The blue line marks the way of the new wall

On the west side of “The Wall” is a teeming community that has been there as long as I can remember. Google Earth shows streets on the east side of the wall but few structures. There are more now, plus two car washes. The new is a work in progress. And it’s actually not a bad development with mixed use and relatively dense concentration.

I don’t know how people on either side of The Wall feel about each other. The newbies are tolerated I expect by the manufactured homes park folk on the west side. The newbies to the east are, I expect, worried about their property values. Neither can do anything about the other. Maybe both are happy The Wall is there. But if it weren’t; what then?

NEARLY ALL of the north side of this block of downtown Bozeman is affected.

A WARM SATURDAY AFTERNOON and a stroll through a busy downtown Bozeman. One block, just west of Rouse Ave, nearly isn’t there except for some ruins. Downtown Bozeman is back in business but up and down the street are stores with boarded up fronts and signs saying “open for business.” Some of these buildings are more than a block away from the scene above. Click on the photo to see it in full size,

What is worrying is the fate of the building on the far right. See the detail below. It seems intact but clearly there is fire damage inside. See detail below:

BUILDING JUST TO RIGHT of the VFW

I have always known that some day the Republican Party as we know it would bring about its own destruction. Implode in a large cloud of dust like the demolition of the giant Montgomery Wards building in Saint Paul. It was only a matter of the right conditions. That awareness dates to 1995 when a moderate Republican friend of mine in Dubuque, Iowa, said to me: “I want my Party back.” What she meant, of course, is that she had been marginalized by extreme, doctrinaire, right wing religious fanatics who had taken full control of the Dubuque County Republican Party apparatus. They became a party of only a few very narrow issues. Of course, fiscal responsibility wasn’t one of them. This phenomenon occurred in Iowa before most other places in the United States. I was starkly aware of it because I was battling the same extremism as a candidate for the local school board. In those days the fanatics imagined they could take control of government by first electing their people to school boards — in Iowa separate elections to which very few people paid attention. Once elected to the school board their people could matriculate upward to higher office — city council, state legislature, Congress and, well, who knows.

Sarah Palin - the future of the Republican Party?

IT WAS A CHILLING notion but one we in Iowa quickly discovered was a largely overblown concern. Yes they could quietly get some of their folks elected by mobilizing church members through “stealth” campaigns. We would wake up one morning and find ourselves represented by people who didn’t believe in public education. People who were home schooling their kids. In Dubuque, where two of seven school board members were of this ilk, they would take the reins of power over a $60 million a year enterprise. In other Iowa cities, Davenport, and I can’t remember where else, the products of this sinister strategy were popping up.

But their plan didn’t work for very long simply because the people they got elected couldn’t be cool. They started ranting and raving on all manner of issues, alienating virtually everybody. Eventually the electorate got sick of them and kicked them out. This gave me some confidence that right wing crazies couldn’t take over our government. Turned out I was right and wrong and maybe now right again. They did manage to capture the highest office in the United States and from there proceeded down a path so destructive that hundreds of thousands of people were maimed or killed, hundreds of thousands more pushed out of jobs, public debt in the stratosphere and, in a final flourish, managing to bring the American economy to its knees. It took all of that and a very smart guy who may be our next FDR to finally get the American people’s attention.

We might ask now, wither the Republican Party? I suggest they go to my disillusioned friend in Dubuque and ask her what it will take to get her back. I think she might say that all of the single-issue crazies have to go. That the Republican Party has to reach out and find those soccer moms they’ve pushed aside for failing the wacko litmus test and convince them they have a future as a Republican.

So I submit that it is not Sarah Palin who has a future with the Republicans because if she does, there probably won’t be a Republican Party pretty soon. John McCain, at his core is a pragmatic moderate, is the future of the Republicans. But I’m not optimistic anyone will see that. To be truthful, I don’t care a whole lot because I believe that after eight years of hell the right people are finally in charge.

Winning a caucus is a way of proving you know how to win a caucus. Your campaign faithful can be prepared and trained to wait patiently in line for harried precinct volunteers to register and distribute little slips of paper. They will fight the traffic and the parking.  

THE GENERAL ELECTION coming up in the fall looks a whole lot more like, well, an election. Regular people come out because they know they probably won’t have to stand in line in an overcrowded hallway. In other words, one needs a broader appeal.

Where are those free washing machines?

I also wonder whether the full electorate can get behind the emotional mumbo jumbo of Barackism. Take a look at this article in an Australian paper.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the fact that a member of the Lake Elmo city council is NOT NICE is front page news today in the Sunday St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Pi Press reports that this council member has a lot to say and goes to the trouble of analyzing three city council meetings. The results of their work may be seen in the chart below.

The article jumps inside and goes on for quite a ways. This guy has created a real sensation in Lake Elmo. But it’s not as though he just joined the council. He’s on his third term. So he must be doing something that his constituents like. No doubt he’s having a tough time getting things done with the many, many four to one votes. Democracy is built upon compromise. One might say it is necessary for the minority to compromise with the majority. Consider that this situation may call for the opposite. In any event, the whole thing is very funny. In New York, Chicago, Boston or, say, Philadelphia, we might not be able to hear what this guy has to say above the din.

The look on this lady’s face reveals it all. Minnesota Nice. Not!

At last, an insightful American cartoonist GETS the real reason for Karl Rove’s resignation from the Bush Administration effective the end of this month. Click here or on image to see scalable version. To see the This Modern World archive, click here.

In Minnesota, here in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, we are some distance from the agricultural economy. We know from lawns and gardens. I have very little of the former. A lot more of the latter. And we have a lot of trees on our property. The sun rises and gives us a cloudless day every day. The temperature rises to the 90s and then cools off in the evening. It is beginning to feel like Havre, Montana.

What doesn’t get watered, dies. 

So right now I am watering my hedge in the front. I had neglected one of the front gardens while my attention was focused elsewhere and the plants started turning brown. There is a bush in my back yard that somehow must have been out of the typical arc of watering because its leaves are wilted. It may well be gone though I soaked it last night and this morning. All of the volunteers growing in the dog run on the side aren’t growing anymore. They are brown and crisp.

Welcome to Desert Minnesota.

We’ve sort of given up on the boulevard grass. We try and keep some of it going in selected areas but there is just too much square footage to keep going with a measly little 5/8 inch garden hose. When I finish bucking up the front yard vegetation I have to haul the big hose around so I can water the Fry Street gardens including a new one we’re working on right now. It’s constant. But I know that all of this soaking style watering I’m doing is reaching tree routes. And our trees, a few of which I’m guessing were planted by soldiers from Fort Snelling when the military road went through here, are looking reasonably good. No shortage of sun. 

The traffic morass caused by the I-35W bridge collapse has been moving ever eastward. SR 280 was turned into a temporary freeway. But this weekend some connecting ramps are being improved along the detour and the highway department is recommending Snelling as an alternative. The street that runs right through the middle of our Hamline-Midway neighborhood (Star Tribune Aug. 9).

We’re accustomed to the occasional Snelling jam up. Northbound to the State Fair in the morning and southbound from the State Fair in the evening. Classic car show. Same deal. We know how to route around all of that and we are accustomed to adapting with surprising cheerfulness to these consequences of urban congestion. But it is not unreasonable to ask, is all of this really necessary?

Why does the government have such a serious responsibility to ensure absolutely that I can aim my 2.5 ton wagon at any place in the city I want it to be anytime I want it to be there? Does anyone even begin to suggest that maybe I should just, well, stay home or, alternatively, take the bus or ride my bike? That notion does not appear in the Strib story. 

  Dylan with Pronto Pup | click for larger version

The people sitting in their cars during State Fair time could very easily have gone to one of the many park and ride lots where they could ride a free bus to and from the fair. In some cases the free bus goes along a dedicated right of way ensuring no waiting for deep fried food items on a stick. This year, with all of the mess, possibly the Fair organizers could simply shut down the parking option on the Fair grounds and tell all of the fair-goers to park and ride. But that idea seems completely absurd, doesn’t it?

It’s all there in black and white. The Republican record of shame. And for this behavior Pawlenty was awarded high approval ratings by the voters. Time Magazine has hailed his “creative” solutions to problems. Three cheers for the governor who refuses to invest in his own state! Now as the dust settles around the stunning I-35W bridge collapse and divers continue their search for victims, the consequences of Republican malfeasance become evident. Pawlenty’s spokesman now says a special session of the legislature is “being considered” and reconsideration of the gas tax bill is “a possibility.” Democrats are saying a lot more things are a possibility as well. Such as reversing Pawlenty’s veto of the Local Government Aid bill.| Below – Bush visit to disaster site on Saturday.