Brodkorb notes a Robin Marty post at MN Campaign Report:

This post from MN Campaign Report is so insensitive and extreme:

“If God took out New Orleans because of the homosexuals, why’d he go after the boyscout camp? (Note: I can make fun of it because my cousin was there [he’s fine], your mileage may vary).” Source: MN Campaign Report, June 12, 2008

Er, sorry, Robin, but no, you can’t; having a cousin there doesn’t buy you a pass on this one.

The notion that anyone would say G*d “went after” either place “because of” gays, scouts, or anything else is as noxious to most Christians as the events themselves were horrifying.

The difference? I don’t know a single credible conservative commentator who didn’t slap their head in transferred embarassment at the whole “Katrina was a punishment for gays” thing. The impossibly vast majority of us are very loathe to try to tell our Creator what his motivations are.

Being the optimistic sort that I am, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that the post was really just random characters her baby pecked, inadvertently and yet miraculously, into the keyboard. Or perhaps Rew is woozy from spit-up fumes. I’ve been there and seen what it can do; perhaps that is an example of one’s brain on eau de garf.

The interesting part, I suspect, is going to be seeing which leftybloggers leap to MCR’s defense, and their rationalizations for trying to turn this on my friend and radio colleague Brodkorb. That is going to be fun to watch.

UPDATE: Of course, Gary’s right:

Robin’s faux paus does not reveal a black soul — only a misbegotten lampoon.

And I sincerely hope nobody reads my post to imply anything more than that, as well!

If this had only happened a week earlier, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer might be running for Senate today.

Over the past few years – perhaps because he’s been eying national office – Barack Obama has been cleaning up his act on guns.

It’s not a huge surprise; guns have been a third rail for the Dems for about a decade.  The ’94 “Crime Bill”, with its draconian, capricious intrusions into the rights of the law-abiding gun owner, mobilized the long-sleeping giant of the NRA, whose membership soared through the roof.  The gun owner was a very significant part of the Gingrich Revolution (and was probably what put Rod Grams over the top against Ann Wynia that year).  ’94 was the year Minnesota’s Gun Owner’s Civil Rights Alliance (and its child, Concealed Carry Reform Now) hit their stride, and began the most successful bit of grassroots politics in recent Minnesota history – the ten year battle of the common, bipartisan, law-abiding citizen against the soulless bureaucrat, the snivelling elitist, and the racist pettifoggers who’d bedeviled them. It’s been one victory after another since then – and if the SCOTUS’ Heller decision breaks the right way later this month, the best may yet be to come.

Against this backdrop, of course Obama is going to make nice.

Given his past history, according to James Taranto, it’s probably good that we work our butts off to keep it that way.

Back in April, columnist Robert Novak noted that Barack Obama was performing a “dance” on the topic of gun rights:

Obama, disagreeing with the D.C. government and gun control advocates, declares that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applies to individuals, not just the “well regulated militia” in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts that this constitutional guarantee does not preclude local “common sense” restrictions on firearms.

The government of the District of Columbia is defending a gun ban before the Supreme Court, with a decision expected this month.

Now, I don’t mind if a guy changes his mind – in the right direction.

Of course, that which flips might eventully flop, when it becomes expedient.

As, for Obama, it once was:

The National Rifle Association Web site has a list of those “common sense” restrictions Obama has favored. One of them caught the eye of blogger David Hardy:

Barack Obama supported a proposal to ban gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park, which would eliminate almost every gun store in America.

…Five miles? As Hardy notes, the effect of this would be to “eliminate almost every gun store in America.”…

…The proposal Obama endorsed in 1999 would have banned gun stores within five miles, or 26,400 feet, of a school. Imagine the same maps with each of those circles 10 miles across. Gun stores would be permitted only in the most remote rural areas–and only if there is also no park within five miles.

The Defender article also reported that Obama proposed “to make it a felony for a gun owner whose firearm was stolen from his residence which causes harm to another person if that weapon was not securely stored in that home.”

The point, of course, is to save the flip, prevent the flop:

To be sure, these are positions Obama took as a state legislator. It is unlikely that he would stand by them today, and even unlikelier that Congress would enact them. But it does lead one to think that Obama’s instinct is to trash, rather than protect, the Constitution.

It’s all back there somewhere.

I had a piece in the hopper this morning in which I was going to ask “I wonder how long it’s going to be before a DFLer tries to make “domestic tranquility” an issue in the Minnesota Senate race?”

It didn’t quite make the cut this morning (7AM, my cutoff time for morning blogging, came too dang early).  And it’s a shame, since I just knew this was going to happen…

…yep, the ink on Franken’s Rochester hotel tab is barely dry, and suddenly his minions are on the case!

From the 3rd Hour of [Fast Eddie Schultz’s Friday] show.

On the Al Franken scandals:

“This is all to just lather up the right, to shake down the Democrats, to make Norm Coleman look like he’s an altar boy, which he is not. And that is a story that the right wing media in Minnesota will never do. You know, Norm likes to chase the skirt, you know, there’s no doubt about that. Anybody wanna counter me on that? Anybody in the media want to write an editorial about what an altar boy Norm Coleman is? Any right wing talkers in Minnesota want to tell us what an upstanding, wonderful, highly moral guy Norm Coleman is? Come on! Let’s get it on!”

Schultz spent significant time in the 3rd hour of his show on Friday coming to the defense of Al Franken.

Of course he did. 

It’s been an open secret forever in Saint Paul and Minnesota politics; Norm and his wife have a rather unconventional marriage.  Schultz is being disingenuous if he claims this is some big revelation (or, equally likely, the dim little bulb inside his thick little head hasn’t quite quite figured it out yet, and his prime directive, “blow hard first, ask questions later”, is in control). 

And Franken is to be complemented; he’s been married to Franny for thirty-something years.  Kudos.

But since when did the party of “MoveOn.org” – an organization founded ten years ago to cajole the American people into ignoring the legal perjury (and, incidentally, marital infidelity) of a middle-aged lothario in the White House – care about such things?

It was made abundantly clear a decade ago; the Democrats wanted us to consider politicians solely on the issues. 

Wasn’t that what it was all about? 

So if Fast Eddie and his smarter colleagues in the trenches (that’s called “damning with faint praise”) want to try to ding Norm on the issues, go for it; Senator Coleman does have the advantage/liability of actually having a record to criticize.

Unlike Candidate Franken. 

Joe Kimball in the MNPost apparently has been taking a hit off of Lori Sturdevant’s bong.

He apparently thinks that Minnesota Republicans should  bend over and ask Senator Obama where he’s like us to kiss him:

So much for Monday’s GOP ‘welcome’ of Obama to St. Paul …
Not wanting the Democrats to get all the St. Paul headlines today…

Perhaps he expected us to send Obama – our opponent – a marching band? 

…the Republican National Convention sent out this email today:

STATEMENT FROM 2008 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION SPOKESMAN MATT BURNS ON SEN. OBAMA’S VISIT TODAY TO SAINT PAUL, MINN.:

“The Xcel Energy Center hasn’t hosted anyone who skates and flips as much as Senator Obama since the U.S. Figure Skating Championships were in town and the Minnesota Wild were eliminated from the hockey playoffs. We look forward to Senator McCain’s visit to Saint Paul in September, where he will accept our party’s nomination and offer a more substantive vision for leading America forward than the spectacle witnessed tonight.”

Why does Joe Kimball hate dissent? [*]

(more…)

A: Under “Single-Payer Healthcare”, whatever the state wants to pay for it – and then, only if you don’t step out of line.

Kathy from Cake-Eater Chronicles – a cancer survivor (who quite memorably documented her struggle in one of the better bits of blogging I’ve ever read) and who thus has Absolute Moral Authority – writes about yet another atrocity of the British socialized system. She quotes the London Daily Mail:

{…}Mrs O’Boyle, 64, had been receiving state-funded treatment – including chemotherapy – for colon cancer.

But when she took cetuximab, a drug which promised to extend her life but is not available on the NHS, her health trust made her start paying for her care.

{…}Mrs O’Boyle, an NHS occupational therapist, is believed to be the first person to die after being denied free care because of ‘co-payment’, where a patient tops up treatment by paying privately for extra drugs.

Got that? She paid for a drug on her own, which was outside what the state wanted to allow her to have.

No, that’s not out-of-context paranoia; that is, indeed, exactly the government’s policy:

Co-payment was blocked last year by Health Secretary Alan Johnson because he claimed it would create a two-tier Health Service.

Bureaucracy? Sure (emphasis mine)!

However, her consultant recommended-Cetuximab, which could extend her life. But it is available on the NHS only in Scotland, not in England and Wales.

Kathy:

Nice, huh? A lifetime of taxes to pay for a health care system that actually employed this woman and her husband, only to be betrayed in the end because she was willing to pay out of pocket for a few more months on this Earth. She wasn’t looking for a cure. She knew that was beyond her. She was simply looking for a palliative treatment which could extend her life a bit. Just a bit.

She was asked, “How badly do you want to live?” And she replied that she wanted just a few more months with her family. She paid the price for a drug that wasn’t available under universal healthcare, and she did it gladly, only to be smacked with a frozen mackerel in the end. Her actions would create a “two tier” health care system, and that, apparently, cannot be allowed, because that would mean she wasn’t receiving lowest common denominator health care, like everyone else does with the NHS, and the NHS cannot stand that. She thought she had the right to choose what her healthcare was worth to her, and that she wasn’t going to be penalized for her decision. One would suspect, with universal healthcare, that that would be a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

You could say the “good news” is that at least it’s just over there.

Well, this fall ain’t looking so good:

And yet this atrocious system is what some people would have us install here in the US. This is what some people want because their health insurance premiums are too high, and they would prefer not to have to pay them, but would rather let the government run things. It’s tidier in theory, but absolutely disgusting in practice.

Again, how badly do you want to live?

…

Governments with nationalized healthcare systems don’t want to give their citizens a choice. Patients are blackmailed, ultimately, into going with the lowest common denominator treatment if the the choice is between that or nothing at all because they don’t have spare millions on hand to pay for private care.

The political is the personal to Kathy – and many others in our country:

I know I harp on rather a lot about my cancer experience, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned what Dr. Academic told me one time, about what my treatment would have been if I lived in Italy. During the course of the staging controversy, we were told by my original oncologist that I would have to undergo three treatments of chemotherapy, instead of the six I’d been told originally. The reason for this was that a new study had come out, advocating three treatments for women with my stage of ovarian cancer, instead of six, because they hadn’t been able to find any added benefit, when contrasted with the risks, to the extra three treatments. However, when I was transferred over to Dr. Academic, he said, if I had to have treatment (which he wasn’t sure about at that point in time because of the evidence he had in front of him) I would have to have the dreaded six treatments, because he didn’t think the study the original oncologist had quoted was a very good study on the whole—and he would know, as he was on the board of the organization which published the study. He said that the group members had been polled and over ninety percent of them hadn’t thought it a good study, either—and weren’t going to use it as a treatment recommendation. He said that the reason for this disconnect was that to make the study’s results all the more powerful, they had let in to the statistical pool ovarian cancer diagnoses from places like Italy and Japan, for example, and Dr. Academic scoffed at their inclusion. He said their participation had ruined the study—because they hadn’t followed the protocol precisely, as in, the surgeries hadn’t been completed in the proscribed manner and as a result, had skewed the results. He said, after he’d dropped this bomb, that if I’d been living in Italy, with my cancer, all they would have done was the surgery. After all, that meant I would have a 70% survival rate for five years, which is nothing to sneeze at, particularly if you look at the statistics for things like pancreatic cancer, which has a 2% survival rate. But with a round of “precaution” chemo, just to make sure everything was cleaned out, my five year survival rate was boosted to 93%.

Which would you rather have?

Of course, when you’re talking nationalized healthcare (“Managed Care” run by the government), it’s the wrong question; “what’s it worth to the state authorities” is the first question.

Quite frankly, this is the difference between recurring and not—and if ovarian cancer recurs, well, that’s what the cause of death will be. It’s sad, but it’s true. So the goal, for women like me, is to make sure at the start that we have the best chances possible NOT to recur. That means a standardized protocol of precaution chemo. This is the standard of care here in the US. But not in Italy. How many Italian women, who were diagnosed with my stage of ovarian cancer, have recurred, and received, ultimately, a death sentence, because their government was too cheap to give them precautionary treatment in the first place?

And as we see with the O’Boyle case, the second is “does it interfere with government policy?”

Because, having worked in the industry, I can see the malthusian logic (if also the mechanistic inhumanity) behind “care management” decisions – but not the policy of forbidding people from paying for their own care, an act whose message is “not only is your life worth exactly what we say it is in terms of actual care, but it’s worth even less in terms of public policy”.

And that is inhuman.

Via Gary Miller, Matt “No Relation To Gary” Miller notes that Hillary Clinton provided this nation a great service – way above and beyond the whole “soaking up Tic resources for a few months” bit – in the race.

There was the conventional stuff…

But, there’s something about what she’s done for politics in America over the last 2 years that deserves respect. She’s fought. She’s struggled. And at times, she’s pushed back against the hijacking of the Democratic Party, which has been, for all it’s flaws, a party of great and patriotic men and women; a party which has, until now, only once succumbed to out and out radicalism in the last 60 years of nominations. She’s tried to speak to hardworking Americans, not about them. She’s tried to communicate a responsible foreign policy, not historically laughable pie-in-the-sky utopianism. She’s tried to recall a party she loves from the abyss. She’s tried. And she’s failed. Not everyone can be avatars of hope and light.

Indeed, there can only be One.  But I digress.

There is  a lesson there for the GOP – especially in Minnesota, where the party had a hard-fought battle with its own utopian fringe.  Hopefully the good guys can find a better way to help channel all that utopian energy than the tic are managing so far.

And here’s the real salient point; the point that conservatives, and moderates, and patriotic Americans of all regions and all religions ought to be thanking her for; Hillary Clinton has revealed Barack Obama. Four months ago, Barack Obama was an insurpassable public figure. He was The One We’ve Been Waiting For. An agent of hope and change poised to bridge all gaps, overturn all conventions, and melt all hearts. He was the great redeemer, surpassing that other great redeemer, and we were his subjects, waiting in humble supplication for the touch of his gentle hand. Now he’s tarred with Wright. And Ayers. And Pfleger. And he’s schemed, and calculated, and given ludicrous explanations, and played old politics with the best of them. His halo has descended before our very eyes. Make no mistake about it, no inducement on earth could have brought the press to question Barack Obama in a general election campaign in 2008. And no amount of evidence could have made the public care. Not even in a campaign against John McCain, the media’s favorite Republican. Even as a Democrat who ostensibly shares many of their goals, Hillary has had little success in shaping the media’s narrative. But, she has shaped the public’s.

The whole thing’s worth a read. 

And I join with Gary; Thanks, Hills!  See you in ’12!  And ’16!  And ’20!  And ’24…

A Twin Cities feminist and longtime DFL stalwart wants feminists to write in Hillary! this fall:

Though she acknowledges it is a difficult sell, [DFL Feminist Caucus founder Koryne] Horbal said she and other feminists are promising not to vote for Barack Obama and write in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name in November if the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations are not fully seated at the Democratic National Convention and Obama becomes the presidential nominee.

But if the move costs Obama the election?

“I don’t care,” Horbal said of the possibility that the move might cost Obama votes. She said she also would not be bothered if the write-in campaign indirectly helped elect John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. “Let McCain clean it up for four years, and then we can have Hillary run again,” she said.

Democrats; for the love of goddess, by all means follow Mz. Horbal’s advice.  If womyn don’t stand as one behind any liberal woman; any liberal woman at all Hillary this fall, when indeed might you get another chance?

I’ll be copiously posting the write-in rules in this space over the next five months.

In a sense, fisking Lori Sturdevant has become almost as rote and pro forma as fisking Nick Coleman used to be.

In her most recent hit job DFL puff piece column, Sturdevant – whose leg got a Chris Matthews-like tingle when the likes of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone flirted with national ambitions – suddenly goes all provincial on us, to the point where she has to contradict herself to do it.

But here’s a first; at least she admits it. Not that that matters much:

National ambition is a desirable trait in Minnesota politicians — or so I’ve said on these pages. A pol who wants a call to the Show will play a better game here in the minors — or so I used to think.

But covering Gov. Tim Pawlenty in the lawmaking season that just ended raised some doubts about the home-state utility of national ambition. Was it because Pawlenty wants to be vice president that he vetoed a much-needed gas tax increase, or Central Corridor funding?

Was he minding the store while on all those weekend trips for John McCain?

(Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch)

“Minding the Store?”

Perhaps Ms. Sturdevant has noticed; the Governor has a bit of an executive branch that’s hired to “mind the store” in the event that the Governor has to, y’know, sleep or go to the bathroom or campaign for office.

Just like DFL governors do.

But wait!  Not only does Sturdevant observe radically different standards for DFL and GOP politicians – she can find DFL politicians who agree!

I haven’t had much to say about Ted Kennedy because, honestly, everyone with anything to say has already said it and better.

Except, of course, for the fact that I’m praying for Mr. Kennedy, and hope he recovers and lives many more years.  Life is much more important than politics.

First Ringer has the best compendium of Kennedy’s career I’ve yet read:

From his choices in policies to his choices in politics, Teddy has remained the well-groomed rebel, the slightly mainstreamed radical.  But Kennedy’s flair for risk did not serve him as well as it did his brother.  Clutching a bare 38% of the primary vote and slightly over 1,100 delegates, Kennedy carried on a quixotic floor fight culminating in his convention address that may well have signaled the beginning of the second phase of Kennedy’s political career.  [He defined] himself as the champion of the “New Deal” and “Great Society” liberal Democrats…

Ted Kennedy, even when I was a kid, seemed to be the figure in which paleoliberalism showed its age – where the sixties started fraying into the seventies and spun off the rails in the eighties.

It remains more than a little tempting to ravage Kennedy, who in the preceeding 28 years after that address personified every liberal stereotype in the eyes of both conservative critics and skeptical independents.  Sometimes a parody onto himself, Kennedy would bluster his way on to the national stage for every issue of note, spout the need for some massive government intervention, take a hard but blunt strike at Republican opponents of the measure and then retreat to Kennebunkport.  Often lacking title in the Democratic ranks yet still given deference by pols and the media alike, Kennedy seemed more like a member of the “Patres Conscripti” of the Roman Senate – old men selected by the Roman powers that be, unencumbered by such concerns as elections.  Given that Kennedy’s only received less than 60% twice in his Senate career (in 1962 and 1994), the description seems somewhat apt.

Perhaps.

I see him more like the British parliamentarians of the 1820’s; elected, but yet sitting in secure sinecures for life, loyal to factions that politically defined them.

Anyway – best wishes to Senator Kennedy.

To:  Al Franken, Senate Candidate

From:  Mitch Berg, common schmuck

Re:  Profile in Courage

Mr. Franken,

It has to look bad now; your tax problems are becoming a pop-culture punch line to the point where even some of the people who drank your kool-aid are trying to toss you under the bus.

This has to be the dark night of your political soul.

But I urge you, Al – fight the tide!  Take those who are trying to throw you under the bus, and body slam them like you did that senior citizen who was heckling Howard Dean.  Rhetorically, I mean.

Let’s face it, Al – you were “swiftboated” [*]!

Because if you depart the race, what is the DFL left with?  A dozey addlepated pseudoprofessor from a “peace studies” “program” (St. Thomas adopted the program because it didn’t fit National American University’s standards of academic rigor), and yet another lawyer.  Norm Coleman’s a lawyer, for crying out loud; they’re practically kissing cousins!

So you have to stay in this campaign, Al.  You have to!  Because…er, you owe it to the children!  Only you have what New York needs.

Minnesota. Only you have what Minnesota needs.  Sorry.

Anyway – stay the course, Al! The Strib’s hard at work gundecking all that “tax” folderol, anyway – you can ride this out, with a little help from your friends at 425 Portland (occupant moved, no forwarding address)

You can do it, Al!

That is all.

[*] “swift-boat-ing, v. To tell inflammatory, incriminating stories about Democrats that happen to be documentably completely true.

Now, bear in mind that if you look in the “politics” bookshelf for received wisdom, you are likely to be disappointed,  Most of what’s on the “politics” bookshelf is the equivalent of bad talk radio; button-pushing mixed with selective self-adulation.  I don’t take much of the genre all that seriously, even when I agree with the author.

But Al Franken’s “Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell” was particularly galling, since the “lies” were, in many cases, disagreements, differences in interpreting things – the usual stuff that comes from “communicating about complex things with humans”.   By slapping the word “lies” on every disagreement, Franken set the already-sorry state of American communication back by decades.

So yes, I’m happy to see RedState’s new piece, “Bearers of False Witness and the False Witnesses They Bear”, which I link via Brodkorb (and is in turn driven by Michael’s work on Franken’s tax records):

You may think that’s an odd title for a blog post about comedian and Senate candidate Al Franken, but those are his words. In his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken attempts to paint anyone who disagrees with him as a liar or worse. Ironically enough, this book has put the failed radio host on a path of lies and deceit, due to his failure to pay for workers’ compensation while the book was being written and researched.

Franken’s defense…ignorance. While this may apply to Franken in most cases, it is a hard sell in this instance. In order to believe Franken’s claims of ignorance on his corporate governance problems you must believe totally disregarding reality:

Read the whole case.  Er, thing.

G. R. Anderson – a writer who apparently spent his career at the City Pages rehearsing to be the next Doug Grow, building a career on soft-core DFL flakkery – gushes about MN Senator and and DFL hatchetwoman Tarryl Clark.

Did I say gush?  Yes, I did – like three times.

Well…?

Mid-session Fridays are sometimes a ho-hum affair at the Capitol. But media conferences are held on that day to review the past week and preview the week ahead, something the DFL caucus often does by putting Tarryl Clark in front of reporters.

One Friday morning last month, Clark, a state senator from St. Cloud, readied to meet the press before a polished wood conference table in a hearing room. The media savvy Clark always banters with the assembled scribes, talking heads and camera jockeys before getting down to official proceedings. (She’s also normally dressed in some shade of blue.)

Note to Mr. Anderson; I’m told she also likes walks in the rain and hates shallow people.

On this day, murmurs around the Capitol were that Gov. Tim Pawlenty had hopped a flight out of town, presumably to Washington, D.C.

Clark, who possesses a sharp tongue and tenacity, rarely misses a chance to take a loyal oppositional swipe at the governor, and she uttered something about a “super-secret” trip by  Pawlenty in a tone that suggested a wink and a nod: Surely you guys will report on this, right?

Surely he will.  In a reporters notebook festooned with scribbles; “G. R. Clark.  Mr. G.R. Clark.  Mister G.R. Clark”.

A cynic might see a ploy here — a leader of the less-than-moderate Minnesota DFL Party trying to position herself as a moderate who can work both sides of the aisle, unite Minnesotans, yadda, yadda, yadda … But Clark appears sincere.

Maybe a few hearts doodled around the margins.

King Banaian is a little less lovestruck over Senator Clark:

MinnPostToasties runs a long, gushing review of Sen. Tarryl Clark, repeatedly bringing up “she could be governor”. It does its best to portray her as moderate; I’ve heard her “my daddy was a Republican” pitch before. Those of us familar with her views on taxes, what bills we try to pass in response to a bridge collapse, stadium taxation without referendum, or denying access to a business development tool preferred by businesses in her own district, might not be as in awe of Clark as the Post is.

Let’s go back to that “I started out as a Republican” pitch. Anderson:

“I grew in a Republican family, and I voted Republican when I first started voting,” Clark admits, saying that she was hewing to her family members’ core beliefs.

I’d like to know, of course, what Senator Clark thinks that means – or, more importantly, what it’s supposed to mean to voters.

After all, I used to be a liberal!  What did I take from it?  (It’s fodder for another discussion).

What did Clark take from her alleged Republican background (bearing in mind we’re talking about pre-Quist, pre-Reagan Minnesota Republicans, which is to say “DFLers with better suits”?

“They’re pretty moderate. They believe that it’s important to make investments, but they didn’t like the idea of government being in people’s lives, local control, values I still hold.

Of course, the “value” is expressed by equating “Local Government Assistance” (or, as King notes, “ …on taxes, what bills we try to pass in response to a bridge collapse, stadium taxation without referendum, or denying access to a business development tool preferred by businesses in her own district” with “control”; the comparison works in the same way as “Freedom is slavery” works.

Things I don’t necessarily see the Republican Party doing.”

The biggest failing of the MNGOP in the past two years is that it has so abdicated its role as defender of smaller, more local government that Tarryl Clark can say this without getting hooted off the stage by any objective observer.

Well, not G.R. Anderson.  He’s back in his room, building a photo collage.

Reporters nibbled a bit on Pawlenty’s absence from St. Paul, and Clark was happy to offer some red meat. “The governor’s focus may be a stumbling block,” she said at one point. “Depends on whether he’s here or not.” And, later: “If his words were a bridge, I’d be afraid to cross it.”

Her words were wry, with no hint of anger. And they had the effect of painting Pawlenty as, like Clark often puts it, an “absentee governor.”

At the end, one rumor that was hanging in the air finally came as a question: Have you thought about running for governor?

Al Franken sacks his old “campaign manager”, brings in a new one.

What a difference a change in perspective makes: with the news, Roosh…:

Franken brings on new campaign chief, Minn. native has experience unseating incumbents

I don’t care if she can make Monkeys come out of Franken’s [rear exit]. Franken’s issue is his own dumbassness.

Brodkorb:

Hamline political science professor David Schultz is hardly more kind in assessing the state of the Franken campaign. ‘Is this the classic putting lipstick on a pig?’ he asks. ‘Does Franken have fundamentally bigger problems that changing campaign managers won’t solve?’

Schultz is struck by the static nature of the polls in recent weeks. ‘Unless the Franken campaign can get a bunch of people to rethink Coleman and therefore rethink Franken the race is over.’”

And finally, Doug Grow – for non-Twin-Citians, that means “the most in-the-bag member of the in-the-bagosphere”. I add emphasis:

The Franken for Senate campaign became a little more traditional today with the announcement that Stephanie Schriock will become campaign manager in early June. To date, Franken’s campaign has not had a single person with the title of campaign manager…Franken campaign officials say the hiring of Schriock doesn’t signal any major changes in the organization but is a traditional step in preparing for the race against incumbent Norm Coleman. The hiring apparently assumes that Franken will win endorsement at the DFL convention, which is to be held June 6-8. — Doug Grow

I suppose it makes sense:

Democrats have chosen a blogger from each state to “participate” in the Democratic National Convention in Denver. And the winner from Minnesota is: Minnesota Monitor.

I suppose in its own  way it’s cheaper  than hiring a PR firm, while  being pretty much the same thing otherwise…

I knew bupkes about Michelle Obama until her “Barack will save the nation’s soul” crack last winter. I figured then that she was going to be a huge liability among the part of the electorate that doesn’t feel hatred and contempt for the rest of the electorate.
Michelle Malkin writes about that exact observation:

In one of her few (unintentionally) funny moments during a recent sit-down with comedian Stephen Colbert, Mrs. Obama claimed, “Barack and I tend to look at the positives.” That’s a side-splitter. As National Review’s Yuval Levin put it, Michelle Obama is “America’s unhappiest millionaire.” And she has the audacity to extrapolate her misery and her husband’s alleged victimization to the “vast majority of Americans.”

In South Carolina, she called America “just downright mean” and bemoaned “a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day.” And in case you hadn’t heard enough of her carping about how hard it is for a seven-figure-earning family to pay for ballet lessons and piano lessons and pay off college loans, Mrs. Oh-Woe-Is-Me was at it again on the campaign trail in Indiana and North Carolina before Tuesday’s primary.

On the stump, she warmed up (or rather, berated) supporters by complaining about how her husband is an underdog even after he keeps winning primary and caucus after primary and caucus. With a scowl etched on her face, she bellyached that “the bar is constantly changing for this man.” Call the waambulance, stat.

If Obama wins, look for Michelle Obama to be his analog to Billy Carter.

To:  Al Franken

From: Mitch Berg – mere peasant taxpayer

Re:  When The Going Gets Tough.

Mr. Franken,

I’m Mitch Berg.  I’m a conservative Christian Republican.  And I wouldn’t vote for you if you waterboarded me.

But I’m here to ask of you; please, please, Al – be a profile in courage.

Resist the tide.

Don’t drop out of the race.

Now, I don’t give you a lot of credit in the whole “guts” and “perseverence” department; partly because you run like a scared bunny before even the fundamentally-friendly mainstream media, to say nothing of conservative media; if you can’t handle Minnesota’s notoriously-DFL-up-sucking deadtree press corps or a group of conservative bloggers, how the hell are you going to deal with the knock-down, drag-out of life in the Senate?

No matter.  You need…Minnesota needs you to stick this battle out.

Go for the nomination, Al.  Fight for every last Minnesota DFLer vote.  Raise every DFL dollar you can.  Battle for every news cycle.  Send your oppo people to slash and burn your opponents – and respond in kind to their assaults!

The Minnesota DFL needs it, Al.  And deserves it. 

Please, Al.  You’re good enough.  You’re smart enough.  And dog-gone it, bloggers need you.

That is all.

There are two Americas.

One of them admires former terrorist thug Bill Ayers.  Y’know – the major political influence that Barack Obama hasn’t tried to underbusify yet.

That is an American flag he’s standing on (although this first America doesn’t care much). 

The other America doesn’t.

I hate to think that I’ve become this cynical – but, sad to say, I have.

Whenever I see some lefty parrot-media outlet make some disparaging claim about Republicans, in the back of my mind a voice chimes in “somewhere out there, a Democrat is doing the same thing, only worse, and they are trying to draw attention away from it”.

And that little voice is usually right. Nobody would be argling about “McCain’s preacher” had it not been for Jeremiah Wright. Not a single Dem would be nattering about Limbaugh’s tongue-in-cheek “Operation Chaos” if they hadn’t been doing the same exact thing for years.

And so when I saw that the leftybots at Uptake were yapping being ejected from GOP conventions…

Minnesota’s Republican Party seems very camera-shy. Over the past several months Republicans have prevented journalists from recording their candidates at events…“[the] DFL makes it a policy to allow press, including videobloggers to attend all of its conventions and debates”,

…that voice said “the Tics have to be doing it, and much worse”.

And as usual, that voice was right. DFLers ejected Republican camerapeople at DFL conventions all over the state.

At CD2:

a Republican staffer was told to stop video tapping at 2nd CD DFL convention today.

And CD1:

Last week, a Republican staffer was kicked out of the 1st CD DFL Convention. If you’re keeping score at home, this is the second black eye for the Minnesota DFL.

And CD8:

…a Republican tracker at the 8th CD DFL convention was verbally and physically harassed. The staffer was pushed, his camera was grabbed and disgusting comments were made to him about President Bush and Senator Coleman. Thankfully, most of the incidents were caught on film.

Michael adds:

I should add that I haven’t had any trouble blogging from DFL conventions and both DFL staff and volunteers have treated me with respect.

It’s up to the hosts, of course – but I conventions should be opened to the other party’s observers, especially bloggers. And the local Sorosphere should be ashamed of their one-sided “reporting” of this issue.

Or, since shame would seem to be beyond them, the news consumer should know that they’re only getting half the story or less from them.

UPDATE AND BUMP:  The MinnPost, which claims to be “High Quality Journalism For People Who Care About News”, runs the Uptake story pretty much verbatim, ignoring the DFL’s at-least-equal transgressions.

Why, it’s almost like the MinnPost is…a leftyblog!

CORRECTION:  My bad. I have the “Daily Planet” and the “MinnPost” in the same category in my feed reader. 

I apologize for any insult inherent in comparing the MinnPost to the Planet – a site that can be fairly described as “all the measured journalistic detachment of the Minnesota Monitor, heh, without the funding”. 

My bad.  Sorry.

My NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb has been beating up the Franken campaign like Mikek Tyson going over an errant waiter.

Now, even the AP is on the story, with this piece by the AP’s Pat Condon (with whom we’ve visited in the past) on Brodkorb and his MO:

From the kitchen table in his tranquil suburban neighborhood, Brodkorb for the last year has used his blog “Minnesota Democrats Exposed” to launch a furious political assault on Franken. He’s labeled the former comedian and liberal commentator a “mean-spirited and un-Minnesotan” candidate who’s running a “desperate and ridiculous” campaign.

That’s routine stuff in the world of political blogging, but in the last two months Brodkorb has scored two direct hits that have the Franken campaign reeling. Brodkorb scooped the traditional media by detailing extensive bookkeeping problems in New York and California that ultimately prompted Franken, this week, to pay about $70,000 in back taxes to 17 states.

The stories have knocked Franken off balance as he prepares to take on Sen. Norm Coleman, in what’s expected to be one of the most expensive and toughest-fought U.S. Senate races this year.

I loved this next bit (emphasis added by me):

Democrats have tried to downplay Brodkorb by portraying him as part of coordinated Republican attacks.

“When people talk about the right wing noise machine, that’s what it is,” said Franken spokesman Andy Barr.

But even some of his harshest critics admit Brodkorb, who has no real counterweight on the left, has been effective.

No counterweight.  I love that.  And ain’t it the truth.

UPDATE:  The DFL is spinning like mad to try to un-poink Franken.  And Gary Gross is chopping the spin up like a rhetorical teppanyaki chef.  Read the whole thing, and – if you don’t much care for the notion of a Senator Franken – chuckle.  It leaves a mark on a lot of people other than the would-be senator.

So a little over a month after Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros Monitor pondered Rep. Bachmann’s reticence about giving time to regional non-conservative/Christian media, and my challenge in turn to Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Growth and Justice leader Dane Smith and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, I can report the following:

• Stuart Smalley:  Bupkes.
• A-Klo:  Nada
• Keef:  Zippo
• Betty Mac:  Pfffft.
• Dave Thune:  While not specifically part of my original challenge, I did ask Thune several times to come on the air for some questions about his “puking Republicans” slur.  We’ve not heard the last of that one, yet.
• Dane Smith:  We had an excellent interview on the NARN a week and a half ago
• R.T. Rybak: Well, glorioski!  We have confirmed the Mayor for this Saturday’s NARN broadcast!  The Mayor’s press contact and I just confirmed the details!  I will welcome the Mayor to the show on the broadcast this Saturday, May 3rd.

Kudos the the Mayor! 

And hey, Andy Birkey?  Since Franken, BettyMac, Ellison and A-Klo don’t return my calls, why don’t you ask them why they are even more evasive around right-leaning media than Rep. Bachmann is around the left-leaning media?

Not that I’ll hold my breath or anything.

Democrat “Get Out The Fraudulent Vote” efforts took a hit yesterday when the SCOTUS ruled that states can require almost the same proof of identity that is required to write a check or use a debit card, validating an Indiana voter ID law:

The Indiana law was passed in 2005. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed it as unconstitutional and called it a thinly veiled effort to discourage groups of voters who tend to prefer Democrats.

It was in effect during the 2006 elections when Democrats picked up three congressional seats in Indiana and won control of the state House of Representatives.

One presumes some Tic officials were amazed they had so many honest voters.  Also living ones.

“The universally applicable requirements of Indiana’s voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not ‘even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting,'” [Justice Antonin] Scalia said.

Especially when the “penalty” for not having an ID isn’t disenfranchisement, but merely the filling out of a provisional ballot. 

It’s been a month since Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Monitor complained that Rep. Michele Bachman (GOP, MN6) fails to disregard the Minnesota mainstream media’s anti-conservative hackery, and limits most of her media to conservative and Christian outlets.

I responded by sending invites to half a dozen key DFL office-holders and candidates. I left emails and, in almost all cases, voice mails with the media contacts for Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, my own “representative” Betty McCollum, Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak, and Growth and Justice president Dane Smith. In the intervening time, I also invited Saint Paul City Council prez Dave Thune to talk with us about his “puking Republicans” slur.

Of course, on Saturday Ed and I interviewed Dane Smith of G’nJ. It was, nearest I could figure, an excellent hour – although frustraing. I think we could devote a couple of shows to be debate between the “Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota” movement that Smith represents, and the opposition of which I’m a part. It was a civil debate – notwithstanding the conceit of talk radio’s opponents, who believe we’re entirely about plate-throwing – and hopefully the first of several.

I noted last week that, in addition to Smith, I’d heard from another of my invitees. Sort of.

Someone in RT Rybak’s press office left a comment on “The Upsider” (a regional blog you should be reading) denying that I’d emailed the Mayor. I responded, in the comment as well as via email, saying that I’d left a note at the City of Minneapolis site on a form that said “we’ll forward the message to the right party”. Apparently that didn’t include the mayor’s office.

We traded an email or two last week. We shall see.

But I’ve heard not a peep from candidate Al Franken’s campaign, or from te press offices of Representatives Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, or Senator Amy Klobuchar.

The logical conclusion is that, while conservative politicians have to either run the gauntlet of hostile left-leaning mainstream media or be considered “evasive” by the even more hostile, more left-leaning alternative media, Minnesota’s liberal politicians feel no compunctions about ignoring the half of their constituents with whom they disagree. They are afraid to face tough questions, preferring the vacuous softballs they get from a regional media that largely regards them as friends – a regional media that largely sympathizes with them (the Strib’s Rochelle Olson and the wife of Keith Ellison have been observed to have a cordial social relatioship; it seems unlikely that most of the Strib’s staff will get too tough with Amy Klobuchar, daughter of longtime columnist Jim Klobuchar; that Dave Thune feels the need to depart the friendly confines of the local media and the lefty echochamber to answer questions.

Which is the sign of a particularly gutless breed of politicians.

UPDATE AND BUMP:  I neglected, in my haste, to note the name of the blog via which I came into contact with Mayor Rybak’s office – The Upsider.

Pennsylvania Democrats!

Vote for Hillary!

So she can be President!

Jay Reding has been bidden by our overlord to tell you:

There’s always the chance that this race could be a shocker and Obama could pull ahead, but none of the polls seem to show that. The most likely outcome is Hillary gets a victory, stays in the race, and the Democrats continue to battle for the nomination. Unless Clinton dramatically loses the next few races, the possibility of this race being settled in Denver will remain.

It takes a village to raise a village!

Vote Hillary!

You’d think that after “Crackerquiddick”, the Obama campaign would learn to tread lightly around the beliefs of most of us bitter, gun-totin’ Jesus freaks in the midwest.

Well…

Erick Erickson over at RedState tells us all of an anti-Christian video recently introduced with great frivolity by Internet philosopher and Obama technology advisor Larry Lessig. The video introduced at a Google Author series seminar shows Jesus singing the Gloria Gaynor tune “I Will Survive” in a very effeminate, theatrical way. As the song ramps up, Jesus throws off his robe and strips down to a diaper-like covering, then he sashays through a modern city until he gets hit by a bus in an intersection.

Larry who?

Again, as Erickson points out, “Barack Obama’s campaign has regularly cited Lessig as a key supporter on technology issues (see here too) and made sure Lessig was quoted when listing Obama’s technology endorsers.”

Hm.