In my daily skimming of leftyblogs yesterday, I noticed an item on a couple of leftyblogs. As Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “Independent” put it:

Bachmann slams Dems on bill she voted against:

And then Zack Stevenson of MNPublius (in the post “Bachmann vs. Bachmann“) reprised the story, using Birkey as his source.

Here’s Birkey’s money quote (emphasis added by me):

On Friday, Rep. Michele Bachmann slammed Congressional Democrats for not passing tax credits for solar and wind energy. On the Laura Ingraham Show, a conservative talk radio program, she called Democrats “strange” for not passing a bill that they actually did pass, but without Bachmann’s help…The Democrats did pass such a bill in the House, but without Bachmann’s help. In May, before her newfound campaign issue, she voted against it, Think Progress reports. The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 would provide such tax credits but has been stalled in the Senate by Republicans.

“Hm”, I thought. “Not one but two leftyblogs, and ThinkProgress! That’d be an odd, inconsistent stance for Rep. Bachmann to take, if it’s true”!

Of course, that final “if true” clause is always the clinker when you’re talking about leftymedia coverage of any issue; all the more so with Rep. Bachmann, given that:

1. No figure in Minnesota – not Kersten, not Brodkorb – provokes the derangement among the left that Michele Bachmann does, and…
2. …the Dems are waking up, I think, to the realization that energy is their achilles heel in this election; they can’t solve the issue and placate their base, so their only real option is to…
3. …use their paid propaganda streetwalkers – like their Center for “Independent” Media publication, like the Mindy – to try to obfuscate the issue.

So I figured – before dinging Rep. Bachmann for her apparent inconsistency, I’d check a few things out.

First and foremost: why would Rep. Bachmann vote against alt-energy tax credits before she voted for it? Would it be because…

• Rep. Bachmann has no idea what she wants, policy-wise? Seems less likely with Rep. Bachmann than with most Congresscritters, but heck- let’s put it on the list. Or maybe…
• …because there is some picayune bit of context that the Mindy and the MNPublius kidz didn’t feel compelled to tell you, the gentle reader? Some bit of key, vital information about the “Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008” (PDF pr HTML) that’d make it, I dunno, utterly noxious for a conservative to vote for? Some thing or things that’d make it much more attractive to withhold support of the bill, and push to implement the parts she supports, independently?

Always, always check out the second option before assuming the first. I did.

And, as it turns out, The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 has just a few bits and pieces to it that’d make it – I dunno – utterly anathema to a principled, consistent free-market small-government conservative.

For example, the bill includes about $55 billion in tax increases over ten years (mainly on capital formation – a huge no-no for conservatives) on top of a skeezy corporate estimated tax payment shift. Worse still, the tax increases are long-term, while many of the tax cuts in this bill – the ones that Birkey and Stevenson are whooping and hollering over – are just one-year extensions of current law. To a principled fiscal conservative, more long-term taxes are hardly a good trade for a brief hiccup in short-term ones. And it’s even worse than that; energy, especially alternate energy, is extremely R and D intensive; the focus on short-term extensions in existing tax cuts prevents American companies from planning for the near future, to say nothing of one that’s realistic in the world of research and development.

Dumb and dumber? The bill would apply Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements to all tax-credit bonds, whether created by this legislation or not. Mannah from heaven for Democrats, and feel free to argue their merits, but you can’t realistically expect a fiscal conservative to vote for more salary mandates that’ve been slipped into a bill with one item she supports, can you?

Dumb and dumberer? At the end of the day, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008’s “incentives” are aimed primarily at energy sources and technologies that are, to coin a phrase, technological “shots in the dark”; sources that might someday prove capable of powering a growing, first-world economy, but equally may not (remember when ethanol was going to solve our problems?). Either way, there is one ineluctible fact that the “alternative energy über alles” crowd keeps ignoring; if our economy isn’t healthy, we will never develop viable alternatives; for the next decade or two or five, that signal fact is going to depend on having enough oil. There is no way around that fact. The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 doesn’t recognize this; Rep. Bachmann does.

Oh, yeah – and the bill contains tax perks for trial lawyers, movie producers, and a huge earmark for New York City (for transportation infrastructure projects, including mass transit, highways, railroads, airports, ports, waterways, etc).

Read it for yourself (PDF or HTML). It makes no sense to take (let’s be charitable) 2 steps forward and 20 steps back in the grand scheme of things. There’s just too much pork for the Congresswoman to vote for this thing. I, a genuine conservative and energy hawk, would have been upset with her if she had!

The Twin Cities’ liberal altmedia; all the news George Soros and Brian Melendez want them to print.

I’m going to interrupt my narrative (although rest assured, it’s going to continue) to announce a fascinating experiment.

Bob Johnson, of the A Democracy blog – which focuses on housing and city council issues in Saint Paul – is hosting a round table discussion featuring, as this is written, Saint Paul City Council member Kathy Lantry.

They’re talking about a number of housing-related issues, including the vacant home ordinance we talked about in the rest of this series (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V), as well as some I haven’t talked about much; a RICO suit against the city by a number of landlords, questions about code enforcement abuses, and the future of housing in the city.

I’m honored to have been asked to help moderate the discussion, along with Bill Cullen, a Saint Paul landlord and activist. (Bill will let me know if that’s not a fair description!).
So go over to the thread on A Democracy and leave a (polite, reasonable) question; Bill and I will be picking the ones we forward to Councilperson Lantry and any other city officials that agree to participate.

This should be an interesting exercise.

UPDATE: Bumped up to today, so everyone hopefully sees it.

1972: Nixon wins in a landslide. Pauline Kael: “How could we win? Nobody I know voted for him!”

2008: Hypothetically, John McCain wins. Macintosh/Twitter/MyFace/AppleCrack users: “But he doesn’t even use Safari!”

Y’see, he’s older than a lot of candidates. He’s not a real computer guy. At an age when most of Obama’s latte-guzzling Mac-toting Twitter-tweeting audaciously-hoping e-advisors were learning how to put video on SpaceBook, he was learning how to fly an A4 Skyhawk and lead men into harm’s way. About the age most of the too-cool-for-Starbucks crowd was getting burned out on Match.com, Mac was getting his hands hammered flat by NVA goons which, lemme tell you, is hell on your texting speed.

Oh, he’s making tentative moves toward the online crowd – but to some of that particular pack of hamsters…:

His efforts have won him brutal derision from the online left.

“McCain Makes Historic First Visit to Internet,” Obama-backing satirist Andy Borowitz headlined one imagined dispatch.

“Sen. McCain said that he had embarked on his visit to the Internet to allay any fears that he is too out-of-touch to be president, adding that he plans to take additional steps to demonstrate that he is comfortable with today’s technology: ‘In the days and weeks ahead, you will be seeing me rock out with my new Walkman,’” Borowitz wrote.

Show of hands; anyone who gives a crap?

I mean, anyone who actually pays taxes and doesn’t think Che Guevara was sexy and heroic?

I thought so.

Others have been less gentle.

After a spokesperson told The Associated Press that McCain is “fully capable of browsing the Internet and checking Web sites,” a front-page diarist on DailyKos sneered: “I hope someone gave him a cookie.”

And if we were looking for someone who could out-twitter Ahmadinejad, that’d mean a whole lot to me.

But we’re not, and it doesn’t, and as a side note to anyone who docks a candidate any points for being ten years behind the online fashion curve, I’m going to refer you to www.whogivesacrapyoutriteslapnuts.com.

Consider yourself s3rv3d, pwn3d and, what the hell, v@nqui$h3d.

LO friggin’ L.

Joe Kimball has long has a reputation for impeccable ethics and credibility.

Now?  Pfft:

People are asking: How can we, Dick and Jane Public, get a ticket to attend the Republican National Convention in St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center?

Oh, really, Joe Kimball?

Name them.

Chief over at the Dogs on the “guests” who’ll be coming to Saint Paul in less than a month:

Awake to the Che’ alarm clock, smoke a bedside bong, have some green tea, rub on the BO/patchouli ointment with indigenous soil to look and smell the part, pull on the camoflauge and hemp togs for the day, then step on down to the curbs of sunny St. Paul for a week of America, GOP, western civ, Bush McChimpHitler, conformity hating. A great day in the life of a paid protester in Amerikkka.

Back when I was at KSTP – when I was, I feel it safe to say, the only conservative pundit in the Twin Cities underground rock and roll scene – I interviewed a bunch of the kids from the “Backroom Anarchist Center”, which was sort of the “Jackpine” of the ’80s. After I booked them, I did a little cursory backgrounding on the three guests who were coming to the show. Every single one hailed originally from Edina, Woodbury or Orono. Nothing wrong with that, of course, although it saps a little credibility when your “revolutionary zeal” all stems back to the kick you get cheezing Mumsy and Dadders off when you say you’d love to french-kiss Che Guevara.

And it’s save to say that I never met a single “anarchist” who didn’t fit exactly the same profile, when pressed or called on their BS.

It’s a tangent, of course. But read Chief’s bit for the real payoff.

Check out this piece by Paul Demko in the Minnesoros “Independent”, re Ashwin Madia’s campaign to try to replace Jim Ramstad in the Third Congressional District.

Note the many, many references to Madia’s time in the Marine Corps.

Forget, for a moment, that military service in Republicans is something about which Democrats are at best silent, and at worst scabrously defamatory or (in the Mindy’s pages, no less) ignorantly mocking.

What does this constant spin tell us about the DFL’s appreciation of this issue?

Discuss.

Since time immemorial, I’ve set this blog to display the most recent 20 posts.  When it was just me doing the writing, that was usually enough to keep 4-5 days’ work on the front page.

Now, with two fairly prolific guys working on the blog, it means that stuff I published Friday is already falling off the bottom of the blog.  After a weekend, mind you – when I rarely post, and Roosh usually slows down.

So for the first time ever, I’m going to crank up the number of posts on the front page.

Newspapers: Shrinking.

Shot In The Dark:  Growing.

Invest accordingly.

To:  America’s writing teachers

From:  Mitch Berg (BA, English)

Re:  Status Report

As my friend Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci notes over at the Kool Aid Report, it’s quite clear from this example that some of you really, really aren’t pulling your weight.

Seriously – we presume that most of the people writing the linked bilge are adults, right?  High school, if not college graduates?  They can’t even pull off “cutesy” and “smug” well.

Perhaps more surprising; given the demographics of most “counterculture” protesters, many of the perpetrators are likely private school grads.

This should be popping up on your performance reviews (presuming justice breaks out in this universe any time soon).

See to this, please.

That is all.

Jeff “Not The Gun Guy” Rosenberg is a regional leftyblogger who, like most regional leftybloggers, writes at a couple of dozen blogs. I’ve met him, he’s a good guy.

Which doesn’t mean I can’t respond to this post, “Conservative Math”, over at (checks list) The Daily Liberal.

Turns out there’s more to “liberal math” than “multiply the crowd at any lefty protest by an order of magnitude; two if you’re nasty”:

Sometimes I just can’t help but respond to the local conservative blogs. Roosh at Shot in the Dark seriously believes conservatives have the answer to our national debt problem:

Jeff quotes Roosh’s post from last week, “Sheriff’s Sale”. The post’s money quote…

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.

…echoes the possibly-fictional but still utterly accurate “Alexander Tytler” quote (I always thought it was De Tocqueville?): “A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”

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.

Rosenberg responds:

Unfortunately, he and the rest of the conservatives don’t have a leg to stand on. Their hero “W” has the dubious distinction of being the only president to lead us into war while simultaneously cutting taxes. Republicans in Congress fought tooth and nail against returning to pay-as-you-go rules.

Let’s try to get a couple of things straight:

• “W” President Bush was never a hero to fiscal conservatives. I was a Forbes/Kemp guy in 2000, until the last gavel sounded at the convention; we all knew that Governor Bush’s record was that of a “fiscal moderate”. We warned the party. I never warmed up to Bush, really, until 9/11; history is going to completely vindicate his foreign policy on most counts. But his fiscal policy, especially his spending, have always been disasters.
• His spending is a disaster because on that issue he is virtually indistinguishable from a liberal. His pre-9/11 Education program and the Prescription Drug benefits, for example, were closer to Ted Kennedy than Milton Friedman.
• The Republicans in Congress from 2000 to 2006 certainly didn’t help matters much.

But so far, so good. That part is still on the rails.

This next bit…:

In typical Republican fashion, however, they don’t want you to pay any attention to this. The tax cuts aren’t the problem. The war isn’t the problem. Deficit spending–which we didn’t do under Clinton–isn’t the problem. No, the problem is that the terrible liberals want to make sure we provide our citizens with proper healthcare and send our veterans to college.

…not so much.

The tax cuts aren’t the problem – indeed they’re part of the solution. The war is part of the problem (but it did pretty much come to us, and the financial impact of not fighting the war might well have been much higher – which is a subject for a different post).

Deficit spending is surely a problem – see all of us Forbes supporters waving over here? (And Clinton can thank Reagan for the peace dividend check he cashed, and the Gingrich Congress for forcing him to be a moderate, and all of us conservative voters for rejecting the agenda of Clinton’s first two years at the polls in ’94).

Part of the problem, however, is that the left is trying to peddle the soft side of government spending, portraying it as “college benefits for veterans” and “health care”, omitting the bit about “generations of entitlement spending helping destroy the inner cities”, “farm entitlements destroying agriculture”, “government spending, and a generation of federalizing education, have left us with a decayed, failing school system”, “Education subsidies have made college unaffordable to everyone but the wealthy, except with government help” and, soon, “the entitlement and subsidy cultures that the Dems have spent the last four generations building is about to make private health care unaffordable and lead to de facto socialization even if the formal socialized medicine program doesn’t get jammed down our throats” and the big kahuna, “excessive taxation harms the economy”.

Don’t buy the hype. Conservatives these days are not interested in reducing government spending.

Jeff doesn’t hang around many of us. (Closed circuit to Brodkorb; we need more happy hours. Stat.)

They’re just interested in redirecting it: from working families to energy speculators,

This is one of those lefty memes – a non-sequitur, really – that puzzles me.

Conservative policy is to drill more oil, and do it now, to alleviate the shortage that exists now and will no doubt get worse if we don’t get more oil to market. It’ll affect the market psychologically in the short term (knowing the supply will eventually get better), and physically in the long term (more oil!) and will, in the end, be the key to developing a viable alternative energy economy (only prosperous societies can fix their problems; our prosperity at the moment depends on oil).

Speculation profits from scarcity. If a good is in plentiful supply, there’s no motive to speculate.

SPECULATOR 1: “George, are you interested in ten billion in oil futures?”

SPECULATOR 2: “Vot? Are you MAD, T-Boon? Ze Price iss FALLING! Ze zupply iss RISINK! Vy Vould I buy oil? Hell, Lefty propogohnda vebsites are a bettah inwestment! I’d rotha induce a deprezzhion in another emerging country!”

It’s only when a good is in short supply that there’s any upside to betting on its price fluctuations.

So the joke is this; a movement driven by the likes of George Soros – whose entire fortune is built on profiting from shortages, fluctuations, and the misery of others – is yapping at conservatives about “energy speculation”, when the liberals’ current policy is the one that’ll create the conditions that let them make their profits!

No, I didn’t think it was funny either.

At any rate; lefties? Feel free to keep trying to lecture us on math. Practice makes perfect.

Is e-mail ruining your life? Delete … now

According to a report to be published in October by the New York-based research company Basex, unnecessary interruptions such as spam, other unnecessary e-mail and instant-messages take up 28 percent of the average knowledge worker’s day.

So if I spend another 28 percent of my day in the bathroom and another 40 percent blogging…wow! That’s like 106% of my day spent…(I’ll resist finishing that sentence).

Behind the e-mail backlash is a growing perception that — despite its convenience and everything positive it has brought to work and social situations — it is a monster that’s threatening to ruin our lives.

“It chases you,” said Natalie Firstenberg, a Los Angeles therapist who said the subject of e-mail is a frequent subject with her clients. “There are no business hours.”

Methinks her clients needed therapy before they got a smart phone (a misnomer if ever there was one). My friend Smithers has a more colorful moniker for these devices.

As legions of “knowledge workers” vacation this summer, the question of whether to take along the BlackBerry is more complicated than ever. Do, and the vacation might not be such a vacation after all. Don’t, and you’re likely to return to an in-box that takes hours to clear or, worse, the dreaded “your mailbox has exceeded its limits” message.

We covered this here and here. 

The Matrix can be our friend. Or our enemy. It’s only as smart or as menacing as we allow it to be.

Well…unless your boss hands you a crackberry on the company account and says “Don’t leave home without it.”

Then you’re pretty much screwed.

And some people (or their parents) are just plain stoopid unfortunate.

The nation’s youngsters will soon be headed back to school and making new friends in new classes, as well as catching up with old buddies – activities that these days typically spark a flurry of text-messaging, especially among teens and young adults. But the nation’s emergency physicians say they are seeing a dangerous trend that can go hand-in-hand with texting: a rise in injuries and deaths related to sending text messages at inappropriate times, such as while walking, driving, biking or rollerblading.

“In March, [we] were driving and saw a  woman in her twenties step off the curb and get struck square by a pickup truck,” said Dr. Matthew Lewin, MD, PhD, an emergency physician at University of California San Francisco Hospital in San Francisco. “She was unconscious and it appeared she’d suffered a massive brain injury. You could tell she saw the truck at the last moment because her cell phone was dropped right where she was struck just off the curb, and she was thrown about 20 or 30 feet.. It was horrifying. The truck stopped. The driver was devastated. I was amazed to hear she survived all the way to trauma center but died [in] the ER.”

So unless your boss superglues a Blackberry to your wrist, it behooves the wireless warrior to keep your wits about you and condition your fellow thumbinistas. Yesterday on a bike ride I received two phone calls from a client who didn’t leave a message then proceeded to text me:

“JR call me back ASAP. I have to talk to you.”

So I stopped what I was doing, which was biking (Yes, I pulled over), thinking maybe he had had a death in the family or something (I do insurance planning too) and called him only to find out he wanted me to confirm some rumor about one of my colleagues.

Sigh.

I told him that since he had texted me I thought his call was urgent and if it’s okay with him, could we please carry on this conversation later (or not at all).

I used to tell my clients that I return all phone calls within twenty four hours but if you email me “it’s like you sent me a letter – give me a couple days.”

That doesn’t really work any more. In fact, many of my clients see email as more urgent than a phone call, probably because they really don’t use the phone any more. The upside of this is that I in turn can get a lot more done and can communicate a lot more efficiently using email.

Expectations do have to be managed and in a service business such as mine, that must be done in a cordial but firm manner.

It cuts both ways. There’s no such thing as “email tag”, which is a good thing.

So for now, as long as I am able (though I rarely do) to disconnect, I am Master of My Domain on The Matrix; not the other way around.

According to Mike Pence – one of the heroes of Friday’s insurgency on the House floor – te fun’s not over:

House Republican Leader John Boehner announced today that House Republicans would be back on the House floor Monday “to continue and unprecedented protest that began last Friday, when dozens of Republicans joined hundreds of American citizens on the House floor to protest Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) decision to send Congress home for the rest of the summer without a vote on legislation to lower gas prices and move America toward energy independence.”

And MOB blogger Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring got a nice surprise…

For a little flavor of what to expect, check out this blog entry that includes unedited video from Friday’s protest on the floor of the House.

Yes, I’ll be tuned in tomorrow…

Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn is dead at 89.

Through unflinching accounts of the eight years he spent in the Soviet Gulag, Solzhenitsyn’s novels and non-fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person’s courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

Along with Paul Johnson, Fyodor Dostoyevskii and P.J. O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn was one of the authors that paved the way to my becoming a libertarian-conservative, 25 years ago.

Beginning with the 1962 short novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn (sohl-zheh-NEETS’-ihn) devoted himself to describing what he called the human “meat grinder” that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.

His “Gulag Archipelago” trilogy of the 1970s shocked readers by describing the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe.

But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person — Solzhenitsyn himself — survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice.

Sheila O’Malley:

Shaking my head. Strange. How it feels like a personal loss.

The world was a better place, a more honorable place, a place where bravery was possible, and where truth was always louder than lies … because he was in it.

Jay Reding:

His influence helped foster in the end of the Soviet empire and the dawn of a new age of freedom. His willingness to speak out against the evils of the Soviet system helped forge the moral case against Communism. 

Read Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag. Great stories, great lessons – and history that mankind will forget only at its immense peril.

UPDATE:  One thing that’s important to remember about Solzhenitzyn; he was Russian, first and foremost.

While The Gulag was a key motivator that helped bring down the USSR, Solzhenitzyn also endorsed the authoritarian Putin, and supported many of the former KGB officer’s crackdowns and power-grabs.  This is not out of character with the “Russian personality”, of course; in a land that’s been a kick-toy for invaders for millenia, security trumps “liberty” in the traditional western sense, and Solzhenitzyn embodies this trait.

Whack 1) How incredibly hot Ellen Foley was back then; hot enough to be the subject of this song, indeed…

Whack 2) That Pat Benetar became a superstar, while Ellen Foley (but for her bit on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and her part on “Night Court”) languished in obscurity.

Whack 3) The fact that most of those videos are almost thirty years old…

This 4:52 worth of video should give us all the motivation we need to work our butts off the last 90-something days of this campaign. Watching Mike Pence got my blood flowing. It was inspirational watching him. I’m betting you’ll feel the same way.

Nancy Pelosi tried shutting the House down. Ms. Pelosi’s strongarm tactics failed. They failed because an inspired group of GOP representatives used their words, their camcorders and their smart use of technology to tell Ms. Pelosi that this is still the People’s House, not Pelosi’s Politburo.

Steve Perry is shocked – shocked! – that after months of setting himself up as The Messiah, of Michelle Obama prescribing him to fix this nation’s soul, that the GOP is actually taking Obama at his word.

Because in the world of Steve Perry – former journalist, now paid propaganda flack and majordomo of a really, really bad glorified blog – is certainly getting the vapors over “The One“, Mac’s inspired mocking of the Obama personality cult.

You really have to watch this to appreciate how committed the McCainiacs are to their scorched-earth policy for courting the dumb-dumb vote. An hour or two ago, the McCain campaign posted a new web ad that leaps even further over the top in its denunciation of Barack Obama than the “Celebs” TV spot from earlier this week.

They only hate you if you draw blood.

Oh, and Perry – whose idea of a great source his is weekly mutual toenail-painting sessions with David Schultz – thinks the peasants are just revolting:

It’s a close relative of “Celebs” in the distasteful, incredulous reaction it’s likely to elicit from bloggers and even mainstream pundits. Then again, like “Celebs,” it’s not for that crowd. It’s for the more lumpen elements of the Christian extremist base. Who else is going to get worked up at the not just dubious but profoundly cheesy implication that Obama thinks he, like Chuck Heston, is capable of parting the Red Sea?

And where could that “cheesy implication” have come from?

I’d point out that Perry’s “response” is of a piece with the entire left’s mutual talking point on this spot – but that’d be redundant, wouldn’t it? The entire justification for Perry’s blog and its bloated payroll is to recite the talking points when the leash is yanked.

(I’d also point that Perry’s response is actually worse than most; it’s nothing but but a class-action ad hominem.
You earned your pay, Steve. Now go feed the pets; your grudges and hatred are hungry.

I have had more than my share of speeding tickets over the years. I drive a fair amount, like fast cars, and sometimes lose track of my speed or get caught having a little extra fun.

For me, the occasional speeding ticket is a cost of doing business.

As a taxpayer however, It has always raised my ire to observe speed traps on state or federal freeways staffed by local municipal squads. I have a great respect for our police officers. I consider them to be just as brave and in service to our country as anyone in the armed forces. However, I wonder if the officers themselves are thinking

“Is this what I signed up for? Traffic duty?”

Yesterday I spied a Golden Valley squad on 394 before he spied me with his laser gun.

He was “shooting” at cars in very heavy traffic, all of which were well above the posted speed limit. This caused an annoying and probably dangerous scenario where drivers, having spotted him, were jamming on the brakes before the poor sap just behind them knew what was happening.

One has to wonder what is more dangerous? The extra seven miles per hour or the tax collector police officer with the laser gun. 

Two days ago I observed two Minnetonka cops preying on Westbound traffic on the Crosstown, Highway 62 near 494 where the speed limit drops from 55 to 45. One with the laser gun. One primed to pounce.

In the case of Minnetonka, I happen to know that at any given time there are four squads on duty in the city because I have voiced my opinion on the topic with the police chief more than once, having also seen the same thing on 494, an interstate freeway.

In essence, half of our police force was preying on motorists on a state highway that happens to pass through the city. In the mean time, in almost five years living in my neighborhood, where motorists regularly travel at ten to fifteen over the limit on a street where children are regularly seen biking, I have seen a squad patrolling only once.

Within the last ten years or so, a convenience store and a Dairy Queen have been robbed at gun point in the city of Minnetonka. In the case of the convenience store, an employee was shot and died.

That is not to say that either could have been prevented (unless a squad happened to be within view). Rather, it makes the point that speeding isn’t the only crime in these parts.

Shouldn’t our squad cars be conspicuously cruising our neighborhoods and business districts? Isn’t that the highest and best use of a scarce resource? Are speeders from a different community on a state or federal highway that happens to pass through the community a chief concern for the respective police department?

or…

Is it actually a local tax on out of town speeders in response to diminished state and federal funds coming to local police forces?

I’ve heard Governor Pawlenty talk live twice while he’s been governor and have been tremendously impressed by his unflappable posture and his ability to successfully steer a talk away from politics when the subject of the talk was clearly not politics.

He is one of the most comfortable, adept leaders we have had around here in years and certainly the GOP and McCain have taken notice for some time now.

Yesterday in Ames Iowa the Governor spoke out in a way that may portend a near future role in the McCain campaign as it was uncharacteristic of Tim Pawlenty.

“He’s put so many contingencies around it that I wonder, in fact I question, whether he would do it at all,” Pawlenty said after he helped open Republican campaign office in Ames. “It may be a way for him to gain favor during the election, and tube it later because all the contingencies weren’t met.”

Pawlenty further criticized Obama, saying there is not one issue of national prominence where he has led the country. He said a vote for Obama “is the political equivalent of bungee jumping.”

A clear shot at Obama, Pawlenty’s comments are uncharacteristically direct, and encouraging as it relates to the Governor’s political future.

His cool and unflappable reputation gives his criticism of Obama a certain gravitas and McCain is going to need all the help he can get. 

Leo from Psycmeister’s Ice Palace has had just about the longest weekend a parent can have:

At approximately 1am yesterday morning, our son Doug and his nearly-fiancee Brooke were coming home from a friend’s house on Doug’s motorcycle, when the motorcycle hit a deer (they were travelling around 40 mph); They were both wearing protective gear and helmets; no alcohol was involved. Doug sustained some pretty hefty road rash at two places in his body, but was otherwise okay.

It’s not all good:

Brooke, however, sustained a serious brain injury. She was transferred from Detroit Lakes Hospital to Merit Care Hospital in Fargo, ND (around 50 miles away, where they have a top-grade trauma unit).

She was largely unresponsive yesterday, and was placed in a medically-induced coma so as to keep her calm.

But a later update includes some good news on Saturday afternoon:

They brought her out of her coma for a bit a half hour or so ago. Doug was there, and asked her if she knew that he loved her. The nurse spoke up and said, “If you know he loves you, why don’t you give him a thumbs-up?” Brooke then gave Doug a thumbs-up!

She was able to wiggle her toes when asked, as well. This is huge, since yesterday she wasn’t responding to commands. Also, her intercranial pressure continues to decrease.

Thanks all, for the prayers and well-wishes!

Leo notes:

Her Caring Bridge site is here.

Have a word, if you would, with whatever higher power, metaphysical force, karmic balance or ineluctible fate you believe in.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have shifted their positions on drilling for oil. McCain acknowledges that while an increase in supply may be years away, the psychological effect will create downward pressure on the market and he is right.

Obama, feeling the heat from his groupies, is now changing his position as well, but clearly out of political necessity.

“I remain skeptical that new offshore drilling will bring down gas prices in the short-term or significantly reduce our oil dependence in the long-term…”

But it’s not enough for a Democrat to allow for drilling of our own oil in our own territory. Obama must assuage his guilt by promising Americans a gift. A a gift at the expense of the oil companies, those evil doers!

Earlier in the day, Obama pushed for a windfall profits tax to fund $1,000 emergency rebate checks for consumers besieged by high energy costs, a counter to McCain’s call for more offshore drilling.

It’s called pandering and Obama is showing he is fast becoming an accomplished liberal politician having mastered the technique.

“This rebate will be enough to offset the increased cost of gas for a working family over the next four months,” Obama said during a two-day campaign swing in Florida. “It will be enough to cover the entire increase in your heating bills.

(unless your name is Al Gore)

Or you could use the rebate for any of your other bills, or even to pay down your own debt.”

Or you could buy four hours with Brett Favre.

Thanks for the financial planning advice perfesser. Maybe the mother land should follow that advice and pay down it’s own debt and stop promising it’s citizens a free ride.

Obama isn’t addressing the real issues here – not going far enough. I am outraged that many Americans have suffered greatly at the hands of supply and demand and oppressive refining regulations evil oil companies and have canceled many a family vacation. I say we increase the windfall profit tax to say $10,000 and enable each and every American family to visit Disneyland.

Or you could use the money to grow wings and fly to Never Never Land, or to organize a community protest, or buy a 1999 Volvo Wagon with 75,000 miles and a Kerry/Edwards sticker on the rear bumper, or invest it by placing it in a jar and burying it in your back yard.

President Bush’s economic stimulus was a bad idea that had little effect on our economy. Rebates (Money for Nuthin’) just dig us a bigger hole. Robin Hood and his groupies are too economically obtuse to realize this.

As everyone knows by now, the Packers have offered Brett Favre $20,000,000 to stay home (I put the zeros there for emphasis instead of the customary $20M or $20 Million to illustrate how unbelievably absurd the NFL has become).

It serves further to illustrate how asinine it is to allow franchise owners to hold major market communities hostage by threatening to move clubs to more agreeable venues. If the Vikings threaten to leave the Twin Cities because we won’t give Zygi $200,000,000 I say fine. There is no way you can justify the expenditure of public money for the construction of a sports facility any more, which is probably why the Vikings stadium issue hasn’t floated to the top of the news pile of late.

I say screw them and the Sex Boat they rode in on.

I get the fact that Green Bay doesn’t want Brett Favre to end up with a division rival but his arrival on the roster is by no means a guarantee of a division title let alone a Super Bowl.

I have a hunch that Brett retired for a reason.

History shows that mature, overpaid primadona athletes are as likely to implode in these scenarios than propel their teams to national championships. Ladies and Gentlemen, Herschel Walker.

As such, how can it possibly be worth $20,000,000 to keep Brett on ice? You can buy a lot of grass seed for twenty million. Crap, you can buy the team a new airplane for that.

Oh, and furthermore, in alignment with the boss around here, …who the hell cares.

Via Ms. O’Hara, I see that pandemonium has broken loose in the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi and the Dems tries to pack up, go on recess, and literally shut down the debate:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) [“Kim Jong Pelosi“, as Patterico says] and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

What? Doing the people’s work on company time?

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz..) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones were turned on shortly afterward.

It sounds like a ton of fun:

Only about a half-dozen Republicans were on the floor when this began, but the crowd has grown to about 20 now, according to Patrick O’Connor.

The Party of the Media is upset that they’re being outflanked:

Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker’s Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers.

“You’re not covering this, are you?” complaing one senior Democratic aide. Another called the Republicans “morons” for staying on the floor.

And it gets better:

Update – The Capitol Police are now trying to kick reporters out of the press gallery above the floor, meaning we can’t watch the Republicans anymore. But Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) is now in the gallery talking to reporters, so the cops have held off for a minute. Clearly, Democrats don’t want Republicans getting any press for this episode. GOP leaders are trying to find other Republicans to rotate in for Blunt so reporters aren’t kicked out.

The First Amendment: It’s for Democrats only!

Update 2 – This message was sent out by Blunt’s office:

“Although, this Democrat Majority just Adjourned for the Democrat 5-Week Vacation, House Republicans are continuing to fight on the House Floor. Although the lights, mics and C-SPAN camera’s have been turned off, House Republicans are on the Floor speaking to the tax payers in the gallery who, not surprisingly, agree with Republican Energy proposals.

Pelosi’s feeling a bit…churlish?

Update 3 – Democrats just turned out the lights again. Republicans cheered.

And kudos to good ol’ American, Republican do-it-yourself knowhow:

Also, Republicans can thank Shadegg for turning on the microphones the first time. Apparently, the fiesty Arizona conservative started typing random codes into the chamber’s public address system and accidentally typed the correct code, allowing Republicans brief access to the microphone before it was turned off again.

“I love this,” Shadegg told reporters up in the press gallery afterward. “Congress can be so boring…This is a kick.”

The piece from Politico reads like a liveblog, and sounds like fun:

Update 4 – The scene on the floor is kind of crazy. Normally, members are not allowed to speak directly to the visitor galleries, or visitors are prohibited from cheering. But in this case, the members are walking up and down on the floor during their speeches, standing on cheers, the visitors are cheering loudly. Some members even brought in visitors, who are now sitting on the House floor in the seats normally filled by lawmakers, cheering and clapping. Very funny.

Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), not normally known as an distinguished orator, just gave a rousing speech, accusing Democrats of stifling dissent. He referenced President John Quincy Adams, who returned as a House member after being defeated in his bid for re-election as president. Waving his arms and yelling, Manzullo brought the crowd (including a lot of staff shipped in by GOP leaders to fill up the place), and he left the floor to hugs from his colleagues. You don’t see that up here every day.

Wonder if this’ll make The Daily Show?

Update 6 – Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. He stood on the other side of the chaber and listed all of the GOP bills that the Dems killed.

He then said “I am a Democrat and here is my energy plan” and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around he house floor with the sign while the crowd cheered.

Rumors that Janet Reno called Pelosi and told her to burn the Capitol down are unconfirmed.

Sgt. Tom, Flash’s son, is in Iraq. 

I remember Tom when he was still in junior high; my stepson, Will, used to babysit him and his younger brothers, way back when not all that long ago.

Best wishes.

…that the 35W Bridge collapsed.

The city is having all sorts of memorials today. 

In a typical year, I’d drive across that bridge maybe 3-4 times. I was in Fridley at a meeting with my son, at one of their rec centers.

As we walked out, I saw the TV tuned to Channel 5, and noticed what looked like a flattened bridge. It took a few moments to register that it was in Minneapolis; my first clue was “there’s no way these people would ever watch the news”, which led me to look more closely and notice which bridge it actually was.

On the drive home, I got probably half a dozen calls from friends and relatives.

And I didn’t go to the scene until late June.

Tomorrow and Monday, I have some questions to ask.

Today, I’ll just hope and pray that the families of the dead and injured can find some peace and comfort, and to thank the rescue workers and citizens on the scene who helped prevent a much worse tragedy.

…that Rush Limbaugh’s nationally-syndicated radio program debuted.

To me, in 1988, it wasn’t a good thing; Limbaugh (and the contemporaneous euthanasia of the “Fairness” Doctrine) not only changed the content and tenor of talk radio (and saved the AM band in the process) but changed the business model as well. Up until 1988, talk radio was an expensive format; instead of hiring a couple of disc jockeys and sitting them down with a stack of records (on tape cartridge, in those days), you had to hire people who could talk about whatever the subject was, and put ’em in a studio; the audience before Limbaugh, lulled by the enforced mediocrity of “Fairness”-doctrine-era radio, was either smallish or, in the case of middle-of-the-road talk giants like WCCO, interested mainly in farm markets, temperatures and scores. And to staff those shows, smaller talk stations had to hire someone; sometimes, it was a 25 year old kid who’d had a graveyard shift show in Saint Paul who’d come to Santa Rosa or Columbus or New Bedford and work mid-days or evenings for $20,000 a year.

But Limbaugh changed that. His program was free; it cost the stations nothing. Limbaugh paid his salary, his tiny staff, the uplink fees, and covered it with advertising. Suddenly, stations had access to a big-budget, major-market air talent, and he was not only free, but his controversial, entertaining, funny program brought in gargantuan ratings. Which, for a smaller station, literally meant money for nothing.

Which didn’t do a lot of good for the career prospects of that 25 year old kid from Saint Paul. But it did turn talk radio into something nobody had dreamed about before then.

Any station could now be a talk station – which, for AM stations, was the life ring they n eeded. When I worked in radio in the eighties, there was serious talk about decommissioning the entire AM band; when I worked at KSTP-AM, it was the poor cousin of the Hubbard Broadcasting machine (including Channel 5 and KS95). The station was on the block, for a ludicrous price, and couldn’t get a taker.

Suddenly, Limbaugh made these underpowered, undervalued stations into money machines; hundreds of AM stations that had been ekeing out a terrible income playing country or oldies or polkas started carrying Limbaugh, sometimes several times a day via tape delay. And the money poured in – to the stations and to Limbaugh. When I went back to KSTP for my one-night fill-in gig for Bob Davis, I talked with my old friend, the late Joe Hansen, who was producing Jason Lewis at the time. The station, the former poor cousin, was “carrying the rest of Hubbard”, said Hansen.

A month or so ago, Zev Chafets did perhaps the essential profile on Limbaugh, in the NYTimes Magazine.

At 57, he is an American icon, although his fans and critics don’t agree on precisely what he is iconic for. I’ve heard him compared to Mark Twain and Jackie Gleason, the Founding Fathers and Father Coughlin. Serious people have called him a serial liar and a moral philosopher, a partisan hack and a public intellectual, nothing more than a radio windbag and nothing less than the heart of the Republican Party.

One thing is certain: Limbaugh has been a partisan force for two decades. In 1994, he was so influential in the Republican Congressional landslide that the grateful winners made him an honorary member of the G.O.P. freshman class. He moved not only voters, but the party itself. “Rush talked about the ‘Contract With America’ before there was a ‘Contract With America,’ ” Karl Rove told me. “He helped set the agenda.”

What Rush was was a voice to people who’d not had one; the masses of Middle Americans who consumed American media culture, but really weren’t part of it. TV, newspapers, NPR and traditional talk radio, all of them based on the coast, driven by the dominant, Northeastern culture, had very little to do with the lives of most of Middle America, and cared even less.

And then, along came Limbaugh. He gave that huge mass of people something that resonated.

“Yeah”, say the detractors, “racist sexist lies!”

Well, no. He gave them a voice in New York, who didn’t so much shout back at the lumpen masses of the media establishment, but cut their knees out from under them with humor, biting satire, and something that they just weren’t used to; articulate opposition.

His success has vexed his detractors for a solid generation, now; they’ve tried many times to meet and beat him in the free market, with Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower and Air America and Nova M. And all failed, to the point where the American left is next going to try to resort to government bullying to shut up conservative talk radio.

They missed the point, of course:

When we met he was on the verge of signing a new eight-year contract with his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks. He estimated that it would bring in about $38 million a year. To sweeten the deal, he said he was also getting a nine-figure signing bonus. (A representative from Premiere would not confirm the deal.) “Do you know what bought me all this?” he asked, waving his hand in the general direction of his prosperity. “Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn’t buy this house. First and foremost I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.”

And for all that, the part that most inspires me is this:

Limbaugh was a failure almost as long as he has been a success. And although he is now an apostle of sunshine (“having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have,” he crows on his show), he spent many years trying to convince his family — and himself — that he wasn’t wasting his life…Limbaugh drifted from job to job…In the mid-’80s he took a job in the front office of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. He was making $12,000 a year, and he almost quit to take a more lucrative job as a potato-chip distributor. “They were offering $35,000,” he told me. “That sounded like a lot of money.”

“But what”, ask his detractors, “does this say about our society? That all the dumb people are listening to Limbaugh?”

Well, the simple answer is, they’re not. As most multi-issue movement conservatives can tell you, conservatism takes more thought than liberalism. And Limbaugh’s audience bears this out (emphasis added):

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners. The study found that “readers of newsmagazines, political magazines and business magazines, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and NPR and viewers of the Daily Show and C-SPAN are also much more likely than the average person to have a college degree.”

Read the whole (nine-online-page!) article, perhaps the best thing I’ve ever seen in writing about Rush.

And happy anniversary, Rush! Your new contract means the NARN has eight years to get its act really humming!

(Brad Carlson also writes on the anniversary, and Jen O’Hara not only gathers scads of great tributes from others, but writes a wonderful one of her own).