I see stories like this – Patterico commenting on the “subliminal messages” in the “Hillary Is Standing Watch at 3AM” ad…:

Once the subliminal craziness starts, my friends, it never stops. I am now receiving e-mails detailing alleged Jewish references as well:

Opening shot: light allegedly resembles Star of David.

:04 — six-pointed stars on the girl’s pajamas.

:19 — design of sheets resembles a tallit or an Israel flag.

A blue and white tinge to the opening scenes supposedly references the blue and white flag of Israel.

Once you go looking for subliminal messages, you’ll see them everywhere.

…and raise you this episode.

(And am I the only one who saw Hills’ ad and thought about this scene?)

If you haven’t checked out Ed’s new digs at Hot Air, you should.  He’s blogging full-time again, and he’s got  some great stuff going on; his takedown of the Dems’ attempt to provide economic stimuli to voter fraud, his rip on the Times’ loathsome drive-by of John McCain’s citizenship status…

…and this story, about the depressing venality of Barack Obama’s economic “policies” so far:

 Many people have compared Obama to Ronald Reagan in his ability to promise “morning in America,” but they have focused only on the most superficial part of the Reagan revolution. Reagan didn’t cast himself as the agent of hope, but appealed to the hope within Americans that they could lift up the country, and not the other way around. He focused on the hope of the individual as the true agent of change, and not the despair of the collective that required government intervention.

The rhetoric has given us nothing really new. It has the same populist ring to it that we have heard since before collectivism got entirely discredited in the latter 20th century. It’s simplistic calls to soak the rich and redistribute the wealth, to impose economic isolationism, and to prey on the fears of the working class by casting globalization as an unmitigated evil.

I’ve noted, a few weeks ago, the Carteresque side of Obama’s polarizing, vilifying rhetoric.  Ed notes the similarities with William Jennings Bryan, another demigogue and legendary stemwinder.  And for me – a North Dakota native – Obama naturally smacks of Bill Langer, leader of the “Non-Partisan League” party, which advocated radical (and socialistic) measures to deal with the farm crisis during the Depression (and, if you’ve read the farm bills of the last sixty years, he’d seem to have won).

There are two kinds of things being written about yesterday’s ouster of Lt. Governor Molnau as Minnesota’s Transportation Commissioner.

1. Crap
2. First Ringer’s authoritative  takedown of the situation.

Let’s go with #2 for now (with emphasis added):

While the political adroit will likely observe that the day’s vote was set in motion five years ago with Pawlenty’s appointment of his right-hand gal in MN/DOT’s head office amid a more closely divided Senate, even the laymen know that whatever weakened clout she may have carried on July 31st, 2007, her tenure collapsed alongside the stretch of I-35 that sat in the Mississippi on August 1st.  As the dust settled and the administration’s critics drew blood with ink, most knew nothing could be done to salvage Molnau’s post – not even a record that saw increased construction and a willingness to entertain the transportation boondoggles of expanded light rail – given her proximity to the Governor.

The DFL resembles a toddler who’d rather smash a toy than share it:

Removing Molnau had emerged as something of a cause celeb among sectors of the local DFL as eager for a head on a plate as any significant legislative accomplishment.

And now, what passes for good news in this story, if you’re a Republican:

The DFL may have finally bludgeoned their transportation Bête noire but they may regret some of their defenses of their crime of passion.  Imbuing the Commissioners of the Governor’s Cabinet with an autonomy equivalent to a double-parked UN bureaucrat, the DFL implied the Governor had little right towards appointing authorities to carry out his administrative wishes yet alone share a philosophical view that there existed an alternative view of management of the state’s infrastructure outside of simply increasing the tax burden.  Rather, the DFL continued to present a series of false dichotomies as, perhaps in keeping with times, “change” versus doing nothing all.

A practice and dichotomy that is, by all accounts, getting the Republican base as riled as a hive of hornets.

Saddled with a superminority and few, if any, friendly media outlets, Republican plans to improve transportation or MN/DOT itself were relegated to a shallow grave on the back pages of the Metro section at best.  And without an aggressive effort to showcase an alternative, viable or not, the same strategy will be employed by the DFL’s electoral demolition crew until the margins look less like a Minnesota-flavored version of the Bertrand Snell-sized Republican minorities of the Great Depression.

The solution?  Well, Ringer has half of it?

Armed with an approval rating far greater than his current legislative lilliputians, Pawlenty would be wise to appoint a replacement more willing to do battle with the DFL Senate and even less likely to be approved.  Basking in victory, there seems little reason why the DFL would or should accept an appointee even remotely on the young governor’s terms.  Perhaps it would be far better to see an endless parade of appointees go before the Senate’s legislative gulliotine and leave MN/DOT headless for the duration if only to see one suggest that fixing the structural deficiencies of the State’s transportation funding system are necessary to improve roads – not paving them over with pork.

That, and focus all that outrage in the Republican conventions this next few weeks on getting that DFL supermajority escorted out of the building.

The Strib finally provided a public service yesterday, in this editorial.

Oh, you get context-mangled DFL propaganda, first, naturally:

One of this state’s most persistent and damaging political logjams finally gave way Monday. As a result, some of this state’s most persistent traffic jams will ease before this decade ends, and most damaged bridges will be replaced.

Let’s strive for honesty, here.  The state will build monuments to itself – and, maybe, take care of some infrastructure difficulties if they get around to it.

But whatever; “stop the presses, the Strib writes a hagiography for DFL hacks”.  Whoop di doo.

But then – mirabile dictu – they do something useful. 

They provide a handy-dandy blacklist!

Many of the legislators and lobbyists who contributed to this result deserve credit for making the state’s infrastructure a priority in 2008. Our list is incomplete, but starts with these:

• DFL House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. Yesterday’s vote likely would have had a different outcome were it not for Kelliher’s personal role in shaping the bill. She took the lead in securing business backing. Her respectful, persistent courtship of House Republicans won six minority votes that stayed solid under heavy intra-caucus pressure.

Did the editorial writer work for Kim Jong-Il? 

Kelliher twisted arms, browbeat, and threatened to kill GOP legislation in committee – and even then, she only got six RINO patsies.

Kelliher’s legacy – “the only political in Minnesota not as inept as Larry Pogemiller” – is intact; she needed a crushing legislative majority to accomplish her mission in two terms as the leader of a prohibitive majority.  Not that that’s good news; as Churchill said, you can’t win a war with a series of Dunkirks. 

But making Kelliher a hero is…well, Sturdevantian (indeed, the article looks like Sturdevant’s work).

Further evidence of Sturdevantism:  the Strib pastes a nice, big target on one of their butt-boys:

• Rep. Ron Erhardt, R-Edina. The template for yesterday’s bill was the one Erhardt assembled almost single-handedly in 2005, when, as the chair of the House Transportation Policy Committee, he resolved to do something about the growing shortage of transportation funds.

The NARN Volume II will be interviewing Keith Downey, real Republican candidate to replace Erhardt, this Saturday at 2:15.  Tune in, and bring the outrage.

His bill was vetoed, but his courage inspired others. Kudos to the five other House Republicans who voted yes yesterday: Neil Peterson, Bloomington; Kathy Tinglestad, Andover; Jim Abeler, Anoka; Bud Heidgerken, Freeport, and Rod Hamilton, Mountain Lake.

Yeah, “editorial writer”.  His courage is gonna inspire a backlash that’ll make the “Contract With America” look like a Mike Gravel rally.

• Minnesota Chamber of Commerce President David Olson. By raising their gas tax ante at the start of the session, Olson and the chamber positioned themselves to help shape the outcome.

 Read:  “The CoC cozied up to the majority for pure political expediency”. 

Olson withstood nasty barbs from some of his own members to secure for his organization a seat at the negotiating table and a role in whittling down the bill’s metro sales tax to 0.25 cents on the dollar.

In other words, he worked to push this grotesque subsidy bill out of the failing Metro, to the parts of the state that work.

Great work!

The revenue this bill will provide for roads, bridges, transit and even repair of the MnDOT building is badly needed. Now it’s up to the Legislature’s DFL majorities to find ways to soften the tax blow that goes with it. A 20-year transportation funding battle ended yesterday, but the general fund battle is about to begin.

Read:  Hold onto your houses, your first-born and your clothing; it’s too late for your wallets.

If you’re not ready to march on the Capitol – especially the DFL/RINO Caucus – with torches and pitchforks, then what the hell will it take?

Nothing official, of course, but that’s what the Clinton campaign is doing.

Allahpundit:

She’s got a few weapons left — brass knuckles at tomorrow’s debate, 527s taking off and strafing the Messiah in Texas and Ohio — but that won’t roll back the advance. It’s our dumb luck that we finally get the Clintons in an election where we can beat them … and they flame out in the primary against a superior candidate. Even in defeat, they end up making our lives harder.

Anyone want to offer any Hail-Mary optimism this morning or should we pause at last to exult in her failure, electoral consequences be damned?

Or as Slublog puts it:

I do hope the Tics drag it out a bit lot longer, of course.Every time a Tic spends a dollar campaigning against a Tic, an angel gets his wings.

Ron Erhard  – “Moderate” GOP represenative from Edina – must be feeling a little pressure.  After all, the DFL controls the House and Senate, but Pawlenty still has the veto pen – and the February 5 caucuses saw an avalanche of conservative turnout.  And that avalanche is making its presence known; the denial of endorsement to Mary Tingelstad on Saturday was just the first symptom.

Oh, yeah – and pressure from taxpayers:

Rep. Ron Erhardt, in responding to a caller asking him to uphold the Governor’s veto on the transportation bill and all of the taxes it contains and to not support the Democrat override attempt responded with anger and profanity, telling the caller to “tell the people who told you to call to go ‘F***’ themselves.”

Erhard must be feeling the heat.  He’s even got a challenger for his office: Keith Downey, a genuine conservative, has an energized campaign that kicked  Erhard’s butt at the caucuses, and is angling for the nomination.  If you’re a Republican in Edina, get on board wtih Downey.  It’d be good to show another RINO the price of abandoning principle.

“Why the hell won’t Republicans or conservatives mix it up with the media?  Why do Republicans always let the Tics and the media (pardon the redundancy) get away with gang-raping Republicans – see Rod Grams and Alan Fine and the 2000 ambush and the 2004 60 Minutes attacks on Bush?  Why do Republicans take the proverbial “high road” and hope that the media that is the active player in the smear, every friggin’ time, will somehow turn around and get the actual truth out in the end?”

Well, merry friggin’ Chrismas; Mac fought back. 

The piece about McCain’s friendly relations with a telecommunications lobbyist — long-discussed in political circles and planned for weeks by McCain operatives — was the first test of his ability to confront a public-relations crisis since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

But the reaction may have said as much about the mindset of the conservative movement on the brink of the general election as it did about McCain and his team.  

And the dead-tree media are whining like shower-room nancyboys about it:

By Thursday morning, when the article appeared in the print editions of The Times, the McCain campaign had begun an aggressive attack against the newspaper, calling the article a smear campaign worthy of The National Enquirer. It was a symphony to the ears of Mr. McCain’s conservative critics.

Ed groin-kicks the Times’ whinging:

 

She managed to make the New York Times the victim of “an aggressive attack” by McCain over a smear — without explaining what the smear actually was! The Times piece originally led with an accusation of a sexual affair for which they offered exactly zero evidence. Calling it a smear worthy of the National Enquirer isn’t an aggressive attack, it’s a factual description.

Yeah, I’m happy.

…not even David Cassidy in his prime had fans that were this friggin’ bizarre:

Yes, just a day before a debate in Texas, Sen. Barack Obama has a head cold.

And about a half-hour into a speech here, the Illinois Democrat announced that he had to take a quick break. “Gotta blow my nose here for a second,” Obama said.

Out came a Kleenex (or perhaps it was a hankie), and he wiped his nose.

The near-capacity audience at the Reunion Arena, which his campaign said totaled 17,000, broke out in a slightly awkward applause.

Heaven help Western Civilization if he comes down with jock itch on the trail.

Second law of the major media when covering politics; the Republican that acts the most like a Democrat (and gives the best interviews) gets treated well.

First law:  When that Republican actually has to compete with a Democrat, disregard the Second Law.

As I predicted the moment Mac became the front-runner, the Times has broken out the slime against McCain.  Read it for yourself; past the resurrection of “The Keating Five” as an issue, it’s thin gruel as smear jobs go.

Especially given what Ed notes:

Well, you have to read past the rehash of the Keating Five scandal of the mid-1980s, past a strange accusation involving McCain’s use of direct flights from Washington to Phoenix, and past his crusade to clean up Washington through the BCRA (which I adamantly opposed and still do) to get to the Slimes’ sourcing. It turns out that they talked to two anonymous former staffers — neither of whom allege that the relationship actually became romantic — and who describe themselves as disgruntled.

Great sourcing there, guys. Way to corroborate a non-story. I guess Lucy Ramirez must have been hard to find this time around.

Gateway Pundit adds:

f there was ever a moment that clarifies the grotesque bias of the media leading New York Times it is this moment.
Their fair-haired Republican is the front runner for President. And, suddenly after years of kissie-kissie there appears a Maverick hit piece.
The love affair is over.
Done.

And, there’s only one way for the Maverick to bring back that loving feeling…

…Lose in November.

That, indeed, is the Prime Directive of media coverage of Republicans; the only good one is a retired one.

UPDATE AND BUMP:  Via Ed – the Times report appears to be baked wind.  John Weaver – a former top Mac aide – states to the WaPo:

“The New York Times asked for a formal interview and I said no and asked for written questions. The Times knew of my meeting with Ms. Iseman, from sources they didn’t identify to me, and asked me about that meeting. I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman.

Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee and his staff were wrong and harmful and I so informed her and asked her to stop with these comments and to not be involved in the campaign. Nothing more and nothing less.

I responded to the Times on the record about a meeting they already knew about. The campaign received a copy of my response to the Times the same day, which was in late December.

In other words, Ms. Iseman’s claims – the basis for the most “damning” part of the Times’ story – was a bit of influence-peddling gone awry.

Ed:

Iseman had bragged about her connections to the committee in order to expand her client list. Weaver heard about it and told her to knock it off, or she’d get frozen out. Lobbyists collect clients by making themselves appear influential, and apparently Iseman got a little too hyperbolic about her connections.

That’s the extent of the supposed “intervention” — and the Times knew it.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Times – the unofficial paper of record of the party of Marc Rich, of Harry Thomasson, of Senator and Mrs. Daschle – respond to this.  To say nothing of the babbling hordes of the Sorosphere.

Kouba, after sitting through a very, very long Obamatory, ponders:

Abraham asked God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if 10 righteous people could be found there, and that after talking God down from fifty. I’d bet my lunch money you couldn’t find 10 people in that audience who really know what Obama’s health care “plan” is. I’d bet most of those people assume that when Obama talks about Guaranteed eligibility, Comprehensive benefits, Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles, they think they won’t notice much change in their own health care, they just assume it will be cheaper. Somehow. On the way to the billing office, they’ll just stop by the money tree and pick off a few fresh, ripe bills.

I’ve wondered that about the mile-wide, inch-deep nature of awareness on the left in the past (as in this 2003 encounter with a Code Pink crone who was passionately denouncing the concealed carry bill – about which she knew absolutely nothing).

I wonder what an hour on the street in front of an Obamevent would tell us?

No, I don’t really wonder at all.

Saint Paul – unable to balance its budget without getting an eternal subsidy from the parts of the state that aren’t saddled with bills from decades of Tic management – is a perennial financial mess.

The Republican National Convention, coming to town in September, should be a financial windfall for an awful lot of regional – not just Saint Paul – merchants, restauranteurs and hoteliers.  Saint Paul’s city government certainly doesn’t mind the extra traffic coming to town, although we know where the Gang of Five’s hearts really are.

But I digress.  With the “Gang of Five” in office, the RNC would also seem to be a big ripe suck for a city administration that never saw a tax it didn’t like.

St. Paulicy, as usual, has the story:

The plan is apparently to increase the food and/or drink tax during the time of the RNC convention.  While Mayor Coleman’s heart will be in Denver – he realizes there will be a lot of fat cats and big wallets right here in the Capitol City when the RNC rolls into town.

As the city looks at a tight budget, SPicy can imagine how this idea emerged.

“We really don’t like the RNC – but there are plenty of rich Republicans.  Like us Democrats, they like to drink too.  They like to eat, albeit better than we do.  And since there is not a lot in the way of an expanded tax base in Saint Paul – the city really needs to find some more money.”

Bingo

St. Paul raises the drink and food tax just for the week of the convention.  When the evil Republicans leave – things go back to normal.  What’s left behind is free money.  It’s clean and easy.  No one gets hurt – and the GOP won’t miss the extra ½ percent.

On the one hand, but for a few demonstrably Republican-friendly restauranteurs and bar owners in Saint Paul, I’d be tempted to try to find a way to direct delegates and their money elsewhere in the metro for their dining and lodging needs (and, ironically and hilariously, leave the city’s overtaxed hotels and food to the media and the protesters).

On the other, it’s a great warning about what awaits this nation should the Tics win in November.  Everyone who’s not a ward of the state is a target of the state!

Humans have a deep-seated need to belong to something bigger.

And I’m not just talking about the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, here. Bear with me – Ed and I were talking about this on the show on Saturday, and I’ve got this urge to elaborate. And we know how ugly that can get…

———-

For most of history, that “something bigger” has meant “higher powers” and “eternity” – the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, Valhalla, Nirvana, whatever. Organized religion, for much of human history, has focused (or, depending on the religion and your point of view, exploited) that human need, for good (hope, charity, Haendel and Bach) or ill. Religion is a hot topic, one way or another, for most of the organized world’s people.

And part of being “part of something bigger” also means “being against something bigger and badder and on the other side”; to Christians, it’s evil in its many forms, from Satan to temptation to what-have-you.

After the left claimed God was Dead in the late 19th century, that human impetus didn’t go away, of course. People have exploited that human desire even as they denied the Higher Power that had been its focus.

Marxism replaced God with ineluctible forces of history. Lenin turned that academic notion into a pseud-messianic crusade, an overarching “something bigger” that subsumed all of Russian (and, to his warped little mind, world) society. Stalin, a former Orthodox seminarian with a keen understanding of how people work, expanded his cult of personality to Messianic proportions – lessons the likes of Mao, Castro, Kim Jong-Il, Idi Amin and Pol Pot (himself a former Buddhist monk) exploited. And of course, they replaced Evil with a variety of enemies – class enemies, countries, anti-cults, whomever.
Hitler learned from Lenin’s mistakes, and did him one better; rather than banning God and the thousands of years of communal tradition His worship brings along, he co-opted it. An atheist, he wrapped himself and his party in the traditions of German Lutheranism and the mythology of German Catholicism, and – more importantly – the overarching German notion of Volk. This concept is a hard one to explain to Americans – I minored in German, and I’m only familiar with its outer edges – but it’s an idea at the nexus of the German land, language and history; Blut und Boden (“Blood and Territory”) is a phrase as familiar to students of Volk as “Domini et filii et spiritus sanctus is to Catholics, something with a meaning far beyond the literal to the adherent. Volk goes well beyond folklore and tradition, and was a sort of meta-religious link to Germany’s pagan past, underpinning German life and faith and culture the way paganism is just behind the surface of Latin, African and Caribbean Catholicism.

And so rather than having to spend time and energy vanquishing thousands of years of folk tradition and religious teaching, all Hitler had to do was take advantage of it.

Volk aided Hitler in putting a Big Evil – Judaism – in front of the people, as well; the Volk tradition viewed life on the land as inherently more noble and valuable than life in the towns; it viewed town and city life as corrupt and ignoble. And it associated Jews with city life, and at its extremes blamed them for its ills and corruption. The Lutheran Church in Germany drew heavily on Volk tradition and mythology, while the Catholic Church of the day added its own level of anti-Semitism which, again, was ripe for Hitler’s picking in Germany and especially Poland.

But in all cases, in the USSR and Red China and Nazi Germany and to similar extents in fascist countries everywhere, there were Big Enemies to replace the ones they’d abolished.

———-

Ed and I talked about Michelle Obama’s “Save the Nation’s Soul” speech on the Northern Alliance show last weekend (the podcast should be up soon). We called out this statement of Mrs. Obama’s:

And things have gotten progressively worse throughout my lifetime, through Democratic and Republican administrations, it hasn’t gotten better for regular folks. ….

We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another — that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.

Ed’s response on the show was similar to what he wrote on his blog:

But it’s the notion that only Barack Obama can save our souls that is the most offensive part of the speech, by far. Government doesn’t exist to save souls; it exists to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. If I feel my soul needs saving, the very last place I’d look (in the US) for a savior would be Washington DC or Capitol Hill. I’ll trust God and Jesus Christ with my soul, and I’m not going to mistake Barack Obama for either one.

And my first reaction was similar; “Step off, ‘Chel.  My soul is between Christ and I”.

But it’s really a lot worse than rude presumption.  It’s not just that government is a lousy place to go for moral repair.  It’s that when govenrment tries to serve as a national soul, things break and people get hurt.
Fortunately, Jonah Goldberg just wrote an entire book on the subject, and the reaction to the book sparked a really great blog,  on which he writes;

Many of the tropes of a political religion/liberal fascism are evident. He exalts unity as it’s own reward. His talk of starting new and starting over often sounds like more than merely “turning the page” on the Bush-Clinton years. It sounds a bit like starting at Year Zero.

Which was the hallmark of Lenin and Mao; the past had to be wiped away (and its practitioners, real or imagined, sent to gulags) before the future could really get underway.

But what I find most intriguing is his rhetoric of destiny and “choseness.” He often makes it sound like he has been selected by forces of providence or God or simply history for this moment. He is, in Oprah’s words, “The One.” But even more interesting, he tells voters they are the ones. “This is it,” Obama proclaimed on Super Tuesday. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.” That’s pretty oracular stuff.

And…:

Such a vision is comforting because it plays upon man’s inherent desire to belong, to be protected by his fellow man and his community. “Strength in numbers” is the narcotic of all populists, the logic of all “people powered movements” as leftwing bloggers like to say (though for reasons that defy easy analysis, the left has mastered the art of casting itself as the voice of the dissidents against the oppressive, stultifying “herd mentality” even as it places the group at the top of its hierarchy of political aesthetics). This is the motivating passion behind the fascist quest for order.

Sometimes it sounds like Obama wants to talk about God’s plan when he’s talking about his own campaign for a New Order. But most times, you can see that he wants to stay on the secular side of the divide — where his white base resides — but without giving up the prophetic vision. He wants to persuade his followers, and perhaps himself, that he is elect, but he cannot do so without religious language.

There’s much more, and you should just go read it.

I get leery of the likes of Mike Huckabee (note: not “Huckajesus”.  Just…no.  Don’t) and his rhetoric – but invoking ones’ personal, transparently-visible, well-known faith (anyone who thinks Christianity has a secret agenda has been sleeping for the past 2000 years) into the White House is both limted by the Constitution and mediated by the fact that it is completely open and transparent.  Most importantly, it’s a very different thing than turning the state into its own pseudo-religion.

The latest talking point among the paranoid left in the Twin Cities is that the Saint Paul Police Department – a union operation in the third-most-liberal city in the nation’s fourth-most-liberal state – is secretly out to brutally squash leftist dissent at this September’s Republican National Convention in Saint Paul.

The local Sorosphere can be expected to, and forgiven for, doing what they’re paid to do – push lefty talking points. And Andy Birkey at the MinMon does his bit, expanding on a bit of lefty hysteria that’s been making the rounds lately:

St. Paul Police Department is requesting 230 Tasers to outfit the all of the department’s officers with the electroshock weapon, Fox 9 News reports. The SPPD will purchase the Tasers with $210,000 collected from drug raids. The St. Paul City Council will have to approve the purchase.

The purchase is expected to arrive in St. Paul just in time for the Republican National Convention prompting media speculation that the weapons are being purchased specifically for the convention. When asked by Fox 9 News whether the police will use the weapon at the convention particularly against protesters, police spokester Tom Walsh said, “Our hope is that no one will have to use any degree of force. If it becomes necessary, will that be one of the tools available to them? I suppose that’s safe to say.”

Now, the conceit among the local fringe-left is that the SPPDs is going to act as a tool of Karl Rove:

We need more of these lethal weapons when the wild and crazy protesters come to exercise their 1st Amendment Right to free speech.

Now, that’s the kind of rubbish we’ve come to expect from the local fringe left – the City government is bending over backwards, if not a little further, to make protesters welcome (in some quarters, more welcome than the delegates themselves).  The tasers are for when the “anarkids” – the trust-fund fops that are promising violence in Saint Paul next September – get violent and won’t respond to a regular arrest, but the cops don’t want to over-escalate.

If one assumes that the critics of the SPPD are completely irrational, of course, you might assume that they’re unaware of what tasers are for.

Tasers – used legally – are a step in the escalation to dealing with a violent suspect that needs to be restrained for the public’s and, often, their own safety.  They are used when the police need a relatively safe means to subdue and restrain a violent suspect, and simple holds and hand-to-hand techiques won’t work.  It is both less violent than other means (of which more in a bit), and vastly less indiscriminate.

So let’s say some of you get your wish, and the SPPD doesn’t have tasers.  What then?

Here’s what.

When (not if) someone gets violent, without tasers, the police will have to resort to…:

• Billy clubs and riot batons – which are  much more violent than tasers, vastly more prone   to cause injury, and a propaganda coup for the wackjobs.

• Pepper Spray, which is both less reliable at subduing people, and much more indiscriminate.

• Pepperball and beanbag rounds, and  “Baton” rounds, which are high-impact  “non-lethal” founds fired from shotguns and/or 37mm/40mm grenade launchers, respectively.  They hit their target like Mohammed Ali in his prime,   knocking them down quite violently.  They are vastly more likely to injure their target than  tasers.  Worse, they involve firearms, which are a psychological crossing of the Rubicon   that any sensible police department would like  to avoid.
• Clouds of tear gas applied via hand grenades, grenade launchers and so on.  An area weapon, it’d make huge parts of downtown Saint Paul un-usable until the clouds of irritant dispersed, and be both a nuisance and health hazard to everyone in the city downwind, and a potent propaganda symbol for the anarchists and the entire fringe left.

So if it’s safety you’re concerned about, you should SUPPORT the purchase of the tasers.  I’d be willing to chalk the opposition to tasers up to ignorance…

…but underestimating ones’ opponent is a fool’s game.

Insert the obligtatory “I support free speech, and the right of the peaceful protester, bla bla bla” here. And let’s be honest – neither I nor any other Republican is afraid of any of the violence these screeching little weasels are planning, since ANY Republican is an even match for 20 lefties in ANY kind of scrap, rhetorical or otherwise (and this forum is evidence of it).

But let’s not be stupid; there is a significant faction among the demonstrators that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the safety of the protesters.  They WANT a riot.  They WANT the psychological images of tear gas and grenade launchers and cops in riot gear.   They WANT to reap the propaganda bounty of an indiscriminate, violent response to their provocations (as they did with the Critical Mass riot last year).

Tasers enable a measured response to small acts of unreasoning, illegal activity.

And that’s just not crazy enough to suit the demonstrators’ purposes.  They want to provoke a massive, polarizing response.

You can practically see the genitals tingling when some of these fops talk about the violence – indeed, as we noted last week, some of their actions seem calculated to provoke panic reactions – the panic that will play into the propaganda plans of those who seem bent on provoking a riot.

I’m sure Andy Birkey doesn’t want that. 

Some of the rest of them? Well…

Whenever I refer to John McCain’s “American Conservative Union” (ACU) rating (lifetime: 82:  2006:  65), I almost always disclaim it “for those of you who believe in these things”.  While I support the ACU on most issues (duh), trying to cram someone’s stances into a simple 1-3 digit number is at best unclear, and at worst very, very misleading.

Such numbers can make useful guidelines, of course; your gut can tell you that John Kyl (97) is a better conservative than Jim Ramstad (68), who is in turn better than Dennis Kucinich (who cares).

But as Kouba notes over at TVM, there’s much more to Mac and his rating than just the number:

Just so we know what went into that rating, I looked up McCain’s votes on the issues the ACU used to make up its rating for 2006. Here is the list of the 25 issues the ACU used. Here are the Senate roll call votes for 2006.

He helpfully provides them all, in convenient table form (which I lift wholesale from his post):

Jeff notes some of the nuances to at least a few of the votes that oppose the ACU, and concludes:

There are press releases addressing other votes here, and if you’re interested, you could go find out why McCain voted the way he did. I think by going through the votes, we’d find we may not always agree, but at least he had his reasons, reasons that had more substance than “I wanted to please my buddy Ted Kennedy.”

Indeed, the overall rating is relatively useless for parsing what Mac is really about.

So let me totally geek out, here, and break the votes above into categories that actually mean something.  Let me geek out even further by adding my own choices in some or all of the categories, where they might differ from those of the ACU.

Judiciary

Of course, only one of the roll call votes in the ACU’s list really addresses the Judiciary, an issue on which Mac has his legitimate conservative detractors.  But still:

100% of one vote is hardly dispositive – and I remain to be convinced that he’s not going to buddy up to the left on SCOTUS and Federal bench nominations. 

So convince me!

Fiscal

I put an asterisk on the Tax Reconciliation vote; McCain’s “no” was, reportedly, due to the Dems and the Administration breaking their word on spending caps.  I made the “fiscal” rating a 75% for that reason.

Economic

Granted, it’s an assortment of three bills that covers the waterfront.  But if we’re using the ACU’s sample as the gospel (and I don’t), it’s instructive.

Immigration

Well, we knew that was gonna be a problem, didn’t we?

Social Issues

There are a couple of issues here where I differ from the ACU, and alter Mac’s score accordingly:

It’s a composite score, for me – I differ from the ACU strongly on the gay marriage amendment, don’t much care about the Native Hawaiian government (but it sounds wrong), and would need to know the specifics of the Embryonic Stem Cell bill.

And finally…:

Foreign Policy

Kouba notes the “nuances” of the Iran Sanctions bill in his post, which you really need to read.

Is it an adequate measure of Mac’s acceptability to conservatives?  No. 

Are six numbers better than one? 

I think so.

Lighting rarely strikes twice in the same place.  

Six times?

There’s been a bit an epidemic of the temporary vapors at Obama rallies – people’ve been fainting dead away. 

Six times.

Six campaign stops.

Six fainting incidents, within view of the stage.

Six very similar responses from Barack Obama.

Oh, see for yourself.

I’m a speech junkie – a veritable connoisseur of oratory.

And Barack Obama is, undeniably, an excellent speaker, with great physical presence and perfect pitch – at least, in the short, measured clips I’ve caught of him.

I’ve not yet been exposed to a full speech.

But Daniel Henninger has – and it’s not all roses for Obama or his acolytes.

Oh, the speech starts with a bang – sort of like Obama’s political career itself…:

The speech was classic Obama. Beautifully written and beautifully delivered, the words soaring to the rafters of a Madison, Wis., auditorium filled mostly with 17,000 cheering students. The rookie senator had just come off blowouts of Hillary in Virginia and Maryland.

The senator’s charisma and appeal has been undeniable. He is almost insanely eloquent.

Cool

But then…: 

Still, about halfway into this (very long) speech, the feeling was hard to shake: This is getting hard to listen to. Again and again. 

A few weeks ago, we noted that Obama “gets” Reagan – at least, the basics; put out a message of hope, delivered with passion, without talking down to the listener.

Some say he really does get it.  On the other hand, Henninger notices something else:

Up to now, the force of Sen. Obama’s physical presentation has so dazzled audiences that it has been hard to focus on precisely what he is saying. “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” Can what?

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard:

“Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That’s what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It’s a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It’s a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can’t keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they’re not rich . . .”

Here’s his America: “lies awake at night wondering how he’s going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can’t afford health care for a sister who’s ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin’ Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I’ve fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren’t denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories.”

It ends: “We can cast off our doubts and fears and cynicism because our dream will not be deferred; our future will not be denied; and our time for change has come.”

I am not saying all of this is false. But it is a depressing message to ride all the way to the White House

Wrapping Jimmy Carter’s message in Ronald-Reagan-style rhetoric, in other words.

I’ll have to try to dig out some transcripts.

I’d have rather seen Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney – in that order – get the GOP nomination.

It ain’t gonna happen, of course.  And so we have John McCain – as imperfect and mercurial a conservative as exists, with a lifetime ACU rating just a shade higher than Jim Ramstad.  Which, to be fair, is still head, shoulders, ankles and bunions better than either of the Tic candidates.

Noodles from the Dogs refers us to this piece by Kim Du Toit – perhaps the most paleo of the blogosphere’s paleos – who just plain gets it (emphasis added by me):

By not voting Republican—even one as flawed as McCain—we will handing this country over to the peaceniks, and on this I am absolutely certain…Furthermore, if we wake up on November 5th to President-Elect Obama or President-Elect Clinton, and then we turn on the TV to see joyous street demonstrations all over the Arab world, how will we feel then?

And when, in 2009, President Obama/Clinton nominates some pinko jurist with a love for a Silly Putty Constitution (or maybe two pinko jurists), the Supreme Court will swing sharply Left, for decades.

There’s only one thing to do: elect McCain, and at the same time, elect conservative Republicans to Congress, in 2008, in 2010, and in 2012.

I know; McCain’s a total shit, and I loathe him. But in the end, I love my country more than I hate John McCain—and handing over the reins of power to the Left will, with absolute certainty, bring this country down—just as the Left has brought down Britain, France and the rest of Europe.

Not gonna happen. Not while I draw breath.

This is not the time to pout. This, my friends, is our last stand. If we don’t win this one, the job is going to be incalculably more difficult in the future, both for us and for our kids.

Noodles expands on Kim’s point:

I’ve decided that I can not stay home in protest or even write in a preferred candidate.  It is readily apparent that the system by which we get our candidates is not perfect and that compromise often leaves many unhappy, in this instance the more conservative Republicans have definately gotten the shaft.   That being said every time the pendulum swung toward sitting this election out the vision of Hildebeast or Obama being sworn in on a cold day in January made it swing right back.

This blog’s mission – well, one of several missions for this next eight months, actually – is going to be to find every one of you conservatives who’s planning on sitting this one out, and changing your mind.

Fact: I support free speech more than anyone in the Twin Cities. Along with being the Twin Cities’ best feminist, it is one of my major superlatives.

So it’s not so much that I oppose this idea…:

True Blue Minnesota is lighting up the night sky with giant Jumbotrons, where we hold the Republicans to their record, let them hang themselves with their own words, show people a better future and do it in a way that DRAWS PEOPLE TO US! True Blue owns the night sky.

…as that I wonder how many Saint Paulites – Republican or Tic – really want anyone “owning” their night sky.

And we will own the national media with it.

They make this sound like it’ll be a conflict.

And this next line grabbed me:

True Blue will also be able to drive what happens on the street by setting the tone and the message.

Giant Jumbotrons setting the tone and the message? Like this? Or, really, this? (Scroll about 2:30 into the clip and tell me you don’t think about exactly what these people are after…)

Oh, well, More of George Soros (*) money well-spent!

* Plural, not singular.

First Ringer on the possible boomerang effect on the DFL’s witchhunt of Carol Molnau:

With Pawlenty’s peripheral vision directed slightly south of the Capitol towards the Xcel Center, site of the Republican National Convention, the DFL might not be free of Molnau should they fire her.  A Governor Carol Molnau, post November, might be more than happy to exact a little legislative revenge, providing for an even more contentious atmosphere in St. Paul.  But should the DFL stay the execution, it will be less because of any potential repercussions and more likely out of hopes in hanging Molnau as an albatross around Pawlenty’s neck.  The tactic hasn’t worked so far.

Read the whole – as the kids say – thing.

Ask a Saint Paul DFLer about the potential for violent demonstrations at the Convention this fall, and most of them will say “oh, they’re just a lunatic fringe.  Mainstream Tics won’t stand for that kind of thing” (not to mention “the rioters are just a strawman”).
If only it were true.  I got this from a Saint Paul politics discussion forum:

When considering the feasibility and likelihood of unlawfulness and
property destruction at the RNC this summer, a number of posters here have
presumed that riots are counter-productive to the interests of
protesters, and that the Seattle experience was a failure for those protesting
the WTO. Let’s look at the these presumptions again.

Since the WTO debacle in Seattle, there has not been single new
multilateral trade agreement signed between North American or European powers and the Third World, and several attempts of advancing the WTO agenda through the Doha round of talks has failed. In view of this, the
Seattle protests, including the “brick-throwing” tactics, should be seen as
an unqualified success for the organizers of the protests, both lawful
and unlawful, not a failure.

Likewise, the civil rights riots following the death of Martin Luther
King are largely credited with providing Washington with a sense of
urgency for reforming and funding the urban renewal and anti-poverty
programs of the 1970’s, such as the Community Development Block Grants
(CDBG), a federal form of Minnesota’s LGA.

Brick-throwing, under certain circumstances, does work, particularly
when employed by groups who have few other options for exercising
political power over a given policy question. In light of this, and the
unpopularity and powerlessness many feel regarding the war in Iraq, it seems
pretty reasonable to expect that more radical forms of action will
occur than merely exercising one’s right to free expression.

In other words, “they may be thugs, but they’re our thugs”.

I don’t know how representative the writer is of Tic opinion in Saint Paul – you be the judge, but he appears to be a garden-variety lefty rather than a spittle-flecked radical.

I think – and this is just my opinion – that the majority of DFLers are opposed to the brick-throwers.  But I think there are a few, like the writer, who can think of all sorts of obtuse rationalizations – and a bigger minority who’ll look at the convention like a hockey game or a NASCAR race or a Britney Spears appearance, looking for the spectacle.  Perhaps they’re wistful for their lost youth forty years ago; perhaps they’re teenagers (literally or emotionally) who love drama.  Whatever.  A riot, to these people, might be counteproductive – but it’d sure be fun, woonit?

PShort writing at Truth v. The Machine notes that some non-establishment conservatives are getting on board with McCain:

Over the past few days, John McCain received three endorsements that will be very hard for the hard-core anti-McCain conservatives to dismiss: Gary Bauer, John Bolton, and Congressman Jeb Hensarling…When principled conservatives like these say, in effect, “despite our differences, it’s ok to get on the McCain bus,” many conservatives are going to listen.

Pat notes that Bauer, Bolton and Hensarling are hardly Beltway insiders – which at least chips away at one of Mac’s big poison pills.

Along with my friends at True North, I’ve spent a good chunk of the last year getting primed to deal with the hordes of “anarchist” thugs – generally upper-middle-class college kids or twenty-somethings – who plan on coming to Saint Paul this fall to cause mischief.

This blog has spent lots of time and effort documenting their statements of intent, and their actions.

While I support everyone‘s right to free speech, and am perfectly willing to ascribe 90% of the things the Anarcho-fops are saying to “post-adolescent drama-addiction”, there are enough of them out there who do intend to cause serious trouble – vandalism, rioting, assault and mayhem – that I plan on doing what I can to protect my city from their depredations.

And when I’ve mentioned this in mixed-politics forums – like the “E-Democracy” Saint Paul discussion group – the resopnse, almost to a person has been an ignorant “riiiiiiight” at best, and a denial-clogged “the Republicans are just as likely to get violent” at worst.

One of the people who’s given us plenty of both was Grace Kelly of the local leftyblog MNBlue. Kelly, a 9/11 “truther”, is shocked, shocked, to notice that some of her fellow protesters are up to planning no good!

While nearly every peacemaker group has focused on elections, one small group, Protest RNC 2008 has been focussed on protesting the Republican National Convention(RNC), which is normally a good activity except this time.

(Which is a sentence that makes perfect sense except for this time)

I wrote of the importance of nonviolence and peace pledge previously. Now all groups who are participating with this group are being asked to commit to a unity pledge

Let’s be clear, here (since Grace Kelly doesn’t state it very clearly); it’s the “Protest RNC group” that’s proposing the pledge below. Kelly herself proposed a pledge – one of those “unicorn in every garage” pledges, all full of high expectations and dreamy assumptions that are the peacenik’s only useful tangible intellectual product – and is somewhat upset that the other guys’ pledge is getting more traction among the anarkids.

And – this kills me – she’s surprised that the anarkids want to pledge people to… (Kelly’s responses are in parentheses below; mine will be in square brackets):

• respect the diversity of tactics (ignore the people who state on public email lists that violence to property like throwing bricks through windows is ok

[Or on MPR, or in the Minnesota Daily, or…]

• >separate activities (please don’t stand next the person throwing bricks or you too will probably get arrested

[we’ve been through this one before; this is part of the art of psychologically priming people to help create a riot against their will]

• don’t criticize publicly (like I am doing right now, no free speech, no request for peace pledge, no request for a standard of non-violence, no openness, no transparency)

I get a kick out of this; Kelly, like many dozey peaceniks, is actually surprised that people whose intellectual and ideological roots trace back to Lenin, Mao and Stalin would actually stifle free speech.

The horror of it all! Who knew?

• don’t cooperate with police (like my pledge to point at the person throwing bricks)

Of course, Kelly’s a 9/11 Truther – so even though the intent to commit mayhem against both the city and the convention and her fellow “peaceful” protesters is right there in black and white, we all know whose fault it really is…:

Well I looked at this unity pledge and I thought, all that Bush has to do to shut down protests is join the groups protesting as “George Bush, Tactic – Iraq War and Group – US Government” and to live by the unity pledge, the protests could say nothing.

And there is more, to even sign up to go organizing meeting of the “umbrella” of groups planning for the peace protest, you have sign a pledge of endorsement – which means the group’s name can be used, basically associated with all the “diversity” of tactics used and dragged through media mud.

Gosh. D’ya think.

The Protest RNC 2008 and RNC Welcoming Committee had a “community” meeting, which I came to represent St Paul. They only collected questions and then promised to answer question later if we came to the organizing meeting.

Hm. Where have we heard this before?

Oh, yeah. From conservative bloggers who’ve been “covering” the fops for the past year.

I came to that meeting and was requested to leave because I advocate for the community, the peace pledge and non-violence. I am not “one” of the them. Exactly, I am a peacemaker. I am a member of several peacemaker groups, all of which have declined to be involved.

No kidding!

We on the right have been warning you about exactly this since the very beginning.

Many peacemaker groups have long experienced activists who know the history of people who join groups to cause difficulties. The question is what happens to groups advocating for peace, who do not have that experience. Will they unknowingly sign on and take the unity pledge? Will people’s unwillingness to question tactics of people who seem to work for the same cause get them in trouble?

Clearly we need a separate non-violent peace pledge committed group to organize a separate peaceful protest.

No, Grace. Clearly, what “you” in the “peace” movement need is to rise up and condemn those who advocate violence; you need to make them feel unwelcome in the Twin Cities. You need to actively reach out to Law Enforcement and make sure that thugs, mayhem-seekers and other degenerates get the welcome they deserve from Saint Paul.

But y’all aren’t gonna do that, aren’t you?

Because you still think “pledges” and the unicorn-in-every-garage rhetoric of the “peace” movement actually carries any weight among your movement’s degenerate wing!

Mark my words; the anarchofops are going to be here; they don’t give a shit about your motivations; they will actively seek to disrupt the convention and life in this city. They may be a tiny minority of those protesting, but they will get the vast bulk of the press coverage. They will vandalize. They will destroy. And, if some of their rhetoric is to be believed, they will attack anyone who gets in their way.

And the “peace” movement will do nothing about it, because the “peace” movement is only about taking the easy moral stands.

Which means that they are utterly worthless at either making peace or dealing with aggression.

Fops: You’re in my town, now.

PShort writing at Truth v. The Machine notes that some non-establishment conservatives are getting on board with McCain:

Over the past few days, John McCain received three endorsements that will be very hard for the hard-core anti-McCain conservatives to dismiss: Gary Bauer, John Bolton, and Congressman Jeb Hensarling…When principled conservatives like these say, in effect, “despite our differences, it’s ok to get on the McCain bus,” many conservatives are going to listen.

Pat notes that Bauer, Bolton and Hensarling are hardly Beltway insiders – which at least chips away at one of Mac’s big poison pills.

A reader sent me this via email:

I missed when you started referring to Democrats as
Tics but I don’t like it. When I see you use Tics I
think of Nick Coleman using the term “Wingnuts.”
Coleman is a jerk and an idiot so I don’t like most of
what emanates from his keyboard anyway.
When he uses Wingnuts I think that he’s run out of
argument and now has to resort to insults.

To be fair, there’s a difference.

Mitt bows out.

John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival suspended his faltering presidential campaign. “I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney told conservatives.

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

OK. On to “Plan B”. Mac! Don’t be taking the right wing for granted.