“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!” – John F. Kennedy
“Thank Goddess – Adults having sex with 17 year olds is vaguely technically legal in Minnesota!” – every DFLer in Duluth.
Remember back in 2004? When a bunch of Navy Vietnam vets dared criticize the account their former commander, Senator and former Lieutenant (JG) John Kerry, gave of his time in Vietnam, and were rewarded with a scabrous campaign of character assassination by the left’s plutocracy that has entered the lexicon – “swiftboating” – as a synonym for “we don’t care what you say, you must not attack our candidate in any way”.
So I’m dying to see how the Dems try to defame these guys:
Maybe they’ll demand to see the SEALs’ income tax returns?
“They wanna put y’all in BUD/S”?
I listened to a news item on the radio the other night. In the middle of a couple of DFLers talking about their primary contest today, the radio reporter inserted a clip of Minnesota GOP chairman Pat Shortridge commenting on the state of the DFL.
“It doesn’t matter who they run”, Shortridge said, “It’s a contest between Extremer and Extreme-est”.
And I thought – “is this really news? Taking time out from a story about a DFL primary for a GOP official to bag on the DFL? That’s not news. That’s not Man Bites Dog. That’s not even Dog Bites Man. Party chairs bagging on the opposition is Dog Sniffs Dog”.
Thats’ what I thought.
Or I would have – had it happened.
But there was no radio story about Pat Shortridge bagging on the DFL, dropped incongruously into the middle of a story about a couple of primary races.
That’d be weird, wouldn’t it?
Naturally, it doesn’t end there. I said there was no story including an incongruous quote of Pat Shortridge bagging on the DFL in the middle of a story about a DFL primary.
But for some reason, Tim Pugmire, of Minnesota Public Radio News – whose putative motto is “No Rant, No Slant” – in the middle of a story about the GOP primaries in the west Metro, opted to drop in a quote from MInnesota DFL chair Ken Martin about the nature of the GOP races:
Democrats offer a much different theory.
“What you’re seeing on the Republican side right now is truly a civil war, where you have an already pretty far right Republican party being challenged by people even more to the right who feels those Republicans haven’t done a good enough job being conservative up at the Capitol,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota DFL Party.
So why is the opinion of Ken Martin – who was imposed on the DFL by Alida Messinger to cut out the intellectual middleman – of any news value in the middle of a story about a GOP primary race? Is he offering any opinion that would surprise one about a GOP primary? Does his insight – “Republicans are teh extreem!” – surprse anyone? Again – it’s not news. It’s dog licks dog.
Now, had Martin had said “I believe this race in face defines the Minnesota mainstream”, that would have been news. Along with the next week’s story, “Ken Martin found dead in ditch with Alida Messinger’s stiletto marks on his throat and electrical burns on his genitals.”
But as it is, what Pugmire gave us was a freebie DFL mention which was of no news value, but certainly made for a nifty little free ad.
…a dumber person in American politics than Debbie Wasserman-Drescher?
It’s further evidence of Berg’s Seventh Law that the party of “Sarah Palin is teh dummy!” elevated “The Nanny” to their ostensibly top position (although it’s also evidence that the Democrat Party nationwide is no more relevant than they are in Minnesota; just as the DFL is nothing but a front for Alida Messinger, the national Dems are basically water-carriers for the Soros-led claque of liberal plutocrats, the government employee unions, and their useful idiots in Hollywood).
Flashback to high school:
(Harp arpeggios has hazy scene dissolves to homeroom at a high school):
GIRL: Who’s your boyfriend?
LEFTYBLOGGER: Oh – he goes to another school!
(Harps return for more arpeggions as scene dissolves, then re-establishes at college)
PROFESSOR: So what evidence did we have that Reagan was a crook that should have been in jail and who actively promoted the crack and AIDS epidemics?
FUTURE LEFTYBLOGGER: He was a Republican!
PROFESSOR: Close enough!
(Harps again; scene dissolves, then re-establishes in a basement somewhere in suburbia)
LEFTYBLOGGER: (Speaking as she types): Of course the the Burkett memos were real! One of the world’s leading forensic document analysts is in my bowling league, and she says the case that they were forged has absolutely zero merit! No, I won’t reveal her name, or the name or location of the bowling league, because I don’t want to put her in danger from all you teabagging wingnuts. But if they gave a Nobel prize for document analysis, she’d have five. And so if you disagree with me, you’re an idiot!”
(Harps again, as scene dissolves, then re-establishes in Washington DC):
“[The source of Harry Reid’s allegations against Mitt Romney] is an investor in Bain Capital, a Republican also, and somebody … who has been dealing with Romney’s company for a long, long time and he has direct knowledge on this,” [Reid aide Jose Parra] said.
Parra’s statement comes after Romney, in an interview with Fox News, challenged Reid to identify his source.
However, after some media attention on Parra’s radio interview, Parra issued a statement taking those remarks back.
“I do not know the party affiliation of the source, how long he invested with Bain, or his relationship to Romney beyond the fact that he was an investor with Bain Capital, as Senator Reid has previously stated,” he said.
The Democrat strategy seems to be to find enough of the stupid, the gullible, the dependant, the depraved and the incurious to eke out a victory.
Experience in Minnesota shows that at least 43% of any given population can be counted on.
It may be the only consistent line of substantive defense of his record that Barack Obama has come up with in almost four years; “it’s Bush’s fault!”.
And according to a Fed economist, it may not be true.
The latest BLS statistics are out. The media are portraying this as a mild win for the Administration.
It’s not
The unemployment rate ticked up to 8.3% – which is about .3% higher than the peak “The One” promised before unleashing Porkulus.
But worse than that? The Labor Force Participation Rate, which this past April was the lowest it’d been in thirty years (68.6%) before ticking up in May and June, dropped another tenth to 68.7%. That’s a good chunk of the reason the unemployment rate held as steady as it did – people left the workforce.
What that means, if you remove the unemployment rate from the participation rate, is that 58.41% of the workforce is working. That is…:
Put another way? It’s been three years since more than 59% of the American people were working.
How long can economy sustain itself with less than three out of five people working?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has adopted your oldie-but-goodie “a source I can’t name, but is an absolutely dispositive expert on the subject, but no, I won’t tell you who it is so you can judge her veracity for yourself” standard of evidence!
You’re all…validated! Sorta!
That is all!
…that the Light Worker’s campaign is aimed at the one group he’s got a shot with: the not very well informed:
This is an ad, as Ed points out, that even left-leaning Politifact has rated “pants on fire”.
As this blog has been noting for quite some time now, the Democrat strategy seems to be to just toss crap in front of the electorate and hope just enough of it sticks to the dim, uninformed, adolescent, solipsistic and over-emotional to eke out a win.
It worked for Mark Dayton.
Tens of millions of dollars burned up. A state’s business disrupted (well, some) for the better part of a year and a half. Endless rounds of recall elections, with much ballyhoo and smack-talk, passed…
…all to give Wisconsin Democrats a one vote majority in the State Senate that they can never use, because the Senate doesn’t meet until after the next round of elections.
Oh, never mind. The Wisconsin Senate is…:
…16-16-1 now, thanks to Senator Jim Cullen bailing out of the Democratic party.
Cullen was one of the fleebaggers last year; one of the seventeen sore losers that tried to hijack democracy and nullify the election just passed by hiding out in Illinois to dodge voting on one of Governor Walker’s bills.
Let’s take a moment to remember that:
It may have been the Wisconsin Senate Dems’ swan song for now:
After months of screaming, millions blown on recalls up and down the state, and boasting and yelling by every fist-icon-sporting lefty out there, the Democratic victory that was recalling Walker barely flipping the senate (when it isn’t in session again until after the November elections which are likely to restore at least two seats to the Republicans) hit an iceberg today.
I’d like to say Cullen’s flip was due to pure, unvarnished principle – but like so much in politics, it’d seem there’s a tetch of ego involved:
When the party regained control, Cullen, who had fled with the rest of the Democrats but was willing to work with Walker on reforms after returning to the state, was denied chairman status on any committee. He felt insulted, has walked, and the three-week-long Democratic majority is over.
There are times a house in Hudson looks soooooooo good.
Americans prefer Romney over Obama on the economy by more than 2:1!
That’s after a couple of weeks of Democrat harping on Romney’s bank accounts, tax returns, and his wife’s horse.
Americans would seem to be in a serious mood about economic matters.
But why, oh why, could that be?
Good news, Democrats! Your internal propaganda budget is apparently well-spent!
Democrats have a much more optimistic view of the U.S. economy than either Republicans or unaffiliated adults.
Currently, just 36% of Democrats believe the economy is in poor shape, according to new Rasmussen Reports polling. Nearly twice as many Republicans (67%) offer such a pessimistic view. So do 54% of those not affiliated with either major party.
It’s gotta be either the propaganda budget thing, or most of them work in government jobs that are untouchable until the entire economy Greeces out.
The national telephone survey of 3,500 American Adults was conducted by Rasmussen Reports July 14-20, 2012. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Confidence in the survey, of course. Not the economy. Or the accuracy of the pollyannas’ views.
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
It occurs to me that President Obama’s “You Didn’t Build That Yourself” theme may not be original to him.
The St. Paul City Council already had one like it, only theirs is longer: “If you have a successful business, you didn’t build that; at least not here because we won’t let you.”
Not sure which version I like better.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
It’s like asking “who do you like less: Rick Astley or Vanilla Ice?”
Why choose?
In 2004, lefty commentator Thomas Frank published a book “What’s The Matter With Kansas” – which analyzed the growing conservative majority in America’s heartland…
…in the most patronizing, contemptuous way I’d heard until the mainstream media’s response to the Tea Party five years later. Frank hammered on the idea that conservatives in the heartland were “voting against their interests” by voting Conservative.
The ‘Interests”, of course, were limited to “having government take care of you, provided you send it enough taxes” (my phrase, not Frank’s).. “Kansas” – Frank’s home state on the one hand, and his and every lefty pundit’s short-hand for “all those dumb rubes I left behind when I went to an Ivy League school” on the other – has “interests” that begin with getting farm subsidies and end with single-payer health care.
Frank’s thesis, in other words? States, and citizens, are dependents. Like pets. Like a herd of cattle for which a noble farmer is responsible; it’s in the cattle’s interest to make the farmer’s life easy. Or maybe like children – little people who aren’t quite fully formed, who depend on the older, wiser, parents to keep them on the straight and narrow until a majority that never comes.
And it highlit one of the big disputes between “progressives” and conservatives: what is the role of a person, a citizen? To a liberal, it’s “vote when told to vote, pay your taxes when told to pay taxes, and don’t get in the way”. To a conservative, it’s to be one of the free association of equals that consents to having a government, and – make no mistake – controls that government.
This argument came to the nation, and Minnesota, this past few months.
Last spring, Representative Mary Franson from the Alexandria area took nationwide heat for a comment which some of the local Sorosphere’s ‘dimmer bulbs yanked out of context (and a few of the less less-bright ones correctly called out as a dumb hit) which was, in its entirety, correct; long-term dependence on welfare does, in fact, treat people like animals. Like pets, at best; little critters for whose well-being the master – the owner, or government, depending on which end of the metaphor you’re talking about – is responsible.
And about the same time the Sorosphere was denouncing Franson with florid indignation, the Obama Administration came out and proved that Franson was exactly right – that the government did in fact see citizens as monochromatic consumers, as ivestock, dependent on their owner/master/government for their ongoing wellbeing, with the fabulously inept and gloriously spoof-worthy and, beyond that, downright Orwellian “Julia” campaign.
David Clemens – in a piece called “Elvis Vs. Julia”, which is actually a defense of humanities education, the discipline of studying the why of humanity, which is in its entirely worth a read for its own sake – cuts to the reason “progressives” attitudes about the government / citizen relationship, as revleated by “Julia” are not just toxic, but dehumanizing:
This is why selling the Julia concept frightens me. She doesn’t yearn to be free, like a human; she yearns to be kept. Julia embraces the piano key life that the president offers, and like W. H. Auden’s Unknown Citizen, she will act and behave predictably, she will choose and think correctly.
But in literature (and life) we recoil from those who trade freedom for safety nets and soft landings. The great anti-utopian novelists warned us over and over what happens when we make that bargain: George Orwell’s Winston Smith, Aldous Huxley’s John Savage, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s D-503 would rather suffer or die than join the Party, take the soma, or blend into the One State.
So what I find most chilling about the Julia ad concept is its creators’ cynical view of Americans, particularly women. And what if her creators are right? As Michael Walsh writes, “It’s tough to accept that perhaps a majority of our fellow Americans would cheerfully trade liberty for a false sense of security.” That is, how many workforce-ready but literature-free voters see The Life of Julia and find her flat, subsidized, feckless life desirable? With the liberal arts in decline, how many “miss the connection?” One must have been exposed to Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin in order to see their relationship to Julia and hear the warning.
Clearly, much of the left does – or, worse, “gets it”, but feels the trade is worthwhile, or worst of all, sees themselves as the “shepherds” needed to manage all of us sheep, or Julias, or whatever line of metaphor you want to run with.
A perennial question that divides the political left and right is this: what sort of beings are we? Do we have an immutable, perhaps transcendent, nature that will surrender everything utopia for autonomy, agency, and freedom (Elvis) [who, it might be said, rebelled against the very security that his phenomenally-successful career ]? Or is there no inherent nature, and humans are just socially constructed, plastic, seeking nothing but safety and a reliable sense of well-being (Julia)? Political Science, Psychology, and Anthropology cannot answer that question, and the sciences can only measure what is measurable. The liberal arts and humanities, however, insist that we are like Elvis, and that those who trade liberty for comfort always live to regret it.
Well, some humanities observe this. Others are waiting on their next NEH grant.
But the real question is – which is a better reflection of what humans are, and can be? Conservatism, with its immutable standards and great consequences and sometimes greater hurdles? Or a life bellied up to the government trough, like the one Obama and Mark Dayton clearly see for us?
What’s the matter with Kansas – and with Kansans like us?
We’re human, and we want to stay that way.
Let me see if I’ve got this right this year:
In 1992 and 1996, a record of military service (like George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole had) was absolutely not important…
…but in 2000, it – or the version of it in which being a “military journalist” under the watchful eye of a senior NCO who didn’t let the future Democrat candidate within miles of any known action was bigger and better than being an Air National Guard F-102 pilot. a job with a frighteninly-high “peacetime” casualty rate.
In 2004 it was especially confusing – since having been a Navy “Swift Boat” commander was reputed to give absolute moral authority, while crewmen in those same boats who dissented from their former junior officer’s view of things were said to be blackguards.
It was back to normal in 2008, when a Community Organizer was deemed the real hero, and America’s chattering classes reduced themselves to tittering about the dental state of a man who’d spent years in a POW camp, to say nothing of the circumstances of his getting shot down in the first place.
And this year? Supporters of Obama are trying to paint the community organizer – who was one of about 98% of the adults in his generation who never served in the military – as somehow more noble as the community organizer (for the Mormon Church) who was among the 70-odd percent of people of his generation who got one form of deferment or another – missionary and educational – until he was finished with school, in 1975. Two years after the draft ended.
Which is it?
The Berg Institute – the nation’s foremost think tank on public safety and social policy [1] – is announcing a brand new program; the Politician Buy-Back!
Today only, please bring any politicians you’d like to get off the street down to the Shot In The Dark comment center. Toss ’em in the box – in the comment section – no questions asked. In exchange, you get a Mastercarp card good for $100 [2].
So bring your politicians down and make our streets that much safer!
Thanks to Berg Institute Senior Fellow Kermit for the idea.
Obama’s administration, picking winners and losers yet again, destroys even more (outré, déclassé) entrepreneurship.
Although to be fair, this time he didn’t need John Roberts to do it.
The demand for my first episode of “FACQ” was so immense, I thought I’d do a follow-up.
Q: “So what do you think about Mitt’s “Swiss Bank Account”?
A: “Fascinating. Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Q: “Mitt made his money by short-selling America!”
A: “Speaking of short-selling – how does the value of your house compare to four years ago?”
Q: “Is it moral that Mitt short-sold America?”
A: “He didn’t – that’s a narrative repeated by people who don’t understand the term, intended for and repeated by others who also don’t have a clue. Short-selling is a way of creating wealth out of the process of creative destruction. It in turn creates more capital to create more jobs. Speaking of jobs – are you better off than you were four year ago?
Q: “People don’t like Mitt Romney”
A: “You know what people like less? Being out of work. Did you see last Friday’s jobs report? Most of us are doing much worse than we were four years ago!”
Q: “Hahahaha! Obamacare is constitutional!”
A: “We’re working on it. Now – are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Q: “Mitt’s wife rides a horse!”
A: “I bet the horse is the only one who’s better off than he was four years ago. Speaking of which – are you better off than you were four years ago?”
More as conditions warrant.
They said that if we voted for John McCain, we’d get secretive, imperial government that’d rule by decree and conceal its activities from the peasants.
And they were right! DEA Freedom of Information Act rejections have doubled since 2008:
Despite President Obama’s 2009 executive order requiring agencies to err on the side of disclosure when processing Freedom of Information Act requests, the Drug Enforcement Agency exempted a record number of FOIA requests in 2011 in nearly every category.
But it didn’t set records just in 2011: According to a comparison of publicly available data from FOIA.gov, the DEA rejected more FOIA requests in 2009, 2010, and 2011 than it did during the last year of George W. Bush’s administration.
It gets complicated. I urge you to read the whole thing.
Dave Mindeman seems flabbergasted that elected officials must be in tune with their voters on even the most flamingly, sirens-blazingly obvious issues:
Rep. Colin Peterson has confirmed that there is one thing more important than being a Democrat….one thing more important than principle….one thing more important than the truth.
That would be: The NRA
Well, let’s be honest here; it’s not “being a Democrat” that’s been keeping Peterson in office in his fairly conservative district – which, once Peterson retires, will likely become a hard-red district. It’s reflecting his constituents.
And I’m curious what “principle” Mindeman thought Peterson was breaking; to most Americans, keeping government in line – say, when it uses the power of government to try to slander the law-abiding gun owner, or especially when they try to cover up and stonewall the facts of a case that’s led directly to the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one, and now possibly two federal agents – is the height of principle.
This travesty of a contempt vote, being brought against Attorney General Eric Holder, that the House has insisted upon because the NRA is pulling the puppet strings, has 4 Democrats signing on to it. And one of those four is Colin Peterson.
And this blog salutes their courage, in bucking the Democrats’ naked power-mongering to stand up for the rule of law.
The whole issue is a joke. The Fast and Furious policy was a dumb thing to do but to move this whole thing into a contempt vote is even dumber.
I think Brian Terry’s family might agree it was a “dumb” thing to do – and would think getting answers from our “public servants” isn’t so dumb at all.
I doubt Peterson would be giving it one minute of thought except for the fact that the NRA is going so “score” the vote. Scoring a contempt vote? How crazy is that?
Keeping score on a vote on an issue involving the “Justice” department using government time, resources and power primariliy to slander the NRA’s five million constituents?
Crazy like a fox – in that “I’d like to get re-elected” sense of the term.
But this has been crazy from the beginning. Just to gain some political points and satisfy the fantasy world of the NRA’s fear of the “secret Obama war on guns”, they are counting noses for this vote.
Dave Mindeman, like many Democrats, believes that Voter ID suppresses legal voting, but can’t believe an administration headed by a President who used to be bankrolled by an anti-gun foundation, and who depends disproportionally
Peterson plans to join in on the sham. And why not? It gets him NRA bonus points while sticking it to the administration – the one he is running away from.
Even a second amendment supporter like Peterson must know this whole thing is a joke….but then there has never been anything funny about the NRA.
But there is plenty funny about the way urban DFLers demonize it. The NRA is perhaps one of the grass-rootsiest lobbying organizations there is. It has five million paying members – unlike the typical big-money group supporting the DFL (say, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, which has one).
And besides most Republicans, they have plenty of traction among Democrat voters outside the 494-694 circle, who may vote all wrong, but certainly understand that the Second Amendment is a civil right.
A right that Barack Obama and his administration have been trying – on “principle” – to chip away at the best they could since before they were elected.
A rare kudo to Colin Peterson. You finally got one right.
But feel free to desert him for this one, Democrats.
BONUS QUESTION: Why doesn’t Mindeman have similar harsh words for CD1’s Tim Walz, who also voted to hold Holder accountable for his coverup? Closing ranks and ignoring it because the CD1 race might be closer, perhaps? Do Dems only criticize the Democrats they think they can afford to?
Perhaps you’ve heard about Barack Obama’s new bridal registry, wherein couples can opt to have wedding guests give to Barack Obama in lieu of (or in addition to) wedding gifts.
It’s a brilliant idea, of course – bolster anemic small-donor giving by instituting a voluntary tax on life’s little joys, just one little bit of asceticism for the greater good.
But why stop with weddings?
With that in mind – my top ten other ideas to help “gift” America and the world with four more years of Barack Obama:
6. You kids’ birthday money – If Obama wins, every day will be a birthday party!
5. Bar/Bat Mitzvahs – With news that the Jewish vote is eroding, it’s way past time to get the younger generation on board! Today you are a Democrat! Mazel Tov!
4. Grandma’s Nursing Home Budget – You can clean out that spare bedroom, for the good of the country, right?
3. Your Internet Access bill – good Democrats should be getting their news from NBC anyway, right?
2. Your pledge to MPR – Let’s face it, if Obama loses, the Republicans are going to send tanks to the studios anyway. Just like they did during the Bush Administration.
1. Your “Friday Night On The Town” money – Why should newlyweds carry all the burden? Instead of wasting money trying to get some desirable of your preferred gender to go home with you, donate the money to Obama! Republicans will just outlaw sex if they win, anyway, right?
SCENE: Tarryl Clark, DFL candidate to run against Chip Cravaack, along with her aide Muffy Eisenberg-McDuffy, stands in front of a room full of DFL activists and media (pardon the redundancy).
CLARK: I just want to express my sympathy to the people of Saint Cloud over all the tragic flooding.
EISENBERG-MCDUFFY: (sotto voce) Duluth!
CLARK: To the people of Duluth. Sorry.
(And SCENE).
Over the years, this blog has had a lot of fun cataloging statements that reveal the exposed inner id of Democrats.
We’ve brought you gems like:
To that, I need to add this gem by retiring New York congressman Spencer Ackerman:
The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber.
If the GOP doesn’t print this – and the three above – on T-shirts this fall, it has only itself to blame. As usual.
And while the people may or may not be dumber, it’s for sure that Democrat senators’ IQs certainly are under the speed limit:
I don’t know that I would’ve said that out loud pre-my announcement that I was going to be leaving. [Laughter] But I think that’s true. I mean everything has changed. The media has changed. We now give broadcast licenses to philosophies instead of people.
We give ’em to neither. Ideology is a programming option, like “Top Forty”. Unlike Top Forty – or Spencer Ackerman – conservative talk is successful.
The SCOTUS kicked the can for the Obamacare ruling down the road to next week.
Predictions?
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