi-partisan talks fall apart.    
* The deal becomes decidedly unresolved.    
* He shows up at the debate.

Michele Bachmann: Friend of Gun and Knife.

Try as I might, I haven't been able to find Michele Bachmann's rationale for being the only Minnesota member of Congress to vote against the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.

The legislation, which would require health insurers to cover mental health in the same way they do physical illness, was named for former Sen. Paul Wellstone, but it was also the product of dogged work from Bachmann's Republican colleague, retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad.

One possible objection to the bill for a knee-jerk, business-friendly fiscal conservative like Bachmann might be increased premiums. But for families who have family members suffering from mental illness, the bigger issue is the way insurers impose hoops and hurdles on policy holders seeking help.

Since Bachmann and her husband own six counseling clinics, you'd think the representative would be sensitive to mental health issues from the patient point of view. But since they don't provide benefits to their own employees, perhaps Bachmann's position is instead a principled stand fathomable mainly to free marketeering godly capitalists.

Although I failed to find any statement about the bill that indicated Bachmann had spent much mental energy  on mental health, I did come across this:

Calling all Sportsmen: Last week, the Bachmann for Congress table was a bit [sic] hit at the Gun Show in Brooklyn Park.  My opponent says he's a friend of sportsmen, but I've got the record to prove it and I've had strong support from the NRA ever since they endorsed me in 2006.

This weekend, we'll be at the Minnesota Weapons Collectors Association Show September 27-28th at the State Fairgrounds.  Come join us!  It's a lot of fun.  Let Krista know if you can make it: 651-735-7512 or KRISTA. 

And, we'll be at the Gun and Knife Show at the Anoka Armory October 11-12th! So, save the date!

I guess she has a point. If you're looking for votes and fun, do you go to the gun show or the treatment center?

UPDATE: For more on the bill, which still has differences between the passed House and Senate versions, visit NAMI-Minnesota. Here are statements [Download] from Ramstad and Sens. Coleman and Klobuchar.

"The alternative may be a national catastrophe..."

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

speech on energy policy (see video below). Thirty years later,

Drill, baby, drill.

Carter warned that facing up to the implications of our energy consumption would be the "'moral equivalent of war'— except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy." The alternative, he warned, "may be a national catastrophe."

But this was, in James Howard Kunstler's phrase, a long emergency, and so Carter's warning was set aside and his prescriptions laughed off during the ensuing Reagan/Laffer years.

This week the incumbent president spread an even greater cloud of gloom and doom, and his words sounded more like a threat to acquiesce than an exhortation to act as a nation.

In contrast to Carter, who spoke early and often about energy realities and what the country should do about them, Pres. Bush has only come lately to the realization that his policies and values contributed to the mess in our financial markets. And in contrast to Carter's notion of a long-term national policy backed by united efforts, Bush proposes a financial bail-out to avert catastrophe — a burden imposed on the citizens rather than a sacrifice shouldered.

. Again, it was about energy, but also about a nation losing faith in itself.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

We didn't listen then. I wonder how many will hear the call in this election?