There’s an old saying; “success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan”. 

In the wake of the Democrat party’s nationwide electoral humiliation, the left is looking for things to hang their hopes on. 

It’s human nature; the good guys were doing it two years ago, too.

So here’s what the Democrats are hanging their hats on; in a blue state, a 67 year old governor who gets mistaken for his entrepreneur anscestors, a superannuated standup comic, and a couple of congressmen dragged out of mothballs at the Museum of Pettifogging eked out wins in a state where…they were expected to eke out wins. 

But remember – whatever success there is has a thousand fathers.  Er, parents.  And the local left is stepping all over itself to claim their piece of the success less-failure. 

“In These Times” is the sort of “progressive” publication you can imagine a room full of Grace Kellys producing.  I don’t read it much, because it’s just not a challenge. 

But in their post mortem of the MN elections, they made an interesting and, dare I say, surprising claim.

No, it’s not the callow reference to stereotypes.  That’s no surprise from any “progressive” publication:

Mike McIntee, who lives in Eagan and is executive producer [Hah!  – Ed] of The UpTake, a citizen journalism-driven, online video streaming website, has seen his first-ring suburb change politically. The residents of Eagan’s cul-de-sacs no longer exclusively resemble an episode of The Brady Bunch, but include different ethnicities and low-income housing.

“White People” = “Brady Bunch”. 

Huh. 

Anyway – here’s the interesting part (emphasis added by me):

McIntee also credits the work of Protect Minnesota, which works to end gun violence by turning it into a political issue in urban and suburban areas. Protect Minnesota sent out mailers this election season attacking candidates who opposed gun control. Its gun-safety champions who won on Tuesday include Ron Erhardt, who represents the suburb of Edina. Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association’s influence may be waning in Minnesota. Three rural DFLers who were endorsed by the NRA all lost.

Protect Minnesota?

The gun grabber group led by Heather Martens known mainly for its comic ineptitude, has done more harm than “good” for the gun grabber movement in the past…couple of decades.  They mobilize no significant people (a couple of dozen might turn out for a vital hearing, as opposed to hundreds of Real Americans. 

But what of their claims? 

• McIntee claims “Protect” Minnesota sent out “mailings attacking candidates“:  Now, the Minnesota Human Rights community is pretty good at keeping tabs on what the orcs are doing.  And nobody seems to have seen a “Protect Minnesota” mailer.  None.  Michael Bloomberg and the DFL both hit on guns – but both groups carefully excised the hapless “Protect Minnesota” from their strategy.
• What “Gun Safety Champions?”  Protect MN is a lobbying group, not a PAC.  Did they endorse candidates?  If so ,they broke the law; lobbying groups can’t endorse candidates.
• They’re claiming credit for Ron Erhardt?  If Mike McIntee or Heather Martens wants to make the claim that guns were behind Ron Erhardt’s razor-thin win in Edina, feel perfectly free.  But be ready to be slapped down hard.   It’s an absurd claim. 
• They’re Claiming They Have The Momentum?:  “Three rural DFLers endorsed by the NRA” lost – but then, most rural DFLers lost, whatever their NRA and MNGOPAC endorsement. The election wasn’t about guns! But even so, over 3/4 of MNGOPAC’s endorsed candidates, GOP and DFL, won on election night – and many of the ones that lost in Greater Minnesota lost to other candidates with high GOCRA and MNGOPAC ratings.  Either way, gun owners won.  To claim the Gun Rights movement lost last Tuesday is a Baghdad-Bob-level bit of delusion. 

But delusion is Heather Martens’ stock in trade.  From the “Protect” MN website:

From the “P”M website. Click on the link to actually see it.

Look, “Progressives”; if it makes you sleep easier at night thinking that…:

• Mark Dayton, who has spent the past two cycles trying to defuse Real American opposition by claiming he has a couple of .357 Magnums at home for self-defense, and
• Al Franken, who touches on guns as obliquely as his caucus will allow him to, and
• Rick Nolan, who ran away from the anti-gun movement (ineptly), and
• Colin Peterson, with an NRA “A” rating, along with…
• 11 new Republicans, all of them pro-gun, mostly MNGOPAC endorsed, all of them Second-Amendment-friendly, and
• a solidly pro-Human Rights MN House, with Michael Paymar’s Metrocrat caucus demoted to the cheap seats…

…are a “victory” for “gun safety?”  Go for it!

It’s Heather Martens’ take, and it’s delusional…

…but I repeat myself. 

Note to Mike McIntee and the rest of the “progressive” feed trough; if that’s the best source you can pick, no wonder you guys are getting your asses kicked on Second Amendment issues.

One of the brighter spots in Tuesday’s proceedings was the crushing victory of Peggy Bennett over Shannon Savick in Albert Lea. 

It was an old-fashioned whooping – 53-40.  Not even close.  And that was with an Indyparty candidate who took 6% out of the race, likely mostly from Bennett. 

I’m still doing the end-zone happy dance in my head. 

Shannon Savick was one of the DFLers from Greater Minnesota who supported Michael Paymar and Alice “The Phantom” Hausman’s gun grab bills in the 2013 legislature. 

And she was one of the DFLers who joined Hausman and Paymar in getting up and theatrically walking out of the hearing room when the Real Americans of the Second Amendment movement started their testimony against their proposals.  Indeed, the DFL made a shameful spetacle of ignoring their opponents’ testimony.

Watching their bills – and all of their support from Michael Bloomberg – go down to whining, piddling defeat – was sweet.  And it was what mattered most.

But seeing Shannon Savick tossed out of office with all the ceremony of a day old egg salad sandwich is right up there.

OK, Ms. Savick.  NOW you may get up and leave the room.

UPDATE:  It wasn’t just Savick – and it wasn’t just in Minnesota.  Gun grabbers were crushed nationwide.  It was lopsided in the Senate, of course – but the most astounding progress was among governors.

To sum it all up?  The NRA-endorsed candidate won in Maryland. 

Perhaps bigger, but definitely more subtle?  The flip of the Senate will at least slow down President Obama’s ongoing campaign to pack the Federal Appelate courts with gun-grabbing activists. 

It was a good Tuesday for Pro-Second-Amendment Real Americans from coast to coast.

The Minnesota legislature wants to make it as easy as possible for voters to get to the polls.

In major, DFL-dominated cities, anyway; Minnesota urban transit systems will be providing free transportation all day tomorrow, courtesy of the Democrat-controlled 2014 legislature:

The faith-based group ISAIAH works to increase voter turnout. Organizer Matt Gladue said the new law might help people in a rush with work and children to get to the polls before they close.

“Any law that removes the substantial barriers people face to getting to the polls on Election Day is a good law,” Gladue said. “If it allows one, a hundred or a thousand people to get to the polls who wouldn’t be able to do it, it’s a good thing.”

No word yet if ISAIAH is going to help farmers in Pennington County make the long, cold drive to their polling stations after a long day in the fields…

 An activist with the Mali Marvin campaign (running against Deb Hillstrom in Brooklyn Center) provided an account on Facebook about the obstruction every Republican activist in a DFL town knows first-hand (included in full below):

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Black Chicago preacher endorses the GOP candidate for governor of Illinois over the loathsome Pat Quinn…

…and gets robbed, along with death threats:

Corey Brooks, a South Side pastor featured in an ad endorsing Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, says he’s moved his family from his home while police investigate an overnight burglary of his church, as well as threatening derogatory phone calls he received which claim he’ll be beaten for being Rauner’s “puppet.”

On Saturday, Brooks rushed to the New Beginnings Church of Chicago after a maintenance employee found the church’s back doors shattered and an estimated $8,000 stolen from a glass charity box, meant to build a community center across from the church.

Democrat apologists will no doubt say that it was just typical street crime. 

How many common thug burglars operate from a political/racial agenda?   Emphasis added below:

“The death threats seem to be related to [GOP candidate] Bruce Rauner,” Brooks said at the church Saturday. “They say his name as well as mine and most of the references were in response to me in support of him. So it’s really derogatory, real racial, a lot of homophobic words. It’s real life threatening.”

Brooks said he received the five phone calls on Friday. He recorded one of them, and provided it to police. In that call, which was played for the Sun-Times, a man’s voice is disguised via a high-pitched filter. He is heard calling Brooks a “token n—–.”

How many common burglars in Chicago would you think even know the GOP endorsed a candidate, much less take the time to pitch-shift their voice on the phone?

Their message sounds a little like Minnesota Progressive Project reads:

“We on you boy, we on you. And you ain’t got nobody that can stop us, nobody. Who you go [to] the deacons? They can’t stop us. We going to beat your fat a– in front of your mama congregation Sunday. Yeah we going to steal the sheep of the hypocrite. You’s a hypocrite we going to beat your fat a– in front of your own congregation. Who you got that…f— we going to beat their a– too. They can’t protect you. You sell out you Uncle Tom a– n—–. You token. You a puppet for Bruce Rauner you puppet n—– a–. P—- a– n—–,” the voice says on the recording.

Read the whole, disgusting thing.

And imagine if it would be different here in Minnesota if a black pastor in North Minneapolis or Frogtown broke from the DFL. 

I’d bet $20 on “no”, but I’ll forgive you for not taking the bet.

Durable goods orders are off. 

Unexpectedly, natch.

Representative Shannon Savick is a first-term Democrat from House District 27, the Albert Lea area, south of the Metro.  She’s a member of the Democrat Farmer Labor party. She’s blessed with a fairly well-off rural community for whom the consequences of DFL control aren’t yet life-or-death, and the presence of the Albert Lea Tribune, a newspaper that gives the City Pages and Star Tribune a run for their big-city money as mouthpieces for the DFL.   The paper has, of course, endorsed Savick. 

Everything seems hunky-dory for Ms. Savick, who is running for a second term. 

Everything but one; an especially noxious vote against Minnesotans’ human rights and civil liberties during her freshman session in 2013.  It was a bill by Rep. Paymar that would have:

• Banned “Ugly Guns”: The bill would have banned firearms with scary military-looking cosmetic features
• Banned Large-Capacity Magazines: Paymar wanted to force law-abiding homeowners and citizens to be forced to reload 2-3 times as often if they are beset by determined, dissociative or chemically motivated attackers. 
• Private Transfers: While even some Second Amendment people think this – requiring all purchases to go through a federally-licensed firearms dealer (FFL), to close the non-existant “gun show loophole” – doesn’t sound too noxious on the surface, its byproduct -a paper trail for all guns – makes the next step, universal registration, trivially easy.

Savick was one of four outstate DFLers – including John Ward, Erik Simonson and Paul Rosenthal – who voted for this atrocity of a bill. 

At the risk of sounding crass, I’ll tell the truth; the bill was an attempt to kick in the teeth of every law-abiding gun owner in Minnesota. 

Even worse?  During the public hearings on these bills – where pro-Human-Rights activists outnumbered Victim Disarmament activists by close to 30-1 – Savick joined her Metrocrat colleagues in walking out of the hearings when it came time for opponents to testify against the bills.

Despite this deeply misguided vote, and deeply stupid bit of theatrics, the conventional wisdom had Savick as a pretty sure bet for re-election.

The calculus must have changed.  Savick is pulling an Ann Wynia – protesting her history with firearms:

I remember when my dad gave me my first gun when I was 16. It was a Marlin .22 bolt-action rifle. I have many fond memories of carrying that gun as I went hunting with my cousins. Over the next 30 years or so, I acquired another five guns, some for shooting and some for collecting.

I share this because I have recently been asked about how I feel about guns. People are concerned that I might be a gun-hating politician who wants to take away their guns.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I own and shoot guns. I have a permit to carry. A few months ago I hosted a permit to carry class in my basement so others could get their permit. And actually, I am a pretty good shot.

Just thought I should set the record straight.

If you have questions about this, please don’t hesitate to call me.

Oh, I’ll call. 

Because owning guns is easy (thanks to us Second Amendment activists, anyway).  Mark Dayton says he owns guns.  Carl Rowan owned guns.  A rabidly anti-gun Missouri state Senator was arrested with a gun in Ferguson a few weeks back. 

But the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. 

Representative Savick:  Can you name a single vote you took in the past two years that supported the rights of the law-abiding Minnesotan to keep and bear arms for self-defense? 

Can you find some action on your part to atone for your votes for Paymar’s agenda?

Have your people call my people.  But just in case my people are calling your people anyway.

Savick’s opponent, Peggy Bennett, is having a forum at the Hayfield American Legion tonight at 7PM.

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a piece about Tina Flint Smith, Minnesota’s first whore. Having someone like that in the office of lieutenant governor would serve to concentrate all of the power of the executive office…

… wait – did I just call Tina Flint Smith a whore?

Dang.  That’s bizarre.

Anyway – I was talking with a Republican friend about “Take Action Minnesota”, the community organizing group run by that door-to-door, bore-on-the-floor whore Greta Bergstrom.  The group has been working overtime…

…What?  Really?  I did?  I called her a “whore?” Not only that, but concocted a cutesy rhyme to set it all off?  Oh, not again.  How could that possibly happen?

Well, I guess it just goes to show you it could happen to anyone.

Accidents!  Who knew?

Or at least that’s what the media wants you to think about – I’m sure it’s just a coincidence – a Democrat saying it about South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (emphasis added):

FLORENCE, S.C. (CBS Charlotte) – Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincet Sheheen is coming under fire for accidentally calling Gov. Nikki Haley a “whore” at a campaign event.

Sheheen was caught on video at an appearance in Florence last week stating “we are going to escort whore out the door” referring to Haley. His gaffe appeared to be a slip from the tongue and he quickly corrected himself stating “we’re going to escort her out the door.”

So Shaheen “accidentally” used a rhyming couplet, for which he corrected himself, before yukking it up with his peckerwood supporters?

But immediately after correcting himself, Sheheen has an almost gleeful interaction with the crowd and laughed at his gaffe. Video of the event has gone viral.

Who hasn’t had that happen, honestly?   

I’m imagining a world where the Democrat Party didn’t have a media “accidentally” serving as their Praetorian Guard.

The big DFL strategy in this election, so far, seems to be to scare to death the voters who they haven’t bored to death.

There was a debate on Wednesday in Bemidji.  Since a couple of districts – 2A and 5A – are in play in the Bemidji area, candidate from both were apparently in the ring.

The topic turned to gun control:

In response to a question on gun control, [HD2A GOP challenger Dave] Hancock said shooting incidents usually occur in places where guns are banned.

“If we look we look at the areas where tragedy has occurred with guns, they are usually in gun-free zone(s),” he said. “Where you have people armed and carrying concealed weaponry, the criminal in use of a gun thinks twice.”

That’s pretty much the fact.  Hancock got it right.  No surprise there.

Here’s where it gets interesting – and when I say “interesting”, I mean “A DFLer starts saying things that misinform the uninformed”.  The DFL’s Joe Persell responded to the question; I’m going to add emphasis:

Persell disagreed, saying carrying weapons can exacerbate tense situations.

“Folks that are out there carrying, playing cop … I don’t think we want them to be doing that,” he said. “There’s more instances of people being killed because they are carrying, and they think somebody said something nasty, and they felt threatened, and so they shot them.”

Really, Rep. Persell?

I wanted to ask Rep. Persell to name one example of either of a Minnesotan…:

• being killed because they were “playing cop”
• killing someone who “said something nasty” to them.

Conversation:  I sent Rep. Persell an email asking for clarification.  He contacted me, saying he’d been taken out of context in the Bemidji Pioneer.  We wound up having a conversation last night.   I pointed out that there has never been such a case involving a legal post 2003 carry permit holder in the state of Minnesota (although there were a few incidents with pre-2003 permits – the ones issued by sheriffs).

Rep. Persell told me that the conversation referred to the Second Amendment as a general, nationwide issue, and that he was referring to cases like those of Michael Dunn, the Florida man who shot a teenager over, the court case said, “loud music”.

Those cases certainly grab the headlines – the media, being left-of-center and largely anti-gun, makes sure they do.

But even those lavishly-publicized incidents are exceedingly rare.  I ran the numbers, nationwide, a few years ago; in a typical year, a carry permittee is two orders of magnitude less likely to commit any kind of crime than the general public.

So while Persell wasn’t “lying”, per se, he was focusing attention on a type of incident that is exceedingly rare in real life.   While his original quote in the Bemidji Pioneer may have been out of context, the context of his remark is misleading and inflammatory.

The problem with guns, statistically, nationwide, isn’t a guy with a carry permit killing someone unjustifiably.  It’s the thousands of criminals without permits who kill people without regard to the law at all.

Hope that word gets out…

(more…)

Back in 2006, they told us that electronic voting machines were going to be an easy, non-transparent way to hijack elections. 

And they were right:

Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library.

“I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race.

There’s a simple answer, of course:

 “This was a calibration error of the touch-screen on the machine,” Scalzitti said. “When Mr. Moynihan used the touch-screen, it improperly assigned his votes due to improper calibration.”

“I’m not robbing this bank, officer; I’m just doing a bad job of calibrating the safe”.

“That’s not a crack pipe under my seat, officer; its a poorly-calibrated CPAP mask”. 

“Those weren’t dead people voting; just poorly-calibrated living people”. 

I’m not going to say the Democrats are a criminal syndicate.  I’m just wondering how they’d have to behave any differently to be one…

Watch this video starring Ted Nugent, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage, in which President Obama is called…well, exactly that.

UPDATE:  I lied.  It’s not Nugent, Hannity and Savage.  It’s Nat Hentoff, liberal civil libertarian and godfather of the ACLU.  He’s a liberal – but he has been committed enough to actual civil liberty over the decades that he’s even pissed liberals off at him…

It hasn’t been a good campaign for DFL Secretary of State candidate Steve Simon. 

For starters, he barely got over 40% in the primary – against a perennial candidate and a nobody.  Which might not have been a showstopper for the DFL machine to overcome, except that they were up against Dan Severson, who has statewide name recognition from a 2010 SOS run and a Senate bid (that came up short in the convention in 2012). 

Then, last week, the polls showed that Severson was ahead of Simon; he was the only GOP statewide candidate to lead in the polls at that time.  

At the very least – given the polling that, we are told, shows Mark Dayton supposedly cruising to victory – it’s a sign that the DFL/Big Money Democrat onslaught has a chink in the armor. 

At the most?  It shows that the DFL’s “We’re Inevitable!” vibe may not be entirely factual. 

Severson’s press conference last week – in which he showed smoking guns tying the SOS office to a policy of tossing veterans’ votes, and Rep. Simon’s signature on legislation that exempted the military from absentee voter reforms – went badly for Simon, and worse for the DFL’s Ken Martin, who tried and failed to take a chunk out of Severson in a comical morning of duelling press conferences. 

Simon is apparently desperate; he’s now telling his base that Severson proposes “forcing rape victims to pay for rape kits”. 

It’s BS, of course.  Not just the usual, comical, inept BS the DFL tosses around at this point in campaigns, all juvenile photoshopped heads and racist japes. 

No.  This is a sleazy, toxic, intentional, cowardly lie.  Severson responds (and I’ll add emphasis):

I moved it forward with the understanding that the bill would propose sharing the cost of all expenses associated with sexual assault between the counties of the victim and the perpetrator.

I specifically killed the bill before it EVER got a hearing because of the language specific to victims having to pay for anything.

In a just world, whatever DFL messaging genius that came up with this attack would get some sense groin-kicked into him.

As it stands?  Since a lie will make it around the world before the truth has finished checking Facebook in the morning, it’s back to the long, slow slog of telling people the one central truth of Minnesota politics.

If a DFLer says it, it’s a lie. 

If a DFLer who’s losing says it, it’s probably defamation.

…that racism is the only reason to claim that election fraud exists. 

(Remember how the left whined during the 2000s that electronic voting machines were susceptible to corruption?  Turns out they think that’s a feature, not a bug).

Nope.  No irregularities here, you racist bastards.

During the Soviet era, while Soviet “citizens” crowded onto dilapidated streetcars and rattletrap buses, and waited in endless lines for food, shoes, or pretty much all of life’s essentials, and dreamed about getting their own apartment, maybe, and daydreamed about owning one of the Soviet-era cars that were both biodegradable and cost several years’ salary to buy, the Communist Party nomenklatura were whisked about in private cars, shopped in fully-stocked shops that catered to party members only, and had houses in the city and on the lake.

And as the Met Council works overtime to shove Twin Citians into high-density developments and high-density public transit run by high-density public employees, it stands to reason that some things never change.

SCENE:  The Admiralty, London, May, 1940.  Winston CHURCHILL is poring over a map in the Admiralty’s operation’s center, looking over the deteriorating situation in France.  He is joined by Admiral Nigel FRIEDEN, head of the Royal Navy’s public health wing.

CHURCHILL:  It is clear that we are going to have to evacuate the British Army from France.  In addition to a maximum effort by the Royal Navy, we’ll need thousands of civilian boats to help get the troops off the beaches and evacuate them from the Nazis. 

FRIEDEN:  I’m afraid that’s a bad idea, sir.

CHURCHILL:  Why do you say that?

FRIEDEN:  If we evacuate the Army, it will just make the occupation worse in England.  Also, we’ll have to use the fleet to evacuate Germans from England, too, then.

CHURCHILL:  That makes no sense.

FRIEDEN:  I’m an expert. 

NEXT SCENE: The US Air Force base at Wiesbaden, West Germany, June, 1948.  General Lucius CLAY, commander of US Military Government in occupied West Germany, is looking at a map of the Eastern Zone.  Ominously, red Soviet stars sit astride the three road/rail routes supplying West Berlin; the Soviets have just instituted a blockade, trying to starve West Berlin into the Soviet sphere.  Clay looks pensive.  He is joined at the map table by Brigadier (one-star) General Maximilian FRIEDEN, head of his public health corps. 

CLAY:  Blockade, schmockade.  We will need to start the greatest airlift in history to keep Berlin supplied.  It will show Stalin that we’re serious about

FRIEDEN:  We can’t, General.

CLAY:  What the hell?

FRIEDEN:  If we bring food, medicine and coal to Berlin, it’ll just make the hunger, disease and cold worse.  Also, for every load of supplies we bring in, we’ll have to bring a plane-load of Soviet spies and commandos back. 

CLAY:  Whose army do you serve?

SCENE:  April 1975.  As the North Vietnamese Army overruns Saigon’s last line of defenses, US Marine Brigadier General Richard CAREY is discussing the upcoming evacuation of Americans and certain Vietnamese from Saigon.  Artillery is heard in the distance, as CAREY makes the final plans to remove the last Americans, and as many Vietnamese as possible, from the Embassy compound .  He is addressing a group of officers, including State Department public health attache T. Morton FRIEDEN.

CAREY:  And so we’ll bring in the helicopters from the aircraft carriers.  We’ll get the last of the Marines out by 1800 hours. 

FRIEDEN:  General, that’s a bad idea.  Evacuating Marines will only make them more subject to Communist rule.  And for every helicopter full of Marines you remove, you’ll need to bring one full of Vietnamese back from the ships. 

CAREY:  (Stands, slack-jawed).

———-

CDC director Thomas Frieden is telling us that wejust can’tstop all flights coming in from West Africa, because…:

It’ll Make the Epidemic Worse:  Because ancient tribal burial rituals, lack of information about handling infections, and superstitions about healthcare workers aren’t bad enough; dispersing the epidemic all around the world must be ten times better!

If we stop air travel, we won’t be able to bring supplies:  That’s only true if all flights from West Africa are on disposable aircraft, or are kamikaze flights.  Planes can fly in the other direction.  Hopefully to drop off supplies and trained well-equipped healthcare workers.  And return empty, until the crisis eases.

I imagine Mr. Frieden knows this.  But judging by the last round of elections, it’s a lot for a plurality of Amerians to understand…

UPDATE: You think I’m selling Dr. Friedman short? 

Read this – especially Dr. Frieden’s interview with Megyn Kelly. 

It only looks like one of my parodies.

And I ask that question in a context that goes above and beyond the typical “The Alliance For A Better Minnesota Is Lying” sense of the term.

As we noted a few weeks back, the DFL is making TV ads with fake middle class families.  It’s nothing new for them, of course.

And now, as both Bill Glahn and the lesser talk station’s Jack and Ben have pointed out, the DFL is going hog wild with the Photoshops, as with this hamfisted whack at Stacey Stout:

Glahn:

The face of the man in the bottom photograph (captioned “Stout works for extreme Republicans) belongs to the state House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt.

The body belongs to Conor McFadden, the son of U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden, as illustrated in the Star Tribune’s side-by-side comparison.

Fake people.  Fake photography.  Fake insurance exchange that gives results with a shelf life, if you can get to that point.  Fake “economic health”.

Is anything real about these people?

One of the more galling facets of the 2012 Presidential campaign was watching Mitt Romney taking flak from the social right, the Rick Santorum crowd, on having been marginally impure on social issues, while at the same time getting beaten up from the fiscal purists (egged on by the left) for Romneycare, and the Libertarians for having been insufficiently pro-Liberty, whatever that meant. 

Of course, the key difference was that Mitt Romney had been in office, governor of not only a large state, but a toxically left-leaning one, in which he had few legislative allies.  To get anything useful done as governor of Massachusetts – and he did – he had to compromise.  “Romneycare”, bad as it may be, was a better compromise than what the Massachusetts Democrats would have spawned. 

The lesson, of course, is that rock-solid principle is easy, when your job never involves having to engage on a daily basis with your opponents to get anything done.  US Congresspeople do that only on the most symbolic and ritual level. 

Governors?  It’s part of their daily job.

And so while the likes of Govenors Romney, Pawlenty, Walker and others may have great black marks against them in the great book of princples in the sky, those marks are given by people who’ve never had to negotiate with a recalcitrant state employee union, or horse-trade with a hostile legislative majority. 

Fact is – as I say all the time – politics is a marathon, not a sprint.  Things get done over time, not overnight.  It’s work for the obsessively patient. 

Society get changed not by the people who have the coolest slogan – “Repeal Now!” or “War on Womyn!” or “TRU LBRT!” or whatever it is that sends a tingle up one’s true believers’ legs – but by the people who not only show up, but keep showing up.

Which is Kevin Williamson’s point in this NRO piece, which you should read in its entirety, and which concludes:

The Democrats did not build the welfare state all at once in 1965, and Republicans didn’t have an honest shot at repealing it all at once in 1995. Everybody has a big plan, and Washington is full of magic bullets: leash the Fed, enact the Fair Tax, seal the borders. But what’s needed — what might actually result in a stronger American order — is a thirty years’ war of attrition against the welfare state and entrenched incompetency. Federal crimes and misdemeanors ranging from the IRS scandal to the fumbling response to Ebola suggest very strongly that we have management and oversight problems as well as ideological ones, but holding oversight hearings long after (one hopes) Ebola is out of domestic headlines provides very little juice for a presidential candidate facing a restive base all hopped up on Hannity. Being the guy who gets up and demands the repeal of Obamacare might get you elected president; being the guy who fixes the damned thing simply makes you a target for talk-radio guys who have never run for nor held an elected office but who will nonetheless micturate upon your efforts from a great height.

Everybody wants to run for president. But somebody has to save the country.

Read the whole thing.

And hold the sloganeering.

Surgeons do surgery.

Baseball players?  They play baseball.

And Doug Grow?

For four decades and change, generations of Minnesota voters know that Doug Grow is synonymous for flogging and fluffing the DFL narrative.

Yesterday’s MinnPost piece on the Severson press conference (which I wrote about yesterday) is one for the record books.

The DFL and media (ptr) narrative this year, by the way, is “DFL Victory is Inevitable”; keep that in mind as you read Grow’s description of the presser:

Finding the current election cycle a little boring?

The DFL sure hopes to keep it that way!

Unexpected:  Doug Grow leads off with one of those “too good to fact-check” claims:

As it turned out, the back-to-back pressers were actually back to back to back. First Severson. Then Martin. Then Severson again.

Unbeknownst to each other, Republican secretary of state candidate Dan Severson had scheduled a 10 a.m. news conference, while DFL party chair Ken Martin had scheduled his own 11 a.m. newser to talk about the secretary of state race. In the same room.

As it turned out, the back-to-back pressers were actually back to back to back. First Severson. Then Martin. Then Severson again.

It’s about as “unbeknownst” and unpredictable as, say, the MinnPost hiring a staff full of DFL shills.

Sources in the Severson campaign tell me that Severson had the conference room – where both pressers were held – booked from 10AM ’til noon.  When the DFL got wind of the presser, they swooped in and got the 11AM booking.

Initially, Severson had planned to devote his news event to the subject of voter participation among members of the military. Among other things, Severson contends that President Barack Obama’s administration, current secretary of state Mark Ritchie and DFL secretary of state candidate Rep. Steve Simon have all participated in efforts to suppress voting by members of the military.

And this, as I described yesterday, he did.  Mark Richie’s office sent county election officials a “how to” on finding ways to reject military absentee ballots; it’s there, in black and white.  The media was given a copy at the press conference – as they were given a copy of the absentee ballot reform bill co-authored by Simon that specifically exempted the military (who vote overwhelmingly conservative) from the reforms.

Amazingly enough, outside of the ofay mockery in the piece’s title (“Fraud! Suppression! Aspersions! Dueling press conferences wake up a sleepy secretary of state race”), the actual facts Severson brought up, the paper trail he presented supporting both Severson’s key allegations, never got mentioned.

“My Opponent Has Been Caught Masticating!”:  After Severson’s presser – whose actual subject you’d never know from reading Grow’s piece – Ken Martin took the stage.

I’ll say it again; “Ken Martin took the stage”.  We’ll come back to that.

But at 11 a.m., Severson moved to the back of the room in the state office building in St. Paul as the DFL’s Martin moved to the front…Martin said that at a Tea Party event in June, Severson claimed that Sen. Al Franken had won his 2008 election as a result of voter fraud. At that same meeting, Martin said, Severson claimed the DFL had re-captured control of the Legislature also because of fraudulent votes.

“The last thing we need is a conspiracy theorist as secretary of state,’’ Martin said. “I call on [GOP gubernatorial candidate] Jeff Johnson and [Republican Party Chair] Keith Downey to refute Severson’s unfounded and irresponsible allegations. I question Severson’s ability to be secretary of state when he makes dangerous allegations of crimes that don’t exist.’’

It was cheap theatrics.   And Severson answered them with the kind of burst of full metal rhetorical jacket that I wish a lot more Republicans were throwing back at the Media-Progressive Complex this year:

“I’m not casting aspersions,’’ Severson said. “I’m saying let’s solve the problem.’’

Now that’s a novel approach.

Cast This:  Of course, mentioning the problem is the problem, to the DFL and the media that works for it:  

But suggesting that DFLers win races because they cheat sounds a bit like an aspersion…But Severson said it’s not just his observations at campaign rallies that cause him to have doubts about the integrity of the system. He cited the “study” of an organization called Minnesota Majority that claimed there were more than 6,000 fraudulent voters in the 2008 Senate race in which, after a recount, Al Franken defeated incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by just over 300 votes…Martin pointed out that in the recounts of the Coleman-Franken race and the Tom Emmer-Mark Dayton race of 2010, both parties “spent millions of dollars” as ballots across the state were recounted.

“Not a single instance of voter fraud was found,’’ Martin said.

Martin is lying, and Grow is just fine with that.

Doug Explains It All:  Anyway – charge met countercharge.  But here’s the interesting part; Grow elects to speculate:

Did Severson schedule his as a desperate bid to tie himself to the military and to inflame those in his GOP base convinced DFLers only win because they cheat?

The base is pretty inflamed already.

No – here’s the interesting part.  Here’s the part that undercuts Grow’s entire, snarky, dismissive premise:

Did Martin schedule his because the DFL is concerned that Simon needs to raise the profile of a down-ticket race?

Did who schedule it?

Steve Simon?

No.  Ken Martin, chair of the DFL.

Not Steve Simon, SOS candidate.

In fact, Steve Simon wasn’t present for the press conference.  About his own race. 

Martinized: Ken Martin did the whole thing.  Steve Simon was nowhere to be found.

Ken Martin, State DFL Chair, apparently feels the need to intervene directly in what is, in a normal election cycle, a boring, humdrum race that tracks, or sometimes lags, the top of the ticket.

Why would he do that?

I can think of a couple of reasons, by no means mutually exclusive:

• Martin knows where Richie buried the bodies.  Corruption is as rampant in the SOS office as the GOP claims, and they need to do their best to keep a lid on the pot.
• It’s Not A Humdrum, Sleepy Race At All:  I’ve heard two rumors from well-placed sources; first, that GOP internal polling shows Severson ahead.  Second, that Martin’s behavior in the past week shows that the DFL knows it.
• That Air Of Inevitability?  Check It:  If Severson’s race is defying the “DFL is Inevitable” narrative, maybe other races are, too?  And if word gets out that the GOP has in fact defied the DFL’s “inevitable” victory, all electoral hell could break loose next month for the DFL.

Where was Steve Simon?

Why is Ken Martin intervening personally in this race, rather than sending some 22 year old communications minion, the way he normally would for the SOS race?

Stay tuned.

DFL Secretary of State candidate Steve Simon hasn’t had the easiest time of it.

First, he barely squeaked through his own DFL primary – getting 42% against a longtime perennial candidate and a future perennial candidate, in a primary race that should have been a coronation. 

Of course, he’s up against Dan Severson, a candidate with – alone among the MNGOP’s state office candidates – high name recognition, from a previous SecState and Senate run.  Severson is also the single prominent Republican who’s made a significant priority of reaching out to Latino, H’Mong, Somali and other immigrants. 

Rumors – and that’s all I have to go by so far, but they’re from fairly reliable sources – indicate that internal polling in both parties show that Severson is the only statewide GOP candidate to lead in the polls a month before the election.

The DFL reaction was predictable; the facts against them, they went for the sleaze.  The “progressive” alt-media’s attempt to paint Severson as a confederate sympathizer because of the color scheme on his lawn signs was not only idiotic, but transparently desperate. 

It’s only getting worse for Simon.

Vote Suppression! – This morning, Severson held a press conference in which he pointed out the known fact that 5% of Minnesota’s servicepeople and their families serving overseas get their votes counted – a travesty – and that…:

• Mark Richie’s state department sent out a memo advising county election authorities on ways to legally reject military absentee ballots (active-duty military votes around 3/4 conservative Republican), and…
• Simon – whose campaign lit says he wants to emulate Richie – co-authored a bill that exempted the military from an attempt to smooth out the absentee voting process.  In other words, a bill that made absentee voting easier for college students and other itinerant but reliable Democrat voters specifically left out the military. 

And unlike most press conferences for constitutional office races, the media actually showed up.

Perhaps because of one of the other attendees.

Captain Smith Leaves The Bridge:  MNDFL chair Ken Martin attended the press conference. 

Let’s let that roll around your head a little bit. 

The chair of the DFL party, who is working hard to find a way to keep the DFL from losing the House, but whose state office slate is purportedly already measuring the drapes in the Governor, State Auditor and Attorney General races, is taking time out to pimp for a candidate that should be a shoo-in. 

Why is that?  Because Simon is losing?  And because if Severson wins, we can finally get answers about the rot and corruption in the state’s election system?

We’ll find out soon enough. 

Oh, Martin’s whole line was claiming Severson is a “conspiracy theorist.  Of course, the numbers are real, as was the fact that Steve Simon is listed in black and white, as co-author of a bill that exempts the military from absentee vote reforms. 

And the media (!) actually pushed back on Martin, asking him if the DFL had erred in exempting the military from the reforms, which means the conspiracy is apparently on the DFL side of the aisle…

Anyway – more tomorrow.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Subsidiarity” is the Conservative political principle that says things ought to be managed at the lowest level of organization capable of handling them.  School lunches, for example, should be selected by millions of individual Moms, not dictated by The First Lady of The United States.

President Obama is committed to this principle.  We will now screen arriving international air travelers for Ebola symptoms but those who exhibit symptoms will be a problem for local health officials, not the CDC or national government.

Muslim terrorists never attack so we don’t need boots on the ground in combat, there are only episodes ofworkplace violence or film protests gone bad for law enforcement to handle.

When immigration amnesty plans caused millions of illegal aliens to swamp the Mexican border, Congress gave extra money to pay local cops overtime rather than beef up Customs.

It’s good to see the President embracing Tea Party principles of government. If only Republicans were this good at it.

Joe Doakes

Politics is the worst possible way to deal with the realities of the world around us.

…then you know you’re bad.

When you’ve got Carter bagging on you from the right on defense and foreign policy, it’s time to whiz on the dogs and call in the fire.

 Someday, when we need an epitaph for the Obama Years, I’m going to submit this paragraph by Mattew Continetti:

Over the last few years the divergence between what the government promises and what it delivers, between what it says is happening or will happen and what actually is happening and does happen, between what it determines to be important and what the public wishes to be important — this gap has become abysmal, unavoidable, inescapable.

(more…)

I got word over the weekend that Democrat oppo-researchers, in trying to grunt out a hit piece against Stewart Mills, GOP-endorsed candidate in CD8, “quoted” Mills’ appearance with me last January on the Northern Alliance Radio Network.

The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) released this exceptionally puerile hit piece on Mills last week.

No, I said “puerile”:

Green Bay Packers fan and millionaire Stewart Mills III emerged from hiding – briefly – to reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he sold millions of dollars worth of cars using stimulus money. As a candidate, Mills has opposed the stimulus.

The state’s economy is stagnant, we’re heading for deficit – and the Democrat Party is targeting voters whose votes turn on f****ng NFL team loyalty?

This is the mentality of the voter the Democrat Party is aiming for?

The ad tries to jack Mills up because the family’s car business bought vehicles using Cash for Clunkers money.

The nerve; in a system designed to promote and reward rent-seeking, people seek rent!

Of course, that was four solid years before Mills decided to run for office.   Y’know – one of those episodes that led him to decide to try, at least, to change things in DC.

Oh, yeah – I’m famous now:

Mills Said the Stimulus was a “Sugar High.” In 2014 Mills said, “The last round of tax spend and borrow stimulus which is nothing but one sugar high after another, negatively affected our part of Minnesota because we had none of the benefits from it, but yet we’re the ones that are going to have to pay the bills.” [Northern Alliance Radio Network with Mitch Berg, 1/4/14]

Wow – oppo researchers were tuned in!  I feel…

…dirty.

Oh, yeah – Mills was 100% correct.  The stimulus – of which “Cash for Clunkers” was far from the dumbest – was a “sugar high”; it subsidized car purchases in 2009, inducing people to buy buy buy probably earlier than they would have otherwise (the sugar high), meaning they didn’t buy later (the crash).

It’s how every “stimulus” works.

Mills was right.  The DCCC is wrong.

Someone tell their oppo weasel I said so.  And that I’m a Bears fan.

The Irvine Park neighborhood, south of West Seventh Street and downhill from the XCel Energy Center, votes reliably DFL.

And so they care a ton about the homeless.

Provided they are walled away from them.

The Dorothy Day Center – across 7th Street from the X – wants to expand.  And that’s got Irvine Parkers up in arms:

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that residents of the nearby Irvine Park neighborhood want more say into the plans for the expanded shelter and service center.

Few will deny there’s a real need for the expansion. But neighbors say they already see homeless people spill over into the nearby park and onto their properties while waiting for the shelter to open each evening. They say the proposed design of the upgraded facility won’t do much to alleviate the situation.

Either will sixty more years of DFL rule, complete with using the inner city as a warehouse for the poor and de-institutionalized.

Who do we protest to about that?

 Bill Glahn notes that the Dayton campaign’s latest TV ad – featuring a “beleaguered middle class family” – continues a long DFL tradition:

The Ports are in no sense “middle class.” Steve Port owns his own businessin Burnsville, employing several staff. In true, “What’s the Matter with Kansas” fashion, I’m not sure the Ports—by supporting Democrats—are operating in their own self-interest as small-business owners in Minnesota.

But they do support the Democrats. Besides the sizable campaign donations, Lindsey Port recently wrote a letter to the editor supportive of the Democratic cause.

And we do mean large contributions; the Ports gave $1,000 to Roz Peterson’s undistinguished lump of a DFL opponent. 

This is, of course, a DFL pattern.  Four years ago, the DFL and the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and its media allies at “The Uptake”, produced a piece featuring a mother who was “boycotting Target” because of their pro-business campaign donation to the putatively “anti-gay” Tom Emmer.  Of course, the woman was an upper-middle-class DFL donor from the southwest suburbs. 

The DFL.  Fake outrage.  Fake numbers.  Fake people.