While in DC next week, this would be just about the only map you really need.

Camille Paglia – no conservative, she – sums up the absurdity of Dem proposals to reinstate the “Fairness” Doctrine.

For starters,they just don’t “get” radio (emphasis sparingly added):

Radio is a populist medium where liberals come across as snide, superior scolds. One can instantly recognize a liberal caller to a conservative show by his or her catty, obnoxious tone. The leading talk radio hosts are personalities and entertainers with huge rhetorical energy and a bluff, engaging manner…The best hosts combine a welcoming master of ceremonies manner with a vaudevillian brashness. Liberal imitators haven’t made a dent on talk radio because they think it’s all about politics, when it isn’t. Top hosts are life questers and individualists who explore a wide range of thought and emotion and who skillfully work the mike like jazz vocalists.

I’ll cop to “Mick Jagger”.

Talk radio is a major genre of popular culture that deserves the protection accorded to other branches of the performing and fine arts. Liberals, who go all hushed and pious at Hays Code censorship in classic Hollywood, should lay off the lynch-mob mentality. Keep the feds out of radio!

The liberal response is “But President Obama isn’t pushing the Fairness Doctrine”.

I answer “he’s not President for five more days, and it doesn’t matter; the Democrat leadership in Congress is, and I doubt Obama would waste a veto to protect Conservative talk.

In any case, all of us who’ve spent decades fighting – and lately, winning – the battle for the Second Amendment can tell you; liberty takes eternal watchfulness.

So we watch.

It’s all over the news – the Campbell family of New Jersey, who infamously gave their children Nazi-linked names (oldest boy is named Adolph Hitler Campbell) has had the kids hauled off by Child Protection:

Little Adolf, who is three, was removed along with his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.

There must have been some signs of physical abuse or neglect, since I doubt DYFS can parchute in just because mom and dad are neo-Nazis with awful judgement in baby names.

When I interviewed neighbors of the family last month, Sally Miller, who lives down the road from the Campbells, said they had trick-or-treated at her home (not dressed as storm troopers, or anything–just regular Halloween costumes).

Adolf’s mom, Deborah Campbell, was pregnant at the time, and when Miller congratulated her, she joked about fighting a lot with her husband. Miller also said other neighbors had heard the couple arguing.

Miller didn’t discover the boy’s name until it made headlines.

But according to Fox News, Holland Township Police Sgt. John Harris said cops never saw any signs of abuse and, in fact, dad Heath Campbell seemed very good with his kids.

The chattering classes are presuming there has to be more to it – but there’s nothing publicly available (which isn’t unusual in Child Protection cases).

Of course, if it was all about the name, that should make your hair stand on end.  Let’s clarify this for you; your kids can be taken away if the authorities think you’re “too weird”).

With the approval of an awful lot of people, from comment section trolls to the mainstream media:

Obviously, if the Campbells were denying the children food that’s one thing. But is the state within its rights to remove children from a home because of the parents’ political beliefs? If indeed that’s the reason (the state isn’t saying so). That’s a tough question, but I think in this particular case most of us can agree that removing children from an atmosphere of obvious poison is probably a good thing.

Obvious poison?

Naming a kid “Adolph Hitler” is certainly a social gaffe. But worse than the parents (at least the overeducated Anglos) who name their kids “Che”?  In historical degree, maybe.

What if they’re following through; teaching the kids that Jews are subhuman?  It’s perfectly legal – indeed, protected by the first Amendment – for adults to believe that (albeit not act on it on more than a rhetorical level); should it be illegal for parents to teach their kids hate?  Wonder what the daughter that Garrison Keillor dotes on thinks about red-state Republicans.

The point, obviously, is that “poison” is a moving target.  Some consider non-cafeteria Christianity a “poisonous” environment, and they’re powerful enough to spark genuine worries that Christian beliefs could be viewed as factors in “hate crimes”.

This might be a better question for all of you who spent the last eight years worrying about John Ashcroft and Karl Rove shipping you off to camps in Idaho for voting for John Kerry; is this a precedent you want to let stand?
(Via AP at Hot Air)

Watch and tell me.

Karl Rove – whom some Minnesota liberals have called the Michael Brodkorb of national politics – offers advice for Obama:

Rove, who is considered the architect of President Bush’s election victories in 2000 and 2004, described the latest contest as a “very localized, particularized and, if you will, personalized victory for Barack Obama.”He noted, as evidence, that Democrats failed to pick up as many state legislative seats as past presidential victors from the party had.

“I love John McCain, but with all due respect, he had a dreadful campaign. And having a dreadful campaign, for an opponent, is always helpful,” Rove said to laughs among the crowd of more than 1,500.

That, indeed, was the most frustrating thing about this past fall; how McCain’s campaign could go from its upset win in the primaries and its pre-election conventional-wisdom status as the “moderate’s favorite Republican” and turn it into…well, the campaign we got.

With an eye to the 2012 elections, both strategists were asked whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin could re-emerge as a national candidate.

Rove said he thinks she will resurface if “she could grow to become a major policy player with wonderful ideas.”

[Co-panelist and former Clinton and Gore majordomo] Brazile’s rapid-fire answer didn’t miss a beat: “You betcha.”

Nothing really new here.  I’m just sorta working through the novelty of getting material about Karl Rove…

…from Rove’s twitter feeds.

You got it, lefties; after eight years in office, all of us on the right finally  have a connection to Rove!

Last month, the NHL took a huge step in the right direction, holding a hockey game outdoors at Wrigley Field,  Although the game was a great idea, and held at a near-sacred American monument, it couldn’t overcome one crucial problem; it was hockey.  I mean, who cares?

But we have another step in the right direction to look forward to: Moutdoor baseball in February.

It’s on February 28, and it’s the Saints, natch:

Some former and current Saints players will go to bat against a team of unnamed celebrities, sure to be bundled up.Saints spokesman Sean Aronson said the baseball field’s base lines will be shoveled, but all the other snow will stay on the field . . . whereever those piles may be.

Festivities will begin at 1:30 p.m. with — what else? — tailgating.

It’s for charity, of course.

Note, borne of years of blogging experience:  when leftybloggers start attributing conservatives’ actions to having “crushes”, just tune them out.

However, in this case…

A new video posted today shows more footage from the event, including evidence of what appears to be a Coulter crush on former Sen. Norm Coleman.

…I don’t think I ever tuned Chris Steller in in the first place.

Oh, yeah:

Franken, at one point gesturing as if his skull was exploding, asks, “What does that mean?! What does that mean?!”

I bet we’ll see a lot of that after Franken gets seated in the Senate.

At least I don’t do it while writing or commenting, unlike someone else we know.

Seven Cups of Coffee a Day May Lead to Hallucinations

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Consuming the caffeine in seven cups of instant coffee a day may leave you more likely to see, hear and smell things that aren’t there, U.K. researchers said.

People who drink at least 330 milligrams of the stimulant a day were three times as likely to have hallucinations as those who consumed less than 10 milligrams a day, Durham University researchers found in a study of 219 college students published today in Personality and Individual Differences.

Some habits are worth the risk. They will bury me with a bag of Starbucks Italian Roast.

One of the reasons I always liked being a solo blogger (until Johnny Roosh joined the staff last summer) was that miscommunications among contributors were pretty rare.

Of course, with bigger blogs, it’s not always quite so easy.

Over at True North, I comment on a flap between two of my favorite regional bloggers; my friend and NARN colleague (for the rest of the week, anyway) Michael Brodkorb, and Col. Joe Repya.  The flap grew into a few questions about how True North does business – partly with the prodding of some Twin Cities leftybloggers who, like addled kittens who see a shiny bit of foil, are trying to romp and cavort about the “story”.

I try to answer them.

Bin Laden sounds off on Gaza…

Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden has issued a new audiotape urging Muslims to launch a jihad, or holy war, to stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Because Muslims have taken it so easy on Israel so far.

Because one Israeli soldier pulls a stunt that’d have done Jack Bauer proud.

Or deeply full of angst and regret, in season 6-7 terms.

(Via Joel Rosenberg/Twitter)

1999 through today:  Hyperdramatic narcissistic anarchist fops attack Starbucks.

Today:  Palestinian sympathizers attack Starbucks.

I never go to Starbucks; it’s somewhere down below DunnBros and Caribou, when I do coffee-shop coffee at all. 

But I’m tempted to go now, just on principle.

For those moments when you just have to know – was it a SIG, or an H and K?

Because this is the kind of brand marketing I could personally sink my teeth into.

…you’ll have to go to Bogus Gold for your AmIdol coverage…

…because I’m sure not going to watch it.

There’s an add running on some online conservative podcasts lately; paraphrasing it, it says something like “join the resistance to Obama!”

Big, dumb mistake.

For starters, applying military metaphors to politics and government is (unless one is fighting a war) always, always a dumb mistake. Back away.

And beyond that? It’s the sort of talk that makes conservatives sound like too many lefties over the past eight years – the shrieking ninnies that spent the last years digracing themselves and their families with the depths of their obsession with Bush Derangement Syndrome.

And Jeffrey Lord is right; it’d be a very bad idea to sink to that level:

It will be well and vividly remembered, of course, that Bush mistakes on, say, weapons of mass destruction were morphed into “lies.” That a philosophical commitment to keeping America safe by taking the fight to enemies abroad was treated not as a serious difference of opinion or judgment but rather as evidence of a lust for deliberate murder in the mode of the infamous mass murderer of six million Jews. That this lust included a desire to murder the children of American citizens. And so on and on and appallingly and drearily so on.THE QUESTION NOW IS, should conservatives pick up the cudgel? Should Obama be Bushed in the style of Mr. Rich and his friends? For example, is President-elect Obama’s trillion dollar spending plan simply a wrong-headed (if spectacularly mammoth) example of even more government financial mistakes that will prove ruinous for generations? Or, in Rich-think, is it the mark of a venal liar (the new President Obama) scheming to rob average Americans blind in perpetuity to reward both his own political cronies and those of his party? Is the push to close Guantanamo a mistaken decision that could allow a collection of vicious killers to go free under the guise of legal protections never given before in American history? Or is it instead the action of a devious fool who has no intention of protecting American citizens because in reality he believes Americans should be murdered for their multiplicity of sins (against blacks, native Americans, all people of color etc., etc., etc.) during their history? Did Obama’s support for the election and re-election of the now-nationally infamous Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich mean that he was just doing the routine rally-around-my-party’s-nominee-for-governor dance common to all politicians? Or was he a sinister cynic and a willing participant if not a leader in the effort to elect as governor a man whose ethics were plenty visible to insiders before caught on tape trying to sell a seat in the U.S. Senate?

What would Mike Malloy do?

This is a serious question for conservatives. There are now (as there have been the last eight years) vital issues at play in the world. Issues of economics, constitutional law, national security, foreign policy, health, immigration and on and on. If conservatives start down the road of these Frank Rich-style Shallow Hal’s of the left — and doubtless there will be some unable, understandably, to resist the temptation — the conservative movement will not be back any time soon. Nor would it deserve to be. The fundamental successes of the Reagan era and, yes, of the George W. Bush presidency are devotion to ideas. In Reagan’s case it was a well thought out and deeply serious commitment to end the Cold War and put right (no pun intended) the American economy. Volumes have been written about the serious approaches inherent in launching the defense buildup that included the 600-ship Navy and Strategic Defense Initiative while rejecting the nuclear freeze or installing Pershing missiles over the vociferous objections of the American and European left. Or the intellectual work that went into supply-side economics and the understanding of tax cuts and monetary policy.

Read the whole thing.

And eschew the dark side.

Much, much more later.

…that even before he’s inaugurated, President-Elect Obama is having such a great affect on world opinion of the US among those that have hated us for so long.

It’s -10 at noon.

Next week, though?  Flirting with freezing.

An old piece of NoDak weather lore; “tough fall, easy spring”.

I may have made that up from whole cloth.  And maybe not.

We’ll see, won’t we?

…and finds the government stopped paving it, in favor of the low road.

General Motors and Chrysler flew their private jets to Washington to beg for some cheese.

Congress said “No.” George W. Bush said “Yes.”

So they got it, along with all the “strings.”

Ford said “No, thanks” and sent in their offense, announcing new energy-efficient and technologically-advanced models and boasting of higher quality and industry publication endorsements.

And now they want to kick some Detroit rear quarter panels. They want the Big Three to become The Big Ford.

Company insiders say the overarching goal was to separate Ford in the public mind from General Motors (GM) and Chrysler. As the crisis afflicting the auto industry has deepened, Mulally & Co. have gone out of their way to convince car buyers that Ford is stronger, greener, and more technologically advanced than those other guys. Executive Chairman William C. Ford Jr. sees an advantage if “people view us as a company that pulled itself up by its own bootstraps.”

At a time when GM’s and Chrysler’s financing arms have been hard-pressed to make loans to potential buyers, Ford has been using television, online, and radio ads to remind the world that it has money to lend. And executives have been falling over themselves to promote Ford’s kudos from Consumer Reports, which this month noted that of eight new Detroit cars it recommends, six are Fords or Ford brands.

In a dismal fourth quarter, it notes, only Ford, Honda (HMC), and Toyota increased their market share among the top six carmakers.

And yet?

This is why the President should have respected Congress’ and the people’s rejection of the bailout:

But GM, in exchange for federal help, likely will swap equity for debt and may emerge with a stronger balance sheet. By taking the high road, Ford could find itself at a competitive disadvantage.

President Bush in one fell swoop turned the American automotive industry upside down by rewarding failure and inadvertently but predictably penalizing success. Contrary to President Bush’s assertions otherwise, in the long run you can’t protect capitalism by abandoning free-market principles; especially to this magnitude.

GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to fail.

Ford Motor may find this out the hard way thanks to President Bush. Our nation may found out the hard way thanks to the President-Elect.

There are a few geographical peculiarities in this country that I have to confess I’ve had enough of:

• Yes, Texans, we know; everything’s bigger.
• Alaskans:  Like Texas, in the same accent Francis McDormand used in Fargo.
• New Orleans: When you describe the New Orleans attitude, you’re describing a 24/7 houseparty.  Most of us outgrew that in our early 20’s.
• We don’t care how you do it in New York.

But one of the most tiresome is the reverence Chicago pays to its history of political corruption.

Christopher Orlet at AmSpec has had enough, too:

Here we go again. Another corrupt Chicago politician hogging all the headlines. It seems like every time you open a newspaper (or surf the Internet) some columnist is snootily recounting Chicago’s colorful past as a Shangri-la of corruption and political intrigue, from Mayor Levi Boone’s 1855 Beer Riots to the zany antics of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Manhattanites may be ardent arts and culture snobs, but no one appreciates a good political scandal like a Bears fan.Just the other day Wall Street Journal readers were treated to the giddy recollections of Chicago native Scott Simon, who reminisced wistfully about the colorful history of Chicago politics. “Chicagoans and Illinoisans,” wrote Mr. Simon, “love political scandal the way that Milanese love opera.”

Speaking as a journalist who just happens to be a downstate Illinoisan, I’ll grant that political scandals are wonderful copy, perhaps even comedy gold. But as a disenfranchised citizen of a corrupt, one-party state ruled by Democratic party hacks (and I mean that in the best way possible) there is little to “love” in these continuous scandals.

Pride in rampant criminality that skews government? I don’t imagine they’d be as proud of it if were a Republican majority.

I had to touch on another incongruity from Victor Davis Hanson’s excellent piece last week on the ironies of 2008.

All that talk about how paranoid and “unconstitutional” Bush’s measures in the war on terror were?

You might not be hearing so much about that:

Bush’s Texas-twang explication that he kept us safe for seven years was laughed at, especially by a suave ex-Harvard Law Review editor Barack Obama on the stump. And then what?Are we now in February to see no more Patriot Act? At least FISA overturned? Couldn’t we shut down the Gulag Guantanamo by January 25? (as easy as getting out entirely from Iraq by “March 2008” as promised once by Obama?)

Or now are all these once so clear-cut issues “problematic” and “raise concerns”? The irony? Compared to what Lincoln, Wilson, FDR or Truman did during wartime, George Bush was a constitutional purist—and the former all had conventional enemies in wartime, not stealthily terrorists who entered our shores to murder 3,000 Americans.

Of course, it’

The issue was never empirical, never historical, but simply political most of the time. Once Bush was wounded over Iraq, his opponents smelled blood and jabbed at anything they could. Most current Senate civil libertarians voted for both the ‘that was then, this is now’ Iraq war and the Patriot Act, and oversaw the CIA and FBI as much as Bush did.

A President Obama will not revoke all, or even most, of Bush’s supposedly unconstitutional measures. Why? Because he knows they did not end our civil liberties but most assuredly helped to keep us safe.

In short, the media will grow silent as the issue now suddenly disappears—as we probably keep wiretapping and holding enemy combatants and terrorists in detention…

Gonna make a note to look back on this in a year or two.

Victor Davis Hanson,from last week’s excellent piece on the ironies of 2008, on the California gay “community’s” protests against Proposition 8. Hanson notes that not only did Hispanics and Blacks voted every bit as disproportionately against gay marriage as, say, Mormons and Evangelicals, but that in his (predominantly Hispanic) neighborhood people rarely use terms as polite as “gay” to describe gays.

But then…:

Why then did not gay groups march through the streets of West Fresno, San Jose, or South Central LA, where such opponents are concentrated en masse and could be picketed, demonstrated against, and megaphoned for their sins?Was it because it is more dangerous calling Latinos in Fresno barrios homophobes than screaming the same at Mormons in the upscale temple parking lot? Or was that to do the former questioned the fable of uniformly aggrieved groups who share a variety of racial and sexual grievances, while to do the latter attested to the easy oppression we associate with white male Christians?

Well, it does make sense – in facile, gutless kind of way…

Background for those of you outside the Twin Cities; we’re expecting a winter storm.  It’s actually the tail end of a blizzard that’s currently working over the Plains states).

So I was standing at the bus stop this morning.  I recalled “we’re expecting snow”, remembering the radar from the morning weather that showed a big front bearing down on the Twin Cities.

I looked around; no snow at all in my immediate proximity.

“Hmm”.

I looked down the street.  It seemed clear down as far as Snelling, maybe even Fairview (3/4 of a mile away) – but beyond that, down toward Prior, the snow was coming down heavily enough to make it hard to see past that street, about a mile away.  I could see the front of my bus, just ahead of the snow.

And I watched as the snow caught the bus, changing the headlights from sharp glints to diffused washes of light as I watched.

Literally – the front came in that sharply and identifiably.

That was cool.

Figuratively and literally.

The snowy winter and wet autumn points to possible spring flooding in the Red River Valley this spring.

On Friday, the North Central River Forecast Center, which tracks flood potential in all or parts of nine states, forecast a 90 percent chance of major flooding for Fargo-Moorhead before May 1 and about a 45 percent chance for Grand Forks-East Grand Forks. The chance of a flood crest reaching the 1997 mark is about 7.5 percent in Fargo and 6 percent downstream in Grand Forks.That forecast is “not likely to change much for better unless we get really innocuous conditions,” said Steve Buan, a hydrologist for the forecast agency, which is part of the National Weather Service operation in Chanhassen. “We’ve gotten a really strong kick-start.”

The Twin Cities left erupted in reaction to this news.

“While the citizens of the Red River Valley can defend themselves from floods” said U of Minnesota victimization-studies professor Jacob Lawrence, “it’s important that the response be proportional. The locals should only respond by making the water wet”.

Others were less conciliatory. “Water was there before the people of Fargo were; they plopped their city into the middle of the Water homeland” said Meghan Jeffreys, spokesbeing of Victims Unanimous of Plymouth. “We express solidarity with the water”.

A pro-flood protest is planned for Wednesday at 8AM in front of the Federal Building in Minneapolis. Protesters are urged to wear water in solidarity.

Barack Obama has made it clear you won’t get it from the President.

First off, as a refresher, there are leading economic indicators and there are lagging economic indicators.

The stock market is a leading economic indicator in that to the degree investors have the data and the visibility, the market tracks the forseable future, barring any unforseen events such as natural disasters, wars or terrorist attacks.

The 21 percent rally in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since Nov. 20 reflects speculation the worst of the recession is over, according to Biggs, managing partner at hedge fund Traxis Partners LLC, and Doll, chief investment officer for BlackRock Inc. Equities will probably keep rising, they said yesterday on Bloomberg Television.

“Sometime around the middle of the year there’s going to be pretty conclusive evidence that the economy has stabilized,” Biggs said. “That’s what the stock market is now looking forward and seeing, and that’s why I think that this rally carries further.”

Employment on the other hand, is a lagging indictor. Unemployment usually confirms what we already know, or at least suspect. The fact that we are hearing news of job losses is, at least from a macro standpoint, good news, as long as we are all resigned to the fact that we are in fact in a recession. Job losses usually mark the beginning of the end.

Context is everything. By no means is 7.2% unemployment severe in the context of past recessions. It’s been much higher in modern times, and around 5 1/2% of that is “built in” – represents the unemployable.

My advice is to reject media analysis of the economy, including – I mean especially – Barack Obama. His understanding of basic economics is impaired.

the president elect warned that failure to pass legislation enacting his proposals within the next few weeks risks letting the U.S. fall into a deeper and more prolonged recession.

…his understanding of politics and fear however is quite well developed, which makes him motivated. And dangerous.