“Independence” Party candidate Tom Horner’s been telling voters that his budget plan – calling for about $2 Billion in tax increases, which is half of Mark Dayton’s planned hikes (which will leave  a $1 Bilion deficit) and about $2Billion more than Emmer’s plan (which will balance the budget) – has been vetted by the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

Um…:

Officials at the Minnesota Department of Revenue are saying Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner has not submitted his budget plan for review, but that Horner’s campaign contacted them to see if the tax plan would work.

Not only did he lie about it, he was kind of a dink about it:

At the most recent debate last week, Horner said he submitted his budget plan for a review…

Horner: “We’re going to take medical services off of the table. We won’t tax those. We won’t tax prescription drugs or medical devices and the numbers do add up.

Republican Tom Emmer: No they don’t.

Horner: The Revenue Department says they did.

Emmer: They have not and you have to be honest about it.

Horner: I’m just curious as to where your information is that the Department of Revenue has said my numbers don’t add up because the Department of Revenue told me that the numbers do add up.

Emmer: Well put it out there. We’ve asked and haven’t been given anything that supports that.

Horner: Tom, That’s just not true, you know that’s not true.

Emmer: What we have been shown is that you have to make much broader attempt.

Horner: That’s just a blatant lie.”

“Blatant lie?”

Hm.

When Dave Schultz at Hamline University calls it quits on a “DFL-Lite campaign like Tom Horner…

It looked all so promising only two weeks ago. Momentum and buzz suggested Tom Horner was gaining ground and he had a real chance to be governor. Polls showed strong gains, he was ahead of where Jesse Ventura was in 1998 at this time, and rumor had it he was racking in piles of money. Horner, a former public relations person, also knew how to package his statements for the media. It all looked so good.

…then you know it’s time to stick a fork in it.

Schultz, unlike me, thought that Horner may have had a shot at it – but then, he does twig to the real key fact; Horner is not Jesse Ventura:

Here is the horn(er) of the dilemma. Horner needs media attention to get his message out. He can only do that with money. He can only raise money if he lets people know he is running and what his message is, however he needs money to do that. Horner is trapped in a cycle and he may not be able to get out of it.
But not being Jesse and not having money is only part of the problem. MN’s flirtation with third party politics runs in cycles. Third party candidates do well when the state is economically doing very well or very badly and there is high disenchantment with the major parties. Think Floyd Olson (Farmer-Labor Party elected during prohibition) and Ventura during the flush times of the 90s.

It’s neither bad enough that people are that desperate, nor good enough that people are that frivolous.

The Independence Party has had, since the departure of Jesse “the Mind” Ventura, a serious challenge; proving its own relevance.

The Twin Cities chattering class desperately wants the IP to be relevant; the party is compposed of, and largely appeals to, wonky people who are fascinated by the mechanics of govenment, people who love to play with the levers and knobs of the machinery of government.

Which made Jesse Ventura’s election extra-ironic.

Anyway – by way of showing their relevance, the IP has been claiming they’ll raise $2.5 million for this gubernatorial race; just a couple of Renoirs for Mark Dayton, but serious money otherwise, especially for a third party.

Now, as of July 19 the Horner campaign had raised $200,000.  He also got $350,000 in (soooo well-spent public subsidies).  That leaves him just shy of two million dollars to raise during the race.

Do the math:  Horner will need to raise just over $19K.  Over $130K a week.

The campaign’s been claiming over $120K a week.  We’re a little over a month away from the next campaign finance report.

I’m gonna guess the don’t hit it.

Just saying.

I’m going to be on Rob Port’s “Say Anything Morning Show” on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo in about (checks watch) one minute.

Join us!

Remember that trip Al Franken took to Minneapolis to stump for “Net Neutrality” last month?

It ties into a new ethics complaint against the Senator by Senate Ethics Watch.

Check out MDE.  More later.

The Seattle School District bars an EdBlogger from a press conference:

Local blogger Melissa Westbrook, who writes for the blog Save Seattle Schools, was barred from asking questions during a press conference of the Seattle School Board yesterday, right before they approved the new teachers’ contract.

The district’s rationale was nothing new:

Beforehand, when Westbrook called up the Seattle Public Schools Communications Dept. to ask if she could be on the press list, they told her that she could attend, but couldn’t ask questions. Westbrook went anyway, thinking that if other bloggers asked questions, she would too. But reached by phone, Westbrook said that SPS refused to provide a press pass because she was not a “real journalist” and her blogs were more commentary than reporting.

Bear in mind, this story is being reported in “The Stranger”, Seattles version of the “City Pages”.   And they got the absurdity of the district’s stance:

So I asked SPS if they had any set standards for press conferences. District spokesperson Teresa Wippel said the event was for media organizations that “provide unbiased coverage and subscribe to journalistic ethics.” By that, she means “the types of practices outlined in the Code of Ethics from the Society for Professional Journalists,” Wippel said. “It is our opinion that Ms. Westbrook’s blog does not fit into that category.”

The SPJ “Code of Ethics”? Protecting them from scabrous opinion “journalism?”  Hah! Hah Hah!  Hah Hah Hah!

Does that mean the Stranger—which is quite clear about its opinions and makes no attempt to provide “unbiased coverage”—can’t ask questions? Or are they simply allergic to Westbrook, who asks questions that the District doesn’t want to answer? “It’s not like we are shunning off information to people who are not members of the press,” Wippel said. “Westbrook has lots of different ways to ask questions to the board.”

If it’s like the Saint Paul School Board, none of them work.

As for the Stranger, Wippel said we could ask questions because we were a news organization that provides opinion as well as news.

Westbrook—who often takes positions that The Stranger disagrees with—admits that her blogs are sometimes critical of the school district. But she argued that Mayor Mike McGinn’s office has always let her attend press events as a citizen journalist. “I got into the convention for Arne Duncan, and the American Federation of Teachers even gave me a press pass,” she said.

It’s this simple; government at all levels wants to control the message it puts out.  When “journalists” were a predictable troupe of institutional repeat customers, it’s not that difficult. The more diffuse “journalism” becomes, the harder it is to control the message you put out to the public.

A neighbor writes:

Keep raising a stink about this. When our founders wrote the part about the freedom of the press, the press consisted of annoying, opinionated buggers who didn’t subscribe to any code of ethics and provided more commentary than reporting.

No problem.

By the way, someone will ask “if this bothers you, does it also bother you that the Tom Emmer campaign is shunning The Uptake?”  I’m not sure about the Uptake bit – shunning alt-media bugs me, but the Uptake has swerved pretty far into being a pure lefty propaganda site – and it’s not the same situation anyway.  The Emmer campaign isn’t a government body.  Yet.

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.

I overslept this morning, not feeling at all like writing anything…

…to find not one but two pieces by First Ringer up on the site!

So I was able to relax, eat my customary morning oatmeal, and noodle something out for noon before getting on my bike and heading in to the office…

…um, in about ten minutes.

Gary Gross at LFR sent me a copy of NRO’s Jim Geraghty’s list of 13 potential November upsets.

And coming in at #11:

11. Theresa Collett vs. Betty McCollum, Minnesota’s 4th District.

Reasons the challenger should have no chance: This is a D+13 district; McCollum won it in 2008 by 37 percentage points.

Reasons the challenger has a chance: Upon winning the primary, Collett, a University of St. Thomas law professor,challenged McCollum to four debates. She’s still waiting for a reply. On the stump, Collett makes her points in a crisp, clear, direct style. Outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty is giving Collett some help. Collett is severely underfunded, but McCollum has only $160,634 in cash on hand as of July 21, which is fairly low for an incumbent.

This is the first I’ve seen anyone think of MNCD4 a potential upset…ever.

I remain to be completely convinced.  Oh, in a just world Teresa Collett – a blindly-articulate, fiercely-intelligent con-law professor, would mop the floor with McCollum, a woman often distracted by shiny objects, and about whose speaking style it is said that she could read the phone book from the well of the House, if only because it sounds like she already is, and who is serving her fourth term on the strength of being endorsed by the DFL in a district that would have sent Richard Hung  to Washington if he’d come up with the endorsement.

Is this year going to be that different?  I’ll cross my fingers and whisper “from Geraghty’s lips to God’s ear”.

It was a bruising, ugly primary season. Minnesota – especially all of us of the chattering classes – could use a break, a respite to get together over the things that matter; beer, companionship, beer, cigars, beer, food and beer.

That respite is here!

Saturday is the Sixth Annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Summer Party! We’ll be at Keegans at 7PM!

Come on down, enjoy what promises to be a glorious, not-quite-so-hot evening in Keegans’ brand-new cigar patio, and hang out at the coolest party in town!

You don’t have to be a blogger; you just gotta love hanging out with fun, interesting people. And the MOB is strenuously non-partisan; we specifically invite all our DFLer friends who especiallyneed to heal up from this past week’s trench warfare!

Join us!

In 2008, Wall Street backed The One.

They were, according to my double Jim Cramer, before they were against him:

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Wall Street’s political contributions have shifted from 70 percent Democratic in March 2009 to nearly 70 percent Republican as of June 2010.

I bet we really start hearing a lot about the poisonous affect of money in politics pretty quick here.

First non-crushingly-humid night in weeks.

Sleep actually felt good.

So my “wake up at 5:30 AM to blog” routine got sidetracked.

More perhaps later today.

The new generation just might turn out OK after all…:

Okay, so I’m in the Costco on Coors on the Westside and am browsing through its tables of books for sale and in between “The Best of Tent Camping” and “Shi*t My Dad Says” is F. A. Hayek’s classic “The Road to Serfdom.”

I was so shocked I damn near dropped my 30-pack case of Bud Light. I’ve come to ignore looking for books in Costco because, although the prices are good, we’re talking John Grisham, James Patterson, and Nicholas Sparks. I’m not a book snob, but I like to read really good writers of fiction, or really good writers of non-fiction. Not formulaic he-said, she-said, predictably plotted genre books.

And Hayek is not one of those.

Now, the only question is “will people read a paper book anymore…”

Barry Goldwater’s greatest line,from the 1964 Republican Convention:

Interestingly, the left and media (ptr) have pretty much obliterated the second half of the quote – “moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue” – from public memory.

Just an accident, I’m sure.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is out on assignment, but I follow from 1-3PM Central.   I’ll am scheduled to talk with a slew of people:  veteran, candidate and now author John Kriesel; state auditor candidate Pat Anderson; 7th district congressional candidate Lee Byberg, and Ohio Treasurer candidate Josh Mandel, as well as Kim Crockett, talking about the Friedman’s Birthday party.  Plus, y’know, the news of the week!
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

“What’s a racist?  Someone who’s winning an argument against a liberal Democrat”.

— Dick Morris

Brad Stine – sort of the conservative’s Dennis Leary (although you don’t see it in the clip, but I’ve seen him live, take my word for it) has an idea whose time has come:

And if it doesn’t work, I’d say “ditch the car”.

The Minnesota Majority reports (via Fox) that Ramsey County is investigating felons voting in Saint Paul during the ’08 elections:

That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes — fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority’s newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records…

…”We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done,” said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority’s executive director. “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”

Naturally, the MNGOP is excited about this.

And, equally naturally, the DFL/media spin machine is not.

Writing at the MinnPost, Doug Grow – who was always almost as reliable a DFL shill as Lori Sturdevant – is on fact-check detail:

Now, some context:

• In the hyper-excited Fox News reports, Carruthers is quoted as praising the Minnesota Majority study.  “What I said is that they did as well as they could do given the data they had, but much of their data is not good,” Carruthers said.
• Of the 475 cases Minnesota Majority questioned, 270 examples were just not accurate, Carruthers said.

There are reasons for so many inaccuracies, Carruthers said. For example, because of data privacy laws, Minnesota Majority was able only to get year of birth of many of the people they claimed had voted illegally. But, for the group to be sure it had the right individual, it would have needed the actual date of birth.

“In a state with so many Johnsons,’’ said Carruthers, “you have many people with the same name born in the same year. You have to have date of birth, to be sure you have the right person.’’

I’m suspecting there aren’t that many Johnsons on the list. Just a hunch.

• Additionally, Carruthers said, Minnesota Majority would not have had access to changes in sentencing. For example, a person who initially had been sentenced to 10 years of probation may have had that probation reduced during the period of the sentence. At that point, the individual’s civil rights – including the right to vote – would have been restored.

Now, that might hold water.

Still, there were people who voted, or registered to vote, who were not eligible. That’s a felony, and if found guilty, they could face five years in prison and a $10,000, though Carruthers said that would be unlikely.

Not as unlikely as “reform” – or as Doug Grow is to answer the question “how many felons are acceptable?” in an election.

But I am so so so so glad that the likes of Grow are finally focusing on making sure media coverage is accurate.  Thank you, Doug Grow. Thank you so very much.

I was getting ready to move into the house in South Minneapolis with the three women I’d known in college (and one of their sisters).

But first, there was the matter of getting out of the place I was in.

I’d agreed to let my roommate pay for a “Roommates” ad in the Strib out of my damage deposit. A stream of potential roommates came by. I only remember one.

At about this time, the U of Minnesota men’s basketball program was in a bit of turmoil; one of their star players, Mitch Lee, who’d been accused of sexual misconduct, and then rape, in separate incidents that would eventually bring down coach Jim Dutcher. Lee happened to be black.

One of the potential roommates – an African American guy who worked in the athletic department at the U – came by. He looked around the place – well-situated for him, but a little small – as I packed up stuff to get ready for my move.

My roommate introduced me: “This is my current roommate, Mitch Lee…”

He stopped and caught himself, and started to stammer. Potential Roommate’s eyes got a little wide, and he looked at Roommate.

“Yeah”, I responded. “I get more flak about that these days”.

I doubt I have that kind of timing anymore.