Secrets of the City

Apparently the guy who had the cross burned onto his lawn in Anoka WAS the guy who burned the cross into his lawn.
Not that Anoka doesn’t have real racism problems, but this is definitely a disconcerting turn of events in its own way.

This ruins my plans to draw a swastika on my forehead and claim I was attacked by skinheads. Of course, I stole that idea from Morton Downey Jr.

This has to make the hate crime aspect much more complicated for the prosecution. What a jerk.

A criminal mastermind I am not, but I would think that if you have nefarious plans, you shouldn’t be telling fellow inmates about them.

wow. nothing like a preemptive self-inflicted hate crime to put the neighborhood on alert.

Can anyone believe Carol Molnau is still commissioner of transportation after the bridge collapse?
I remember when T-Paw named her as transpo commish, he made a big hullabaloo about how much money it would save the state to have her holding two jobs (since she only gets paid for one of them).

Yeah, big savings….how much did that bridge collapse cost us? In lives and money?

Much as I sometimes can’t stand Nick Coleman, he’s been right on the mark about this fiasco from the get-go….today’s column being no exception.

Shoot, my Internets are freezing up for some reason – anybody got the link to Coleman’s column today handy?

Never mind, here it is

“Yeah, big savings….how much did that bridge collapse cost us?“

In our never-ending quest for that one perfectly stupid political assertion, we need to throw this one on the list for consideration.

This is one of those statements that immediately telegraph that the speaker knows nearly nothing about the subject of which they scream, and doesn’t really care that people know it – that, to them, the facts aren’t nearly as important as their own emotion-centered hatred for all things outside of their own ideology.

Next, we’ll hear from him “I went on a picnic, and it rained – that fucking Pawlenty!”

A brilliant solution!!! The best way to stop illegal action in restrooms is to provide more concealment!!!

Genius!!

A brilliant solution!!! The best way to stop illegal action in restrooms is to provide more concealment!!!

Genius!!

There’s going to be a statewide smoking ban Monday? Wow, I never saw THAT one coming…

A brilliant solution!!! The best way to stop illegal action in restrooms is to provide more concealment!!!
Genius!!

It just means that rather than toe-tapping happy feet or waving your hand underneath the stall divider, you’ll have to wrap out code on the wall:
three short and two long wraps… it’s a go.

The cross burning story is disturbing in that the guy used his race and a hideous act to garner sympathy. And then humorous that his idiocy was such that he told fellow inmates in prison about the plan. Mensa member in the making.
It’s people like this guy that do as much harm, if not more, than if it had actually been a true act of hatred.

I blame Science education for the bridge collapse. If we didn’t know about entropy, it wouldn’t occur.

Close our schools and this will never happen again!

Here is where I grumble about the death of personal freedoms regarding the smoking ban:

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I love how you use the term “death” to defend smoking. Ward, look up this article — note comment on “personal freedoms” near the end.

http://www.wmitchell.edu/news/articles/default.asp?articleId=11313

When talks of a smoking ban began, as a smoker, I was really fired up – no pun intended, personal freedom issues and all and then I started thinking of all those people who work in industries exposed to my smoke. Not fair on either side of the table it seems. Restaurants/bars that I’ve been to have found ways to create outside smoking areas which are comfortable and don’t invade on the non-smokers.

I used to think “slippery slope” — this freedom, then what’s next kind of thing, but it’s proven that smoking and 2nd hand smoke are harmful and my need to smoke shouldn’t take precedence over the health of all.

But again, the minute the gov starts telling me that I can’t smoke in/around my house, then I’m going to get my panties in a big bunch.

I (heart) Cat. Too few smokers are willing to think about the rights of others around them, in particular the hospitality workers (including musicians). I am ashamed to admit that when I was a smoker, I didn’t think much about that either. It is indeed proven that secondhand smoke is harmful — there is a new study out showing a big drop in heart attacks in smokefree New York (also see in smokefree communities in Colorado and Montanta).

The Minneapolis/Hennepin ordinances are now more than two years old, and let’s face it, smokers and non-smokers still have their personal freedoms, and the bar workers have a healthier place to work.

My argument isn’t that smoking itself is a right. Rather, that if I buy a bar, stock the bar, hire employees, and more importantly, pay taxes, I see very little reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to permit smoking.

Why should bar/restaurant owners even be required to make non-smoking areas?

Why do we claim restaurants and bars have no right to put their employees at risk when countless other high-risk employers are allowed to continue?

I understand that smoking harms the people around you, but thanks for explaining. Now explain why people who enter a bar or restaurant labeled “smoking allowed” aren’t asking for it?

Shucks, Bob. I think it’s more of my somewhat utilitarian approach to the world. I’m by no means an evolved smoker. Multiple incidents of death and cancer due to smoking in my life. Enough so that you would think it would scare me into quitting, but the mind is a very tricky organ.

I may have felt differently about a smoking ban if I smoked a lot and it’s rare when I do, but when I do, shut the front door as it’s smokey smokes-a-lot out at the bars with friends… and I don’t even drink. It seems as if there are enough products on the market today to feed nic-craving smokers needs without the smoke – friend goes through more nic gum than I ever will in smokes.

If Molnau goes under pressure, then the state lawmakers from both political parties should adopt the same double standards: resign from public office. They can’t just dance around and say that they were innocent for the bridge to fall, and put the blame on the Governor alone at the same time. They were in charge for the last eight years on the same damn committees and therefore, they didn’t do a squat but talk about queers, ballparks, self-pay raises, and potluck dinners.

Give them their pink slip already!

I’ll try to explain it to you, ward. Yes, some occupations are, by their nature, hazardous. Being a firefighter, coal miner, etc. Today we try to make these occupations as safe as possible with helmets, oxygen tanks, two-way radios, etc. However, there is nothing inherently risky about working as a bartender, except the hours and hours many Minnesotans spend working in a smoke-filled work enviroment. Removing the secondhand smoke adds no additional expense, no extra equipment nor does it hinder freedoms. It just clears the air. The drinks, food and music can — and will — continue unhindered by the new law.

Bars and restaurants were required by the Clean Indoor Air Act of 1975 to offer non-smoking areas. Thirty-two years ago, Minnesota lawmakers thought that would be enough to offer nonsmoking patrons a safer, healthier place to eat and drink. Today, we know the secondhand smoke is much worse than they knew back then — we also know that these “no smoking” areas and ventilation schemes just don’t work. We also know that non-smoking areas do absolutely nothing to protect hospitality employees — the thousands of good people who got left behind when most other Minnesotans were guaranteed a smokefree workplace back in the 1970s.

Owners of any other (non hospitality) private business in Minnesotans also buy the building, buy the goods, hire employees, and pay taxes, yet they can’t allow smoking in their stores or office buildings. Why should a bar owner have “special rights” on what they can allow in their place of business? Besides, the government already closely regulates and licenses all food and liquor establishments. Every owner knows this.

Still worried about your poor bar owners, ward? Well. just keep going to your friendly local neighborhood bar — smokefree begining Monday — as you did before. Don’t forget to patronize your smokefree American Legion and VFW, too.

I used to think “slippery slope” — this freedom, then what’s next kind of thing, but it’s proven that smoking and 2nd hand smoke are harmful and my need to smoke shouldn’t take precedence over the health of all.

When you think of the tens of thousands of innocent people who die every year because of someone else’s ingestion of alcohol, would you be in agreement that we should ban the serving of alcohol in public establishments?

You can smoke only at home. Let people drink only at home.

Because that’s the argument the anti-tobacco lobby used to get tobacco banned … that innocent people were being harmed by the act of other people smoking. Well, innocent people are being killed by the act of other people drinking. What’s the difference?

Well, one is, I can document the number of people who were actually killed in an alcohol-related auto wreck. You can’t document how many people actually died from ingesting second-hand smoke.

When you think of the tens of thousands of innocent people who die every year because of someone else’s ingestion of alcohol, would you be in agreement that we should ban the serving of alcohol in public establishments?

That’s why drunk driving is illegal.

Why should a bar owner have “special rights” on what they can allow in their place of business?

Because a bar is a business where it’s understood that the purpose of its existence is to foster the ingestation of adult substances … alcohol and tobacco. Bartender and waitrons are adult people. They take those jobs knowing what the job conditions are.

And although anti-tobacco organizations claim that up to 3400 deaths occur each year as a result of second-hand smoke, there are no documented statistics that attribute any deaths to second-hand smoke. There’s no reason to believe their lives are in any more danger than if they had taken a job in the water treatment plant. It may not smell nice, but there’s no proof that it’s deadly. If they had taken a job serving ice cream to children, but found themselves in a smoke-filled room, they would have reason to complain.

Don’t forget to patronize your smokefree American Legion and VFW, too.

While they still exist.

“We also know that non-smoking areas do absolutely nothing to protect hospitality employees — the thousands of good people who got left behind . . .“

Yeah, but amongst those “good people” are thousands of others who are only mediocre, and there’s a bunch that are truly bad, too. Can’t we smoke around THEM?

Yeah, but amongst those “good people” are thousands of others who are only mediocre, and there’s a bunch that are truly bad, too. Can’t we smoke around THEM?

*Cheezy Smiley Face*

Because a bar is a business where it’s understood that the purpose of its existence is to foster the ingestation of adult substances … alcohol and tobacco. Bartender and waitrons are adult people. They take those jobs knowing what the job conditions are.

Since when did the definition of a bar become “Because a bar is a business where it’s understood that the purpose of its existence is to foster the ingestation of adult substances … alcohol and tobacco.”

Oh, yeah: When it became convenient to your argument.

I’m going to bars a lot more now that they are smoke free, to do the only thing I have ever go to a bar exclusively to do, and the thing they make the most money from me doing: Drinking alcohol. Although, if they don’t start hiring bartenders who know what they are doing, the bars are going to lose me.

Since the days of the spitoon, bar owners and patrons have always recognized the symbiotic relationship between alcohol use and tobacco use. Ashtrays, match books, cigarettes girls, etc., exist(ed) as part of the saloon culture because it was understood that those behaviors have always been engaged in together. There’s even enzyme research that shows that the use of one causes the craving for the other.

Point being, ban one, ban the other. If you’re going to destroy one industry, you might as well destroy the other because they prop each other up anyway.

Since the days of the spitoon, bar owners and patrons have always recognized the symbiotic relationship between alcohol use and tobacco use. Ashtrays, match books, cigarettes girls, etc., exist(ed) as part of the saloon culture because it was understood that those behaviors have always been engaged in together.

I think you’re being disingenuous. You used to be able to find those things in movie theaters as well. The Cooper theater had a smoking alcove off to one side of the theater.

“Since the days of the spitoon . . .“

They’re over?

Damn. It was hard enough finding places I could take Mom out before.

No more spitoons . . . and it rained today . . . damn that jerkass Pawlenty!

Dang! I missed out on being able to smoke everywhere. At my fomer work place a bunch of the old guys used to tell stories of being able to smoke at their cubes. For the new employees, they were given phones, pads of paper, pencils/pens, and an ash tray.

Maz: smoking and alcohol consumption aren’t really bedfellows. Just because something used to be a certain way, doesn’t make a good argument not to make changes. A person can drink, but the consumption of alcohol doesn’t negatively affect the people around him/her – except maybe exposing those around him to his jackassian qualities. Drinking in and of itself only harms the person who is drinking.

Smoking, on the other hand, especially in enclosed spaces exposes everyone to harmful smoke. And I knew someone would bring up the “well, people don’t have to work in those environments if they don’t want to.” But, if it’s all that you’ve known as a job, it’s pretty callous to shrug it off as “well, just look for other work.” For many in the bar/hospitality industry, it wasn’t known what 2nd hand smoke could do when they started working in the industry. Are you saying: “so what, new evidence, phooey?”

People are going out to non-smoking bars and restaurants across the country – the change is good.

On one hand, it’s nice to come home from a night out, such as the one I’m about to embark on, without smelling like the bottom of an ashtray. And it makes it much more difficult for this reformed smoker to find a cig to bum in a drunken haze – you have to find your coat and go outside and by the time you do that, you might as well have another drink.

On the other, it gets effing cold here. I feel for the shiverers. The Park Tavern in St Louis Park has a pretty nifty smoking patio thing, with a ventilation system, that’s completely closed off from the rest of the bar, and they don’t serve out there, so employees aren’t subjected to it. I can understand how that might be cost-prohibitive, but it seems like a good compromise between the slightly nanny state feel of the ban and being in a room under a cloud of blue smoke all night.

(Sidenote: My grammy managed and bartended at a VFW for thirty-odd years, and died at the ripe old age of 96 from being the ripe old age of 96. Secondhand smoke’s effects seem like a crapshoot sometimes.)

Drinking in and of itself only harms the person who is drinking.

MADD would disagree with you. But I realize that most drinkers are masters of rationalizing and living in denial.

MADD isn’t against drinking, they’re against drinking until you’re too drunk to drive and then driving anyway.

“rationalizing and living in denial”

That’s one of those self-damning comments.

Prim teatottlers like Maz love to shame the Fallen Angels

I have in my possession, Max a bottle of Chivas Regal 25-year-old Blended Scotch.

Eat your heart out

I just drank your Chvas Regal, while you were typing that.

I’ve got half a bottle of Drambouis. Let’s rusty some nails together, Rat.

Not this one. It was launched this weekend.

I’ve got half a bottle of Drambouis. Let’s rusty some nails together, Rat.

I woudn’t drink this Scotch with anything except maybe a little water.

It’s spelled Drambuie, kids. I wouldn’t drink single malt with anything but water…blended scotch, on the other hand, I would mix in cocktails or even cook with.

A little water reveals the flavor and subdues the alcohol burn. Sometimes I’ll use soda water. Less if I add ice.

Bourbon, in the meanwhile, I mix with B&B, half and half, add a dash of bitters and an orange wedge. I’m drinking one now, God help my soul.

It’s called the McQueen, and it’s the most dangerous drink ever made.

“On one hand, it’s nice to come home from a night out, such as the one I’m about to embark on, without smelling like the bottom of an ashtray.“

On the other hand, now that the spittoons appear to be gone, people are going to be spitting at your feet all night long. I’m thinking this was a bad trade.

I’ve got half a bottle of Drambouis. Let’s rusty some nails together, Rat.

Um, is that a buttsecks joke?

“No more spitoons . . . and it rained today . . . damn that jerkass Pawlenty!“

Okay, THIS one you probably can throw in his lap. The picnic would’a been harder . . .

““rationalizing and living in denial”

That’s one of those self-damning comments.“

Is not. And even if it is, everyone says it.

“On the other hand, now that the spittoons appear to be gone, people are going to be spitting at your feet all night long. I’m thinking this was a bad trade.”

Nah. Ever since spittoons were taken away, they’ve been carrying around empty coke bottles. So you’re fine as long as you only drink from your own bottle.

Removing the secondhand smoke adds no additional expense, no extra equipment nor does it hinder freedoms. It just clears the air.

Look, you’ve explained that smoking is not only dangerous to other patrons, but also to employees. I understand that. I still don’t understand why you think we should curtail the rights of private property owners.

If patrons don’t want smoking, let them express that view by not patronizing that particular establishment. If employees don’t want to work in an environment in which they’re exposed to smoke, let them opt for other work, in the same way that people who don’t want to be trapped underground in a dark area for hours at a time don’t opt to be coal miners, and people who don’t want third degree burns and missing limbs don’t opt to be steel plant workers.

I’m hearing a lot of “gosh I’m glad there’s no more smoking in bars, because it really irritated me.” How did we get so blind to personal property rights that we’re willing to give them up so easily? How are these same people saying we ought to legalize weed (something I completely support)?

Bars and restaurants are not public institutions. They’re not yours in the same way the courthouse is, or the light rail is, or public streets are. Ban smoking in public, for all I care. That’s your right as the public.

But banning smoking in privately owned establishments is one step away from telling me I can’t do it in my home, which is one step away from having inspectors in my home telling me what’s safe to cook for dinner and watch on TV.

I mean, I think it probably is safer to have the government listening to our phone conversations. It doesn’t mean I think they should violate my right to private conversation in order to produce that safety.

Do people really just disregard the owners of private businesses so easily?

Look, you’ve explained that smoking is not only dangerous to other patrons, but also to employees. I understand that. I still don’t understand why you think we should curtail the rights of private property owners.

By this argument, we could undo any safety precaution required at a job by law.

And why do that when it’s easier and and it makes you feel good to add more?

(Yawn)

I’ll have to try one of those McQueen’s, max. Who in town (other than you) pours a good one?

You have to tell bartenders how to make it, because it’s a srink that was invented by the Bottle Gang; but, because it’s half and half (bourbon and B&B), it’s impossible to mess up. Just make sure they ass a dash of bitters and an orange wedge.

The Bottle Gang invented a srink?

I’ll try it, max, thanks…

After a few McQueen’s, you’ll be calling it a srink too.

After long last, I’ve finally figured out the solution to the whole smoking thing. Just make all of the employees wear respirators.

I woudn’t drink this Scotch with anything except maybe a little water.

and not maybe a little vermouth?

By this argument, we could undo any safety precaution required at a job by law.

We regulate places like steel refineries and coal mines to be as safe as possible while still producing the product they are there to produce. That is, we eliminate every risk that isn’t strictly necessary for the end goal to be accomplished.

What if the end goal of a particular restaurant is a space where patrons can feel free to smoke? Eliminating smoking in that case wouldn’t follow the principle you propose here, Max.

I’ll be celebrating FTBA Of 2007 with a hundred or so of my friends in an undisclosed location (not one of usual haunts) Monday after work. I’ll try a McQueen then.

Just make all of the employees wear respirators.

Another “solution” involving mandated behavior. You must be a democrat.

Oh Jebuz Christ maz, there are all sorts of work safety regulations that are mandated.

Are there enough to satisfy you now, Jeff?

Rat, I have always been more or less against the ban. My comment was mostly in jest; I didn’t think I’d end up defending my choice of words. I just figure that such a thing would be a solution that would be consistent with other industries: protective gear as appropriate to protect workers, but not treading on further than that on the rights of property owners. In hindsight, it probably would be a pretty fair solution. It’d just look kinda funny.

The Times has a piece on studios banning smoking in their movies

In the movies can see damn near any pathology in the book, any violent, lurid indecent act portrayed.

But they’re drawing the line at smoking.

Let’s just disband OSHA.

I wouldn’t mind the life expectancy dropping back to about 67 like it was in 1970 when the OSHA Act was passed. It sure would save social security.

So you would blame or credit government for the life expectancy rates. Typical.

Mazapaza,

Your logic is flawed. Not all alcohol consumption is bad. In moderation, it is actually good for ya all!

ALL smoking is bad for the smoker and the poor putz sitting next to him.

Nonsense. There are several health benefits from smoking.