Separated At Birth?

Scott e-mails to take another tack on the SAB from Sisyphus yesterday with this timely suggestion:

The man who helped bring Happy Days back to television Tom Bosley and...

...the woman whom liberals hope will bring happy days back to the Supreme Court Elena Kagan?

For the record, in addition to Costas and Bosley, Kagan has also been visually linked to:

Actor Mike Meyers

Actor Patton Oswalt

Actor Zero Mostel

Baseball player Gerald Laird

British writer David Mitchell

and Federal Judge Evan Wallach.

We might all feel a little better about the pick if Kagan's resume resembled Wallach's when it comes to experience on the bench.

Separated At Birth?

United States Solicitor General and likely Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and NBC sportscaster Bob Costas.

Northern Alliance Radio Network

The Northern Alliance Radio Network is back LIVE this morning at 11 AM. But without your genial co-hosts. Hinderaker and Ward are taking a rare and well deserved day off.

In a shameless appeal to Minnesota demography for ratings, as guests hosts we've called in guys with two of the most ethnically Swedish and German names we could find. Taking over for the day are two of my favorite Minnesota bloggers and all around good guys, Brad Carlson and Kevin Ecker.

According to Brad, show topics will include:

Amongst the myriad of topics on the docket is the Arizona Immigration bill. Kevin is perhaps the Twin Cities most prolific advocate for immigration reform, so I know he'll provide valued insights on said legislation.

We'll also cover the local political angle, including Minnesota's budget issues, threat of a local government shutdown, the MN Supreme Court usurping Governor Pawlenty's executive privilege of unallotment, etc. And given our status as a Vikings rubes, discussion of the stadium issue may also rear its ugly head.

In the Noon hour, we will be joined by local NBA expert Mike McCollow. However, we will not be breaking down the Timberwolves roster for the 2010-11 season for fear of a revolt from the regular NARN listeners. No, Mike will be in to promote the recently released novel of his long-time friend (and former Sports Illustrated columnist) Steve Rushin. Steve will be in town May 20th & 21st signing copies of his newly released book Pint Man. Mike will also be in to discuss his own involvement withThe Patriot golf club out of Tulsa, OK., and what they're doing to support family members of our veterans who were wounded or killed in combat.

We'll also provide the weekly First Team staples "Loon of the Week" and "This Week in Gatekeeping."

Following as always at 1 PM, Mitch Berg and Ed Morrissey. And, don't forget at 9 AM, The King Banaian Show over at the Patriot's sister station, KYRC (Business 1570). Remember, The Northern Alliance Radio Network starts at 11AM Central, locally on AM1280 the Patriot. Streaming LIVE worldwide at the web site. You can join the conversation at 651-289-4488.

Don't you dare miss it!

Both Ends Against The Middle

Maybe it takes an immigrant to explain the essence of America's immigration debate to Americans. That son of Britannia, John Derbyshire (now naturalized citizen of the USA) had the following trenchant observations on his Radio Derb podcast last week. (Full transcript provided here.)

I've always liked the American middle class, since I first encountered them forty years ago. What's not to like? Middle-class Americans are polite and hospitable, generous and kind, law-abiding and patriotic. This is indeed, as my colleague Florence King once tagged it, the Republic of Nice. The problem with being so nice, however, is that the un-nice will take advantage of you. They'll bully and manipulate you. They'll turn you against your neighbor and make you feel bad about yourself, using your own generous values as a weapon against you, in a sort of politico-cultural ju-jitsu.

American political life today isn't really a struggle between two parties; it's a struggle between the political and the un-political -- between, on the one hand, activist ideologues and cynical rent-seekers, and on the other, mild middle-class types who'd rather just get on with living their lives and raising their families while bothering with politics as little as possible. Class-wise, it's not the rich against the poor: It's the rich and the poor united against the middle. The overclass has allied with the underclass to milk the middle class. By way of fortifying the alliance, the overclass is keen to import tens of millions of high school dropouts from Mexico, to keep the ranks of their underclass allies well filled up with cannon fodder, and to make it easier to browbeat the middle class with charges of racism if they dare to raise any objection to alliance advances and usurpations.

That's the context in which this fuss about the Arizona law should be seen. The United States today is a gigantic press, the overclass looking for cheap profits and cheap grace, the underclass looking for free benefits and make-work jobs in the public sector, and in between them the poor old American middle class having the blood squeezed out of it to pay for everything. Should the middle class try to rebel, as they have with the Tea Party movement, all their good-natured values are turned against them. They're told that they are full of "hate," when there has never in the history of the world been a body of people less inclined to hatred than middle-class Americans. They're told they are Nazis, when their fathers and grandfathers suffered and died to destroy Nazism. They're told that they're nativists, when they've been turning the other cheek for decades as foreigners pour into the country in defiance of our laws. They're told they're "anti-immigrant," when half their own parents and grandparents were immigrants.

As the overclass sneers at them and the underclass threatens them, America's middle class soldiers on, keeping the country going, keeping the lights on, getting up on cold winter mornings to feed their families, perform their civic duties, mind the laws, pay their own bills, and then pay all over again to support the underclass, even as the underclass swells with foreign scofflaws, swamping our schools, hospitals, courts, and prisons.

Well, guess what: middle-class Americans can still vote. Because they are too decent to care about politics, they don't always vote wisely, but once in while they get to have their own way, passing a law that throws sand in the gears of the overclass-underclass alliance. Then all hell breaks loose from both ends of that alliance. The overclass lays down thundering barrages of rhetoric about "hate" and "Nazis" and "profiling," while Al Sharpton and La Raza mobilize to march and break a few middle-class windows. That's what you've been seeing this week: the outrage of the politicals, that the un-politicals dare to defy their will -- which is, as they never cease to remind us, rooted in the highest ideals of morality and social justice, never in self-interest. Not at all!

The individual components he identifies are obvious to anyone paying attention, but the way he draws it all together is a perspective on the issue that I hadn't considered before. Yet it seems exactly right, hiding in plain sight amid the chaos of the debate.

His proposed remedy is correct as well. At least for now, the middle class has the numbers to win elections. Which explains why the primary tactic of the Democrats (i.e., the coalition of the underclass and overclass) is threats and slander. The only thing that can stop the political victory of the middle class in this next election is getting the middle class to believe its values are unworthy of victory. Which is why the Democrats will be trying to convince the middle class that they are in fact racists, Nazis, teabagers, etc., all the way to November.

UPDATE: Michael Barone's essay leading off the 2010 Almanac of American Politics identified the "Obama top-and-bottom coalition" through analysis of exit polling results. He referenced it in subsequent columns, including here at the Washington Examiner. Doesn't this sound a little like what Derbyshire hypothesizes on above?

Barack Obama carried voters with incomes under $50,000 and those with incomes over $200,000 and lost those with incomes in between. He won large margins from those who never graduated from high school and from those with graduate school degrees and barely exceeded 50 percent among those in between.

The top-and-bottom Obama coalition was in effect a coalition of those dependent on government transfers and benefits and those in what David Brooks calls "the educated class" who administer or believe that their kind of people administer those transactions. They are the natural constituency for the culture of dependence.

Government's Island

Joe Carter fesses up to being part of a widely shared pop culture experience in a post at the First Things Blog:

Almost every American who owned a television from the late 1960s to the early 1980s has watched an episode of Gilligan's Island . And if you were a child during that era--in a time before cable and console video games--you probably watched all 98 episodes more than once.

It shames me to consider it now but I suspect I've seen each episode at least a half dozen times--over 8,000 hours engaged with this single cultural artifact. Even more embarrassing is the that despite spending so many hours watching the show I never considered whether there was a deeper meaning in this "text."

Because Lewis Napper is much smarter than I am (or perhaps because he felt the need to justify the time he wasted watching the show) he has put a lot of thought into the situation of this sitcom and produced a short essay titled, Here On The Island: A Scholarly Critique of the Style, Symbolism and Sociopolitical Relevance of Gilligan's Island.

Just a few weeks ago, I was having a drink with some business colleagues and we were discussing "Gilligan's Island." We are all in roughly in the same age cohort (as I suspect Mr. Carter is) and like him each one of us had probably watched every episode of the program multiple times during our youth. I can recall coming home from school and watching "Gilligan's Island" day after day after day. I don't know if we really even liked it that much. I don't remember finding it particularly funny or enjoyable. It was just there and since we had some few entertainment options at the time, we felt compelled to watch it.

As Joe notes, Napper's essay is well-worth a read. I especially liked his explanation of the what Gilligan symbolizes:

Gilligan, the Skipper's "little buddy", embodies every extraneous governmental agency, policy and program ever foisted on innocent people anywhere. It is "Gilligan's island." Gilligan is well-intentioned. He sincerely wants to help. Gilligan saves no exertion, refuses no absurdity, respects no boundary in his unceasing efforts to solve, or at least soften, any and all of the everyday problems of the castaways. More often than not Gilligan is the problem. At best he makes a bad situation worse. At worst, he makes a great situation completely unbearable.

Something to keep in mind the next time you heard someone talking having the government "help."

Beer of the Week (Vol. LIV)

Another edition of Beer of the Week brought to you by the intrepid folks at Glen Lake Wine & Spirits who can help you explore the wide world of wine, whiskey, and beer.

Father Louis Hennepin was definitely a man who left a mark:

Father Louis Hennepin, O.F.M. baptized Antoine, (12 May 1626 c. 1705) was a Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Recollect order (French: Récollets) and an explorer of the interior of North America.

Hennepin was born in Ath in the Spanish Netherlands (now in the province of Hainaut, Belgium). In 1659 Béthune, the town where he lived, was captured by the army of Louis XIV of France.

At the request of Louis XIV the Récollets sent four missionaries to New France in May 1675, including Hennepin, accompanied by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. In 1678 Hennepin was ordered by his provincial superior to accompany La Salle on a voyage to explore the western part of New France. Hennepin was 39 when he sailed in 1679 with La Salle from Canada through the Great Lakes aboard Le Griffon to explore the unknown West. Local historians credit the Franciscan Recollect friar with being the first European to step ashore at the site of present-day Hannibal, Missouri.

Two great waterfalls were brought to the world's attention by Louis Hennepin: Niagara Falls, with the most voluminous flow of any in North America, and the Saint Anthony Falls in what is now Minneapolis, the only waterfall on the Mississippi River.

Hennepin never returned to North America and died in Rome.

Today, there's a town in Illinois that bears his name. You can can't swing a dead cat around these parts without hitting something connected to Father Hennepin's exploits of discovery, be it a County, an Avenue, a Bridge, a State Park, or an "island" and city park in Minneapolis.

There's even a song by Brian Setzer about the man and the bridge that carries his name:

Father Hennepin went down to Benningan's
To discuss the construction of the Hennepin Bridge
He had time to kill down by the flour mill
So he planned a picnic lunch on St. Anthony Main

Now Father Hennepin he was notorious
And he liked a little drink down al Nye's Polonaise
His explorations were more than glorious
So they planned to build a bridge that would feature his name

Well first Niagara and then St. Anthony's
Were discovered by the fella with the Hennepin name
But when the lock was filled on the lower falls
Everyone was shopping on the Nicollet Mall

And when the rope was cut on the Hennepin
Father Louis had a most unusual plan
He would take a dip in the Mississippi
He would dive from the center and swim to the dam

When the time had come and he took the plunge
Everybody screamed, "My God! What has he done?"
And though he tried to swim, the current carried him
Closer and closer to the brink of the falls

The people lined the banks of the Mississippi
To watch Father Hennepin go over the edge
The people there that day, they all swear they say
Father Hennepin was laughing as he fell to his death

Setzer obviously took a few liberties with history with his lyrics. Artistic license and all that.

In addition to all this, there's also a beer named after the wandering man of God. From Cooperstown, New York--a place known for a bit of history itself--we have Hennepin Farmhouse Saison from Brewery Ommegang.

Shapely 12oz brown bottle. Busy but eye-catching label with a lot going on in the fore and background. Nicely captures the brewery's and the man's European origins.

Beer Style: Saison Farmhouse Ale

Alcohol by Volume: 7.7%

COLOR (0-2): Bright white and full. Good lacing. 2

AROMA (0-2): Fruit and sweet malt scents with spicy overtones. 2

HEAD (0-2): Whitish gold and very cloudy. 2

TASTE (0-5): Like the smell with citrus, banana, and sweet malt flavors nicely complimented with spices and a touch of hops at the finish. Medium bodied with a smooth mouthfeel. 4

AFTERTASTE (0-2): Smooth follow through. 2

OVERALL (0-6): Saison is usually not one of my favorite styles, but Ommegang's Hennepin is an exceptional offering. Flavors are pretty rich so it goes down a little slow. But it's well worth savoring every sip. Glen Lake sells Hennepin Saison in four-packs of 12oz bottles, which is a good way to enjoy this excellent beer. 4

TOTAL SCORE (0-19): 16

Role Playing

Daniel Henninger asks the key questions:

We will never reduce anything if we don't first answer some important questions: What exactly is it that we expect government to do for us--and not do for us? Harder still, what is government able to do for us? Security tops the list. Below that, everything's fair game for a downgrade or dumping.

If you want to know what all the opposition to President Obama and the Tea Parties are about, this is it. It's not racism or extremism or "rage." It's citizens who want to engage in the long overdue debate about what the proper role of government should be.

They Ain't Comin' Back

More evidence that even as the economy recovers, job growth will continue to lag comes from a story in today's WSJ based on a survey of CEOs (sub req):

Despite improved employment expectations, jobs remained a weak spot. The majority of CEOs surveyed, 72.2%, said the pace of new hires would remain stable. Most also expected the unemployment rate to remain in the still-high range of 9.1% to 9.5% in December 2010.

Indeed, goods-producing industries continued to shed jobs in April, according to the ADP report. Service-providing industries added jobs, leading to the overall increase.

Employment is following a gradually rising trend, said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers. "But the gains are fairly modest so far, not yet the kind of gains that would be necessary to push the unemployment rate down or to be consistent with a stronger recovery," he said.

But even more disturbing is the prospect that many of the jobs that have been lost will never come back. Another story in today's Journal looks at what the future might hold for the unemployable man (sub req):

That would be good news, but not good enough. It's hard to exaggerate how bad the job market is. Here's one arresting fact: One of every five men 25 to 54 isn't working.

Even more alarming, the jobs that many of these men, or those like them, once had in construction, factories and offices aren't coming back. "A good guess…is that when the economy recovers five years from now, one in six men who are 25 to 54 will not be working," Lawrence Summers, the president's economic adviser, said the other day.

This is not one of the many things that can be blamed on subprime lending, inept regulators or Goldman Sachs. "The Great Recession has reinforced prevailing labor market trends that were under way long before the recession," David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, observed in a recent paper commissioned by two Democratic-leaning think tanks, the Center for American Progress and the Hamilton Project.

Demand for workers who haven't much education--which includes many men, particularly minority-group men--is waning. A shrinking fraction of them are working. Some are looking for work; some have given up. Some are collecting disability benefits or an early-retirement pension. Some are just idle. On average, surveys find, the unemployed in the U.S. spend 40 minutes a day looking for work and 3 hours and 20 minutes a day watching TV.

One in six America men being in a state of permanent unemployment has profound implications for the United States economically and culturally. A life lived on the perpetual dole doesn't mesh well with the expectations of the American Dream. If this indeed is the situation we find ourselves in five years from now we'll have become much more like Europe much sooner than most have would ever thought possible.

A High Glass Joint

The Summit Beer Blog has a good post on the debate over whether you should drink your beer in a glass or a bottle?:

To many, a glass is just a glass, something that holds your beverage so that you don’t have to sip from your cupped hands. And to many, a beer is consumed straight from the bottle. For some, little mountains tell them when their beer is ready to be drank, straight up from the wide mouth can. All of this is just fine and dandy for some, but for me, I just can’t abide.

Now, I know that the bottle is very well built to be put straight to the lips. I know that sometimes you just gotta dig right into the cooler and drink that beer down, cold as ice, the bottle freezing your fingers. If a lawn chair is around, typically so is the bottle. A camp fire, a lawn mower, a softball game-ditto. This all makes sense.

However, I entreat you to look beyond that bottle. And, I don’t want to blow your mind here, but maybe get rid of the bottle in some of those aforementioned situations. Ok, maybe not the softball game or the lawn mowing, but campfire and lawn chair? For sure! If you have ever been to my house, you know that I will allow you to drink straight from the bottle, but I will struggle mightily with your decision. “Are you sure? I don’t mind dirtying the glass. Here, come look at my collection. Go ahead, choose your own. No, I definitely don’t mind you taking it into the backyard.”

Actually I'm not even sure if there is any real debate here at all. Unless circumstance absolutely will not permit it, beer belongs in a glass. Period. End of story. Like the author of this post, I have many varieties of beer glasses on hand at home and I'm more than happy to have my guests use them. In fact, if I can help it, I usually make sure that every beer poured in my home ends up in a glass. Sure, it's a little more of a hassle and a little more work cleaning up. But it's well worth it to enjoy beer the way it's meant to be consumed. Anything else would be uncivilized.

The PintMan Cometh

Brad e-mails with a couple of events that combine a few of our favorite things:

I've noticed that in addition to politics, Fraters Libertas occasionally delves into the topics of beer and books. I thought you may like to promote this:

Steve Rushin is putting the pub back in publicity tour: The Bloomington native and former Sports Illustrated columnist will sign and read from his new novel, The Pint Man, at O'Gara's Bar & Grill in St. Paul on May 20th at 7 PM and at O'Donovan's Irish Pub in Minneapolis on May 21st at 5:30 PM.

The Los Angeles Times calls The Pint Man, set in an Irish bar in New York, "wipe-your-eyes funny." Best-selling novelist Carl Hiaasen says, "The Pint Man is clever, bracing and full of laughs." With his "exceedingly enjoyable first novel" (Booklist), "Rushin emerges as one of the sharpest wits on the scene" (Publishers Weekly).

There will be drink specials both evenings and books will be available for purchase at 20% off the cover price. O'Gara's will feature live music courtesy of Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist and ESPN 1500 radio host Jim Souhan, who will play with his band after the book signing. Join us for a fun night out as we raise a pint with The Pint Man.

Imagine That

At NRO's The Corner, Jay Nordlinger has an interesting post on one of the most hated songs ever:

In today's installment of the Oslo Journal, I have an item on a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. He talked about the "agrarian utopia" that the Khmer Rouge wanted to create. He said, "You know the John Lennon song 'Imagine'? 'Imagine no possessions, no religion'? That's what it was like in Cambodia." In my journal, I say how good it was--thrilling, actually-- to hear that Lennon song cited negatively. I have always found it one of the most irksome of songs. And I live quite near the Lennon memorial in Central Park, with its holy-ish emblem: "Imagine."

A number of letters have come in about the song, and I wanted to publish two of them. The first is from a friend of mine--an American who grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia, escaping with her family when she was 16. She writes,

"That John Lennon song always bothered me. It reminded me of the spoiled children of the 'West.' They had everything they could possibly want, and they were free. Yet they complained. And, worse, they promoted ideas and regimes that were senselessly destroying other people's lives."

The second note offers a different take. A reader from Iowa writes,

"When 'Imagine' was new, and I was young, I, of course, took it literally as the way the world should work. Since at least partially growing up (being 57 now), I have come to understand John Lennon as one sarcastic SOB who delighted in demonstrations of his superiority over lesser beings. I am thinking that 'Imagine' was meant as a send-up of liberal utopia, an insult hidden in the open."

Any reasonable person would have to include "Imagine" on a top ten list of the worst songs of all time. It's simple-minded, smug, and sanctimonious. And it's often invoked for purposes ill-suited to its true intentions and played it situations that are completely inappropriate for its message. The worst example from personal experience was hearing it at a Mass held at our high school. Yes, a Catholic Mass featuring a song extolling the virtues of "no religion." I believe that the occasion of the Mass was that a classmate of Atomizer's and the Nihilist in Golf Pant's had recently offed himself. He supposedly was a big Beatles fan, especially Lennon, and so someone decided it would make sense to listen to "Imagine" as the student body paid their respects. Under the circumstance, one would have thought he could have used a little "Amazing Grace" instead.

But what if the Ioweejin who contacted Nordlinger is correct? What if "Imagine" isn't the heartfelt rendering of a true idealist, but rather a smart-arsed smack-down of the delusional dreams of a secularist utopia? That would simply be too good to possibly be true. Wouldn't it?

Blood Alcohol Level

Today's WSJ reports the results of an important new study:

Beer and Mosquitoes: The body odors emitted after drinking beer attract malaria mosquitoes, according to a study in PLoS ONE. Female, blood-sucking mosquitoes guide themselves by sensing heat, moisture and smell. Researchers recruited 43 men living in the West African country of Burkina Faso and 4,300 mosquitoes. Using a contraption in which mosquitoes can fly down one of two differently scented tubes, the researchers found mosquitoes had no preference between standard human odor and plain outdoor air. Then, 25 of the men were assigned to drink a liter of low-alcoholbeer. Fifteen minutes later, the mosquitoes preferred the odor of beer drinkers to outdoor air by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.

Caveat: The study didn't determine whether beer consumption makes women more attractive to mosquitoes. Subsequent studies could clarify whether all alcoholic beverages, or just beer, increase mosquito attraction.

Two obvious conclusions come to mind:

1. If you're going into the woods, you should drink beer with high alcohol content.

2. Chicks (even mosquito chicks) dig men who drink beer.