I bag on the Democratic Party.  A lot.  I do it for a lot of good reasons; the party tries to make virtues out of much of the worst of human nature, and to cheapen much of what is the best.  If you put a gun to my head and said “become a Democrat or die”, I’d reponse “use a big bullet”.   I bag on the DFL on principle; it is one of the reasons I started this blog; I am utterly successful at it, and have no plans of stopping.

Now, many of my best friends, and both of my parents, are Democrats.  Heck, I used to be one.  So in many cases I respect their points of view – but the Democrats and the DFL are my rhetorical beeyotch.

But in the unlikely event that, say, my daughter Bun – the more politically-involved of my kids so far – were to not only become a Democrat, but a committed one who did a great job (say, managed a successful State Senate campaign for a DFLer candidate), what do you suppose I’d do?

Disown her?  Pffft.  Not at all.   I’d be proud of her.  Oh, I’d question her political choices; but if she decided to take that course in her life (presumably after a brain injury) and excelled at it, what parent wouldn’t be proud?

And it’s not a big deal – because within certain limits, family comes before politics.

Seems obvious to most people.  But some liberals apparently aren’t “most people” .

Benjamin Sarlin – apparently a slumming press-release writer – quoting Tarryl Clark in the “Daily Beast“:

[She and Michele Bachmann] have three things in common: We’re women, moms, and we both have sons in AmeriCorps,” Clark said. “The difference is I’m proud of mine and we should be proud of our young adults giving something to the community.”

This is an old meme; Bachmann has criticized Americorps – the Clinton-era social-engineering temp program – on basic principle.

Harrison Bachmann, one of the Representative’s sons, has joined an Americorps-related teaching program.  The usual pack of suspects is tut-tutting and tittering.

So is the liberal mind so intolerant and incapable of cognitive dissonance that they think a parent can’t be proud of a son’s mission and achievement, even if he/she’s opposed to the bureaucracy for which he works?

And how utterly, pointlessly, creepily ghoulish is it that Tarryl Clark would even bring it up?

Are Tarryl Clark and the DFL that desperate against Bachmann?

Note to Republicans:  If you want to have Democrats labelling you  “Teh ReTHUGliKON Heppocreet!” and hopping up and down like a bunch of dogs when a new carton of spoiled meat comes to the kennel, just approve of some facet of something that you criticized in a completely different context.  It’ll make their pathetic little day.

The Strib editorial board, writing about the Saint Paul School Board’s perennial search for the flavor of the month in Superintendants:

Given the challenges faced by the district, the schools need a collaborative, inspirational CEO who has had success in improving student achievement. The district needs a strategic thinker who can build relationships, heal morale problems and be a strong, respected advocate for schools within various constituencies.

Er, no.

:Advocating for constituencies” is what got the Saint Paul Public Schools into the mess it’s in now.

The SPPS is paralyzed by “constituency” politics; watching a School Board meeting is like watching film of 1960’s Comintern meetings, with endless streams of apparatchiks solemnly declaiming their district would meet its quota of desk chairs or eggs or iron ingots in support of the glorious Five Year Plan.  Only instead of eggs or desk chairs or ingots, or even students, the apparatchiks principals and program directors and staff members would solemnly swear that they were meeting their goals for “diversity”.

And yet the SPPS’ achievement gap is the worst of any major city.  The schools’ budget is bigger than that of the City of Saint Paul, but the graduation rate is south of 50% and falling. Over an eighth of Saint Paul’s parents have hit the lifeboats (myself included), bailing out for charter, private and parochial schools, or schools in the ‘burbs, or homeschooling (and that was as of two years ago; the numbers have no doubt accelerated).  And for all that – with increasing budgets and declining enrollments – the SPPS threatens to cut teachers, programs and schools every budget cycle (although never laying a finger on the grotesque bureaucracy at 360 Colborne).

What the Saint Paul Public Schools needs is someone with experience in arresting failure.  The district needs the educational equivalent of Red Adair.

What the district will get, with its current all-DFL, mostly-Teachers-union-member board, is what it’s had for the past twenty years; a principal who is adept at being politically correct; one who carefully massages the various constituencies (and I’m not just talking ethnic groups, here) on the one hand and plays them against each other on the other hand.  One who will sit quietly aside while the School Board, as concentrated a bloc of far-far-far left DFL ideology as you will find in this state, babbles on about diversity and barring recruiters from schools and abolising JROTC and handing out condoms and supporting constituency support programs that happen to employ their non-profit cronies…

And beyond those qualifications, the district’s next leader must be committed to staying on the job long enough to make meaningful change.

And given the dynamics in the “market” for big-city superintendents – with an endless parade of school boards bidding up salaries and benefits ever-higher in an endless game of institutional musical chairs that essentially ensures the power of the radical left in big-city education – that “committed” leader will ride in on a pink unicorn.

The market for superintendents – paid for with an ever-rising pool of taxpayer money – is a scam designed to jack up the power of “elected”, invariably liberal school boards.  It turns the Superintendant into basically a temp employee.

Or a well-tended lapdog who isn’t too bummed about having to spend half of his/her term looking for the next, higher-paying job, for a position that will pay better and be of even less consequence.

So let’s strike! ….because there’s no one else that can drive a bus or a car on tracks.

[Curly Stooge] Ironic, aint it? [end Curly Stooge]

[Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Edward] Rendell and [U.S. Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa.] had announced a tentative agreement late Friday, but it fell apart Saturday over the union’s call for an independent audit of the pension fund and assurance that members would not be affected if the company’s costs increased with possible passage of a national health reform plan. [in other words they want the same deal as Congress!-JR]

So, let me get this straight. Union workers in Pennsylvania are fearful that national health care “reform”, brought to to us by the gerbils they almost assuredly voted for, could cost them their pension? So they strike…the week unemployment tops ten per cent?

The stupid is so thick you can taste it.

I joined Facebook a while ago, largely to reconnect with friends from high school (for which it’s been great).

But for whatever reason, I’ve been “Friended” by a lot of people with some outspoken political beliefs.  Most of them are regular, workadaddy hugamommy conservatives like me.  A few – very few – are left of center.

And there are a couple from, let’s be polite, a paranoid fringe that spans and ignores party boundaries.

And in the immediate aftermath of the Stealthcare vote on Friday, they were out in force.

Some were just…out there?  “It’s time to talk secession!  Democracy’s dead!”

Well, no.  This bill has to get through the Senate yet – and when you consider that the Dems had a 75 vote majority in the House, and it only passed by five votes, you can see where the Senate, with a two vote lead, is going to be a problem.

The majority were just…depressed?  I can’t say as I blame them; it is depressing to think that Congress is controlled by such profligate wastrels, and even worse to know that so many of our fellow subjects citizens voted for these hamsters.

But I had to respond; “don’t you guys read the blogs?  Or listen to the NARN?  Or member ninth-grade civics? This is not the end of the debate.  This is the end of the beginning of the debate. ”

And Saturday, while not exactly “good news” in the classic sense, wasn’t bad; 39 Dems flipped – most of them because they feared MoveOn and Nancy Pelosi less than they fear…

…you.  The workadaddy, hugamommy conservative who turned out at the Tea Party rallies, and who showed up at their Town Hall meetings, and weathered the ignorance and mockery and occasional seat-stacking and even more-occasional violence to get your points of view across to these idiots.  And so Nancy Pelosi had to rush the vote into a weekend in November, so her minions can’t get home to hear more from you, and in order to try to ram this thing through before the 2010 campaign gets into swing – because the Tea Parties, the Town Halls, and last Tuesday’s elections show that she’s not gonna get an infinite series of chances.

The Senate?  Well, they worry about re-election too.  And while Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins may well join the Dems, there are a lot more blue-dog Senators, especially a few that would not have otherwise won in 2006 and 2008, who are going to be watching their phone logs and mailboxes closely.

So relax…er, no.  Don’t relax.  Call your Senators; let ’em know where you’re at.

And call your Representatives.  If they voted against the bill, thank them (and by the way, thank you John Kline, Erik Paulsen, Collin Peterson and Michele Bachmann).  If they voted for it, politely let them know you’re not amused (presuming the likes of McCollum and Ellison have bothered to clean out their voice mail).

To quote the sage – this isn’t over until we say it’s over.

CORRECTION:  Added Collin Peterson, who is the unusual combination of utterly safe (he won his last race by 45 points), Democrat, Blue Dog and sane on healthcare.  He voted against as well.  I’ve updated the post.

Michael Regan thinks a great GOP resurgence may be afoot.

Republicans have dramatically turned around their fortunes with two high-profile gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey — both by comfortable margins.

Wouldn’t it be swell if this anticipated resurrection were due to the GOP being on point, producing a clear and wide message to voters and not simply because of Che Obama’s blowback?

In almost a year, the Obama administration and congressional liberals have focused their efforts so far left so much faster than anyone envisioned…and at the same time accomplishing nothing. They are making the Gingrich years look productive.

Nancy Pelosi is dancing a jiggly jig having passed a health care bill that has no chance of surviving the Senate in tact while unemployment climbs higher than predicted without the stimulus.

[gulp]

Not that anyone predicted this.

…and Americans are getting pissed.

Imagine the possibilities if the GOP actually gets it’s ducks in a row.

Gorbachev gives Obama advice on Afghanistan

“I think that what’s needed is not additional forces,” the former Soviet leader said through a translator, “this is something that we discussed, too, years ago but we decided not to do it. And I think our experience deserves attention.”

Maybe that’s why a month has lapsed while Barack Obama dithers over Afghanistan…he’s getting advice from anyone and everyone.

While you’re at it, Sir, why don’t you seek counsel from Jimmy Carter on hostage negotiation.

…Alec Baldwin on parenting.

…Britney Spears on driving a car.

…Oprah Winfrey on losing weight.

…Sean Penn on poise under pressure.

This is fun. You try it!

The NYTimes runs a handy graphic on the 39 Democrats who overcame their party’s collective insanity and voted for a free future, good healthcare, and a viable economy.

It’s illuminating – all but five of them came from districts that either McCain won, or that had voted Republican up until 2008.,  Tellingly, six of the last were from former Republican districts and won their seats by less than five points – in several cases, by less than a point.  Tuesday’s election results had to have had an extra impact there.

Many, like Collin Peterson, represent solidly Republican areas, and are as safe as can be (Peterson won his last race by 45 points).  Others, like Dennis Kucinich, apparently were angered by the fact the bill doesn’t give full benefits to plants.

All but 14 are classed as “Blue Dogs”.

Remember – this is a 39 vote swing in a chamber with a 75 vote Democrat majority.  Passing Pelosicare should have been as simple as counting the votes.

Why the swing?  Why did Nancy Pelosi come five votes from failing?

Because of you.  You turned out at town halls and tea parties. You endured the insults and the mockery of the misbegotten “elites”.  You flipped a big group bird at the “conventional wisdom”.  And you almost pulled off the impossible – turning a near-supermajority against itself.

Don’t think the Senate – where we need two votes – is paying attention?

Cross-posted in The Greenroom.

Speaking of Instant Runoff Voting…

Who is it who actually “ranks” their choices, anyway?  Maybe my point of view is skewed because I am a guy who has – and my social circle is a lot of politically-aware people who also have – strong opinions who know who they’re voting for and why, but I can’t remember a single election where I had a second choice for any office.

I went back through the last several key, contested elections, and entered “ranked choices” for each race.

Saint Paul Mayoral Election, 2009
First Choice: Eva Ng
Second Choice: My dog, Clu.
Third Choice:  A jab in the eye with a sharp stick.

Minnesota US Senate Race, 2008
First Choice: Norm Coleman
Second Choice: My cat, Nosemarie.
Third Choice: Getting ripped apart by mice.

Minnesota Fourth District Congressional Race, 2008
First Choice: Ed Matthews
Second Choice: Being forced to sit in booth at Denny’s listening to Ken Weiner, Bill Pendergast and Eva Young frothing about Michele Bachmann for all eternity..
Third Choice: A “Spongebob Squarepants” marathon.

Minnesota Gubernatorial Race, 2006
First Choice: Tim Pawlenty
Second Choice: My other cat, Candy.
Third Choice: Gouging out my own eyes with a spork.  (This was almost a tie for third, by the way; Candy has this habit of biting my nose at 4AM that has her on my schvitz list today).

Minnesota Fourth District Congressional Race, 2006
First Choice: Obi Sium
Second Choice: Drinking a fifth of my own fermented sweat .
Third Choice: Going to “Drinking Liberally” and drinking heavily.
Fourth Choice: Gargling with Drano
Fifth Choice:  Going to “Drinking Liberally” and not being allowed to drink at all.
Sixth Choice:  Any cast member from “The Hills”.
Seventh Choice: Betty McCollum.

US Presidential Race, 2004
First Choice: George W. Bush
Second Choice: Brussels Sprouts
Third Choice: Any random western European leader...

US Senate Race, 2002
First Choice: Norm Coleman
Second Choice: One of those gas-station burritos, after it’s been sitting on my car seat on a hot day.
Third Choice: Rick Kahn’s speech, on eternal loop, forever.

US Presidential Race, 2000
First Choice: Steve Forbes
Second Choice: Jack Kemp.
Third Choice: Steve Forbes.

Now, like most people, I do believe most people are like me.  Or, rather, that most people who should be allowed to vote are like me.

Oh, that sounded so intolerant; what I mean is that I suspect most people who actually care enough about politics to care about their voting system at all, really don’t go into the polling place with any sort of “second choice” in mind.  We go into the polls wanting victory for the candidate who represents our beliefs the closest, and not a lot more.

Who actually has some notion of “ranking” choices in elections?  I’m curious.

In all things political, I urge you to remember Berg’s Seventh Law: whenever liberals attack or mock anything about Republicans or (especially) conservatives, they are projecting or distracting.

Two key Dem memes since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 elections have been…:

• Conservative “tea-baggers” are purging “moderates” from the party, and…
• …this “purge” is causing the GOP to melt down.

What does Berg’s Seventh Law tell us?

Yep.  Projecting and distracting:

A few days ago, the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org began sending out emails seeking contributions to fund primary challenges against any Democratic senator who does not fully support “health care reform with a public option.” Now there’s an update: MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben says the group has raised $3,578,117 for the project and is thinking of new ways to punish errant Democratic lawmakers.

“It’s a huge sum, and the clearest signal yet that any Democrat who helps Republicans filibuster health care reform will face an enormous backlash from the grassroots,” writes Ruben. And now, working in conjunction with Howard Dean’s old organization Democracy for America, MoveOn is starting a drive to take away the committee chairmanships of any Democrat who fails to live up to MoveOn’s progressive standards. “Many of these senators hold coveted committee chairmanships that give them significant power within the Senate,” Ruben writes. “Our friends at Democracy for America have launched an open letter urging Senate Democrats to strip committee chairmanships from any Democrat who filibusters health care.” Ruben says that more than 66,000 MoveOn and Democracy for America members have pledged to contribute.

Look for a Kos vs. DLC (or whatever they call themselves today, if they even exist anymore) brouhaha sooner than later.  Accompanied by lots of stories from Keith Olberman and Fast Eddie Schultz (the real hearts, souls and leaders of the Democratic Party) about how intolerant of dissent the GOP is.

For much of the past ten years, proponents of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) have pointed to a short list of cities that have adopted the system for their elections.  These included four cities of any real size.  San Francisco uses it for its city assembly elections; Tacoma Washington and a few other smaller cities (up until Minneapolis and Saint Paul adopted it in the past two elections).

I observed at the time that IRV seemed to work, sort of, in places with pretty monochrome politics, where elections were usually one-party blowouts with very little chance of needing IRV’s byzantine choice-ranking process, its lack of a paper trail, and its turning over of the counting process to an opaque, “black box” algorithm that is utterly unaccountable to people outside the election process.  Places like, well, San Francisco and Tacoma Washington and Minneapolis and Saint Paul; hopeless one-party liberal cesspools.

I also observed, at some length, that I had plenty of vocational, non-partisan issues with IRV from my background as a usability guy.  I’m hoping to download a ballot from the Minneapolis election sometime today and start taking a formal whack at that angle (although I suspect the worst parts of the process lie behind the scenes).

Those were my observations. They were, by the way, backed up by real-world experience:

Problems from complicating the ballot have been documented in IRV elections. In Cary, N.C., 22 percent of the voters polled admitted to not understanding IRV. In Pierce County, Washington, 63 percent of 91,000 voters indicated that they did not like using IRV. Several studies by San Francisco State University on San Francisco’s Ranked Choice Voting indicate that older voters, those with English as a second language, and those with less income and education were less likely to understand IRV.

You read it here first.

More importantly, though, are the observations from the people of Tacoma, Washington.  While the people of Saint Paul were wafting to the polls on pungent little clouds of reassurance from their political masters and voting for IRV (sometimes called “Incumbent Retention Voting”), the people of Tacoma were going to the polls, yelling “This Sucks!“, and ending their experiment.

With extreme prejudice.  By a 2-1 margin.

What do they know that we don’t that IRV’s slick, well-financed advocates won’t tell you?

Can you imagine the revulsion that would have swept the nation if George W. Bush had, say, mentioned a spree-killing after giving a “shout-out” to some bureaucratic conference?

I never did hear what percentage of active-duty soldiers voted for Obama, but I can’t imagine he’s converted a hell of a lot.

Note that I’m not bagging on what the President actually said.  Just comparing and contrasting.

You know when I knew we were headed for a big night?

It was probably 6:30 last night.  I was waiting for V to come on.  And on Drudge, I saw that the MSM was claiming, mirabile dictu, that they had all sorts of polling to show that this election was not repeat not repeat not about Obama.

That’s when I knew we were going to run away in Virginia, and probably win Jersey.

Ecker on the Christie win:

It is easy to overstate the importance of this election, as it is after all a local race which centers around local issues and personalities just as much as it does higher issues. But voter attitudes towards their government in general can influence how voters approach those issues. In this case, Christie ran on the issue of property taxes and other economic issues, where voter opinions are certainly strongly influenced by the Democratically controlled Washington DC.

It’s also worth mentioning that Obama invested heavily in both races, stumping for both candidates a number of times, including in the final days before the election. It is a sign that his majestic holiness is no longer enough to sway voters with flowery speeches and hollow hyperbole.

Virginia – a traditionally Republican state – was a “must make a good showing” state for The One.

But Jersey?  Not only have they not elected a Republican in sixteen years, but that “Republican” was Christine Todd Whitman, a woman who sent Rockefeller Republicans scampering for their Hayek.

Think that if Obama Deeds had won, or even kept it really really close, and/or if Corzine had won by the usual huge margin, we wouldn’t be hearing Katie Couric chiming that The Dream Is Still Alive this morning?

The most immediate effect of this will be in the outcome of ObamaCare/PelosiCare/etc. Already Blue Dog Democrats were feeling the heat of public opinion regarding the absolutely horrendous bill that is before Congress. Both Pelosi and Reid were already having problems convincing Democrats from swing districts to vote for the bill. This election is likely to reinforce that hesitation. If even an incumbent Democrats in a core blue state can lose, a Democrat in a swing or even a conservative district is officially on notice. Voters are not in a forgiving mood.

You listening, Tim Walz?

And I quote:

If Obama’s skin was any thinner, he’d have a reservoir tip on the top of his head.

From long-time friend of Shot In The Dark, Thorley Winston, at Megan McArdle‘s blog, via Kevin Ecker, who notes the comment was “in reference to Obama’s pitiful need to pick a fight with anyone that offers anything short of glowing praise for him.”

What a great night!

In Virginia, the GOP didn’t just beat the Tics; we didn’t just beat them down; we didn’t just humilate them; we made them say “we’re not just your beeyotch, we are your bee-friggin-YATCH”.  The Obama Revolution in Virginia had a half-life shorter than Milli Vanilli’s chart career.  The Virginia election – in a state the Dems owned barely a year ago – made an eight-on-one prison shower-room beatdown look like a Japanese tea ceremony.

And in New Jersey?  NEW JERSEY?  I knew we were onto something when a third of the polls were in, Corzine trailed by seven, and Minnesota Public Radio’s utterly Republican-free “panel” spent a couple of minutes obsessing over “exit polls”.  Which was at least better than CNN, which was running the “exit polls show New Jersey neck and neck” slide up until, I kid you not, the moment they called it for Christie.

Governor Christie.

Note to Dems; when even fat jokes fail you, you know you’re screwed.

Note to Hugh Hewitt:  You were oh, so close to right on this one; if it’s not close, they can’t cheat (enough).

NY23 – well, there’s a lesson for the GOP:  “Moderates” are death.  Running to the middle to win moderates is the road to palookaville; Liberals want us to run moderates.  Making the middle want to move to you is the way forward.  The GOP flipped the Nassau County Commission, and the conservatives taught a lesson to the 23rd District’s GOP “elite”.  While we lost the special election (cue Ms. Scozzafavva; ride into the sunset by any means necessary), we’re well-placed to beat Owens next year; the party might be over before they know what hit them.

Remember last year, when the left was tittering like a bunch of latte-addled grad students about the GOP and conservatism being dead?

Hah.  We’re here, we’re conservative, and we’re not going away (Janet Napolitano’s enemy’s lists notwithstanding).

Bring on next year.

I liked the original version of “V” which, back in the Reagan years, was pretty much a rockin’ good war story (as I recall it at the time).

I’ve been looking at the new remake with the usual trepidation one gets when something good gets remade.

But my trepidation is changing to something else:

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.

The news media swoons in admiration — one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: “Why don’t you show some respect?!” The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader’s origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: “Embracing change is never easy.”

So, does that sound like anyone you know? Oh, wait — did I mention the leader is secretly a totalitarian space lizard who’s come here to eat us?

Welcome to ABC’s “V,” the most fascinating and bound to be the most controversial new show of the fall television season. Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it’s also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president’s supporters and delight his detractors.

OK, it’s worth a shot.  I hope it’s on On-Demand.

I have a hunch that’s what I’ll need; writing aside (fingers crossed), here’s hoping it survives what will no doubt be a full assault from Obama’s faithful in Hollywood.

UPDATE:  Dang.  I’m remembering why I liked the first one so much.

 If there’s a phrase anywhere in the language that fills the supporter of election integrity with less optimism than “Democrat”, it’s “New Jersey”.   They’re a little better than Chicago – or maybe they just hide their crimes better.

At any rate – Chris Christie is giving incumbent Democrat John Corzine a run for his vast amounts of money in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, which is being decided in elections today.  The polls show it as too close to call; the conventional wisdom shows this as a bellwether for the first year of the Obama Ascenscion administration.

And so the Dems will have the whole army of lawyers and professional spin mercenaries – the same crowd that won them the Minnesota Senate race last year – esconced in every Best Western from Fort Lee to Cape May, ready to duke it out over every single vote ballot to try to retain control of a state the Dems regard as marginally less “theirs” than Saint Paul or Berkeley.

And that’s just the good news; John Fund notes that ACORN has taken time off from moonlighting as a real estate agent for pimps to go back to their main mission – debasing our electoral system (emphasis added):

Victor Negron, a campaign adviser for independent mayoral candidate Roberto Feliz, a former director of Camden’s public works department, says he’s shocked that more than fifteen times the normal number of voters are casting absentee ballots in Camden this year. In the 2005, when the city’s voters voted for both governor and mayor on the same day, only 200 absentee ballots were cast. This year, some 3,700 have already been received. At least four voters have approached the Feliz campaign to complain that an absentee ballot was sent to them without their permission or cast for them without their understanding the documents they were signing. I spoke with Uremia Rojas who reports that “a man with a clipboard knocked on my door and had me sign something so I could vote by mail. I was skeptical but signed and got a ballot. I never really wanted one.” Says Mr. Negron: “We believe this to be underhanded and a possibly illegal strategy by the Democratic Party to undermine the civil rights of the residents of Camden.”

 Just a few bad apples? 

Probably not:

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in [today’s] Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The grounds?  Making sure the system has integrity “disenfranchises”…

…er, someone.   Not honest people, or people cognizant enough to actually belong at the polling station or anything:

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn’t match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey’s secretary of state asking her “to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.” Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks “may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis” and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots.

The shorter Democrat case:  “Integrity is haaaaaaard“.

Fund:

Absentee voter fraud is in danger of becoming a hardy perennial in New Jersey. Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 campaign workers were indicted in September on charges of conspiring to commit election fraud using absentee ballots. One worker pleaded guilty last month. In Newark, five campaign workers were indicted in August on charges involving absentee ballot fraud…There are additional reports from Camden that Hispanic voters have been misled into voting absentee ballots.

Read the whole, depressing thing.

And then answer this question: if people cease to have faith in their electoral system (where “faith” means “a reasonable belief that the electoral system gives each legal voter one vote, and counts those votes once each”), what future can democracy have?

It’s a rhetorical question: the answer is “none”.   So since debasing our electoral system to gain and hold power kills democracy, then the only real goal of the left is to gain and hold power.  By any means necessary.

Right?

.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama greeted Hamid Karzai’s election victory with as much admonishment as praise on Monday, pointedly advising America’s partner in war he must make more serious efforts to end corruption in Afghanistan’s government and prepare his nation to ultimately defend itself.

Shot In The Dark exclusively obtained the transcript from US President Barack Obama’s telephone call to Afghan President Hamid Karzai today:

[sound of technician pushing start button on teleprompter]

Obama: I want to emphasize that this has to be a point in time in which we begin to write a new chapter.

Karzai: Let me offer you assurances that a new chapter that we will begin at this point in time will be one like which you have emphasized.

Obama: The proof is not going to be in words. It’s going to be in deeds.

[sound of Karzai’s hand covering mouthpiece of reciever and muffled sounds of snickering and then laughing audibly; mockingly]

Obama: Karzai! What are you doing?!!

Karzai: [chuckles] I’m sorry…uh…Mr. Obama, did you…Barack Obama…say….[chuckles] words [chuckles]…not deeds?!

Obama: Yes, make no mistake. The proof –

Karzai: [chuckles] I’m sorry. Are you serious? “Click”

[sound of dial tone]

Obama: [pretends to still be in conversation for the benefit of adjacent staff members]

[sound of technician pushing stop button on teleprompter, snickering]

Bill Clinton: See? I toldja Barry. Let me call ‘m next time.

Hillary Clinton: Guys! I’m still on the speakerphone…I heard that!

[sound of former President Clinton hanging up on former first lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton]

[sound of Vice President Joseph Biden awakening from catnap on Oval Office couch]

–end of transcript–

One of the great conceits of the “elite” left – led, in Minnesota, by the Star Tribune’s insufferable editorial board – is that if Minnesota’s taxpayers don’t pony up to pay for a “better Minnesota” – the “high tax, high service” state model – we’ll be a “cold Omaha”.

Voters around the country are saying back – “If it gets us away from you and your moronic, childish policies, Omaha’s not so bad”.

The LATimes notes that voters are making that exact choice with their feet:

In  America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.

It’s not surprising, then, that there’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.

The article compares Cali to Texas – but it could just as easily apply to high-tax/high-“service” Minnesota and some of its neighbors:

California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau’s latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. Only three states and the District of Columbia saw higher per capita government outlays than California, while those expenditures in Texas were lower than in all but seven states. California ranked 10th in overall taxes levied by state and local governments, on a per capita basis, while Texas, one of only seven states with no individual income tax, was 38th.

So people in San Francisco tell each other that if they don’t fund every single thing their public employees and special interests want, they’ll become a “cold Austin?”

Did I say “moving with their feet?”

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive “net internal migration,” in the Census Bureau’s language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

These folks pulling up stakes and driving U-Haul trucks across state lines understand a reality the defenders of the high-benefit/high-tax model must confront: All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones. The high-benefit/high-tax model can work only if things are demonstrably not equal — if the public goods purchased by the high taxes far surpass the quality, quantity and impact of those available to people who live in states with low taxes.

And it’s here that I hope the author has done his homework; we’ve been through this before.

Refugees from California have already spent the last twenty years fleeing California – for Oregon and for Colorado.  They fled the taxes; they brought their taste for lots of “services”.  Ditto New Hampshire and Vermont; inundated with Massachussetts tax refugees, they have turned their adopted states into high-tax, high-“service” hellholes of their very own.

But what does that get you these days?  (Emphasis added):

Today’s public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”

You could say the same about Minnesota and its low tax neighbors.

In more ways than one:

These judgments are not based on drive-by sociology. According to a report issued earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California. The details of the Census Bureau data show that Texas not only spends its citizens’ dollars more effectively than California but emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. Per capita spending on transportation was 5.9% lower in California, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5% lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.

Perhaps people in Texas, Fargo and Miami will start complaining that if the liberals don’t shut up about being “happy to pay for a better Texas, Fargo or Florida”, they’ll turn into a “warm Los Angeles?”

Remember when the Administration was going to change the way things were done in Washington?

More than 40% of President Obama’s top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Twenty of the 47 fundraisers that Obama’s campaign identified as collecting more than $500,000 have been named to government positions, the analysis found.

 Overall, about 600 individuals and couples raised money from their friends, family members and business associates to help fund Obama’s presidential campaign. USA TODAY’s analysis found that 54 have been named to government positions, ranging from Cabinet and White House posts to advisory roles, such as serving on the economic recovery board charged with helping guide the country out of recession.

Nah.  Me either.

But at least the key job of making the US beloved around the world will be entrusted to seasoned foreign service officers, rather than a bunch of Chicago ward-heelers with deep pockets.

Right?

 Nearly a year after he was elected on a pledge to change business-as-usual in Washington, Obama also has taken a cue from his predecessors and appointed fundraisers to coveted ambassadorships, drawing protests from groups representing career diplomats. A separate analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, the diplomats’ union, found that more than half of the ambassadors named by Obama so far are political appointees, said Susan Johnson, president of the association. An appointment is considered political if it does not go to a career diplomat in the State Department.

Someone wake me up in November of 2011.

New Jersey GOP goober candidate might be portly (“I’m 550 pounds”).

But in a couple of months on Jenny Craig, he’ll have abs like Matthew McConaghey…

…while John Corzine and his campaigners will still be a bunch of gutless, sniping hacks.

(By the way – can I say how much fun I’m having now that my display code supports video embedding?)

One of the Administration’s big campaigning points (back when Obama was campaigning before the election, as opposed to whatever he’s been doing this past nine months) was that he’d re-establish America’s purported image abroad.

Which, at this remove, brings up two questions:

1. With whom, exactly, has our image improved since January, in any meaningful way (and by “meaningful” I am not referring to cheap talk and blandishments like the utterly meaningless Nobel Peace prize)?
2. More importantly:  Of the countries that hated, disliked, were utterly ambivalent to, or competed with the United States in 2007, which did not exhibit precisely the same feelings toward us in 2000?  For purposes of this discussion, leave out the Taliban goverment in Afghanistan and the Ba’ath government in Iraq.  List ’em, and give specifics, please.

I’ll be interested in seeing the responses.

Caught this piece from the Forum Group’s Saint Paul bureau; Al Franken is shilling for money for Byron Dorgan:

Franken today sent an e-mail message to his supporters asking them to donate to Sen. Byron Dorgan’s campaign who last year, he said, “made the long trek from North Dakota to Minnesota and we spent some time talking to folks about helping small businesses and getting our economy moving again. I can’t tell you how grateful I was for his insight and support.”

…

“Look, we need genuine champions of the middle class in the Senate, and Byron Dorgan is one of the best,” Franken wrote. “Can you donate $5 or more today to help Senator Dorgan gear up for 2010?”

Federal Elections Commission reports indicate Dorgan’s campaign has $4 million in the bank.

Of course, there’s more to it than a simple repayment of a campaign favor.

Dorgan – who was a heavyweight in North Dakota politics when I was starting out in radio news in NoDak 30 years ago – is the king of the purple-dog Democrats.  He’s a Democrat, and a fiscally-liberal one at that, in a state that’s voted Republican for president almost every possible election since statehood; local politics in North Dakota tends to be also rigorously right-of-center. 

But since the eighties, the state has sent Byron Dorgan, and then Kent Conrad, to the Senate.  It’s about the money, of course; Dorgan and Conrad are champions of big farm bills; they have enough seniority between them to deflect light artillery fire.  NoDak’s voters (like those in South Dakota, Montana and much of the rest of the Midwest, who send plenty of socially-conservative, fiscally-profligate people to Washington) know where the loot is.

But this election, there’s a real challenge.  John Hoeven, North Dakota’s very popular and wildly successful Republican governor (who is, at the moment, the nation’s longest-serving state governor), is rumored to be interested in going to Washington.   He won his last gubernatorial bid by almost fifty points…

…and the rumors are causing strange things to happen in North Dakota Republican politics.  People are donating money, coming to meetings…

…and talking about doing to Dorgan what voters in South Dakota did to Tom Daschle not so long ago; “the unthinkable”.

And so Dorgan would seem to be calling in his markers, dipping into that bottomless pool of Twin Cities liberal money (which, dimes’ll getcha dollars, he’ll softpedal back home) to pad his war chest for what could be the biggest challenge of his long political career.

We’ll be talking with people from the NDGOP on the Northern Alliance in coming weeks.  This could get interesting.

It looks like even the Administration is sticking a fork in Creigh Deeds.  And it goes deeper than just a candidate with a funny name.  If current trends hold, it might just mean that not only is the Hope ‘n Change honeymoon over, but dead, buried, and pushed out to sea.

Democrats seem to be learning that life without a boogeyman is hard:

They’re learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can’t lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

And when you can’t get Democrats to let other people pay for their stuff, you know you got a problem.

(badda-BUM)

Suddenly, the White House is treating the bereft Mr. Deeds as if he’s on the fourth day of a three-day underarm deodorant pad. Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel – not even a Motel 6 – but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The “throng” was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

It’s not all good, of course – polling shows John Corzine is coming back in New Jersey, which on the one hand isn’t much of a shock, since New Jersey is just New York without the nightlife, but there had been hope.

Still, this could be a good sign.

The old big-“L” Libertarian dream is to have no president at all in the White House; to just let the executive branch almost completely wither away.

Of course, in the era of Hope ‘n Change, there’s no danger of the executive branch going the way of the Dodo, Vanilla Ice or Crispin Glover.

But is Barack Obama the un-President?

It is important that the nation is suddenly awakening to the possibility that the president has no real plan for anything whatsoever, and never did. He literally seems to be making it up as he goes along, and his strategy is to do nothing at all but procrastinate.

In the recent past, we have watched the White House and its branch offices gaze glassily past Iran, the Taliban, North Korea and Moscow in hot pursuit of their real enemy, which appears to be the dissenting media.

Economic policy, formerly the purview of rooms that at least contained Larry Summers, is now directed by a Chicago-hood playground pal named Valerie, and its focus is on the compensation levels of 200 people.

Joe Biden is the commander in chief.

Of course, the problem with un-Presidents, especially un-Presidents who get in too deep in foreign affairs, is that eventually they have to prove they’re not un-Presidents.  John F. Kennedy was dubious at best at foreign affairs; after getting a huge black eye at the Bay of Pigs, he approved sending troops to Vietnam – for the quick win, naturally, to show that he was really in charge.  Carter, of course, embarked on the Desert One debacle.

What’ll Obama do to show that he’s really not a pretty suit in a fancy office?

To: President Obama

From: Mitch Berg, staunch critic and forthright conservative

Re:  Setting The Record Straight

Mr. President,

You stink.  Your policies are destroying this country, at home and abroad.

I say this as a representative of a conservative blog and a conservative talk radio show.

Please sic your PR goons on the blog and the show.

That is all.