Coleman concedes at long last

Finally. it’s over, thanks to the Minnesota Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in favor of Al Franken. I heard Franken’s show on Air America back when the network started back in 2004. Going on that, I didn’t think Franken’s then-rumored ambitions for the Senate would fly. Of course the Republican Party still looked strong at the time, and the idea of a Democratic majority was hardly seemed possible, although it seemed Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority was not going to fly, either.

Either way, congratulations to Sen.-elect Franken. I don’t believe that his seating will automatically lead to a permanent filibuster-proof 60 vote majority all the time. That assumes that all 60 Democratic senators vote in lock-step, which is not always guaranteed. They could always prove me wrong. Just like how I was wrong about Al Franken’s final victory. Well done, sir.

Living large via RAM upgrade

Oh yeah. I now have a whopping TWO GIGABYTES OF RAM.

Taste that, Mac 512k!

Not really impressive when you consider the two gigs cost less than $50. I do remember when a single megabyte dropped below $100.00. Or when a 20 MB hard drive slipped below $1,000. Would it ever end?!

Apple’s industrial design, however, is quite nice. Liked that a lot, thank you sir.

My Mac is slightly faster now, which is good.

Doyle vetoes new Milwaukee County sales tax, flushes transit as well

Does this mean CRG likes him now?

I had a hunch this would happen, that Doyle would veto the transit portion of the budget if it didn’t exactly fit his vision for an RTA. So a big thing I’ve worked hard for since last November has been summarily swept away. Thanks for nothing, Mister Governor.

(Apparently KRM isn’t totally dead. At least there’s that… but what about our local transit?)

Meanwhile in Shorewood, a teen dies from heroin overdose

Sometimes it’s good to have thing put in perspective. We’re fanning ourselves over the “right to plant” where we want to, while the suburbs are also facing a serious spread in heroin use among teenagers. My heart goes out to the Shorewood family who lost their teenage son to that deadly opiate. Telling people that they can or cannot plant in the median between the street and the sidewalk at once seems much easier than preventing the use of narcotics, and much more mundane. Perhaps because it’s easy enough for a municipality to make a change with regard to land use such as planting in yards and medians, but making deep social change is much more challenging.

That said, allow me to suggest gardening as a way to combat crime and build community. Having people come together to plant food and flowers is but one step in building a community. You need to go beyond that, and have the people involved in planning the garden, have them involved in harvesting what comes from the garden, and making it part of their lives. If it’s just a pretty thing to look at, in time, it will get ignored. A garden that is producing food and showing people how the many systems relate to and effect one another is a powerful analogy to the way the rest of the world operates. It shows how powerful team work can be, and that we can easily accomplish positive change in our lives through small actions.

How about starting a garden in memory of the young man who lost his life? Few things could better serve his memory and his family.

Using land to grow food… and dodge property taxes?!

That’s what’s happening all around Wisconsin.

• Whispering Springs subdivision, with homes along a golf course: Total property taxes: about $5,745. By having “corn planted on one lot and weeds and marsh hay being harvested from the other five,” the total tax bill plunges to around $12.77.

• In Fond du Lac, “two commercial lots that should be assessed at $636,100, but are valued at a total of $900 because winter wheat was planted on them.”

• At a Gander Mountain in Eau Claire, which is also”being planted with crops,” the tax bill will plummet from around $50,000 to “about $75 next year.”

Does this mean that we can get a break for having six or seven planting beds on our lot?

No?

Somehow, I thought not. Nor should they.

Milwaukee suburb struggles with people doing what they want in their yard

The village of Shorewood is the northeastern portion of iron ring of suburbs that box in the city of Milwaukee. It prides itself on having a respectable standard of living, and is sometimes referred to as a bohemian suburb, if such a thing could exist. Never mind that Shorewood is poised above the  bohemian (“troubled”) Milwaukee neighborhood of Riverwest; while folks in Riverwest pride themselves on generally being able to do what they wish with their yards, folks in Shorewood apparently do not have that luxury.

As part of the recent Victory Garden Initiative “blitz,” planting beds sprung up all around Milwaukee and the greater metro area. Shorewood was no exception, with its organizer Gretchen Mead in residence there. But it turns out that the Shorewood village officials are not so keen on having people used their yards as they wish.

According to shorewoodnow.com, the village has issued fines to some residents for either planting vegetables in their front yards, and in some cases, on the parkway, the area between the sidewalk and the road. While the recent burst of urban gardening brought this attention on the newest offenders of the various rules pertaining to yard-farming, it’s not a new phenomenon. People have been using their lawns as the good growing space that it is for years. What’s more is the village committee that is supposed to meet and discuss such matters “never met.”

The horse may indeed be out of the barn.

August 11, 2009 Update: NPR ran a story done by Susan Bence of WUWM on this matter. Listen to it here.

Question about Sanford’s trip to Argentina

Did he pay for his seven day trip to walk in the woods Argentina himself, or did the state of South Carolina pay for it? I hope for their sake that he paid for it himself. This should be looked into if it has not already been addressed.

A recommendation for Gov. Sanford’s rehabilitation

It is understandable that the good governor of South Carolina may need to make a hasty exit from politics, being a rabidly pro-traditional marriage man who’s since run aground on the coast of Argentina. Tonight’s installment of The Colbert Report should prove awfully interesting watching, with the show’s faux chickenhawk host being a native son of South Carolina.

But should Mr. Sanford need an eventual rehabilitation, I can recommend no better place to start it than on The Colbert Report. Even if Colbert himself (who I have apparently elevated to great status) does not wish to extend forgiveness, it would be something to see Sanford under the gaze of the character who so ably embodies and mocks right-wing pundits. Stephen Colbert’s tough love may yet await.

South Carolina newspaper finds that sex sells, or at least makes web traffic

As I noted here yesterday, the McFly Affair drove traffic on this blog and several other lefty blogs to rarely seen heights. And the latest sex scandal, this one from South Carolina by way of Argentina, has had a similar effect on a newspaper’s web site. The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. has been leading the drive on the story of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s apparent disappearance over the weekend. At first, no one knew where he was or where he’d gone. Then it was billed as a “hike in the Appalachians,” and his wife wasn’t worried.

Then it became a trip Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The rest is now history. That’s a long way to go just to have an affair.

But like our recent saga here in Milwaukee, e-mails exchanged between Gov. Sanford and his mistress have surfaced. Surely right-wing talk show hosts will read these on air, much like Charlie Sykes read aloud Jessica McBride’s emails to Chief Flynn. (Was this before or after she asked the media to lay off? And, Pot, please lay off the Kettle… it’s busy trying to be black.)

Anyway — this is a very long way of saying that The State‘s hits spiked, just as ours did in the Cream City. Specifically, their hits were tripled by word of the governor’s infidelity.

This is the same Mark Sanford who voted to impeach President Clinton…

It’s amazing how the people screaming the loudest about traditional marriage and “family values” so often go down in great scandals of infidelity. McBride and Sanford are but the latest.

When McBride and the Right help the Left

They’re generous. More generous than they should be.

My blog stats went boi-oiii-oing when word of the Flynn-McBride affair hit the interwebs, as did Folkbum‘s and Wallah‘s.

In fact, for a brief and shining day, I was almost half as well-read as Dan Cody. That’s something to aspire to! Thank you, Jessica, for completing us.

Of course, we should just get used to the fact that we’ll never approach Preview P-Mac’s readership levels. To think, we could judge ourselves by that and nothing else!