Matt, one of the giggly fratboys at MNPublius and late producer of AM950’s hapless “Minnesota Matters” (I’m not sure if I should congratulate Matt for getting into law school or for escaping the world of freebie PM drive radio), gushes, crushes and blushes over A-Klo’s latest poll numbers:

According to the same SurveyUSA poll that shows Senator Norm Coleman’s numbers tanking, Senator Amy Klobuchar has more support than any other time since she took office. The 61% approval rating released today is nothing short of stunning and is even more impressive when viewed against the backdrop of her miniscule 31% disapproval rating.

He finishes with…: 

Wow, just wow.

Embarassing, just embarassing. 

Note to the crush-stricken Matt: it’s easy to get great approval numbers when you don’t do anything. 

What, exactly, has A-Klo done? 

(More important is what she hasn’t done:  sat at the crux of a serious issue, as Coleman has, risking political capital on issues that matter.  A-Klo has not.  A-Klo gets good numbers because she is a non-entity).

Nancy Pelosi:  “Americans should be a herd, not a pack.”

Harry Reid: “Freedom is slavery!”

 Via Cox ‘n Forkum

To A-Klo’s credit, she was for protecting John Doe – after she was against it.  In her defense, it seems the dog ate her homework:

It would be nice if she actually understood the bill before she voted on it the first time. She’s still new, maybe they didn’t cover that in freshman orientation classes. But in the absence of perfect information, it’s interesting to note what her instincts tell her to do.

“All that reading and reasoning and questioning what CAIR and Cuddles Reid tell me is so complicated“. 

Thanks, Senator Barbie.  Hope your colleagues don’t kill too many of us.

In the wake of Rep. Ellison’s “Reichstag Fire” smear, Brodkorb notes that making Nazi analogies – or even calling them “Nazis” – is becoming pretty standard practice among DFLers.

He has a list:

• The Minnesota DFL distributed “Bush/Cheney — Most hated world leaders since Hitler” bumper stickers in 2004.

• The SD 42 DFL website once called the SD 42 Republicans “Goebbelesque” and contained the following message: “They’re so SENSITIVE to being called Nazis, but if the boot fits . . .” The Nazi reference was later removed.

• Former State Senator Steve Kelley, the DFL-endorsed candidate for attorney general in 2006, once “compared a Pledge of Allegiance requirement to the rituals of Nazi Germany.“

• Former State Senator Becky Lourey, a DFL candidate for governor in 2006, compared DOMAgate to the Nazi persecution of Jews. 

This, in particular – Lourey comparing legal wrangling over the legal definition of marriage to loading gays into boxcars and pushing them into the gas chambers – was sign of a deeper pathology.

• Coleen Rowley’s campaign blog published a picture of Congressman John Kline, a decorated U.S. Marine, dressed in a Nazi uniform.

Civility for we, but not for ye, apparently.

Lassie from Freedom Dogs went to Keith Ellison’s town hall forum on “credit justice”.

Don’t get me wrong; people need to get a lot smarter about credit.  I was one of them, and I’m still paying for it (and I didn’t get bit too bad, and am almost done). 

Lassie relates a story by a woman who, as it was stated, had it far worse:

Carrie told of being laid off after working 8 years with a company. She was 6 months pregnant with an eight year old daughter, and had to go on COBRA for insurance, which she couldn’t afford. Her 8-year old went to visit her father in Argentina and found out that everyone there (including visitors) gets free health insurance. So she told her to go the dentist while she’s there. Unable to pay her insurance and credit card payments, she told of her rating going down and interest rate going up. I kind of felt for her, and anyone who goes through financial hardship through unexpected circumstances. Her husband/partner and baby were in attendance.

Ow.  I feel her pain, more or less; I had a few credit cards that went doggo when my job situation, back in 2003, went to pot. 

But then…: 

Then, I walked out to the parking lot, where I noticed Carrie’s husband/partner with their baby waiting at their car.

Yep. A BMW. Ellison’s “Politics of Generosity” seems to be working well with Carrie.  I wonder if her 8-year old got braces in Argentina, too. 

To be fair, we don’t know that the Beemer wasn’t paid for by Argentinian taxpayers, either…

Brodkorb on the story that should be leading the news every friggin’ evening; four out of every five of Al Franken’s contribs are from out of state!

Would you expect anything less from a man who said his “life” was in New York and who responded to the question “[i]f Paul Wellstone had not died would you have moved back to Minnesota?” with the answer “I am not sure”.

It reminds me of the statistic from the ’02 Senate race, when records showed that the average donation to the Wellstone! campaign was in the very patrician three digits, while Coleman’s campaign’s average contribution was somewhere under $50 – and yet Coleman’s fundraising kept pace with Wellstone.

I wondered: given how often, and on how broad a range of topics, the Minneapolis Star/Tribune quotes Professor Larry Jacobs of the U of M’s Humphrey Institute (read: on virtually every story about Minnesota politics, national politics, politics in the media, politics and culture, and any other story where “poltiics” is mentioned even obliquely), I had to ask – is he, indeed, the most cited man in the history of the Strib?

Bear in mind, at the Strib “history” means the 30 or so days that they leave articles online.  But a search of the articles available online at the Strib site (and leaving out other “experts” like, say, Algore (684 hits), who is quoted as an expert but is also a newsmaker in his own right) showed the following results:

Larry Jacobs: 58 hits.

Compare that to a selection of other notables:

Albert Einstein: 27 hits.

Steven Hawking: Seven, mostly from Strib blogs. 

Karl Von Clausewitz:  Prussian military philosopher and, literally, writer of the book on the relationship between politics and war:  Two hits, both of them comments from the Big Question blog. 

Benjamin Franklin:  Innovator in technology, politics and statesmanship:  41 hits, although perhaps half refer either to other people of that name or the cast of a play at the Guthrie.

Thomas Edison:  One of history’s greatest polymaths:  Three hits.

Archimedes: Perhaps history’s greatest innovator:  Two hits.

Leonardo Da Vinci: One of history’s great minds:  Six hits. 

Macchiavelli:  Noted expert on politics – perhaps even greater than Larry Jacobs himself:  No hits. 

So there you have it:  Larry Jacobs – the greatest authority in history!

According to the Strib.

…”What do you do to make yourself depressed at the state of humankind?”

Well, that’s fairly simple.  I ponder the fact that Joe Biden has a political career, or that the Doors are regarded as rock legends, or that…

…no, I’m sorry.  That’s untrue.  Nobody asks me what I do to make myself depressed.

They do ask me if I’m going to fisk the latest column explosively-oozing bit of deranged twaddle from Susan Lenfestey. 

It’s a distinction without a difference, of course. 

But I’m all about duty, when it calls.  If indeed Lenfestey needs fisking, I’ll do it.

Still, Jeff Kouba and Learned Foot gave me the best midsummer present of all; they did the job in great style, giving me a column’s respite from slogging through and sharing the woman’s continuing descent into surly, shrieking madness.

I thank you, gentlemen.  And I shall step up for the next one, refreshed and ready to do battle. 

Where “doing battle” equals “whacking at an advancing manure slick with a hockey stick”.

Speaking of Lieberman…

Salina Zito writing in the Pittsburg Trib on the battle for the “Reagan Democrats”:

In 2005, Howard Dean was the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee and saddled with a party weakened after years of national losses. Determined to turn the tide, he commissioned a massive poll with Cornell Belcher aimed directly at values voters.

After poring over the polling data, Dean recognized a couple of things:

 

• First, Democrats did not speak about their faith — but they should. 
• Second, when Democrats talked about abortion, they didn’t emphasize that it should be a last resort. While Democrats needed to protect the rights of women, they also needed to talk about taking care of every child brought into the world — an aspect on which Republicans are perceived to fall short.

Dean took his poll to the party’s leadership and to labor leaders. He pointed out that while swing voters do share Democrats’ values, the party was not speaking to them in the right way.

Which is, by the way, true of both parties.  But I digress:

Dean’s mission became to link things in a way that makes it more difficult for cultural conservatives to walk away from Democrats.

The challenge for both parties is similar: dealing with the control of the primaries by the parties’ extremes. For Democrats, it is their bloggers who want out of Iraq tomorrow; for Republicans, it is the extreme pro-lifers.

One wonders what Ms. Zito means by “extreme pro-lifers”, exactly, but there’s a point there.  Some of my worst political memories involve walking into district caucus meetings where half of the crowd were there purely to introduce and pass infinite varieties of the same pro-life resolutions – not that I disagreed – and who were completely illiterate about any other issues. 

If Republicans want to win, they should remember that Reagan, as president, never let the abortion issue define what it meant to be a Republican. He was against it but he never took steps to make it harder to obtain.

That’s a tough pill for many erstwhile Reagan Conservatives to swallow; Reagan was no dogmatist on abortion or, for that matter, Second Amendment issues; he believed the right things in both cases; he just didn’t push either. 

The more each party must run to its corners and defend what mainstream America considers extreme positions, the harder it becomes to win over Reagan Democrats.

Which is the conundrum for Republicans; getting both “Reagan Democrats” and Evangelicals – both of the “must-turnouts” and “must wins” for the GOP – to play nice together.

The Saint Paul DFL had its City Convention on Saturday.

The usual pack of clowns got the nod…

Incumbent Saint Paul School Board members Anne Carroll and Kazoua Kong-Thao along with newcomers Keith Hardy and Kevin Riach were endorsed by acclimation at today’s Saint Paul DFL city convention.

No opposition was expected and they were the only nominated candidates. Congratulations to all four … the real campaign for St. Paul school begins now. As a united front, they have a great chance of dislodging Republican…

…I presuming they’re talking about Republican Tom Conlon, the sole non-DFL member of the board, the body’s sole source of any form of diversity, and the only sitting Republican office-holder in any city-wide office in Saint Paul. 

We’ll have to come back to that later.

Some parts of the DFL are also gamboling about like jabbering lemurs over Instant Runoff Voting, which was endorsed:

The Saint Paul DFL Party endorsed the Better Ballot Campaign on the 2nd ballot today at the city convention. The Better Ballot Campaign is working to put Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)on the ballot in November. Voters would then choose whether or not to have city municipal elections for Mayor and Council using IRV.

An emailer on a Saint Paul Issues discusssion group, however, noted the irony of the vote:

Excuse me if I am the only person who finds this extremely ironic that
the  advocates for Instant Runoff Voting made it so that it was the only
issue  position that got two chances to reach the 60% needed to be supported by the  party?  Get it?  These are the people who think you should only vote  once in any election cycle and wanted two votes on getting party support! 

All humor aside, it was an interesting look into the way the DFL runs things in Saint Paul in general (I add some emphasis):

The rules allowed the advocates of IRV to make a presentation of  their position lasting fifteen minutes (only those for IRV); then there was a  question and answer period where the answers were given by the advocates of IRV  (one was really funny, someone asked about the concerns that the head of Ramsey  County Elections had raised about IRV and if they would explain them to the  group … the response was, “well everyone is entitled to their
opinion” and on  they went to the next question); during the entire Q and A their was a continual  run of the Pro position being run on the big screen to the group; then after 25  minutes of presenting one side of the issue, both sides got five speakers, one  minute each.  They had made sure that there was no way to discuss all of  the problems that IRV would cause.  You can’t get much across in one minute  and barely can touch on the issue. 

And after all that?

So, with that IRV didn’t reach the 60% needed for endorsement and they
had  to use the extra special second vote that only IRV was allowed and then
they won  by two votes.

Expect the DFL and the Strib (pardon the redundancy) to pull out all the stops to push IRV in Saint Paul and, since this is a DFL campaign, vilify all opponents without restraint.

The Saint Paul DFL Party endorsed the Better Ballot Campaign on the 2nd ballot today at the city convention. The Better Ballot Campaign is working to put Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)on the ballot in November. Voters would then choose whether or not to have city municipal elections for Mayor and Council using IRV. Exact numbers are at the very bottom of the post.

IRV ballot measure missed the 60% endorsement threshold by 2 votes on the first ballot and then won by 2 on the second! Surprisingly, it appears that only 1 delegate left between the first and second ballots. Over here in Minneapolis, we’re used to higher rates of disappearing delegates. I doff my cap to y’all.

I thought about writing about The Today Show’s puffy hagiography of life in modern Cuba…

…but I figured nobody could talk Cuba like Val Prieto.

If you are a Cuban living in Cuba, you have no voice. The Cuban government sees to that.

When you are a Cuban living in exile here in the states – regardless of whence you came – you, like every other American living in freedom, have a voice. But, no one listens. The Media sees to that.

So regardless of how sane your argument is, regardless of how reasonable you are, how verifiable your facts are or how absolutely right you are, the MSM – and by default those that get their news from same – dont really care about what you have to say or what you have experienced. The minute any Cuban crosses the Gulfstream, that voice that has been supressed for so many years becomes like that proverbial tree in the forest that falls. It make a sound, but there’s no one around to listen.

Prieto and his co-bloggers gut NBC’s myopic, oh-so-convenient “coverage” point-by-point, ethical blind spot by ethical blind spot, butt-smooch by butt-smooch, one context-free claim after another, to a devastating conclusion.

The concern is that with the death of fidel castro, so comes the death of his revolution. And the only way to keep that revolution alive, in a post-castro world, is to lionize the bearded tyrant. Barrage the world with the “greatness” of Cuba’s healthcare. Shove the “100% literacy rate” down the world’s throat. Express solidarity with anti-Americanism by making fidel castro, clearly the poster boy of said anti-Americanism, into a David that beat the Goliath to his North.

fidel castro once said that history would absolve him. Yet the only way to do that, given the thousands upon thousands of deaths he’s responsible for, given Cuba’s dismal human rights record, given the revolution’s ruination of a nation, a culture and a people, is to rewrite history. To make the world forget the paredon. To make the world forget crowded Cuban gulags. To make the world forget all the deaths at sea of those whose only hope was to live in freedom.

What we are seeing lately, as the Cuban government manipulates truth, as the world media sheepishly give in to the whims and demands of said government, as the world ignores the inhumanity of the Cuban regime, is the creation of a fictional absolution, fidel castro’s absolution, from thin air.

Read the whole thing, and ask yourself – “why did NBC go there now?”

In 1991, my then-wife and I made $18,000.  Together.  This, with one kid the whole year, and another born in August. 

We lived in a rat-trap of a house in the Midway: three drafty bedrooms, and a foundation that let mice in in droves; the rodents gamboled about inside the walls like Britney and Lindsay on the dance floor; they’d sweep across the floors like the herds of buffalo from Dances with Wolves.  It was cheap, and it was awful.  And it was all we could afford.

From mid-1991 into mid-1993, I (and, most of the time, my wife) went to Plasma Alliance twice a week – the maximum allowed – to get money for formula and diapers.  I still have a divot at the crook of my left elbow, the “sweet spot” where they’d do the draws.  I still know the language – waiting for the Fleeb to do the stick, hoping for a fast draw so I wouldn’t get partialled, because I needed a full check – and the drill (drink LOTS of water, eat NO fat for the 12 hours before the donation, so the lipids in the plasma didn’t slow down the plasmapheresis process); with enough care, you could donate a liter of plama in less than an hour.  It was worth $45 a week, if you did everything right.

I worked, of course; I was a nightclub DJ, making maybe $50 a night for 3-5 nights a week (figure a weekly take-home around $200-250), through the beginning of 1992, working nights and (when my daughter was born) minding the baby during the day.  I also worked at a couple of radio stations for 15 hours a week – KDWB AM and FM and WDGY – for about $6 an hour; $6.50 when I got a raise.  I was choosing, at the time (and it turned out to be a bad choice) to sacrifice a lot, one might say even obsessively, to try to re-jumpstart my radio “career” (and in my own defense, I did come close; I came in second place for the Program Director job at KSTP-AM in 1991, a week before Bun was born).  When that tanked, I worked at some other awful jobs; I was an essay reader for $7 an hour (a “sweatshop for people with degrees”, one of my co-workers called it), then worked for a legal document coding company for $6 an hour.  My wife was a waitress, and then did data entry work, when the pregnancy allowed it.

In November of 1992, with my son on the way, I found a company that wanted to pay me a couple thousand dollars to write an installation manual for a database configuration system.  I quit the coding job to put all my effort into it; on Christmas Eve, they called to tell me they were stiffing me for the money that’d been earmarked for two months of rent and NSP bills. 

The day my son was born, I got eviction and power shutoff notices (and word that the company that had stiffed me had gone out of business). 

Once, money was so tight – half a week away from payday, a day away from another Plasma Hut donation – that I fixed my at-the-time wife and I a dinner of rice with sauteed onions.  It wasn’t bad.  Other staples:  fried potatoes and baloney; cube steak burgers; grilled cheese sandwiches; a zillion variations on spaghetti.  Y’know – poor people food, the kind of starchy, fatty crap that is, at least, dirt-cheap. 

But according to Mark Gisleson at Norwegianity, I know nothing about poverty, at least compared to upper-middle-class, Volvo-driving alpaca-wearing dilletante Barbara Ehrenreich:

Mitch, who I linked to earlier, ripped on Ehrenreich recently, but his criticism says more about Mitch’s failure to “grok” poverty than it does his understanding of Ehrenreich’s writings. Poverty is about having nothing. If you have an apartment or house to live in, you’re not poor by real world standards. Impoverished maybe, but not truly poor.

Yes, Mark, and gosh, we were in a discussion about the American minimum wage, a context which I didn’t figure was an entree to comparing “poverty” in America – where the “poor” overwhelmingly have roofs over their heads, TVs, refrigerators and cars – with poverty in, say, Sudan or Indonesia or Bolivia. 

I didn’t figure it needed much explanation.  On the other hand, we’re talking with someone who can say this…:

 Let’s not even get into Ehrenreich’s new topic: slavery in the United States. But, like a radically anorexic minimum wage, I guess that’s OK with Mitch too, so long as it only affects a few people, and not Mitch.

…something too stupid and casually defamatory for even Kevin McKay or Jeff Fecke to write with a straight face.  My point about she who must not be criticized Ehrenreich was in Nickled and Dimed, she approached poverty wearing the equivalent of blackface; if she approaches slavery with the same upper-middle-class preconceptions as she approached minimum-wage life, she should (but likely won’t) get laughed off the public stage.

I don’t think Mitch is malicious in this regard, just unwilling to take a hard look at what Reaganism hath wrought. “Only a tiny, shrinking minority actually works for the minimum wage”? Mitch, if only one person was getting paid minimum wage, and if that wage didn’t allow them to eat and have a roof over their heads, why would that be OK?

Gisleson mixes his questions.

The vast majority of those getting minimum wage aren’t responsible for feeding or sheltering themselves, much less anyone else; they’re teenagers working at their first jobs.  Would that be “OK?”  Absolutely. 

For the remainder – those adults who are responsible for feeding, sheltering and clothing themselves?  Well, my religion bids me to take care of the most unfortunate among us, an injunction that I take as seriously as the aggressively atheist Gisleson ridicules it.  But that’s a personal thing.

Speaking for society, I have to ask; why does an adult earn minimum wage?   

Because no employer is willing or able to pay more for the skills they bring to the market, either because the skill is of little value to employers (flipping burgers) or the market is glutted with people able to do the job (non-profit work).

So why do these adults – responsible as they are for feeding and sheltering themselves and, sometimes, others – go onto the job market with skills that are only worth the minimum wage to employers (or even less; as the minimum wage rises, Macdonalds and Burger King are moving to minimize the number of burger flippers in their restaurants; they’re switching to pre-cooked patties heated en masse in microwaves, to eliminate the need even for most of the minimum wage employees at the grill)?   

In many cases, it’s because of a physical or psychological problem; they’re not able to learn a skill that’s worth more than the minimum wage. 

In many other cases – including my own, way back when – it’s because of that hoary old conservative cliche, “bad choices” which, like so many conservative cliches, is true more often than not.  Criminal records, drug or alcohol problems, getting pregnant as a teenager, dropping out of school, or just plain dissipation – all of them get in the way of learning a skill, or even just-plain good work habits that can take a person out of the minimum wage world.   And, unfortunately, it’s not just ones’ own bad choices that’ll get you; when criminals, addicts and slackers go on to have kids, and raise them in poverty (yeah, the American version of it, bla bla bla), and pass the culture of poverty down to their families, the kids are indeed victims of those bad choices.  And yes, before the inevitable self-righteous leftyblogger points it out, society has made some bad choices as well – African-American and Indian societies are chronically dysfunctional a century and change after slavery and the extinction of native culture, respectively. 

Factor out that last bit there (I personally favor extending tribal gambling as “reparations” – perhaps we should legalize marijuana, licensing the sales to proven descendants of slaves, to continue the pattern); what is society’s obligation to insulate people from their own bad choices?  Their parents’ bad choices?

Why should anyone who works be unable to feed, shelter and clothe themselves, and I’m not even mentioning healthcare.

Because tacking a few extra dimes per hour onto a miserable paycheck isn’t going to change anything!

And more importantly, because merely “working” isn’t the point; if society subsidizes the mere act of showing up and “working” with food, shelter, clothing and healthcare, then eventually 90% of our society will be leaning against shovels (figuratively and literally) while the other 10% slaves away to pay the bills.

If society is going to subsidize anything, it should be good behavior  – staying in school, learning a skill that can eventually help someone support themselves and those for whom they’re responsible, putting down the damn bong and keeping your johnson in your pants and learning how to support oneself and, eventually, raise families that value the same thing.

Blogging is about advocacy, but I don’t understand advocacy that seeks to take from those who have the least to give. Does it bother Mitch that minimum wage workers in Hennepin county will individually pay more for the new baseball stadium than all the millionaires in Duluth put together?

Mark:  Show me where I’ve ever stumped for subidies of baseball parks.

You’ll be looking a long time.  I’ve always opposed it.

As well as, for that matter, government subsidies of all businesses; corporate welfare is just as debilitating as subsidizing poverty.

I continue to have problems with capitalists who think they sprang fully formed from Adam Smith’s forehead, and that they owe nothing to society or other workers. Right now the underpaid restaurant workers are supporting the overtime that drives our economy, feeding people who don’t have time to cook, but can’t afford to pay real prices.

This isn’t as stupid as the “slavery” crack above, but it does show exactly how “reality-based” Gisleson and his ilk are not, when he notes that… 

…to the [“]reality-based[“]: eating out shouldn’t be inexpensive, or competitive with cooking for yourself. Or do you hate all those restaurant workers that much?

Maybe Gisleson has never fed a family (I’m willing to bet on it); cooking at home is pretty much always cheaper, and can certainly be faster.

Of course, not being “reality-based”, and a mere bread-winner who’s been raising kids through thick and (at times, very) thin for the past 17 years, what would I know about “reality”, as people like Gisleson see it?

…the MNGOP would have to invent him.

Thank you, DFL voters of Northeast Minneapolis. But I feel bad. I didn’t even get you anything for Christmas.

The DFL’s mad rush to finish the session – and jam through extra tax and spending bills by whatever means necessary – drew criticism from at least one media figure; Larry Schumacher of the St. Cloud Times:

The last two hours of debate on the floor of the House of Representatives made me nauseous and angry.

I don’t know if House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Democrats’ decision to run roughshod over the GOP minority to finish on time was within the rules, but I know it was wrong.

House Republicans were stalling, running the clock out to force a special session. Many of them believed House Democrats would take the blame if the people’s work didn’t get done on time.

That was just as wrong. But Democrats’ poor clock management over the last week gave Republicans that power. They didn’t see until too late that they were never going to agree 100 percent with Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and they waited until Monday to press ahead when they could’ve been finishing up over the weekend.

Gary from Let Freedom Ring responds:

The DFL also held up the most important bills to the last second in an attempt for them to pressure GOP legislators. They gambled that they could create a chaos that would lead some GOP legislators to jump ship. They gambled wrong.

Let’s also examine the consequences of the legislation that the DFL passed:

• The DFL passed legislation that would’ve raised a big assortment of taxes to the tune of $5 billion, which would’ve killed Minnesota’s economy in a hurry.
• The DFL passed an HHS omnibus bill that will get Minnesota fined $26 million for failing to comply with federal welfare guidelines.
• The DFL passed the Dream Act before dropping it out of the Higher Education conference report. The DFL bet that Minnesotans would agree with them that we should subsidize illegal immigrants’ college tuitions. Minnesotans from all across the state told them they wouldn’t.

But Monday night’s shameful displays make me just as uneasy. For all the cynics’ desire to scapegoat our politicians for everything that’s wrong today, I think Monday night says more about us than them.

I appreciate Larry’s introspection but I’ll respectfully disagree that Monday night’s floor session says more about us than them. I put the vast majority of the blame for Monday night’s trainwreck squarely on Maggie Kelliher’s & Tony Sertich’s shoulders. And on Larry Pogemiller’s shoulders, too.

I’ll give ’em a break.

They were so used to getting their way for so long, like spoiled children, they can’t imagine anyone telling them “boo” for trying to get their way now by any means fair or foul.

Some people do chutzpah well.  Others…not really.

For example – Tom Delay, getting booked for a trumped-up, politically-motivated ethics charge:

It’s like he’s daring his opponents; “go ahead.  TRY to use this at election time!”

Well played.

On the other hand, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader James Metzen – a DFLer – tries but fails during his photo after being picked up for allegedly driving while intoxicated:

(Photo via First Ringer at TvM)

At least, I hope that’s chutzpah he’s attempting.  Since he got picked up at almost twice the legal limit, I’d say it’s a toss.

At any rate; chutzpah is a gift.  People are born with it.  I’m not sure it can be created.

But if it can, Metzen needs some practice.

That is all.

 Nick Coleman writes about Minnesota US Attorney Rachel Paulose:

Today, a different list of removals needs another name:

Rachel Paulose.

Her staff is in rebellion. The senator who nominated her is demanding the head of the man who presided over the process that produced her. And the bottom line is clear:

Her appointment to a job for which she was unqualified, and which she has demonstrated she is incapable of performing, was the poisoned fruit of a corrupt process.

 Er, yeah, except none of that is true.

One gets the impression Coleman is “Sturdevanting” – rotely reciting DFL talking points.

Not that he’s a DFL monkey or anything, nosirreebob.

Getting called “the worst president in history” by The Worst President In History?

Priceless:

Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush’s environmental policies and the administration’s “quite disturbing” faith-based initiative funding.

Listen to me now and hear me later, Goofytooth:  you were the worst president of my lifetime.  As you phumphered and droned about human rights, you actively connived with the bloodthirstiest regime in history for baldly base political purposes.  

You were, are, and shall always be a morally repugnant scumbag. 

On the plus side, your incompetence and the sheer horror you unleashed upon this nation turned me – at 16, very much a liberal Democrat – into a conservative by age 20.

So I have that for which to thank you.

But that, as they say, is all. 

About twenty years ago I was playing in a band. The drummer was the second-youngest of about eight kids from a very left-leaning family. All eight of the kids were very politically aware, and some of them – not the drummer – were quite active. And it was fun; I’d get into long political discussions over all of the issues of the day; the siblings were all pretty sharp, passionately motivated, and had strong opinions.

Including about gun control. They all favored it. I, being at the time a conservative talk show host (who hoped to be right between jobs, any ol’ day now), opposed ’em. Older brother sneered “a real man doesn’t need a gun to protect himself”; he got a good yuck, until I asked if his sexagenarian father would be “not a real man” if set upon by a gang of young toughs.

Anyway.

One evening, not a week after a long argument about guns, the drummer called me. “We gotta go gun shopping”. He’d been mugged while walking down Pleasant Avenue just off Lake Street.

We went to the gun shop. I talked him out of buying a chinese-made AK-47 knockoff, and into a revolver (a Charter .44 Special). We then went to the range and busted off a couple of boxes of ammo – I brought my whole arsenal (a .45 Colt Auto, an 8mm Hakim battle rifle, and a .22 rifle and .22 automatic pistol) along with to get him seriously oriented. He ended up turning into quite the gunny; the last we talked he had the Charter, a .44 Magnum, an SKS, a .303 Enfield Mark IV, a .45 Auto and a Walther P38 his father had brought back from the war.

Proving, as the old saying goes, that “a conservative is a liberal that’s been mugged (and a libertarian is a conservative that’s been audited”).

It happened in Cleveland (from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, via TvM), where State Rep. Michael DeBose, a previously anti-gun Democrat lawmaker, had nearly the identical epiphany while walking around his “transitional” neighborhood:

The loud muffler on a car that slowly passed as he was finishing the walk caught his attention, though. When the car stopped directly in front of his house – three houses from where he stood – he knew there was going to be a problem.

“There was a tall one and a short one,” DeBose said, sipping on a McDonald’s milkshake and recounting the experience Friday.

“The tall one reached in his pocket and pulled out a silver gun. And they both started running towards me.”

“At first I just backed up, but then I turned around and started running and screaming.”

“When I started running, the short boy stopped chasing and went back to the car. But the tall boy with the gun kept following me.

It was a “road to Damascus” moment for Debose:

DeBose twice voted against a measure to allow Ohioans to carry concealed weapons. It became law in 2004.

He who votes last votes loudest.

Like lots of Americans, including many Republicans, I was of many minds about Jerry Fallwell.

He was one of the boogeymen I held before me as I tried (and eventually failed) ton convince myself to remain a liberal Democrat in high school and college. His “Moral Majority” struck me as…well, basically right about most things, but the group’s name struck me as a bit immodest for my austere Scandinavian tastes.

But he certainly helped focus attention on issues that were and are vital to Christian conservatives. And the media, inflamed by the likes of Jim Bakker and the nearly-irredeemable Pat Robertson, bayed and cavilled about him like he was a pelt they wanted to collect. Many of his worst “gaffes” were taken in a context that was, to be honest, grossly mangled.

I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday enjoying a rare day off when I heard the news. A painfully austere-looking woman next to me was reading the news on her laptop. “Jerry Falwell is dead!”, she said to me – exhuberantly, breaking into a happy little chuckle. Apparently she assumed that since we were in a liberal neighborhood, everyone she came into contact with would share her elation.
I sat quietly for just a moment, wondering – how do I answer this? That I don’t really giggle over much of anyone dying? That many of Falwell’s stances were reported grossly out of context (as is the norm for mainstream Christian fundamentalists)?

I figured “why not play the gaffe card?”

“Ayep”, I said. “And as a firebreathing Christian conservative Republican, I didn’t agree with everything he said, but he certainly was an interesting character”.

She shrivelled just a bit.

I left it at that.

Miss O’Hara took it a bit further:

As you know, Reverend Falwell passed away today. Like him or not, I am nothing short of appalled by the reactions we are seeing from some folks. I never really followed Falwell, so can’t say much about his doctrine, but there are way too many people spewing incredible buckets of hate toward this man. Yesterday I was unhappy that people actually care about Buttafuco/Fisher; tonight I just don’t understand how we’ve become so narcissistic that we can’t feel empathy for the family of someone who has died, or the deceased themselves. It isn’t as if he were, oh, shooting homosexuals point-blank like Che Guevara or actively planning to wipe another nation or two off the face of the earth like Ahdmadinejad. And even so, they are lost souls too.Nothing prepares me for the hate unleashed by people in our society, even when the object of that hate is suffering or dead or being abused. Certain pockets of our culture have marinated in hate and vulgarity so long they have no capacity to actually care for each other as human beings, no matter one’s creed. We’re no longer human, but just belief systems. Not exactly what God intended.

I look at some of the dimbulb leftybloggers who are erupting in joy today, and all I can feel is depressed.

The Times of London discovers that favorite slow-newsday staple of the Star-Tribune; a “flood” of several “Republicans” who are jumping over to support one Democrat or another.

And after spending the last couple of years looking at stories like that, and bumperstickers for “Sportsmen for Kerry” and such, I think it’s time to start coming up with some of our own:

• Free-Marketeers for Edwards!
• Recovering Addicts for Ted Kennedy!
• Zionists for Ellison!
• Speechwriters for Biden!
• Hussein Torture Victims for Kucinich!

More?

Jim McDermott did to a political opponent what he doesn’t want the Administration to do, with probable cause, to people talking with terrorists overseas.

And while the Sorosphere doesn’t want you to know about it, he’s finally gotten spanked:

Rep. Jim McDermott had no right to disclose the contents of an illegally taped telephone call involving House Republican leaders a decade ago, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Brian Ward on noted feminists Nancy Pelosi and Betty “Rubble” McCollumn’s be-hijabbed visits to Greater Islam:

[T]here is something amusing about feminists like Pelosi and McCollum merrily donning the hijab, which has the primary purpose of hiding one’s femaleness, lest you enflame the attentions of men. If that’s what they want to do, fine. When in a patriarchy, do as the patriarchs tell you, I guess.

Check it out.

Chad the Elder had me nervous for a moment there.

King smacks Tarryl Clark:

“The impact of ‘No New Taxes’ is clear,” said Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud. “Someone else has to pick up the tab. That’s not honest and not fair, particularly to the middle class.”

Pick up what tab? Sure, if you assume all spending must be done, somebody has to pay. But you don’t have to spend. Spending is a choice, be it your eating out budget ($96/day) or the higher education budget. YOU ORDERED THE SPENDING, IT’S YOUR TAB. You have misstated this case ever since your inflation dishonesty.

That’s a huge bit of baggage in Minnesota’s public life; this notion, set in motion during the “Minnesota Miracle” (the 30-year stretch in Minnesota when Republicans acted like Democrats) that whatever someone can attach to “public good” is instantly and permanently “worth” whatever its promoters want to spend, damn the consequences and opportunity costs.

The Strib editorial board came out against the cap on charter schools (which we’ve discussed here and here). 

The idea had me scratching my head; the Strib and the anti-charter Minnesota Federation of Teachers are co-bedfellows of the DFL, which is carrying the MFT’s water on this issue.

I figured there had to be a whammy in there somewhere.

Let’s look, shall we?

But limiting charters is not the best way to assure adequate state support for traditional public schools. The larger issue is funding public education programs well enough to allow both traditionals and charters to thrive.

Perhaps a more recent Senate action will make that possible. Although the full Senate adopted a low-ball $496 million increase for education a week ago, it is now debating an income tax increase that would pump in another $400 million.

Well, we could see that coming, right? 

We’ll come back to that.

Still, there are some senators itching to put the brakes on charter expansion, worried that the new schools are hurting regular public school enrollment. They point to a state finance report that identifies charters as one of the state’s fastest-growing expenses.

Which is, of course, rubbish.  Publicly-financed schools of all types – traditional or charter – get paid a certain amount of money for every day every child is in school.  Except that charter schools get a little less of it; charter schools don’t get their parent districts’ supplemental appropriation proceeds, for example.  So keeping a kid in a charter school for a given day – or year – costs the state the state’s taxpayers less than keeping the kid in a traditional public school.

It is true that growth has been rapid; the number of charter students has risen from 10,000 in 2001 to 23,700 today. But that growth has been driven by interest and demand.

Let me digress a moment here; that is a very curious turn of phrase.  Of course the growth is triggered by interest and demand! 

The big question – why is there such “interest” and “demand”?  

And why does the DFL feel the need to choke that “interest and demand” off? 

For 20 years, Minnesota has been a pioneer in offering public school choice, acknowledging that today’s students have a variety of learning styles and needs.

In fact, charters are just part of the menu of educational choices. Out of 800,000 public school students, more than 100,000 attend some type of alternative, contract or charter program — all under the public school umbrella.

Clearly, a significant number of students and families believe in school options.

Again – why do you suppose that is?

But given that it’s the Strib editorial board, I should accept good news where I find it.  For example, they put the numbers in context:

As for cost, stopping the expansion of charters is estimated to save the state about $6 million over two years out of a $13.5 billion education budget.

In other words, one-twentieth of one percent. 

Moratorium supporters do raise questions worth considering. Some school officials worry that programs have been set up just so organizers can go after state startup funds.

But then, there are laws against fraud.  No? 

 A handful of rural groups have said they’ll start charters to stave off much-needed district consolidations.

Let’s stop right there.

Consolidating rural districts is the dumbest thing this state has ever done for education.  In fact, consolidating smaller schools into big, factory-model schools is the dumbest thing this nation has ever done when it comes to schooling.  The simple fact is, rural schools do, statistically, a better job of teaching kids to read, write, do math, learn science and history than big, factory-model schools.  The smaller, in many cases, the better.

Consolidation has nothing to do with educating children, let alone educating them better.  It’s about making the system work better for the system’s sake.

And if the Strib editorial board believes – as they seem to – that an urban parent’s choice is worth protecting (thanks, Strib!), why not that of a parent in a small, rural town who is blanching at the thought of his kids being on a bus for over an hour each way, morning and night – for the dubious privilege of attending a big, prison-like, factory-model school that won’t do as good a job of educating them as the small, rural school they’re losing?  Which the proposed charter school will replicate? 

Indeed, the best way to “save” the public school system – I believe the only way to save it, if indeed “saving” is possible – is to deconsolidate schools, rural and urban.  Dismantle the huge, factory-model schools, with their need for Orwellian security and the chuzzlewitted addiction to “policy” and bureaucracy that do nothing but teach kids that authority is not only uncaring, but stupid (not that it’s not a valuable lesson).  Move the schools out into the neighborhoods.  Make them small – no more than the number of names the principal can remember, ideally.  Move them into the neighborhoods they serve.  Quit segregating by grade level; let older kids teach younger kids.  Live lean.  Focus on the mission – teaching reading, writing, math, science and history. 

Sort of like…well, charter schools.

[Rejection] should befall the charter moratorium when the Senate and House bills land in conference committee. The door should remain open to create innovative schools for Minnesota students.

Well, we ended up in the same place, anyway. 

Gary Gross provides the whole world a public service, enshrining this remark by Saint Paul DFL legislator Cy Thao – an ultraliberal H’mong solon – for all posterity:

Today, at a committee hearing, Cy Thao told Steve “When you guys win, you get to keep your money. When we win, we take your money.” This was Thao’s explanation as to how the DFL plans on paying for all the spending increases they promised their special interest friends.

Note to state GOP organizers; we need to get 10,000 signs printed that say:

When you guys win, you get to keep your money.

When we win, we take your money

Cy Thao (DFL St. Paul), 2007

Please tell me you’re on this.

(Via King)