Keith Ellison stands up for corruption:

Requiring photo IDs to vote in federal elections would be banned under legislation introduced Wednesday by Rep. Keith Ellison, who said such requirements disenfranchise minorities, the poor, women, elderly and young people.

“While photo IDs seem harmless, they are in fact the modern day poll tax,” Ellison, D-Minn., said in a statement.

While appeals to logic with supporters of someone like Keith “X” Ellison are probably futile, one is bidden to try.

How, precisely, is a photo ID – something that is equally available to everyone regardless of race or economic status – anything like a “poll tax” which was, in fact, designed to keep people from the polls?

How dare Ellison trivialize the ghastliness of the Jim Crow laws like this?

Ellison, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, got an important backer for the bill, as the panel’s chairman, Michigan Democrat John Conyers, signed on a co-sponsor.

Color me “not shocked”.

Ellison noted that people do not need a photo ID to vote in Minnesota.

 And we’ve not had (much of) a voting scandal, which shows that Minnesotans are either very lucky, very blind or uncommonly virtuous.

“In Minnesota we go to great lengths to make voting as inclusive as possible,” he said, arguing that has helped with voter turnout.

The mania for “turnout” as a goal in and of itself is absurd. 

While I support the right of everyone, no matter how ill-informed or ignorant, to vote, I value “inclusiveness” at the polls less than I do “smart voters”.  Dragging busloads of ignorant, uninformed people to the polls – whatever the party – does nothing good for our democracy.

Making elections amenable to the ignorant, the uninformed and the lazy (to say nothing of the many Democrat initiatives to re-enfranchise felons – who, factually, seem to be America’s most solid Democrat constituency) cheapens the franchise for everyone – and, more importantly, means this nation will be run by ever-lower common denominators of people.

Fill in the snark of your choice right here.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said that requiring a voter ID helps preserve the integrity of the voting process.

“The right to vote is one of the most fundamental liberties we have as Americans,” he said. “And to protect that right, we must ensure that those who vote do so legally.”

But “the integrity of the voting process” is the last thing Keith “X” Ellison would seem to care about.

But what on earth is the big problem with ensuring people are who they say they are?

I’ve never liked Mark Ritchie much. 

Minnesota’s Secretary of State, swept into office last November by the anti-Republican trend of the day over the vastly more-competent Mary Kiffmeyer, came to office on a platform of empowering the indifferent and the illegal.  He’s a sloganeering stealth party hack who is dedicated to bringing masses of uninformed, disinterested people (and, apparently, suggestible ones) to the polls, as I wrote last year.  He’s a leading figure in the trivialization – read “devaluation” – of the franchise in Minnesota.

It’s also a little bit personal.  A little bird told me that Ritchie ordered the removal of the state “painting” (actually a hand-colored photograph) of “Grace”, by Eric Enstrom – a photo in whose genesis my grandmother was closely involved) from the Secretary of State’s office, presumably to be replaced by a photo of Mao leading the Long March.  Suffice to say that Secretary Ritchie might wanna ensure he was alternate backup if plans to walk in front of any buses.

But today, it’s all business.  Nothing personal. 

Allegations have surfaced that Secretary Ritchie has used his office improperly:

I have received the letter sent to Jim Nobles, the Legislative Auditor for the State of Minnesota, earlier this morning requesting that he investigate how contact information provided at an official meeting of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office ended up being used by Ritchie’s campaign to solicit campaign contributions.

The letter, signed by two attendees of the April 2nd meeting organized by Ritchie’s official office at taxpayer expense, call Ritchie’s actions “an abuse of his position as the chief elections officer”:

“On October 22, 2007 we each received a campaign email from Mark Ritchie that included a solicitation for campaign contributions.  It is our belief that Mr. Ritchie used his capacity as Secretary of State to collect information from prospective donors and transfered that information to his campaign.  We believe that this is an unwarranted use of government resources and an abuse of his position as the chief elections officer.” Source: Giga and Tomczak letter to Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles, October 29, 2007

Click here to read entire letter sent to Mr. Nobles. 

Jim Nobles – the state’s legislative auditor – is known as a person of scrupulous integrity; his office is no partisan hacketeria. 

 Stay tuned to MDE for the latest.

Sue Jeffers over at True North takes Jim Oberstar to task:

In your Tribune Counter Point comments on Oct. 26 you stated it is “unfathomable to not be moved to act decisively” after the tragedy of the bridge collapse. Well, what are you waiting for?

On August 6 President Bush signed your bill to authorize $250 million in emergency transportation aid and $5 million in transit funding assistance to MN for the collapse of the 35W Bridge. MN needs the remaining $195 million promised immediately.  Three months later MN is still waiting for the federal funding while behind the scenes state Democrats continue to play politics with state DOT funding.

Read the whole thing.

And ponder the media’s selective double-standard in covering these things.

It was five years ago today that Paul Wellstone’s plane crashed, killing his wife, daughter, some campaign aides, and the flight crew.

I remember it very well, of course; I was working at a contracting job and listening to my radio in the headphones when I got the word (and posted something immediately).

Of course, the tragedy provoked both a political fistfight in getting ready for the upcoming Senate election – and an outpouring of angst, occasional paranoia, some surprising reaches across the aisle, and a bit of electoral sturm und drang, “Paulapalooza”, that may have altered history the exact opposite of the way intended (as well as helping to put this blog on the map):

If you don’t live here, it’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s like this elsewhere in the country. All I know is, it’s totally on the sleeve of this state, and showed in spades last night. It’s something that started as a vague sense of unease seven years ago, when I first started becoming active in politics in Minnesota. It grew to a more coherent notion in 2000. It whacked me over the head when the mob booed the assembled Republican senators.

Hatred of Republicans is part of the majority, *mainstream* DFL culture in Minnesota.

Not dislike. Not disagreement. Hate.

You see it in bits of day to day life in this state: women theatrically holding their noses when talking about Republican candidates at the coffee shop; people who put “No Republicans Need Apply” at the top of personal ads; a mob of 15,000 mainstream, work-a-daddy, hug-a-mommy Minnesotans baying at the moon at the recognition of Republicans.

I’m not one of those Republicans who will ridicule Democrats for continuing to mourn Wellstone; indeed, many dear friends of mine, liberals mostly, had good reason to admire the guy.  I’m still lamenting the too-early demise of Keith Moon – I’m not the one to talk. 

Still, the death (and Paulapalooza) highlighted the corrosion of the part of civil life in this state that Wellstone didn’t control in the DFL.

Michelle Malkin points us to an LATimes story that…

…digs into Hillary’s finances and uncovers more mysterious Chinatown donors with dilapidated addresses in NYC and jobs unlikely to put them in the position of maxing out campaign contributions. They include dishwashers, waiters, contributors who deny making contributions, and another who “admitted to lacking the legal-resident status required for giving campaign money.” And more:

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown…

…Of 74 residents of New York’s Chinatown, Flushing, the Bronx or Brooklyn that The Times called or visited, only 24 could be reached for comment.

Will Hillary accuse the Times reporters of “stalking” now?

Obviously, the LATimes is a racist conservative tool.

I like the use of the adjective “ephemeral:”

Like many who traveled this path, most of the Chinese reported as contributing to Clinton’s campaign have never voted. Many speak little or no English. Some seem to lead such ephemeral lives that neighbors say they’ve never heard of them.

Predictions: Hillary will come out swinging at the Times, her Asian-American acolytes will accuse the paper of racism and ethnic bigotry, and those “ephemeral” donors will never be found.

I suggest one of Chicago’s cemetaries.

You’ve heard the debate about SCHIP. The Dems want to take a program originally intended to subsidize health care for legitimately poor kids (originally passed by Republicans, if I recall correctly) and expand it to cover children whose families could not pass (or flunk) any legitimate means test for the subsidy under current law. In other words, they want to do what they always do with entitlements – expand them far beyond their original intent, to addict more of our society to government assistance of one kind or another. The Republicans, true to principle, have fought back against the creeping socialization of healthcare smarting after November and leery about their prospects next year, have been acquiescing in depressing numbers. The President, fortunately, has pushed back by vetoing the bill. Most Americans support the President on this veto.
Which is, I suspect, why Congressman Walz is standing to post in the spin machine:

SCHIP was created 10 years ago to help provide health care for children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance. The program is economical — it needs less than $3.50 a day to cover a child — and cost-effective, because children who have access to routine preventive care from a family doctor don’t have to rely on emergency rooms for their medical care.

That is, of course, the boilerplate about the program – boilerplate that got it passed in a Republican Congress. I have nothing to add that better commentators haven’t already hammered on…

…except this next bit.

I believe these concerns, such as those expressed just a few days ago in these pages by my colleague Rep. Michele Bachmann are overblown.Some have expressed concerns that, under this program, wealthy parents will enroll their children in SCHIP instead of providing them with private health insurance. But if these concerns were well-founded, then private insurance companies would be leading the charge against an expansion of SCHIP. Instead, they are among its strongest supporters.

Walz either never passed Economics 101, or things none of the rest of you did.

Picture yourself as a healthcare company (and I’ve worked for them a couple of times – so while I claim no extra-special insight, I’m not the idiot Walz seems to need us all to be). Your choice:

• Engage in the scrum of the market, advertising and selling and servicing insurance to people the old-fashioned way – by having to convince them to give you their money for your products and services, with all of the ups and downs that attend working in the free market
• Letting government do your selling for you, and cashing their checks.

What’s not to like?

As, indeed, Walz notes:

Under SCHIP’s public-private partnership, private health-care plans work with individual states to cover uninsured children. That is why this legislation has been endorsed by America’s Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association. In other words, SCHIP is as good for America’s health-care industry as it is for keeping America’s kids healthy.

Where “good” equals “conveniently remunerative”.

Ed points us to this story, where a bunch of BDS-addled cretins counterprotested…

…a bunch of daycare kids:

“What an opportunity this is for our children,” center director Liz Burkhard said while herding children ages 4 to 6 into a compact, orderly row behind the yellow police tape lining Stony Battery at Church Street.

One group of protesters quickly descended on the happy cluster, however, chanting and singing their own songs to drown out the children’s voices.

“Stop brainwashing children to support a president who doesn’t deserve our support,” one man yelled through a bullhorn.

Now, let’s reiterate: I’m a greater proponent of free speech than any of my critics.  Always.

But this story touches on something in a piece I’m writing for Monday, about the self-centered narcissism that’s behind so many “protesters” – how their ends justify their means, no matter who they crap on in the process.

Ed said:

When children greet a President, they’re not endorsing policy or campaigning for his vote. They sang because of the office, not the person. Whomever would scream at children through bullhorns to promote their own hatred and obsession really needs some psychiatric care. Can you imagine how these children felt when a group of adults descended on them, screaming and shouting through bullhorns?

Scared out of their minds, I bet.

But no matter; to the BDS-addled “protester”, it’s all about them.  As Katherine Kersten pointed out earlier this week, indeed, it’s a pathology of some academic interest:

Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs has studied protest movements…In his psychological studies of ’60s-style radicals, Lichter discovered two revealing things: They scored high on the power scale, exhibiting a strong need to feel powerful. They also scored high on narcissism — the need to call attention to themselves, to get public notice.

Not surprisingly, Lichter says, protesters often latched onto high-sounding motives to justify their self-absorbed actions. “You can’t take expressions of love for humanity at face value,” he explains. “They can serve as cover for aggressive feelings and tendencies.

“It’s all about meeeeeeeeeeeeee”

Scumbags.

So here’s a question:  It’s conventional “wisdom” among BDS-addled liberals that Bush has gutted the Constitution, razed civil liberties, laid siege to the Bill of Rights.

This from the party that not only pushed the ’94 Crime Bill and the ’96 Counterterrorism Bill – the two greatest guttings of real civil liberties in our lifetimes – but many of whom referred to people who opposed those infringements as “wackoes” and “nutcases”.  It’s the party that is not only promotes the return of the Fairness Doctrine, but has a history of trying to censor criticism.  They prance and gambol about like poo-flinging monkeys over Guantanamo Bay – but giggled like schoolgirls when the FBI murdered two Americans with conveniently-ugly beliefs and covered up the evidence of their wrongdoing.

So with that background in mind, someone please tell me (and this is not the first time I’ve asked) – precisely what civil liberties have Americans lost under Bush.

And when writing your list, please omit any claims to liberties – wiretapping, data mining – that actually shifted to “puree” under Clinton.

Thanks.

Foot is even more tired of uninformed, zealot dolts than I am.

And that is very tired indeed.

Roosh body-slams A-Klo’s latest misguided attempt at populism – a bill that would regulate cell contract termination fees and otherwise punish cell carriers for providing an inexpensive solution:

Why are there termination fees? Because if you haven’t noticed, Amy, a cellular phone, even a very basic one, has an acquisition cost of a couple hundred dollars to the carrier. There is no free lunch and there is no “free” phone.

The carriers subsidize the handset in exchange for a one or two-year contract. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure everybody knows this.

That is how carriers have made it possible for virtually everyone that wants one to have one nowadays. 

So, Amy, what will be the result of your ill-advised and asinine proposal (assuming it has a chance)?

Termination fees will be traded for higher activation fees and monthly access fees and equipment costs. Much higher equipment costs.

The Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act? Even the title sounds asinine.

Being a DFLer means never having to pass a cringe-check.

Al Franken bashes tobacco companies from the stump, among other places.

Indeed, check out this entry from his “campaign blog“:

Al Franken, who hopes to challenge Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., next year, says he delivered a stern message to friend Tom Hanks at a fundraiser in Los Angeles last month.

“At one point I talked about the contrast between me and Norm, which was that he takes money from Big PhRMA and Big Insurance and Big Oil and Big Tobacco, and I’m taking money from Big Comedy,” Franken recalled in an interview Wednesday. “And I said, for example, I don’t think I’ll be writing any earmark in for Tom Hanks.”

According to Franken, Hanks stormed out of the room, bringing the house down. Then the actor returned to applause, pointed to Franken, and the two said in unison, “Big Comedy.”

It is to chuckle.

But as it happens, he’s not above dipping his fingers into Big Tobacco’s deep pockets.

Local lefties are un-thrilled at the news.

I wonder sometimes:  If a group of diabolically-weird behavioral scientists were to build an entire universe around a test subject in which the reality we experience is altered in some key ways, a la The Truman Show – say, a red sky, gravity pulls sideways, the sun rises in the north, the Twins are having a good season – what would happen if the subject of that test were to suddenly (a la Truman) escape from that experimental world, and experience life out here with the rest of us?

Would they adapt?  Or would the fundamental change in everything they saw, felt, pre-supposed and believed so disorient them that they’d find it impossible to carry on, and wither and die like a spider kept in a jar?

Along those lines, I also sometimes wonder:  If the DFL stopped issueing talking points, could Lori Sturdevant adapt to the non-talking-point reality?  Or would she flash out of existence?

Sunday’s column makes me want to bet the “under”:

The media bigs tell Minnesotans regularly that U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s reelection bid is in trouble because he has mostly supported President Bush’s policies in Iraq.

Ah.  “Media Bigs” say so. 

It must be true!

I read this next bit, and picture Sturdevant, standing, looking as eager as a sophomore hoping the dreamboat senior class football star will ask her to prom, silently chanting “he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…“:

Maybe so. But for my $11 price of admission, the best measure of Minnesota political reality can be had at the State Fair. On Thursday, I listened as Coleman fielded questions about bridges, ethanol, bridges, transit, bridges, floods, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, the federal deficit, and — did I mention bridges?

“I want to tell you just one thing,” said a stern-faced Ray Martin of Stillwater when he caught up with his senator in the middle of Underwood Avenue.

If Coleman braced himself for a barrage on Iraq, he needn’t have.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…“: 

 [Coleman’s questioners] may not have walked away satisfied [although Sturdevant gives us no reason to assume either way – ed]. But my guess is that the senator did. They’d just provided him with more of the evidence he’d been collecting at the fair that Minnesotans’ minds are on matters Republicans seeking reelection find congenial — that is, matters other than Iraq.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…“.

Alternate possibility:  Minnesotans, like Americans, are starting to realize that Iraq might be doable.  Maybe not instantly, maybe not ending in a surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship built by a nation organized into the greatest manifestation of the New Deal experiment, but – in the way of all counterinsurgencies that aren’t resolved by killing all the locals and scorching the earth – eventually, and with subtle signs of improvement to go along with the declining costs.

Minnesotans (I will speculate) aren’t worried about Iraq because, for the first time since the contractors mutiliated bodies were pulled from that bridge in Fallujah, it’s starting to seem like the US is getting into control of the situation.  And when I say “Minnesotans”, I mean “people who live outside newsrooms and DFL covens like Merriam Park and Kenwood”.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…if he doesn’t, it’s because he’s busy, or he’s got a lot on his mind…he’s GOT to ask me…”

That includes the calamities Minnesotans will forever associate with August 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge collapse and the flash floods in southeastern Minnesota. The federal response to both of those disasters is getting mostly high marks — and for that, Coleman can take a bow…He turned the president’s attention to the needs of flood-ravaged Minnesota towns when, serendipitously, Bush came to the state two days after the flood to raise money for Coleman. Coleman’s pleas, and those of GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty, cut through the red tape associated with federal disaster declarations and got FEMA and the Small Business Administration on the ground with a speed that has to astound survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Grooooaaaaan.

That’s right, Lori.  Never mind that the disasters are of orders of magnitude different scales, and that unlike Louisiana Democrat Governor Kathleen Blanco and NoLA Democrat mayor Ray Nagin, local officials were both competent and less interested in securing political cover. 

Ms. Sturdevant must have gone into journalism because she flunked math.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he knows it’s TRUE LOVE, as much as I do!…he’s GOT to ask me…”

I add emphasis below:

…Coleman may have been spared barbs about Iraq because, as he claimed, “most Minnesotans support my position that we simply can’t cut off funding for the war” and abruptly withdraw troops. On the other hand, the State Fair chapter of Minnesota Nice may have precluded the kind of conversation — or confrontation — the topic begets.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…if he doesn’t…” …then blame it on a bit of facile folk-pop psychology.

One thing’s for sure; when it’s time to measure Minnesota’s cultural barometer, you can count on Lori Sturdevant to check the wind gauge:

Fairgoers weren’t shy about mentioning the war down Underwood Avenue a piece [“a piece”.  Oh, good lord.  ed.], where DFL challengers Mike Ciresi and Al Franken had set up shop.

 To be fair, fairgoers at the Franken booth “weren’t shy” about issueing dangling Halliburton references or theorizing that the World Trade Center fell to a controlled demolition, either.

But while Sturdevant is tone-deaf to culture outside of her native habitat, she is a master of Socialist Realist flakkery, issuing a pealing paeon to those the Talking Points anoint:

If ribbons were awarded for crowd-drawing capacity by politicians, Franken would take purple. Every time the former “Saturday Night Live” comedian, author and radio talker showed up — which happened daily, for long hours — a queue formed for photos and autographs. Old political hands likened his appeal to that of 1998 fair phenom Jesse Ventura — a portentous comparison.

Less “portentous” than strained.  Ventura took in – as in, “bamboozled” – a little over a third of the electorate with a mixture of faux-populist bluster and a veneer of libertarianism (that he tossed aside like a Mustang Ranch souvenir mug when he got into office), which he sold to a credulous state at a time when people took elections as seriously as they take American Idol. Franken’s demographic – autodramatic middle-aged granola crones, gaunt state workers with anal-retentive gray beards, fashionably-downmarket-looking Hamline students – are comparable to Ventura’s masses only by the triteness of their understanding of the issues.

Those words undoubtedly buoyed his spirits that evening as he boarded an airplane bound for Baghdad. Minnesotans may have given him a pass on the war at the State Fair — but he has to wonder whether it was only a respite, as fleeting as the fair itself.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…if not today, then tomorrow!…he’s GOT to ask me…”

Al Franken wants to be your next Senator.

But he didn’t bank on Swiftee, who buttonholed him on Saturday at the Minnesota State Fair:

Swiftee: “Well I am convinced that you yourself were not involved in the actual money exchange, but it is inconceivable that you were not aware that money that was meant to send kids to summer camp ended up in your pocket.” “Have you sent that money back to the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls club?”

Al: “Well, Air America is paying that back and…”

Swiftee: “I’m asking about you Al. I’m asking about the money that went from The Gloria Wise charity to your pocket. What did you do, personally, to make things right?”

Al: “You know they still owe me hundreds of thousands of dollars..”

Swiftee: “Yeah, they are running out of charities to turn to I guess.” “Look Al, you are running for the Democrat endorsement, the Democrat platform is supposedly built around concern for kids, especially poor kids. Don’t you think it smacks of hypocrisy to have kept those funds?” “You may not have known about it at first, but you found out a long time before you car to admit it, and you certainly know about it now; why not send it back today?”

Al: “So, do you want me to answer?”

Swiftee: “Absolutely”

Al: “Well I, you know this story has been twisted so badly, you know there is a newspaper called the New York Post and, it’s known as a conservative paper, and (turns to FrankenTeamster), what was that guy’s name?”

Swiftee: “Forget what the Post said Al, its all lies. I’m asking you, Al Franken, candidate for US Senate to explain what has happened to money that you received that was supposed to have sent those kids to summer camp.” “You’re not going to deny that some of that money was paid to you are you?”

Al: “Well, you know, Air America was being run by people who were not honest, Evan Cohen and (unintelligible)…they were crooks. I didn’t have any knowledge of the financials (unintelligible).”

And I loved this bit:

Al: “Well, look, my lawyer put a blank piece of paper out for me to sign, it was an addendum actually, the document was dozens of pages long, and I signed that addendum, yes, but I didn’t read it.”

Mrs. Swiftee: “You’re saying that you signed a legal document without knowing what it said?”  

I love the photo Mrs. Swiftee took:

Never have I so wished to have been at a campaign function with a tape recorder.

Read the whole exchange.

It’s going to be a fun campaign season.

What with all the civil liberties that the Bush Administration has gutted, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before Martin Lewis is arrested and hauled off to an undisclosed location for backing an extraconstitutional military coup.

After all, the right to criticize the government was one of the rights the Bush Administration gutted, along with all those other rights, like…

…um…

Well, you know, all those other rights the Bush Adminstration gutted.

So long, Mr. Lewis.  I hope they don’t hurt you too bad before you end up being dumped in a back alley with a nine-millimeter aneurism.

On the same discussion about the GOP Convention discussed below, someone piped up (I add emphasis):

I’m glad to see thorough attention being paid to this issue, too.  My
greatest fear is, especially since public funding for law-enforcement is
still looking for a father, that the Republicans will bring their own
police force and call it “privatization”.  I think it’s a legitimate
concern that the GOP  will deputize one of their private armies, like
Blackwater, Inc., and we’ll have vans with tinted windows carting off
protest leaders for extraordinary rendition to South Dakota.  Someone
convince me I’m just paranoid.

I’m not sure anyone can.

A few weeks back, I noted that, as his “campaign” continued, Barack Obama looked less and less ready for prime time.

And now, others are jumping on board.

It’s not like there’s not oodles of evidence. 

Caricaturists!  Think back on the glory days of “Bush is Dum” japery, and let your pens run red-hot!

Caricaturists?

Yo?

In a sense, I owe Garrison Keillor a debt of gratitude. It was my serial fiskings of his sniffing, haughty, holier-than-thou poison pen attack on Norm Coleman and his supporters (here and here) back in 2002 that drew the attention of the likes of Instapundit, and put this blog on the map, way back when.

But, like fisking Nick Coleman and pointing out that Lori Sturdevant is a DFL flak, it gets first repetitive, and then just a bit depressing.

Which is why I’m so happy Jeff Kouba stepped up to gut-punch Keillor’s latest exercise in sniffing self-adoration:

In true form, it didn’t take this Cynicism badge holder long to get around to mentioning the Current Occupant. He can twist anything to use as club with which to beat President Bush, even the already twisted steel girders of a fallen bridge. No human tragedy is so awful it can’t be used to sneer at one’s political opponents.

The Current Occupant came to view the wreckage and to express, in that intense and aimless way of his, his hopes for a better life for us. And then, having raised our hopes, he did not resign from office after all.

Sigh. I’m sure the grieving families of those lost in the collapse will find a few moments of comfort in the snarks written at the dead’s expense. Sometimes I think Keillor’s jawbone could slay a thousand Philistines.

Your tax dollars at work, as they say.

The Freedom Dogs bum-rushed Keith Ellison’s “town hall meeting” last night, proving that they are a one-blog right-wing conspiracy.

Read the reports from Mike Mannske and Diamond Dog.

Mannske:

 I had no trouble finding the meeting place; you could make out the confluence of “Impeach Bush” signs on Google Earth.

DD:

The sheer hatred and venom coming from these folk was unbelievable. One leftist after another stood on a soapbox trying to “out radical” the previous speaker. I would say that Rick Hanson of Military Families Speak Out was perhaps the most hateful of all. According to Mr. Hanson, our “kids” in Iraq understand that their lives have been reduced to less than nothing as they are killed in Mr. Bush’s war as intentional victims.

These are the people we’ll be meeting out on the streets of Saint Paul next year.

Great job, Dogs.

Number 1:  When the engineers finally release their report about what actually caused the 35W Bridge Collapse, a lot of regional lefties – Elwyn Tinklenberg, Rep. Alice Hausman, Nick Coleman and others among them – are going to owe the Governor, Lt. Gov/Transportation Commissioner Molnau, the Taxpayers’ League and the “hold the line on taxes” crowd – a lot of apologies for a lot of defamation.

Number 2: None of them will actually give those apologies.

That is all.

We’ll check back on this when the report comes back…

Writing about the President’s visit on Saturday to the site of the 35W River Bridge collapse, Jeff Fecke of the Minnesota Monitor wrote:

Bush will be in town Saturday to survey the damage caused by the deadly collapse of the bridge, and to attend the Republican Party’s summer meeting, which is being held in Minneapolis.

Michael Brodkorb left two comments:

Have you confirmed with the White House that Bush is speaking at the Summer RNC meeting?  Have you confirmed this with the RNC? I haven’t seen this reported anywhere. 

[and…]

According to my source, the meeting has adjourned. President Bush did not attend the meeting, nor was he ever scheduled to attend the meeting.

The President landed in the Twin Cities (I watched it on TV) around 9:30, and got to downtown Minnepolis within the following hour; the RNC had reportedly adjourned about the time the President landed.

So – Jeff Fecke?  Where did you get this little tidbit?

To be fair – we have no indication that the statement was plagiarized, per se.

But what is the source of this apparently utterly-fallacious statement?

My pal and neighbor, Flash at Centrisity, notes the part of Minnesota’s response to the Bridge Collapse that we’d all like to focus on:

Minnesotans have shown their true colors with displays heroism and unconditional support. Through this tragedy we will rediscover the pride we have in our fellow citizens.

What he said; except that there’s no “re”-discovering.  Minnesotans have much to be proud of, especially during crises. 

Not all of us, of course.  After a couple of contentious sessions in which Governor Pawlenty held the line on the DFL’s demand for more tax money, one might expect this disaster to bring out the ugly side of someone.

And indeed it has.  A Saint Paul DFL operative blames the Governor and all Republicans for the disaster (in a Saint Paul politics email discussion forum; I won’t link it or list his name, for reasons that I think might be obvious):

You can all scream at me for being the first to throw stones, but here is
what I know this bridge was inspected in May of 2006 and found to have cracks in the supports. It was placed on the watch category. One only can wonder if it should have been put on the critical list. It had been listed as having fatigue details from as long as 2001 and by 2006 they were able to take pictures of the fatigue cracks.

Governor NO MORE TAXES AND LET THE RABBLE DIE was just on the tube claiming that the bridge was given a “clean bill of health.’ He knows that what he was saying is as full of crap as he is.

This is the result of Minnesota not raising the gas tax in years.

The Governor has now directly killed people by his policies.

Pretty stupid?  Of course.

Worse, in its own way, was my “represenative”, DFLer Alice Hausman.  Girders hadn’t finished falling into the river, and the blazing truck was still on fire, last night when she went on WCCO Radio and hinted – without really coming out and saying it – at basically the same thing. 

The bodies were barely cold, and some (by no means all) DFLers were ready to blame the Governor and the MNGOP.

The NTSB has barely gotten their luggage unpacked.  The engineers are months away from having an answer.  I’m no engineer, but the simultaneous collapse of nearly 2,000 feet of bridge just might be a sign of a major design flaw, as opposed to a deteriorated girder failing.

In any case, I don’t recall Governor Pawlenty making any bones about the fact that he’d rather spend money on roads (and bridges) than on boondoggles like the Ventura Trolley and the Central Corridor. 

Wow.  Imagine how many bridges we could fix if we could get that billion dollars back that we spent on the Ventura Trolley…

Anyway; no more politics for now. 

Obama would pull out of Iraq, and dive into Pakistan – which, with its bigger population and much-more-difficult terrain, would be a much worse place to fight.

Good one, Barack.

Thomas P.M. Barnett – one of NARN Volume I’s best guests ever – engages Barack Obama’s abdication on genocide and its long-term meaning:

Tell me if this crowd gets back in that they won’t feel compelled to turn many blind eyes across eight long years. And, if so, are we not headed to the same ex post f–ktos as watching ex-prez Bill Clinton whine his way through Rwanda, telling everyone in sight he should have done something–anything?

Do you want to explain to your grandkids why your nation did nothing to counter the Holocaust-size totals in the Gap in the 1990s? Care to go through that again?

Why does Obama play to that base instinct? With Samantha Powers as one of his top advisers?

I sit back at times like this and realize there is no room for me and mine in either party: I don’t demonize the military or interventions so I can’t be a Dem, and I don’t demonize China or want to invade Iran so I can’t be a Republican.

Like all Barnett, the whole thing is an interesting, sometimes infuriating, always fascinating read. 

My NARNII colleague Ed noted something that I’d noticed and started writing about myself; the local leftymedia’s caviling and cavorting over the death of Norm Coleman Sr.:

the Minnesota open-borders contingent turned themselves into the equivalent of Fred Phelps when they decided to picket the home of Senator Norm Coleman — as he and his family prepared to bury his father, Norm Coleman, Sr. Coleman’s presumed opponent for the 2008 Senate Race, Al Franken, couldn’t breathe a word of sympathy for Coleman, and some — not all — of the liberal bloggers here in the state followed his lead.

He went on to quote a pretty ghastly, self-indulgent bit of rationalization on the part of the ghouls “protesters” who tried to disrupt the Coleman family’s mourning.

And I join Ed in noting…:

we should acknowledge those who did show class. Liberal bloggers and Coleman opponents MNPublius and Centrisity had the class to acknowledge the personal loss of our state’s Senator. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who follows these two blogs. Others … didn’t, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone, either.

In no case would anyone who watches some of those hamsters be surprised.

Via Malkin, yet another onslaught of liberal voter fraud:

Guess which left-wing group is at the center of the worst case of voter-registration fraud in Washington state history? Yep, you guessed it: ACORN. The same ACORN tied to massive voter fraud in Missouri. And Ohio. And 12 other states. Here’s the Washington state scoop via Seattle’s KOMO TV: “King County prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against seven people in what a top official described as the worst case of voter-registration fraud in state history, while the organization they worked for agreed to keep a better eye on its employees and pay $25,000 to defray costs of the investigation. The seven submitted about 1,800 registration cards last fall on behalf of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which had hired them at $8 an hour to sign people up to vote, according to charging documents filed in Superior Court.”

Prosecutors didn’t sugercoat the fraud: “This was an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls of King County,” said Dan Satterberg, the interim King County prosecutor. But officials tried to give ACORN some benefit of the doubt, noting that the defendants were motivated by financial gain rather than intentions of sabotaging the election.

The leftymedia and the Sorosphere gamboled about like poo-flinging monkeys at the news of the two GOP functionaries in New Hampshire who got caught tampering with elections – but will this story get any coverage outside of the blogosphere and talk radio?

About an acorn’s chance in a squirrel farm.