The Tic Nutroots are snivelling about yesterday’s debate:

How could ABC News do it? Behold the teeth-gnashing. And hair-pulling. And foot-stomping.

How dare the ABC moderators ask questions about topics that are, you know, topical?

How dare they ask questions that–gasp!–conservatives are asking.

How dare they explore questions of character, truthfulness, and judgment?

Don’t you know you’re supposed to do the Schoolmarm thing or the Suck-Up thing or the Bogus Plant thing?

Don’t you know you’re supposed to just let the candidates bloviate about Compassion or Global Warming or Diversity or some other MSM-designated Important Issue?

Well, there’s yer mistake, Democrats.  You need to get the University of Saint Thomas to “manage” the debate for you.

Then you can get elected, and “manage” public discourse via campaign finance reform and the “Fairness” Doctrine!

I need to see how the Chinese are doing, “managing” those Tibetan demonstrators…

“We’ll be pushing up to the gate now. Thanks for flying Big Sky airlines, and on behalf of co-pilot Hank Bjornson and stewardess Gladys Tostengaard, I’d like to welcome you to Fargo“. The disembodied voice of the pilot sounded flat but crisp over the tinny loudspeakers.

“Wow, I thought…” she started, unwrapping her hand from its death grip on my wrist.

“…Praise Jesus“.

She stopped. “Did he just say “Praise Jesus?””

I cocked an eyebrow. “I dunno. That’s what it sounded like”.

She slowly unbuckled her seatbelt. “Wow. So do people talk like that out here…?

“Not usually”, I replied, climbing up and offering her my hand to climb out of the seat. “People out here are pretty much like people everywhere”, I said, reaching into the overhead rack to grab our carryons.

“Well, I’m tempted to hope so”, she said, putting her sunglasses on. “That flight in was turbulent as hell”.

I chuckled. “Nah”. I banished the thought from my head, and set about getting us out of the cramped 737.

As we climbed down the ladder to the tarmac, she took my arm. “Mitch”, she said, cocking her sunglasses up onto her forehead to push back her curly brown bangs, “thanks for taking me out here. It felt weird knowing you this long and not having ever seen where you’re from”.

I smiled. “My pleasure!” I said. We shared a kiss as we walked through the door into the Hector Field terminal.

A woman in a bonnet and a plain brown peasant dress stared bullets at us, her plain, un-made-up face creased with lines of anger and hate among the more mundane wrinkles. I filed that thought away for later, too.

———-

We needed to rent a car for the drive to my parents’ place, two hours west of Fargo on I94. We walked into the “Midwest Rent-O” office, at the west end of the Hector terminal. The desk was unmanned. I rang the “service” bell.

Nothing.

I rang it again.

“Wow. Slow…” Marisa started staying, stopping abruptly when a doughy man whose ratty, grease-and-mustard spotted dress shirt barely stretched to cover the spare tire around his waist, with half-hearted blond hair for whom receding was probably a merciful death, slouched into the room from the back office.

“Hullo”, he muttered.

“We’d like to rent a car for two days”.

He rolled his eyes, looking almost irritated. “Oh Kay”, he said, leaning on the “oh” hard enough to make the underlying meaning crystal clear. He walked across the room, grabbing a small stack of forms, walking back to the counter, and then walking back to grab another form he’d apparently forgotten.

“What kind of car?” he asked halfheartedly, as he shuffled his papers and pencils with a great ruffling and grunting.

“Oooh,”, Marisa piped up, smiling, “let’s rent a Jaguar!”

It would be cool having my old friends in Jamestown seeing me in a Jag with a movie star…

“…we don’t rent Jap cars”, the guy behind the counter countered, his voice clipped, his lip curling with muted anger.

“Er – Jaguar is…”, I started – but he didn’t look too interested in talking car trivia. “Look, what can we…”

“And we don’t have any low-riders for your little wetback beaner hootchie, either”, he said, pointing at Marisa.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, rearing figuratively up on her hind legs, “I am Italian American“.

“Whatever. We need two forms of ID. Three if you’re an immigrant”, he said, his speech getting more rushed, almost like he was an an anger high.

“No, man, she’s from New York“, I said, willing my voice to stay calm as I tried to reason with this…man. “And I’m originally from Jamestown“, I added, hoping he’d get the local reference, “not that you couldn’t tell by the accent”, I said, a hopeful smile crossing my face, hoping it’d be catchy.

“Yeah, whatever. People from Jamestown keep moving here taking our jobs. Should send them back where they came from, too…”

“OK – how about an Olds…”

“I’ll give you a Buick Skylark” he said with the finality, like a komissar telling a kulak it was his way or the highway.

I nodded my head. Anything to get out of this dump, I thought.

“A Skylark sounds great”.

I rolled my eyes at Marisa, and reached my hand around her waist, pulling her close. “It gets better. Honest!”

She kissed me. “I believe it”, she whispered. “You came from here”.

“You and seniorita wanna get a f*****g room?”, the doughy man yelled as he bent over the file of cars, his shirt pulling out to reveal an acne-riddled plumber’s crack that might have hidden the Jag Marisa wanted.

———-

My parents weren’t expecting us for another day. We drove the Skylark out to a little Bed and Breakfast in the valley of the Sheyenne River, on the edge of the little town of LaMoure, about sixty miles west-southwest of Fargo.

We drove through the little towns along North Dakota One – desolate little towns where farming hadn’t paid the bills in years. Women in peasant dresses and bonnets, faces lined with worry and scowl lines, tending broods of dirty children, watched from the porches. The menfolk, mostly idled for years by the farm market collapse, mostly stood around by the doorways of the ratty-looking bars, holding cans of beer and bibles, staring us down. Other men – mostly the younger ones – wandered around with hunting rifles and revolvers shooting at signs and vacant buildings and occasional small animals. I bit my tongue; these once-proud men had started out just like me, in towns just like mine. But somewhere along the way…

“This is almost spooky”, Marisa said, peering out at the umpteenth scolding gaze. She was tired from the flight.

“Take a nap. I’ll wake you up when we get there”

“You sure?” she asked, leaning her head against my shoulder.

I nodded. In a few minutes she was softly snoring.

The radio was on a station from Winnipeg. They were playing the Corries, a Scottish folk group. I listened to the lyrics:

Flower of Scotland,
When will we see
Your likes again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit Hill and Glen,
And stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

The Hills are bare now,
And Autumn leaves
lie thick and still,
O’er land that is lost now,
Which those so dearly held,
That stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

I sang quietly along on the next verse – almost a lullaby, I thought, as Marisa snuggled into my shoulder. But yet so far from one:

Those days are past now,
And in the past
they must remain,
But we can still rise now,
And be a nation again,
That stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

0 Flower of Scotland,
When will we see
your likes again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit o’ Hill and Glen,
And stood against them,
Proud Edward’s Army,
And sent them homeward,
Tae think again.

I looked around at my once-proud, once-prosperous home state, and felt a chill go up my spine.

An angry chill.

I shook it off and kept driving.

———-

We pulled into LaMoure and drove up to the B’nB around 2PM. A plump older lady and her stooped, seventy-something husband came out and helped us haul our stuff into the B’nB – a converted Edwardian-era house that had once belonged to a bonanza farmer. The current owners had lovingly restored it over the past decade. The place had four guest rooms. It was a beautiful place.

I slung my bag – an old Dutch navy-surplus duffel bag I’d picked up in Cote D’Ivoire during that egregious misadventure that I knew I’d never dare tell Marisa about – and led her up the hallway to the room. The owner gave me a key, eyed Marisa suspiciously and left without a word.

As I unlocked the door, I noticed the other room across the hall had its door ajar. I paused, listening:

Just you and me, baby. They can’t beat US. We’ll take ’em. You’ll never let me down. You’ll never let me down”.

I stole a glimpse through the jarred door. An obese forty-something man with a Billy Gibbons beard lay on the bed, sleep-talking loudly, his arms wrapped around a World War I vintage M1903 Springfield rifle.

“Is that saliva?” Marisa asked,referring to the moist glint around the end of the barrel, next to the guy’s mouth.

“God, I hope so”.

The door to room three opened. A youngish, African-American couple poked their heads out. “Hey – are you two from around here?”

“It’s a long story”, I said, thinking better of trying to explain my history. “Not really”.

“What’s with these people around this town – hell, everywhere we’ve been in the Midwest lately?” the man asked. He was an attractive, articulate fellow with an accent that bespoke plenty of higher education. “The guns, the anger about the economy, the fundamentalism, the bigotry…”

“For the first time in my life” said the woman, an equally-attractive woman, “I’m not proud to be an American”.

“Well…” I started as I unlocked the door, non-plussed and unsure of how to answer at all, much less defend a home state I barely recognized myself, “give it time. Things’ll change”.

They shut the door.

We stepped into the room. I started putting my stuff in the closet. “Jeez, they say you can never go home again, but this place just seems so wierd. Like, we stepped into a production of “Our Town” that nobody ever called “Cut” for…”

I heard the water start in the bathtub.

“But I promise, it’s not all this weird…”

I felt something brushing against neck – soft fabric. I looked down. It was Marisa’s blouse, wrapped around me from behind, pulling me backward.

“So are you gonna give me a sociology lesson?” she whispered in my ear – a phrase that I’d have never figured would sound suggestive up until then.

You live and learn.

———–

Knock knock.

“Get the door, hon”, she mumbled,half-asleep.

I pulled on a pair of running shorts and looked at the clock. 7PM, I thought. Wow.

And then who on earth would be knocking on my door here, a hundred miles from the edge of nowhere? “Just a minute” I said, as I fished my SIG P220 out of my suitcase. I quietly pulled the slide back; the .45 cartridge was seated in the chamber.

Good.

I held the pistol at the ready behind my leg as I opened the door…

…and relaxed as the familiar face glared impatiently at me.

“Добрый вечер, Михаил Павлович!”, Yevgenii Batiukh muttered through clenched teeth. A young woman – early twenty-something, Filipina in appearance, dressed stylishly and wearing very non-North-Dakotan stiletto heels, stood next to him.

“Здравствуйте, Евгений Борисович! Почему Вы здесь? Для того, что я в долгу удовольствие?”, I asked – and he really was the last person I’d expected to meet in a B’nB in a little town in North Dakota in 1999, truth be told.

“I hef bain praktising my Eenglish”, he said thickly. “Meets please my girlfrient, Marta Carlosovna Balakanang”

“Magandang gabi po“, I said, nodding politely, hoping I wasn’t mangling my Tagalog too badly – it’d been years.

“Oh, Mista Berg – good evening to you, too!”, she said with a smile, in English that had only the faintest burr of a Philipino accent.

“Who’s there, hon?” Marisa asked from under the covers.

“Oh, you remember my friend, Gene the Crazy Ukrainian Enforcer? The one I told you about? He’s here with his girlfriend Marta”, I looked at Yevgenii and nodded at Marta.

“Oh!”, she answered, shaking fatigue from her voice, “cool!  Hi, Gene”, she said.  “Mitch has told me so much about you”.  She reached out from under the covers to start finding her clothes. “Gimme a minute!”

“Eez Plezha”, he responded.

“To what do I owe the honor, Yevgenii Borisovich?”

“Well, ees not oll plezhoore”, he said, lingering over each word like it was a sloppy cherry Varenikh. “Een fact, I vas soorprized to see you rezhistered here. Eez coincidence! But Mikhail…” he said, nodding conspiratorially, “Ve heff to talk”.

“Meet me at ze Better Days Bar, on Main Strit, in heff an hour”.

———-

Half an hour later, Marisa and I walked down a decrepit but well-maintained side street, as darkness gathered.

Suddenly, she pulled on my arm. “Look”, she said, sounding alarmed.

In front of a house – 210 Second Avenue – stood a cross. A man in a grease-spotted wife-beater with a holstered revolver was wrapping it with turpentine-soaked rags.

I shook my head to try to clear the vision from my mind – but it was real. I walked over to the guy.

“Sir – are you gonna burn this cross?”

“Hail, Yeeeah”, said the guy. “Gotta teach them thar furriners and japs and Ay-Rabs that we ain’t gunna surrender”. He grinned a mirthless grin.

“Mitch”, Marisa whispered, “look!”.

Next door, at 208, the neighbors – a man in a “WWJD” t-shirt, his wife in a bonnet and a peasant dress, and their kids, gamboling about in joy, were wrapping gas-soaked rags around a ten foot tall wooden Star of David.

“Wow”, I thought as we started walking down the street. “Swear, hon – I’ve never seen anything like this before. I lived here over twenty years, and…”

“Mitch!”, she said again, pointing across the street to 207 – where a hawk-faced woman in a bonnet and peasant dress wrapped a kerosene-soaked sheet around a large wooden crescent – the symbol of Islam.She noticed us, and grinned a venal, toothless grin. “Yieeew-all gunna stay fer the cross-burnin’ festival?” she said with a shrill Arklahoma drawl.

“Maybe”, I said, moving along, nodding as I grabbed Marisa’s hand.

The woman abruptly turned and drew a Colt Peacemaker from under her skirt, firing three shots into the air. Marisa flinched.

“Zebulon? Jedediah? Ezekiel! Dinnertime!”

I struggled to take it all in. The woman’s neighbors over in 205 – a paunchy, overall-clad man wearing a seed cap – was pouring a can of gasoline on a big wooden mockup of a Klansman’s hood.

“Sir”, I yelled to him from the sidewalk as we shuffled down the streeet – “you’re burning a Klan hood?”

“Outsahders is outsahders”, he muttered without looking at us as he continued working.

Marisa tugged my sleeve,and pointed to 203, where a group of drunken, mulletted, wife-beater-clad louts was putting the finishing touches on a huge wooden leprechaun, with a fierce, red, drunken, belligerent caricature of an Irish face and big hands clutching a big bottle of whiskey fabricated from a single elm tree stump. One man poured benzine on the wooden statue.

“I have to say”, Marisa nodded, “that, moral aspects aside, the woodworking is amazing“.

“Yeah”, I nodded, eyeing the huge Golden Gopher being rigged with dynamite across the street at 202.

Finally we turned onto LaMoure’s dirty, ratty main street, and walked to the Better Days bar, a little roadhouse that advertised “Eats”, “Beer” and “TV”.

A group of sullen men – teens through the sixties, mostly in flannel shirts and seed caps – sat on benches on the cracked sidewalk, mounds of crushed Shaefer cans piled up around them, as we walked past. They hushed as we got close, and eyed us wordlessly as we walked in.

The bar smelled of cigarette smoke and vomit. Two tables of fat, doughy people in seed caps and quilted jackets sat, wordlessly eyeing their beer; at another table, a man was cleaning a disassembled hunting rifle as two shot glasses of brown liquor jiggled in front of him. Behind the bar the usual assortment of trinkets, bottles and glasses clashed artlessly; a poster declared “Jesus Saves. You Spend”. A George Jones song played on a wan jukebox in the background.

As we walked to the bar, Yevgenii and Marta walked in. “Mikhail! I heff forst rount!”

He turned to the barkeep, a doughy, malevolent-looking man wearing a “Cheaper Crude or No More Food” T-shirt over a slowly-undulating paunch that almost-completely covered a holstered .38 revolver. “Two wodkas, and two glasses of vite vine!”

“Wodka?”, said the barkeep, a malevolent scowl crawling across his wrinkled face. “WOD-ka?”

The bar got even quieter.

“You some kinda FAY-gut?” he said in the same Arklahoma accent that everyone else seemed to be affecting, looking at Yevgenii, whose bonhomie was rapidly bidding him au revoir – and I knew how dangerous that could be.

“Er, hey, bud – nah. He’s from…”, I thought, measuring my words, “Canada. Canadian. Hey – two Buds, and two Bud Lights for the ladies – and ya wanna get us some peanuts and chips?”

He shuffled away to fill the order. A disembodied older male voice muttered, sotto voce, in the background “This country was a lot nicer before we started tradin’ with them Ay-rabs and Wetbacks, and them and the Jieeews started runnin’ the place“.

I looked; a table full of doughy old men sat, eyeing us.

Yevgenii and I led the ladies to a table in the corner by the front; we sat with our backs to the wall.

“Mikhail Pavlovich – Ve came here to get aVAY vrum eet all”, Yevgenii started out, looking puzzled. “Vat is VIT zese peepel?”

“I don’t know. This place used to be – civil. Civilized. A typical small town, in a typical American part of the country, full of people with the same mix of human imperfections and dreams of improving themselves as every other place in the country – hell, the world“, I said, taking a drag off the Budweiser.

“Zo vot heppened?”, Yevgenii asked, focusing intently on a small group of young, wife-beater-clad toughs who’d come in the back door. “Eez like…”

“Like an Ingemah Bugman film”, Marta interjected, not touching her Bud Light.

“No”, Marisa said, her eyes lighting up with a sudden realization. “A David Lynch production”.

Damn, I thought. Maybe that was it.

“Yevgenii – I think that’s it! I think I know what’s happened! The stereotypical Arklahoma accents, the odd behavior, the sense that the whole town is keeping some deep dark secret…”

“Vot?” Yevgenii started – before the sound of breaking glass drew our attention.

Oh, crap.

One of the local toughs was sauntering over to us, a broken beer bottle in his hand. “Ah think we got oarselves a bunch of Fay-guts and Imm-uh-grunts heer”, said the man – average height, with a red mullet tamped down by a green seed cap, stocky in the way that people get when they start slinging hay bales at age eight. His two friends sauntered behind him, carrying pool cues even though the bar had no pool table. Two of the doughy men from the back table rose to join them. “Jee-zuz don’t like fay-guts and imm-uhgrunts”, he said. “I betcha y’all are Moozlems“.
“Left”, I muttered. Yevgenii nodded. “Hey, fellas”, I said. “Howzabout I get you guys a drink. On me”, I said, standing up, digging in my pocket as if for my wallet.

“We don’t want your faw…” he started, abruptly taking a swing at me. I slipped aside, turning his momentum against him and slinging him face-first into the wall behind me, as Marisa and Marta screamed and shuffled backward. I quickly twisted his arm behind his back until I heard a “snap”, and kicked him hard in the ribs to keep him down.

Yevgenii sprang like a coiled cobra at the man on the left, feinting and drawing his block away with his left hand before smashing him in the face with his Bud bottle.

Marta leapt to her feet, and snapped a pair of nunchucks from her purse, neatly smacking the third tough in the face, sending him sprawling over a bar stool.

I heard a metallic snick as I turned. One of the doughy guys who’d come up from the back table was drawing and cocking a Ruger Redhawk, lifting it toward my head, its .357 inch bore looking more like 35.7 inches from this angle…

…when the man screamed in pain and slumped forward, the pistol discharging into the floor in a geyser of sawdust and wood splinters; Marisa had kicked him in the giblets. I sprang forward, kicking him in the face, sending him sprawling backward as teeth and blood spewed from his mouth. He fell like a sack of durum to the floor. I stomped hard on his pistol hand as I drew my own piece to cover the rest of the people in the bar. Yevgenii, his own silenced Makarov drawn from under his jacket, moved silently, his eyes fierce and bright and calculating, toward the remaining table of sitting people. “No vitnesses, da?”

“No!…NYET!” I yelled. He instantly averted his pistol upward from the first man’s temple. “Vy?”

“It’s not their fault – I know why this is going on. C’mon! Get them outta here”, I motioned toward Marta and Marisa, “I’ll cover. Meet me at your car!”

Yevgenii led the way out of the bar, pistol at the ready, as I covered the bar with my SIG. When they’d left, I fished a $20 out of my pocket. “This should cover the beer, the chips and a tip”, I said as the four men groaned in pain on the floor in the otherwise silent bar. I backed out to the street, and ran toward Yevgenii’s rented Cherokee.

“Get out on the highway to the west – now!”

We drove past groups of people, slowly shambling their way out of town to the west – men in mullets and wife-beaters, women in bonnets and peasant dresses, diaperless children in greasy t-shirts trailing behind them. “I knew it!”

Yevgenii spun the wheel, and we turned onto a two-lane road across the flat prairie as the last streaks of sunlight in the west turned the sky a blood-hued purple.

“Zo – vot?” Yevgenii demanded, the adrenaline slowly subsiding.

“Mitch?” Marisa whispered, looking a little dizzy as her own adrenaline rush faded.

“There’s an old Coast Guard “Omega” navigation transmitter outside town”, I started. “It’s a huge old thing, a huge array of towers, from the sixties or seventies, designed to send a signal around the globe so ships and planes could navigate. It was so powerful it interfered with wildlife’s natural homing instincts, and could fry ducks out of the sky if they flew too near. Satellites made it obsolete, so it was decommiissioned in the early nineties. But…” I started – and saw the aircraft beacons at the top of the array of 600-foot-tall antennae, “if someone were to have taken them over, and run some sort of electromagnetic mind-control system…”

“…like ve – ze Sovietz – vur dewelopeeng”, Yevgenii interjected soberly.

“Exactly. The old “Коллективные мозга…”, I stopped and corrected myself, “‘Collective Brain’ system!”

Yevgenii’s face flashed recognition. “Da. Ze system vas zuppozed to make prrropagahnda obzoleet, by controllingk za peoplez minds by remote control…”

“Jeez”, I muttered. It was all coming together now. “The Russians’ – er, Soviets’ experiment failed because they never had the transmitter power at the right frequency to actually trigger the psychochemical reaction outside the lab. But with Omega…the transmitters have enough power at the right frequency to cover all of Middle America”. I calculated the numbers in my head. “Like, there’s enough power here to cover the whole country, from the Poconos to the Sierra Madre…”

I paused to let that sink in for a moment. “Someone is turning Middle America into a David-Lynch-style Hollywood caricature of Middle American life”.
“Ve heff to do someting”, Yevgenii muttered. Our eyes locked for a shaved moment. We both knew what that was going to have to be.

And it was gonna be ugly.

———-

We drove another few miles, past small knots of people sauntering to the west, toward the lights in the sky. Yevgenii finally doused the lights, and we whipped into a shelterbelt.

“Stay here”, I told Marta and Marisa. I thought about giving them the SIG, just in case, when Marta pulled a Smith and Wesson Model 29 – with the eleven-inch barrel – from her purse. My jaw must have dropped; Yevgenii explained “Zey ver free vit a full of gaz at ze WalMart in Wahpeton…”

We camouflaged the Cherokee with fallen branches, and then moved to the west edge of the shelter belt. There were lights on, and the Omega base complex was humming with activity.

Odd, since the base had been closed for most of a decade.

I nodded to Yevgenii, and we set out toward the cyclone fence that surrounded the complex. I hacked through both layers with my jackknife – and we were inside, moving swiftly and silently.

I heard voices. We froze and took cover behind a fold in the ground. Two men, dressed in all-black Soviet-pattern battledress with black ski masks and goggles, walked toward us – the outline of the curved “banana-clip” magazine of their AK-74s unmistakeable in the ambient light from the tower lights.

“음, 베이컨!” said the leader of the two men in a harsh, North Korean accent.

They both lit cigarettes. Perfect.

I signalled Yevgenii, who nodded curtly and took careful aim.

Silently, I slipped behind the trailing man; he’d just blown his night-vision to hell, lighting up the cigarette. Amateur flub, for a pro, I figured. Oh, well.

I slipped silently behind him, grabbed him around the head as I kicked his legs out from under him, and hacked at his neck with my jackknife. He struggled for a shaved moment, and then slumped to the ground, blood geysering and then ebbing. His leader was already splayed out on the sod, two 8mm entry wounds where the bridge of his nose had been. I nodded approvingly at Batiukh; for an older guy, he still had the eyes and the reflexes.

We grabbed the guards’ AKs and a few extra magazines, and set off toward the center of the compound, the concrete Control Bunker. Hunkered down, we alternated between creeping forward and covering each other.

We got into the shadow of a generator building – the last stop before the control bunker – and looked around, taking stock. We counted at least six more guards with rifles – and we knew there were more where they came from, noticing the two-story barracks block across the way. A couple of black Chevy Suburbans sat in front of the control block.

“Cover”, Batiukh hissed, signalling me that he was going in…

…until I grabbed him. There was a car coming. Batiukh held up, as the lights of another black Suburban bounced into view.

The truck ground to a halt in front of the control bunker. Two Koreans got out first, scanning the area. Then, two more men – middle eastern, I noticed, mildly incredulous – got out, pulling a handcuffed, middle-aged caucasian man. He looked familiar…

“Devvid Leench”, Batiukh hissed.

Damn, I thought. A bunch of North Koreans are in the middle of North Dakota, holding oddball American auteur David Lynch, of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Dune fame, hostage?

I was right!

“Cover me”, I hissed at Yevgenii as the five men walked into the bunker. He switched to the AK – no time for subtlety now.

I got up, and dashed through the scattered shadows, silently approaching the entrance. As I got within ten feet, a guard came out, his rifle slung.

Sucks to be you, I thought, planting the knife squarely in the center of his throat. He slumped to the ground, and I moved into the entry tunnel; I sensed more than saw Batiukh moving up to cover behind me.

I slung the AK, and drew the SIG as I walked down the access hallway, signalling for Batiukh to make sure nobody came through the door behind me.

A sign above the hallway said “Control Room”. I silently slipped to the edge of the door, and peered around the corner. Two Korean guards stood watching the center of the room; one of the middle-eastern men held a gun on Lynch, while the other undid his handcuffs.

“So now you put Blue Velvet in the demoduplexor”, said the man with the gun, “and I will turn the mechanism on”. Stressing the last syllable of each sentence – Iranian. What the…?

And Blue Velvet...?

This was getting serious. Middle Amerrica was about thirty minutes away from morphing from hackneyed urbanite cliche to overwrought and psychodramatic.
I shifted the SIG to my left hand, and took my jackknife in the right. I silently sized up my aim, said a quick prayer, and threw it.

It stuck firmly in the back of the Iranian gunman’s head. He slumped to the floor. The Koreans hesitated for just a second, shocked. It was all I needed; I slid on my back across the linoleum into the room, double-tapping them both. They slid to the floor, a slick of gore on the wall behind them.

The final Iranian – the apparent leader – ducked behind a stack of transmitter gear. “You will never catch me,” he yelled.

“A cigarette”.

Lynch had spoken.

“Huh?” asked the Iranian, as I wondered about the same thing.

“Lush pomegranate smoke”, he said in an affected British accent.

Whaaaa?

The Iranian stepped out from behind the stack of transmitters. “What you say, it make no sense…”

I opened up with the AK, firing all thirty rounds in one long burst, just to clear the conceptual dissonance from my mind in one long cathartic release of tension and ammunition. The Iranian fell to the ground.

“I…never…understood…Blue…Vel…”, he said, before gurgling to a stop, dead.

“Gets them every time”, Lynch said with an enigmatic smile, dancing a wee jig.

I shook my head to clear yet more dissonance, and walked to a VCR player that was attached to a piece of equipment.

“It was playing “Twin Peaks” through the demoduplexor”, Lynch recited in a drab monotone. “The demoduplexor was attached to the transmitter. It was thus affecting the minds of everyone in the middle of the United States – simultaneously hypnotizing them into becoming adjuncts of my concept.” He stopped, then grinned cryptically. “Pretty cool”.

I hit the big red “Emergency Off” button – and with a clanking and rattling, the huge old transmitter shut down.

“They were summoning the locals to do their will”, Lynch said.

“That’d explain everyone that was slowly walking this way like a bunch of zombies”, I mused, riffling through a pile of documents that the Iranian had dropped.

“They should all be OK now”, Lynch said in a Hindu accent.

Yevgenii Batiukh backed into the room. “Come here and look”, he yelled, leading me to the door of the bunker.

From around the facility perimeter, rifles twinkled as the Korean guards fled under a heavy, accurate fire from the locals, who, freed from the mind-control beams, realized the danger that faced their families and their nation, drew hunting rifles from the backs of their pickups, and attacked, taking a heavy toll from the fleeing guards.

In ten minutes, it was over. The locals – shaking the last of the delirium clear from their heads – walked back home to nurse the mother of all psychic hangovers. Marisa, Marta, Yevgenii, Micheal Lynch and I stood in the shadow of the Omega transmitter.

“I, and all of American civilization, owes you my and our lives, respectively” Lynch sang to the tune of a New Bedford whaler’s chanty. “Please accept this as a token of my regard”.

He handed me a Raggedy Ann doll. It had had a pencil stuck through the back of its head. In place of blood was yellow Play-Doh.

“Um – thanks”. I turned to Yevgenii. “I’m trying to figure this out. This operation had Korean muscle and Iranian brains – but most of these documents are in…”

I riffled through a small stack of them, “…Hungarian”.

“Odd”, Yevgenii said. “What are they about?”

“Not sure”, I said – my Hungarian was rusty. “Something about ‘buying mind control on the cheap’? I have no idea”.

In the distance, a siren wailed – probably the county sheriff coming to investigate. Time to get out of here. I pocketed the documents, and we got into the Jeep and drove back to the hotel.

The proprietors met us at the door. “Know what happened to that there nice couple from Chicago?” the woman asked. “They seem to have taken off. Ya, sure – you bet”.

She said it in that “Fargo” accent. The Arklahoma accents were gone! My home is full of real people instead of Hollywood cliches again!

“Crap”, I said. “So the only idea those two will ever have about life in Middle America is that everyone acts like extras in a David Lynch movie, like they’re rotely reciting characterizations from Twin Peaks. Nothing but alarmist, slanderous cliches.” I shook my head. “What a shame”.

“Da”, Yevgenii said. “Good ting he’s not in government!”

I smiled. “Yeah. Whew!”

UPDATE: I’m informed that video shows I was a Human Factors guy at a local network engineering company in 1999. I misspoke – and I am sorry that you simpletons are all bitter about it.

Last week, I noted that of the six big DFL pols or organizations that I’d contacted – Franken, Klobuchar, Ellison, McCollum, Rybak, and Growth and Justice – none had responded to my request for an interview.

This, of course, in response to Andy Birkey’s piece in the Minnesoros Monitor, who sniffed that Michele Bachmann seemed to be limiting her media appearances to friendly conservative and Christian outlets.

And we have an update!

I left phone and email messages to all of the subjects save one, for whom I couldn’t find phone numbers. And as I noted, I got responses from only one – and Dane Smith of Growth and Justice will be appearing on the NARN this weekend.

And now there’s another – maybe.

Updates as they are warranted.

Politico sez Hillary is…sandbagging?:

A lot of coverage of the Clinton campaign supposes them to be in kitchen-sink mode — hurling every pot and pan, no matter the damage this might do to Obama as the likely Democratic nominee in the fall.

In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What’s more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: that if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat.

Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.

Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working-class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico).

Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton — in the genteel confines of an intraparty contest — never could. Top targets: Obama’s radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style.

Is Madame Putin just paying out rope, biding her time for ’12?

Barack Obama on middle America:

So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Nothing like a little bigotry to kick off campaign season.

It’s been a good stretch for Democrat bigotry; it kicked off with Saint Paul City Council prez Dave Thune worrying in public that  Republican delegates would puke all over Saint Paul if the bars stayed open (and “clarifying” that while he wasn’t trying to insult lobbyists, Republicans were a bunch of warmongers).

Back in ’04, the Dems were good enough to keep the most preening pieces of bigotry until after the campaign.

Ain’t technology grand?

A few weeks ago, the local Sorosphere tried to unload their brickbats at Michael Brodkorb for reporting that Al Franken’s handlers were working hard to insulate the former comic and SNL star from reporters.

“Pshaw” they said.  Not exactly Pshaw, although I think the word is long overdue for a comeback.

But the story’s gone all national now; Kevin Duschere, of the Strib’s Big Question blog, notes:

According to The Atlantic Monthly, reporters covering Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race this year shouldn’t count on getting a lift from Al Franken.

That’s one of the amusing bits arising out of a largely flattering piece in the May Atlantic on Franken, considered the favorite to secure the DFL Party endorsement to run against incumbent Norm Coleman this fall.

The theme of the story by Atlantic senior editor Joshua Green is that Franken, who has built a wildly successful career out of being both funny and confrontational, needs to convince Minnesotans that he’s as serious and somber — and presumably dull — a candidate as any of the rest of them.

One of the ways for the Franken campaign to do this, according to Green, is to limit face time for reporters with the candidate as much as possible, to avoid the chance that he will make an unguarded remark that will explode into the headlines the next day.

Green found this out when he wasn’t allowed to ride along with Franken and his staff on a campaign swing in February through St. Paul, the suburbs and Isanti County.

Can you imagine if Michele Bachmann’s handlers kept reporters from seeing she was conservative?  Or if Jesse Ventura was crazy?  Or that Tim Pawlenty is a lawyer?  Like all of those, “Funny” and “unpredictable” is Franken’s stock in trade.  Is it honest, keeping that from the public?

Maybe, maybe not.  You be the judge.

It’s now been two solid weeks since Andy Birkey, acting in his capacity as a conduit for lefty talking points, gurgitated:

Have Michele Bachmann’s media gaffes and extreme conservative views driven her to speak mainly to conservative and Christian-right news outlets? Bachmann’s media appearances since her election create the impression of a member of Congress who is shy when not among friends, and perhaps a campaign that is concerned about what happens when a nonconservative microphone or camera is pointed in her direction.

So Rep. Bachmann – the conservative firebrand and lighting rod from the Sixth District – has consistently shied away from the regional, left-leaning media, which has engaged in bald-faced campaigns of context-mangling character assassination against every single Republican to the right of Arne Carlson in recent memory (see: Rod Grams, Norm Coleman, Alan Fine), and has been in the bag for every single DFL candidate for every single office in every election in recent history. Their claims – and those of their apologists – that outlets like MPR and WCCO are “balanced” are utterly disingenuous, and about as plausible as Flash claiming he’s a Centrist, my claims to be the “best” feminist in the Twin Cities, or the Minnesota Monitor’s claims to being “independent media”.
Hm.

In response, I wondered – would local lefty politicians be any different? So I sent invitations, two weeks ago, to the following:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar (Emailed and left a phone message for her press person)
2. Senate Candidate Al Franken (Emailed and left a voice mail message)
3. Rep. Keith Ellison (left a voicemail and an email)
4. Rep. Betty McCollum (I left a message with her local press assistant)
5. Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak (Email sent).
6. “Growth and Justice” poobah Joel Kramer President Dane Smith (email sent)

In this email, I told the truth; that Ed Morissey and I are overt conservatives – and that we pride ourselves on doing incisive, but fair, interviews. Not ambushes. Not slime jobs. Which is better than an awful lot of the Twin Cities’ media (to say nothing of the ever-hack-ier Monitor) can say.

Responses:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar: Nothing.
2. Senate Candidate Al Franken: Nothing.
3. Rep. Keith Ellison: Nothing.
4. Rep. Betty McCollum – my “representative” did not respond.
5. Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak: I did get an automated response – but nothing else.
6. “Growth and Justice” poobah Joel Kramer President Dane Smith: Eureka! Mr. Smith will appear on an upcoming Northern Alliance broadcast.

So – the obvious conclusions are that, even when faced with a chance to “reach across the aisle” to the half of Minnesota that is to the right of center, in a medium that pledges to be fair and even-handed (and has demonstrably delivered on that pledge over the course of four years), Minnesota’s elected DFL politicians and candidates are a bunch of snivelling cowards.

(Comments stating anything to the effect of “I’m glad they didn’t waste their time responding to a bunch of conservatives” will be mocked for what they are – the enabling of craven cowardice).

We’ve ripped on “MNBlue” before; in a city full of batsh*t-crazy leftyblogs, it may be the dumbest of the lot.

And of the whole crew, “Grace Kelly” may be the worst of the lot. Grace is a flaming liberal (which is fine), and a 9/11 Truther (which is not).

And this is her idea of an April Fool’s joke:

Being lefties in Saint Paul, it’s easy for people like “MNBlue” to think that everyone agrees with ’em.

It’d be really cool if they were to get the word that politicizing the 35W Bridge disaster this crudely and stupidly is lame, even for someone as deeply dim and morally myopic as Grace Kelly.

Say, through a bunch of firm, polite, but forceful comments explaining exactly why this is so deeply, abidingly moronic.

Hypothetically, of course.

Michael writes:

Less than two weeks ago, the Minnesota DFL and liberal blogs screamed foul when images of the 35-W bridge collapse were used in an issue ad about Senator Coleman’s leadership.

MN Publius called labeled the ad “exploitive” and the DFL Party said that “Senator Coleman’s shadowy supporters are politicizing the tragic I-35W bridge collapse for his and their own benefit.

Living in a one-party town means never needing to develop a sense of shame.

Minutes from this morning’s meeting:

———-

LEADER: Attention! The moment we’ve been awaiting is at hand!

VARIOUS OTHER BUFFALO: Sssssssh!

LEADER: After centuries of being put down by the two-legs, and the humiliation of having North Dakota State University in Fargo co-opt our species name as a mascot …

MANY BUFFALO: (hissssssssss!)

LEADER: …against our will, we are finally to get our due! This morning, I’m told a “Tom Elko” – a two-leg who writes for the Minnesota Monitor, who goes with our interests at heart – is set to blow the horns off of the two-legger conspiracy to keep the buffalo down!

(Much enthusiastic stomping of hooves)

RRRRUUHHHNXXH (a buffalo): Leader? Is this the same “Minnesota Monitor” that ridiculed their would-be leader’s teeth? Or that didn’t know that guns are already legal in two-leggers’ “bars”?

LEADER: Yes! We have set up this computer to show the story when it comes across on the two-legs’ “Inter Net”. Grffffrnx, hit the button to view the “Web Page”.

GRFFFFRNX (another buffalo, albeit less handsome): By your leave!

(Grffffrnx the buffalo clumsily clicks a huge “mouse” button. The Minnesota Monitor story loads)

(not actual size)
(Crestfallen dismay)

GGGRRRRRNHX (Another buffalo): My god! After all these years, they write a story about the two-leg bastards in Fargo – and they put up the wrong logo?

RRRRRRHRRRRRRH: (a short, pugnacious buffalo)  Pffft.  Anything west of Saint Louis Park might as well be Uzbekistan to these two-legs!

AAAAAAXHHHXXXXXHHH (a buffallette, something of a sex symbol at the BADL if I may be so bold): Noooo! To try to generate sympathy for us, they show a picture of another cursed two-leg?  The logo of the University of North Dakota, as opposed to North Dakota State, the purported subject of the two leggers’ story?

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHRN (a frumpy-looking middle-aged female buffalo):  Omigod, it gets worse!  Look what he wrote:  “NDSU has frequently been criticized for its “Fighting Sioux” nickname and its Native American logo.”  Don’t these two-legs proof-read anything?

 RRRRRRHRRRRRRH: Look!  He also writes “This latest incident comes the same week NDSU sorority Gamma Phi was put on “temporary social probation”…They have THE WRONG INSTITUTION!

LEADER: (Silent for a moment, choking back tears): Stupid…stupid speciesist two-leg bastards!

And…scene.

My watch was running a bit slow.

Fortunately, there’s another hint Algore might run.  So I was able to reset my watch.

Oh, yeah – go, Al.  Whooie.

Whatever.

Via Roosh:

By the way – in an era in which the prolific solo-blogger on a mission seems to be endangered, Roosh is becoming a daily stop (indeed, via them miracle of the feed reader, he already is).

Go forth and fail to read him no more.

I didn’t get to hear Obama’s “I Am Not A Racist” speech, but Jay Reding did:

Rhetorically, this is brilliant stuff. But like everything else that Obama says, once one gets past the wonderful words, the message itself is largely meaningless. Sen. Obama admits that Rev. Wright is a racist with a deeply disturbing view of America. Yet he won’t back down from him (any more than he already has). On one hand, he thinks that this country needs to have a conversation about race—on the other, he is siding with people who preach a gospel of racial division.

Sen. Obama just can’t have it both ways.

It’s a given that the nation needs a “conversation about race”. Framing the conversation is the hard part.

Maybe we need a referee…

UPDATE: E-Mo at Hot Air:

It’s essentially a non-distancing distancing, akin to the non-apology apology. He excuses Wright’s anti-American rhetoric with a mixture of rationalizations. Wright gets a pass because he served in the military, because he grew up in another generation that apparently hated America, and because he does good work in other areas. Obama also makes the curious claim that rejecting Wright means rejecting the entire black community — something other black churches might see as rather presumptuous. Obama essentially argues that the same kind of anti-Americanism can be found in all black churches, and speaks at length about how the legacy of racism and Jim Crow makes this incendiary rhetoric ubiquitous.

Is that true? Hardly. Black ministers have flocked to the airwaves over the last few days to vehemently deny that kind of argument. However, Obama has little choice but to argue this, because he needs to cast his situation as having little choice in spiritual venues.

All generalizations are false, including this one – and Ed’s. Is it true that this racial rhetoric is common in Afro-American churches? No, but where it’s present, it is very prominent. There is (or has fairly recently been) at least one Baptist church in Saint Paul, and another in Minneapolis, that I’d cautiously classify as being in the same rhetorical category as Wright. If there were such an identifiable undercurrent of paranoid racism in a white denomination, they would be a (justifiable) uproar.

Now, the First Amendment defends their right to preach whatever they want, and I’ll defend that right (not “to the death” – Patton said my job is to make the other poor dumb SOB die for his country, and I’m cool with that) – but nothing about the First Amendment immunizes people from criticism.

Barack Obama’s association with his long-time minister and spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright, has dealt him the first genuine challenge of his heretofore substance-free campaign. How will Obama get away from his twenty-year association with a conspiracy theorist and racist?

Just like Ringo Starr got through lesser troubles; with a little help from his friends. In this case, friends in the Democrats’ bought-and-paid-for cottage industry in propaganda mills.

Like Steve Perry at the MNMon:

Like any spiritual adviser worth his or her keep, Jeremiah Wright Jr. has led Barack Obama to a place he did not want to go but needed to go

That’s right. It was Wright’s “leadership”! Wright and Obama intended for things to come to this pass!
Perry sniffs at Obama’s previous un-PC badthink on race:

Back in March 2007, Obama delivered a speech (full text) on the legacy of the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, in which he claimed that the efforts of the 1950s and ’60s “took us 90 percent of the way there. We still got that 10 percent in order to cross over to the other side.”

Really? 90 percent? Most of black America likely would not agree.

Don’t you just love it when upper-middle-class white boys put on their “Guilty White Liberal” badge and speak for Black America? What would Barack Obama know about it, anyway?

Thus Obama faces peril on both sides on both sides of the racial divide that white America by and large believes to be a thing of the past.

Actually, the answer is most likely somewhere well between that of the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton poverty-pimp line, and the pollyannaish view that many in “White America” (as if there is such a thing) would like to take. Finding that answer would likely involve doing something that Perry and his lily-white, liberal-guilt-wracked little rag are ill-equipped to do; listen to actual black people that aren’t spoon-fed to him by those who stand to benefit from a few more generations of black misery – the ones that are pulling Perry’s strings.

Either way, the question deserves better attention than it gets from either side.

Code Pinkos disrupt the Senate.

I loved the first lady; “I will not be…
“…”

“…”

“…silenced!”

Like she forgot her lines and had to read a cue card.

Random musings on a sad, pathetic (so far) incident:

• Edwards was right; there are Two Americas.  One of them allegedly goes to $5,000/hour call girls for illicit poot.
• Allahpundit asks “Spitz is a Hillary superdelegate. Think she’ll be getting any awkward questions over this about high-profile politicians who cheat on their wives?”.  Um, Allah?  From whom? 
• Five’ll get you ten that by November, the Sorosphere will have coined the phrase “Spitzering” as a substitute for “asking Democrats questions about unethical or illegal activities”.  Sort of like “Swiftboating”, but for crimes…
• …unless, of course, he was seen smoking at the Emperor’s Club.
• Elliot who?

Fearless prediction:  MoveOn will be demanding America “move on” before tonight’s network evening news.

If I had to pick the dumbest-in-a-scary-Stepford-wives-comet-cult-kind-of-way-line in the infamous “O Ba Ma” video, other than the massed droogs chanting “O Bah Mah”, that would be the one.

It may be the best video Hugo Chavez ever produced.

Ingsoc; it’s not just for fiction any more.

The nice thing about masses of young, first-time voters is that they seem to get distracted by noises, candy, and bits of foil on the ground.

For example, Amber Lee Ettinger, the “Obama Girl” from last summer…

 

apparently didnt bother to vote in her primary:

Last summer, the music video “I Got a Crush on Obama” was a Web hit, splashing a seductive performance by a 26-year-old model named Amber Lee Ettinger across millions of screens and prompting deep thoughts about candidates and sex appeal, the YouTube generation of voters, viral marketing and so forth.

On Tuesday night, City Room ran into Ms. Ettinger at an election-watching party in Greenwich Village and asked how things went at the polls.

“I didn’t get a chance to vote today because I’m not registered to vote in New York,” she said.

So where is Obama Girl registered to vote?

“New Jersey.”

Um, but didn’t New Jersey also hold a primary?

True. The problem, she explained, was that she was sick in New York City and was unable to get back across the Hudson River to the polls in Jersey City.

Makes perfect sense, right?

“I was in Arizona for the Super Bowl — every time I get in the airplane I get sick,” said Ms. Ettinger, who did manage to make it to the Svedka Fembot election returns party at Chinatown Brasserie…The previous day she had hit the streets of New York to interview voters, where a Daily News photographer snapped her picture on Park Avenue.

It’s interesting to explain to non-Minnesotans; Minnesota Republicans pray for blizzards on election night; Republicans will crawl across broken lightbulbs to get to the polls, while Tics – especially the “young and clueless” crowd that the Dems bank on for most of their fortunes – will skip elections to catch the latest episode of “Jackass”. 

For starters; if you’ve not been reading Michael Brodkorb’s extended coverage of Al Franken’s labor scandal in New York City (he allegedly didn’t pay “Al Franken Inc’s” workmen’s comp bills), you should get caught up right now.

But I was drawn in particular to this bit here; a spokesman for Franken bemoans the plight of the small businessperson:

“‘We’re not actually sure what happened at this point. As most small business owners know, when you’re dealing with bureaucratic entities sometimes they make the mistake, sometimes you do,’ she said. ‘We don’t know which one happened in this case but we’re going to pay the fine in good faith so our accountant can deal with it on his time not the presses and not the Republican party’s.’“

You read that right; a representative of the would-be candidate of the party of lumpen, leaden, gray bureaucracy, the party that loves small business (as long as they don’t mind regulation, confiscatory taxes, and being hounded to death should they succeed financially), is whinging about the vagaries of dealing with…lumpen, leaden gray bureaucracy!

Dennis Miller on the Clinton comeback:

Well, you know, it reminded me that in many ways, Hillary Clinton is Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” And you better hold her for the extra breath or she’s coming up with a Ginzu. And that’s what happened last night.

To be fair, only Vince Foster’s rabbit got boiled…

I think Barack Obama — you know, when I hear Dick Morris, and I had my earpiece in, so I was privy to him talking a little bit about how he didn’t think the Clintons would go to the nuclear option. I think people ascribe more nobility to them vis-a-vis the Democratic Party than I do. I’ve always said I think they’re in the Clinton business.

And I loved this bit:

To me, they’re like Bonnie and Clyde ripping through the countryside in that jalopy. And they’ve got Buck Barrel in the back. He’s kicked out the window. He’s shooting out the window. Madeleine Albright is Estelle Parson. She’s screaming. You hear that banjo music. They’re just going to do what they have to to advance their cause.

On the Jack Nicholson endorsement:

Listen, there are surprises every week with Hillary Clinton. Jack Nicholson has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Now, I know there are always cultural scholars that theorize that, apres the lobotomy, Randall McMurphy would, indeed, fall in love with Nurse Ratchet. I guess this validates that theory.

The whole thing, as they say, is worth a read.

(Via Brad C)

Clinton tops Obama in Texas, Ohio and the all-important Rhode Island vote:

Clinton won the big races in Ohio and Texas, as well as Rhode Island, to break her costly losing streak, and asserted, “This nation’s coming back and so is this campaign.” But Obama came away with a large share of delegates, too, in counting that continued Wednesday, meaning he’s got a lead that’s tough to overcome.

Democrats:  Clearly, Hillary is the only candidate that truly carries the Democrat standard.  You need to support her.

Liberal:  Clearly, Obama is the only candidate that truly upholds liberal values.  You need to support him!

Undecided Democrats:  Send money to both of them!

Hillary is coming out of the gate strongly in Texas.

Jay Reding:

Real Clear Politics has the latest round of Texas polling, and it is looking very good for Hillary Clinton. PPP has Clinton up by 6%. Insider Advantage has her up by 5%. Zogby has her up by 3%. Rassmussen shows her down, but only by 1%. At this point, Clinton leads in the RCP Poll Average—narrowly, but it’s a lead nonetheless.

Clinton has a solid lead in Ohio, which puts her in a position to almost certainly take that contest. If she takes both Texas and Ohio, she will be in a strong position going into Pennsylvania and some of the later contests. With each passing contest, the idea that this race may not be settled until the convention becomes more and more likely.

On to Denver, baby!

Jay Reding on Obama’s policy on judicial nominations:

Stephen Bainbridge notes that Sen. Obama doesn’t exactly get it when it comes to the rule of law. The basic principle at stake here is this: judges are supposed to say what the law is, not what they think it ought to be…Here’s what [Obama] said about the type of judge he would nominate:

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.

Paying attention yet?

That’s precisely the wrong way to pick a judge. There is a reason why the statutes of Lady Justice has her wearing a blindfold—the law should not discriminate based on how sympathetic a defendant or a plaintiff is. It is not the position of a judge to decide that someone should be treated differently under the law merely because of the color of their skin or their social disposition. We are nation of laws, not of men. The law applies equally to all, and should not be subjugated to social whim, no matter how well-intentioned.

It’s the legislators who are supposed to base their decisions on “sensitivity” – given that they are elected, that’s part of not only their job description, but – in theory – a prerequisite for the job.

Obama:  More and more, he sounds like Jimmy Carter.

Last week, the Minnesota GOP acted against the six House “Republicans” who voted with the Tics to override Governor Pawlenty’s veto of the “Transportation” Bill.  The House GOP Caucus stripped the six of their committee leadership positions and other party-assigned perks; movements to unseat them proceeded from the bottom up as well, with Kathy Tingelstad losing her endorsement last week, other endorsements very much in jeopardy, and with Keith Downey running a very credible campaign against Rino Ron Erhardt in Edina (which, although I don’t endorse candidates because, well, I’m just a guy with a blog, I heartily urge every Republican in District 41A to get out and support Downey at this Saturday’s convention).  

The DFLSorosMedia reacted predictably; they lauded the RINO Six as “courageous“, they insulted the intelligence of those who disagreed, they pondered “Why Are Republicans So Close-Minded?”

For acting – y’know – like a political party.

That is, actually, just background for this next bit. Ponder the DFLSorosMedia’s love of “diversity of thought” as you read this account of a moderate DFLer and long-time DFL delegate’s dissent from party orthodoxy – on abortion and the war. 

And only on abortion and the war.

And wait to see when you’ll see the DFLSorosMedia demanding “open-mindedness” from the Tics.

And wait.

And wait.

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  Check for the update at the bottom. 

If you live in Minnesota, you know that there is nobody in the state who gets more media attention than the thin film of Republicans who pine for the “good old days”, when Republicans and Democrats “worked together” (by acting like Democrats).

But the rest of the nation might be a little newer to the phenomenon. Oh, we’ve seen bits and pieces; the odd article about fundamentalist liberals (notwithstanding that Evangelicals vote 3-1 Republican)), or the occasional liberal in the active-duty military (4-1 GOP in 2004).

But soon, the flotsam and jetsam of “Republicans for Taxes, Abortion, Gun Control and Dishonorable Peace” will soon start getting the same treatment that Minnesota’s remaining Carlson Republicans get from Lori Sturdevant; bemused fawning.

Example: This piece in the LATimes, by Mark Barabak, entitled “They’re Republican Red, and True Blue to Obama“, which (it should surprise nobody) reads like an Obama puff piece.

GOP renegades seeking a candidate capable of ending the Washington
partisanship are surfacing in the senator’s campaign in surprising numbers.
“Obamicans,” he calls them.

“Unicorns”, I calls them.

Delaware, Ohio – Chatter bounces off the bare walls and checkered
linoleum floor as Josh Pedaline and other Barack Obama supporters burn
through their call sheets.

A map of Delaware County splays across a tabletop. Another table is
laden with cookies, pretzels and other snacks. Volunteers sit elbow to
elbow, pecking at cellphones and pitching the Illinois Democrat in
advance of Ohio’s March 4 primary. The scene is a typical campaign boiler
room.

Except that four of the 13 dialing away are lifelong Republicans,
including Pedaline, 28, who reveres Ronald Reagan and twice voted for
President Bush.

And on, and on, and on, bla bla di bla.

Expect all fifty of the “Obama Republicans” to have their own programs on CNN by September.

UPDATE:  Whenever I read stories about “Republicans for Taxes, Abortion, Gun Control and Dishonorable Peace”, my first reflex is to Google the names.  Life got in the way yesterday, unfortunately – I didn’t get to do a complete search…

…but one of my commenters notes that Josh Pedaline, “lifelong Republican” at age 28, has at least one hit on the BS Search:

This Pedaline guy is a lifelong republican at age 28? Wiat, here’s his Obamasturbation page.  He wrote the page two years ago & at that time he was calling bush ‘evil’. He considers himself a centrist and a moderate.

First rule of thumb; whenever the media points you to either a “Republican that’s turned Democrat”?  Distrust, and verify.