2006 was a bit of a holiday from the upper midwest center-right blogosphere’s traditional shredding and hooting at the “Minnesota Poll”, the Star-Tribune’s biennial exercise in DFL promotion.  Things generally went to far to the DFL’s favor (we only salvaged the Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s offices in the worst anti-GOP bloodbath since Watergate) that the Strib didn’t need to try to spin, cook and mangle reality in the DFL’s favor.

This year, of course, things are different.  In what should be a slam dunk year for Democrats in Minnesota, which is traditionally as solid-Democrat as a state can get without massive head injuries, Mac is holding steady and competitive in most polls.  And Al Franken has been trailing incumbent Norm Coleman by high single to low double digits.

The Minnesota Poll, of course, induces its own alternate reality, putting Franken up by a blowout-territory 13 points – almost exactly the opposite of a contemporaneous SurveyUSA/KSTP poll. 

Like all Minnesota Polls, it’s done to generate glowing, feel-good headlines for Democrats, and assumes nobody will read the fine print.  The Minnesota Poll showed a 13 point lead for Franken because they sampled so many more Democrats than Republicans.

Details, details? 

Perhaps – except that this poll is used as a rote talking point by every media figure from Nick Coleman through George Stephanopoulos, who tossed it at Tim Pawlenty on Sunday morning (causing Pawlenty to all-but-chuckle at the reference on the air).

The  Minnesota Poll has been shredded, over and over again.  Rumors of its demise in the Strib’s budget cuts would seem to be exaggerated, although not so much as rumors that the poll would have to clean up its act if it expected to help rather than hurt the Strib in these polarized times, when merely acting liberal on demand isn’t enough to guarantee acceptance anymore.

To:  Governor Palin

From:  Mitch Berg, supporter and fan.

Re:  Lessons Learned.

Governor Palin,

I watched with great interest your interview with Carl Cameron, about the two ambush interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.

A couple of good – and very deserved – shots at the always-vacuous Katie Couric, there.
But the real lesson, I think, is to not give hamsters like Couric and Gibson the chance to “control the battlefield”, to shape your message for you, as they quite clearly did in both intereviews.  Remember – you can say anything you want into the mike; when the editor gets done with the tape, you may or may not recognize anything you said.  The media is a law and set of “ethics” unto itself; they are unaccountable to anyone.

So you should ignore them.  Bypass them.  Let them stew.

Bypass them.  Go directly to the American people, like Ronald Reagan did.  Good gravy, if you have a talent in this world, it’s connecting with all of us who live between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre.  Use that talent.

Ignore them.  And when they react as they will – arrogantly, fuming at the impudence of a mere plebeian daring to displease them – then mock their impotent rage. Play to your strengths – and conservatism’s.  We don’t need the major media.  We detest  them every bit as much as they detest us.

Or at least make sure you have a camera crew of your own there, to make sure that the truth is out there, somewhere.  The word would get out, and fast; there are a whole lot of us bloggers (perhaps you’ve heard of us?) who’d see to that.

So take control.  Even if you and Mac lose this one, you – like Reagan – can look forward to a short time in the wilderness.

Especially if – as I suspect will be the case – Barack Obama becomes the worst president of my lifetime on Inauguration Day.

Tear ’em up, Sarah.

MBerg

…and the leftymedia isn’t there to hear it, is she still a racist?

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

Prediction:  Saying “Obama’s economic policy is stupid” will soon be called “racist”. 

Nick Coleman is dazed and confused (I purchased that sentence from the Department of Redundancy Department).

Nick thinks Sarah Palin winked at him, and his “male” readers. It’s either an attempt at humor (stick to being a broken bat Nick, humor is above your pay grade) or a view into Nick’s psyche; certainly not Sarah Palin’s.

Sarah Palin winked at me during her debate with Joe Biden. She winked at the camera, and I think it was meant for me. There is a connection between us that goes back to that tear-gassy September night in St. Paul, when she gave her acceptance speech and I was up in the balcony, taking notes.

Sarah Palin’s wink was not a come-on, and most certainly not directed to Nick Coleman.

As if.

Now Nick, if you see Sarah lift her middle finger…

Sarah Palin’s was a wink of encouragement to all working Americans. It was a wink to the Democrats “We’ve got your number; you don’t have the answers.” It was a wink of confidence…and it was a wink to her father sitting in the audience during the debate.

I would make a good First Dude.

Silly Nick. A pandering liberal soon-to-be-unemployed columnist for a failing paper vs. a real man in The Deadliest Catch business, who races snow machines and lives off the land in the Alaskan frontier?

Nick, you couldn’t iron her shirt.

…and for your enjoyment, I give you Mariah Carey.

Oh, when you walk by every night
Talking sweet and looking fine
I get kinda hectic inside
Mmm, baby I’m so into you
Darling, if you only knew
All the things that flow through my mind

(But it’s just a) sweet, sweet fantasy, baby
When I close my eyes
You come and you take me
(On and on and on)
So deep in my daydreams
But it’s just a sweet, sweet fantasy, baby

Nick goes on in his column (blah blah blah) and I think he actually says some nice things about Sarah Palin and acknowledges the political clout of soccer moms (blah blah blah) but I lost interest.

It was Wednesday, October 5, 1988.

You might be looking back the last year or so of this series, and noticed a bit of a pattern; Mitch deals with issue with his druggie/sex-addict roommate, goes to work at one crappy bar or another, and pines endlessly for something that was just out of reach. You might even think it’s getting a little stale.

And you’d be right. It certainly felt that way twenty years ago.

But things were so close to changing.

After a year and a half of focusing my job search on radio stations and jobs where I might reasonably think I could have a chance at a job – hosting at smaller and mid-market stations, or producing at bigger-market operations – my unexpected success at landing an interview in New York led me to try a bolder approach. I tried a few more wild leaps.

A week or so earlier, I called WOR Radio in New York – sort of the WCCO of Manhattan, at the time.

I got through to the program director. He asked for a tape.

I followed up today. And he liked it.

“If you’re ever in New York…”

Ahem.

“I’m actually going to be in the city the week of October 16th…”

“Great!”

We set up an appointment.

That was two job interviews in New York.

Certainly one of them had to connect. Right?

Sarah Palin is in attack mode, revisiting the alleged Obama/Ayers connection today on the trail.

“We see America as the greatest force for good in this world,” Palin said at a fund-raising event in Colorado, adding, “Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Almost in anticipation of this attack (the McCain campaign did announce just after the VP debates that attacks on Obama would accelerate in the near term) the New York Times noted yesterday:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

UPDATE: The Times article in question was first released online under the title “Obama had met Ayers, but the two are not close.” That title was soon changed to, “Obama and the ’60’s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths.”

John McCain and Sarah Palin have to fight for their life right now and certainly need to take their campaign to the next level, but I’m not sure digging up alleged associations with Obama’s Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers represents the path to victory.

The path needs to take their message to Middle Americans.

In light of our credit crisis, more needs to be said about John McCain’s unheeded warnings four years ago. More needs to be said about Sarah Palin’s willingness to take on her own party as Governor in the interest of her constituents.

More focus needs to be placed on the fact that the Obama/Biden ticket represents the top two most liberal Senators in America. That Barack Obama is so ideologically shallow he can’t put two sentences together without a teleprompter. That McCain has served his country with honor while Obama has simply pursued and executed a calculated political career. That his preponderance of “present” votes in the Senate is clearly a tactic to counter the fact that Senators almost never become President due to their public voting records.

John McCain needs to point out that Obama’s choice of Senator Joe Biden, one of the Senate’s most entrenched institutional liberals, represents the antithesis of “Change” for his party let alone for the Oval Office and Washington at large. That his failure to select Hillary Clinton as his Vice Presidential candidate represents a deficit in leadership that foretells the same if he were ever to become President.

The McCain campaign needs to highlight the fact that Sarah Palin’s executive experience, while not overwhelmingly substantial, still dwarf’s Obama’s measured by tenure, accomplishment, and political reform.

…and if you’re going to place Obama with unsavory characters, stick with those that can be proven. Tony Rezko, Al Sharpton and Reverend Wright, who married Barack and Michelle, come to mind.

Unaffiliated, undecided voters are going to decide this election and McCain/Palin needs to reach out to them, disturb their centrist sensibilities, and they need to do it now.

…excepting Alice

and well, excepting Katie, that is. Or actually anything that is. Well, the new place has wings, but it’s just not the same without Katie. Jusk ask Joe.

Biden’s Restaurant to Nowhere 

Towards the end of last night’s Joe Biden/Sarah Palin debate, Joe Biden said this: “All you have to do is to go down Union Street with me in Wilmington and go to Katie’s restaurant…”

She investigated a bit and realized Biden was referring to the long-closed Katie’s Italian restaurant, which is actually two blocks away from Union Street.

The establishment is now a Wings to Go.

House approves historic $700 billion financial bailout bill

Financial-Rescue Package Wins Final Approval With House Vote of 263 to 171

According to preliminary numbers, 172 Democrats voted in favor of the bill while 62 opposed it; and 91 Republicans voted for it and 108 voted against it.

Bush to quickly sign bailout bill

The Market reaction?

Let’s just say it’s not down. (1PM)

Factcheck.org

I’ll echo JRoosh; I had a blast at Trocadero for the debate party last night. There’s nothing like watching a debate with 400-odd of your closest friends.

I didn’t live-blog the debate because I’ve figured after all these years that I’m just no good at it. But I’ll echo Roosh; both of the candidates did well. Palin was able to stay on the offensive – I think it’s fair to say she won the first half by keeping Biden back on his heels for the most part. She could have done more; at one point, Roosh, Ed and I all noticed that Biden had dodged an answer; “C’mon, Sarah – jump on it!”. She had a few answers where I’d have liked her to have gotten on-point faster.

But on balance? Given that she owned the first half, and the expectations that the media and left (pardon the redundancy) had set – Palin was supposed to run crying from the room, remember? – Palin would have to have been the more impressive performance. Whether it matters for next month or for 2012 matters not.  The left will have to unleash a lot more bald-faced hypocritical sexism to try to negate her than they’ve even attemped so far.

(Che knockoff courtesy my daughter Bun)

I’ll also go along with Roosh on Gwen Ifill. Perhaps the controversy about her upcoming book put her on notice; the conservative alt-media would not tolerate any hijinx. Whatever – Ifill did a good job.

Which isn’t to say that she had much to work with. In contrast with the first Presidential debate with Jim Lehrer, which allowed the candidates to seriously cross-examine each other and spend some time developing (or, in Obama’s case, not developing) positions, the format only allowed for the most shallow, trival, sound-bite based approach to any given question. That, of course, was to Joe Biden’s advantage; it enjoined him from babbling on endlessly, like at the Alito and Roberts hearings.

I was among hundreds in attendance of the AM1280 The Patriot debate event hosted and moderated by Mitch, Ed, John, and Chad. If you weren’t there last night, I would recommend you attend the Presidential debate event…there were still some empty seats…not a lot…but some. It was an optimal environment to view the debate and Sarah Palin gave cause more than once for the the crowd to go wild.

As for the debate, I haven’t surfed the mainstream media reactions of yet, nor did I listen to them last night. By design.

My take?

First a note on the Gwen Ifill controversy: Ifill kept her word. Her moderation was balanced and if anything, she leaned on Senator Biden a bit more than Governor Palin, at one point inflicting a glancing blow on Joe on a flip flop Palin had previously referred to, in an effort to encourage the candidates to actually answer the questions.

The quick and dirty: both candidates exceeded expectations.

Joe Biden was well-spoken, mostly polite and respectful, and for the most part resisted the urge to bloviate beyond his time slots. He was clearly coached by his handlers no less than the Governor. He was at times nervous, literally “hot under the collar”, at one point actually running his finger along the inside of his collar to relieve the pressure building in his neck. Was this a Richard Nixon moment? Probably not. If he were a Republican in this media environment? Front page stuff.

More notably, there were several instances where Senator Biden was “playing footsie” with someone in the audience, and not paying attention while Governor Palin spoke. The camera caught him snickering and fidgeting in a way that seemed to belittle Governor Palin while she wasn’t looking. At each instance, of which I think there were two or three, the spit screen that revealed his hijinks faded to Ifill or Palin alone as if the control room didn’t want to embarrass Biden. I will be interested to see if the media makes note of this in any way.

As for Governor Palin, she faltered a couple times that were almost unnoticeable. She was confident in her posture and discourse and as the debate went on found more than one opportunity to deliver Joe a smackdown for his assertions that were contrary to his to his voting record or his debates with Senator Obama. Palin took the high ground more than once, and more than Biden.

Palin was also able to express her disdain for the federal government and Wall Street in a way that effectively captured the nation’s collective disgust.

At one point during the detonation of these Barracuda Bombs, while the crowd went wild at Trocadero, Senator Biden involuntarily smiled wide and shrugged; clearly as if to acknowledge “You got me there, sweetheart. Good one.”

Despite the same old weathered and worn political script from Joe Biden and a pointed and refreshingly incoriggible Sarah Palin, both sides got what they were looking for last night and will no doubt claim victory. Neither Biden nor Palin collapsed or fell victim to their storied weaknesses. Biden was not able to trip Palin up while she was clearly able to do so for him. As a bonus, she exhibited a comfortable claim on foreign and domestic policy issues to the extent of the scope of the debate.

Sarah Palin takes the win by slightly more than a narrow margin because she was on the offensive and exhibited just the posture and verve that endeared conservatives to her when John McCain introduced her to the American political scene.

…and just the Sarah Palin that we need to hear more from in the next thirty or so days.

Media Take: “Of course Biden won!  We had the story written before either of them took the stage!

My Take: Palin spent the first half of the debate walking over Biden.

P Diddy is afraid of lil’ ol’ Sarah Palin.

Democrats.  So pathetic.

Cringe or die, mother****er, cringe or die.

Scumbag.  Drama queen.

UPDATE:  The above was writting while very tired and punchy.

Not that I don’t stand behind the sentiments expressed.

Barack Obama is buying his own satellite television channel. This is cause for

1) Elation – as this opens up a whole new category of bloggfodder, derision and political satire

2) Concern – What sort of propaganda can Obama have in store for his hypnotized minions, given his series of associations with anti-American far left radical thinkers and activists (some would say even terrorists)?

Bill O’Reilly (paraphrased from his radio show this morning): Why does Obama have to buy Channel 73? He already owns MSNBC.

Looking to the future…

Cable companies will offer one-channel plans.

Obama’s minions will walk the streets like zombies, wearing Obama logoed T-Shirts saying Change: to 73

Whoopee Cushion will leave “The View” and will have a new show on Obammy-73 called “The Pew” (not as in church – as in olfactory dissatisfaction).

Reverend Wright and Michelle Obama will host a perky morning show:

“Good Morning God Damned America”

Bill Ayers will host a new show about blowing up public property for fun and entertainment:

“Smash ‘n Grab”

Tony Rezko will host a home improvement show:

“Steal It, Fix It, Sell It, Prof-it”

The possibilities are endless…

So does anyone out there in the greater Saint Paul area have a drum sander, or a really oomph-y orbital sander, that they could rent or lend to an area blogger for a day?

It’s for a new recipe.

No, not really.  I have a floor or two to refinish – and all of Menards’ rental sanders are broken and unavailable.

I love the smell of poly in the morning.  It smells like…

…a hangover when you haven’t been drinking.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me know.

“Iceberg? What Iceberg? We were just trying to see how fast she’d go.”

Here we go; the Veep debate is tonight.

Will Joe Biden’s endless jawing cause him to spontaneously combust? Will Sarah Palin shred him like moose bound for the stewpot? Will the overwrought, panicky sexism of the “diverse” left become so dense it collapses in upon itself, creating a black hole that consumes the planet?

I dunno – but it’d be a lot more fun to watch with a bunch of your closest friends!

AM1280 The Patriot is hosting a debate viewing party at Trocadero in Minneapolis (it’s right by the Monte Carlo, on Third Avenue at First Street North) tonight.

We’ll have free appetizers and a cash bar (and let me tell you – nobody does appetizers like Trocadero!). The debate goes from 8pm CST to 9:30pm CST and doors will open at 7:30pm-ish.

Admission is free – but please RSVP at the handy AM1280 RSVP Page so we can plan accordingly.

Sign on up and join us tonight.

Not to mention the Presidential debate, on October 15, too. Same time, same station, same wonderful nightclub.

We’ll see you there!

UPDATE:  Just heard from the station – we’ve had a ton of reservations.  But don’t worry – we’ll make room for more!  Sign on up – we’ll see you there!

Once upon a time, someone asked Winston Churchill what he believed about government welfare. This was, of course, at a time when most of the world’s nattering classes believed that socialism and the welfare state were not only the best possible idea, but in fact inevitable.

Churchill, a conservative, responded “I propose not to level out the peaks to fill in the valleys, but to put a net over the abyss”.

That, for me, has always been one of the tenets of being “center-right”, as opposed to a paleoconservative; government has a place – in the few places were the free markets don’t have a presence.

As re the current economic crisis? I’m not nearly smart enough to be an economist.

King Banaian is smart enough – so much so that he is in fact an economist. And a conservative.

And a proponent of some kind of bailout:

The free market has taken an enormous amount of abuse as regards the current financial crisis. It shouldn’t; it had nothing to do with it, as many of the other authors in this series have pointed out (and will). To the extent that the market has failed, it has done so largely because of government coercion over the years.

The “free market” did not get us into this mess, but we need the free market to get us out. For that to happen, the free market needs government as a partner, whether conservatives like that idea or not.

But the free market solves everything,right?

Well, yeah – as long as there is a market. As King points out, this is not like the Great Depression, or any of the depressions before it; those were liquidity crises. This is a credit crisis; the engine of recovery, in our economy, is credit. And much of our credit market is based on assets – crummy mortgages, exotic derivatives based on other numbers – that may or may not have any value.

And without a market for credit? No recovery.

King:

Free markets do not mean always private markets. Free markets mean markets with an absence of coercion. It is possible for government to step forward for a missing market and not be coercive. A bailout that did not consume taxpayer dollars would be one example. Forcing banks to alter their lending standards would be coercive and unfree.

The problem we face is the absence of a market. Government can help create a free market where none exists today, and that would be a good thing. It may be that we cannot avoid costs associated with previous government meddling in the market that helped create this crisis, but we can all hope that the costs will not extend beyond those already sunk.

Which is not to say that any government intervention doesn’t need to be watched closely to prevent it becoming the pork-fest the House Democrats tried to inflict on the nation last week. Government may need to act; it doesn’t need to be stupid.

Read King’s entire article – and the Center of the American Experiment series of which it’s a part.

UPDATE:  Government doesn’t need to be stupid.  But it seems to come naturally, as Kevin Ecker notes.  Kevin – every bit as paleo as i am – is willing to be convinced.

But…:

However, my willingness to be convinced diminishes greatly, when I read through the bill and see things like this:

• Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
• Sec. 310. Extension of mine rescue team training credit.
• Sec. 311. Extension of election to expense advanced mine safety equipment.
• Sec. 316. Railroad track maintenance.
• Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
• Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventory.
• Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds.
• Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
• Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

Look expanding FDIC and things like that I get.  You’re giving yourself the tools necessary to fix the economy.  But if you had the time to be concerned about wool research and motorsports tracks I start getting the impression that you aren’t taking this seriously.

Yeah.  That’s a problem a lot of us are having with this proposed “fix”.

I wasn’t aware that “film and television production” was that essential to the economy.

I commute via bike. I do it because I enjoy it, because I’ve lost 2-4 pants sizes in the past five months, and because it’s a just-plan-good time.

Although I just started biking seriously again in June of 2007, I had a ton of experience as an urban and distance biker. I’m pretty defensive (and I write that knowing that in doing so I’ve very likely written something that can be used as an ironic coda by some jagoff in the event of a mishap in the future), because when biking in the city, everything you do can kill you, and everything you don’t do can kill you, and everything someone else does or doesn’t do can kill you.

Which was what I worried about last spring, when I saw hordes of new bicyclists joining us out on the road. You could tell lots of them were newbies; I saw lots of telltale signs of the less-experienced biker; innocuous ones like coasting down long hills (better to keep pedalling, even if it’s just freewheeling, to keep your muscles from cooling off), and serious ones, like zoning out on busy streets. I joked with a few other bikers that we could expect a heavy toll of accidents among all those newbies out there.

Sadly but inevitably, that’s pretty much what happened.

Being a conservative and a biker, I get plenty of flak from both sides; some conservatives take the car culture as a matter of pride (as do I – or as would I, if I had a cooler car) and take a lot of really dumb rhetorical swats at bikers; many bikers are pretty chauvinistic about their left-centeredness.

There’s a big, important story in there; bikes are different than cars. Some cities – like Boise, Idaho – recognize that bikes are not just spindlier looking cars, and have changed their laws (bikes can regard stop signs as “Yields”, and stop lights as signs). The changes will do doubt piss off drivers – although they shouldn’t, since people who follow the laws will never run afoul of each other anyway. There are good, health and safety-related reasons for these changes. Which doesn’t change the fact that some bikers are just plain dumb and/or inexperienced (above and beyond the whole “Democrat” thing), and some conservatives say really dumb things about bikers.

No big surprise there, right?

Of course, given a choice between a real story and a dumb sideshow, the local alt-media knows what to cover.

Emily Kaiser caught Anti-Strib being un-PC:

The latest from the Anti-Strib blog is sure to get hardcore bikers and Sen. Barack Obama fans riled up. After recent reports of deaths and injuries due to the increasing numbers of commuters taking to their bikes for a primary mode of transportation, the Anti-Strib blog says it might help Sen. John McCain win the election.

Gosh. Hyperbole. Hardly new at Anti-Strib – or the City Pages, for that matter.

Not that it matters; I haven’t read a dead-tree edition of the CP in years, and doubt I’ve willingly patronized one of their advertisers in even longer.

But the comment section was where things got interesting mildly loathsome. “Scottsdale Woman”, proprietor of local deranged-nutbar hangout “Mercury Rising”, wrote:

Oh, and by the way: A heavy-duty cyclist of my acquaintance [I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that “heavy-duty cyclist” bit, picturing a 400 pound guy on a recumbent – Ed.] wants you to know two (2) [Two (2)? You mean deux (II)? Please be more specific – Ed.] things:

1) Your comments are being reported as terroristic threats to the Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments, and:

Oh, goody.

This is, of course, the same whinging crone who responded to my call for vigilance of anti-RNC protestors by calling me a “provocateur”. But let Tracy Eberly take a joking swipe at her 400-pound friends, and suddenly she’s Ms. (?) Law and Order?

(And if there’s anyone at the metro police departments would could pass this “forwarding” on, that’d be much appreciated).

And I loved this bit:

2) A growing number of cyclists now carry handguns.

Wow.

I’d go to Mercury Rising to see how Scottsdale Woman stood on the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, but that’d involve…well, going to Mercury Rising. That’s just crazy talk.

But it’s ironic, isn’t it, that Wes Skoglund was partly right? That there are people out there who will turn traffic accidents into shootouts? Of course, like Scottsdale Woman, they are lefties and Obama groupies, not actual gunnies. Not that that’s a surprise.

And while as a long-time carry-permit-reform activist I would never dream of confirming or denying anyone actually carries anything, and stipulating that it’s very hard to find a good carry rig for biking (yet another reason to eschew that skin-tight lycra crap), I have to ask – how in-freaking-credibly stupid is this “woman?”

She’s taking it on herself to remind the car-driving public – even the a**holes who don’t like bikers – that some of us might be carrying?

Thanks for nothing!

“She” also does a drive-by outing of Tracy Eberly’s place of employment. Which brings us to a modest proposal.

This city is clogged with anonymous bloggers, invariably lefties, who make scabrous claims and gutless ad-hominem attacks from behind pseudonyms, taking big, brave (and usually fact-challenged) swats at peoples’ ethics, personalities and histories. Some of these attacks – like “Scottsdale Woman’s” in the City Pages – are direct attacks on peoples’ livelihoods.

I can’t help but think that some of these people would be a lot more polite if they – like most of us conservative bloggers, Hinderaker and Johnson, Morrissey, Brodkorb, Banaian, Eberly, Tucci and, er, yours truly – had their real names out there.

So maybe it’s time to abolish the anonymous leftyblog; to find, and “out”, the most egregiously gutless, the ones that attack from cover and skitter away behind their anonymity.

Not to say it’d be easy; it’s not that hard to cover your tracks in the world of blogs.

But if there’s one thing conservative bloggers are good at, it’s finding things we’re not supposed to find. And if there’s one thing anonymous leftybloggers are good at, it’s having stuff we’re not supposed to find.

No, I have no idea how. Just saying.

but Still in the Woods, to The House of Representatives we go…

The Senate’s revised bill sweetened the original package by tacking on a number of tax breaks and other perks in the hopes of swaying the House to reverse its original veto.

The add-ons include tax breaks for businesses, users of alternative energy and hurricane victims as well as relief from the alternative minimum tax.

Also, it would boost the limit on FDIC-insured bank deposits to $250,000 from $100,000 for one year.

Additionally, a bill boosting improved health insurance for mental health was wrapped into the package.

Say again? Was that Pelosi’s idea?

In all, the add-ons bring the potential package cost to over $800 billion, according to published reports.

What’s an extra $100 Billion?

The revised bailout received the support of both presidential candidates.

American taxpayers have swamped many representatives’ offices with e-mails and phone calls, with overwhelming majority urging them to vote down the bill.

…and they were listening last time. Brace yourself. This may not be over yet.

I’ve been following the renewed interest in nuclear power.

While I (as a muttonheaded 16 year old who thought George McGovern had most of the right ideas) joined the herd in panicking about nuclear power after Three Mile Island, it’d seem rumors of the death of nuclear power were premature.  Word filtered back through the literature as far back as the late eighties about German and Swedish advances in nuclear physics that made meltdowns physically impossible – which sure sounded good.

Anyway, I thought about that when read this bit in Pop Mech a while ago.

As a result, the frontrunner for the initial $1.25 billion demonstration plant in Idaho is a helium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor whose extremely high outlet temperature (1650 to 1830 F) would be ideal for efficiently producing hydrogen. There are a couple of designs that could run that hot, but the “pebble bed,” so named for the fuel pebble that Weaver holds, is attracting particularly intense interest.

A typical pebble-bed reactor would function somewhat like a giant gumball machine. The design calls for a core filled with about 360,000 of these fuel pebbles–“kernels” of uranium oxide wrapped in two layers of silicon carbide and one layer of pyrolytic carbon, and embedded in a graphite shell. Each day about 3000 pebbles are removed from the bottom as fuel becomes spent. Fresh pebbles are added to the top, eliminating the need to shut down the reactor for refueling. Helium gas flows through the spaces between the spheres, carrying away the heat of the reacting fuel. This hot gas–which is inert, so a leak wouldn’t be radioactive–can then be used to spin a turbine to generate electricity, or serve more exotic uses such as produce hydrogen, refine shale oil or desalinate water.

The pebbles are fireproof and almost impossible to use for weapons production. The spent fuel is easy to transport and store, though there still remains the long-term problem of where to store it. And the design of the nuclear reactor is inherently meltdown-proof. If the fuel gets too hot, it begins absorbing neutrons, shutting down the chain reaction. In 2004, the cooling gas and secondary safety controls were shut off at an experimental pebble-bed reactor in China–and no calamity followed, says MIT professor Andrew Kadak, who witnessed the test.

We should be cranking these things out like X-Boxes.

Naturally, read the whole fascinating thing.

And if that works, maybe we can go for one of these.

(And remember which party is still married to those thirty-year-old “No Nukes” shirts).

The financial markets melt down.

The country teeters.

Barack Obama…

…votes “present” and spends the day preaching to the choir.

Really, what is to be afraid of if he wins?

The Vice Presidential debate is coming up on Thursday. Have you signed up for the party yet?

AM1280 The Patriot is hosting the best Veep debate viewing party at Trocadero in Minneapolis (it’s right by the Monte Carlo, on Third Avenue at First Street North) tomorrow.

Wanna get your food and booze on?  We’ll have free appetizers and a cash bar (do I even need to rave about Trocadero’s appetizers? I think not!). The debate goes from 8pm CST to 9:30pm CST and doors will open at 7:30pm-ish.

The admission is free – but please RSVP at the handy AM1280 RSVP Page so we can plan accordingly.

Not to mention the Presidential debate, on October 15, too. Same time, same station, same wonderful nightclub.

We’ll see you there!

 Last June, democracy won a huge victory when the Supreme Court ruled for the plaintiff in the Heller case. 

As a human rights advocate (the Second Amendment being merely one right among many that needs to be jealously defended), I had been looking forward to the decision with anticipation and trepidation for quite some time. 

To the point where I basically had posts written for both contingencies – a win, and a loss.  Both posts were written, for the most part, weeks in advance. 

Naturally, we – Americans and human rights advocates – won, and I ran this jubilant-yet-defiant-to-the-point-of-belligerent post.  I’m still proud of that one.

I’ve had people ask me – “so, what did you write in case we lost?”

I remembered that question as I was cleaning some old stuff out of the Drafts folder this morning. 

Here – a little bit of alternative history written for a much uglier state of mind:

Fascism Wins.  Freedom Kicked in the Groin.  For Now. 

By a X to X vote, the Supreme Court of the United States today ruled in the Heller case that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is exactly the opposite of what the founding fathers intended; that a right “of the people” means “the National Guard”, not “you and I”. 

Y’know – how rights “of the people” to assemble only refer to Congress, and how freedom of speech and the press only mean the news media.

As a result of today’s ruling, the District of Columbia’s gun ban – like most gun control measures, a racist conconction intended to keep all those brown-skinned people from running amok in the nation’s capitol – stands, and will return us in deed if not in thought to the days when black people had a separate, unequal justice system…

 

…with hints of much, much worse…:

…shall carry forth for the moment unabated. 

As Gary Miller notes in his Categories list – Western Civilization; it was a helluvva run.

Oh, this is not the end of the war over the Second Amendment.  The orcs control much; many cities still pay fealty to the notion that a disarmed, docile citizenry is a safe one.  This is far from the end.  The movement of Real Americans who support our God-given rights is large, and sure – if I have anything to say about it – to take this as a wake-up call.

The big lesson?

Your rights are only as secure as your ability to bring political power to bear can make them.

The SCOTUS’ decision was a loathsome one, and a bad day for America:

And as Churchill noted, one does not forge victory from defeats:

And yet Americans – real Americans, the ones that are rendered nauseous by this decision, as opposed to tin-pot authoritarians like Heather Martens and Wes Skoglund – are all about fighting back against adversity, against horrible odds…

 

…and prevailing.  Much hard fighting remains.

The orcs will take this as a cue to continue and redouble their assault on the God-given rights of the law-abiding American.  It is inevitable; it is the way of the orc to feed on your freedom.

 But we – the Americans who’ve fought long and hard to keep this issue on the national radar – have to cinch up our belts and get back into it.  We’ve won much in the past ten years; “shall-issue” is now the law of the land in most of the US; even unabashed liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fear the might of the NRA.

Damn right.  Let’s show the bastards what fear at the polls really is.

To the pike with the enemies of freedom.  (Speaking rhetorically, of course). 

God Bless America.

NOTE:  This blog seeks dialogue.  However, if you wish to defend the SCOTUS’ decision, you will need to make it a very, very good one to avoid having  your comment deleted or mutilated for my amusement.

Nice to see that it’s just a rhetorical curio.