When I cast my first-ever conservative vote – for Ronald Reagan, in 1984 – I didn’t tell anyone. Part of it was that the whole conversion from mushy-left to right was so very recent. Part of it was that I was still feeling my way around an unfamiliar place.

And a big part was that I really just didn’t want to be associated with “those” conservatives.

In the media of the day, “out” conservatives were pretty much portrayed as smug fundamentalist televangelists, warmongering caricatures or malthusian skinflints. I edited a college newspaper at the time, and our syndication service – the “Campus News Service” – fed us a constant stream of anti-conservative, anti-Republican propaganda in written and cartoon form, all of it based on the three stereotypes above and the notion, constantly hammered in story after story, cartoon after cartoon, that President Reagan was

a) a doddering buffoon
b) a warmongering psychopath
c) both.

I got over it.

I graduated, moved to the Twin Cities – and it got worse. The media of the day ranged from left-leaning (it was the golden age of Jim Klobuchar; Nick Coleman was just getting started as a columnist) to falling-over left. Just before I started my old KSTP talk show, I remember reading a piece in the City Pages about some counselor/”artist” type in some political action group saying – unchallenged – “liberalism is the only intellectually acceptable philosophy”.

The attitude one perceived could have fairly been called “contemptuous” against conservative people and ideas.

And on the issues? Well, it was at KSTP in 1987, in a discussion on handgun control, where I first heard the old chestnut “I think people who think they need guns are…[brief pause as a verbal wink and nudge] compensating for something…”. It is, of course, the standard line for anti-gunners who want to believe they’re bringing the forces of soft science to bear against their opponents without actually understanding any. And it is nothing if not contemptuous. And it’s not the only issue where conservative substance has been met for decades with ignorant contempt.

To sum up: Twenty years ago, the contempt for conservatives was everywhere.

One thing that was not everywhere was avenues for response. This was before the market drove talk radio to the right. This was before conservatives had any written outlet, short of the National Review and the odd token George Will or Cal Thomas column set into the OpEd page like an exhibit at a zoo. The Strib’s letters to the editor, then as now, published only the most carefully-bowdlerized selection of conservative opinion (seemingly selected for sounding the least coherent, at times)

Today, of course, it’s a different story. Conservatives have voices – and those voices pretty well crush the opposition (which is why the Democrats are talking about bringing back the “Fairness” doctrine). Conservatives have outlets, and they’ve become influential out of all proportion to their size, which is why George Soros and his deep-pocketed friends are trying to buy a share of the blogosphere; it’s not really working (which is why the left has already tried to regulate blog content).

At any rate, in the last twenty years – and especially the past five years or so – people on the left, especially people who remember what life was like back when the conservative in the street only got to speak at the bar and around the table and every couple of years at the polls have had to learn that there really are more than one side to an argument.

The masthead of Charlie Quimby’s blog reads “How Can People Disagree And Still Build a Decent World?”; it’s a good question, one that I ask a lot in this blog and – rather more often – in personal conversation. It is important, and not merely because I’m a conservative with a mother who thinks Jane Fonda is a reactionary.

Charlie poked a little fun last week at the selection of Republicans getting credentials at the Convention next month. The common thread he found: “From Ladies Logic to Grizzly Groundswell to Pair O’Dice you’ll find at least one thing in common: a fairly strong contempt for liberals.”
Over the weekend and still on the subject (having gotten some pushback from a couple of the bloggers he’d names), he asked:

It is possible to separate personal relationships and politics. The success of any free political system depends on it. But over the past 20 years or so, it seems to be happening less and less. Contempt — not just philosophical disagreement — has been ratcheted up and real tolerance for human differences over policies is given the sort of smirking pro forma observance we see between Hannity and Colmes…

The difference, I suggest, is that over the past twenty years contempt and ridicule (and the guys behind their respective curtains, ignorance and fear) have become two-way streets. There’s not more contempt and ridicule; you can just see it. And if you’re a Twin Cities’ liberal, you can see it aimed at you for the first time.
You don’t have to read Nick Coleman or Lori Sturdevant or Brian Lambert all that terribly long to realize that Minnesota liberals of a certain age just aren’t used to being questioned, much less criticized, to say nothing of being the objects of contempt. I’m going to venture that not one of them, growing up in acceptably-lefty households, coming up through a left-leaning academic establishment, and working a career in left-leaning newsrooms, has ever heard someone say “I don’t know why people need pay-equity laws, unless they’re compensating for something, nyuk nyuk”.

Or bloggers and their invisible moonbat/wingnut friends. Which is why here I try to make those exchanges real and open, aimed at understanding rather than refuting the other.

Contempt is the tip on the iceberg of ignorance and – toward the bottom – hatred. I try to avoid it, and seek out conversation with the rare liberal blogger who’s not too stupid and sodden with fake intellectual entitlement…

…oh, crap. Let me start over.

Contempt is the junk food of rhetoric; it’s cheap, easy, and sometimes all you have in the cupboard. It’s easy to say “I don’t use it”; everyone knows better. There are times when it’s the easiest way to respond to the gaffes and slights and sins of the “other” side. It was the same thing twenty years ago; if Hubert Humphrey and Ronald Reagan are the respective egos of the left and right, “guns are compensating for something” and “liberalism is a mental disorder” are the respective ids. And we all balance these in different ways.

At some point, contempt for ideas and values becomes contempt for a group becomes contempt for a person, as the bones in mass graves the world over attest.

True.

But a lot of things have changed in the last decade or two. Liberals in the Twin Cities are having some inevitable growing pains realizing that there is more than one point of view in this world (just like conservatives in Austin Texas and Chapel Hill North Carolina have been having to do).
It’s just all out in the open now.

The only real question now is how people deal with it – a question people have to answer whenever there is more than one side to a debate.

Which is why it’s such a new thing in the Twin Cities.

In my daily skimming of leftyblogs yesterday, I noticed an item on a couple of leftyblogs. As Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “Independent” put it:

Bachmann slams Dems on bill she voted against:

And then Zack Stevenson of MNPublius (in the post “Bachmann vs. Bachmann“) reprised the story, using Birkey as his source.

Here’s Birkey’s money quote (emphasis added by me):

On Friday, Rep. Michele Bachmann slammed Congressional Democrats for not passing tax credits for solar and wind energy. On the Laura Ingraham Show, a conservative talk radio program, she called Democrats “strange” for not passing a bill that they actually did pass, but without Bachmann’s help…The Democrats did pass such a bill in the House, but without Bachmann’s help. In May, before her newfound campaign issue, she voted against it, Think Progress reports. The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 would provide such tax credits but has been stalled in the Senate by Republicans.

“Hm”, I thought. “Not one but two leftyblogs, and ThinkProgress! That’d be an odd, inconsistent stance for Rep. Bachmann to take, if it’s true”!

Of course, that final “if true” clause is always the clinker when you’re talking about leftymedia coverage of any issue; all the more so with Rep. Bachmann, given that:

1. No figure in Minnesota – not Kersten, not Brodkorb – provokes the derangement among the left that Michele Bachmann does, and…
2. …the Dems are waking up, I think, to the realization that energy is their achilles heel in this election; they can’t solve the issue and placate their base, so their only real option is to…
3. …use their paid propaganda streetwalkers – like their Center for “Independent” Media publication, like the Mindy – to try to obfuscate the issue.

So I figured – before dinging Rep. Bachmann for her apparent inconsistency, I’d check a few things out.

First and foremost: why would Rep. Bachmann vote against alt-energy tax credits before she voted for it? Would it be because…

• Rep. Bachmann has no idea what she wants, policy-wise? Seems less likely with Rep. Bachmann than with most Congresscritters, but heck- let’s put it on the list. Or maybe…
• …because there is some picayune bit of context that the Mindy and the MNPublius kidz didn’t feel compelled to tell you, the gentle reader? Some bit of key, vital information about the “Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008” (PDF pr HTML) that’d make it, I dunno, utterly noxious for a conservative to vote for? Some thing or things that’d make it much more attractive to withhold support of the bill, and push to implement the parts she supports, independently?

Always, always check out the second option before assuming the first. I did.

And, as it turns out, The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 has just a few bits and pieces to it that’d make it – I dunno – utterly anathema to a principled, consistent free-market small-government conservative.

For example, the bill includes about $55 billion in tax increases over ten years (mainly on capital formation – a huge no-no for conservatives) on top of a skeezy corporate estimated tax payment shift. Worse still, the tax increases are long-term, while many of the tax cuts in this bill – the ones that Birkey and Stevenson are whooping and hollering over – are just one-year extensions of current law. To a principled fiscal conservative, more long-term taxes are hardly a good trade for a brief hiccup in short-term ones. And it’s even worse than that; energy, especially alternate energy, is extremely R and D intensive; the focus on short-term extensions in existing tax cuts prevents American companies from planning for the near future, to say nothing of one that’s realistic in the world of research and development.

Dumb and dumber? The bill would apply Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements to all tax-credit bonds, whether created by this legislation or not. Mannah from heaven for Democrats, and feel free to argue their merits, but you can’t realistically expect a fiscal conservative to vote for more salary mandates that’ve been slipped into a bill with one item she supports, can you?

Dumb and dumberer? At the end of the day, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008’s “incentives” are aimed primarily at energy sources and technologies that are, to coin a phrase, technological “shots in the dark”; sources that might someday prove capable of powering a growing, first-world economy, but equally may not (remember when ethanol was going to solve our problems?). Either way, there is one ineluctible fact that the “alternative energy über alles” crowd keeps ignoring; if our economy isn’t healthy, we will never develop viable alternatives; for the next decade or two or five, that signal fact is going to depend on having enough oil. There is no way around that fact. The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 doesn’t recognize this; Rep. Bachmann does.

Oh, yeah – and the bill contains tax perks for trial lawyers, movie producers, and a huge earmark for New York City (for transportation infrastructure projects, including mass transit, highways, railroads, airports, ports, waterways, etc).

Read it for yourself (PDF or HTML). It makes no sense to take (let’s be charitable) 2 steps forward and 20 steps back in the grand scheme of things. There’s just too much pork for the Congresswoman to vote for this thing. I, a genuine conservative and energy hawk, would have been upset with her if she had!

The Twin Cities’ liberal altmedia; all the news George Soros and Brian Melendez want them to print.

Check out this piece by Paul Demko in the Minnesoros “Independent”, re Ashwin Madia’s campaign to try to replace Jim Ramstad in the Third Congressional District.

Note the many, many references to Madia’s time in the Marine Corps.

Forget, for a moment, that military service in Republicans is something about which Democrats are at best silent, and at worst scabrously defamatory or (in the Mindy’s pages, no less) ignorantly mocking.

What does this constant spin tell us about the DFL’s appreciation of this issue?

Discuss.

Jeff “Not The Gun Guy” Rosenberg is a regional leftyblogger who, like most regional leftybloggers, writes at a couple of dozen blogs. I’ve met him, he’s a good guy.

Which doesn’t mean I can’t respond to this post, “Conservative Math”, over at (checks list) The Daily Liberal.

Turns out there’s more to “liberal math” than “multiply the crowd at any lefty protest by an order of magnitude; two if you’re nasty”:

Sometimes I just can’t help but respond to the local conservative blogs. Roosh at Shot in the Dark seriously believes conservatives have the answer to our national debt problem:

Jeff quotes Roosh’s post from last week, “Sheriff’s Sale”. The post’s money quote…

I maintain that our deficit spending habits and their product, our national debt have left our country in an increasingly precarious position and is in fact an issue of national security.

The extrapolation of the mathematics, an element of which is our evolving demographics (i.e. more people getting on the wagon and less people pushing it) will eventually result in a national financial meltdown and the collapse of the American dollar.

…echoes the possibly-fictional but still utterly accurate “Alexander Tytler” quote (I always thought it was De Tocqueville?): “A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”

Liberals oft cited moral imperative to be a compassionate, civilized nation manifested in layers and layers of entitlements will be eclipsed by the fact that at some point we will simply be unable to service our debt let alone borrow more.

Soon we will all be conservatives. Fiscally-speaking that is. The question of what our federal government should or should not do for it’s citizens will become an academic discussion.

Rosenberg responds:

Unfortunately, he and the rest of the conservatives don’t have a leg to stand on. Their hero “W” has the dubious distinction of being the only president to lead us into war while simultaneously cutting taxes. Republicans in Congress fought tooth and nail against returning to pay-as-you-go rules.

Let’s try to get a couple of things straight:

• “W” President Bush was never a hero to fiscal conservatives. I was a Forbes/Kemp guy in 2000, until the last gavel sounded at the convention; we all knew that Governor Bush’s record was that of a “fiscal moderate”. We warned the party. I never warmed up to Bush, really, until 9/11; history is going to completely vindicate his foreign policy on most counts. But his fiscal policy, especially his spending, have always been disasters.
• His spending is a disaster because on that issue he is virtually indistinguishable from a liberal. His pre-9/11 Education program and the Prescription Drug benefits, for example, were closer to Ted Kennedy than Milton Friedman.
• The Republicans in Congress from 2000 to 2006 certainly didn’t help matters much.

But so far, so good. That part is still on the rails.

This next bit…:

In typical Republican fashion, however, they don’t want you to pay any attention to this. The tax cuts aren’t the problem. The war isn’t the problem. Deficit spending–which we didn’t do under Clinton–isn’t the problem. No, the problem is that the terrible liberals want to make sure we provide our citizens with proper healthcare and send our veterans to college.

…not so much.

The tax cuts aren’t the problem – indeed they’re part of the solution. The war is part of the problem (but it did pretty much come to us, and the financial impact of not fighting the war might well have been much higher – which is a subject for a different post).

Deficit spending is surely a problem – see all of us Forbes supporters waving over here? (And Clinton can thank Reagan for the peace dividend check he cashed, and the Gingrich Congress for forcing him to be a moderate, and all of us conservative voters for rejecting the agenda of Clinton’s first two years at the polls in ’94).

Part of the problem, however, is that the left is trying to peddle the soft side of government spending, portraying it as “college benefits for veterans” and “health care”, omitting the bit about “generations of entitlement spending helping destroy the inner cities”, “farm entitlements destroying agriculture”, “government spending, and a generation of federalizing education, have left us with a decayed, failing school system”, “Education subsidies have made college unaffordable to everyone but the wealthy, except with government help” and, soon, “the entitlement and subsidy cultures that the Dems have spent the last four generations building is about to make private health care unaffordable and lead to de facto socialization even if the formal socialized medicine program doesn’t get jammed down our throats” and the big kahuna, “excessive taxation harms the economy”.

Don’t buy the hype. Conservatives these days are not interested in reducing government spending.

Jeff doesn’t hang around many of us. (Closed circuit to Brodkorb; we need more happy hours. Stat.)

They’re just interested in redirecting it: from working families to energy speculators,

This is one of those lefty memes – a non-sequitur, really – that puzzles me.

Conservative policy is to drill more oil, and do it now, to alleviate the shortage that exists now and will no doubt get worse if we don’t get more oil to market. It’ll affect the market psychologically in the short term (knowing the supply will eventually get better), and physically in the long term (more oil!) and will, in the end, be the key to developing a viable alternative energy economy (only prosperous societies can fix their problems; our prosperity at the moment depends on oil).

Speculation profits from scarcity. If a good is in plentiful supply, there’s no motive to speculate.

SPECULATOR 1: “George, are you interested in ten billion in oil futures?”

SPECULATOR 2: “Vot? Are you MAD, T-Boon? Ze Price iss FALLING! Ze zupply iss RISINK! Vy Vould I buy oil? Hell, Lefty propogohnda vebsites are a bettah inwestment! I’d rotha induce a deprezzhion in another emerging country!”

It’s only when a good is in short supply that there’s any upside to betting on its price fluctuations.

So the joke is this; a movement driven by the likes of George Soros – whose entire fortune is built on profiting from shortages, fluctuations, and the misery of others – is yapping at conservatives about “energy speculation”, when the liberals’ current policy is the one that’ll create the conditions that let them make their profits!

No, I didn’t think it was funny either.

At any rate; lefties? Feel free to keep trying to lecture us on math. Practice makes perfect.

I’m trying to imagine what life’d be like if Saint Paul had “won” the Democrat rather than GOP National Convention.

One thing I don’t see ever happening:  Republicans making up snotty, stupid lawn signs to parade their elitism, bigotry, and exaggerated sense of moral and intellectual entitlement.

Of course, they’ll be contributing to the city’s light (and moral, aesthetic and intellectual pollution) with “True Blue Minnesota”‘s jumbotron on Cathedral Hill; we an exclusive preview of True Blue Minnesota’s video event right here:

And here, True Blue in their uniforms:

But thanks to more lefties with deep pockets, it’ll extend to the neighborhoods as well!

The top vote-getter, receiving 130 votes, was Teri Kwant’s sign, “I’m for preemptive peace. Others making the cut: “Give a shit” by “Liza Minelli” (or, perchance, Liza Minelli?); David Brynestad’s “My redneck, sexist, gun-toting, racist brother-in-law is voting” (“Are you?”); and Joseph Hughes’ simple sign that shows a checkbox with the first of two options marked: hope and fear.

Oh, and as if property values in the Twin Cities’ blighted neighborhoods weren’t crappy enough already:

The 50 designs will be distributed in yards in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff, St. Paul’s West Side and Minneapolis’ Seward neighborhoods. But if you don’t live in those communities, you can still plant one in your yard: $20 gets one delivered to your door.

Twin Cities liberals; happy to pay to make themselves look like smug, blinkered, self-satisfied prigs!

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring connects the dots on a letter to the editor from Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner about Michele Bachmann’s recent spate of publicity on energy policy.

Susan Gaertner, of course, is the Ramsey County Attorney – and the wife of John Woedele, former Jesse Ventura press flak. Woedele’s working for the Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg campaign.

Conclusion:

The big picture point I’m making is that Ms. Gaertner’s sloppily researched LTE is a poorly disguised hit piece for her hubby’s boss. That certainly isn’t Minnesota Nice. In fact, it’s downright sleazy. If Mr. Tinklenberg suggested that this be written, then the Tinklenberg campaign should apologize for suggesting it. If Ms. Gaertner’s LTE was suggested by her husband, then it’s something that the Tinklenberg campaign should distance itself from ASAP.

In either case, the Tinklenberg campaign’s behavior has been shameful.

Woedele and Gaertner’s relationship is hardly an obscure factoid. You’d think the newspaper would make that clear if they printed her letter. Wouldn’t you?

Nah. Me either.

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.

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.

Speed Gibson – new to the world of seceding from the tax-paying car community – notes the bad news:

The Twin Cities slept through the last Transit strike and barely noticed the one before that. But now ridership is up and the union knows it. They voted down the latest offer, 19 to 1. A strike is possible in about a month, just in time for the State Fair and the Republican National Convention.

Oh, wouldn’t that be great news?

Public Transit provides a very small percentage of the total number of passenger miles. Most don’t use it at all. But if you’re a regular, you might want to arrange an alternative. As ineffective as the last strike was, it did last 45 days.

Any doubt about fares going up another 50 cents next year?

Government in action; “people are using the product!  Jack up the price!”

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.

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.

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.

…in a campaign where Al Franken – a guy who worked for a network that plundered a boys and girls club to pay his grossly-inflated salary – gets busted bobbling his taxes in dozens of states, to say nothing of a series of crimes against taste (that don’t bother me especially – he was a comedian, so they say, and a freelance writer of sorts – but seem to bother some Democrats)…

…is find that Senator Coleman got a 30% discount on a crappy apartment, then perhaps the DFL needs some better opposition researchers.

Please, I beg of you, please, please please please, please please PLEASE let this be true:

Barack Obama‘s presidential campaign has requested information from Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd as part of its search for a possible vice presidential candidate.

The former White House hopeful and Connecticut lawmaker indicated Wednesday that he has been approached by the campaign. “There’s been some inquiries, yeah,” Dodd said. “They ask for a lot of stuff. I’ll leave it there.”

Now that’s change I can believe in.

(Via Ed)

To:  Jesse Ventura, ex-governor and “celebrity”

From: Mitch Berg, Average Schlemiel

Re: Senate Bid

Dear “Governor” Ventura,

One minute you’re running; the next, you’re not.  It’s almost like you’re arguing with The Crusher or Vern Gagne or Vince McMahon [1] or someone.

Let me help you settle this.

Run.  Run, Jesse, Run. 

Run for Senate.  Please.

Ten years ago, in a simpler and more trite era, it was easy to convince people that you were a populist, libertarian/conservative everyman.  Back before you actually had to govern (“Govern”?  Whatever), you could make yourself out to be whatever you wanted to look like; like every third party candidate, you could wrap ideals around you like they were so many pink feather boas.

Of course, then you got into office.  And that “deer in the headlights” look you got on election night 1998 morphed into you turning into a sock puppet for Dean Barkley and Tim Penny and, eventually – to deal with the fact that you had no party supporting  you in the legislature – ran to Roger Moe like a new, boyish-looking blond inmate cuddling up to a big bruiser inmate for protection.

But we know you today, Mr. Ventura. Some of us know you way too well. 

We know that you, like your “party”, are DFL lite.  To Democrats, who might prefer a trite, vapor-light, paper-thin devil they know to a trite, vacuous devil they don’t, that might be a sell over Franken.  To Republicans?  You had some of us fooled ten years ago; they’re not biting anymore.

Oh, and you’re a 9/11 Truther.  That appeals entirely to…well, you know who.  Indeed, the numbers show, so far, that you will draw more voters from Franken than Coleman.

So please, Jesse.  Run.  I beg of you.  Let’s make this electoral season even more humiliating for Al Franken.

That is all.

[1] What?  None of these names were current when you were in “wrestling”?  Sorry – I guess I had a brain and didn’t pay any attention at the time.  Sorry.  Not.

Dennis Haysbert – formerly “President David Palmer” on 24 – says that his role on the hit show may have given people positive mojo about a black president:

“If anything, my portrayal of David Palmer, I think, may have helped open the eyes of the American people,” said the actor, who has contributed $2,300 to the Illinois Democrat’s presidential campaign.

“And I mean the American people from across the board — from the poorest to the richest, every color and creed, every religious base — to prove the possibility there could be an African-American president, a female president, any type of president that puts the people first,” he said Tuesday.

To be fair, Haysbert’s “Palmer” had coherent policies, and didn’t change his statements from season to season episode to episode.  While “Palmer” was a Democrat, he was more of a Bill Richardson than a Jimmy Carter.

Now, Wayne Palmer…

Haysbert, who now stars on “The Unit” on CBS, made his comments to reporters during a teleconference call promoting the upcoming American Century Celebrity Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe.

Haysbert, who also played Nelson Mandela in the 2007 film “Goodbye Bafana,” said his role as President Palmer seemed to “confuse people” who would approach him on the street “every day, almost every hour, and ask me to run.”

“I still, even after three seasons into `The Unit’ playing Sgt. Maj. Jonas Blaine, I’m still asked by people on the street to run,” he said.

Now, Sergeant Major Blaine I’d vote for.

Demko at the Minnesoros “Independent” brings the allegations (from an organization that shares funders with the “Independent”):

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint with the Senate’s ethics committee calling for an investigation into whether Sen.Norm Coleman’s Washington living arrangements violate the legislative body’s gift rules. The questions stem from recent revelations that Coleman rents a $600-per-month basement apartment on Capitol Hill from Republican operative Jeff Larson.

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci responds:

And the story here is what, exactly? If the landlord was trying to payoff the Senator or give him a side-door gift, what about the other 8 months (2007: July August September October & December; 2008: February, April, May and possibly June) when the rent was paid on time and the checks were cashed. Why November and January? Why hold just the March check? Certainly there can be no other explanation for the 3 relevant months in this casual business relationship?

Not if your a Soros funded hatchet jobber trying to get moonbat liberals elected without having to actually defend your stupid stances on taxation, energy policy and national defense.

Sometimes it seems like the local leftyblogosphere is paralyzed by MDE Envy:

Finally, for those barking seal MDE wannabe lefty douchebloggers wondering why the MNGOP is just attacking CREW and not addressing the substance of the charges, it’s really very simple.

It’s because there is no substance to address.

People ask me why I keep dinging on the “Independent”, when it is by any objective measure a complete failure; they have a higher payroll than some radio stations I’ve worked at, but about the same circulation as Shot In The Dark.

It’s simple. As Foot showed us last week, these organizations – “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Among Republicans In Washington”, Media Matters, the Center for “Independent Media” and all of its subordinate affiliated blogs – all get their money from the same little circle of deep-pocketed lefty activists.

And that’s their right. But on the chance that there’s a news consumer out there who doesn’t know exactly what they’re getting – not just from the “Independent”, but from the rest of this chain of financial cause and effect – then I’m gonna try to fix that.

It is their right. And I’ll defend it (although it’s interesting to notice how many of the “Indy’s” staff were at the “Media Reform Conference” in Minneapolis last week, cheerleading on cue for the notion of reimposing the “Fairness” Doctrine, which is a direct attack on conservatives’ freedom).

All that, and sometimes it’s just fun beating on the hapless.

UPDATE:  Of course I’m too charitable. Brodkorb has, to quote Paul Harvey, the rest of the story.

Which brings up a question:  while it’s possible that most of the media that are breathlessly reporting on Coleman’s apartment are unaware of…:

• …the links between the CREW and Franken’s campaign, and…
• …the financial ties linking the Center for “Independent” Media and CREW…

…it’d be an insult to Steve Perry and Paul Demko’s unquestioned intelligence to assume they don’t.

Jay Reding on Obamamania:

It’s hardly unusual to see a candidate inspire their partisans—that’s what a good politician does. What is so unusual about Obama is the level of fervor that surrounds him. He is treated like a rock star in a way that even Clinton was not. The Obama campaign is less a traditional campaign that it is a movement.

I think it’s worse than Jay lets on.  I think that a big part of Obama’s “movement” is verging on a personality cult.  The “messiah” references, the unmoderated mass adulation (about nothing so much as him, himself), the masses of people mawkishly investing their political hopes and dreams into a personality that has given no rational reason beyond him…

…well, as Jay notes it’s not “about the issues”:

Political campaigns are, or at least should be, about ideals. The Obama movement is about nothing deeper than some vague vision of “change”—a value that could mean everything from marching through Poland to changing the national anthem to “Kumbaya” and inviting Osama bin Laden to a nationwide love-in. “Change” is an empty slogan, the intellectual equivalent of junk food—filling, but never offering anything of substance.

And if it were just about “change” there’s no reason to suspect that Obama would be ahead. Every candidate in this race talked about change. The real force behind the Obama campaign is not mere change, but force of personality.

And we know how well those work in office.  Right?

I pulled this off of an E-Democracy discussion group.  These groups are all basically DFL sandboxes.

Poll results show that about 19 out of 20 Republicans plans on supporting Senator Coleman; Franken is drawing about 3/4 of Democrats. It’s reasonable to expect independents to break toward the incumbent. As a result, Senator Coleman is currently sitting on a ten point lead.

As far as I know, there are no other declared candidates who will challenge Franken in the primary – yet. I’m not backing someone else, but I hope I’m doing more than venting. I’m trying to say in as many forums as I can that I am worried. Perhaps people who have influence in the DFL and in Franken’s campaign will recognize that the poll numbers reflect concerned Democrats as well as Republicans and independents. I’d like Al to get some new advice and definitely some better marketing. As [someone else] said, the vulgar joke issue must be taken seriously by the Franken campaign because it certainly is being taken seriously by people he needs in November.

I’ve written to the Franken campaign. Naturally, I didn’t get an answer. I’ve responded to their appeals for contributions and to appeals from the DFL with strongly worded appeals of my own – please get serious! Franken is bombing and the party must shake up his act or get someone else.

So far so good.  Almost reasonable.

Until we get to the zowie:

That might be Ciresi, or Nelson-Pallmeyer or someone no one’s thought of. Draft Steve Miles, even Patty Wetterling. Coleman is beatable. It’s inexcusable that he should have a 10-12 point lead.

I’m going to just sit and marinade in that little burst of concentrated desperation.

(Marinade).

(Marinading).

(Mari mari marinade).

Please, please, please Tics; draft Patty Wetterling.  If she couldn’t beat Bachmann, the great lightning rod for lefty derangement, she sure won’t put a scratch on Coleman.

Or better yet, Tics, please please please please PLEASE draft Jack “Conspiracy Nut” Nelson-“Conspiracy Nut”-Pallmeyer.

I’ll donate. Pinky swear.

Politicians – mostly Democrats, in this IBD poiece on the subject –  have been on the take from mortgage companies for years.

There’s method, naturally, to the madness:

A number of top Democrats have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, suggesting corruption in the party linked to the recent home-mortgage meltdown. Will the mainstream media just ignore it?

We’ll come back to that.

The firing of Democrat insider and money-man Jim Johnson a week ago as head of Barack Obama’s vice presidential search committee came as no surprise. Johnson, who served as chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae during much of Bill Clinton’s presidency, was discovered to have received a favorable mortgage loan from Countrywide Financial’s founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo…Now it turns out that Johnson wasn’t the only Democratic F.O.A. — friend of Angelo.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, head of the Senate Banking Committee that oversees Countrywide, also was a recipient of Mozilo’s mortgage largesse. So was Kent Conrad, the North Dakotan who chairs the Finance Committee and sits on the Budget Committee.

Both Dodd and Conrad, like Johnson, had potential clout in crafting legislation and regulations that would directly affect Countrywide’s future. And both got favorable loans through Countrywide’s now-infamous “V.I.P.” program.

Dodd’s case is illustrative. He took out two mortgages with no closing costs attached, at fixed rates of 4.25% and 4.5%. Sound like something you’d get?

No, indeed.

Countrywide, you fat bastards?  We gotta talk.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke also benefited, as did one prominent Republican — former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson.

Granted, both Shalala and Holbrooke had left public office when they got their deals. But it was reasonable for Mozilo to think they’d serve again in another Democratic administration.

And what, many wonder, was the quid pro quo for all this?

Oh, what do you think?

Just a month ago, in unusually harsh language, Dodd ripped into President Bush on the subprime mess and defended a $400 billion plan that would bail out the subprime lending industry — including Mozilo.

Friends of Angelo, indeed.

So the initial question was “why don’t the media cover this?”  Indeed, why are so much of the “independent” media so very, very on board with legislation that would distort the mortgage market, to the benefit of the big mortgage companies?  As the number of Tics with their hands in the jar grew, why were they trying to deflect blame to Republicans and past-their-shelf-date Democrats?

It’d be interesting to see what kind of mortgages the principals at Media Matters and the other attack-PR firms that control the lefty alternative media have.

Allahpundit on Barack Obama’s dangerous delusions about prosecuting – I use the term advisedly – the war on terror…:

…which start with an implausibility…:

redeploying tens of thousands of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and having them shake their fists angrily in the direction of the Pakistani border?

…and ends with a pointless metaphor…:

So what’s a Nuremberg for Osama going to accomplish? Here’s what it’ll accomplish: It’ll give him a world stage to inveigh against the U.S. just like his crony-in-chief did a few weeks ago down at Gitmo, secure in the knowledge that the media would carry the good word back to the Wahhabi faithful abroad. That’s the other huge difference between now and Nuremberg. When Hermann Goering ranted on behalf of Nazism, there was no one left on his side to be inspired. Not so this time. If Obama’s so hot for analogies to German trials, he should think less about 1945 and more about 1924.

Everyone knows history begins in 1933, right?

I’m not one of the people who’s especially exercised about Franken’s record as a comedian or writer.  It was his career.  He was certainly successful at it; at times he was quite good (although he certainly faded into being a “satirist” over time).  And, as is the fashion among comedians these days, he certainly worked blue at times, saying and doing and writing some things that wouldn’t be advisable for a future politician (although to be fair he was able to count on a complicit media to keep all of that on the down-low up until the past five years or so).

It’s getting to the point where a potential politician has to sense by about age 12 that they want to be an elected official – and then start living their lives entirely with an aim toward avoiding future opposition research.  Which will leave us with a raft of politicians even more worthless than most of what we have in office today.

(Of course, while I don’t much care about Franken’s Playboy article or SNL skits, I think his tax problems are very legitimate issues, and his complicity in the looting of the Gloria Wise center is a genuine red flag).

Against this, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the DFL has really only two points:

1. “We really really really really really hate Norm Coleman”
2. “You should vote for  Franken because he’s audaciously hopeful and he’s not Norm Coleman and you really really totally should, because you just should, and Paul Wellstone would want you to if he were alive but for whatever reason not seeking a fourth term”

More seriously?  His career as a comic, entertainer, “satirist” and failed pundit are all fair game, because it’s the only record he has.  I went over Alec Baldwin’s spate of logorrhea in support of Franken last week; in and among the ad-homina and the platitudes, there was not one single reason based in policy or experience that Baldwin could give…

…because there are none.

Norm Coleman has a fourteen year record in elected office – six in the Senate, eight as mayor of Saint Paul.  There’s plenty of things to take your shots at, no matter what side you’re on; Coleman’s votes on ANWR, the surge, and other bills drew conservative ire; the fact that he’s an apostate DFLer (he was in the party into the first part of his second term as Mayor, and even placed Paul Wellstone into nomination at the DFL convention 12 years ago), which is one of those things the DFL never, ever forgives.  For better or worse, his record’s out there; you can judge Norm, yea or nay, according to whatever criteria you choose – if little things like “records” and “experience” mean anything to you.

So here are a couple of questions for you Franken supporters:

1. If we’re supposed to leave his comedy, “satire” and freelance writing careers out of how we gauge Franken for office, what can we use to try to figure if Franken is someone we want in office?
2. Please give  me  some affirmative reasons – one, two, three, whatever -why anyone should vote for Franken.  Caveat; these reasons need to relate to Franken; “he’s not Coleman”, or “he’s not in bed with the Administration”, or “”Halliburton Cheney Wide Stance Bush Brought Down The Towers Duke Cunningham” don’t cut it.  In other words, leave out the reasons not to vote for Coleman (because those would apply to Ciresi or Nelson-Pallmeyer or Jerry Janezich for that matter, any of the people you DFLers could have, but didn’t, nominate); they have to be reasons to vote for Franken.

Can y’all do it?

Paul Schmelzer, at the Minnesoros Independent – the site that joked about John McCain’s teeth (although to be fair, they didn’t know he’d been tortured in Vietnam) writing on the new Al Franken ad.

He starts by quoting Franken – who, to give credit where it’s due, has spent a lot of time in Iraq entertaining the troops – in his latest spot (emphasis added by me):

“We’re building 810 schools, 4800 water and sewage projects and 1047 roads and bridges.” But there’s a kicker: We’re building them not in the land of I-35W and Winona’s Highway 43 bridge, but in Iraq.

The message could come off as harsh—running the risk of seeming anti-troop or, for that matter, anti-Iraqi (who, bombed to kingdom come by coalition troops, might rightfully expect a little rebuilding)

Uh, Paul?

Since about April of 2003, most of the “bombing to kingdom come” has been done by the insurgents.

You know – the “other” bad guys?

But the ads, which will run in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester and Mankato, might not satisfy supporters of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who could read into it a less-than-immediate pullout of troops in Iraq.

To be fair, to win over the Nelson-Pallmeyer supporters, he’d have to claim that we’d murdered a million Iraqis.

Franken’s not depraved enough get most of Nelson-Pallmeyer’s supporters.

MLP at Casual Sundays notes:

I keep trying but I can’t come up with an analogy that’s as stupid as

You can’t drill your way out of high oil prices

And she really did try.  Read the post; there’s a lot of effort there.

I talked about this Strib story on the NARN last weekend; the chorus of calumny over the state of the Minnesota Department of Transportation seems to stop, like one of those mediaval maps of the world, at the edge of…the Pawlenty Administration.  To hear the left’s howling and baying, you’d think that MNDoT was an elite body with a decades-long record of excellence at transportation engineering that was only interrupted by Tim Pawlenty and David Strom.

Not so, of course.  Minnesota’s transportation system bears clogged, congested, poorly-engineered witness to decades of MNDoT’s dubious command of its subject.  The urban highway system funnels into several “commons” areas, where freeways merge and cross in arrangements that seem designed to create road rage (94/35W in downtown Minneapolis; 35W and Crosstown 62 in Richfield; 35E and 94 in downtown Saint Paul; 35E and 694 in Little Canada).  Many freeways were built with “forced exit” lanes – lanes with the dreaded yellow “exit only” signs, which force traffic to merge in on itself for no real reason (and which MNDoT has been trying to un-build, at dizzying cost, for decades). 

And of course, the bridges in Saint Cloud and Winona and of course downtown Minneapolis?  They didn’t start rusting until Inauguration Day, 2003, to hear the local left. 

Prominent among them was Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, a DFLer who was Jesse Ventura’s Transportation Commissioner until 2002.  Last August 1, as the last of the girders were still falling into the Mississippi River, he went on WCCO with DFLer Alice Hausman to blame the “No New Taxes” pledge for the collapse – likely before the NTSB investigators had even booked their tickets to Minneapolis. 

Why was he yelling so loudly?  Why so early?

Andy Aplikowski at RezFor covered it this morning as well:

Don’t let the media gloss over the fact that El Tinklenberg, who is running for Congress against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R MN6), was the MNDOT Commissioner under Gov. Jesse Ventura. Yes, he was in charge of Minnesota’s transportation system, including the 35W bridge. No Carol Molnau has not been the only person ever to hold that position, and see reports on the critical nature of the bridge. 

(STRIB) Seven years before the Interstate 35W bridge fell, a consulting firm sent Minnesota officials a proposal to shore up the aging structure that included examining its gusset plates — the connections that federal investigators now believe likely played a role in the collapse.

The preliminary plan from HNTB Corp. of Kansas City, which was buried among hundreds of documents released at a recent legislative hearing, has gone largely unnoticed in the debate over the disaster. The company did its study at no cost in an attempt to gain a state contract for the bridge work but, in the end, wasn’t hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT).

A series of follow-up memos in 2000 and 2001 featured drawings of how HNTB planned to strengthen areas immediately surrounding the gusset plates and included renderings of “supplemental plates” and a “new oversize gusset.” Other drawings called for adding supplemental supports in the vicinity of the gusset plates.

El Tinklenberg, was MNDOT Commissioner at the time this proposal was denied. 

So let me get this straight; E-Tink presided over transportation in an administration that governed for four mostly-prosperous years – indeed, one that squandered billions in surpluses on new spending – and yet built almost no new roads, did very little bridge maintenance work, and whizzed $700,000,000 down a rathole building a train from the Mall to downtown.  Tinklenberg, indeed, did almost nothing in office…

…but was on the air while rescuers were still pulling people from the river to blame Pawlenty?

Hm.