McCain came to town.

I didn’t have an invite.

But reading the leftymedia’s contortions on the subject is probably almost as much fun anyway. It ranged, as usual, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Or at least from the groaningly obvious and cliche-driven to the moderately interesting.

For the former, we turn to former City Pages writer GR Anderson at the MNPost – who uncovered a real scoop:

Shocker! McCain’s visit to bring out the wealthy, protestors

GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s visit to the Hilton in downtown Minneapolis for a fundraiser this afternoon promises to be a moneyed affair: To qualify to be on the host committee, McCain’s web site says, “individuals or couples must raise or contribute $20,000.” For the less fortunate, “tickets for the Photo Opportunity & Dinner are $2,300 per person. Tickets for the Main Reception and Dinner are $1,000 per person.”

Right. As opposed to those Democrat fundraiser$, where $your $pocket $change will get you in?

Who says the economy is bad?

(I don’t have an exhaustive list, but I do know that the MNPost and the Minnesoros Independent will be calling it “Bad” until 18 months after the recovery is generally accepted as undeniable, or Barack Obama’s inauguration, whichever comes first. But I digress).

Seriously – does GR Anderson think that big-buck fundraisers are a Republican franchise?

Eric Black’s article was more interesting – or at least a little less predictable:

Senator McCain. Welcome to Minnesota. Thank you for your service. My question is about the occupation of Iraq.

I agree that some Democrats have tried to have a little too much fun with your “100 years in Iraq” quote a while back. I take you at your word that you didn’t mean 100 more years resembling the last five — 100 years of steady U.S. casualties. In explaining what you really meant, you have said that it would be fine with you if U.S. troops had a long-term presence in Iraq, like the troops have had in Germany, Japan and Korea.

Well, we’re off to a good start. That’s more honest than most of Black’s colleagues have been with that question.

Many Americans may think that sounds fine. I’m not so sure. No other country has huge military installations around the world.

But that’s a fairly recent development – not so long ago, plenty of other countries maintained genuine empires; Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and even Belgium had or have imperial possessions within my lifetime and, incidentally, Eric Black’s.

It’s not only expensive, but it smacks of imperialism.

Let’s touch on both of those assertions.

It “smacks” of imperialism, because it is – sort of – and always has been. And yet unlike every single other imperial power in history, our “imperialism” has left behind largely functional, largely democratic countries; Germany, Japan and South Korea are world leaders and, at least by their previous standards, incredibly liberal in that small-“l” way that even I approve of.

And the “expense” has to be based on costs and benefits – indeed, Black touches on that concept later, so we’ll come back to it. The “expense” of any “imperial” entanglement has to be judged against the benefits; the Cold War, for example, has to be gauged against the general good of having contained the Soviets until they collapsed.

Ask yourself how the U.S. — specifically the McCain administration — would view it if another powerful country — let’s say China for the sake of illustration — toppled the government of our neighbors — let’s say Mexico, and said that one of its goals was to leave behind a Mexican government that would be an ally of China. Let’s say China did install a Mexican government friendly to China and then reached a deal with its puppet government for a permanent military base close to our borders in order to protect what China declared to be its “vital interests” in the Americas. And then let’s say China announced that it would be fine if the bases were there for 100 years. My hunch is, the McCain administration wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t tolerate it, would view it as a threat and an act of aggression against the United States and a statement of China’s intent to dominate our hemisphere. Please correct me if I’m wrong about that.

Black is right – sort of. The Monroe Doctrine has pretty much been established policy, one we’ve enforced for almost 200 years.

Of course, the analogy makes Iran – a murderous dictatorship that has been in a de facto state of war with us for my entire adult lifetime – the moral equal of the United States.  Is that a dock  you wanna walk down, Eric Black?

There is, of course, another difference; China has not secured UN resolutions condemning our human rights abuses, our acts of war against China and their allies, our pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction and our defiance of previous agreements caused by our previous aggression.  We don’t pose a threat to China and the rest of the world.

The parallel, Mr. Black, really isn’t there.

And I know – your analogy doesn’t depend on the parallel, necessarily. But let’s just say that some of Mr. Black’s audience doesn’t know this.

Of course, the USA is not just any country. We are the world’s only superpower. How we use that position is essential to how the rest of the world views us as we try to repair some of the damage that President Bush — and the Iraq misadventure — have done to the our image in the world.

Actually, Mr. Black, Iraq has very little to do with the world’s “elites'” views of us. There’s another entire post brewing on that subject – but suffice to say that Europe’s opinion-class have never much cared for us (except when we’ve saved them from, say, Hitler or post-war starvation) and they never really will. The left’s conceit that Europeans will generally love the US once this “misadventure” is over are, at best, wishful thinking and utterly ahistorical.

I know I’m making more assertions than posing questions here, but the question is: If, as you hope, U.S. troops will be in Iraq for 100 years, what will that do to the perception that the U.S. seeks to dominate Middle East?

A “perception” that the left and media (pardon the redundancy) are trying to reinforce in every reference to the subject?

Your reference to the long-term U.S. troop presence in Germany, Japan and Korea is designed to illustrate that U.S. troops can be present in foreign bases without facing daily combat or casualties. My question is: How soon and at what cost in blood and treasure do you believe that the situation in Iraq — specifically the situation regarding the safety and normalcy of U.S. troops in Iraq — will resemble the situations in Germany, Japan and Korea?

I can answer that for Sen. McCain; “when the sentient terrorists realize that their chances of achieving their goals aren’t worth their lives”.

And Germany, Japan and Korea are bad examples (although to a nation of people who are largely ignorant of history, they may be the best we can do). The Philippines and El Salvador are better ones; insurgencies that died off (literally and metaphorically) as the result of an extended, judicious combination of military and civil action. It took six years for the Philippines’ insurgency to tail off a century ago; El Salvador is fairly recent history. Neither accomplishment was achieved without pain; both had the good luck to be either too early or too obscure for the attentions of the modern-day American media.

It’s wonderful that the level of violence in Iraq has fallen over recent months. But more than 200 U.S. troops, and a much larger number of Iraqis, have been killed in the less than half-year of 2008 so far.

Context counts, though. The number has been falling for a year, is at its lowest level of the war so far, and seems for the moment to be continuing to fall. Everyone from Petraeus to Michael Yon says to expect a counterattack to try to influence the election, and that’s reasonable. But if the violence continues to drop, the Iraqi government continues to improve (I notice you haven’t written, Mr. Black, about the fact that the Maliki government has quietly achieved most of the 18 criteria for recognizing Iraq as a legitimate government that the Dems were howling about last year), as Al Quaeda continues to be killed off (again, the MNPost is silent), it seems reasonable to believe things will tail off over the course of years rather than decades.

I hope, as you do, that the number continues to drop and soon gets close to zero. I assume we agree that the reasons for the decline in violence are several and complex and, as Gen. Petraeus said, “fragile” and “reversible.” Do you agree, “fragile” and “reversible?”

I agree with the General that it’s best not to be overconfident – but that while the fragility is a function of a difficult Iraqi situation, the progress will “reverse” only because of decisions made in Washington DC.

I suspect we may disagree, but I believe that there is no likely benefit to ordinary Americans of the invasion and occupation of Iraq that will outweigh the costs already incurred.

Those costs are already incurred and we can’t get them back. But decisions about war, including the future policy in Iraq, cannot and should not be shielded from the logic of cost/benefit analysis.

OK.  Let’s look those costs and benefits over:

Costs:  4,000-odd dead American troops, hundreds of billions of dollars.  (I’m not going to count “international goodwill”, becuase for the most part that is mercurial and cultural and if it hadn’t tanked over the Iraq war, it would have over soccer rules or trade balance or Susan Lucci’s Daytime Emmy or whatever they Euros are always whinging about whenever we’re not disposing of their genocidal dictators for them).

Benefits: Iran is firmly counterbalanced.  In a few years, the countries of the Middle East will very likely have a safe, stable neighbor against whom the people can find their own dictatorships and medieval baronies sorely wanting.  We have a base to contest Iran’s control of – I stress this – two thirds of the world’s currently-working oil reserves, which may be of much more importance to the third world and developing nations like China and India than to us.  Absent a serious US presence and counterbalance on the ground, Iran could close the Straits of Hormuz more or less at will (indeed, has been building for a decade and a half a force capable to doing that, with North Korean and Chinese anti-ship missiles and Russian submarines), with terrible effects on the US economy and potentially cataclysmic effects on the developing world.

You can, of course, easily reply that there are never any guarantees in war except that it will be bloody and awful. I agree. It’s one reason we should not get into unnecessary wars. But seriously, given the entire regional and historical context in which Iraq sits, what is your level of confidence — and how can you convince skeptical listeners to share your confidence — that the situation of U.S. troops in Iraq will resemble the situation in Germany within 20 years? Or, I don’t know, why not make it 100?

That’s easy.  There’s a zero percent chance that Iraq will ever resemble any of those countries.  Unlike Germany, its two primary religious factions are still in a low-level war (as opposed to “500 years ago”).  Unlike Japan and Korea, Iraq is ethically as well as religiously heterodox.  Unlike Germany and Japan, there was no clean, legal end to a conventional war, after which the people of both countries pretty much toed the occupier’s line. 

What we can hope for, and have worked for, is that Iraq will turn into the best Iraq it can be.

So I called this “Question for Eric Black”, didn’t I?  Here’s the question, then:  Given continued improvement on the ground, and assuming that over the course of the next year or two the insurgency dies off to a fairly background-level problem, and that the US involvement starts to draw down (as Gen. Petraeus has said) to a small garrison of mostly civil affairs and special forces troops over the course of the next 2-5 years, what do you think Iraq is most likely to turn into.  What do you think, given the above (and the above seems not all that unreasonable these days), are the best, worst and most likely cases for Iraqi civil society over the next decade or two?

Take it away.

MNBlue – a blog that includes the likes of Andy Driscoll and Grace “The Government Brought Down the Towers” Kelly – is running this ad:

It links to another conspiracymonger blog, naturally – par for the course with MNBlue, really.

Just saying – they must really be shooting for that military vote, huh?

MaryW, writing at the new District 66B GOP blog, notes an event that an awful lot of Republicans should oughtta attend:

Minnesotans for Limited Government (MNLG) is a newly established political action committee dedicated to promoting the idea that individual and economic freedom be the first consideration of any government.

We are having a kick-off picnic to celebrate MNLG and the summer! We will be grilling burgers, brats and hot dogs along with serving an assortment of other goodies.

Politics and cookout food?  It gets no better!  The party is going to feature healthcare privace expert Twila Brase, CD5 Congressional candidate Barb Davis White, gadfly Sue Jeffers, and my own candidate in the Fourth, Ed Matthews!

Of course, political and economic freedom must be joined by one other key factor; security.  Without judicious security, there is no freedom.

But that’s what picnics are for! 

I am going to try to get there!

For the past year or so, we’ve been noting the plans of some on the radical fringe left to not only disrupt the Republican National Convention, but to disrupt life in the Twin Cities itself.

Most troubling were the threats in some quarters to actually harass convention delegates, not merely in downtown Saint Paul in and around the convention itself, but back at their hotels.

I’m willing to write 90-99% of these sorts of things off to arrested-adolescent posturing by the sort of narcissistic, self-adulating fops that are drawn to this sort of fringe politics (every “anarchist” I’ve ever known in my life, and I’ve known quite a few, hailed from an upper-middle-class background; most were, at the end of the day, trying to get back at Mumsy and Dadders for being successful bourgeoisie.  I know there must be exceptions – but damned if I can say I’ve met any).

Who’s left?

I dunno – but someone’s looking out for ’em:

The imminent arrival of the Republican National Convention sent Minnesota’s three biggest metro-area cities scrambling to pass new regulations concerning the unprecedented number of street protests they’re anticipating. St. Paul’s existing ordinance requiring permits for public assemblies provided a model for the language approved May 19 by City Council members in Bloomington (PDF, see 5.4C), home to the Mall of America and oodles of hotel rooms where many convention-goers will stay.

Look – if you want to protest the RNC, or the party, or what it stands for, go for it.  And we’ll be watching.

But I have to ask – why the targeting of delegates at their hotels?

Hey, Chris Steller/Andy Birkey/Paul Schmelzer; if this were a Planned Parenthood convention, and pro-lifers were planning to harass conventioneers at their hotels outside of convention hours, are you trying to tell me you’d not be demanding the National Guard be called in?

I do this about every year and a half or so; note that I’d do this for free (which is true) and pass the hat, more or less like a typical guitar busker.
So if you’re so inclined, I’ll be everlastingly grateful for whatever spare electronic change you might toss in the pail. No pressure…

Or, if you prefer the anonymous route, click here to go to an Amazon Honor System page.

Either way, thanks for your patronage.

And thanks to the people who’ve already donated.  I appreciate it!

George Soros is apparently paying people to snift through Republicans’ personal websites:

Romping with kids, picnicking with the kids, wrasslin’ with the dog — just the kind of activities you’d expect on the ubiquitous “family” page on a candidate’s website. But for one campaign website, that of Sauk Rapids Republican Rep. Dan Severson, there’s a surprise addition — a guy blowing himself up.

Uh, yeah – that video made the rounds a while ago. Perhaps Birkey remembers it?

While the notion of carnage is distasteful to most people, it was hugely popular because – I might need to type this slowly for the Minnesoros Independent’s staff – most people don’t like the suicide bombers who’ve been killing our troops, and thousands of innocent civilians, all over the world. We kind of like the idea, however abstract and crude, of at least one of them dying for bupkes, even if only in a josh video. We don’t like them. So while (unlike them) we do not celebrate death – even theirs – it doesn’t exactly bring a lump to the throat to see that those who murder innocent women and children meet a grisly, risible end.
Indeed, seeing terrorists get killed off for real is something of a hot item on Youtube.

“As you can see, my family enjoys spending time together and having fun,” reads Severson’s site. “I appreciate a good smile. Click on the link below to view a movie that will hopefully put a smile on your face.”

Wow. Guess that totally belies all that fun family stuff on the website, huh? I guess it means Severson is a HYPOCRITE HYPOCRITE HYPOCRITE, huh?

Minnesota Independent has contacted Severson, and we’ll publish his reply when we receive one.

Rep. Severson; before replying, please consult my friends Learned Foot, Yossarian and Swiftee on the finer points of telling people to pound sand with style.

Or, y’know, don’t. Like most of the rest of the Minndependent’s targets.

…but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for an activist, Marine-veteran judge if this case goes to trial.

Politicians – mostly Democrats, in this IBD poiece on the subject –  have been on the take from mortgage companies for years.

There’s method, naturally, to the madness:

A number of top Democrats have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, suggesting corruption in the party linked to the recent home-mortgage meltdown. Will the mainstream media just ignore it?

We’ll come back to that.

The firing of Democrat insider and money-man Jim Johnson a week ago as head of Barack Obama’s vice presidential search committee came as no surprise. Johnson, who served as chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae during much of Bill Clinton’s presidency, was discovered to have received a favorable mortgage loan from Countrywide Financial’s founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo…Now it turns out that Johnson wasn’t the only Democratic F.O.A. — friend of Angelo.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, head of the Senate Banking Committee that oversees Countrywide, also was a recipient of Mozilo’s mortgage largesse. So was Kent Conrad, the North Dakotan who chairs the Finance Committee and sits on the Budget Committee.

Both Dodd and Conrad, like Johnson, had potential clout in crafting legislation and regulations that would directly affect Countrywide’s future. And both got favorable loans through Countrywide’s now-infamous “V.I.P.” program.

Dodd’s case is illustrative. He took out two mortgages with no closing costs attached, at fixed rates of 4.25% and 4.5%. Sound like something you’d get?

No, indeed.

Countrywide, you fat bastards?  We gotta talk.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke also benefited, as did one prominent Republican — former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson.

Granted, both Shalala and Holbrooke had left public office when they got their deals. But it was reasonable for Mozilo to think they’d serve again in another Democratic administration.

And what, many wonder, was the quid pro quo for all this?

Oh, what do you think?

Just a month ago, in unusually harsh language, Dodd ripped into President Bush on the subprime mess and defended a $400 billion plan that would bail out the subprime lending industry — including Mozilo.

Friends of Angelo, indeed.

So the initial question was “why don’t the media cover this?”  Indeed, why are so much of the “independent” media so very, very on board with legislation that would distort the mortgage market, to the benefit of the big mortgage companies?  As the number of Tics with their hands in the jar grew, why were they trying to deflect blame to Republicans and past-their-shelf-date Democrats?

It’d be interesting to see what kind of mortgages the principals at Media Matters and the other attack-PR firms that control the lefty alternative media have.

Allahpundit on Barack Obama’s dangerous delusions about prosecuting – I use the term advisedly – the war on terror…:

…which start with an implausibility…:

redeploying tens of thousands of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and having them shake their fists angrily in the direction of the Pakistani border?

…and ends with a pointless metaphor…:

So what’s a Nuremberg for Osama going to accomplish? Here’s what it’ll accomplish: It’ll give him a world stage to inveigh against the U.S. just like his crony-in-chief did a few weeks ago down at Gitmo, secure in the knowledge that the media would carry the good word back to the Wahhabi faithful abroad. That’s the other huge difference between now and Nuremberg. When Hermann Goering ranted on behalf of Nazism, there was no one left on his side to be inspired. Not so this time. If Obama’s so hot for analogies to German trials, he should think less about 1945 and more about 1924.

Everyone knows history begins in 1933, right?

I’m not one of the people who’s especially exercised about Franken’s record as a comedian or writer.  It was his career.  He was certainly successful at it; at times he was quite good (although he certainly faded into being a “satirist” over time).  And, as is the fashion among comedians these days, he certainly worked blue at times, saying and doing and writing some things that wouldn’t be advisable for a future politician (although to be fair he was able to count on a complicit media to keep all of that on the down-low up until the past five years or so).

It’s getting to the point where a potential politician has to sense by about age 12 that they want to be an elected official – and then start living their lives entirely with an aim toward avoiding future opposition research.  Which will leave us with a raft of politicians even more worthless than most of what we have in office today.

(Of course, while I don’t much care about Franken’s Playboy article or SNL skits, I think his tax problems are very legitimate issues, and his complicity in the looting of the Gloria Wise center is a genuine red flag).

Against this, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the DFL has really only two points:

1. “We really really really really really hate Norm Coleman”
2. “You should vote for  Franken because he’s audaciously hopeful and he’s not Norm Coleman and you really really totally should, because you just should, and Paul Wellstone would want you to if he were alive but for whatever reason not seeking a fourth term”

More seriously?  His career as a comic, entertainer, “satirist” and failed pundit are all fair game, because it’s the only record he has.  I went over Alec Baldwin’s spate of logorrhea in support of Franken last week; in and among the ad-homina and the platitudes, there was not one single reason based in policy or experience that Baldwin could give…

…because there are none.

Norm Coleman has a fourteen year record in elected office – six in the Senate, eight as mayor of Saint Paul.  There’s plenty of things to take your shots at, no matter what side you’re on; Coleman’s votes on ANWR, the surge, and other bills drew conservative ire; the fact that he’s an apostate DFLer (he was in the party into the first part of his second term as Mayor, and even placed Paul Wellstone into nomination at the DFL convention 12 years ago), which is one of those things the DFL never, ever forgives.  For better or worse, his record’s out there; you can judge Norm, yea or nay, according to whatever criteria you choose – if little things like “records” and “experience” mean anything to you.

So here are a couple of questions for you Franken supporters:

1. If we’re supposed to leave his comedy, “satire” and freelance writing careers out of how we gauge Franken for office, what can we use to try to figure if Franken is someone we want in office?
2. Please give  me  some affirmative reasons – one, two, three, whatever -why anyone should vote for Franken.  Caveat; these reasons need to relate to Franken; “he’s not Coleman”, or “he’s not in bed with the Administration”, or “”Halliburton Cheney Wide Stance Bush Brought Down The Towers Duke Cunningham” don’t cut it.  In other words, leave out the reasons not to vote for Coleman (because those would apply to Ciresi or Nelson-Pallmeyer or Jerry Janezich for that matter, any of the people you DFLers could have, but didn’t, nominate); they have to be reasons to vote for Franken.

Can y’all do it?

…by the progress they’re making on the rebuilding of the 35W Bridge.  Reportedly, the builders could  have the spans joined together (although still months away from traffic-ready) by July 4. 

Downtown, looking west.  The south (left) and north (right) approaches are at the bottom of the picture.

Daily Digital has been covering the progress, with photos and weekly updates of the various engineering and fabrication accomplishments.

These blogthings just keep nailing it.

This test:  “Are you a PC or a Mac?”

You Are a NeXT Black Slab

You are way ahead of your time.  While the ininformed call you “monochrome”, you are really incredibly nuanced.  You are about the best there is, even if not everyone knows it or, for that matter, has heard of you.

Wow. Didn’t see that coming!

…when I read headlines like this…:

SUV rolls over, kills woman at southern Minnesota state park

…along with copy like this…:

A camping trip ended in tragedy Monday morning for a woman from Savage when she was pinned under a vehicle…Samantha Binetti, 40, and a female friend were hitching a camper to an SUV that they had borrowed…Binetti ended up trapped under the SUV and died at the scene…

…if perhaps the woman would have been alive if a Ford Focus or a Toyota Prius had run the woman over?

Not saying that substituting “SUV” to imply an active, malevolent presence in the story, or even just to differentiate it from, say, cars, trucks, minivans ans what-not is a way of skewing the coverage of this story toward a political end…

…although I’m at a loss for any other motivation to ascribe to myself.

As I’ve noted in the past – I don’t do the blog for money, particularly. I get enough from advertising to cover the hosting and a few other minor things. Beyond that? That’s just fine.

However – about every 18 months or so, I “pass the electronic hat” around the room once or twice; I have a few projects waiting on me.

Don’t feel any pressure, obviously; it’s all in good fun. But if you’re so inclined, I’ll be everlastingly grateful for whatever spare electronic change you might toss in the pail…

Or, if you prefer the anonymous route, click here to go to an Amazon Honor System page.

Thanks.

To: Sir Elton John

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Fabric choices

 Sir John:

While acknowledging your record as a master of popular songcraft – especially on the albums of your heyday, like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – and allowing that you certainly had a way with writing an amazing hook or two, I feel compelled to note that your longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin, could be fairly described as “a bit over the top” sometimes, to the point where some of the songs make, regrettably, no sense at all.

For example: in your classic long-form pop song “Tiny Dancer”, the chorus – as catchy a bit of pop treacle as ever graced the airwaves – starts out wonderfully.  It is, indeed, a memorable confection, scooting from hook to hook with gay abandon (so to speak). 

But then comes the line “lay me down in sheets of leather” – and the air just zips out of the whole enterprise. 

Leather sheets sound troublesome; on hot days, they must be legendarily uncomfortable; even under ideal conditions, they must be sticky and rife with friction.

Please clarify and, if necessary, have a word with Mr. Taupin.

That is all.

Gary Gross over at LFR, in an article that notes at least one poll showing Norm Coleman with a 12 point head to head lead over Al Franken, discusses  the…

…I can hardly say it…

…the possibility of a Ventura candidacy:

The poll results make me slap my forehead. Hard to believe Jesse could rate 10%, let alone 23%. But there you have it, Norm still holds a 10 point lead after all the fruits and nuts are sorted out.

Here’s the part that I love – and that vindicates my opinion of at least some Minnesotans.

Bringing Duh Body into the race brings Coleman down from 52 to 41 – a tad over 20% of his numbers.  Franken drops from 40 to 31 – just a shade under a quarter of his share.

So Minnesotans do see Ventura as DFL-lite!

Paul Schmelzer, at the Minnesoros Independent – the site that joked about John McCain’s teeth (although to be fair, they didn’t know he’d been tortured in Vietnam) writing on the new Al Franken ad.

He starts by quoting Franken – who, to give credit where it’s due, has spent a lot of time in Iraq entertaining the troops – in his latest spot (emphasis added by me):

“We’re building 810 schools, 4800 water and sewage projects and 1047 roads and bridges.” But there’s a kicker: We’re building them not in the land of I-35W and Winona’s Highway 43 bridge, but in Iraq.

The message could come off as harsh—running the risk of seeming anti-troop or, for that matter, anti-Iraqi (who, bombed to kingdom come by coalition troops, might rightfully expect a little rebuilding)

Uh, Paul?

Since about April of 2003, most of the “bombing to kingdom come” has been done by the insurgents.

You know – the “other” bad guys?

But the ads, which will run in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester and Mankato, might not satisfy supporters of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who could read into it a less-than-immediate pullout of troops in Iraq.

To be fair, to win over the Nelson-Pallmeyer supporters, he’d have to claim that we’d murdered a million Iraqis.

Franken’s not depraved enough get most of Nelson-Pallmeyer’s supporters.

James Walsh at the Strib pays tribute to a woman who got through college, despite having been pregnant twice by ninth grade:

There is something about Jennifer Banks that erases doubt.

Perhaps it’s her clear and steady gaze, the way she never looks away as she talks about her past — or her future. Or is it her voice? Calm and matter-of-fact when she says she never doubted herself. Talk to Jennifer Banks for just a little while, and you see what so many others who have met and helped her have seen: Determination to achieve.

Banks graduated last month with a two-year degree in radiography from the College of St. Catherine. Two days later, Hennepin County Medical Center hired her.

In this season of graduations, Banks stands out because she reached this goal after she gave birth to her first son at 14 and another at 15. She moved to Minnesota from Arkansas as a pregnant ninth-grader.

Her own parents sent her away to find better schools and, perhaps, a better life here.

So congratulations – sincerely – to Jennifer Banks. There’s no denying that she’s accomplished a lot. And stories like hers are certainly an encouragement.

Unfortunately – and we’re going to open the focus up Ms. Banks to all of society, here – situations like Jennifer Banks’s are a silver lining on a very dark cloud; the epidemic of fatherless families in our society.

J Roosh links us to this rather bone-chilling article about the future of the American family by Walter Williams:

It is now common to meet young people in our big city schools, foster-care homes and juvenile centers who do not know their dads. Most of those children have come face-to-face with their father at some point; but most have little regular contact with the man, or have any faith that he loves or cares about them.

When fatherless young people are encouraged to write about their lives, they tell heartbreaking stories about feeling like “throwaway people.” In the privacy of the written page, their hard, emotional shells crack open to reveal the uncertainty that comes from not knowing if their father has any interest in them. The stories are like letters to unknown dads – some filled with imaginary scenes about what it might be like to have a dad who comes home and puts his arm around you or plays with you.

You don’t need me to tell you it’s an epidemic:

The extent of the problem is clear. The nation’s out-of-wedlock birth rate is 38%. Among white children, 28% are now born to a single mother; among Hispanic children it is 50% and reaches a chilling, disorienting peak of 71% for black children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly a quarter of America’s white children (22%) do not have any male in their homes; nearly a third (31%) of Hispanic children and over half of black children (56%) are fatherless.

This represents a dramatic shift in American life. In the early 1960s, only 2.3% of white children and 24% of black children were born to a single mom. Having a dad, in short, is now a privilege, a ticket to middle-class status on par with getting into a good college.

The odds increase for a child’s success with the psychological and financial stability rooted in having two parents.

And yet society as a whole actively fights this notion. Not just the usual targets – “urban” culture and rap music with is misogynistic themes and “bitches” and “hos” and bump and run approach to sex; not just Hollywood, which has been increasingly portraying fathers as a useful lifestyle accessory that glamorous starlets might or might not keep about the house (on and off camera), on top of a generation of movies that depict sex as something that magically stops at “fun” and avoids the whole “baby” thing.

It also includes a welfare system that systematically devalues fatherhood (the DFL might as well refer to the family as “womenandtheirchildren” for all the times that the likes of Ellen Anderson refer to the concept), giving fatherless families more welfare benefits and actively encouraging them to make themselves scarce.

So congratulations, Jennifer Banks. I hope a lot of people follow your example. I just hope society learns a different lesson altogether.

…”What do you mean, Dad, about R and B having been better a long time ago?”

And I reply “dang skippy”.

And they say “Do you mean Motown?”

And I say “Motown Schmotown. Stax/Volt, baby”

“Huh?”

“I said Stax/Volt“.

Is this a way to reach out to Catholic voters – Algore imitating Pope John Paul II?

Habemas Demigogam?

There’s another that came out via email…:

Isn’t that supposed to be “and lo, I shall be with you always?”

MLP at Casual Sundays notes:

I keep trying but I can’t come up with an analogy that’s as stupid as

You can’t drill your way out of high oil prices

And she really did try.  Read the post; there’s a lot of effort there.

Lileks and I were talking last Saturday on the NARNII show about the real “Two Americas” in this country. There’s a pessimistic America that believes the nation is spinning into a vortex of decay, global warming, and rich-vs.-poor civil war on the one hand – an American that thinks the rest of America needs its soul “saved” (not to name any names here). And there’s an America that is optimistic – that retains the spirit of its immigrant forefathers who came to this land to find a new, better life.

One America thinks our best days are behind us, and gets a secret tingle up their leg watching The Day After Tomorrow (“That’ll teach you to drive SUVs and ignore Mother Earth!”), and believes that we’d better quit nattering about freedom and the market and liberty and just hush up and listen to our older, wiser betters in China and India. One America sings “America: F*** Yeah!” with simultaneous comic irony and pit-of-the-gut sincerity.

One America voted for Jimmy “Malaise” Carter, Walter “Sure, I’ll Raise Your Taxes” Mondale, Michael “Look At Me In My Tank” Dukakis, Algore, John Kerry and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, and quietly waits for the inferno to overtake them; many of them even avoid having children, either because their thoughts of the future are so dismal or, in extreme cases, because they believe the human race should voluntarily extinct itself. The other America elected Ronald Reagan, flocked to see Rambo, waved the flag at times that made that other America blanche with embarassment, bought Smith and Wesson Model 29s and dared you to pry them from their cold, dead hands, and quietly contributed to the downfall of a genuinely evil empire, leaving the world a much better place than it’d been ten years earlier.

Now, I believe a couple of things:

1. The world’s going to run out of oil. Not real soon, but eventually.
2. The free market – assuming it’s allowed to be free – will anticipate and react to that inevitability faster than government will. People will adapt their behaviors in the short run (as they are today with gas prices); as the supply of oil contracts, the market will present alternatives.
3. The market will present these alternatives long before government can mandate them. Long before the government can lay a half-mile grid of trolley tracks in every American city, industry will have developed an electric or fuel-cell car, running from something we do have in great profusion – nuclear-generated electricity, waste material, paperwork from failed Tic programs, whatever.
4. Government actions will exacerbate the problem.

Let’s go back to optimism for a bit.

James and I were talking about how crushing pessimism was one of the dominant leitmotifs of American pop culture over the past fifty years. We also noted that next week’s Minnesota Street Rod Association convention at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds (at which the NARN will be broadcasting!) harkens back to an era when America was profoundly optimistic – where the sky, and beyond, was the limit. Cars were big, brawny, cheery and optimistic.

I noted, in contrast, that this is the face of the current American car-buying public (or at least the stereotype of it):

Now, the Prius is a perfectly fine car – Toyota builds a good vehicle, yadda yadda.

But I noted that other car makers had tried their hands at building hybrids – Honda, Volvo et al – and gotten dicier results in the hybrid market; they’d made the “mistake” of merely building hybridized versions of their regular cars. In other words, their “normal”-looking hybrids failed in the market, while Toyota dealers can’t keep the dorky-looking Prius in stock.

The reason, of course, is that the people who are concerned about “global warming” today want to be seen doing the vehicular equivalent of wearing a hair shirt. They want to drive a car that looks like a rolling cockroach, thus to feel closer to the nature into which they feel we are all about to decay anyway.

My statement; America – at least, the part of America that flies the flag and hears “God Bless the USA” with a certain tingle of pride even as they cringe at the mawkishness, the America that flies the flag on June 14, right-side up, no flame involved – will take the notion of alternative transportation into their hearts only when electric vehicles look like this…:

…only when hybrids look like this…:

Only when a ride on a light rail train looks like this:

…rather than some exercise in self-abnegation and penitence to Mother Earth (like Michelle Obama envisions for us…):

Then – when the idea of “alternatives” are seen not as expressions of shame, of crabbling about after the crumbs of our betters, of finding comfort in societal doom, but rather of progress rather than decay, of skill and prowess rather than doom – then, America will embrace these ideas.

So sign me up for the first electric Porsche 914.

Er…maybe the first one in the third year of production, anyway.

I talked about this Strib story on the NARN last weekend; the chorus of calumny over the state of the Minnesota Department of Transportation seems to stop, like one of those mediaval maps of the world, at the edge of…the Pawlenty Administration.  To hear the left’s howling and baying, you’d think that MNDoT was an elite body with a decades-long record of excellence at transportation engineering that was only interrupted by Tim Pawlenty and David Strom.

Not so, of course.  Minnesota’s transportation system bears clogged, congested, poorly-engineered witness to decades of MNDoT’s dubious command of its subject.  The urban highway system funnels into several “commons” areas, where freeways merge and cross in arrangements that seem designed to create road rage (94/35W in downtown Minneapolis; 35W and Crosstown 62 in Richfield; 35E and 94 in downtown Saint Paul; 35E and 694 in Little Canada).  Many freeways were built with “forced exit” lanes – lanes with the dreaded yellow “exit only” signs, which force traffic to merge in on itself for no real reason (and which MNDoT has been trying to un-build, at dizzying cost, for decades). 

And of course, the bridges in Saint Cloud and Winona and of course downtown Minneapolis?  They didn’t start rusting until Inauguration Day, 2003, to hear the local left. 

Prominent among them was Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, a DFLer who was Jesse Ventura’s Transportation Commissioner until 2002.  Last August 1, as the last of the girders were still falling into the Mississippi River, he went on WCCO with DFLer Alice Hausman to blame the “No New Taxes” pledge for the collapse – likely before the NTSB investigators had even booked their tickets to Minneapolis. 

Why was he yelling so loudly?  Why so early?

Andy Aplikowski at RezFor covered it this morning as well:

Don’t let the media gloss over the fact that El Tinklenberg, who is running for Congress against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R MN6), was the MNDOT Commissioner under Gov. Jesse Ventura. Yes, he was in charge of Minnesota’s transportation system, including the 35W bridge. No Carol Molnau has not been the only person ever to hold that position, and see reports on the critical nature of the bridge. 

(STRIB) Seven years before the Interstate 35W bridge fell, a consulting firm sent Minnesota officials a proposal to shore up the aging structure that included examining its gusset plates — the connections that federal investigators now believe likely played a role in the collapse.

The preliminary plan from HNTB Corp. of Kansas City, which was buried among hundreds of documents released at a recent legislative hearing, has gone largely unnoticed in the debate over the disaster. The company did its study at no cost in an attempt to gain a state contract for the bridge work but, in the end, wasn’t hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT).

A series of follow-up memos in 2000 and 2001 featured drawings of how HNTB planned to strengthen areas immediately surrounding the gusset plates and included renderings of “supplemental plates” and a “new oversize gusset.” Other drawings called for adding supplemental supports in the vicinity of the gusset plates.

El Tinklenberg, was MNDOT Commissioner at the time this proposal was denied. 

So let me get this straight; E-Tink presided over transportation in an administration that governed for four mostly-prosperous years – indeed, one that squandered billions in surpluses on new spending – and yet built almost no new roads, did very little bridge maintenance work, and whizzed $700,000,000 down a rathole building a train from the Mall to downtown.  Tinklenberg, indeed, did almost nothing in office…

…but was on the air while rescuers were still pulling people from the river to blame Pawlenty?

Hm.

Kevin Ecker over at True North and Eckernet notes that today just might be the big day:

Here is a pretty good roundup of what to expect from this decision, especially since it makes the distinction between upholding the Second Amendment for a number of purposes, most notably civic and personal. The author (Mike O’Shea) is right that there is a general consensus amongst airchair justices that the Second Amendment will in all liklihood be upheld….so the debate comes down to finer distinctions.

I fully expect this decision to essentially tapdance around the Miller 1939 decision, and come down in favor of private rights, leaving the argument for/against civic uses essentially twisting in the wind. Is I wrote previously, SCOTUS made it clear from the start that their decision would be limited to the case at hand, which is an issue of private usage.

Civic usage is likely to remain undecided, allowing states pretty wide latitude to ban “scary guns”. While SCOTUS, due to it’s non-elected state, is theoretically free from having to respond to public whims that may change from day to day, I don’t think most of the Justices want to come forward with a decision of essentially granting everyone the right to a howitzer.

The answer – to those of us who’ve been through this already (in my case, Minnesota’s ten-year-long battle over “shall-issue” carry permitting) is that the courts would do well to leave those decisions to the states; this is a battle that the howitzer-American community (hypothetically) needs to fight in the various legislatures.

This case – presuming the SCOTUS decides properly – will not win “the war”.  If Heller scuppers the District of Columbia’s racist gun ban, it’ll be analogous to getting across Omaha Beach.  It’ll be a signal that one of the most noxious effects of the gun control spree of the sixties and seventies has been reversed. But it’ll also mean that we civil liberties supporters will have to redouble our efforts.  We have a lot of ground yet to win, and  it’ll have to be won the hard way; one legislator, and one voter, at a time, before we can put the last anti-gun orc to the rhetorical sword.

I, for one, can hardly wait.

Conservatives are just plain better people.

Science proves it! Last week’s NARN I guest Peter Schweitzer, writing in the Daily Mail, concluded:

There is plenty of data that shows that Right-wingers are happier, more generous to charities, less likely to commit suicide – and even hug their children more than those on the Left.

In my experience, they are also more honest, friendly and well-adjusted.Much of this springs from the destructive influence of modern liberal ideas.

There are about fifteen column-inches of examples, of course; I liked this one among many:

You don’t need to explain that to Doug Urbanski, the former business manager for Left-wing firebrand and documentary-maker Michael Moore. ‘He [Moore] is more money-obsessed than anyone I have known – and that’s saying a lot,’ claims Urbanski.

How is it possible that those who seem to renounce the money culture are more interested in money?

One might suggest those on the Left are simply being more honest when they answer such questions. The problem is that there is no evidence to support this.

Instead, I believe the results have more to do with the powerful appeal of progressive thinking.

Many on the Left apparently believe that espousing liberal ideals is a ‘get out of jail free’ card that inoculates them from the evils of the money culture.

Speaking purely anecdotally, that seems to be the case among more than a few modestly-prominent Minnesota lefties. There are exceptions, naturally.

Still, I feel happier just writing it!

P.S.: Let me clarify here; I know many good, wonderful people who are decidedly left of center, and are genuinely good people. Some of them are in my own family. Being a conservative, I’m loathe to judge people by groups, anyway.

But since someone else already did it…