I thought I’d respond to some of the email I get most often here at Shot In The Dark.

Q: You come in for a lot of fairly scabrous attacks from a lot of leftybloggers.  How do you deal with that?

A: My basic assumption has always been that the opinion of anyone who doesn’t revere me isn’t worthy of contempt.

Q: Hah, Merg!  You are teh unethikel.  You poast derring the wurk day!?!

A: Nope.  In the past five years, I can think of two times I’ve blogged from the office, and both were for really big news flashes – Heller, and one other.  And they were both during breaks in the action at work, to boot.

I write, usually, from 5:30AM until about 7AM.  Sometimes, rarely, in the evening, although that is rare indeed.  Which isn’t to say I’m not thinking about what I”m going to post; when I actually do start writing, I usually have a posting pretty thoroughly mapped out in my mind, and can pretty much do data entry.  And I’m a very fast typist.

I am that good.

It helps that Wordpress – my blog editing tool – allows me to schedule posts for anytime I want them, so they can publish immediately, or at any time in the future that I want.  So I can run a bunch of posts in the early morning, and spot a few more to run at noon, and occasionally schedule something for much further out.

In fact, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, this blog would continue posting content for (checks schedule) right around two years.   Although a lot of it wouldn’t make sense; in October of 2012, I have a piece about the North Dakota National Guard landing on Guadalcanal that, so far, says “NDNG Guad; Bloody Nose, M1, Jungle, town”.   I could see it becoming a literary genre in its own right, really – but all in all, I’m hoping to be alive to flesh the notes out.

Still – those pieces I do on music of the eighties, and my World War II pieces, and most of my “Twenty Years Ago Today” stuff is written months – sometimes years  - in advance.  The current record?   I have a piece about the thirtieth anniversary of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Shoot Out The Lights” scheduled for April of 2012; it’s been completely written for probably 18 months.

I’m a little manic that way.

Q: Whatever happened to “Twenty Years Ago Today”  Did you have much  of a life twenty years ago?

A: No, I really didn’t.

Well, that and some of the people who were in my life twenty years ago have said they don’t want to appear in my blog.

But I can announce this; the series will be making a return in coming months.  Actually, it did return, sort of; I posted my first epi in 15 months a few weeks ago.  But if you like the series, I have episodes spotted out for the next year or so.

The crazy part?  I started the series five years ago this month.  Those five years didn’t go nearly as fast the first time.

Q: Why so much writing about the gubernatorial race?  Do you work for the Emmer campaign?

A: This campaign has given me lots of opportunity to do some of the things I haven’t had much time to do with this blog – actual reporting.  Digging into stories and analyzing them.  In this case, the “story” is the boundless, slimy perfidy of the DFL and Mark Dayton’s campaign.  Let’s just say it’s a target-rich environment.

But no, I do not work for the Emmer campaign.  I keep my “Disclosures” section pretty rigorously up to date.  Unlike the Minnesota Independent, I am rigorously honest about this blog’s backstory.

Q: Oh, bull.  You have so much inside info from the Emmer camp, you gotta be working for them.

A: Nope.  I have plenty of contacts in conservative and GOP circles – one of the benefits of doing, I dunno, a successful conservative blog and talk show for all these years - and those contacts translate into “sources”, when it comes time to report on things.  But no; I have no connection to the Emmer campaign that every other “journalist” in town doesn’t have on whatever “beat” they cover.  Absolutely none.

Q: You are such a shill.  You are an idiot.  You are stupid. No intelligent person can believe what you do.

A: Mom?

Q: Why don’t you write more about music?  It’s what you do best.

A: Why thanks.  But throughout the history of this blog, I’ve written about whatever crossed my mind, when it’s crossed it.

That said, I have a solid two more years of “This Was The Year That Was” posts, about eighties music, coming up.  The pace is dilatory, but I’m kinda jazzed about the actual articles.

Q: You are wasting my time.  You have no expert knowledge of Minnesota politics.

A: You came to me, jagoff.  Not the other way around.

Q: What was that Gubernatorial  prediction again?

A: Emmer 47, Dayton 44, Horner 8.

Q: How about the CD6 race?

A: Bachmann 52, Clark 42, Anderson 6.

Q: OK, smart guy; CD2?

A: Kline 62, Madore 38.

Q: You think you’re sooooooo smart.

A: No.  I don’t.  Honestly, I feel like a moron most of the time.

Part of it is that kids on the Great Plains generally grow up with the sense that they really aren’t anything special; you’re not bad, but don’t go expecting to change the world, because you’re just not that big a deal.  There’s even a Norwegian word for it.  I forget the word – Fjøreløren, for all I know – but it translates to “knowing your place in the scheme of things”.  Not getting “uppity”, to translate it to American.

Anyway – long story short, I usually feel like the dumbest person in any room I’m in.

Unless I’m at “Drinking Liberally”.  Then I’m in the 99th percentile.

Q: You are teh heppocreet and you lie!

A:  ”Hypocrisy” is one of those concepts that sloppy usage has perverted out of all semblance of reality in recent years.  So please focus on this; on what issue do I demand that someone else make a moral decision from which I exempt myself?  That would be hypocrisy.

“Lying”, again, is another one.  It’s entirely possible – albeit unlikely – that I’ve made a mistake on some issue or another; bobbled a number, mis-read a quote, whatever.  An error made in good faith, like “Paul Wellstone was elected in 1988″,  is not a “lie”; “I bagged Marisa Tomei last night”, alas, is – or would be, were I not using it as a f’rinstance.

Which brings up an interesting question; is a statement like  ”9/11 is an inside job” or “the Holocaust never happned”  or “Mark Dayton will be a fantastic governor” or “the moon landings were faked” a “lie”?  All are absurd – but people can say either one and honestly believe ‘em.

Q: Why are you so arrogant?

A: Please.  Like you’d understand my motivations.  Sheesh.

Q: Where are Roosh and Bogus Doug?

A: Not writing at the moment.  They both have other things going on – and my deal with them from the very beginning was always “write as much as you want; once a day, once ayear, I don’t care”.  They took me seriously on it!

Q: I like your World War II stuff.  Why don’t you write more?

A: Were there other major wars going on 70 years ago today?

No, I’d love to write more of the non-political stuff.  After the election, I likely will focus a lot more on some of my ancillary interests.

But this election is a hoot!

Q: Why do you bag on leftybloggers?

A: Because so many of them are just sloppy thinkers and crummy writers.

Don’t get me wrong – most of them are good human beings (there are notable exceptions); some of them are capable of a rational argument, and a few are even fairly bright.  But for whatever reason, the gene pool among the great mass of lefty bloggers is just really really shallow.  Like their reasoning.

In fact, I’m pondering starting a big series after the election; “Logic for Leftybloggers”.  I’m thinking of going through the list of classic logical fallacies and applying them to the sorts of “template” premises you see leftybloggers falling back on all the time.

Because I’m all about the education.

We’ll see.

Q: When are you going to update your blog’s design?

A: Good question.  It crosses my mind from time to time.   But I’ve got seven and a half years invested in this look, and I kinda like it.

Q: Couldn’t you go with a snazzier color scheme?

A: I don’t care about snazz.  I’m a usability guy. Black text on white background is the most readable combination; Verdana is a nice, readable font.  Lots of blue is relaxing and agreeable-looking.  ”Friendly”, and also just plain easy to read in a hurry.

Q: Why don’t you go with a three-column layout? Everyone’s doing it!

A: Never.  Never never never.  I hate three-column layouts (unless you need a left column for navigation, and I do not).  Hate hate hate.  I mean, if you like ‘em, put ‘em an your own blog, and God bless ya, but I hate hate hate hate hate three column layouts.  The content is king on a blog, especially a blog like mine that’s not part of any larger enterprise.

The western Human eye starts reading on the left, and so I don’t want my audience to have to pick their way over a bunch of links and ads and unneeded navigation and crap to get to the actual content.  Furthermore, I want the left margin to the usable to provide “scanning cues” to users who are scrolling down the page looking for something interesting; clogging up that left margin with ads and lists and twitter feed widgets to try to find what they want.

The left side of the page is the most valuable real estate on the page.  Putting a bunch of links and lists and crap on the left side is like putting the restrooms and service corridors at the front of your mall.

Yuk.

Q: How long are you going to do this blog?

A: Until it stops being fun.  We’re nowhere close yet.

Just so we’re clear on this:  Mark Dayton’s education “plan” calls for three things:

1. Gutting charter schools
2. Ending federal-mandated testing
3. Giving the teachers union a bunch of money.

To contrast with this, Tom Emmer is releasing his own plan, as we speak.

His education plan is focused on a few simple, key things:

• ensure that K-12 funding is held harmless in the next biennium.
• improve school results through broad reforms.
• cutting mandates on schools

There are also reforms including  initiatives related to teacher effectiveness, kindergarten readiness,and – this oughtta be interesting – the redesign of teacher preparation programs.

And – this should play interestingly on the left – the state will repay the education shift to local school districts in accordance with state law.

Expect the DFL to respond “we really need a huge increase”, and for the union to say the only “reform” needed is more union teachers.

More later today.

They said that if I voted for John McCain, the government would trash our property rights like John Bonham trashing a hotel room.

And they were right:

Sheriffs in North Carolina want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.

The state sheriff’s association pushed the idea Tuesday, saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people’s medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.

One of the purported cost savers in Obamacare is electronic medical records kept – eventually – in a national database.

And when the government controls your data, your data is only as safe as the least power-hungry or dishonest government official wants it to be.

Joe Bodell at the Minnesota “Progressive” Project may know his technology.  But he needs to work a little on his cultural and language literacy:

It’s always been a curiosity to me that our media calls radical Muslim leaders “clerics” while people like Terry in Florida and Phelps in Kansas get to hang on to the title “Pastor.”

{{facepalm}}

That’s partly because Christian churches have  a fairly uniform system for naming and identifying clergy; Islam’s system isn’t nearly as uniform. “Pastor” is a very broadly-accepted definitive for protestant clergy; “Father” works for Catholics, while “Rabbi” generally works for Jews.

“Imam” is usually, but not always, an appropriate definitive for a Muslim prayer leader.

Sounds less ominous than “cleric”, doesn’t it?Are we trying to make the other side’s radicals sound like Dungeons & Dragons characters? Does that make them scarier, somehow?

Only if you are completely unaware that “cleric” is the singular of the plural “clergy” – which, to be fair, didn’t pop up in “Dungeons and Dragons”.

More momentum building among the Dems Mo for extending the Bush tax  cuts:

Momentum built Thursday for extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts after President Obama avoided a veto threat and a key Senate Democrat voiced support for the extension.

War policy. Guantanamo.  Patriot Act . Tax cuts.

Not sure if we have any policy reason to miss Bush yet; it’s like he never left.

Did Tom Emmer lie?

No.

But we’ll come back to that.  We’ve got a bit of business to take care of first.

———-

It’s time to inaugurate a new Berg’s Law.  These laws of human and political behavior are based on decades of observing people and their behavior, and, as “laws”, have passed beyond mere theory.

Anyway – there were nine.  Now there are ten.  Here’s the new one:

Berg’s Tenth Law of Quantum Context: When a liberal says a conservative is “lying”, the odds of the “lie” being merely an ambiguity triggerging some form of cognitive dissonance increases in geometric proportion with the volume and stridency of the liberal’s declaration.

That law will rear its head shortly.

———-

If there’s one thing I like about Tom Emmer, it’s that he’s a real guy.

When Emmer talks, you know you’re getting Tom Emmer, and not some slickee-boy focus-group-polished polibot facade.   That’s played against the part of his public image his opponents and the Twin Cities media (they are, at an institutional level, one and the same) have chosen to spotlight; “he has a temper”, intones a Twin Cities media that spent a couple of decades covering for congenital martinet Mike Hatch’s Queeg-like administration at the Attorney General’s office and his legendary temper.

He’s a big, beefy guy with an iron handshake and a sense of dynamic magnetism that wins people over when they actually meet him – which is why the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) are playing such eager ball on “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”’s smear campaign.

Which shows off, by the way, some of the media’ s hypocrisy; their editorials will bemoan, for three years at a shot, the impossibility of “real people”, with families and warts and skeletons and real-life jobs and careers and stories, getting into politics, and how opposition research will eventually limit the political gene pool to people who’ve bred themselves for campaigning from childhood – people who can not possibly related to regular voters.  And then we get exactly such a regular guy – and the media spends two months misrepresenting his civil court records and his 20-and-30-year-old reckless driving convictions.

Anyway: like most people, Emmer’s great strength is also a weakness.  His passion for his cause and his campaign, and everything it stands for, makes every room he’s in positively throb with energy.  That’s a huge strength;  watching Emmer on a stage with with his opponents is a study in contrasts; Tom Horner is like a human MP3 player loaded with message lines stuck on “shuffle”; Mark Dayton looks like he’s about to demand to go watch Wapner.  Emmer, on the other hand, is sharp, engaged, and thinks on his feet as well as anyone in Minnesota politics.

As opposed to “consistently repeats a rehearsed, focus-grouped, finely-tuned message vetted by his message cops”.

And that’s the downside of Emmer’s big strength; he occasionally ad-libs; often it’s a home run; sometimes he fans; once in a while – the tip flap – he bats into a double play.

I give Emmer – or anyone who speaks exemporaneously but genuinely, including the likes of Paul Wellstone, who was a spotty public speaker but nothing if not geuine, warts and all – a lot of slack.  Because that’s how real people who are passionate about what they think and believe speak; straight from the gut, damn the torpedoes.

I like that quality in Emmer, because that’s how I speak.  I’m usually dead-on; I occasionally muff one.  I pick myself up, dust myself off, and go forth to kick more ass.

———-

So the other day, Emmer released the first installment of his budget plan.  It is, for the moment, a high-level set of goals and principles, as befits a guy from the party not in power (yeah, Pawenty’s the goverrnor, but his power, brilliantly as he’s exercised it, has been entirely defensive).

And as part of presenting that installment, Emmer said that the  proposal had been vetted by the Department of Revenue.

Someone from DoR, asked later that day, said that “Emmer’s plan” had not been vetted.

“Lie!”, screamed the usual assortment of DFL chanting-point bots in the blogs and on Twitter.

That’s where Berg’s Tenth Law comes in.

I talked with two different sources close to the episode.  Both said that Emmer – speaking extemporaneously and on a bit of a roll – wrote a rhetorical check that the bank needed to run through two times; he mis-spoke just a tad.  Because “the plan” had not, in its entirety, been vetted by the DoR.

But every single part of it, individually, has been.

Because there is, in fact, nothing new in Emmer’s plan.  All of it has come out in one proposal in the house or another over the past few years, from the conservative bloc led by Emmer and Mark Buesgens and Laura Brod and Keith Downey and a few other notable fiscalcons.   And each of those proposals has, in turn, been vetted by DoR when they were going through the legislative process, according to the same two sources with intimate knowledge of the gestation of Emmer’s budget proposal.

So while nobody has walked Emmer’s entire budget proposal into the DoR and gotten the entire document signed off, there is nothing new in the proposal as far as the DoR is concerned.

More on that later.

So Emmer turned many small approvals, in the heat of the moment and on a stage at a moment when his campaign was making a great leap forward, into one big one that happened not to exist.

Is it a “lie?”

Depends on what the definition of the word “is” is, doesn’t it?

———-

So does a conflation of many approvals into one for purposes of giving a speech – an infinitesimal rhetorical bobble under any normal circumstances – make Tom Emmer a bad candidate?

Hell no.  The underlying facts are worthy of debate (which is why the media and the DFL chanting point bots are focusing so hard on everything but the underlying facts).  So what if Tom Emmer bobbles the occasional I or T?  I will take a real, genuine person with passion for his principles every single time, all other things being equal, over a focus-grouped talking-point-bot.

Every single time.

So, I think, would most Minnesotans, if they thought about it.

Which is why the Twin Cities media and the DFL’s noise machine is trying to keep people from thinking about it.

Paul Demko, writing for Finance and Commerce, reaches many of the same conclusions that I reached on Tuesday’s series fact-checking the Dayton budget “plan- and comes up with one that I missed :

The final plank of the DFLers tax-the-rich proposal involves a crackdown on tax deadbeats. According to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, roughly $1 billion in taxes goes uncollected each year. During the last biennium, the state revenue agency spent $20.2 million to collect $133.7 million in outstanding taxes, a return rate of $6.60 for every $1 spent. Dayton’s plan counts on collecting an additional $400 million in unpaid taxes by upping the enforcement budget to $60.6 million, theoretically netting the state approximately $340 million.

But financial experts see a problem with that calculation: The rate of return on enforcement activities is almost certain to drop as more tax scofflaws are chased down.

Demko, being a liberal partisan, pays the plan his complients and takes a whack at Emmer as well.  But our bottom lines are pretty much similar:

The bottom line on Dayton’s proposed plan to make the state’s richest residents pay their fair share of taxes? It’s unlikely to result in $4 billion worth of additional revenues for the state.

Now, the DFL’s been howling for months about Emmer’s lack of a “plan”; Demko is no exception:

Even so, financial experts give the DFLer high marks for actually presenting a reasonably detailed plan for solving the looming cash crunch. By contrast, Republican nominee Tom Emmer has yet to provide a credible breakdown of how he’d balance the state’s books, although he’s ruled out tax increases.

Of course, the party out of power doesn’t need a complete plan with perfectly-dotted-I’s and crossed T’s.  They need a vision that convinces people they have a better idea.  The plan matters next February.

Still, Dayton’s not getting quite as smooth a ride as one might expect.

Gary Gross also commented on Demko’s piece.

The reporters who’ve been reflexively characterizing Sen. Dayton’s plan as detailed didn’t do their homework. In fact, I’d argue that serious people couldn’t characterize Sen. Dayton’s submission as a plan, much less a detailed plan.

We’ll keep working on it…

I’m trying to remember my talking-points briefing from ScaifeNet on conservatism’s “heterosexist agenda”.

Maybe I left it in my notes.

Oh, wait; there were no notes, or talking points, because across conservatism at large, there is no heterosexual conservative agenda.

There are most definitely conservatives, of course.

Now, many of us are Caucasian (we are reminded, by people who are almost universally Caucasian).

But among conservatism’s most celebrated thinkers and activists  are Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, and Linda Chavez and Michelle Malkin.  It passes without remark on the right, largely – becuase conservatism isn’t about nursing or fixing racial grievances.  It’s about traditional values in running a society.

Most American conservatives are Christians – but not all of them.  There are atheist conservatives; among America’s immigrants, the most likely to be and vote politically conservative are Indians, largely of Hindu, Sikh, Jain and other South Asian faiths.  Is Bobby Jindal any less a conservative for having been born a Hindu?

So how about gays?

Gays vote predominantly Democrat, of course; they are considered a safe-enough voting bloc by Democrats that the party counts on their support even though they extend themselves to enact virtually none of their favored policies until a majority of conservatives are on board anyway (see “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell”).

But if an American is a pro-free-market, pro-fiscal-responsibility, pro-security, pro-sovereignty, pro-individual rights, pro-merit person who happens to be oriented toward his or her own gender, what is the problem?

To Joe Farah – who’s been harping on Ann Coulter for appearing at “HomoCon” – plenty.  He’s debating Christopher Barron of “GOProud”, a gay conservative Republican group:

Barron told The Daily Caller that Farah challenged him to debate over whether GOProud can be considered “conservative” after Farah argued on his site that there is no place within conservatism for an organization like GOProud, a group that promotes itself as “the only national organization representing gay conservatives and their allies.” TheDC is waiting for confirmation from WND about the debate’s details.

Farah dropped Coulter from a speaking engagement at WND’s annual “Taking America Back” convention in Miami for agreeing to speak at GOProud’s “Homocon” party in New York. (Coulter later said that Farah had never actually booked her for a speech, calling him a “swine” and a “publicity whore.”)

Farah contends that groups like GOProud are trying to commit a “coup” to unroot the conservative movement with an “agenda…to take the homosexual agenda inside the conservative tent.”

Barron insists that his group is genuinely conservative and said he looks forward taking on Farah in front of a WND crowd.

For the record, I will vote for a Philipina Taoist lesbian who is a solid fiscal, legal and security conservative before I’d vote for a liberal hamster who happens to be white, straight and Christian.

Although if the Filipina is a Bears fan it’d help.

Mark Dayton is to money like John McCain was to houses:

Luke Hellier explains Dayton’s South Dakota trusts – which save him a ton in taxes – and asks some questions:

1. In your “Deficit Solution” plan (item #3), you criticize snowbirds who maintain residences outside of Minnesota for six months and a day to avoid certain taxes, but why is it okay that your trust funds maintain residence outside of Minnesota 12 months a year?
2. Have you ever asked your family members or the executor of your South Dakota trust funds to move these trusts to Minnesota? If not, why not?
3. Have you ever asked your family members or the executor of your South Dakota trust funds whether you can divest? If not, why not?
4. Will you ask for the release of the tax returns for your South Dakota trust funds?
5. What tax benefits do you derive from your South Dakota trusts in comparison with the tax liability you would have were they in Minnesota?
6. How much in Minnesota taxes have you avoided paying the state in your lifetime because of these arrangements? If you cannot answer this question, would you be willing to allow an independent referee to calculate it before Election Day?
7. Can you explain your holdings in the well-known tax havens of the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands that are listed on your Senate Financial Disclosure reports?
8. Would you be willing to gift to the state of Minnesota all monies you would have been required to pay had your trusts been established in Minnesota?

I’m picturing a Scrooge McDuck kind of vibe here:

There’s an old saying; “insanity is repeating the same thing over nad over, thinking you can get a different result”.

With that in mind, a blogger looks at the left’s attempts to parody, slime and co-opt the Tea Party:

The Coffee Party.

Crash the Tea Party.  (The creator of this silliness lost his job over it, by the way.)

The Tea Party Is Over.  (I liked the original spooky look better, though.)

The Other 95% 98%.  (Also covered in my post here.)

The Teabusters.

The Brownbaggers.

Have I missed anything?  Good grief, I almost forgot that whole F*ck Tea thing.

Here’s the left’s new plan.  They are going to track the Tea Party Movement with a brand newTea Party Tracker, sponsored by the NAACP and George Soros.

It’s bound to work this time, right?

In going over the “Tea Party Tracker”, he notes something that we “shall issue” activists noticed  back in the day; at a “Million Mom March” or “Citizens for a Better Minnesota” meeting, there’d be more shooters than gun-grabbers; in some cases, there’d be no grabbers at all.

Of course I perused the site, and followed the link that promises “photos of tea party extremism.”  This link leads to a Flickr group with a pretty daggum unimpressive collection of extremism.

As of today, tea party types are the more active members of this Flickr group.

Throw it in, lefties.

Vanity starts with an ‘M’ in Alaska’s senate contest.

Like a horror movie villain, the candidacy of Sen. Lisa Murkowski keeps returning from the dead.  Despite losing on election night, losing the absentee ballot fracus, and even conceding the GOP primary, Murkowski’s political ego has shown staying power the envy of Jason Voorhees.  Even the failure of Murkowski’s latest attempt to woo Alaska’s Libertarian Party apparently hasn’t dampered her efforts to return to D.C. short of buying her own ticket.  Instead, Murkowski’s newest bid is to prove the pen is mighter than the ballot with a longshot write-in candidacy:

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is expected to mount an independent campaign for senator after losing her primary, much to the dismay of her Republican colleagues, who won’t back her, according to a senior GOP leadership aide. 

“The entire Republican leadership has endorsed and would continue to support Joe Miller,” a the aide told Fox News on Wednesday…

A National Republican Senatorial Committee official made it clear that more money would be on the way to Miller, and suggested that Murkowski might be going through “the seven stages of grief.” 

“You know, first they concede … then there are the rumors of a write-in candidacy … then you get the acknowledgment that they’re done,” the official said.

If Murkowski does go through with a write-in effort, than she truly is “done”; which may suggest that she’s not Freddy Krueger, she’s Bruce Willis in the “Sixth Sense.”

Murkowski doesn’t appear to be gaining any options as the window for her to make a decision narrows.  The Libertarian option isn’t offically closed as long as endorsee Brian Haase continues to entain the notion of removing himself from the ballot.  But the LP’s executive committee has already voted against nominating Murkowski short of Haase presenting them with a fait accompli with his withdrawal.  And given some of the statements by the LP’s committee, even that scenario might not produce a Libertarian-endorsed Lisa Murkowski.

Only Strom Thurmond has ever won a general election write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate.  Thurmond’s 1954 candidacy was far stranger than Alaska’s current senate tift.  The death of the Democratic incumbent, the Democrat Party’s decision to not hold a primary election, and former Governor Thurmond’s backing by the major players in the party were the only reasons why the endless South Carolina Senator prevailed.  Considering only one candidate was on the ballot – St. Sen. Edgar A. Brown for you political junkies out there – Thurmond’s candidacy was unique in the extreme.  Nothing approaching it awaits Murkowski on the frozen electoral tundra.

No pollster has yet demonstrated the effect of a Murkowski write-in campaign in Joe Miller and Scott McAdams minor league showdown.  While others polls show Murkowski with a narrow lead over Joe Miller (and Scott McAdams trailing badly), all were done with the assumption that Murkowski would actually be on the ballot.  A Murkowski coalition of moderate Republicans, independents and assorted anti-Palin voters could have propelled her to victory in a three-way race.

But a strategy that relies on such deep candidate committment to write-in her name – regardless of the hundreds of thousands of dollars Murkowski still has available to encourage voters to do so – is bound to attract only the hardest of hardcore Murkowski supporters.  It’s also one of the few strategies that could provide a victory to Democrat Scott McAdams.  While Murkowski’s holdouts certainly won’t be the 50% of the Republican electorate that voted for her on primary day, any votes for her will almost certainly be coming out of Miller’s side.  Couple that with even one poll showing Murkowski pulling low double-digit write-in support and the DNC might change it’s mind about bypassing the 49th State.

Murkowski could still be a viable force in Alaska politics – possibly even challenging first-term Senator Mark Begich in another four years.  But the longer Murkowski openly flirts with continuing a candidacy out of a cocktail of ego and spite, the less likely she’ll successfully seek office again.  Much like Charlie Crist, Murkowski’s unwillingness to suffer a present political setback has endangered (or in Crist’s case, likely ruined) her political past and future.

Why Congress should be non-plussed about China’s trade surplus.

One of the oldest trade disputes of this very new century has been the seismic imbalance in U.S./Chinese trade relations.  American lawmakers have repeatedly beg/threated/legislated to try and get China to appreciate their currency, believing that the U.S. trade deficit might get reduced if the Chinese took the yuan on a romantic dinner date…or something to that effect.  U.S. legislators have even attempted to essentially fine the Chinese into currency compliance – trying to hike tariffs on Chinese goods as high as 27.5%.

Considering China’s latest trade surplus may exceed $20 billion, Congress may be closer to the mood of reviving Smoot Hawley:

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee will discuss next week China’s currency policy after Premier Wen Jiabao’s government limited the yuan’s gain to less than 1 percent versus the dollar since a June pledge for greater flexibility. With November elections looming, legislators may push a bill letting companies seek tariffs for compensation for an undervalued yuan…

U.S. lawmakers including Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, have pressed the Obama administration to demand a speedier appreciation of the yuan. The house committee will discuss whether China has made “material progress” on the issue and what action Congress and the administration may need to take to address the nation’s exchange-rate policy.

While the Adminstration is unlikely to approve any Congressional legislation to gode the Chinese into reassessing their currency – especially after already agreeing to do so this summer - bills threatening a tariff war seems almost certain to be introduced.  Similar measures were taken in 2005 and, like in the summer of 2010, resulted in the Chinese acquising to some American demands for appreciation. 

Legislators might as well rub a lucky rabbit’s foot to ward away the U.S. trade deficit if they believe currency appreciation will significantly impact the situation.  The last time the Chinese appreciated their currency, the U.S. trade deficit…wait for it…grew:

Recent evidence suggests that RMB appreciation will not reduce the U.S. trade deficit and undermines the common political argument for compelling China to revalue. Between July 2005 and July 2008, the RMB appreciated by 21 percent against the dollar-from a value of $.1208 to $.1464.⁴ During that same period (between the full year 2005 and the full year 2008), the U.S. trade deficit with China increased from $202 to $268 billion.

In addition to the fact that increasing the currency value won’t have any major impact on the U.S. trade deficit, and will only fray trade relations with America’s second largest trading partner (you might be surprised to know Canada is #1), is the reality that China gains nothing by doing so.  With their economy slowing, in part as China encounters the same real estate nightmare the rest of the world has experienced, the Chinese are unlikely to want to also reduce the value of their U.S. debt holdings.  The Chinese are already reducing stimulus efforts and trying to avoid pumping more money into what is potentially becoming the international economy’s next major bubble to burst – China itself.

They never learn.

It’s been a little over two years since Andy Birkey of the Minnesota “Independent” first sniffed that Rep. Michele Bachmann “only does sympathetic media”.

Of course, it makes perfect sense for Bachmann; she represents a conservative district; talking with hostile media (and when it comes to the Twin Cities media, “hostile” is not just a rhetorical term) makes as much sense as a frontrunner looking at a comfortable 30-40 point margin agreeing to debate a non-entity opponent.

Still, let’s accept at face value the proposition that candidates talking with media that oppose them is a good thing.

Two years ago, after Birkey wrote his grand attack on Bachmann, I figured I’d see if the pancake was brown on both sides.  I contacted RT Rybak, Chris Coleman, Dave Thune, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and asked them to come on the Northern Alliance with Ed and I – and wrote about the experience.

Summary:  Except for Rybak – with whom Ed and I had an excellent, civil, respectful, serious-yet-fun discussion focusing on actual issues rather than the “ambush the bad guy” crap that Bachmann can usually expect – none of them did us the courtesy of so much as a brusque brush-off.

The Clark campaign must be getting desperate to make something stick, or at least to get donors in the Twin Cities to pony up; the story’s baaaaaack.  According to Paul Schmelzer at the Mindy, Bachmann snubbed CNN:

“She says God called her to run for Congress, so rushing to the media outlets that transmit her views without question is a priority, but for members of the press who might have some harder questions? Different treatment — because Bachmann thinks some in the media are out to get her,” says Tuchman.

“Speed-walking in heels through political mud,” Bachmann is shown rushing between interviews with conservative media including KTLK’s Jason Lewis, Christian radio station KKMS and The Patriot.

So they got completely shunned?

CNN is shooed away by Bachmann’s handlers, but later she agrees to an interview, but only two questions.

Ah.  So Bachmann, who leads Taxin’ Tarryl Clark by nine points and will likely win by at least ten, didn’t shut CNN out; she merely didn’t treat them with the deference to which they’re accustomed.

But in the interest of getting the whole story out there: during the run-up to the Minnesota State Fair and our long string of extra weekday broadcasts, I contacted the DFL about getting Mike Hatch Mark Dayton, Yvette Prettner-Solon, Mark Ritchie, Mike Hatch Lorie Swanson, Rebecca Otto, Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum on the show, for the same, exact, respectful-but-pointed interview we gave RT Rybak.

The DFL roundly turned us down at every turn.

So let me get this straight; the GOP is wrong for not facing hostile media, but Democrats are…

…well, still universally just as gutless as the Mindy and CNN want people to think Bachmann is.

Ever since May, the DFL – via their closely-knit band of media and “alternative” media mouthpieces – have been spending time and money trying to paint Tom Horner as “the reasonable Republican”, to try to soak votes away from Tom Emmer.  The conventional wisdom is that, in this year of revulsion with government spending and overreach, there is a huge reservoir of seventies-vintage “Independent Republican” liberal Republican fossils out there pining for the days of Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger.

Of course, the last few polls have shown that Horner is drawing more DFL votes than MNGOP votes.  Considerably more.

So suddenly it’s OK for leftybloggers to bag on Horner.

Couldn’t see that coming.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that David “The Spam Meister” Plouffe is one of the “geniuses” behind the Obama campaign two years ago.

His tactic this year?  Put the bar down on the ground, walk over it, and spin it as a successful high-jump:

President Obama’s top political guru said Tuesday that he believes 70 House races and 15 Senate races are in play this fall.

White House senior adviser David Plouffe — Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager — said that a bevy of races were in play, from the national to local level.

Next stop: say the GOP should pick up 140 seats; spin a 60 seat pickup as a crushing disappointment.

Reality is this; if the GOP picks up 20 seats in the House, and any in the Senate, the DFL should commit seppuku.

There.

The GOP is having a press conference at 10AM:

Republican Party of Minnesota leaders Garofalo, Sutton, and Brodkorb to call on Mark Dayton to come clean on all financial holdings outside of the state of Minnesota.

Hm.

Wonder if the GOP is just a “lazy-ass activist?”

If there’s one thing that America could do for its own long-term betterment over the next few years (that doesn’t involve big electoral victories for the GOP), it’s sending Paul Krugman to work at McDonalds or in a nursing home, or something else productive.

This past week, he said the US needed another World War II – at least, in terms of Keynesian government intervention in the market – to revive the economy.

Victor Davis Hanson  points out that the US economy recovered in spite of the government involvement, largely because the war left us as the last market standing:

As WWII ended and the clean-up began, there was an enormous amount of pent-up global demand for goods. Given the wreckage in Europe, Japan, and Russia and the underdevelopment of India, Asia, and South America, we were about the only ones with the industrial and commercial wherewithal to supply the world rebound — often receiving cheap oil, gas, minerals, and interest in exchange, which supplemented our own vast supplies of comparatively cheap and easily recoverable resources. Nor should we forget the psychological element: Americans, after winning two wars, were enormously confident about their newfound international stature and influence.

At home, four years of consumer deprivation during the war and the weak demography of the 1930s had combined to create huge demand, all while society was increasingly leaving the farm for good and becoming suburbanized. The result was that in the late 1940s and 1950s, the birth rate soared and consumers enthusiastically made first-time purchases of washers, dryers, fridges, cars, etc. Thus, the American economy grew by leaps and bounds.

Any similarities between 1948-1958 and today are purely coincidental:

Today’s situation is not comparable: We are in hock to foreign creditors for trillions and have not been a net creditor since the 1980s. A China, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, or India is as or more likely to supply recovering demand for food, steel, or electronics.

Massive spending will only revive the economy if it involves destroying the rest of the world economy, in other words.

Joe Doakes from Como writes:

John Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966 and served in Vietnam. It was one of his major qualifications for office.

George Bush the Younger graduated from Yale in 1968. He caught a lot of flack because his National Guard time wasn’t “real” military experience. Democrats commonly accused him of shirking his duty to serve his country – a draft dodger – implying he was unqualified for office.

Mark Dayton graduated from Yale in 1969. He then . . . what? Taught school in New York? What happened to that duty to serve the country? Was he deferred? 4-F? Is he unqualified for lack of military service?

That’s a good question.  With most people who were of draft age back then, there’s some kind of story; one relative of mine who graduated earlier than Dayton described getting several deferrals because he was a teacher in a place that was drastically short of ‘em.

Is that what Dayton did?

Just curious.

I grant that Tom Emmer’s closest brush with military service was going to St. Thomas Academy. But Emmer did his college and law school in the 1980’s when there was no huge military push. Dayton graduated six months after the Tet Offensive, at the height of the Vietnam War, when every gentleman’s son knew where his duty laid.

Look – other than Jesse Ventura, I’m at a loss to remember a recent Minnesota governor who did serve in the military.

But how did Dayton get out of the draft?

We do know how the Dems mocked Dick Cheney for getting five deferments; how they discredited Dan Quayle’s time in the National Guard, and tried to do the same with President Bush’s in the Air Guard.

It’s an appropriate question.

Does that ‘military service’ requirement only apply to the Presidency because he serves as Commander in Chief? Governors command their own National Guards – are overnors exempt from any duty to serve their country?

Or does it only apply to Republicans?

As far as the media is concerned…

The SEIU, in endorsing Mark Dayton, writes:

I can’t donate millions of dollars like corporate CEOs,

The SEIU has donated at least as much as Target so far, and that was as of five weeks ago.

I called this series “The Dayton Dustbowl for couple of reasons.  One of them is fairly obvious; raising taxes in a recession is just plain stupid.

The other is a little more subtle; the original Dust Bowl on the great plains was a combination of circumstances; some of them out of human control,  and well within; a drought combined with a depression exacerbated by government reaction to an economic downturn.

The victims?  For all the publicity about stock barons diving off window ledges (mostly apocryphal), the people who suffered the most were the people who had the skin in the game; the farmers and people of the rural midwest.

And as I noted in the first part of this series, the Dayton Dust Bowl – a combination of a deep recession Minnesota didn’t cause, which would be exacerbated and institutionalized by Dayton’s proposed tax policy and spending proposals – would have the same affect; it’d make being a hard-working, middle-class Minnesotan a much more difficult thing.  The “cop and nurse” that the Emmer campaign refers to – the hard-working husband and wife who put in extra hours and scrape and scramble to make over $150K between ‘em – will get hammered by new taxes just as they are reeling from the Obama tax hikes next year.

The tax hikes – and their revenue sources – will erase hard-won advances in school choice (charter schools), and make entrepreneurship, especially for the Subchapter S corporations that drive so much job creation, deeply unattractive in Minnesota.

And for what?  A fatter, happier government employee base?

A Teachers Union that can work without fear of competition?

Who else wins?

There was never a chance I was going to vote for Mark Dayton.  After reading this four-page “plan”, I have to wonder – why would anyone with half a brain?

Who’s not a government union employee, anyway?

Last but not least, if you are Dayton’s choice for Budget Commissioner, good luck solving the deficit with this plan, especially when the last line in the document is: “That leaves me $635.4 million to go.”

Now, bear in mind that 635 million is roughly 1.5 times larger than the immense tax hike the Dems were able to pass in the 2008 session, when they controlled both houses, in a year when the Dems had a huuuuge tailwind, with immense political cost to themselves.

And they want to enact this after passing a tax hike that was ten times as large as the one that they managed in 2008.

With a huge tailwind.

And control of both houses.

Against minimal organized opposition, other than the against-the-ropes GOP.

Simple fact:  Mark Dayton’s entire “plan” is based on the vacuous, vaporous idea that “taxing the rich” – who are largely not “rich” – can by itself balance the budget.  Even under ideal circumstances – meaning “Dayton gets exactly what he proposes” – it can not work.

Dayton will not get exactly what he wants.  Even if the DFL retains control of both chambers – and it likely will not – they can not pass a budget ten times as large as the divisive, controversial budget they passed in 2008; there will still be a huge deficit, while will require an expansion of the defnition of “the rich”.  Which will, in turn, kill more jobs and drive more layoffs and lead to less revenue…

…and it’s a moot point.  Dayton is likely going to lose the House this year; if (heaven forfend) he’s elected, he will face fierce GOP opposition in both chambers, and a populace that’s doesn’t even know how shell-shocked the Obama Tax Hikes are going to gut-shoot it.

So if Dayton is (heaven forfend) elected, the best he can hope for is complete, utter gridlock that will leave the deficit to be dealt with by more fee-juggling and accounting jiggery-pokery, even as Dayton is forced to pay off his chits to his constituents; jacking up union hiring, pouring more money we don’t have into our education system.

Even under the “best” circumstances, the Dayton budget is a complete waste of time.

At worst, it’ll multiply the very problem it’s supposed to “fix”.

This is the Dayton “Plan”.

In a state with a functioning news media, it would be the subject of acerbic fact-checking and  muted ridicule.

Since the only real functional news media in this state is the conservative alternative media, allow me to begin the ridicule right here.

Coming up at 3PM:  That Big Brown Cloud Coming In From The West.

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

The paragraph in Dayton’s budget plan is a subtle one:

3. Eliminate tax loopholes, such as the one allowing “Snowbirds” to live outside Minnesota for six months and one day of the year, and pay no personal income taxes in this state. I would ensure that anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Minnesota pays taxes in Minnesota.

So the State of Minnesota is going to define what a “significant” period of time is. and stake a claim to income, property and other non-user fees during that (undefined) time?

The state treasury should not line up to cash that check just yet.  It’s going to be in court for a while, duking it out over interpretations of the Commerce Clause; let’s not forget the suit over Equal Protection clause issues.

It’s going to be a full-employment program for tax lawyers, and that’s after all the ConLaw people get their cut.

Coming up at 2PM:  What happens when a “plan” is really just a mish-mash of ideas that at best will never be adopted, and at worst will make a bad situation worse?

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

Did you pull your kids out of the public school system and put ‘em in a charter program?  Like I did?

Start looking for a new school.  If Mark Dayton gets elected and pushes his “budget plan” through, you’ll need to start looking for a new program for your kids.

That’s right – Dayton plans to kill off charter schools.

Oh, he can plausibly claim he’s not “killing” them; merely cutting a piece of their funding that the Star Tribune says is “prone to abuse”.

No, seriously; item 16 in the Dayton Budget proposal says “Reform Charter School Lease Aid Program to eliminate Star Tribune documented abuses. Est. Savings $20 million (out of biennial cost of $85 million).”

Of course, we talked about the validity of the Star Tribune’s “investigation” – Part 1 and Part 2 - and let’s just say it’s thin gruel on which to base policy.

Still, it’s a tiny amount of money in the great scheme of things – but it will pay off a big chit to the Teachers Union.

I wonder if Dayton’s focus-group testing bothered to ask all the African-American, Native American, Somali and Hispanic parents  - who’ve pulled their kids out of their failed public schools to give them a shred of hope, and are charter schools’ biggest proponents – what they think about this?  Not to mention parents like me…

Oh yeah – cuts in lease aid will affect the charters serving poor kids, with not-that-well-to-do parents, the most.  Charters in Stillwater and Eden Prairie with backers with more financial clout will figure out a way – bake sales or construction bonds or something.  But all you Afro-American parents who pulled your kids out of Central High to go to Skills for Tomorrow?

Get back in line and speak only when spoken to!

And I do most sincerely hope the Emmer Campaign is going to do a get-together with charter parents in the inner city before the election.  Have you looked at the percent of students at inner-city charters that are kids of color who are fleeing our wretched failure of a city public school system?

Without lease aid, charter schools will not be able to generate the revenue they need to survive.

Coming up at 1PM:  The Law is what Mark Dayton says it is!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you own or are employed by one of the 305 small businesses being helped by the JOBZ program right now, you’ll be out of luck.

Dayton’s plan reneges on your agreement and eliminates funding for JOBZ.

Of course, during the Almanac debate a few weeks back, Dayton agreed with… Tom Emmer that it’d be wrong for the state to pull the rug out from under the current JOBZ projects.

Check it out yourself!

Didn’t we have a large institution, with printing presses and transmitters, once upon a time to help us keep track of debate inconsistencies?

So let’s try to keep track here; Dayton wants to propose billions in tax hikes that will gut small business and stymie job creation (in the private market), but he wants to gut a program that actually tries to create (private) jobs?

Why, it’s almost as if “private jobs” aren’t an issue at all for Mark Dayton!

Coming up at Noon:  Why does Mark Dayton hate minority families?

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you are benefitting from a professional or technical contract with the state, your funding could be cut. Dayton says we can cut half of the $850 million we spend every two years on state contracts.

He may or may not have a point.  But you’ll never know it from his budget plan.

State contracts are used for a variety of things including road and bridge design, computer consulting and even arts instruction at the Perpich Center for the Arts – basically, any skill that the state doesn’t usually keep on its inventory of elite uniononized employees.

Of course, Dayton doesn’t specify which half of state contractors we can live without.  Because most of the contracting is for work that actually needs to get done, by a person who is qualified to do the job.

Need a big, high-traffic bridge built?  The MNDOT doesn’t keep a big bridge design department on staff – because it’s not like the Dept. of Transportation is constantly building new bridges.  You need a bridge designed and built?  Hire a temp – or a “contractor”, as they’re called.

If the state needs to build a new website for vehicle tab info and renewals (hint hint), and they need to make it usable by a multiethnic, polylingual population?  The State of Minnesota doesn’t employ User Experience Architects (that’s what I do), because they don’t need ‘em every day; they contract ‘em out.

Building a road?  Remodeling a state building?  Transferring data from an old database to a new one? Analyzing the market for a government service? Anything the state doesn’t normally do, day in, day out? They hire “temps”, contractors – construction workers, dry-wall contractors, database analysts, researchers – to do the job.

Democrats endorsed by government employee unions typically go after state contracts because they take jobs away from union members, not because we’re spending too much. Is Dayton planning to actually cut these contracts or does he want government employees to do the work instead?

The simple fact is, shifting contract work to state employees may very well cost more, not less.  At the very least, it’s not a cut, merely a shift (unless Dayton, AFSCME, MAPE and the SEIU really think there are that many underutilized state employees out there…) blowing a $425 million hole in Dayton’s budget plan.

Coming up at 11AM:  Dayton kills tax cuts for (private) job creation!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!