Lincolnite

The New York Times is good for a 'Wal-Mart Sucks' article every month or so.

Well holy cow, Terry Werner got the boot. So much for my prediction powers. I really thought Terry was bullet-proof. Not because he's a great politician, mind you. He isn't. In fact, as a politician I think he's pretty poor. No, I thought he was bullet-proof because I thought he had a fairly substantial core base of supporters. Either those supporters stayed home yesterday, or Werner's core has disintegrated much more substantially than I thought. Werner himself blames the attack ads that came out against him. It's natural for him to blame the ads, but to blame them too much is to fail to recognize just how quirky Terry Werner really is. The ads may have broken the camel's back, but the camel was already under a pretty hefty load long before the ads came out. Besides, how can one blame the attack ads for Werner's loss while still explaining the fact that Dan Marvin won? Marvin was attacked as well. Granted, the attacks against Marvin had a much flimsier basis, but they were still pretty potent. And what's the deal with Robin Eschliman being elected? I'll repeat what I asked yesterday: Does anybody know what she stands for? Then again, not like anybody knows what Mark Koller or Shaun Traudt stand for, either, so with Werner going down at least one of those three had to win. It may as well have been Eschliman. Congratulations to Ken Svoboda, Robin Eschliman, and Dan Marvin. And so long to crazy ol' Terry Werner. The big question now is: will anything actually change?

Nebraska may not be the most forward-thinking state in the Union, but at least our Board of Education isn't sponsoring a six day trial to "debate" the merits of evolution. Money quote:

Detractors also argue that evolution is invalid science because it cannot be tested or verified...

I would write a snarky retort, but it's just too blasted easy.

Julian Sanchez has an excellent article about Social Security over at Reason Magazine.

Lincolnites go to the polls today. Well, a few of them will. Despite all the bitching about city government, don't expect a record voter turnout today. A rundown of the top four City Council candidates:

• Ken Svoboda Somehow this guy avoided taking any direct hits during the campaign. It's not like he is blameless or anything, but he has managed to avoid having a target painted on his chest. That's good and bad, I suppose. On the one hand it means nobody hates him. On the other, it means his name hasn't been splashed around the media as much. Nevertheless, expect Ken to walk into another term on the council.
• Terry Werner Often called "Lincoln's Ernie Chambers," Terry is a favorite punching bag for the political right in Lincoln. A fan of mass transit (yay!) and clogging council meetings with pointless discussions of national politics (boo!), he knows how to make friends and enemies. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- his quirks, Terry will waltz into another term on the council.
• Robin Eschliman Ms. Eschliman has run a reasonable campaign, but she has a weakness: nobody really knows what she stands for. Well, we all know she stands for "families" and "community" and b.s. like that. But her core stances have been lost in the shuffle, in part because nobody hated her enough to challenge her directly.
• Dan Marvin Dan will benefit greatly from becoming the target of the Nebraska Republican Party. For some reason the Nebraska GOPers thought it would be a great idea to make a series of ridiculous attacks against a guy who, left alone, would have finished solidly in fourth place tod ay. Instead, Marvin will receive a healthy dose of voter pity and he'll squeak into the third and final council seat. Expect Marvin to make a toast to the Nebraska GOP during his acceptance speech tonight.

What's the deal with all of the articles about Oklahoma head baseball coach Larry Cochell not including the facts surrounding his resignation? Cochell resigned "two days after reports surfaced of alleged racial remarks he made during two off-camera interviews to a sports network. The longtime coach submitted a letter of resignation to president David Boren, who had met hours before with athletic director Joe Castiglione and members of the university's black community on the matter." What the heck is a "racial remark," and why won't any news organizations report what those remarks were? Apparently Cochell used "racial epithets" as he praised a black ballplayer on his team. I'm guessing he said something like "that nigger is one helluva ballplayer." But I don't actually know what he said, because the friggin' media won't tell me. Whatever happened to "We report, you decide"? Is the American public really so hyper-sensitive that we can no longer be given news facts because somebody might be "offended" and sue the reporting news agency? [Mr. Wilson tries one more time to find an article that tells the facts.] Aha! I finally found an article that describes what happened. There were two incidents. In one, after Cochell had praised freshman Joe Dunigan for staying in school, Cochell said to play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne, "There's no n[igger] in him." In the second, Cochell said to color commentator Kyle Peterson, "Dunigan is a good black kid." Maybe I'm not a sensitive enough guy, but neither of those statements strikes me as "unreportable" by the major media. I'm also a little torn about the end result of this situation. Cochell was clearly a condescending son of a bitch in his remarks, but were his remarks worthy of getting him fired? (Yeah, he resigned, but let's not pretend that resigning was his idea.) Whatever happened to "sensitivity training" and other P.C. solutions to the problem? I mean, the guy was very well respected, and he frequently interacted with black student athletes over the years. If he were truly a racist bastard wouldn't he have been outed long ago? Was he stupid? Yep. Careless in his word choice? Definitely. Racist? I'm not going to say no. I don't know the guy and I sure as heck ain't going to defend the character of a man I know so little about. But unless this guy has some major skeletons in his closet, I just find the "racist" label too harsh at this point. Anybody out there know more about this guy or about the two situations that ultimately got him canned?

Random fact: the Official Baseball Rules do not explicitly state that a batter must have a bat in his possession while he is in the batter's box.

More bad news for poor Johnny Bolton (and Bush) - the senate foreign relations cmte is expanding the investigation into this sick bastard. His "serial abuse," ideology, and horrible haircut aside, I find one good reason NOT to promote this guy (I am assuming that being named UN Ambassador is a "promotion"): reforming our OWN intelligence service! After the whole WMD debacle, its pretty clear to everyone that there were some serious problems going on and a lot of group-think and political pressure. This guy has not only played a part in exagerrating the WMD threat, but he tried, on several occasions, to get people fired who didn't agree with him. Talk about some serious "political pressure" - is that any way to run an intelligence agency? What kind of message does that send to actually promote him? And promote him to the UN of all places???? George Jr. and his buddies made a seriously bad mistake in nominating this joker.

The AP is at it again:

The House passed a bill yesterday that would make it illegal to dodge parental-consent laws by taking minors across state lines for abortions, the latest effort to chip away at abortion rights after Republican gains in the November elections.

The mainstream media often wonder why they are perceived as biased. Phrases like the one I emphasized above are one reason. [Edited to add: Oh by the way, I think the law in question is a pile of Republican dung. But that's for another post.]

Today the Lincoln Neighborhood Alliance released its report card for City Council candidates. The grades were based on a survey (PDF) distributed to the six finalists. The grades are:

• Terry Werner: A
• Dan Marvin: A
• Shawn Traudt: B
• Ken Svoboda: C
• Robin Eschliman: C
• Mark Koller: D

Even a cursory glance at the grades makes one thing clear: the Lincoln Neighborhood Alliance is biased toward more liberal candidates. That isn't at all surprising. The political scene in Lincoln has for several years been painted as a battle between "business" and "neighborhoods," with "business" acting as a proxy for Republicans and "neighborhoods" for Democrats. It's a false dichotomy, of course, but it remains a popular division. If I get more time I'll try to fill out the survey on my own. I glanced at it, but I haven't had time yet to actually write in my responses.

President Bush today signed legislation legalizing technologies that enable users to skip or mute sections of DVDs. Most often these technologies are targeted to parents who want to control what their children watch. Hollywood and other media companies opposed the legislation because they argue that the government is enabling companies to distribute technologies that violate Hollywood's copyrights. That would be a fair charge if anybody were actually altering the content (and especially if they were distributing the altered content, which is illegal). But that isn't happening. The content isn't being altered at all. The technology enables users to automatically skip certain sections of movies. It's no different than if a reader were to skip a couple pages in a book or a track on a CD -- except in this case it's automated, and the skipped portions are very carefully selected. Although this legislation is driven by an ideology of censorship, the outcome is more consumer freedom. That's a good thing. And it's typical that Hollywood would oppose it. (As an aside, I got a kick out of the URL for this article. The URL includes the phrase "bush_sanitizing_hollywood". That's beautiful. It sounds just like what an [impartial and objective!] AP editor would title this piece.)

LES wants to raise rates by an impressive 9%. That's a pretty hefty rate increase, if you ask me. LES has rightfully accumulated a nice stash of customer satisfaction capital over the years due to its excellent customer service and low rates. I wonder how much of that capital will be wiped out by this announcement.

Lowe's might be coming to 66th & Highway 2. Home Depot is already at 70th & Highway 2, while Menards and Tractor Supply Co. are down the road at 87th. Do we really need another monster home improvement store along that stretch? How much home improvement can one city do?

Flesh Chunks Found in Iowa Water Lines

I saw a hilarious sign this morning. It was one of those signs on the side of Lincoln's buses promoting StarTran that area schoolchildren have drawn. It said:

Save gas. Save money. Save time.

Save gas? True. Save money? For most people, true. Save time? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! I'm a big mass transit fan and I use StarTran buses to get to work most days. I ride the bus for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I once calculated it is about 1,500% more expensive for me to drive to work than to take the bus. But time is one of the biggest reasons not to use StarTran. StarTran is one of the most pathetic excuses for a mass transit system in the country for a city of Lincoln's size and demographics. It is an incredibly inefficient system, which is one of the reasons why so few people use it. It takes me 40 minutes to get home using the bus (including walking time), compared to 15-20 minutes in my car (including walking time to the parking garage). And don't get me started on all the time lost because you can't run errands on the way to and from work. No, little fourth grade student from a Lincoln elementary school, saving time is most certainly not a good reason to ride the bus. But two out of three ain't bad.