…that the staff of The Onion won’t be missing their target of the past eight years, George W. Bush, nosirreebob…:

Oh, God, no,” says feature editor Joe Garden. “It’s been a nightmare trying to figure out what to do with him [in the paper].” From the Onion’s standpoint, Barack Obama’s nomination and his rock-star celebrity were good news, “simply because he has people interested in politics, which lets us satirize something people care about,” says Garden.

…I have been meaning to ask for quite a while – isn’t it time to start satirizing The Onion? 

Is it just me, or have they been phoning it in for the past year or two?

Yes, my good friend, it would seem you’ve been hitting some hard times.

I’m truly, truly sorry to hear that your car has broken down.  It can be a real hassle when cars break down. 

And it’s sad that your daughter is sick, and needs to get to Regions.  I’ve been there; trying to take care of family emergencies with a balky car can be harrowing, for sure. 

And it’s drastically bad luck that she’s in the car right now in her condition, with Mom over on a side street out of sight of this parking lot.  Gawd, that has to stink.

And I know – I know! – that you are under immense stress.  The tone of your voice truly says it all.  I feel your pain and your stress, on a level perhaps deeper than you might suspect.

And I know this is the kind of time that you could use a helping hand from a stranger – say, $100 to get your car towed and catch a cab down to Regions.  Christian charity is a powerful thing, and Minnesotans are rightly famous for it.

I do feel I should lend you the hand you need.  I feel it in the pit of my gut.

And I’d feel it a lot more if this weren’t the second time you, yourself, have tried this con on me in this self-same parking lot in the past year.

That is all.

What would happen if Congress failed to bail? Preferred to defer? Adjudicated to abdicate?

A look at U.S. history suggests that even during the worst U.S. recessions, Americans have been able to turn things around. There were times when things looked so bleak that only a fool might have hoped for a brighter future. Eventually, that brighter future arrived.

Is this time different? Yes. Every time is different, but that doesn’t mean we won’t overcome this one, like the rest.

Why?

Because we can. As embattled and encumbered as the free enterprise system is by liberal policies, corruption both corporate and federal, incessant layers of useless regulation and tort abuse, America is still the world’s comeback artist. As watered down as our flavor of capitalism has become it is still the only proven system of sustained prosperity; socialists take note.

Some of my clients are disturbed by the precipitous drop in leading economic indicators such as demand for shipping, logistics and packaging. Some companies have chosen to extend holiday breaks to their employees; starting now. To their credit, I find employers are more concerned for their employees than for themselves, a quality lost on Barack Obama, who feigns concern for the working man for the sole purpose of indenturing him further to the Democratic Party, and seeks to penalize those that employ.

At the same time, these same business owners are just as certain that this too shall pass. Because it always has.

But this one’s gonna sting.

Why did things always work out in the end? Because we remembered who we were when times got tough.

Limiting Government

The U.S. has always distinguished itself relative to its major trading partners by having a higher faith in free markets and a greater respect for the limits of big government. Sure, the U.S. passed a stimulus package now and then, but it also let failure run its course and refused to resort to excessive big- government intrusions into the private sector.

I fear many Americans have no idea how deep and persistent this recession could be. Real Esate has fallen for seven consecutive quarters and may not be half done. Unemployment is on the rise. New cars, even Toyotas, are stacked three high at dealerships. The Dow (another leading indicator) is bouncing off 8000 likes it’s trying to break through.

…and we have a President-Elect and Congress hell-bent on raising taxes (on those that actually pay them), increasing government, putting failed business models on life support and spending our dollar into oblivion.

Today I read that John Kerry’s defeat was “the luckiest thing to happen to Democrats in 40 years.”

The next four years are a hot potato, now in the hands of BHO.

Barack Obama may very well be the luckiest thing to happen to Republicans since 1981. Not because Barack Obama isn’t up to the task – in all fairness its too early to tell. Rather because I’m not sure any President could survive the next four years politically, even if he/she made all the right moves. Twelve percent unemployment will have a rather deleterious effect on even the most popular President. The most likely remedy for this particular recession is exactly what Obama doesn’t have.

Time.

Americans have become increasingly dependent on the government, mostly because of the policies of liberals like Barack Obama but it is that very thing that will bring about his political demise. Americans expect the government to create jobs and facilitate “soft landings.” They have little patience and little appetite for sacrifice and thrift. Those are the hallmarks of generations past.

Ultimately our salvation will be invention, innovation and hard work, despite the worst efforts of liberals who will keep printing money until we have double-digit inflation and 16% mortgage interest rates.

We survived the Seventies – in fact a lot of great music was probably borne of the pain and suffering that marked the decade. We will survive this time too, and maybe in the process create a whole new genre of future classics in the process.

In the mean time the Obama Presidency will be marked by the worst recession since the Great Depression and unless he (and we) get a lucky break, The Great Recession of 2009-2011 will be his 9/11.

Obama has neither the tools, the people (save Paul Volcker?) nor the ideological inclination to save us or his legacy and the result will be a resurgence of conservatism. He won’t do the right thing, which may be nothing, bail-out-wise. His congress will pull all the liberal levers. He will sign. The recession will follow its course unabated. The incriminations will ensue: “Obama, it was you.”

Jimmy Carter will be proud.

…and off the hook.

Our next Secretary of State will be someone with part of a term on a Senate committee, and eight years of watching the sausage get made?

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem

No, I’m guessing it won’t be.

Let’s just say I’m underwhelmed.

A few days after the election, regular commenter Angryclown (an old friend of mine, by the way) left this bit in a post-mortem about the election:

 Palin, Quayle, Shrub: stupid.

Bush 41, Dole, Kemp, McCain: smart enough.

A cacaphony of comic routines from the eighties and nineties rattled through my head as I pondered the response; when George HW Bush was in office, his verbal tics, bumbles and occasional attack of food poisoning certainly got their press; Kemp was only obliquely a factor in presidential politics, but he was usually portrayed as someone who’d taken a few too many concussions during his years as an NFL quarterback, especially when he got on the radar during his years as Reagan’s HUD secretary; Dole’s campaign was pretty much DOA in ’96, so his portrayals were a milder form of ridicule.  As to Mac – well, we’ll come back to that.

I responded:

Any Republican can be “smart enough”, when he/she is not a contender or a threat.

Bush41, Mac, Kemp and Dole are all “smart enough” now that they’re retired. When they were contenders, they were all “stupid” or worse.

Sorta like McCain; “Maverick” was every Democrat and media outlet’s favorite Republican, until he actually got endorsed. Then he was a crazy old man – until his career ended. Now he’s “smart enough”.

If Palin retired from politics tomorrow, all the “Palin be dum” stuff would disappear overnight.

It’s true, of course; to the Democrats and the media, the only good Republican is an irrelevant one.  Whether that irrelevancy comes from expired shelf-life (Dole, Kemp, George HW Bush) or being indistinguishable from Democrats (Arne Carlson, Dave Durenberger, and the media’s official “Good Republican”, Chuck Hagel – in Minnesota terms, any Republican that Lori Sturdevant endorses), the idea is the same; the media and the left will tolerate Republicans who are no threat whatsoever to Democrats.

Take the example of John McCain.  He has for the past decade been every liberal’s favorite conservative.  I can’t count the number of Democrat friends who, between 2001 and 2007 or so solemnly intoned “McCain is the only Republican I’d ever think about supporting”.  And conservatives were duly lukewarm on him; he earned an American Conservative Union rating of 87, only a point or two better than notorious moderate (and fellow “Democrat’s Favorite!”) Jim Ramstad, the departing Congressman from Minnesota’s Third District.

And yet the moment he got through the endorsement process, what did his years of accomodation, his “maverick” appelation, his “goodwill” and “reaching across the aisle” get him?

Along with being labelled an “extremist” Republican by a media that managed to shunt Mac’s moderate past down the public memory hole with record speed, I mean? 

Bupkes.

In the wake of the Republican Governors’ Conference, the MSM’s talking heads are prescribing…running to the center. 

Patterico looks back at his own predictions on the subject:

One post that I think has held up pretty well is one that I wrote on February 4, 2008, while the Republican primary was still going hot and heavy. My post was titled John McCain: The Myth of an Electable Candidate. Responding to a Wall Street Journal piece by Steven G. Calabresi and John O. McGinnis calling John McCain the most electable Republican, I said this:

It’s my view that McCain only seems electable because of his media image, which will collapse once the country actually gets to know him in the general election.

. . . .

Many voters will eventually learn that McCain’s image is nothing like the reality. People who know nothing of McCain except his image are finally going to sit down and watch a debate. At that point, a lot of them are going to say: “Holy crap! That’s the guy I thought I liked?!” The antiwar crowd will finally realize he makes George Bush look like Neville Chamberlain. And everyone will see McCain’s smug condescension, born of a background of elitism and privilege. It will manifest itself in that self-satisfied mockingly contemptuous grin that he can’t hide.

As one should beware of Greeks bearing gifts (unless it’s Michael Dukakis trying to look martial astride an M-1), conservatives should beware of the approval of the agenda media.

So what should  we do? 

More later.  Like, over the course of the next year.

News Flash:  Chris Matthews wasn’t the only one whose legs The Light Worker made all tingly:

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Commerce is one thing.  Gassy hagiography?  Well, that’s downright…

…unjournalistic?

What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing…But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world…Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it “BAM-A-LOT.”

Remember when the mainstream media umphed and bargled over the propriety of embedding with the troops, because they might not be “detached” enough to cover the war “fairly?”

Those were the days, weren’t they?:

“Here we are,” writes Salon’s Rebecca Traister, “oohing and aahing over what they’ll be wearing, and what they’ll be eating, what kind of dog they’ll be getting, what bedrooms they’ll be living in, and what schools they’ll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas’ tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?”

But aren’t media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

Read the whole dismal thing.

As we’ve seen in California since the election, the only really acceptable form of discrimination is against blasphemers against PC – in this case, Christians in the Castro District in San Francisco:

At first, they just shouted at us, using crude, rude, and foul language and calling us names like “haters” and “bigots”. Since it was a long night, I can’t even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us. Then, they started throwing hot coffee, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually. Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said “Hey, that’s not yours, can you please give it back?”. He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said “No, tell him I forgive him.”

They got video.

I fully expect to see a proposal to make fundamentalist objection to the gay lifestyle declared a hate crime in the next four years.

There might still be a future for newspapers, says Rupert Murdoch – provided they can quit condescending their readers.

I put the over/under at “10% chance”:

With newspapers cutting back and predictions of even worse times ahead, Rupert Murdoch said the profession may still have a bright future if it can shake free of reporters and editors who he said have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers.

“My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers,” said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp. He made his remarks as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation.

The problem?

Murdoch, whose company’s holdings also include MySpace and the Wall Street Journal, criticized what he described as a culture of “complacency and condescension” in some newsrooms.

Complacency hits all different kinds of businesses.  But “journalism” is almost unique in that it engenders a kind of preening condescenscion toward “outsiders”, AKA “the consumer”, the kind of thing you see in bad doctors and worse police departments and all sorts of businesses that have death wishes.

To make his point, Murdoch criticized the media reaction after bloggers debunked a “60 Minutes” report by former CBS anchor, Dan Rather, that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.

“Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. ’60 Minutes,’ he said, was a professional organization with ‘multiple layers of checks and balances.’ By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as ‘a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.’ But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.

“Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone,” he continued. “A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”

The Strib is worse than most; not only are we peasants too stupid to think for ourselves, they send Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman to do our thinking for us.

That’s a slap.

I’ve all but given up on fisking Nick Coleman.  It’s like slapping a brain-damaged dog with a newspaper when he pees on your floor; it’s not like it’s going to actually affect anything.

Indeed, I’ve pondered the notion of completely ignoring the doddering old duffer – a fate he truly deserves above all else. 

But on his record Nick Coleman truly does have one vast, ghastly, unatoned crime against morality, against “right”, even against what used to be called “journalistic ethics” in a time before the term became a weasel-word for “framework allowing journalists to justify pretty much anything they do”.

His shameful, ghastly, ghoulish performance in the wake of the 35W bridge collapse.

A quick timeline for those of you in whom time has sanded off the fury:

1. In the immediate wake of the disaster, Coleman blamed the Pawlenty Administration in a column (which, under the Strib’s singularly gutless policy, is unavailable online).
2. He went on (where else?) MSNBC the Saturday morning after the collapse and, standing on the banks of the Mississippi, and loudly blamed the Pawlenty Administration and the failure of the Gas Tax hike for the collapse.  He also wrote a line in response to claims that he and his ilk were politicizing the tragedy, a line that should be rubbed in the face of the entire Strib editorial board; “Is it political to be angry about that? So be it. Everything is politics. Politics is not a dirty word by itself. Politics builds bridges and schools and hospitals. And politics can make them fall down.” He ignored, natch, the simple fact that every administration had passed on comprehensive bridge maintenance, preferring instead to build more infrastructure.
3. I predicted that Coleman, along with Alice Hausman and Elwyn “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, were going to owe the Administration an apology when the results finally did come out (but they probably wouldn’t do it anyway). 

The scientists have spoken (over Jim Oberstar’s objections, natch); the collapse was the result of faulty – and opaque – calculations made when the bridge was designed, in 1967-68, as well as tons of construction equipment parked atop the bridge (doing, y’know, “maintenance”, the stuff that the Administration was criticized for not doing).

Coleman’s response?  ignore all those “experts”; my agenda trumps your facts!:

The National Transportation Safety Board is able to explain structural failures. It is not much good at explaining governmental ones.

Especially when they are scientifically irrelevant.

The final report on the Interstate 35W bridge blames the collapse on an obscure bridge designer who, like 13 citizens trying to get home on Aug. 1, 2007, is dead.

The report, curiously, is silent on Nick Coleman’s non-sequitur juxtaposition of unrelated factoids to try to drum up a spurious, uninformed (indeed, disinformed) emotional reaction. 

Conspiracy? 

Let’s see, as he attempts to pull off the difficult Triple Non-Sequitur:

In effect, the NTSB adopted a conclusion reached days after the collapse by an outside consulting firm hired by Gov. Tim Pawlenty for $2 million — the exact same cost as a plan to reinforce the bridge that had been rejected by the same administration: “The dead guys did it.”

Pawlenty got the right answer for the exact cost of a “plan” that would likely not have prevented the bridge collapse in the first place, in other words.

A very convenient theory. But there’s one problem: Carol Molnau is still alive.

On the morning after the bridge collapse, I wrote here that “both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap” and both have scrimped “on the basics.” Still true. But the buck stops with the man in the governor’s chair, and during six years in office, Tim Pawlenty has stopped billions of bucks designated for crucial highway and bridge projects.

None of which would have prevented the collapse!

He has vetoed three transportation bills, including one that passed over his veto while he was engaged in a yearlong beauty pageant, trying out for Miss GOP V-P, a role that went to Caribou Killin’ Sarah Palin.

All of which happened after the collapse!

His complaints about being the target of premature and unfair criticism after the bridge fell should be viewed as the posturing of a guy who wants to be a standard bearer for the Republicans and needs to shake the mud off his feet.

No, Nick Coleman.  His complaints were dead-on.  You defamed him by trying to tie a general policy to a specific consequence…

…which the NTSB has just shown is completely untrue.

Is it unfair to link the bridge to the infrastructure problems that have grown much larger during Pawlenty’s tenure? Hardly.

The the same sense that it is perfectly fair to link the fact that Nick Coleman has a job to the decline of journalism?  Sure.  It’s perfectly logical; “if you fail to systematically unearth bad engineering” is to “bridges fall” as “journalism continues to erode into an agenda-driven exercise in partisanship” is to “Coleman has a gig”. 

Beyond that…?

Despite his post-Obama-slide conversion to a belief that Republicans need to reach out to moderates, T-Paw has embodied the knife-point anti-government agenda of those who think the best way to shrink government is to prove that it doesn’t work. On Aug. 1, 2007, he may have felt the effort had gone a bridge too far.

Or he “may have” been leading a team of Israeli Commandos against a North Korean nuclear reactor in Zimbabwe, at about the time I “may have” been squiring Marisa Tomei about Manhattan and Nick Coleman “may have” been having unprotected conjugal relations with Larry Craig.

“May have”; two words that give weasels the power to move mountains.

“Premature?” How about unveiling plans for a new bridge while victims were in the river?

I’m dying to find out how, in Nick Coleman’s special little world, that’d be any worse than claiming – wrongly – to have solved the mystery based purely on political prejudice.

Is it?

I’m thinking “no”.  

How about hiring a firm supposed to investigate independently that ended up partnering with the NTSB and fingering the gussets (before the wreckage was examined)? Premature? A week after the collapse, Pawlenty declared it “unrelated” to any shortcomings in inspection or maintenance.

Fast work, T-Paw.

A point that is, I’m sure, unrelated:  He was right.   Nick Coleman was irredeemably wrong.

The phrase “Inconvenient Truth” has been stripped of meaning in the past few years.  A pity.

My point is: Choices were made in funding, inspecting, maintaining and repairing a bridge that yes, had a design flaw, but stood 40 years and never should have collapsed.

Never. Ever. Collapsed.

Since Nick – longtime enemy of “ba-LAW-gers”, has adopted one of the most irritating blogging techniques (the. serial. periods. to. connote. emphasis.), perhaps it’s time to declare victory and leave the old dolt alone. 

The bridge did collapse.  There is very little reason to believe any amount of spending would have involved retroactively analyzing the gusset plate design, or that any of the supposed upgrades would have prevented the collapse at all. 

Yes, Tim Pawlenty has a bad case of Potomac Fever, but he is Minnesota’s governor and he needs to stop complaining about unfair criticism and take Big Boy responsibility for a catastrophic failure that happened on his watch. He has not said what any governor must say:

“Minnesota, your government let you down. I am sorry. We did not do our job. There are no excuses.”

Sure.  Perhaps Pawlenty should  join with Jesse Ventura, E-Tink, Arne Carlson, Rudy Perpich, Al Quie, Wendell Anderson and, by the way, the ghost of Nick Coleman  Senior, who was Speaker of the Minnesota House when the bridge was designed and built; perhaps that phalanx should admit the blazingly obvious, that mistakes happen and that government has never been able to repeal that fact, and move on to try to do things better.

It’s probably more likely than the Star/Tribune making the same admission as Nick Coleman is chased from the building.

———-

The Strib will never chase Nick Coleman from the building.  But I will chase him from this blog.  He is a doddering old fool, in the classical sense of the term “fool”, and is of no value to this community, to journalism…

…or, really, to this blog, anymore.  Fisking the old duffer has become a rote exercise.  It’s like playing basketball against people on crutches.

And so while there’s no way I will guarantee this promise, and there’s no way for anyone to enforce it, I retire from fisking Nick Coleman.  A year after a bridge collapse that was the nadir of a career of mediocre petulance, Nick Coleman lived down to even the minuscule expectations I had of him.

There is really nothing more to say about him; so I hereby wall off that cavern-full of thud-witted venality from my consciousness forevermore.

(more…)

Twasn’t us. Trust us. By the way, can we have some government cheese please?

Rather than admit that the UAW’s plum labor agreements and contentious negotiations have contributed to the current gloomy situation, the United Auto Workers head man says that the economic downturn is to blame for everything, and that Congress should approve loans to the auto industry, saying “We cannot afford to…see this industry collapse.” You’ve got to love that black and white logic. The current state of the economy, and in turn the automakers’ pain, are both closely related, and separate issues at the same time.

Word to the wise: update your resumes. Any government bailout will only delay the inevitable. The Big Three will become the Big Two or Big One.

Note to all you liberals out there:  If you forget history, you are condemned to repeat it. 

Let’s look back a bit, here.  I remember in 1998, discussing Libertarianism (the party and, more importantly, the philosophy) with some lefty friends of mine.  They were, to be charitable and understated, guffawing at the notion of running a government first and foremost on strict constitutional principles, erring always on the side of freedom and liberty.

Two years later, when John Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General, these same people were suddenly very libertarian – provided that the “liberties” in question were the freedom to burn the flag, make statues of the Virgin Mary out of dung, and see breasts on statuary during news conferences.  This sudden (and oh so sincere) concern with liberty was transferred after about 2003 in toto to two major demographics:

1. Suspected terrorists
2. People in the US receiving calls from suspected terrorists overseas.

(The left remained silent on the civil liberties of gun owners, conservative talk show hosts, and the data privacy of plumbers who dared to ask questions of their overlords).

But now the left holds nearly-untrammeled sway on the levers of federal power (and if Norm Coleman loses the recount, it won’t be trammeled at all).  And I think things are going to be changing soon.

News stories I think we’ll see before too terribly long – say, along about 2010:

Conservatives Decry “Preventive Executions”

Washington (AP) – As the Obama Administration institutes its’ “Audacity of Death” policy on accused terrorists, liberal pundits defended the Administration’s news appraoch.

The policy, which would allow the State Department to execute accused terror suspects without trial, FISA warrants or notification of any sort of oversight, have drawn flak from conservative critics, although they have broad approval from the Democrat-dominated Congress in an election year.

“It’s just like a bunch of conservative pantywaists to whinge and moan about the “rights” of terrorists”, said Paul Begala.  “I think it’s because they secretly want to be stuck in a toilet stall with Osama Bin Laden and Larry Craig”.

And I expect to see this comment in my comment section shortly thereafter:

PlacqueMonger Says:
November 16th, 2010 at 9:34 am

You neo-nutzies are sooo soft on terror!  What happens – your’re are now longer in power, and soddenly you want to go all soft on terrorr?

Terrrrrorrrists have no rightsts.

Am I being hyperbolic?

Well, doyyy.

But given the way the left seems to toss sweeping statesments of principle down the memory hole when confronted with reality…

Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?

That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.

…I really don’t think I’m being that far out of line.

We’ll see.

Oh, yes we will.

Zack at MNPublius writes:

If Katherine Kersten can’t find evidence of misconduct by a DFLer, than there isn’t any. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the words of Fritz Knaak, Norm Coleman’s attorney for the recount. When asked about the handling of the canvassing process, Fritz said it was “neither wrong nor unfair.”

Which could mean…:

1. There is “nothing wrong or unfair”
2. Republicans don’t want to act like (some) Democrats have over the past eight years, throwing wild, baseless and dim-witted accusations that undercut confidence in democracy to try to undermine the legitimacy of [fill in the GOP winner].
3. Some indeterminate combination of the above.

It’s called “being a grownup”. 

Ace on the politically-motivated, officially-sanctioned, illegal smearing of Joe Wurzelbacher:

Wow! That “Sudden Fame Exception” to privacy wasn’t known by many, but it sure seems to have been known by partisan Democratic Ohio bureaucrats!

…The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe the Plumber.

…Anthony said the database searches on both days were conducted to ensure that the information in Lucas County was being properly reported by the media.

”Wouldn’t that have been a disaster if the lien had been paid,” Kohlstrand said. ”The responsible thing for us to do would be to take prompt steps to make it right.”

 

God Bless You for your service.

Yep.  Glad our Democrat-party-linked state government officials aren’t a bunch of pettifogging ward-heelers abusing their power for political gain or anything.  That’ll teach all you uppity peasants.

Where is the ACLU, anyway?

…he certainly didnt’ forget he’s a liberal.

…and he certainly didn’t forget his teleprompter…but it does appear someone set it up a bit too high. Barack Obama usually likes to look down on us angry Americans, not up to us.

Another campaign speech from the Office of the President-Elect. Thanks for the reminder el Presidente’. I think we know we are in a recession. Your people caused it, remember?

He throws a $150 Billion around like we have it. Folks, best hope for another World War because that’s what it took to pull us out of the Great Depression, which was extended by the last “New Deal.”

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

• Volume I “The First Team” –Brian, Chad and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I do our thing from 1-3. We’ll be talking in the second hour with Dr. Kenneth Hill, author of a brand-new book on the Fairness Doctrine.  Tune in!
• 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.

Plus – details of our final debate party, and our best-in-class election coverage!

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

(Title: The Members)

Not that I need to dig that hard, of course.  But sometimes, things just fall into your lap.

From MPR’s “Loophole” blog, Jeff Horwich writes:

The other day at our weekly brainstorming meeting, a producer friend of ours mentioned that his female friends were all a-twitter about Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s new Chief of Staff)…Evidently the swooning has begun…[as in leftysphere articles] heralding “our sexy, angry, sexy, evil chief of staff designate.” A writer on Gawker invokes the phrase “the cute little guy.”

And someone has taken to Yahoo! Answers to pose the question “Anyone else think Rahm Emanuel is sexy?” The consensus, after 10 responses: Two snaps up.

I have never been prouder of my party.

Well, almost never.

I guess if Sarah Palin can be turned so instantly into a sex symbol, why not Rahm Emanuel?

Jeff Horwich is usually a very sharp guy.  I don’t know if caring for a newborn has warped his mind, or if it’s just working in the Taj Ma Kling day in and day out…

…for “Post Title of the Month”…

…is right here.

Growing up as something of a wannabe rock star, my dreams as a teenager were probably more focused on guitar gear than on cars than for most teenage guys. 

And in fact they still are.

And the big mack daddy of ’em all, to a kid who grew up a Who fanatic and who played guitar for two years before he knew there was a way to strum the guitar other than windmilling, was the amp that Pete Townsend, more than anyone, made famous; the Hiwatt.

Famous largely for getting smashed during Townsend’s “destruction is art” phase from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, the Hiwatt was also famous for being clear, powerful, reliable and very, very loud.  It was part of the “big three” of Brit guitar amps of the sixties and seventies, along with Vox (which was the Fender of Brit amps) and Marshall (which was, hello, Marshall).

Of course, being all Brit and exotic and all, they were impossible to find in North Dakota.  Although rumors from travelling musicians had it that you could occasionally – rarely – see one at Marguerite’s Music in Moorhead.  And so, one day, when I was finally old enough to do road trips to Fargo/Moorhead with my friends, I made the pilgrimmage.  I walked into Marguerite’s…

…and found nothing.

So the second time I took a road trip to Fargo, I tried again.

And there it was.  No, not the stack, but the “Studio Stage” combo…

…which, truth be told, may or may not have been up to the standard of the original “stack”, with its two cabinets with eight 12 inch speakers and 100-120 watts of pure electonic meth.  It’s hard to say..

…and it prompts the question; if you’ve never tasted, say, scotch, and you walk into a bar and someone gives you a glass of six-week-old WalMart scotch and, next to it, a glass of 30-year-old LaPhraoig, do you think you could tell the difference?

I dunno.  The little combo was a joy to play, but then everything at Marguerite’s was.

Even if they’d had an honest-to-goodness stack, could I have cranked it to the stops to get any idea of its real performance, in the middle of a music store?  Probably not.  It would have blown half of Moorhead and all the topsoil in Clay County over the Red River into North Dakota.

Someday.  Someday.

Last night my son and I watched the Wild Phlatten Phoenix but the 4-0 shutout was not the highlight of the game.

This last election was marked by an unprecedented level of rancor, mudslinging and division. The war in Iraq was a source of much of the same until the media decided winning it was a non-event. The Coleman/Franken recount is bound to hold off the healing for at least another month.

Sitting in a packed and confined space with 18,000 Minnesotans however, it appeared there was one thing that can and did unify us all, and I found myself proud…and relieved somehow.

During a break in the action, the crowd cam picked up images of wide eyed kids, young couples huddling close and die-hard fans dressed in every from of Wild apparel.

…but when the camera caught four young soldiers, dressed in field camo, the image needed only to appear for a fraction of a second.

The crowd went wild. The camera lingered. The crowd sprung to their feet, cheering louder for those four young servants, our heroes, as loud as at any time during the game.

I was so proud, and so relieved that Minnesotans still feel this way, and seemingly unanimously, and for my son to witness it.

I am not a huge sports guy; the tickets were given to me by a client. But I can tell you that I am now a huge Wild fan fan.

I’ve often thought Denny Hecker’s empire was built on sand these past few years as he levered his automotive empire, already a survivor of one financial crisis into the Real Estate and Mortgage markets.

…talk about bad timing.

And now this…

Denny Hecker sues Chrysler’s financial arm

The ubiquitous auto dealer also is expected to file for bankruptcy for some of his businesses as soon as today.

Minnesota auto dealer Denny Hecker filed a federal lawsuit this morning against its longtime partner Chrysler Financial Services for allegedly acting in bad faith after it froze Hecker’s credit lines, affecting his rental car business, fleet sales business and 13 Hecker dealerships including one in California.

If you will allow me to ramble, consider the cascade effect manifested here.

Corrupt (and Liberal) officials at ACORN, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae simultaneously crash the markets for Credit, Homes and Equities. Congress and the Unions slowly bleed the domestic automotive industry to death.

As a result, a local billionaire goes bankrupt, likely taking local jobs and investment with him.

Thank you liberals. Your evil plan is coming together. I can’t wait to see your solution. Lemme guess: it will involve more of the same. Higher taxes, bigger government, more regulation.

The backlash that will be the Conservative Revolution can’t come quick enough.

The first post this blog did that generated any attention – and by that, I mean maybe 50-60 hits, in those days before this blog had any kind of regional following at all, back in the summer of 2002 or so – was the “DFL Dictionary”.  The post – which is, unfortunately, lost to history (for now) listed a series of common words that the DFL had re-defined for their purposes.  For example:

“Bipartisanship (noun): to belong to a non-DFL party, but to espouse and support DFL policies without any serious question”.

That kind of thing.

And it’s become almost a cliche among leftybloggers in recent months lately as long as I’ve been reading them;  a sort of inexorable “inflation” in pejoratives.  Conservatives never take umbrage, they “whine”; we don’t argue, we “melt down. 

Now, I’m a pretty lucky guy.  Generally pretty happy with life.  I have two great kids, a job I love, a couple of hobbies I love even more, great family, great friends – really, just about a guy could want out of life.  I’m in the best shape I’ve been in in decades, I’m feeling generally good about life, I’ve dispensed with a lot of real and metaphorical baggage in the past year or so, and while life has all sorts of inevitable twists and turns, things are generally going pretty dang well right now.  One of my hobbies – debating politics with strangers in writing and on the radio – has turned into a fun sideline; in this, I’ve been able to find some semblance of fulfillment, as well as some future possibilities, while honoring my sense of integrity.  In other words, I’m getting little bits and piece of happiness, and all in all it’s a pretty good stretch for me, knock wood.

Which, if you’re a gutless anonymous leftyblogger, means “angry”, “hateful”, bla bla bla.

No, really.  “Stove” from Cocky Slob just can’t get enough of trying to jam people into his own bigoted little template:

It came to Spot today, unbidden. In over three years of reading blogs and writing this one, Spot has been unable to find the word that summed up the festering Bund of the right wing blogosphere. But he’s got it now: bullies.

Ooh.  Another neo-Nazi reference. 

He must be writing about something serious.

What, after all, is a bully? It’s someone who is cruel and overbearing, a thug. Someone who picks on somebody else, preferably smaller and weaker, maybe to make himself feel like a big cheese, or even just appear to be one to the drooling sycophants he wants to impress. The words of the bully almost always have a tinge of intimidation in them, or sometimes more than just a tinge.

Or sometimes much, much less than a “tinge”. 

Indeed, in some cases it’s more of a “little corner of actual meaning that you’ve carefully sanded to fit your own  myopic, bigoted, deranged template through which you force all of your own perceptions”. 

As in “you read “apples”, and see “axles””.

There they sit on the bar stool of grudge and resentment, taking big swigs from their tankards of bile, belting out tuneless refrains of impotent rage. Then, tottering home in crazed and bilious humors, they sit down and write stuff like this.

He links to the piece I wrote Tuesday about former Minnesoros “Independent” writer Molly Priesmeyer and City Pages doddering troll Emily Kaiser. 

Rage?  Bile?  Crazed? 

It is no especial mystery why all the paranoid, poisoned, gun-toting crazies are all on one side.

(Although why some people need to vilify, defame and demonize those who disagree with them is an “especial” puzzler to those of us with fuller, richer lives) 

 The pathology is unremarkable. But its consequences over the last twenty five years or so have been catastrophic.

If only because they – “consequences” like people speaking freely and still disagreeing with “Spot”, gutless anonyme – seem to have driven their author around the bend into complete derangement.

Intimidation?  I wished Molly Priesmeyer good luck in her job searc, having been in her shoes all too many times (sometimes with kids to feed, to boot).  I’d like to be so “intimidated” by my nemeses.

Bullying?   I’m the underdog, you half-trained trick chimp.  I’m a little solo blogger from Saint Paul.  Emily Kaiser writes for a multi-million dollar corporation; Molly Priesmeyer wrote for a Soros front, and not being an untalented writer will no doubt get picked up by another sooner than later.

It is a period from which the barest signs of emerging have now just appeared. But the bud is nascent and the bullies will try to kill it.

Catch that?  It’s not just responding – “participating in life”.  It’s “bullying” and “crushing your hopes”. 

For some of us, the notion of “disagreement” and “dissent” isn’t a threat. For the others, there are anonymously-posted pictures of the Nuremberg Rallies.

Courage my friends.

“Courage”.  Heh.

This from a guy who blogs anonymously – who quite visibly panics, indeed, at the notion of being “outed”, when he’s not taking his defamatory, cowardly little shots at his betters.

The word we’re looking for is “deranged”.  

Look that one up on “Answers.com”. 

Courage, little doggie.  Now, run and play.  You are boring and predictable.

(Via Fut)

Cheneys to host Bidens on Thursday

…are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?

A Canadian Jon Stewart fan is miffed at being “snubbed”:

Hell hath no fury like a Jon Stewart fan scorned. A Canadian Jon Stewart fan? Well, that’s like bitter times infinity, because while we have the charismatic Barack Obama, with his blackness and his dancing on Ellen and his straight-faced puppy talk, they have Stephen Harper, a conservative hockey fan (aren’t they all?) who looks like he wants to sell you this beautiful 1996 Oldsmobile. In other words, you can’t blame Canucks for projecting all their little hopes and dreams southward, feeling like no-one gets them in Winnipeg or Medicine Hat.

In other words, if Harper wins another term we’ll have Geddy Lee and Norm McDonald threatening to move to the US?

So we read with sadness the tale of Sharilyn Johnson, a woman who has traveled from Toronto to New York City to attend Daily Show tapings so many times, she’s on a first-name basis with “Teri” and “Jessica” from the audience department. Yet when she flew down last week for the Daily Show’s Election Night Special, she waited in line and watched as seats filled with VIPs… and then the unthinkable happened: She was turned away at the door. (Only about 21 or so folks got in. Johnson was No. 40 out of about 250.)

[Gratuitous reference to liberal single-payer healthcare plans removed d/t excessive obviousness]

How could this happen?! She reserved her tickets 7 months ago! And she’s the biggest fan ever! And she took vacation days from her job, booked a hotel, and traveled FROM TORONTO (that’s a 52-minute flight!)! Gawker excerpts Johnson’s emotional HuffPo screed about the incident, and here are some context-free highlights: “I am owed,” “robbed of an experience,” “emotionally empty,” and our favorite – sorry, favourite – “How do I stand outside under that awning again?”

I’m trying to think of a one-word summation of the story that links Ms. Johnson’s credulous naivete and liberalism’s corrosive elitism.  I know what I’m shooting for, but I’m coming up zilch.

Help me!

The phrase that started it all. First AIG then the rest. The Big Three are about to become U, S, and A. The UAW and the Congress killed the Big Three, now we’re going to own them.

Let’s assume that the powers in Washington — the Bush team now, the Obama team soon — deem GM too big to let fail. If so, it’s also too big to be entrusted to the same people who have led it to its current, perilous state, and who are too tied to the past to create a different future.

In return for any direct government aid, the board and the management should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp GM with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible.

That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others, and downsizing the company. After all that, the company can float new shares, with taxpayers getting some of the benefits. The same basic rules should apply to Ford and Chrysler.

So first shareholders take it in the shorts, then taxpayers.

In the Washington mind, there are two kinds of private companies. There are successful if “greedy” corporations, which can always afford to pay more taxes and tolerate more regulation. And then there are the corporate supplicants that need a handout. As the Detroit auto makers are proving, you can go from being the first to the second in the blink of an election.

For decades, Congress has never had a second thought as it imposed tighter emissions standards on GM, Ford and Chrysler, denouncing them for making evil SUVs. Yet now that the companies are bleeding cash, and may be heading for bankruptcy, suddenly the shrinking Big Three are the latest candidates for a taxpayer bailout.

…Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) wants another $25 billion, this time with no strings attached.

Barack Obama implied at his Friday press conference that he too favors some kind of taxpayer rescue of Detroit, though no doubt he’d like to have President Bush’s signature on the check so he won’t have to take full political responsibility.

Why would there be a political liability for bailing out our automakers? Is it possibly because most Americans are against it? Think about that for a second. Our government is increasingly acting as if it is no longer accountable to it’s citizens.

A bailout might avoid any near-term bankruptcy filing, but it won’t address Detroit’s fundamental problems of making cars that Americans won’t buy and labor contracts that are too rich and inflexible to make them competitive.

While GM has spent billions of dollars on labor buyouts in recent years, they are still forced by federal mileage standards to churn out small cars that make little or no profit at plants organized by the United Auto Workers.

Sounds like good money after bad to me on the surface, but the government, along with the unions are culpable. This scenario is an example of the effect of overarching regulations. CAFE standards force automakers to flood the market with cheap, poorly-conceived high-mileage models to bring down the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, forcing automakers to manufacture a higher percentage of a certain model than the market demands from that particular manufacturer. This along with an inflated labor cost destroys profitability, in turn forcing Ford, GM and Chrysler to come to the government with their hands out.

The Japanese have proven that there is a stong market for small, efficient cars but since they don’t make large vehicles, which are also in demand for certain consumers, they aren’t forced to dump smaller cars on the market at a loss to meet CAFE standards.

We need to allow the Big Three to shed themselves of union extortionists and at the same allow the free market to determine how many small cars people want to buy and from whom.

Otherwise, expect the government to have to bail out (what’s left of) the domestic auto industry every few years.

Update:

Why GM can’t survive bankruptcy

Does this mean I get to keep my Suburban and not make the lease payments? Mr. President elect? Hello?

Dems push for the fed gobbling up a stake in the Big Three automakers:

Congressional Democrats are pushing legislation to send $25 billion in emergency loans to the beleaguered auto industry in exchange for a government ownership stake in the Big Three car companies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., hope for quick passage of the auto bailout during a postelection session that begins Monday.

Of course, the British auto industry went through a similar (in many respects) process starting around 40-odd years ago. 

Note the British auto industry’s powerful position in the world car market – and the fearsome reputation they had for quality during their nationalized years.