They warned me that if I voted Conservative, dissent would be viewed as treason.

And they were right; according to Whoopi, speaking out against intrusive searching is “an act of terrorism”:

Via Rob Port.

David Harsanyi notes that it’s not just the Who0per:

Not so long ago, the left positioned itself as the defender of innocents against the Bush administration’s war on terror, which was “just one tiny step away from fascism.” The Constitution was sacred, especially when we faced danger — and even more especially when a Republican was president.

It is a little galling that the left likely would have upheld accused terrorists’ Islamic scruples against full-body scanning…

It was not long ago that Democrats were regularly quoting Thomas Jefferson, who never actually said that “those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” (Every nanny-state initiative in existence exempted, of course.)

Yet today, left-wing pundits, typified by syndicated liberal columnist Ruth Marcus, implore Americans to grow up, become better automatons, get moving and submit. The admired liberal columnist Michael Kinsley first offers us tales of TSA kindheartedness and then tells us the same.

Many left-wing publications that cautioned us against George W. Bush’s ham-fisted intrusions now defend Barack Obama’s ham-fisted intrusions.

Modern liberals.  I’m not saying they support authoritarian dictatorship.  But they are the kind of people any would-be dictator needs to have around to take control.

According to the Strib, Voter ID is just not needed…

…according to a survey of people who’d have to work harder if it were implemented…

…conducted by two groups that benefit from inflated vote counts.

Minnesota does not need a law requiring photo identification at the polls because there have been relatively few cases of ineligible voting, two advocacy groups said Monday.

Citing data collected from county attorneys from the 2008 election, the two groups said that there were 26 convictions statewide of felons voting illegally – a figure representing 0.0009 percent of voters that year.

It’s a figure that also represents investigations in Ramsey, and only Ramsey, County.  The only county for which the Minnesota has done the County Attorneys’ jobs by doing all the investigating for them.

Allegations of felons voting represented 77 percent of voter fraud investigations, the groups said. The other 23 percent of the investigations from the 2008 election – which did not lead to any convictions – involved charges of non-citizens voting, double voting, voting outside of jurisdiction and impersonating a voter, the groups said.

Right.  That’s because under Minnesota law, pleading ignorance of the law is enough to get you acquitted.  Only paroled felons have to sign a form stating they know they’re not supposed to vote.

The study was conducted by Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance. The groups said the study was based on responses from 71 of the state’s 87 counties.

The “Center for Election Integrity of Minnesota“?  Sure sounds like an important group!

The Strib doesn’t see fit to mention that “CEIMN” is an offshoot of “non-partisan” liberal pressure group “Common Cause MN” (check out CC of MN’s and CEIMN’s addresses), whose motto is “Holding Power Accountable”, and which spent the 2010 election demanding accountability of conservative groups while ignoring the rafts of liberal special interest money.  They favor rationing speech to regular Americans, but exaggerating the influence of unions and liberal special interests.

One wonders if Strib reporter Mike Kaszuba didn’t feel this was relevant, or if he just didn’t know.

But I’m almost tempted to start, just so I can join everyone else…

…in telling the TSA where they can shove their fingers.

Look – I know some TSA workers.  Not a few of them do sincerely care about security.

But the leadership is a huge, huge problem.

In late 2008, Rahm Emanuel made famous the phrase “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste.” It was an unabashed entreaty to liberals frustrated by years of pent up designs to advance the socialization of America. Obama, Reid and Pelosi wasted no time while a stupefied citizenry watched the unfolding of a theretofore unimagined agenda.

Less than two years later another crisis has presented itself, the nature of which is surely an exception to Rahm’s axiom; a crisis within.

Within the party that is.

A handful of survivors of the electoral razing of the democratic party are not unlike those famous Japanese soldiers hiding in tunnels on remote isles months after V-J Day…

In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.

Some liberal democrats are figuratively living on Lubang, off the grid, not recognizing that Americans have soundly rebuked the extreme leftist agenda inflicted on them.

Liberals made clear Tuesday what they want from the bipartisan deficit commission — more help for the poor and middle class and bigger corporate tax increases.

Americans made clear that what they want is for their government to get out of the way, to cease disincenting those that would otherwise be spending, borrowing and investing in ways that create jobs for everyone, especially for the poor and middle class.

Mathematically, you can’t increase taxes enough on corporations or the wealthy to make even the slightest dent in the deficit let alone the national debt.  Eventually, either by choice or by force, the federal government will have to cut spending and by extension, entitlements.

Moderate and conservative commission members, who compose the bulk of the panel, have been more circumspect. After co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson offered their proposal last week — focused 2 to 1 on spending cuts over tax increases — the commission’s three Republican House members tentatively welcomed their approach.

The Tea Party may have given rise to a Regressive Movement in America, where once and for all, a majority will press the federal government and those it has enslaved by decades of sedimentary entitlements to do more with less, across the board.

…but not without a fight from the hardy few on Lubang.

But liberals were outraged. They tend to favor activist government, help for the needy and higher taxes on wealth to pay for it. Moderates and conservatives are more inclined to reduce government services to cut government debt and are less willing to raise taxes.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said: “Democrats should fight loudly and clearly — because the public overwhelmingly wants Democrats to fight that fight.”

Not anymore Adam. The war is over. You can go home now.

Oh, the humanity…

First, there was a plummeting “favorability” rating of 29 percent, nearly half of her “unfavorable” score, according to a recent Gallup poll. Then there was the staggering loss of 60 seats in the House of Representatives, a resounding midterm election “shellacking” if there ever was one.

Now, Nancy Pelosi can add “embattled” to her list of woes. On Friday, the lame duck speaker of the house announced her plan to fight to be house minority leader for the next session of Congress. Frankly, that decision sort of left me scratching my head and wondering how strong the Kool-Aid is in Pelosi’s office.

Turns out her new office might not have a Kool-Aid dispenser, among other amenities lost now that America has thrown her out on her saggy ass orderly asserted itself via the democratic process.

Gone will be the spacious office suite with its federalist decor, the rides home aboard a military plane, and a good chunk of her staff. “It’s a profoundly humbling experience”

she’ll lose the right to authorize overseas congressional trips and dole out prime office space to lawmakers. She will also shed 10 percent of her $5.1 million office budget and lose nearly half of what records show is a staff of over 50.

Sniff. Sniff.

I don’t begrudge your choice to smoke cigarettes as long as you:

1) Keep it out of my face.

2) Keep it out of my kids’ face.

3) Quit throwing them out of your god-damned window.

4) Pay your fair share: don’t expect me to pay higher life, disability or health insurance premiums. You should though.

5) Let me bum one off of you once a year or so for old times.

But seriously, if you don’t know smoking is dangerous by now, is it because the government hasn’t done an adequate job of edumacating you?

Apparently the government thinks you’re so damn stupid that the dangers can only be conveyed to you in pictures.

Corpses, cancer patients and diseased lungs are among the images the federal government plans for larger, graphic warning labels that would take up half of each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States.

Whether smokers addicted to nicotine will see them as a reason to quit remains a question.

Sounds like another shovel-ready project to me.

The share of Americans who smoke has fallen dramatically since 1970, from nearly 40 percent to about 20 percent, but the rate has stalled since about 2004. About 46 million adults in the U.S. smoke cigarettes.

In the same period, the average cost per pack has gone from 38 cents to $5.33. Much of those increases are from state and federal taxes.

It’s unclear why declines in smoking have stalled. Some experts have cited tobacco company discounts or lack of funding for programs to discourage smoking or to help smokers quit.

I would submit to you that there are a certain percentage of us that are going to smoke cigarettes.  They like to smoke. It aint illegal. They know it aint good for ’em. And they don’t give a rip.

In the mean time are we to assume the federal government intends to spend more and more of everyone’s tax dollars until there are no smokers left? Maybe we should just let evolution run its course.

Yesterday, we examined how Mark Dayton would endeavor to move Minnesota backward – to try to go Back to the Seventies for its economic model.

And that’s if everything goes perfectly – which it can not.

But it’s so much worse than that.

Mark Dayton, and the Democratic Farmer/Labor Party, wants Minnesota to not only look backwards forty years for its model – but they want Minnesota to look at the sidewalk in front of its feet as it shuffles forward into history.

The DFL in Minnesota – and the state’s once-very-liberal Republican party – have a vision of government that, to take the Dayton campaign at its word, has three messages:

3. Attack the most convenient scapegoats. During tough economic times, “the rich” are a convenient set of scapegoats.

2. Focus on short-term outcomes: The old saying goes “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; show a man how to fish, he eats forever”.  Mark Dayton’s campaign is all about creating a large, elaborate, unionized and exquisitely expensive infrastructure to hand out fish in all its metaphorical forms, while making the art of fishing that much harder for them to master.

1. Above all, keep government fat and happy. Mark Dayton’s axiom for Minnesota, if you take  his campaign at face value, is this; satisfying the wants of Minnesota’s professional and vocational Governing Class is the supreme mission of government.

And history shows us that a state – in the general or United sense – that focuses on these priorities can not survive, much less thrive.

At the very least, these priorities pound society into a master-servant relationship – with government as the master.  A benevolent master, mostly, doling out little bits of satisfaction – fish, if you will – to keep the peasants mollified, but a master nonetheless.

Like a cattledriver and his cattle.

Are you happy to moo for a better Minnesota?

Minnesota deserves better.

Because in its truest form, America is about better.  America in its truest form is not a bunch of serfs serving its lords and masters.  It is a free association of equals, governing itself by consent of the governed, with a government that takes care of its appointed roles and otherwise gets the hell out of the way.

Mark Dayton, at his very best, is a throwback to an era that not only can not come back – it must not come back.

So tomorrow, Minnesota, let us deserve better.

Previous Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor

• #2: Moving Minnesota Backward
• #3: Unexamined
• #4: Fool Us Three Times
• #5: We Are Better Than This

Democrats: pre-marked ballots in Nevada:

Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County’s electronic voting machines.

Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, her Democratic opponent, Sen. Harry Reid’s name was already checked.

Ferrara said she wasn’t alone in her voting experience. She said her husband and several others voting at the same time all had the same thing happen.

“Something’s not right,” Ferrara said. “One person that’s a fluke. Two, that’s strange. But several within a five minute period of time — that’s wrong.”

The voting machine technicians?  SEIU employees.  What could possibly go wrong?

The get-out-the-vote effort? Reads just like a conservative’s wisecrack.

Isolated incident?  Nope:

A Craven County voter says he had a near miss at the polls on Thursday when an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended.

Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff.

“They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.”

M. Ray Wood, Craven County Board of elections chairman, issued a written statement saying that the elections board is aware of isolated issues and that in each case the voter was able to cast his or her ballot as desired.

And between Hennepin and Ramsey County along we have 75 charges of voter fraud from 2008.  That’s 1/4 of Al Franken’s margin of victory, in counties totaling 10% of Minnesota’s population.

But remember – according to the DFL, all of you who want to bring integrity back to our election system are racist thugs.

Helps keep things in perspective, doesn’t it?

“Let’s make sure nobody who isn’t supposed to vote, votes”.

Let’s see which leftyblogger is the first to say that I’m “supporting voter intimidation”.

Because it seems they do set the bar that low.

As I’ve written in the past, single-sex marriage is not my marquee issue, personally.

Oh, I know what I believe; that marriage is about having kids, and kids grow up best with functional parents of both genders.  It’s a belief that should inform a lot of family-law issues (which is why I support gay adoption; two functional same-sex “parents” are not preferable to different-gender parents, but they are much better than a single parent, if that’s the choice.

But I think that as a rule government should stay out of most personal choices; that people should be able to sign a civil contract that ties them into a legal construct that gives them all the legal rights that a “Married” couple has – and that people like me should be able to opt out of the government contract and follow the purely religious contract that we believe in.  And if you belong to a religious demomination that can come up with a theological justification for it, then that’s your first amendment right – just as it’ll be mine to debunk it.

I’m not going to argue about it, either.

But the fact is that while Tom Emmer is not focused on gay marriage – this election is, quite rightly, about jobs to him – he also stands in sharp contrast to Dayton and Horner in that he does not want the issue decided by a DFL-dominated legislature or an “elite” court that jams the issue down the state’s throat.

Which is the subject of this ad:

Let the legislature do its damn job. For that matter, let the courts do their job, and interpret laws, not create them from whole cloth.

Emmer is right on this issue.  I think most Minnesotans agree.

Dayton wants our self-appointed “elites” to decide this issue.  Horner too, although he’s irrelevant.

Pass the word.

That’s what my friend and radio patriarch Hugh Hewitt says.

But it’s going to be close, and you can count on the DFL cheating.

Minnesota Majority is taking the bull by the horns:

“We are putting a price on the heads of anyone who would attempt to organize people with the intent of cheating in our election,” explained Jeff Davis, president of Minnesota Majority, a coalition member organization. “We’ve received reports of organizers enticing people to vote fraudulently with small financial incentives such as gift cards. We’ve also seen evidence of this illegal practice in the official incident logs from the 2008 election. We will now offer individuals a more lucrative incentive for turning-in these organizers of voter fraud.”

The group launched their Election Integrity program last week to engage citizens to help detect and deter voter fraud. The program includes training people on how to spot fraudulent activity and a call center to handle reports of fraudulent activity by the public. Radio ads are now running to expand awareness of the program and recruit more “fraud spotters.” Another ad is planned closer to the election warning of the consequences of voter fraud and encouraging people to report suspicious election activity to a toll free number. Volunteers will log incidents in a database and refer to law enforcement as needed.

“We’ve got a really robust program here,” said Randy Liebo, an organizer with the North Star Tea Party Patriots who are also participating in Election Integrity Watch. “With a strong public awareness campaign that involves several media outlets and grassroots networking, we’re building a team of informed fraud spotters. Offering rewards for the identification and conviction of organizers of voter fraud strengthens our program even more. This is like a “wanted” poster placing a bounty on fraudsters. If you do the crime, somebody’s going to turn you in.”

We’ll be talking about the program with Dan McGrath on the NARN on Saturday, during the 2PM hour.

If all goes well, it could singlehandedly revive the economy in Ramsey county.

Picture yourself on a snow-covered lake, gliding smoothly on your new snowmobile at 60 mph and about five miles out you begin to feel the growing sensation of pain and regret as your bladder balloons from the two Grain Belt Premiums you pounded at the last pit stop.

Your two buddies are out ahead of you and without a clue as to the escalating emergency you are about to be a party to.

In your distraction, you miss the snowdrift that your buddies navigated around and when your sled hits it you are airborne. As time slows, as it always does in times like these, gliding through the air with the greatest of ease, you think to yourself  “This is going to hurt.”

You land hard and fast, slightly tipped to the left but a second later realize that your forward momentum has continued unabated. All limbs are onboard and your sled appears to be no worse for the wear.

…and then you feel the warmth.

At first you are pleased because your manbrain usually associates warm feelings down there with great anticipation.

…but when the warmth moves down your thigh and starts to creep out back? Not…so…much.

And so it goes with the liberals among us.

Having peed their pants with stimulus, government make-work projects, census jobs and the like, the only remedy is to keep peeing your pants so as to fend off the chills that come when your wet snowsuit becomes a cold wet snowsuit.

…and George Soros is chief Pisser.

Billionaire investor George Soros said the U.S. economy should pursue more fiscal stimulus instead of joining international efforts to reduce budget deficits.

Soros said spending cuts are the “wrong consensus” in the current economic environment. He said the global economy is still not at equilibrium, even though financial markets are functioning again, and U.S. fiscal restraint is limiting the recovery.

My neighbor, a liberal, thinks the government is spending too much and getting too big. My liberal colleagues (as few as they are) also associate “stimulus” with “failure”. Even democratic legislators are disassociating themselves with Obama and stimulus spending to save the shredded remnants of their political careers.

But George Soros persists with this notion of a continued flow of urine as a prescription for restoring our financial future as a nation.

Why?

The U.S. has been “driven to quantitative easing because the political debate has been won basically by the Republicans, who argue for balancing the budget and no more stimulus.”

…because it wasn’t his idea.

Piss off George.

Join in on global warming hysteria, or…

…explode in a gruesome welter of blood and gore. Children first!

This is what the Global Warming cult is down to now.  Warning – there are some disturbing images here, and as Ed says, they’re disturbed as well:

Must be that “avalance of violence from the right” they’ve been warning us about…

[I just sent the following to Mark Dean, director of Common Cause MN, which just filed a complaint against conservative PAC “Minnesota’s Future” for doing exactly what “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund” have been doing – or about 10% of what they’re doing, anyway…]

Mr. Dean,

I’m Mitch Berg, one of the hosts of the Northern Alliance Radio Network on AM1280 in the Twin Cities.

I’d like to invite you to appear on the “NARN” with Ed Morrissey and I one of these next weekends to discuss your complaint against “Minnesota’s Future”; we’re curious why Common Cause has neglected to file a similar complaint against “”Alliance For A Better MInnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund”, which are doing exactly what you allege Minnesota’s Future has done, only with many times more money.

On the chance it was all a ghastly oversight, I’ll bring a complaint form. We can fill it out on the air together.

While the request is pointed, the Northern Alliance prides ourselves on doing civil, respectful interviews. Previous “non-partisan” guests include RT Rybak, Dane Smith, Eric Black and Rochelle Olson.

We would sincerely love to discuss this before the election.

Let me know if any of the next few Saturdays work. Our program airs from 1-3PM.

I do hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Mitch Berg

Co-host, The Northern Alliance Radio Network,

AM1280 (WWTC-AM) Radio.

“Shot In The Dark” (www.shotinthedark.info)

“True North” (www.looktruenorth.com).

Flunkies attack a blogger/cameraman at an appearance by Oregon Democratic candidate for governor John Kitzhaber:

There is apparently an avalanche of violence by Democrats against Republicans.

(I mean, everyone’s declaring avalanches these days…)

(Via Rob)

It doesn’t quite rise to the level where it should be included in my “Climate Of Hate” page – the ever-expanding feature where I document the violent depravity of the American left – but it came close.

A woman at a union-organized protest outside a conservative alt-media conference spits on Andrew Breitbart (at the 7:20 mark):

This was after a group of protesters called him “homosexual” because of…the way he talks.

Mr. D. at MinnPost and over at the Neighborhood points out that it’s been a rough week for the First Amendment, what with Kathleen Sibelius calling down the smack on Obamacare critics and Justice Breyer pondering making the whole nation a crowded theater (for purposes of protecting Qu’rans, anyway).

And he asks an interesting question:

I don’t mean to be flip about this, but let’s ask a hypothetical: would it be okay to burn a Koran if it were wrapped in an American flag? And if not, on what basis should the Koran (or a Bible) be afforded greater protection than an American flag?

That whole “government of laws, not men” thing is looking pretty sick these days.

They said that if I voted for John McCain, the government would trash our property rights like John Bonham trashing a hotel room.

And they were right:

Sheriffs in North Carolina want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.

The state sheriff’s association pushed the idea Tuesday, saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people’s medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.

One of the purported cost savers in Obamacare is electronic medical records kept – eventually – in a national database.

And when the government controls your data, your data is only as safe as the least power-hungry or dishonest government official wants it to be.

One of the left’s favorite shrieking points – like a chanting point, but delivered in an insistent, high-pitched, angry squeal – was that the right, especially the Tea Party, was/is involved in delivering an “avalanche of violence” upon their opponents.

But any sort of detailed investigation shows that, in fact, the prohibitive majority of political violence in this country is left-on-right.

One of my many small projects has been to create a page – an online museum, if you will – commemorating each act of left-on-right violence in recent years.

For purposes of this page, “violence” is defined as physical violence resulting in injury or death, and property damage at a felony level.

And I’m going to throw it open to you, the audience, as I give the Shot In The Dark “Climate of Hate” page its formal debut.

Please send me any examples of significant left-on-right political violence in the past decade.  Remember – injuries and/or felony property damage. Links are appreciated – unlike the left, we on the right need to substantiate our accusations.  I’ll give you credit (unless you disclaim it) in the museum.

There’s going to be a public hearing on “saving the Internet” tonight.  It’ll be at the auditorium at South High (3131 19th Avenue South in Minneapolis).

No, that’s really what they’re calling it; here’s the email:

From: Josh Silver, FreePress.net [mailto:info@freepress.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 11:01 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Why you should join me and Al Franken on Thursday

Dear Friend,

I know you’re busy, but I can’t tell you how important it is that you join me and Sen. Al Franken [tonight]at South High School in Minneapolis (yes, Sen. Franken is coming!)

My warnings are no longer speculation. Google, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are about to turn the Internet into cable TV — where their favored websites and content will move fast, and everyone else will be left without a voice. It’s time for all of us to stand up or get rolled.

President Obama has said that protecting the open Internet was a top priority. But the FCC chairman remains silent. And too many in Congress have been bought by the phone and cable companies.

Our last line of defense is you. We need more than 400 people to show up on Thursday night. If we don’t tell Sen. Franken and Commissioners Copps and Clyburn (both will be there) that people like you are outraged about a corporate takeover of the Internet, we will lose. It’s that simple.

Please come with a friend or two to South High School Thursday night. The event begins at 6 p.m. You can go here to RSVP and learn more.

If you have something to say, we’ll make certain you have time at the microphone. We need to hear you. The commissioners need to hear you.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Josh Silver

President & CEO

Free Press

www.freepress.net

www.SavetheInternet.com

P.S. For more on Thursday’s hearing, read today’s great MinnPost editorial by our allies at the Center for Media Justice and New America Foundation.

Wow.  That sounds important.

Rumors are bopping around that Secretary of State Ritchie is also  going to attend, although there’s some back-and-forth over whether the Senator Franken is supposed to be in town or not.  The group putting on the event, “Free Press“, would seem to need some star power to draw people and attention to the event; last night’s Meet Emmer” event drew more people than either of the two previous attempts.

Negligible as this event seems, though, it’s important for conservatives to try to turn out (I have a prior engagement, unfortunately).  Copps and Clyburn are both activists on the FCC, who are completely on board with Obama’s push to create a kinder, gentler, tamer (for Democrats) media landscape.

“Oh, you’re just being paranoid, Berg”.

Not if you dig into the pedigree of “Free Press”.  Behind the innocuous name is an organization with big, intrusive plans for even more “hope and change” in American society.  Their board is a who’s who of behind-the-scenes media utopians – Josh Silver, Robert McChesney, people from The Nation and the Norman Lear Foundation.

And their track record?

They don’t like capitalism or the free market very much:

“There is no real answer [to the U.S. economic crisis] but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.” (Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster, “A New New Deal under Obama?,” Monthly Review, 2/2009)

But that doesn’t mean that “Free Press” is about nationalizing the Internet, does it?

Josh Silver on the case for nationalizing the internet:

“The agency needs to shut out the noise machine and do what it must to fulfill its mandate to ‘serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.’ Any other course would be disastrous…. The United States is falling further behind our global competitors in high-speed Internet adoption, speed and price. The birthplace of the Internet now ranks at No. 22 globally in broadband speed and access, in part because the government lets the phone and cable companies dictate telecommunications policy.” (Josh Silver, “Viewpoints: Broadband rules are crucial to expand access and protect users,” Sacramento Bee, 7/18/10)

Ben Scott on the same subject:’

“Increasingly the Internet is no longer a commercial service, its an infrastructure…What we’re witnessing at the FCC now is the logical next step which is we are going to create a regulatory framework for the Internet which recognizes it is an infrastructure now and not a commercial service.” (Ben Scott, C-SPAN: The Communicators, , 9/25/09)

“Infrastructure”.  Like the Interstate system.  Or public toilets.

No, really:

“We have to stop thinking of media as a business pure and simple…The way we should understand journalism is as a public good.” (Robert McChesney, “Journalism should be subsidized by government, professor says,” 2/2/10)

I mean, it’s not that they mind free speech.  Just the right kind of free speech.  McChesney:

“To the extent commercial activities are given First Amendment protection, it makes the rule of capital increasingly off-limits to political debate and government regulation…In my view, progressives need to stake out a democratic interpretation of the First Amendment and do direct battle with the Orwellian implications of the ACLU’s commercialized First Amendment.” (Robert McChesney, “The New Theology of the First Amendment,” Monthly Review, 3/1998)

In fact, “Free Speech’s” McChesney wants the government to pay for more of the right kind of speech:

“When you look at our founders, they did not only condone government subsidies of journalism, they demanded it.” (Robert McChesney, “Journalism should be subsidized by government, professor says,” 2/2/10)

No, not being paranoid:  the government.  With taxpayer dollars!:

$200 Tax Credit Proposal for Newspapers in Free Press Report: “McChesney and Nichols have drawn from this proposal to advocate that taxpayers receive $200 in annual tax credits to spend on daily newspapers, as long as the newspapers publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial news hole of at least 24 broad pages each day with less than 50 percent advertising.148 Another proposal would allow people to write off their subscriptions to newspapers and magazines as a tax deduction, as they do with their college tuition.” (Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns and Craig Aaron, “Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy,” Free Press, p. 36)

Because “the market” is allowing dissenting opinions waaaaay too much sway:

“The ultimate irony of Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh is that they couch in populist rhetoric a message that, in its very essence, is anti-populist – designed to protect the swindle at the core of our media system’s failure. And that is why the media’s old guard is targeting the idea that this system needs to change.” (Tim Karr, “What Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh are really afraid of,” Huffington Post,9/16/09)

…and those dissenters have not only scary opinions, but sometimes (says Josh Silver) disrupt the chosen and preferred narrative!:

“Fox News continues to amaze us and propagandize many, labeling as fringe-left anyone who disagrees with the president, takes issue with tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, says that Iraq is a quagmire, or dares to declare that all Americans deserve a living wage and guaranteed health care. The narrow, corporate-driven rhetoric that passes as reasonable political debate on Fox and most of the mainstream American media has become a laughing stock – if only to keep us from crying.” (Josh Silver, “The decline of US media: Fox News leads race to the bottom,” Huffington Post,  2/22/07)

And those “right wing” peasants must be suppressed!  For the good of The People!

“No wonder our political system can’t solve big problems. Ruthless opposition and dingbat delusions are the currency of right-wing success, and sand in the gears of democracy. Whether they’re cynical postures or sincere beliefs doesn’t matter. The grand national conversation that was intended to enable citizens and their representatives to find common ground for conflicting values has become a grand national midway of carny-barkers and rodeo clowns.” (Marty Kaplan, former Air America rodeo clown, “How would the Right know it’s wrong?” Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Huffington Post,10/5/09)

Because to McChesney, it all ties together:

“…any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.” (Robert McChesney, “The U.S. Media Reform Movement,” Monthly Review,, 9/2008)

And when I say “ties together”, I mean “to his real, larger goal“:

“Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism..” (Robert W. McChesney, “Journalism, Democracy…and Class Struggle,” Monthly Review, 11/2000).

So this is who we’re dealing with.

These are their goals.

These are the people that Al Franken and Mark Ritchie, apparently, are going to be shilling for tonight.

And I honestly wish I could attend.  And if someone does – if one of you liveblogs or streams it – let me know.  I’ll link it and push it in any way I can.

What if a group calling itself “Free Press” threw a public meeting to evangelize the idea of nationalizing the internet…

…and it turned out that the leadership of the group “Free Press” was on record favoring the complete squelching of economic and personal freedom?

That’d be…ironic, wouldn’t it?

As PJ O’Rourke said, life is full of ironies, if you’re stupid.

Tomorrow morning in Shot In The Dark.

As we began the march toward the primaries, and I saw that Mark Dayton had (according to the KSTP poll) a 13 point lead in the race over DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher, I sat back in my seat and wondered “Why?”

Why Mark Dayton – a superannuated playboy with a 30-year habit of treating electoral office as a hobby?

“Because he can?”

Sure, but that explains a lot of people running for office.  Leslie Davis and Peter Idusogie and Ole Savior all ran for governor “because they could”.  They didn’t have the deep pockets of the Dayton and Rockefeller families to bankroll them, of course – but deep pockets alone don’t win primaries, much less elections; if they did, we’d be talking about “Governor Corzine”, and “Former California Governor Huffington”, for that matter.

It takes more than will, and it takes more than just money.  It takes skill and organization to spend all that money effectively in order to beat the combined brawn of the entire DFL machine to start a campaign, have it gain traction across this state, and take it through the primaries.

And that takes people who know the DFL; people who know the people whose palms need to be greased; people who know how to get out the people who get out the liberal votes; it takes people who know where the bodies are buried and how to put more there, as it were.

———-

One of those people is Ken Martin.

Martin is currently the director of “Win Minnesota“.  If you read this blog, you know who they are: they are a PAC that launders the Dayton family’s political contributions to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” and the “2010 Fund” and the other arms of the Dayton Campaign’s tightly-wound little money-laundering and distribution machine.

And in 2006, Martin was Mike Hatch’s campaign manager, orchestrating an epic smear campaign against Tim Pawlenty that came within a cat’s whisker of winning.

———-

Mike Hatch needs no introduction.  A longtime legislator, former head of the DFL, former Attorney General, and two-time gubernatorial candidate, Hatch could be quickly but fairly described as the Lyndon Johnson of Minnesota politics.

Mike Hatch

Hatch has never been bashful about exerting his power.  During the nineties, he essentially ran Minnesota’s healthcare industry from the Attorney General’s office, using the AGO’s power to force the likes of HealthPartners to insert his cronies into controlling positions (on “consumer protection” grounds, naturally).

In 2003, Hatch tried to use the power of his office to try to intimidate the Commerce Department into pushing for an illegal settlement with a Florida-based insurance company – an effort that involved a shady potemkin contribution that amounted in my opinion to virtual blackmail against his political opponents, including the Minnesota GOP.  I reported on this story in 2003 (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five).

After his failed gubernatorial bid in 2006, Hatch went on to “consult” at the Attorney General’s office, with his successor and longtime protegé, Lori Swanson.  It was, according to sources familiar with the arrangement, a potemkin consultancy; Swanson had served so long as Hatch’s understudy that the two were basically one and the same entity, for policy purposes.

It’s an open secret among Minnesota’s chattering classes that Mike Hatch is by no means ready to shuffle off into the sunset – at least when it comes to wielding political power.

And Hatch remains, by all accounts, close friends with Ken Martin.

———-

“So what?”, you might ask.

Here’s what.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are a superannuated playboy hobby politician with a reputation for being a blunderer.  You’ve been “serving” inside the beltway, or been out in the political cold.  Your last experience in state electoral politics was in 1995, when you left (hypothetically, mind you) the office of State Auditor.

What do you need to succeed?

A Chief of Staff who knows where the bodies are buried, and is dying to bury a few more.

And if you are – again, hypothetically – a long-time political majordomo who still thirsts for power, but has been rejected for the endorsement to get it via electoral means?  How do you find that power?  By latching onto a (hypothetical) administration led by an inconsequential candidate who is nonetheless capable of providing boundless funding to get elected, backstopped by an even less-consequential running mate (Yvonne Prettner-Solon, whose record is as negligible as her opponent’s, Annette Meeks’s, is impressive), that’s how.  And then getting appointed to a position to influence the weak-kneed top of the ticket.

Rumors are trickling around Minnesota political circles that Hatch  is angling for the Chief of Staff gig in a Dayton Administration.

A source with knowledge of capitol  politics tells me that her or his sources saw a group of key Dayton staffers in the back room at a south-metro Perkins restaurant not long before the primaries.  With them, according to the source, was Hatch’s pal and former campaign manger Ken Martin.

———-

Again, you might say “So what?  It’s just a staff gig!  A guy’s gotta earn a living!”

But Mike Hatch as Chief of Staff brings up all sorts of wrinkles.  It seems fair to conjecture, given Dayton’s ineffectiveness as a leader and inexperience at executive office, that a Chief of Staff Hatch would have a very strong influence on the policies of the executive office.  He also remains the de facto Attorney General; via his years at AG, he has an inordinate influence in the Commerce Department.

In other words, in a Mark Dayton administration, Mike Hatch would have unprecedented power for an unelected official in Minnesota.

“He’d be the King of Minnesota”, quipped my source.

Remember all those shootings in Obama’s Chicago?  The gang warfare that’s made Chicago just about the most dangerous city between Juarez and Kandahar?

Maybe not – the national media has been pretty hands-off on “gun violence” in Chicago since The One’s ascenscion.

And it turns out that it’s even worse than the shooting figures indicate; in the event they catch a shooter, they can’t seem to put ’em in jail:

The Chicago Sun-Times tells “the story of why they won’t stop shooting in Chicago.” The newspaper said the story is told “by by the wounded, the accused and the officers who were on the street during a 2008 weekend when 40 people were shot, seven fatally.” Two years later, nearly all the shooters from that weekend have escaped charges. “You don’t go to jail for shooting people,” says Dontae Gamble, who took six bullets that weekend, only to see his alleged shooter walk free. So far, not one accused shooter has been convicted of pulling the trigger during those deadly 59 hours from April 18-20 of that year, a Sun-Times investigation found.

Only one suspected triggerman — a convicted armed robber caught with the AK-47 he allegedly used to blow away his boss — is in jail awaiting trial. Three other victims said they know who shot them but refused to testify. Six murders from the weekend remain unsolved. Time’s running out to catch the bad guys who shot 29 other people because there’s a three-year statute of limitations on aggravated batteries with firearms. The Chicago police batting average for catching shooters has fallen to an alarmingly low level. Detectives cleared 18 percent of the 1,812 non-fatal shootings last year. They were slightly better in catching killers — 30 percent of murders were cleared. Even though detectives cleared 18 percent of non-fatal shootings last year, almost half of those were cleared “exceptionally,” records show. That means more than 90 percent of those gunmen weren’t charged.

But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, don’t let people defend themselves Mayor Daley!  If you can’t do it, why should they?

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.

There’s nothing a tyrant hates worse than an apostate.

When the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – a radical fascist and anti-semite who hob-nobbed with Hitler and rooted for the Final Solution – first started agitating against Jewish immigration to “Palestine” before World War 2, he turned his goons loose on…

…moderate Arabs.  Not the Jews.  Because like tinpot tyrants the world over, the Grand Mufti knew that while virtually none of his people were going to convert to Judaism, plenty would be perfectly happy to seek accomodation with them; radicalism had to be made safer than peace, to keep his base in line behind him.

And tyrants, petty and otherwise, the world over have repeated the pattern; Lenin killed the Socialists and Mensheviks to consolidate his power before going after the Czarists.  Franco killed the moderates and accomodationists, as did his communist opponents.

I’m not going to say that the DFL and its friends at the various PACs – Alliance for a Better Minnesota and so on – are in that league.  Perish the thought.

Over the past week or two, the regional and, now, national left have been in high dudgeon over Target’s donation of $150,000 to MNForward, a political action committee that seeks to send gays to re-orientation camps in Colorado.

{scrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch}

Wait.  That can’t be right.  Let me look…

Whew.  OK, I had that wrong.  MNForward is a pro business PAC.

But you’d never know it from the left’s response to Target’s donation of $150,000 to MNForward, a Political Action Committee whose entire focus is on business, and the notion that a DFL governor would be a disaster for Minnesota businesses already suffering from a lagging economy and among the highest corporate taxes in the nation.

Of course, Target is far from the only company giving money to MNForward.  Best Buy and Hubbard Broadcasting (both former employers of mine), Polaris, Davisco, Red Wing Shoes, Regis (whose founder, Myron Kunin, gave $5K to “Win Minnesota”, which is the money-laundering cutoff for “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”), Securian, Pentair, Federated Insurance, the Insurance Federation of Minnesota, and Cold Spring Granite have so far ponied up something around $900,000, which is a few bucks more than the Daytons and Alida Messinger have contributed all by themselves, and less than half than what they, their plutocrat cronies, and their union supporters have given to A4aBM and “Win Minnesota” alone, so far in this race (and sources tell me A4aBM will eventually spend ten million, mostly in Dayton and union money, this cycle).  That’s less than a quarter of what Matt Entenza has spent so far, most of it attacking Emmer.

Of course, Hubbard Broadcasting is the #4 TV station in a four station market; they’re so desperate for ratings, they’ve begun experimenting with the radical notion of not appearing relentlessly left-of-center – the experiment is only partial, and the jury is still out.  Polaris and RedWing pretty much serve blue-collar clienteles; you don’t find a lot of urban “progressives” on snowmobiles or wearing steel-t0ed work boots.  Most people have no idea food processor Davisco exists, but they’re rural and thus off the radar for the urban progressives.  And most people can get a vague idea from their titles what Securian, Federated, Cold Spring and IFM do – but none of them are linked with “progressive” ideas or, to most people, any ideas at all.  (I know what Pentair does, but the odds are pretty good you don’t…)

But Target, and to a lesser extent Best Buy?  In addition to immense charitable giving to a very eclectic array of community groups and schools (Target in Minnesota’s leading corporate charitable donor, and their money helps support dozens of public, charter and alternative schools), both led the way on “diversity” in the Twin Cities.  They are widely regarded as “progressive’ companies, and both have long put their money where their corporate mouths were when it came to acting “progressive”.  Both actively worked to support GLBT employees; I knew not a few gay managers at Best Buy, and their orientation seemed not to harm their careers in the least; I’ve never worked for Target, but friends who have tell me it’s at the very least the same.  And that’s a good thing – because both companies led the way in recognizing that a person’s orientation has nothing to do with his or her productivity, talent or merit.

So what happens when a “progressive” company donates to a candidate that dissents from the economic policies of the party that has tried to seize the word “progressive?”

They’re seen as apostates – “traitors”.  And Big Progressive – that combination of Big DFL, Big Labor, Big Gay, Big Open Border, Big Academia and so forth – know that they must destroy apostates.

So A4aBM and its cronies in the “Human Rights Coalition” – a Big Gay group – have spent the past week painting Target, that most progressive of companies in that most progressive of places, Minneapolis – as “anti-gay”.  Because of a contribution to help Minnesota’s business climate, supporting a candidate who Big Progressive wants – needs – to paint as “anti-gay”.

(Is Emmer “anti-gay”?  He’s been on record supporting traditional marriage amendments; he’s also said on the Northern Alliance that it’s really a side issue for the governor – as it in fact is.  Is supporting traditional marriage “hate”?  Is it “rabidly anti-gay”, as a gay co-worker of mind called it?  I think it devalues the term “hate”, but as PJ O’Rourke said, I’m not a liberal, so I’m not an expert at stuff I know nothing about…)

And so Target and Best Buy, the “apostate” “progressives”, must be destroyed, while the Polarises and the Hubbards and the Securians and Pentairs get left alone; no “progressive” is ever going to start doubting the mother faith because a snowmobile manufacturer or a rural food processor or a granite company supports Tom Emmer.

But “progressive” Target and Best Buy?  That’s a threat.

And so the thoughtcrime must be punished.