While the anti-neocons in the American left congratulated themselves and The One over the past weeks for meddling excessively in Iran’s internal poliics, Globalsecurity notes that the big winners in the unrest were the Revolutionary Guards:

The re-election appears to have depended on systematic fraud, as alleged by vocal opponents. What it represents is a defeat for Iran’s ruling clerical class, led by such revolutionary luminaries Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – and a victory for the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who are in many ways the real power behind the upstart Ahmadinejad.
The Guards indicated even before the election that they would not allow Ahmadinejad’s challenger, Mir Hussein Mousavi, to succeed. And they are willing to use any means possible, including mass arrests of opposition leaders and the use of military force against protesters, to maintain their grip on power. Iran’s ruling political elite have earned much popular hostility in the last few days, but they appear to have enough military support to withstand the protests for now. Regardless, the Islamic Republic may no longer be able to count on the people’s will to maintain its legitimacy

The result has serious implications for the Iranian people – including continued social repression, economic mismanagement, and the stifling of political dissent – and for the international community, especially the United States. The Guards’ continued political ascent and their military aspirations, including expanding missile and nuclear programs, will pose a new challenge to the Obama administration’s efforts to engage Iran.

The Guards are the kind of groups most dictators set up – a second army to play against the real army, like the SS or the Republican Guards.

June was a good month for ’em…

Most everyone thought Norm Coleman’s concession speech was gracious and classy.  There were some risible exceptions (see previous)…

…and Charlie Quimby, who notes:

I heard an MPR reporter say that cameras from The UpTake were excluded from livestreaming Coleman’s announcement. Instead, the news service shot shaky video from a neighbor’s yard and posted it here — a mute commentary on the snub.The UpTake has provided the most in-depth video documentation of the various proceedings associated with the recount, but has been systematically stiffed by Coleman’s staff. If Coleman does decide to run for office again, he’s certainly not paving the way with citizen media.

Now, let’s see if we can get this straight:  Uptake, an avowedly “progressive” “news organization”, gets access to “document” the election process from election authorities led by a “progressive” Secretary of State; they do a decent job of covering the proceedings (at least, the parts where their editorial stances aren’t included), but they are unmistakeably in the bag for Al Franken throughout the entire process.

So how is Coleman wrong for ejecting them?

I have no problem with partisan media; I am partisan media!  I have no problem in particular with the Uptake, who I believe generally tries to do a good job (with a few notable problems endemic to its’ “everyone plays!” participation model). 

But being partisan media has consequences.

I am a conservative blogger and host; I can fairly easily get access to Governor Pawlenty, John Kline, Michele Bachmann, and the one good Senator Minnesota has had since 2000, Norm Coleman, at least in part because my allegiances and the audience are pretty obvious.  They all know that while there might be a tough question or two, there will be no ambushes, no smearing, nothing rebroadcast out of context.

On the other hand, last year I sent invites to appear on the Northern Alliance to Senator Klobuchar, candidate Franken, Representatives Ellson and McCollum, and RT Rybak.   Only Rybak responded (we had a good interview!); the rest didn’t even give the courtesy of a rejection.

“Well, of course!”, the standard response went.  “You’re conservative media!  The Uptake is…”

Um…what is the Uptake?

“They’re journalists!”

Well, sure – and by the same standard, so am I.

“Nooooo, Berg – you’re a fire-breathing talk show host! It’s different!”

Keep your stereotypes to yourself.  I’ll put the interviews that Ed and I (and King, and John and Brian) do up against anything on MPR.  Of course that’s a matter of opinion, but it happens to be correct.

So – why the vapors over the “progressive” Uptake’s snub?  Partisan journalism has its downside!

Rasmussen sez  cap and trade not exactly lighting up the polls:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% believe the climate change bill passed by the House on Friday will help the economy. Fifteen percent (15%) say it will have no impact, and 24% are not sure.A majority of both Republicans (56%) and adults not affiliated with either major political party (52%) think the bill will hurt the economy. Among Democrats, however, 30% say it will help the economy, 23% that it will hurt and 21% say it will have no impact.

I bet if they phrased the question “are you aware that this bill will flense any chance you have of keeping a job for the next couple of generations, and crate up American jobs and industries and ship them to China, India and Indonesia as fast as we can find ships to put ’em in?” the numbers would be even better.

Yesterday, in conceding that Al Franken is going to be the next (puke a little in my mouth) Senator from Minnesota, the Minnesota GOP sent out a press release:

St. Paul- Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman-elect Tony Sutton today issued the following statement regarding the Minnesota Supreme Court’s ruling in the U.S. Senate race.

“Today’s ruling wrongly disenfranchised thousands of Minnesotans who deserve to have their votes counted. Alongside Senator Coleman, the Republican Party of Minnesota has fought to make sure every vote counts and all voters are treated fairly and uniformly. As we move forward, our deeply flawed election system must be dramatically improved to ensure our state’s elections are fair, accurate and reliable.” (Republican Party of Minnesota)

This election does bring up a slew of questions:  how did we wind up with a 500 vote swing over the course of eight months?  Why do we have ballots being counted several times (according to at least one SCOM justice) while we’re not entirely sure every ballot was rightfully counted once?  Why does our state have different recount standards in every county?  Why did every single question about the recount process break in Franken’s favor?

And the big one – can more than about 1% even come close to explaining what just happened?   I’ll allow for the fact that 43% of Minnesotans got what they wanted, and many of them wouldn’t care if it came by ballot or by decree, but I’d like to think this state could hope for better.

“Two-Putt Tommy”, a fairly generic anonymous leftyblogger writing at Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project (a blog that actively recruits liars and distributes 9/11 conspiracy theories), brought what every anonymous leftyblogger brings to the issue: Mthe sort of classy analysis that makes one thing “I’m so glad his vote counts the same as mine”:

Incredible. At the same time Norm Coleman played the “gracious concession” act, the State Republican Party showed their true colors with their official press release:In other words, “Norm wuz robbed.”

Well, actually “Minnesotans who believe Minnesotans should understand and have justified confidence in their election system were robbed”.

That’s the way the state GOP Party was under former Chairman Ron Carey; that’s the way it will remain under new Chairman Tony Sutton.

Catch that?

A guy who spent the last eight years chanting “Bush was selected, not elected!” is yapping about other peoples’ questions about an election that, over the last eight months, might have struck one as “contentious”.

The DFL may achieve a “classless society”, but probably not in the way they intended.

UPDATE:  In a phone conversation on Monday, Mr. Tommy denied having ever said that Bush was “Selected, Not Elected”.  While I was writing more broadly – many of Mr. Tommy’s fellow-travellers and blog-mades certainly did, and do – my sentence as written implies that he has personally made that claim.  Since I have no objective evidence that he did, I regret the ambiguity.

Today is “Canada Day”, the 142nd anniversary of Canada finally getting permission from the UK to get its own place.

Congratulations, Canada!

To honor the holiday, I plan on being nice and innocuous, cranking some Gordon Lightfoot, Rush or Triumph (but not Loverboy; ew), complaining about the price of beer, and getting into a hockey brawl.

Happy Birthday!

…when going to Canada to escape the taxes was like going to Scotland for the cuisine.

Well, the American people had Hope, and boy, did we get Change:

In a clear indication that Canada is starting to be considered a low-tax place to do business, Tim Hortons Inc. announced yesterday plans to shift its base of operations from Delaware to Canada for tax purposes.

Further, analysts indicate this is also a sign of unease among corporations regarding the U. S. business environment, where taxes are likely heading upward to deal with trillion-dollar deficits and proposed health-care reforms and the White House is looking to crack down on companies that invest abroad.

Remember when Democrats used to whinge that the GOP was “exporting jobs?”

Of course, Cap ‘n Enslave won’t so much “export” them as put them out on the curb to be hauled off, but I digress:

In Canada, the federal corporate tax rate is headed to 15% in 2012, and the federal Conservative government has called on the provinces to get to a 10% business levy by the same time frame–for a combined 25% rate on corporate income. Alberta is already at 10%. British Columbia will be there in 2011, Ontario by 2013, and New Brunswick will go down further, to 8%, in 2012.

In the United States, the top corporate tax rate is in the mid-30% range. As a result, the United States now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan, among industrialized countries.

“This is an indication that Tim Hortons has looked at the structure, and they think Canada has a competitive tax system … but I think it is forecasting into the future that Canada is likely to stay that way,” said Len Farber, senior tax advisor at law firm Ogilvy Renault and former top-ranking official at the Department of Finance.

Hm.  Maybe that’s why all those celebrities who promised to move to Canada back in 2004 didn’t actually do it; they realized that the US was going to become everything that Canada was, and vice versa.

(Via KB)

Patt Morrison at the LATimes talks with Karen Bass, Speaker of the California House of Representatives,  and a key player in California’s current fiscal meltdown.

And she does it by beating conservatives with a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals, of which more in a bit:

How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?

The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.

So you caught that?  Dissent isn’t merely unpatriotic – it’s “terrorist”.

Which is, naturally, the way lefties are going to play it in the future.  It’s straight out of Alinsky:   Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.”

“Sticking to ones’ conservative principles and asking your elected legislators to do the same” equals “terrorism”.  It’s nonsense, it’s irresponsible – but it does pick, freeze, personalize and polarize.

I don’t know when Karen Bass had time to read Josef Goebbels, what with flushing California’s future down the toilet, but the jackboots look divine, don’t they?

This is politics in the age of Obama.

Thanks, lefties.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

But unlike way too many lefties the past eight years, I’m not going to disgrace myself by whinging about the results, or chanting “Selected Not Elected!”.  Senator Franken is going to be a terrible joke, and the sooner he gets into office, the sooner the citizens of Minnesota can start realizing their error.  Hopefully.

But here’s the question Minnesotans (or at least Minnesotans who care about Minnesota and its future) need to ask themselves: how many Minnesotans do you think can actually, correctly explain how this election went from a 200+ vote Coleman victory eight months ago to a 300 vote collective humiliation of the whole stateac?

That percentage  – and I’d be amazed if it got into single-digits – should be the percentage of confidence you feel with this state’s recount system.  Because if people don’t have confidence in their electoral system, how does democracy survive.

(And before one of you lefties shrieks “then don’t undercut that confidence by dissenting from Mark Ritchie in any way!”, remember what you spent the past eight years doing).