• Do you need tax-avoidance assistance?
• Do you have cash to “process” back into the system?
• Did you “forget” to vote the last few cycles and would like to “catch up” and vote twice or more in the next election?
• Are the monthly payments on your mortgage, flat screen television, leather sofa, and 24″ chrome wheels too much to handle right now?
• Is your community disorganized?
• Do you have immigrant employees that need “Social Security” numbers or “Citizenship”?
• Do you run an “entertainment or recreational enterprise” and need help determining what legitimate NAICS code to assign to it?
  
• Would you like a ride on Marine One?⁺

Call Huggy Barry, PIC^® at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

866-67-ACORN or www.acorn.org

“Huggy Barry, PIC^® – He’ll get The Man off your back.”

⁺Minium donation to ongoing Obama camapaign required

PIC^® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Pimps-In-Chief

To: President Obama

From: Mitch Berg, perplexed peasant

Re: Huh?

Dear President Obama:

About that whole “cancelling missile defense” and “selling out our political allies in Eastern Europe” thing?

Well played, sir.  Seriously.

“This regime (Israel) will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it … This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end,” [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] said in a speech broadcast live on state radio.

No, no sarcasm here.

That is all.

Obama administration bails on missile defense for Poland and the Czechs:

A U.S. delegation held high-level meetings Thursday in both Poland and the Czech Republic to discuss the missile defense system. While the outcome of the meetings wasn’t clear, officials in both countries confirmed the system would be scrapped.

Czech Prime minister Jan Fischer said in a statement that U.S. President Barack Obama told him in a Wednesday phone call that the United States was shelving its plans. Fischer did not say what reason Obama gave him for reconsidering.

A spokeswoman at the Polish Ministry of Defense also said the program had been suspended.

“This is catastrophic for Poland,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to be named in line with ministry policy.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. James E. Cartwright, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to hold a news conference Thursday morning. The Defense Department has not announced what will be discussed, but Cartwright is the point man for the missile defense shield program. See how the system would work »

Poland and the Czech Republic had based much of their future security policy on getting the missile defenses from the United States. The countries share deep concerns of a future military threat from the east — namely, Russia — and may now look for other defense assurances from their NATO allies.

“At the NATO summit in April, we adopted a resolution focusing on building a defense system against real, existing threats, i.e. short-range and medium-range missiles,” Fischer said. “We expect that the United States will continue cooperating with the Czech Republic on concluding the relevant agreements on our mutual (research and development) and military collaboration, including the financing of specific projects.”

What this means is that hostile nations like the Russians have more clout with the Administration than the small,  Eastern European states – Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary, the Czech Republic – that have sacrificed so much to join the Western World.

Putin is pulling Obama’s foreign-policy strings:

This is bad news for all who care about the US commitment to the transatlantic alliance and the defence of Europe as well as the United States. It represents the appalling appeasement of Russian aggression and a willingness to sacrifice American allies on the altar of political expediency. A deal with the Russians to cancel missile defence installations sends a clear message that even Washington can be intimidated by the Russian bear.

What signal does this send to Ukraine, Georgia and a host of other former Soviet satellites who look to America and NATO for protection from their powerful neighbour? The impending cancellation of Third Site is a shameful abandonment of America’s friends in eastern and central Europe, and a slap in the face for those who actually believed a key agreement with Washington was worth the paper it was written on.

If by “improve our image abroad” Obama meant “yell “off what” when Vladimir Putin says “jump”” during the campaign…well, mission accomplished.

It’s Jimmy Carter all over again.

“The good news: it appears to be well run.”

At last, we can all see exactly what a “neighborhood organizer” does before becoming a “public servant.”

Interestingly, if you rearrange* the letters in “ACORN” you get….OBAMA!

*and swap a couple out for others and use the “A” twice

The latest chapter of the left’s carefully reasoned and mature dialogue on public policy comes from the UK Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland:

Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare. That probably sounds hyperbolic, if not mildly deranged: even those who are adamant that 45 million uninsured Americans deserve basic medical cover would not claim that the future of the earth depends on it. But think again.

Got it. If President Obama doesn’t get “his way” on health care we’re all gonna die!!! This is exactly the kind of cool, dispassionate reason we’ve come to depend on from the left, and why we take their warnings about overheated rhetoric coming from the right so seriously.

Anyway, I sure hope the president gets around to deciding what “his way” on health care is supposed to be, and letting the Democratic leadership in Congress know. Is he going to get working on that right after this next round of speeches or something? Now that we know the planet is doomed without his stamp of approval on some kind of actual health reform thingy, can he maybe shift his schedule around to get cracking on this?

Because I, for one, can’t wait to see the kind of super-human focus and bipartisan coalition he brings to bear on < superhero-theme-music > saving the planet < /superhero-theme-music > after his dazzling performance on health care… insurance… whatever… reform.

…and is not often found paired in a sentence with “Barack Obama.”

But don’t call Obammy a “liar”, “hypocrite”, “cowardly”, or “intellectually dishonest” as the First Amendment has no place in the House.

The Economist, not bound by such childish attempts at squelching free speech, has no problem calling Jimmy II a liar. They just use bigger, prettier words.

…on his speech on America’s financial collapse:

…much of what Mr Obama said was disingenuous.

Which is to say…

“You lie!”

In all fairness however, one must attempt to discern if Obama (and his accomplice TOTUS) are:

1. employing deliberate disingenuousness or if
2. President Bush is correct in saying Obama is without a clue, i.e. Obama’s just stoopid with numbers and math and money.

I might suggest 3. (1+2=3)

Taryll Clark is a Saint Cloud state Senator who’s running against Michele Bachmann in the MN6.

Leo Pusateri (writing at Freedom Dogs) wondered – where does  she get her support?

The answer was on Twitter:

Thanks to the Laborers Union for your support and endorsement. It’s going to be a fun campaign! Have you joined? www.tarrylclark.com

The new AFL CIO booth is fabulous and full of fun people! Thanks for all your encouragement!

The new AFL CIO booth is fabulous and full of fun people! Thanks for all your encouragement!

Spoke at the Famers union booth….I’m ready to work with Cong Peterson in Washington!

More fun on the campaign trail: thanks to the Carpenters for your endorsement, too! http://tinyurl.com/lc6tfw

Glad to have more friends joining the campaign – thanks to Teamsters Joint 32 and Teamsters Local 120 for your endorsements!

Got to see my AFSCME, working America and teacher friends. AFSCME’s early endorsement has gotten us off to a great start!

Thanks to my friends in AFSCME Council 65 for your endorsement! We’re off to a great start. Hope you will join too at www.tarrylclark.com

Proud to have the endorsement of my friends in AFSCME Council 5

Now, let’s not cast aspersions.  Just because a candidate is entirely beholden to special insterests whose entire goal is more spending and political power, that’s not a problem, is it?

NarcIssIst-In-Chief, Barack Obama

“I‘m not the fIrst presIdent to take up thIs cause…but I‘m determIned to be the last.”

It’s all about the “O” – er the I – that is.

Behold a man who spends a quarter mIllIon taxpayer dollars to take hIs wIfe on a date In Chicago yet can’t get on a plane to New York to observe a moment of sIlence (a dIffIcult feat indeed for SIr Talkalot) for the over three thousand vIctIms of the 9/11 attacks.

Three days later he’s on a plane to New York to “celebrate” the fIrst annIversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers and to take credIt for the economIc non-recovery engIneered by he and hIs tax-evading, crack economIc team.

In every one of the Emperor Hussein’s speeches, not only does the song remain the same, so do the words. I want you to do this. I am going to force you to do that. I will not allow you to do whatever. Not since Thomas Friedman got his column at the New York Times has anyone so abused the first-person singular. Indeed, Barry’s patented speeches are an orgy of solipsistic onanism, his animus apparent, his feelings deeply sensitive. Even though he’d like to discuss these crucial reforms civilly, the time for talking is over. Cross him and he will call you out. And whatever you do, don’t get him all wee-wee’d up.

It’s all about hIm, our Super-Ream Leader™.

When former President Bush gave his state of the union a few years ago, a clutch of Democrat legislators, hidden by their numbers, booed.  They profaned their office and attacked the dignity of the President’s address – and not a one of them had the cojones to identify themselves, much less either apologize or elaborate.  It was sophomoric at best, cowardly and solopsistic at worst.

Rep. Joe Wilson broke protocol, and rudely so, by standing up and called the President a liar during his Health Care pep rally campaign speech address earlier this week.  Unlike his Democrat forebears, he apologized later.

But let the record show, as an emailer pointed out this morning, that Wilson was right:

President says his proposed health insurance law will not give taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage to illegal aliens.  Proposed law says specifically that illegal aliens are not covered.

BUT . . . proposed law also says the government is forbidden to ASK if the person is an illegal alien, or to demand proof of citizenship/legal residence.

In my mind, that’s like Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.  Official military policy is that gays are not allowed to serve in the military.  But the military is forbidden to ask if you’re gay.  So the end result is that gays DO serve in the military as long as nobody talks about it. 

I wish the President would explain why that won’t be the same result with the insurance plan.  Illegal aliens will show up to apply for taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage, the government won’t be allowed to ask if they’re illegal, so the illegal aliens will get coverage as long as nobody talks about it, right?  If not right, why not?

The President who says the law will not give insurance to illegal aliens but the Congressman who says the President is lying about what the law will do.  I’m on the Congressman’s side in this one.

There’s a time and a place to attack the President.  I’m not entirely sure that a glorified campaign stump speech isn’t one of them – but nonetheless, at the very least we are to respect the office if not that man, his (misguided) policies and his (misleading) rhetoric.

Might have been rude to interrupt the speech.  But he was right.  I’d rather my Congressman risked being rude to be right.  Good for him.  Wish we had a few like him from Minnesota.

Well, we do; Michele Bachmann isn’t one to hold back when she’s on a tear – to her occasional chagrin. 

Doesn’t seem like such a bad trait, sometimes, these days.

In the wake (or afterglow, if you work for MSNBC) of Obama’s latest prime-time grabbing foofarah, I’m noticing a telling disconnect between those who examine what comes next in concrete terms from those who just want to bask in how awesomely terrific our dreamy president appeared. Let’s start by examining the latter, and what better example could there be than noted pant-crease fetishist David Brooks…

On Wednesday night, Barack Obama delivered the finest speech of his presidency. The exposition of his health care views was clear and lively. The invocation of Teddy Kennedy was moving and effective. The rumination at the end about the American character and the role of government was the clearest summary of Obama’s political philosophy that he has yet given us.

It’s not often you can summarize an ostensibly conservative columnist’s opening paragraph about a Democratic president’s call to socialize medicine as, “Squeeeee!!!” But this is hardly the first time Brooks has been enraptured by Obama. The telling part begins to show next, but Brooks doesn’t seem to register the significance even as he makes note of it.

(more…)

…could turn around and yell at my sister and brother to quit bickering and shaddap.

President Obama, on the other hand…

Shaking off a summer of setbacks, President Barack Obama summoned Congress to enact sweeping health care legislation Wednesday night, declaring the “time for bickering is over”

…no.  By your leave, your highness, our represenatives will continue to represent the majority of this nation that has serious questions – you might call it “bickering”, but then you’re not my Dad – about your health insurance “plan”.

That is all.

I watched bits and pieces of the latest Great Obama Oration (henceforth, “GOO”) last night, mostly because the alternative television programming between seven and eight on Wednesday evening turns out to be about as entertaining as the extended director’s cut of Gigli. Also because “So You Think You Can Dance” had to cut to an occasional commercial break.

I was struck by the fact that someone I am assured is one of the most electrifying speakers of our time sounds so monotonous, repetitive, and stuck on his old campaign trail script. As God is my witness, at one point he actually said, “I won’t stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.” Didn’t he use that same line in the GOO he delivered at the Ankeny, Iowa Lion’s Club back on the campaign trail in 2007? And the GOO at the Rutland, New Hampshire “Sun Up Cafe”? And the GOO at the Newberry, South Carolina VFW? Etc. etc. etc. I suppose such a fervent adherence to recycling (in this case of speech lines) probably wins extra support from the environmental lobby, but it didn’t seem quite suited to the moment.

I was also struck by how the post GOO analysis remained nearly perfectly split along partisan lines. It’s not so surprising that the Democratic backers confessed themselves smitten over the stunning power and unexpected (?!!) effectiveness of the GOO. That’s the same script they follow every time Obama fails to impale himself on his teleprompter while simultaneously being caught on tape cursing out a troop of cub scouts. No, that much I knew would be coming.

The striking thing was how the media-proclaimed post-partisan president seemingly did little more than rally his own partisans in, once again, campaign-like fashion. Why, I’ll bet if they had to vote for president tomorrow they’d vote for him again!! Take that, naysayers!

The problem is I’m not sure that particular outcome added anything new or significant to the health care insurance mumble… mumble… reform situation. What exactly was this speech supposed to do? Lay out a clear compromise to break the Congressional stalemate? He didn’t offer one. Win over independents or votes across the aisle? Didn’t seem much attempted. Come down one way or the other on a “public option”? He once again played both sides of the fence.

So anyway, near as I can tell, yet another GOO has passed and once again nothing has really changed.

Biden says B interrupting the President’s speech was declasse’:

Vice President Joe Biden says a Republican congressman’s outburst during President Barack Obama‘s health-care speech Wednesday night “demeaned the institution.”

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” after Obama said extending health care to all Americans would not mean insuring illegal immigrants.

Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday, Biden said the incident made him “embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love.”

Yeah.  Don’t be embarassing Congress with any of those outbursts, or Joe Biden will clutch his pearls and say “tut-tut”.

UPDATE: Dang Google.  I keep searching for “biden clutching his pearls and tut-tutting over Dems booing during state of the union”, and get nothing.  Google must be broken.

With Mitch already holding the title of the Twin Cities blogosphere’s best feminist, I feel it incumbent upon me to fill the role of the post-modern, liberal, lesbian, iconoclast on this blog. Or at least to emulate the television viewing habits of Camille Paglia…

I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it.

I have a feeling our respective definitions of “old movies” differ quite a bit (for example mine would include the earlier Harry Potter movies which seem to broadcast every other weekend on the ABC Family channel and can be viewed with clear conscience without shooing the kiddies from the room). But otherwise that television watching description is uncannily like mine.

Anyway, Camille has a few other thoughts this week, including a rather extended smackdown of her fellow Democrats over their fumbling of the health care issue. It’s worth checking out.

Via email – the speech Barack Obama should give, but probably never will:

My fellow Americans:
 
I speak today to my people – the Baby Boomers – because we have a lot to answer for. 
 
The WWII generation is rightly known as The Greatest Generation.  Young people put off college, marriage and families to spend years tramping around the world and dying in far-off Hell-holes.  Their efforts brought down two empires and brought freedom to future generations worldwide.  Then they came home and built the greatest wealth-generating economy the world has ever seen.
 
We, their children, squandered it all.  We were so full of ourselves, so sure of the nobility of our goals, so confident that our wisdom exceeded the ages, that we tore down everything they had built through hard work and sacrifice and replaced it with entitlements.
 
Now those same entitlements threaten to bankrupt our country. We need to grow up.  Right now.
 
I’m asking Congress to cut government spending for everything that isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution as being the job of the federal government.  Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, transfer payments and subsidies of every kind – all gone.  Naturally, since the federal government no longer spends that money, taxes should go down.  What government no longer does, people will have to learn to do for themselves, just as our parents did.
 
This will be hard.  It’s hard to give up the gravy train.  There will be sob stories everywhere.  But if we don’t suck it up now, there will be even more sob stories later.  The Greatest Generation looked world-wide disaster in the face and charged in to fix it.  Can we do less?
 
Goodnight, and may God bless us all.

To be fair, he’s really the third president who should have given this one…

Labor Day weekend is supposed to be a sleepy time removed from the normal grind of days. It’s to be a time of camaraderie with family and friends and escape from the workaday routine. It denotes the symbolic end of another summer idyll and the return of less frivolous pursuits, foreshadowing the imminent return of less frivolous weather as well. This is what Labor Day weekend is supposed to be.

Instead this Labor Day Weekend was all too full of politics as usual. It started, as most things do in the era of Hopenchange, in the White House.

The sordid details follow the jump…

(more…)

…the Democrats didn’t raise a fuss like the GOP is today over Obama’s speech!”

Well, no, not really.

Politico counts the Administration’s casualty list.

The latest one grabbed me; it’s the twerp with absolutely zero experience in the auto industry who became Obama’s car czar:

When the Treasury Department announced on July 13 that Steve Rattner, the private equity executive who headed the president’s Auto Task Force, would return to the private sector, Secretary Tim Geithner said Rattner’s work in Washington was essentially done.

 

“With GM’s restructuring complete, Steven Rattner, whose leadership and vision were invaluable to the Auto Task Force’s efforts, has decided to transition back to private life and his family in New York City,” Geithner said in a statement. “We are extremely grateful to Steve for his efforts in helping to strengthen GM and Chrysler, recapitalize GMAC, and support the American auto industry. I hope that he takes another opportunity to bring his unique skills to government service in the future.”

But that sounds like it’s becoming the Obama Administration equivalent of “Good Job, Brownie”:

 

But Rattner’s departure wasn’t the end of the Auto Task Force. Indeed, even as Geithner announced Rattner’s job as done, he announced that Ron Bloom, a former banker and union official serving as an adviser to Treasury, would take over Rattner’s responsibilities.

 

For months, Rattner’s tenure had been plagued by stories of a New York-based investigation into Rattner’s firm, Quadrangle Group, and allegations that it had illegally obtained a management role in New York’s public pension fund.

Blame all the noise at the town hall meetings…

That’s what we are telling our kids when President Barack Obama addresses the nation’s schoolchildren in his upcoming address. Be there, listen, take notes and we will talk about it when you get home.

At the same time, I respect parents that are pulling their kids that day a hell of a lot more than those that are neutral on the issue, or aren’t even aware of it.

This is a teaching, parenting moment.

Some parents have cried “Leave the parenting to us, not the President!”

But guess what, a lot of you are really crappy parents.

Some are absentee. Others are uninformed, lazy or disinterested. Many are physically present but not active; wealthy but won’t invest time. A lot of our nation’s ills can be traced back to a lack of focus, leadership and discipline on the part of parents, fathers especially, coupled with the increasingly fragmented family unit.

If there is one thing to recognize Barack Obama for, he seems to be a pretty good Dad and I think its fair to say it’s a harder job than being President, and certainly while being President.

If the President is true to his mission for this address, it could be of value. The nation’s first African-American President, addressing millions of children, many of whom are without a father, telling them to stay in school, dream big, and make the American dream your dream is good for all of us.

At the same time I understand the disdain many parents have for the President’s address. This is in part due to its timing, amidst a controversial and highly unpopular push for a government takeover of our health care system, soaring deficits, and the predicted bloating of the federal government.

But I also think it can be tied to a growing awareness that the President really hasn’t been the agent of systemic change that he told us he would be; that the actions he and Congress have taken to stimulate the economy have more likely made things worse; and the growing list of broken campaign promises.

A lot of people don’t trust Obama any more and aren’t exactly looking for his advice, especially to their children.

My kids know that we are conservatives, but they also know why. They know we don’t blindly follow or discount a politician of any particular party – my kids also know I’m not a George Bush fan and why. They also know that I am not a Barack Obama fan, but not because he isn’t like us, rather because I don’t agree with his politics. That is not to say that there aren’t things we agree on, and that will purportedly be the agenda for his address.

…and if the President strays into political or ideological territory, my kids will spot it from a hundred yards.

I don’t want my children to blindly follow in my ideological footsteps. I want them to form their own beliefs and philosophies. I want them to own them so that no one can take them away without a fight.

And that is why I want them to watch the President with respect, and with an open but discerning mind.

Saturday in the NARN, I said that Van Jones – Obama’s “Green Jobs” Czar – would step down on the graveyard shift, Saturday or Sunday, when the people are asleep and the media are playing infomercials. 

Jones, who was a 9/11 truther and casual racist with a knack for reaching across the aisle – bailed out last night. 

President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

He never existed, Winston.

…is a teleprompter, and independents, Republicans a public majority and a growing faction of your party is against you, what do you do?

Give another speech? …to my kids?

Obama has lost contact with the American people and is soon to be floating in a political vacuum…talking to himself.

“We gave Congress a charge, we gave them broad outlines, which is the reason we are farther along than any of the five presidents that have tried,” [Rahm] Emanuel said in an interview yesterday.

By what measure? Americans are five times more pissed off at their government? The unsubmitted bill used five times times more paper?

Rahm is in a state of stupor.

“We’re not there yet, and this speech is intended to finish the job.”

…I guess we’ll see what or who will be finished. When a thug from Chicago says “finish the job”…

I do try to get along with people.  Even liberals.  Even leftybloggers.  Part of it is that I grew up a liberal, in a liberal family; I’m not one of those who sees liberals as an evil “enemy”, necessarily – because I used to be one of them, and I was no more “evil” or “enemy” then than I am now. 

And there are some good leftybloggers out there.  I’ve called them out when I see them. 

Which doesn’t change the fact that the Twin Cities’ leftysphere is one of the world’s mother lodes of Mittyesque fantasy, deranged paranoia, hopelessly hatred-addled ranting masquerading as “thought”, and (at the end of the day) mindless passing-on of what ones’ superiors want passed on.

But every once in a while, a leftyblog tries to actually “report” the “news”.

Now, as I noted last weekend, a couple of minions from Dustrytrice.com (a DFLer whose blog is to Minnesota Democrats Exposed as Debbie Gibson was to Chrissie Hynde) were busy videotaping GOP gubernatorial candidates’ appearances on the NARN last weekend.   They stood there for two hours, getting vid of Paul Kolls, Pat Anderson and Marty Seifert and, as I got off the air, I saw they were getting ready to film Laura Brod.

I mentioned this to Laura, who is the sort of irrepressible conservative that will no doubt get her labelled as “crazy” by the DFL noise machine in fairly short order here.  Always looking for a scrap, she walked over to introduce herself to the camera guys.

And I thought “Hm.  I wonder how this is going to come out?”  I already had a hint; earlier, Trice had twittered that the utterly mild-mannered Paul Kolls – easily the lowest-key of the four three and a half gubernatorial hopefuls – was “hateful”.  I figured “this is gonna be a doozy”.

So I was mildly shocked to read Trice saying that Brod – who is nothing if not a good GOP trooper – had “said”:

Over the busy opening weekend a few DUSTYTRICE.COM tipsters were volunteering to help tape over at the Patriot Radio booth. They caught up with Rep. Laura Brod as she was getting ready to go on air. One of the tipsters mentioned that none of the GOP candidates were speaking at the GOP booth.

Well, according to Laura Brod they aren’t letting them speak.

Huh. 

Well, I took the liberty of talking with Brod before our NARN interview yesterday, and emailing her this morning just to make sure.  And while the both communications were off the record, let’s just assure you that that was not what Laura Brod said.  She said nothing about the GOP not “allowing” candidates to speak at the booth.

So what I want to know is why the MN GOP is preventing their candidates from speaking to the 1.6 million Minnesotans at the Fair?

And what I want to know is, given that Brod said nothing of the sort, and Dustrytrice.com has absolutely no corroboration of this rather odd charge, where does this curious claim come from? 

Oh, yeah.

We know their booth is only seeing light traffic,

[althought not nearly as light as the DFL’s; I spend two hours a day watching the place from my vantage point across the street at the Patriot booth; it’s a morgue, even though it’s at one of the highest traffic intersections at the fairgrounds.  And I’m seeing easily 2-3 times as much GOP swag and flair as I am DFL as I wander a, which is a huge turnaround from last year] 

 so are the GOP party bosses afraid nobody will be there to listen? Are they worried that the extremist right-wing candidates (Pat Anderson, Tom Emmer) may drag down the more moderate candidates (Bill Haas)?

Nah, Dusty.  In the age of Obama, conservatism is not a drag. 

Being wired as they are – as hive creatures – liberals want the soothing balm of firm-but-benign authority inserted into every conceivable crevice of not only their own lives, but those of everyone around them.

And so they want President Obama to address America’s grade-school kids next Tuesday.

It’s not the dumbest idea this administration’s had, but it’s right down there:

With just four days left until the first day of school for most students, school administrators spent Thursday fielding angry phone calls and e-mails. Some parents and community members are pressuring schools not to show the telecast, arguing that it’s an attempt to advance the president’s political agenda through the public schools.

Here’s your Minnesota tax dollars in action:

“Some parents are calling their superintendent and saying they’re not going to have their kids go to school,” Education Minnesota President Tom Dooher said at a Thursday afternoon news conference. Dooher urged superintendents to show the broadcast anyway, for its educational value.

“The education of our students shouldn’t become a partisan pawn for those who are trying to score political points against the president,” he said.

Dooher – whose job is all about scoring political points (as the head of Minnesota’s most powerful, and most relentlessly DFL-leaning, union – is, of course, being disingenuous.  As is the Strib, for not telling the less-politically-savyy reader that Dooher heads a union whose main function is to tell the Democratic Party when to “jump”, and off what.

But it’s a moot point.  This speech is illegal.

We all know that for many liberals – even many of those that profess some sort of organized religious faith – that liberalism is a substitute for religion, eliciting much of the same zeal that it does among the faithful (and, among the fringe extreme, even some of the same creepy excess).

This was accompanied by plenty of considered religious imagery during Obama’s campaign; his wife said his purpose was the save the nation’s soul; the point was not lost on a fawning media:

So presenting Obama’s speech violates the Separation Clause just as surely as broadcasting the Pope or the Dalai Lama to our kids would.

I was reading Dusty Trice today when I was reminded of something from over the weekend:

Over the busy opening weekend a few DUSTYTRICE.COM tipsters were volunteering to help tape over at the Patriot Radio booth.

Yes, indeed, they were.  We had three gubernatorial candidates – Paul Kolls, Pat Anderson and Marty Seifert – on Saturday.  Laura Brod was also on King’s show, although she’s not a candidate.  They were on for half an hour each.  And for that entire time, a couple of guys stood, holding a video camera, slurping it all up.  For two hours.

And on one level, I thought “wotta life – standing for two hours in the sun, videotaping every single thing a candidate says, waiting for a “flub”. 

And on the next level, I thought “it doesn’t matter what the candidates say, because the best they can hope for is to be merely wrenched out of context; whatever they say will be called “hateful” or “crazy” anyway”.

It was a scratch! [end Seinfeld voice]