…I’ll be on AM1100 The Flag with Rob Port at 6:35 or so to talk about the Governor’s race.

You can listen in here:
Live video by Ustream

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”).

Joel Demos may need more than a great web ad to beat Keith Ellison in the Fifth District. He’ll probably need the National Guard. The Fifth, aka “Berkeley on the Prairie”, is one of those districts where the DFL could endorse a package of pork chops and get 50% of the vote.

Still – if great ads won elections, Demos could start measuring the drapes in Ellison’s office.

There is no more thankless job in the world than running for CD5 (or CD4, across the river, which is just as bad).

But if Republicans in the city couldn’t hope for miracles, we couldn’t hope for much at all.

To hear the local left and media – pardon the redundancy – you’d think Target came out advocating killing puppies.  In fact, for the left and media (ptr), it may have been even worse – committing apostasy.

But is the “news”  bad for Emmer, the “MNForward” PAC, or even for Target?

There are a couple of reasons I’m going to suggest “no”.

Dayton’s Already Won The Base: A friend of this blog once suggested to Tom Emmer that he needs to quit trying to win the conservative base.  There may be a point to that.  But this issue – especially the “Emmer is Anti-Gay” slur, about which more below – is the same thing in reverse; it’s the left’s attempt to inflame the lefty base over some of their big code words; “anti-gay” and “corporate money”.  It’s possible that people who haven’t been converted to one side or the other might pay attention to this story – but for a variety of reasons, I think that at the very very worst this story has short legs.

That Sweet Stench of Desperation: But there is a reason to try to get the lefty base all riled up – because they are in the midst of a lethargy that reminds me of Republicans in 2008 or 1996.  The widespread, outside-the-party-meeting passion is all on the right these days.  The DFL knows it – and has do to something to get their base to give a damn, especially given the spectre of having to go out and get people excited about Mark Dayton in less than a week.  And so the left needs to create a boogeyman.

Now granted it’s a purely negative campaign – “Vote for Dayton or…um…there’ll be a conservative in office!”.  But consider the alternative; “Vote for Mark Dayton; he’ll tax people who work hard enough to earn over $250K, and probably the rest of us too.  And then…um…”

And a negative campaign is better than no campaign at all.

Emmer Is Not Anti-Gay: There are probably a thick dollop of DFLers and not-that-smart independents who hear “supports traditional marriage” and think “hates gays”.  But people in the real world, the world of the intelligent, do in fact know that the vast majority of people, regardless of their politics, both accept gays as equals and, judging by the voting on gay-marriage referenda nationwide, do not accept the idea of gay marriage.  It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance; smart people see cynical people saying “that means he’s rabidly anti-gay” to dumb people, and shake their heads in disgust.  And, jokes about “Governor Ventura” aside, most people are smarter than that.

Although perhaps the Emmer campaign needs to send the sound bite from his appearance on the NARN at last year’s State Fair to those who believe A4aBM’s slur:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What do you think about gay marriage?

EMMER:  I don’t care!  [Audience laughs]  No, seriously – I believe marriage is about procreation – but this next election is all about jobs.

I suspect that’s not too far afield from what the vast majority of Minnesotans – regardless of their politics  – believe.

It’s Not A Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay World:  Look – in any population, you’re going to find 1-2% of the people are actively gay, and probably 1-2% of the population who genuinely hate gays.  In between you have the rest of us; people who would fight for a gay person’s right to political and legal equality (to say nothing of their right not to get beaten up), but need to be convinced about gay marriage.  And among that 96% are not a few people who either care enough about politics to ask “er, how is this “anti-gay?”, and not a few more who say “someone hates gays?  Sack up, fellas, I got plenty of people who hate me for being a Korean grocer/white Christian/Lebanese mortgage broker/Armenian professor/Jew.  Life’s tough; have a falafel and join the freakin’ club”.   Either way, playing the victim card only gets you so much traction when times are as tough as they are.

Especially because…:

MNForward Is Right: MNForward’s agenda has nothing, bupkes, to do with social policy.  It’s about trying to make sure we get a responsible government – one whose policies will not actively trash this state’s already dicey business environment.  Jobs are hard to find these days; the last thing we need is to make it harder to create, get and hold (private sector) jobs.

James Carville said it; “it’s the economy, stupid”.  And deep in their conference room down on Plato Boulevard, you just know the DFL has to admit to itself that this is a lousy year to be selling dime-store socialism – but it’s the only card in their hand.  And so they have to draw attention away from it, which leads to…well, see the “Sweet Stench of Desperation” section, above…

I think that when the dust settles on this that, even if the media manages to hush up the genuine discussion about A4aBM’s funding and the speciousness of the “anti-gay” claims, that Tom Emmer and, most likely, Target will both come out ahead.  The whole flap reeks of last-ditch desperation.

And even Minnesota voters don’t get that silly.

Three weeks ago, Shot In The Dark showed you that “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, which has been funding the avalanche of anti-Emmer attack ads, is an astroturf group funded by the Dayton family and their friends, relatives and cronies (60%, give or take) and the unions (around 40%).

Today, Pat Kessler’s “Reality Check” on WCCO does the same.

While we’ve been focusing a lot on the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and their serial lies about Tom Emmer (currently accuracy rate climbing up toward 0%), the other DFL candidates haven’t done a whole lot better in the accuracy department.

Matt Entenza has been running a very dirty campaign…against Tom Emmer.  Not against Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, of course, behind whom he’s running a wan third place in the DFL primary race.

But that hasn’t kept him from spending nearly $4 million on ads so far this cycle – more than Tim Pawlenty spent in his entire winning campaign in 2006, and more than Tom Emmer might spend in this entire cycle, too.

And for that money, he’s gotten ads that aren’t any more accurate about Emmer than A4aBM’s dreck.

When I first saw  Entenza’s “Education” ad – which makes the very “tenther”-y claim that Entenza will withdraw from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – I thought that the ad’s claim that Emmer supported NCLB didn’t pass the stench test.  I have spent the past two weeks trying to get confirmation from the Emmer camp (which should hush those of you who’ve been yapping that I am “with the Emmer campaign”, capisce?), so MPR’s Catherine Richert, at MPR’s Polinaut “Poligraph”, got the story first.

I thought, like so many of these scabrous “vote” claims you see in Dems’ ads, that it was a report about an out-of-context vote that was muddied by some sort of procedural or parliamentary foible or another.  I was right:

Entenza’s campaign says Emmer voted against a plan to drop No Child Left Behind in 2008. And at first blush, it would seem that way.

But parliamentary maneuvering on the House floor muddied the intent of the amendment Emmer voted against. It didn’t just end the program; it contained other unrelated provisions.

It’s a tenet of conservatism unto the point of dogma that we want education pushed to the state and, preferably, local level; we take unjustified flak for wanting to abolish the Department of Education.  Emmer is – so we’re told! – nothing if not a thoroughgoing conservative, and Richert’s got the records to prove it.  I’ll add emphasis as appropriate:

In early 2009, Emmer co-sponsored a bill that would have prevented implementation of No Child Left Behind.

Later that year, Emmer told Minnesota Public Radio that he opposes No Child Left Behind.

“I object to the federal government having any law that tells the state of Minnesota, more importantly parents of children in the state of Minnesota, this is how your schools are going to be run,” he said on Dec. 11, 2009.

Emmer supports holding teachers accountable, spokesman Bill Walsh said. He just doesn’t think the federal government should tell the state how to do it.

That’s more like it.

In a radio ad that’s part of the same series, Entenza claims that Emmer proposes “devastating thirty-percent budget cuts”.  That’s another ancient, ripe, stinky rhetorical turd that we thought we’d dispensed with almost two months ago.  Alas, like all DFL propagandists, Entenza’s people apparently believe they can trust to some kind of diminished capacity and short attention span on the voters’ part.

And with Ventura and Franken on our collective electoral conscience, they may have a point.  But we can try to shoot for better, can’t we?

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.

I’ve been watching the Florida District 22 race, where Allen West is running against Congressman Ron Klein.  It’s a tight race, but a vital one.

I’m hoping this ad helps:

A congressman with this kind of integrity?

I’m dying to see this guy in a debate with Betty McCollum…

In an op-ed in the Strib, the Freedom Foundation’s Jonathan Blake  Jo unload’s on the left’s (and media’s) hypocrisy on Target (emphasis added):

The recent uproar over Target Corp.’s $150,000 contribution to MN Forward, a business-friendly political action committee that is running ads in favor of a probusiness gubernatorial candidate, has officially become a media phenomenon, covered in virtually all of the state’s newspapers, blogs and TV newscasts. It’s even made national news.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s largest public employee unions have already spent five times that sum, more than $750,000, on the upcoming election, virtually all of it in support of a single political party and its allies. That story has been relegated to deep inside the local section, if it is covered at all.

That’s because the owner of the “local section” has a dog in the fight.

Their refusal to endorse Emmer in a primary that he’s going to win by 90 points is kind of a tell…

When it comes to politics this year, you need to remember the following rule of thumb; when the DFL or one of their affiliated blogs writes about Tom Emmer, you need to distrust, and then verify.  Because the ratio of BS to truth is the worst I’ve ever seen.  Ever.

When I was a kid, growing up in small-town North Dakota, one of my dad’s best friends was a lawyer.  The guy took all sorts of cases; wills, divorces, probate and wills, criminal defense, criminal prosecution, civil litigation, commercial litigation, contracts, and pretty much anything else that came through his office door.  He was also in the rotation for public defender duty, and for helping out the prosecution, and he did a stretch as municipal judge (carefully watching for conflicts of interest).

So if I were to write this lawyer “was a defense attorney”, someone could read the above and bellow “HAH, Berg,  you are teh lier!  He is a civil litigator!”  And you’d be right.  And you’d also be proving you need a reality check.

The law, especially small-market law, is full of such things; small-town prosecutors contract with general practice lawyers to help with caseloads without adding headcount; small-town public defenders offices may not even have a lawyer, but get lawyers from the local bar (legal, not liquid)  to help out; it’s not unknown for an indigent accused murderer to be represented by someone whose “specialty”, if you can call it that, is probate.

And let’s not forget those lawyers have to keep their fields straight, as a matter of professional ethics, while avoiding conflicts of interest.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Last week, Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius figured he’d “caught the Emmer campaign lying”.

Emmer’s opponents have been carping for months about the fact that Emmer:

1. Got drunk driving-related convictions in 1981 and 1991 – twenty and thirty years ago.  When he was 19 and 29.
2. He paid his debt to society, decades ago, exactly as he was supposed to.
3. During the 2008 session, he pushed two bills:  one that would have given convicted drunk drivers some of their rights back after ten years of good behavior, and one that would have upheld the radical notion of considering drunk drivers innocent until proven guilty.We’ve talked about this before.

The left has spent the past week or so spending a half a million dollars of Alita Messinger’s money talking about the DWI “issue”; the offenses, and Emmer’s supposed “soft on DUI” policies.

That’s all bad enough.   But as we’ve learned this past few weeks, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is a reliable liar.  More on that at noon today.

I’m less used to calling Twin Cities’ DFLbot-blog MNPublius on basic integrity.

But this piece at by Rosenberg, entitled “Emmer’s DWI bill written at the request of DWI attorneys,” walks up to the line between ambiguity and deception, piddles on it, walks back, jumps into a monster truck, spins cookies on the line, and drives across past the “FLAMING FIB-VILLE, 2 MILES” sign at 80 miles an hour.

Here’s “the scoop”:

I already wrote about this a bit below, but I buried the lede. The more I think about this, the more I think it’s a major story that Tom Emmer’s DWI bill was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys, especially because he’s obviously trying to mislead the public about that:

On his campaign website, Emmer said: “At the request of local prosecutors, Rep. Emmer agreed to author their bill to reform the court system and how DWIs are handled. The legislation prepared by the prosecutors and other interested parties with the assistance of nonpartisan House research staff would have provided incentives for early and immediate prosecution of first-time offenders.”

The Emmer campaign identified the “local prosecutors” as Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes, and said they are based in Stillwater, Washington County. Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling. [Emphasis mine]

Local prosecutors? Excuse me? Once again, Emmer may not technically be lying, but he’s also definitely not being straight with us. He’s trying to make it sound like this bill was written to help local law enforcement officials, when in fact it was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys.

“Emmer may not technically be lying”?  No.  He is in fact telling the truth.  Knowing that Stokes and Weidner worked both as contract prosecutors and “DWI Defense Attorneys”, I asked a source familiar with the case in which capacity the two lawyers operated while discussing this bill:

The only thing I know about that is that Weidner said no cities asked them to ask for bill & Stokes id’ed self as [prosecutor] during testimony.  Probably fair to say Weidner and Stokes argued for bill based on their prosecutor experience, but not b/c of any city’s request.

Now, if Jeff Rosenberg would like to suggest that Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes – who are, let’s remember, officers of the court – blurred the ethical boundaries of their field while giving testimony to the Legislature on these bills, I’m sure the Bar Association would be interested in hearing about it.  Bring actual evidence, of course.

However, if you believe WCCO, in a story they ran when this “issue” first came up before the MNGOP convention, that’s just not true; Weidner and Stokes do prosecution work.

But OK – so maybe Rosenberg doesn’t know how the practice of downmarket law works.  That’s hardly a grave offense, is it?

Well, no.  But a misleading presentation of facts is.

Using the facts above, Rosenberg writes that Emmer wrote the bill  “…at the request of DWI defense attorneys”, and that Weidner “…must have been acting in his capacity as a defense attorney” and declares “Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling….You can see that these are clearly not the people who should be responsible for crafting our DWI laws”.

He accompanies this claim with a screenshot from the law firm’s website that shows Weidner and Stokes “specialize” in DUI law.  This has, in fact, been the chanting point among local leftybloggers and twitterbuildup; “Emmer operated on behalf of DWI defense specialists”

So I checked the website.

Turns out Kevin Weidner also “specializes” in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death, Auto Accidents (including, ironically, sueing people who kill or injure people in DUIs!), and  general Criminal Defense (of everything from juvenile crimes to murder).  And there’s more; check out his page at the firm.  And that doesn’t include the contract prosecution work.

And in addition to DUI, Sean Stokes “specializes” in Family Law, Divorce, Child Custody, and general Criminal Law.   Here’s his bio page.

So the left’s defamatory meme notwithstanding, Weidner and Stokes are not “DWI  Defense specialists”; indeed, as we’ve seen above, they litigate for both the plaintiff and defendant in DWI cases for their practice, in addition to prosecution work for whom the client, the plaintiff, is Washington County.

(Is it even possible to “specialize” in a firms’ entire criminal and family area?)

So, to use Rosenberg’s term, MNPublius and the rest of the Minnesota Sorosphere that is spreading the “Emmer works for DWI defense lawyers” meme aren’t “Technically” lying; they are just presenting a set of facts that is so cherrypicked and misleading that nobody reading their account stands a snowball’s chance in hell of learning the truth.

So – why does the local left feel the need to spread such a defamatory lie?  Because  lies are  the only weapon they have against Tom Emmer?

And Jeff Rosenberg – why is MNPublius, once a leftyblog with integrity (Aaron Landry notwithstanding) participating in such a transparent wad of buncombe?

At the very least, shouldn’t your piece have been titled “Emmer’s DWI bill written at the request of after consulting attorneys who defend and sue DWIs, among pretty much every other area of criminal and family law, as well as DWI prosecution”?

It doesn’ troll off the tongue, but it’s more accurate.

———-

Do the state a favor, Minnesota Left; put a fork in this stupid meme.  Move on to your next lie.

We’ll be waiting.

There’s going to be a new “Minnesota” Poll tomorrow in the Strib.

Here are my fearless predictions; I predict a couple of things:

1. Despite the fact that actual, reputable polls show Tom Emmer inside the margin of error  (despite having been outspent by a 16:1 margin so far in this campaign), the “Minnesota” Poll will show Emmer down, probably by two digits.
2. The local media and DFL-leaning “alternative” media will take this as a huge boost for the DFL…
3. …notwithstanding the fact that the poll will drastically oversample Democrat-leaning voters.
4. But you’ll only learn that on conservative blogs and talk radio.

This pattern is iron-clad and absolute; the Minnesota Poll is a useless appendage that serves only as a morale-builder for the DFL; the only exception has been in 2008, when the GOP did so badly that the DFL didn’t need the help.

This year?  Facing a solid GOP candidate with three nonentities and facing an “Independence Party” candidate that will take three DFL votes for every two Republicans, in a year when anti-tax-and-spend fever is sweeping every part of this nation outside the Beltway and Kenwood?

The morale-builder is needed.

My favorite bit of Minnesota Poll history; immediately before the 2002 gubernatorial election, the Minnesota Poll showed Roger Moe with a slim but significant lead, while Tim Pawlenty and IndyParty candidate Tim Penny duked it out for second in a near-statistical tie.  You may recall that Pawlenty won pretty handily, while Penny got about half the share the MNPoll predicted.

Luke Hellier at MDE has more:

Let’s use the 2006 Governor’s Race as an example.
On November 6 the poll showed the following:
Tim Pawlenty 39%
Mike Hatch 42%
Peter Hutchinson 7%
Just a day later, Minnesotans went to the poll an reelected Tim Pawlenty to a second term. The actual results were:
Tim Pawlenty 46%
Mike Hatch 45%
Peter Hutchinson 6%
In the US Senate Race, the poll showed Mark Kennedy only receiving 33%. On election day he received 38%
Going back 2 years earlier, the poll had President George Bush only with 42% of the support in Minnesota. On election day the President received the support of 48% of Minnesotans.
Needless to say, the Minnesota Poll vastly under estimates the support of Republicans while inflating that of Democrats.

Powerline was also shredding the Minnesota Poll long before most people had heard of either the poll or the blog.

The whole intent is to try to demoralize the undecided but GOP-leaning voter – the ones that are going to decide this election.

A:  Their fingers are moving over a keyboard.

The Dayton-family-funded attack-PAC ran this on Twitter last night – and, as with most lefty memes, when you see it one place, you see it everywhere:

.@TomEmmer says he never sponsored a law to lessen penalties for DWIs… Here’s his signature: http://twitpic.com/29rwsk #stribpol #mn2010

Um, no.  He didn’t vote to “lessen penalties”.  He voted to allow convicted drunk drivers to get some of their rights back after ten years’ good behavior, and voted for a provision that would allow accused drunk driver the radical right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota has no shame – but we should all be ashamed of them anyway.

I was thinking about the DFL’s engineered flap over the donations Target, Best Buy, Red Wing Shoes, Davisco, Polaris and Hubbard Broadcasting made to MNForward, a pro-Emmer PAC that’s had the temerity to run advertising on Emmer’s behalf.

I found the word I’m looking for:  Offensive.

I don’t know what offends me more, though.  Is it that the DFL…:

• … is (news flash) lying (as usual)?  Emmer is not “anti-gay”; that’s just your standard Alinski 101 framing?
• … is trying so hard to manufacture outrage over corporate donations while they take millions a year from outrage-proof institutions – unions and plutocrats?
• …that they think so many Minnesotans are so stupid that they’d buy it?
• …that, in over 50% of the cases (especially in the metro) they’ll be right?
• …that our “elite” media is eating this crap up for exactly the reason they were intended to eat it up; because the DFL has nothing else to talk about.

As re that last one?  That may be the worst.  The DFL really doesn’t have anything in the idea department.  I’ll prove it, and you can too:  ask any DFLer for a positive idea; watch them respond “I’m POSITIVE I hate Target!”, or something to that effect.

It’s good news for November, of course – but in the short term, it’s killing my blood pressure, and in the long term having to share a society with people like this can’t be good for a nation.

Perhaps there’s a T-shirt idea for the GOP; “The DFL:  The party that thinks you’re a not-to0-bright drama queen”.

Maybe we can hand ’em out at the fair.

We get it – the “elite” of the regional left has the victorian vapours that some “Tenthers” would suggest that local pre-emption of federal laws, to say nothing of secession, might be legitimate manifestations of popular revulsion at government overreach.

So – does DFLer Matt Entenza’s plan to “get rid of No Child Left Behind” – a federal program – mean that he is the moral equal of a slave-owner?

It gets hard to follow these people.

(Note:  I oppose NCLB too – but not the same reasons Entenza does.  The teachers unions hate NCLB because it holds them accountable for their failures; I oppose it because, among other things, it holds them accountable for the wrong things)

Some of the DFLers’ ads have said that Tom Emmer “supports No Child Left Behind”.

Really?

Seek shelter, DFL and your minions.  There’s a storm coming in.

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 often wondered how senior citizens pay our various cities’ rampant and always-rising property taxes on fixed incomes.

The House DFL doesn’t!

May 5, 2008 – the House was debating HF3149, regarding property tax reform.  Laura Brod proposed an amendment that would have had the state refund a portion of a property owner’s property taxes, provided he/she was eligible for property tax relief, on a sliding scale depending on their (low, low) income.  The end result – a person would pay no more than 5% of their income in property taxes.

The amendment came to a vote (see page 11323).  Tom Emmer (and Brod, naturally) voted to help struggling property owners.

Margaret Anderson Kelliher voted against it, along with most of the DFL; the amendment failed 71-58.

Later in the day, Brod offered a similar amendment, limiting the refunds to people over 65 (scroll down to page 11325)

Emmer and Brod voted for it.  Kelliher voted against it.

Apparently she’d rather get publicity for talking about capping property taxes than actually do ot.

I suppose that DFLers voting against squeezing revenue out of people would be a little like vampires voting agianst free blood.

I just heard your radio ad.

Two questions:

1. Even the leftymedia realizes that Emmer isn’t actually calling for at 30% budget cut.  More’s the pity.

2. Is Sarah Palin actually on Emmer’s ticket?  I get so confused.

That is all.

Charlie Quimby accepts State Auditor Rebecca Otto’s explanation about her expense reporting (my jury is still out) – and skips from that to “showing” how the GOP really isn’t the party of business.

(Whereas the party of top-five-in-nation corporate taxes, “tax the working rich”, and the $20K/year minimum wage, apparently, is…)

Go over and read it if you like.

But I’ll take things to the next level.  Let’s move the debate out of hooting about numbers and name-calling, and focus on the issues.

Let’s start with Rebecca Otto’s record in office.  Let’s start with all of her accomplishments in her four years as State Auditor.

For starters…

…er…

…um…

(scratches head)

Love the rain, doncha….

…OH, I got it!  She filed an amicus brief in support of McDonald…

…no, that was Attorney-General Swanson.  OK…

…um…

 …gosh, I’m kinda…

…OK.  Perhaps we need to go back to namecalling.

(In the interest of fairness:  If, indeed, Rebecca Otto did not, in fact, overbill for her on-the-road per diems, she can use “Otto For Auditor:  She Didn’t Really Overcharge You!” as a campaign slogan.  Uninspiring, but really, the best thing she’s got so far).

According to Tom Houser at Channel 5:  R  Emmer ad gets a B+:

Last week:  Alliance for a Dependent Better Minnesota: F.

Mark Dayton (via his “surrogates”) spent a million dollars on advertising and trumping up a phony controversy over the past month – and got bupkes for it:

According to the latest FOX News-Rasmussen Poll , Mark Dayton would beat Republican Tom Emmer 40 to 36 percent, with the Independence Party candidate Tom Horner [dropping to] 10 percent.

Now, there’s a lesson in this for all of us; be careful of what you wish for.  For years, I wished that U of M Professor Larry Jacobs weren’t the most overquoted person in the Twin Cities media.  And in response, we get Hamline University …

Political analyst David Schultz said it looked like Emmer was clearly ahead back in May. He believes two things have changed. He believes the democrats are now better known than a few months ago and Emmer’s recent dispute with waiters and waitresses didn’t help.

Mr. Schultz; in May, Emmer had his post-convention bounce.  And yes, generally having concurrent advertising blitzes for a month while Emmer didn’t run ads (til the past few days) will mean the Dems are “better known”.  Of course, having the DFL-leaning media engineer two straight hit jobs – Pat Doyle’s squib and the waiter bit – will bring out the negatives; that’s what they were designed to do.

Target is getting a lot of crap from the usual pack of The Very Challenged, who are appalled that corporations can now donate money to campaigns that best support policies they (their boards, really) deem to be in their shareholders’ fiduciary interest (in the same way that unions have always been able to).

Expect a lot of  really ugly, stupid invective against Target – and expect it to get worse before it gets better (at least rhetorically; what are these shining lights of liberal “ethics” gonna do, switch to WalMart?)

However, one good turn deserves another; this advertisement is provided to Target free of charge.

Now, if your grocery section can actually stock some tabouli mix, we’ll be cooking with gas.

Of course, it’s not just Target that donated to Minnesota Forward; Polaris, racked by the DFL’s taxes, is holding on by the skin of its teeth.

Hope it drives some business to you guys:

Davisco Foods, based in LeSeuer?  A plucky little outstate company that’s fighting in the international market, and could use all the help (or at least the least possible amount of interference) it can get?

Hubbard Broadcasting – owner of Channel 5, KS95, Chicktalk107 and AM1500 The Sports Megilla?  Well, they do compete with my show and with Salem, which owns my show.  And they did pass on the chance to hire me as KSTP’s program director back in 1991, not that I hold a grudge.

So I’ll stick with a simple “attaboy” for HBI.

And I’ll draw the reader’s attention to the fact that these four corporations have spent about half as much on this race as the Dayton family alone, and a small fraction of what AFSCME, the SEIU, the MFT, Education Minnesota, the AFL-CIO, the UFCW and the Teamsters will end up spending.

And the rest of us – the Minnesotans who actually pay taxes – don’t have the option of boycotting any of them.

UPDATE: As I noted this morning, Minnesota’s big corporations, being in Rome, have to do as the Romans do; in addition to a decades-long tradition of being good corporate citizens, they also have been exceedingly friendly to liberal causes; as a commenter below noted, Target lets their GLBT group use the Target logo; most of your major Minnesota corporations (and I’ve worked with many of them) are very aggressive about promoting women and minorities, donating to non-profits, sending staff out to work on Habitat projects, helping subsidize mass transit, and on and on.

Careful what you wish for, lefties.  You geniuses, you.

Let’s put the facts in order here.

Rebecca Otto, one of the nastiest little people in Minnesota politics,  defeated Pat Anderson, one of the most proactive and competent state auditors this state has ever had, in 2006, partly on a promise to “make sure rules are followed”, but mostly on a wave of anti-incumbent fervor that swept out all the GOP constitutional officers except the Governor and Lieutentant Governor.

She then proceeded to do a very spotty job of auditing, but did manage to spend money like a sailor on leave.

She did, however, get very pissy when people tried to hold her accountable for her office’s counterintuitively spendthrift ways.

“State Auditor Rebecca Otto’s re-election campaign this morning accused the Minnesota GOP Party of making ‘sweeping’ data requests in search of information to smear her campaign. She said the state GOP and an aligned group are using the Minnesota Public Data Practices Act to make ‘open ended, burdensome data requests of at least one constitutional office on the taxpayers’ dime.’”  (Charley Shaw, “Otto accuses Minnesota GOP Party of ‘burdensome’ public data request.” Legal Ledger, June 30, 2010)

Not that there was any doubt I was voting to return Pat Anderson to the Auditor’s office this fall, I realize – but seriously, Otto’s regime at the Auditor’s office almost reads like a parody.

Read the MDE story.

A few weeks back, Tom Emmer appeared on MPR’s “Mid-Morning with Keri Miller”.

Now, while I have credited MPR’s Newsroom with making a game attempt at providing balance, MPR’s programming is pretty much a pro-DFL morass.  Miller is less overtly a DFL flak than her predecessor, future former “Air America” prop Catherine Lanpher, but only barely.

Her interview with Emmer should have been an embarassment.    Tough questioning is one thing – and a good thing! – but Miller’s stock questions were accompanied with condescention, badgering and hectoring.

So all three DFLers are going to be on Miller’s show today.  Think Miller will be as concerned about specifics as she was with Emmer?

Think we’ll see questions like “Mr. Dayton, if we end state contracting, will we just stop doing the work, or will the work go to more-expensive unionized state employees?”, or “let’s say you tax “the rich” at confiscatory rates; how much of that five billion deficit your DFL caucus ran up; how much of the deficit will it kill off?  Be specific!”  “Mr. Entenza, you talk a lot about “Green Jobs” – but the record of “Green Jobs” in the US at large and in Spain has been dismal at best.   How is your plan not doomed?”  “Speaker Kelliher – so get specific here;  your “plan” makes a lot of vague blandishments about squeezing money out of people; how exactly do you close the deficit and spend as much as you’ve promised?’

How often will Miller sharply, mockingly purr “That won’t save much!”?

Any bets?

And when, not if, the DFLers squeeze by without any serious challenge, will Erik Black sniff about how vague they all were?

I’ll be an interesting day.

In many ways, the classic Minnesota corporations have always been the very model of “good corporate citizens”.  These corporations – 3M, Daytons (now Target), Medtronic, Mayo, Best Buy and many more – gave profusely to Minnesota charities, schools, universities, arts, research…the whole works.

But they’ve also gotten squeezed, hard; has bad as taxes are for individuals in Minnesota, they are much worse for businesses; Minnesota has among the worst corporate tax rates in the country.   And the entire DFL slate – Dayton, Kelliher, Entenza and stealth-DFLer Horner – are running on platforms that involve “creating jobs” by taxing the living daylights out of corporations and their investors.

As we run up toward the primaries, groups working with the DFL – especially the Dayton-funded “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – has poured a sea of money into advertising against Tom Emmer, and it’s just started.  This past week, another group – MNForward – finally put an ad on the air pointing out Emmer’s positive approach to creating more jobs; getting government out of the way of the businesses, small and large, that’ll lead any recovery that happens.

And the DFL is shocked, shocked that some businesses are willing to help keep the Democrats from plundering the state.

The DFL has been hooting and hollering that Target, among a few other businesses [disclosures here – PDF alert] has given money – about $100K – to MNForward.

Among them was DFL representative Ryan “Don’t Call Me Henry” Winkler, who tweeted around eightish last night:

Target fundshttp://tinyurl.com/26bcfkw Emmer adhttp://www.mnforward.com. Emmer anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-min. wage. Target guests agree?

Anti-gay?  Huh?

A bit later, Darin Broton – a PR flak – tweeted back:

@repryanwinkler – Has Target given the House DFL Caucus money this cycle? Past cycles? DFL incumbents?

Winkler responded to Broton:

Nope. Never…

Later yesterday evening, WCCO-TV’s Esme Murphy ran a report on how Democrats were supposedly staying away from Target because of this advertising donation – which prompted me to wonder how many Democrat wonks Murphy hangs out with; the lines at Target in the Midway, deep in the most Tic-infested district in Minnesota, were as long as ever.  Perhaps they were all Republicans? I doubt it.

The Strib also reported that, despite the economic downturn that’s prompted them to lay off people at the corporate office and close a distribution center, than Target is not easing off its charitable giving:

Last year the Minneapolis-based retailer gave $169 million nationally in cash and in-kind contributions, making it, by some reckonings, Minnesota’s most generous grant maker. For the past five years its largess has significantly outpaced that of the McKnight Foundation, Minnesota’s No. 2 donor, according to the Minnesota Council on Foundations. Between 2004 and 2008, Target’s annual giving rose steadily, from $96.3 million to $169 million, while the McKnight Foundation’s went from $75.4 million to $93.6 million…

…Arts organizations around the country are particularly dependent on Target for providing free or reduced admission to museums, theatrical performances and events. Its beneficiaries in the Twin Cities include Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Children’s Theatre Company, Guthrie Theater, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, Circus Juventas, Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and the Latin American Folklore Dance Company

No matter to Rep. Ryan Winkler, who responded to Murphy via Twitter:

@esmemurphy Target has been good corp. citizen, but MN political spending is new. Your show just showed risk of giving to candidates.

No.  It showed that it’s dangerous being a for-profit business in Minnesota, under the watchful eye of the DFL.  That it’s dangerous to cross the all-beneficent, all-knowing Mother Party.

It shows the risk of crossing party hacks like Steve Winkler, who think that corporate political giving is “new”, and that corporations should just shut up and take it – for giving $100,000 (which is, by the way, $761,000 less than various members of the Dayton family and Dayton’s ex-wife Alida Messinger have given in this cycle to “Win Minnesota” alone).

And it shows the risk of actually having to run a political campaign on donations from people and companies that actually have to earn their money, as opposed to merely inheriting it; the DFL will try to keep you from earning that money.

It’s the Chicago Minnesota DFL way.

Me?  I’m off to Target.   I’m going to buy something I may not even need all that badly.  And I’m going to write “thanks for donating to MNForward” on the charge slip.