I think it was Mark Twain that said “a lie can make it around the world while the truth is waiting in line at Caribou”.

That’s the little swatch of human behavior that the Dayton campaign, and especially its’ money-laundering smear shop, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, seem to be hoping dominates the upcoming election.

Because to the extent that ABM’s strategy is intelligent, it’s in this way; a simple lie takes five seconds to tell; that same like will take sixty seconds to refute.  Do Minnesota voters have the attention span to absord sixty seconds of facts to counter five seconds of lying?

The GOP needs to hope so.

And if you’re ABM, or the DFL?  Do the phrases “A thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in Minnesota” and “Yes, We Can!” ring a bell?  They most certainly do to the people on the Dayton/Rockefeller family payrolls that are ginning up the dirtiest, most cynical political campaign in Minnesota history.

So I’m gonna get started on those sixty seconds right now.

ABM’s house blogger – inevitably anonymous (and, we’re told, paid) – writes:

Either Tom Emmer is still stuck on the first stage of grief because of his disastrous campaign to date,

Fact: Two points less “disastrous”, by all accounts, than Tim Pawlenty’s at this point in the race eight years ago.

which recently voted several staffers off the island,

Fact: What, campaigns never change staff?  The local jabbering class has spun the Emmer campaign’s turnover as some sort of unusual event after a primary.  Just plain dumb.

or he thinks that he’s campaigning to become governor of The Matrix. Tom Emmer’s most recent “I have absolutely no budget plan” distraction technique unveiled today is the red pill inspired: “There is no spoon”.

Fact:  Opinion:  Matrix references?  What next?  “Dayton is Spock, Emmer is Ferengi?”  Good lord, Emmer’s being attacked by the friggin’ chess club!

From Tom Emmer via MPR:

Where is the deficit? We talk about ‘You got to raise taxes, government has to invest.’ I’ll say it again, government in the state of Minnesota is scheduled to get a 7 percent increase in the next biennium. Government will have more money to spend in the next two years than it is spending right now.

You see, Minnesotans? There is no spoon. Whoa. The deficit is all in your head! If the budget crisis doesn’t exist –bam– no plan needed.

Fact: Opinion: ABM is a plan to employ the innumerate.

There might be a more civil explanation, but I got nothin’.

Even with his attempt to melt our minds by going all Neo on us, no one is fooled.

I’m having high school flashbacks.  Trekkies insisting they were really “TrekkERs”. “Live long and prosper”.  Ugh.  Must move on.

Despite Emmer’s selective accounting, we know we’re facing a historic budget crisis, and as Tom Scheck immediately points out, the major reason for the uptick in state spending cited by Emmer is that Tim Pawlenty’s kicking of the budgetary can is coming home to roost. (Mixed metaphors win elections)

I’m not sure if Tom Scheck of MPR is honest enough to point this out; it’s for sure ABM’s anonymous blogger is not.

Let’s accept that Tim Pawlenty “kicked a budgetary can” for sake of argument.

That “can” was made big and stinky by a DFL legislature that was fixed on raising spending, and especially using the state budget as a vehicle to launder money to help local governments hide their own rapacious spending – especially the DFL governments in the Twin Cities and Duluth, which got and get 250% more money than non-metro cities, entirely as a means to camouflage their ruinous spending and the costs of the DFL’s policy of warehousing the poor in the inner city.

With over a billion in school shifts and half a billion in temporary cuts coming off the chopping block, many of the gimmicks bullied through the legislature by Tim Pawlenty–with the full support of Tom Emmer and House Republicans– are putting the state in an even worse situation next year.

And all of that with an economy collapsing.  Wow. What do do?

What to do?

Instead of owning up to his role in the budget debacle we find ourselves in…

…that “role” being arguing for fiscal restraint against a DFL near-supermajority in the House that was fixed on spending first (and covering it with taxes from Minnesota’s productive classes) first and asking questions later.

— and provide us with what would actually be a “new direction” — Tom Emmer has decided to try and confuse us.

Fact: Opinion: In fairness to Emmer, it doesn’t seem like  it’d be that difficult a job…

Whether it’s mashing up $20 billion and 20%, or comparing Minnesota to a wagon full of Clydesdales, Tom Emmer is willing to say anything, except what he would actually do to the services we all use and rely on if he became governor.

Fact: The DFL and its paid spokeshamsters at ABM are being incredibly disingenuous.  Emmer has always said his plan will be out in September.  And so it will.  And it’s gonna turn the Dayton campaign on its ear, I have a hunch.

The problem? It’s pretty hard to dance around the fact that he introduced things like cutting the minimum wage while pushing for lower taxes on corporations.

Fact:  It’s even harder to dance around the fact that context is being waterboarded here.  Minimum wage cuts and lower corporate taxes are both proven means of creating more jobs.  Raising taxes and spending are both proven ways to kill (non-government) job growth.

We wont forget that — when he bothered to show up to vote– that he consistently sided with big businesses instead of working Minnesotans.

Where does this guy think “Working Minnesotans” work?

For the new direction the Minnesota needs someone ready to make the hard decisions to move us forward.

Speaking of “hard decisions”:  What is Dayton’s big proposal?  Besides “eat the [working] rich”, I mean?

We need someone who can lay out a plan to get Minnesota back on track, not more Pawlenty-styled governing by press release.

Well, you asked for a plan.  I suspect you’ll get one pretty quick here.

Then the fun will begin.

Ahem:

The politicians say “we” can’t afford a tax cut.  Maybe we can’t afford the politicians.  ~Steve Forbes

There’s a reason I supported him in 2000…

It is my right, under the First Amendment, to walk into a biker bar and tell them that leather chaps look like gay S and M wear.

Just because it’s my right doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Billy Joe Tubb, writing in South Carolina Traditional Values blog, takes on the real reasons for not building the Ground Zero Ground Zero Debris Field mosque:

The fact is that building a mosque next to the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the 11 September attacks, is a strange story. This is because the mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!

That is the interesting part; the actual Muslims are hardly party of the discussions.

Neither did the Muslims ask for a single building, nor do the angry Muslims want the mosque. This is one of the few times when the two opposing sides are in agreement. Nevertheless, the dispute has escalated, and has reached the front pages of the press and the major television programs, demonstrations have been staged in the streets, and large posters have been hung on buses roaming the streets of New York calling for preventing the building of the mosque and reminding the people of the 11 September crime. It really is a strange battle!

I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!

The building used to be a Burlington Coat Factory…

Tubb follows the money:

The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery.

…and cuts to the important point:

What the US citizens do not understand is that the battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle, and not theirs, and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam. This is what has started to happen now; they claim that there is a mosque being built over the corpses of 3,000 killed US citizens, who were buried alive by people chanting God is great, which is the same call that will be heard from the mosque.

Worth a read.

CORRECTION:  I mistakenly identified the author as Billy Joe Tubb.  the actual author is; Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed writing in Al Sharq Al-Awsat:

I regret any confusion.

From 2004, Lex Green at the Chicago Boys blog – the best political/economics blog that I never have time to read – worked over the “United States of Canada” meme – the sore losers who sprang up after John Kerry got sent back to Ville de Palooque:

The basic idea is that the Blue Staters are so horrified about living under the rule of George Bush that they want to break the USA into pieces and form their own country. Of course, they are just venting.

The core strength of “liberal” America resides in the descendants of Yankee puritans, a memetic “Greater New England” that sprang from the Yankee diaspora which settled the Northern tier of the country. These folks have been living uneasily with their fellow Americans for over 350 years. They have been trying to reform the rest of us for our own good the whole time: Revolution, abolition, prohibition, civil rights, environmentalism � . Sometimes they are even right, as much as I hate to admit it. Look at a picture of Cotton Mather, or Susan B. Anthony, or any eat-your-peas liberal do-gooder. The eyes: sad at the foolishness and injustice of the world — the mouth, a mirthless line — and the jaw, set in determination to rectify the world’s wrongs and smite its wrongdoers. Those Yankees, genetic or memetic, are the core of the “progressive” element in American life, and they have been for centuries, and they’ll never change.

Spoofing this movement was some of the most fun I’ve had writing this blog.

And now, ripped from the headlines, “Jamie Stiehm” writes in USN&WR:

All states are not created equal, as this summer’s performances in Congress and other political platforms show anew. Some states are pretty great; some are just plain trouble. Take [Texas, Arizona and South Carolina], for example…

…let me make a modest proposal: that the states that seceded–let them be gone! That means South Carolina, Texas, and even Florida as a bonus, along with the Deep South states that send recalcitrant Republican representatives to Washington with no intention of doing the nation’s business. They are there to block, taunt, and undermine a president, a man from Illinois making social progress. This time, let’s let them go without a fight. Oh, and we’ll keep Virginia, more reconstructed than the rest, and give them Arizona.

…by way of calling for the reddest of the red states to secede.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on the comparison here; people from the ultra-conservative fringe advocate secession = knitted brows and outraged talk of sedition.  Typically vapid Ivy League legacy slime working puff jobs with major media outlets talk about seceding or expelling states that offend them = look at the shiny object.

Wonder if Erik Black will furrow his brow and write a scholarly piece dissecting the pathologies of the left’s mania for secession.

I’ll take “Under” on the over/under.

I have a quick question for the Twin Cities’ leftyblog buildup.

Since gay marriage has emerged, at least for the DFL, as the most important issue in the gubernatorial election – at least as re the perceived record of the GOP’s candidate – I think it’s only fair to ask “why has the DFL been such an utter waste of time when it comes to passing gay marriage?”  If there really is an outcry for gay marriage, then why didn’t the DFL-controlled legislature use their four years of absolute legislative hegemony to push the issue?

Because if there genuinely is popular support for a measure  then there is no such thing as a “wasted vote”.

Here’s how it works; Representative A (DFL – Spike Lake) brings up a gay marriage bill.  Representative B (GOP – Mud Lake) bottles it up in committee and it dies.  DFL candidate C runs for Represenative B’s job, and uses the vote to stir up popular anger at Mr. B, who is turned out of office by the voters who are demanding gay marriage.

In the next session, Representative A and C and fifty other DFLers (and GOPers, scared by the demise of Representative B) pass the bill through the House , and send it to the Senate.  There, Senator D (GOP – Ham Prairie) bottles the bill up in committee.  That fall, GOP candidate E runs against Senator D in the primary, capitalizing on the growing grass-roots realization that gay marriage is what the people want, and gets the endorsement, and wins the vote in Ham Prairie, a reliably GOP district that, like all Minnesotans, really do support gay marriage.

The next session, the House and Senate both pass gay marriage bills.  They are carried to Governor F.  Ms. F vetoes the bill.  In the following gubernatorial election, the popular support for gay marriage sends Governor F. packing; pro-gay marriage former state insurance commissioner G is elected governor. And in his first session, when presented with a gay marriage bill, he signs it, just as he promised in the keynote to his winning campaign.

——–

Is the example above a fanciful hypothetical?  Yes and no.  It was, more or less, how “Concealed Carry” was passed in Minnesota. Pat Pariseau and Linda Boudreaux proposed “Shall Issue” legislation for four or five different sessions (if I remember correctly, and I may well not) before the votes were there to get the victory in 2003.  It wasn’t because they thought they could win every single time – in 1997, they certainly could not.  It was because they knew they wanted the issue in front of the legislature, because the process surrounding the debate would eventually win legislators over (and see to the electoral firing of legislators who opposed the popular measure). And this was in a Legislature that was not controlled by Republicans, much less conservatives.

The MNGOP’s gubernatorial candidate opposes gay marriage. So, by the way, do most Americans, in one form or another; while many support civil unions (myself included), Gay Marriage proposals keep losing in referendum after referendum.

“Why waste the votes?”, one DFL wag asked me when I brought it up once.

I dunno – because if you believe in the rightness of your cause, that’s what you do; if you believe in the democratic process and you believe that the people really do support your cause, then there is no such thing as a “wasted vote”.

The DFL knows this, because while they are fine using gay marriage as a cudgel against conservative politicians to fire up, or shore up, their base, they have spent their last four years of absolute hegemony in the Legislature pushing exactly zero gay marriage legislation to Governor Pawlenty.

“Shall issue” handgun laws survived and grew during at least seven consecutive legislative tests against nominally hostile legislatures.  Why doesn’t gay marriage get even one test in a relentlessly friendly legisature?

All through American history, there have been those who asked “what’s it all about?”

The answer, whether stated or (usually) implicit, is “to beat your opponent”.

In 1776, we had a tyrannical king and his troops to send packing.

In 1864, it was the slave-owning secessionistic southern Brahmins.

In 1945, it was the Nazis and the bombers of Pearl Harbor.

In 2002, it was the people who planned 9/11.

And today?

It’s the cast, creators and producers of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”.

Jersey Shore's employees. Er, cast.

So when people like Tony Jones sound ready to give up…:

But, as far as I could tell in the 30 minutes that I watched before I could watch no more, there is no reason to watch the characters of Jersey Shore other than voyeurism. There’s no story, no character development. There is pure exhibitionism. In that sense, Jersey Shore is like pornography. And, also like pornography, it’s completely predictable what will happen: party, fight, sex, repeat.

I’m not one to proclaim the denouement of our culture or our country based on the devolution of our fetishes, but after seeing Jersey Shore, I might be ready to change my tune on that.

No, don’t, Tony.  “Jersey Shore” may well be the ultimate proof of my theory – that Mike Judge’s classic, underrated movie Idiocracy was a comedy for the social right and a to-do list for the social left – but for those of us who see better things ahead, it’s a call to action.

So you know those emotions you feel when you watch “Jersey Shore” (And I’ll cop to it; I saw three minutes of the first episode, and felt the same way)?  Don”t let them make you write off Western Civilization.

In the immortal words of Jed Eckert (Harry Dean Stanton) in that classic manifesto of flyover-land “FU” belligerence, Red Dawn – don’t let Jersey Shore get you down.  Let it turn.

Let it turn into something else.

Earlier today, I bagged on the regional left for recycling each others’ stories long after they’ve been debunked.

It’s tempting to think it’s because they’re all talking from the same slate of topics. It’s so prevalent it’s also tempting to think that it’s a matter of top-down policy – to repeat not only the big lies but the little ones often enough that people start to believe it.

Over at Cackling Spoo, “Spot” repeats an old slander:

[GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer] also been a fan and financial supporter of Bradlee Dean…

Of course, if you want the facts about anything to do with politics, you need to go to a conservative blog.  This “issue” is no exception; we gut-shot that particular meme two months ago.

Twin Cities leftyblogs; continually confirming the adage “Distrust, then verify.  Then carry on with the distrust”.

Under New York state law and city ordinance, if a Muslim group buys property in lower Manhattan, and builds a mosque subject to city building codes and zoning regulations, a principled property-rights advocate should say “they have the right to do it” – even if the entire project is a thumb in the eye of the victims and the city that suffered so much on 9/11.

But I should also think it’d be perfectly legal for someone to buy some property near the mosque and build – subject to codes and zoning, naturally – a statue.  Of, say, Mohammed.

Maybe 110 stories tall.

UPDATE: This is, of course, satire.

Maybe the mosque builders would get the point then.

After a month in which groups paid for largely by his family and cronies ran more smear ads than were run in the entire 2006 governor’s race, Mark Dayton suddenly wants to play it clean:

Just a day after he declared victory in the DFL gubernatorial primary, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton called for an end to all negative ads — including those from outside groups supporting him.

“I mean it,” he said.

He doesn’t mean it.

He’s posturing; trying to take the high road.  None of the groups supporting him (and paid for by him) are under the faintest obligation to obey.

Most importantly, the unions – who control their own political spending and don’t take orders from Dayton, nudge nudge wink wink – can do anything they want, spend as much as they want, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it (but heaven forfend that a business might be able to do the same thing).

Dayton is, at the very least, posturing.  At the most, perhaps, he might want to forestall future exposures of dirt in his record; the GOP’s “Erratic” ad is, truly, just the beginning.

The call comes weeks after the Democrat-supporting Alliance for a Better Minnesota released an ad smacking Republican Tom Emmer for past drunk driving charges and a day after the Minnesota Republican Party smacked Dayton for his past Senate history.

Minnesota has seen similar calls before — and seen absolutely nothing happen as a result.

And nothing will happen this time.  After months of paying for “independent” PACs to slime Emmer, Dayton’s current narrative is “I’m Being Swiftboated!”

In October of 2008, Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman decided he would pull all his negative ads (they are no longer available on YouTube) and asked his supporters to follow suit. None of his supporters listened and they continued to rip Democrat Al Franken on the air. Franken ended up winning that Senate election by 312 votes.

Unlike Dayton, Coleman was sincere.

Michael Brodkorb, deputy chair of the Republican Party, said Dayton’s calls was hypocritical and the party would only consider pulling its ad after it had run as much as the Alliance ad had. Right now, it appears the GOP doesn’t have the funding to run it that often.

Given that unlike A4aBM’s largely fallacious spots the GOP’s commercials are true, the spending gap may not tell the whole story.

In the DFL “Unity” rally yesterday, Mark Dayton – who has funded, along with his family, the most expensive orgy of attack advertising in Minnesota history, unprecedented in both its cost and its fallaciousness –  complained:

“I expected the smears to start right away, and they have.”

He was complaining, of course, because after a month of carping on Emmer’s 20 and 30 year old careless driving arrests (and lying about his legislative record), the GOP – not the Emmer campaign – took out an ad highlighting Dayton’s genuine and recent erratic behavior.

Leaving aside that the MNGOP’s ad buy will be a tiny fraction of what “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” spent smearing Tom Emmer (on the Dayton family dime), one must ask; is reporting facts – something A4aBM never tried in re Emmer’s record – a “smear”?  How does Dayton feel about the “smearing” that his family-funded PAC has been funding for the past month?

This is the beginning of the latest chanting point from the left.  On Tuesday night, Jeff Rosenberg of the leftyblog MNPublius – a good guy, but as reliable a barometer of the direction of DFL spin as exists in the Twin Cities lefty “alternative” media since Dusty Trice exited the blogging stage in a welter of snark-splat – tweeted his vision of the upcoming discourse:

Dayton/DFL: “We should really solve the budget problem.” Emmer/GOP: “MARK DAYTON IS A POOHEAD.:

Which is an interesting take, given that while Dayton, his family and cronies have funded more attack ads in the past month than ran in the entire 2006 campaign against Pawlenty.

So let me ask you this, Jeff Rosenberg and, by the way, every single other lefty commentator: name and document one single attack that has come from Tom Emmer in this cycle, against anyone; against any of his convention opponents, or Kelliher, Entenza, Horner or Dayton.

You can not, of course.  Emmer has taken an utterly scrupulous high road – as has his main political action committee, MNForward, funded by Minnesota businesses.

But expect this narrative over the next week or two; that Dayton is a victim!

Indeed, I’m going to go out on a thick, strong limb and say Dayton will issue nothing substantial for the next week; he’ll whing about being “Targetboated”, and he’ll redouble the efforts of  his goons at A4aBM.

Enjoy this, Minnesota.  This is your 2010 model DFL in action.

The only surprising thing about this story…:

…is that it didn’t happen in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Anoka or Edina first.

In fact, I’m not sure that it didn’t; stories like this pop up every few years somewhere in the US.

What is new is the promise by “lemonade stand activists” to launch a lemonade-stand-in at a street fair coming up soon.

I’m liking this whole “fallout from the Tea Party” thing, myself…

I’m a fiscal conservatve.  Along with that, I’m a legal constructionist and a social libertarian, and a personal Christian by the bye.

And I generally take that “libertarian” side pretty seriously.  I don’t much care what other people do with their lives; I’d much appreciate it if they felt the same and let me live my personal life the way I want to; I’m happy to return the favor.

So my approach to “gay rights”, as a rule, is driven by all these factors.  All people must be equal before the law.  Nothing else should modify that statement – not race, gender or religion, not orientation, nothing.

My faith sees marriage as a guy and a gal getting together to start a family.  My libertarian side says that government should allow people to sign contracts, including civil “marriages”, and enforce them (and since goats and children can’t sign contracts, the “human-animal marriage will be legal” argument is something of a red herring, and it should be a fairly simple thing to legislate that groups can’t get the same rights as inter-personal “marriage” contracts without violating anyone’s right).

I happen to see marriage as a religious institution, not a civil one.  In the event I ever get married again, I’ll endeavor to avoid the state bureaucracy, to the point of eschewing the government  license if possible, and sticking with the church ceremony. And, by the way, since I see marriage as a religious institution, I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t add that a church might be perfectly within its theological purview to find a scriptural justification for same-sex marriage.  It’s difficult, of course; no major religion anywhere in the world believes any such thing – but never say never.  If theology were engineering, the Episcopals in particular could build the Panama Canal.

And I’ll exercise my right not to get married there!

I’m a Tom Emmer supporter.  While I kept quiet about it, I’ve been supporting him since last summer.  There were several moments that tipped it over for me; I’ve written about one of them on this blog before.  When an audience member asked him about gay marriage, Emmer responded without skipping a beat that while he was a Catholic who shared his church’s beliefs on what marriage is, that the only real issue in the upcoming election is jobs and the economy – and the governor would have absolutely nothing to do with any legislation on gay marriage, anyway.

And I thought “there’s a guy with the right priorities”.  And I still do.

———-

The “MNForward” flap has been a classic case of astroturfing.  Now, a writer for a “Gawker”-class snarkblog wrote me last week taking umbrage at my calling it “astroturf” because…well, apparently because his publication had written about it and they just don’t do astroturf, nosireebob.  I wasn’t entirely clear on that point.

(I was thinking about writing about how the biggest thing standing in the way of acceptance of gay rights has been gay activists – but The Onion said it better.  And they’re liberals, so they can get away with it).

But the fact is that the issue took off when the Alliance for a Better Minnesota started pushing it as a wedge; gay groups ran with it, with the able help of the regional and finally national media, trying to portray an action by very, very few people as an epic groundswell (that was going to harm Target financially, no less) even though gay issues are pretty much a nonentity for Emmer…

…and all three of the DFL contenders, none of whom has ever wasted a moment of their precious time introducing any bills to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota or speaking at all outside safe DFL districts about the issue.  Paper statements on how important it is, sure – but they have yet to put their bills where their mouths are.

The writer pointed me to the DFLers’ paper positions, as well as Emmer’s support for a constitutional amendment favoring traditional marriage, and asked me if I actually knew anything about Minnesota politics, or “am I wasting my time?”

In retrospect, I should have responded “I have virtually nothing against gay marriage outside my own personal religious observance.  Ask me about subject I care about, or consider it a waste of time and leave me be”.  I made the mistake of reading his writing about Emmer to that point – the sort of ad-hominem context-smashing that fits in in places like “Gawker” or “Dump Bachmann” – and just threw him in my spam folder.

Here’s the ironic part; if Tom Emmer were genuinely “rabidly anti-gay” and the gay community is genuinely concerned about a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, they  would be better off with him in the governor’s mansion (or, obviously, out of the House, although that wasn’t gonna happen by electoral means until Emmer felt like retiring) – since the governor has nothing to do with Consitutional Amendments.  Nothing.

At any rate, this issue exists for only one reason, as far as the DFL spin machine and Dayton’s personal smear shop are concerned; to get moderates to think “Emmer is intolerant”.  Which is absurd; he, like most of us, has strong, personal beliefs on the subject, as is his right.  It does not make him “anti-gay”, in the sense of “hating gay people”; it merely means he, like over 2/3 of the American people even in liberal cesspools like California and Oregon, opposes one policy plank of the gay agenda.

That is all.

The Dems need to turn this campaign away from what will be the key issue, and the issue that should matter to Minnesotans; what is going to do the most to bring jobs, prosperity and fiscal sanity back to Minnesota.  Because while DFLers may or may not cAare, moderates and swing voters need jobs too. And even the DFL knows that Mark Dayton loses that debate.

And so the DFL, the media and the smear machine need to make this about emotional side issues – to distract the distractible.

As far as this blog is concerned, this election is about jobs and the economy.   And I, like the parts of Minnesota that this election will affect most – workers, taxpayers, regular schlemiels – will be paying attention to that, rather than the cynical, astroturf side issue from now on.

Oh, yeah; Emmer’s going to win by 2-3 points.

(Disclosure:  I don’t work for the Emmer campaign, and never have.  I don’t get anything from them, other than what I get out of my sources on the campaign.  It’s called “reporting”).

The topic of the breakup of the United States bounces around every once in a while.  Often it’s a comic subject – as last year, when a Russian tycoon predicted we’d break up into six countries each aligned, conveniently, with a European or Asian power (or Latin-American “power”).

It’s been rattling about lately because of the newfound acceptance of what used to be Big-L Libertarian rhetoric, since the rise of Ron Paul.  To a big-L libetarian, naturally, liberty comes before government.

We’ll come back to that.

Erik Black at the MinnPost has been writing a series of posts on “understanding tentherism”, which has been a useful, challenging exercise (and which deserves a more-detailed set of answers, but I haven’t had the time what with having to keep Minnesota safe from Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota and all).  There was, naturally, no commensurate hand-wringing in 2004 over the wave of lefties who called for breaking the Blue states off to join Canada, but then apparently the left has a sense of humor about their own wackos that they don’t share with the right’s.

But I digress.  Black says:

The more I obsess on it, the more convinced I am that Tentherism is the key to the biggest ideological divide in American political culture. It takes the perpetual argument about how big the government should be and how much it should do, and attaches to the adoration of the founders and the framers and the belief in the Constitution as our secular/sacred text.

Which is an interesting assertion, and one I’ll address in a future post.

But long story short, I think Black has things backwards.  We’ll come back to that in a bit.

Black notes with the sort of shock that the left always shows when the subject comes up – feigned or real – that some conservatives are actually engaging in edgy rhetoric about the subject that must never be mentioned…:

Yes, secession.

If you think the civil war talk is crazy, did you notice that a sitting congressman, who is a candidate for governor of Tennessee, said last week that he hoped the next couple of election cycles would come out right “so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government?”

Hard to take that as anything less than an assertion that states have a right to secede and that if things keep going the way they are going, some states might exercise that right.

Monday that Tennessee guv candidate, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, said that if he is elected Tennessee will not secede from the union, although there was no takeback of the assertion that it could.

“Could” Tennessee, or any state, secede?  We fought a war at least in part over the question once upon a time – but that’s really neither an answer nor the subject that interests me.

Black says “tentherism” is the key to our current political divide.  I say it’s a byproduct of the real key.

And the real key to “the divide” in America today is one’s answer to these two questions.

First:  To what does an American truly pledge his/her allegiance?  To…:

A) America the physical entity with four million square miles of land, and its government with its capitol and it’s branches and bureaucracies and fifty sub-governments with their sub-branches and sub-bureaucracies?

B) Or is it to the one thing that created America – the idea of liberty, that we are all created equal, that we are a nation under a creator that endowed us with inalienable rights which no government has the legitimate power to take away?

How you answer that is “the key” to the divide. Is America the ideal of liberty?  Or is it a government?

That’s the easy question, of course; plenty of people – especially those who see themselves as principled liberals or Liberals – will answer “B” almost by reflex.

Of course, there are not a few people out there who are solid “A”s – Pete Stark’s “the Constitution is irrelevant, and the Fed can pretty much do what it wants” outburst is the A-list version, but he’s hardly the only “government uber alles” activist among America’s suit class.

Still, Stark and his ilk are basically cartoons.

But there’s a second question.

If our government decayed to the point where it could realistically be said to have rejected the ideals that this country is ostensibly built around, and there is no realistic electoral or legal remedy, is it a citizen’s duty to…:

A) Suck it up and go along with it, because it’s our government, dammit, or…

B) Find a place and/or a means to re-instate those ideals, even if it means starting a new country that actually does enshrine what America really means?

That’s where the question gets interesting.

I’m imagining certain peoples’ answers even as I write this.

So if the United States’ federal government ever abrogated the Constitution to an extent that was utterly, unmistakably a thumb in the eye of the notion of the “government of, by and for the people” – say, if presidents stopped handing over power peacefully, or if one branch of government shut down one of the others – would the states (forget the people for a moment) have a duty to stay in the country if they had a better idea?

(more…)

Joan Vennochi in the Boston Glob: The Dems are now the party of patrician privilege:

From Newport, R.I., where Kerry’s “Isabel’’ was berthed before heading to Nantucket, to Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Chelsea Clinton was married in a mansion modeled after Versailles, today’s Democrats are looking more like Louis XVI than Tip O’Neill.

Kick in the First Family’s vacation plans for Martha’s Vineyard, and there’s a real air of Marie Antoinette & Co. retreating to idyllic gardens, while Fox News whips up revolutionary flames. The ethics charges against Representative Charles Rangel of New York are added foie gras.

Of course we see that in Minnesota politics as well; while the left sniffs down its aquiline nose at Tom Emmer’s bourgeois upbringing and suburban base, Mark Dayton is hard at work buying another election to put next to the others in his collection – with scarcely a word from the local media (which is too busy carping about the “corruption of money in politics”, apparently, to bother).

Would it kill you to observe the fact that there’s a difference between an “immigrant” and an “illegal immigrant”?

You really just want to abolish the border, don’t you?

Why won’t liberals ever, ever, ever answer questions on the subject?

Chad, writing at Fraters, on the overwhelming presumption of the left:

The biggest driver of liberal media bias is not a grand conspiracy to alter the news–although the Journolist disclosures show there was more coordination and conspiring going on than most would have imagined. The chief reason that the news is more often than not tinged with a leftist perspective is that the vast majority of people in the newsrooms, studios, and offices of the traditional media roughly share the same ideological mindset. And, since the people they work and live with generally have the same views they do, they assume that this mindset is shared by the majority of Americans. Well, at least the majority of reasonable Americans.

You see artifacts of this in the occasional moments when our institutional left talks about society when it thinks its among friends.  “West Wing” – and its predecessor, the really dumb movie The American President – greeted references to abortion, guns, taxes, defense, and spending with the sort of blithe assurance that reql Americans accept the left’s ideas as the norm.

Journolist?  More of the same:

When Avent says that Palin “has terrible positions on things like choice,” everyone on the Journolist knows exactly what he’s talking about and agrees with him. What reasonable person wouldn’t? The use of language is also telling. Now when I read Avent’s words about “choice” I know exactly what he’s talking about. But this isn’t how most people talk about abortion. And if you told the average American that Palin has “terrible positions on choice” they might well ask what the hell you’re talking about. A choice about what?

ABORTION! ABORTION! ABORTION! The semantic games that abortion supporters play betrays that fact that they know how unsettling the word is. If abortion is such a swell “choice,” why not come out and say that you’re pro-abortion. Heck, I’m willing to drop the “pro-life” label (at least when it comes to abortion) if the “pro-choice” crowd would be willing to be honest about what they really support. One side is anti-abortion and one side pro-abortion. Let’s stop playing word games.

In the interest of clarity, I’ve been doing this for years.

I’ve mellowed a bit from when I called choicers “pro-death”.

You gotta hand it to Nick Coleman.  While his sympathies for the lumpen gray Minnesota left were almost too obvious to joke about, he at least went to the trouble of hilariously claimaing to be “nobody’s monkey”.

But when the DFL puts out a street organ,  Jon Tevlin puts on a funny suit, grabs the handle and starts grinding:

Mark Dayton’s campaign ads tend to feature timeworn photos of his family’s department store downtown. For those old enough to remember, the pictures conjure memories of whimsical Christmas displays, fat old Santas and the smell of caramel corn wafting from the candy store.

Down the street, Target, the discount chain that Dayton’s launched, has carved a similarly feel-good atmosphere that makes us crave that lime green wastebasket or retro toaster, even if we don’t really need it.

Now that Target has jumped into the corporate political sweepstakes by donating $150,000 to an organization that supports Rep. Tom Emmer for governor, you have to wonder whether every American outing will eventually be tainted and influenced by the nasty politics that divide us.

You mean, like every child’s “outing” to school, every single day, is “tainted” now that the teachers’ union has donated at least twice as much to the anti-Emmer “Alliance for a Better Minnesota?”

By Tuesday, Target was on the defensive because of the immediate response of gays and lesbians, many of whom are no doubt valued “guests” of the Tar-zhay experience.

“We rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or candidates we support, and we do not have a political or social agenda,” Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said.

Target offers domestic partner benefits and was a sponsor of the recent pride parade. But some gay groups are now criticizing Target because Emmer is against gay marriage.

And right there is your proof positive that Tevlin is getting his writing marching orders directly from the DFL.  Because while Emmer is no more a gay marriage supporter than most Minnesotans, he’s also correctly noted (in this Northern Alliance podcast from the State Fair) that the next governor of Minnesota has much, much bigger problems to deal with, and that it’s never really going to be an issue for that governor.

This is proof, by the way, that there is no way to appease the liberal special interest monster; as Tevlin notes, Target gives benefits to domestic partners, has aggressively led the way on “diversity in the workplace”, sponsors Minneapolis’ annual Pride rally, and among its 160-plus milllion in annual charitable giving are not a few bucks to gay-friendly non-profits.

But offend the gay political orthodoxy by supporting a candidate who supports business policies more palabable to Target’s board’s fiduciary duty, and you might as well be Andrew Dice Clay.

Like here:

OutFront asks that Target rescind the donation or give to one supporting candidates who fight for gay rights.

I have a better idea, Target; keep doing what you’re doing, and tell OutFront to go to WalMart.

I, on the other hand, like to think of our political system as a delicate product. So remember, Target, if you break it, you own it.

Does that mean Alida Messinger and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers are shoplifting?

Oh, by the way?

Thanks, Target.

I’ve been driving, walking and riding by this shop for 23 years, now.  And I figured I finally needed to pay them their due.

It’s a little Vietnamese repair garage in the Midway.  And on top of the building is a flagpole.  And atop the flagpole is Old Glory.

And below it…

…even 35  years after the fall of Saigon, is the old Republic of Vietnam flag.

They had one for many years that finally got ripped to shreds in the wind.  So this year they replaced it.  The Stars and Stripes are brand new and im-friggin-maculate.

More immigrants like this, please.

Attention, Janet Napolitano:  You keep looking for the political terrorism and violence in American politics!

Here’s more of it!

Further proof that all of the real violence in American politics (as opposed to the imagined, “potential” or slanderously imputed) violence in American politics comes from the left.

(Via Gary at LFR)

 The Dems have officially run out of stuff to talk about.

So they’ve gone back to reruns of earlier tempests in teapots.

A “Jim Horan” fobbed a “story” off on “Talking Points Memo”  via  Twitter:

RT @tpmmedia: Flashback: Emmer Had Past DWIs — And Sponsored Bills To Soften DWI Laws http://tpm.ly/a244GP

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, all the smart people dealt with this “issue” quite some time ago.  The DWIs were in 1981 and 1991; Emmer sponsored legislation to make it possible for people who’d been convicted but kept their noses clean to get out of under some of the more onerous burdens of sentencing earlier.  I wrote the first time this issue emerged, when the issue came out before the GOP convention…:

…regarding a couple of DWI-related charges, that…Tom Emmer, got 19 and 29 years ago – questioning not only his character due to the arrests, but some legislation he backed that’d have had the effect of treating drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty and making DUIs private information after ten years of good behavior – in other words, allowing people who’d made  a dumb mistake to function and get their lives back. Drunk driving is an emotional issue – made all the more so by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the drunk driving lobby.  It’s understandable; anyone who’s lost a loved one to a drunk driver is justifiably motivated to seek change.   But the .08 blood alcohol level limit is a ludicrious waste of resources, and the resources spent on hammering on first-time, only-time offenders with low levels of intoxication are largely a complete waste.

Question:  Does saying the above mean I “support” or am “soft on” drunk drivers and drunk driving?

But it’s ludicrous to treat attempts to make the system fairer and more rational as “sympathy for drunk drivers”.  Almost as ludicrous as assuming two mistakes made a generation ago are defining traits about a late-fortysomething guys’ judgment.

 All the smart people dealt with this issue three months ago.

But DFL propaganda is never aimed at smart people.

Oh, yeah – who’s pushing the story?  Who is “Jim Horan?”

He’s working for Independence Party candidate stealth DFLer Tom Horner:

Screenshot from LinkedIn

That sound you hear?  It’s the sound of Tom “Weasel” Horner’s campaign scraping the ground below the bottom of the barrel.

So far in this campaign, as the DFL hammers its way toward its primary next month, most of the attacks against Tom Emmer have come from a shadowy group, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.

I’ve busted them repeatedly stretching the truth and/or lying; Channel Five followed suit earlier this week.

But who are these people?  And where did they get the money to run all these slick (if utterly truth-free) ads, and all these posh (but amateurishly-designed) websites?

Because they run through a lot of money!

2006 Campaign – We first heard of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (A4aBM) during the 2006 campaign.  During that outing, A4aBM spent $2,545,162 – about $2.3 million of it in ads against Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Where did that money come from?

Their donor list is as follows:

• CWA COPE $5,000
• MAPE $5,000
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $5,000
• MN AFL-CIO $5,000
• United Food Comml Workers $7,500
• Ma Mah Wi No Min Fund1 (Mille Lacs Tribe) $7,000

Unions and Native American gambling interests so far; no big surprises.

• Tom Kayser (MN) $7,500  [One of Mike Ciresi’s cronies]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $15,000
• MN Nurses $15,000
• United Steelworkers $22,000
• Afscme Council 5 – $25,000
• Lks and Plains Carpenters $25,000
• IBEW MN State Council $25,000
• Intl Union of Operating Engineers $25,000
• America Votes MN $30,040 [aka “ACORN 2.0“]
• Coalition for Progress $50,000 (Mich)
• Laborers Dist Cncl $60,000
• Pat Stryker (CO) $100,000
• SEIU MN State Cncl $100,000
• Educ. MN $135,000
• Tim Gill (CO) $300,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $746,000
• Win Minnesota $778,500;

So – out of two and a half million dollars spent, about 20% – about $449,000 – came from those whom I thought were the most likely suspects, the unions.

And nearly 2/3 came from two sources – “Alida Messinger”, and a group called “Win Minnesota”.

We’ll come back to both of them.

2010 Campaign So Far – To date in the gubernatorial campaign, A4aBM has raised $93,386 (as of this past Tuesday).  They’d spent $72,383 of it as of Tuesday (on ads that were, as we ascertained earlier this week, wall to wall bullcrap).   Of that $93,386, 79.636 of it came from the “Win Minnesota PAC”.

So that’s two election cycles in a row (so far) where “Win Minnesota” has been the leading funder of scabrous hit pieces against Republican candidates.

Win Minnesota?  Seems pretty innocuous, doesn’t it?

Who is “Win Minnesota”, And Who Funds Them? – Here’s the list of major contributors to “Win Minnesota” during the 2006 campaign.  I’ll be adding the emphasis for reasons that’ll become fairly obvious:

• Anne Bartley (San Fran) $25,000 [Linked via the Rockefeller foundation to Alida Messinger – whose maiden name was “Rockefeller” and who…well, we’ll get back to that.  She’s also linked to Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Leadership Council” and former Clinton administration figure]
• Shayna Berkowitz (Mpls) $100,000; ]
• John Cowles (Mpls) $20,000; [Why yes, the former Strib publisher!  But don’t you dare say the Strib is biased!]
• Andrew Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• David Dayton (Mpls) $5,000;
• Eric Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• Mark Dayton (Mpls) $25,000;
• Mary Lee Dayon (Mpls) $100,000;
• Vanessa Dayton $1,000;
• Sandra Ferry (NY) $50,000; [Yet another Rockefeller – sister of Alida Messinger]
• Barbara Forster (Mpls) $25,000; [generic liberal with deep pockets]
• Roger Hale (Mpls) $100,000; [Former Daytons’ executive]
• John Harris (PA)$20,000;
• Myron Kunin $5,000; [Hair care tycoon]
• Kim Lund (Mpls) $25,000
• Darlene Luther 47A Committee $10,000 ;
• alida Messinger (NY) $165,000;
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $20,000;
• Linda Pritzker (TX) $30,000; [Scionette of the Hyatt fortune, big-time liberal with deep pockets; major donor to MoveOn.org]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $10,000;
• Tina Smith (Mpls) $10,000;
• Linde Uihlein (WI)$100,000; [Schlitz heiress, long-time political plutocrat]
• Julie Zelle (MN) $5,000

That was a lot of Daytons, and people linked with the Daytons…wasn’t it?

So how about this year?

So far in 2010, “Win Minnesota” lists the following donors to “Win Minnesota”‘s current warchest (currently worth $1,173,500), again with emphasis added by me:

• Andrew Dayton $1,000
• David Dayton $50,000
• John cowles $25,000 [Remember him from 2006?]
• MaryLee Dayton $250,000
• Emily Tuttle (MN) $5,000
• Ronald Sternal (MN) $5,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $500,000
• James Deal (MN) $50,000
• Roger Hale (MN) $10,000 [Remember him from above?]
• Barbara forster (MN) $25,000
• Democratic Governors Association $250,000;

So of the $1.1 and change million warchest, $851,000 came from Daytons, and Alida Messinger.

But wait!  There is another fund registered with the state, with a different account number but with the same email and street addresses, that has $850,000 socked away but has spent no money.

And where did that $850,000 come from?

• Alida Messinger (Mpls) $50,000
• Win Minnesota $50,000
• Education MN $250,000
• Laborers District Council $100,000
• MAPE $50,000
• IBEW MN State Council $50,000
• MN Nurses Assc $50,000
• Local 49 Engineers $25,000
• Vance Opperman $50,000
• Afscme Council 5 $50,000
• MN AFL-CIO $25,000
• SEIU MN State Council $50,000
• AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;

And who is this Alida Messinger who has contributed so mightily – over $1.46 million over the past four years! – to the cause of disinforming Minnesotans about Republicans?  Other than the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller III?

The ex-wife of candidate Mark Dayton.

So “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is essentially a front for a group of unions and, to the tune of millions over the past four years, Mark Dayton’s family, friends and ex-wife.

They are paying millions of dollars to advertise – and hiding it from casual view behind two layers of astroturf.

Mark Dayton is trying to buy the election, but he’s taking great pains to make sure you don’t know about it.

Minnesotans support immigration reform:

8* Suppose the new Arizona immigration law was being considered for your state. Would you favor or oppose passage of that law in your state?
53% Favor

34% Oppose

14% Not sure

9* Suppose a police officer stops someone for a traffic violation or a violation of some other law. If the police officer suspects that the person they stopped might be an illegal immigrant, should the officer be required to check their immigration status?

62% Yes

27% No

11% Not sure

Like most people, Republicans have always supported letting people into this country the same way most of our anscestors, from all countries, came here; through the door.  Legally.  With the full expectation that they would assimilate into American culture – learning the language, the history, and what made this country important.

Like most Americans, Republicans believe that immigrating to America is an opportunity, not an entitlement.

So yes,

Wanna talk policy?

Or you wanna dump pennies on candidates?

Here is the attention-whoring, self-promoting face of the Minnesota DFL.

It’s “Robert Erickson”, and we’ve run into him before, of course:

He’s convinced himself that Minnesotans want open borders, and that making sure immigration is safe, available  and legal is for squares.

And he interrupted yesterday’s town hall meeting to dump a bag of pennies on Tom Emmer.

So you wanna talk about immigration, DFL?

I think we’re more than ready for that discussion.

Make sure you send that oh-s0-special lad Robert to have that discussion with us, DFL.

Let’s talk!

It was one of the Senate’s stranger friendships; Barry Goldwater and Paul Wellstone.  The two were at the opposite extremes of American politics, but they admired each others’ passion and commitment to their principles.  They became fairly close friends.  Wellstone even attended Goldwater’s funeral.

But that doesn’t mean that Wellstone was ever remotely tempted to vote as a fiscal conservative, or that Goldwater broke ranks with conservatives from his friendship.  Admiration only goes so far.

Even in notoriously liberal Minnesota, crowded as its Metro and Arrowhead areas are with invinicble DFL voters, this could be a rough year for the Democratics.

And it’s when times get tough that some people, at least, start reaching, hard, for plans.

Grace Kelly, noted 9/11 truther writing at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, believes she has the answer.  She notes that the “Goldwater/Wellstone” phenomenon means that people who are passionate about their principles often have more in common, politically, than mushy moderates who vote more on the basis of pragmatism or, as with so many moderates, last-second gut reaction. She even has a graphic:

So far, so good.

But then comes the unsupportable conclusion:

This model would suggest that persuading strong Republicans who hate Emmer politics,  would be a persuasion that would stick until the election and possibly even create more Democrats.

Well, that’s simple.  Because while many highly-committed conservatives will get along, at least socially, with many highly-committed liberals because of the same “birds of a feather” phenomenon that made friends of the likes of Goldwater and Wellstone, you will find very, very few “conservatives” who support outrageous tax hikes, featherbedding state employees’ unions, or out-of-control spending.

Break into the strong Republican social networks and wonderful other things would start happening because the opinions are held on false information and false logic.

That’s right.

Because nothing endears one to a social network into which one is trying to “break” like exuding the belief that “everything you believe is wrong” (especially given that history shows conservatism to be pretty much inevitably right about the things that really matter).

An outsider has a hard time changing the group, however an insider could really be impressive. So why are we leaving these groups alone again?

If I had to guess?  The DFL is leaving us alone because there is no huge reserve of conservative Republicans who disagree with Emmer’s politics, or who would do anything with any DFL policy (much less the far left ones) other than line their bird cages with ’em.

Hope that helps.

The “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – an astroturf group sponsored by a consortium of DFL-linked pressure groups – has been behind much of the smear-mongering against Tom Emmer so far this campaign. They’ve occupied themselves with a klutzy false-flag website, a couple of twitter accounts (one of baldfaced propaganda, and one, “StuffEmmerSays”, that tried to mock Emmer statements but actually made him sound like Ronald Reagan to the point I spent the last month mocking it as a pro-GOP site; it seems to have worked, and the account seems to have demised).

And if that’s the best the DFL can do, this election’s not going to be nearly as hard as I’d worried.

“A4aBM” ran the first anti-Emmer ad of the campaign this week; and the Republican Twitterverse has been redounding with bits and pieces of the information A4aBM got wrong.

Long story short; the ad is warm runny bulls**t.

Claim #1: Audio: “Tom Emmer sided with Governor Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force corporations and CEOs to pay their fair share of taxes”  ABMBackup: “On May 18, 2009, Emmer voted against the second attempt at a DFL- written FY2010-2011 revenue bill…

Sounds pretty gnarly, huh?

The Truth: Tom Emmer did not cast a vote on this roll call.

Oh, my.  You mean, A4aBM got a fact wrong?

Well, the ad is 0-1 so far.

Claim #2: Audio: “They cut funding for education” ABM Backup: “On April 18, 2007, Emmer voted against HF 6, the K-12 funding bill, which passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority of 119-13. On May 8, 2007, Emmer again voted against the bill as it was re-passed on a similar 119-14 vote…

Voted against it twice?  Emphasis added:

The Truth: After April 18, 2007, there were no additional votes taken on this bill that year.  During the 2008 session, this bill was used as a “vehicle” and a delete-all amendment was added completely changing the bill.  The vote they reference on May 8, 2007 was actually a vote on May 8, 2008 and it wasn’t a vote on the bill but, rather, a procedural vote on whether the bill should be taken from the table.  Emmer voted against taking the bill from the table.

You’re trying to say A4aBM lied about the real intent of voting on a picayune procedural technicality in the life of a background-noise bill to try to smear Tom Emmer?  Say it isn’t so!

0-2 so far.

Claim #3: Audio: “[Tom Emmer and Tim Pawlenty] cut funding for education.”

The Truth: There is nothing in the bill cited that included a cut to education.  In addition, KSTP’s Tom Hauser recently had this to say about the claim that Governor Pawlenty cut education funding: “As for Pawlenty cutting education funding, that’s not true.  According to the education department, per pupil funding has gone up since 2004.”

0-3 – well, more like 0-4, really.

Claim #4: Audio: “[Emmer voted to cut] job training.”

The Truth: Nowhere in ABM’s backup is there any support for this claim.  “Training” is mentioned only once in the legislation, and that is in reference to home ownership education.  This bill had nothing to do with job training.

Zero for five.

Claim #5: Audio: “[Emmer and Pawlenty cut] job training and health care”.  On screen: “Source: Minnesota House Journal, 4/25/2005”

The Truth: According to the Minnesota House of Representatives Journal, the House was not in session on 4/25/2005, meaning there could be no Journal of the House for that day.  The Alliance’s citation, therefore, does not even exist.

So the lesson for today is, whenever “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” speaks, distrust and then verity.

Because the DFL asssumes that you, the people, are too stupid to know any better.