The DFL, stricken as they are by Bachmann Derangement Syndrome, are throwing one of their more promising lights at Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District.

Sen. Tarryl Clark (DFL-St. Cloud) announced officially last week that she was running for the DFL endorsement to face Rep. Michele Bachmann in the MN-06 race. Yesterday, her path became much simpler; Elwyn Tinklenberg shuttered his campaign leaving her and Maureen Reed vying for the endorsement. This development makes Tarryl the frontrunner for the endorsement.

Of course, Patty Wetterling and E-Tink immolated their political careers against Bachmann. 

But according to Eric “Big” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, this time it’s different.  See if you can spot the catch:

DFL activists throughout Minnesota know Tarryl as a rising star in the party. She’s worked with at-risk teens and for the Girl Scouts. She helped start Habitat for Humanity in the St. Cloud area. She attended an accredited law school [Not just a law school, but an “accredited” one?  Yowza.  Does she want a cookie? – Ed], William Mitchell in St. Paul, and worked for Legal Aid for seniors focusing on their healthcare issues.

The legislators I’ve spoken to all speak highly of her, she was appointed Assistant Majority Leader in the Senate and probably most importantly, she claims that she already has a decent volunteer base that’s been growing rapidly since her announcement.

That’s right – DFLers just loooooove Tarryl Clark.  In a district that’s conservative enough to buck two Democrat flood tides and elect the feisty, controversial (because she’s female and conservative) Bachmann, that is a dubious distinction in the best of times.

In 2010?  When the American hinterland is clutching their chest and reaching for the nitro pills for the sticker shock on all of that Hope and Change?  With a record like Tarryl Clark’s – as a tax-and-spender with less grace than Marie Antoinette, albeit arguably more than Cy “When you win, you keep your money; when we win, we take your money” Thao?

Yes, DFL.  Please.  I beg of you.  Nominate Clark in the Sixth. 

I was cutting my grass over the weekend when I was approached by a late-fiftysomething couple bearing clipboards and carrying a briefcase.  She was prematurely gray, ponytailed, wearing a faded “Don’t Park The Bus” t-shirt and a peasant skirt.  Come to think of it, so was he.

The following conversation happened:

WOMAN (Prematurely gray, ponytailed, wearing a faded “Don’t Park The Bus” t-shirt and a peasant skirt): “Excuse me, sir…”

MITCH: Yes? 

WOMAN:  Have you heard about the government’s “Moola for Mowers” program? 

MITCH: Er…no?

MAN: We offer…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP!  (Man shinks).  We offer people $5,000 to get rid of their energy-inefficient lawn mowers.

MITCH: Er – Five thousand dollars?  For lawn mowers?  Like this one?

MAN:  Exactly like…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP!  (Man cowers as if he expects to be struck) Yes, sir.  Exactly like that one.

MITCH:  Um…OK?  So what do I do?

(MAN pulls ball-peen hammer from briefcase).

WOMAN:  We give you $5,000 in cash, and Bhill here will destroy it.

MITCH:  But I got this mower at a rummage sale for like $30…

MAN: Not a…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP AND STOP UPSTAGING ME!  (Man falls mute, looking like a dog that’s been beaten too much) Sir, that’s really not the issue here.  We need to get this mower off the street.  Would you like $5,000, or not?

MITCH: Sure!

(WOMAN peels off fifty $100 bills.  MITCH takes them, stuffs them into wallet).

WOMAN: Yes!  The program is a success!  Bhill?

MAN (trudges to mower, like he spends half his time just covering up, and beats it weakly about the cylinder head)

MITCH:  So…you getting a lot of takers?

WOMAN: Oh, yes!  Everyone we’ve talked to has taken the $5,000 for their mower!  Indeed, one man told his neighbors, and the all brought out mowers and snowblowers!  It’s the most successful government program ever!

MITCH:  I’d imagine…

MAN: (Smacks the head until the spark plug breaks off).

WOMAN:  Yaaaaaay!  Total success!  Complete proof that Obama has brought hope and change!

MITCH: Why?  Because I got $5,000 in taxpayer money for a $30 mower?

WOMAN (happily):  Yes!

MITCH: And because all my neighbors got the same for mowers that maybe ran $50-200?

WOMAN (ecstatic): Yes!

MITCH: But whomever is funding this “program” just got ripped off to the tune of about 99.4% of their “investment”, which…

WOMAN (nonplussed):  But…a gas-guzzling mower is off the street!

MITCH: Right – for 100 times what it could have cost!

WOMAN: (Silent for a moment):  Why do you hate children?

MAN (glares at woman demonically)

That’s what the Democrats’ apologists for Obamacare continue to assure us.

As usualy, they’re full of it.

More trouble on the horizon for The Great Society part deux: After thinking it over, many people are coming around to the notion that the current health care system may not be so bad after all.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% rate it as poor.

These figures reflect a significant increase in support for the health care system over the past few months. In May, just 35% of adults nationwide rated the system as good or excellent. A year ago, just 29% of Likely Voters rated the system in such positive terms.

The new polling also shows that 80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent. That’s up from 70% in May.

Bolding mine, and it’s a doozy. President Obama and his Congressional groupies launched into a bold initiative to reform the nation’s health care system under the premise that people wanted… ahem… change. But how much “change” will really be tolerated by people who already find their health care coverage as, at worst, “good”?

(more…)

As we discussed last winter, the left observes two different sets of rules for “protected classes”.  Women, for example; female politicians on the left are treated with a sort of victorian deference; conservative women, on the other hand, great treated like recalcitrant waitstaff at best, hookers under arrest at worst by the left’s chattering classes.

That much is a given.

But it sometimes the left’s distaste, even hatred, for cognitive dissonance even catches me off guard.

Given that the left has invested millions into creating a rumor factory about Sarah Palin, spawning off tales that are, inevitably, fake (but that don’t need to be true, since their only purpose is to serve as nattering points for the national chattering class, used to defame Palin while still technically following the rules “Journalists” are supposed to follow), it  shouldn’t surprise anyone that they are shopping a aTsourceless rumor that the Palins are getting divorced. 

Yestrday, we discovered the problem: Conservative bloggers don’t have “sources” the way progressives do. Take for instance, the highly influential blog called Immoral Minority, which has been rockin’ the Site Meter lately. Their secret? Sources:

Earlier this week one of my best sources claimed to have explosive new information for me . . .

According to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage . . .

As for the babygate story . . . my sources are still working on it, and the information is becoming more accessible . . .

It’s all about ”sources,” you see. Which is a big problem for conservative bloggers, because for some reason we can’t get any sources with intimate details of the marriages of prominent Democrats.

It’s certainly possible ,not that the story gives us any reason to believe it; the kind of pressure the Palins are under – two very different careers, special needs child, pregnant teenage daughter – have broken up an awful lot of families.

Now, the rumor is hinky to the point that the normally-Palinphobic mainstream media isn’t playing ball with it yet.

The part that amazes me, though is not just the hostility that Palin engenders, but the hatred so many on the left feel for the whole notion of the close-knit, unapologetically Christian family.

A local “progressive” commentator, writing on Twitter (who shall remain nameless) wrote in re the rumors of the Palin divorce rumors:

I am betting on divorce among politicians who preach family values…Because often [“family values”]  are in direct contrast to having loving, open communication and a healthy marriage.

I’ve been astounded at two things, really:  that people on the left still use the term “family values” (we on the right mostly gave it up after it got turned into cheap-irony-fodder twenty-odd years ago, for starters, and then that so many on the left believe their own press about those that differ from them.  It’s been a Hollywood staple for a generation, now; the fundamentalist is dumb; the Christian couple is not just dysfunctional, but secretly depraved; the minister is the villain of the story.

Of course, it’s true – to the extent that it’s true for everyone;  “Family values people” are human, the same curse that faces everyone else; they are imperfect, given to “sin”, to grab a seemingly-appropriate term.  It’s just that it only seems to be tittering material when it’s someone whose worldview presses one to try to live better than that.

So I asked the person in question if she had anything, y’know, a little more empirical:

Archaic ideas about women’s roles bump up against reality/create conflict.

Which prompts the question: what “archaic ideas about women’s roles” are we talking about here?  Whatever you think about Sarah Palin’s politics, she’s hardly a latter day Barbara Billingsley.  She’s vastly more accomplished a person than the vast majority of her critics of either gender, on many levels; as a parent, as a politician, as a communicator.

I’m not sure what to chalk it up to:  conservative women (hispanics, blacks, etc) are targets for self-loathing hatred, or as a projection of the left’s worst traits.

“It’s a bad one”, Sergeant Koziolecki said; the flushed look on his face showed that he wasn’t exaggerating.

“Whadda we got?”  I clipped my badge to my belt as we walked through the abandoned warehouse in the Saint Paul Warehouse District, ducking under the yellow “crime scene” tape.

“Four vics; two hispanic males, early twenties; one black male, late twenties; one caucasian female, late teens-early twenties.  Gunned down execution style” Koziolecki recited from fresh memory.

We rounded a dirty, ratty corner to what had been the lobby of a shipping dock, and saw the CSI crew going over the scene.  Four bodies were lined up, face-down, by a grafitti-clogged block wall.  “No kidding”.

“A bullet to the back of each head” Koziolecki read off the notes, pushing his readers up to the bridge of his nose.  The acrid smell of fresh blood was fading as we stood there, replaced by the smell of death.  Death and…I thought for a moment, not quite placing it.

“Killer or killers left a calling card”, Koziolecki continued.  “May I?” he asked the CSI guy, who nodded as he dusted, fruitlessly, for prints.  Koziolecki gently rolled the body of a girl – late teens, with tattooed arms and hair that’d been multicolored even before getting sprayed with her own and her friends’ blood and brains, who looked like a tank grrl or roller-derby chick.

Former roller derby chick.

And she had something in her mouth.

(more…)

In the wake of Minneapolis’ 35W bridge disaster – which occured two years ago tomorrow – Democrats nationwide use the tragedy as yet another reason to call for more taxes, to pay for more “infrastructure” spending.

Minnesota DFLers used the tragedy as an occasion to pillory Governor Pawlenty – in some particularly ghoulish cases, even before the last girder had fallen into the river – for having vetoed a hike in the state gas tax, and for having taken and held to a “no new taxes” pledge five years earlier, during his nomination process.

In response, many of us asked, hypothetically, “if the DFL had had complete control of the state for the past ten  years – if Skip Humphrey had beaten Jesse Ventura and Norm Coleman – do you homestly believe they’d have spent that time and money doing the unglamorous, tedious, exquisitely expensive work of going and inspecting and repairing old infrastructure (or not-so-old infrastructure – the 35W bridge was half the age of the bridges up and downstream from it) rather than more-visible work, like building light rail and more roads?”

We were, of course, absolutely correct:

Tens of thousands of unsafe or decaying bridges carrying 100 million drivers a day must wait for repairs because states are spending stimulus money on spans that are already in good shape or on easier projects like repaving roads, an Associated Press analysis shows.President Barack Obama urged Congress last winter to pass his $787 billion stimulus package so some of the economic recovery money could be used to rebuild what he called America’s “crumbling bridges.” Lawmakers said it was a historic chance to chip away at the $65 billion backlog of deficient structures, often neglected until a catastrophe like the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed two years ago this Saturday.

The lesson?  Raising taxes and assuming that Democrats will use the money to pay for maintenance is like giving a teenager a credit card to buy school supplies.

The question isn’t so much “why is the President losing ground on healthcare”; socialized healthcare is a dumb idea, and most Americans (especially those of us who’ll be paying for it and losing from it) know it.  It was the shoal that the liberal Bill Clinton of 1992-1993 ran up on; it’ll be proof that the Obama administration is only human, too:

Pluralities now say that the president’s health care plan is a bad idea, and that it will result in the quality of their care getting worse. What’s more, just four in 10 approve of his handling on the issue.The poll also finds that Obama’s overall job-approval rating has dropped to 53 percent. And it shows a public that has grown increasingly concerned about the federal government’s spending as the administration defends its $787 billion economic stimulus and supports a $1 trillion-plus health-care bill.

No, the question is this:  Given that grassroots support for socialized medicine is falling faster than Nancy Pelosi’s jawline, the question is, how does this lack of support make middle-America racist?

A year ago, Obama was being hailed as a “light worker”, the salvor of our nation’s soul; a man, but not just a man.

Today, of course, his poll numbers are gratifyingly human:

The nation is close to evenly split in its assessment of the president’s policies to date, and there is great intensity on both sides of the debate with dwindling numbers in the middle.Those are the chief findings of the latest NPR poll of 850 registered voters conducted nationwide Wednesday through Sunday by a bipartisan team. The pollsters found 53 percent approving of the president’s handling of his job, while 42 percent disapproved — the narrowest gap of the Obama presidency to date. Most of the approving group said they approved strongly, and an even greater majority of the disapproving group said they disapproved strongly.

Poll respondents liked a Democratic statement on solving health care problems better than a Republican statement (51 percent to 42 percent). However, when asked about the plan now moving through Congress, a plurality of 47 percent was opposed and 42 percent said they were in favor, based on what they had heard about the plan so far.

Presidential poll numbers are the most fungible transient asset in American politics, of course; Ronald Reagan’s numbers were abysmal in 1982, but jumped enough to give him re-election in 1984 and a Republican house of Congress in 1986.  So don’t start writing Obama’s political epitaph yet.

Because poll numbers aren’t forever.

I’m not so much saying this to the Republican and Conservative readers, though.  It’s not them I’m worried about.

No, it’s the readers on the left that concerned me.  Because while poll numbers change with the breeze, hatred just smolders on; Eric Kleefeld is finding racists under rocks.

He addresses the “racism” between the lines (it must be between the lines) from, in this case, Rush Limbaugh (with commentary inset):

So let’s take a look at some of those recent racially-charged attacks that have circulated against Obama, both right before and after the Gates incident.

• Above all others, the real celebrity here has been Rush Limbaugh. He’s done this kind of thing before — remember the “Barack, The Magic Negro” song? [which, while un-PC, was a takeoff on a line by a liberal commentator; certainly not a commentary on Limbaugh’s approach to race – Ed.] But in the wake of the Gates incident, he’s managed to become even more hard-edged about it. “Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman,” Limbaugh declared this past Friday. [which would have been pretty below-the-belt, had it not been for the fact that that’s exactly how Gates played it – as a racial issue- Ed.] Yesterday, he shared a dream he’s had about the dangers to capitalism: “I had a dream that I was a slave building a sphinx in a desert that looked like Obama.” [Remember when dissent was the highest virtue?  Now, it’s apparently “racist”- Ed.] And he joked that food-safety advocates will go after all the unhealthy foods people like to eat, one by one — but they’ll have to wait until Obama is out of office to ban Oreos. [I suppose it would have been safer to say “Starbucks” or “Volvo” or “Patagonia”…- Ed.]

How much intellectual seed corn is the left willing to burn to prop up The One?  Poll numbers come and go,  but assaults on the integrity of half of ones’ fellow countrymen – defamatory, specious, intellectually vacuous attacks, of course – are gifts that just keep on giving.

One controversy after another dogs El Presidente as he pours a cold one with his new-found beer buddies.

Earlier this week the White House indicated each man would drink the beer of their choice — Bud Light for President Obama, Blue Moon for the police officer, and perhaps Red Stripe or Beck’s for Gates.

But one Massachusetts congressman thinks another beer entirely should be served: Boston’s own Sam Adams.

In a letter to Obama dated Wednesday, Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal strongly urges the president not to drink Budweiser, now owned by a Belgian company. Nor should the White House consider serving Miller or Coors, Neal writes, both owned by a United Kingdom conglomerate.

These are weighty issues. This is behavior unbecoming the leader of the free world. I think the President should just resign.

(I glad that I created our new “Beer” tag because it appears to be well positioned for heavy use in the immediate future)

But in the mean time and in light of Congressman Neal’s push to elevate one’s choice of beer to the national stage, we can speak up, be heard, and tell our President what beer we think he should drink for the betterment of our nation (these are all real beers).

Posted by Johnny Roosh in Beer, President Obama| 17 Comments »