Hey, wait. That’s not funny.

Comedian Al Franken Wins Minn. Senate Nod

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Comedian Al Franken grabbed the Democratic nomination Tuesday for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, setting up a showdown with Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

What?

Not “Statesman” Al Franken?

Not “former State Representative” Al Franken?

Not “Entrepreneur” Al Franken?

Not “Former Mayor” Al Franken?

Not “former War Hero” Al Franken?

Not “Prominent Attorney” Al Franken?

Not “former Professor” Al Franken?

Not “Community Organizer” Al Franken?

Not “(failed) Radio Political Commentator” Al Franken?

Not even “long-time Minnesota Resident” Al Franken?

The AP, ostensibly not able to apply any other credible label to Mr. Franken, listed him as “Comedian” Al Franken.

Even less funny, 163,000 Minnesotans actually went out of their way to cast a primary vote for a candidate listed as a “Comedian.”

Seriously, folks (pun intended) are you telling me the best candidate the DFL in Minnesota can muster is a vulgar, tax-dodging, carpet bagging “Comedian?”

That’s all ya got?

Is this thing on?

One of the great linguistic crimes of the left in recent years is their attempt to hijack the term “tax cut” to refer to what are, in essence, payoffs to specific constituencies.

During the 2000 and 2004 elections, in a spate of almost-honesty trumping marketing, the Gore and Kerry campaigns referred to them as “targeted tax cuts” – allowing the audience to ask “Targeted?  At whom or what?”

The answer, of course:  anyone whose vote the Democrats want to buy.

As a Republican, of course, I favor across-the-board cuts in both taxes and spending.  I also acknowledge that many of the most popular tax cuts that fall short of that goal are “targeted”, in a sense.  The Mortgage Interest Deduction is targeted at homeowners; Capital Gains Tax cuts are aimed at stockholders and others who directly or indirectly buy or sell investment securities, equities or property; the Death Tax is aimed at people who die.  These have one thing in common; they affect the vast majority of the American people, most of whom own houses and participate in the market (directly or via their 401K funds, and all of whom will eventually enter the probate and inheritance system, presuming the Democrats leave them any property to bequeath).  Home owners, direct and indirect investment and probate cross all party, demographic, regional and social lines.

Democrats’ “targeted cuts”, however, try to slice the pie into much finer slices, each of them a constituency they need, essentially to rebate some of the cost of the higher spending back to the groups, classes and other slices they need to keep happy.

Hence Al Franken and his proposal to give a post-secondary tax deduction, which Aaron Landry misleadingly labels a “tax cut”. 

From a Franken press release today:

A college diploma is more than a dream for Minnesota families – it’s practically a requirement for middle-class prosperity. But with George W. Bush in the White House and Norm Coleman in the Senate, that prosperity has slipped out of reach for Minnesota’s middle class. My tuition tax cut will bring college within reach for 10 million students nationwide. And it will take a step towards restoring America’s middle-class promise: that hard work can bring prosperity to your family.

Landry:

The average student loan debt in Minnesota jumped over $6K during the first three years of Coleman and is the 5th in the nation. Coleman’s continually voted against students, such as letting tuition tax deduction expire, opposing $4.9 billion for Pell grants.

Of course, one of the reasons a postsecondary education is so expensive is the immense subsidy from the government.  It’s Economics 101; when more money is made available to pay for something for which there is a limited supply, the price will rise.  The price of postsecondary education has risen much  faster than inflation over the past thirty years; anecdotally, tuition at my very modestly-priced alma mater has nearly tripled since I was in school, while average incomes have not. 

So Franken isn’t proposing a “tax cut”, so much as a “rebate” of a price increase caused by the government’s own subsidies, which are the primary inflationary pressure on tuitions in the first place.

At any rate, getting into college isn’t the biggest problem facing Americans’ entry into the middle class; graduating from high school knowing enough English, math and citizenship is.  And on that front, Franken promises only more of the status quo.

Not even a “tax cut” to help people secede from the system that Franken’s biggest supporters, the Teachers’ unions, broke in the first place.

But I digress.

Let’s just make sure we keep our terms straight, OK?

I’ve seen quite a few “demonstrators” and “professional media” from this past week claim that the police were “out of control” last week at the RNC – even accusations that there was a “police riot”.

And let’s make one thing clear; I oppose police overreaching. Indeed, since an Obama administration would likely try to shut down conservative talk radio and regulate political blogs, I oppose all government overreaching.

But let me ask you all; where was the overreach?

Let’s allow for the moment that I, too, am concerned about some of the reports of excessive use of mace on people who weren’t actively resisting the police. It’s technically and legally a gray area (whether it should be or not is another entire discussion), but let’s acknowledge some mutual concern here, and move on.

And let’s balance that by acknowledging the concern I have that the local lefty media and Sorosphere is trying to ignore both the threat that did exist before the convention – threats to “shut down” the convention, kidnap or harass delegates and so on – as well as the violence that did happen (the sandbag attacks and bum-rushing of the various incoming buses on the first day), to say nothing of the constant, peek-a-boo refusal of the various protest groups to renounce, condemn and work against violence. This was the background against which law enforcement had to work, and it was a daunting one.

With that out of the way, please, “demonstrators” and “professional media”, take a whack at answering these questions, if you please:

1. At any time, did the Police try to shut down a permitted demonstration that was operating during its permitted time?
2. If so, were significant numbers of the demonstrators involved engaged in violent or destructive behavior?
3. Did the police do anything against any protester taking non-violent part in a legally-permitted protest? And remember, by “legally permitted protest”, I mean a protest operating under a permit that had not either expired or been voided due to the demonstration veering outside its permitted limits (because demonstrators have to follow the law, too).
4. In an “overwhelming display of law-enforcement power”, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department executed (ahem) five search warrants and arrested, um, six people before the convention started. The thirty-page affadavit claimed that the six were parts of a conspiracy to commit all manner of mayhem on the convention – chains across freeways, kidnappings, pee-and-poop bombings, tieing up traffic and worse. Which of the Ramco Sheriff’s claims do you contest, and why?

I’m genuinely curious.

Neil Peterson was perfectly fine ditching the GOP last spring, when he joined with the rest of the Override Six to stab Governor Pawlenty and his district’s voters in the back by voting to kill the veto of the DFL’s Transporktation bill, the biggest tax hike in Minnesota history.

But with the primary here today, it’s another story:

That’s a voters’ guide card mailed to residents of District 41B, listing Peterson among the endorsed Republicans in today’s primary.

Of course, Peterson was not endorsed. Jan Schneider was.  The 41B GOP rejected Peterson by a staggering, Georgia Tech Vs. Cumberland-like margin at their convention.
Peterson’s scurrilous dirty trick is clearly aimed at duping the disengaged voter into pulling the lever for him. It is a lie.

If you are a 41B Republican, don’t be fooled, please. Vote Schneider.

If you know a 41B Republican, don’t let them be fooled.

Peterson trashes the Republican party – until he believes he needs it to stay in office. This can not be allowed to succeed.

Vote Schneider in 41B.

Joe Repya notes the big number from the RNC – or rather, the lack of number:

For months leading up to the Republican National Convention the anti-war crowd in the Twin Cities boasted that they would have 50,000 to 100,000 people protesting on the streets of Saint Paul during the RNC. Well, they didn’t even come close.

The major media and the St. Paul Police estimated that at the height of the protests on Monday, September 1st, that maybe 8,000 to 10,000 people were present. The protest organizers have unions who bused in marchers (the AFL/CIO, the Teachers Union and Service Employee International Union) to thank for what pathetic numbers they did muster.

The media gave much more coverage to some 400 to 500 anarchists that rioted in the streets by breaking store windows and destroying automobiles. Naturally the anti-war organizers whined about it to the media by complaining that they didn’t get the coverage they deserved. Frankly, they deserved nothing. You have freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean others have to listen to what you say.

And remember – your right to swing  your fist ends not only where my face begins, but your parade permit ends when it says it ends.

Just like ours did.

I’ve heard a number of you complaining that the mainstream media “ignored the story” of your protests.

Let me set you straight; the protests were “dog bites man”.  You were not, as a rule, newsworthy.  A gathering of BDS sufferers?  It happens every weekend in these parts.

Inside the building, a woman was selected for Vice President; she electrified the party; she may have turned the election inside-out.

Outside:  A bunch of petulant arrested adolescents stomped and screamed and occasionally threw things.  If you have children, it’s a daily thing.

Get over it.

“Flyover Land” – the part of this country between the Hudson at the Sierras, with a few islands like Minneapolis and Chicago and Boulder, outposts of faux-coastal-transplant cosmopolitanism – is a place that exposes a lot of ignorance on the part of people who don’t live in it.

And we all know that ignorance breeds fear at least, and hate at worst. The coastal media treats “flyover land” with a mix of superstitious stupefaction and condescension.

And via accident or design, the McCain/Palin campaign is pouncing on it. For me, the most memorable line of Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech was her smacking of Obama’s hypocrisy – pandering to blue collar workers and farmers one day, tittering about God and guns and the Bible the next behind closed doors in San Francisco. 

I say right now – it will be the deciding factor in this election. The “Red/Blue divide” in 2000 and 2004 was a demographic happenstance, a series of blotches on a map. In this election – says me – it’s going to be the fulcrum on which McCain and Palin put the lever that lets them move a mountain.

Did I say ignorance and hatred? Bill Maher, as near a posterboy as exists for smug establishment liberalism, wrote in Salon (via Peg Kaplan):

New Rule: Republicans need to stop saying Barack Obama is an elitist, or looks down on rural people, and just admit you don’t like him because of something he can’t help, something that’s a result of the way he was born. Admit it, you’re not voting for him because he’s smarter than you.

No, and I’m smarter than Bill Maher too. But we both digress.

Karl Rove described Obama as “the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini, and making snide comments about everyone who passes by.” Unlike George Bush, who’s the guy at the country club who makes snide comments, and then passes out. Now this characterization, of course, was something Mr. Rove just completely pulled out of his bulbous, gelatinous ass, but remember this is America, a land where people believe anything they hear. One of McCain’s ads casts Obama as “the one,” implying he thinks he’s the Messiah. Good, maybe he can raise McCain from the dead.

Barack Obama can’t help it if he’s a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you’re a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us.

And there you have it. We – the lumpen proles in flyoverland – should shut up and fall in line behind our betters.

If you live between the Hudson and the Sierras (outside Chicago, the Twin Cities, Boulder, Austin or Santa Fe), you are a rube, good only for paying taxes and defending the nation. Otherwise, shut up.

That is the attitude – indeed, it’s accepted with near-religious certainty – of the east and west coast media. And McCain, by accident or design, knows it and is capitalizing on it. This attitude – and Mac and Sarah’s response – threatens to do something that the last four GOP candidacies haven’t been able to manager; re-form the Reagan Republicans.

That storied electoral mass – blue-and-white collar voters from the nation’s less-fashionable zip codes – may or may not pay much attention to politics, but they know the economy, because they live in it. They know national security, because it’s their brothers, sons, daughters, cousins…them that serve in our military in vast geographic disproportion.

It’s the part of this nation that takes the flag seriously, and had anscestors not only in World War II, but in Vietnam and the first Gulf War.

It’s the part of the nation that sees this ad (go and watch it) and not only feels a clutch in the stomach for the subject, and thinks “Yes, Lee Greenwood is a sap, and his song is mawkish and hypersentimental, but &*#$*#, I do feel a swell in my heart when I see the flag go by”.  They shop and Walmart and watch NASCAR – and, for that matter, have BAs in English and raise kids and write rings around Bill Maher.

The hatred is more than just a matter of this campaign.  The Guardian’s Nick Cohen traces its recent roots:

In Britain, the most snobbish attacks on Margaret Thatcher did not come from aristocrats but from the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who opined that Thatcherism was the ‘anarchism of the lower middle classes’ and the liberal Jonathan Miller, who deplored her ‘odious suburban gentility’. More recently, George Osborne, of the supposedly compassionate Conservative party, revealed himself to be a playground bully when he derided Gordon Brown for being ‘faintly autistic’.

 And it’s not just a matter of personality, whether Thatcher’s, Palin’s, or even Bush’s:

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.

In this, American liberals are no different from the politically committed the world over. David Cameron knew that he would never be Prime Minister until he had killed the urgent hatred of the Conservative party in liberal England. A measure of his success is that hardly anyone now is caught up by the once ubiquitous feeling that no compromise is too great if it stops the Tories regaining power. Hate can sell better than hope.

Seeing the left vent its conventional “wisdom” over Palin, so it seems.

And yet…it’s not working:

But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor’s office.

On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter’s. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.

When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows. And everything that could go wrong with the campaign against Palin did. American liberals forgot that the public did not know her. By the time she spoke at the Republican convention, journalists had so lowered expectations that a run-of-the-mill speech would have been enough to win the evening.

It’s the true genius of the McCain/Palin strategy; the Reagan Coalition always saw themselves as the underdogs – and the left (thanks, Bill Maher!) was happy to oblige the impression!

As it was, her family appeared on stage without a goitre or a club foot between them, and Palin made a fighting speech that appealed over the heads of reporters to the public we claim to represent. ‘I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion,’ she said as she deftly detached journalists from their readers and viewers. ‘I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.’

Anyway – keep condescending, lefties.  Keep trying to slap that glass ceiling above an actual woman of accomplishment who should be a hero to feminists (if feminism were still about, y’know, empowering women).  Keep attacking a very typical middle-American family, with accomplishments and problems all rolled into one.  Please, please have Bill Maher keep telling Middle America what a bunch of dumb schlubs we all are, and how lucky we are “The One” deigns to walk among us at all.

It does our work for us.

A post-convention wrap-up: 

The RNC convention bump has McCain up +1.0. Time will tell if that will stick. The USA Today poll, Obama’s favorite isn’t good news for him. McCain +10.

Of late, polls of polls have shown Senators Obama and McCain deadlocked. But McCain clearly has the momentum right now…voters by the thousands in attendance to see McCain/Palin.

56 days to go.

Can America really be split exactly down the middle?

How accurate are polls at predicting the outcome of the election to come?

Is the liberal media behind the design of most of them? If so, do we assume McCain is doing better than he is?

When Americans step into the booth, hand on the lever, are they ready to vote for an African American President for the first time in history?

Conservatives – if the GOP candidate were Colin Powell, would race be even more a factor?

Personally, I hope race is no longer a factor but am I naive?

Is McCain, the more historically conventional candidate, the default if voters enter the booth undecided?

…or will they stay home?

Speaking of staying home, will Obama once and for all be the candidate that gets young, first-time voters to vote? If so, will they all vote for him?

If the polls continue to reflect a shift in momentum to McCain/Palin, should Obama dump Biden, in an unprecedented admission of a poor choice of VP, and select Hillary?

Is that what lunch with Bill is about? Change?

Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Undecided…all are welcome: Discuss. Pick any (or all) question(s) you’d like.

What do you think? 

Bob Collins over at NewsCut is going to be liveblogging MPR’s “Midmorning” show. The subject?:

Does a candidate’s gender really make a difference? That’s one of the questions we’re exploring this morning during the first hour of MPR’s Midmorning.

A better question, perhaps – to whom does it make a difference?

How many Hillary Clinton supporters out there want to vote for a woman – any woman? (Check out the podcast of Ed and my broadcast from the convention last Thursday, with the two Hillary supporters who’d switched to Palin while driving home from the DNC).

Still – read some of the “feminist” response to Palin’s nomination; it seems the only “gender” issue that matters to most of them is abortion.

Ironically, among the base at whom Palin was really aimed – the Reagan coalition of 1980 – Palin could have been male, female, black, Hindu, or damn near anything, as long as he/she conveyed the three emerging messages of this campaign:

1. Flyover land matters
2. The GOP needs to be the party of integrity
3. America – *%$$ yeah!

(Along with “Drill oil, split atoms, create energy”, of course).

Dear Teenager,

It was fun meeting you out on the other day, out on Sixth at Saint Peter, and having the little discussion we had. Part if it is that you seem a lot like I was, almost thirty years ago. Passionate, smart, full of piddle and vinegar to change something – and also full of information you’ve gotten from your peers, your teachers and, I can only presume, your parents that is just plain wrong.

You said a few things during our conversation that I felt deserved some answers. And while I took a whack at it last Wednesday, I’m going to do a bit more thorough of a job this time around.

No, This Is Not A Police State: You were upset at the police response to the protests, especially the Monday (and, I presume, Thursday) events which involved a bit of violence. You said the police were “systematically violating the First Amendment”.

With all due respect, no – and it seems that you and a lot of people much older and who should be much wiser than you are just as confused as you are on this subject. Let me explain a few things:

• The Law is what it says. Not what you want it to be. Not even what you really really want it to be. The law says that groups of over 25-odd people need a permit to demonstrate; permits have conditions, like time limits and routes. If your demonstration (of 25-or-so or more people) goes outside those limits, you’re breaking the law. At an event like the RNC, you need a permit because the police and city don’t want big crowds of completely different people bumping into each other and breaking into violence.
• The demonstrations that got broken up violently were, as far as I’ve heard, operating outside their permit conditions; late, or on the wrong route, or something.
• You may not have agreed with the police response – and for that matter, I’m still thinking about some of it – but the fact was (or seems to be) that the police followed the rules (see above; the rules as they are written down, not necessarily the way you want them to be); they left permitted demonstrations alone, and gave big, non-permitted demonstrations time to disperse after the orders to disperse were given.

“The Police Overreacted”: Look, I’ll keep an open mind, but so far what I’ve seen is this: the cops gave lawful orders to disperse several times. An order to disperse a crowd is like an order for an alleged drunk driver to get out of a car; if you disagree, you need to take it up with a judge, not a cop.

Furthermore, from what I’ve seen and heard from others, the police pretty much did everything they could to avoid trouble until the demonstrators flagrantly disregarded the law. At the first march on Thursday, when hundreds of protesters were bottled up on th John Ireland overpass, the police just stood there. They’d have been well within the law to have arrested everyone on that bridge. They didn’t (thus boring many of the demonstrators to death, so they didn’t stick around for the louder, more disruptive riot later in the evening).

It’s all “The People” vs. “The Rich”: I refute you thus: George Soros is a Democrat. I am a Republican. Keep your stereotypes – which in an older person are called “bigotry”, but you’re young, so we’ll just call it “ignorance” and “mindlessly parroting what other people have told you” – to yourself,thanks.
More as the opportunity arises.

Predictably, the local lefty “alternative” media (for those of you for whom the Strib, WCCO and MPR aren’t left enough) is up in a snit over the treatment journalists got at the convention…

…er, wait.  Look at the coverage the Sorosphere gives the convention; see how often the term “media professional” pops up.  Interesting turn of phrase.

But I digress.  It’s interesting  the number of “Journalists” whose only “story” at the convention involved tramping around with a bunch of people whose primary mission (at a high level, not necessarily among any individual protester) was to “shut down the convention” and provoke a police overreaction.

Among “journalists” who seem institutionally incapable of recognizing, much less “reporting”, a couple of key facts; that…:

1. …if you’re protesting in a group of over 25 or so, and you have no permit, you have an illegal assembly.  And no, that doesn’t chill free speech, because…
2. …permits are issued pretty much for the asking in Saint Paul, except when EVERYONE wants one, in which case there’s a lottery. As there was, last spring.  Permits are issued so that groups of, say, klansmen don’t get to demonstrate at the same time and place as, say, Holocaust survivors.    And…
3. …if your “demonstration” goes outside the time and place specified on the permit, your assembly is illegal.  And…
4. …when you’re at an illegal assembly, the Police have every right to tell you to leave. And…
5. … when the police tell you to leave, it’s called a “lawful order”.  You have no more business arguing with cop about an order to disperse than you do to try to try to talk your way out of showing one your drivers license when you’ve been pulled over.  It’s the law.  And…
6. …if you resist, stall or dink around with lawful orders, you can be warned – and then force can be used to enforce the order.

Now – if any of you “media professionals can show me any stories where…:

1. …the police regulated the content of any of the legal protests, or…
2. …regulated the content of any “media professional”‘s coverage of any event, or…
3. …broke up a legal, permitted protest where nobody was committing violence,

…then let’s talk.

And then we’ll talk about the double standard you “media professionals” practice; you condemn the police for treating “media professionals” (and dipsticks with video cameras who claimed to be “journalists”) who were standing around at illegal assemblies as what they were – poeple who are breaking the law.  And then you turn around and support the Obama campaign, an administration that will make the “Fairness” Doctrine a matter of policy, which will suppress genuine, legal speech with the full weight of the federal government.

We’re talking about a group of “media professionals” (and amateurs, not that a blogger is one to crab about that) whose only focus was the protests and whatever happened to them.  They cared not an iota about what happened in the Xcel Center (beyond the fact that the objects of their stereotypes and bigotry were going to be meeting there); they certainly didn’t cover the dark side of the protesters on whom they slathered endless, favorable, victim-mongering coverage (while the “demonstrators'” sandbag attacks on buses and the harassment of delegates on their way to the convention somehow never got covered.  Go figure!).  No, these “journalists” already had their stories written before they arrived in downtown Saint Paul. 

And that’s not really “journalism”.

So maybe if we conservatives peed in buckets, slept under  bridges and didn’t shower for a few weeks…?

On the show last Saturday, Ed and I got a phone call from “Doug”, a volunteer driver who ended up spending most of the convention shuttling MSNBC people around the Cities.

And yow – what a phone call.  Ed has the audio from the phone call – it’s about six minutes.  Give it a listen.

Ed summarizes:

• According to Doug, MS-NBC apparently took no chances on questions from the crowd.  Rather than get caught with a question that might make Republicans look good, their producer pre-screened questioners, and Chris Matthews pretended it was random.
• Republicans were good tippers.  MS-NBC stiffed the drivers.
• Media people talked in the cars about how effective the Republican convention turned out to be, while publicly saying something else entirely.

Now, reading this bit here – which criticizes Ed’s piece (and, by extension I suppose, mine) on the subject – there are a few legitimate questions about this segment:

…much as I realize that MSNBC is now a left leaning network, mostly at night, this sort of “bottom of the barrel” type of scraping to find dirt on networks that don’t agree with your political ideologies is, quite frankly, childish and immature.

There was no “scraping”; Doug called us, unsolicited.  And

You think Fox News doesn’t pre-screen people on their network? Please. Don’t make me laugh.

I won’t make you laugh, but I might make you learn something, with any luck.

Of course Fox (and everyone else) screens people.  The objection is to screening to find people that precisely fit the narrative that’s already been written.
And finally:

Okay, first of all, were any precautions taken to ensure that this guy was not some sort of crank caller? I highly doubt this.

We – our producer Matt, in this case – did the usual phone screen.  It’s not impossible to think there was a crank.

So we’ll do what bloggers do; cast the question open to the legions of experts out there.

Were you a volunteer at the convention?  Were you in the audience on MSNBC?  What did you see?

My gut says the guy was on the level.  But what the heck; let’s shoot for confirmation.

A handy clearinghouse of Palin rumors and their debunkings.

With all the talk about Sarah Palin’s sublime speech and the anarkids’ display of petulance, it seems we’ve pretty much missed talking about the dumbest display of the entire RNC; “True Blue Minnesota”‘s jumbotron.

Now, when TBM started talking about mounting “huge” jumbotrons high above downtown Saint Paul, on Cathedral Hill, to beam messages of goading and shame down upon the assembled delegates, I was thinking something like this:

But in fact, the effect was neither as sinister nor as grandiose.

Indeed, I can’t find a photo of it anywhere on the web (I didn’t bring a camera with me). Absent a picture, I need to come up with something to explain the overall effect.

There.

That’s it.

Andrew Sullivan – back when the MSM considered him one of the “new generation of conservative intellectuals” – was the blog that got me started as a blogger, back in 2002.

His current obsession seems to be tittering about the sex lives of the Palin family (and of course, his endless sexist, classist, classless jabbering) – after having tried to declare his own off limits in the name of basic human decency.

Patterico:

Gee, I dunno. If Obama’s had written about the scourge of homosexual promiscuity, as Sullivan has, and then had advertised himself for promiscuous homosexual sex, as Sullivan did (link is not work-safe), advertising for “One-on-One’s, 3-Ways, Groups/Parties/Orgies, and Gang Bangs” — do you really think the press would not have written about it?

At least Sullivan’s story has a hypocrisy angle among the lurid details, the pictures of his naked buttocks on the Internet, and the description of his “power glutes.” Talking about the sex life of Sarah Palin’s sister or daughter has no legitimate purpose at all.

Truly reprehensible.

Sorry, blog-dad. I’m not taking care of you in your old age anymore.

This Week on ABC is featuring an interview with Barack Obama.

When asked by George Stephanopoulos about tax cuts and the economy, Senator Obama spoke to the differences in the economic theories of his strategy versus Senator McCain’s.

Obama’s plan, tax cuts to the middle class is a bad idea, and an ill-advised one based on the notion that the economy somehow grows from the bottom up, which is in fact how Obama himself described his plan.

Ben Stein, Lawyer, Writer, Actor and Economist: I ADMIRE Barack Obama…But I am a bit worried that his knowledge of economics may not be as extensive as his legal background. In particular, he’s been campaigning with an idea of a second round of economic stimulus to combat the evident slowdown in the economy, to follow President Bush’s first round that is now wrapping up. The first round hasn’t succeeded, and Senator Obama’s ideas aren’t very promising, either.

The failure of the Bush stimuless program clearly confirms this. Tax cuts for the middle class amount to a few hundred dollars per year – essentially, another Bush stimulus check. Obama has said that he would be in favor of another stimulus package, despite recent evidence that it has failed. So how is that change? How is that different than Bush’s economic strategy?

In a nutshell, why have a stimulus program that may not — and probably should not — stimulate much consumption? And why help pay for it through taxes on a group whose members have done no moral or other wrong and who often are not particularly rich, either (not that it’s a moral wrong to be rich)?

These are complicated issues, and

I am not even remotely sure how to solve all of them myself. But some of Senator Obama’s plan is just hard to rationalize.

Our economy is fueled by consumer spending stemming from consumer confidence and job creation through the formation of new businesses. Tax cuts to those that start these new businesses have been shown time and again to stimulate the very growth that creates jobs and bolsters consumer confidence which leads to increased consumer spending and ultimately increased tax revenues.

It’s simple. Whose name is on your paycheck? Do you want the government to help this entity or person or harm them? Do you want them to be incented to hire more of you or not? Do you want them to be profitable so that they can increase your income at the next review or not?

Our economy is like a train. The engine is corporate America and small businesses – employers large and small. The train cars are working Americans – taxpayers. The caboose represents those that don’t pay taxes or are unable to work or provide for themselves.

Government? Government’s role should be to keep the tracks clear of danger and to help people get on the train, or back on the train if they get knocked off. Government’s role has however become the cargo, and to help more and more people become the caboose.

Make no mistake. We need the caboose. There are people that can’t contribute to our economy and the government should play a part in their care and protection. Liberals however are confused as to which end of the train serves the most important role in our nation and our economy.

Tax cuts and rebates to the cars in the train doesn’t make the train go any faster. Gearing our economy to the caboose hurts everyone on the train, including the caboose. Increasing government just increases the load for the engine.

So why do liberals continue to offer up this strategy as an economic policy? Votes. Political expediency. Obama is pushing this strategy to buy votes, plain and simple; just like every liberal predecessor. That’s not change either. That is the liberalism that is just another stripe in the spectrum of socialism.

What liberals don’t understand, and why usually the American electorate swings in the direction of the Republicans during economic challenges, is that in most cases, “wealthy” Americans are just regular people that took risks to leverage the American dream.

After eight years of Republican liberal fiscal policies, the American people are confused, which goes a long way to explain Obama’s popularity despite his lack of executive experience and ill-fated economic proposals.

John McCain is wise to distance himself from the Bush administration’s economic strategy and is attempting to make the case to voters that the solution to our economic woes is to shrink government, to keep money in the pockets of those that earned it and to stimulate economic growth through the creation of jobs.

Gearing our tax code to continue to penalize the “wealthy” in order to redistribute the booty to and eliminate the risks of life of those that would vote Democrat has weakened our nation and serves to drain the incentive of those that create jobs and take those risks that ultimately grow our economy.

Obama’s plan is a failure out of the box.

A couple of our loyal commenters accused law enforcement of “overreaching” during the pre-RNC house raids that uncovered various and sundry household items; asserting that the items uncovered could be used for anything.

Does Freedom of Assembly Include the Right to Carry a Bucket of Urine?

And Now She’s A Weapons Expert

The Star Tribune listed an abbreviated list of said items; conveniently omitting those that tend to be less useful for domestic chores, some of those items included throwing knives, a gas mask and filter, homemade caltrops (everyone that reads this blog surely knows what they are by now), and empty plastic buckets cut and made into shields.

Despite hundreds of arrests and the generous use of mace and teargas, the event went on without making national news for the wrong reason. Clearly this was the result of a conspicuous show of force and a proactive approach on the part of law enforcement.

But it could have been en entirely different story if it weren’t for the aforementioned approach, and as it turns out a little luck.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Two Texas men are charged in federal court in Minneapolis with illegally possessing Molotov cocktails. Authorities say the men planned to target law enforcement during the Republican National Convention.

Twenty-two-year-old David Guy McKay and 23-year-old Bradley Neil Crowder are each charged with one count of possession of firearms that were not registered to them.

The two Austin men are in custody following an initial court appearance Friday.

According to the criminal complaint, law enforcement officers overheard a conversation in which McKay said the Molotov cocktails he and Crowder made would be thrown at vehicles parked in a lot in St. Paul.

The lot was used by law enforcement, and patrolled by U.S. Secret Service and the military.

Just for fun, I would entertain anyone’s offering as to other common household uses for the molotov cocktail. Thank you in advance for your creativity as a liberal to defend almost any behavior as a personal freedom or exercise of free speech.

I ran into Leo Pusateri and his son, Leo III, at the demonstrations on Thursday.

And Leo III has a serious future in the whole “reporting” business, with his posts (here, here and here) on the demonstrations.

Take away the celebrity, the thrilling words; what’s left?

Old Ideas masquerading as change.

This is a short  campaign ad that doesn’t break any new ground in it’s content but I do think its production values are artistically relevant, submitted for your discussion.

Dagnabbit. I wish I would have caught this myself. Reposting this is admittedly a thinly veiled piece of plagiarism, but I dutifully submit it for your enjoyment in case you didn’t catch it in the WSJ or NYT.

I remember Sarah Palin’s commentary on Senator Harry Reid during her acceptance rout speech:

Harry Reid, the majority leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee. He said, quote, “I can’t stand John McCain.” Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we’ve chosen the right man. Clearly what the majority leader was driving at is that he can’t stand up to John McCain.

And Reid’s response…

Now Harry Reid is hardly thin-skinned and almost anything else Ms. Palin could have said about him might not have drawn much of a reaction. But to the former boxer from tiny Searchlight, Nev., that insinuation from Governor Palin amounts to fighting words. He sees himself as more than capable of standing up to Mr. McCain and, through spokesman Jim Manley, Mr. Reid fired back.

“Anyone who knows Senator Reid knows he never backs down when he’s fighting for what’s right and that he always stands up to John McCain when he is wrong,” said Mr. Manley. “Shrill and sarcastic political attacks may fire up the Republican base, but they don’t change the fact that a McCain-Palin administration would mean four more years of failed Bush-Cheney policies.”

Via a spokesman (Reid was getting a pedicure) by the name of Manley.

Despite McCain’s lack of hokey Styrofoam props…and big-name rock bands, Senator McCain’s convention acceptance speech garnered 500,000 more viewers than Senator Obama’s speech the week earlier, despite being shown on less networks.

I’m thinking they were all men.

In fairness to Obama, the GOP has two smokin’ hot -er I mean rather comely ladies on the ticket – Sarah Palin, and of course first lady Cindy McCain…

…

Sorry. Sort of lost my train of thought.

…where was I?

Oh, here it is…

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain attracted a record 38.9 million television viewers to his acceptance speech last night, surpassing Democratic rival Barack Obama and McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin.

The total exceeded the 38.4 million who watched Obama accept the Democratic nomination in Denver on Aug. 28, Nielsen Media Research said today in a statement. Palin drew 37.2 million on Sept. 3 after three days of intense media coverage.

The last night of the Republican gathering in St. Paul, Minnesota, was seen in 28.3 million homes, breaking the record of the 27.7 million who watched Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. McCain’s ratings are the highest for a political convention since Nielsen began collecting data in 1960.

Combined, McCain and Palin, who is Alaska’s first-term governor, drew 76.2 million viewers, compared with the 62.4 million who tuned in to see Obama and running mate Joe Biden

The Republican nominee’s audience last night also exceeded the typical nightly viewing for the Beijing Olympics

No wonder Oprah doesn’t want Sarah Palin on her show. Her ratings would probably embarass Obama’s there too.

Nevermind.

Who gives a crap about Oprah.

We – Kevin Ecker and I – were standing about fifty yards behind the police line with about eight other civilians, most of them with cameras.  Most of the other civilians had obvious signs of non-GOP sympathy; T-shirts, buttons, whatever.  I kept my own beliefs pretty quiet all afternoon while wandering among them; I certainly kept my AM1280 ID badge in my pocket.  I figured discretion is the better part of valor thrillseeking.

A couple of cops in military uniforms walked up from behind and asked us to move north off the bridge and back off the street.  The ten or so of us turned around and started trudging up the hill.

A lingerie-model hot woman with a digital SLR quipped “so it’s a police state!”

I’d been listening to this crap all day.  I couldn’t take any more.

“If this were a police state”, I said just loudly enough for everyone to hear, “the protesters would already be dead”. 

They didn’t really talk with me anymore.

The Associated Press states the bleeding obvious; the GOP isn’t real stacked with minorities. 

The Republican National Convention showcased a Native American color guard, a black preacher and video footage of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, all part of its effort to present the GOP as a picture of diversity. What it hasn’t offered is many minorities speaking from the podium in prime time, or sitting among the delegates.

Well, tell me about it!  Here in the Fourth District, we realize the GOP’s shortcomings at reaching out to the Afro/Latin/Somali/Hmong American communities.  It’s a challenge the GOP needs to meet. 

But I think it’s worth noting that as “white” as the GOP’s body of delegates may have been, it was a lot more diverse than the clots of protesters outside, who were as close to universally white as anything this side of a Klan rally.

Just saying.

Palin is more popular than Mac or Barry O, says the latest Rasmussen poll:

A week ago, most Americans had never heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Now, following a Vice Presidential acceptance speech viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% hold an unfavorable view of the self-described hockey mom.

The figures include 40% with a Very Favorable opinion of Palin and 18% with a Very Unfavorable view (full demographic crosstabs are available for Premium Members). Before her acceptance speech, Palin was viewed favorably by 52%. A week ago, 67% had never heard of her.

That’ll adjust over time, of course; they honeymoon is on, and rest assured the left and media (pardon the redundancy) will be in full slime mode for the next two months.

But if you’d told us two weeks ago we’d be at this intersection, how many people would have thought you were nuts?