In the wake of the budget trimming at the Minnesoros “Independent”, someone leaked a copy of Robin “Rew” Marty’s memo to the surviving staff to Romanesko.  Who printed it (I add emphasis):

Memo to Center for Independent Media employess

Hi, everyone. I know the last 24 hours have been a lot to think about. We also understand that one of the the assets of online media is that everyone knows lots of reporters, and has established very close relationships with their media, both local and national. I need to ask you all to please not respond to media questions about the CIM and our restructuring process. If you receive any calls or emails, please forward that information on to me so I can direct inquiries to the proper channel. It is imperative that you do not talk to the media yourself about this issue. Any violation of this will be grounds for immediate dismissal.

Thank you for your assistance in this, and one again, thank you all for continuing on with us. If you have any questions, please do hesitate to contact me.

Robin Marty
Deputy Program Director
Center for Independent Media

On the one hand, it’s “good” to see that an organization that would seem to have no capacity for shame actually being embarassed.

Or at least to know they should be.

David Brauer on the melt-down:

In essence, the memo tells the chain’s remaining muckraking journalists not to talk to muckraking journalists calling about recent budget slashing.

…

For the record, I’ve emailed Marty — no response. CIM spokesperson Dan Walter, emailed me Monday that “a letter from the publisher on the site tomorrow explaining the situation” would be posted — it wasn’t. And requests to interview CIM poohbah David Bennahum have been met with Walter’s cordial stonewalling (though a Colorado site gets hilariously contradictory interviews with CIM’s leadership here.)

If Bennahum thought this was going to blow over, Romenesko just blew him up.

 Welcome to the feeding frenzy, by the way, Romanesko and Brauer.  Glad to see what it takes for alt-leftymedia to make it on the alt-leftymedia radar:

Agenda journalists obfuscate and stonewall about their funding?  Not a story.

Buddies of lefty alt-media figures feel they’ve been shafted by fellow lefty alt-media figures?  That’s a story.

But better late than never, anyway.

Sometimes, being a Republican feels like being a Bears fan.

Over the years, there’ve been good seasons, and legendary seasons; there’ve been plenty of 9-7 and 8-8 seasons, as well.

Of course, the past two election cycles feel a little more like that stretch after Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus got too injured to play, but before the days of Peyton and Ditka and Singletery and Dent and McMahon; the Abe Gibron years; the years when Wes Montgomery led the team’s rushers with 240-odd yards (on the season); the years when quarterback Bobby Douglass was the team’s top gainer.

The seasons where Bears fans muttered “we’re rebuilding”, year in, year out.

Of course, how one “rebuilt” is always a dicey question – because so many people have so many wildly-different visions of what a team, or a political party, should be.

Patterico tackles David Brooks’ take  take on the GOP’s future.

Brooks:

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed. 

Yep.  Not even just “traditionalists”, but people who are Conservatives first, Republicans second.  It’s one of the reasons we at True North opted to distance ourself from the party, to base our message on “first principles” rather than a party identifier.

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

Patterico responds: 

Cutting government, cutting taxes, and restricting immigration (at least illegal immigration) sound good to me.

And by the way: “rally behind Sarah Palin” is not a “core idea” of the Republican Party, David. It’s true that most Traditionalists have rallied behind her, and she may well be a Traditionalist candidate in some future race. But however much Traditionalists might like her, let’s not load the dice by suggesting that supporting her is a “core” Republican idea.

Maybe Brooks misspoke mis-wrote; Palin is, indeed, not a “core value”. 

But finding, or if needed cultivating, party leaders that put first principles first is in fact the big mission for “traditionalists”.  Right up there is finding and promoting candidates that not only follow them, but can make the case for them to the people.  It’s something Reagan excelled at; it’s a trait at which Sarah Palin has great potential (which is why the media-industrial complex is spending so much energy trying to destroy her). 

Back to Brooks:

The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.

Patterico: 

I don’t think the future of the Republican party is to be Democrat Lite.

There lies the Way of Sturdevant, the Way of Rockefeller. 

The way to “appeal” to any voter, young or Hispanic or Nigerian lesbian, for that matter,  to show them how our beliefs are in synch with their own enlightened self-interest.  I’ve observed this on the blog and on the show almost to the point of cliche: if you could get people to strip away groupthink and tradition and just-plain-bigotry, the inner city should be chock-full of conservatives.  Nobody is more sour on the debacle in our educational system than inner-city blacks (and audacity and hope aside, the Obama administration isn’t going to change a thing there); Hispanic catholics (and the growing number of hispanic evangelicals) are socially-conservative right out of the box, and while the immigration issue polarizes the community now, there’s evidence that that peters out among Hispanics who’ve been in American more than a generation or two; Asians are, of course, stereotypically free-enterprise and strong on education.  Why would they vote Democrat?  It’s a question Brett Schundler asked, and a code he cracked for three terms as the conservative mayor of Jersey City back in the nineties.  The fact that the New Jersey GOP gundecked his further aspirations in favor of a series of gutless moderate hamsters proved the NJGOP should have nothing to do with engineering the national GOP’s road back.

Patterico:

While I disagree with the Traditionalists on some issues — gay marriage, the environment, animal rights, and the like — I tend to fall into what Brooks calls the Traditionalist camp on the major issues.

I still think people believe in cutting taxes and limiting government. They just want a party that is actually going to do it.

And that’s part of the key right there:  not only do we need a party that can translate Hayek for the NASCAR crowd and  sell Friedman to the “soccer moms” and convince Mainstreet that we’re better for the pocketbook and the safety of this nation (which we can do, and have done!), but we need to actually deliver. 

Which is something that Reagan did, and where Gingrich fell a little short, and where the post-2000 GOP was an abominatal failure.

Which is why I support Michael Steele in the battle for the GOP leadership with Newt Gingrich.  There’s no denying Newt’s place defining the roots that the party needs to return to; I just believe that Steele is a clean break with the baggage of the past (ignoring Gingrich’s personal baggage completely, by the way), and a nod to the bench of new talent that the GOP has neglected for far too long.

Advisers doubt Obama

The majority of financial advisers have little faith in President-elect Barack Obama’s ability to put the nation back on sound economic footing.

An exclusive InvestmentNews survey of 968 advisers last week found that 61% lacked confidence in the new commander-in-chief’s ability to resolve the country’s economic woes.

After last Tuesday’s historic vote in which Mr. Obama was elected the nation’s first black president, advisers across the country began considering ways to protect client assets from changes that could go into effect under the incoming new Democratic-controlled government.

That’s not encouraging. Investment advisors are already advising their clients on ways to protect their assets from the President and his Economic Geniuses?

…and it might be too late to escape? (emphasis mine)

“Very possibly, we’ll be looking at a retroactive tax increase for upper-income people to Jan. 1, 2009,” Federal Policy Group managing director Ken Kies told more than 1,000 advisers who participated in InvestmentNews’ post-election webcast last Wednesday.

“the tax increase will be significant, and it’s going to be a lot more than anything he campaigned on.”

Before you dismiss this because you don’t count yourself among upper-income earners, remember, Obama’s standard for this distinction has and could fall further.

With the news that Molly “Is It White In Here” Priesmeyer has become a victim of budget cuts at the Minnesoros “Independent”, it’s time to step back for a moment for a brief perspective check.

Did she use obnoxious Gen-X colloquiety to mask wafer-thin understanding of complex issues and history?  Sure. 

But even on her worst day, she was better than the person who seems to have replaced her on the facile stereotype beat at her alma mater, the City Pages, one Emily Kaiser, whose combination of gutlessness and middle-school-level writing chops (as in this recent hatchet job on Michele Bachmann) actually…

…I can’t believe I’m saying this…

…make me miss Molly.

Come back, Molly.  All is forgiven Hope you land a gig soon, Ms. Priesmeyer.  A rising tide lifts all boats; likewise, three inches of brackish runoff covers the algae-sodden mud.

The Community Organizer was made famous by our President-Elect as his sole “qualification” for the job – save running a successful but financially corrupt Presidential Campaign. Credit is due; Obama changed politics and campaigns forever.

Obama’s success underscores the failure of Republicans to enlist the same level of grass-roots participation among conservatives and centrists that could (and that’s a probably a stretch) have swung the 2008 Presidential Race in John McCain’s favor.

John McCain lost the election not because he was a conservative. He lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. In any case, this election probably wasn’t lost in 2008, rather over the last eight to fourteen years.

The election of 2008 was probably over before it began as the conservative movement ended with George W. Bush’s first State Of The Union address. Republicans have failed to show Americans how they can best serve the interests of middle Americans, moving to the center and leaving the right unoccupied, sometimes desperately adopting quasi-liberal positions in the interest of political expediency.

For naught it turns out.

America hasn’t ceased to be Center Right but Republicans made the fatal mistake that Center-Right is where they should camp out to wait for them. The GOP has failed to make the case to the American people that conservatism represents the best hope for the values that the majority of Americans still hold to be true. Worse yet, Republicans have failed in their leadership by not notifying Americans that this crisis calls for sacrifice and discipline – not another government bailout. A bailout that in retrospect, John McCain should have voted against.

The promotion of Universal Health Care (albeit a “conservative” version), No Child Left Behind, buying ill-gotten mortgages and the most fiscally liberal Republican in modern history have left conservatives without a candidate – or a party.

The result? Kamikaze conservatives actually voted for Barack Obama to hatch another Jimmy Carter backlash.

…but many more stayed home.

Liberals have overrun conservative strongholds by gathering legions of new voters under the banner of esoterica, lead by “Community Organizers.” These Pied Pipers, heretofore dismissed, armed with the internet and credit card terminals are the new tools of political power aggregation and management. The meteoric and unsubstantiated rise of Barack Obama is the ignoble manifestation of this grass-roots groundswell. It bolstered voter turnout (although not as much as expected) among liberal constituents during a contest that concurrently exhibited a mediocre turnout among conservatives.

Lesson learned.

For ’12 -nay ’10- it behooves conservative Republicans (sadly, there is a distinction) to steal Obama’s playbook, rend the chapters on “How to Garner Fraudulent Contributions via Anonymous Credit Card Donations”, “Deflection and Projection”, and “How to Hypnotize the Electorate by Saying Nothing At All” and enlist their own “Community Organizers” to educate, motivate and mobilize the would-be conservative base for the next go-around.

The cause? A new Contract with America? A renewal of unabashed conservatism among Republicans. A rejection of the notion that our federal government is the solution to all ills personal and national. An acknowledgment that our government has become bloated, corrupt, and insolvent.

Moving to the center seemed like a good idea at the time. Average Americans however, are less ideological and more pragmatic. They just want to know who will help them keep their job, keep their taxes low, protect them from evil and share their values of family, freedom, and independence.

Republicans need to sell true conservatism as the only way to serve the long-term needs of the greatest number of Americans. True conservatism is good for the economy and our national security. True conservatism creates real wealth, real jobs and real charity. True conservatism promotes accountability and self reliance; still core values of America to this day. True conservatism promotes democracy and protects the world from tyranny while at the same time champions the rights of the smallest lives. True conservatism recognizes that some traditions got that way because they work.

Republicans have failed to close the sale that Ronald Reagan teed up for them. There’s a good chance Barack Obama and his cortege will meet them half way, but Conservatives need to make Liberal a bad word again. One voter at a time.

…we have two years.

I’d hoped to try to write something in honor of Veteran’s Day along the lines of the piece I wrote last year, about my hometown’s National Guard unit, which under various names has fought in all of America’s wars except Vietnam (for which the Guard was only selectively called up) and Desert Storm. 

I wasn’t able to do it this year.

But to be honest, I’m still kinda proud of last year’s piece.  And honestly, except for Jamestown’s Guard company changing names (it’s now the 817th Engineer (Sapper) Company) and the end of a second tour in Iraq (ended without serious casualties several months ago), there’s nothing new to report.

So I’ll link to last year’s piece, solemnly submitted in memory of an awful lot of good North Dakota farm boys and city kids, who left the lone prairie to fight all over the world for the rights we all share today.

Thanks to all of you, then and now.

Now that the Minnesoros “Independent” has accomplished its mission of serving as a local-regional propaganda outlet for the mid-to-far left – a sort of local analogue to “Media Matters” and “MoveOn”, even as far as sharing some of the same funding sources – and the election is over…

…the reason for having the “Independent” has apparently passed.  The Center for “Independent” Media has yanked the budget leash on its’ “independent” vassals affiliates.

The first sign?  The “Independent” has started whacking its staff:

A couple more names are victims of budget-cutting at Minnesota Independent: full-timer Andy Birkey and politics freelancer Britt Robson.

Birkey had covered LGBT issues for the site since its August 2006 inception; he was one of two staffers axed, along with reporter Molly Priesmeyer.

The last time I knew anything of the “Independent”‘s financials, the “writers” got a stipend for working part-time for the glorified blog.  I’d suspect – and will try to dig up info – that when they brought on former journalist and ex-City Pages editor Steve Perry, it came along with a big, and currently unnecessary, jump in funding.

But I’ve come to look forward to staff departures at the “Independent”, because it seems that’s when the actual truth comes out.  When Eric Black left, he let slip the Mindy’s Soros connection (the worst-kept secret in the Twin Cities alt-media). 

And now, Britt Robson – one of the Mindy’s few capable better writers, unencumbered by having to carry the water for his overlords in DC, lets fly (emphasis added):

Robson became a casualty when MnIndy’s parent, the D.C.-based Center for Independent Media (CIM), eliminated the freelance budget entirely…However, Robson — who writes about arts for MinnPost and sports for The Rake — was caustic in his view [of] MnIndy’s Capitol overlords. He says CIM’s national staff was less interested in the organization’s professed mission — “a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that operates an independent online news network in the public interest” — than boosting the party of Barack Obama.

“I was working with them fairly closely during the Republican convention and privy to interoffice emails,” Robson explains. “The type of things non-local editors were into were very party-race stories, particularly stories that embarrassed Republicans and promoted Democrats.”

Wow.

Kinda exactly like the Mindy’s critics have been saying all along, you mean?

Robson believes the local staff chafed at this purposefulness; they consider themselves progressives, not DFL party hacks. He points to Perry’s tenure as City Pages editor, when staffers went after Republicans hard but regularly gnawed the legs off local Democrats such as R.T. Rybak.

A reflexively pro-Dem agenda “is a bias that’s reflected more in the national echelons,” Robson says. “We both know Steve Perry; he probably has as little use for Democrats as Republicans, that’s his reputation.”

That was Perry’s reputation.

My opinion:  when the Mindy got started in 2006 under original “editor” Robin Marty, it was amateurish but earnest.  It had journalistic ambitions, of sorts. 

When Perry took over, whether in spite of his presence or because of it, the paper’s tone became more shrill, more propagandistic; it read less like an earnest college newspaper staffed by newbies, and more like a dumb, trite, phoned-in, ill-informed, propagandistic leftyblog.

David Brauer covers the utterly unsurprising “story” at the slightly-less-overtly-bought-off MNPost; let’s see if my comment ever gets out of moderation.

For one reason or another, I usually wind up driving somewhere on Saturdays between 5 and 7 – if not for the entire two hours, at least in bits and pieces.

And one of my favorite rituals during that time is to flip over to MPR to listen to A Prairie Home Companion.  Say what you will about Garrison Keillor’s politics (hard left) and personality (a**hole); I just plain like the show.  The music’s usually great; the sketch comedy’s often good, sometimes great; “News from Lake Wobegon” may be a funny fictional ramble to most people, but if you grew up Scandinavian in the Midwest, it’s more like a documentary. 

But listening to Keillor’s post-election show, I couldn’t help but think:  for eight years in defeat, Keillor was graceless, venal and churlish; it stands to reason that in victory, he’s utterly insufferable.

…(we) must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis – Al Gore

…and

This here map.

Dork.

My name is JRoosh, and I’m a Houseaholic. 

 Lori Sturdevant remains the DFL Party’s primary unpaid PR flak among the Twin Cities’ mainstream media (although Rachel Stassen-Berger at the PiPress is closing in fast). 

In yesterdays’ column, she pines for “Instant Runoff Voting” because – why else? – it would have put more DFLers in power:

Play the what-if game that’s the rage among Minnesotans who are sick of plurality-rule elections:

(…a subset of voters that includes poli-sci grad students, a few newspaper columnists, a couple of math majors who love to design “cool new systems for running society” in their spare time, and Twin Cities’ third-party members, who believe they’re everyone’s “second choice” for power.  Really – Ed.) 

What if last week’s plebiscite had been conducted under the vote-by-number system called instant-runoff voting?

For more on IRV, read here.  And I mean read carefully.  It’s  a system that only a math major could love or, for that matter, really understand.  I’ll leave the listing of IRV’s disadvantages to that piece, for now.

Here’s my opening bid:

•The Senate race might still be headed for a recount. But there’s a decent chance that it would be with DFLer Al Franken, not Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, in the leader’s spot.

[smug, self-serving speculation removed for brevity’s sake]

And how would the Senate race have changed in message, tone and maybe outcome if the voters’ second choices had mattered all along? Might the fight have been more about, say, health care, and less about old comedy sketches? (See how delightfully speculative this game can be?)

And the “Recount” would be done entirely by machine, centrally, at the Minnesota State Department, managed almost entirely by sorting algorhithms, far too complex for people – indeed, there’d be almost no way for actual humans to follow it.  Odd, really, considering that among IRV’s most ardent supporters are the same people who thought Diebold and the other electronic balloting operations were in the tank for the GOP (who’ve been curiously silent for the past two cycles). 

•U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann would not be headed back to Congress. The outspoken Republican culture warrior wound up at 46.4 percent on Tuesday. Every other vote cast in the north suburban Sixth District, I’ll venture, was an anti-Bachmann vote. 

I’ll venture that Lori Sturdevant was huffing paint when she wrote this piece.

No, I have just as much evidence as she does.

Seriously.  Was “every vote” cast for Jesse Ventura in 1998 an “Anti-Norm Coleman, Anti-Skip Humphrey” vote?  Of course not.  Many were “ignorant nutslap who think it’d be fun to vote for a wrestler” votes.  Many more were “Lower fees on my jet-ski” and “Hey, $1,000 back from the government!” votes.  Many many more were “I don’t care much about politics, but I saw Jesse Ventura’s ad, and it made me laugh” votes. 

In the Sixth?  I suspect (with every bit as much evidence as Sturdevant brings to the table) that the “Anti-Bachmann” votes were easily diluted by the “pox on both their houses” votes, the “Hey, a Norwegian last name” vote, and – rare as this might be – the tiny film of IP voters who realized that Bob Anderson who actually a fiscal conservative and former Republican. 

Note, by the way, her main reason for supporting IP so far (other than “pluralities make me sad”); it’ll get her pet candidates elected.  The ends, in Lori’s curious little world, do justify the means.

•Republican Erik Paulsen would still have the U.S. Rep.-elect title in the Third. My thinking: Paulsen is close to the 50 percent mark already, at 48.5 percent. My unscientific, skimpy sample of voters who opted for the IP’s David Dillon include a fair share who would have given their No. 2s to Paulsen.

So Paulsen benefits from real-life ambiguity, but every single person who voted for Bob Anderson was an “Anti-Bachmann” voters.  Such is the order of the world in that special little space we call “Lori Sturdevant’s mind”.   

•State Rep. Ron Erhardt of Edina would have been reelected. Instead, he was the second-place loser to Republican Rep.-elect Keith Downey in a city that Barack Obama carried with 55 percent of the vote.

Right.

Which is also in a state with a statistical tie for Senate, and where conservative Erik Paulsen won by eight points, both in Lori Sturdevant’s special little world and the real one!

How, you ask?

Don’t:

In third place in the District 41A contest, just 134 votes behind Erhardt, was DFLer Kevin Staunton. If Edina voters used IRV, would DFL voters have given their No. 2s to a small-government, socially conservative Republican, or to a maverick former Republican who was a prime mover of the big transportation bill in 2008? If second choices had been registered and counted, this one wouldn’t have been close.

Presuming, of course, that Lori Sturdevant – she of the selective ambiguity and constantly-shifting context in this district – is really that clairvoyant.

Three-way races have become the norm at the top of the ballot and are proliferating further down. Last week, the Edina legislative seat was won with 36.7 percent of the vote.

And as a result of which…what?

The earth opened and swallowed the city whole?

No?  The mayor, elected with a third-and-change of the vote, had to govern by compromise, as an executive with a plurality rather than a decisive mandate?

The horror!

Seriously – this would be the future of politics with IRV:  candidates elected with phony “majorities” (derived from obscure machinations carried out without the vaguest possibility of human scrutiny, without even a paper trail!), who exist in a political netherworld, not really certain they have a majority, but unsure of how far from majority they really are. 

 Every Minnesotan who thinks democracy should mean majority rule will be watching.

And every Minnesota who thinks that “a phony majority delivered by a voting system one degree of separation from a math-major parlor game is a way to run a government” should have their heads examine.

But not by Lori Sturdevant. 

UPDATE:  A commenter to the column asks: “What if we could instant run-off the worst columnist at the Strib?
We can dream”

The hard part would be actually ranking the “choices”.

On Saturday, King and I filled in for John, Chad and Brian on the second hour of NARN Volume I.  To kill the time with as little effort as possible, we did our “Top Ten” lists of best and worst things about having an Obama Administration. 

Because it beat doing show prep, that’s why.

Anyway, one of “best things” was “Conservatives make better underdogs”.  Another was “Maybe our ‘leadership’ will finally get the message” – but we’ll get back to that.

“Evil Conservative” over at TvM extrapolates on the thought:

My first feeling and it’s a surprising one both in how strong it is and that it’s lasting even until now – relief. Relief from the stress of following the election. Relief from defending George W. Bush all the time. Relief from defending Bill Frist when he wants to ban internet gambling. Relief from defending House and Senate Republicans when they get together to do something colossally stupid like, y’know, banning internet gambling!

For all of you on the “right” that tried to ignore all of us Forbes supporters back in 2000 – you may express your apologies, at least as re spending and economic issues, in the form of bottles of single-malt and/or good vodka.  Thanks.

The bottom-line: the pressure is off us at last. We have had some semblance of control of the federal government for 14 straight years. In that time, many Republicans have lost their way (Lott, Bush, Santorum), many have become embarrassingly corrupt (Foley, Abramoff, Stevens), and many are flat out hypocritical (Larry Craig, most who voted for socializing the banking system especially the No votes the 1^st time around who voted Yes the 2^nd time around when it was loaded with pork).

One last bit of relief that connects my points above about the past and my points below about the future. I’m relieved that our side is taking the correct steps to right the ship. We are not reacting like spoiled little babies like MoveOn and the nutroots in the DailyKos did in 2004.

Actually, I’m impressed by all three of the principals’ approaches to the transition, so far.  Bush is by all accounts being gracious about the transition (and seems unlikely to tolerate the vandalism and less-visible obstruction that his predecessor did eight years ago); McCain has done his best to quell the anger on the part of many of his supporters (although I’m looking forward to him dropping the hammer on some of his more petulant soon-to-be-ex staffers), and Obama has exercised his prerogative to be manganimous in victory.  All to the good. 

Suffice to say I’ll be particularly merciless to any rightybloggers that want to take the low road.  Don’t bother; its still too crowded with leftybloggers who’ve been squatting there for the past four years.

Onward:

There are no more targets on our backs. The media has to report on Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They have no choice but to be negative to sell, re-state their expectations of The One that they have promoted for the last 18 months, and resist the backlash now that the meme of the media favoring Obama is accepted by at least half of the audience – many who are refusing to watch or buy.

Not so sanguine here.

Of course they have a choice.  The media soft-pedalled Bill Clinton’s transgressions years ago (remember, it took Matt Drudge to get Newsweek to stop sitting on the Lewinski scandal?), and I see no reason to believe they won’t try again.

Of course, the media scene has changed since 1998; blogs, talk radio and a phalanx of alternative media have broken the logjam of “gatekeepers” that so benefitted Clinton.

Prediction:  Congressional Democrats will try to institute the “Fairness” Doctrine; it’ll be a dumb, ugly overreach that starts people thinking “maybe these people are too powerful”.

The Strib’s post-election editorial holds no major suprises – those all came before the election, when the Strib surprisingly endorsed Norm Coleman over Al Franken.

But when I say “no surprises”, I also mean there’s no change in their overall policy toward Republicans; “the only good republican is one that’s indistinguishable from a DFLer”. 

First, on Governor Pawlenty:

Despite losing out to Sarah Palin in the VP competition, Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s future within the Republican Party remains bright. He’s a legitimate candidate for the GOP nomination in 2012, when he might well face Palin again. What will Pawlenty’s national aspirations mean for Minnesota?

Actually, they’d make a great team:  Palin, given four years to polish her approach, has the potential to be a Reagan-like spokeswoman for free-enterprise, limited government, and America as a “shining city” (as opposed to a sick, old giant that needs intensive care – the central message of Obama’s supporters, if not The One himself).  Pawlenty could provide the George HW Bush role – the duo’s technocrat, the head-knocker, the detail guy. 

That’s unclear, but what is certain is that Minnesota needs the governor to provide the state with skilled and pragmatic leadership as we negotiate a deep economic downturn and serious budget challenges. In January, he’ll be working with a new Legislature comprising more DFLers and fewer moderate Republicans. Pawlenty should read DFL legislative successes as a call from voters for him to take a less rigidly conservative posture as the state addresses what is expected to be a major budget deficit.

Good lord, why?

Indeed, that’d be exactly the wrong “lesson” to take from the election.

“Moderate” Republicanism – the GOP of facile sloganeering and going along to stay in power – was the biggest loser of the last two election cycles.  If Pawlenty doesn’t see the real message – that real conservatism, in the guise of Michele Bachmann, Erik Paulsen and John Kline was the big winner (among GOP factions, obviously – we got beaten nationwide, surely enough) in this past election – then he needs to.   

More than ever, Minnesotans need and expect problem-solving compromises at the Capitol.

And to Strib editors, “compromise” unfortunately always seems to be “shut up and go along with the DFL”. 

We can not have that.

The Strib moves on to the Ventura “Independence” Party.

Even harder questions need to be asked by, and of, the Independence Party. After another round of weak showings and indistinct messages by its candidates, the IP’s reason for existence is no longer clear. What is clear is that IP candidates were spoilers this year, contributing to the election of candidates who lacked majority support in several key races. David Dillon, the party’s Third District congressional candidate who won 11 percent of the vote, hit the right note Wednesday. “It’s a legitimate, fair question. It bugs some people in the Independence Party that we have to wonder what our purpose is if all we’re doing is ruining the results for one side.”

It’s a question I keep asking my V“I”P friends:  since your party really is nothing but Jesse Ventura’s ever-eroding legacy, and in non-presidential years you barely cling to major-party status in Minnesota, and the party’s essense is really just the most irritating possible combination of “DFL-Lite” policies and third-party idealism (“We greens/libertarians/Constitution Party/whatever are not in power, and never really will be (shaddap about Ventura), so of course we can solve all the world’s problems – in our minds!”), and they will never again win a single significant office in this state (and Minnesota’s  V“I”P is nothing but the ghostly, solitary echo of what was once Ross Perot’s “Reform” party, nationwide – then why do you exist? What is the goal?

Don’t say “Winning elections” – the Libertarians say the same thing, with about as much credibilty.

Does the  V“I”P really want to just go on as spoilers forever?  As they soak up votes for moderate/pragmatic DFLers (and people who are suckers for idealistic sloganeering) I’m fine with that, of course, but for your (plural) own good, you might wanna think about it…

I know, I know.

I’m one of those Republicans who’s been castigating Democrats for the past eight years for frivolously trying to devalue our democratic process and the integrity of our elections by spuriously, speciously undermining confidence in our electoral process.  Their constant, fraudulent complaining after the 2000 election spawned a cottage industry in conspiracy theories (which left fertile ground for an even more fertile, and damaging conspiracy-mongering after 9/11), combined with the endless drumbeat of voter registration and voter fraud cases involving Democrats, have left a lot of Americans worried about the integrity and validity of our elections, rightly or wrongly.

Here in Minnesota, we’ve always been proud of running clean elections.  Like most responsible conservatives, I’ve done my best to try to uphold that impression (even as liberals spent years and millions trying to undercut former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer through callow rumormongering during the ’04 and ’06 races).  Watching the chicanery that’s hobbled the reputation of elections in so many other states (including neighboring Wisconsin), it’s been easy to feel thankful that we live here.

And so as the re-canvass of the US Senate election between Coleman and Franken (and Dean Barkley) proceeds toward the statutory recount, the imperative to maintain confidence in our system (even though it is currently run by doctrinaire DFL activist Mark Ritchie and his cohorts) is a strong one.

And yet, it’s hard not to wonder how stupid they think we are.

In what is becoming regular enough for a pay-per-view event, the monks are back to brawling in Jerusalem:

Israeli police rushed into one of Christianity’s holiest churches Sunday and arrested two clergyman after an argument between monks erupted into a brawl next to the site of Jesus’ tomb.

The clash between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks broke out in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

The brawling began during a procession of Armenian clergymen commemorating the 4th-century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

Just a reminder that all of that violence you see between Shi’a and Sunni Moslems today was pretty normal between the 53 flavors of Christianity between 500-1000 years ago.

Election talk?

Yeah, we got it. The Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM: 

• Volume I “The First Team” –Brian, Chad and John are off on assignment today; we’ll have a Best Of Strom from 11-12, and King and I (and maybe Ed, if we can coax him into the studio) will do a super-di-duper special fill-in from noonish ’til one, until we get to…
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I do our thing from 1-3.
• III, “The Final Word” – King and Michael will be dishing the Minnesota smack from 3-5.

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. On the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

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

(Title courtesy Al)

It’s been a busy, crazy year at the Berg household.

Not all of it in a good way.  But it’s been one of those things with its upsides.

Due to a variety of issues dating back a few years, I was in a subprime adjustable rate mortgage that I was having a hard time getting out of, last winter.  And when I say “subprime”, I mean Slobodan Milosevic could have gotten a better loan that me, at the time.  It was pretty bad; it started adjusting about a year and a half ago, and by the time it was done it was eating up about 2/3 of my takehome pay (and I make decent, albeit not spectacular, money).  That, along with a few other family crises, made things a wee bit tight around the Berg house.

So along about last Christmas, when my car broke down, I gave it a long, hard think.  My employer pays for my “all you can ride” card on Metro Transit.  My kids’ schools are nearby.  Most of what I needed to do in my life was walking, biking or busing distance away.  The upshot; if I absolutely needed to get by without a car (and all of its attendant bills), I could.

And by that point, I absolutely needed it.  The savings on repairs, car insurance and gas alone, at that point, made it worth it (and this was back when gas was still at or around a mere $3 a gallon).  Not having those bills kept things on the level while I sorted out the rest of the mess.

My “experiment” ended up running about ten months.  I bused to work until mid-april, when I started biking – which I am still doing, although it’s getting more and more difficult as it get colder.  The kids bused to school.  We did a lot of getting around via bus, bike, and good old-fashioned shoe leather. 

And boy, do I have stuff to report!

On the upside:

• Pants: I fit into pants 2-4 sizes smaller than I did last winter.  My belts are all verging on too big.  Everything I own fits better, unless it fit perfectly before, in which case it’s gotten kinda loose and baggy.  I like that.
• Money: I can say honestly that I bought not one drop of $4/gallon gas.  That aside, I saved enough to help get the family through what was probably the nastiest financial hurdle I’ve had, except for my stretch of un/underemployment back in 2003.  In some ways it was worse; when you’ve got little to no income, there’s an ineluctible logic to it all; it just makes sense.  You stretch, you scrimp, you do what you have to.  When you’re working hard and making decent money and still feeling broke?  That sucks. 
• Party: When you take the bus or bike to Keegans (or,  y’know, wherever) and driving a car is not an option, and you’re one of those guys whose tolerance has dropped from 4.5 to 2.5 beers in the past decade, let’s just say it’s one less thing to worry about. 
• Hah:  Back when I was an adjunct instructor at a MNSCU university, I had the option of paying my “fair share” for collective bargaing or, for $8 more, joining the union.  I joined the union, because most of my liberal, “pro-labor” friends had never been in a union.  I figured this gave me bragging rights.  In the same way, while I see no empirical reason to believe in man-made global warming, I’ve rather enjoyed being able to hector my “liberal” friends and neighbors about their patrician “carbon footprints” and gas-guzzling Priuses.
• Good:  That’s how I feel, these days.  I feel  better, walking and biking and just being generally more active.  My attitude’s better (and believe me, I’ve needed it to be better).  And sailing past the Capitol, seeing the High Bridge over the Mississippi in the distance, and zipping into the canyon on Saint Peter between Babani’s and Saint Joe’s is a wonderful way to kick off a work day.

Of course, it’s not all hearts and flowers:

• Expectations: I want to laugh when I see some of the lefties – especially the transit-oriented leftybloggers – yapping about running their lives on transit.  I notice that not a single one of them seems to have kids; children are the big clinker in the “transit-oriented lifestyle”.  If you have to get kids to an after-school event, it’s a major expedition; if you have to take one to urgent care, it’s either miserable (hauling sick kids on the bus is a rotten feeling, although I never had to do it) or expensive (cabs in the Twin Cities are nothing to write home about). 
• Metro Transit Is A Black Hole of Suck: Although the stats show that the Twin Cities’ metro transit system is less of a money suck than many/most other major cities’ transit setups, it is not ready for prime time.  The part that bugged me the most?  Bus-driver acquaintances tell me that absenteeism is a problem – and when too many drivers call in sick, and they can’t find a replacement in time (which is not at all uncommon), MTC shaves routes.  They’ll skip a bus departure on some of the lower-traffic routes – including the one I use to get home.  I can’t tell the number of times (usually once or twice a month) where I’ve had to wait the extra half hour for the twenty-minute bus ride home, because the bus never comes.  Even the hideously-expensive Ventura Trolley often runs a few minutes late, and if you try to ride it on weekends (as I did on Saturdays for much of this past few months, getting to and from AM1280 on Saturdays when I didn’t have the legs to bike from Fort Snelling all the way down Highway 13), the line is staggeringly likely to be down for maintenance along one part of the route or another, replaced by “55” buses that make the half-hour train ride from downtown to the mall an hour-long ordeal. 
• Minnesotans Are Terrible Drivers: Being a bike commuter was a great experience; there is really very little in life better than blasting downhill on Shepard Road or Constitution on a beautiful summer morning; it’s a stunning way to kick off a day.  But you can only enjoy it so much, because so many Minnesota drivers are too busy putting on their makeup, changing their IPod settings, or nodding off to Willie and Jay to pay attention to things like, I dunno, bikers.
• Tote That Load: One of the reasons I lost so much weight was because I spent so much time hauling loads of groceries home from Rainbow – about a 3/5 mile walk.  Yes, I could have taken the bus, but hauling bags on the bus is a major hassle, and frankly the quiet time was often nice – unless I had to bring a couple of gallons of milk and stuff home.  Then, it just got heavy.  And no matter how much you haul, you still have to go shopping in a couple of days, again.  Which nullifies some of the savings from not paying for gas and such, I thought, muttering to myself as I trudged home more than once.   Much more than once.
• Government “Services” Demean and Degrade The Consumer: After a few of those missed buses, and bobbled schedules that left me standing for wasted half-hours at one bus stop or another, I found myself adopting the sullen, angry listlessness that PJ O’Rourke observed among anyone who has to sit and bark on command for government “services”, only to be implicitly told “you’ll take what we give you and you’ll like it”.  It’s not the better me.

So this past week or so I got my mortgage squared away.  It left me with a few extra bucks I wasn’t used to.  I fixed the car, bought insurance, and updated my tabs.  For the first time in ten months, I’m driving again.  I kinda like it.   I do not plan on going car-free again.  But then, who plans on these things? And I’ll still be biking (weather permitting) and busing to work, because as long as there’s an option, it’s cheaper, and I just flat-out enjoy it.

It was interesting doing it, and knowing that I can do it.  And with that said, I’m more than ready to relegate it to the “ephemeral anecdote” drawer. 

Really, really ready.

It was Monday, November 7, 1988.

I came back from New York feeling pretty upbeat. 

And even if the stuff in NYC didn’t pan out, I had other irons in the fire, and of course my band was happening again.  Some of the things that made me me were starting, it seemed, to work out again.

Either way, it looked as if I’d be able to bid the whole miserable situation goodbye soon.

I was right, although I didn’t know exactly how right I was, or why.

Wyatt was already a month behind on his bills – rent, power, phone, the works.  Shane and I were both getting tired of carrying him.

It was about 10AM, and I was heading out to go downtown when Wyatt came downstairs.

“Hey”, he said in his fake Arklahoma accent, “I got a plan to get the bills caught up”

“Ah.  Cool”, I responded.  It wouldn’t have been the first “plan”. Some of them worked, although none of them lasted.

“Yeah.  I’m bringing some product up from Florida”.

“Well, cool”, I said, walking out the door.  “Later”.

I was a couple dozen feet down the sidewalk when it sank in.  “Product?”

I occurred to me he wasn’t talking Amway…

[Cliff Clavin] “Ahhhh, it’s a little know fact Nawm, that uh, America does not have a two party system. There is actually to date quite a few political parties. Truth be told, this year I voted for the Cool Moose candidate, a Mr. Bill Winkle.”[end Cliff Clavin]

To wit:

Car and Driver tests several Bond cars and is left underwhelmed. It turns out they may have actually used special effects in the production of these films! 

There are two ways James Bond’s cars are portrayed in film: seductively sitting still (often draped with beautiful women) or blazing across the screen in some of the most exciting car-chase sequences ever made for the big screen. But in many cases, there’s got to be some serious lens trickery going on: upon reviewing our test data for some of James Bond’s coolest cars, we found that not only are Bond’s rides seldom the fastest cars of their time, some of them couldn’t catch a bad guy on a bicycle. This could explain why some of those chase scenes take so long.

In any case, enjoy some of my favorites. The rest can be found here.

Aston Martin DB5 – Goldfinger (1964)

• 4.0-liter inline-6 (282 hp, 288 lb-ft)
• 0–60 mph: 8.1 seconds
• Quarter-mile: N/A

BMW 750iL – Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

• 5.4-liter V-12 (322 hp, 361 lb-ft)
• 0–60 mph: 6.3 seconds
• Quarter-mile: 14.8 @ 98 mph

BMW Z8 – The World is Not Enough (1999)

• 4.9-liter V-8 (394 hp, 369 lb-ft)
• 0–60 mph: 4.5 seconds
• Quarter-mile: 13.0 @ 111 mph

Aston Martin Vanquish – Die Another Day (2002)

• 5.9-liter V-12 (460 hp, 400 lb-ft)
• 0–60 mph: 4.4 seconds
• Quarter-mile: 12.9 @ 115 mph

One of my biggest worries coming out of the 2000 Republican Convention as a disappointed Forbes supporter was the thought that the party had turned into a support mechanism for George W. Bush more than for a set of first principles.

Jay Reding noticed the same thing, and examines its role, among other things, in McCain’s defeat:

From 2000 on, the GOP was unified around George W. Bush. From about 2005 on, Bush was as toxic as a mortgage-backed security. Political movements based around single individuals do not tend to last, and by hitching their wagons to Bush, the Republican Party sowed the seeds of their own downfall…

…The failure of the McCain campaign must be tied to the failure of the Bush Presidency. He fought on a completely uneven playing field. The media was in the tank for Obama, and the Democratic machine was energized. But that doesn’t excuse the mistakes of the McCain campaign. They had the right message in the “Country First” theme, but they never really used it effectively. McCain could have won, but it would have taken an incredibly smart campaign to have done it. Instead, the McCain campaign went for the tried-and-true techniques of Bush 2000 and 2004—in a political climate that could not have been more different.

Via whatever means, the GOP needs to reorganize itself – and fast – around conservatism’s first principles, and providing a meaningful alternative to the Dems. 

Clearly, the party showed that where we do this – for example, the Third and Sixth Districts – the message resonates with people:  liberty, prosperity, security, culture, limited government and family works as a message.  Certainly better than “better than the other guys, plus with earmarks!”

Oh, yeah – while the GOP became the Bush Party for  a couple of terms,  Jay notes…:

(Note that the Democrats are doing the same with Obama now. Sic transit gloria mundi.)

I’m waiting to see what happens when people wake up and find out Obama’s not going to give them bread and circuses pay their gas and mortgage bills.

In the wake of the “historic change” on Tuesday, the question “who has a better sense of humor – liberals or conservatives?” may become a pivotal one.

And the answers? Well, they’ll surprise…

…well, anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, or who is driven entirely by media meme and dogma. You know who I’m talking about.

Psychology Today notes:

To look into this question we approached 285 individuals in public places in Boston, asking them to answer a few questions about their political beliefs, and most importantly to rate how funny they found 22 jokes (see all jokes below). Some of the jokes we used were more funny, some were less funny, and in general they fell into seven categories: race, religion, golf, employment, Jack Handey’s deep thoughts, marriage, and family. Participants were asked to rate each joke on a scale from 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious).

At the end we had 140 self declared liberals and 145 self declared conservatives, and the results were not at all what we expected. As it turned out conservatives gave significantly higher rating to the jokes in each of the seven categories (see table below)!

So, is the stereotype of liberals as being funnier completely off? When we asked our respondents to self-report how funny they are, liberals indicated that they were funnier. This means that liberals are not finding life to be funnier, but they think they are.

If you’ve comparison-shopped a MOB party and “Drinking Liberally”, or gone to both Nihilist In Golf Pants and Clicking Spot for entertainment, this comes as no surprise.

This piece in the NYTimes analyzes the “issue” further, and draws more – and similar – conclusions:

“Conservatives tend to be happier than liberals in general,” said Dr. Martin, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario. “A conservative outlook rationalizes social inequality, accepting the world as it is, and making it less of a threat to one’s well-being, whereas a liberal outlook leads to dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and a sense that things need to change before one can be really happy.”

And of course, there’s a certain amount of Pauline Kael Effect going on, too:

Another possible explanation is that conservatives, or at least the ones in Boston, really aren’t the stiffs they’re made out to be by social scientists. When these scientists analyze conservatives, they can sound like Victorians describing headhunters in Borneo. They try to be objective, but it’s an alien culture.

The studies hailing liberals’ nonconformity and “openness to ideas” have been done by social scientists working in a culture that’s remarkably homogenous politically. Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one on social science and humanities faculties, according to studies by Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University. If you’re a professor who truly “seeks new experiences,” try going into a faculty club today and passing out McCain-Palin buttons.

Could it be that the image of conservatives as humorless, dogmatic neurotics is based more on political bias than sound social science? Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviews the evidence of cognitive differences in his 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” said that while there were valid differences, “liberals and conservatives are roughly equally closed-minded in dealing with dissonant real-world evidence.”

A friggin’ commie professor would say that.

(Via Sanden Totten @ MPR’s LoopHole)

If there’s one bit of fallout from this election, one constant meme, that I’d like to get past it’s the whole Obama Cult of Personality bit.

Unfortunately, it just seems to go on and on.

Caribou and Starbucks apparently think we’ve breached the Holiday season already.

The barista behind the counter this morning offered me a sample of their holiday cookies. I inquired as to how they would be keeping them fresh until the holidays actually arrived…

…well, I thought it was funny.

He…not so much.

I haven’t been to the mall of late, but I can only assume they are stringing popcorn, blinking lights and tinsel all over their stores as well.

Querry: Is this too much too soon or more of a good thing?

Discuss.