If you haven’t checked out Ed’s new digs at Hot Air, you should.  He’s blogging full-time again, and he’s got  some great stuff going on; his takedown of the Dems’ attempt to provide economic stimuli to voter fraud, his rip on the Times’ loathsome drive-by of John McCain’s citizenship status…

…and this story, about the depressing venality of Barack Obama’s economic “policies” so far:

 Many people have compared Obama to Ronald Reagan in his ability to promise “morning in America,” but they have focused only on the most superficial part of the Reagan revolution. Reagan didn’t cast himself as the agent of hope, but appealed to the hope within Americans that they could lift up the country, and not the other way around. He focused on the hope of the individual as the true agent of change, and not the despair of the collective that required government intervention.

The rhetoric has given us nothing really new. It has the same populist ring to it that we have heard since before collectivism got entirely discredited in the latter 20th century. It’s simplistic calls to soak the rich and redistribute the wealth, to impose economic isolationism, and to prey on the fears of the working class by casting globalization as an unmitigated evil.

I’ve noted, a few weeks ago, the Carteresque side of Obama’s polarizing, vilifying rhetoric.  Ed notes the similarities with William Jennings Bryan, another demigogue and legendary stemwinder.  And for me – a North Dakota native – Obama naturally smacks of Bill Langer, leader of the “Non-Partisan League” party, which advocated radical (and socialistic) measures to deal with the farm crisis during the Depression (and, if you’ve read the farm bills of the last sixty years, he’d seem to have won).

There are two kinds of things being written about yesterday’s ouster of Lt. Governor Molnau as Minnesota’s Transportation Commissioner.

1. Crap
2. First Ringer’s authoritative  takedown of the situation.

Let’s go with #2 for now (with emphasis added):

While the political adroit will likely observe that the day’s vote was set in motion five years ago with Pawlenty’s appointment of his right-hand gal in MN/DOT’s head office amid a more closely divided Senate, even the laymen know that whatever weakened clout she may have carried on July 31st, 2007, her tenure collapsed alongside the stretch of I-35 that sat in the Mississippi on August 1st.  As the dust settled and the administration’s critics drew blood with ink, most knew nothing could be done to salvage Molnau’s post – not even a record that saw increased construction and a willingness to entertain the transportation boondoggles of expanded light rail – given her proximity to the Governor.

The DFL resembles a toddler who’d rather smash a toy than share it:

Removing Molnau had emerged as something of a cause celeb among sectors of the local DFL as eager for a head on a plate as any significant legislative accomplishment.

And now, what passes for good news in this story, if you’re a Republican:

The DFL may have finally bludgeoned their transportation Bête noire but they may regret some of their defenses of their crime of passion.  Imbuing the Commissioners of the Governor’s Cabinet with an autonomy equivalent to a double-parked UN bureaucrat, the DFL implied the Governor had little right towards appointing authorities to carry out his administrative wishes yet alone share a philosophical view that there existed an alternative view of management of the state’s infrastructure outside of simply increasing the tax burden.  Rather, the DFL continued to present a series of false dichotomies as, perhaps in keeping with times, “change” versus doing nothing all.

A practice and dichotomy that is, by all accounts, getting the Republican base as riled as a hive of hornets.

Saddled with a superminority and few, if any, friendly media outlets, Republican plans to improve transportation or MN/DOT itself were relegated to a shallow grave on the back pages of the Metro section at best.  And without an aggressive effort to showcase an alternative, viable or not, the same strategy will be employed by the DFL’s electoral demolition crew until the margins look less like a Minnesota-flavored version of the Bertrand Snell-sized Republican minorities of the Great Depression.

The solution?  Well, Ringer has half of it?

Armed with an approval rating far greater than his current legislative lilliputians, Pawlenty would be wise to appoint a replacement more willing to do battle with the DFL Senate and even less likely to be approved.  Basking in victory, there seems little reason why the DFL would or should accept an appointee even remotely on the young governor’s terms.  Perhaps it would be far better to see an endless parade of appointees go before the Senate’s legislative gulliotine and leave MN/DOT headless for the duration if only to see one suggest that fixing the structural deficiencies of the State’s transportation funding system are necessary to improve roads – not paving them over with pork.

That, and focus all that outrage in the Republican conventions this next few weeks on getting that DFL supermajority escorted out of the building.

In my continuing homage to hot gear, we now enter the realm of the broken heart.

Remember that girl you went out with, once or twice, twenty years ago, where there was that brief, fleeting moment of connection, followed by…well, nothing? Or maybe that “pal” from high school where you realize, thirty years later, it could have and maybe should have been something else? The one where you could have probably gone a lot further, and there was potential, but something – it’s hard to remember exactly what, even – got in the way?

The Yamaha SG2000 is that.

The SG2000 is one of the most gorgeous guitars ever made. As dense as depleted uranium (meaning in terms of “weight per unit of volume”, not “Matt Snyders”), the body and neck are heavy, almost like carrying a guitar made out of steel railroad rails – so the sustain, fed through the SG’s gorgeous electronics, was just out of this world. It was a sweet-toned marvel with a low, slick action that made even the Les Paul feel clunky, and made playing Fenders (like my primary axe) feel like you were tryin to bend rebar.

It was built from the late seventies into the mid-eighties, and it never quite caught on like some of the others in its weight class – the Les Paul, of course, but also the Hamer Standard and the various Paul Reid Smiths – but it was a beautiful instrument that played just like ringing a bell.

I came across one on a frigid January Saturday in 1987 at the old Benedict Guitar store, on 34th and Lyndale. Visions of Stuart Adamson’s celtic guitar gymnastics skirling through my head, I sat and played it for close to two hours, putting it through every pace I could think of. And I fell madly in love.

And it was just on the high end of my price range. And prudence got the better of me.

And for 21 years, I think, I’ve regretted it.

Now, the Hollywood legend would have it that when you finally meet that girl who totally smote you back in high school, 25 years later, it’s all different; the thrill is gone (although the women in my graduating class have done really well, actually – can I get an amen, JHS ’81 guys?), with the SG2000, it’s a whole ‘nother thing. I found one, at Capitol Guitars in downtown Saint Paul, last summer.

And oh, my. Better than I remember.

Next year’s tax refund? Could be. We’ll see.

From Barney Greenwald’s classic soliloquy after the court martial in The Caine Mutiny:

See, while I was studying law ‘n old Keefer here was writing his play for the Theatre Guild, and Willie here was on the playing fields of Prinshton, all that time these birds we call regulars–these stuffy, stupid Prussians, in the Navy and the Army -were manning guns. Course they weren’t doing it to save my mom from Hitler, they’re doing it for dough, like everybody else does what they do. Question is, in the last analysis–last analysis–what do you do for dough? Old Yellowstain, for dough, was standing guard on this fat dumb and happy country of ours. Meantime me, I was advancing little free non-Prussian life for dough. Of course, we figured in those days, only fools go into armed service. Bad pay, no millionaire future, and You can’t call your mind or body your own. Not for sensitive intellectuals. So when all hell broke loose and the Germans started running out of soap and figured, well it’s time to come over and melt down old Mrs. Greenwald–who’s gonna stop them? Not her boy Barney. Can’t stop a Nazi with a lawbook. So I dropped the lawbooks and ran to learn how to fly. Stout fellow. Meantime, and it took a year and a half before I was any good, who was keeping Mama out of the soap dish? Captain Queeg.

I thought about that when I read this.  Medea “Code Pink” Benjamin before, defending Berkeley’s assault on the Marines:

“If it weren’t for people like the people in Berkeley, standing up for what they believe, we’d be living under Hitler.”

Medea Benjamin yesterday:

“While we were at the protest in Berkeley from 12 to 4 PM a white volvo drove by and a man spat upon code pink. They chased him down the street and got into a verbal altercation. The police were NO WHERE in sight. That’s not the best part, ready for this? Medea Benjamin yelled and I quote “Marines!” she actually yelled for our help because this man had stepped out of his car.

Perhaps a mistake?  Something lost in translation from human to Code-Pink-ese?

I even asked her if she was yelling Police and she told me “I said Marines” then put her arm around my friend Allen (the Marine vet) Ironic?

Paging Alanis Morissette.  And Jose Ferrer.
(Via Malkin)

I remember when I first became aware of the decay of the education system, during Reagan’s first term.  “A Nation At Risk” was the seminal report detailing the problems the system faced.

The thing that worried me at the time was the overwhelming push to drive kids into science and math.  Although I was still pretty much a proponent of the system back then, I figured that the only way to deal with this nation’s “shortage of scientists and engineers” was not to try to convince junior high kids that math was cool – but to teach kids to think, and pave the way for the ones that are inclined toward math and science to get into the field.  But with all due respect to my engineer and scientist friends, math and computer science and engineering majors can be among the most provincial, narrowly-focused people around. Which is fine to an extent; I don’t care if my neurosurgeon has read James Joyce, and I’ll forgive some of our engineers’ ignorance on Locke vs. Rousseau if they at least get the next batch of gusset plates right.

But I worried about the tendency to push science and engineering as a panacea for all that ailed education.

And, whaddya know, I was right!

Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Don’t count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can’t identify the books or historical events associated with them.

Twenty-five years after the federal report A Nation at Risk challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education, the study finds high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of “a complete education.” And, its authors fear, the nation’s current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities – even if children can read and do math.

Wanna know something scary?  I actually expected these numbers below to be worse than they turned out:

Among 1,200 students surveyed:•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.

•52% could identify the theme of 1984.

•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

I’ve commented on this before, here and on the NARN show.  My kids complained that, while in the public system in Saint Paul, they basically learned about…:

• Slavery
• The Civil Rights movement.

Worthy and essential topics – but hardly the whole sweep of American contribution to the world, much less history.
Now, certain lesser bloggers phumphered and argled when I made that comment on the air.  But I had a point…:

“School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it,” says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. “What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom’s Cabin part.”

I guess in a backhanded way, I should be encouraged.  Indeed, I suspect the alternative media has had a lot to do with the wide knowledge of at least the surface aspects of 1984.

I mean, maybe.

The findings probably won’t sit well with educators, who say record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement history, literature and other courses in high school.

“Not all is woe in American education,” says Trevor Packer of The College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement.

Maybe there’s a change in the wind for the public system?

The study’s release today in Washington also serves as a sort of coming out for its sponsor, Common Core, a new non-partisan group pushing for the liberal arts in public school curricula.

And…maybe…not…

Its leadership includes a North Carolina fifth-grade teacher, an author of history and science textbooks, a teachers union leader and a former top official in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Stay tuned.

I don’t know if I was the only one who heard about the Administration’s plan for a “virtual fence” – sort of like a real fence, only hideously expensive and relying on unproven technology, and which provides no physical barrier to actually crossing it – and recalled the many other “virtual” flopolas of the dotcom era.

If you did, pat yourself on the back (virtually, if not physically); you were right. The virtual fence is to security what Pets.com was to investment, or what PowerAgent was to virtual scamming:

Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.

Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.

The announcement marked a major setback for what President Bush in May 2006 called “the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history.” The virtual fence was to be a key component of his proposed overhaul of U.S. immigration policies, which died last year in the Senate.

Investigators for the Government Accountability Office had earlier warned that the effort was beset by both expected and unplanned difficulties. But yesterday, they disclosed new troubles that will require a redesign and said the first phase will not be completed until near the end of the next president’s first term.

Those problems included Boeing’s use of inappropriate commercial software, designed for use by police dispatchers, to integrate data related to illicit border-crossings. Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.

How about a few hundred thousand dollars a mile to replace the “software” with railroad-style people-management hardware – a double row of chain link topped with barbed wire?

I may be the only person in the western world who can say this truthfully:  I was converted to conservatism while an English major in college.

My major advisor – Dr. James Blake (easily the finest among many, many fine professors I had at my obscure but talent-rich little college in the middle of nowhere) was so far to the right, he described himself as a “monarchist”, with a straight face; he also introduced me to a series of writers that helped push me along on my journey from left to right; Dostoevski, Solzhenitzyn, Tolstoii, Paul Johnson, and even P.J. O’Rourke. 

Dr. Blake and I weren’t entirely alone; the other upper-division major at the time was a guy named Scott.  We’d been friends since high school; a year older than me, we’d played guitar together in any number of abortive bands; he wrote a column under the pseudonym “Madagascar Red” in the college paper that I edited which, with the hindsight and gauzy soft focus that two decades’ remove grants all things, was as funny as anything in The Onion.  Honest.

Anyway, Scott was another conservative in the English department.  And as my own journey to the right coalesced, the three of us became something of a conservative brickbat-throwing machine at Jamestown.

The school’s library was run by quite a different specimen – a woman who was, in addition to the wife of my History minor advisor, a bit to the left of even the academic norm.  A well-meaning sort, but…well…

She had a “suggestion book” at the entrance to the stacks; if someone wanted to see a book or other resource, they could write it into the book.  There was a column for the librarian’s response. 

One chilly October morning, Scott and I walked into the library.  He looked around, grabbed a pen, and wrote down “Please get a copy of God And Man At Yale“. 

The response took a week or two; finally, the librarian wrote something snarky and dismissive.

Wrong move.

In an exchange that resembled a blog comment section, fifteen years before blogs were invented, Scott and the librarian mixed it up – he making the case for including this key, vital book in the collection, she backpedalling and trying to justify (eventually) its exclusion.

I think Scott graduated without seeing the issue resolved. 

The long and short of it being that the whole fracas was my introduction to the pure, simple joy of being a conservative underdog, duking it out with the leaden, lumpen establishment.

Just saying; without that dust-up on William F. Buckley’s behalf, this blog might never have existed.

If there was a person I was hoping to meet at this fall’s GOP convention (besides Angie Harmon), it would have been William F. Buckley, the godfather of the American conservative media.

Sadly, it’s not going to happen. 

Author and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. has died at age 82.

His assistant Linda Bridges says Buckley died Wednesday morning at his home in Stamford, Conn.

I remember watching the erudite, unflappable Buckley driving liberal commentators to near-aneurisms as I was just starting to question my own left-of-center assumptions as a college kid, and thinking – showing the prejudice that I still rail against in too many on the left – “wow – he’s pretty smart for a Republican”. 

I’d so hoped he’d make it to the NARN reception…

Nick Coleman wrote a column about a scary – and fairly atypical – home invasion in crime-sodden Minneapolis:

Someone called 911 on Nov. 3 to report three men walking on the street in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis…a police squad was sent to investigate. It was too late.By that time, the three men were burglarizing a nearby home, climbing on patio furniture to get in through a small window that had been opened to air out the kitchen after dinner. Grabbing butcher knives off a counter, the masked robbers burst into a nearby room, surprising the homeowner, who was playing the piano.

It’s gotta be one of everyone’s worst nightmares; one or more complete strangers, descending on you like a bolt from the blue, with mayhem in mind.

It’s both relatively rare and all too common; in the US, about one in eight burglaries is “hot” – it occurs when someone is home. They’re incredibly dangerous situations. In countries like the UK, with stiff gun controls, the ratio is one in two. But I digress.

The homeowner had some guns – but they were hunting guns and a relic, locked in a case downstairs. They weren’t for self-defense; in this situation, they were for bargaining:

“I could have had an Uzi, and it wouldn’t have done any good,” he says. “I was pounced on.”

I’d be the last one to second-guess people in that situation – although I was in a not-completely-different one twenty years ago this coming summer. More later.

Although the robbers involved sound like the kind of people the world’d be better off if they did get shot:

Mike was knocked on the floor by the robbers, who put knives to his throat, threatened to kill him and started filling paper bags with valuables: Jewelry (including rings that belonged to Jane’s parents), a laptop computer, a BlackBerry, house keys. They rolled up a Persian rug and took that, too…But the robbers wanted more than they could find. They were becoming threatening, so Mike tried to calm them by revealing that he had guns they could add to their haul.

The robbers led Mike at knifepoint to the basement and made him open the cabinet where he kept a shotgun, a rifle and an old pistol. Then they loaded the guns with ammunition, tied Mike up, and pointed his guns at his head…Thankfully, the robbers did not shoot Mike that night, telling him he “could stay [alive] with your family.”

And while some justice may yet be served, “Mike” may have gotten lucky after all:

Five days after the home invasion, three suspects were arrested in Michigan City, Ind., after one pulled a gun from a car trunk and wounded another person…The suspects are from Gary, Ind., and are 18, 21 and 23. They are expected to be extradited to Minnesota to face charges of first-degree burglary and aggravated robbery.

One can hope they get a long, ugly sentence. Given that it’s Hennepin County, I won’t hold my breath.

There are plenty of lessons one can draw from this incident.

• For all its recent improvements, Minneapolis remains a high-crime city.
• Prudence rules. It pays not to make your house an easy mark, either passively (by leaving your house an easy mark) or actively (by ones’ ability, or lack thereof, to deter or resist crime).
• Sometimes events, or capricious, remorseless fate, trumps prudence. Prudence, in short, helps, but it is no guarantee of safety.
• “Mike” is a lucky guy.

For my part? Well, I try; I do the usual prudent, passive stuff. And if you’ve read my blog, you know I advocate more active measures as well – within the bounds of the law, of course.

Charlie Quimby draws a different lesson:

The castle defender fantasy, of course, is an armed and prepared homeowner defeating such an invasion with extreme prejudice — as family lore said my granny once did.

But in reality, we are not so eternally vigilant. Like Mike, we play piano or crank up the tunes. We hunker over blog posts. We take care with trigger locks. We come home with our arms full of groceries. We sleep.

We live our lives.

Since it’s Charlie Quimby, I’ll assume he didn’t mean a gross insult with the “Castle Defender Fantasy” quip. The fact is, most of us who choose to exercise our Second Amendment right to defend ourselves and our homes with firearms are pretty normal folks; when we talk about defending our castle, we’re not like the guy in “Pride of the Marines”, his machine gun blazing away into the teeth of a Banzai charge.

But the other fact is, choosing active self-defense does involve some changes in the way you perceive things around you. Not adopting a bunker mentality, as the “Castle” quip implies, but certainly in being more than a passive spectator to events around one.

I’m not here to pass judgment on peoples’ choices on defending their homes, selves and families. Active, passive, submissive, it matters not so much.

But Quimby – normally a fairly rational sort – passes on a few myths about the issue that, while they’ve been ransacked like “Mike’s” house in the marketplace of ideas in the past fifteen years, still seem to be making the rounds.

The reality is that about 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides or accidents. At least half Nearly half of suicides murders involve non-strangers, and guns were involved in more than half the deaths of those who knew their killer.

Quimby posts this graphic to support his statement:

What is – by a factor of 600% – the biggest category among “non-strangers?”

“Acquaintances”. It might mean a hunting buddy. It could mean someone in the neighborhood that the victim knows by name. And it could – indeed, in the vast majority of cases does – mean “someone’s drug dealer, or customer, fellow or opposing gang member, or partner/opponent in some criminal venture”. It doesn’t matter – as long as the two have met, in any context, it’s a “Non-stranger”.

This was the big clinker behind the infamous 1993 New England Journal of Medicine study that – according to the gun controllers who spun the results – showed that a gun in the home was 43 times as likely to kill the owner of someone the owner knows than a criminal.  Of course, in the raw data (shootings from a period of time in King County Washington, including Seattle), the vast majority of the “43” were suicides; most of the rest were shootings involving people who “knew” each other; abusive spouses, drug dealers and customers, casual acquaintances, and so on.

But back in the day, someone – and the name is unfortunately lost to pre-Google history – went through the raw data, and noted that if you control for households where the gun owner has a drug or alcohol-abuse record, a violent mental illness or a criminal record, and assume that killing criminals isn’t the goal (and it’s not; deterring them is), it broke down more like this:

• If someone in the house has a problem with drugs, booze, mental illness or a crime record, a gun is about equally-likely to kill the owner or an acquaintance
• If nobody in the house has any of those problems, a gun is 400 times as likely to deter a crime as to harm anyone (and that’s using the FBI’s deterrence stats, which are about an order of magnitude lower than the number criminologist Gary Kleck uses).

Quimby:

In other words, if you die by gun shot, it’s not likely to happen at the hands of three young men from Flint.

True.  With all due respect to Mike and his wife, it’s most likely to happen at the hands of three young men from Flint that you met at a bar and bought crack from.

But the point is still correct. You are more likely to die from a gun that belongs to you or someone you know than to die at the hands of a stranger.

It’s “correct”, and still completely out of context!

Quimby concludes:

That does not mean people are wrong to have guns for self-defense. I’m simply stating that owning guns doesn’t necessarily make you safer from gun violence.

And having a sprinkler system doesn’t mean you’ll never die in a fire – but it helps.

Especially if the sprinker is turned on – or  in your pocket, loaded, and ready to use in legal self-defense, as the case may be.
Which, for better or worse, “Mike’s” were not.

The Strib finally provided a public service yesterday, in this editorial.

Oh, you get context-mangled DFL propaganda, first, naturally:

One of this state’s most persistent and damaging political logjams finally gave way Monday. As a result, some of this state’s most persistent traffic jams will ease before this decade ends, and most damaged bridges will be replaced.

Let’s strive for honesty, here.  The state will build monuments to itself – and, maybe, take care of some infrastructure difficulties if they get around to it.

But whatever; “stop the presses, the Strib writes a hagiography for DFL hacks”.  Whoop di doo.

But then – mirabile dictu – they do something useful. 

They provide a handy-dandy blacklist!

Many of the legislators and lobbyists who contributed to this result deserve credit for making the state’s infrastructure a priority in 2008. Our list is incomplete, but starts with these:

• DFL House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. Yesterday’s vote likely would have had a different outcome were it not for Kelliher’s personal role in shaping the bill. She took the lead in securing business backing. Her respectful, persistent courtship of House Republicans won six minority votes that stayed solid under heavy intra-caucus pressure.

Did the editorial writer work for Kim Jong-Il? 

Kelliher twisted arms, browbeat, and threatened to kill GOP legislation in committee – and even then, she only got six RINO patsies.

Kelliher’s legacy – “the only political in Minnesota not as inept as Larry Pogemiller” – is intact; she needed a crushing legislative majority to accomplish her mission in two terms as the leader of a prohibitive majority.  Not that that’s good news; as Churchill said, you can’t win a war with a series of Dunkirks. 

But making Kelliher a hero is…well, Sturdevantian (indeed, the article looks like Sturdevant’s work).

Further evidence of Sturdevantism:  the Strib pastes a nice, big target on one of their butt-boys:

• Rep. Ron Erhardt, R-Edina. The template for yesterday’s bill was the one Erhardt assembled almost single-handedly in 2005, when, as the chair of the House Transportation Policy Committee, he resolved to do something about the growing shortage of transportation funds.

The NARN Volume II will be interviewing Keith Downey, real Republican candidate to replace Erhardt, this Saturday at 2:15.  Tune in, and bring the outrage.

His bill was vetoed, but his courage inspired others. Kudos to the five other House Republicans who voted yes yesterday: Neil Peterson, Bloomington; Kathy Tinglestad, Andover; Jim Abeler, Anoka; Bud Heidgerken, Freeport, and Rod Hamilton, Mountain Lake.

Yeah, “editorial writer”.  His courage is gonna inspire a backlash that’ll make the “Contract With America” look like a Mike Gravel rally.

• Minnesota Chamber of Commerce President David Olson. By raising their gas tax ante at the start of the session, Olson and the chamber positioned themselves to help shape the outcome.

 Read:  “The CoC cozied up to the majority for pure political expediency”. 

Olson withstood nasty barbs from some of his own members to secure for his organization a seat at the negotiating table and a role in whittling down the bill’s metro sales tax to 0.25 cents on the dollar.

In other words, he worked to push this grotesque subsidy bill out of the failing Metro, to the parts of the state that work.

Great work!

The revenue this bill will provide for roads, bridges, transit and even repair of the MnDOT building is badly needed. Now it’s up to the Legislature’s DFL majorities to find ways to soften the tax blow that goes with it. A 20-year transportation funding battle ended yesterday, but the general fund battle is about to begin.

Read:  Hold onto your houses, your first-born and your clothing; it’s too late for your wallets.

If you’re not ready to march on the Capitol – especially the DFL/RINO Caucus – with torches and pitchforks, then what the hell will it take?

Kouba at TvM notes the inevitable:

One more thing. If you think roads are the only thing the DFL will say needs urgent fixing right now or we’ll all die, take another look at this post.

State Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, says bipartisan accord is within reach on a new, simpler funding formula for K-12 education, one better tied to what up-to-the-standards schooling actually costs.

All that’s needed, she said, to sell the Legislature on the recommendations likely to come out of a task force she cochairs is (drum roll, please) more money. A cool $1 billion more per year, phased in over a few years, would do the job.

A billion dollars?

So – still think there’s no difference between the parties?

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  Check for the update at the bottom. 

If you live in Minnesota, you know that there is nobody in the state who gets more media attention than the thin film of Republicans who pine for the “good old days”, when Republicans and Democrats “worked together” (by acting like Democrats).

But the rest of the nation might be a little newer to the phenomenon. Oh, we’ve seen bits and pieces; the odd article about fundamentalist liberals (notwithstanding that Evangelicals vote 3-1 Republican)), or the occasional liberal in the active-duty military (4-1 GOP in 2004).

But soon, the flotsam and jetsam of “Republicans for Taxes, Abortion, Gun Control and Dishonorable Peace” will soon start getting the same treatment that Minnesota’s remaining Carlson Republicans get from Lori Sturdevant; bemused fawning.

Example: This piece in the LATimes, by Mark Barabak, entitled “They’re Republican Red, and True Blue to Obama“, which (it should surprise nobody) reads like an Obama puff piece.

GOP renegades seeking a candidate capable of ending the Washington
partisanship are surfacing in the senator’s campaign in surprising numbers.
“Obamicans,” he calls them.

“Unicorns”, I calls them.

Delaware, Ohio – Chatter bounces off the bare walls and checkered
linoleum floor as Josh Pedaline and other Barack Obama supporters burn
through their call sheets.

A map of Delaware County splays across a tabletop. Another table is
laden with cookies, pretzels and other snacks. Volunteers sit elbow to
elbow, pecking at cellphones and pitching the Illinois Democrat in
advance of Ohio’s March 4 primary. The scene is a typical campaign boiler
room.

Except that four of the 13 dialing away are lifelong Republicans,
including Pedaline, 28, who reveres Ronald Reagan and twice voted for
President Bush.

And on, and on, and on, bla bla di bla.

Expect all fifty of the “Obama Republicans” to have their own programs on CNN by September.

UPDATE:  Whenever I read stories about “Republicans for Taxes, Abortion, Gun Control and Dishonorable Peace”, my first reflex is to Google the names.  Life got in the way yesterday, unfortunately – I didn’t get to do a complete search…

…but one of my commenters notes that Josh Pedaline, “lifelong Republican” at age 28, has at least one hit on the BS Search:

This Pedaline guy is a lifelong republican at age 28? Wiat, here’s his Obamasturbation page.  He wrote the page two years ago & at that time he was calling bush ‘evil’. He considers himself a centrist and a moderate.

First rule of thumb; whenever the media points you to either a “Republican that’s turned Democrat”?  Distrust, and verify.

Dave Mindeman writes the leftybot blog MNpACT!. And he – like Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman – misses the good ol’ days, when “Republicans” were nothing but Tics with better haircuts.

He’d also seem to have bought, whole hog, into the Barack Obama-via-Daily-Kos school of political rhetoric, in a post that combines Obama’s substance-free noodling with the Kossack penchant for broad insults.

Rep. Kathy Tingelstad, R-Andover has committed the ultimate crime against the Minnesota conservative base.

She has rational thoughts.

Some background for political non-junkies in the audience; Kathy Tingelstad was one of the Republicans who voted for the DFL’s 6-plus billion dollar Mass Transit Subsidy “Transportation” bill. She is also one of the six RINOs in the House that voted to override the Governor’s veto of this pork-barrel monstrosity.

In retaliation, her district’s Republican convention declined to endorse her at their convention this past weekend. The District 49B Republican Party – acting in their capacity as the people who decide who will represent the party and its’ interests in the November election, committed the radical act of wanting Republicans to act like Republicans.

One presumes that Mr. Mindeman, having declared “support for the pork-barrel bill” to be “rational thought”, will eventually tell us how opposing the bill is “irrational”.

To fail to do so would be Obama-esque. Or Kos-like. One of the two.

She has the audacity to look for solutions.

Or was it “The audacity of hope?” Or some similar meaningless catch phrase?

To feel that her district needs actual help and not more delays. She has the unmitigated gall to vote as an individual and not as a collective, mindless, partisan gang of naysayers.

Score one for “meaningless catch phrase”.

The nerve.

With reasoning skills like this, it’s not hard to see why Minnesota’s left-of-center bloggers, as a community, are a national laughingstock.

Tingelstad voted – which is what she was free (and elected) to do.

Her district GOP convention responded – as they are free to do as well. As, indeed, is the purpose of party conventions! To do party business!

It is obvious that she needs to be punished. District 49B activists are willing to oblige. No endorsement for you, until you repent!

Maybe the GOP in District 49B has some unusual insight into the voters of their district.

Being as they are, to a person, voters in District 49B, that might actually stand to reason!

Obviously, it is a different reading than Rep. Tingelstad has been getting.

Here’s Mindeman’s problem – and to be fair to him, it’s the same problem that everyone in the DFL from Brian Melendez to Lori Sturdevant has; they want Republicans to do the DFL’s work for them. To magically deduce the “will of the district’s voters” first and foremost, before (or instead of) actually acting like a political party…

…and act on that bit of clairvoyance DFL-friendly wishful thinking.  So the DFL doesn’t have to.

Of course, I’ve not noticed the DFL doing the same; although most Minnesotans oppose unrestricted abortion, for example, we’ve not seen the DFL do what Melendez/Sturdevant/Mindeman would have the GOP do – forget that they’re a political party!

Because in the special little world of the likes of Sturdevant and Nick Coleman and Dave Mindeman, only the DFL gets to act out of partisan interest!

When she announced her re-election bid in 2006, it stated:

However, what she’s best known for is being the leading advocate in the Legislature for the Northstar Commuter Rail project. This year, the legislature approved $60 million for Northstar, the final state contribution to the rail project, which will begin service through Coon Rapids in 2009.

Heretic!

She actually wants to bring District 49B into the 21st Century.

How can the GOP stand for such forward thinking, rational ideas?

They can’t.

DISCLOSURE: I don’t necessarily actually oppose the Northstar, either.

But if the threshold for “21st Century Rationality” is “unblinking, unquestioning support for a 19th century transportation system that systematically shorts our road and bridge infrastructure”, I think I’m starting to understand where Mindeman’s myopia Obama-esque paucity of actual substance comes from; it’s only in the absence of actual thought that it makes any sense.

What is the threshold to be considered “rational”? In Dave Mindeman’s world, it’d seem to be “following the DFL line, even if you’re a Republican. Nya nya nya”, and not a whole lot more. To be fair to Mindeman, there could be more to his point of view. To be realistic, there’s no evidence of it in this post.

I add emphasis in this next bit:

So, they must punish this problem solver. They must set an example, so that any other rational and clear headed thinkers can be chastised back into the program, and become the partisan automatons they were endorsed to be.

“Partisan” and “Party” come from the same root! It was a party convention!

The voters of District 49B be damned.

Pardon me. I need to take an ibuprofin.

One wonders why Mindeman wrote that last line.

Does he really not understand the function of political parties? I suppose if your entire point of view is based on having always been the party in power – in conflating the party and the state in ones’ cognitive model of government – which is common in places like China and the USSR and Minneapolis – it’s understandable (albeit kinda disturbing).

Does he merely assume his readers don’t know any better? I suppose if Dave Mindeman’s only goal is to push DFL orthodoxy, it’d be a convenient assumption.

Or, either way, does he just not know that the voters have their say?

In November?

Not March?

(more…)

…what if a certain local “media columnist” were to write a column in a local Sorosblog about…well, local media?

He’d insert huge swathes of his own opinion to bind together rumors from the few of his drinking buddies that still had jobs at newspapers, TV stations and radio operations.

And on this blog, hypothetically speaking of course, he’d “moderate” comments – and only approve (publish) the ones that basically agreed with him!

Why, we could call it “Hamster To The Slaughter”!

Nah. Dumb idea.

So where do we go from here?

It’s really fairly simple.

First:  Remember This List of Names. These are the “Republican” legislators that stabbed the governor, the party, and every single fiscally-responsible voter in the back:

• Rep. Abeler, Jim (48B) – 651-296-1729.  rep.jim.abeler@house.mn
• Rep. Erhardt, Ron (41A) – 651-296-4363.  rep.ron.erhardt@house.mn
• Rep. Hamilton, Rod (22B) – 651-296-5373.rep.rod.hamilton@house.mn
• Rep. Heidgerken, Bud (13A) – 651-396-4317.  rep.bud.heidgerken@house.mn
• Rep. Peterson, Neil W. (41B) – 651-293-5373. rep.neil.peterson@house.mn
• Rep. Tingelstad, Kathy  (49B) – 651-296-5369. rep.kathy.tingelstad@house.mn
• Sen. Frederickson, Dennis (21) – 651 296-8138.  mailto:sen.dennis.frederickson@senate.mn
• Sen. Dille, Steve (18) – 651 296-4131. sen.steve.dille@senate.mn

Call them.  Write them.  Make your displeasure known.  Make it very plain that you’re tired of being “represented” by “Republicans” who act like Democrats.

And call the other Republicans – the ones with integrity – and thank them.  They’re feeling incredible pressure from the overgrown spendthrift teenagers that are running things in the Legislature these days.

2. Ignore the BS.  The Gang of Eight’s excuse is going to be that the DFL committee chairs extorted them by telling them their bills won’t be heard if they didn’t vote to override.

Tough.  That’s what elections are for.  And that is on you, the voter.

3. Retire Them From Office.  Maybe it’ll be this coming month at the endorsing conventions.  Maybe it’ll be at th next round of caucuses.  It doesn’t matter.  Get rid of them.

4. Ignore the Strib, the Leftymedia, and the DFL. They’ll do what they always do – try to paint tax hawks as ignorant peasants beating on the observatory door with pitchforks and torches.  It’s an attempt to play on peoples’ insecurities – their desire to appear as smart as their neighbors.  The left has spent four generations setting itself up as the “smart” party – and given us a catastrophically-failed school system, a decaying post-secondary system, and a population that thinks “Audacious Hope” is a policy position.  Don’t buy it. 

All of this is predicated, of course, on getting, being, and staying involved; on not staying home because of John McCain’s alleged slights or Tim Pawlenty’s trip to the arctic or whatever.

The House overrode Governor Pawlenty’s veto of the Mass Transit Subsidy “Transportation” bill. 

Six House Republicans broke with the governor to make the 90 votes needed to override. The final tally was 91-41.

Hang on to your wallets, Minnesota.  And be careful on those bridges; most of the SIX BILLION DOLLARS is going to go to DFL pet projects, pork, and mass transit.  Which you can ride to your next job interview, since the DFL is dead-set on gang-raping the state economy. 

The Lady Logician has the names of the six RINO hamsters who betrayed the party and the people who voted them into office:

Rep. Abler

Rep. Erhardt [about whom more below – ed.]

Rep. Tinglestad (hello HD49!)

Rep. Heidgerken

Rep. Neil Peterson

Rep. Hamilton 

Kudos to the District 49B GOP, who denied endorsement to Rep. Tingelstad last weekend.  I don’t know which districts haven’t held conventions yet, but I’d hope they also either deny endorsements or – better yet – endorse people who won’t betray Republican and Conservative ideals.

Like Keith Downey has a chance to do in Edina.  I think we’ll be interviewing him this weekend on the NARN Volume II show (stay tuned for details).  If you live in Edina, you need to turn out to support him in ejecting the hamster Erhard from office.  If you live in a safe district (or, alternatively, a hopeless one, as I do), you need to pony up time and money to support Downey.  While it would be the depth of pretension for me, a humble blogger, to “endorse” anyone, let it be known that I’d really, really like Downey to kick the hamster Erhard’s ass at the March 8 convention, and sweep to victory in November behind a tide of angry, motivated conservatives.

It’s time to put some RINO pelts above the fireplace.

UPDATE:  Well, maybe the State GOP gets it after all.

There are still a few things you can count on in this universe.  The sun rising in the east; the futility of the Cubs Vikings; the fastball, the Jeep CJ, the Les Paul, Summit Beer, the National Review‘s point of view; God, country, death and taxes.

And Captains Quarters, posting eight to fifteen posts of brand-new, top-flight political analysis (and Notre Dame flakkery) every single day.

In these unsettled times, it’s good to know that you can still count on…

Beginning on March 1, I will begin working for Michelle Malkin, a friend, mentor, and writer I have long admired. She has offered me a position as writer at Hot Air, and my blogging will appear exclusively there.

…er…how’s that?

That means that I will close out Captain’s Quarters sometime in March.

 Doh.

Um…

…never mind.

 This saddens me, as it has become my ever-ready home and because of the terrific community it has generated. I hope that the CapQ community comes with me to Hot Air, and Hot Air will have open registration today for 12 hours in order to allow CapQ commenters to join me at my new digs.

Seriously – congrats, Ed!  This is a huge move for E-Mo, my friend, fellow MOBster and radio colleague, and will make him, if possible, an even bigger mover and shaker in the alternative media.

Yesterday, Canada.  Tomorrow…Red China?

(more…)

If you are a principled conservative – or just a taxpaying and/or gun-owning citizen who’s sick of being taken for a ripe suck and/or a “potential criminal” – you have two orders of business before you today:

• Call or fax (or email) your Republican representative (and/or as many other Republican representatives as you can) to tell them to back the Governor on the veto of the Mass Transit Subsidy “Transportation” Bill.
• Call or fax (or email) your rep and/or Senator about Michael Paymar’s gun registration bill – the bill that’d treat every law-abiding gun owner in Minnesota as a criminal first, while doing nothing to so much as inconvenience real criminals.

I put “Or email” in tiny type because, as Kevin correctly notes in the comment section, “Emails make little difference, they get alot of them. Faxes, and especially calls, are more likely to make an impact”.

He’s right, of course. Emails are cheap; everyone writes ’em, and way too many of them are the equivalent of political spam – one email with hundreds of legislators on the cc: line.
But legislators, like talk show hosts, know that every phone call they get represents 100 other people who didn’t call.

So – find and call (or email) your Senator, and then do the same with your Representative.

Be polite. But tell ’em where you sit.

Because nothing says “democracy” like the knowledge that the constituents are not only watching, but they’re pissed, too.

All of you Republicans who sat out the 2006 election because Mark Kennedy voted for Ethanol subsidies,or Norm Coleman voted for ANWAR, or Tim Pawlenty called a “tax” a “fee”?

Bad things happen.

Big, bad things like the Mass Transit Subsidy “Transportation” bill, of course – and slightly smaller things, like the DFL’s universal gun registration bill.

Joel Rosenberg explains:

It’s HF 3324. The companion bill — same language — in the Senate is SF 2989 . Buried in jibber-jabber about “assault style weapons” and the usual gun grabber gibberish, this is nothing more or less than a permanent gun registration scheme for the state of Minnesota. If this bill becomes law, every time a handgun or supposedly scary rifle is transferred — even between two private parties — the state would keep a list of who bought it, and who sold it, and when.

The DFL believes they can get away with this because – well, they can. They won a majority in both houses, and it’s almost veto-proof. With the aid of a couple of Republicans in Name Only – “Republicans” but not conservatives, people who crave the approval of the likes of Lori Sturdevant – the DFL pretty well gets its way.

And not only do they get to romp and play in your wallet, and your schools,and your businesses, but they get to do what they want in your gun locker. Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota – a group with maybe ten members, run by one Heather Martens – has an inordinate amount of sway with the DFL.

Joel explains the way this bill is going to work:

Got an old revolver that your buddy has an eye on? No, you couldn’t just ask to see his carry permit or purchase permit and hand it over — or even loan it to him for a couple of weeks.

Nope; the two of you would have to go down to a gun shop — if your local gun shop hasn’t been zoned out of business you might not have that much of a drive — hand it over the the clerk,, have him book it in, and pay the clerk to run a background check on your friend. Your friend who, by the way, already has either a carry permit or a purchase permit, and who already has gone through a criminal background check that can be repeated — under current law — by the authorities any time that they please.

And it gets worse. If there’s a glitch in the NICS system, and your friend doesn’t get immediately approved, the clerk can’t just give your own gun back to you; he’s got to run a background check on you — which, of course, you have to pay for — before he can.

And the state gets to keep records of that transaction forever. Forever.

The answer, of course, is to get on the line with your state legislators – now – and tell them not to support this fascist travesty. Be polite; write your spiel down beforehand, if need be. But contact them.

Especially if your Senator or Rep is a wobbly Republican.

Oh, yeah. And if you’re a Second Amendment supporter who is thinking about staying home in November because Tim Pawlenty went to the Arctic? Grow up; real life isn’t about getting everything you want; it’s about making sure you show up to drive the compromise the right way.

Nothing official, of course, but that’s what the Clinton campaign is doing.

Allahpundit:

She’s got a few weapons left — brass knuckles at tomorrow’s debate, 527s taking off and strafing the Messiah in Texas and Ohio — but that won’t roll back the advance. It’s our dumb luck that we finally get the Clintons in an election where we can beat them … and they flame out in the primary against a superior candidate. Even in defeat, they end up making our lives harder.

Anyone want to offer any Hail-Mary optimism this morning or should we pause at last to exult in her failure, electoral consequences be damned?

Or as Slublog puts it:

I do hope the Tics drag it out a bit lot longer, of course.Every time a Tic spends a dollar campaigning against a Tic, an angel gets his wings.

Pianomomsicle is now also blogging…

…at Preggersicle.

Yes, there’s a reason.

Ron Erhard  – “Moderate” GOP represenative from Edina – must be feeling a little pressure.  After all, the DFL controls the House and Senate, but Pawlenty still has the veto pen – and the February 5 caucuses saw an avalanche of conservative turnout.  And that avalanche is making its presence known; the denial of endorsement to Mary Tingelstad on Saturday was just the first symptom.

Oh, yeah – and pressure from taxpayers:

Rep. Ron Erhardt, in responding to a caller asking him to uphold the Governor’s veto on the transportation bill and all of the taxes it contains and to not support the Democrat override attempt responded with anger and profanity, telling the caller to “tell the people who told you to call to go ‘F***’ themselves.”

Erhard must be feeling the heat.  He’s even got a challenger for his office: Keith Downey, a genuine conservative, has an energized campaign that kicked  Erhard’s butt at the caucuses, and is angling for the nomination.  If you’re a Republican in Edina, get on board wtih Downey.  It’d be good to show another RINO the price of abandoning principle.

In the tug-of-war that is grass-roots politics, the goal is to pull the rope as far as you can to the right.

As we noted last week, a number of GOP legislators were considering abandoning the governor in his veto of the DFL’s Mass Transit Subsidy “Transportation” bill – and the DFL was actively wooing wobbly Republicans.

The base is calling BS.  And not a moment too soon.  Michael Brodkorb notes that one district’s activists have yanked the leash on at least one wobby Republican:

Republicans in HD 49B have delayed endorsing Representative Kathy Tinglestad due to her vote for the DFL transit plan.  There was no future date set for Tingelstad to be endorsed.

As the GOP heads into convention season, word has it that the insurrection is spreading to other districts.

If you’re a Republican who values fiscal restraint and sane priorities, you need to get on the line with your legislator Monday morning.  AAA at True North gives the handy-dandy list:

Anderson, Bruce (R) 19A -651-296-5063 rep.bruce.anderson@house.mn
Anderson, Sarah (R) 43A 651-296-5511 rep.sarah.anderson@house.mn
Beard, Michael (R) 35A 651-296-8872 rep.mike.beard@house.mn
Berns, John (R) 33B 651-296-4315 rep.john.berns@house.mn
Brod, Laura (R) 25A 651-296-4229 rep.laura.brod@house.mn
Buesgens, Mark (R) 35B 651-296-5185 rep.mark.buesgens@house.mn
Cornish, Tony (R) 24B 651-296-4240 rep.tony.cornish@house.mn
Dean, Matt (R) 52B 651-296-3018 rep.matt.dean@house.mn
DeLaForest, Chris (R) 49A 651-296-4231 rep.chris.delaforest@house.mn
Demmer, Randy (R) 29A 651-296-9236 rep.randy.demmer@house.mn
Dettmer, Bob (R) 52A 651-296-4124 rep.bob.dettmer@house.mn
Drazkowski, Steve (R) 28B 651-296-2273 rep.steve.drazkowski@house.mn
Eastlund, Rob (R) 17A 651-296-5364 rep.rob.eastlund@house.mn
Emmer, Tom (R) 19B 651-296-4336 rep.tom.emmer@house.mn
Erickson, Sondra (R) 16A 651-296-6746 rep.sondra.erickson@house.mn
Finstad, Brad (R) 21B 651-296-9303 rep.brad.finstad@house.mn
Garofalo, Pat (R) 36B 651-296-1069 rep.pat.garofalo@house.mn
Gottwalt, Steve (R) 15A 651-296-6316 rep.steve.gottwalt@house.mn
Gunther, Bob (R) 24A 651-296-3240 rep.bob.gunther@house.mn
Hackbarth, Tom (R) 48A 651-296-2439 rep.tom.hackbarth@house.mn
Holberg, Mary Liz (R) 36A 651-296-6926 rep.maryliz.holberg@house.mn
Hoppe, Joe (R) 34B 651-296-5066 rep.joe.hoppe@house.mn
Howes, Larry (R) 04B 651-296-2451 rep.larry.howes@house.mn
Kohls, Paul (R) 34A 651-296-4282 rep.paul.kohls@house.mn
Lanning, Morrie (R) 09A 651-296-5515 rep.morrie.lanning@house.mn
Lesch, John (DFL) 66A 651-296-4224 rep.john.lesch@house.mn
Magnus, Doug (R) 22A 651-296-5505 rep.doug.magnus@house.mn
McFarlane, Carol (R) 53B 651-296-5363 rep.carol.mcfarlane@house.mn
McNamara, Denny (R) 57B 651-296-3135 rep.denny.mcnamara@house.mn
Nornes, Bud (R) 10A 651-296-4946 rep.bud.nornes@house.mn
Olson, Mark (IR) 16B 651-296-4237 rep.mark.olson@house.mn
Otremba, Mary Ellen (DFL) 11B 651-296-3201 rep.maryellen.otremba@house.mn
Ozment, Dennis (R) 37B 651-296-4306 rep.dennis.ozment@house.mn
Paulsen, Erik (R) 42B 651-296-7449 rep.erik.paulsen@house.mn
Peppin, Joyce (R) 32A 651-296-7806 rep.joyce.peppin@house.mn
Seifert, Marty (R) 21A 651-296-5374 rep.marty.seifert@house.mn
Severson, Dan (R) 14A 651-296-7808 rep.dan.severson@house.mn
Shimanski, Ron (R) 18A 651-296-1534 rep.ron.shimanski@house.mn
Simpson, Dean (R) 10B 651-296-4293 rep.dean.simpson@house.mn
Smith, Steve (R) 33A 651-296-9188 rep.steve.smith@house.mn
Urdahl, Dean (R) 18B 651-296-4344 rep.dean.urdahl@house.mn
Wardlow, Lynn (R) 38B 651-296-4128 rep.lynn.wardlow@house.mn
Westrom, Torrey (R) 11A 651-296-4929 rep.torrey.westrom@house.mn
Zellers, Kurt (R) 32B 651-296-5502 rep.kurt.zellers@house.mn

If they can’t agree on limited government, prosperity, security, culture, family and liberty – and the “Transportation” bill directly impacts four of those -then why are they Republicans, again?

“Why the hell won’t Republicans or conservatives mix it up with the media?  Why do Republicans always let the Tics and the media (pardon the redundancy) get away with gang-raping Republicans – see Rod Grams and Alan Fine and the 2000 ambush and the 2004 60 Minutes attacks on Bush?  Why do Republicans take the proverbial “high road” and hope that the media that is the active player in the smear, every friggin’ time, will somehow turn around and get the actual truth out in the end?”

Well, merry friggin’ Chrismas; Mac fought back. 

The piece about McCain’s friendly relations with a telecommunications lobbyist — long-discussed in political circles and planned for weeks by McCain operatives — was the first test of his ability to confront a public-relations crisis since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

But the reaction may have said as much about the mindset of the conservative movement on the brink of the general election as it did about McCain and his team.  

And the dead-tree media are whining like shower-room nancyboys about it:

By Thursday morning, when the article appeared in the print editions of The Times, the McCain campaign had begun an aggressive attack against the newspaper, calling the article a smear campaign worthy of The National Enquirer. It was a symphony to the ears of Mr. McCain’s conservative critics.

Ed groin-kicks the Times’ whinging:

 

She managed to make the New York Times the victim of “an aggressive attack” by McCain over a smear — without explaining what the smear actually was! The Times piece originally led with an accusation of a sexual affair for which they offered exactly zero evidence. Calling it a smear worthy of the National Enquirer isn’t an aggressive attack, it’s a factual description.

Yeah, I’m happy.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I “The First Team” – Chad, John and Brian will do their thing from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I will talk about the week that’s been. We do the 1-3 shift – AKA “the most important shift in local radio”. Really.  And natch, we’ll be talking about the Times’ hit piece on McCain, and McCain’s…well, dare I say “UnRepublican” response (and I mean that in a good way).  What am I talking about?  Tune in.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – Janet Beihoffer joins Michael. Smart money says they’ll be talking about the “Transportation” Bill. They’re on from 3-5.

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. On the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

(Along with the Stroms, from 9-11, natch).