The Rake Magazine

The Minnetonka police officer who gave U of M student Nick Stremer a ticket for underage drinking, it could be argued, was just doing his job. It could be argued, I said. But, arguing with a fool is always a bad idea.

Like a lot of the people quoted in today's Strib story and on MNSpeak, I think Nick is a hero...and Minnetonka Police Chief Joy Rikala is a constipated boob. As she justifies the ticketing of Nick, she admits that the girl who actually drank herself unconscious wasn't ticketed. According to the story, "Rikala said officers were concentrating on saving the woman's life." Except for the officer who was concentrating on giving Nick Stremer a criminal record, that is.

Joy Rikala is the former chief of the U of M police. Imagine the experience she has dealing with drunken minors. Too bad she doesn't seem to have learned anything from it.

So, I'm sending a contribution of $70 to MADD in Nick Stremer's name, and a like amount to the Minnetonka police. I encourage them to use it to buy a dictionary and look up the word "discretion."

Klobuchar Pere: "l'etoile c'etait moi"

For those of you who remember afternoon newspapers, you know that one of the best things about the Minneapolis Star was columnist Jim Klobuchar. When it came to homespun humor, he was Garrison Keillor before there was a Prairie Home Companion.

Characteristic, often, of his portraits of typical Minnesotans, was his outrage at how they'd been treated by government, circumstances, or just plain bad luck. He was the first thing I went to in the paper I actually liked.

He's weighed in again, over at voxverax, (which means true voice in my favorite dead language). There's nothing startling here. In fact, the Louis XIV reference showed up in a Helen Thomas column on Friday. It's another Bush bash, but we love it when the old indignation raises its head. Let's hope his daughter has inherited it enough to start taking some real stands on some critical issues. This "we can do better" pap we're getting from her is not worthy of her father's straight forward example.

Molly Ivins is my favorite columnist. She doesn't pull any punches and is harder on the Dems' incompetence than she is on the Republicans' treachery.

Anyway, here's today's entry, which was reprinted in the Strib. Sort of like what I said yesterday about Ford Bell.

She talks about leadership. Dems get a clue.

A Ford worth driving

We supported Patty Wetterling for Senate. It wasn't hard. She's a good person who wanted to be Senator for what she could do, not what she could be. But, for whatever reason--and many think she was pushed out by the national Democrats so they could clear the field for Amy Klobuchar to take on Mark (The Weasel) Kennedy without depleting her resources against a strong challenger for the nomination--she pulled out and endorsed Klobuchar.

But, as I once said, what's the point of supporting Democrats if they're just going to be a less bad alternative? All you have to do is look at Klobuchar's website to see that she's just as wishy washy about damn near everything as John Kerry. And you know where that got us.

Health care? By golly, Amy's for it, only she thinks it ought to be cheaper and more efficient. Duh.

The war in Iraq? By golly again, Amy's agin' it--right up to the point where she thinks we ouught to pull out someday, in the future, when the time is right, when...well you get the picture.

What's the alternative?

Ford Bell on health care? Single payer, now.

Ford Bell on the war? Pull out by next summer.

Bell may not have the DNC behind him, but at least he knows where he's going. It may not be the Senate, but if Klobuchar gets there instead, it will just be more of the same Democratic wandering around in circles. That's the Democrats' chosen path, it seems.

Does all this travel make me look fat cat?

After slagging the Strib the other day, now I've got to be fair and give due praise for a front page story today on Norm Coleman's travel habits.

(However,for some reason, it's not on the front page of the Strib web site as I'm writing this, so I guess they don't want anyone who doesn't get the printed version of the paper to know about it unless they happen to be searching for "coleman." Actually, it seems the Coleman story lost its place to yet another heart-string-tugger about the murdered Chaska mom. Yup, that's worth a lot of discussion. For example, we've been heard at the Rake water cooler spouting such insights as, "Gee, I'm sure glad my kid isn't a drug addled murderer, aren't you?" and "I never thought something like that would happen IN THE SUBURBS!")

Sheesh.

At any rate, Strib reporters Rob Hotakainen and Aaron Blake do a good job of outlining the peripatetic Coleman's travels and who paid the freight.

They make note of a couple of things worth mentioning here: that Coleman travels, especially at other-than-government expense, more than three times as often as Jim Oberstar, the House member and pork king of Minnesota; and Senator Mark Dayton did not travel at all unless on the government's dime.

Draw your own conclusions about Coleman's assertion that there are no strings attached to his first class tickets around the world. And think about the distinction between Dayton, who is getting out of politics because he hates the influence of money, and Norm, who utterly embraces it.