I have been accusing Obama of economic illiteracy for some time now as our nation’s impending financial crisis should by far be our chief concern for the future of our nation and voters would be well advised to consider this before conferring their will in November.

Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession

…despite his obvious general intelligence, and uplifting and motivational eloquence, Sen. Obama reveals this startling economic illiteracy in his policy proposals and economic pronouncements. From the property rights and rule of (contract) law foundations of a successful market economy to the specifics of tax, spending, energy, regulatory and trade policy, if the proposals espoused by candidate Obama ever became law, the American economy would suffer a serious setback.

A setback hardly sounds ominous in the big scheme but I wonder if the average American has a grasp of how close our economy could be to the abyss right now. It’s one thing to hear consumers lamenting the fare the media serves up as market and economic intelligence. It is quite another to hear accomplished, accredited investors and the well informed talk of collapse.

I have always heard the former and have dismissed it as the flotsam that it is and have advised my clients to do the very same. Hearing the latter of late has me concerned.

There is a fair amount of optimism in the marketplace as well but that may be recalled if Obama ascends to the White House. His personal economic illiteracy is not so much the issue, as we all know the President can’t forge economic policy without the boys and girls on the hill.

Some cite Bill Clinton’s move to the economic policy center following his Hillary health-care and 1994 Congressional election debacles as a possible Obama model. But candidate Obama starts much further left on spending, taxes, trade and regulation than candidate Clinton. A move as large as Mr. Clinton’s toward the center would still leave Mr. Obama on the economic left.

Also, by 1995 the country had a Republican Congress to limit President Clinton’s big government agenda, whereas most political pundits predict strengthened Democratic majorities in both Houses in 2009.

Essentially, Obama will presumably make every effort to drain what’s left of our economy (“Hey, cool! What does this button do?”) and there will be no one to stop him.

History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy, the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression. While such a policy mix would be a real change, as philosophers remind us, change is not always progress.

Consider this: January is not that far away. How much do you expect our economy to recover between now and then? We’ve had a credit and housing meltdown, the lava flow of which has not yet stopped its seething march into the lower regions of our economy. This coupled with record high energy prices and reduced consumer spending have culminated in a near perfect storm. There is just one thing missing to set into action a collapse of our dollar and our economy.

A major disruption in oil production or a terrorist attack would do.

Obama in the White House may suffice as well.

To Democrats, everyone west of the Hudson Elgin is pretty much interchangeable:

Some Democratic campaign buttons made for distribution in Idaho show an unlikely pair: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican Sen. Larry Craig.

But don’t expect the staunch Republican to throw his support behind Obama or for the presidential candidate to ask Craig to change his mind and run for Senate again. Apparently the button manufacturer picked a picture of the wrong Idaho Larry.

Apparently Obama’s campaign believes none of the bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freaks out west’ll know the difference.

I’m a little late with this one – but, given Al Franken’s latest ad buy (“I was a comedian, er, satirist; sometimes the jokes went off the mark, but that’s comedy.  Minnesota’s future is no joke to me”), I think it’s timely enough.

Last week sometime, Aaron Brown of “Minnesota Brown” kind of summed up the real problem with Franken and his past – quite possibly without knowing it.

Democrat Al Franken, an unusual candidate facing unusual challenges, is fighting to reestablish the narrative of a campaign which has been mired in talk of his past. Franken’s past does not include any of the things most politicians must explain or deny: he has no shady land dealings, love children or criminal activities; but he did enjoy a long, successful career in comedic writing.

And that – along with a hideously expensive, failed radio show – is it.   That’s all there is to Franken’s past.  He went from “Minnesota grade school kid” to “Harvard guy” to “SNL/comedian/satirist” to “liberal talk show host” to “candidate”. 

That is all. 

 This career produced reams of smart and somewhat unsmart jokes and a regretable tax reporting error that has been corrected. And that is the sum of the GOP incumbent’s campaign strategy.

 What else is there to talk about?  He’s never voted on a bill.  He’s never pushed for – or rejected – an earmark.  He’s never written or passed a budget.  He’s never been elected to catch dogs.

He’s written written, joked and talked about politics.

So has Aaron Brown, and for that matter yours truly (indeed, I’ve probably written more about politics than Al Franken has in six years of blogging). 

What else can Coleman address?

Oh, by the way…

 Anyone who knows even the tiniest bit about comedy knows that the moment you have to explain a joke, that joke becomes unfunny, indeed, poisonous. Which is why a rather good campaign by Franken has struggled against a relatively unpopular incumbent with eerily white teeth, Sen. Norm Coleman.

…Mr. Brown will need to explain the teeth reference.

But we digress:

But here’s my personal, highly anecdotal experience. If you were ever at some point far too young for your parents to let you watch Saturday Night Live, especially in the late 1980s and ‘90s when the show took some more crass turns, and then aged to a point where there was some doubt if you were old enough so you snuck over to a friends’ house to watch it, you aren’t bothered by Al Franken’s comedic past.

If you didn’t start sneaking in to watch the show until the late eighties, you have little idea who Al Franken was.  I started sneaking downstairs to watch the show when Chevy Chase still hosted Weekend Update.  And Franken was everywhere on the show back then.  So no, Franken’s comedic past doesn’t bother me (although given the number of droughts SNL has suffered through while Franken was writing for the show, it doesn’t exactly turn my comedic crank, either).  

In fact, if you are a Democrat of that age your first political book was probably “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.” That book probably influenced your awareness of irony not just in comedy, but in politics.

So that’s what we have to thank for Markos Moulitsas, Jesus’ General, the Democrat Underground and the chanting masses of droogs in Jon Stewart’s audience. 

And so, you probably knew about Franken’s past “low” humor in addition to his many moments of deep insight (the kind of insight that would be useful in some kind of lofty federal office from a prominnt Midwestern state other than Wisconsin).

I’m struggling to remember a moment of “insight” “deeper” than “This is the decade of Al Franken”.  Feel free to fill me in.

 If you are unfamiliar with Franken’s very real transition from SNL jokester to satirist, however, the idea of a comedian gradually shifting gears over to public service seems to many as crazy as that crazy wrestler we elected governor and wasn’t that crazy! Damn kids!

You mean Dean Barkley and Tim Penny’s sock puppet our former “governor”, the 9/11 Truther?  You “kids” have some ‘splainin’ to do.

To get to what is perhaps Aaron Brown’s larger point – the higher-level concept that’s uncontaminated by inconvenient reality – let’s say a conservative comic were to run for, say, Senate.  Let’s say Dennis Miller (I know, more a libertarian than a conservative, but he’s right on most of the issues, and much funnier and politically cogent than Franken ever was) moved to Minnesota to take on Amy “A-Klo” Klobuchar in 2012. 

What would A-Klo’s campaign have to work with, other than thirty years of comedy?  From Dusk ‘Til Dawn Bordello of Blood?  Monday Night Football?   Joe Dirt? His switch from frowzy lefty to 9/11 libertarian?

Would A-Klo be at a loss for much more to talk about in re Miller?

What more is there to Al Franken?

I submit for your approval:  Nothing.

Discuss.

I’ve always hated humidity.  Heat, I’m fine with.  Humidity – especially the hot, stick garbage we get in Minnesota this time of year, the kind that hangs over the state for weeks and makes foetid morasses of every part of your body where two things rub together – is the bane of my existence.

The exception, since my mid-teens, has always been “unless I can be on my bike and riding like a madman”.  There’s something about a fast, intense ride on a muggy dog day that just feels…good.   Like it cleans your system out a bit – or at least makes the air conditioning at work feel that much better-deserved.  Either way, it’s about the only way I can stand humidity like this week.

So – thank goodness for biking.

Of course, in weather like this, and with as much stress as people these days have in their lives (gas prices, for instance), it’s good not to antagonize people.  Some of them are on the razor’s edge of civility to begin with.

Which brings us to “Critical Mass” the nationwide “group” of bicyclists whose stated goal is to promote bicyclists’ rights, but whose unstated one (if we ignore the likelihood that they’re really just hapless tools of other groups who wish to promote thuggery) seems to be to revel in the adolescent glee of pissing off “bad guys” – in their case, people who drive cars.

As someone who was biking long before most of “you” were born, please – stop your efforts “on my behalf”.  Please.  For all of the high-minded rhetoric accompanying your rides, it’s become a magnet in too many cities for antisocial, solipsistic jagoffs, and does the rest of us much more harm than good, to the point where plenty of people can see this sort of thing and be pretty damn sympathetic to the cop.

Michael Durant – the Black Hawk pilot who survived the shooting down of his helicopter in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 – has this to say about Obama’s Landstuhl gaffe:

“Over the last week, Barack Obama made time in his busy schedule to hold a rally with 200,000 Germans in Berlin, hold a press conference with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris, and hold a solo press conference in front of 10 Downing Street in London. The Obama campaign had also scheduled a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, but this stop was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff, and the traveling press corps, would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama.

“I’ve spent time at Ramstein recovering from wounds received in the service of my country, and I’m sure that Senator Obama could have made no better use of his time than to meet with our men and women in uniform there. That Barack Obama believes otherwise casts serious doubt on his judgment and calls into question his priorities.”

Oh, I think his priorities are crystal-clear.

Something to do with wanting people to line his path with cloaks and palm fronds.

Last week, the local Leftosphere was all abuzz over the lawsuit placed by a variety of trade unions against “lies” the Coleman campaign was allegedly spreading about the “Employee Free Choice Act”. 

“What were the lies involved in Coleman’s ad?”, we wondered.

So did the Office of Administrative Hearings, which handles such campaign-related flibbertigibbets:

“For purposes of a prima facie determination, the Complainant [the DFL’s Brian Melendez, in this case] must detail the factual basis to support a claim that the violation of law has occurred (Minn. Stat. 211B.32, subd.3.)  Here, the Complainant has not alleged with any specificity why the statements at issue are factually false. The Complaint merely asserts that the statements are false and “contrary to the facts,” without providing any further information.

The Complaint also does not identify the named individual Respondents, nor does it allege any facts to support an allegation that they participated in the preparation or broadcast of the material knowing it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity.”

Note to DFL politicians, “citizen journalists” and bloggers; merely wishing something to be true, and/or repeating “it’s true!” endlessly and loudly, does not make it so. 

No matter how hard you may wish, how many times or how loudly you repeat it, eventually you’ll need to bring some facts.

Or, y’know, have some.

Slate

Around noonish yesterday I took advantage of the gorgeous day to buzz over to the Xcel Energy Center to take in the “Anti-War Committee”‘s press conference to announce their plans for the fourth and final day of the Republican National Convention.

We stood on the plaza at Seventh and Kellogg.  Construction workers with their yellow contractor badges taking a break from the big buildout inside the X wandered around, lunchpails and Subway wrappers in hand, taking (mostly) no interest at all in the proceedings.

I counted a total of seven reporters or camerapeople of various types (plus me, whatever it is that I am), seven people from the “Anti-War Committee”, three of whom spent the conference standing in the back of the camera shot holding a banner (and not all that successfully; one corner got away from one of the guys a couple of times), and a rather portly guy in cargo shorts with a consumer-grade video cam who hovered around the edge of the “conference” shooting footage of…the reporters, mostly. 

Three women from the AWC spoke – briefly.  Jesse Albertson-Grove – a dead-ringer for a younger Chelsea Clinton – noted that the Anti-War Committee “stood in solidarity” against US involvement in wars in Iraq, Palestine and Colombia.  I didn’t get to ask her if they advocated giving Ingrid Betancourt back to FARC.

Next, Katrina Plotz noted that Iraq wasn’t the only war – indeed, we have a “war at home”; as evidence of this war at home, she noted that candidate and presumptive nominee John McCain wants to…

…extend the Bush tax cuts. 

(Around this point a heckler – a lanky guy with a contractor badge, carrying his lunch box as he walked back to the X on Kellogg – yelled “Why don’t you go back to your own neighborhood?”  I don’t think he got any air time). 

 Misty Rowan – an auburn-haired woman in an AWC t-shirt who looked like Kelly O’Donnell’s younger, vegan, Prius-driving sister – added that the group’s plans include a march.  The Saint Paul Police had given them a permit to march from the Capitol to the X later in the afternoon on the Fourth; according to Rowan, the AWC was upset that the permit didn’t allow them to march into the X and throw garbage at delegates, or something (I’ll admit my attention was wandering around this point). 

Among ’em, they mentioned that the 9/4 march, timed to coincide with John McCain’s acceptance speech, is going to be “more militant” than the opening-day parade.

How much “more militant?”  And what does that mean?

Ms. Plotz took the microphone again. 

I asked her – given the number of left-leaning groups who are talking about blockading streets, damaging property and attacking delegates, did the “Anti-War Committee” specifically condemn or abjure violence?

MPR was there.  Bob Collins noted the conference on NewsCut yesterday.

What about what most people think when they hear a term like militant, violence, for example?

“The violence that I’m worried about is the violence that’s being carried out in Iraq right now,” she answered, which isn’t really an answer.

“You’re not answering my question,” a blogger said, uttering the five words that mark a great political journalist.

“I know,” she said, adding that she doesn’t consider the blockades being planned — allegedly — by other groups “violence.”

“That’s not what we’re planning,” she said.

Collins notes the game of rhetorical peek-a-boo as some of the other reporters followed up with Plotz:

“We worked very hard to make the Day 1 march on the Xcel something that you can bring your family to and you can all come out for the war. And we believe Day 4 is for the truly committed and for the people who really want to see change and expect that to be a little harder to come to than just showing up with the kids and the balloons.” (Listen)

Collins:

That sounds almost militant. Perhaps, too militant, because the other speaker jumped in to spin that answer…

“If people are wondering about Day 4, is it going to be safe, is it going to be OK to bring their families, we would say ‘yes.’ I think the more the better.”

A few minutes later, however, she said militant might mean that “people face a little more risk by coming down.” (Listen)

Also – whenever “violence” was mentioned, all the speakers took pains to note that the violence they feared the most was from the police.

After saying there wouldn’t be any “sit-ins” or “die-ins,” that led us back to the question of how the second protest is more militant than the first? “I would say if people have questions, they should get in contact with us,” she said.

Hello?

She said people should go to an organizing committee meeting to find out what the protest is going to look like.

Hmmm.

As the conference broke up, a woman with the AWC asked me for my card.  She said she wanted to read what I wrote about the event.

After six and a half years of blogging, I still don’t have cards.  I wrote down my URLs (for Shot in the Dark and True North).

I presume she’s interested in checking out the fairness of my coverage. 

In the spirit of the event, let me say that the only unfairness I am worried about is in Zimbabwe.

…that Minnesota’s first female governor would be Republican.

But I always thought she’d be elected, as opposed to fleeting up because our governor got a promotion:

Pawlenty, who previously has gone out of his way to tamp down expectations, on Tuesday pointedly dodged the veep question.

“I’ve stopped engaging in all this vice-presidential discussion,” he told Fox News on Tuesday, in an interview from Arlington. “It’s interesting, I’m sure, for people to speculate about, but I’ve stopped engaging in it.”

On Wednesday, Pawlenty popped over to Michigan to speak to Republicans at a well-known audition spot: the Lincoln Day dinner.

Governor Molnau?

I suppose her first act in office might be to appoint Larry Pogemiller to head MNDoT.

Barack Obama is proposing $4 Billion in aid to the automotive industry, aid that John McCain is opposed to, and for good reason.

Obama pledges $4b in aid for Detroit automakers

After nearly eight years of getting little or no attention from the White House, it seems as though Detroit’s automakers will be a major focus the 2008 Election. With the economy looking worse by the day, lawmakers in Washington have been kicking around the idea of a second economic stimulus package to get people shopping again, and Mowtown’s lawmakers want in on the money.

Years ago, the Japanese suffered an extended recession because they did this very thing, only on a larger scale. Bankruptcy was considered a national dishonor. Good money was sent after bad; public money at that.

Over the long haul, our economy is much more resilient because we (at least those of us that understand economics and the free enterprise system) understand that failed management teams or business models should not be put on life support. The talent and capital should be free to seek its best and highest use – and without delay. That is why our recessions are typically limited in length and in fact many times our economy comes roaring back afterward.

No one celebrates the Enrons or the WorldComs of the world but we are strengthened by the lesson and can at least take comfort in the fact that the suffering and devastation ended as soon as possible.

Putting our automotive industry on life support will only delay the inevitable. Ford, GM and Chrysler need to reinvent themselves or get out of the way. Don’t think that large trucks and SUV’s sitting on dealership lots is their only competitive disadvantage. They suffer far more from a legacy of arrogance and overpriced labor and benefits force fed by unions acting in their own interest, and not that of their members or the domestic automotive industry.

Presumed Republican nominee John McCain opposes the idea of federally backed loans, but he does support tax breaks to those that purchase fuel efficient vehicles and a $300M in prize money for electric battery powered vehicles

Obama’s proposal is either politically-motivated, ignorant or most likely both. Obama, having no other tools at his avail, thinks the answer is government welfare. McCain understands that the best way to stimulate our economy is to incent innovation and new solutions.

As the economy is almost surely to become the electorate’s chief concern, McCain would be well served to exploit this opportunity to explain to Mr. Obama how and why capitalism works.

Rick Bupkus of Chicago will be leading a coalition of Second Amendment activists to Saint Paul this September to picket the Republican National Convention. 

“We need to convince the Republicans to join with the majority of Americans who support Second Amendment rights”.

GOP spokesperson Anna Elk responded “Er…the GOP was supporting Second Amendment rights long before it was politically cool to do so…”

Bupkus, undeterred, promised “A 4,000 gun salute” outside Saint Paul’s XCel Energy Center, site of the convention. 

———-

OK, I made that whole bit up. 

I had to, just to illustrate how ridiculous this bit here sounds:

When a [trucker-protest organizer Mike] Schaffner-organized truck rally comes to St. Paul on September 2, he hopes the [currently 150-truck] convoy gets even larger, the better to send a resounding message to those assembled for the Republican National Convention: Skyrocketing fuel prices are threatening the livelihood of truckers, more than 80 percent of whom are independent owner-operators, according to Schaffner (pictured). Further, while oil companies continue to post soaring profits, it’s consumers who rely on the trucking industry for shipping the food and clothing that end up paying the tab.

“I’m tired of the rhetoric,” he adds. “Tired of being like the little child and the government is the mother giving us a spoonful of medicine and telling us we have to take it.”

So – you protest at the convention of the party that’s actually trying to do something to increase the supply of fuel, thus lowering prices (and, by some indications, succeeding at it, at least on an initial psychological level)…

…and…

…and…

…oh, never mind.  The “intricacies” of the Tic mind never cease to baffle me.

Good news from Pennsylvania; the campaign to expunge John Murtha from Congress seems to get getting some financial traction:

The campaign of Johnstown resident and Republican nominee for Congress Lt. Colonel Bill Russell outpaced incumbent Congressman John Murtha in the second fundraising quarter of 2008. According to campaign manager, Peg Luksik, William Russell for Congress reported raising $637,137 to Murtha’s $113,155 to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). The combined totals from the first and second quarters of 2008 exceed $900,000.

“The incredible story about Bill’s campaign is that the $15 and $25 contributions are coming in from all over Pennsylvania and every corner of the country,” said Luksik. “This is K-Street versus Main Street. These are patriotic families expressing support for soldiers, sailors and Marines, and people saying they’ve had enough of the old ‘pay-to-play’ culture in the Capitol. That’s what’s fueling this campaign.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer candidate, or a worse Congressman:

[Luksik] continued, “Bill is currently on active duty with the Army. That means he can’t campaign, he can’t direct campaign activities and simply can’t be a candidate. The ‘Russell Brigade’ is forming around Bill’s personal story and motivation for running. There’s something really special going on in this race.”

…

Lt. Colonel Russell will resume campaigning on August 1st at 12:01am with a marathon, 48-hour campaign tour. Russell and his wife Kasia are survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon. He has served in the U.S. Army for 28 years of Active and Reserve service, including six tours in hostile fire zones. His deployments include Operation Desert Storm, action in Kosovo and most recently Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Wow.  Don’t they call that “absolute moral authority?”

Doug Grow – long known as the DFL’s number two shill in the mainstream media (second only to Lori Sturdevant) – is trying to blow some wind into the sails of the Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg campaign.

E-Tink is trying to unseat Michele Bachmann in the Sixth Congressional District. He’s most “famous” in Minnesota for having been Jesse Ventura’s do-nothing Tranportation Commissioner. He should be even more famous for his ghoulish performance after the collapse of the I35W bridge, almost a year ago. As the fires still blazed and before the last girders had fallen into the water, Tinklenberg joined State Rep. Alice “The Phantom” Hausman on TV and radio coverage of the tragedy, claiming – before the National Transportation Safety Board investigators had shut off their pagers summoning them to Minneapolis – that the collapse was the result of Tim Pawlenty’s refusal to raise the gas tax. The performance was a ghoulish embarassment that would have ended the career of a politician…

…that was not a DFLer in a city where having paid lefty PR flaks like the MNPost and the Minnesoros “Independent” are almost redundant.

Anyway – Doug Grow writes in re the race:

A month ago, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann said she’s on board with a campaign plan to get gasoline prices back to $2 a gallon…Do people in the 6th Congressional District buy this sort of campaign talk?

Well, if “they” don’t understand the laws of supply and demand, they can certainly get jobs as economics reporters for the Minnesoros “Indepdendent” perhaps they deserve to be getting their news from Doug Grow we can trade them all to Massachussetts?

I digress. Grow is doing what he’s done his whole career; spin, whilst carrying water for the DFL:

At this point, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has NOT put the 6th District in its “red to blue” category. Instead, it calls the district an “emerging” race for Democrats. The difference in categories is substantial: Democrats in “red to blue” districts receive financial and other resource help. Those in “emerging” districts receive pats on the back and encouraging words from the DCCC: “Go get ’em, buddy!”

But even if the DCCC isn’t convinced that Bachmann can be defeated after one term in Washington, Tinklenberg says he’s optimistic.

I’d actually pay money to hear some DFLer say “Oh, I’m going to get my donkey kicked. It’s hopeless. Smoke ’em if you got ’em”.

Of course, being a DFLer in Minnesota means never needing to come up with your own facile explanations:

Recall, Bachmann defeated Patty Wetterling by 8 percentage points, 50 to 42. BUT there was a third candidate in the race, John Binkowski, of the Independence Party, who picked up 7.8 percent of the vote. This time around, the IPs endorsed Tinklenberg.

When you add Wetterling’s 127,144 votes and Binkowski’s 23,557 votes, Bachmann won the district by just 548 votes.

Fascinating.

Except that Bachmann and Wetterling were running for an open seat – which is always much more up in the air.

And the national Democrat establishment did a lot more than pat Patty on the back; they poured truckloads of money into the race. The media, even more in the bag than usual for the DFLer, called in all its markers, assisted by a large, sometimes deranged pack of alternative media adjuncts. And for all that, Bachmann still not only won, but won by the biggest margin of victory of any Republican in the state, in a year where Republicans got trounced nationwide, with the most conservative message of any Republican in Minnesota.

This time around? She’s the incumbent. That’s worth a few points all by itself. The media has moved on to other races, doing its damnedest to get Al Franken elected. The DCCC knows a dead horse when it sees one. Her alt-media stalkers – having provided her (I am convinced) with at least one point of her margin of victory – have marginalized themselves into near-irrelevance; even some of the media figures that used to regard them with breathless credulity have gotten the message.

E-Tink; Dead Bid Walking.

Congressional Quarterly says Minnesota is clearing the phlegm out of its electoral pipes:

Congressional Quarterly has switched Minnesota’s Senate race to “leans Republican.” Previously the contest had been assessed as having “no clear favorite.” The publication cited recent controversies sapping Democrat Al Franken’s candidacy, along with a series of polls that mostly indicate a comfortable lead for Sen. Norm Coleman. (One exception: a Rasmussen Reports survey released last week that showed Franken with a 44-42 advantage.)

CQ notes, however, that Republicans being Republicans and acting like a political party is all that it takes to set some Twin Citians off: 

 CQ points to the looming Republican gathering in St. Paul, however, as a potential campaign hazard for Coleman given the party’s overall low regard in Minnesota.

The polling sample for that last question was described as “50% Lori Sturdevant”. 

Hard set upon by an oppressive tyranny, the people dutifully pulled their burdens.  At times, it seemed there was no hope; the overlords would work you to death and their pleasure, living off the fruit of our labors and the sweat of our brow, as it pleased them.

There were occasional whispers – kept silent, for fear of retribution from the overlords – of a liberator.  But most of the people kept it firmly in the realm of legend – as much for their own protection as out of lack of faith.  Some of the people even acquiesced with their oppressors; “truely, it’s better to go along than to resist”, they said, weary of the battle. 

But then, one day…

…in the middle of yet another dark, dismal year in the dank, oppressed land…

…the first glimmer of sanity broke over the rancid murk.

And a few of The People began to whisper under their breath.  Soon. 

Soon.

Sean at MNPublius does the endzone happy dance over Iraqi leader Maliki’s “endorsement” of The Messiah’s “withdrawal plan”:

Obviously — this is huge. The Democratically elected leader of Iraq says that Barack Obama’s withdrawal plan (1 or 2 brigades a month, somewhere between 6-8 thousand people a month) is the right idea.

Er, let’s shoot for accuracy here; Maliki agrees with The Messiah’s latest plan. The one he put forward after the surge (which The Messiah opposed) made the whole notion of withdrawal responsible enough for Iraq to consider:

Allahpundit, with emphasis added by me:

The unasked follow-up question: How about the 14-month timetable that Obama wanted to set in January 2007 to start pulling troops out before those positive developments could occur? How keen does that look in hindsight?

(Hindsight? Leftybloggers don’t need no steenkin’ hindsight!)

To repeat a point made yesterday, the only reason a timetable or “time horizon” is arguably a responsible strategy now is because it was properly rejected as being irresponsible then.

Sean missed this part of Maliki’s statement:

Maliki hints at that in another part of the interview:

So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat. But that isn’t the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias.

Exactly, which at least partly explains why Bush is more willing to compromise now on some sort of informal schedule. Compare Maliki’s justification for the timetable to Obama’s justification in his big Iraq speech. The pacification of the country is almost incidental, something to congratulate Petraeus on and then quickly move past.

Most of us want to embrace the victory that our troops – and tens of thousands of brave Iraqi troops, and the millions of citizens that the troops won over through killing Al-Quaeda and pacifying the religious militias – seem to have won. Obama just wants to gloss it over.

Other than all of that, though? Sure. It’s a ringing endorsement of The Messiah’s sagacity.

Hey – does anyone remember when the left thought Maliki was just a stooge of the Bushes?

Why, sure I do!

UPDATE: Of course, the above only counts if Maliki really said what Sean said he said – if it made the translation from Arabic to German and then to English correctly and… ach du lieber! Und ach, Dolmetschung is so schwehr!

Well, of course, if they got the political context right…

Right?

D’oh!

Sort of like “Secession Diaries” and Minnesota 2050. 

Really.

The harassment of delegates came as organized protests continued to draw thousands of people. The Still We Rise march by advocates for social issues was peaceful, and a Poor People’s March, a column several blocks long, proceeded from the United Nations to the Madison Square Garden yesterday after the police decided to let it go ahead without a permit.

When marchers approached the Garden, a police detective was knocked off his scooter. He was then repeatedly kicked and punched in the head by at least one male demonstrator, the police said.

…

The heavy police presence at the Garden apparently inspired the coordinated plan by anarchists and other radicals to strike out at the delegates at their hotels, breakfasts, parties, and on the streets.

The incidents are the result of months of planning by opposition groups, who report that they have obtained copies of plans and addresses for delegates’ parties, caucuses and other gatherings outside the Garden.

OK, I’m not making it up.  It’s what happened in 2004 in New York.  With all the talk about all the arrests that were dismissed over allegedly-excessive zeal on the part of the NYPD, you’d have a hard time realizing that there really was any low-level, non-lethal (hey, the cop on the scooter lived!) domestic terrorism going on at the last RNC.

The Twin Cities’ police are officially fairly sanguine; they’re taking a fairly low-key approach (which isn’t a bad thing; there’s no need to feed the anarkids’ need for drama). 

Anyway, no need to worry; “Scottsdale Woman” assures us that it’s really the GOP delgates and their sympathizers that’ll be causing the problems.

More later.

The political pundits are buzzing today about Hillary Clinton’s new look: She changed her hair part from left to right. What might this mean? If you go by the CEO hair-part theory I wrote about in Fortune three months ago, her new right part could signal that she is ceding her claim to leadership and is moving into a role supporting Barack Obama.

Applying Fortune’s hair-part theory to Hillary’s new look 

Or it might just mean she got up on the wrong side of the bed?

Hey, I think she looks thinner too! What does that mean?

Slate

In Denver, they’re getting concerned about the “anarchists” and their plans for the Democratic National Convention.

A draft law proposed by the Denver Police Department would ban the possession by protesters of materials such as weighted pipes and chains and items that can make urine and feces bombs.

Police say that such materials are potentially dangerous. The City Council Safety Committee will review the proposal July 23.

If you make poop bombs illegal, then only criminals will have poop bombs.

Well, hang on.  Are we to assume that the Denver Police…:

a) …are paranoid?

b) …have been sniffing butane?

c) …employ Ryan Rhodes?

What could possibly prompt them to do this?

LaCabe, who oversees the police department, said the proposed ordinance requires authorities, before they make an arrest, to find an intent to use the material to obstruct the public’s right to move freely.

“We certainly don’t want to interfere with anyone’s First Amendment rights and the right to be heard,” [Denver’s Safety Manager Al] LaCabe said. “But it has to be done in such a way that it does not obstruct or endanger the general public or the police department.”…The proposed ordinance would ban material, such as weighted pipe and chains, to fashion what are known as “sleeping dragons.” Protesters have chained themselves to such devices at other protests to make it difficult for police to arrest and remove them.

I thought, briefly, about checking with the various metro jurisdictions to see if perhaps there were already any poop-bomb control ordinances…

…but then I realized, why bother?  While I have in the past wondered if I should take the claims by some of the protest organizers that they want to “shut down the convention” and “make the people of Saint Paul know what the people of Baghdad feel like” seriously, Scottsdale Woman of Fired O’Glake says that’s just silly, and it’s all gonna be OK!

Except for Protest Warrior, who are thugs who smash everything in their path.  Natch.

Back in college, I was the editor of  the school newspaper.

The newspaper had its own mail box at the school post office.  And every week like clockwork, I got a copy of Gramma, the official propaganda organ of the Cuban Communist Party.  A holdover from a previous, more-radical editor (although I was still a liberal at this point), it was helpfully translated into English.  Stilted English that sounded like it came from the bastard child of a Yale semiotics professor and a half-literate union thug (“Comrade Castro announced that production of milk in the third year of the Fourth Five Year Plan in Metastiza Region had increased 35% over previous years, testimony to the wisdom of Comrade Castro’s agriculture pollicies”) but English nonetheless.
Viewed in that light, Andy Birkey’s piece in today’s Minnesoros “Independent”  almost makes sense:

Some politicians running for re-election in a safe district can get lax in their campaigning,

Right.  Some of them skip the Juneteenth Parade, until someone calls and tells them that Barb Davis-White is there.

but Rep. Keith Ellison is working hard in this year’s campaign. At a Saturday afternoon meeting of LGBT activists at the Spirit of the Lakes Church in Minneapolis, Ellison expounded on his “politics of inclusion and generosity” and the responsibility to engage every voter in the district even when the odds look good.

A new sugarcane harvest in Santa Margarita appearance in front of a friendly constituency.

Read the whole thing – a puff piece on Ellison’s outreach to gays – and ask yourself two things:

1. Given how the local leftymedia has harped on Barb Davis-White’s religion – especially its anti-gay aspects – just as they do for every Republican politician who is open about a faith that doesn’t aggressively embrace homosexuality, why has nobody in the leftymedia asked Rep. Ellison (the way they ask Barb Davis-White and Michele Bachmann, to pick two random examples) about how his religion, the very anti-gay Islam, affects his views on homosexuality?
2. Given that the Fifth is a district where the DFL can traditionally count on being able to wrap a bag of dog poop with DFL stickers, endorse it, and collect 50% of the district, why is Ellison – as lax and lazy a campaigner as Minnesota has ever seen – hitting the hustings?

What would Che do?

Yesterday, Zack from MNPublius exulted:

I was listening to MPR and heard [Lawyer and DFL Senate candidate Priscilla] Lord Faris say that she that she wouldn’t run if Franken was ahead of Coleman in the polls (I’ll post the audio clip if MPR puts it online).

Well, that day has come.

So, when will the Lord Faris announce her departure from the race? She hasn’t filed as of this writing.

I could just be a communication problem:

Lord Faris said a DFL Party leader she wouldn’t identify called her Monday to urge her to back down, but she refused citing polls showing Franken trailing Coleman.”

Perhaps the Franken and Lord Faris camps just need to communicate better.
Shot In The Dark: Doing its bit to bring Democrats together.

Dean Barkley – one of the hands that controlled the wires attached to former governor DFL-lite sock-puppet Jesse Ventura – might just run to get “his” Senate seat back:

Dean Barkley, who briefly served in the Senate himself, said this morning that he plans to file for the office this afternoon as an Independence Party candidate.

That is, assuming Ventura sticks to his announcement Monday night that he’s not running, a statement he made with the qualifier that he’ll change his mind if God speaks to him.

“Just knowing him, he still might show up,” Barkley said. “That’s Ventura — anyone who’s been around him awhile knows he never says anything without thinking it through. You can be sure he thought that line through.”

Just like you can be sure he was his own man as governor.

Go, Dean!  Go!

On the one hand, Zack from MNPublius has gladdened my heart with this bit here:

Priscilla, Lord Faris (stole that one from Mitch)

If I could contribute one trite but funny (in a very Anglophilic way) meme to the local ‘net, it’d be one of life’s fun little accomplishments. 

Oh, yeah – it’s not all about me:

 …announced yesterday that she would challenge Al Franken for the DFL nomination in the primary this fall. I was listening to MPR and heard Lord Faris say that she that she wouldn’t run if Franken was ahead of Coleman in the polls (I’ll post the audio clip if MPR puts it online).

Well, that day has come.

It links to a Rasmussen poll that shows Franken two points ahead of Senator Coleman.

Which is interesting, I suppose – except that Rasmussen also notes in its toplines that Coleman has much higher “very favorable” and much lower “very unfavorable” ratings than Franken does.  Which introduces the question “who are they polling?

In other words – what are the polling samples?  How many of them are registered or leaning Republican versus DFL?

It’s not a trivial question; in many previous polls, including Raz polls, identified Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-2 in the sample.  And while I don’t know for sure (crosstabs are only available to subscribers), given the disparity in the Very Goods and the Very Bads, along with the fact that 90+% of Republicans are supporting the Senator while only three of of four Dems are, I have to suspect some sort of imbalance in the sample.

Zack:

So, when will the Lord Faris announce her departure from the race?  She hasn’t filed as of this writing.

Rumors of Priscilla, Lord Faris’ demise are greatly exaggerated – or at least very, very premature.

The good news – we don’t have Jesse Ventura to kick around anymore:

Although his appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” had all the trappings of an incipient campaign, Ventura squelched weeks of hinting that he was planning to enter the arena against Coleman, whose pro-Iraq war record he despises, and Franken, whom he has characterized as an opportunist for returning to Minnesota after years away to run for office.

Ventura would be the precisely one person in the world who should not call Franken an “opportunist”.

Oh, yeah – and the good news:

Late Monday, Dean Barkley said he might enter the race today.

“I certainly am considering it,” he said. Ventura appointed Barkley to fill out the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s unfinished term in 2002.

While there might be fifteen or twenty Republicans who could get fooled by a Ventura candidacy, Barkley will draw not a single GOP vote.  He’ll be yet another anchor around Franken’s neck.

The other bit of good news?  Priscilla, Lord Faris’ candidacy.  Franken will have to fight Barkley on is “right”, and Lord Faris on his left.

And the other, other bit of good news?  Ventura could still still take the plunge:

The candidate filing period ends at 5 p.m. today.

Ventura slyly left open the possibility of running if God spoke to him before then — one of several comments he made suggesting that religion has an undue influence in politics.

And I have to confess – it would be so wonderful to have his big, bloated ego to kick around:

The reason he isn’t going to run, he said, is the media. His daughter doesn’t want the attention his candidacy would focus on her, he said, and he didn’t relish having his motives unfairly attacked and second-guessed.

You mean, you don’t want bloggers claiming that you’re only doing this for publicity?

Yeah.  Good call.

“I was close to doing it,” he told King. “One part of me wanted to very badly. But when I spoke to my daughter and … she feared what would happen to her that happened to her brother, that put me over the top.

“I thought, I will not put my family under that type of position again.”