Max Boot on the consequences of “cut and run” or “cut and jog”, or whatever it is the Democrats are proposing:

Bad as the situation is today, it could get a lot worse if we simply pull out. The probable result might be labeled “civil war,” but it would bear scant resemblance to our own Civil War. It wouldn’t be two sides fighting one another; it would be a war of all against all. Iraq would probably degenerate into the kind of anarchy seen in Somalia and Afghanistan in the 1990s. As in those countries, the resulting backlash could produce an Islamist dictatorship that would threaten American interests. We would also be hurt by the perception that we are a “weak horse” (to quote Osama bin Laden) that can be driven out of a country by a few suicide bombers — a perception sure to embolden terrorists.

Not a pleasant scenario. But we need to be honest with ourselves about what is involved in an unseemly dash for the exits. By all means, try to apply a political Band-Aid to Iraq’s gaping wounds. Just don’t be under any illusion that it will hold.

More on this later this week.

Back in the late seventies/early eighties, my little sister – like a lot of early-teens – pined for the disco stars of the era. And I think that, in her thirteen-year-old way, she might at one point have asked “how cool would it be if Andy Gibb joined the Bee Gees?” [1]

In yesterday’s Strib editorial, Lori Sturdevant dreamed of a one-party state:

In my daydream, Mike Hatch and Dean Johnson stood alongside Tim Penny and Peter Hutchinson (and in some versions, the Green Party’s Ken Pentel). They were surrounded by a bevy of Minnesota’s progressive glitterati.

Interesting phrase, “progressive glitterati”. We will have to come back to that.

Amid gentle joshes and handshakes all around, they announced the merger of their parties, with a new platform blending the best of the old, and a new name. (Did I hear somebody suggest the Minnesota Democratic Party?) The ghost of Hubert Humphrey, the last wizard to pull off a major party merger in Minnesota, hovered about, beaming.

If I were my younger, cruder self, the response would write itself. Fortunately, I’m older, wiser, and more rhetorically sober. Just so you know.

But onward and upward. Sturdevant isn’t merely dreaming. She wants to get those damn smart-alecky Ventura Independence Party heretics to rejoin the mother party!

The DFL candidate for governor missed the brass ring by fewer than 22,000 votes, out of more than 2 million cast. Hutchinson got about 141,000 votes. Had he not been in the race, some of those 141,000 would have gone to GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Some might have stayed home. But it’s hard not to believe that enough of them would have gone to Hatch to put him in the governor’s office.

And apostasy, to a committed DFL flak (or “progressive glitterata”) like Sturdevant, has consequences:

I can also scratch Hutchinson and Penny, the previous bearer of the IP’s gubernatorial standard. Not even Tuesday’s drubbing has them interested in merging with anybody. They think the Independence Party has only just begun to grow.

Hutchinson talked Tuesday night like somebody starting a long campaign, not ending one with 6.4 percent of the vote. “Minnesotans did not send us here just to start this race. They sent us here to finish it,” he said. “As a party, as a people, it is our duty to do that.”

It’s fair to question whether he’s thinking straight about who, in a democracy, gets to do the political finishing.

“Who, in a democracy, gets to do the political finishing”?

One wonders who Sturdevant actually does think “gets” to do the “political finishing”. “Progressive glitterati”, or voters and people who want to run for office based on their own ideas, ideals and passions.

It’s a valid question, given that Sturdevant’s concern for “democracy” seems to be entirely filtered through the institution of the DFL:

He’s right about this much: They’ll have money. Hutchinson squeaked past the 5 percent bar in state law that bestows major-party status and access to public funds in the next campaign.But will the IP have a distinct and salable reason to exist in 2008 or 2010? Voters evidently had trouble finding one this time. Hutchinson had his own slant on the issues, but it was a slant in the DFL’s direction.

Penny says the Independence Party’s raison d’être is twofold: 1) It stands for honest budgeting, as opposed to DFLers who promise too much, then underfund the big things, and Republicans who keep trying to have something for nothing. 2) It wants government disconnected from special interests.

In my daydream, the DFL took up those causes to the IP’s satisfaction. Actually, House Speaker-designate Margaret Anderson Kelliher is moving that way. Her commitment to do the big things right on a fiscally prudent budget signals an end to DFL overpromising.

Um, no, it “signals” the DFL is trying to get people to shut up about its many shortcomings as a governing party, and get the foot soldiers – like Sturdevant – in line.

She already has government reform on her agenda. Bringing the state’s campaign finance system into the Internet era, with disclosure rules that preclude anonymous end-of-campaign ad bombs, belongs on her list.

Further restrictiosn on free (if arguably objectionable) speech! Such a “reform!”

But one begins to wonder whether there can be any satisfying a crowd that views its 6.4 percent of the vote as a mandate to press on. It increasingly looks as if they would rather stand apart and hope that the lightning of 1998 will strike again than participate in governing this state now.

I’m awake now. I don’t see a reunion of Minnesota progressives on the horizon. And without one, there likely won’t be an inauguration of a progressive governor to cover, either.

So there you have it, all you V IPers; stop your petty objections about financial responsibility!  Why, the Speaker-Designate has made a non-binding pre-campaign promise to maybe uphold one of your (most trivlal-yet-authoritarian) campaign ideas!

With brains like this measuring the drapes in their new offices, who needs reform?
(more…)

…to Laura Ingraham interview Christopher Hitchens is like watching Rosie O’Donnell play tennis with Pete Sampras.

I’m almost willing to write this Strib editorial off to post-election let-down; perhaps the editoral writers are still hung-over from the election they and their paper worked so hard to engineer.

But the piece – which sniffs and phumphers about ad space being sold on the outside of trains – frankly, makes absolutely no sense.

Trusting the stranger is a basic precept of the successful city. An urban place cannot thrive if public sidewalks, parks and transit are overtaken by the fear of unpredictable or threatening behavior. Happily, those tensions can be eased by good architecture. Unobstructed windows are especially important because they provide transparency between, say, a sidewalk and street-level business. As the urbanist prophet Jane Jacobs observed, the more eyes looking in and out, the greater the confidence in the urban experience.

That’s why it’s so ironic that the Twin Cities’ latest and most celebrated venture into the urban experience — light-rail transit — so eagerly violates Jacobs’ dictum.

For starters, Jacobs’ “dictum” has been pretty well debunked – not by free-market conservatives, mind you, but by the people who’ve actually spent the last fifty years trying to make it work. “Eyes on the Street” doesn’t prevent crime, and a city is built on distrusting people enough so that the honest people stay honest. (Read the linked article; it doesn’t debunk “new urbanism”, merely guts out the very myth that the Strib is peddling in this editorial).

Metro Transit has shrouded most of its light-rail cars in advertising. Whole trains — windows and all — have become gliding billboards for supermarkets, sports teams, discount stores, you name it. Commuters on platforms can’t see into the cars; riders inside can see out, sort of, but only into what appears to be a murky, depressing city.

Thus, the transit agency trades the confidence and pleasure of customers for the revenue that advertising brings. It’s willing even to obscure its own brand identity in a desperate dash for cash. These “wraps” account for one-third of Metro Transit’s $2.7 million annual ad sales (but far less than 1 percent of its total budget).

One wonders what the Strib is thinking:

1. A city that is “murky, depressing” through a thin layer of translucent paint will spring to vibrant life through a clear window?
2. “Brand identity?” The train is a government venture! Branding only matters if there is competition! There is only one train! Oh, sure – the train is competing against cars. But does the Strib board think that the very Metro Transit “brand” that Twin Cities’ commuters shun by a 95-5 margin is going to actually draw people in? That the dismal off-white cattle pens on rails are going to be any more inviting, in and of themselves, than the dismal off-white cattle pens on wheels?

Back to the Strib:

We do not disparage advertising.

But it’d be perhaps useful to note that the Strib competes for the same ad dollar that the trains are eating up.

Perhaps some of that money should go to teaching the Strib some elementary logic. Or maybe just how to control one’s hysteria:

…transit is a public product, and allowing whole trains to be tarted up with images of toothpaste and laundry soap demeans the public’s pride in its investment.

It’s a train! An ugly steel trolley shuttling back and forth on ugly steel tracks over ugly cement overpasses! The only “pride in investment” in having a train in the first place is the efficiency it (supposedly) brings to the city’s life. Trains can be aesthetic – but that’s not the point of the public’s investment.

Imagine the outcry if Lake Harriet were “sponsored” by a hamburger chain on condition that lighted golden arches were placed at the lake’s center.

I sat, stunned, the first time or two I read this.

The Strib editorial board can’t tell the difference – conceptual as well as literal – between a natural wonder in the middle of our city, and a train?

Or if the 2006 election had been “brought to you by” a TV newscast, which placed ads on every ballot. At some point a line is crossed. Metro Transit has crossed it.

The Strib also notes that the MTC has begun rolling back the amount of window surface to be covered. so why write the editorial in the first place?

It’s unfortunate that Metro Transit hasn’t been provided the money to build and operate a fully modern system.

No, Strib editors. It is, in fact, too bad that metro taxpayers have been saddled with a “transit” system that is structurally unable to pay its own way – a billion-dollar “train to nowhere from nowhere”, linking the airport and the Mall to a downtown full of people who don’t, as a general rule, take the train to the airport or the Mall! A train whose main function is to take the (few) commuters in South Minneapolis who neither drive to jobs in the ‘burbs nor downtown, to the relatively few jobs remaining downtown, or to take revelers on the now-ritual Friday/Saturday night trolley pub crawls.

A train could have been built to haul people from the inner city, where people actually are, out to Burnsville and Bloomington and Eden Prairie, places to which people actually need affordable transit, that had a better (though still dismal) chance of paying for itself. But a work-a-daddy, hug-a-mommy trolleythat hauls working people about isn’t quite as posh a monument to the wisdom of its creators as a gleaming train connecting the crown jewels of a city – its downtown(s), airport, and “destination”.

Or to put it in the business terms that the Strib’s editors so poorly understand, “get a sound business case before you worry about branding”.

(Oh, and Strib? Weren’t you guys just raving about what a “success” the Hiawatha line has been?)

It’s too bad that it feels the need to become so thoroughly “wrapped up” in the pursuit of extra cash. It’s regrettable that it has violated the see-through principles of safe, responsible urbanism [hah!]. Advertising truly has its place on public transit — just not every place.

The Strib’s version of “new urbanism” is unsafe, irresponsible, and obsolete; their concern for the “branding” of a train that should never have been built (or at least built where it is) qualifies as “turd-polishing”.

Scots want to split from the UK:

In an ICM poll published this month by the Scotsman newspaper, 51 percent of Scots said they favored independence and 39 percent said they preferred keeping things as they are. Ten percent were undecided.

A poll conducted for the Sunday Times newspaper by YouGov found that 44 percent of Scots favored independence and 42 percent were against. The number favoring independence has nearly doubled since 2000, when YouGov asked the same question.

Rumor has it that parliamentarian Angus MacMcCain is pitching the Brit parliament on the notion of “Independence Campaign Finance Reform” to cure that.

Scotland has enjoyed a kind of quasi-independent status since 1999 after it was granted a parliament of its own and control over most of its internal affairs under a process called devolution. Many analysts thought devolution would put an end to calls for full independence. Instead, a taste of self-governance seems to have left the Scots hungry for more.

The Brits are paying the price for cutting and running in 1783; bit by bit, an ideology hostile to the one on which their government was built at the time has gobbled up most of their land and people; the US, Australia, Canada, India…

In the world of business, when an executive wants to get his subordinates onto the “same sheet of music” he’s on, he holds a “come to Jesus meeting”, where he/she exhorts, cajoles, bullies or otherwise convinces everyone to get with the program, whatever the program might be.

The GOP needs to do this, and desperately.

Ed and I had a bit of a Come to Reagan meeting Saturday on the NARN show. The subject – what does the GOP need to do to regain its worthiness to govern?

We, and most of the callers, agreed it came down to “first principles”. Of course, deciding what those “First Principles” are can get pretty dicey.

For example, Gay Marriage and Abortion are two issues where it’s possible not only for conservatives to disagree with liberals, but indeed with other conservatives, purely on conservative grounds. Banning either on a national basis would turn the Tenth Amendment on its head – so even as most conservatives are revolted by abortion and oppose gay marriage in and of themselves, they differ with social conservatives on government’s role in either issue. And both sides are conservatives.

As far as I’m concerned (and Ed was more or less on board with this as well), the big principles on which the GOP needs to model itself are:

• Strong defense (not just in a military sense, either; securing the border is vital)
• Limiting government – both in bread and butter terms (taxes) and higher principles (like restraining judicial activism). Constitutional Constructionism generally goes along with this.

With that understood – that the party is a big tent, but the tent is built on those two key overarching ideals – I have some questions for Republicans:

1. Assuming you’re a Republican (Democrats can abstain from this one; I gave you your own post last week, with generally dismal results), do you agree? On what principles should the GOP base itself?
2. Who, given your principles, should the GOP support for President? VP? If you’re in Minnesota, for Senate in ’06 and Governor in ’10
3. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have both violated a number of these first principles (McCain sponsored Campaign Finance Reform, a gross inflation of government power, and chaired the Gang of 14; Giuliani is quite anti-Second-Amendment, likewise a big government power grab (and also political suicide for anyone, much less a Republican, these days). Both are “pro-choice”, which means either/both that they support abortion (a no-no among social conservatives) and they abrogate the state’s Tenth Amendment right to decide an issue that the constitution, but for the fairly ludicrously-written Roe decision, would seem to have been reserved for the states. So – if either of them made amends on these issues, given that both of them would be very strong on defense and generally useful on other conservative issues, then would you, as a conservative/Republican, support them?

I don’t have the answers – I’m thinking about it, too. But I fully intend to do whatever is in my (dubious) power to hold the party’s feet in the fire about this.

UPDATE: Thorley Winston has a new blog – OK, a blog that’s been around a bit, but Thor’s been a bit busy for much updating – and a response to this post.

Scott Johnson responds to a note from a journalist friend, which I’ll excerpt here:

Your often trenchant critiques of the Strib’s editorial/opinion pages would be heard so much farther if you granted the strengths of the rest of the paper, thereby allowing you to point out how boring, slanted, vicious, cheap and dishonest the editorials often or usually are, compared with the rest of the Strib.

I’m guessing that, in effect, such an approach would be winsome, winning over many more of the Strib staffers who probably think similarly about the editorials, and would plunge the dart of your retort deeper into the hearts of the editorial editors.

I agree, actually. And I’ve actually done a bit of this, at least in terms of MPR (which is the second-most-important establishment news source in the Twin Cities.

And as far as “winning over Strib staffers” – well, I do hear from enough of them to know that this is a valid goal. There are a few people inside the Strib who know what’s going on, but also need to learn a living and don’t really want to go back to writing obituaries in Sheboygan.
So how about the Strib?

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I’m told that there’s a certain sect of Zuni tribesmen in the American southwest whose shamen pray every morning for the sun to rise. Since the sun rises every morning, they say, it must be working.

In a more-or-less unrelated matter, did you know Bill Press had a radio talk show?

Me either. But according to Brian Maloney, Press believes he – and Al Franken, and Fast Eddie Schultz – are the real impetus behind the electoral turnaround for the Dems: and for pretty much the same reasons as the Zuni shamen believe it:

But it also wouldn’t have happened – without progressive talk radio.

Think about it.

Two years, there was no progressive talk – It was all right-wing – and we lost our ass.

This year, there is progressive talk – and we won big time.

So shows like this really can make a difference. Not just me, of course. But Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, Al Franken and Randi Rhodes, Alex Bennett and all the rest.

And you, the listeners.

By speaking truth to power, every day – we helped get American back on track.

Be proud of what we accomplished in 2006.

And now – On to 2008!

Brian Maloney notes the absurdity of the claim:

Sure, Bill – your tiny ratings and small number of affiliates made all the difference in the world! It couldn’t have been that the Republican Party blew it, right?

Liberal talk radio is straining to justify its existence, granted – but given liberal talk’s anemic ratings (only in rare markets does the entire libtalk genre get out of the one-point cellar), to claim that libtalk had any impact at all is comical.

Dead at age 87.

Want eloquent writing about actors? See Sheila:

I’m sure others can be more eloquent about this well-loved and LONG successful actor (look at his IMDB page – especially look at the dates .. there isn’t really a significant GAP like there are with many old actors, gaps that show that they couldn’t get work for, oh, 10, 20 years … No gap. Palance has always worked.) … so I will just note his passing with sadness. I always liked having him around. Crotchety, old-school, talented, didn’t make a big deal about it, but obviously gave a crap about his work.

Oh … and a little bit crazy.

You know:

I love nuts like him.

Ditto.

I like satire. And normally, when the satirist runs up against the dim wailing of the not-too-bright audience, I take the side of the satirist.

But not this time:

A growing chorus of people who see no humor in Chris Stewart’s role in a satiric campaign website want the new Minneapolis school board member to resign even before he is sworn in.

But Stewart indicated that he is staying the course.

On Friday, former school board member Ann Berget joined those calling for Stewart’s resignation after he took responsibility for a racially themed website that mimicked the official website of Fifth Congressional District candidate Tammy Lee.

Racially themed? You be the judge. Here’s a bit:

Congressman Martin Sabo’s longtime District Director, Kathleen Anderson, who is a lifelong, loyal Democrat is crossing party lines for the first time in support of Tammy Lee’s campaign for Congress. Anderson says, “Independence Party candidate, Tammy Lee, is the only candidate that I feel is white enough to carry on Congressman Martin Sabo’s legacy. I’m voting for Tammy Lee because I’m a drunken hag who can’t possibly vote for Mandingo.”

Four suburban Mayors also agree and are publicly supporting and endorsing Lee’s candidacy: ReNae Bowman (DFL Mayor of Crystal), Mike Holtz (DFL Mayor of Robbinsdale), Martin Opem (Ind. Mayor of New Hope) and Gary Peterson (DFL Mayor of Columbia Heights). These are all elected politicians who no one has heard of, but still, they’re white like Tammy Lee.

Stewart’s side, via the Strib:

“The buck stops with me and I take responsibility for the caustic and gross commentary that has resulted.”I look forward to focusing my energy on the incredibly tough work of creating safe, orderly and academically rigorous schools for every child in Minneapolis.”

Naturally, the buck-stopping and responsibility-taking stops short of an concrete penitence.

Of course, if Stewart resigned, he’d be replaced (this is Minneapolis, after all) with someone who do doubt believed the same, whatever his/her race, whether they said it or not. This is the city that elects Greens to responsible positions in government, after all. But it’d be nice to draw the line somewhere.

Laptop is in the shop again.

So I’m enjoying the delightful repast of posting from a coffee shop. Mmmm, coffee!

Have to rig my Plan B machine back home.

OK. So now what are you going to do?

Seriously – yesterday, one of my commenters echoed what I’ve heard from more prominent Democrats; the Dems will “withdraw from Iraq with victory”.

Really?

And how do you plan on doing that?

Because I’ve heard a number of plans from Democrats…:

1. Leaving in six or twelve or whatever months flat
2. Pulling the troops back to Kuwait/Okinawa/”Afghanistan”, and, if the situation goes south, going back in and retaking the country
3. Reinstituting the draft and sending a huge draftee army forth to win the situation.
4. Negotiating with the terrorists.
5. “Fighting smarter”.

Of course, 1 and 2 have nothing to do with victory (and are only “victory” in the most cynical possible sense of the term). 3, history (assuming Democrats bother reading any) shows, is the worst possible approach to fighting a counterinsurgency war, 4 is the kind of lunacy only a Democrat could say with a straight face, and 5 (like 4) is a campaign-trail platitude that only fools the terminally dim.

But by all means, Democrats, convince me. How is it you plan to get both “withdrawal” and “victory”?

Seriously. Dad gave you the keys to the car. Impress me.

A longtime friend of this blog, and an elected official in the west metro, sends me this analysis:

Attached is a revised copy of the GOP scumbags that voted in favor of
final passage of the Twins Stadium bill.  You'll note 13 of the 38
turncoats were defeated or elected not to run and a DFLer took the seat.

This means:  Of the 26 seats that were lost, 13 (aka 50%) voted for the
Twins bill.

Coincidence?  Perhaps.  But I call it a factor in the defeat.

Here’s the list:

Won: Abeler (Anoka County)

LOST: Blaine (Morrison County)

LOST: (retired, moved to DFL) Bradley (Olmsted County)

Won: Brod (Sibley/LeSueur Counties)

LOST: Charron (Washington County)

LOST: Cox (Scott/Goodhue Counties)

LOST: Cybart (Scott County)

LOST: Davids (Fillmore/Houston Counties)

Won: Demmer (Dodge/Steele Counties)

LOST: (retired, moved to DFL) Dempsey (Goodhue County)

LOST: (retired, moved to DFL) Dorman (Freeborn County)

Won: Finstad (Brown County)

Won: Garofalo (Dakota County)

LOST: Gazelka (Crow Wing County)

Won: Gunther (Martin County)

Won: Hamilton (Cottonwood County)

Won: Heidgerken (Stearns/Pope Counties)

Won: Hoppe (Carver County)

Won: Lanning (Clay County)

Won: Magnus (Rock/Murray/Pipestone Counties)

Won: McNamara (Washington County)

Won: (retiring, held GOP) Meslow (Washington/Anoka Counties)

LOST: Peter Nelson (Chisago County)

Won: Nornes (Ottertail County)

Won: Ozment (Dakota County)

LOST: (retired, moved to DFL) Penas (Roseau/Kittson)

Won: Neil Peterson (HENNEPIN COUNTY)

LOST: (retired, moved to DFL) Samuelson (Ramsey County)

Won: Severson (Benton County)

Won: Simpson (Wadena/Ottertail)

Won: Sviggum (Wabasha/Rice)

Won: (retiring, held GOP) Sykora (HENNEPIN COUNTY)

Won: Tingelstad (Anoka County)

Won: Urdahl (Meeker County)

Won: Wardlow (Dakota County)

LOST: (retired, moved to DFL) Westerberg (Anoka County)

No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

When Republicans act like Republicans, we win.

When we act like Democrats – awash in power, giddy over being in control of all the cool wheels and buttons and levers of government – we lose.

Many Republicans needed a refresher. Many of them got it on Tuesday.

Got the offer.

Thanks to all for the various metaphysical or merely sotto voce encouragement.

(In a semi-related question – anyone need a tech writer or usability guy for a 1-2 week project?)

On the one hand, who better to cover the Neil Young classic “Cinnamon Girl” than Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs?

Cool.

On the other hand, time is not being especially kind to Sweet [compare and contrast].

Perhaps a name change to “Matthew Nutrasweet” is in order?

(more…)

Hugh knows:

Tuesday was part Foley fallout and part GOP fatigue. But it was mostly disgust with the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight on the Hill. The country expected a lot from the majorities it gave the Republicans in 2004, and it got very little. The long explanation is here. Team Pelosi is a high price to pay, but two years is a very short time. If the Republicans elect the right leadership, recruit the right candidates, and select the right nominee for the White House in ’08, they will be back in the majority two years from now.

All, of course, depends on the party having its “Come to Jesus Reagan” moment. As Limbaugh among many others noted yesterday, conservatism didn’t get smacked on Tuesday (as, indeed, we saw here in Minnesota, where Gil Gutknecht’s race to the center was rewarded by ejection, while Michele Bachmann is measuring the drapes in DC); overt conservatives generally fared better than the party at large; and let’s not forget that while the polls showed generalized frustration with the way things are going in Iraq, the same polls also showed that people oppose cutting and running by nearly 2-1.

I’ll forgive Tim Pawlenty for taking an accomodationist stance against a hostile (and deeply silly) DFL legislature. Politics sometimes requires pragmatism.

I will not forgive the GOP runnig to the center now. Going Beltway – acting like a ruling party, like the Dems did from the thirties through the eighties – was what killed the GOP this week.

Nationally? Dump Frist, Hastert and the whole gang that squandered two years of political capital. Neuter McCain (or make him act like a Republican).

In Minnesota? Well, it’s clear that something at the MNGOP needs to change; Minnesota has gone from “Purple” to “sickly, cyanotic Blue” inside of two years. Who screwed the pooch?
What do y’all think?

My mom called last night to tell me a bunch of her foreign friends were upbeat about the election results.

I thought about that as I read this bit about overseas reactions

And I thought – how typical is this?

The French want to whinge about “unilateral foreign policy?” The French have always run their foreign policy for the pure, simple benefit of France – which was why they provided nuclear technology to Hussein in the first place; They propped up the technology, defenses and trade of the the genocidal Hussein (going as far as building the nuclear reactor that the Israelis finally had to destroy 25 years ago) to buy themselves an ally in the region. The French have never bought into multilateral foreign policy – except to leverage their own self-serving interests; Whenever some gabbling Frog refers to “cowboy diplomacy”, I have to chuckle – the surrender monkeys invented the concept of diplomacie des enfants du vache.

Germans yakking about human rights? It was within the lifetime of your current leadership that we Americans taught you that gassing people by the trainload was a serious social gaffe. Kuess mei’ Sitzfleisch, Linker, and thank the US for not treating you the way the Soviets did – the way you deserved to be treated after what your nation did to the world (conservatives – find a liberal friend and tell ’em what the Germans and Soviets did to each other; all any of them remembers about history is the Indians, Slavery and the Civil Rights movement). To the extent that your nation has any moral capital to spend on yammering about human rights, you borrowed it from the souls of hundreds of thousands of Americans, Brits and Canadians who died teaching you the lesson.

Turks yipping about Guantanamo?; Go rent Midnight Express.
Sorry, whole wide world. When any of you are qualified to lecture the US about diplomacy, human rights or morality at large, we’ll let you know.

(more…)

From my comment section:

Now that we have subpoena power, we have the ability to critically examine every move you guys made for the last 6 years and believe me, we’re going to do it.

Oh, please. Please please please. Go for it.

I mean it. Subpoena everyone from Karl Rove down to Learned Foot. Bog the Congress down in endless retribution for your (plural) lunatic obsessions! Try to tie every “scandal” to have oozed from your fetid imaginations to any available Republican! Turn Congress into a venue for the Stalinist show trials so many of you have been panting about for so long!
Show the nation your true colors in time for 2008!

Show this nation what the Democrats are really made of.

It’ll be the best two years we Republicans could ask for.

Remember when Democrats whinged and yapped about the threat to democracy posed by Diebold? That the polling system was irredeemably broken?

Atomizer does, if only vaguely:

I realized that I had AM radio on all day and had not heard one frantic report of rampant voter fraud. I hadn’t heard a single person crying about how they had been disenfranchised. Nobody had yet come forward with tales of having been intimidated at the polls. The always reliable members of the MSM had yet to trot out even one pathetic loser who was too incompetent to figure out how to cast a ballot. No candidate was threatening court action to overturn a close result and nobody was shrieking about an election being stolen.

No, we were all spared these indignities this time around and I, frankly, found it quite refreshing. I guess that’s just what happens when adults lose elections.

I heard not a single Republican…:

• impugning the intelligence of the opposition
• declaring widespread fraud
• declaring the system broken
• saying that Americans (or “those other Americans”) need to “Wake Up”
• call for investigating secession.

The more I see the differences between the parties, the more I look forward to 2008. These Democrat hamsters are going to immolate themselves trying to actually run a government.

This next two years could be a huge opportunity.

Note:  This post has nothing to do with religion, per se.  At least, not in the sense that a person of faith would recognize. 

When I tell you I’m a Republican, those of you who don’t know me most likely resort to stereotypes; I’m white, male, Christian, anti-tax, anti-big-government, pro-defense (so far so good), anti-gay (not really true), pro-life (yes, but much moreso pro-Tenth Amendment), and…

…”Anti-Education”.  It’s an interesting phrase, that one; the notion of “Education” has been corrupted to refer to the institution of the educational establishment – the school boards, administrations, unions and the educational academy – in a sense that really has nothing to do with actually providing an “Education”.

So with that dichotomy understood – you’d be mostly wrong.  I was, in fact, one of those Republicans who was a big proponent  of public education.  Oh, it had problems, things that needed to be tuned up and fixed, but it was the system we had, dagnabbit!

Education was the family business, in a sense; my mother’s parents were both teachers, and my sister works in the system as well.   I even thought – briefly – about a career in education while in college, although that lasted about three days.

Most of all, my father was a teacher for the better part of four decades – and a great one at that.  Dad taught English, Literature and (best of all) Speech.  Strangers as well as friends of mine stop by years – now, decades – later and tell me he was the best teacher they’d ever had.  If every teacher were like Dad was – if every school district and administration let people like Dad teach, for that matter – we wouldn’t have an education crisis in this country.
You’ll note that everything in the previous couple of paragraphs is in the past tense.  I was a proponent.  Ten years ago, I was as strong a supporter of public education as one could find in the GOP.

That’s changed.  The public education system in Saint Paul and Minnesota has taken a guy who was once a firm friend, and turned him into an implacable, remorseless enemy for life. And it has little to do with politics – indeed, the GOP is almost (but not quite) as clueless as the DFL when it comes to education.  But it goes way deeper than that.
And now that both of my kids are at long last out of the public system, I’m going to tell their story, and mine.

There are going to be a number of parts to the story, probably two episodes a week for a couple of weeks.  Stay tuned.

(Read the whole series)

Strom:

Conservatives: this is not a turning point in history. This is a bad election. There is a difference. Take a few days to digest the loss, but then get ready to work. Our ideas are as necessary tomorrow as they were yesterday.

Read the rest of the post.

Michael Medved has a list of the lessons we should have learned last night.

I have a few more:

1. Check out the losers (in competitive races; Obi Sium, Rod Grams and Alan Fine can sit this one out, as can Colleen Rowley and Wild Wendy); Gil Gutknecht ran for the center when the president’s going got tough, as to a lesser extent did Mark Kennedy. Michele Bachmann stayed the course, and won by a solid margin. The lesson – conservatives win when they run as conservatives. I’ll be looking forward to hearing David Strom’s split of races between candidates who ditched the “No New Taxes” pledge and those who’ve kept true to it; at a superficial glance last night, it looked like the tax-hikers lost out, as they did in ’04.
2. While the Minnesota Poll was, for once, almost accurate, the Strib’s reporting took its’ place as a loathsome DFL tool. If you are a citizen who cares about democracy (as opposed to untrammelled one-party rule), you need to become better-informed about the ways the Strib shades its reporting. Read the blogs. Become a blogger, if you’re angry enough.
3. A letter-writer last night noting that he hopes that the MN Republicans…
   

   take a long hard look at how they run campaings after that ass kicking. I have a clue for them; Hennepin county matters, a whole lot!
   Stupid suburbanites run the party and they ran the campaign. If Aklo didn’t suck so bad, I’d say they got what they deserved.

Put another way – the MNGOP needs to learn, once and for all, that until they can make the cities competitive, the current strategy of holing up in one’s suburban enclave is going to continue delivering us disasters.

Plenty to learn, and about a year to learn it.

I look at it this way; it’s going to be a great two years for conservative talk show hosts (partly, at least, because when the Dems try to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine”, there’s at least a veto-sustaining minority of Republicans left in Congress). The Democrats, who ran a purely-negative campaign against the war and the President, devoid of any policy ideas, will now have to try to legislate from that same well of thought. Which will be, indeed, a blogger and talk-radio goldmine.

Good for me!

Of course it was a terrible night (and will be a gruelling two years) for taxpayers, the people of Iraq, fetuses, people who want the courts to act like courts rather than shadow legislatures – and if you’re a gun owner who voted Democrat, you need to get your head checked.

But it was what it was. King Banaian and I declared the 2008 campaign in session at about 1AM last night.

Game on.

A little bird told me…:

• Look for a potential upset in MN House District 3A, up in the far north part of the state. DFLer Tom Anzelc – endorsed to try to replace 17-term DFLer Irv Anderson – may have spent too much money (as in, all of it) getting through a bruising primary fight, and also faces a Ventura Independence Party challenge (which always soaks up DFL voters). Republican challenger Les Lemm looks to be in a decent position in this very DFL-heavy area.
• In District 8A, Jim Hilty – a five-term DFLer from Finlayson, in a district that frequently doesn’t field Republicans – has only started campaigning recently against Republican Tim Hafvenstein. Hafvenstein has apparently run a pretty solid, well-funded campaign; a little bird says it’s an even race.

Stay tuned for more.

Oh, don’t call Mary Kiffmeyer (or Doug, the Guardian of Poll Justice from my comment section): I had a spoiled ballot.

Suffice to say my cats are going to do much better than the pundits predicted.

By the way, Republicans; ignore the exit polls. They make you more discouraged than you need to.

And Democrats – you should also ignore the exit polls; they’ll make you sound like idiots in two years, say, when you’re insisting that exit polls are a more valid measure of voter intent than the actual results.

(Cue conspiracy theorists)