Chicago, awash in gang crime, is getting desperate:

The summer of 2008 will be remembered as especially violent. Blagojevich said there’s been a child shot nearly every day since June 26. Bringing in state troopers — even National Guard helicopters to high-crime areas — is still very much in the planning stages.

The governor said Chicago Mayor Richard Daley hasn’t asked for help, but Blagojevich said he’ll call the mayor once he has some concrete suggestions about what help he can provide. He didn’t have many specifics, but he said it’s more likely that state police will be brought in than the National Guard.

Whew. Good thing it’s still almost completely impossible for the law-abiding citizen to get a gun in Chicago.

Goodness knows what would happen…

Plymouth, Minnesota: Money Magazine’s #1 Best Place to Live, August 2008 Issue

Some selected stats, however, may not bode well…

Plymouth, MN vs. Best Places Average

Sales Tax:  6.65 vs. 6.60% (Baseball in the freezing rain anyone?)

State Income Tax Rate: 7.85% vs. 5.17% (Highest Bracket)

State Income Tax Rate: 5.35% vs. 2.43% (Lowest Bracket) (That’s not a typo…their lowest is higher than the average highest)

Job Growth 7.89% vs. 18.72% (Anyone think taxes may have anything to do with this?)

Average Property Taxes $4526 vs. $3886

Topnotch schools, good jobs, affordable housing, low crime, an active outdoor culture – yep, they’re pretty much all here. Plymouth could have become just another Twin Cities suburb, but more than 50,000 jobs keep residents working there.

And they’re paying for it too!

I – and quite a few other regional conservative bloggers – got an email from an MPR producer the other day:

MPR News asks: What course would you set for the GOP?

The Republican Party is at a crossroads. An unpopular president is on the way out, and the party’s election-year hopes are pinned to a candidate who sometimes strays from the party line. With the convention coming up and the GOP seeking the public input on their platform outline, we want to know: Where would you steer the party? And how was your Republican identity shaped?

To share your thoughts and your story, please visit: www.mpr.org/gop

Please contact Molly Bloom at mbloom [at] mpr [dot] org with any questions, thoughts or concerns.

Do go out and respond (presuming you’re a Republican, natch.  Not such a big deal if you’re a DFLer, since, doy, the programming is mostly about you anyway.

Scott Johnson, who also posted the email, notes in response:

President Bush is still relatively popular among Republicans from whom MPR hopes to hear, but the reference to his unpopularity by Ms. Weggel is not unfair. President Bush’s unpopularity contributes to the enormous electoral challenge facing Republicans in the fall and to the interest of a project such as MPR’s.

All very true. 

I can think of a few responses, and I suspect so can you.

Your mission is clear.

In Denver, they’re getting concerned about the “anarchists” and their plans for the Democratic National Convention.

A draft law proposed by the Denver Police Department would ban the possession by protesters of materials such as weighted pipes and chains and items that can make urine and feces bombs.

Police say that such materials are potentially dangerous. The City Council Safety Committee will review the proposal July 23.

If you make poop bombs illegal, then only criminals will have poop bombs.

Well, hang on.  Are we to assume that the Denver Police…:

a) …are paranoid?

b) …have been sniffing butane?

c) …employ Ryan Rhodes?

What could possibly prompt them to do this?

LaCabe, who oversees the police department, said the proposed ordinance requires authorities, before they make an arrest, to find an intent to use the material to obstruct the public’s right to move freely.

“We certainly don’t want to interfere with anyone’s First Amendment rights and the right to be heard,” [Denver’s Safety Manager Al] LaCabe said. “But it has to be done in such a way that it does not obstruct or endanger the general public or the police department.”…The proposed ordinance would ban material, such as weighted pipe and chains, to fashion what are known as “sleeping dragons.” Protesters have chained themselves to such devices at other protests to make it difficult for police to arrest and remove them.

I thought, briefly, about checking with the various metro jurisdictions to see if perhaps there were already any poop-bomb control ordinances…

…but then I realized, why bother?  While I have in the past wondered if I should take the claims by some of the protest organizers that they want to “shut down the convention” and “make the people of Saint Paul know what the people of Baghdad feel like” seriously, Scottsdale Woman of Fired O’Glake says that’s just silly, and it’s all gonna be OK!

Except for Protest Warrior, who are thugs who smash everything in their path.  Natch.

I had a lively meeting yesterday with a client and friend with whom I share many values but also a respectful but opposite polarity politically.

As we sat at a Caribou Coffee (which is owned by an Islamic bank; a known supporter of the Palestinians –  but they have more locations that Starbucks – I digress) our conversation weaved around multiple topics on the political landscape and arrived at our national debt.

I maintain that our deficit spending habits and their product, our national debt  have left our country in an increasingly precarious position and is in fact an issue of national security.

The extrapolation of the mathematics, an element of which is our evolving demographics (i.e. more people getting on the wagon and less people pushing it) will eventually result in a national financial meltdown and the collapse of the American dollar.

Liberals oft cited moral imperative to be a compassionate, civilized nation manifested in layers and layers of entitlements will be eclipsed by the fact that at some point we will simply be unable to service our debt let alone borrow more.

Soon we will all be conservatives. Fiscally-speaking that is. The question of what our federal government should or should not do for it’s citizens will become an academic discussion.

(catching my breath)

My colleague countered that he is of the understanding, and has read that in fact that the opposite is true. He maintains that so many nations are owed so much by we Yanks that no nation in their right mind could or would bear the brunt of an American default and the resultant Sheriff’s sale.

It would be financial suicide. (Little consolation in a world where suicide is in fact an acceptable risk, even a tactical element for our most feared enemies).

Nonetheless, I had never heard that before.

I try to keep an open mind. My brief and by no means exhaustive research on the topic (I Googled it) yielded nothing in support the position of my esteemed companion in caffeine. Could this be true? Or is it simply a rationalization of our current predicament and an endorsement to carry on?

Do liberals actually believe that we are more secure in the global economy as a debtor nation?

Back in college, I was the editor of  the school newspaper.

The newspaper had its own mail box at the school post office.  And every week like clockwork, I got a copy of Gramma, the official propaganda organ of the Cuban Communist Party.  A holdover from a previous, more-radical editor (although I was still a liberal at this point), it was helpfully translated into English.  Stilted English that sounded like it came from the bastard child of a Yale semiotics professor and a half-literate union thug (“Comrade Castro announced that production of milk in the third year of the Fourth Five Year Plan in Metastiza Region had increased 35% over previous years, testimony to the wisdom of Comrade Castro’s agriculture pollicies”) but English nonetheless.
Viewed in that light, Andy Birkey’s piece in today’s Minnesoros “Independent”  almost makes sense:

Some politicians running for re-election in a safe district can get lax in their campaigning,

Right.  Some of them skip the Juneteenth Parade, until someone calls and tells them that Barb Davis-White is there.

but Rep. Keith Ellison is working hard in this year’s campaign. At a Saturday afternoon meeting of LGBT activists at the Spirit of the Lakes Church in Minneapolis, Ellison expounded on his “politics of inclusion and generosity” and the responsibility to engage every voter in the district even when the odds look good.

A new sugarcane harvest in Santa Margarita appearance in front of a friendly constituency.

Read the whole thing – a puff piece on Ellison’s outreach to gays – and ask yourself two things:

1. Given how the local leftymedia has harped on Barb Davis-White’s religion – especially its anti-gay aspects – just as they do for every Republican politician who is open about a faith that doesn’t aggressively embrace homosexuality, why has nobody in the leftymedia asked Rep. Ellison (the way they ask Barb Davis-White and Michele Bachmann, to pick two random examples) about how his religion, the very anti-gay Islam, affects his views on homosexuality?
2. Given that the Fifth is a district where the DFL can traditionally count on being able to wrap a bag of dog poop with DFL stickers, endorse it, and collect 50% of the district, why is Ellison – as lax and lazy a campaigner as Minnesota has ever seen – hitting the hustings?

What would Che do?

Yesterday, Zack from MNPublius exulted:

I was listening to MPR and heard [Lawyer and DFL Senate candidate Priscilla] Lord Faris say that she that she wouldn’t run if Franken was ahead of Coleman in the polls (I’ll post the audio clip if MPR puts it online).

Well, that day has come.

So, when will the Lord Faris announce her departure from the race? She hasn’t filed as of this writing.

I could just be a communication problem:

Lord Faris said a DFL Party leader she wouldn’t identify called her Monday to urge her to back down, but she refused citing polls showing Franken trailing Coleman.”

Perhaps the Franken and Lord Faris camps just need to communicate better.
Shot In The Dark: Doing its bit to bring Democrats together.

To:  Paul Schmelzer, Minnesoros “Independent”

From: Mitch Berg, schmuck blogger

Re:  Interview

Paul,

While I think the Mindy has become a pretty risible exercise, you are without a doubt a writer that could make it at a real publication.

Now, since you do write for a lefty propaganda shill site, I know that one of the ground rules is that you have to titter and chuckle at any traditional representation of religion (with exceptions made for lesbians declaring themselves ordained priests, Jewish supporters of Hamas and that sort of thing).

But reading this bit here, I gotta say:  interviewing PZ “Meyers” Myers about religion (with breathless, Tiger-beat-style credulity, no less; “The incident with college student Webster Cook comes as religious passions everywhere are incredibly inflamed –- Shiites and Sunnis, Evangelicals and atheists, etc. Does this say anything about the state of religion?”) is a little like interview Andy Dick about the state of method acting.

That is all.

UPDATE:  And no, Paul and PZ – the incident says nothing about the “state of religion”.  It says something about the state of atheism/agnosticism.  They’re reduced to playing “monkey in the middle” with the artifacts of ceremony. 

Pathetic.

Yesterday, I reported that JRoosh of RooshFive was hanging up his pajamas. Family obligations and a busy schedule made his customary blogging schedule – a very me-like four-or-more posts per day – untenable.

The good news? Roosh will be joining the staff here at Shot In The Dark.

OK. Roosh will be the staff here at Shot In The Dark. In 6.5 years, it’s the first time I’ve had a co-blogger.
At any rate, Roosh will be bringing his blend of fiscal conservatism, family, and hot cars to this blog…well, pretty much whenever he wants to. Might be weekly, might be annually, but he’s here.

Everyone say hi!

Dean Barkley – one of the hands that controlled the wires attached to former governor DFL-lite sock-puppet Jesse Ventura – might just run to get “his” Senate seat back:

Dean Barkley, who briefly served in the Senate himself, said this morning that he plans to file for the office this afternoon as an Independence Party candidate.

That is, assuming Ventura sticks to his announcement Monday night that he’s not running, a statement he made with the qualifier that he’ll change his mind if God speaks to him.

“Just knowing him, he still might show up,” Barkley said. “That’s Ventura — anyone who’s been around him awhile knows he never says anything without thinking it through. You can be sure he thought that line through.”

Just like you can be sure he was his own man as governor.

Go, Dean!  Go!

On the one hand, Zack from MNPublius has gladdened my heart with this bit here:

Priscilla, Lord Faris (stole that one from Mitch)

If I could contribute one trite but funny (in a very Anglophilic way) meme to the local ‘net, it’d be one of life’s fun little accomplishments. 

Oh, yeah – it’s not all about me:

 …announced yesterday that she would challenge Al Franken for the DFL nomination in the primary this fall. I was listening to MPR and heard Lord Faris say that she that she wouldn’t run if Franken was ahead of Coleman in the polls (I’ll post the audio clip if MPR puts it online).

Well, that day has come.

It links to a Rasmussen poll that shows Franken two points ahead of Senator Coleman.

Which is interesting, I suppose – except that Rasmussen also notes in its toplines that Coleman has much higher “very favorable” and much lower “very unfavorable” ratings than Franken does.  Which introduces the question “who are they polling?

In other words – what are the polling samples?  How many of them are registered or leaning Republican versus DFL?

It’s not a trivial question; in many previous polls, including Raz polls, identified Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-2 in the sample.  And while I don’t know for sure (crosstabs are only available to subscribers), given the disparity in the Very Goods and the Very Bads, along with the fact that 90+% of Republicans are supporting the Senator while only three of of four Dems are, I have to suspect some sort of imbalance in the sample.

Zack:

So, when will the Lord Faris announce her departure from the race?  She hasn’t filed as of this writing.

Rumors of Priscilla, Lord Faris’ demise are greatly exaggerated – or at least very, very premature.

It was Friday, July 15, 1988. 

It was hot.  Blazingly hot. 

I’d been out biking since early morning.  Not the kind of fast, purposeful riding I do today getting to work or going places, mind you – more a sort of aimless rambling about the metro.  I went up to Northeast Minneapolis, by Broadway and Stinson, meandering about the tangle of roads that, today, are a thriving shopping center, but back then were just…well, it’s hard to remember.  There wasn’t much there, there, back then.

I ambled down Broadway down into the presidents (north-south streets in Northeast Minneapolis are named, in order from west to east, from Washington through Coolidge (including the little-known eighth president, Central, responsible for the Central Doctrine if I recall correctly). 

My level of motivation was dropping by the day.  Oh, I was trying to keep my brain moving; I’d bought a cookbook, “Cooking for One Or Two” – either a supremely optimistic title or a very depressing one – the other day.  I’d spent a few hours getting a big pile of beef and veggies cooked and stored in the freezer of the old wreck of a fridge in the house on Fry and Minnehaha.  That way, I could just grab as much of these staples as I needed to get a quick, modestly healthy mean for one (or two!  I mean, it could happen!) ready in a hurry. 

Baby steps, I figured.  Hang on to some semblance of normalcy, and normalcy will return.

And on I pedaled. 

There is nothing more miserable than a concrete vista on a hot, miserable, humid day, I thought.  The only way it could be worse was if I was walking, I thought, as the scorching mid-day turned into a steamy, humid morass of a late afternoon. I started pedaling home.  Gotta take a shower and get ready for another night at City Limits.

At least I had all the fixings I needed for stuffed peppers.  That’d be a nice treat. 

I got home.  Wyatt was “entertaining” upstairs – probably one of the bartenders from the bar he was working at. 

We had a new roommate, by the way, since early in the month; Shane, a singer in a speed metal band.  He was nineteen, about 5’6, wore his hair in a white trash afro (long, frizzy and all over the place) and looked every inch the metal dude.  He was a nice guy, though, and paid his bills on time.  This became important, later.  Anyway – he was off practicing with his band.

It was about 4:30.  I went to the fridge. 

I grabbed the handle. It felt kind of funny, but it didn’t register before I pulled the freezer door open.

Warm.

A blast of warm, dank, rank air met me as I looked into the freezer; a freshet of filthy, stinking water sluiced out onto the floor at my feet.

It was at least 120 degrees in the “Freezer”.  All the meat I’d cooked and frozen was warm, suppurating, and worse than inedible. 

I spent half an hour throwing out ruined food, and then went to the sink to wash my hands, grumbling about the $40 worth of food I’d lost – a  lot of money for me, back then…

…when I felt a drip from the cabinet above the sink.  I looked at the cabinet; a little stream of water was oozing out from under the cabinet door, collecting, and dripping into the sink.  The water looked brown, and smelled…also brown.

I opened the cabinet.  Filthy water was leaking into it from…

..above.  The bathroom.

So I’d lost a cabinet AND a freezer full of food. 

This was adding up to be a great day.

I called our landlord – a fella we’ve talked about before – and left a message. 

Then I stalked upstairs and started getting ready for work.

Last week, I wrote about the mood change I see in Saint Paul since the Coleman (Chris) Administration took over, and since the ultraliberal Gang of Four consolidated their power and expanded to Five. 

To sum it up – things seem gloomy in Saint Paul lately. 

Now, I’ve lived in some gloomy places.  I grew up in North Dakota, during the farm depression of the seventies and eighties.  The family farm, in those pre-ethanol days, was in deep trouble.  A decade of profligate farm lending (and borrowing) ran smack-dab into huge surpluses and lower prices.  This, combined with government interference in the market both chronic (the various farm subsidy programs) and acute (the 1980 grain embargo of the USSR), made independent farms dry up and blow away faster than Al Franken’s political future.  Some farmers (and the rural businesses that supported and depended on them) adjusted; they sold the land and left the business; others diversified crops and, in many cases, careers.  Others reacted less rationally.  And quite a few just hunkered down and rode it out.

Which, if you’re not on the federal reserve board or Warren Buffet, is about all you can do.

Unless, of course, government seems hell-bent on making things much, much worse.

———-

I got an email last week from a Saint Paul resident, from the Como Park neighborhood.  He’ll remain nameless for now, since his wife is closely-enough connected to this issue that it’d be poor form for her name to be floating around.

She got a copy of this new St. Paul city ordinance from her trade association.  If they’re correct that this ordinance was adopted, it could be historic.  We could see huge swaths of Frogtown and the East Side disappear in the next three years.

That got my attention.

Saint Paul has a foreclosure problem – and that leads to a vacant building problem.  As of yesterday, the city listed 1993 vacant properties in Saint Paul.  The number is big enough when you put it up against the total number of houses (115,713 as of the 2000 census); it’s worse when you see how those vacant properties are concentrated.   While real estate values throughout the city have suffered, a big part of the problem is concentrated in some of the city’s most “challenged” neighborhoods.  You can walk some blocks in the North End, the East Side and Frogtown and see more houses with blue “Vacant Building” signs on them than without; I walked a block near one of my kids’ schools, in the North End, last spring and counted five vacant, foreclosed homes out of six on a block just west of Rice Street.

Now, you can attribute this to any cause you want.  Some will point to greedy, unethical lenders – and they are certainly a part of the problem. 

Of course, free markets are usually pretty good at preventing bad behavior on their own – and when you see unethical behavior on a wholesale basis, it’s often useful to look for openings for that behavior, created by government interference in the market. 

The Community Reinvestment Act, and its various amendments, is a good place to start looking; the CRA impelled lenders to get into the subprime business on a wholesale level in the first place.  This wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself; home ownership can, in and of itself, be a very good thing for communities.  Twenty years ago, “absentee landlords” were the crisis du jour in exactly the same neighborhoods that are awash in foreclosures and vacancies today. 

Of course, combining a regulatory compulsion to do assume riskier loans and the “get rich quick” impulse on the part of many lenders to fill that compulsion during the housing bubble meant that, in a lot of cases, money was moving faster than information; a lot of new home-buyers didn’t know the questions to ask.  The lenders (or, to be fair, the brokers that originated the loans that the big lenders then bought to collect on the debt) didn’t, by law, need to care; they were doing their job, as mandated under the CRA.

But this posting isn’t about why we have a foreclosure crisis in Saint Paul.  It’s about how we – as a city – react to it.

And that’s where the really bad news kicks in.  Not only are many of the city’s oldest – and, as it happens, most historic – neighborhoods in immediate jeopardy, but so is the notion of actually being able to buy a home, if the plan goes through.

More on Thursday.

(Read the whole series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V)

I’ve avoided the suppurating mass of leftybloggers and commentators that have reacted disgracefully to the death of Tony Snow.  I haven’t commented on this blog because my only reaction to such moral retardation – depressed disgust – doesn’t translate to print well.

Patterico notes that there is one guy who does this sort of thing very well:

I stopped watching Bill O’Reilly a long time ago, but he’s good for one thing: righteously laying into someone with passion and anger. When there are goons who laugh about people’s deaths — whether they are Ted Rall, or commenters at the L.A. Times web site (posting with the permission of comment moderators) — you need someone with O’Reilly’s attitude to take them to task.

Well done.

I’ve only seen O’Reilly’s show maybe three times (barring the odd clip that pops up here and there).  Don’t care much for him, most of the time.

But…well, just watch:

The good news – we don’t have Jesse Ventura to kick around anymore:

Although his appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” had all the trappings of an incipient campaign, Ventura squelched weeks of hinting that he was planning to enter the arena against Coleman, whose pro-Iraq war record he despises, and Franken, whom he has characterized as an opportunist for returning to Minnesota after years away to run for office.

Ventura would be the precisely one person in the world who should not call Franken an “opportunist”.

Oh, yeah – and the good news:

Late Monday, Dean Barkley said he might enter the race today.

“I certainly am considering it,” he said. Ventura appointed Barkley to fill out the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s unfinished term in 2002.

While there might be fifteen or twenty Republicans who could get fooled by a Ventura candidacy, Barkley will draw not a single GOP vote.  He’ll be yet another anchor around Franken’s neck.

The other bit of good news?  Priscilla, Lord Faris’ candidacy.  Franken will have to fight Barkley on is “right”, and Lord Faris on his left.

And the other, other bit of good news?  Ventura could still still take the plunge:

The candidate filing period ends at 5 p.m. today.

Ventura slyly left open the possibility of running if God spoke to him before then — one of several comments he made suggesting that religion has an undue influence in politics.

And I have to confess – it would be so wonderful to have his big, bloated ego to kick around:

The reason he isn’t going to run, he said, is the media. His daughter doesn’t want the attention his candidacy would focus on her, he said, and he didn’t relish having his motives unfairly attacked and second-guessed.

You mean, you don’t want bloggers claiming that you’re only doing this for publicity?

Yeah.  Good call.

“I was close to doing it,” he told King. “One part of me wanted to very badly. But when I spoke to my daughter and … she feared what would happen to her that happened to her brother, that put me over the top.

“I thought, I will not put my family under that type of position again.”

One of my favorite relatively-new blogs in the Twin Cities center-right is now one of my most lamented ex-blogs.  Roosh is hanging up the jammies:

A rough sketch of my “Vertical Alignment” can be found in the subtitle to my Blog. Save God, it’s all there, and pretty much in order.

…but something has to go. And for some time now, I’ve had a pretty good idea what.

Blogging is a lot more time consuming than it looks. And ask any blogger who is committed to regular writing, it is also quite addicting. As much as I have enjoyed the creative process, the comments and debate, I have a finite amount of time and focus and I have decided to allocate both elsewhere for the foreseeable future.

He’s right – it does take a lot of time.  And any adult has to prioritize – as Roosh notes in the lead-up to his piece.  For my part, I’ve had to keep my blogging to a fairly tightly-constrained period between 5:30 and 7AM, most days (summers aren’t quite so bad, but on the other hand summers are the time I’m least interested in writing).

So sorry the cookie’s crumbled this way, Roosh.  Hope to see you around.

I’ve been wanting to write about the absurdity of Obama’s “withdrawal” plan – aka “Dunkirk On The Euphrates” – but Jeff Kouba already did it:

Well, I guess it wouldn’t be precipitous if you don’t define precipitous as leaving all your equipment behind.

The Dems are channeling split personalities when it comes to Iraq. On the one hand, Iraq’s early security woes were because we didn’t have enough troops to prevent looting and whatnot, and on the other, Fightin’ Obama can reduce our presence in Iraq to a skeleton crew and still perform the tasks we’re doing now.

So, go ahead America. Roll the dice. Those crazy Islamists really don’t mean what they say, do they?

The Dems’ entire approach to terrorism seems to be “it’s all adolescent posturing; ignore/negotate with them and it’ll go away”.

There are times I almost feel bad beating on the Minnesoros “Independent”. The site – a paid propaganda site funded by “liberals with deep pockets” and now staffed mostly by refugees from the City Pages – is (occasional and, I stress this, rare bits of good reporting notwithstanding) kind of like the the really drunk guy who walks into a bar spoiling for a fight after he’s already had sixteen beers. You shake your head and hope he doesn’t hurt himself. You hope he goes away, and gets home safely. You try to mute a chuckle as he tries to pick fights with bartenders, waitresses, the barback. You try to continue talking or playing trivia or dancing.

And then the drunk – or the “Independent” – staggers over to wherever you are, and says something really, “beneath and below the call of duty” stupid and inflammatory. And as you’re trying to wave it off, he throws a punch – a sloppy, drunken roundhouse you duck easily. And, earlier sympathies and compassion and best wishes notwithstanding, you’ve had enough, and you smack his jaw so hard he falls down like a load of old City Pages returns getting dumped in the landfill, and despite yourself, you have to laugh. He pissed you off that bad.

Steve Perry staggers over and calls your date a whore as snot drippes over his stubbly mustache thinks he’s got big goods on Mac:

Steve Benen at Carpetbagger Report and Jake Tapper at ABC pick up on a rather astounding fib told by John McCain to a Pittsburgh TV station:

“When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”

“Did you really?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

“In your POW camp?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

If you’ve heard this story before–and it’s one of the staples of McCain’s POW yarns–you know that it has always been the Green Bay Packers whose starting lineup McCain claims to have recited for his captors. In his 1999 book Faith of My Fathers, McCain wrote: “Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron.”

Steve Perry – paid propaganda streetwalker of the party whose previous nominee presumptive concocted a dash through sniper fire that was invented from whole cloth, whose hubby invented terror-bombings of black churches, and whose last Prez nominee had a completely fictional Christmas trip to Cambodia “seared, seared” in his memory, goes on:

So much for the third-rail sanctity of John McCain’s time as a North Vietnamese POW. In his own mind, clearly, it’s just another tool in an old campaigner’s arsenal.

And you know what, Steve Perry? More power to him. If this is the best “lie” you can come up with, then you are going to have one long campaign, little fella.

For starters, Mac survived one of the ghastliest ordeals any American has ever suffered, and I don’t care if he claims, forty years later, to have recited the entire lineup to Disney On Ice or the cast of The Fantastics.

Second – so what? It has what to do with policy?

That’s right – exactly the same as Norm Coleman’s “luxury apartment” or any part of Barack Obama’s platform.

Funny this is coming to light a day after McCain confessed in the New York Times that he is not really up on his computers and internets.

“Life is full of ironies, if you’re stupid”. P.J. O’Rourke.

This is your lefty “alternative” media at work; nitpicking a triviality spoken by a guy whose suppositories Steve Perry is not fit to carry.  I have a hunch that in five years, he probably managed  to get through the Steelers, the Packers, the rest of the NFL, major league baseball, and every cabinet officer in US history.
And it’s “Internet”. What, you’ve been taking “glib and cutesy” lessons from Priesmeyer?

No, no no – it’s “Priscilla Lord Faris”.  But with a name like that, who could resist?

She’s the daughter of Miles Lord, the Minnesota judge who was to the law what Mitch Snyder was to rational social policy.

Oh, yeah – and she’s mounting a primary challenge against Al Franken.

Though relatively unknown, Lord Faris could prove to be a test for Franken because she does have natural constituencies. She’s a clear anti-war choice. She’s a former grade school teacher in Golden Valley and Minneapolis. She is a founder of the law firm Faris & Faris, which she says gives her great insight into many of the vexing problems of our times.

Yeah – in the way that being a rat gives you “great insight” into world hunger. 

And she is the daughter of Miles Lord, the former Minnesota attorney general and legendary federal court judge.

“I can’t keep him down,” said Lord Faris of her 88-year-old father. “He’s sent me 12 emails already today.”

“You’ll be getting two senators for the price of one…”

Lord Faris is 66 years old, “which is young, when you compare me to John McCain.”

Enh.

Still – getting Jesse Ventura to run is a little less important now.

My record at predictions – as long as we’re not talking sports – is mixed.

Between “Good” and “Friggin’ Great”. 

I got the 2004 election within eight electoral votes – in a prediction made at the NARN’s first meeting, with Hugh Hewitt, at Billy’s Lighthouse in January of 2004.

Nailing the date of Hussein’s execution, while admittedly ghoulish and not something I especially enjoy, was further proof of my absolute dominance at games of blind luck (that, further, can’t profit me in any way).

And while I had a couple of glaring flubs in 2006 (the Senate race wasn’t close, Gutknecht lost in CD1, and Pat Anderson got toppled in the Auditor race), I had some amazing picks elsewhere; while I got the wrong margins with Betty McCollum’s wins in CD4, and I didn’t really “predict” the SOS race so much as voice a fear (correctly) that it could all go wrong and we could get Mark “Not Married to Madonna” Ritchie as Secretary of State, I also got the CD2 (Kline v. Rowley), CD3 (actually underestimated Jim Ramstad’s margin over Wendy Wilde), attorney and the Ramco and Henco sheriff’s races very close, nailed the CD5 (Ellison versus Alan Fine and some Ventura party chick) race almost on the nose, and – most importantly – predicted the Sixth District Race right on the nose (Michele Bachmann with an eight-point win over Patty Wetterling). 

I present the above for background for the below; I’m going to give my initial predictions for the US House and Senate races this fall.  Take ’em for what they are worth; highly preliminary, based on entirely subjective data.

Just like very single one I listed above.

This is subject to revision at least once.

US Senate:  Norm Coleman will endure a lefty/media (pardon the redundancy) smear campaign of biblical proportions to gut out a six point win – eight if Ventura gets into the race.

First District: Tim Walz will win – but it’ll be closer than you think, setting up what will be a serious threat in 2010 to end Walz’s career at two terms, especially if Barack Obama wins the presidency.

Second District:  John Kline will beat Steve Sarvi by at least ten points.

Third District: Erik Paulsen will confound “conventional wisdom” (which is Strib editorial-board talk for “an opinion pulled from the collective butts of Lori Sturdevant and Larry Jacobs) and beat Ashwin Madia by six.  Talk that the Third Distict is “turning blue” will abate – especially if Obama wins, in which cast Paulsen goes on to win in 2010 by at least 12 points against anyone the DFL throws against him.

Fourth District:  I’m going to withold predictions on this race…

Fifth District:  …and this one.  Partly because I’m too close to both, and partly because they’ll be a lot more fun to write about if I don’t try to predict them just yet.  I think Ed Matthews (CD4) and Barb Davis-White (CD5) are, at worst, initial steps on a path toward re-establishming the GOP in the cities.  This is going to be the subject of another article, soon.

Sixth District: Michele Bachmann will recap her 2006 margin of victory over E-Tink, by at least eight points – maybe better if the regional center-right can get E-Tink’s record of uselessness at MNDoT out in front of the public (juxtaposed, for the fun of it, with his craven, ghoulish performance the night of the 35W Bridge collapse.

Seventh District: Collin Peterson will win.  Fifteen, twenty, thirty points?  I feel bad for whomever the GOP has endorsed, and I wish it could be different, but there you have it.

Eighth District:  Jim Oberstar will slouch onward, the Robert Byrd of the Northland, borne forth on a wave of entitlement swag and an avalanche of yummy pork.  He will be America’s first undead congressman.

Expect at least one round of revisions – hopefully nothing drastic.

Yesterday morning, I had a special project going on.

Can’t talk about that just yet.  Maybe in a couple weeks.

But afterwards, I went to what might have been a Twin Cities first; a group of Twin Cities Second Amendment supporters met at the Lake Harriet bandshell…

…for a picnic.

Of course, most of the crowd of around thirty – over-21 Minnesotans with clean criminal records, no record of drug or alcohol abuse, mental illness or incipient violence, and every one of whom had passed skills courses – was armed.  Indeed, as Minnesota’s carry permit isn’t a “concealed carry” permit, but a “carry” permit (most people carry concealed out of tact and to avoid standing out in the crowd to anyone who is planning mischief), probably over half of them were carrying openly, with pistols holstered at the hip. 

It was probably the safest picnic shelter in Minneapolis.

I didn’t know about the event until Sunday morning.  I didn’t know what to expect…

…well, yes.  I did know what to expect, in the sense that I do know many of the people involved (although I did meet a few new ones), and that there’d be nothing weird going on in the picnic shelter, other than the sort of particularly intense discussion you get when David Gross, Joe Olson and John Caile get into a room at the same time.

But being that the shelter was at the top of Lake Harriet, where Harriet Parkway comes together with several bike, skate and walking paths by the boat yard, the bandshell itself (there was a jazz concert going on) and the north Harriet beach, and on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, made it one of the busiest places in one of the most liberal cities in America.  I expected some wierdness to break out among bystandards and passersby.

I eyed the crowd pretty carefully; while many people walking past the shelter did abrupt double-takes when they saw that half of the picnickers were strapped, we didn’t seem to generate a cone of fear around us.  Indeed, I only saw one Park cop drive by and look things over (and then drive off), and, eventually, a woman who walked up and asked why so many people had pistols.  She got a courteous, friendly explanation, as well as a couple of carry permits for explanation’s sake. 

It was a lot of fun.  We’ll have to do it again sometime. 

Maybe in Rice Park?

Bob Colllins notes that the RNC convo will be bringing extra private jet traffic to the area:

The airports around the Twin Cities haven’t gotten much attention from the media in advance of the Republican National Convention in August. But the Twin Cities Business Journal reports the increase in private jet traffic by the bigwigs should be quite noticeable

It might look like 1/4 of a global warming conference…

…in a campaign where Al Franken – a guy who worked for a network that plundered a boys and girls club to pay his grossly-inflated salary – gets busted bobbling his taxes in dozens of states, to say nothing of a series of crimes against taste (that don’t bother me especially – he was a comedian, so they say, and a freelance writer of sorts – but seem to bother some Democrats)…

…is find that Senator Coleman got a 30% discount on a crappy apartment, then perhaps the DFL needs some better opposition researchers.

Cancer finally took Tony Snow:

Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush’s press secretary, died early Saturday of colon cancer. Snow was 53 years old.

“Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of our dear friend, Tony Snow,” Bush said in a statement. “The Snow family has lost a beloved husband and father. And America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character.”

Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program “Fox News Sunday” from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

Back when Snow was first diagnosed, I sent him a “get well soon” email.  He responded to me – a nobody, schmuck blogger and weekend talk host – with a thoughtful, involved thank-you that addressed and elaborated on the things on my original note.  That Tony Snow – at the time a talk radio and cable heavyweight – would take time out from his professional life, to say nothing of his onrushing health news and, naturally, his family, to not only respond to a schnook from Minnesota, but in a form that gave me years of food for thought, amazed me.

He certainly made press conferences interesting; I could see me trying to do the same thing as a press guy, albeit not nearly as well.

My prayers and best wishes are with the Snow family.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez has much more.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM:

• Volume I “The First Team” – Chad and Brian and John kick things off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I will take over from 1-3. .
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King and Michael will be dishing the Minnesota smack 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.

And don’t forget the David Strom Show, with David Strom and Margaret Martin and the bird-friendly Prius, from 9-11!