Hey, didja notice how the Wisconsin Recall Elections disappeared from even the regional media last Wednesday?

While the leftymedia spent about a day trying to polish the turd – “We got two of them!” – it was pointless; coming up one short was no better than losing all six recalls, especially after spending the kind of money the “progressives” spent.   You can bet that if the Dems had won three, we’d be hearing about how the Tea Party was dead, at top volume.

The final round is scheduled for today, and since we’re not hearing a lot about it, that most likely means…

…well, we’ll come back to that:

On the ballot were Sens. Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie and Jim Holperin of Conover. Holperin is the first state-level elected official in U.S. history to have faced two recall attempts. He survived one in 1990 as a member of the state Assembly after he was targeted for supporting tribal spearfishing rights.

There’s a decent chance that Holperin can be tossed.

Which is, I suspect, why we’re not hearing a whole lot about today’s elections.

…from early childhood, President Obama…

…and you are no Martin Luther King:.

And now that King has his own memorial on the Mall I think that we forget when he was alive there was nobody who was more vilified, nobody who was more controversial, nobody who was more despairing at times.  There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks angry.

Heh.

But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.  But it doesn’t bend on its own.

Yep.  We understand it, and it keeps us going too.

And I’m starting to think it might just bend back in November of 2012.

Let me be clear about this: I believe that Barack Obama will win four more years.  Indeed, I believe the electoral landscape is shaping up such that if he wins with less than 55% of the vote – he’s an incumbent running before a fawning media and a hysterical following, for crying out loud – and the Dems don’t take two seats in the Senate and retake the House completely, they should consider it a crushing loss for the party as a whole.

Still, there are signs all is not well for front-runner and favorite Obama:

U.S. consumer sentiment worsened sharply in early August, falling to the lowest index level since 1980, even though retail sales posted the biggest gains in three months in July, separate reports on Friday showed.

1980?  Why, I remember that.  That was the golden age of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale! The era of stagflation!  The Iranian Hostage Crisis!  13% inflation!

Make no mistake; I think Obama’s going to win, and if he doesn’t win big, it’ll be the same as a loss.  But this would seem to be a bit of a hurdle…

Minnesota is heading for a battle over redistricting that may just make the just-passed budget battle look like a stroll in the park.

And, just like with every such battle lately in Minnesota, there is at least one “non-partisan” non-profit claiming to have the interests of average, non-affiliated Minnesotans at heart.  There are a couple of reasons for this; for starters, the Minnesota DFL is a largely impotent organization;

In the 2010 elections, of course, it was “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and a small circle of other groups – “The 2010 Fund”  – a group that funnelled millions of dollars from unions, the Dayton family, and their cronies to try to win the election for Mark Dayton (largely by running a toxic sleaze campaign).  Their power in “progressive” circles is remarkable; Governor Dayton has brought a fair number of ABM’s staffers to work in his office; the former head of the “2010 Fund”, Ken Martin, now runs the DFL.

And for the redistricting battle?  The new astroturf group is “Draw The Line”, an organization that spans several states where the Democrats are fighting for their organizational lives, including Minnesota.

So who’s behind “Draw the Line?”  And what are they after – and by “they”, I don’t mean “Draw The Line”, so much as the people behind them?

More next week here on Shot In The Dark.

Ahem.

At the risk of dispersing some of this blog’s usual decorum:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(breathe)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m not usually one for end-zone happy-dancing.  But after all the “you are teh racist/sexist/anti-worker/anti-middle-class/teabagger!/Koch-sucker/crap all of us conservatives have had to sit through since the last election, frankly, I think we’re entitled.

Last night’s victory in Wisconsin, like the “budget compromise” in DC and the Minnesota state budget, weren’t unalloyed victories – but in this case, it wasn’t even as close as it looked for the Wisconsin Democrats.

Think about it, “progressives”; you just spent $40,000,000 of your unions members’ dues – twice as much as the entire campaign for the entire Wisconsin State Senate cost in 2010.

Twice as much as the GOP spent.

You did it, you said, because you just knew Wisconsinites, deep down inside, were a bunch of liberals!  Not without reason; Barack Obama won every single one of those districts in 2008.

You – every damn one of you – just knew that you’d flip three, four, maybe even all six seats!  Because – you just knew this – Wisconsin just BLEEEEEEEDS “progressive”!

Or at least you had to hope so – because this, along with this autumn’s vote in Ohio on a slate of reforms similar to Walker’s – could mark the beginning of the end, not of public unions, but of public unions as a critical, game-ending force in national politics.

Because in a few years, with more stories like this floating around out there, even more voters will see what a crock of crap you “progressives” have been selling for so long.

Your platform – which, when you strip away all of the happy-talk, is “we will force private sector workers to work ’til they’re 72 so public union members can retire with full benefits at 55” – just isn’t working anymore.

And what did you get for your tens of millions?

You got two – one that everyone knew we were going to lose, and one squeaker against a guy with lots of personal electability issues,  The rest of them – even the Darling-Pasch race, which started the evening’s returns with Pasch winning – weren’t even close.

And Shelly “MAKE NO MISTAKE, WE ARE IN A WAR” Moore?  Yep, you were in a war.  And you were Italy.  And even with all that union money for those obnoxious, “A Better Minnesota”-style TV ads, and all those union people trawling the streets, and all those Twin Cities “progressives” coming across the river to help out?  Not to gloat, but that was the sweetest victory of them all last night, at least for a Twin Cities conservative who got to watch that race close-up from across the Saint Croix.

Sixteen points.

And the Democrats’ Holperin seat is looking kinda squishy in next week’s round of recalls.  Your two pickups could very easily turn into one by this time next week.

Scott Walker has been affirmed; Barack Obama has been refudiated.

You want to call this a war?  You know how those end, right?

Shelly Moore – the Dwight Schrute of Wisconsin politics – lies so blatantly, even the left-leaning Politifact can’t help but notice.  One of Moore’s recent flyers drew Politifact’s attention:

For one, Moore plays loose in stating the impact of Ryan’s Medicare proposal. At one point, her flier says it would “eliminate Medicare as we know it.” In another, it says the plan would “end” Medicare.

For those who turn 65 before 2022, the program would not change. And for the others, Medicare would change dramatically but it would still exist, PolitiFact Wisconsin noted in ruling False a MoveOn.org claim that Medicare would be abolished in 10 years.

And best of all, her flyer misquotes an actual person:

And, last but not least, we called the woman pictured under the flier’s headline: “Lyda Haskins of River Falls Can’t Afford For Medicare to End.”

Haskins, 85, told us that she would have no trouble without Medicare even if it were taken from her — which it would not be, under the plan.

“It’s laughable that I wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Haskins said. “They should have not have done that.”

Haskins, whose daughter Alison Page ran unsuccessfully against Harsdorf in 2008, is well known in the area.

Haskins said she was not told her name would be used, and was not aware that Medicare would be an issue in the direct mail piece. She said she agreed, along with her grandchildren, only to be pictured generically as a Moore supporter.

Which earns Moore an unplaudit:

The flier’s claims are false, barring new information, and the misleading nature of the presentation pushes this into ridiculous territory.

That’s a Pants on Fire.

If you live in the greater Hudson / St. Croix River area, you have a chance today – to help continue saving Wisconsin from its ruinous, California-like fixation on spending, and from forcing the private sector to work ’til it’s 72 so the unions can retire at 55.

While this blog doesn’t do endorsements, I’m just going to say vote early and often for Harsdorf.

According to Drew “Don’t Call Me Michael” Westen, Obama’s problem is that he wasn’t interventionistic, imperial, demigogic…progressive enough!

No, I’m not going to quote it.  Read it.  On an empty stomach.

I’m told that CNBC’s Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money”, and I have a bit of a resemblance.

So – if Thompson Building and Remodeling, who’ve been sponsoring the Northern Alliance for most of this past five or six years, hires me to endorse their services, even though I don’t make any “Cramer” references whatsoever during the ads, is Thompson “impersonating Cramer?”

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Jill Burcum isn’t the worst, most in-the-bag-for-the-Democrats Strib editorial writer.  That “distinction” floats at random between Lori Sturdevant, Jon Tevlin and most of the rest of the staff.

And I don’t mean that to sound as nasty as it probably does.  If more of the Strib’s editorial writers were in Burcum’s “I’m a DFLer, but I don’t want to come across like an obvious house shill” weight class, the Strib and its editorial would be less a laughingstock.

Still, priorities are priorities.  Burcum takes umbrage, on behalf of Morgan Freeman, at the latest ad for Sheila Harsdorf in her battle for the Wisconsin Senate in the district just across the St. Croix from the Metro against  Shelly “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED UNIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON” Moore.

The latest attack ad on Wisconsin state Senate candidate Shelly Moore instantly prompts this question: How’d they get actor Morgan Freeman to do the voiceover?

The reality is that it’s not Freeman, whose authoritative voice made him a logical choice to play God in the hit film “Bruce Almighty” a few years back. Instead, the slippery group funding the ad found somebody who sounds just like Freeman.

So what does Burcum suggest?  That established voice-over guys be able to trademark the timbre and tone of their voices, so nobody else can sound like them?

Because Burcum sounds serious:

The [organization funding the spots’] latest effort is nothing less than a fake celebrity endorsement of Moore’s opponent, Republican Sheila Harsdorf, in the recall election taking place just across the border.

Baloney.  The guy’s voice sounds like Morgan Freeman, in the same way that I look like Jim Cramer.  Did he say “I”m Morgan Freeman?”  No.  Does his voice say “I’m detached and authoritative, like Morgan Freeman’s?”  Sure.  Is it of any legal or ethical weight?  If it is, then everyone with a passing resemblance to a celebrity who swerves into the public eye in any way loses their stock in trade.

(And this lawsuit, by Bette Midler against a soundalike who sang one of her songs on a commercial, tucks in the legal case.  Being a soundalike isn’t in and of itself an issue; Midler’s suit got tossed).

Let’s try this, and see if Burcum squawks.

“DFL and RINOs good.  Conservatives bad.  Vote for Sheila Harsdorf!”

Now, was that actually Lori Sturdevant endorsing Harsdorf?  Of course not.  Did I try to leverage the coincidental resemblance of the line I wrote with a regional celebrity’s trademark dogmatism?  Perhaps, but so what?   Does a celebrity own their tone, their timbre and cadence and presentation?

If so, Burcum might be getting a call from Doug Grow’s lawyer.

It’s no secret – Obama’s priority isn’t the economy.  All that “I’ll be fine being a one-term president” was so much baked wind; he wants four more years to get his addled agenda across.

The guy’s got a nation to destroy:

Of course, this by no means is an indication the President has lost the Huffington Post. Arianna, Alex, and everyone at this liberal abomination will be campaigning for the former junior senator from Illinois next year as if he’s a close relative.

But the disappointment on the left is palpable, and if the economy really is double-dipping, it will be interesting to see whether the rats leave the ship or figure out a way to blame it on Republicans.

And it’s in this cycle that the Tea Party, and all of those millions of newly-minted fiscalcons, needs to earn its bones.

As NewsBusters previously reported, there already is an effort underway to use the debt ceiling agreement as the culprit for any downturn.

Whether or not the American people will buy it is another thing altogether.

The media is already working overtime try to rig that part the equation.

I’ve been listening to some of my fellow conservatives – especially Tea Partiers – complaining about the debt ceiling deal, in terms that start with “it’s awful” and often as not end with “well, it was a great run – time to start hiding gold under the mattress”.

To which I answer, as appropriate, “what did you expect when we only control the House?” and “if you’re not storing gold, ammo and food even in the good times, you’re nuts”.  But I digress.

Ed Morrissey – with whom I co-host a radio show every Saturday on AM1280 – notes in The Week that it wasn’t a perfect victory for the Tea Party – there was no way for that victory to happen, at least not via democratic means, in this Congress with this President – but it was a victory nevertheless:

Who won, and who lost? Did anyone win? If we gauge winners and losers by the reaction from politicians and activists across the political spectrum, no one was satisfied with the deal reached between Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress and President Obama. Though it is arguably true that few actually advanced their agenda much in the deal, that doesn’t mean everyone came out of this deal equally worse off. Indeed, despite some dissatisfied rumblings from within the Tea Party, one lesson is clear: They succeeded in transforming Washington.

The codecil to that – one that the Tea Party needs to remember?  Politics is not like a championship game, with a final end result that stands for all time.  It’s a season – one that never actually ends.  It’s one where everything that happens in this game – hurt quarterbacks, momentum gained and lost, everything – affects the next game, and the game after that, and games played after your children take things over.

The example I keep coming back to: handgun carry reform in Minnesota.  When Concealed Carry Reform Now first formed, and started trying to change Minnesota’s racist, sexist, patriarchal weapon carry laws, they couldn’t even get time to talk with legislators – with “friendly”, Republican ones.

I can’t help but feel that some of the Tea Party conservatives who are complaining about the debt ceiling deal today would have fumed about the unfairness of it all back then, thrown in the towel and spent the next six years silently stewing.  But I’d hope it’d be a teaching moment.

Because the next year…well, only a few legislators talked with CCRN.  But it was more than the previous year.  And CCRN’s mailing list bloomed, and outstate voters started paying attention.

And the next year?  A few more legislators opened their doors.  And CCRN’s mailing list started having an effect – legislators started hearing from more people, which opened still more doors.

And the next year?  There was talk of a bill.  It never happened, but legislators were getting the message in droves; CCRN’s volunteer lobbyists were getting audiences with key legislators.

And the next year?  Well, the CCRN mailing list grew some more, and the DFL had to start playing defense.

And the next year?  And the following?  More of the same.  The DFL – and their point man on the issue, Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund – had to crank the smear and lie machine up into full force, since it was becoming clear they had no basis in fact.

And the next year?  There was a bill – and it died on the table (as I recall – I could very well have the specifics wrong, but it doesn’t really detract from the point).  And CCRN’s mailing list told voters which legislators voted against it.  And they got an earful, and a few of them – outstate DFLers who’d voted against the bill – lost their return tickets to Saint Paul.

And the next year?  We won.

(And two years later, we won again, after a DFL-pet judge struck down the law on ludicrously selective grounds).

Viewed from the perspective of 1995, and 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, we lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost and lost again.

And yet without all the effort – and there was a lot of effort – expended from 1005 through 2002, there would have been no victory.

And the victory wasn’t won by simply wanting it badly enough – although you gotta have that.  It was won by playing grassroots politics better than the other side.  We – the pro-Second-Amendment movement – had to win over a lot of hearts and minds in the legislature, the media, and on Mainstreet Minnesota.

The Tea Party did transform American politics – once. It did it by convincing the American people last Fall that they had the best ideas for taking this nation forward.

And now they need to do it again – to win the Senate, the White House, and a bunch of State Houses and Legislatures, enough to really, seriously, totally revamp the way this nation views the relationship between The People and government.

And it’s not a sprint, or a single game; it’s a marathon, an endless season.  Something that’ll challenge many Americans’ addled attention spans.

All the better.

(SCENE: Denise CARDINAL, head of Alliance for a Better Minnesota chair of the Minnesota DFL, wallks into her office, sits in an overstuffed chair)

(KEN MARTIN walks in to room).

MARTIN: “Hello…”

(MARTIN stops abruptly as CARDINAL motions downward with her index fingers.  MARTIN sighs, gets on hands and knees in front of CARDINAL’s char.  CARDINAL puts feet up on MARTIN’s back).

(REP. JOHN LESCH, who is minding the phones, buzzes in) “Mizz Cardinal, the party from the legislature is here to see you”.

CARDINAL: “Send them in please”.

(Tom BAKK, Paul THISSEN and Ryan WINKLER walk in.  Each bows deeply toward CARDINAL).

CARDINAL: Rise!

(All three take seats in overstuffed chairs around the room).

CARDINAL: OK.  What do we have?

BAKK: We think we have a plan!

THISSEN: Yes!  A plan!

WINKLER:  Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Let me hear it!

(THISSEN motions to WINKLER)

WINKLER:  Well, there’s this group, the “American Legislative Exchange Council“, or “ALEC”.  They are your run of the mill conservative activist group, run by Grover Norquist…

(BAKK, THISSEN and CARDINAL hiss theatrically)

WINKLER: …and they propose legislation and stuff, and lots of Republicans legislators have signed up with the group…

BAKK:  And if we can spin them as some big, shadowy conspiracy that tells affiliated legislators do to Grover Norquist’s bidding…

THISSEN:  Yeah! Grover Norquist!

WINKLER: Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Silence!  I like it! Winkler?

(WINKLER bows deeply)

CARDINAL: Start telling people that ALEC is a powerful, unaccountable group that wields boundless resources to pull the strings at the Minnesota State Legislature…

LESCH (Buzzes in) Mizz Cardinal?

CARDINAL (enraged) WHAT?

LESCH:  The Gentlemen are here.

CARDINAL:  Thank you. Send them in.

(CARDINAL makes a hand gesture to BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER, all of whom get up from their chairs and lie, face-down, on the floor, head-to-foot, from the door to CARDINAL’s chair)

(CARDINAL rises as Tom DOOHER enters the room in a long, black cape.  He is accompanied by Javier MORILLO, who is wearing a long purple cape.  DOOHER steps across WINKLER, THISSEN and BAKK’s backs to walk to CARDINAL, to whom he offers his hand.  CARDINAL kisses his pinky ring).

DOOHER:  Well?

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey.

MORILLO:  You heard the man! SOUND OFF!

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey!

DOOHER: Very well.  Stand up, for Minnesota’s students.  (As BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER stand, DOOHER takes BAKK’s seat.  BAKK takes THISSEN’s, THISSEN takes WINKLER’s, who stands awkwardly).

DOOHER: Let us talk of the 2012 session…

(And SCENE).

It’s no secret – American trade unions have been hemorrhaging membership for decades.  Outside government, there really is very little future for unions; in the private sector, they are a cost that generally can not be sustained.

And so when the unions can find a hidden trove of tens of thousands of workers that can be unionized in one fell swoop, it’s like candy at Christmas.

The proposed merger between ATT and TMobile will release just such a stockpile of fresh potential dues-paying recruits.  ATT is unionized; TMobile is not, but being the absorbed entity, its employees – 20,000 of them – would be potential union recruits.

That’s a lot of money.

And the unions knew it.  And so the unions – almost all the big ones – aggressively lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve the merger.  The record is long and ornate; the unions really, really wanted this deal.

Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO., sounded off when the news of the proposed merger broke:  “Yesterday’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T hasimportant, positive implications for consumers in the U.S. and Germany, forthe U.S. telecom workforce and for our country’s economic future. The acquisition ensures AT&T a strong telecom workforce well-positioned tocompete globally, while offering tens of thousands of T-Mobile USA employees the opportunity to make their jobs good jobs by benefitting from the pro-worker policies of AT&T, one of the only unionized U.S. wireless companies”

The AFL-CIO’s house blog was similarly effusive: ““The announcement over the weekend that AT&T is buying T-Mobile USA could benefit both consumers and employees”

And Larry Cohen, President, Communications Workers of America. also spoke up: “For more than a decade, the United States has continued to drop behind nearly every other developed economy on broadband speed and build out. The Federal Communications Commission sounded the alarm more than a year ago with its broadband report, and President Obama in his State of th eUnion address called for increased efforts to bring the U.S. back to global parity as a key stimulus for economic development. Today’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T is  avictory for broadband proponents in both the U.S. and Germany. For the U.S.,it means that T-Mobile customers will get quick access to the AT&T network,soon to include LTE or data speeds of at least 10 megabits down stream.More important, as part of the deal, AT&T is committing to build out to nearly every part of the U.S. within six years”    Bear in mind that Cohen and the CWA are not cheerleaders for big telecoms; they’ve fought a long, losing battle with Sprint over their practice of contracting out labor, rather than hiring expensive union employees and taking on their pension burden.

Last month, Philip Qualy, legislative director of the Minnesota United Transportation Union’s mailed the FCC’s Julius Genachowski to support the merger; you can read the letter here.  Ditto Shar Knutson and Steve Hunter, from the MN AFL-CIO.  And Julie Schnell, President of the SEIU’s Minnesota State Council; while the SEIU is reliably in bed with the Democrats and the DFL, they know money when they see it.

And Edward Reynoso, political director of the Teamsters’ “Democratic Republican Independent Voter Education” (DRIVE) project, who estimated the long-term upside for the unions, and the private economy, at up to 96,000 jobs.  Not to mention Mona Meyer, president of the Minnesota Communications Workers of America, the union that’d be most affected by the merger.

There is no doubt that labor has close ties with Democrats in Congress.  A list of eighty members of the House of Representatives – including Betty McCollum, of Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District, signed a letter to the FCC also supporting the merger.

So it’s a big deal for the unions.

And as such, it should be a big deal for Democrat – right?

———-

Last Wednesday, Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl recommended that the FCC spike the almost-$40-billion deal:

”I have concluded that this acquisition, if permitted to proceed, would likely cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest, and therefore should be blocked by your agencies,” Kohl said [last] Wednesday.

The unions seemed flabbergasted.  Candice Johnson, communications director for the Communications Workers of America, wrote to tell the FCC that no, they were not amused:

CWA Response to Kohl Letter 7 20

So what does this mean for Al Franken, for  you private sector union people out there,and for the country?

More tomorrow.

We really did.

“Socializing 1/7 of the economy”, we tried to tell the other 52-odd-% of you,”will screw up the economy even worse than it already is”.

And we were right:

Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future. To encourage hiring, Congress should repeal Obamacare.

Some of us are trying.  We really are.

What if Minnesota’s unions gave their all to support a DFL senate candidate – and he stood them up when it was time for their key bit of swag?

Yesterday, it got a column in the WaPo.

In the Tech section, in a piece by Cecilia Kang.  Al Franken filed a brief with the FCC opposing the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Tuesday urged regulators to stop AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile, saying the $39 billion deal would drive up prices for consumers and threaten jobs.

We’ll come back to that last sentence in just a moment here.

In a filing sent to the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission, Franken said the deal would lead to a market duopoly and that conditions attached to the merger wouldn’t stop what could be as much as a 25 percent increase in wireless costs for consumers.

“The competitive effects of a merger of this size and scope will reverberate throughout the telecommunications sector for decades to come and will affect consumer prices, customer service, innovation, competition in handsets, and the quality and quantity of network coverage,” said Franken, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ”These threats are too large and too irrevocable to be prevented or alleviated by conditions.”

Now, in a sense, this isn’t a surprise.  The far left, the “Nutroots”, hate this merger.  Behind the banner of “Net Neutrality”, they’d much prefer the government to control the world’s bandwidth.

Franken’s move comes after committee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis. wrote a letter to federal officials last week, saying such a merger would violate antitrust law.

But we’re not here to debate Net Neutrality.  We’re here to talk Al Franken.

Franken has two main bases of support in Minnesota, which pushed him – a political neophyte, albeit a pundit with portfolio – over the top in the 2008 Senate race against Norm Coleman; the Netroots – the mass of far-left “alternative” media activists – and the unions.

And on this issue as few others, those two bases are very much in conflict.

And if you’re a union worker, you need to know what Franken did.

More at noon today.

Boehner’s response to the President’s communal scolding was short and to the point.

Still, this one would have worked just fine:

(Via Brad “The Closer” Carlson)

Obama’s support is crumbing – among Tea Partiers Liberals:

The Post-ABC poll found that the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president’s actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed.

As longtime friend of this blog Duke Powell tweeted this morning:

Forget who the GOP Presidential Candidate will be…. Who will the Democrats run? #p2 #stribpol

I’d love to see Pelosi run…

UPDATE: Let’s be clear here; I think Obama is going to be hard to beat in 2012. Lots can go right, as well as wrong, between now and then.  Let’s never forget that incumbency counts for a lot.  Indeed, if Obama doesn’t win re-election by at least five points, and if the Dems don’t retake the House and extend their lead by five seats in the Senate, they should take it as another grievous drubbing.

Just saying – he can’t be happy with the news.

Throuigh the simple expedient of remembering why they were went there, and staying with it against a full-court media press, the House GOP majority has prevailed on Harry Reid to cave on the budget.

…now that Harry Reid is developing a proposal with $2.7 trillion in cuts and nothing in revenues, it’s a safe bet that it won’t include any tax increases. Which means that whether Republicans realize it or not, they’ve won. The question now is whether they can stop.

Originally, the Democratic position was that we should simply raise the debt ceiling. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that reduced the deficit by at least $2.4 trillion — which is the size of the debt ceiling increase needed to get us into 2013.

Then the Democratic position was that we should raise the debt ceiling through a deal that reduced the deficit by about $2.4 trillion, with $2 trillion of that coming from spending cuts and $400 billion coming from taxes. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that disavowed taxes.

Sound familiar to Minnesotans?

If you’re a conservative, neither the Minnesota budget nor the various GOP proposals in Congress are perfect.   Neither can be; both faced Democrat chief executives, and in Congress a Democrat-controlled Senate.  Let’s be honest; the GOP at the federal level is doing its darnedest to shake off a decade-old habit of going along to get along with the establishment and its craving for spending.   Viewed through a conservative purist’s lens, it’s not good enough; viewed from the perspective of a GOP that, six years ago, was spending money like an Orange County sweet-sixteen with dadders’ platinum card, it’s well-nigh miraculous.

Ditto the Minnesota GOP.  Again – the MN budget deal isn’t perfect, and the MNGOP admits it.  They had to compromise to get past the Governor.  But the job in Minnesota isn’t just getting a budget passed; it’s reversing five decades of “government first” inertia among the state’s governing class, against a DFL phalanx of lavishly-funded special interests who would leave no mound of slime unturned to protect the status quo.

The GOP went to DC and Saint Paul with a clear mandate; don’t be that GOP, the one that played ball with the DFL on a wink and a backslap from 1969 through 1998, the one that went inside-the-beltway native after 1994.

There’s a lot of work to be done.  But it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you remember your mission.

The Twin Cities’ lefty sorosphere is all atwitter over the latest results from the Wisconsin recall primaries (and one actual election).

Eric “Big” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project tweetched:

Eric Pusey – The results from the 1st round of recall elections in #WI are in http://ow.ly/5IX81 Doesn’t look good for teabaggers #1U #stribpol

What happened was that the Republicans who entered the Democrat primary races…got beaten.  In Democrat primaries.

That’s not exactly Man Bites Dog.  More like dog sniffs dog.

And the other big news – the one actual election – went…well, about as expected.  From Kos:

Today, incumbent Democratic Senator Dave Hansen thoroughly crushed his Republican opponent in the first of the recall elections pitting a Democrat against a Republican. Hansen retains his seat and the FitzWalkerstan cult leaders in Madison are feeling the heat.

They’re “feeling the heat” over…the Dems holding a seat.  In Green Bay – which isn’t much less Democrat than Saint Paul.  By the same margin, or slightly less, than he won in 2008 (look up Senate District 30).

If this is the big tonic for the lefty troops the day after their defeat in Minnesota, it’s a pretty warm, weak one so far.

100% of sitting presidents seem to have a problem with making stuff up as he goes along.  Last week, he claimed 80% of Americans support tax hikes – which would seem to be an epic turnaround in eight months, if it were true.

If it were true:

Where is he getting this 80% figure? How about “out of his hind end.” Gallup doesn’t back him up. Neither does Rasmussen. Gallup gets you closest, but you have do get a little creative with the numbers and even it shows that 50% would prefer a deal with no “revenues” at all (Ras shows 55% on that side).

Obama’s just scattin’ and be-boppin’ and makin’ stuff up.

Where is Snopes?  Politicfact?  All of our legions of journalistic “fact-checkers?”

Of course you’re not.

And Marco Rubio knows it:

“Every aspect of life in America today is worse than it was when [President Obama] took over. Unemployment higher. Interest rates. The only thing that has gone down in America over the last two years is the value of your home. This president has mismanaged this economy. He has been incompetent in his management of this economy,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on “Hannity.”

Oh, incomes have dropped.  Don’t forget that.

The only thing Obama has done better than Carter so far?  Interest rates haven’t ballooned yet – and that’s likely coming if we don’t get the deficit under control.

It’s time for change.

The New York Times opts to toss facts under the bus in yesterday’s editorial about the Minnesota Shutdown:

How far will Republican lawmakers go to protect millionaires? Those who think a default on the federal government’s credit seems implausible should take a sobering look at the “closed” signs dotting Minnesota. The Republican Party there readily shut down the state’s government on Friday by refusing to raise taxes on the 7,700 Minnesotans who make more than $1 million a year.

Well, no.

The GOP refused to raise taxes.  Period.  Dayton chose to make it about “millionaires”, and before that “the rich”.  Had Dayton chosen to raise, say, the gas tax (like the DFL majority in 2009 did), a terribly regressive tax that squats all over working-class prosperity, the GOP would have opposed that, as well.

For the Times to turn the GOP’s opposition to a tax into “protecting millionaires” is a craven bit of rhetorical dishonesty.

Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, campaigned for office last year promising to raise taxes on high earners, so it was no surprise when he proposed a tax increase on families making more than $150,000 a year to help close a $5 billion budget gap. In negotiations with the Republican majority in the Legislature, he compromised and reduced the increase to those making $1 million or more, but Republicans are refusing to consider any income tax increase.

Note the rhetoric: Dayton keeping a campaign promise?  Good.  The GOP? Can’t be good, can it?

Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts.

The Times’ “editorial” was apparently written by the MNDFL’s chair, Ken Martin.  The GOP budget is the biggest spending increase in Minnesota history.

The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs.

All of which the GOP compromised on, meeting Dayton much more than halfway.

The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.

The Times apparently believes the GOP should “negotiate” like a Saturn dealer; start with their “final offer” and work backward from there.

Also unmentioned by “the Times” editorial writer: Dayton walked out of the negotiations every time.  The GOP Legislature was waiting in the Capitol, ready to negotiate and/or pass a “lights on” bill, to keep govermment running

More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets and park fees.

Unmentioned by the Times (or any of the Twin Cities media); the evidence is overwhelming that Governor Dayton rigged the shutdown to cause as much pain as possible, specifically to drive those dependent on state employment or services to try to push moderate Republicans into wobbling.

As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country.

“Extremist ideology”.

The GOP ran very openly on a platform of holding the line on taxes and spending.  Perhaps you remember the Tea Party – it was in all the papers, including the Times.

Extremist?  Governor Dayton won with 43% of the vote; the GOP majorities had, by definition, over 50% of the state’s voters pick them (since the third-party challenges were virtually nonexistant in legislative races in 2010).  Can a policy chosen by over half the voters be “extemist?”

“There once was a Congressman named Wiener,
Who possessed a perverted demeanor.
He got kicked off the Hill
For acting like Bill,
Now D.C. is one wiener leaner.”

— forwarded by Joey Gerdin

Minnesota politicans – DFLers all – have blessed the rest of us with three quotes that sum up the difference between conservative and “progressive” politics – and, indeed, the evil of progressivism – more concisely and starkly than all of the Poli Sci PhDs in the world have done through all of history.

Back in 2007, it was Saint Paul DFL Senator Cy Thao, who said “When you guys win, you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money!”.

In 2009?  Larry Pogemiller, who said “I think it’s silly to assume people can spend their own money better than government can”.

Both of these statements can be read as “politicians slipping up and telling the truth”; they’r funny, as far as that goes.

But both statements also point out what is so profoundly wrong with “progressive” politics; it exists by not only sponging off the labor of others, but by trying to convince them that being sponged is in and of itself noble.

And now we have a third.  Last Sunday, on the Esme Murphy show, Elliot Seid  – the capo for the Twin Cities Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem!”.

In other words, everything that everyone earns in this state should be suject to being appropriated, until government’s appetites are met. Maybe exceeded just a bit, just to be sure.

The quote has an inside shot of winning this year’s Charles Townsend award.

And it, along with Thao and Pogemiller’s quotes, should be printed up on T-shirts by the GOP and handed out at the fair this summer.

I’ve restrained myself ably, if I say so myself.

But after the better part of a decade of reading peoples’ bumper stickers, I just gotta way it.

I’m already against Obama’s next war. .

…is taking some time to find the real exhibitionists.