Walter Mondale and Arne Carlson do add up to success!

I bumped into the former governor in the grocery store and we chatted amicably until I asked a sensitive question.
by Charlie Leck

Met former Republican Governor in the grocery store the other day: Arne was a great friend of mine back before his gubernatorial days. And, I worked for Arne for a short period of time on a special project.

We chatted for a few moments in the store aisles about personal matters. Then I turned to the matter of our state’s shut-down and what could be done about it. Arne was suddenly too busy to chat and had to move on – “no comment,” in other words. There would be no scoop for this blog.

Later in the day the formal announcement came that the former Governor and former Vice President of the United States, Walter Mondale, had formed a committee of distinguished and qualified citizens to look at the political problem between the two major parties that prevented them from getting a budget passed. Seemed like a great idea to me!

The current Governor welcomed the idea.

The legislators on the Republican side are bellowing loudly against taking advice from such a group. They are totally negative about this group trying to make suggestions.

That’s the mood among Republicans today. By God, they’re simply going to have it their way or there will be “no way!”

Minnesotans need to put pressure on them. If your legislator is a Republican contact him/her and tell them to encourage the committee and not discourage it.

Carlson is a good man for this job. He distinguished himself as a Governor during hard times in this state. He has a sharp brain and sensitive political mind. He won’t participate on the committee but he had great success in bringing in some of the best people in the state to assist.

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Jimmy Leck

I have never met a man like him; one who could so happily laugh at the world and also cry for it with such passion!
by Charlie Leck

This is a very personal blog. I write it in a great state of mourning. So, perhaps, it is not meant to be read – only written. It is a way of heaving up the pain I feel.

Jim, a nephew of mine, died in the morning on 4 July. He was far too young to leave. And, he was a deeply good and kind man who had so much more to give to this world.

No other person could make me smile and laugh the way Jim could; nor could anyone else make me weep for the world as he did. He loved as cavernously as a man could love and he felt the pain of those who suffered as if he were Christ-like. He talked often of justice and how allusive it is. Why, he often wondered, did injustice and cruelty prevail on such a beautiful planet?

I so enjoyed the Dom Delouise imitation he could do! I and my family would rock with laughter when he did it for us. Lord, he was a funny man.

Jim did not shake my hand when we encountered one another. He would give me a giant bear hug and plant a kiss on my cheek and tell me he loved me.

His father – my brother – called me on the morning of the fourth and tried to tell me. Words wouldn’t form and agony wept from him. I heard only a painful squeal. Jim’s mother took the phone and shared the sad, terrible news. Jim’s big, loving and generous heart had failed him.

I tried to speak words of sympathy and to express my love, but something choked at me and slammed against my chest. For me, all the world, for an instant, was dark and lonely and so very desolate; for I had lost a love.

The laughter had stopped, but I closed my eyes so I could see his broad, playful smile and his gleeful, glistening eyes.

A candle flickered before the gentle breath of God; and, it went out! A good, loving and generous man died far too young. May he rest forever among the stars and in the arms of constant love!

I loved you, Jim!

The Fourth of July (2011)

It’s an important day in our nation – to think and remember and wonder – as so many other nations strive to achieve what we have!
by Charlie Leck

Such a wondrous freedom we have – to speak our minds freely and proudly and responsibly. It is a morning off for me – to enjoy the peace and quiet of my home.

Morning in summer – a hot
hot summer among the lakes and trees –
where the loons chatter and trill
and the dry brush crackles beneath my feet.

The sunlight is but sprinkled about
beneath the thick canopy of leaves
that barely stir and leave the residents attentive
to the crackling, symphonic sound beneath my feet.

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Oh, Ernie, I wish you had known!

Fifty years ago Ernest Hemingway, in failing health and deeply unhappy, took his life.
by Charlie Leck

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know!” [Ernest Hemingway]

I’ve had chats with one of my daughters about Ernest Hemingway. She teaches creative writing, literature and English at the college level. She doesn’t ask anyone to read Hemingway. She doesn’t like his take on women. He was a chauvinist.

Oh, my!

I have a collection of Hemingway’s works in leather. They are destined to become the property of this daughter. I am quite sure that I have read all of Hemingway’s published works. I liked the way he put sentences together. Most time, I liked the way he put stories together.

“In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore.” [Hemingway]

Fifty years have passed since Hemingway’s tragic death at his own hand. He had a character flaw that, I think, came from his own writing. He admired strong and heroic men. To be a man, in his eyes, one had to be virile, of great physical strength and capable of being the hunter. When he was not that (any of that), he took his life. He was miserable when he died, but oh how he could write jarring and tantalizing sentences at the height of his productivity.

The first great book I ever read was Old Man and the Sea. I have read it at least a half-dozen times. Talk about victory and defeat! How powerful is Hemingway's creation of a central character in this work? Extraordinary!

“In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.” [In Another Country, by Ernest Hemingway [Scribner, 1927]

*I wrote about this sentence in another blog, in March of 2010: “The war was always there!”

Hemingway was not a good public speaker. His speech when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature is a good example of that. Listen to it here (below) and forget the poor delivery of the words, but listen, instead, to the remarkable sentences (one after another). I found this video on Open Culture.

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life… (The writer) grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and, often, his work deteriorates.”

Have a wonderful 4th of July. I have family coming home to spend the better part of two weeks with me. The house will ring with the sound of children’s laughter and there will be hugs, kisses and lots of love and joy. Ernest, I wish you had known such happiness; yet, in this quiet moment I whisper my gratitude up into the stars to you.

“After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.” [Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms]

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We’re Well into 2012 Presidential Campaign

It has begun already and that’s too bad, but when one candidate starts running the others have got to follow, I guess.
by Charlie Leck

The caucuses and primaries don’t take place until early in 2012, but those lining up to be president have already started campaigning in those states that will hold the early vote counts. New Hampshire and Iowa are hot-beds of politics already.

The initial fund raising information shows that an awful lot of money will be spent on these campaigns. We will break all past records this year. Bachmann and Obama have clearly demonstrated their abilities to raise huge amounts of money from little givers. Others among the candidates (Romney and Huntsman) are personally very wealthy and will fund their own campaigns if they need to.

Then, of course, there will be the PAC contributions and the labor money and the mega amounts the corporations will contribute.

The wild and funny comedian, Stephen Colbert, recently made a trip to Washington to appear at the Federal Election Commission to await that body’s first campaign fund raising report. He tried to be funny, but, as Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post: “…comedian Stephen Colbert flew down to Washington this week to parody the nation’s campaign finance laws. But there was a flaw in his plan: The campaign finance system already is a parody.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v FEC changed everything. Before we had a lot of petty graft (labor unions sliding hundreds of thousands in cash under a campaign committee’s door, for instance) on both sides. Now the nation’s corporations can anonymously (in most states) donate hundreds of millions of dollars to the candidate of their choice. It was the worst and most destructive decision made in my life time in terms of the damage it does to our democracy. It makes corporations a virtual voter in the system and it certainly gives them an amount of power and voice in the elections that throws the scales completely out of balance.

“The Supreme Court, in five straight campaign finance decisions, has largely wiped out post-Watergate campaign reforms and, in the case of corporate contributions, undone nearly a century of law. Adding to the anarchy, Congress has been unable to agree on legislation requiring donors’ disclosure. For those who violate what’s left of the law, there is little risk of punishment because the FEC, paralyzed by a partisan split, has been unable to agree on much enforcement.” [Dana Milbank in the Washington Post]

Now the super-rich can have a huge impact on the results of federal elections without needing to identify themselves. Oh, my! That’s not the way our campaign finance laws were meant to work. Those laws, which were already messy and weak, have been shattered by the Supreme Court.

It’s “BYOB,” Colbert said with a smile. “Bring your own billions!”

I promised another blog on the twisted and staggering errors that Michele Bachmann makes in her chatter. As I did that research I was staggered by the number of non-factual things the woman says. Amazingly, she admits to having this weakness and, because of that, I have some sympathy for her. She has asserted that she will try harder to be factual and not so much off the cuff in what she says. Can I believe her?

I wrote the blog I promised, but I decided, because of all the flak I took after the last one of this sort, that I would submit it to a researcher to actually fact-check what I’d written. It hasn’t come back yet, but I’m pushing.

Columnist Aaron Blake pointed out something about the Bachmann v Media squabbles that I find interesting: “…it could actually be a good thing for the media to savage Bachmann.”

The more she’s savaged, the more it galvanizes her supporters.

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Passing the Bar

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is a graduate of that famous law school, The Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University.
by Charlie Leck

I find it strange that Congresswoman Michele Bachman has raised questions about Barack Obama and his law degree from Harvard. She never made clear why she doubted he could have done such a thing, but there was some kind of reference to the word “luck.” Obviously, if I can’t find the statement, I can’t nail down what she was getting at. I’ll keep searching, but if any of you remember this whole dialogue and can help me find it – well – please do!

The Congresswoman got her undergraduate degree from Winona State University in Minnesota. She began studying there in ’78. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and English.

President Obama began college at Occidental and ended up at Columbia University in Manhattan. From Columbia he went on to Harvard Law School and became the head of the Harvard Law Review in his senior year.

Congresswoman Bachman went on to Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University. Her’s was the last graduating class from that law school. It was closed down in ’86 after it lost its accreditation. The general skinny is that it was teaching too much religion and not enough law (but, in all honesty, I can’t source or document that). Then, it is said, she went on to William and Mary and got a LLD degree in tax law in ’88.

Barack Obama passed the bar examination shortly after leaving Harvard. So far, we can find no record that the Congresswoman has ever taken the bar examination (and, if she did take it, whether she ever gave it back). We’re trying to look into that here in Minnesota. It’s not an important matter because one can work for the IRS without having taken the bar exam (that’s a fact). And, that is what the Congresswoman did for a couple of years.

10:00 A.M. Addition to this blog!
A member of the MN Bar Assoc did confirm for me this morning that Michele Bachmann did pass her MN bar examination in 1986 and was then admitted to practice in MN. She is no longer authorized to practice law here but that
could well be that she has simply not continuted to pay dues while she is serving in Congress.

Let me retract my comments about her being a nut-case. I was actually trying to be funny (I shouldn’t do that). Instead I’m going to substitute the word “enigma.” Michele Bachmann is an enigma.

I’m pouring over information about her so that I can better explain her. I’ll do my damnedest to document, source and reference everything, but that isn’t going to be easy. However, I do know that some very good reporters are now trying to put together an accurate biographical background story about her.

I wonder if anyone has yet asked her to come up with a birth certificate to prove beyond reasonable doubt that she was born in Waterloo, Iowa. I think it would be silly to ask for anything like that. No one would really do such a thing, would they?

My first recollection of the name Michele Bachmann came in connection with something just crazy – sorry, but it was just that – really crazy (see below)!

MinnPost, a first rate on-line news source up here in Minnesota, did a story some time ago about some of the kind of weird or enigmatic things she’s done. My favorite, of course, is this one…

The bushes
Early in her state Senate career Bachmann was caught spying on a pro-gay-rights rally by hiding behind bushes. This incident occurred after she was profiled in the Star Tribune and photographed vacuuming in heels (see LaFave's letter to the newspaper above).

If you want to read the entire 2006 MinnPost story you can find it here!

I want to say something positive about Congresswoman Bachmann. If she’ll be serious and use some caution in what she says (as she advised Chris Wallace to do after he asked if she was “a flake”), she can be a very powerful candidate. She shouldn’t be lumped in with the former Alaska governor. She’s brighter and quicker than that. She recently admitted that she occasionally misspeaks and admitted that she needed to be more careful. All that being said, I don’t think she can do that – that is, be serious and use some caution. She is not psychologically built that way and she’ll just keep misfiring and shooting herself in the foot.

Tomorrow I’ll have more about some of the Congresswoman’s most recent “misstatements.” Some of them are serious and very erroneous. Once these misstatements are planted in her followers' minds, it's very difficult to correct or erase them.

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Comments on “a Minnesota Corn Flake”

My “flat out crazy” description of Michele Bachmann really drew some rage!
by Charlie Leck

I make a practice of not publishing comments by people not willing to put a name on what they say. It’s easy to vent and rage against someone when you are not willing to reveal your identity. Anonymous comments tend to be rather nasty and mean – “tough guys” hidden behind the anonymous tag. That's been the case in most of the 22 comments that came in about my recent blog, Michel Bachman is a Minnesota Corn Flake. Most of them show me clearly the kind of people she appeals to most.

I’ve published the ones that included a name after the comment (even though those names might be fictitious, I suppose). Most the commenters, however, were not identified.

I feel guilty about not publishing the rest of the comments because they were so highly critical of me and really hacked at me and my writing skills. I don't want to appear to be closed to critique. So, here’s a summary…

“Write much? All I read is an angry old man who can’t stand to see a woman in power who speaks up. Back to the kitchen to make me supper where you belong…”

I’d like to tell this anonymous person that I was first on Hillary’s bandwagon in 2007. I’d also like to tell her I write a great deal and that I’m not an angry old man at all – old, indeed, but not angry. I just dislike Michele Bachmann intensely. And, I do prepare about 90 percent of the dinners around here.

“The same type of analysis could be done for any candidate with similar results and for the current president you could have a field day with misquotes and ignorance…” …from Alabama

This guy’s long comment was actually very good and I enjoyed reading it. I’d just like to tell him that our President does get his tongue twisted occasionally, but it’s not from stupidity and he doesn’t lie. We know Representative Bachmann up here and she has a history. She really is a “nut case!”

“This reminds me of Fred Armisen’s sketch in SNL where he just reads a headline and says ‘that’s crazy’ without any real analysis.”

Good stuff! I remember that sketch, too.

“What a demo idiot!”

I’ve been involved in a lot of demo occasions. I use to demo legal research for a big company out east and I demo naturally raised lamb meat to potential buyers. I do a pretty good job of it, too, and I’m not usually called an idiot.

“You should be embarrassed. You’re an idiot.”

Again with the idiot label! Two graduate degrees, anonymous, and plenty of people who respect me as an academic (but come to think of it, you’re probably correct because an awful lot of academics are idiots).

“Speaking of always getting it wrong… you can’t even spell her first name, so I’m embarrassed for you.”

This one hurt because the commenter is correct.

“That’s a great list. My favorite gaffe of hers was when she was talking about the ‘Hoot Smalley’ act. Not only did she get the name of it wrong, but it wasn’t passed under FDR like she had said… I guess we’re lucky she’s not a tax attorney.”

Yup.

“Can you write anything except ‘flat out crazy’? Try ‘insane’ or ‘mentally deranged’… You type like a second grader.”

Nope! Ooh, the comment about my typing hurt. I took two years of typing in high school and got straight As both years. Lord that was a fun class. Twin sisters were in the class with me and one sat on each side of me and we played footsy all the time – Mary and Agnes!

“You call Michelle Bachmann flat-out crazy but you think your ultimate destination is the edge of the universe and beyond? Ok, Woody. And you claim that there's only one rule and that is "to be kind". Then you call a mother of five a flake, a dumb-ass idiot, crazy, homophobic, a nut-case, and a witch. Do you understand that her children might read this? Do you understand that this screed might be hurtful to those that love her? You have no credibility. I pity your grandchildren..”

Ooooh! That’s a real smack. This comment came to me in an email from Richard Scheibel. He really takes me to task. I can only reply with the following…

I hope my grandchildren will be proud of me for standing up to a woman who lives by the lie. And you say I have no credibility. In a credibility contest between Ms. Bachmann and me, I will win going away. My destination? How about her belief that she is saved and will live out eternity with Jesus? Her claims are based on the literature of the Bible while mine are on the literature of Milton. Don’t be a literalist! We’re both talking about fantasy here. The woman doesn’t know the real, tough and merciful Jesus – the one who demands we feed the hungry and clothe the needy.

Enough with literalism! Even my small grandchildren are not literalists.

Here’s what I’ll guarantee you (or is it guaranty?): I’m watching Representative Bachmann like a hawk and I’ll report on every single one of her goofs and lies here. And, there have been plenty of new ones lately.

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